Apartado 8-4480 
San °os£, Costa Rica 
August 30 » 1978 
Director 
NIH 
Building 1, Room 124 
9000 Rockville Pike 
Bethesda, Maryland 20014 
USA 
Lear Sirs 
I am responding to your invitation to make comments on proposed revi- 
sions to the NIH Guidelines on research involving recombinant DNA molecules. 
I am Mrs. Average Citizen with no scientific qualifications whatsoever 
to jud~e or to criticize the proposed guidelines. As such, then, my 
overriding interest is in the safety of the proposed experiments and 
the protection from "mistakes", accidents, or "unexpected developments" 
that DNA ressarch may entail. I believe in the closest government control 
and supervision of this research. My opinion is that all parties - private 
and public - involved in LNA research must be supervised and controlled by 
adequate government regulations and supervisory structure. There must be 
no possibility from any party of a "Pandora's Box" from DNA research. 
I would not allow the scientists alone to set up standards and guidelines 
for the supervision of EJSTA research. Barbara Villet in her article in the 
ATLANTIC (June, 1978), "Opiates of the Mind", in writing about scientists 
writes: "When word of this find ("scientific J reached the United States, 
it was received with a mixture of excitement and dismay. 'It meant they 
were ahead of us in the race,' Avram Goldstein recalls, 'and science is 
just that - a race. It's cooperative, but it's competitive too, and 
probably more of the latter because scientists are by nature competitive 
people. Since there isn't much in the way of monetary rewards for what 
they do, they go for the ego rewards. ' " 
At all costs LNA research must go ahead - if at all - at a slow, controlled 
pace so that the welfare of the people will not be sacrificed to the ego 
rewards in "the race" of scientists involved in this kind of research. 
Very truly yours 
cc: Senator Kennedy 
[A-65] 
