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that there is an enormous amount of other influences bearing on the develop- 
ment of the Guidelines, namely those of politics. And by definition it seems 
a lot of the political considerations regarding these proposed changes are not 
available to us, while they may be available to others in the room. At any 
rate, all we can do is do our best. That just goes without saying. 
Specifically, I have three or four comments to make regarding the pro- 
posed Guidelines. In the introduction I favor the intent of the new defini- 
tion regarding recombinant molecules in that it tends to exclude certain 
experiments that are presently classified in the EK1-P1 situation and remove 
them from the jurisdiction of the Guidelines. I am in favor of both from my 
own experience and from reading supporting material that has been made availa- 
ble to us. 
It does seem important, in reading the Berg letter and the telegram from 
the European Molecular Biology Organization, that we must take into consider- 
ation the situation of chemically synthesized DNAs , and parenthetically to 
that, it seems important to define what a chemically synthesized DNA is, 
whether it is an enzymatic product, a complementary sort of DNA, or whether 
it is wholly chemically synthesized without any enzymatic assistance at all. 
As a subnote to adoption of the new definition it seems very important 
to encourage you and your staff and the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee to 
undergo a full debate regarding an assembly of DNAs which would be included 
in the list of non-novel molecules. And perhaps, I am not sure — this is an 
expensive meeting to get together, and I am not sure how often this sort of 
thing can be done, but the equivalent sort of consideration. Those are im- 
portant, because they involve obviously pushing certain experiments that 
are now under the jurisdiction of the Guidelines out, and the public needs 
to be represented, it seems to me, the scientific and the lay public. 
I have no specific comments in the physical and biological containment 
sections other than those I mentioned as a part of the record already. In 
regard to the experimental guidelines, the actual implementation and class- 
ification of certain types of experiments, I am sure this is going to be 
brought up over and over again around the table, and I hope much more elo- 
quently than I can do, seeing as how my experience does not lie in the 
section of animal viruses, but it seems that the classification of recom- 
binant DNA work with animal viruses needs to be re-examined very closely. 
That is my very strong impression as evidenced by, for example, the polyoma, 
cloning polyoma in prokaryotes, and development of polyoma vectors in mouse 
cells. Also, by Dr. Chilton's explanation of her problems of reclassifi- 
cation upwards of plant host-vector systems, that doesn't seem to make a 
whole lot of sense to me. 
In roles and responsibilities, the obvious gist of the change in roles 
of the institutional biohazards committee has been that they have become 
much more important in the proposed revisions; and as more responsibility 
is placed on local people, it seems to be extraordinarily important to be 
very specific in telling these committees what is expected of them. There 
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