5 
Argument 
I. Separate Environmental Impact Statements 
Are Not Required For Each Individual 
Experiment . 
Plaintiff's argument appears to be that defendants 
have failed to comply, with NEPA because they have not prepared 
a separate impact statement for the individual experiment to 
be conducted at Fort Detrick. Defendants have not prepared 
a separate statement for the experiment at Fort Detrick, and 
such a statement would serve no purpose since the research 
complies with the NIH Guidelines. The EIS which we have filed 
with the Court fully assesses the environmental impact of 
all recombinant DNA research conducted in accordance with the 
NIH Guidelines, and individual statements for each experiment 
are unnecessary and would be duplicative. 
Significantly, the Guidelines of the Council on 
Environmental Quality (CEQ) and other CEQ pronouncements 
favor the preparation of multi- action EISs covering numerous 
individual activities. The CEQ Guidelines specifically place 
the responsibility for determining the scope of statements 
on the agency and contemplate preparation of programmatic 
statements : 
Agencies should give careful attention to 
identifying and defining the purpose and 
scope of the action which would most 
appropriately serve as the subject of the 
statement. In many cases, broad program 
statements will be required in order to 
assess the environmental effects of a number 
of individual actions on a given geographical 
area (e.g., coal leases), or environmental 
impacts that are generic or common to a 
series of agency action¥ (e.g. , maintenance 
or waste handling practices) , or the over- 
all impact of a large-scale program dr 
chain of contemplated projects (e.g., major 
lengths of highway as opposed to small seg- 
ments) . Subsequent statements on major 
[Appendix C — 113] 
