For Delivery at:  "Les Droits de 1'Homme and Scientific Progress

A Symposium Sponsored by The Smithsonian
Institution and The National Academy of
Sciences

Maxine F. Singer

October 27, 1989

The word frontier is used repeatedly to describe

original scientific work. Scientists who do such work are
frequently called pioneers. But excessive use has dulled the
impact of these descriptions.
have become tiresome and empty.

As metaphors for science they

     In 1944, when the words were used by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Vannevar Bush,
President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and
Roosevelt's war-time sci'ence advisor,
inspiring vision for the future. In mid-November of that year,
45 years ago, Roosevelt wrote to Bush:

they signified an

'*New frontiers of the mind are before us,
and if they are pioneered with the same
vision, boldness, and drive with which we
have waged this war, we can create a fuller
and more fruitful employment and a fuller

and more fruitful life."

Continuing, Roosevelt asked Bush how the lessons,

learned from coordinating the nation's scientific effort during
World War 11, could be employed in peacetime. Bush's formal
response came in July of 1945. It was entitled "Science, the

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Endless Frontier'# and it established a framework for American
science that has lasted for almost half a century. Bush's vislon
had two components. One was the establishment of the National
Science Foundation. In 1950 the dream was realized, and the
Foundation, along with the contemporaneous growth of the National
Institutes of Health, demonstrated the United States' commitment to
foster research in the national interest, broadly conceived. The
second component of Bush's vision was the idea of science as

frontier.


     From the first settlement of the new world until the early
years of the 20th century, geographic frontiers, the move westward,
provided unlimited opportunities for succeeding generations of
Americans and for new iqnigrants alike. Serious scholarly analysis
of the frontier is said to have begun with publication of Frederick
Jackson Turner's paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History" in 1893. And for many years, Turner's frontier hypothesis
was the framework for American historians. It is almost certainly
Turner's ideas that Roosevelt and Bush had in mind when they used
the words pioneer and frontier.

But, even by 1945, Turner's hypothesis was being seriously

questioned. That notion'of frontier is, in words phrased by A.B.
Giamatti, a romantic "nostalgia, masquerading as historical memory,"
had begun to fade under more realistic historical examination. Yet,
the romanticism persists today. Its elements are surely condensed
into the continuing metaphoric use of the words: 'frontier and
pioneer' for science.

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However, current concepts about the historical

frontier provide a complex and more illuminating metaphor for
contemporary biological research and the culture in which it
thrives, than did the romance. By examining science in this


new frontier context we can perhaps dispel some of the popular
romanticism, a curious mixture of awe, dependence, and fear.
Science, like the geographic frontier, will then be more

realistically understood.

      In this talk I will use several aspects of the
historical frontier as background for illustrating contemporary
biological research and its interaction with and impact on the

world at large.

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      One of the frontier myths holds that pioneer society
was overwhelmingly youthful. A foreign visitor to Chicago in

about 1845, when the city was just emerging, recalled that he
saw "neither an old man nor a gray hair" (W.A. Williams). In

science too, productivity seems to go with youth. Young people
populate biology labs, providing hard work, originality, and
irreverence. Several of the most important discoveries of the

last 4 decades were made by very young people.

For example, the prediction in 1964, of the existence

of reverse transcription, the copying of RNA molecules into
DNA, was made by Howard Temin, then 30 years old. The notion
challenged what was called "the central dogma,1v that biological
information flows unidirectionally from DNA to RNA to protein.

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The confirmation of Temin's prediction came 6 years later when
Temin, and independently, David Baltimore, then age 32
demonstrated that retroviruses encode a reverse transciptase
enzyme. Yet, as important as the work seemed, in 1970, its
full significance was hardly discerned. Now we know, from the
work of both young and older biologists, that reverse
transcription is not restricted to viruses, but is encoded in
cells. Substantial portions of chromosomal DNA originated as
reverse transcripts. Many of the transposable elements in the

DNA of a wide range of organisms move by processes utilizing
reverse transcriptases that the elements encode. Moreover,
some recent and highly plausible hypotheses about the origins
of cellular processes and coding systems suggest that RNA not
DNA was the first informational nucleic acid on the planet, and
that reverse transcriptwe was an early enzyme, responsible for
converting the initial life forms to our ancestral DNA

organisms.

The vitality of research depends on a steady flow of

young minds and hands. The astonishing expansion of our
understanding of life on the planet over the last 40 years was
fueled by a panoply of fellowship opportunities, by the federal
government in the United States, and by private foundations,
fellowships at both pre-doctoral and post-doctoral levels.
Sustaining a frontier requires that these continue. But
sustaining the frontier also requires a steady if not
increasing population of gifted students to take up the
fellowships. Here, we in this country face great difficulties.
Dozens of blue-ribbon panels have concluded that at the
elementary and secondary school levels, American children

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receive inadequate instruction in science. Of the few that

enter college intending to major in science, many fall by the
wayside, finding their earlier preparation inadequate or the -

teaching unattractive, or both.

