the process followed by the expert scientific communities has 
made it extremely difficult for the public to participate in 
the recombinant DNA rulemaking: 
(1) The Falmouth conference proceedings 
were published in the May 1978 Journal of 
Infectious Diseases , just a few weeks before 
the revised guidelines were published for public 
comment. This left little time for people to read 
and digest the technical papers. 
(2) The proceedings of the Ascot, US-EMBO 
workshop have not been published. A summary report 
was issued in the March 31, 1978 Federal Register . 
This failure to open the proceedings to public 
scrutiny is especially important since none of the 
American critics of the NIH regulatory procedures 
and risk assessments were invited to attend. Nor did 
the critics have an opportunity to review the Ascot report 
at the subsequent April 6-7, 1978 Recombinant DNA 
Advisory Committee Working Group. 
(3) The much touted Martin- Rowe experiments 
on the potential infectivity of polyoma DNA when it is 
inserted into a plasmid has never been published. 
It is cited in the Environmental Impact Statement as 
Israel et al . (1978a), "in preparation." 
Thus, we are left with the nagging impression that 
these revisons are being rushed through the public review process. 
[A-182] 
