SEPTEMBER 6-7 - MI NOTES OF MEETING 
20 
Mr. Schwarz, a congressional assistant to Senator Stevenson, noted that 
Senator Stevenson has asked his staff to draft a bill requiring mandatory 
registration of projects. Dr. Ahmed requested that a more detailed discussion 
of this issue be scheduled at the next meeting. Dr. Set low then called 
the vote to approve the supplement to the NIH Guidelines. Eleven members 
voted for the motion, none were opposed, with four abstentions. 
XI. PROPOSED EXEMPTION FOR PSEUDOMONAS POTT DA AND PSEUDOMONAS 
FLUORESCEINS 
Drs. Campbell and Gottesman presented a request from Dr. N. Ornston of Yale 
University (707/3) to add Pseudomonas putida and Pseudomonas fluorescens 
to the exchanger list (Appendix A to the Guidelines) of organisms exempt 
from the Guidelines in accord with Section I-E-4. This request had been 
discussed at the last meeting. ITiey summarized evidence (700) of transfer, 
exchange, and transduction from members of the current list of exchangers 
into P. putida , and pointed out that no data showing transfer frcm P. 
putida into members of the exchangers list was presented. Good data exists 
showing exchange between P. fluorescens and members of the list. On the 
basis of the data. Dr. Gottesman concluded that it is reasonable to add 
these strains to the list of exchangers. Dr. Campbell added his support 
for including both strains on the list of exchangers in Appendix A. 
Dr. Gottesman made a motion to add P. putida and P. fluorescens to the 
list of exchangers with E. coli in Appendix A. This motion was accepted 
by the RAC by a vote of 11 for, none against, and 3 abstentions. 
XII. OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH IMPLICATIONS AND HEALTH SURVEILLANCE 
Dr. Parkinson discussed occupational health and health surveillance. He 
began his presentation by disagreeing with the statement in document 701 
that the primary purpose of health surveillance is to protect the worker. 
He stated that medical surveillance is an insensitive tool for protecting 
worker health; usually problems are noted after the fact. Even with a 
good medical surveillance program, the methodology of surveillance is in 
its infancy. For this reason, the gathering of statistics is as important 
as protecting the health of the worker. He stated that companies don't 
need to know anything about the individual health of each worker. What 
the company needs to know and what NIH needs to know in this instance is 
the overall statistics. In his view, this document (701) is deficient in 
establishing an adequate reporting requirement for health problems and 
assembling and tabulating them so that a good epidemiological study could 
be done. He went on to say that workers must understand what they're 
doing and how they can protect themselves. An adequate education program 
is thus necessary and the workers should be consulted in the structuring 
of such a program. Also, preventive techniques must be established. 
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