Dr. Fredrickson 
Page Four 
on the IBC must be expressed as a percentage of total membership, 
so that it will not be diluted as the committee grows in size. 
(2) Serious considerations should be given to providing 
that the institution may appoint only a single representative 
to the IBC, and that even scientific representatives must be 
appointed by some other authority or panel. Even if this suggest- 
ion is rejected, the institution should be permitted to appoint 
no more than 3/7 of the IBC members. One of these three should 
be required to be selected exclusively by non-professional 
institutional employees. 
(3) In order to assure adequate public representation and 
to assure that public representatives will be accountable to their 
constituency, the guidelines should provide for appointment of 
at least 4/7 of the IBC members by elected public officials, 
subject to confirmation by the appropriate legislative body. 
(4) In order to assure that diverse interests and perspec- 
tives are represented, the regulations should further provide that 
the public representatives must include at least one representative 
of an environmental organization, one representative of a local 
public health agency, and one consumer member of the local Health 
Systems Agency. Moreover, the institution should be required to 
notify the local HSA immediately upon filing any application for 
federal funds for recombinant DNA research. 
Voting and Reporting 
Although nearly all the decisions IBCs will make will involve 
technical and non-technical components, some will be less technical 
and more policy oriented than others. 
A voting system which permits institutional or scientists 
representatives to exercise 3/7 control over all decisions means 
a unified institutional or scientist bloc will prevail every time 
they are able to convince one out of four public representatives 
to go along with them. Such extraordinary power is proper only 
on issues which are unusually technical and arcane, if it is ever 
appropriate at all. On all other issues, decisions should require 
majority public member support or at least a 2/3 vote of the IBC. 
It may be possible to define in the Guidelines certain categories 
of decisions, such as the decision to undertake a particular 
research project, which clearly entail large social-policy com- 
ponents, and therefore sould require majority public representative 
support. For other issues, a 3/5 vote of the IBC should be required 
to categorize a decision as a "technical" decision requiring less 
than majority public representative support. 
[A— 379] 
