3601 4th Street 
Lubbock, TX 79430 
October 23, 1984 
Director 
Office of Recombinant DNA Activities 
Building 31, Room 3B10 
National Institutes of Health 
Bethesda, Maryland 20205 
Re: Jeremy Rifkin Amendments Proposed to NIH Guidelines for Research 
Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules 
To Whom It May Concern, 
We, the undersigned, are faculty members of the Texas Tech University Health 
Sciences Center acting as individuals and are scientists who conduct research 
in the biomedical sciences sponsored by a variety of granting agencies 
including the National Institutes of Health. We would like to express to you 
as strongly as possible our concern that the above two amendments (published 
as part of the Federal Register, pg. 37016) sponsored by Jeremy Rifkin of the 
Foundation of Ecomonic Trends do not become part of the NIH Guidelines for 
Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules. 
The Guidelines, as they are now written, more than adequately govern this 
aspect of work with recombinant DNA molecules. If these amendments were to 
become part of the NIH Guidelines, they would place impossible restrictions 
upon this type of research. Consequently, work directed at understanding the 
mechanisms which control normal and abnormal gene expression would be severely 
limited. For example, molecular genetic studies on the basic research in 
cancer, cell growth, cell differentiation and development would be limited to 
those approaches which we now have available, and so new ideas would be 
inhibited. The newer approaches, which the two amendments would ban, offer 
insights into fundamental questions of biology and the biomedical sciences 
that cannot be approached through other methods currently in use. Ultimately, 
the benefit to medicine and the potential to alleviate human suffering through 
research using recombinant DNA in this manner will far outweigh the emotional 
concerns raised by this well-intentioned watch dog group. 
Sincerely vours. 
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