Council Extends DNA Experiment Ban

The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to extend its three-month moratorium on controversial “recombinant DNA” research at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for an additional three months....

The Council’s original resolution to initiate a recombinant DNA research moratorium in June followed considerable local and national debate on the potential environmental consequences of such research.

Among the proposed experiments that have sparked heated debate are those which would examine genetic control mechanisms in higher-level organisms.

In these experiments, researchers would transfer loose strands of DNA-—the basic molecular unit of heredity—from warm-blooded animals into specimens of E. coli, a commonly-utilized laboratory bacterium, in hopes of producing a new species with heretofore unknown characteristics.

—Sept. 30, 1976

Tutorial Grades Decline; Mansfield Still Unsatisfied

Despite his efforts to combat “grade inflation” in the Government Department, grades last year declined less than anticipated, Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.

Mansfield said that he was especially disturbed by statistics for Government 98, the junior tutorial, which show that the number of A’s given in the course last year only declined 5 per cent from the previous year. Ninety-five percent of those taking the course received honors grades.

Mansfield, who called last year for a “general deflation” in grades and for a return to the tougher grading standards of the late 1960s, said that he has been “exhorting members of the department who haven’t noticed the upward creep in grades to pay attention to what they’ve been doing.”

—Oct. 1, 1976