Professor Sends Student Ideas On DNA Company to Officials

A Harvard professor will forward the take-home mid term papers of his class--which examine Harvard's decision not to participate as a minority shareholder in a DNA company that would have used Harvard patents--to two top University administrators.

Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of History of Science, will send several of the key ideas from the History of Science 150 papers to President Bok and Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University next week. He said yesterday the assignment was suggested by students in the class who had expressed concern to him in the past weeks over the prospects of a Harvard-owned DNA company. "Tossing the question back to them seemed like the natural step," he added.

"We welcome advice and thought from any quarter on the DNA issue," Steiner said yesterday, adding "It seems very plausible that Professor Mendelsohn's exercise would help us through this complex problem."

Bok said yesterday that he looked forward to reading the papers next week, but he had no further comment.

Mendelsohn asked the class to use historical precedents to examine possible social consequences of a DNA company at Harvard. "If universities are to remain the centers for the development of new knowledge, we are all going to have to start questioning the standard of technological utility and commercial profit as a guideline for scientific research," Mendelsohn said yesterday.

The assignment asked students to compare the direction and aims of the corporate sector with the open, slow-paced and critical character of the academic scientific community. A profit-oriented emphasis on quantity and technological utility would suppress the quality and academic freedom of scientific research in major universities across the country, Rosalyn E. Jones '83, a student in the class, said yesterday.

Dayna L. Cunnigham '81, another student in the class, said yesterday that "the commercial influences on scientific research at universities is an attack on the scientific community that constrains their initative and creativity."

Cunningham, who said that the capital interests of certain industrialists already dicates the direction of scientific research at universities, added that the Reagan administration "would most likely conscript scientists into the ranks of an elite military research group to develop strains of recombinant DNA for defense."

Mendelsohn, who will hand back the mid term papers tomorrow to the 60 students in his class will select a group of the essays, with student's permission to give the administration next week. "I don't think we, as scientists, can never be insensitive to the social needs that technology can cure for society," Mendelsohn said, adding "but we have to be careful when these needs are determined by commercial profit, and not by a broader view to social good."