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OCR for page 276
276 THE LIFE SCIENCES
Natural history museums, as both forums and research settings for sys-
tematists, ecologists, and environmental scientists, are becoming increasingly
important as a national scientific resource, despite a long history of public
neglect.
BIOLOGICAL DISCIPLINES
For brevity and conciseness, we found it useful to structure all the life
sciences into a dozen research areas. But this should not conceal the rich
and diverse infrastructure of the life sciences. As we have seen, classical
disciplinary labels have lost their meaning, but one could readily describe
a hundred or more subdisciplines based on the work of groups of like-
minded scientists who have blended the approaches of several older dis-
ciplines in attacks on some specific subsets of biological problems. A few
examples are cited in the following paragraph.
PhOtobiolo~istsq well versed in optics and the nhv~ics of light, are vari-
in photosynthesis,
-is -- or-
ously concerned with the mechanism of vision, the events
the emission of light by bacterial and animal forms (the biological purpose
of light emission by all but fireflies being not at all evident), and the photo-
inactivation of enzymes and viruses. Neuroscientists bring the skills of
electrophysiology, cellular biology, molecular biology, and communications
theory to bear on studies of information processing in the nervous system.
Oncologists, focusing on the essential nature of the transformation of
normal cells into malignant ones, are similarly a group apart, borrowing
from every major discipline that may be of help, while vascular physiol-
ogists necessarily borrow from hydrodynamics and studies of urban traffic
flow as they study the operation of a capillary bed or a major blood vessel.
Physical anthropology is a subdiscipline that contributes to the total en-
deavor while it provides a bridge from the biological to the social sciences.
It is the study of the bodily manifestations of human variation in particu-
lar, the description of human body size, shape, and function in the light
of man's history and the role of heredity, environment, and culture In
bringing about man's present diversity. The biological anthropologist aims
to understand human physical variation and to apply his knowledge for
human betterment through medicine and engineering.
As concern with the environment grows, an increasing number of physi-
cians and biologists of many backgrounds have generated the area of
research and practice called "environmental health," the concern of one
of the panels of this survey. More sophisticated understanding of this field
should permit society to enjoy the fruits of an advancing technology, a
OCR for page 277
THE WORLD OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH 277
superior living environment, and freedom to develop a society with fewer
restraints and tensions. Past effort is minuscule compared with the magni-
tude of the problem. Since the problems increase with increasing population
density and developing technology, efforts at controlling the environment,
and thus the health of the population, must keep pace. Indeed, in a very
real sense, students of environmental health serve technology by providing
the knowledge permitting its benefits to be enjoyed without adventitious
adverse effects on the health of man and, more broadly, on the environment
of man. Thus, support of an adequate level of competence in environmental
health is indispensable to a society that elects to make optimal use of the
fruits of technology. Accordingly, the environmental-health resources of
the nation must first be expanded to catch up with the problems now with
us and thereafter be developed, along with technological development, to
provide an adequate preventive program. Current support of research in
environmental health probably lies between $30 million and $50 million
per year; support for training for both research and practice is between
$9 million and $18 million per year and is known to support (in 1969)
974 candidates for the master's degree, 981 candidates for the Ph.D., and
148 postdoctoral fellows.
A broad federal policy is needed, with a long-range plan of attack upon
the whole problem of environmental deterioration and with better identifi-
cation of the separate missions and responsibilities of the several federal
departments and agencies. Only with such a policy will it be possible to
develop in an orderly way the required training programs to supply the
personnel needed for both research and practice, both within and outside
the government, necessary to build a strong foundation for effective control
programs against environmental-health hazards, a foundation that must
rest on the entire current understanding of the life sciences.
Thus, the world of research in the life sciences is marvelously diverse. Tens
of thousands of scientists in a thousand institutions contribute to its prog-
ress. They migrate between institutions, between classes of institutions, and
between subfields of biology. They are quick to seize upon any new
instruments or techniques, without regard to whether these are initially
devised for use in the physical sciences or for some other research area in
the life sciences. Biochemistry has become the language of biology, pro-
viding the bridge to the physical sciences, but it has yet to be applied to the
farthest reaches of organismal biology. The federal government is the
principal sponsor of the entire endeavor and, for the indefinite future, only
the federal government can sponsor an effort of this magnitude. Its success
will affect all aspects of our lives, and its conduct has become one of the
central purposes of our civilization.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
public neglect
