NEXT STEPS DR. MURRAY: We have to decide what to do next now. Go out on a limb. Clearly we do not have agreement on all points. We do not have full clarity on all points speaking today. I think, though, much of that is within our grasp. I wish we had another two days to spend together hammering out differences. We do not have that luxury. What I would like to propose is this: That the staff of NBAC, those commissioners, not just subcommittee members but any commissioner who would like to have a hands on involvement in the preparation of the next draft, Kathy and I, work on the next draft, which we would like to see be -- I would like to see be a penultimate draft and be pretty near final. Now that may mean leaving certain things in brackets where we still have a few decisions remaining. It will certainly mean some points that we think we made clear will not have been made sufficiently clearly for all members. It has been further suggested by Eric Meslin, and we talked about this in subcommittee yesterday, that we see -- at some point see a draft of the report, either it would be the next one or perhaps the one after that, and post it as an interim report and actually post it on the World Wide Web for public comment for a period of days, perhaps 30 days, before we then can take the comments and assimilate them and decide what changes, if any, to make in what will be our final report. I would like to see all this happen expeditiously because you can draw these things out and make them a little better but again we would like to see it happen in our lifetimes. In fact, I would like to see it happen early in 1998 as a final report. So, I guess, my proposal, and I would like to hear Harold's response to this, is that we have a very ambitious second draft of the report which we hope will be either the penultimate or the near penultimate version of the report. DR. SHAPIRO: Thank you, Tom. I think we have decided, as Tom just indicated, to take the first draft that we are at least almost satisfied with and issue that as an interim report, wait for some comments like 30 days, and then with our own analysis go back and see if we cannot produce a final report. I would say, Tom, there is a big area between 30 days and our life times, I hope. So we will have to see just how much time we have there. But I think we will spend a large amount of intensive staff time on this report in the next month and it would be extremely helpful to us and to the quality of what we are able to do ourselves if those of you who have, one, challenging ideas that you think need careful consideration if you would write them down so that we can analyze them as carefully as possible because we will make every attempt to respond to all the issues raised here today one way or another, either by clarification, changing the nature of the recommendation or the structure. There are lots of different ways of responding. That is not to say that every point can be gotten then because there are some that are mutually inconsistent and we will have to make some choices but those will be argued out by the full commission itself at our next meeting where those occur. Perhaps the vehicle Tom has recommended where we see those happening we can think about some alternatives and include them in the report and we will have to argue them out as we meet. So I see the next month to have, one, very intensive staff work on this. We will have to call on particular members of the commission during this time to help us out to perhaps writing a few pages or by clarifying or helping us think through issues. I think you can expect to hear from Eric and/or myself and/or Tom in the next weeks as we try to move ahead. It is not that long until we have our next meeting. As you know it is less than a month so it will require some intensive work but we ought to take that on as an objective. If we do not quite make it we will get as close as we can. So I think that is entirely acceptable. Let me -- we will have to move on now. Let me say something first of all about this afternoon's agenda before we go to public comment and then take a break for lunch. I noticed on our agenda we meet for three-quarters of an hour and then have a coffee break. That seems a little excessive so I have decided that we will eliminate that 1:45 coffee break and go immediately at 1:45 to the report on Human Subjects Subcommittee. We will try to move from that to the federal oversight item at 3:15. Again 15 minutes ahead of where we were. And if discussion allows we will try to go to processes in changing regulations at 4:00 o'clock. It may be that three-quarters of an hour is not enough. We will have to see. If we do that it will enable us to finish somewhat earlier than is indicated here, which would help a lot of members of the commission, including myself, so that we will try for that. If we do not -- we do not want to inhibit the discussion, if we cannot make it we cannot and we will just go a little bit longer. Are there any other questions before we move -- we only have a minute or so before we have to move to public comment? DR. MURRAY: Can I just on behalf of the Genetics Subcommittee thank our guests today very much and thank the other members of the commission for taking the report seriously and giving us lots of useful feedback. DR. SHAPIRO: Let me just add one other thing. I know many of you have done editorial and other comments on the draft that we had. Please do not forget to give those to Eric, myself, Kathy so we can have them and take a look at them and consider them. Okay. Thank you all very much. I believe we have only one person for public comments. Is Mr. Rabin here? Do you want to come forward and use the microphone, please? I also want to remind the commissioners that Mr. Rabin has submitted some written materials which was in the book that we all got. Mr. Rabin, let me remind you that the rules that we have here is five minutes. Thank you very much.