Faculties all over the country report a decline in the

quality of students at pre- and postdoctoral levels. American

industry finds it increasingly difficult to find qualified
engineers, technicians, and scientists. Everyone agrees that

we have a crisis.

Many things can be said about this crisis. What I

would like to stress today is only one of them, the one that

reminds us that neither the historical nor the scientific

frontiers can succeed with youth alone. Aside from continuing

research, special responsibilities devolve onto older

scientists, including the responsibility for science

education. Walter E. Massey, President of the American

Association for the Advancement of Science, recently put the

case sharply in an article in Science Magazine. He urges that

scientists and engineers make significant personal and

institutional commitments to science education. And it is

really only the more established scientists that have access to

the resources and clout that can get this accomplished.

There are of course other vital activities (a dizzying

number of these) for those no longer describable as youths: to

continue their research, to enrich their own and their students

research with experience, memory of the literature, with wisdom

and criticism, to edit journals, to run departments, to serve

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on the committees that provide the infrastructure so vital to

research. Many senior people are in fact too busy, the demands

on their time too great to permit thoughtful actions. And,

besides these obvious and essential contributions, events of

the last few years highlighted another, less frequently

recognized responsi- bility: to transmit to new generations

the ethical foundations of the scientific community. These

foundations, or standards, derive from the nature of science

itself. Without scrupulous honesty and rigorous

self-criticism, science fails. To increase understanding of

nature requires that nature be confronted squarely, as

impartially as possible. Sadly, breaches in these standards

have occurred in the last few years and any delinquency

diminishes the scientif* endeavor in fact and in name. We have

learned to our deep regret that powerful people and people

seeking to be powerful are ready to use the breaches, rare

though they are, and even allegations of breaches, to condemn

the enterprise. They are aided by the deep public

misunderstanding and consequent distrust of intellectual

endeavors in general and scientific endeavors in particular in

our country, phenomena that have existed since the nation was

new. There is no question about the fundamental integrity of

current scientific research. The evidence lies in the science

itself, and its magnificent and uncontrovertible discoveries.
Yet, many in the scientific community recognize a diminishing

awareness of the broadly consensual standards. Those who

teach, the more senior members of the community, should teach
not only the science, but, by example and persuasion, the

underlying ethical demands.

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William A. Williams, talking of the frontier days in

the upper Mississippi Valley, in his book The Contours of
American Historv makes a stimulating comment in this regard:

(The frontier brought) "wealth, political
freedom and social acceptance ..... but it also
produced a paradoxical mystique. One half of
it was as hard-souled as any in the world,
with one eye roving for the next unclaimed
watering-place or likely looking acreage and
one hand on a gun. Though the other half was
in contrast warm and humane and cooperative,
its fundamental nature was one that
encouraged the evasion of the less obvious
but subtly vital problems of social  and

personal relations. 'I

Another aspect of the historical frontier that

illuminates science is the question of expansion.
elements at least, are important in defining the direction of
geographic expansion: the discovery of routes, the ease of
following the paths, and the bounty to be found upon arrival.
The same is true in biological research. The success of

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molecular genetics in so many areas of biology over the past
fifteen years illustrates the point.  New methods opened routes
to long standing questions: the methods used to study microbial
genetics and bacteriophage, recombinant DNA techniques (that
is, molecular cloning), DNA sequencing, increasingly powerful

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separation methods for biological macromolecules,  advanced
immunological methods including monoclonal antibodies,  and most
recently the polymerase chain reaction. Along the way, the more
difficult, tedious versions of the techniques have been replaced
by rapid, often automated methods that anyone can master. And
the bounty has been great.

entities, not abstract ideas. Fundamental new discoveries are

announced almost daily ... if not flashy enough, or clinical

enough for the New York Times, then certainly interesting enough
to biologists to be reported in Science or Nature Magazine.

We now manipulate genes as chemical

But expansion, like youth needs to be tempered. In the

American west, the exploitation of natural resources and the
conquest of indigenous pppulations left a legacy of formidable,
baffling problems.  Arrogant assumptions about the territory and
people being invaded exacerbated the inevitable difficulties.
This suggests a parallel with molecular genetics. The nature of

the changes in genetics that started in the late 1940s and

continued into the 50s and 60s, in particular the remarkable
discoveries of the phage group, were seen as an invasion of
biochemistry's territory. The perceived, and sometimes actual

arrogance of the invaders, together with the perceived and
sometimes actual arrogance of those who felt invaded inhibited

the formation of bridges between the two disciplines. When

finally built, those bridges, like the railroad out west, sped

expansion and financial support. A similar situation still

exists at the interface between molecular genetics and those

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biologies that deal with whole organisms and populations.
are some signs that bridges are abuilding.
the arid debates over reductionism versus holism will abate.
When this happens, we will see another great leap in our
understanding of nature.

