November 1977 INTERAGENCY COMMITTEE REPORT ON INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES 
This 50-page report, submitted to the Secretary, HEW, recommended that 
the Federal Government agencies "continue to work closely with national, 
international, and regional organizations to promote safeguards and 
disseminate relevant information. In the Committee's view, no formal 
governmental action is necessary at present to produce international 
control by means of treaty or convention. The Committee emphasizes 
that the Biological Weapons Convention prohibits the use of recombinant 
DNA for biological warfare." 
December 15-16, 1977 DAC MEETING 
Called in order to review the RAC-proposed revisions and public comment 
thereon, the DAC (charged with public oversight) held a public meeting, 
notice of which had appeared in the Federal Register in October. There 
was almost unanimous agreement that the original Guidelines badly needed 
updating and numerous suggestions were made regarding the directions that 
revisions should take. Much of the discussion at the December DAC meet- 
ing affirmed the need for continuous reevaluation of the scientific 
premises underlying the original Guidelines. Concerns were voiced that 
some of the requirements of the proposed revisions were too stringent. 
January 5-December 22, 1977 FIRST SESSION, 95th CONGRESS, CONSIDERS 
LEGISLATION 
Sixteen bills on the topic of recombinant DNA were introduced. Four 
different Committees held a total of 25 hearings or mark-up sessions, 
listening to nearly 100 witnesses. Neither the Senate nor the House 
passed any of the proposed legislation. 
MAJOR EVENTS: 1978 
January 26-28, 1973 ASCOT WORKSHOP 
The December 1977 DAC meeting heard concerns that containment levels 
were set too stringently for recombinant DNA work on viruses and 
plants. The "U.S.-EMBO Workshop to Assess Risks for Recombinant DNA 
Experiments Involving the Genomes of Animal, Plant, and Insect Viruses" 
was held in Ascot, England, to address the virus aspect of the problem. 
Here experts from several countries reached an unequivocal opinion 
that the risks of cloning viral DNA in a bacterium like E^_ coli K-12 
are not greater, and are usually much less, than the risks of handling 
the parent virus alone. They also stressed that defective viruses pose 
little risk of infection when used as vectors for cloning DNA in 
eukaryotic cells, since the cells cannot escape in viable form. 
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