Graduation speaker to share his devotion to practicing—and defending—science

Thirty-three years later, the same bespectacled professor—by now a Nobel laureate—again speaks to the cameras. This time Berg has only 30 seconds, the cameras are for television and his target audience is California's 16 million voters. He wants them to pass Proposition 71, the 2004 measure that would provide state funding for embryonic stem cell research that the federal government has refused to support.

Both efforts were successes. The film is now an underground classic, and Prop. 71 won a thumbs-up, making the Golden State a national mecca for stem cell research.

Inspiring teacher, award-winning scientist and research advocate—these are a few of the hats worn by Paul Berg, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, Emeritus, who will deliver the keynote address at the School of Medicine's Saturday commencement ceremony. He plans to discuss the inextricable link between the practice of medicine and scientific research.

With a perspective informed by experiences ranging from breakthroughs in the laboratory to policy battles in Congress, Berg brings an unusually deep understanding of the challenges of moving science forward. In 1980 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with recombinant DNA. Three years later, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the French Academy and the U.K. Royal Society. At Stanford, he has served as chair of the biochemistry department and director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.

Today Berg devotes much of his energy to supporting and defending scientific inquiry. In the past year alone, he has given 25 public talks. Two weeks ago, for instance, he stood before the committee that oversees California's stem cell institute and warned against a state legislative proposal that he said would cripple the institute's ability to advance stem cell research. The next night, he was in the Clark Center's LINX cafeteria, where, as speaker at the semiannual medical staff meeting, he explained stem-cell fundamentals.

Berg said that when he chose science as a career he did not foresee becoming engaged in public policy issues, but that "public service frequently comes as an obligation of success."

Part of what's driving Berg to speak out now is proposed federal legislation that would criminalize scientific research and patient therapies that use certain stem cell lines. A strict reading, he explained, would prohibit patients from going abroad for treatment, then returning home with forbidden stem-cell products in their bodies. An early version of the House bill passed by an overwhelming majority.

"That development outraged me," Berg said. "If there's anything that motivates you to act in this kind of situation, it's that—what I call arrogance."

Berg understands that people uncomfortable with embryonic stem cell experiments might decline therapies based on the research. And he has no problem with physicians who might opt out of providing such services. But, he added, a powerful minority should not deny everyone else.

"Not all religions share the same views," Berg emphasized. "There's a spread of views. And, being a pluralistic society, it's an insult to have one segment of society impose their views on everybody else—even to the point of excluding or impairing possible therapies to help people."

Berg's role as a public advocate for science is not a new one. Thirty years ago, congressional nervousness about the emerging field of genetic engineering threatened to shut down his research. Berg led the call for a preemptive voluntary moratorium, and he chaired the famous Asilomar scientific conference that produced guidelines allowing experimentation to proceed under federal oversight. He testified before Congress, and he spoke with the press.

While Berg said that public-policy work doesn't afford "the headiness of a good scientific experiment," he added that it does bring its own satisfaction. After Asilomar, "science moved forward gloriously," he said.

The Brooklyn-bred scientist speaks with fondness of his decades at Stanford. He arrived in 1959 with another future Nobel laureate, Arthur Kornberg, PhD, the Emma Pfeiffer Merner Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus, and five other colleagues from Washington University. Together they established the new biochemistry department. It was a special group, he said, that helped build an unusually collaborative culture in the fledgling department.

For example, no one there holds claim to designated lab space, he said, even today. The Beckman building was designed to promote interaction and collaboration. In the early days, the biochemistry faculty even pooled their research grants. And it's a little-known fact, Berg added, that the reagents for his Nobel experiments came from Kornberg's refrigerator.

"Everybody grew up with the sense that we shared," Berg said. "Maybe that has something to do with my sense of how you share discoveries."

Berg's lab freely shared samples and methods with others, even before publication. And he never patented his discoveries. In his formative years, he explained, "academic science was the true faith." He added, "You did science because you loved it." Berg noted wryly that he is "persona non grata" with the university's technology licensing office. "I'm a purist," he said.

People often ask Berg if an Asilomar-type conference might help bridge the current deep divide over stem cell research. Berg doesn't think so. The genetic engineering debate of the 1970s centered on issues amenable to empirical analysis, he says, while today's stem-cell controversy rests on differences of opinion and ethical and religious conviction.

Berg believes public discomfort with science will intensify as researchers delve more deeply into human biology—especially determinants of behavior. "Discovering things about how your brain works can be pretty threatening. What is the mind? What is the brain? Are we just a machine programmed to do something by chemicals acting and signals being exchanged?" he asked. "Or, is there something more?

"People are going to be really challenged. Does that mean the science is going to be impeded? Yes, I think so."

Is there a way forward through current and future impasses? Berg, a self-avowed optimist, points to better science education and—emphatically—"the ballot box."

"It's going to be resolved," Berg said, "by who has the most power and the most votes."

Posted: 6/8/05