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MALARIA: A STATISTICAL INDEX Date: May 12, 1997 Number of clinical cases per year: 300 million to 500 million Number of deaths per year: 1.5 million to 2.7 million, about 4 percent to 5 percent of all fatalities Rank among major infectious diseases in mortality rates: 3rd (after pneumococcal acute respiratory infections and tuberculosis) Occurrence: 90 percent of all cases in sub-Saharan Africa; two-thirds of remaining cases in six countries: India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Vi

FUNDING AGENCIES FOR MALARIA RESEARCH Date: May 12, 1997 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Contact: Michael Gottlieb or Lee Hall Parasitology and International Programs Branch Solar Building/Room 3A12, Bethesda, Md. 20892-7630 Tel:(301) 496-2544 Fax: (301) 402-0659 E-mail: mg35s@nih.gov (Gottlieb) or bh24q@nih.gov (Hall) Web site: http://www.niaid.nih.gov UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) TDR Communicat

Following fiscal year 1998 congressional appropriations hearings, a budget of about $185 million has been proposed for the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), slightly less than the Clinton administration's proposed figure of $275 million. While no one can be sure what the final budget appropriation will be, some observers see the amount as evidence of new bipartisan support for the program, which for the past two years has been dubbed "corporate welfare" and marked for

FORCING THE ISSUE: Thomas Landefeld says his suit against the University of Michigan is an attempt to make it "more responsive to the treatment of minorities on their campus." Thomas Landefeld, a former associate professor of pharmacology, has sued the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, charging that he was retaliated against-and eventually fired-because of his outspoken attempts to improve the racial environment at Michigan's medical school. Landefeld is currently a professor of biology and

Eighteen accomplished researchers, including a 91-year-old endocrinologist who's known affectionately as "the George Burns of science," are being honored for their achievements at the 134th annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), scheduled for April 28 in Washington, D.C. They will be feted during an event that will include the election of new academy members and the induction of members elected last year (T.W. Durso, The Scientist, May 27, 1996, page 3). The academy's highes

The 'environmental justice' movement presses for studies of links among poverty, exposure to toxins, and disease. A collaborative effort is under way to assess the legacy of environmental pollution that falls upon the poor. An Institute of Medicine (IoM) committee recently completed site visits as part of its 18-month study that will evaluate the research, educational, and health policy needs required to bring "environmental justice" to impoverished and minority communities. Environmental just

Twenty-five years after the notorious Tuskegee study came to light, the United States government will formally apologize to its unwitting participants. The White House announced in early April that President Clinton soon would issue an apology to the 399 African American men whose syphilis was observed from 1932 to 1972 as part of an experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service. Despite the discovery in 1947 that penicillin cures syphilis, researchers neither treated the men nor told them they

'EMOTIONAL ISSUES': Allegheny University’s Suzanne Ildstad is not surprised by the vigorous debate over xenotransplantation guidelines. Scientists are weighing in heavily with comments-both favorable and unfavorable-about the Public Health Service's (PHS's) draft guidelines for xenotransplantation, or transplantation of cells, tissue, or organs across species. While many researchers see the guidelines as a sound beginning to regulate a new field, some say they don't go far enough to prot

Many observers endorse waiving the pedagogy requirement initially, but say additional training in education is crucial Facing a shortage of qualified applicants, some public school districts have begun hiring college graduates who majored in the sciences, rather than in education, to teach science, primarily in high schools. Science education observers say the practice is likely to increase in coming years. Most are cautiously optimistic about its effectiveness, although many warn that greater

In the seven weeks since the announcement of the successful cloning of a lamb called Dolly from an adult ewe, the scientific community has had time to reflect on what they've read, heard, or watched in the mass media. Among the scientists and bioethicists interviewed by The Scientist, there is unanimous excitement about the research itself. Despite this enthusiasm, observers and participants have a mixed reaction to the initial media coverage of the Dolly story. Some are pleased with news repor

NO PROBLEMS? AWIS’s Catherine Didion comments that women often are not willing to acknowledge impediments to advancement. Women and underrepresented minorities-African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans-generally are paid lower salaries and occupy fewer supervisory positions than their white, male counterparts in industry, according to a recent study conducted by the National Science Foundation. The study also sheds light on the issues that women and minorities say often impede t

Photo: C. Garasi, C. Galino, N. Miller, A. Simon, J. & B. Peterson and the NMSU Visualization Center (scanning) 'WAKE-UP CALL': Comet Hale-Bopp could help illustrate the dangers of superstition, according to codiscoverer Alan Hale. He helped to discover Comet Hale-Bopp, science's biggest media darling since Dolly the cloned sheep, but astronomer Alan Hale has more earthly concerns these days. The adjunct professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University is worried about how difficult t