International Review Sought for Release

WASHINGTON—A group of public interest organizations has asked the United Nations to develop international standards for the re lease of genetically altered organ isms into the environment in the wake of recent experiments by American researchers in Argentina and New Zealand.

The organizations, which included the Committee for Responsible Genetics, the Environmental Policy Institute, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, also asked the U.S. government to re view all federally funded genetic re search taking place outside the United States. Meeting last month at a two-day conference here on genetic engineering and social policy, the groups said that “weaknesses in the U.S. regulatory framework permit the easy export of potentially dangerous genetic experimentation that might be prohibited here to nations whose regulatory framework is either un known or different than our own.”