At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombin... in 1975 scientists agreed

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombin... in 1975 scientists agreed to a moratorium on certain types of genetic research. Basically everyone agreed. I don't know how true it is, but a professor of mine who was active in this type of research back then said that as soon as the moratorium expired, everyone published all these fantastic results from huge complicated experiments that they had very obviously been doing during the moratorium. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.