Attachment IV - Page 1 
PUBLIC AND SCIENTIFIC AFFAIRS BOARD 
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY 
1913 I Street, N.W. 
Washington, D. C 20006 
Telephone: Cooe 202, 833-9680 
ilHl 
March 30, 1984 
The Honorable Albert Core, Jr. 
1131 Loagworth House Office Building 
Washington, D.C. 20515 
Dear Representative Gore: 
This letter is intended to serve a dual purpose. First, we wish to express 
our appreciation for the time and trouble taken by Mr. Robert B. Nicholas 
to visit with several members of the Public and Scientific Affairs Board 
(PSAB) of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) during the recent 
annual meeting of the ASM in St. Louis, Missouri. He used the occasion to 
describe your proposal for a President's Commission on the Human 
Application of Genetic Engineering and to discuss testimony presented at 
the hearings you conducted June 22, 1983 on environmental implications of 
genetic engineering. Mr. Nicholas is an articulate, persuasive advocate of 
your causes. He proved enjoyable as well as interesting and informative to 
talk with, and we hope there will be future opportunity to meet with him 
and again discuss issues of mutual interest. 
Our second reason for writing relates to the article published by Drs. K. 
L. Giles and H. C. M. Whitehead in the journal Plant and Soil in 1977, 
which you brought to the attention of Dr. Wyngaarden for review and com- 
ment. The article was the subject of discussion by the Recombinant DNA 
Advisory Committee (RAC) at its February 6, 1984 meeting, and we questioned 
its significance when we talked in St. Louis with Mr. Nicholas. However, 
our opinion at the time was more instinctive than informed, and it was 
apparent that the Giles and Whitehead report was deserving of further 
study. 
In reading the article, it was quickly evident that the investigations of 
Giles and Whitehead left much to be desired in terms of experimental design 
and statistical control. The limits of confidence assignable to their 
results were indeterminant. However, a need to assess their significance 
was obviated when we found by searching the literature a later article, 
published by Giles with Dr. I. K. Vasil, which reports that controlled 
experiments yielded results quite different from those Giles published pre- 
viously with Whitehead. A copy of the relevant pages of the Giles and 
Vasil article is enclosed for your information. 
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