127 
An examination of the composition shows that the means for decision 
with respect to the guidelines have been concentrated in the hands of those 
who have an interest in going ahead with the experiments. Approximately 
half of the members of the committee are currently actively engaged in the 
aspects of recombinant research. Several others have an interest in using 
recombinant techniques in the future. It would seem unlikely to me that a 
committee with this composition could judge the hazards unacceptable. By 
saying that, I am not questioning the integrity of the members of the com- 
mittee, but it is well known that scientists often have a greater tolerance 
of hazards associated with their experiments than the members of the popu- 
lation at large. 
It is advisable then, in principle, to eliminate the possibility of 
conflict of interest by restricting the number of those who are engaged or 
expect to be engaged in the experiments under review. 
There is a second aspect of the composition of the committee which is 
also questionable, and that is the range of scientific perspectives repre- 
sented. With a few exceptions, the members have backgrounds in genetics, 
in molecular biology, but where one works within the confines of a scien- 
tific discipline it is difficult to understand, and sometimes even to notice 
the significance of phenomena that fall outside the range of assumptions one 
is working with. In science this is normal, where when one deals with some- 
thing very complex one can only focus on a limited part of it at any time. 
Other phenomena must be ignored. 
But in defining the nature of a risk, that is precisely what one can- 
not afford to do. This is why it is essential that the membership of a 
committee charged with judging the hazard be drawn from all the perspec- 
tives which bear on the problem. In this case, that should include ecology, 
epidemiology (there is one epidemiologist), biosafety, occupational safety, 
public health, certainly probability theory, and a discipline which tran- 
scends scientific disciplines such as philosophy or history of science. 
There is some vested interest there, perhaps. 
Ideally then, the composition of an advisory committee to judge the 
risks would be very different from the present composition. It would be 
far more diverse with representation in the fields mentioned, and in addi- 
tion the number of members presently involved in the experiments would be 
limited to a small minority, two or at the most three in fifteen, say. 
The third set of questions I want to address concerns scientific basis 
of your guidelines. There are specific problems such as the efficacy of 
physical and biological containment and the question of whether the so- 
called low and moderate risk experiments are actually much higher risks, 
which critics of the La Jolla guidelines pointed to. 
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