Neither the ethics nor the wisdom of manipulating an animal's genes--the basic units of heredity--was at issue last week when the Med School formed a committee to oversee recombinant DNA research there. Keeping federal grant money was.

Grant money is the string the federal government can pull to influence how medical schools educate America's future doctors. It is a big-string--federal grant money accounts for more than half of Harvard Med's budget.

When Congress quietly passed a bill tying federal aid to the requirement that U.S. medical schools admit American students now in foreign med schools, Harvard loaded up its legislative guns and prepared to fight. But the Med School has quietly accepted this administrative ruling on DNA research.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) this summer issued regulations requiring that all institutions doing recombinant DNA research establish committees to regulate the research.

Recombinant DNA research involves manipulating the genes of a bacteria strain to create organisms not naturally found in the organisms--hopefully to make them perform biochemically useful tasks such as the production of insulin or fertilizer.

But the trial-and-error nature of the experiments also makes it possible they will produce a strain of bacteria that could seriously infect man or other animals and for which no cure is known.

The oversight committee requirement does not represent a serious check on genetic research--the Med School committee will consist mainly of faculty members, whose colleagues are the ones conducting the research.