  It is shown that a natural gauge hierarchy and doublet-triplet splitting can
be achieved in SO(10) using the Dimopoulos-Wilczek mechanism. Artificial
cancellations (fine-tuning) and arbitrary forms of the superpotential are
avoided, the superpotential being the most general compatible with a symmetry.
It is shown by example that the Dimopoulos-Wilczek mechanism can be protected
against the effects of higher-dimension operators possibly induced by
Planck-scale physics. Natural implementation of the mechanism leads to an
automatic Peccei-Quinn symmetry. The same local symmetries that would protect
the gauge hierarchy against Planck-scale effects tend to protect the axion
also. It is shown how realistic quark and lepton masses might arise in this
framework. It is also argued that ``weak suppression'' of proton decay can be
implemented more economically than can ``strong suppression'', offering some
grounds to hope (in the context of SO(10)) that proton decay could be seen at
Superkamiokande.
