31 
Research on Recombinant DNA Molecules. I have not worked out the acronym 
for that meeting. 
The meeting was generally held to be greatly or enormously successful, 
and some of that which was reported will certainly be discussed here, I 
would hope, by Dr. Roy Curtiss, when he has this podium. Indeed, the effect 
of the science which was announced at that meeting was quite demonstrable 
upon the attitudes of the committee meeting which immediately succeeded 
it. 
All of our meetings have been advertised and public. They have all 
been open, with the exception of one brief period of time during which it 
was our assignment to review grant applications. It is still traditional 
and approved, apparently, to hold review of grant applications in a confi- 
dential mode, since the application itself, at least until it is funded, is 
held to be confidential. But with that brief exception of a half hour, the 
meetings were public. I believe press was present at all of the meetings, 
and the meetings were reported extensively. 
We had, in addition to the members, a number of liaison associates 
from various other agencies, and one whom I would like particularly to 
single out, Dr. Herman Lewis, who attended all of our meetings, represent- 
ing the National Science Foundation, since it was apparent to all concerned 
that it would be desirable, whatever policy was reached, to have the policy 
of granting by the National Science Foundation and by the National Institutes 
of Health compatible with each other. 
In some of the meetings, there was representation from foreign inter- 
ests, particularly from Britain, and from the European Molecular Biology 
Organization, EMBO, which is centered at Heidelberg. 
At our first organizational meeting it was recommended that, pro tem- 
pore, we accept the document which was yet to come out of the Asilomar con- 
ference as a guideline, and during the early months after the document was 
distributed, grants in limited number were awarded insofar as they conformed 
to the principles in that document. 
At the present time, however, we have asked that all grant applica- 
tions and fellowship applications relating to DNA recombinant molecules be 
referred to our committee. We have, by way of example, at the present mo- 
ment nine such applications on the table which are currently being reviewed, 
and the results of these reviews will then be referred to the appropriate 
study sections, where these grants will be studied for the merit which they 
contain. 
In addition to all of these activities, consideration has been given 
to the desirability that we institute here at the National Institutes of 
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