Articles by Donald Forsdyke

David Carlberg1 should not apologize for "sounding a bit academic" in objecting to my use of the word "antibiotic" in my commentary on the chemotherapy of AIDS.2 It is of vital importance that we avoid confusing our students, our patients, and ourselves by getting our definitions right. If, in Carlberg's words, "an antibiotic is formally defined as a microbial product that kills or inhibits other microbes," then what do we call the new synthetic penicillin derivatives? If we want to call them a

Maxwell Gordon, in a letter to The Scientist,1 agrees with the main point of my Commentary article2 that latency is a primary factor in the failure of current therapies. Antibiotics cannot reach the reservoirs of latent HIVs in the genomes of their host cells, so that, as researchers have long known,3 combinations of antibiotics must be combined with agents capable of flushing out latent viruses. Studies of the latency phenomenon, which might have identified such agents, should have received a h

The Hot Papers article1 of Dec. 6 on the failure of various combinations of antibiotics to eradicate latent HIV gives the false impression that AIDS researchers were not aware of this possibility. ("Scientists are still grappling with the questions raised by this sobering discovery.") Doctors learn at medical school the fundamental rule that antibiotics should be given for short periods in adequate doses to destroy all pathogens and prevent the emergence of resistant strains. As soon as it was

Albert Anderson says "the presence of numerous sauropod eggshells in Patagonia is certainly evidence that sauropods existed but not necessarily that they evolved,"1,2 while Gina Kolata in The New York Times quips that "evolutionary biology can be long on theory and short on evidence."3 The blame for this sorry state of evolutionary understanding lies at the feet of scientists and educators who just have not done their homework. In 1886 Charles Darwin's research associate George Romanes showed

Candace Pert begins her recent Commentary (The Scientist, April 2, 1990, page 18) with the hypotheses that it is "the one-in-a-million scientist who fabricates data" and that "the overwhelming majority of outright deceptions . . . is quickly revealed." From this she continues that overattention to the possibility of fraud generates a "witch-hunting climate," which may make reviewers ruthlessly skeptical of "the new, unexpected discoveries that make for real scientific progress." There is, howe

In his article entitled "U.S. Research Environment Lures Canadian Scientists..." (The Scientist, May 1, 1989, page 9), Louis Siminovitch laments that persons "with less than the best qualifications" are appointed to peer review committees because of the policy of inclusion of persons from different Canadian geographical areas. According to Siminovitch, "inevitably, this means that the best scientists get shortchanged in their research funds." His prescriptions for reform include having only the