The Chemical World This Week
MARCH
13,
1961
WASHK . GTON C O N C E N T R A T E S • Charges that scientists do not have access to top military men who plan the nation's defense will be investigated immediately by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Ten to 15 years might be saved in the planning of weapons systems if top military brass could have better and closer communications with their scientific equivalents, Dr. Richard J. Russell of Louisiana State University told the committee last week. Dr. Russell, member of the House Committee's Science and Technology Panel and the Department of Defense's Panel on General Sciences, told C&EN that "On one side we have the 'two- and three-star' scientists, and far removed on the other, we have the 'two- and threestar' military." Scientific ideas must filter down, sometimes to the GS-10 level, before starting up the military side. These military subordinates often are incapable of transmitting the ideas to the systems planners of D O D , he says. Dr. Russell offers a partial solution: Give top military brass their own scientific advisers. • The end is in sight for the Advisory Panel on General Sciences of the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. It is likely to bow out as an entity this year, and Rep. Overton Brooks (D.-La.), chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, is concerned about it. The committee "will want to know what steps are being taken by the Defense Department, now that the panel is being disbanded, to make certain that the men upon whose planning the nation's security depends can be reached by the scientists, without whose ideas there can be very little effective planning." But Pentagon sources say that, although in all likelihood the six-year-old advisory panel will be dissolved, its individual members will be retained as consultants to ODDR&E to be used in smaller groups on an ad hoc basis. • Better coordination of government science activities is the goal of two bills Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D.-Minn.) plans to introduce. One bill would reorganize the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and change its name to the Department of Health, Education, and Technology. Science activities of other agencies, such as the National Bureau of Standards, Office of Technical Services, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Science and Technology Division of the Library of Congress, would be transferred to HET. Present welfare responsibilities of H E W
would go to the Labor Department, which would be rechristened the Department of Labor and Welfare. The other bill would create a Commission on Science and Technology to recommend ways to improve coordination of government science programs, including the possibility of creating a federal science department. • The Senate Education Subcommittee is preparing for a "historic debate" on federal aid to education in the Senate. To be resolved when the general school bill reaches the floor are basic questions on the constitutionality of any form of federal aid to education, of aid to private and parochial schools, and of aid to states that are defying desegregation laws. Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff told the subcommittee, as it opened hearings last week, that the Administration wants a cleancut vote on education. He says he hopes neither the Senate nor House will add desegregation or private school amendments that will jeopardize passage of the President's program (C&EN, Feb. 27, page 40). • An investigation of drug counterfeiting will kick off Kefauver committee activities in this Congress. At hearings slated to open next week, Food and Drug Administration officials are expected to be the principal witnesses. According to Sen. Estes Kefauver (D.-Tenn.), the committee wants to find out how big a problem drug counterfeiting is, who is doing it, and what can be done to stop it. Says Sen. Kefauver, "The pirating of trademarks by irresponsible individuals is a vicious practice, whether the counterfeit is efficacious or worthless." • Senate approval of U.S. membership in OECD is likely after the Foreign Relations Committee last week almost unanimously approved the treaty setting it up. A committee amendment, aimed at reassuring Senators who feared that O E C D (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) might usurp some of Congress's power to set tariffs, provides that the treaty will not affect any present powers of Congress or the Executive Branch. OECD, designed to replace the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, would link the U.S., Canada, and the 18 O E E C nations in a mutual agreement to work out problems of trade and economic growth. MARCH
13, 1 9 6 1
C&EN
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