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realistic, however; part-time members of institutional committees are not 
likely to have sufficient time and motivation to monitor experiments 
frequently or to investigate violations thoroughly. I recommend that NIH 
conduct periodic audits of the conduct of institutional biosafety committees 
and have authority to suspend a committee with a record of bad performance. 
In such cases, the responsibilities of the committee would revert temporarily 
to NIH. 
Non-trivial violations of the guidelines and accidents should be 
reported promptly to both the institutional committee and the Office of 
Recombinant DNA Activities. NIH should not rely solely on the institution 
to investigate an allegation of a serious violation. The guidelines should 
make clear that funds will be suspended or terminated if such a violation 
is found to have occurred. Institutions should be encouraged to develop 
procedures for disciplining individual offenders. 
5) Representation 
It is important for the Director of NIH and the heads of institutions 
to have discretion in appointments to the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee 
and the institutional biosafety committees. Nonetheless, I believe that 
NIH should make a more definite commitment to broader representation on 
these committees. The Subcommittee's report recommends that the RAC should 
be expanded to include members with expertise in regulatory procedures. 
[A-426] 
