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Cheer up, things could be worse
0160-791X/89$3.00+ .OO Copyright0 1989 Pergamon Press pk
Tdmdogy in So&y. Vol. 11, pp. 297-305(1989) Printed in the USA. All tights resetvcd.
Cheer Up, Things Could Be Worse Problems and Opportunities for the Decades Ahead W.&am T. GoZden
This essay ir a modified version of the first William D. Carey Lecture, delivered by Wikam T Go/den at the annua/ meeting of the Amerkan Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, Califoornia,onjanuary I>, 1989. Mr. Carey was Executive Officer of the Amenkan Association for the Advancement of Science from 197s to 1987. Mr. Golden has been its Treasurer and member of its Board of Directors since 1969. He is Chainnan of the New York Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the Ametican Museum of Natural History.
First, I will explain the title of this essay: Bleak in November, many years ago, while camping in the arid Navajo Reservation of northern Arizona, I was huddled at my skimpy campfire, morose and sulky after a day of fruitless foraging for fossils. Since dawn, the skies had been overcast; the night was moonless: no stars to inspire the soul or to enchant the imagination. At eventide, I had been soaked by a sudden, rare shower. Soon I shivered, as the dry night air chilled rapidly, as is its wont in the desert. Coyotes ululated in the distance; owls hooted; bats swooped hungrily from a nearby cave, sallying forth for their nocturnal insect hunt. Those of you who know Goya’s engraving, El suet?0 de la razon produce monstmos (the dream of reason evokes monsters), can picture the scene. Then, of a sudden, I heard a voice-faintly. Did I? Yes. I was alone, but a disembodied voice whispered softly in my ear, “Cheer up, things could be worse. ” So I cheered up; and, sure enough, things got worse. But the good news is we’re all still here. We live in a world of infinite variety and boundless potential. Several million species of insects share the world with us (or perhaps I should say we share the world with them); and every species has found a biological niche in which to earn its living, to be fruitful, and to multiply. And to feed the bats. And to feed on other species of insects. And, some of them, as pollinating symbiotes, to help feed us: “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples.” And, fizza&, others of them, some day, will feed on us. There’s ample opportunity for things to get better as well as worse. And, as history shows, they do. Both. Much remains to be seen in our expanding, or oscillating, universe-and trying to peer over the horizon is what motivates all of us at this annual meeting. Now, according to Ecclesiastes, 297
W. T. Golden
298
In much Wisdom
is much Grief; And he that increaseth Knowledge
Of course, I’m at odds with Scripture lines:
increaseth
Sorrow
on that, preferring
James Elroy Flecker’s
For lust of knowing what should not be known, We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
I know better than to try to lead you along any road, Golden or muddy-or both. Instead, I will fungo up some questions that we and our children cannot avoid, with the purpose of fomenting discussion. Even my questions will not be novel to you, and if they serve only to elicit more interesting questions, that, too, will be gratifying. All these topics are concerned with the future, with neoplastic issues of the future. Surely, in this journal it will be deemed wholesome to quote Socrates. So, to enrich the treasure-house of his intellectual legacy, I reveal, apocryphally, his lament as he took to drink: “Everything is changing, and even the future isn’t what it used to be.” As then, so now-and that keeps life interesting. I will enumerate a selection of major issues and then comment briefly on a few of them. My objective will not be to contribute revelations- which I cannot do- but to serve as a constructive irritant, a Disturber of Complacency, and thus to stimulate thought and discussion. I hope to leave you uneasier, enriched in the intellectual radioisotope of anti-complacency and excited to a higher state of resourcefulness in combatting unwholesome ingredients in the substrate of our society. Here, then, briefly stated, is a generous score of topics-of problems, and therefore of opportunities. A kind of Table of Contents: a laundry list of sorts, since these matters need cleaning up: 1. First: The arms race and the ever-present hazard of a nuclear holocaust. 2. Popdation growth, especially but not exclusively in the developing countries. 3. Deficiency of literacy and nzcmeracy , including ethnic issues and the plight of the underprivileged. 4. The state of science education, including the public’s understanding of science and technology and its attitudes toward them. 5. Women. History may well record the rise of womanhood as the greatest development of “mankind” (Homo sapiens, that is) in the 2&h-2lst centuries: the conversion of a long latent resource competition. 6. The malnutrition of the humanities
to a dynamic
one,
with the added
spur of
and the socialsciences: may the Lord bless and nourish them through the prevailing lean years of budgetary constraints and reluctance to raise taxes. 7. Medical and biological advances and the problems and penalties associated with the benefits of progress. 8. Health care, involving issues of technology and allocation of limited resources. Triage. 9. The burgeoning drmg problem with its many ramifications.
