Page 31 of Attachment E 
In another session of this symposium, participants heard from several 
members of industry (J. Boldingh, Unilever Research, Netherlands; I.S. 
Johnson, Eli Lilley, USA: and M. Soria, of Carlo Earba, Italy), all of whom 
expressed strong support of the aims and intent of various guidelines 
and “codes of practice” governing recombinant DNA research. 
Although industrial involvement at present is minimal all expressed a 
confidence that the recombinant DNA techniques would some day 
result in significant benefits to medicine and agriculture. 
(5) Proposed revisions to the NIH Guidelines. 
The proposed revisions were published in the U.S. Federal Register in 
September 1977 and discussed during a two day public meeting at NIH, 
December 15 and 16, 1977. 
Summary minutes of this meeting and a detailed justification for the 
revisions prepared by the Recombinant DNA Molecule Program Ad- 
visory Committee, have been published in a supplement to the Fall 1977 
issue (Vol. 1, No. 1) of the Recombinant DNA Technical Bulletin. This 
supplement is available through the NIH Office of Recombinant DNA 
Activities, Building 31, Room 4A52, NIH, Bethesda, Md. 20014, USA. 
The introduction to the proposed Guidelines states that “the present 
revisions take into account many communications from both scientists 
and non-scientists since the original publication of the Guidelines”. 
With respect to risk-assessment it goes on to state that: 
“ During this period the committee has also become better in- 
formed about the general ecology and epidemiology of infectious 
microorganisms. Of particular relevance has been the information 
received from many medical microbiologists, including data from 
experiments with Escherichia coli K-12. These experiments include a 
demonstration that strain K-12 cannot be made pathogenic even 
when provided, by standard genetic techniques, with the genes for 
known toxins and other pathogenic properties. Other relevant ex- 
periments that have been reported show that the incorporation of 
foreign DNA does not increase, but rather tends to decrease, the 
general fitness of microorganisms; this phenomenon further con- 
tributes to the unlikelihood that cells carrying recombinant DNA will 
survive in Nature. Indeed, everything we have learned tends to 
diminish our estimate of the risks associated with recombinant DNA 
in E. coli K-12. Nevertheless, the revised Guidelines continue to be 
deliberately restrictive, with the intent of erring on the side of 
caution." 
A list of the sources by which the committee has become “informed” 
is contained in Part B of the Technical Bulletin mentioned above. It 
includes material presented at the Falmouth Meeting (See Section IV of 
this report) as well as other published data. Much of this material is not 
new information, but data familiar to experts in epidemiology and 
medical microbiology. Thus, it is clear that a larger body of information 
relevant to risk assessment is already available. It is significant that 
familiarity with this information has tended to diminish estimates of 
risks. 
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