COUNCIL MEMBERS AND OFFICER RESPONDENTS 
1. Jerome Frank agreed with all of the points of the memorandum, saying he had been 
persuaded some time ago that the potential damage was "permanently irreversible" 
and that no safeguards can "completely exclude human failure." He felt the use 
of E.Coli was "inexcusable" and said about the problems of finding a substitute: 
"What's the hurry?" 
Dr. Frank, our Vice Chairman, is a psychiatrist, a former President of the 
Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues and the American Psychopatholo- 
gical Association; he is professor at the Phipps Clinic, Jchn Hopkins Hospital, 
Baltimore. 
2. Dr. Rose Frisch agreed with all of the points of the memorandum and noted that 
she had been deeply influenced by a New York Times Magazine article in the begin- 
ning of September. 
Dr. Frisch is our Council Member and a Research Associate of the Harvard 
Center for Population Biology. She has published extensively on the world food 
problem and population growth. 
3. Dr. Raphael Littauer agreed with all of the points of the memorandum. He felt 
that the costs of containment would, over the years, be a small fraction of 
other related expenditures. He considered the memorandum "very important and 
valuable" and emphasized especially points III, IV, V, and VI. He wondered if 
something should not be said to discourage "shotgun" experiments; if scientists 
did not have something special in mind to experiment about, what was the hurry? 
Dr. Littauer is Chairman of the Department of Physics at Cornell University. 
4. Dr. Philip Morrison agreed with all of the points of the memorandum and did so 
emphatically on point IV (High Priority to Removing Uncertainties). But Dr. Morri- 
son did not think the memorandum "evenhanded." In particular, he felt that the 
comparison between the possible detrimental effects of adding safety provisions 
to reactors and that of higher containment was not fair. It was important to 
avoid raising the precautions to the point where the research might not get done 
and while the memorandum did notexceed the balance, there was a balance to be 
struck and one should be careful on this point. 
Dr. Morrison is our past chairman and Institute Professor at MIT. A reviewer 
of books for Scientific American , and a famous astrophysicist, he is very well 
informed on a wide range of science questions. 
5. Dr. John Edsall commented: "After a good deal of discussion and thought, I believe 
that the guidelines of the NIH do provide an adequate framework for the prosecution 
of research in this area, under suitable safeguards. I should add that I do not 
hold the view that the increase of knowledge is necessarily good (compare the inter- 
view with Robert Sinsheimer in Science , 15 October 1976). However, in this area 
T believe that the increase of fundamental knowledge can be great and beneficial 
Appendix K — 46 
