41 
Two, the incidence and character of hospital-acquired infections in the 
United States. You go into the hospital and you pick up there an E. col i in- 
fection. The incidence of the laboratory-acquired infections in the United 
States, the known incidence. Information of the roots of infection in the 
above case, how did people pick up these infections? Was it a puncture wound 
Did it get in their mustache? The relationships between plasmids, antibiotic 
resistance, and pathogenicity. A discussion of the origin of new disease 
strains of organisms; diseases do show up in history, paralytic polio, the 
Hong Kong flu. What is known about the origin of these new strains? Animal 
reservoirs for human enteric infections. 
Now, the mechanism for obtaining this information is very traditional. 
It is through the organization of conferences widely publicized in the scien- 
tific press, open to all those who have information to contribute, and obvi- 
ously some funding has to be provided to make sure the conference takes place 
This has not taken place in this arena, and the proceedings of the NIH 
Advisory Committee are at odds with the normal tradition of Federal regula- 
tory standards committees, which usually gather all the stuff in a big 
book, and then say on the basis of this data we have proceeded thusly. 
The Falmouth was a small, closed conference, not announced to the 
scientific or public health communities, and drawing on a very small frac- 
tion of the expertise needed. 
Recommendation one is that such a broad conference be convened prior 
to any further modification of the Guidelines and this be advertised in 
the journals. 
Problem two is — let me just finish problem two, and then I will stop. 
The failure to set up a system to continuously survey infections 
of laboratory workers. Page 34 of the justification document states that, 
"Recombinant DNA research has not been associated with a single adverse 
incident." This claim has no basis in fact or method. To determine whether 
or not adverse incidents occurred, you have to know what people who al- 
ready get sick in laboratories, and certainly people who work in labora- 
tories get sick, what was the causative organism? Now, there is no system 
in the United States for recording and identifying the etiology of all 
laboratory-acquired infection. People go home, they take hot tea and 
aspirin, they come back to work, and they get well. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. King, your 
tend your comments by writing them? 
DR. 
KING: Yes. 
Can I 
just read 
DR. 
FREDRICKSON: 
No. 
Are there 
on his comments? 
time is up. Would you like to ex- 
the paragraph for correcting that? 
any questions, however, for Dr. King 
Mr. Hutt. 
[ 245 ] 
