COVINGTON & BURLING 
Donald S. Fredrickson, M.D. 
February 20, 1976 
Page Two 
As I stated at the conclusion of the meeting, the 
scientific community in general, and Dr. Berg in particular, 
deserve enormous credit for raising these difficult issues 
and dealing publically with them. Having taken this initia- 
tive, I believe the scientific community should be permitted 
to keep it, as long as it continues to pursue a reasonable 
means of protecting the public against unnecessarily large risks 
from this experimentation. If this objective is actively pur- 
sued and achieved, I believe it unlikely that the public would 
seek additional legislation or other restrictions that might 
impede the scientific research involved. If it is not pursued 
at this time, however, I find it unlikely that the public will 
allow this type of research to remain uncontrolled, and addi- 
tional legislation or other forms of restriction will in time 
undoubtedly be imposed. Moreover, the history of government 
regulation has shown, time and again, that when a group fails 
to exercise reasonable control over its activities which impinge 
upon the public the governmental controls that inevitably follow 
have imposed far more stringent restrictions than could initially 
have been utilized by that group on a voluntary basis. I would 
therefore urge that the scientific community turn its attention, 
as soon as possible, to devising the least restrictive form of 
control mechanism that will both reduce the risks to the smallest 
level that is reasonable and at the same time permit the continua- 
tion of this important research without crippling legitimate 
scientific inquiry by qualified experts. 
II 
The public is becoming far more sophisticated with 
respect to scientific issues than many in the scientific community 
recognize. There is wide understanding that "absolute safety" is 
not attainable and, in any event, is not proveable. Thus, the 
term "safety" is used by me and others, including Congress, to 
mean nothing more than a level of risk that is both reduced as 
far as is reasonanly feasible under the circumstances and does 
not outweigh the potential benefits. 
At the same time, the public clearly expects that the 
burden of showing an acceptably low risk is on those who propose 
to proceed with the project involved — whether it be industry, 
academic scientists, or other groups. It is wholly insufficient, 
in my view, to argue that no harm has been proved; the burden 
is on the scientific community to prove to the public that the 
risks from research on recombinant DNA molecules have been reduced 
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