16 
mittees. It is important that some of the members be drawn from the 
public at large. Laboratory workers, both non-professional as well as 
professional, should be considered for membership. Public members 
of industrial Boards of Directors may be good candidates for certain 
biosafety committees. 
It is expected that such guidelines would be sufficiently flexible to 
provide for experimentation across the country. Depending on re a- 
tionships within a community, traditions of the area, and so forth, the 
composition and nature of biosafety committees might well be quite 
different, as might the degree of involvement such committees would 
have in administering and enforcing regulations. The knowledge ac- 
cumulated over the next two years from these experiments should be 
valuable in discussions of the broader issues of public participation. 
It is impossible (not to mention objectionable) for the Federal gov- 
ernment alone to assure compliance with the regulations. Therefore it 
seems essential that responsibility for primary oversight of recom- 
binant DNA research lie with the biosafety committees. Their impor- 
tance should be emphasized. 
Proprietary Information 
The committee also amended H.R. 11192 to require the Secretary to 
include in the regulations “provisions giving due consideration to the 
need for protection against improper or unwarranted disclosure of 
privileged, confidential, or proprietary information, trade secrets, and 
information held under patent rights.” This amendment gives the 
Secretary no new authority, but it does make explicit the desire of 
both the Commerce and Science Committees that the regulations con- 
tain adequate safeguards for nonprofit, industrial and commercial 
entities equally with regard to protection of their data and informa- 
tion of a proprietary nature. 
All private and public witnesses who testified on H.R. 11192 before 
the subcommittee expressed some concern about these problems. It was 
also noted that the Department of Commerce is less than fully satis- 
fied that this bill will meet the needs of the protection of trade secrets, 
proprietary rights, and intellectual property. 
The question of how proprietary information in this area is going to 
be handled by the government is important because proposals to do 
recombinant DNA research are to be submitted before the research is 
done. Recombinant DNA research in universities as well as industrial 
research laboratories will involve potentially patentable information, 
and suitable protection should apply whether the information is sub- 
mitted by a private company, a university, or any other individual or 
institution. 
The regulatory provisions of H.R. 11192 require that the Govern- 
ment obtain a great deal of information about certain basic research 
projects which it normally would have no reason to obtain. Once again 
the committee is concerned about precedents which may be set if ade- 
quate consideration is not given to this issue. In the particular case of 
recombinant DNA research, problems may not be as serious as they 
might be since it can already be shown that the information may have 
commercial or proprietary value. If regulations are ever imposed 
upon other areas of basic research which cannot make that showing, 
there could be serious problems in the future. 
[Appendix B — 204] 
