29 
imposed for the time being, anyhow: that all beneficiaries of this news- 
letter will be expected to make at least one contribution to it each year. 
Promptness of publication will be its chief goal. It will not be, I think, 
a place for the publication of new basic science, but rather of new tech- 
nology directed toward increasing safety. 
It was determined to ascertain what higher level of physical contain- 
ment already existed in the United States. Our local expert. Dr. Emmett 
Barkley, from whom you will hear later, was given this responsibility, and 
he has identified some 27 facilities in the United States which are well 
designed to handle noxious microbial agents. Some nine more apparently are 
under construction. These are variously Federal, state, or university fa- 
cilities. They have been solicited to ascertain their availability for 
other scientists who may need such facilities for the conduct of, let us 
say, an occasional experiment. 
Two such facilities are under the direct control of the National Insti- 
tutes of Health. One is our own Building 41; the other is at the Frederick 
Research Center, some 30 miles from here, where high-containment facilities 
already exist. 
An area of importance where it was determined by the committee that re- 
search should be stimulated was the development and testing of safer micro- 
organisms. Five distinct requests for proposal were drafted. These were for 
the design or the construction of safer bacterial hosts, of safer plasmids, 
of safer bacteriophages, for the design of tests to measure the survival of 
these and other forms, and for the design of tests to study the genetics of 
these forms. 
I can report to you that we have received proposals in all five fields. 
One proposal in one of the fields, and more than one proposal in the other 
fields. Review committees have been named which will study these proposals, 
and it is everybody's expectation that contracts in these areas will be 
awarded within the near future. 
It was deemed desirable that we establish stock centers for microorgan- 
isms. Since there was already a stock center for Escherichia coli , the 
microorganism which Dr. Berg mentioned earlier, at Yale University, it was 
not hard to persuade Dr. Adelberg of that university to extend the stock 
center's responsibility to include such mutant forms of _E. coli as may be 
developed in the quest for a safer, or what may be called a self-destructing 
organism. 
Any strain of organisms deposited in such a stock center would of course 
be available to any responsible investigator who required such an organism. 
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