276 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you, Dr. Vidaver. 
Dr. Robert Sinsheimer is a biologist, former Head of the Department at 
Cal Tech, and now, as I mentioned yesterday, Chancellor at the University of 
California at Santa Cruz, and has been here before. Dr. Sinsheimer. 
DR. SINSHEIMER: In my new task I have frequent occasions to interact 
with students in varying number in more or less friendly interactions, and to 
use their own phrase, what they always want to know is where am I coming 
from. I think it perhaps would be useful if I indicated where I am coming 
from in the sense of how I see the Guidelines as they exist. 
For one thing, they strike me as extraordinarily anthropocentric in 
their concerns. There is the whole concept of the gradations of containment 
which seems to me to have been directed rather exclusively toward the possi- 
bility of human infection, human disease, and it seems to me that in a long- 
term sense we have to be concerned with potential for harm to plants, as 
was just mentioned, and indeed to many, many species. Nematodes are very 
important in this world, and on and on. 
Even, frankly, with regard to human infection, it seems to me that we 
have addressed ourselves largely to the problems in terms that are relevant 
to advanced societies with high levels of sanitation, and we have not been 
particularly concerned about the potential impact of any harm that might be 
caused in the large parts of the world which do not have advanced sanitation. 
The Guidelines also strike me as representing an extraordinary confi- 
dence in the completeness of our knowledge in microbiology, and in our 
ability to predict the consequences of scaling things up by factors of 10 10 , 
a confidence which I lack personally. 
The Guidelines also strike me as being quite narrow in the sense that 
Jim Neel described, in their preoccupation with recombinant DNA molecules 
formed in vitro , and without consideration of what could be equally impor- 
tant, and perhaps equally potentially hazardous, experiments involving cell 
fusions, chromosome transfers, and so on. I think it is really time that 
these other areas be given thoughtful consideration. 
This perspective, which it seems to me informs the Guidelines, may 
reflect, indeed, the political center. It does not, to ray mind, reflect the 
objectivity with which we are familiar in everyday science. 
To turn to more specific points, I really personally find myself 
troubled by being asked to give an opinion on these proposed revisions, 
particularly because there is such an extensive reliance upon unpublished 
data. If you look in the Green Book in the sections that are particularly 
relevant, on pages 30, 31, and 32, there are 19 references there of which 
eight are notes not available, and the others are unpublished manuscripts. 
I guess this weighs on me particularly because I feel I am one of the 
[ 480 ] 
