Biotechnology and the Faustian Dilemma

Scientists, politicians, and corporate leaders were just beginning to get over the initial shock caused by the announcement of a ten-year, $60 million grant for research in genetic engineering given to Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital by a German firm last month, when they were jolted again on Monday. Du Pont, the chemical and drug conglomerate that dominates the state of Delaware, had promised $6 million to another group of geneticists, and once again the recipients are associated with Harvard--this time through the Medical School itself.

Since the University made headlines last fall with a proposal for joining one of its faculty members in sponsoring a commercial genetic research concern, Harvard has become closely associated with the scramble to squeeze profits from exotic biomedical innovations. The two most recent agreements with Du Pont and the German company, Hoechst-Roussel, differ vastly from the failed attempt to set up a business with Mark S. Ptashne, professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. But all three cases have contributed to a nation-wide reevaluation of academic-commercial links and a hurried attempt by members of Congress and the administration to catch up with a trend some say could lead to academic disaster before it produces any scientific breakthroughs.

Biotechnology--the commercial use of biological processes, including genetic engineering--has received a great deal of attention from the scientific community as a potential source of medical and industrial advancements. By "splicing" and rearranging genes, researchers believe they may someday produce such crucial substances as insulin and interferon, as well as the means to accelerate food and energy production. One laboratory has already announced that it has found a vaccine for hoof-and-mouth disease, the deadly ailment that afflicts cattle.

Thus, eager to keep up with the latest discoveries made in university labs and, in the long run, hopeful that basic research will lead to marketable products. Du Pont, Hoechst, and other companies have readily supplied cash for projects that in the past have been backed primarily by federal agencies. Large research universities like Harvard have openly sought these new sources of income, arguing, as President Bok did in his annual report this year, that with extreme vigilance, academic values will not be threatened by the new corporate connections.

Yet in the past month alone, members of the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, officials of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and high-ranking university officials from the United States and Canada have met independently to review Harvard's affiliations with industry and to voice their fears over the growing field of biotechnology.

At a recent gathering of the NIH advisory committee, Donald Fredrickson, director of that agency, questioned an official from Massachusetts General about whether the quality and independence of the hospital's research would be compromised by industrial support. Ronald Lamont-Havers, director of research at the facility, defended the Hoechst agreement as specifically designed to preserve academic integrity, adding that similar fears were raised 30 years ago about increasing federal funding for campus research. He noted in a recent interview that without the government, which today supports 75 per cent of the nation's biomedical research universities would "never have achieved anything close to what we see now."

Lamont-Havers contends that a corporation will not necessarily begin dictating research policy to a university or hospital just because it helps support work going on there. He told the NIH that Hoechst's main interests are to obtain up-to-date information and have a place to train its best young scientists. Alan C. Olsson, dean for resources at the Med School and one of the masterminds behind the Du Pont deal, agrees emphatically, saying that although Du Pont has not requested training positions for its people, the company's main interest "is forwarding investigations that will lead to scientific advancements, not racing to get the rights to discoveries that may never be made."

Under the Du Pont and Hoechst agreements, the grant recipient still retains the patents for discoveries made with corporate funds, but the companies are given exclusive licenses to develop and market any products that result. One concern described in an interview by Doris Merritt, a research and training resources officer at NIH, is that private benefactors will pressure scientists to hold off on patenting their innovations--keeping them secret--until the discoveries "are fine-tuned and ready to be sold." In what has become a widely quoted warning, Merritt told the NIH conference. "Publish or perish doesn't need the corollary of patent or perish."

After appearing at the NIH gathering and a subsequent set of hearings before the Science and Technology Committee, Lamont-Havers expresses impatience with "many deliberate misconceptions" associated with the Hoechst agreement and adds that "of course everything will be published as if there was no industrial money involved--we are still scientists first." Referring specifically to the House hearings, he says that "like anyone else, Congressmen are interested in gaining publicity when an important event occurs. That was their main motivation." After grilling Lamont-Havers, one committee member, Rep. Albert Gore (D. Tenn.) emerged from the conference room to tell reporters that the ultimate victims in the Hoechst case may be American taxpayers who have indirectly supported fundamental research that will now benefit foreign investors--a "technology leak," as one of his aides later called it.

Most scientists seem less concerned about Gore's patriotic rhetoric than about the possibility that universities will reshuffle research agendas to suit corporate needs. At a recent meeting of 400 Canadian and American university administrators in Toronto, Roderic Park, vice-chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley said, "Proprietary research has no place on campuses. Students and faculty members must be able to pursue their research where their interests lead them and publish it for their own career benefit," according to a report in The Chronicic of Higher Education. But Olsson says that, if necessary, the Med School, and presumably other campus facilities, would be able to separate completely those projects undertaken with private funds from other work. "It will entail paperwork and guidelines, and it is something that can be monitored," he explains.

It is just such a set of guidelines that would probably mollify Rep. Gore, Vice-Chancellor Park and others, Lamont-Havers concedes, adding that Mass General has been hard at work on regulations for industrial affiliations since 1975. In his annual report, Bok said he would urge the entire faculty to hasten its efforts along a similar vein.

Meanwhile, though, Mass General has declined to comply with a request from Congress to reveal the details of its agreement with Hoechst, a position that will no doubt continue to create distrust and may result in a formal subpoena, staffers on the Science and Technology Committee say. Harvard does not anticipate formal investigation of the Du Pont grant, but the same Congressional sources indicate that they will scrutinize the information available before deciding whether the public deserves to know more. "Unless we hear some good reason, there seems to be no benefit in this type of interference," Lamont-Havers says, complaining that Congress has already "mixed apples and oranges and come up with pears" in analyzing the information it has on the Hoechst agreement.

No one, of course, is proposing that politicians legislate scientific restricitons for universities. "In all of this, there has never been an indication that Congress would intervene directly, only through encouraging schools to keep track of what they are getting into," says an aide to Gore. And when the emotional speeches about Faustian dilemmas give way to policy making, universities may well end up having things as they wish. Before she took her position with the NIH. Doris Merritt served as dean for research at Indiana University, and, like most government officials with an academic background, she still trusts the scientific community to be its own watch dog. "Universities have had a remarkable record in terms of regulating themselves in the past. The public and the government--for lack of knowledge and sophistication--may have to put their faith in university leadership." In the short run, they will have little choice, as scholars at Harvard and elsewhere promise to accelerate a process that is already well under way.