Jewish Invention Myths: Genetic Engineering

One of the harder ‘jewish invention’ myths to crack – and also one of the more prevalent one that is routinely cited by jews – (1) with it being claimed to have been the work of a jewish biochemist at Stanford University called Paul Berg.

For example, ‘MNews’ claims:

‘Paul Berg – Genetic Engineering

The term “genetic engineering” has become a staple of modern science, thanks to Paul Berg, who created the world’s first recombinant DNA. He laid the groundwork for the entire field of genetic manipulation.’ (2)

Adding to this Berg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980 for:

‘For his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA.’ (3)

For those who don’t know recombinant-DNA is roughly another way of saying ‘genetic engineering’ but in scientific language. The case that genetic engineering was the brainchild of Paul Berg sounds solid: doesn’t it?

However, this is where it gets interesting because Paul Berg himself tacitly admitted in a personal reminiscence in the journal ‘Genetics’ in 2010 that it wasn’t he who had come up with genetic engineering in 1971/1972 but rather a PhD student at Stanford called Peter Lobban.

Berg – along with Janet Mertz – wrote how:

‘Peter Lobban independently conceived the idea of using a series of enzymes to covalently join DNAs together in vitro while fulfilling the Stanford Biochemistry Department's requirement for Ph.D. students to write and defend an original research proposal (Lobban 1969).

Lobban's stated goal was to create a λ phage-based transduction system by replacing nonessential DNA in the middle of the phage λ genome with “foreign” DNA (Figure 1). He proposed to isolate DNA segments derived from the left and right “arms” of λ phage DNA and then to join the foreign DNA to the two internal ends of these arms. The cohesive ends present on the left and right arms would be left intact to permit the recombinant genome to circularize and replicate. The formation of the recombinant was to be achieved by using TdT to add short polymeric tails to the 3′-ends of the foreign DNA and complementary polymeric tails to the internal 3′-ends of the left and right arms of the λ DNA.

In his proposal and Ph.D. thesis (Lobban 1972, Lobban) foresaw the prospect of inserting any foreign DNA, including from mammalian cells, into the phage DNA. He suggested that such an approach might enable specific mammalian genes to be identified and their mRNA and protein products to be detected and recovered in E. coli. He speculated that there would be many uses for such transducing phage, including “genetic engineering” (Lobban 1969, 1972). However, rather than directly pursuing the construction of a λ phage transducing virus as proposed, Lobban decided it would be better to focus initially on developing an in vitro DNA joining protocol to form circular dimers of phage P22 DNA from P22 DNA monomers (Lobban 1972; Lobban and Kaiser 1973). His reasoning was that the latter was a better model system for working out the detail methodology since P22 phage DNA naturally has blunt ends and is circularly permuted and, therefore, would be unable to dimerize without the addition of (dA)n and (dT)n tails.

During this period, Lobban and Jackson were in close communication, freely sharing enzymes and their findings while they worked on their respective projects. Unbeknownst to them, Jensen et al. (1971) were also attempting to join together two DNAs in vitro by synthesizing complementary tails with TdT followed by incubation with DNA ligase in the presence of DNA polymerase I; in this case, they used phage T7 DNA as the two templates. Clearly, the idea of joining together DNAs by generating cohesive ends with TdT was a logical extension of facts already known to many biochemists at this time.

A suitable DNA for linking to SV40 DNA was developed during the winter of 1971 through the collaborative efforts of D. Berg et al.(1974). This DNA, called λdvgal 120, contains both the genes from phage λ necessary for replication as an autonomous plasmid in E. coli and an intact gal operon, i.e., the three genes from E. coli needed for metabolizing galactose. At the time, Mertz also showed that purified λdvgal 120 DNA could be reestablished as an autonomously replicating plasmid in E. coli using a procedure originally developed by Mandel and Higa (1970) for transformation of linear phage DNAs. Thus, both the mammalian and bacterial cloning DNAs were in hand, along with methods for reintroducing them into their host cells.’ (4)

Now if we summarise this and remove the specialist language then what it means is that in 1969 Peter Lobban submitted a PhD proposal to Stanford to research and engage in what we’d now called genetic engineering – including coming up with the term ‘genetic engineering’ for what he was doing in 1969 – and that this was successfully done circa 1972 when Lobban successfully completed his doctoral programme.

Put another way: Lobban came up with and carried out genetic engineering for the first time between 1969 and 1972.

So how did it come to be attributed to Paul Berg rather than Peter Lobban?

Well surprisingly the answer comes from an unexpected source: a Marxist political journal called ‘Dissent’.

Susan Wright as an aside to an article talking about the political implications of genetic engineering blithely mentions that:

‘The field of biotechnology was launched in the early 1970s when the ability to perform controlled genetic engineering was first demonstrated at Stanford University by a graduate student in biochemistry, Peter Lobban, and independently by the chair of his department, Paul Berg, and colleagues.’ (5)

In essence Peter Lobban came up with the idea for genetic engineering and carried it out, while his department head recognized the genius of Lobban’s idea and what he was doing then moved to seize it by doing Lobban’s work himself and was then falsely awarded the credit for it by both posterity and won a Nobel Prize for work that he himself didn’t truly originate but rather one of his (non-jewish) graduate students did!

References

(1) For example: https://forward.com/opinion/547927/jewish-inventions-inventors/

(2) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions

(3) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1980/summary/

(4) Paul Berg, Janet Mertz, 2010, ‘Personal Reflections on the Origins and Emergence of Recombinant DNA Technology’, Genetics, Vol. 184, No. 1, pp. 11-12

(5) Susan Wright, ‘Legitimating Genetic Engineering’, Dissent, Spring 2025 (https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/legitimating-genetic-engineering/)