Cheer
up, Things CouldBe
299
Worse
10. Sing/e-parent holcseholdk and the changing family structure: policy implications in education, health, community and support services, and employment, for example. 11. Energy: wastage, shortage of substitute sources, and conservation; nuclear energy, solar energy, superconductivity; the growing demands of developing countries. 12. China ariring. Questions of the stability of the present government, and of the revolution and evolution underlying its policies. The trend toward capitalism. One fifth of the world’s population. 13. The Soviet Union in J&X, influenced in part by the developments in China. Gorbachev, gl’asnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). US-Soviet relations. 14. Environmental issues: local, national, and global. Greenhouse effect: is the earth warming up, the climate changing? The ozone and CO* and questions. SOa and acid rain. Chlorofluorocarbons. Radiation, in which we are immersed. Waste disposal: both hazardous waste and just plain bulk. 15. Citizenshz~: pride and responsi&iZty. 16. PoliticaLand economic questions, including financial restraints, inflation and its discouragement of saving, taxation, unemployment, shorter work weeks and reduced productivity. 17. The Eiectronic Reuohtion and the Computer Age -which some believe will be as comprehensive in their effect on society as were the Agricultural and the Industrial Revolutions. 18. Cosmo1og_y and space exploration and exploitation. Horizon unlimited but nearterm prospects murky on financial grounds. Cheerful outlook for Hubble Space Telescope launch, at last, in 1990, but prospective atrophy of US ground-based optical and infrared astronomy because of NSF’s low priority assignment. 19. Neo-hedonism: the pervasive appeal of short-term versus long-term objectives. 20. Fraud in science. 2 1. InternationaL competition. Why has our country been losing ground? 22. International cooperation and joint ventures. For example: with the USA, the Space Telescope Science Institute; without the USA, a $250-million consortium of nine European countries building a giant 16-meter multi-mirror telescope through the European Southern Observatory. Should the USA encourage a multinational approach to the human genome analysis project, and to the Superconducting Super Collider-on intellectual, financial, and fraternal grounds? Encouraging are the increasing number of bilateral science and technology conferences and programs of the USA with the Soviets and with the People’s Republic of China, under the USA auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the New York Academy of Sciences. 23. The federal government’s organization for science and technology and their involvement in major policy determination in the executive branch, and in the functioning of the Congress, the judiciary, and the regulatory agencies. So much for the Table of Contents. dozen of those topics:
Now for extended
comments
on some half-
300
W. T. Golden
The Arms Race Since the days of Cain and Abel, the fabric of world history has been loomed on the warp of peace and the woof of war. Like the Sword of Damocles, since 1945, the risk of a nuclear holocaust has clearly been one of the greatest and most ominous hazards to the survival of mankind; and perhaps the most immediately demanding issue confronting all of us. I will not attempt a discussion of its complexity, including the toll it levies on our standard of living. It grows greater as more elegant devices are contrived to diversify the armamentarium; and as smaller nations acquire such weapons, heretofore monopolized by the big fellows. Yet we have experienced, if not enjoyed, a tense Pax Atomica for over 40 years since Hiroshima. For whatever syndrome of reasons, the current trend of relations with the Soviet Union is encouraging. And prophets of doom should be chastened by the unwarranted pessimism of the great Professor Einstein who, on June 9, 1947, after forecasting, correctly, that “Russia will surely develop an atomic bomb,” assured me that “If an effective world government is not established, an atomic war is a certainty within a few years (say, 2 ro lo), since the premium on the attack has become so great that one side or the other will shoot first, from fear or from nerves if not from policy. This is inevitable,” he said. Population Growth In 1950, the population of the world was about 24 billion. By 1975, it was up more than 60%, to 4 billion. It is now over 5 billion. By the year 2000, as the trend goes, it will exceed 6 billion and by the second decade of the 2000’s, it appears that it will have grown to some 8 billion, more than 50% above the present population and more than triple that of 1950. So, if there is no nuclear holocaust, or Black Plague such as AIDS, to perturb population growth, there may be different kinds of holocausts: starvation, national and international unrest, organizational revolution, major changes in moral attitudes. According to United Nations’ data, some 90% of the world’s population growth occurs in the underdeveloped portions of the globe. In these areas, as the population has grown, the per-capita food production has risen only slightly, a few percentage points on average. But averages can be misleading, as you all know. In China and India, food production has grown substantially, but in other parts of the Third World, it has not increased very much, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, it has actually declined. Where will this lead us? If the population and food balance in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to deteriorate, for example, will we in the United States tax ourselves, and thereby to some extent impoverish ourselves, in order to feed the starving Africans? Or will we stand idly by and watch them starve, thereby debasing ourselves spiritually? Or some compromise: a tithe of austerity and a nod of debasement? In the cities of our own country, there are homeless people and stretch Cadillacs. Ultra violet and infra red. How do we shrink the spectrum between these extremes? How do we encourage a red shift (not in a political sense!) to move the spectrum upward and shrink the poverty end?
