Notebook

'IRREPRESSIBLE': Carl Sagan died last month. The late Carl E. Sagan was remembered by friends, former students, and colleagues for his research and his passionate efforts to spark public interest in science at a tribute following his funeral December 23 in Ithaca, N.Y. The Cornell University astronomer, who had battled a bone-marrow disease for two years, died December 20 of pneumonia at age 62 in Seattle, leaving the science community in laudatory mourning. Joshua Lederberg, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation Scholar at Rockefeller University in New York, recruited Sagan to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958 as part of an advisory committee on interplanetary quarantine policies. Lederberg recalls: "What was most impressive about Carl, besides his mental agility and his inexhaustible fund of factual detail and plausible inference about planetary evolution, was his positive humor and his irrepressible enthusiasm. His curiosity was boundless." Sagan cofounded the Planetary Society, and was awarded the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (New York, Random House, 1977) and the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal in 1994 (N. Sankaran, The Scientist, April 4, 1994, page 1), among many other honors. His phenomenally successful 1980 PBS series Cosmos earned Emmy and Peabody awards, and its companion book (New York, Random House, 1980) stayed on the New York Times's best-seller list for more than a year. Cornell, where Sagan served as David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies, will conduct its own memorial service February 3. 25 IN '98: Jaleh Daie heads CSSP’s celebration efforts. The new year has just begun, but to some groups, 1998 is right around the corner. The Washington, D.C.-based Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP), for example, is starting to plan next year's 25th anniversary celebration. CSSP includes the heads of nearly 100 scientific and engineering societies, representing more than 1.4 million members. CSSP chairwoman-elect Jaleh Daie, the president of the Association for Women in Science and a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is heading the society's drive to mark the anniversary. Daie, who will assume office at CSSP next year, says that while it is still too early to discuss specifics, the general idea is to emphasize "the importance of a robust science and technology enterprise." She states: "We really need to make a compelling case for the public at large to understand that this is a critical thing for our future, [for] all of us-not just scientists, not just technologists." Current chairman Roland W. Schmitt, president, emeritus, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., says CSSP has narrowed its focus to a few selective issues, such as electronic publishing, lobbying, ethics, and supporting academic research. The anniversary, he declares, will "be a very important test of whether CSSP, by its new activities and approach, is gaining broader support in the scientific community and among our member societies." MMM, MMM, GOOD? A famous cookbook still contains references to eating this endangered sea turtle. Conservationists recently have begun to take steps to express their distaste for a recipe that's been in a renowned cookbook for decades. Both paperback and hardback editions of the venerable Joy of Cooking (I. Rombauer, M.R. Becker, revised hardback ed., New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995) contain references to cooking and eating endangered sea turtles. The book includes recipes for green-turtle soup, as well as a description of the turtles' "highly prized, highly priced gelatinous meat ready-diced and in cans." Susan Nelson, manager of marketing and programs at the Sea Turtle Survival League, a project of the Gainesville, Fla.-based Caribbean Conservation Corp., was casually flipping through the book and noticed the troublesome passage. Sue Ellen Smith, communication coordinator for the league, says that her organization decided to bring the matter to the public's attention as part of its education mission. It is illegal to sell sea turtle products in the U.S. Smith sent a letter to Penguin Books USA, the paperback edition's publisher, requesting removal of the sea turtle references. She is still awaiting a reply. "Either they don't know sea turtles are endangered or it has been overlooked by the publishers," she remarks. Ironically, Joy of Cooking also recommends The Windward Road (2d ed., Gainesville, Fla., University Presses of Florida, 1979)-written by the late sea turtle conservationist Archie Carr-as a source of information about green sea turtles. Carr was the founding director of the league. "For Joy of Cooking to use Dr. Carr's book in this context is in very poor taste," asserts Smith. NEW HOPE: AIDS researcher David D. Ho, Time's Man of the Year For the first time in more than 35 years, Time magazine has named a scientist as its "Man of the Year." Virologist David D. Ho, scientific director at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, graced the cover of the Dec. 30, 1996, issue of the news magazine. The last time the research community was honored in this way was in 1960, when Time chose 15 American scientists as "Men of the Year." The magazine cited Ho and his team for "pioneering the treatment that might, just might, lead to a cure" for AIDS. When an expensive cocktail of protease inhibitors and other antiviral drugs was administered by Ho's team to a small group of AIDS patients, viral loads in the subjects fell dramatically. "The selection of Dr. David Ho as Time magazine's Man of the Year is a wonderful tribute to an outstanding scientist," remarks William E. Paul, director of the Office of AIDS Research. "Dr. Ho's contributions to understanding the dynamics of viral replication in infected individuals have given us a remarkable picture of the nature of the HIV infection. His selection is a recognition of the coming of age of AIDS research." Last year, the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information ranked Ho among the top 25 cited AIDS researchers (The Scientist, July 22, 1996, page 12). DON'T GO IT ALONE: Susan Yanovski