The Constitution in The Laboratory: Recombinant DNA Research as “Free Expression”

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Constitution in The Laboratory

T2 - Recombinant DNA Research as “Free Expression”

AU - Carmen, Ira H.

N1 - Funding Information: Upon this much, all agree: government agencies are under no constitutional duty to spend a penny funding either scientific research in general or the natural sciences, physical sciences and social sciences as discrete categories in particular. Moreover, these agencies appear free to pick and choose among disciplines subsidized; they can select history but reject sociology, encourage biology but ignore geology, assist botany but refuse to assist zoology. Is this not a form of discrimination? In a sense, yes; however, just as the public schools do not have to teach everything in order to teach something, so public-funding instrumentalities need not give money to everyone in order to give money to someone. Even though all these disciplines and fields are in the nature of speech, the distinctions made between and among them are consistent with the equal protection principle because they are rational, and the constitutional test is one of rationality because there is just so much money to go around and the categories do not disfavor some views of truth as against competing conceptions of truth. But can the state choose to support experiments in genetics while refusing to support experiments in recombinant DNA? This paper has argued that an outright ban on gene splicing would abridge fundamental freedoms, and some would go on to say that government has no greater authority to introduce "content distinctions" into the funding decision than it has to invoke them in framing criminal statutes.'19 The suggested congruency, however, treats a delicate constitutional question with a sledge hammer rather than a scalpel. For one thing, research proposals fail of approval every day of the week because their content seems misguided, inane, or worse. Suppose the National Science Foundation puts up money to support grants in "science and society," and someone requests funding to prove that recombinant DNA is a communist plot or a capitalist swindle. Have the researcher's rights been transgressed because

PY - 1981

Y1 - 1981

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0019745785&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0019745785&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.2307/2130635

DO - 10.2307/2130635

M3 - Article

C2 - 11632326

AN - SCOPUS:0019745785

SN - 0022-3816

VL - 43

SP - 737

EP - 762

JO - The Journal of Politics

JF - The Journal of Politics

IS - 3

ER -