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Mice everywhere are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Soon, far fewer small laboratory animals will be routinely sacrificed to allow researchers to observe the after-effects of gene mutations or other experimental manipulations. Instead, investigators will be able to track the implications of those changes in living specimens in exquisite detail and for extended periods of time, thus painting a fuller, more accurate picture of what's going on and why. At least, that's the likely scenario i

The lobbyist credited his client. The client credited his lobbyist. Both praised scientists and legislators on the brink of an historic vote that would put the National Institutes of Health on the path to doubling its budget in five years. Congress, as of press time for The Scientist, was poised to pass a $500 billion legislative package that includes a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health. The agency received $13.648 billion for 1998. Prior to the vote on the "omnibus" spe

BIOREMEDIATION TO THE PIGPEN It was a stinky summer at the EnviroPork hog facility near Larimore, N.D., with penalties pending for violating state odor regulations, and neighbors complaining loudly about the foul fragrance. Making matters worse, the manure lagoon associated with the facility threatened groundwater supplies. Happily, researchers from the University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) had a low-tech solution: barley straw. Using a cannon, they shot a

Editor's Note: In the previous issue of The Scientist (12[20]:7, 14, Oct. 12, 1998), we published the first part of an excerpt from NO by Carl Djerassi. We met the chief protagonist of the book, an Indian scientist named Renu Krishnan, who has developed a drug called NONO-2 and a delivery system called MUSA. Guided by Martin Gestler, a hard-charging expert on biotechnology start-up companies, Krishnan has left academic research to found a company called SURYA. The previous extract described t

You have probably heard more than your share of Viagra jokes; a whole Web site is devoted to them. But impotence, or erectile dysfunction (ED), is no joke. According to a survey (H.A. Feldman et al., Journal of Urology, 151:54-61, 1994), more than 50 percent of men between 40 and 70 suffer from some degree of ED. The figure climbs to 67 percent at age 70. That's 20 to 30 million men, according to the National Institutes of Health. FIRST IN LINE: Viagra is actually the second drug approved t

On September 25 at the Hotel Pierre in New York City, seven prominent scientists, representing a generation of landmark discoveries in biology and medicine, stepped to the podium to receive this year's Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, a coveted honor bestowed annually since 1946 by The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. The research of six of this year's recipients made possible groundbreaking discoveries in the field of cancer research. The research of the seventh, who received his award

A plan to screen pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides for endocrine disruptor activity could be bad news for the manufacturers of those synthetics, but good news for research in biocontrols, a natural alternative to those chemicals. Recently, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee (EDSTAC) recommended that about 15,000 commercial chemicals be tested for their interaction with reproduction and development (P. Smaglik, The Scientist, 12[18]:1, Sept. 14, 1998). Although

LEAVING HOWARD HUGHES After serving as the president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1987, Purnell W. Choppin has announced his resignation. "While my enthusiasm for the position I have been privileged to hold and my dedication to the Institute remain as intense as ever, I believe that it will be time for someone to take up the reins and lead HHMI into the new millennium," Choppin wrote in a letter to the institute's staff. He will remain in the position through 1999. Under Choppin

EDITOR'S NOTE: Carl Djerassi's novel NO concerns the development of a fictional, though close-to-life, drug and delivery system for the relief of male impotence. While the science in the novel is accurate, the book is a work of fiction. Nevertheless, some real-life characters, including Djerassi himself (a professor in the chemistry department at Stanford University), and other more or less disguised fictional characters based on real people make appearances in the book. In this issue and in t

As drug companies downsize and research grants in big universities dry up, Chinese scientists in the United States are taking a more aggressive stance toward their own professional and economic development. Chris Pak As though taking the cue from President Bill Clinton and Premier Jiang Zemin, whose open TV debate a few months ago shocked and surprised many Chinese and Americans, Asian scientists in the United States are going after a base of political power. A few are adopting roles ranging

GENOME SYMBOL: DNA strands form the basis of a graphic symbol of the genome project. They said it wasn't a race. When a private venture announced plans in May to produce a version of the human genome four years ahead of the international nonprofit Human Genome Project's deadline, scientists associated with the public project insisted that the private effort wasn't really a challenge to theirs. The private effort would present, at best, a "rough draft" with many holes--if it worked at all, they

By In the early 1950s, when Jonas Salk produced the first inactivated polio vaccine and Albert Sabin later produced a live, attenuated, oral polio vaccine, the individual researchers' names were permanently linked to the products. But development of an HIV vaccine--a task President Bill Clinton has charged researchers to accomplish by 2007--requires the skills of so many scientists and so many laboratories worldwide that it would be impossible, and perhaps even improper, to link any vacci