7 
IV. The Interagency Committee on Recombinant DNA Research 
I would now like to devote the remainder of my testimony to the 
activities of the Interagency Committee on Recombinant DNA Research. 
This Committee was created, with the approval of the President, to address 
extension of the NIH Guidelines beyond the NIH, to the public and private 
sectors . 
The specific mandate of the Interagency Committee is as follows: 
to review the nature and scope of all recombinant DNA research conducted 
in the United States, to determine the applicability of NIH standards 
to the government of this research nationally, and to recommend mechanisms 
to ensure that the standards are being complied with. The Committee is 
advisory to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. It includes 
representatives of Federal Departments and Agencies that support and 
conduct recombinant DNA research (or may do so in the future), and repre- 
sentatives of Federal Departments and Agencies that have present or 
potential regulatory authority in this area. At the Secretary’s request, 
I serve as Chairman of the Committee. 
Two meetings of the Committee were held in November 1976. The first 
of these, on November 4, was devoted to a review of the development of 
the NIH Guidelines. The Committee also reviewed activities in other 
countries on the development of guidelines for this research. Recombinant 
DNA research is being conducted in a number of countries, including Canada, 
the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian countries, most other parts of western 
Europe, eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan. 
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