Notebook

Getting Leaner But Not Meaner All You Need is Drugs Thanks, But The Answer's No Spreading The News Researchers have an obligation to think about what's good for society as well as what's important for science, says Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Transportation Committee. Such public-spirited thinking, he says, could lead to a smaller federal research budget but a healthier citizenry and stronger national economy. Speaking at the National Academy of Sciences to a group gathered to discuss a new report that argues for the need to set priorities in space research, Brown warned his audience that "we must stop choosing between science and social assistance, and start asking how we can be responsible about both. This may mean leaner science budgets that more effectively accomplish good science." Brown also said he "could envision a vital space science program without a space station, or even a space shuttle." United States drug companies are conducting a national media campaign to persuade the American public--and the scientific community--of the important role that pharmaceuticals play in improving the nation's health. The impetus for the campaign is a recent Gallup poll, conducted for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association Foundation, that shows the public ranks drugs and vaccines fourth--behind diagnostic devices, surgery, and lifestyle changes--on a list of the reasons for medical progress in the past 30 years. Foundation officials say that the ranking undervalues pharmaceutical products' real contribution, and cite as proof a study they commissioned from the Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers of Seattle. In that study, Battelle was asked to calculate the 30-year impact of pharmaceuticals on eight major diseases. In fact, although the foundation's news releases don't say so, Battelle found that it was impossible to document the role that drugs and vaccines had played in half of those diseases--namely cancer, arthritis, influenza, and pneumonia. But Battelle did a second study last fall that predicted pharmaceuticals would be responsible for half of all progress in the next 25 years against five major killers. The White House appreciates it when researchers provide it with a rank-ordered listing of the projects that are most important to them, says Allan Bromley, the president's science adviser. But they shouldn't expect that their wishes will always come true. For example, the budget President Bush has proposed for 1993 contains no money for a $1 billion Space Infrared Telescope Facility, the top large- scale priority of the National Academy of Sciences' panel on astronomy in the 1990s, chaired by Princeton astrophysicist John Bahcall. "We have had a long series of such reports [on research priorities]," says Bromley, himself the coauthor of an earlier report looking at the future of physics, "and I'd estimate that 60 percent of their priority projects have been funded. And that's not a bad record. The fact that we ignored this one shouldn't discourage scientists from doing this sort of thing." The federal government's two leading basic research agencies are beefing up their efforts to reach the public. In January, National Institutes of Health director Bernadine Healy and National Science Foun- dation director Walter Massey each held unprecedented "press availability" sessions with the national media to discuss where their agencies are headed. In addition, last month Healy announced the appointment of Johanna Schneider, a former deputy press secretary at the Labor Department, to the new position of press secretary to the NIH director and senior media adviser. (For as long as most people can remember, inquiries from the press have been handled by Storm Whaley, who heads the institutes' communications office.) And at NSF, Michael Fluharty has become the fourth press spokesman for the agency in the past 20 months. Fluharty, who left Whaley's office last summer to join NSF, succeeds David Barna, who replaced Allan Levitt, who took over in June 1990 after the retirement of longtime spokesman Jack Renirie.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of