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As far as the biological or physical containment, all that seems fairly 
sensible to me. It is when we get to the experimental guidelines that I have 
more difficulties. I found the discussion last evening extremely unsettling 
on the matter of plant and animal viruses. It would be my recommendation 
that a meeting with the European scientists be convened as quickly as pos- 
sible, and that the Guidelines be revised after being informed by those dis- 
cussions. I had no confidence at the end of the evening that that committee 
which drew up those Guidelines believed that they were as they should be. I 
think that they had had an overlay of what I termed or called politics, which 
is not — I have no disagreement with Dr. Gustafson on this point. I am not 
talking about allowances made for caution or for prudence. I am talking about 
a notion that this is what someone else will accept politically. 
I think the appropriate role for the Committee, the Recombinant Molecule 
Committee, is to make scientific judgments exactly as they see them based on 
the data before them, and no more or no less. I had no confidence that that 
had been done in this case. In fact, I think the Guidelines have been unduly 
restrict ive . 
I also was upset that these experiments had been going on in Europe, 
not by wild men, but by responsible scientists, and they ought to have been 
going on here, because otherwise how can we assess the risks? 
Again, with respect to communication, I think that one of the points 
that Mr. Dach made the other evening is a point that I would have to go along 
with, and that is that in here there is an inadequate statement of the phi- 
losophy behind why some groups of experiments are put into P4 and why some in 
PI. I think that should be converted to lay terms, and I think that will 
expose some of the problems that were raised by Dr. Watson today and the 
problems that ought to be addressed. I think when you are forced to write 
something it makes you think a lot more clearly about what mental process 
went on, and allows the public to understand your thinking on that, and make 
some judgments as to whether they agree. I am not saying it was in any way 
inappropriate or irrational in result, but I am saying that the method by 
which you arrived at that result ought to be more explicitly stated. 
One final point on that is that anything you can do to improve commu- 
nication in this area, whether it is a newsletter, I have no idea, I think 
there could almost be a separate conference on that issue alone. As Eric 
Sevareid points out, perhaps it is not so much the public's right to know as 
the public's right to find out. And if there is some material there that 
the public can get access to, and it is in lay terms, it will be very help- 
ful, and I think it will cut down the level of fear which has permeated 
many of the discussions on this matter, and generated what in my view was 
very inappropriate legislation from the Congress earlier this year, or at 
least the proposed draft. • 
Now, as far as the exemptions from the Director for risk assessment, I 
wholeheartedly endorse that, and have every confidence that the Director here 
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