Faced with the novel reality of genetically modified life in the early 1970s, scientists across the world issued a moratorium on recombinant DNA research and in 1975, gathered together in Asilomar, California for a meeting to discuss how the scientific community should proceed. Much of how we conceptualize biotechnology risk today can trace itself back to the discussions at this meeting, including the Biosafety Level framework adopted by many scientific agencies worldwide to categorize the risks associated with different types of organisms in laboratory research.

50 years after the initial meeting, researchers from Rice University, Stanford University, and the Science History Institute organized a meeting titled The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology to re-evaluate these same questions in the context of a half-century of developments in biotechnology. Together with Richard Murray, I organized and oversaw the discussions on one of the meeting’s five themes: Biotechnologies Beyond Conventional Containment (BBCCs).

Much of the mindset that emerged out of the 1975 Asilomar meeting fundamentally equated physical containment of engineered organisms with safety. But in the case of engineered organisms that are intended to be released into the open environment (such as GM crops, or engineered organisms intended for applications in bioremediation or ecosystem restoration), such frameworks no longer necessarily apply. What conceptual frameworks can drive the safe, effective, and fair governance of such technologies?

Read the Report

The participants of the meeting have compiled a series of reports, which can be accessed here. The reports specifically related to BBCCs are labeled as 1.x.