The Asilomar system
The precautionary method according to science: highlight the limit in order to exceed it immediately afterwards
Almost fifty years have passed since the first and undoubtedly most famous Asilomar conference in California. It was 1975, less than forty years after the scientific atrocities committed by the Nazis, but also by the Bolsheviks, the Japanese and the Americans, the latter subsequently snatching up the worst and therefore the best scientists to transfer them to their homeland to continue their research using new methods. The purpose of the famous conference was to organise a scientific meeting, the first of its kind, to assess ways of minimising the potential biological risks arising from new genetic engineering techniques, particularly recombinant DNA. The focus was mainly on the personnel directly involved in the experiments, but later shifted to the outside world: what would happen if the fruits of genetic engineering were to leave the laboratory?
It was at this meeting that possible solutions were proposed, adopting new laboratory safety mechanisms that also included physical containment elements with a biosafety level (BSL) design that provided for biological containment through the use of ‘unarmed’ host strains. Ultimately, these solutions led to the adoption of new federal guidelines for laboratories conducting research with recombinant DNA.
The meeting ended a previous voluntary moratorium proposed by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences that restricted certain types of experiments, thus acting as a buffer between scientific research considered acceptable and research considered more controversial due to its unexpected results for some and perhaps all too clear for others.
Today, Asilomar is often remembered and invoked as a virtuous example in the scientific field for careful risk assessment before implementing new technology, as an important reference point for contemporary discussion on scientific self-regulation and what it means to conduct research in a socially responsible manner. It was a kind of original precautionary method established by the researchers themselves, who would always and in any case have taken into account the consequences of their research, also endorsing that of other researchers in a kind of mutual support within the laboratory. While Asilomar focused on biotechnology, we must not forget other fields such as nuclear physics, which began the actual production of bombs after the war ended at the dismantled Los Alamos facility, or chemistry, which, once its use on the battlefields of the Second World War had been exhausted, began a new era by silencing the countryside of all forms of life, as Rachel Carson told us in Silent Spring.
Criticism of the Asilomar meeting, when it did arise, focused on details or obvious points, such as the discovery that even in the field of scientific research there were specific elites and corporations that imposed their will above all else, disregarding any public debate, as if there had ever been principles and neutrality on the part of the ruling power, particularly the military. When had scientific research ever felt the need for public debate? For scientists, this meant having to deal with people who knew nothing about science and, above all, with those who were not funding their projects. This ‘debate’ only took place when they were forced to do so by particular public attention or when a laboratory product became a collective disaster, placing the scientific consequences on a collective form of responsibility that meant nothing more than socialising and offloading the harmful consequences of the disaster they themselves had caused.
The Asilomar conference, even if the images of the time show us scientists with long hair and bell-bottoms, children of ‘68 and the great changes underway, was nothing more than a moment of discussion, but certainly not public, rather for those involved in the most controversial sectors, particularly biotechnology, on how to move forward, deciding on rules and making themselves the arbiters of compliance with or eventual overcoming of those rules.
Post-war atomic energy had invented ‘atoms for peace’ despite denials of nuclear proliferation by most of the states that were preparing for the worst ‘for the greater good’, not to mention the eternal legacy of waste and serious accidents in plants and, of course, the production of increasingly deadly weapons. With recombinant biotechnologies, it was still difficult to create a narrative to justify the ugliness of their laboratories, largely at the expense of poor people and other animals and all those non-persons in the colonies of the countries of the Global South. The experimental fields that were opening up were becoming increasingly impressive for some, while for others they were nothing more than challenges that science could not give up.
That is why, even at that time, researchers began to talk about safety, transparency, responsibility, control and risk management, all rhetoric that has continued to the present day, becoming inseparable from techno-sciences and embracing every other controversial field such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.
The Asilomar meeting was much talked about, becoming a kind of international icon, especially in the years that followed, as a fundamental moment in which science questioned its own direction, considering the great possibilities and therefore the risks that were opening up with the development of genetic engineering technologies. There was talk of small moratoriums for reflection and the creation of guidelines: the laboratory questioned itself and the laboratory operators responded with solutions, never binding, but on a voluntary basis, because scientists would in any case distinguish between what was good and what was bad in their work. All this was aimed at achieving self-regulation by scientists themselves, which would then set a precedent in the years to follow.