notes that weight-reducing drugs aren’t effective without diet and behavior therapy. The National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity has both good and bad news for eternal dieters. The 13-member group, made up of nutrition and obesity experts from academic, government, and consumer organizations, reports in the December 18 issue of JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association (National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity, 276:1907-15, 1996) the results of a review of the medical literature from 1966 through 1996. Prescription weight-loss drugs, all the rage in recent years, are hardly a panacea for losing weight and keeping it off, they conclude. However, when combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise, drugs may help some obese individuals lose weight and maintain the weight loss for at least a year. They recommend more research to measure the long-term safety and effectiveness of these medications. The review focused on prescription appetite suppressants such as phentermine, fenfluramine, and dexfenfluramine, which boost the brain's serotonin levels. According to task force executive director Susan Yanovski, director of the Obesity and Eating Disorders Program at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, most weight-loss medications are approved only for short-term use, though dexfenfluramine (marketed as Redux) can be used for up to 12 months. Yet the task force found little justification for short-term use. "People who go on these drugs for three or even six months and then stop using them tend to gain the weight back," says Yanovski. Appetite suppressants have potentially dangerous side effects and should be prescribed only for the obese, she notes. Yet, "sometimes the risk [of side effects] outweighs the potential health problems from obesity," she points out. Concludes Yanovski: "These drugs need to be used in combination with diet and behavioral therapy-and that's not happening." Yanovski is upbeat about the future: "We'll have safer and more specific weight-loss drugs in the future, as pharmaceutical companies and physicians recognize obesity as a potentially chronic disease." Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation in Seattle, using sophisticated mathematical models based on infrared spectroscopy, have for the first time detected dramatic changes between healthy and cancerous prostate tissue DNA. The researchers theorize that free radicals-chemicals known to damage DNA-may be generated in the prostate and be responsible for the DNA changes. "It is a major advance in understanding the cause of prostate cancer because it implicates free radicals, which have been suggested previously [to alter DNA and play a role in cancer]," says Donald C. Malins, director of the molecular epidemiology program at the Seattle foundation. Malins and his coworkers took computer projections of DNA from healthy men as well as those with prostate cancer. They subsequently were able to distinguish normal and cancerous DNA with "100 percent accuracy." Malins's group was also able to distinguish DNA from tissue of benign prostatic hyperplasia, a precancerous condition. "These findings suggest that going from normal prostate to cancerous prostate creates a new type of DNA" that carries that blueprint for generating cancer cells, he says. "That's never been shown before." Malins explains that normal DNA appears to be progressively damaged. "At a certain point, as if a switch is flipped on, the DNA is transformed to cancer DNA." The researchers think that the altered DNA results mostly from the cells' inability to control oxidation that leads to the buildup of free radicals. They reported their results on January 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (D.C. Malins et al., 94:259-64, 1997). Malins would like to understand why and how free radicals change normal prostate DNA "until it reaches a point of structural DNA change and develops into cancer." However, it's too early to tell if these findings will result in improved early detection and screening for prostate cancer, he concludes. 'PROPHETIC FIGURE': Right Livelihood Prize winner Herman Daly Last month, Herman Daly, senior research scholar in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, received the honorary portion of the 1997 Right Livelihood Award from the Swedish Parliament. The 17-year-old prize recognizes people "who have made significant contributions to the survival of humanity" in the fields of economics, health, peace, and development. The honor has also been referred to as the "alternative Nobel Prize" because it honors those whom the Nobel committee has overlooked, according to the prize's organizers. Daly, whose award carries no monetary prize, shared the recognition with Greek alternative medicine researcher George Vithoulkas; the People's Science Movement of Kerala State-India, an organization of Indian scientists backing development rooted in social justice; and the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, a Russian group seeking military reform. These three honorees split $250,000. Daly, an ecological economist, was cited for "his dedication, in spite of unremitting hostility from the conventional mainstream of his profession, in formulating an economic approach that integrates the key elements of ethics, quality of life, environment, and community." In his new book, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (H. Daly, Boston, Beacon Press, 1996), he asserts that the world's economy must be conceived as part of the global ecosystem. He espouses a reevaluation of traditional economic models to include the costs of natural-resource depletion. "He's a prophetic figure of our time," remarks Timothy Weiskel, director of the Harvard University Seminar on Environmental Values. "He should've received the Nobel Prize [in economics] a long time ago. I'm glad to see he's getting some recognition." The Right Livelihood Award was founded in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, a Swedish-German writer and former member of the European Parliament.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

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