EDITORIAL
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Bioengineering-Friend
or Foe?
ack in October 1966, the ACS Division of Industrial and Engineer-
B ing Chemistry sponsored its 33rd Annual Chemical Engineering
Tokyo, Japan
12 Iikura Kata-machi, Azabu Minato-ku Michael K. McAbee ADVISORY BOARD: S. Geor e Bankoff, William C. Bauman, Floyd L. Cu%er, Merrell R. Fenske, Leo Friend, Howard L. Gerhart, Robert L. Hershey, Charles A. Kumins, Robert N. Maddox, Charles N . Satterfield, Warren C. Schreiner, Eric G. Schwartz, Thomas K. Sherwood, Joseph Stewart, Shen Wu Wan
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REINHOED PUB%ISHING CORPORATION (For list of offices, see page 68)
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Symposium. Entitled “Chemical Engineering in Medicine and Biology,” this symposium was just one of many held both previously and since which demonstrates the chemical engineer’s growing involvement in areas outside the scope of his traditional discipline. Daniel Hershey of the University of Cincinnati, Chairman of the I &EC Division symposium, says in his introduction to the published proceedings of the symposium (Plenum Press, New York, 1967): “Chemical engineers, by virtue of their background, education, and training in non-Newtonian flow, chemistry, chemical reactor kinetics, mass transfer, mathematics, and process dynamics, are well qualified to examine problems in the engineering-life sciences interface.” Despite the undoubted logic of Hershey’s statement, there may be danger in this venture into bioengineering (or biomedical engineering, if you prefer). The danger lies in the possible wholesale adoption of this involvement as the main facet of an appeal to high-school students to make their careers in chemical engineering. There are already signs that universities are starting courses involving the design of artificial kidneys and the like, expressly to attract the altruistically inclined student. “Become a chemical engineer,” such appeals seem to say, “and perform a useful service to society.” What worries us here is the underlying assumption that the the engineer is only useful to society when contributing directly to the continuance of human life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The design of an ethylene glycol reactor or of a lubricating oil dewaxing unit is doubtless much less glamorous than providing a hospital patient with a new kidney. But it is considerably more important in furthering the technical and economic progress on which, for better or for worse, the advancement of our society depends. I t also provides, in taxes, the federal funds which support most bioengineering research. Perhaps the feeling that such industrial jobs are mundane or even superfluous is related to the belief, surprisingly widespread among young idealists, that American industry has built u p such momentum that it can run itself without people or effort and still buttress a booming economy. This belief is, of course, erroneous : Withdraw the technical manpower from industry, and the economy would soon grind to a halt. We certainly do not oppose the application of chemical engineering knowledge to the life sciences. To do for medicine and biology what they cannot do as well for themselves is a worthwhile contribution for chemical engineering to make, both to those sciences and to society a t large. Chemical engineers are indeed well qualified to tackle problems outside the industrial field. But the implication, however tentative, that all chemical engineers should do so is quite unrealistic and should not be encouraged by educators or by anyone else, even if it does seem to be an expedient response to a real current shortage of entering students.
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