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And what will be the consequences of widely varying population growth for the political strtccture of the world, that is, the organization of society? Our own population in the United States will be growing, too, albeit slowly. Will we just add more congressmen, more aldermen, let the cities expand and watch them fuse and overlap, pay more in welfare, support more unemployed, hire more policemen, build more jails? Will it be feasible just to add more cubicles to the present governmental structure? Or will major changes evolve to deal with a different order of magnitude of population size? I wonder not only about our own country but about the rest of the world as well; and about the hazard of violence and war as relievers of population pressures. Literacy and Numeracy Now let’s turn to the closely related problems of literacy and numeracy, and in particular the downward spiral of the underclass in our country. Scientists and science should be concerned with alleviating the plight of the underprivileged, for reasons not only of compassion but also of self-interest. I am thinking especially of minority groups whose education is inadequate, whose unemployment is high. It is self-evident that a child who does not learn, in the first few years of school, to read and write adequately and to do simple arithmetic is doomed to a life of inferior status and chronic unhappiness. In some instances, this will lead to crime. Inevitably, it leads to unemployment, decreased productivity, and in declining ability of our country to compete in world markets. It is clear that the problem of literacy is a fundamental and complex one and that motivation is important. P&&c Understanding of Science and Technology Let’s consider thepu&lic understanding of science and technology, and the public’s ambivalence toward them. The conflicting phenomena of anti-science and anti-technology attitudes on the one hand along with growing popular interest, respect, and desire for the benefits of science and technology on the other, are striking. Contrast the growing appeal of fundamentalism-creationism versus Darwinism and evolution on the one hand with the growth of science sections in newspapers and magazines (e.g., The New YOY&Times) and the public subscriptions to popularized science journals. Whether the growing readership of science fiction should be scored for science, or for anti-science or for paratheology, I leave to you as an intriguing puzzle. Health Care If you’re still feeling well, I’ll turn to health care: certain ethical, political, and fmancial aspects. We hear a great deal about the rising cost of health care. As costs escalate with new opportunities for survival and betterment of life through scientific and technological progress, how will selection be made of the beneficiaries? To take well-known examples, development of successful kidney hemodialysis and organ transplants are triumphs of technology based on science. But will society
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choose to pay the cost? That is, will the working public and other taxpayers rebel against providing such services to all who need them? Rationing? Who will be the recipients of heart transplants at a cost, for hospitalization alone, of approximately $150,000 each? Who will be the recipients of kidney transplants at a cost, for hospitalization alone, of approximately $70,000 each, plus a lifetime supply of cyclosporine. Who will receive kidney dialysis at an annul/ cost of $25,000 per person. If a first transplant fails, who will receive a second? Approximately 90,000 people in the US today require kidney dialysis or transplant. This number will increase as the population ages and grows and as technology improves, allowing patients to live longer lives with the aid of dialysis. Total national expenditures for health care rose to an all-time high of 11.1% of GNP in 1987, up from 10.7 % in 1986. Over 500 billion dollars were expended on health care in 1987, approximately $2,000 per man, woman, or child. Of the total national health care bill, the major payors were the government at 41% , private insurers at 32 % , and private individuals at 25 % . In 1989, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has already asked for a $5-billion reduction in Medicare expenditures and a $l-billion reduction in Medicaid expenditures. Where these dollars will be “found” has yet to be determined. Reflection suggests a potential conflict between democracy and technological progress in some costly areas, such as the biomedical. Who shall decide who shall survive? Who will be the caretaker? And who’ll take care of the caretaker’s daughter? Will compassion for the handicapped handicap the compassionate? One of the great achievements of the human intellect, nourished by federal financing and catalyzed by the co-enzyme of private funding, has been the progress in recent decades in knowledge of basic biology and in medical applications. Human suffering is being alleviated in degree, though, some argue, sometimes extended in duration. In developing countries, infant mortality is being reduced. Lives are being extended. The quality of life, at least for some, is being improved. But what are some of the complex and less obvious consequences of this progress? As men and women get older, their efficiency and productivity diminish. Their aches and pains increase; they break easier, heal slower. They need more medical services, more pills and potions, and more hospital days. They need virtually as much housing, and they need more help to keep the household going. They cost more and earn less. Earning less, they pay fewer taxes. They drain payments from Social Security without making payments into it. So the growing aged population will become an increasing burden to the younger, working class, the taxpaying part of the population. Will the young taxpayers accept uncomplainingly this increased burden? Or will they revolt? How, politically, will disgruntlement be expressed? How, politically, will it be accommodated? Citizenship:
Pride and ResponsibiZty
Surely it is troubling that so few Americans vote. Out of some 250 million Americans, 182,628,OOO were of voting age in November 1988. Of these, only 91,584,320 actually voted. The trend is even more cause for concern. The percentage who voted declined
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Up, Things
Could Be Worse
