THE WORCESTER FOUNDATION 
FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY 
, /A xeuu vy, ^ //aAiucAuAeits 
01545 
Telephone (617) 842-8921 
September 12, 1978 
Dr. Donald S. Fredrickson 
Director 
National Institutes of Health 
Department of Health, Education 
and Welfare 
Bethesda, Maryland 20014 
Dear Don: 
I am writing to you in response to the publication 
in the Federal Register of the new guidelines for re- 
combinant DNA research. I find it tragic that we must 
continue restrictive guidelines for research of such 
enormous potential benefit to mankind after all evidence 
indicates the absence of significant risk. By doing so 
we seem to deny all we have learned of genetics, evolution 
and molecular biology in the last century. Living 
organisms have been recombining staggering numbers of DNA 
molecules for billions of years through transformation, 
transduction, conjugation and sex and it is the extremity 
of presumption to think that five years of man's experi- 
mentation can produce an unexpected pathogen. As we gain 
new knowledge through recombinant DNA experimentation, we 
find less and less justification for the imposition of 
regulations. We must insure that this most powerful tool 
of molecular biology is not fettered into impotence. 
Smcerely yours, 
Mahlon B. Hoagland, M.D. 
President and Scientific Director 
MBH : j f 
cc: Dr. Wallace Rowe, Chief 
Laboratory of Viral Diseases 
National Institute of Allergy 
and Infectious Diseases 
[A-123] 
