A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

Versatility is a quality that is prized at TIME, where the pressures of deadlines and breaking news occasionally push writers, editors and correspondents into varied and unaccustomed roles. Correspondents sometimes write firsthand reports for the magazine, while writers and editors have been known to report from the field on matters of their particular expertise or interest.

The duties of TIME editors usually leave little time for writing. Sciences Editor Leon Jaroff is one senior staff member who has regularly proved his versatility by turning to the typewriter -- or, these days, the computer terminal. Since joining TIME in 1958, he has been a correspondent, writer, associate editor and, from 1970 to 1979, a senior editor responsible for stories on science and space. After four years (1980-84) away from the magazine while serving as the founding managing editor of Time Inc.'s DISCOVER magazine, he returned to TIME last year to take overall editorial responsibility for the Science, Medicine, Space, Environment and Computers sections. In the ensuing months he has found time to write several stories, including articles on the medical ramifications of President Reagan's colon surgery last summer and on the strange behavior of the star Sirius last November.

Now Jaroff has returned as a writer to a subject he has followed closely as an editor. In 1971 and again in 1977, TIME cover stories that he edited examined the phenomenon of genetic engineering, or gene splicing, with its broad promise for medicine and other branches of science, and its inherent perils. In this week's issue Jaroff updates the techniques and applications of genetic engineering and chronicles the latest efforts to bring its new products to the marketplace, especially in the field of agriculture, where their use has been hindered by a host of legal maneuvers and regulatory roadblocks.

The story discusses a new and largely unwarranted wave of fear about genetic engineering, one that was also at full flood nine years ago. "There are parallels between now and then," Jaroff says. "In the 1970s, even though the scientists themselves had set up some very strict guidelines, some people wanted to prohibit all gene-splicing research because of the remote chance that a Frankenstein germ might emerge from the laboratory. Now there are efforts to block tests of agricultural products in the open air for the same reason. The threat in 1977 turned out to be nonexistent, and the chances are that with caution and rationality, this one will too."