In the thirty years from 1945 to the present, federal support for biomedical research has increased over 1000-fold to its current 1.7 billion dollar level. This increase in federal support for biomedical research has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in federal support for health care. In fact, as shown...
Archive - November 2021
This article criticizes Fredrick Stare's book: "Panic in the Pantry" which is a defense of the food industry, along with his motives. It then discusses the AAAS' role in food production/advertising and proposes a better alternative.
The healthcare system seems so chaotic, so unplanned, so uncoordinated, that many people call it a nonsystem. To cure the healthcare crisis, they conclude, we must turn it into a system. Specifically, they argue, some form of national health insurance would provide financially shaky hospitals with a stable income...
The most surprising fact about agriculture today is that sometimes people have enough food, that hunger is not more widespread than it is. This is surprising because in most of the world today, food production is not undertaken to feed people, food does not flow from well-fed areas to hungry areas; nor do fluctuations...
Recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics have improved greatly our understanding of how genes carry information from one generation to the next, and how they specify the development and functions of all organisms. Associated with this new knowledge are powerful new technologies which allow the linking of genes...
In late 1973, people in the Boston area who heard about our group began to give us some details about a study being conducted at the Boston Hospital for Women. In this study the researchers were screening all newborn males for the XYY karyotype and then following the XYY children to detect any “psychopathology” =...
“Science and Our Expectations: Bicentennial and Beyond” is the title of this year’s AAAS convention. But what are our expectations? We see our cities falling apart, people thrown out of work, education and other vital social programs being cut back and the danger of war continually increasing. At the same time, people...
The National Laboratories are a post-World War II development that evolved from the wartime mobilization of scientists. Partly devoted to basic research and partly to continued atomic-weapons development, the Labs offer employment to research scientists under favorable conditions, but with somewhat less prestige than...
Priorities in Cancer Research: Occupational and Environmental Carcinogenesis.
—The politics behind cancer spending.
Feb. 20. 3 pm. Sheraton/Beacon A.
Arranged by Allen E. Silverstone (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Cancer Research).
From October 24-26 the Third Annual Northeast Regional Conference of Science for the People was held in Voluntown, Connecticut. Approximately forty people attended, representing Boston, NYC, Stony Brook (NY), Chicago, Tallahassee, Washington (D.C.) and Montreal.