That Asilomar was not just any meeting, but that it was intended to mark the beginning of a new method, was demonstrated by the promptness with which the US government intervened after the conference to initiate regulation entrusted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an organisation composed of other scientists, the only ones who would understand the researchers’ perspectives. This new ‘regulation’ between scientists and the increasingly advanced new genetic engineering laboratories that were emerging at the time was possible because, as is always the case when science questions itself, only technical aspects were debated, without ever questioning the very meaning of their work and their research, because that would have meant closing those laboratories and stopping genetic engineering.
At Asilomar, scientists sent out an international message: there were no fundamental ethical and philosophical questions about what genetic manipulation of living organisms had meant up to that point and what it would mean in the near future. Behind the reassuring words of the guidelines, the foundations were laid for a system in which only scientists themselves would monitor their own work, setting limits, where necessary, on a purely voluntary basis, in what would become the new ethics of techno-science and transhumanism.
Why assemble DNA from different organisms? Why intervene in the germ line of a living being? Such issues could not be addressed by those who were trying to make biotechnology safe, to protect it from external influences and to ensure its future development. These may seem like contradictions on the part of the scientists of the time, but this was not the case, because by being the first to denounce the imminent threat, which was clearly already underway, they took responsibility and became champions of the present and, above all, future threats, while at the same time confirming all that cutting-edge research. In that challenge, as transhumanists call this research, their glory and recognition were at stake: to be the creators of such technologies, but also the only ones capable of governing and directing them, making them inevitable for the world1.
In the years since the Asilomar meeting, no barriers have been placed on the advance of genetic engineering. On the contrary, over time it has occupied every possible field, even engineering food and thus plants and other animals reduced to zootechnical guinea pigs. The latter, as we have seen over time, have proved to be an excellent model for new biotechnologists who, within ‘experimental farms’, have been able to think and act undisturbed towards the realisation of a human zootechnical existence. The enormous possibilities offered by eugenics policies and Nazi and military experiments in various countries had lasted too short a time. It was necessary to divide the fields and start talking about the salvation of humanity in order to continue, ensuring the containment of transgenic chimeras, which was obviously never maintained, contrary to the ever-stronger commitment to the development of genetic engineering in every field. Thus, in 2015, at an important meeting on CRISPR/Cas9 technology, we find two leading figures from the Asilomar conference: Paul Berg and Davide Baltimore, the former the creator of recombinant DNA technology and the latter the discoverer of reverse transcriptase, which uses RNA to create DNA. They were joined by another celebrity from the scientific world, Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology itself.
The topics of the international meeting covered somatic gene therapy, in vitro research and germline genome editing, demonstrating how many barriers had been erected over the years and then quickly overcome thanks to self-regulation among scientists. In fact, once again, CRISPR/Cas9 genetic engineering technology was promoted as a fundamental tool for in vitro research on humans and, of course, for tackling the usual rare genetic diseases. The barrier that was put in place in this case related to germline research, knowing full well that they and they alone were the supreme guardians of the experimental field and that when the situation allowed, they would move forward with a method that had been tested for decades. Since the first Asilomar meeting in the 1970s, researchers had not limited themselves to mere promises, and in fact, at the first International Summit on the Human Genome in 2015, the conclusions were even clearer than usual, stating that ethical guidelines (albeit imaginary) needed to be continually reviewed in light of the rapid pace of progress. To what end? What urgency or emergency was at stake? We would find out in the following years, but the immediacy of the discourse created the conditions for the removal of any barriers, however useless they had always been in reality, to the point that the inevitable Baltimore declared that it was even inadmissible to place limits on techno-sciences based on ethical considerations. The latter could no longer be considered the yardstick or the means to stop the assault on life with biotechnology. They never had been, but a new paradigm was emerging, still in the making, which as early as 2017 was seeking to take shape in global regulation of genetic editing, starting, as always, with rare cases. If the Asilomar clan, in the guise of Baltimore, neutralised ethics immediately afterwards, it then devised a techno-scientific basis for it, which not only was self-regulating but, with its own new propaganda and new ideologies fresh from the inclusive academies of sociology, pushed for the creation of a new universe of biotechnological meaning guided by technocrats, not so much to make science credible. In the forge of technocracy, with a furnace fuelled by the stakes of the former ethics, the fabrication of the new social science fits perfectly with the other engineering, this time of all bodies.
