90 
organisms, although that has, as a matter of fact, been apparently going on 
elsewhere. But no, we don't have a large contract program going in this 
area, but I have made it very clear that we are most interested in funding 
good ideas in this respect. And we have some support, but not much. 
Yes, would you identify yourself? 
DR. WEISS: Dr. Weiss, National Academy of Sciences. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Yes, Dr. Weiss. 
DR. WEISS: One of the major concerns of the National Research Council 
group which has looked at and responded to your document was the question as 
to whether the biological containment systems will significantly inhibit risk- 
assessment studies. I would like to have some general idea of how you are 
approaching that issue. 
DR. GOTTESMAN: Well, I don't think that the systems themselves can 
inhibit risk-assessment of the sort, for instance, which is proposed for EK3 
testing — that is, where you deliberately clone in a marker which you want to 
follow, and then follow it in in vivo testing and ask is it transferred out 
of the organism that you put in into other things? because then you can put 
in an easily followable marker, and there won't be any difficulty. 
In terms of risk-assessment, that is let us say, monitoring in the lab 
when P3+EK3-level experiments are going on, yes, I think there is some 
difficulty. That is, the organisms die. But given the choice between that 
sort of risk-assessment, if you recover the organisms you are not happy and 
if you don't recover them you are not happy. I am not sure that it is so 
easy to find the middle ground that is going to be good both for risk- 
assessment and for containment. One precludes the other, in a sense. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: I think, Dr. Gottesman, Dr. Weiss is making sure we 
read the NRC document. It was circulated to all members. This was one of 
the questions they asked: How can you assess risk if all that assessment 
is forbidden under the Guidelines? You will note that the revisions contain 
a provision under the so-called prohibited experiments which allows that to 
be specifically exempted. That is, certain risk-assessment experiments would 
be exempted under the recommendation of the Committee and after the specific 
decision by the Director of NIH under these particular Guidelines. So this 
revision now contains that possibility. Is that an answer to your question? 
DR. WEISS: Yes, well — 
DR. FREDRICKSON: I think that is interesting, because we really are 
at the stage where we are also talking about those specific prohibitions, 
and there has been very little comment on those, because I suppose they 
really weren't changed, except for this. 
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