264 
will use those exemptions appropriately and see that the risk assessment 
activities go on. I think that is a necessary and essential flexibility. 
As far as roles and responsibilities are concerned, and I will try to be 
brief here, philosophically it has been my position that the scientists did 
us a great service in bringing this problem to our attention in the first 
place. I would not have them treated as thieves in the night, and I do not 
believe that we ought to set up what amounts to a big brother, adversarial 
police system here to monitor what is going on. The responsibility should 
be peer review. As bad as our experience has been with medical doctors, I 
think it is different here. They don't have to publish. I think responsible 
journals can be encouraged not to publish the work of those scientists who 
do inappropriate experiments. I have talked to the editors of some of those 
journals, and I don't think that they would regard that as a good idea — that 
is, to publish the work of people who are not following the Guidelines. 
Furthermore, I have every confidence that the Director, through per- 
sonal suasion, can induce people who have strayed to come back in line. 
And furthermore, as I say, I think in the midst of what has to be a post- 
Watergate paranoia, distrust in government and in people, I think we ought 
not to lose our trust in human beings. I think we keep the pressure and the 
onus on the scientist to expect the best from him, not the worst from him. 
There is one final point about the safety officers. Perhaps they could 
be uniformly trained at NIH so that as they go about their enforcement tasks 
they could be sort of uniform in their applications and learn some of the 
tricks of the trade. I also believe that it is difficult for one scientist 
to go into the lab of another colleague and criticize what he is doing, so 
perhaps the safety officer should be someone a little bit removed so that he 
doesn't have to get involved in intercolleagial , embarrassing situations. 
Thank you, sir. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Helms. 
If some of you aren't using f luorohydrocarbon aerosol containers, it is 
the fault of Dr. Mario Molina, who is in the Department of Chemistry at the 
University of California at Irvine. That is an honor you have earned, Dr. 
Molina, as far as we are concerned. We would like to have your comments. 
DR. MOLINA: Let me qualify my comments by saying that about a month 
ago I knew very, very little about this subject. So if I can contribute 
something it is not really details or specific recommendations, it is more 
perhaps a fresh point of view. I am really brand new to this subject. 
As I learned more and more about recombinant DNA, many of my original 
fears disappeared. Thi's is, of course, a general trend. As you become 
better informed on a subject, you tend to agree with what appears to be the 
consensus of experts. In this case it seems to be that these original fears. 
[ 468 ] 
