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1 from the very beginning, including work on the original 
2 Asilomar Committee, which dealt with the potential -- the 
3 possible hazards of eukaryotic genes. 
4 I am here to support the revised guidelines as 
5 a move toward rational guidelines, although it seems to me 
6 that they are not all the way at rational guidelines. 
7 Several years ago the strict NIH guidelines were 
3 issued, and many of us who had been involved in this 
9 proceeding from the beginning had very grave misgivings 
10 about our participation in this process. We had suggested 
11 that recombinant DNA research go slowly, and had even 
12 proposed that some experiments not be done at all. Yet, 
13 there was no evidence, not the slightest bit of evidence, 
14 to fear even these forbidden experiments at that time, nor 
15 is there any evidence today. 
16 Yet scientists involved in the work were ready 
17 to limit themselves while they took stock of a new and 
18 powerful method. Now, this was a process, it seems to me, 
19 of self-education in which scientists wanted to think about 
20 this process for a while. In retrospect, we should have 
21 realized that the public statements of uncertainty by 
22 scientists, and the ensuing publicity were absolutely 
23 guaranteed to generate opponents — which you have heard 
24 many this morning and this afternoon — of recombinant 
25 DNA, and the controversy that followed was guaranteed, in 
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