Letters

PETA Not Extremists UNESCO’S Vision A Friendlier TeX Elisabeth Carpenter’s informative article about animal liberation actions (December 14, 1987, P. 1) paints People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (rather typically I’m sorry to say) as an extremist group. Sadly, the major focus of our work seldom makes the papers or the six o’clock news. A mediawide tendency to link PETA with the Animal Liberation Front and similar groups is the result of PETA’s reporting on these groups’ activities. We accept any material we legally can on animal abuse, regardless of the source, and we make that information available to the public. Our whistle-blower program requires complete and guaranteed anonymity to ensure its effectiveness. Anonymity allows people the freedom to report abuse, waste and cruelty that otherwise would go unreported and uncorrected. Many whistle-blowers are from within the scientific community, often in high-level positions. We have many scientists and health professionals within our ranks. Animal rights advocates’ opposition to animal experiments is based on scientific as well as ethical grounds. We are not opposed to medical science. But we differ with members of the science community who defend experiments that inflict pain, suffering and death on otherwise healthy animals. We support humane and civilized science to aid human patients and prevent human disease. But even the actions of those who break into laboratories or slaughterhouses cannot rightly be called terrorism. These individuals do not create terror, they rescue individuals from it. Their mission is the same as all humanitarians’, but their tactics are different. —Alex Pacheco Chairperson, PETA P0 Box 42516 Washington, DC 20015 I read Eugene Garfield’s Up Front article “Vision for a renewed UNESCO” (November 30, 1987, p. 9) with great interest, and was most gratified by Garfield’s appraisal of the prospects for UNESCO’s continued development during my tenure of office. I appreciated the candidly optimistic analy 515. The support of individuals and groups in scientific and academic communities the world over is vital if UNESCO is to move ahead in these challenging times. Garfield rightly and accurately identified the major challenges, and pertinently summarized my views on the running of the organization. Further, I cannot agree more when he suggested that it is through increased participation by the American academic and scientific communities in certain specific UNESCO programs that the way can perhaps best be prepared for a recovery of universality. What is more, multilateral cooperation, particularly in the scientific field, sorely needs the significant input such stepped-up participation would bring. —Federico Mayor Director-General, UNESCO 7, Place de Fontenoy 75700, Paris, France In general, I found Malcolm Brown’s review of PCTeX to be objective and accurate (January 11, 1987, p. 20). Brown is an apt choice for authoring this review, since he coordinates the TeXHax dialog on ARPANET, and has been a TeX supporter for many years. It was disappointing that Brown was unable to obtain the Boston Computer Society’s Benchmarks (the BOS test results shown on p. 21). Dr. Cameron and the reviewers at the society were successful during their testing. I suspect that Brown neglected to use the virtual memory option, which can be set with a simple command line switch and which removes any DOS memory limitations from PCTeX’s operation. This problem could have been corrected with a call to our technical support staff. Our timings for the BCS test were: 116 seconds with our 8Mhz AT clone, 206 seconds with our 6Mhz IBM PC/AT. We do not have an 8Mhz IBM PC/AT such as Brown used. We recently released version 2.1, which adds a great deal of user friendliness to the otherwise mildly friendly TeX system. This release has an extremely flexible set of environment configuration options and a menu system that integrates PCTeX device drivers and text editor. —Lanee Carnes President. Personal TeX. Inc. 12 Madrona Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 THE SCIENTIST welcomes your letters. Please include your name, address, affiliation (if you like) and a telephone number. Letters must be signed. Letters selected for publication may be edited for length. Send letters to Feedback, THE SCIENTIST, 1101 15th St., N. W, Suite 605, Washington, DC 20005.

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