Interviewee: Victor McElheny. Former science journalist Victor McElheny talks about why the Asilomar conference is not a good model for the interaction of science and society. (DNAi Location: Manipulation > Revolution > Putting it together > How should science and society interact?)

The Asilomar conference is often discussed, argued about, contested, on the question of whether it is a model for interaction between science and society or it isn't. And I think there's a pretty good short-term case as well as a long-term case that it isn't a very good model. And the short-term case is the arising in the next two or three years of this regulatory structure and all the discussions and the Cambridge city council and other city councils around the United States and in front of the California and New York legislatures, and in various committees of Congress, those, those did happen. And that's kind of a short-term statement that the experiment in self-regulation that the scientists had been playing around with very publicly, wasn't keeping the wolf from the door.

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