Friday, 4 July 97 Washington, DC

1. EMF: THEY SAY IT'S NOT OVER TILL IT'S OVER -- WELL, IT'S OVER.
A long-awaited National Cancer Institute epidemiological study of residential exposure to magnetic fields and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children (WN 8 June 90) was published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine. It was a reported link between EMF and ALL that started the trouble 18 years ago. A NRC report in October (WN 1 Nov 96) left the door open just a crack-- the NCI study slams it shut. The exhaustive, seven-year study concludes that if there is any link at all, it's far too weak to be concerned about. The APS completed its own review two years ago, concluding that "the diversion of resources to eliminate an unsubstantiated threat" is "incommensurate with the risks, if any" (WN 5 May 95). The controversy, which began with a sloppy epidemiological study in Denver in 1979, turned into full-scale public paranoia after professional fear-monger Paul Brodeur wrote a series of New Yorker articles (WN 25 Aug 89). A New England Journal of Medicine editorial sums it up:"...hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into studies that never had much promise of finding a way to prevent the tragedy of cancer in children. ... It is time to stop wasting our research resources." Past time.

2. ARCHER TAX BILL: HOW TO MOVE MONEY FROM RESEARCH TO THE IRS.
WN has pointed out that the House tax bill eliminates tuition tax wavers (WN 13 Jun 97), creating a substantial new tax burden on graduate assistants. At private institutions with relatively high tuition, the increase could well be prohibitive. The likely response of principal investigators would be to increase the subsistence stipends for assistants to cover the added tax, in which case, the net effect would be to transfer federal funds from research to the IRS. Given the strong bipartisan emphasis on increasing the federal investment in research this year, it's hard to imagine that this is what Congress had in mind.

3. SPACE SCIENCE: COLUMBIA ASTRONAUTS ARE BACK TO SETTING FIRES.
Back in April, they only got to set 14 before the mission was aborted, so they are back up there setting more. NASA scientists explained that the research will reduce air pollution on Earth. Well, at least it won't add to it. Columbia is not the first to study fire in microgravity: In February, the Mir crew witnessed the uncontrolled combustion of a backup oxygen generator; flames shot out two feet, spewing bits of molten metal, for 14 min. Mir is again forced to use the backup oxygen generators. Meanwhile, NASA's microgravity cheerleader, Larry DeLucas of the University of Alabama, gushed in a Senate hearing that "in a year on the International Space Station, the science done will exceed that done on the shuttle, Skylab and in the whole history of NASA."

4. MARS: PATHFINDER WILL ARRIVE AT THE RED PLANET TOMORROW,
with the robot Sojourner. There are no plans to start any fires.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.