Montana State's Troublesome Elms

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Late last week a cordon of Montana State University police stepped aside as Gary Strobel, a professor of plant pathology, led a group of onlookers to a stand of 13 American elms in the Bozeman campus research grove. He took a chain saw and severed the trees six inches above the ground. Then the trunks were sawed into sections and trucked to an incinerator. The stumps were doused with a powerful herbicide, and the surrounding soil was fumigated. Said a tearful Strobel: "Now maybe I can go back to other things."

On Aug. 12, Strobel admitted he had injected the elms with genetically altered bacteria in an attempt to treat them for Dutch elm disease. The experiment had shown encouraging results, but it was, he acknowledged, an act of civil disobedience that was in violation of Environmental Protection Agency regulations. After receiving a reprimand from the EPA and a warning that any similar experiments in the next year must be co-sponsored by another investigator and receive special permission from the university, Strobel requested that the elms be disposed of to end controversy over his actions. His troubles, however, were not yet over. At week's end University President William Tietz formally censured Strobel. Said he: "No member of the academic community is above the guidelines and regulations that are designed to protect the public."

Disturbing new evidence emerged last week that Strobel had released altered bacteria into the environment prior to his experiment with the elms. In an Aug. 10 letter to the EPA, Strobel admitted he had released a "new strain of Rhizobium meliloti . . . in South Dakota, Montana, California and Nebraska in 1983-84." The Rhizobium had been altered to enhance nitrogen fixation in alfalfa plants. Though it is not yet clear that those experiments violated regulations in force at the time, they are under investigation by Montana State and the EPA.

Antibiotechnology activists were infuriated with Strobel's actions and with his mild punishment. They claim that scientists could unwittingly unleash destructive mutant bacteria into the environment, a worry that is considered alarmist by most scientists. Says Jeremy Rifkin, a Washington lobbyist: "We cannot expect the scientists to police themselves. They feel they are above the law."

Strobel admits that his frustration with the maze of federal rules and the often lengthy EPA approval process led him to start the elm test last June. Geneticist Duane Jeffery of Brigham Young University likens Strobel's actions to Oliver North's, contending that the scientist knew the rules and pulled the idealistic stunt "in the name of service to humanity." Strobel is a recognized expert on plant pathogens who once wrote that his career choice "was brought on by a desire as a teenager to understand why the chestnut trees had died in my home state of Ohio." He has argued all along that his bacteria posed no threat.

That is not in dispute. The presumed safety of an experiment does not exempt it from federal rules many scientists find stifling. Approval for an altered- organism release is a multistage process involving several agencies and requires extensive documentation; an experiment can wait years for a go-ahead. Beyond that, the definitions of what constitutes an engineered organism are vague. The crux of the dilemma is that regulators have bent over backward providing safeguards that will appease public fears over the dangers of genetic engineering. Says Anne Vidaver, head of plant pathology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: "Persons reading those documents would be confused, even if they were trying to do the right thing." Even Government officials see the problem: "There's a concern that we are overregulating," says David Kingsbury of the National Science Foundation.

Strobel's misdeeds placed Montana State officials in an unwanted spotlight. "This has become a mark on the university," says Strobel. "It's not worth it to continue at the expense of my colleagues." Still, while there was ^ concern over possible repercussions for the university, MSU's Tietz stressed that "it is our hope that this issue will further an awareness of the tangled interpretations . . . procedures . . . and classifications that dominate today's biotechnical research. A simplified code is absolutely essential."

With reporting by Pat Dawson/Billings and Dick Thompson/Washington