Notebook

Table of Contents Appleaing Standards Farmer Dan Uncle Sam Wants You To Teach Alleged Vandal Free On Bond Hot Stuff Identity Crisis A federal appeals court's dismissal of a drug-liability lawsuit earlier this month may set a rigorous new standard for scientific evidence. In Daubert et al. v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., two children, Jason Daubert and Eric Schuller, and their parents charged that an anti-nausea drug called Bendectin, taken by the mothers while pregnant, caused the children's limb-reduction birth defects. The case was first decided in Merrell Dow's favor in United States District Court for the Southern District of California in 1989. In 1991, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco upheld the lower court's summary judgment that the standards of the scientific community--reliance on peer review, in this case--should outweigh other considerations in evaluating the admissibility of evidence. Then, in 1993, the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the San Francisco appeals court with the instruction that judges take a more active, "gatekeeping role" in screening courtroom science. The decision suggests that judges act independently in assessing evidence, using only relevance and reliability as their guides. On January 7, a three-judge appeals court panel found that the plaintiff's scientists, in presenting an unusual statistically based argument, had not used an accepted methodology to show that Bendectin caused the birth defects. Numerous questions weigh heavily on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its constituents these days, including whether its roughly $1.3 billion in research funding will survive the promised cuts in the Republican "Contract with America" (R. Twombly, The Scientist, Jan. 9, 1995, page 1). One, however, was recently answered: the identity of President Bill Clinton's choice to replace agriculture secretary Mike Espy, who resigned under pressure last October. Clinton nominated former Kansas Democratic Congressman, Dan Glickman, who lost his seat in the last election. Glickman who served nine terms in the House, was on the Agriculture Committee and is generally regarded as having solid agriculture legislation experience, including initiatives involving research. A news release by the National Association for Biomedical Research, however, reminds its members that Glickman voted in committee against the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992, which provides federal legal protection to labs that use animals in research. The National Research Council (NRC), the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is looking for more than a few good military scientists and engineers. Armed with a five-year, $5 million grant from the Department of Defense (DoD), NRC's Defense Reinvestment Initiative: Scientists to Teachers Project will begin retraining displaced scientists and engineers from the military, aerospace and defense-related industries, and national laboratories for new careers in science and mathematics teaching in middle and high schools. The initial class of 20 teaching fellows will begin this summer in the Los Angeles area. For more information, contact project director Maureen Shiflett at (714) 721-2232. Following a December bail hearing, Rodney Coronado, an animal- rights activist accused of vandalizing and setting fire to animal-science labs at Michigan State University (MSU) in February 1992 in connection with activities of the Animal Liberation Front (M. Devins, The Scientist, June 8, 1992, page 4), has been released on $650,000 bond. Coronado, arrested September 28 in Arizona, was indicted in July 1993 and had been a fugitive for more than a year. The trial is scheduled to begin March 1 but is likely to be postponed, according to MSU sources. Karen Chou, an MSU associate professor of animal science whose lab was damaged in the incident, says the destruction cost her an opportunity to publish a virtually completed study: "There's no reason to waste taxpayers' money repeating something that I know the result of." She relates the vandalism to recent acts of violence at abortion clinics. "Debate is the foundation of civilization for our society," she maintains, "but once someone breaks the law in the name of passion, it's no longer a subject of whether we support animal research or are pro-life: This is a crime." In another scientific matter on the crime docket, a Massachusetts scientist and businessman were arrested December 14 and charged with trying to sell the formula for erythropoietin, or EPO--a genetically engineered drug whose patent is owned by Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen Inc.--for $300,000 to an FBI agent pretending to be a Russian spy. The biochemist, Vemuri Bhaskar Reddy, formerly worked for Integrated Genetics of Framingham, Mass., which lost out to Amgen in the EPO patent race and apparently shelved its cell line for the product, which Reddy is accused of stealing. He was arrested along with Subrahamanyam M. Kota. The drug, which stimulates the growth of red blood cells, has an estimated worldwide market of $1 billion. "I guess you could say that, in a weird sort of way, it was flattering," says Dave Kaye, manager of product communications at Amgen, whose company tested Reddy's cell line at the FBI's request. "But it's the kind of flattery we could live without. We wouldn't want someone out there counterfeiting our product without the patient getting what they thought they were getting." In late December, a press release was faxed to media organizations announcing winners of "IgNobel Prizes" for the worst animal and human experiments of 1994. But these were not the annual humorous awards for dubious scientific achievement bestowed by the MIT Museum, publishers of the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), "the MAD magazine of science." This release came from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a group that advocates eliminating animal research, among other issues. And the awards were decidedly not funny: a New York University scientist was cited for allegedly addicting monkeys to crack cocaine, and a National Institutes of Health investigator for reportedly withholding whooping cough vaccines from children. An AIR statement reads: "We were shocked, shocked to hear that a lobbying group in Washington, D.C., has tried to claim credit for the Ig Nobel Prizes. . . . We must protect the purity and distinction that each of the genuine Ig Nobel Prize winners worked so hard to achieve." According to PCRM media director David Wasser, his group's prizes were devised in a staff meeting: "None of us on the staff had heard of either [AIR] or their awards. We had planned to make this an annual event; now we won't do it next year."

Notebook

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