On May 17, 1984, Federal District Court Judge John J. Sirica temporarily halts all federally funded experiments involving the deliberate release of recombinant DNA organisms, causing a scramble among many federal agencies to see which shall have regulatory responsibility. Jeremy Rifkin claimed that National Institutes of Health failed to file environmental impact statements on the research. ones.

Sirica ruled that in approving that experiment, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had failed to satisfy two legal requirements: it had not conducted a formal environmental assessment of the experiment, and it had not prepared a much lengthier environmental impact statement (EIS) on the entire programme of environmental release of recombinant DNA.