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that are to be found in this room, for example, should have a strong input 
into the final result, but I am not sure whether the discussion is clarified 
by having an input by everybody at every stage. 
To go back to the EMBO business, well, the EMBO committee has taken a 
step beyond what your committee, sir, has taken. I think that there could 
be some useful feedback here, and I think it might be worthwhile to perhaps 
have some more articulated mechanism for getting a relationship in both 
directions between what is going on in this continent, and what is going on 
on the other side of the Atlantic. 
But so much for generalities, and I just wanted to make very briefly 
one or two more specific points, some of which have been made before, but 
which I would like to emphasize. First of all, I am strongly in the belief 
that all efforts should be made to encourage risk testing experiments, and 
I would endorse the idea of exemptions. I would think that they ought to be 
positively encouraged by special funding, because the fact is that if you 
happen to think that the dangers have been exaggerated, if you do a risk 
testing experiment, the result you expect is a negative one, and that makes 
for a boring experiment. So I think it is very important to do the experi- 
ments, but I think people need incentive to do them. 
Secondly, I believe it is very important to encourage the development 
of alternative host-vector systems at this juncture, and I am not going to 
enlarge on these points, they have been enlarged on before. 
Thirdly, I would like to have seen in the Guidelines more precision on 
the subject of naked DNA. I think there is a certain lack of clarity there, 
but I won't enlarge on it here. 
Another point — it has been mentioned before — I don't know whether it 
belongs in the Guidelines, and that is for me the enormous importance of 
training courses, and not only of the existence of training courses, but the 
validation of courses. I proposed in my laboratory in Heidelberg to say 
that people cannot come and work there unless they have passed a training 
course which we will put on ourselves, or they can demonstrate that they 
have satisfactorily accomplished an equivalent training course somewhere 
else, but how do we know what is an equivalent training course somewhere 
else? I think some kind of standardization or accreditation of training 
courses is very important. 
Equipment design, I believe that the time has come when we need some 
kind of standardization, certification of equipment design, and especially 
I think we need standardizat ion of test procedures. Test procedures are 
understood, but they differ in different places. I think it would be impor- 
tant in some regulatory area to establish procedures for testing equipment. 
Finally, I come back to the point I raised before — positive pressure 
suits. I think there are some people in some countries who would like to 
see safety cabinets done away with altogether, and the whole thing done with 
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