One of the best heirs of the Asilomar clan is the scientist Jennifer Doudna, who has also mastered the art of propaganda, making statements of repentance and relaunching her field of research, but underneath there is always something that drives her to pick up the scissors and devote herself to genetic decoupage. In fact, in 2018, together with the inevitable Baltimore, she will be on the organising committee of the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, where the birth of the first two genetically edited babies will be publicly announced. After initial criticism of the Chinese scientist, who was apparently conducting research not supported by the rest of the international scientific community, the tone shifted to a reaffirmation that such research must be conducted responsibly. Criticism was levelled at the experiment and the way in which the results were communicated, even though some of those responsible for the ongoing research were involved, but nothing concerning the direction of the research itself and therefore genetic editing on human beings. Once again, self-regulation by scientists worked, enriched by unprecedented and accurate international information.
Obviously, the never outdated instrument of a moratorium was subsequently proposed again, by scientists such as Berg, Baltimore and Doudna, who made fundamental contributions to reaching this situation, with the precise strategy of highlighting the limits in order to do everything possible to overcome them immediately afterwards, while ensuring the greatest possible consensus or social acceptance2.
After the birth of the edited babies in China, at the third International Summit on Human Genome Editing, news broke of a new experiment: the birth of a pair of male mice using in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a technique whereby embryos are developed by reprogramming cells extracted from two adults of the same sex. The research was carried out at Osaka University, following on from a previous study in 2018, which had led to the development of offspring from pairs of female mice. Here are the results of their ‘precautions’ and, as they wrote in the guidelines, all research is justified if one of the motivations is non-discrimination. In genomics publications, the results of this research are already being promoted as potentially useful for LGBTQ+ pregnancies, once again highlighting the alibi used, cloaked in progressivism, to break down the last barriers3.
In times of techno-scientific convergence, if the Asilomar meeting was considered so important for biotechnology, especially for the benefits to biotechnologists themselves, techno-scientists have also sounded a controlled alarm for artificial intelligence and called for caution, referring to the ‘Asilomar Principles’ with the inevitable proposal for a very short moratorium with appeals signed by transhumanists ready to dose terrifying alarms and reasonable rules4.
Fifty years after the first meeting in Asilomar, the meeting ‘The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology’ was held in the same place from 23 to 26 February this year. Once again, the topics of discussion were the threats of biotechnology, with the obvious updates to current research, focusing on so-called artificial life, artificial intelligence and the creation of synthetic cells.
Since the first meeting, we have seen many chimeras created between species with different DNA, not all of which have remained confined to laboratories, and what was once recombinant technology has been surpassed, or at least perfected, for an infinite number of recombinations for industrial and, of course, military purposes.
While the first meeting focused on genetics and was dominated by biologists from a small sector, this one had a much broader programme and an audience that included scientists from many disciplines, as well as environmentalists, bioethicists, lawyers, former government officials, national security experts, journalists and a dance company. Participants were given notebooks made from apple peel and badges with their names engraved in wood.
Once again, meetings such as this, and especially ones of this magnitude, attempt to draw boundaries and limits. They delimit areas of research and propose restrictions, in this case unanimously, on issues such as biological weapons and ‘mirror life’ created by the new possibilities of synthetic biology, which can create mirror versions of certain natural molecules by introducing ‘mirror’ bacteria unknown to nature into the environment, with unpredictable consequences for the body and the planet.
The CRISPR issue remained only in the choreography of the small show organised for guests around the fire, and other fundamental issues, such as artificial intelligence, dangerous pathogens, synthetic cells and genetically modified bacteria, did not find common ground. Fences are being drawn on issues that have long since become concrete and are no longer just theoretical questions. Suffice it to recall the extensive research into gain-of-function in biolaboratories – including in Italy with various projects to increase5 – where work is being done to engineer viruses and bacteria into unknown forms and to develop recombinant DNA and mRNA genetic engineering techniques for new, possibly more harmful mutant versions that are, to all intents and purposes, new biological weapons. We have GMOs that were first approved at European level for biotechnological serums for the so-called pandemic and then, as we know, imposed everywhere. Then there are the new GMOs obtained with new genomic technologies (NGTs), which are treated at European level as traditional plants, renamed TEA (Assisted Evolution Techniques) in Italy, and tested in open fields – and therefore disseminated – by virtuous public research centres6. Then there is military research, which is not, as one might imagine, confined to secret laboratories, but is carried out in respectable public universities and simply finances whatever it finds most interesting, wherever it may be, directing the results of entire sectors, and we do not have crowds of scientists protesting about this or fleeing.
