STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER 
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 
DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY 
Stanford University School of Medicine 
Area Code 411 
497-6101 
September 10, 1980 
Dr. William Gartland 
Chief, Office of Recombinant DNA Activities 
National Institutes of Health 
Bldg. 31, Rm. 4A-52 
Bethesda, MD 20205 
Dear Dr. Gartland, 
I am writing you in support of Dr. Maxine Singer's recent 
proposal to ORDA to eliminate the central NIH review, registration and 
approval of recombinant DNA experiments explicitly assigned containment 
conditions in the NIH guidelines. I agree with her that the function of 
review, registration, and monitoring of research workers falling into 
categories explicitly mentioned in the Guidelines can be effectively 
administered by the local Institutional Biosafety Committees. This would 
reduce the workload for ORDA allowing it to spend more time determining 
policy and revising the guidelines according to requests or to new data. 
It would simultaneously ease the bureaucratic work load for the 
researcher without jeopardizing the effectiveness of the Guidelines. 
Not only are the procedures described in the Guidelines now standard 
practise among most laboratories, as pointed out by Dr. Singer, but I 
feel that the local Institutional Biosafety Committees are much better 
position to evaluate compliance with the Guidelines. Because of their 
past experience with the Guidelines I feel that these committees are 
ideally suited to take over this important administrative role. 
Douglas l. Brutiag 
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