The National Research Council, a division of the National Academies, has strongly recommended that the federal government withdraw proposed standards governing federal agency risk assessments. The standards were proposed in a bulletin released one year ago by the Office of Management and Budget and would, when final, set requirements for federal agencies performing risk assessments, usually as a prelude to regulation or other decision-making. According to the NRC, the technical standards in the proposed bulletin are "fundamentally flawed" and attempt to promote standards beyond what previous reports have recommended and beyond the current state of the science. In comments last March, the AAMC cautioned that the proposed standards could interfere with critical decision-making in the Public Health Service, such as a determination by a data safety monitoring board to intercede in a clinical trial. For more information, please visit the National Acadenmies website or http://www.aamc.org/.