The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research 
333 Cedar Street • New Haven • Connecticut 06510 
December 15, 1976 
Dr. Donald S. Fredrickson 
Director 
Department of Health, 
Education and Welfare 
National Institutes of Health 
Bethesda, Maryland 20014 
Dear Doctor Fredrickson: 
This note is in response to your letter of 
November 29, 1976. The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund 
for Medical Research carries out no "in house" research. 
Our funds are expended entirely either in the support of 
postdoctoral fellowships, or, in a much more limited way, 
in small grants to young or recently established investigators 
generally in academic institutions. 
The research supported by the Fund clearly involves 
recombinant DNA experiments in some instances. However, the 
monitoring, evaluation and control of this work and the specific 
application of the NIH Guidelines is the responsibility of the 
host institution where the research is carried on. 
Up to this time the Fund has made no inquiries of the 
host institutions as to whether or how they apply the Guidelines. 
On the surface it does not appear that such a request would serve 
any useful function. The Fund has no means of checking on such 
aspects of the research that it supports, especially since the 
various laboratories are located all over the world. In all 
instances academic, governmental or non-profit research 
institutions are involved. To the best of our knowledge all 
of these are committed to and interested in complying with the 
Guidelines . 
I am not prepared on short notice to respond in detail 
about your proposed list of functions required for implementation. 
Since Sal Luria, Paul Berg and Bob Sinsheimer among others are all 
members of our Board of Scientific Advisers, I feel that from their 
various positions you will have all the multifaceted input to these 
questions that this Fund could possibly supply even after long 
internal deliberation. 
FMRref 
Sincerely yours , 
Frederic M. Richards 
Director 
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