Ill 
Dr. Fredrickson, here I think it is part of your responsibility in this 
matter to see that the guidelines are widely followed by establishing the 
appropriate procedures. 
Finally, 1 wish to emphasize the need for haste. The Gordon conference 
is now almost 3 years ago, but we are still in the process of generating a 
set of guidelines under which the work can be done. During this time many 
experiments have been done, but many critical experiments have been avoided 
and many laboratories around the world have been marking time. 
In summary, I think recombinant DNA research is critical to the pro- 
gress of science, and to the solution of medical problems. I think the 
present guidelines provide a very conservative framework within which such 
experimentation can go forward. I think these guidelines have been arrived 
at by a responsible process in which scientists have been acting as public 
advocates. I feel that the world has waited long enough for the issuance 
of these guidelines, and that with as little delay as possible they should 
become national policy. 
Finally, I hope that other agencies that fund biomedical research will 
adopt these guidelines, that industrial laboratories will publicly announce 
their adherence to the guidelines, and that individual scientists will 
accept them as a framework within which all recombinant DNA experiments will 
be formulated. 
Thank you. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Thank you, Dr. Baltimore. 
Are there questions or comments for Dr. Baltimore. 
Dr. Sinsheimer? 
DR. SINSHEIMER: I just wanted to ask about one point. You made the 
argument that you felt that we should focus only on DNAs that have some 
reason to be thought of as hazardous based on the position that the random 
combinations of DNA must have occurred, and we are still here. I agree 
that it is probable that random combinations of DNA may have occurred at 
some sporadic frequency, some frequency we do not know, and the conse- 
quences of such events we may not know. 
Unfortunately that doesn't give me a great deal of comfort because it 
sort of reminds me of saying well, the human species evolved in the presence 
of background radiation, and therefore we don't have to be worried about 
radiation, whereas what is being contemplated, at least, is an increase in 
those events certainly by many orders of magnitude. 
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