Word: insulin
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Researchers at the University of California have apparently already broken strict Federal rules recently designed to curb the potential biological hazards of recombinant DNA research. The California violation occurred in a well publicized experiment culminating last May when researchers inserted the rat gene that controls insulin production into bacteria that had not been certified for use in DNA experiments. The experiment created no hazard and researchers claim they destroyed it as soon as they realized their error. They later completed the experiment with certified bacteria...
...edition of The Crimson, Laurie Hays cites the charges of unnamed Harvard scientists "that because Cambridge opponents delayed construction of a P-3 facility, used to contain hazardous experimentation, a team of researchers from the University of California was able to create insulin though recombinant DNA experimentation before the Harvard researchers could do so." The title of the article perhaps best sums up the attitude of these scientists who wish to remain unidentified: "DNA Results Irk Harvard Scientists...
...sorry Harvard did not make the insulin breakthrough. The scientists are part of our community and we are proud of their accomplishments. But M.I.T. is part of our community, too, and a 20 minute bus ride will take any Harvard scientist to the P-3 lab at M.I.T. Let's hope M.I.T. will share their facility in order to contribute to knowledge. And let's not forget that the larger community is footing the bill for this research and not only has the right to know what is going on, it has the right to say no if it deems...
...guidelines adopted by the National Institutes of Health (to lessen the risk of accidentally producing an E. coli that might be harmful), such less readily available material would have required a far more stringent level of physical containment in the lab than any yet available. Instead, they experimented with insulin genes from rats. Placing this foreign DNA inside enfeebled E. coli, they were delighted to find that the genetic material was replicated every time the bacteria divided. But the scientists do not yet know whether the rat genes -in the language of molecular biology -actually expressed themselves, that is, produced...
...matter; the experimenters are convinced that they will soon be able to "switch on" the genes. Said Rutter: "I'd be surprised if it took more than a year or two." The production of human insulin will probably take much longer. Yet meanwhile, the experiments themselves should help scientists clarify the complex chemistry of insulin and better understand diabetes-which is not a single disease, as was once thought by doctors, but a variety of metabolic disorders that may afflict as many as 10 million people in the U.S. alone...