Ned Shaw Columnist George Will has observed that when the Titanic steamed into that iceberg, the disaster was not democratic: 56% of women sailing in third class died, while only four of 143 women in first class perished. You don't need to ask which class was traveling near or below the waterline. When it comes to healthcare research, development and delivery--or, to be more precise, the lack thereof--those closest to the "waterline" are less-developed countries. Health-related R&D has b

Response to Response The response by Fred Gould and Jennifer Kuzma1 to my description of the fundamental flaws in two reports from the National Academy of Science/National Research Council2 is reminiscent of the story about the drunk searching for his lost keys under the streetlight. A friend who happens upon the fellow asks if he's sure that he lost them there. The drunk answers, "No, I'm sure they're not here, but the light is better." Gould and Kuzma concede the consensus that the risk-r

Image: Anthony Canamucio The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self- perpetuating society of distinguished scientists and engineers "dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare," and committed to "advis[ing] the federal government on scientific and technical matters." The Academy regularly conducts studies for a variety of sponsors, most often the federal government. The public, as well as those who are knowledgeable abo

Image: Anthony Canamucio Controversies--or perhaps pseudocontroversies would be more apt--continue to engulf recombinant DNA technology, the "new biotechnology," applied to agriculture and food production. One theoretical concern is that consumers might experience allergic reactions to foods made from recombinant organisms. In a June 2002 report, the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology concluded that regulatory agencies might have difficulty evaluating the potential for allergic reactions

Sixty percent of Americans would opt for smallpox immunization if the vaccine were available, according to a recent poll, and U.S. health officials have just negotiated the purchase of enough vaccine for everyone in the United States. Those two facts may be a prescription for bad medicine. Medically and epidemiologically, smallpox is the most feared and potentially devastating of all infectious agents. It spreads from person to person, primarily via droplets coughed up by infected persons, via d

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just launched two salvos in federal agencies' war against biotechnology by attacking various manifestations of the biological process called cloning, in which a mature cell--from the skin, for example--from the animal (or human) to be copied is inserted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed. The resulting embryo is then implanted into a surrogate mother that carries the fetus to term. In response to public claims by two groups that they are attem

Illustration: A. Canamucio The sad truth is that we're a bunch of fatsos, and getting fatter. Sixty-one percent of adults are now overweight, an all-time high, and more than a quarter are actually obese, or grossly overweight, according to the 1999 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But while we get fatter and suffer from diabetes and high cholesterol in record numbers, federal regulators are drastically limit

Several points in Kate Devine's article, "GM Food Debate Gets Spicy,"1 deserve amplification. The first pertains to the widespread recall of foods containing "StarLink" corn. The bottom line is that not a single person is at all likely to be harmed by this product, which differs from other commercial varieties by the presence of a Bacillus thuringiensis protein called Cry9C. The foods in question are actually far less likely than thousands of other products on the market to cause allergic or oth

A proposal to create a senior scientist position at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is winning support from Congress. In June, a National Academy of Sciences panel recommended creating the position to bolster EPA's use of science, and at a House subcommittee hearing this summer, U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) announced that he was preparing legislation to create the deputy-level (agency head) science position. "Scientists need more clout," he said. But EPA needs more than Ehlers' r

Illustration: A.Canamucio A long-awaited report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation of recombinant DNA-manipulated plants that was released last month has been interpreted in contradictory ways. The Washington Post reported that "crops that are genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides appear to be safe," and CBS news observed that the NAS review was "the closest thing to a seal of approval gene-altered foods have

When I was a medical resident at Harvard Medical School's cancer center, I had an experience that was both unnerving and illuminating. In the wee hours of the morning, I was about to give a patient her scheduled dose of an experimental chemotherapeutic agent, but I had trouble getting the air bubbles out of the syringe. So there I was, muttering and tapping on the syringe, when the patient suddenly sighed deeply ... and died. Had all gone smoothly, I'd have given the drug 20 seconds earlier, she

The home gardening season is beginning in Northern California, and with it, a public-service campaign that asks, "Have you oversprayed your garden?" The runoff of agricultural chemicals--especially fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides--directly into San Francisco Bay poses a perennial problem. What is not so obvious is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is obstructing an innovative and environmentally friendly solution. The EPA's decision to introduce Draconian regulation of an e