21 
which would increase the probabilities of the fragments being kept non- 
virulent; conditioning approval of proposals involving the use of non- 
transmissable plasmids to require checking that they remain non-transmissable 
after cloning; and conditioning approval of an experiment involving genetic 
transfers from yeast to E-coli and then back into yeast in order to study 
what the effect has been, on the prior approval by the NIH for the use of 
yeast as a host system. None of these conditions, to the best of my under- 
standing, are required by existing NIH rules. 
What the IBC can do in actuality is to assure that there is good flow 
of information between the public and technical personnel. This helps to 
insure that their own deliberations are as well informed as possible, and 
keeps the members of the resarch community and of the general public in 
some type of reasonable communication. In order that such functions proceed 
smoothly, certain procedural requirements have seemed to us at the Unviersity 
of Washington to be essential. I note them here with the suggestion that 
the NIH require them as procedural rules for all IBCs. Meetings of the 
IBCs should be open to the general public (except perhaps for the actual 
voting on particular research proposals); furthermore, the general import 
of "sunshine law" requirements should be followed, assuring that there 
is adequate publicity of the open meetings, that minutes are publicly 
available, etc. In addition, at the University of Washington, we have 
decided to hold our meetings in the evenings so members of the working 
public and homemakers can attend; we require that researchers prepare 
a lay summary of their proposals in written form for distribution to 
members of the general public which come to our open meetings where their 
proposals are being discussed; that they orally present their research proposals 
in terms which are understandable to members of the lay public and to the 
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