There

There is hope that'

Frontier people clashed with the society they left behind

as well as the peoples they displaced. The same is true for
biologists, although those left behind and those displaced are,
in a sense, one and the same.
profoundly mechanistic view of living things, and see humans as
one among many species that share the planet. We have no choice
in the face of what we are learning. We know that a cloned
human gene, introduced *to yeast, can cure the yeast cell of a
genetic disease caused by a mutation in the orthologous yeast
gene. We are startled when challenged by the very different,
deeply-held ideas of our fellow citizens, as we now see
world-wide with respect to the application of the fundamental
discoveries to real problems, including the treatment of disease
be it in humans or plants. In the United States the issues are
most sharply raised with respect to the study of reproductive
biology. Two major thrusts drive current research. One is a
desire to understand the'development of fertilized eggs into
complex organisms. The other is a desire to put biology at the
service of human problems: the societal and ecological problems
engendered by overpopulation on the one hand and the individual
problem of infertility on the other. Sadly, these well

Modern biologists have a

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motivated desires have become intricately associated with the
wrenching national debate about abortion, which is itself,

unhappily, a political debate rather than a serious dialogue
about difficult, ultimately personal issues. Disassociation of
the abortion question from research on in vitro fertilization
and from investigations with early embryonic or fetal tissue is

essential to fulfilling the promise of modern biology.

   Finally, we need to consider the American national belief
that frontier means freedom. And it did stand for freedom...for
some. For others, the situation was different .... the Indian
tribes that lived in the space .... the Chinese laborers who built
the railroads, to mention only the most obvious. Biologists
probably more than other scientists, just because we deal with
living things, need to consider that one person's freedom .... to
discover, may be seen as diminishing the freedom of others.
There are various ways to look at this tension. One, of course,
is to deny its existence. Another is to try to legislate it out
of existence. Yet another is to recognize the rich opportunity
it provides, as the modern historians of the western frontier
are doing. If we do that for biology, we stand a chance of
sustaining the frontier and at the same time ameliorating human
problems. Therefore, I opt for living with the tensions.

Consider the question of freedom, blemished though it

is. The frontier idea still stands for Americans as a reminder

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of the significance of freedom.  With the geographic frontiers
behind us, what frontier ensures a lasting testimonial, strong
enough to preserve that fragile and vulnerable thing we call
freedom. Science, the expansion of knowledge through
fundamental research remains a frontier, complex, but endless
and likely the only frontier left to explore.  In the past,
science stood as a reminder of freedom as well as requiring
freedom for its success. In worrying, properly, about the way
that scientific progress can threaten human rights,  we should
remember that science, and the human culture in which it

thrives, confirms and affirms the value of freedom. In those
same dark days of the early 1950s, when the idea of freedom was
so threatened in the United States by Joseph McCarthy and his
followers, freedom was affirmed in the designs for how the
National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of

Health would work.
forward their own ideas for evaluation rather than being
instructed as to what research to pursue.
system are obvious to all who look.

Individual scientists were encouraged to put

The fruits of this

The potential threat to this freedom is what worried some

of us about recent end-runs around the peer review system by
some misguided universities.
to dictate how science should be done---be they through

The same threat exists in attempts

centralized decisions about research directions in the human
genome project, or through catastrophic confusion about the
difference between wrongdoing and error in scientific work. And
the threat appears in talk of banning some kinds of research.

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There are other less stultifying and more effective ways to
reach consensus on if and when certain techniques should be
applied.

Vannevar Bush's image of science as the endless frontier

endures. Although the image has lost its utopian cast, it
remains visionary and bold. Science, the remaining frontier,
testifies to the tension between freedom and responsibility.

In closing, I will read some words of A. Bartlett

Giamatti, who understood better than anyone else I have known,
why learning, that is research, is at the core of being human
and being free. A humanist, he said:

"From the spientists, social and natural,
we derive our belief in the unifying
force of the search for knowledge, and in
the harmonies among forms of knowledge,
even as knowledge, increasing, tends to
fragment itself and us with it. From

them we learn what we should never

forget, that to view nature justly,
nature human and material, we must eschew
parochialism and casual labels and
bureaucratic boundaries, and seek to see
the truth from as many vantage points as

humankind can summon.

A.B. Giamatti, The University and the Public Interest. Atheneum.

W.A. Williams. The Contours of American History. Norton and Co. 1988.
W.E. Massey. 1989. Science Education in the United States: What the

New York, 1981.

Scientific Community Can Do. Science 245 915-921.

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