Senator HARRIS. We certainly agree with the general points you have made which were also made in the memorandum from me as chairman of this subcommittee to our members in advance of these hearings and in the press release following a conference we sponsored in Oklahoma last October, which listed as the first two points the following:

It is likely that significant additional benefits to the health of the Nation would follow from more attention to the application of biomedical knowledge. Mounting such a program at the expense of basic research would be disastrous for future progress in solving our national health problems.

We are certainly in agreement on your basic points. I am very interested in what you say about additional attention being given to application. In your questions-and-answers section that we have just inserted in the record, I note particularly the portion of that which says:

Additional attention should be given to the support of certain groups in one or more agencies which would be specifically charged with identifying workable basic data and showing how that information could be translated into specific utilitarian objects or ideas.

Then you go on to say that these might be idea-think-analyst-engineer groups. That is a very intriguing idea and I wonder if you or your associates might comment on that further.

Dr. NABRIT. I would like to ask Mr. Dunham if he would not want to speak to this point.

Dr. DUNHAM. This is just a thought which Dr. Nabrit threw out. It is certainly apparent to all of us who have worked in biology that there is the problem of communication between the basic scientist and the one who is on the medical firing line as it were, trying to take care of patients. Although, in our National Lab setups there is a good deal of interplay. Even there, I think it could be greatly improved by assigning one or two people to watch the area of the basic research products, and keep in mind what the other people can be doing in terms of applying these things.

I think it is not an elaborate concept, but I think it is one that is simply a matter of people giving thought to this.

Senator HARRIS. It is a good idea. I would say it borders on another idea that you made later on here, about private industry. That is another interest of this subcommittee, how the private sector might play a greater role, and what, if any, additional incentives might be required.

NASA, you know, maintains a program for disseminating to private industry some of the things that they develop. I think that is the general idea also behind the State Technical Services Act that we passed two sessions ago. Perhaps we might do more of that. What sort of program does AEC itself have in that regard?

Dr. NABRIT. Dr. English.

Dr. ENGLISH. Mr. Chairman, we are aware of the NASA program and, in fact, we make use of it, in connection with their publications, which you mentioned and which they disseminate to private industry. We have groups in several of our national laboratories who are looking at the research results that have come out, and cooperate with NASA in the AEC-NASA Tech Briefs which records, for several

of our laboratories developments which could be of interest to industry.

We also have at two of our national laboratories, the one at Chicago, the Argonne National Laboratory, and our Oakridge National Laboratory, special offices set up, staffed with just a few people, who serve as the contact point with industry to attempt to acquaint industry with the research we are doing, and interest them in potential applications.

Actually, all of our laboratories are aware of this problem and in their discussions and publications and attendance at meetings, we attempt to see that they do try to communicate these to industry.

Senator HARRIS. Along that line, in the written question-and-answer portion, I note that you say:

Many of these advances conceivably could come about by inducing industry to focus more attention upon developmental activities.

Our subcommittee probably would want to go into this more specifically as we continue our inquiry.

Another aspect which was developed earlier in these hearings, and in our conference in Oklahoma, is covered in your written testimony in items 3 and 4, and that is the whole field of bioengineering.

I believe Dr. Chauncey Starr, and then Dr. Walker, made some suggestions in this regard. Dr. Starr said that we might fund some projects sponsored jointly by a medical school and an engineering school of a university. There has even been the thought expressed that there might be a National Institute of Bioengineering within NIH, to develop the field of bioengineering. We will want to go into this further.

What sort of contacts do you have between NIH and AEC?

Dr. DUNHAM. We have multiple contacts. I am invited as a courtesy of the National Cancer Institute to attend the meetings of the Cancer Advisory Council, for instance. My staff and technical people, all of them attend appropriate meetings of NIH study sections. Our genetic scientists sit on their study section meetings. They also do the same thing with the National Science Foundation.

We have this very close working relationship with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Institutes of Health, whereby funds are actually transferred, most of them from the Cancer Institute, but some from the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for cocarcinogenic work, for work on the development of the zonal centrifuge, both for use of cancer research and in separating out viruses for eventual use in commercial vaccine manufacture. It is a close working relationship.

Senator HARRIS. Very good. I think the specific suggestions you made, both in your affirmative testimony and that which you filed, are very good. One of these was that we might provide additional equipment to scientists and technicians. What do you do at AEC in that regard now? You do build certain equipment and provide equipment around the country.

Dr. DUNHAM. You see, our appropriations are for research, in my division, so that in order to provide a piece of equipment, it must be accompanied by an appropriate and sound research proposal from the receiving institution, and this is quite easy with many institutions.