NEWS OF THE WEEK
SCIENCE AGENCY DIRECTORS: Moves tofilltop NSF, NIH slots The Bush Administration has taken steps to fill two major directorships in federal research agencies. Physicist Walter E. Massey, 52, of the University of Chicago has been nominated to head the National Science Foundation, and cardiologist Bernadine Healy, 46, of the Cleveland Clinic appears to be the nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health. Only Massey's selection is official, however, though Health & Human Services Department sources confirm Healy's selection. Both will require Senate confirmation. Massey, who is vice president for research at the University of Chicago, has big shoes to fill at NSF, succeeding Erich Bloch who retired at the end of August. Massey is not expected to take over until year's end because Congress will not be moving to confirm his appointment until after the elections. He currently is in Paris on an NSF grant to study the impact of Europe's 1992 economic unification on European, universities. Healy is currently at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio but had considerable Washington policy experience during the Reagan Administration, w h e n she was associate director for biomedical sciences at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Since then, she has served on various biomedical and academic research panels and is currently, with Massey, a member of the prestigious President's Council of Advisers for Science & Technology. Chairman of that body is President Bush's Science Adviser, D. Allan Bromley, who has worked with them both for several years. Getting two members of PCAST picked for such key jobs is seen as deft maneuvering by Bromley. The jobs of Massey and Healy are of a different sort but both face one large issue in common: the crisis in 4
September 24, 1990 C&EN
NIH leading candidate Healy (left), and NSF nominee Massey funding for academic researchers. Additionally, Healy will have to face g r o w i n g demoralization at NIH, suffering under a hemorrhaging of mature research talent: Experienced researchers are taking much higher paying jobs in industry and academia. Coincidentally, Massey is a member of an Institute of Medicine committee looking into the problem. Massey, formerly a member of the National Science Board (NSF's board of directors) would be the second black person to head NSF. John B. Slaughter was director from 1980 to 1982. In common with Slaughter, he has championed national efforts to attract more minorities into science and inherits a considerably revitalized education and human resources program at NSF. Those contacted by C&EN hailed Massey's selection. "No one's ever said a bad word about him," says Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences. Press adds that Massey has experience in just the kinds of places that would qualify him for the NSF directorship: tenure in physics at Brown
University, director of a federal laboratory (Argonne), university research administration (Chicago), and policy panels of various stripes in Washington. He also was the 1988 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most see Massey's major challenge as being whether to moderate Bloch's controversial drive toward making NSF more relevant to the U.S.'s industrial needs. "Walter's going to have to decide whether these are the kinds of priorities he wants to continue to implement," says Press. "Peer review, the funding stress in the community, big science versus small science, support for new facilities—Massey will have to address those issues." A source on Capitol Hill says, "The big question Massey will have to face as we see it is whether the public is getting enough out of its investment in research. He'll be facing the challenges all the other agencies are facing." In contrast to the fast action at NSF, the top post at NIH has been vacant since July 1989, when former director James B. Wyngaarden re-
signed at the request of the Bush Administration. The search for a new NIH head has been slowed both by politics and the inherent limitations of the job itself. Although NIH's budget of about $8 billion a year is four times NSF's $2 billion budget, the director wields much less direct power. At least one top early candidate for the NIH directorship reportedly rejected the post after being quizzed on his views on abortion. To calm the ensuing controversy, HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan announced in October 1989 that politics would no longer be a consideration in choosing the NIH director—rather, scientific and leadership credentials would be paramount. Sullivan also convened a blue-ribbon advisory panel to look at ways to enhance the appeal of the NIH directorship. Currently, many of the NIH director's decisions are subject to second guessing by higher-ups at HHS. Even within NIH, the director has little direct authority and must lead by persuasion, according to NIH sources. The panel recommended raising the NIH director's salary and beefing up power over issues like staff recruitment and advisory committee a p p o i n t m e n t s — steps that would make the NIH top job more like NSF's. Both Healy's science and policy qualifications appear impeccable. Ironically, however, she is on record with a position directly opposed to Sullivan's on the volatile issue of fetal tissue research. Healy served on the NIH advisory panel that recommended in 1988 that Sullivan lift a ban on federal funding of research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses. Sullivan overruled the group's recommendation and extended the ban indefinitely. NIH has been functioning reasonably smoothly under acting director William Raub. But an acting director doesn't carry the clout of a political appointee, especially with Congress. The House Committee on Appropriations, for example, has specifically asked in its report accompanying NIH's 1991 appropriations bill that the new NIH director prepare a four-year management plan aimed at cutting costs. Wil Lepkozvski and Pamela Zurer
U.S. capital outlay to fall short in 1990 Perhaps at the beginning of a year, companies are more optimistic about what they are going to build. Or perhaps it's just the effect of the current economic situation on the t h i n k i n g of corporate planners. Whatever the reason, the Commerce Department's latest survey of U.S. capital spending shows a large revision downward for the chemical industry from the forecast at the end of last year. Spending on new chemical plants and equipment in 1990 now is projected to total $19 billion, a 3% increase over 1989. At the end of last year, the department projected an increase of almost 7%. Chemical spending for 1990 is well below the 5% increase forecast for all manufacturing. C&EN's own survey of 1990 capital spending plans for major chemical firms, taken at the end of last year, forecast a rise of 12% worldwide, with only 5% growth in the U.S. (C&EN, Dec. 18, 1989, page 9). The 3% rise forecast for 1990 is the industry's lowest growth in spending since the mid-1980s. Commerce's data show chemical capital spending up 19% in 1988 and 11% in 1989, for instance. Unlike last year, w h e n capital spending by chemical producers increased in the second half, the industry is putting on the brakes in
Capital spending growth slows for chemicals $ Billions
1987
88
89
a Planned. Source: Department of Commerce
90 a
this year's second half. In 1989, the industry spent at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of $18.2 billion in the third quarter and $20.3 billion in the fourth quarter. This year, the industry will spend at an annual rate of just $17.9 billion in the third quarter and $18.5 billion in the fourth. However, even the lower Commerce Department forecast may be overly sanguine. The survey was conducted before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The resulting squeeze on chemical profitability may well make corporate planners rethink their capital spending schemes for the remainder of this year and next. William Storck
Added gene corrects cysticfibrosiscells Two separate teams of scientists, working with culture media, have corrected cystic fibrosis cells— which bear a defective gene—by adding the normal gene to the cells. This development opens the way to the possibility of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis patients. "This research is a milestone in the drive to cure CF," says Robert K. Dresing, president and chief executive officer of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which provided partial support for the studies. Both teams find that insertion of the normal gene corrects the defect in the diseased cells, whereas addition of a defective gene does not. One of the teams—led by James Wilson and Francis Collins of the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, and Raymond Frizzell of the University of Alabama, Birmingham—used a retrovirus to introduce the normal cystic fibrosis gene into human cystic fibrosis cells in vitro [Cell, 82, 1227 (1990)]. The other group—headed by Alan Smith of Genzyme Corp., Framingham, Mass.; Douglas Jefferson of Tufts University School of Medicine; and Michael Welsh of the University of Iowa College of Medicine—used a different virus to insert the gene into the cells [Nature, 347, 358 and 382 (1990)]. September 24, 1990 C&EN 5
