PERIODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Health, Education, and Welfare issued a report on in vitro fertilization, but the panel never dealt with the freezing of embryos. In 1982, then Rep. Albert Gore, Jr., (D.-Tenn.) headed a House subcommittee that held hearings on frozen embryo research but came to no conclusions. Consequently, note Grobstein and his fellow researchers at the Univer- sity of California, no firm federal guidelines were ever set. In addition, "a de facto ban on federal support...
PERIODICALS
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Originally, Darwin (1809-82) explained evolution through natural selection, or "survival of the fittest." Animals randomly mate and pass on heritable characteristics. Those well suited to their environment survive; others die off.
But during the 1930s, a revised "synthetic" theory of evolution slowly displaced the original doctrine. Biologists affirmed Darwin's be- lief that current species share common ancestors but disagreed with the...
the U.S. Geological Survey. (Even these data are trouble- some, since samplers for the Survey are not designed to measure pollu- tion.) And industrial water pollution, the most dangerous, is monitored only the polluters themselves, who must report their own violations. The National Resources Defense Council found that 90 percent of 2,200 industries studied had exceeded their pollution quotas.
Stanfield suggests that centralized pollution monitoring would be well worth the money. In the words of...
IODICALS
RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT
Other scientists disagree. Arnold Schecter, an epidemiologist at the State University of New York, argues that the government's studies lacked adequate controls and failed to quantify the amount of TCDD (the most toxic compound in dioxin) to which the subjects were ex- posed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies TCDD as a "probable human carcinogen." In addition, many cancers have 15-year latency periods; the carcinogenic effects m...
authorities, kept their fiction in "the desk drawerM-to be read secretly and smuggled abroad. Only recently have many of those manuscripts been published in the West.
Despite the delays, contends Eberstadt, an American novelist, West- erners now have "a more comprehensive view of the state of culture and creative life in the Soviet Union than has been available . . . since the early '60s."
Eberstadt argues that most of the recent Soviet authors fall into three categories. First,...
Edward Roth- stein, in The New Republic (June 24, 1985), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
The lives of musical geniuses are supposed to be filled with drama: bril- liant outbursts undermined alcoholism, mania, and syphillis. Or so the legends go.
But Johann Sebastian Bach, whose 300th birthday the world cele- brated this year, is a genuine exception, contends Rothstein, music critic for The New Republic. "Bach's life is considered stupefyingly ordi- nary," although his work...
Woodrow J. Kuhns, in East
European Quarterly (June 1985), 1200 Uni- InAfrica versity Ave., Boulder, Colo. 80309.
In the African arena, the Soviet Union has relied primarily on Cuba to further its aims with troops and advisers. Now, writes Kuhns, who taught political science at Pennsylvania State University, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has joined Cuba as the Soviet Union's key helper in African affairs.
In 1981, according to estimates the U.S. Department of Defense, the GDR had more than...
Woodrow J. Kuhns, in East
European Quarterly (June 1985), 1200 Uni- InAfrica versity Ave., Boulder, Colo. 80309.
In the African arena, the Soviet Union has relied primarily on Cuba to further its aims with troops and advisers. Now, writes Kuhns, who taught political science at Pennsylvania State University, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has joined Cuba as the Soviet Union's key helper in African affairs.
In 1981, according to estimates the U.S. Department of Defense, the GDR had more than...
That proposal, notes Huan, a Visiting Fellow from China at the US. Atlantic Council, would allow the KMT in Taipei to "maintain its social and economic system, its armed forces, and its unofficial ties with for- eign countries." In return, Taipei must surrender its claim to represent all of China and agree to become a "special administrative region." Since signing a similar agreement in 1984 with Britain on Hong Kong's future, Deng has been eager to try this arrangement with...
by Roland Barthes
translated by Linda
Coverdale
Hill & Wang, 1985
368 pp. $24.95