efforts are under way to identify appropriate governmental bodies to ensure 
compliance with safety standards for this research. 
B . Regional 
The European Medical Research Councils, the European Molecular Biology 
Organization, and the European Science Foundation strive to ensure consist- 
ency in safety standards to govern this research throughout western Europe. 
All have varying degrees of contact with government organizations to enlist 
their assistance and to coordinate activities. Under the sponsorship of NIH 
and EMBO, a workshop was convened in London in March 1977 to discuss param- 
eters of physical containment.* The technical aspects of primary and 
secondary physical containment were discussed, and agreement was reached 
on the appropriate range in which physical containment provisions should 
fall. The report of this meeting indicates that, while adjustments are 
still required if these guidelines are to offer uniform physical contain- 
ment standards, all three sets are comparable. This effort complements 
the work of WHO as described below (section IV-C) . 
The European Economic Community (EEC), as discussed in the survey, has 
legal authority under certain circumstances to enact policy decisions bind- 
ing on its member nations. In this context, EEC has begun to examine scien- 
tific activities of member states to ensure that safety measures they 
have adopted are uniform and that private industry adheres to the same 
standards as the public sector. Meetings have been held, and a directive 
*The "Report of the NIH/EMBO Workshop (Parameters of Physical Containment)" 
may be obtained from the Office of Research Safety, National Cancer Insti- 
tute, Room 2E47, Building 13, National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville 
Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20014. 
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