was released in 1982. In 1986, the United States
passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; the first
person prosecuted under the new law was college
student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr., another com-
puter virus author. The son of a computer security
expert, Morris said he had been motivated by bore-
dom to create the worm and set it loose on the Inter-
net, causing problems for six thousand users of the
sixty thousand hosts connected to the Internet.
Biology, Genetics, and Medicine The face of the bi-
ological sciences changed over the course of the
1980’s, particularly in the field of biotechnology. In
1980, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer filed a pat-
ent application for a process of gene cloning that al-
lowed them to make human insulin from genetically
modified (GM) bacteria. In a similar advance, a vac-
cine for hepatitis B was created through genetic
modification.
Genetic modification was not universally popular,
and in reaction to its development, an anti-biotech-
nology movement formed under the leadership of
Jeremy Rifkin, who argued against awarding patents
for GM bacteria and opposed the transfer of genes
from one species to another and the release of modi-
fied bacteria into the environment. Rifkin delayed
the release of the first GM bacteria into the environ-
ment for four years. Eventually, in 1987, the bacteria
were released and used to make potato plants more
frost resistant.
In 1984, Alec Jeffreys developed a deoxyribonu-
cleic acid (DNA) fingerprinting technique in the
course of his research into human genes. The previ-
ous year, Kary Mullis had begun research that led to
the development of the polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) technique, which allowed scientists to am-
plify or multiply DNA from a single cell in order to
replicate a DNA sample. In 1987, police began using
DNA fingerprinting to investigate crime. In 1983,
the virus that would come to be known as human im-
munodeficiency virus (HIV) was first isolated. The
virus was linked to acquired immunodeficiency syn-
drome (AIDS). In 1985, the Food and Drug Admin-
istration (FDA) approved a blood test for HIV infec-
tion that could be used on blood supplies. In 1987,
the FDA approved the anti-AIDS drug azidothy-
midine (AZT).
The decade also witnessed the foundation being
laid for one of the most prominent advances in hu-
man science, the Human Genome Project. Liver-
more Laboratory and Los Alamos collaborated to
build human-chromosome-specific gene libraries,
developing advanced chromosome-sorting capabili-
ties. The project’s goal was to map the entire human
genome; it was hailed as history’s most ambitious bi-
ological project. Other advancements in medicine
in the 1980’s included the first use of artificial skin to
treat burns (1981); the first use of a permanent arti-
ficial heart (1982); the first release of a patient with
an artificial heart from the hospital (1985); the first
heart-lung transplant (1987); and the development
of Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake in-
hibitor, by the Eli Lilly Corporation (1987).
One notable medical failure of the 1980’s oc-
curred in October, 1984, when Doctor Leonard L.
Bailey used the heart of a baboon to replace the fail-
ing heart of an infant who became known to the me-
dia as Baby Fae. The transplant operation was both
unsuccessful and possibly illegal. Although Baby Fae
seemed to do well for a few days, her body rejected
the new organ, and public scrutiny was drawn to the
issue of human experimentation.Energy Crisis and Environmental Movement Driven
by the previous decade’s energy crisis, scientists in
the 1980’s explored alternative sources of energy, in-
cluding biodiesel, hydrogen fuel, and wind energy.
A secondary impetus of this research was the rising
risk of environmental pollution and an increasing
public awareness of the dangers such pollution posed
to human well-being. Antinuclear and environmen-
tal activists had also drawn significant attention to
the difficulties of safely disposing of radioactive and
toxic waste.
The environmental justice movement spread in
the United States and across the world, as it sought
to combat the social structures that had thwarted en-
vironmental reforms in the past. One of the major
impetuses of the movement was the Warren County
polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disaster. The state
of North Carolina was forced to create a landfill to
contain the more than thirty thousand gallons of
PCB-contaminated oil produced by the disaster. The
state chose to locate the landfill in a primarily Afri-
can American county, leading to charges of environ-
mental racism, particularly after it was revealed that
the site was not hydrologically suitable for such dis-
posal.
Media coverage of environmental disasters con-
tinued to increase public awareness of the dangers856 Science and technology The Eighties in America