There have been Congressional Hearings and the National Institute 
of Health has developed a set of guidelines but the thrust of these 
efforts .have been to lower the degree of risk associated with small scale 
research efforts. The problems associated with commercial activity have 
not been explored. For example, would the governmental options for 
controlling a hazardous or potentially ecologically damaging situation 
be greatly affected if the product v/ere a "miracle drug"? 
This assessment should consider the potential ecologic, economic 
and social impact of the rapidly expanding applied genetics industry. 
The assessment must include a description of the potential of the problem 
(including likelihood, magnitude), as well as a comprehensive, integrated 
overview of the longer term regional, national, and global environmental 
outlook. This should permit the contractor to evaluate concepts, models, 
methods, and environmental controls and policies as they affect the 
environmental future. 
The final report must summarize the state-of-knowl edge concerning 
the problem, define and scope the problem in terms of its public health, 
public welfare and environmental policy implications and identify major 
information/knowl edge gaps and inadequacies in analytical methods and 
techniques. 
2. Applied Genetics: Agriculture 
The major impact of applied genetic research over the next decade 
may well be in the realm of agriculture. The potential for expansion of 
Biotechnology via Applied Genetics into the industrial arena was discussed 
in the previous description of Applied Genetics: Industrial, and most 
of the same expansion factors mentioned there apply to agriculture as 
well. The addition of nitrogen fixing ability to non-leguminous plants, 
control of crop disease, production of fertilizer and degradation of 
pesticides are only a few of the potential agriculturally related products 
of genetic engineering. The positive result of these developments could 
be additional acreage available for food crops, lowered pesticide and 
fertilizer usage, or higher crop yields per acre resulting in increased 
food supply. The possible disbenefits include the potential for decreasing 
the gene pool in a given food stock, ecological or public health effects 
resulting from large scale dispersion of novel genomes, or the economic, 
ecologic, or social consequences of rapidly expanding the cultivation of 
a new species. 
This assessment should consider the potential ecologic, economic 
and social impact of the rapidly expanding applied genetics industry. 
The assessment must include a description of the potential of the problem 
(including likelihood, magnitude), as well as a comprehensive, integrated 
overview of the longer term regional, national, and global environmental 
outlook. This should permit the contractor to evaluate concepts, models, 
methods, and environmental controls and policies as they affect the 
environmental future. 
The final report must summarize the state-of-knowl edge in terms of 
its public health, public welfare and environmental policy implications 
and identify major information/knowledge gaps and inadequacies in analytical 
methods and techniques. 
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