On 8 November 2004, the trustees agreed to issue a letter in support of Professor Steven Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble, and Professor Ferrell:

To Whom It May Concern:

We, the undersigned Trustees of the Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust, are writing to express our serious concern over legal proceedings brought against members of the highly respected artists group, Critical Art Ensemble. The Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust was created to further constructive and creative dialogue between the arts and the sciences. We regularly organise debates and presentations, often at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, bringing artists and scientists together to explore the common ground between them and to develop better mutual understanding. Creative aspects of scientific work and rigour in artistic activities are both central to the development of a healthy, productive and just society. Critical Art Ensemble make an important contribution in this area.

A number of Trustees have known about the work of Professor Steven Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble for many years; indeed one of our number, Dr Martha Fleming, has taught with Professor Kurtz, whom she has known and respected for nearly a decade. Others of us have become aware of Professor Kurtz's work because of the international alarm and outcry that his arrest, along with that of geneticist Professor Ferrell, has raised. That these arrests were then followed by subpoenas to a number of other artists working with scientific ideas and materials, and extended to subpoenas even to Critical Art Ensemble's publisher, is also deeply worrying. The involvement in this case of the New York Civil Liberties Union, PEN USA, and the Freedom to Publish Committee is reassuring to us, demonstrating that our own concerns are shared by internationally renowned civil rights organisations. Investigating a potential threat is entirely acceptable; making a scapegoat of honest practitioners in any field, artistic or scientific, is not.

We understand that the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State was of the legal opinion that Kurtz's materials, seized by the FBI earlier this year, posed no public safety risk. Indeed many of the practices and materials which we understand Professor Kurtz to employ in his public art works are very similar to those one might encounter here in the UK in a public demonstration for science teaching, either in an educational establishment or an open science centre environment.

Curtailing this kind of activity could send the public engagement with science back into the Dark Ages, destroying opportunities to develop a more informed public which would be equipped to engage with and to understand scientific breakthroughs and their implications. For these reasons as well as the issues of civil liberties, this case is being closely watched by a growing number of professionals internationally among which we number.

The social context of science and technology is something to explore socially, publicly, democratically -- especially when there is no danger to the public itself. This is what the Critical Art Ensemble does best. The idea that a mobile DNA extraction laboratory could be used for anything sinister, or that CAE's BSL1 bacteria posed any more of a public threat than does the use of a public lavatory, is surely known to be wrong. We sincerely hope that the erroneous charges against these respected artists, scientists and publishers will be withdrawn before further damage is done to their good reputation and to that of the Office of United States Attorney of the Department of Justice.

Signed,