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from 62.8 in 1960 to 60.9 in 1968, 55.2 in 1972, 52.6 in 1980, and 50.1 last fall. Another disturbing fact is that young people vote much less frequently than do their seniors. Of those between 18 and 20 years of age, only 36.7 % voted in 1984, compared with 67.7 % for those over 65. And in the 1986 congressional elections, only 18.6% of the young voted versus 60.9% of the elderly. Why is this? Questioning and diagnosis might lead to palliation. Will failure to exercise the right (and responsibility) to vote lead to its atrophy? Short- Term Versus Long- Term Objectives Now to a more subtle issue: the insidious appeal of short-term versus long-temn objectives. This should be a matter of special concern not only to scientists and engineers but to all of us, for it undermines our country’s long-term economic competitiveness. Hedonism and the carpe diem attitudes seem to be growing, not only in our country but throughout the world. The attractiveness of the present over the uncertainties of the future. Today is here all right, but will tomorrow come? Get-rich-quick opportunities-or the quest for them - may adversely affect our biological and biomedical research laboratories. They have attracted a minor goldrush of Pied Pipers and snake oil salesmen- not only on Wall Street. During the past decade in boom and collapse cycles, they have helped redistribute the wealth of some gullible and avaricious speculators, even as the ferment of ideas and finance have produced a few fabulous millionaires, some of them deserving. In many laboratories, “Whirl has been king, having displaced Zeus.” But my guess is that in the long run, the traditional pecking order of the gods in the cathedrals and gaming houses of academia will largely be re-established; with mammon added to the hierarchy, but with science and Nobel again ascendant. Doubtless the desire for immediate reward, the quest for prompt gratification, the hope of guessing the lucky number, are inherent in mankind. But there is also an instinct for long-term investment, else parents would not make sacrifices for their children and grandchildren. Also, after World War II, much emphasis was placed on rebuilding, on long-term betterment. The Marshall Plan was one manifestation. The establishment of the National Science Foundation, late in 1950, with its original focus on long-term, basic science, was another. The malignant effect of the current hedonistic trend is evident. It carries through to academic laboratories. It activates the latent genes of dishonesty and fraud. And it infects the corporate world, where, in the United States, managements may rise or fall on this year’s profits and next year’s promise -and may tremble on this quarter’s dividend versus the previous quarter’s. The Federa! Government Organization for Science and Technology These comments lead me to my final topic: the federalgovernment organization for science and technology : particularly, the presidential science advisory apparatus -and its present status and prospects. There is little disagreement that in the post-World War II era and for the fore-
304
W. T. Go/den
seeable future, issues involving science and technology have increasingly becomeand will continue to be-interwoven in policy making at the federal as well as at local levels. Originally largely of military concern, science and technology issues-as is evident from the foregoing enumeration-are now importantly involved, consciously or unconsciously, in virtually all major policies including economic, cultural, and social areas- both national and international. The question is not whether they are involved but bow advice on these issues is to reach the president, the Congress, the judiciary, and the regulatory agencies, in forms and with credibility suitable for their consideration along with political factors. Those sufficiently interested can read all about this in a book’ of 85 original essays on this subject by outstanding authorities including past presidential science advisers and members of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC)-and by President Ford himself. An important development was the establishment by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the fall of 1988 of the bipartisan Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, with a stellar membership and advisory council of outstandingly well-qualified, public-spirited citizens, experienced in science and engineering and in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government; included are Presidents Ford and Carter. It is amply financed and assured of three to five years of life. Very encouraging good news is President Bush’s reiterated statement that he will appoint a science and technology adviser to the president with the title of assistant to the president, thus re-elevating the office to its pre-Ford, pre-Reagan status. In addition, he has stated that he will re-create a PSAC as the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors and will strengthen the Office of Science and Technology Policy. All this comports well with the recommendations of the Carnegie Commission in its first report. That report should be of extraordinary interest to those concerned. The appointment of the assistant to the president for science and technology, on a level equal to that of the assistant for national security affairs, is eagerly awaited. He or she will have an opportunity for major service to the president and to our country. To con&de: Each of us is a moving part in a moving scene. We are components of a great mobile, on an orbiting planet in an expanding universe. Acceleration is the leitmotif. Change is the only constant. Alertness, creativity, and adaptability are the essentials for survival and for what we may call progress. Scientists, engineers, political scientists, philosophers, and entrepreneurs should be the leaders in this revitalization. Charles Darwin said it all, better and beautifully, some 130 years ago, in the final paragraph of The Origin of the Species; and I indulge myself- and, you may reckon, edify all of us- by excerpting from his words:
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank [of a stream], clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth; and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a maneer, have all been produced by laws acting around us . [involving] a Ratio of Increase
Cheer Up, Things
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305
so high as to iead to a Struggle for L;f , and as a consequence to natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of /ess improvedforms. . . . Thus, from the war of nature, jbm famine anddeath, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fued law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been made, andare being evolved. I end with gratitude
to Charles
Darwin
for those inspiring
insights,
so felicitously
expressed.
