Why Asilomar conference was a bad idea, Victor McElheny

Interviewee: Victor McElheny. Former New York Times science journalist Victor McElheny talks about why he thought the "Moratorium Letter" was asking for trouble. (DNAi Location: Manipulation > Revolution > Players > The controversy > Why the moratorium was a disaster)

Because I thought it invited thunderbolts from heaven. The world is an irrational place and I reported about science, in part I think by an idealistic devotion to science as the only rational raft that we can be on. And here we were about to dash a lot of quite realistic hopes with ill-informed political and public interference. I knew the letter would give rise to a sort of fire-storm of ill-informed brave new world stuff.

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