The Public Health Research Institute 
of the City of New York. Inc. 
455 First Avenue. New York. N. Y. 10015 
TEL. (212) 578 0000 
May 6, 1986 
MEMORANDUM 
TO: Recombinant ENA Committee 
FROM: R. Novick 
R. Clowes 
S. Cohen 
R. Curtiss III 
S. Falkow 
RE: Amendment to Guidelines 
In view of the recent success enjoyed by Jeremy Rifkin and the 
Foundation on Economic Trends in blocking the release of ice-crystal 
mutants of Pseudomonas and the testing of a pseudo rabies vaccine, we 
should like to propose a re-affirimation of the basic philosophy of the 
Guidelines in the form of an amendment. 
When preparing our draft proposal for Asilomar we considered 
organisms containing material from two or more species as novel and 
therefore conceivably hazardous. The entire proposal and, we believe, 
the guidelines themselves, were based entirely upon this concept. 
Subsequent scientific progress has resulted in the ability to 
eliminate any specific gene in a microorganism by cloning, in vitro 
deletion, and subsequent recombinational replacement. Ihis results in a 
local deletion and the organism is not in any sense recombinant; indeed, 
this technology is merely a more sophisticated, more precise, and 
infinitely more reliable means of accomplishing what plant and animal 
breeders have been doing for several millenia and what geneticists have 
been doing for the better jpart of a century. 
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