229 
I think if that is all for Ms. Pfund, I omitted one invited witness 
who wanted to speak, and that is Dr. Davis. Then we will go to the public 
witnesses . 
DR. DAVIS: It seems to me that the character of the discussion has 
varied quite a bit from one part of these two days to another. This morning 
has been perhaps less balanced than some other times, so I would like to 
take up a couple of minutes of your time to summarize some rather general 
remarks . 
Before that, let me offer one correction on the specific content of the 
Guidelines in the section that we are discussing, and that is the statement 
on page 49604, a third of the way down the third column: that the local 
committees should possess competence "to determine the acceptability of its 
findings in terms of applicable laws, regulations, standards of practice, 
community attitudes, and health and environmental considerations." I would 
like to question the wisdom of including community attitudes here. Com- 
munity attitudes must be taken into account very ser iously--and I presume 
they are — in the setting up of the regulations, but for local committees to 
be considering community attitudes would seem to me to suggest that, in one 
place, if the scientists squeal loudly enough, the committee might become 
more relaxed than at another place, and vice versa. It seems to me perhaps 
an inappropriate time or level at which to take those into account. 
Now, the general remarks are as follows: It seems to me there has 
been a good deal of artificial dichotomizing in much of the discussion last 
evening and this morning, proceeding on the assumption that scientists are 
concerned in their input solely with the advancement of science, in terms of 
their personal advancement, and the cultural contributions of science, while 
others must be concerned with the welfare of society. That is surely far 
from an accurate reflection of the activities of committees of scientists 
that have been concerned with this work. The responsible scientific groups 
must be concerned with balancing risks with benefits, and therefore taking 
into account the welfare of society, and also taking into account the risks, 
because they are clearly the first at risk. We have heard much evidence 
that the possibility, the very low possibility with, say, an E. col i K-12 
strain of a laboratory infection, is still very much larger than the pos- 
sibility of an epidemic. 
Now, I would like to call attention to a very important article written 
by Freeman Dyson [?], a theoretical physicist at the Princeton Institute, in 
the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists , I think it was between two and three years 
ago, called, "On the Hidden Costs of Saying No." Professor Dyson's thesis 
was that it is very easy within the structure of social actions that we are 
familiar with to convict a person for doing something that hurts another 
person. That is part of our legal framework. You cannot convict a person 
for not making a discovery that could have helped other people. The aim of 
scientists is to convert, as far as possible, many acts of God that harm 
people into things that are no longer acts of God. But you can't throw a man 
in jail or even fine him for not bothering to do that. And everybody who has 
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