Hi WIMSE members!

Here are a few headlines which caught my attention.  You might enjoy
the debate over ethics and the space program information.

Jan Y-R

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IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - November 1, 2000


IS COLD CASH DEFILING PURE SCIENCE?
from The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) - A funny thing happened to Dr. Jerome Kassirer at a
recent
lecture to medical students about financial conflicts of interest for
doctors: It turned out the free buffet was provided by a major drug
company.


Kassirer had a blunt message: Medical schools and training programs
``must
teach that there is no free lunch. No free dinner. Or textbooks. Or
even a
ballpoint pen.''

From freebies for medical students to research funding that can taint
study
results to the growing practice of marketing prescription medicine
directly
to consumers, drug companies have a growing and sometimes unseemly
influence
on doctors, according to articles, studies and editorials published
Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The relationship between research and industry appears to be under
growing
scrutiny. The editor of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote an
extraordinary critique in May, saying science is being compromised by
the
growing influence of industry money.
<http://www.ctnow.com/scripts/editorial.dll?bfromind=1425&eeid=3357601&eetyp
e=article&render=y&ck=&userid=206553684&userpw=.&uh=206553684,2,&ver=2.11>


THRESHOLD OF NEW ERA IN SPACE
from The San Francisco Chronicle

Three orbiting spacefarers are set to move into humanity's first
permanent
habitat in space tomorrow aboard the largest, costliest and most
complex
engineering structure ever built, some 250 miles above Earth.

After a two-day flight launched yesterday from the steppes of
Kazakstan, an
American astronaut and his two Russian partners will nudge their
Russian
Soyuz spacecraft delicately up against the docking port of the huge
International Space Station at 1:20 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow.

The mission opens a new era in space exploration, Russian and American
space
agencies say, the first phase of 15 or more years of continuous
habitation
aboard the space station, with successive crews following for
increasingly
longer stays.
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2000/11/01/MN96578.DTL>


COMPANY TRIED TO BAR REPORT THAT H.I.V. VACCINE FAILED
from The New York Times

A California company tried to block the publication of a scientific
paper
that showed its H.I.V. vaccine was not effective, and it has asked for
damages of more than $7 million from the universities and researchers
who
published the findings.

The company, the Immune Response Corporation of Carlsbad, Calif.,
makes
Remune, a vaccine intended to increase the body's defenses against
H.I.V.,
the virus that causes AIDS, in people already infected. The drug was
tested
from 1996 to 1999 on more than 2,500 people with the infection, in one
of
the largest H.I.V. treatment studies ever conducted. Results of the
study
were published in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical
Association.

Researchers consider finding a way to bolster the body's immune system
to be
one of the most important approaches to treatment of H.I.V. infection

The study, paid for by the company, was stopped in May 1999 before it
was
completed because analysis of the results from more than two years
showed
that the vaccine was not working. Patients who got the vaccine died or
developed AIDS-related infections as often as those getting a placebo.
The
chief investigators on the study, Dr. James O. Kahn at the University
of
California at San Francisco and Dr. Stephen W. Lagakos at the Harvard
School
of Public Health, then prepared a paper on the disappointing study.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/01/science/01CONF.html>