45 
that I don't think it is appropriate to distribute it in its present form. 
This is still under the jurisdiction of Gorbach, who is the contractor; it 
is up to him to come up with a final version. I think he has the rights to 
this transcript. It is a good document; anybody is welcome to read it as 
far as I am concerned. 
DR. STETTEN: Professor Rosenblith. 
PROFESSOR ROSENBLITH: I don't want to sound like a lawyer, but if I 
look at page M-l and compare it with M-6 in the fattest book — 
SPEAKER: Which book? 
PROFESSOR ROSENBLITH: The fattest book. I see that one is called 
a "Workshop on Studies for Assessment of Potential Risks Associated with 
Recombinant DNA Experimentation," and the other one is called a "Work- 
shop on Risk Assessment," ami I am perfectly well aware that people abbre- 
viate things. I cannot frankly say whether the list of participants that 
is being given reflects broad representation of disciplines, because what 
is given in general is their affiliations, not their disciplinary back- 
grounds . 
But living in an institution in which risk-assessment is, to say the 
least, a lively issue, I would have hoped that I would recognize some of 
those people who have been worrying about risk-assessments in other fields. 
I know that it may well be that these people were available as consultants 
in a different way, but I do think that the issue of risk-assessment from a 
mathematical, operations analysis point of view, a statistical point of view, 
a variety of other probabilistic techniques that exist is a very serious one, 
and I would hope that at least some comments will be invited from experts in 
this field if there are none among the participants, which I cannot judge. 
DR. STETTEN: Dr. Sturgis. 
DR. STURGIS: I would like to ask Dr. King — I gather you are not an 
M.D., because you seem to have undue confidence in the ability of physi- 
cians to make a diagnosis on the illnesses of laboratory workers. How 
do you propose that we make such accurate diagnoses? 
DR. KING: In the first place, there sec^is to be quite a difference 
of opinion in the community about the possibility of making such a diagno- 
sis. There is a question of how much money one is willing to put into 
it. Many people have told me it is impossible to identify K-12 as a caus- 
ative organism of infection, which makes me very nervous about using it 
if you can't identify it. Other people — for example, Dr. Liberman, who 
is our MIT Biohazard Assessment Officer — has said no, it is quite pos- 
sible to do it. 
I would like to say in general, I agree that there were many, many 
people at the Falmouth Conference who were experts in this whole area, but 
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