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First came the talk about a trend: Fewer physicians are entering biomedical research. Now come the data: results from a study published in February by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).1 "Opportunities for applying research results to patients have never been greater. At the same time, the number of physician-scientists who can carry out that kind of translational research is declining significantly," comments Kenneth Shine, president of the Institute o

President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's brief statement of March 14 supporting free access to human genome information unleashed a slew of clichés, including "too little too late" and "water under the bridge." But initial misinterpretation of the statement led to a temporary slide in biotech stocks. By the end of the day, Celera Genomics Corp. of Rockville, Md., had dropped 19 percent, while Incyte Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, Calif., plummeted 27 percent. Even thoug

Henry Lee How many scientists can claim the simultaneous titles of state police commissioner, chief state fire marshal, chief building inspector, director of the state forensic laboratory, and university professor? Probably a safe answer is only one, Connecticut's Henry Lee. The development of the field of forensic sciences, the application of science in solving legal issues, parallels Lee's career. As a young man, Lee was a police captain in the Taipei Police Department in Taiwan. There,

Paul Berg Regulating biotechnological discoveries hasn't gotten any easier since scientists and policymakers faced their first major challenge 25 years ago. In 1973, recombinant DNA technology burst onto the scene.1 The response was remarkably swift. A group of scientists led by Paul Berg, now director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Research at the Stanford University School of Medicine, called for an international moratorium on recombinant DNA research, fearing that the technol

Cancer Registry Collaboration The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently officially announced a collaboration to develop a cancer surveillance and cancer control research system. It's the latest of several collaborative efforts--the two agencies often overlap on projects involving areas such as surveillance, tobacco control, and dietary intervention. CDC director Jeffrey Koplan and NCI director Richard Klausner signed a memorandum of underst

If you're a cancer specialist seeking participants for your clinical trial, take note. The floodgates may well open as Cancer: Evolution to Revolution hits the HBO lineup and its companion Web site launches on the Internet. This two-and-a-half-hour informational documentary is a timely demonstration of television's ability to rise to viewers' needs with true public service programming, providing dozens of contact phone numbers and Web addresses for virtually every cancer organization in the cou

Unplanned obsolescence is the fallout of risky biotech businesses, especially in glycobiology, a small niche marketplace. A specialty manufacturer can spend millions in R&D to bring a new piece of equipment to market, only to find that customer demand never catches up with cost. As a result, high-profile customers can be left high and dry with brand-new instruments and little or no guarantees for parts, reagents, or support. Also, manufacturers sell off product lines and offer limited period

Early cartographers, without the luxury of an aerial view of their surroundings, did their best to map expanses of land based on expeditions and, of course, on previous maps. Although quite helpful, they and their maps were often less than perfect. Cartographers sketching the layout of the American colonies, for example, might map a lake or a mountain that simply didn't exist. Subsequent maps might then incorporate the make-believe landmark, sometimes even "moving" it several miles from its pre

Graphic: Cathleen Heard Although a smaller percentage of African American women are diagnosed with breast cancer than white women, African Americans are more likely to die from breast cancer than women from other ethnic groups. Vietnamese American women have the highest cervical cancer rates of any ethnic group. And poor Americans of all races have higher rates of cancer incidence and mortality than do people from other socioeconomic groups. The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report The Une

Although the Institute of Medicine report1 on health disparities between ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the United States has focused government agencies on improving health of minorities and the poor, National Institutes of Health leaders say their institutes began dealing with these issues before the report was released. And their forthcoming plan will be major. At the Intercultural Cancer Council's Biennial Symposium held in Washington, D.C., in early February with a focus on health

In the human tragedy of HIV infection, dendritic cells play a vicious double role analogous to an international cocaine trafficker who morphs into a street-level crack peddler. These antigen-presenting immune-system cells transport HIV from the mucosal membranes near which it enters the body to secondary lymphoid organs. There, the cells pass the virus over to the T lymphocytes that it will ultimately destroy. Exactly how dendritic cells serve these functions is unknown, but two new studie

Officials at the National Institutes of Health are anticipating that problems will arise with implementation of the Shelby amendment. Passed by Congress last year, the amendment mandates that scientists make data from federally funded projects publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "FOIA is too crude an instrument for this; it was never designed for scientific data sharing," commented Wendy Baldwin, NIH deputy director for extramural research, at a session of the America