October 1993

With Five-Year Ban On Fetal Tissue Studies Lifted, Scientists Are Striving To Make Up For Lost Time Author: MYRNA E. WATANABE, pp.1 delayed by the moratorium, that may relieve human suffering Sometime this month, the National Institutes of Health will announce the recipients of the first federal grants since 1988 for research on human fetal tissue transplants using material derived from elective abortions--the main source of live and healthy fetal tissue that can be maintained in culture

investigation that will carry advances forward The transfer of genetic materials into humans to correct diseases--gene therapy--is a new medical enterprise, barely three years old in the clinic. But in the short time since a research team at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., first treated a young girl's genetically compromised immune system with a transfusion of her own DNA-corrected white blood cells on Sept. 14, 1990, gene therapy has grown to command considerable public

to deepen the influence of its prestigious membership In the very near future, if things go according to plan, the traditionally low-profile Washington, D.C.-based Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) will be exerting influence in the science community far greater than it has ever exerted before in its 20-year history. According to its new executive director, Martin Apple, the organization--whose membership comprises past, present, and future leaders of some 60 scientific societ

John L. VandeBerg has been appointed scientific director of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR). VandeBerg, 46, has headed SFBR's department of genetics since 1982. He began his new position October 1. The nonprofit foundation is located in San Antonio. Its 2,700 primates are used in a variety of studies on human diseases. The foundation studies atherosclerosis, hypertension, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis, as well as infectious diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis, and

Last month, the U.S. Senate approved funding for a modified version of space station Freedom, and a group of volunteers, many of whom are scientists and others involved in the aerospace industry, would like to believe that the weight of their arguments played no small role in saving the project. In at least one respect they are right. Over the summer, the group, calling itself the Space Station Freedom Fighters, collected more than 30,000 signatures on petitions calling for renewal of the stati