August 8, 1977

The Honorable Paul N. McCloskey
305 Grant Avenue
Palo Alto, California 94306

Dear Pete:

I am grateful for what I take to be your interest in putting a

brake on recombinant DNA legistation. Already, the misguided features
of the Kennedy bill in the Senate are widely appreciated.  Senator Gay-
lord Nelson has made it very clear that the need to regulate indurtrial
activity is already met by available Federal statutes and that repres-
sive state and local statutes can be preempted without imposing equally
foolirsh Federal laws.

You sent me the l'Backgrounder on Recombinant DNA Reoearch"
                      I cannot answer it point
              I find the whole tone and subrtance of this

(prepared by John Bartenstein, July 20, 1977).
by point as you aaked me to.
eaeay to be so grossly inept that analysis of its detail8 aeems futile.
To begin with the very first sentence:

   There wals no major breakthrough at Stanford in 1973!  What
Stanley Cohon achieved was a significant step in an orderly train of
releearch that can be traced accurately for at leart the past 25 to 50
years.  The enzymes baric to recombinant DNA research had been
known for many years and their application to joining chromoromal
fragments wae an inevitable link in our attempt to understand the heredi-
tary and metabolic machinery of the cell.  Congress could retard this
march of science in the U. S., aa Lysenko did in genetics in the Soviet
Union for a whole generation, but romewhere in the world it will pro-
ceed.

Recombinant DNA research ir not a Pandora's box.

There is

no single instance or example to suggest that this research has a potential
for harm any more than any other avenue of rerrearch in medical science
today.

Pete, I invite you to have lunch with me and some of my colleagues

the next time you are in the Dietrict to give us a chance to give you a
more substantial background on this whole issue.

With warm regards,

Sinc erely,

Arthur Ko rnbe r g

AK/i