14 
within the Federal Government with respect to health and safety re- 
quirements for recombinant DXA activities. The Committee notes that 
other Federal agencies have authority to establish general health 
and safety requirements. However, in order to prevent a Federal maze 
of overlapping and inconsistent requirements, the provision provides 
for a procedure by which an orderly resolution of conflicts and dupli- 
cation of requirements can be worked out. Generally, the health and 
safety requirements of other Federal agencies will be preempted by the 
requirements of the Commission when these requirements are incon- 
sistent with or differ from those promulgated by the Commission. If 
the Commission has not established a requirement, the requirement 
instituted by another Federal agency should remain in force and no 
application for an exemption from the Commission is necessary. For 
example, a Federal agency may have a requirement pertaining to a 
certain system for the health monitoring of all workers in all research 
it supports, including recombinant DXA work. The Commission may 
require a different system of health monitoring. In this case, the Com- 
mission's requirements would prevail unless the other Federal agency 
applies to the Commission and is granted an exemption. 
The exception to this is OSHA. where the language continues to 
follow the Administration's recommendation so that this agency will 
continue to set standards to protect the health and safety of employees 
who are within their jurisdiction now. The Commission will still be 
able to take action with respect to unique protections for the health 
and safety of employees affected by DXA research. The Committee 
believes that the two agencies, the Xational Commission and OSHA, 
should consult with each other to assure that there are no duplicative 
or inconsistent requirements. 
XII. Definitions 
There was much discussion in the Committee about the definition 
of recombinant DXA. In general, the Committee's definition treats any 
novel occurrence resulting from use of the recombinant technique, 
i.e.. an occurrence which cannot happen naturally, as recombinant 
DXA. In addition, the definition includes DXA techniques which 
present an unreasonable risk to the public health and environment, 
whether or not that risk may also result from natural processes. Thus, 
the Committee believes that the definition encompasses both novel 
organisms and those presenting an unreasonable risk whether or not 
the latter group is novel. 
The burden of proof as to whether something should be exempted 
from the definition of recombinant DXA for the purposes of this act 
rests with the petitioner. The Commission then must make a deter- 
mination that a given class or part of a class of experiments does not 
present an unreasonable risk to the health of the persons exposed to 
such molecules, to the environment, or to the health of the public. The 
Committee believed that the benefit of the doubt ought to be given to 
the public and that more activities rather than less should be covered 
initially with the Commission making a class-by-class determination 
of which activities are safe enough to be removed from the definition. 
The Committee wishes to point out that this has nothing to do with 
whether or not activities can be conducted: it simply relates to the 
safety regulations which would apply to the activities. 
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