• θ OVER N MENT

Congress Looks A t Some Aids to Science Educat ion: • More liberal tax treatment for teachers, fellowships farf

science teachers to continue their education ^

J> Scholarships and fellowships to help qualified but needy

students get a higher education

• Plans to help schools pay for improved facilities, equ ip - i ;

ment, and supplies -; | |

Federal Scholarship Programs Hit Educators call for quality not quantity in science edu­cat ion; enrollments in science courses up

ο PPOSITION τ ο federal scholarship programs is popping up. The Senate Committee on Labor and Public Wel­fare heard educators testify that more students will not lead to a stronger U . S. science education system. Prob­lems such as the shortage of good sci­ence teachers, inadequate facilities, and the high cost of graduate-level educa­tion must be met first. The best an­swer to these problems is direct aid to colleges and universities, says John T. Caldwell, speaking for the American Association of Land-Grant Colleges and State Universities.

The advent of Russia's sputniks brought U. S. science education into the limelight. Top scientists and edu­cators pointed out glaring deficiencies in U. S. schools. Some called for a sweeping overhaul of the whole educa­tion system, and a rash of bills aimed a t bettering science education poured into Congressional hoppers. Among the top bills are S.3187, by commit­tee chairman Sen. Lister Hill ( D.-Ala. ) , and S.3163, the administration" bill, both directed at assisting science educa­tion mainly through federal scholar­ship programs.

• Federal Scholarships Opposed. Both S.3187 and S.3163 represent long-range attacks on U. S. education prob­

lems, while the critical period is the next 1 0 years, says Caldwell. There is no shortage of students. The crying need is for qualified teachers, backed by adequate facilities in which to do their job well. Scholarship programs will only aggravate the problems, says Caldwell.

A big help would be aid at the graduate level—the source of badly needed teachers. Direct aid to the colleges would further alleviate the teacher problem by making possible better wages for instructors and so pro­vide incentive for better teachers. Facilities, too, could be upgraded, says Caldwell. Other step in this direction: The Government should pay the full cost of agricultural research and other contract research being done for it by schools.

It's up to the states to give more backing to higher education, says Cald­well. Some high per-capita income states do very little here. More than half the states don't know what per­centage of their high school students attend college. Suggests Caldwell: Find out where and why the problem exists before starting a federal scholar­ship program.

Quality, not quantity, is the big need in U. S. science today, agrees Clark A.

Dunn, National Society of Profes­sional Engineers. Dunn opposes federal scholarship programs, pointing out that such plans don't lead to better stu­dents. "The primary concern of the Government should be with improving the quality of students."

First-rate science teachers are one path to quality students, says Dunn. Teacher salaries are the key here. Congressmen heard a plea for more liberal tax treatment for teachers, and more support for fellowships for teach­ers such as those offered by the National Science Foundation.

• Progress Cited· The picture isn't as gloomy as some people paint it, says Glenn O. Blough, National Science Teachers Association. High school stu­dents today are «showing a lively inter­est in science. The evidence: During the period 1900-54 there's been a 200 9Ό increase in actual enrollment in high school physics, and an 1100% in­crease in actual enrollment in high school chemistry. During the same period, the per cent of all students age 14-17 in school and enrolled in chemis­try multiplied by a factor of eight, those in physics by a factor of two. And 55% of the boys who took the National Honor Society's scholarship exams said they planned to major in science.

Blough agrees that science education faces some tough problems. Biggest need—good science teachers. The num­ber of science teachers graduating in June 1958 and actually going into teaching will fall short of the demand by nearly 5000.

3 4 C & E N M A R C H 10. 1958

The path to more good teachers is higher salaries, says Blough. More liberal tax treatment for teachers and more grants earmarked for teacher sum­mer institutes are steps Congress can take to help. "When we urge our own children to become teachers due to the opportunities available, the problem will be licked/*

Who Polices Drug Ads? Nobody, if ethical drug ads appear in medical journals, Congress hears

A . NUMBER OF WITNESSES urged Rep. John A. Blatnik's (D.-Minn.) Subcom­mittee on Legal and Monetary Affairs to transfer jurisdiction over ethical drug advertising from the Federal Trade Commission to the Food and Drug Ad­ministration (C&EN, Feb. 24, page 42) . But, as hearings on tranquilizer advertising drew to a close, FTC spokesmen told the committee FTC has no authority over these ads, pays no attention to them.

