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Theodore L. Brown (Chair); ACS Board of Directors Chair: Nina I. McClelland; ACS President: Elsa Reichmanis; Charles P. Casey. Peter C. Jurs. William W. Leong. Peter J. Stang Copyright 2003. American Chemical Society Canadian GST Reg. No. R127571347
Sleep, Security, And Science
S
ENIOR EDITOR ELIZABETH WILSON S
story on very recent research to understand the brain chemistry of sleep (see page 51) will come as welcome news to millions of people who have sleep-related disorders. This includes the relatively small number of people—125,000 in the U.S. — who have narcolepsy (the inability to stay awake), the larger group ofpeople who need to stay awake and alert for work-related reasons or to finish reading an issue of C&EN, and the even larger number of people who suffer from occasional insomnia. To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question the brain apparently is grappling with all the time. Research first reported in 1998, according to Wilson, resulted in the discovery of two previously unknown neurotransmitters that play important roles in sleep regulation. Building on this discovery, scientists have a new strategy for developing more effective treatments for narcolepsy Researchers have also found more effective treatments for the opposite of narcolepsy— sleeplessness, a disorder that afflicts more than half the U.S. population at some time or another. I'm quite sure this statistic is true, by the way based on a totally unscientific sample of letters to the editor that arrive in my e-mail box at 3 A M from U.S. readers. Up until quite recently, I was a person who fell asleep just minutes after my head hit the pillow I slept soundly and needed very little sleep—perhaps five hours maximum—to function well. Those days are gone, so I'm going to be following the research described by Wilson very carefully Lately, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I worry a lot about the kinds of issues Senior Editor William Schulz writes about in his story on balancing needs for national security against the need for openness in reporting the results of scientific research (see page 46). Nearly a year ago, I raised these issues in an Editor's Page titled "What Price Security?" (Feb. 25, 2002, page 3). I was concerned about discussions that were being held on whether certain types of unclassified research should be restricted from being published. I posed the questions, "What price are we willing to pay for our security? How much of our freedom to publish and to have free access to information are we willing to yield?" These questions have taken on increasing urgency in the past year, as
the government has formed the Department of Homeland Security and begun implementing a number of regulations aimed at tracking foreign students studying in the US; some regulations have already resulted in delays in processing visas of some foreign chemistry graduate students. These are also the same kinds of questions that were explored earlier this month at a workshop convened by the National Academies. Last year in my Editor's Page,
I urged scientists to get involved in decisions that maybe made on restricting publication of scientific literature. I believe even more strongly today that members of the chemical community should be riiinking broadly and deeply about these issues. They should be weighing in with the President's science adviser, John H. Marburger III; National Academy of Sciences President Bruce Alberts; and their scientific societies, including the American Chemical Society They should not wait. If members of the chemical community need motivation to take action, they should pay close attention to the words of Office of Science &Technology Policy staffer Penrose C. (Parney) Albright, who is also a staff member of the White House Office of Homeland Security Albright spoke at the academies workshop, and, according to Schulz, he said: "The scientific community needs to develop and vet criteria for what is 'good' research and what is 'bad' research. We need processes for assessing bad cases and unexpected research results. This issue will not go away Action is needed quickly The scientific community has to get its act together. Ifit doesn't, someone will do it for them" (C&EN, Jan. 20, page 8). Albright's warning is a chilling one. It's enough to keep anyone awake at night.
7W^£> Editor-in-chief
Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS. HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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/ JANUARY
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