Author - SftP Archives

Science for Sale: The Pesticide Connection

Farmers like George Neary feel that the objectivity of these scientists is being compromised by the close financial ties to chemical manufacturers. The allegation is backed by some scientists within the land-grant establishment. “Chemical companies are brazenly buying University goodwill,” said the late Robert van den...

Sexual Harassment: Your Body or Your Job

The scope of sexual harassment is staggering. It ranges from propositions and sexual innuendo to rape. It is just as pervasive in universities as in blue collar jobs, in police forces as in acting schools, in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as in unions The Women’s Legal Defense Fund estimates that “more...

Book Review: The Politics of Cancer

The Politics of Cancer is his contribution to the debate over the future of the environmental health movement. In it he has pulled together a monumental amount of information on specific carcinogens, on the scientific background to cancer, and on the “scientific” and “non-scientific” opposition to regulation. He...

The Politics of Cancer Research

Cancer research in this country has become a bureaucracy and an industry, and certain avenues of research languish because of this. Cancer prevention and its research are not in the interests of the medical establishment, and cause contradictions in our economic system. This article will examine the broad issue of...

Comparing Apples to Oranges: Risk of Cost/Benefit Analysis

As the concern about the risks of modern technology to people and the environment has been translated into legislation, a basic idea has emerged - that the best way to evaluate such a risk is to compare it with the associated benefits. This is known as risk/benefit assessment.

Cancer: Some Notes for Activists

Cancer is both a scientific and a political issue. It is a scientific issue because it is a heavily researched disease — one whose most basic characteristics are still being uncovered and one about which honest and less-than-honest differences of opinion exist among scientists. It is fundamentally a political issue...

Their Victory is Our Victory

Through our struggle in science we have come increasingly to realize that alongside the peoples of Indochina we have a common enemy — the system of monopoly capitalism in its imperialist stage. We have come to recognize the use of science to provide the ideological justification of racism, sexism and exploitation as...

Five Years of Science for the People: A Political Analysis

The following is a political analysis which views the history of Science for the People as a history of struggle. Consistent with this analysis, it stresses certain struggles as the most important and raises key questions. It combines information which is not generally available with personal recollections and...

Small is Beautiful as a Book and as a Bum Steer

The following is a review of a book which tries to be about building a nonviolent alternative society, an idea that, unfortunately, seems to have special appeal to technically trained people, who have rebellion in their hearts. The book is Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. After dealing briefly with the book...

Biomedical Research, Politics and Health Policy

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...