278 
I would agree with Dr. Ginsberg's suggestion that Pl+EKl experiments be 
eliminated from the Guidelines, primarily because I don't think it is a 
meaningful level of containment anyway; just a lot of red tape. 
Other than that, I have to say that I think the tidying up of the defi- 
nition is important, so as to exclude a lot of kinds of experiments that 
simply duplicate events that go on in nature anyway. I think there are a 
lot of other things that are tidied up in the Guidelines. Other than that, 
I am hesitant to endorse the numerous changes which correspond to a decrease 
in level of containment at this time. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you, Dr. Sinsheimer. 
Ms. Patricia King, as we have indicated, is a member of the National 
Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects. She is a lawyer and an as- 
sociate professor at Georgetown. 
Ms. King. 
MS. KING: Well, I guess I had better state where I come from, too. 
That is, basically a person who was not biased, either in favor of revisions 
in the Guidelines or against them when I came to this meeting. I might add, 
I probably still am not. I have been happy to have been a part of the 
meet ing . 
I share, however, I think, something that was stated before. That is, 
I have been terribly upset with what I can view as the procedure to the 
process by which the revisions were proposed. That does not mean that I am 
opposed to the revisions, necessarily. It may mean that I may have no 
confidence one way or the other that they should have been proposed. I 
think in fairness to NIH, because I don't want to sound too critical, that 
I think a part of what I am about to talk about is a result of a lack of a 
clear objective about what we want to do in this area, whether we indeed 
want to have guidelines or have regulations. I think in the face of the 
somewhat of an ambiguity in our objectives, some things were to be expected. 
Since, as I understand the NIH position, you want to have guidelines 
and give guidance, and not be a regulatory agency, what I am about to say is 
in that vein, because I quite agree with you. I am not sure I would like 
to see NIH as a completely regulatory agency at the same time it promotes 
and sponsors the same type of research. 
Let me go back to the Recombinant Advisory Committee. It seems to 
me that at the time that the revisions were proposed, we should have had 
some serious thought about, one, the composition of that committee and 
what its precise role is going to be. If it is going to make scientific 
assessments only, then I have no problem with that committee being composed 
entirely of scientists. If that committee was to do more, which was to take 
into account additional concerns other than evaluating purely scientific 
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