-three- 
increased factor of safety which such a policy would offer was not discussed in the 
Draft EIS. Restrictions on technology of unknown hazard, such as recombinant DNA 
technology, should fall to the conservative side of those technologies of known 
hazard, such as nuclear energy development. 
The composition of the groups which prepared the "Guidelines" and the Draft 
EIS is inadequate in light of the directive of the NEPA which calls for "a systematic, 
interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and 
social sciences... in decisionmaking which may have an impact on man's environment 
(NEPA §102 (A))." The input into the decisions that led to the formulation of NIH 
policy concerning recombinant DNA research can only be described as token at best. 
For example, only one member of the "Recombinant DNA Molecule Program Advisory 
Committee" was from other than the natural sciences (Emmette S. Redford, Professor 
of Government and Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin) and only one other 
member (John W. Little, Chairman, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Hospital) 
was from a field having little concern with recombinant DNA research. 
Public hearings on this research and its environmental impact are desparately 
needed. Representatives of the general public must have a decision-making role 
over and above that of those scientists who have established the policy of an ^x post 
facto implementation of "Guidelines" for research proceeding at full throttle. 
The National Institutes of Health has not dealt with the potentially disasterous 
impact this research may have on humanity and the environment upon which we are 
completely dependent, in a way which insures a full accounting of public concern over 
this issue. 
References 
(1) PNAS 23: 1471, (1976). 
(2) Rougeon, Kourlisky, and Mach, Nucleic Acids Research 2* 2365, (1975). 
(3) Ef f tratiadis , al^. , Cell 2* 279, (1976). 
Samuel C. Kayman 
Philip Allen Youderian 
Frances R. Warshaw 
Jonathan King 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
Edward L. Loechler 
Brandeis University 
Scott Thacher 
David Shore 
Harvard University 
Robert M. Park 
Tracy McLellan 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 
Appendix K — 170 
