106 
and finally, a community that does say and does continuously inquire into 
the problems of what technological achievement demands in terms of tech- 
nological assessment. That is really what it seems to me this needs to be 
about, instead of trying to do something else, which says you prevent me 
from doing my experiment or you may be risking something. 
I don't think that we are looking for a riskless microorganism society, 
but we are looking for one in which the risk is commensurate with what our 
understanding is likely to be. I would hope that we might get off this 
all-or-none kind of a debate. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you for helping us get off that point, because 
I do want to start another one. 
DR. HANDLER: 'lay I add just one sentence? 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Yes, Dr. Handler. 
DR. HANDLER: The problem, the only one that I can hear is that I 
don't seem to know what the risk is. By that I mean that if the risks are 
only those associated with the organisms with which we have been familiar, 
then we do know how to handle them, and that is the essence of the guide- 
lines. The guidelines have estimated risks on the basis of previous exper- 
ience with various kinds of organisms and their products, and the question 
Dr. Sinsheimer, I think, was putting, and others as well, was whether or 
not the whole is something other than the sum of its parts, and that is, is 
a form of E_;_ coli into which you have added a plasmid really something with 
which you have any experience whatever, and whether the manifestations of 
its infection in plants or animal are those which you have some reason to 
predict. 
The problem is that maybe you can't. I think this is what Bob was 
saying earlier, and it is the one thing that troubles me. Otherwise I 
feel very comfortable saying just the kinds of things that Dr. Rosenblith 
just said. It is just that I am not sure that the prediction of risk and 
benefit rests on anything known to me. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Very good. 
Now, as you know, one purpose of this committee, one of its many pur- 
poses was to be sure that interested members of the public would also have 
an opportunity to speak to this committee. And we have received nine re- 
quests to do so. Only one member has indicated a need to leave earlier 
than most, and it is for that reason that I will call upon him to begin. 
Otherwise we will attempt to intersperse the presentations more or less 
in the order in which they were received. 
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