Note 1. W.T. Golden, ed., Science and Technology Advice to the President, Congress, andJudiciary Pergamon Press. 1988).
(Elmsford, NY:
Tdmdogy in So&y. Vol. 11, pp. 297-305(1989) Printed in the USA. All tights resetvcd.
Cheer Up, Things Could Be Worse Problems and Opportunities for the Decades Ahead W.&am T. GoZden
This essay ir a modified version of the first William D. Carey Lecture, delivered by Wikam T Go/den at the annua/ meeting of the Amerkan Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, Califoornia,onjanuary I>, 1989. Mr. Carey was Executive Officer of the Amenkan Association for the Advancement of Science from 197s to 1987. Mr. Golden has been its Treasurer and member of its Board of Directors since 1969. He is Chainnan of the New York Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the Ametican Museum of Natural History.
First, I will explain the title of this essay: Bleak in November, many years ago, while camping in the arid Navajo Reservation of northern Arizona, I was huddled at my skimpy campfire, morose and sulky after a day of fruitless foraging for fossils. Since dawn, the skies had been overcast; the night was moonless: no stars to inspire the soul or to enchant the imagination. At eventide, I had been soaked by a sudden, rare shower. Soon I shivered, as the dry night air chilled rapidly, as is its wont in the desert. Coyotes ululated in the distance; owls hooted; bats swooped hungrily from a nearby cave, sallying forth for their nocturnal insect hunt. Those of you who know Goya’s engraving, El suet?0 de la razon produce monstmos (the dream of reason evokes monsters), can picture the scene. Then, of a sudden, I heard a voice-faintly. Did I? Yes. I was alone, but a disembodied voice whispered softly in my ear, “Cheer up, things could be worse. ” So I cheered up; and, sure enough, things got worse. But the good news is we’re all still here. We live in a world of infinite variety and boundless potential. Several million species of insects share the world with us (or perhaps I should say we share the world with them); and every species has found a biological niche in which to earn its living, to be fruitful, and to multiply. And to feed the bats. And to feed on other species of insects. And, some of them, as pollinating symbiotes, to help feed us: “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples.” And, fizza&, others of them, some day, will feed on us. There’s ample opportunity for things to get better as well as worse. And, as history shows, they do. Both. Much remains to be seen in our expanding, or oscillating, universe-and trying to peer over the horizon is what motivates all of us at this annual meeting. Now, according to Ecclesiastes, 297
W. T. Golden
298
In much Wisdom
is much Grief; And he that increaseth Knowledge
Of course, I’m at odds with Scripture lines:
increaseth
Sorrow
on that, preferring
James Elroy Flecker’s
For lust of knowing what should not be known, We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
I know better than to try to lead you along any road, Golden or muddy-or both. Instead, I will fungo up some questions that we and our children cannot avoid, with the purpose of fomenting discussion. Even my questions will not be novel to you, and if they serve only to elicit more interesting questions, that, too, will be gratifying. All these topics are concerned with the future, with neoplastic issues of the future. Surely, in this journal it will be deemed wholesome to quote Socrates. So, to enrich the treasure-house of his intellectual legacy, I reveal, apocryphally, his lament as he took to drink: “Everything is changing, and even the future isn’t what it used to be.” As then, so now-and that keeps life interesting. I will enumerate a selection of major issues and then comment briefly on a few of them. My objective will not be to contribute revelations- which I cannot do- but to serve as a constructive irritant, a Disturber of Complacency, and thus to stimulate thought and discussion. I hope to leave you uneasier, enriched in the intellectual radioisotope of anti-complacency and excited to a higher state of resourcefulness in combatting unwholesome ingredients in the substrate of our society. Here, then, briefly stated, is a generous score of topics-of problems, and therefore of opportunities. A kind of Table of Contents: a laundry list of sorts, since these matters need cleaning up: 1. First: The arms race and the ever-present hazard of a nuclear holocaust. 2. Popdation growth, especially but not exclusively in the developing countries. 3. Deficiency of literacy and nzcmeracy , including ethnic issues and the plight of the underprivileged. 4. The state of science education, including the public’s understanding of science and technology and its attitudes toward them. 5. Women. History may well record the rise of womanhood as the greatest development of “mankind” (Homo sapiens, that is) in the 2&h-2lst centuries: the conversion of a long latent resource competition. 6. The malnutrition of the humanities
to a dynamic
one,
with the added
spur of
and the socialsciences: may the Lord bless and nourish them through the prevailing lean years of budgetary constraints and reluctance to raise taxes. 7. Medical and biological advances and the problems and penalties associated with the benefits of progress. 8. Health care, involving issues of technology and allocation of limited resources. Triage. 9. The burgeoning drmg problem with its many ramifications.
