III-8-4. My Response to Comments on Requirement for Programmatic EIS 
As Indicated in Section III-8-3, just above, Mr. Rogers wrote 
one sentence indicating that a programmatic EIS Is required. That sentence 
refers to "the court of appeals opinion. . .suggesting that a programmatic 
EIS is required." In fact as noted in the April 15, 1985, Federal Register 
notice, the Appeals Court reversed "the District Court's finding that 
plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing, at this point, that the 
governing law requires NIH to complete a programmatic EIS on deliberate 
release experiments." 
While one sentence of comment was received indicating that a program- 
matic EIS is required, on the other hand, numerous, detailed, cogent 
arguments were advanced in ten different letters (which are given in 
Section III-B-1 of this memorandum, above) indicating why a programmatic 
EIS is not required in connection with NIH approvals of proposals to release 
into the environment organisms containing recombinant DNA. I recommend 
that you find that such a programmatic EIS is not needed at this time. 
However, if the NIH role with respect to deliberate release experiments 
changes in the future, we can reevaluate the need for a programmatic EIS 
at that time. 
III-C. Comments and Response to Comments on Adequacy of April 15, 1985, 
Federal Register Notice 
III-C-1. Mr. Rogers in his May 14 letter states: 
"As a preliminary matter, we wish to point out a significant omission 
in the notice in its description of the opinion of the Court of Appeals 
in FET v^ Heckler . The court of appeals agreed with the district court 
that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) applies to the 
deliberate release experiments, the court stating 'that if NIH fails 
to give appropriate environmental consideration to any other experiment, 
as it has failed to do with the University of California experiment, 
injunctive relief would be clearly proper.' Slip op. at 4: see also 
Slip op. at 31. 
"The difficulty with the notice on this point is that it is consistent 
with — and therefore could be erroneously construed to mean — 
that the court held only that NEPA applies to the University of 
California experiment. In light of the importance of the applicability 
of NEPA to all deliberate release experiments conducted by entities 
receiving recombinant DNA funding from NIH, a corrective public notice 
should be issued on this point." 
III-C-2. My Response to Comments in Section III-C-1 
I do not believe the April 15, 1985, Federal Register notice is misleading. 
The notice did not purport to give a complete analysis of the Court of 
Appeals decision, and the quotations from and references to the decision 
in the notice are accurate. A complete discussion of the details of the 
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