CHARLES C. SPRAGUE, M.D. 
PRESIDENT 
_tHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
HEALTH-SCIENCE CENTER AT DALLAS 
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February 16, 1976 
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SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL SCHOOL 
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES 
SCHOOL OF ALUED HEALTH SCIENCES 
Donald S. Fredrickson, M.D. 
Director 
Public Health Service 
National Institutes of Health 
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 
Bethesda, Maryland 20014 
Dear Don: 
As you requested, I shall put down in writing some of my 
thoughts with respect to the Directors Advisory Committee 
meeting regarding the recombinant DNA research guidelines. 
May I say at the outset that you and your colleagues at NIH 
plus a small group of investigators are to be commended for 
the manner in which this entire problem has been handled. I 
think you have established, in the eyes of the public, the 
image of a governmental agency that is as interested in 
obtaining and considering the best in public opinion as it 
is in having scientific input. 
In developing the guidelines to their present state, the 
representatives from the scientific community, as well as 
the representatives from the NIH, have demonstrated not only 
thoroughness, thoughtfulness and reasonableness with respect 
to the scientific aspects of the guidelines, but they have 
shown a remarkable degree of concern for the public good. 
While some criticism was directed at the composition of the 
NIH Advisory Committee, with it being heavily weighted in 
favor of scientists with vested interests, I daresay that a 
more broadly representative committee probably would not 
have come up with guidelines significantly more "conservative" 
unless, indeed, they would have wished to make them so 
restrictive that they would have, in fact, precluded further 
research in the field. Such action would, in my opinion, 
have been both unfortunate and unwarranted. 
While I feel incapable of commenting on the exact wording or 
even the scientific merit of some of the judgments made by 
the advisory group with respect to the guidelines, I do have 
some general comments to make. There seems to be an obvious 
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