Attachment II - Page 2 
FOUNDATION ON ECONOMIC TRENDS 
1346 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1010 Washington, DC 20036, (202) 466-2823 
Statement By Jeremy Rifkin Concerning The Shiga-like Toxin Experiment Proposal 
We are formally requesting that the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee 
(RAC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) table indefinitely any 
action on the proposal to clone a Shiga toxin and refuse to consider any 
further requests from the Uniformed Services University of the Health 
Sciences until such time as the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Arms 
Control and Disarmament Agency conforms with section 36 of the Arms 
Control and Disarmament Act. Section 36 requires a complete Arms 
Control impact statement (ACIS) assessing and analyzing the arms control 
and disarmament impact of any "program involving technology with 
potential military application and weapons systems application." It is 
important to emphasize the intent of subsection 36 (a)(3) of this act. 
According to the legislative history of this provision, the Congressional 
Committee responsible for the act wanted to make sure "that there would be 
no question that technology with potential military application, rather than, 
simply, weapons technology, could be reviewed and reported upon under the 
legislation." 
Present and former members of the RAC have, on several occasions, noted 
that recombinant DNA experiments being conducted by the various branches 
of the Armed Services have the "potential" to be used in slightly altered or 
modified form for the purposes of weapons development. Such weapons 
development would be in violation of the 1972 Treaty unconditionally banning 
biological warfare experimentation. Writing in the November 1983 edition of 
the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists , Robert J. Sinzheimer, a renouned 
biophysicist, and chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz 
observed that because of the nature of this particular category of 
experimentation, there is no adequate way to properly distinguish between 
peaceful uses of deadly toxins and military uses. According to Sinzheimer, 
experiments like the kind being considered today could be used to advance 
the knowledge of how to develop biological weapons as well. 
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