49 
the National Environmental Policy Act as it has been used in this case, 
I think. The first one is that the Environmental Impact Statement appeared 
only after the Guidelines were released, and a policy of expansion had 
effectively been put in place. Funding had gone into effect, and people 
were doing experiments and so on. 
Secondly, when the comments were received, and I think members of the 
Committee have those comments in the large Yellow Book, it is not clear to 
me that any real notice has been taken of them. For example, there were 
very very detailed comments from Louis Lefkowitz, who is Attorney General 
of the State of New York, and his environmental scientist, Deborah Feinberg; 
from Dr. Leive of the NIH; from Dr. Zimmerman, who was then at the EDF ; 
from Dr. Lappe from the California Department of Public Health--I believe 
he was then at the Hastings Institute; not to mention the comments that I 
myself and my colleagues submitted at that time. 
Well, I have read the revised version of the Impact Statement. I have 
read over the revised Guidelines that I did receive, but there seems to be no 
reference to the comments that were received on the draft Environmental Impact 
Statement in those documents. I think good scientific procedure requires a 
response to all positions and not simply to those that appear to support the 
proposed revisions to the Guidelines. 
Thank you, Dr. Fredrickson. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you, Dr. Wright. 
Mr. Hutt. 
MR. HUTT: Dr. Wright, are you saying that there was no specific ref- 
erence to named comments, or that the final Environmental Impact Statement 
did not cover the subject matter involved in the various comments? 
DR. WRIGHT: Well, both. I have had that document for a very short 
time, so I did some spot checking. For example, Dr. Zimmerman raised the 
question of whether colonization was always necessary for an illness to be 
caused, and I don't see any response to that comment in the Environmental 
Impact Statement. There were several other comments that I and my col- 
leagues raised, and I did not see that the final Impact Statement responded 
to those comments. For example, I do not think that the final version of 
comments on a policy of containment in national facilities has ever been 
in the NIH process directly addressed and dealt with, and I don't consider 
the comments in the Environmental Impact Statement very satisfactory. 
Given our experience from physics — before I became a historian of 
science I was a theoretical physicist. Physicists go happily to national 
facilities. I don't see that the difference in discipline is really a 
decisive factor in arguing that that cannot happen with the biological 
sc iences . 
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