The experience of the past few years justifies this approach. We applaud 
the excellent job that the Director, the staff at NIH and the Recombinant DNA 
Advisory Committee has done in developing the new guidelines. We further 
endorse the addition of representatives of critical disciplines in epidemiology, 
infectious diseases, medical microbiology and virology as advisors. Their 
expertise and workshops such as the Falmouth meeting, the ASOT meeting and the 
workshop on Risk Assessment of Agricultural Pathogens in Washington provide 
essential, valuable input in evaluating the available scientific information. 
We believe that this approach is sound and increases the confidence and quality 
of decision making. New hosts and vectors in recombinant DNA research are to 
be expected, and the procedures to evaluate and assign appropriate levels to 
each have been developed by NIH. 
(2) Changes in Containment Levels 
During the last two years there have been dramatic contributions from 
recombinant DNA research to both fundamental concepts in biology and to appli- 
cations in biomedicine. Concern over freedom of research and protection of 
the public, in such a rapidly changing field are, and will continue to be, 
characteristic of this field. We support the approach by NIH to continually 
review the risk asssessment data of host-vector systems in DNA recombinant 
research to provide conservative guidelines. The lowering of containment 
levels for recombinant DNA research based on viral vectors, following detailed 
evaluation of experience with animal viruses (ESCO meeting and Ginsberg Report) 
represent the type of public responsibility in evaluating risk experience, 
which should serve as a model for other host-vector systems. The resulting 
reductions in containment levels, in our opinion, are justified and based on 
sound principals of pathogenicity and epidemiology. We recommend that in the 
continuing process of risk assessment that the appropriate experts, as Committee 
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