1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
11 
12 
13 
14 
15 
16 
17 
18 
19 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 
25 
30 
Congress is hard-pressed to resist. 
I personally got calls from the heads of three 
of our major universities, from the heads of some of the 
giant corporations of America on this issue, an effort 
which seemed to me far out of proportion to the problems 
that would be caused to then by regulation. 
On the other hand, we heard testimony from 
some of the most eminent scientists in the country and 
in the world, who testified that there were potential 
dangers of very yrave magnitude if we didn't properly 
control some of the ON A recombinant research. 
It has the potential for bringing us some very 
great benefits, but also perhaps some of the greatest 
horror stories since we dropped the atomic bomb in Japan. 
And indeed, the former head of New York's Cornell Univer- 
sity described the potential of DNA recombinant research 
to me in precisely those terras. 
The recent transport of smallpox froia England 
to the United States is illustrative of the kind of problem 
we might face with DNA recombinant research. We were told 
a year ago by the World Health Organization that smallpox 
had been eradicated, and was only a concern for historians. 
It is now clear that such optimism was premature. While 
smallpox may have been confined to the laboratories, mostly 
for archival purposes, the threat to public health was 
[122] 
