Dr. William Gartland, Jr. 
January 22, 1981 
page 2 
The Baltimore-Campbell proposal would eliminate all mandatory aspects 
of the NIH guidelines by replacing them with a 'voluntary' code of 
practices. This alternative would seem superficially to many scientists 
to expedite the pace of recombinant DNA studies by doing away with the 
time consuming procedures related to the functioning of the RAC and local 
IBCs. I do not believe that this in fact will be the result. Rather, 
haphazard illogical and nonuniform standards will be proposed by the 
governing bodies in the communities in which the research is being carried 
out. 
The reality of the present situation is that the vast majority of 
experiments became exempt from the requirements of the NIH guidelines as 
of July 1981. The Gottesman proposal covering the remainder of these 
experiments is a responsible and reasonable document with requirements 
that will not be too cumbersome to either the experimenter, the IBCs, 
or the RAC. 
LcnarV GaidstelrT 
Assocl^e Professor 
RG:jw 