Cheer
up, Things CouldBe
299
Worse
10. Sing/e-parent holcseholdk and the changing family structure: policy implications in education, health, community and support services, and employment, for example. 11. Energy: wastage, shortage of substitute sources, and conservation; nuclear energy, solar energy, superconductivity; the growing demands of developing countries. 12. China ariring. Questions of the stability of the present government, and of the revolution and evolution underlying its policies. The trend toward capitalism. One fifth of the world’s population. 13. The Soviet Union in J&X, influenced in part by the developments in China. Gorbachev, gl’asnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). US-Soviet relations. 14. Environmental issues: local, national, and global. Greenhouse effect: is the earth warming up, the climate changing? The ozone and CO* and questions. SOa and acid rain. Chlorofluorocarbons. Radiation, in which we are immersed. Waste disposal: both hazardous waste and just plain bulk. 15. Citizenshz~: pride and responsi&iZty. 16. PoliticaLand economic questions, including financial restraints, inflation and its discouragement of saving, taxation, unemployment, shorter work weeks and reduced productivity. 17. The Eiectronic Reuohtion and the Computer Age -which some believe will be as comprehensive in their effect on society as were the Agricultural and the Industrial Revolutions. 18. Cosmo1og_y and space exploration and exploitation. Horizon unlimited but nearterm prospects murky on financial grounds. Cheerful outlook for Hubble Space Telescope launch, at last, in 1990, but prospective atrophy of US ground-based optical and infrared astronomy because of NSF’s low priority assignment. 19. Neo-hedonism: the pervasive appeal of short-term versus long-term objectives. 20. Fraud in science. 2 1. InternationaL competition. Why has our country been losing ground? 22. International cooperation and joint ventures. For example: with the USA, the Space Telescope Science Institute; without the USA, a $250-million consortium of nine European countries building a giant 16-meter multi-mirror telescope through the European Southern Observatory. Should the USA encourage a multinational approach to the human genome analysis project, and to the Superconducting Super Collider-on intellectual, financial, and fraternal grounds? Encouraging are the increasing number of bilateral science and technology conferences and programs of the USA with the Soviets and with the People’s Republic of China, under the USA auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the New York Academy of Sciences. 23. The federal government’s organization for science and technology and their involvement in major policy determination in the executive branch, and in the functioning of the Congress, the judiciary, and the regulatory agencies. So much for the Table of Contents. dozen of those topics:
Now for extended
comments
on some half-
300
W. T. Golden
The Arms Race Since the days of Cain and Abel, the fabric of world history has been loomed on the warp of peace and the woof of war. Like the Sword of Damocles, since 1945, the risk of a nuclear holocaust has clearly been one of the greatest and most ominous hazards to the survival of mankind; and perhaps the most immediately demanding issue confronting all of us. I will not attempt a discussion of its complexity, including the toll it levies on our standard of living. It grows greater as more elegant devices are contrived to diversify the armamentarium; and as smaller nations acquire such weapons, heretofore monopolized by the big fellows. Yet we have experienced, if not enjoyed, a tense Pax Atomica for over 40 years since Hiroshima. For whatever syndrome of reasons, the current trend of relations with the Soviet Union is encouraging. And prophets of doom should be chastened by the unwarranted pessimism of the great Professor Einstein who, on June 9, 1947, after forecasting, correctly, that “Russia will surely develop an atomic bomb,” assured me that “If an effective world government is not established, an atomic war is a certainty within a few years (say, 2 ro lo), since the premium on the attack has become so great that one side or the other will shoot first, from fear or from nerves if not from policy. This is inevitable,” he said. Population Growth In 1950, the population of the world was about 24 billion. By 1975, it was up more than 60%, to 4 billion. It is now over 5 billion. By the year 2000, as the trend goes, it will exceed 6 billion and by the second decade of the 2000’s, it appears that it will have grown to some 8 billion, more than 50% above the present population and more than triple that of 1950. So, if there is no nuclear holocaust, or Black Plague such as AIDS, to perturb population growth, there may be different kinds of holocausts: starvation, national and international unrest, organizational revolution, major changes in moral attitudes. According to United Nations’ data, some 90% of the world’s population growth occurs in the underdeveloped portions of the globe. In these areas, as the population has grown, the per-capita food production has risen only slightly, a few percentage points on average. But averages can be misleading, as you all know. In China and India, food production has grown substantially, but in other parts of the Third World, it has not increased very much, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, it has actually declined. Where will this lead us? If the population and food balance in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to deteriorate, for example, will we in the United States tax ourselves, and thereby to some extent impoverish ourselves, in order to feed the starving Africans? Or will we stand idly by and watch them starve, thereby debasing ourselves spiritually? Or some compromise: a tithe of austerity and a nod of debasement? In the cities of our own country, there are homeless people and stretch Cadillacs. Ultra violet and infra red. How do we shrink the spectrum between these extremes? How do we encourage a red shift (not in a political sense!) to move the spectrum upward and shrink the poverty end?
