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Sentiments expressed at a March 12 National Academy of Sciences workshop suggest that scientists and policy-makers remain very concerned about data access issues related to the now infamous Shelby Amendment. The amendment, a two-line provision added by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to an omnibus appropriations law for fiscal year 1999, subjects federally funded scientific research to requests for data made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).1 Its inclusion sparked a debate between indust

When a research team led by Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg in Germany announced last year that they had produced beta carotene, or provitamin A, in rice grains,1 the news created quite a stir.2 For one thing, getting "golden rice," as it was quickly dubbed (for its color, not its monetary value) required a biotech tour de force. Potrykus and Beyer inserted two genes from daffodil and one from a bacterium into ri

The Federal government's Interagency Task Force on Microbial Resistance has issued an 84-item plan to combat the growing public health problem presented by microbes' increasing ability to shrug off antibiotics. This recently released first part of the plan is aimed at domestic concerns, including the use of antibiotics and other drugs in agriculture (H. Black, "Agricultural antibiotics scrutinized," The Scientist, 14[12]:1, June 12, 2000). The Food and Drug Administration is proposing to withdra

As the UK government considers a limited foot-and-mouth disease vaccination programme, there's evidence that the current vaccines aren't perfect but high doses could help stop transmission.

Delegates at a conference last week called for more academic institutions to make theses and dissertations available online.

The National Health Service faces a substantial compensation bill from patients who contracted hepatitis C from infected blood supplies.

The UK could be preparing to vaccinate farm animals against foot-and-mouth disease. But will the vaccines be effective against the current strain?

With an arsenal of 17 approved drugs and intricate rules for deploying each one, a physician's battle to shut down HIV replication is like chess against an opponent too strong to be driven from the board, so keeping the game going is the only alternative to losing. Today's best strategy for suppressing HIV calls for using three or four inhibitors in combination. As with a chessboard siege defense, conserving pieces while sealing off each new attack, doctors try to pick drug combinations that pre

At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in San Francisco, Celera Genomics CEO J. Craig Venter and National Human Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins spent considerable time appeasing autograph seekers at their respective plenary lectures--the former, signing dozens of copies of the February 16 issue of AAAS's journal Science, the latter, copies of the February 15 issue of Nature. They were the sorts of receptions usually experienced by roc

Image courtesy of Eyewire ©2001, Graphic: Cathleen Heard The economy may be chasing the bear rather than the bull, but short-term economic downturns are not affecting pharmaceutical firms' expansion--at least, not yet. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that AstraZeneca PLC's profits were up,1 and those who know the industry see the human lifestyle as more of a factor in drug company growth than the economy. "Although you may see peaks and valleys in bioscience growth and development

Amid last month's hoopla over the human genome sequence and what it says about humans, plant biologists announced two new efforts aimed at a firmer understanding of plant evolution--who is related to whom and how--a discipline better known as systematics. Constructing evolutionary family trees is harder than investigating personal genealogies--biologists don't have the equivalent of birth registrations or family bibles to consult. Fossils tell them what ancient plants use to look like, but placi

The Scientist 15[5]:18, Mar. 5, 2001 NEWS News Notes D2 Receptors Fight Addiction By Harvey Black Mice, which have been experimentally addicted to alcohol show a decrease in alcohol consumption when the population of D2 receptors in their brains is increased, Nora D. Volkow, associate director of Brookhaven National Laboratory reported at a symposium on addiction and the brain. In imaging studies, Volkow found that cocaine addicts had lower numbers of these receptors fo