Dr. William J. Gartland, Jr. 
January 29, 1982 
Page six 
tific etiquette may also occur as the result of intense 
pressures to achieve commercial applications of promising 
scientific techniques. As a scientific field becomes more 
competitive, with more at stake, there is no reason to trust 
professional self-regulat ion to adequately control either 
violations of the internal norms of good science, or viola- 
tions of external norms (imposed through the Guidelines), 
addressing hazards. 
III. The vacuum produced by the dismantling of the Guidelines 
may well be filled by state regulatory measures which will 
produce variant requirements from state to state. 
Two recent examples of state legislation affecting rDNA 
re.search include N.Y. Public Health Law ss 3220-3223 (Supp. 
1980-1981) which requires a certification procedure for the 
operation of laboratories engaged in such research, but bases 
its regulation upon the NIH Guidelines: "If the National Insti- 
tutes of Health guidelines are revised, the commissioner shall 
revise the regulations for the conduct of recombinant DNA 
activity accordingly." Thus, if NIH downgrades its guidelines. 
New York will simply follow suit. Since the statute also 
preempts any local law or ordinance, it fails to present a 
significant regulatory threat. A second example is Maryland, 
in Maryland Anno Code art 43 ss 898-910 (1980) . A license is 
required, and a Biohazards committee is to be apppointed to 
monitor licensed projects. The NIH Guidelines are used again 
as the baseline for regulation; however, sanctions are more 
elaborate including inspection of premises. These two examples 
make the point adequately, since the Maryland provision is 
more demanding than New York; in Maryland, it is not clear 
whether the downgrading of the NIH Guidelines will simply down- 
grade the state regulatory apparatus, as seems to be the case 
in New York. 
IV. The existing regulatory structure should be left in place 
in orddr to force scientists to consider specific risks and to 
gain the benefit of outside assessments of the experiments 
proposed . 
The current structure, utilizing the IBCs and NIH review 
processes, serves two essential functions. First it provides 
a "governor," a method by which potentially hazardous research 
can be temporarily -stopped in order to allow more careful evalu- 
ation of risks, benefits, and future developments. The IBC 
[746] 
