101 
statements that it is unlikely that there will be a disaster, because any 
likelihood is not going to affect just you or your laboratory workers. 
We are talking about a possibility that would effect large populations 
and members of the public. 
In addition, looking at the physical side, I will confess that my 
years of experience as a regulator leads me to conclude that there is no 
such thing as a fail-safe operation, a zero-defect operation, and if any- 
thing can go wrong, I have seen it go wrong, all over the place and all 
the time — so much so, indeed, that in many instances no one involved can 
ever explain afterwards what did go wrong. 
There are many cases where you simply cannot tell where for example, 
an industry in the production of drugs or foods, there will be disasters 
that no one can explain. I anticipate that even under a P4 that would 
occur on occasion, and certainly under something as low as PI and P2, I 
would have to assume that it would happen all the time. 
Then you look at the question of the biological containment, and the 
very fact, Dr. Petersdorf, that leads you to conclude that this is rela- 
tively safe to use coli , leads the Boston Group to conclude that it is 
quite the wrong thing to use — namely, that if you have that level of E. 
coli that can reside in humans, then it is a very poor thing to use be- 
cause it will easily be found in humans, and could carry these dangerous 
forms . 
Now, I would like to hear some discussion of the cost in terms of 
lost scientific endeavor, in terms of money and time, in pursuing the con- 
cept that there would be either no E. coli form used at all, or that in 
any event it be at the bare minimum, the EK2 or EK3, which would then 
have the closest thing to a fail-safe system, certainly much closer than 
use of the physical containment. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Curtiss, would you like to take a whack at that? 
DR. CURTISS: Not the cost part. 
MR. HUTT: Well, what would it do? Would it destroy ongoing experi- 
ments? Would it preclude some type of new knowledge being gained in the 
future? 
DR. CURTISS: Well, I think the point has been raised already, if we 
were to say okay, let us cancel E. coli and go to another system, I don't 
know that anybody has made even a suggestion as to what the other system 
might be. 
The point is that, to my way of thinking, you can think of many 
microorganisms that are out there, in the soil or wherever, but the point 
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