The new Asilomar meeting is like a gathering of physicists who have come together to denounce the dangers of atomic research and the proliferation of nuclear weapons because of their compatibility with civilian use. This is so obvious, one would think, that physicists are careful not to say anything. The new techno-scientists have realised that they must defend themselves as a whole category: techno-science. From here, there is a continuous succession of alarms and remedial solutions, such as denouncing the gain in function in order to then build super laboratories, such as the one in Trieste, which is not even accountable to Italy for what it does. For decades, they have seen that the system of self-regulation by scientists themselves works perfectly, a real technical system that responds not only to money. Since the distant 1975 of the first Asilomar, things have changed, and the biotech empire launched by Gentech and Biogen has been well established for some time. Now there is not only the takeover of life, but its complete management.
At the recent meeting in California, their investigation into the possibilities offered by the enormous developments in artificial intelligence and biotechnology may be limited to partial aspects, such as drugs or some innovative treatments that are yet to be tested, but once again they will never get to the heart of the matter: the social issue of laying the foundations for the creation of a patient who is medically treated from birth with predictive medicine based on genetics and algorithms, and the issue of genetic modification of living beings. Artificial reproduction as the best way to come into the world and euthanasia increasingly available as the best way to leave it. Biotechnology in the fields and in the bodies of everyone, not just those who can afford it, as some naive militants still clinging to dusty theories maintain, but for everyone.
Change is wanted to be clear and radical, certainly slow, inconsistent and full of contradictions, but unfortunately not due to a lack of collaboration, but rather to getting caught up in its own bureaucracy: machines ready before anyone is able to operate them, or vice versa, people trained for non-existent technological infrastructures. In a context of almost total anaesthesia and emotional paralysis between emergencies that call for other emergencies, in a continuous leap into the abyss between wars, pandemics and climate catastrophes, in this destruction of bodies and meaning, it still makes sense for us to recall the human element with its potential to produce radical critical thinking that does not see in the various controlled alarm bells, as the Asilomar demonstrate, the friendly shore where we can dock. In those GMO reeds lie the worst pitfalls of lies, manipulation and the recovery of every genuine form of resistance to this biocidal and ecocidal world: the killer of a free and healthy life and of our home, which, as ecology teaches us, is our planet.
If GMOs are spreading in Italy through those virtuous universities and public research centres that should have put a stop to the predatory economy of the agrochemical multinationals that were once American, it means not so much that things have changed, but simply that it was not understood that there was an underlying sharing of the same techno-world paradigm, albeit with different means. So, after the new Asilomar and the sowing of new GMOs in the field, the only words from researchers that can still give us hope are those spoken after the umpteenth sabotage of a GMO-TEA crop in the open field, in this case vines. A researcher questioned about the incident declared that several years of laboratory research on GMOs-TEA had been ruined: this was a real natural disaster, a true precautionary method that showed that it is still possible to defend oneself.
Costantino Ragusa, April 2025, www.resistenzealnanomondo.org
1 Silvia Guerini, Costantino Ragusa, The ideology of the techno-world. Resisting the megamachine, Acro-polis, 2024.
2 Silvia Guerini, Costantino Ragusa (Eds.), AA.VV., The children of the machine. Biotechnology, artificial reproduction and eugenics, Asterios, 2023.
3 Silvia Guerini, Costantino Ragusa, op. cit.; Silvia Guerini, From the neutral body to the posthuman cyborg. Critical reflections on gender ideology, Asterios, 2022.
4 Resistenze al nanomondo, I transumanisti lanciano l’allarme sui rischi dell’intelligenza artificiale: nuove regole da sostituire alle vecchie per far si che continui a non cambiare nulla, 13 April 2023, https: //www.resistenzealnanomondo. org/necrotecnologie/i-transumanisti-lanciano-lallarme-sui-rischi-dellintelligenza-artificiale-nuove-regole-da-sostituire-alle-vecchie-per-far-si-che-continui-a-non-cambiare-nulla/
5 Costantino Ragusa, Il biolaboratorio mondo (The world biolaboratory), in L’Urlo della Terra, no. 11, July 2023, https://www.resistenzealnanomondo.org/necrotecnologie/il-biolaboratorio-mondo-costantino-ragusa/
6 Costantino Ragusa, OGM – TEA: The attack on life continues, in L’Urlo della Terra, no. 12, July 2024, https://www.resistenzealnanomondo.org/necrotecnologie/ogm-tea-lattacco-al-vivente-continua/; Costantino Ragusa, The new GLOBAL GENETIC ORDER also passes through the earth. The ‘new’ GMOs are coming, in L’Urlo della Terra, no. 10, July 2020, https://www.resistenzealnanomondo.org/necrotecnologie/il-nuovo-ordine-genetico-mondiale-passa-anche-dalla-terra-in-arrivo-i-nuovi-ogm/