How is it that a statement by the Vatican has delayed my annual report to the National Institutes of Health? Not being Catholic, I generally don't pay much attention to Papal announcements, but maybe I need to start listening. Apparently back in March, the Vatican suggested that "genetic manipulations which alter DNA" are mortal sins.

Since just about everything I do in the lab involves genetic manipulations which alter DNA (in fact the only organisms in our lab which aren't genetically engineered are the people who work there), I can add one more item to my long list of reasons for why I'm headed to eternal condemnation.

But before I get to Hell, I need to submit my annual NIH Fellowship update. I have a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health, which pays my not-so-large salary. In return for the money, I tell the NIH what I've been doing every year. That's fair enough - the NIH should expect something for their money.

Everything that I have done this year, however, has involved some sort of genetic engineering - which apparently upsets the Pope. This is unfortunate, because if we eliminated all genetic engineering, essentially all biomedical research would grind to a halt. Genetic engineering, in some restricted applications, has its risks, but the vast majority of genetic engineering that goes on every day in thousands of labs all over the world is essential to our efforts to understand both basic biology and the impact of genes on our health.

How do we get from the Vatican to my NIH progress report? It starts with the fact that in order to receive money from the NIH, I have to comply with NIH guidelines concerning recombinant DNA. Recombinant DNA is a fairly uninformative, non-specific term that essentially means genetic engineering using the techniques of modern molecular biology. This includes cutting and pasting pieces of DNA together, and putting them into different organisms - such as taking a human gene and putting into bacteria. Back when recombinant DNA work was still new, people became worried that scientists might be about to unleash a new plague on humanity in the form of genetically engineered super-organisms.

The concern led to the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, which produced a set of recommendations detailing what types of genetic engineering experiments are acceptable.

Thirty years later, worries about this recombinant DNA work in standard laboratory organisms proved unfounded. There are unquestionably some nasty things you can do with recombinant DNA - making an antibiotic resistant strain of anthrax, or putting a cancer-inducing gene into a virus that has the potential to infect humans. But recombinant DNA work, of a more innocuous kind, has become the essential tool of nearly all biomedical research. We learn about genes by manipulating them - you really cannot do biochemistry, molecular biology, or molecular genetics today without manipulating genes using recombinant DNA techniques.

To study the function of a human protein, scientists often need large amounts of that protein for test tube experiments. The best way to get large amounts of human protein is to take that particular human gene and pop it into bacteria. The bacteria will make gobs of that protein, which biochemists can purify and use in their experiments.

This method isn't limited to research either - pharmaceutical companies make drugs like insulin and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) by producing the protein in bacteria. People who take insulin for diabetes, or FSH for fertility treatments, are beneficiaries of genetic engineering. Sequencing the human genome would have been impossible without genetic engineering: to sequence a genome, you have to chop up the DNA in to pieces, and then splice those pieces into DNA carriers called BACs (Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes), which are propagated in bacteria. We wouldn't understand the basic process of cell division (and how that process goes awry in cancer) without decades of studies in genetically engineered yeast, studies that resulted in a Nobel Prize.

Genetic engineering is not just essential for everyday biology research. It's also largely harmless. Yes, we should think about the ecological implications of genetically engineered crops, and we should put strict controls on recombinant DNA work with pathogenic microbes and viruses, or gene therapy involving human subjects.

But this kind of work is relatively rare compared to the day-to-day genetic engineering that goes on in research labs. Much of that work involves making genetically engineered model organisms such as a harmless strain of E. coli, baker's yeast, flies, or worms. These creatures, in their laboratory forms, are incapable of surviving outside of the coddled environment of the lab. Producing a new plague by genetically engineering these organisms is about as likely as producing a nuclear bomb by tinkering with fireworks.

But just to be safe, the NIH has a set of lengthy guidelines for working with recombinant DNA. These guidelines specify experiments that might be dangerous, and require researchers to submit to a stringent approval process before they can do these experiments. If you want to do recombinant DNA work with viruses that can infect humans, you have to have approval from a university safety committee, and have the appropriate containment equipment.

By far, the vast majority of experiments done in today's biomedical research labs fall under the category of exempt experiments: experiments which the NIH has deemed harmless enough that they don't require any special institutional approval to perform - mainly basic manipulation of single genes in harmless microbes, and deleting or modifying native genes in laboratory model organisms like flies and worms.

This kind of low-risk molecular biology is the kind of thing I do - thus on past NIH forms, I have simply been able to list my recombinant DNA work as "exempt" from NIH guidelines, and my university left it at that - there was no special approval process. That was before the Pope stepped into the issue.

Shortly after the Vatican suggested that genetic engineering is a mortal sin, my university (not the NIH - just the local university) eliminated the "exempt" status. Although my research is still exempt under NIH guidelines, my university now requires everyone who works with recombinant DNA, even the routine, harmless stuff, to submit their research protocols for university approval.

Keep in mind that this new policy doesn't actually change any of the research that's being done - it just adds another layer of pointless bureaucratic paperwork for procedures so basic, that just about about every biological research lab at our University will now have to get specific approval to do the basics in the lab. This makes about as much sense as requiring restaurants to have not just a license to serve alcohol, but one to serve coffee as well.

Our society worries about genetically modified designer babies, genetically modified crops that contain allergens or put an ecosystem at risk, and genetically engineered biological weapons in the hands of terrorists. These are all reasonable things to worry about, but we have to recognize that these scenarios are just the extreme end of the things we can do with genetic engineering.

When the Vatican, or any other influential institution, makes vague and ill-considered statements about genetic engineering, the response should not be more bureaucracy to cover up what almost all biologists do. Instead, the science community should explain how genetic engineering benefits us all.