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The reason the guidelines are so conservative is because we don't know, 
but secondly, if we didn't know and we did not have a chance to know whether 
these are going to be dangerous experiments, then we would have to commit 
ourselves to either being conservative forever or taking our chances or 
taking other people's chances forever. But we are in a system where we can 
evaluate the risks. We are in a very poor situation now for evaluating 
risks, but it is feasible to do the experiments to find out the risks. 
So that is one reason why I think we should stay very conservative, 
because there is a chance of making more informed decisions when we do the 
right experiments. 
Now, the committee, the DNA program advisory committee has appointed 
a subcommittee under Dr. Szybalski, to look into the question of what ex- 
periments can be done to evaluate risks better, and I see that as the 
major function of the committee from here on out, to do good experiments 
and get the input from the whole scientific community as to what experi- 
ments are worthwhile, interpretable, convincing, and how to do this very 
important job. 
As another job of the committee, Malcolm Martin and I are doing this 
experiment that has been alluded to on several occasions of seeing if 
polyoma DNA inserted into a cloning vector can get out and initiate in- 
fection in an animal. 
In this regard — how is my time doing? 
DR. FREDRICKSON: About three more minutes. 
DR. ROWE: In this regard I would like to point out a very important 
way of analyzing things that has not really been alluded to except once 
by Paul Berg. How might these experiments be dangerous? The Asilomar 
listed the three mechanisms, and I think they are always important to 
keep in mind. There are three general categories whereby recombinant DNA 
experiments — We are only talking about E_j_ coli . We are not talking about 
tissue culture cells, or normal viruses. Just normal biological systems. 
How might these be dangerous experiments? 
They might disturb regulation, that is, change the behavior of the 
E. coli so it occupies a different level of the gut, so it penetrates more 
between villus cells, so it gets into the lympathic system, and all kinds 
of minor changes in E_j_ coli could changes its balance within the organism. 
It could introduce — it could serve as a vehicle for conveying high 
concentrations of nucleic acids into or next to cells. The danger of get- 
ting viral genomes into villus cells or whatever, macrophages, viral 
genomes transforming cellular genes could be brought into proximity to 
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