FTC Commissioner Sigurd Anderson told the committee FTC scrutinizes proprietary drug advertising in the mass media. But ethical drug adver­tising in medical journals is another matter. Unless someone lodges a com­plaint, FTC pays no attention to this kind of advertising. So far, says Ander­son, no complaints have been made on tranquilizer or other ethical drug ad­vertising.

Reasons for FTC's policy on ethical drug advertising in medical journals are these:

• FTC is not sure it has authority to act.

• FTC has no qualified examiners in this field; the two M. D.'s on the staff are overburdened with work in other fields.

• Physicians, by virtue of their train­ing and experience are not easily mis­led; hence, FTC sees no reason to be especially alert in covering ethical drug advertising.

FTC jurisdiction over false adver­tising of drugs stems from the Wheeler-Lea amendment to the Trade Com­mission Act, approved by Congress 20 years ago in 1938. Section 15 of the amendment reads, in part, "Mo adver­tisement of a drug shall b e deemed to be false if it is disseminated only to members of the medical profession,

contains no false representation of a material fact, and includes . . . the formula showing quantitatively each in­gredient of such drug." What this statement means creates the problem.

FTC chief counsel Earl Kimtner told the committee he has no idea what Congress had in mind when it approved the amendment. Interpretation of sec­tion 15, he says, is pure legal specula­tion, since no court cases have been brought to clarify the meaning. FTC staff members are divided on what the section means. Some think it gives FTC jurisdiction, some think it excludes FTC, and others think it sets a different standard for drug advertising directed solely t o doctors. There seems little chance that the meaning of the law will be clarified in the near future.

Commissioner Anderson assured the committee that if FTC gets any com­plaints i t will act promptly. However, he said, FTC staff members cannot re­call a single instance where doctors complained about ethical drug adver­tising.

• FDA Views. The Food and Drug Administration nas no jurisdiction over drug ads, Albert H. Holland, Jr., chief of FDA's Medical Department told the committee. But FDA keeps an eye on direct mail advertising of tranquilizers. Tranquilizers come under the provi­sions of the New Drug Act; promo­tional material is construed to be part of the official brochure on the drug, or "literature available to the physician on request."

'ie Government, says Holland, neither needs to nor should scan all promotional literature. Drug makers should b e responsible for policing their own literature. So far, he says, there have been only a few cases of mislead­ing literature in Uanquilizer promotion, and companies have quickly changed the offending material at FDA's sug-gestio.;. !;* only one case were the claims s o "blatant and misleading" that FDA required the firm to send a re­traction to everyone on its mailing li-st.

Holland is not too worried about the possibility of misleading drug adver­tising influencing doctors' judgment. Says he, "I have a little more faith in the medical profession than some of my colleagues. Doctors are not as easily misled as some members of in­dustry would like to believe."

FDA is not too anxious to get in­volved in policing ethical drug ads in the journals, Holland says. But, under some circumstances, journal advertising may be considered part of the label

I COMMENT It seems clear that the technical \

race with the Soviet Union has \ been managed entirely by the re- | spective Governments. Both Gov- | ernments not only define the ob~ \ jectives and methods to be pur- \ sued on each project, but also exercise complete control over the personnel and restrictive control on dissemination of information. Under these conditions the Soviet has had the advantage of being able to order whole universities or research institutes to attack specific projects; such methods would not work in a free society.

Aside from this, however9 the Soviet "authoritarian" Govern­ment has been bold and far-sighted in planning research and educational goals, and has demon­strated surprising flexibility and understanding of its scientists. In contrast, our own Government has failed to attract the full support of scientists, and has, in fact, alienated and separated large seg­ments of the university scientists from important projects.

The responsibility for ineffective government i not so easily as­signed, however. Inadequacies on the part of our Government must be considered to be what they ac­tually are—failures on our part as citizens.

For example, the people in Con­gress and the Executive Branch have had to exercise major re­sponsibilities governing defense, technical secrets and intangibles of basic research and progress under the stress of the cold war and without experience in these new developments. Yet the rest of the country has been satisfied to leave the whole responsibility to them, except for occasional "voices in the wilderness" It is our re­sponsibility, and, I believe, also de­sired by the elected officials, that we make known our best thoughts to these officials.

V. L. PARSEGIAN, dean, school of engineering, Rensselaer Poly, before New York Associated Dailies, at Albany, Ν. Υ., Feb. 5, 1958.

M A R C H 10, 1958 C & E N 3 5