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And what will be the consequences of widely varying population growth for the political strtccture of the world, that is, the organization of society? Our own population in the United States will be growing, too, albeit slowly. Will we just add more congressmen, more aldermen, let the cities expand and watch them fuse and overlap, pay more in welfare, support more unemployed, hire more policemen, build more jails? Will it be feasible just to add more cubicles to the present governmental structure? Or will major changes evolve to deal with a different order of magnitude of population size? I wonder not only about our own country but about the rest of the world as well; and about the hazard of violence and war as relievers of population pressures. Literacy and Numeracy Now let’s turn to the closely related problems of literacy and numeracy, and in particular the downward spiral of the underclass in our country. Scientists and science should be concerned with alleviating the plight of the underprivileged, for reasons not only of compassion but also of self-interest. I am thinking especially of minority groups whose education is inadequate, whose unemployment is high. It is self-evident that a child who does not learn, in the first few years of school, to read and write adequately and to do simple arithmetic is doomed to a life of inferior status and chronic unhappiness. In some instances, this will lead to crime. Inevitably, it leads to unemployment, decreased productivity, and in declining ability of our country to compete in world markets. It is clear that the problem of literacy is a fundamental and complex one and that motivation is important. P&&c Understanding of Science and Technology Let’s consider thepu&lic understanding of science and technology, and the public’s ambivalence toward them. The conflicting phenomena of anti-science and anti-technology attitudes on the one hand along with growing popular interest, respect, and desire for the benefits of science and technology on the other, are striking. Contrast the growing appeal of fundamentalism-creationism versus Darwinism and evolution on the one hand with the growth of science sections in newspapers and magazines (e.g., The New YOY&Times) and the public subscriptions to popularized science journals. Whether the growing readership of science fiction should be scored for science, or for anti-science or for paratheology, I leave to you as an intriguing puzzle. Health Care If you’re still feeling well, I’ll turn to health care: certain ethical, political, and fmancial aspects. We hear a great deal about the rising cost of health care. As costs escalate with new opportunities for survival and betterment of life through scientific and technological progress, how will selection be made of the beneficiaries? To take well-known examples, development of successful kidney hemodialysis and organ transplants are triumphs of technology based on science. But will society
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choose to pay the cost? That is, will the working public and other taxpayers rebel against providing such services to all who need them? Rationing? Who will be the recipients of heart transplants at a cost, for hospitalization alone, of approximately $150,000 each? Who will be the recipients of kidney transplants at a cost, for hospitalization alone, of approximately $70,000 each, plus a lifetime supply of cyclosporine. Who will receive kidney dialysis at an annul/ cost of $25,000 per person. If a first transplant fails, who will receive a second? Approximately 90,000 people in the US today require kidney dialysis or transplant. This number will increase as the population ages and grows and as technology improves, allowing patients to live longer lives with the aid of dialysis. Total national expenditures for health care rose to an all-time high of 11.1% of GNP in 1987, up from 10.7 % in 1986. Over 500 billion dollars were expended on health care in 1987, approximately $2,000 per man, woman, or child. Of the total national health care bill, the major payors were the government at 41% , private insurers at 32 % , and private individuals at 25 % . In 1989, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has already asked for a $5-billion reduction in Medicare expenditures and a $l-billion reduction in Medicaid expenditures. Where these dollars will be “found” has yet to be determined. Reflection suggests a potential conflict between democracy and technological progress in some costly areas, such as the biomedical. Who shall decide who shall survive? Who will be the caretaker? And who’ll take care of the caretaker’s daughter? Will compassion for the handicapped handicap the compassionate? One of the great achievements of the human intellect, nourished by federal financing and catalyzed by the co-enzyme of private funding, has been the progress in recent decades in knowledge of basic biology and in medical applications. Human suffering is being alleviated in degree, though, some argue, sometimes extended in duration. In developing countries, infant mortality is being reduced. Lives are being extended. The quality of life, at least for some, is being improved. But what are some of the complex and less obvious consequences of this progress? As men and women get older, their efficiency and productivity diminish. Their aches and pains increase; they break easier, heal slower. They need more medical services, more pills and potions, and more hospital days. They need virtually as much housing, and they need more help to keep the household going. They cost more and earn less. Earning less, they pay fewer taxes. They drain payments from Social Security without making payments into it. So the growing aged population will become an increasing burden to the younger, working class, the taxpaying part of the population. Will the young taxpayers accept uncomplainingly this increased burden? Or will they revolt? How, politically, will disgruntlement be expressed? How, politically, will it be accommodated? Citizenship:
Pride and ResponsibiZty
Surely it is troubling that so few Americans vote. Out of some 250 million Americans, 182,628,OOO were of voting age in November 1988. Of these, only 91,584,320 actually voted. The trend is even more cause for concern. The percentage who voted declined
