News of the Week
TOP CHEMICAL ADVISER BACKS TRADE PACT As Congress nears a likely heated debate on enabling legislation for the elaborate foreign trade agreements initialed by most industrialized countries in Geneva in mid-April, the U.S. chemical industry's top representative in the Geneva negotiations has thrown his support to the new pact. However, this support for the multilateral trade agreements is in sober tones, adding some caveats. Trade representative William S. Sneath, also chairman of Union Carbide, seems to be saying give it a chance; it's better than risking more protectionism around the world. "If the tariff-cutting package described to us over the past several months remains substantially intact, we think it will be an acceptable one—as will the total package—and deserving of industry support," Sneath told the California Chemical Industry Council in San Francisco last week. It was Sneath's first public comment on the trade agreements. Sneath and many other chemical industry people were deeply involved in the exhausting, sometimes fragile negotiations, of the so-called Tokyo round trade talks that began more than five years ago. Sizing up the results after all this time, Sneath says, "We won some concessions and we made some. The result is that we have what is commonly referred to as a mixed bag."
Sneath: deserves industry support 6
C&EN May 14, 1979
On the tariffs side of the trade pact, Sneath says, "We were able to pare them down considerably from the cuts that were tabled a few years ago. The average reduction of 35% is an improvement over the 50% cut we experienced under the Kennedy round in the late 1960's. And on a percentage basis, it's comparable to those offered by our major trading partners." Sneath notes that the hotly contested American Selling Price method of valuing benzenoid imports to the U.S. finally has been done away with. But he adds that the U.S. government has provided special treatment in tariff-cutting formulas in a number of areas. "We also obtained conversion of fixed-cent-per-lb tariffs to straight percentage rates to cope with the eroding effect of price inflation." In the nontariff area, Sneath says that codes of conduct in the trade agreements "take some strides toward addressing some of the difficult and contentious issues affecting trade. Only time will tell whether it's a case of one step forward and two steps
back." For example, those codes attempt to eliminate export subsidies, open up bidding on government contracts, set rules for standards and specifications for products, and standardize customs valuations. Sneath says the chemicals and plastics industry advisory committees to the trade negotiations have accepted the agreements. Industry groups now are working with Congress on implementing legislation. Sneath recognizes the cynical view held by some on the trade pact but rejects it. "Of course, some will argue that there are too many loopholes in the agreement, that nothing will change. And that the U.S. will once again emerge as the 'patsy,' naively willing to make concessions for the promise of liberalized trade that may never materialize. "They may be right, but I think another sentiment may be more appropriate. It's been said that there comes a season when hope and trust claim a share with prudence in the guidance of human affairs. I think this may be such a season." •
Key point in tumor forme ion identified A specific biochemical change has been identified as a "key point" in tumor formation by Raymond L. Erikson and his colleagues of the University of Colorado's medical school in Denver. That key point centers on a gene product—an enzyme—made both by normal cells and by tumor-inducing viruses that infect them, Erikson told the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, held in Los Angeles. During the past several years, several research groups have been closing in on the particular gene in several viruses (including the avian sarcoma virus studied by Erikson) that's responsible for causing tumors. Genetic experiments have proved that such viruses need that gene, called sre, if they are to induce tumors in animals or to cause transformation (a shift to uncontrolled growth and other irregularities) of cells cultured in vitro. Normal cells carry a gene (and also make a protein specified by that gene) that closely resembles the viral sre
gene, according to Erikson. "Both the cellular and viral gene products appear to be protein kinases," he says. Kinases are enzymes that move phosphate groups from one class of molecules to another in cells. Such changes often figure importantly in controlling vital cellular reactions, particularly by phosphorylating other enzymes. Erikson speculates that the sre gene adds extra amounts of kinase enzymes to cells, thereby disrupting their normal balance of kinase activity and, more important, control. Looking at the question a bit differently, the extra sre genes from the intrusive virus might be throwing off a cell's controls by making excess kinases and thereby flooding it with many more phosphorylated enzymes than it can handle. Erikson's group also finds that the kinases from the virus, from mammalian cells, and also from avian cells are very similar, indicating that their common structure has been conserved during evolution, suggesting that these enzymes play "an essential and basic function" in cell growth. •
