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scientific, public, and private sectors, reviews all recombinant DNA 
research projects for conformance to appropriate safety standards 
and practices. Similar advisory groups have also been established 
in other European countries, and efforts are under way to identify 
appropriate governmental bodies to ensure compliance with GMAG 
standards. 
The European Economic Community (EEC) has legal authority under 
certain circumstances to enact policy decisions binding on its member 
nations. In this context, EEC has begun to examine scientific 
activities of member states to verify that the scientific and safety 
measures adopted are consistent and that private industry adheres to 
the same standards as the public sector. An EEC directive is 
currently under consideration which would require each member 
state to establish its own administrative mechanism to ensure that 
all recombinant DNA research is subject to national guidelines. 
Proposed Revised Guidelines 
In 1977 the Recombinant Advisory Committee, in accordance with 
its mandate in the original Guidelines, began the process of proposing 
revisions to them. Revisions were proposed, based on accumulated 
information on the effectiveness of physical and biological containment 
and on the biology of the hosts and vectors utilized in recombinant 
DNA research, by a subcommittee of the RAC which held open meetings in 
March and April. Following this, the proposed revisions were considered 
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