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from 62.8 in 1960 to 60.9 in 1968, 55.2 in 1972, 52.6 in 1980, and 50.1 last fall. Another disturbing fact is that young people vote much less frequently than do their seniors. Of those between 18 and 20 years of age, only 36.7 % voted in 1984, compared with 67.7 % for those over 65. And in the 1986 congressional elections, only 18.6% of the young voted versus 60.9% of the elderly. Why is this? Questioning and diagnosis might lead to palliation. Will failure to exercise the right (and responsibility) to vote lead to its atrophy? Short- Term Versus Long- Term Objectives Now to a more subtle issue: the insidious appeal of short-term versus long-temn objectives. This should be a matter of special concern not only to scientists and engineers but to all of us, for it undermines our country’s long-term economic competitiveness. Hedonism and the carpe diem attitudes seem to be growing, not only in our country but throughout the world. The attractiveness of the present over the uncertainties of the future. Today is here all right, but will tomorrow come? Get-rich-quick opportunities-or the quest for them - may adversely affect our biological and biomedical research laboratories. They have attracted a minor goldrush of Pied Pipers and snake oil salesmen- not only on Wall Street. During the past decade in boom and collapse cycles, they have helped redistribute the wealth of some gullible and avaricious speculators, even as the ferment of ideas and finance have produced a few fabulous millionaires, some of them deserving. In many laboratories, “Whirl has been king, having displaced Zeus.” But my guess is that in the long run, the traditional pecking order of the gods in the cathedrals and gaming houses of academia will largely be re-established; with mammon added to the hierarchy, but with science and Nobel again ascendant. Doubtless the desire for immediate reward, the quest for prompt gratification, the hope of guessing the lucky number, are inherent in mankind. But there is also an instinct for long-term investment, else parents would not make sacrifices for their children and grandchildren. Also, after World War II, much emphasis was placed on rebuilding, on long-term betterment. The Marshall Plan was one manifestation. The establishment of the National Science Foundation, late in 1950, with its original focus on long-term, basic science, was another. The malignant effect of the current hedonistic trend is evident. It carries through to academic laboratories. It activates the latent genes of dishonesty and fraud. And it infects the corporate world, where, in the United States, managements may rise or fall on this year’s profits and next year’s promise -and may tremble on this quarter’s dividend versus the previous quarter’s. The Federa! Government Organization for Science and Technology These comments lead me to my final topic: the federalgovernment organization for science and technology : particularly, the presidential science advisory apparatus -and its present status and prospects. There is little disagreement that in the post-World War II era and for the fore-
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seeable future, issues involving science and technology have increasingly becomeand will continue to be-interwoven in policy making at the federal as well as at local levels. Originally largely of military concern, science and technology issues-as is evident from the foregoing enumeration-are now importantly involved, consciously or unconsciously, in virtually all major policies including economic, cultural, and social areas- both national and international. The question is not whether they are involved but bow advice on these issues is to reach the president, the Congress, the judiciary, and the regulatory agencies, in forms and with credibility suitable for their consideration along with political factors. Those sufficiently interested can read all about this in a book’ of 85 original essays on this subject by outstanding authorities including past presidential science advisers and members of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC)-and by President Ford himself. An important development was the establishment by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the fall of 1988 of the bipartisan Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, with a stellar membership and advisory council of outstandingly well-qualified, public-spirited citizens, experienced in science and engineering and in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government; included are Presidents Ford and Carter. It is amply financed and assured of three to five years of life. Very encouraging good news is President Bush’s reiterated statement that he will appoint a science and technology adviser to the president with the title of assistant to the president, thus re-elevating the office to its pre-Ford, pre-Reagan status. In addition, he has stated that he will re-create a PSAC as the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors and will strengthen the Office of Science and Technology Policy. All this comports well with the recommendations of the Carnegie Commission in its first report. That report should be of extraordinary interest to those concerned. The appointment of the assistant to the president for science and technology, on a level equal to that of the assistant for national security affairs, is eagerly awaited. He or she will have an opportunity for major service to the president and to our country. To con&de: Each of us is a moving part in a moving scene. We are components of a great mobile, on an orbiting planet in an expanding universe. Acceleration is the leitmotif. Change is the only constant. Alertness, creativity, and adaptability are the essentials for survival and for what we may call progress. Scientists, engineers, political scientists, philosophers, and entrepreneurs should be the leaders in this revitalization. Charles Darwin said it all, better and beautifully, some 130 years ago, in the final paragraph of The Origin of the Species; and I indulge myself- and, you may reckon, edify all of us- by excerpting from his words:
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank [of a stream], clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth; and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a maneer, have all been produced by laws acting around us . [involving] a Ratio of Increase
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so high as to iead to a Struggle for L;f , and as a consequence to natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of /ess improvedforms. . . . Thus, from the war of nature, jbm famine anddeath, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fued law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been made, andare being evolved. I end with gratitude
to Charles
Darwin
for those inspiring
insights,
so felicitously
expressed.
Note 1. W.T. Golden, ed., Science and Technology Advice to the President, Congress, andJudiciary Pergamon Press. 1988).
(Elmsford, NY: