House kills organic chemicals report The International Trade Commission (ITC) says it will stop publishing its Synthetic Organic Chemicals (SOC) re port, a major quarterly and annual ref erence that lists U.S. producers, output, and sales for more than 5,000 organic chemicals. The House Ways & Means Commit tee has told ITC to terminate SOC by Oct. 1, 1996, as part of the GOPcontrolled Congress' efforts to cut fed eral outlays. The committee says the re port "is neither cost-effective nor essen tial to ensuring the competitiveness of U.S. industry/' Report compilation costs $300,000 to $400,000 annually and requires seven full-time personnel, says an ITC spokesman. Chemical industry observers are "shocked" by the action. Industry con sultant Fred Peterson, an economist at Millwood, N.Y.-based Probe Economics, calls SOC "a major asset" for research on U.S. chemical markets. "I think a lot of us will be up in arms," he says. Adds Houston-based petrochemical consultant Hugh Pylant of Pace Consult ing: 'That's the only source of produc tion data available for some of those products. The National Petroleum Refin ers Association is the only alternative, and they don't report nearly the number [of chemicals] that ITC does." NPRA publishes quarterly data on 10 major petrochemicals, but production and sales data on many downstream petro chemicals and intermediates would be lost with the discontinuance of SOC. Peterson also objects to the way the House committee and ITC acted—with out seeking any input from industry. "There's some question about whether due process has been done," he stresses. "In the past, they've always run [pos sible elimination of SOC] by groups like the Chemical Management & Re sources Association and asked for their comments." SOC has been published annually— except for 1931—since 1917. In the mid1970s, ITC decided to terminate the r e port, but Congress ordered its continua tion through 1980. From 1981 to 1988, ITC published SOC on its own initiative. In 1987, ITC again pondered SOC's continuation, after a General Accounting Office study questioned the need for this
and several other ITC reports. At Senate subcommittee hearings that year, thenITC Chairwoman Susan W. Liebeler supported eliminating certain ITC re ports or charging user fees for them. The agency could then use willingness to pay fees to determine the demand for a report and consider discontinuing re ports drawing little demand. But in April 1988, after SOC backers protested, the House Ways & Means Committee reauthorized the production of SOC. However, the committee did not in corporate "a sunset date" in its request, and it asked ITC to continue to investi-
gate SOC's usefulness. Now, the com mittee has set a sunset date of Oct. 1. The last quarterly report will cover the sec ond quarter of 1996, through June, and the final annual report will cover 1995. It remains to be seen if a nongovern mental group will pick up SOC compila tion. T. Kevin Smith, senior economist at the Chemical Manufacturers Associa tion, says CMA has no intention of do ing so at this time. Beyond the cost and personnel, a private organization would face skepticism from industry about data credibility and confidentiality. George Peaff
embly complex found Structure of protein-assembly because of the biological importance of protein synthesis and because of the long scientific history of this complex," says Peter B. Moore, a professor in the departments of chemistry and of mo lecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, in a commentary in the same issue of Science. In protein synthesis, each type of amino acid is coupled to a transfer RNA (tRNA) that contains the threenucleotide "anticodon" specific for that amino acid. The anticodon on the aminoacylated tRNA then binds to a corre sponding codon on messenger RNA (mRNA), the RNA transcript of a gene. The overall protein-making process oc curs on large protein-RNA complexes called ribosomes.
