70 
This alternative postulates that all experiments involving recombinant 
DNA molecules, regardless of assessed potential hazard, would be con- 
ducted in national facilities. It should be pointed out that many of the 
experiments covered by the Guidelines are widely perceived as involving 
no possible danger. For such experiments, there can be no justification 
for confinement to national laboratories. Consideration should be given 
to the alternative of limiting to such laboratories all permissible experi- 
ments judged to present a chance of producing hazardous agents. (The 
Guidelines already prohibit all experiments that are demonstrably 
hazardous.) For the permissible experiments judged to present the 
greatest conjectural hazard, maximum -containment (P4) laboratories 
are required. These will certainly be limited in number and can have 
all the advantages listed above without the concomitant disadvantages. 
With regard to experiments presenting lesser degrees of presumed 
(hypothetical) hazard, many biomedical research facilities are expe- 
rienced in supporting research involving minimal, low, and moderate 
biohazardous agents. These existing facilities should not be excluded 
from supporting recombinant DNA research without good cause. The 
experience of a hundred years of laboratory investigations of known 
pathogenic agents gives no evidence of negative impact on the environ- 
ment. Further, to impose highly restrictive impediments to research, 
in the absence of a proven hazard, would seem unwarranted. 
Nevertheless, some critics of the pattern of safeguards that have 
evolved--from Asilomar guidelines to NIH guidelines and control 
apparatus --propose far more stringent measures, such as a highly 
restricted Federal monopoly on all recombinant DNA experiments. 
See the letter to Science by Dr. Erwin Chargaff quoted on the following 
page (29). 
3. Experiments Prohibited at This Time 
Certain types of experiments are prohibited by the NIH Guidelines. 
(see Section V of the EIS and Section III-A of the Guidelines). The 
prohibited experiments include all those that have a definite and demon- 
strable potential for the production of undesirable organisms. The 
prohibited experiments also include some about which there is considerable 
uncertainty as to the potential of the experiments to yield undesirable 
organisms. These have been included because they might present serious 
difficulties for humans, animals, plants, or the environment should they 
prove to be hazardous at all. 
Alternative actions would result either in deletions from, or additions 
to, the list of prohibited experiments. Although it has been argued that 
available methods can adequately contain even those organisms that might 
arise from the prohibited experiments, it seems prudent to continue these 
prohibitions, for much valuable information can be obtained with the 
experiments that are still permitted. Some of the controversial items 
are-- 
