On a clear fall afternoon, Kathy Valderas watches her 2-year-old son play in the front yard and wonders if the grass, air and water in their Arbutus neighborhood will still be safe in a year or two.
The nearby University of Maryland Baltimore County campus is the leading contender to house the state's $22 million biotechnology processing center.Residents worry that the center, and biotechnology developments likely to follow it, will expose them to harmful, genetically engineered microbes.
"If it was something as simple as a smokestack factory, we could see [the risks]," Valderas says. "But we are not going to be able to tell if some bacteria has been released until the damage has been done."
Industry backers say the fears are groundless and that most biotechnology is as harmless as brewing beer -- another activity that uses microbes. But residents aren't convinced and they're preparing for a fight.
It's a battle likely to be repeated as the state strives to become the Silicon Valley of biotechnology. Millions of tax dollars have been committed, and business leaders have declared a goal of creating a "Biotech Alley" within Maryland. Only two other states have more biotechnology firms now.
Success could mean thousands of new, high-paying jobs dedicated to some of the world's most futuristic pursuits, from developing environmentally sound pest control to curing cancer. And supporters say that biotechnology is safer than most other industries in the state, even steelmaking and chemical manufacturing.
But critics warn that biotechnology is a new frontier, full of unknowns and susceptible to human error. Novel organisms are produced, often by genetic engineering, with unpredictable results. Released into the environment, these life forms could upset delicate ecological balances -- or, worse, sicken or kill people. And regulations have not kept pace with discovery, the critics say.
"There's about as much risk as living next door to a yogurt factory," replies Alan Goldhammer, a biochemist and the technical director of the Industrial Biotechnology Association, a trade group.
Small releases are probably unavoidable, and dangerous organisms can be created, but the risks are far outweighed by the benefits, says Goldhammer, adding that the industry's safety record is nearly spotless.
He and other backers say that much of the criticism is based on ignorance, and that "killer tomatoes" and other fanciful beings are not creeping out of labs. Genetic engineering, these experts say, merely represents a new way of performing one of nature's oldest tricks: mixing and matching genes.
So far as is known, accidental releases of biotech organisms have produced no deaths, injuries or obvious degrading of the environment. But Valderas, president of the 500-member Maiden Choice Community Association, and many other residents are worried.
The Southwest Coalition, which includes Valderas' group and a dozen other community organizations in southwest Baltimore County, is amassing a legal defense fund to fight the center, says Charles Macgill, president of the coalition.
"We don't want to find out 10 years from now that something has happened that has affected the health of the community," he says.
Members of the coalition have met with lawmakers and even picketed the October groundbreaking of the Christopher Columbus Center of Marine Research and Exploration in the city, which will house biotechnology research.
According to Goldhammer, most organisms used in biotechnology are harmless and are designed to grow at very specific temperatures and nutrient conditions; they die quickly when removed from the laboratory. And these organisms seldom are able to reproduce.
Unlike the Frankenstein of fiction, biotechnology researchers focus on transferring existing characteristics between creatures -- not knitting ones from scratch. A Maryland company, for example, has discovered how to transfer to corn the natural insect resistance of Bermuda grass.
Man has been selectively breeding plants and animals for centuries, coming up with faster race horses and juicier plums. Most of the corn we eat is the result of cross-breeding that would not occur without human intervention.
Although privately funded research is virtually free of regulation, government approval generally is required before an organism can be released into the environment or given to a human patient. Most companies voluntarily follow the laboratory safety guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health. But this is not required unless federal dollars are being spent.
"Some genetic engineering can be done very safely," says Neil Levitt, a virologist and former researcher with the Army's biological warfare research laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick.
"Then there are other types that can cause quite a potential problem. If even one of these [dangerous microbes] gets out, it is going to cause a catastrophe," he says.
Levitt left Fort Detrick in 1986 and sued the government, claiming that the laboratories there were not operated safely. If the Army can't safely research dangerous organisms after decades of experience, private industry won't do a much better job with microbes whose dangers may not be fully understood, says Levitt.
"If [state officials] want to bring in more biotechnology, then they need to put in the safeguards prior to the beginning of the work," he says.
Critics say the movement of research from university laboratories to profit-seeking corporations presents new dangers.
Concentrating firms in one state, as Maryland wants to do, increases the likelihood of accidental or intentional releases, says Andrew Kimbrell, with the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington-based watchdog group led by Jeremy Rifkin and known for its frequent criticisms of biotechnology.
Unlike "traditional" environmental disasters, such as oil spills, a batch of runaway microbes could theoretically continue spreading and destroying, says Kimbrell. Much biotechnology research is done with bacteria that tend to migrate and reproduce easily, he says.
Organisms that result from genetic alteration tend to be biologically unique and lack natural predators to keep their numbers in check, he says.
The risks of species unfettered by enemies are already well-known: Dutch elm disease and the gypsy moth, to name two examples, were brought to America from overseas and attack their native prey with impunity.
"Any time you radically alter things, you have to consider the possibility of unexpected things happening. Biological systems are very complicated," says Philip J. Regal, a biologist and biotechnology expert at the University of Minnesota.
Scientists leap-frogging ahead of natural evolution can now accomplish in seconds what otherwise would take centuries. But the results can be unpredictable. A laboratory in Oakland, Calif., for example, set out to make more colorful petunias by adding genes responsible for pigmentation. The result: an all-white petunia.
There are scattered instances of fatalities and sickness among the users of products made through biotechnology.
The worst incident involved scores of deaths and illnesses linked to "L-tryptophan," a natural tranquilizer that was genetically enhanced by a Japanese company and sold in the United States in 1988 and 1989.
In another case of the unexpected, a Philadelphia company injected cattle with an experimental rabies vaccine being developed for animals. The vaccine was genetically engineered from a virus thought to be difficult to spread -- but the test was canceled when 17 farm hands were found to have contracted the harmless virus, apparently from the cows.
To supporters, biotechnology has limitless potential. By tapping into the genetic codes of plants and animals, agricultural researchers are learning how to fight disease and boost crop yields without using chemicals -- something that has won biotech the conditional support of many environmentalists.
Faster-growing trees are being developed to replace forests lost to wildfire. Bacteria are being harnessed to protect plants from frost and insect pests. Microbes are being bred to eat oil spills. And tomatoes are being created that will ripen but not rot.
More importantly, microbiologists -- probing centuries-old riddles with new techniques -- are searching for the cures to acquired immune deficiency syndrome and other maladies. New, more effective vaccines are being developed.
"We're people, too, and more of us are concerned about the environment than the people on the street. Fear represents something you don't understand. We need to get people to talk to each other," says Jon Kramer, a researcher at the downtown Center for Marine Biotechnology, part of the University of Maryland system.
Jared Cohon, vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins University, says universities have worked with microorganisms for decades, and doing so safely is no great mystery.
On campus, a researcher has to get every project approved in advance by a "bio-safety" committee. And laboratories must follow strict rules to prevent accidental releases, says Cohon, who has been active in efforts to develop biotechnology in Maryland.
The new Maryland Bioprocessing Facility is being designed to assist fledgling companies, especially those developing drugs, in producing quantities of their products sufficient for federal testing.
The UMBC site is an undeveloped research park on the northwestern edge of campus. Another site under consideration is the Johns Hopkins Bayview center in East Baltimore. The state hopes to pick a site by Jan. 1, start construction by next summer and open the facility by late 1993.
The center will be classified as a "BL-2" laboratory on the National Institutes of Health rating system that ranks labs from one to four, with four being those working with the most dangerous materials.
The Maryland lab's exhaust will be filtered and liquid waste will be sterilized by a certified waste handler before disposal, says Bruce K. Hamilton, a planner of the facility and researcher with W.R. Grace and Co.'s Washington Research Center at Columbia. "I think it's entirely reasonable for people to be concerned about what's going on. But try and keep an open mind," he says.
This does not placate Valderas and others in southwest Baltimore County. "When the A-bomb was developed, the work was done in the desert with tight security," she says.