Dr. Donald S. Fredrickson 
Page Three 
information to bring about practical benefits to human health and welfare. 
I agree with that view and because I am one who has been frustrated by 
the inadequacy of present day approaches, I reject as absurd the argument 
that we already can do safely what this methodology promises with its 
attending risks. It is pure unadulterated sophistry to argue that a five or 
ten year delay in achieving the promised advances is acceptable in the long 
term. On several occasions I've been asked why we are so eager to race 
ahead in our research. In making the transition from studying prokaryotes 
to the inordinately more complex eukaryotes, I, and most of the scientists 
who made that shift, have found progress tediously slow and unsure; com- 
pared to the achievements made with the simpler organisms, our present 
rate of progress is a snail's pace, primarily because we lack the means 
to dissect and analyze the more complex genetic structures and their func- 
tions. The recombinant DNA methodology offers a means to begin that 
task and encourages my belief that now we can make headway on what was 
becoming an intractable problem. To be able to dissect chromosomes 
from plants, animals and humans and to learn the secrets of their organi- 
zation, expression and regulation promises great rewards to basic science 
and enormous benefits to medicine, agriculture and industry. 
To argue further for urgency and not procrastination, let me point 
out that the world faces an impending shortage of insulin and that diabetics 
will be severely tried unless new sources of insulin are developed or more 
efficient use of existing supplies can be devised. If this line of research 
has even a chance of solving that problem, shouldn't we be promoting that 
advance? And what of the opportunity to develop more efficient sources 
or means of delivering of ammonia fertilizers for our and the world's 
crop needs? Can that wait five or ten years as well? Freeman Dyson re- 
cently cited the hidden costs of saying Nol; he argued, cogently I believe, 
that it is as important to promote the class of experiments carrying no 
visible danger but still promising to unravel the complexities of genetic 
structures as it is to discourage experiments carrying danger to life on 
earth. 
Before ending there are several features in the current version of 
the guidelines upon which I want to comment; 
1. First there is the question of whether Escherichia coli is the most 
suitable (safe) host organism for molecular cloning experiments. No one 
disputes that E. coli is the best understood living organism on our planet. 
Because we are so familiar with its metabolism and genetic systems, 
E. coli provides us the best opportunity to achieve the benefits of this 
research and it is the most likely candidate for providing the safest host 
and vector systems. If we embark on a search for another, as yet unknown, 
but putatively more suitable, organism, what attributes should it have? 
As Roy Curtiss pointed out, it would have to have the very same type of 
genetic systems that make E. coli the risk. If it didn't inhabit man, what 
other ecological niche would it endanger? The search could take us ten, 
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