inghoff said. The industry backs a bill, S. 1477, introduced last year by Sen. Nancy L. Kassebaum (R-Kan.). One provision of the legislation would require a single clinical trial to prove a drug's safety and efficacy, rather than the current two tri­als. Kassebaum has promised to push for FDA reform legislation this year. In addition, PhRMA seeks establishment of an independent oversight commission for FDA to help resolve problems.

David Hanson

Warning of infectious disease threat issued Health experts issued a warning last week at a press conference in Washing­ton, D.C., about the reemerging threat worldwide of infectious diseases.

Global warming, drug resistance, overpopulation, and the evolution of mi­crobes are creating new health threats and rekindling some diseases that it was believed had been conquered. To stress the threat's severity, 36 medical journals in 21 countries, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, coordi­nated publication of 242 articles on the problem this month.

Infectious diseases were in decline until about 1980. Robert W. Pinner, special assistant for surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control & Preven­tion, said at the press conference that the U.S. death rate from infectious dis­eases increased 58% from 1980 to 1992. Such diseases are now the third leading cause of death in the U.S. However, if deaths from AIDS are excluded, the in­crease in mortality is 22%.

Joseph F. Plouffe, professor of internal medicine at Ohio State University, Co­lumbus, found that the incidence of drug-resistant strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae—the most common cause of pneumonia—increased from 1991 to 1994. "Excessive antibiotic use appears to be the driving force behind the spread [of drug-resistant strains]/' he said.

Global climate change is likely to sig­nificantly increase the range of many in­fectious diseases in both the U.S. and around the world, said Jonathan A. Patz, research associate at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health. Ma­laria, dengue fever, and viral encephali­tis are among the diseases most sensitive to climate, he noted. Warmer tempera­tures cause malaria-carrying mosquitoes

to move to higher elevations and to bite more frequently, and also make the ma­laria virus multiply faster in the mosqui­to. For example, in 1987, a high-altitude region of Rwanda where malaria had never penetrated experienced many cas­es after a period of record-high tempera­tures and rainfall. Patz estimated that global warming in the next century may increase global mortality from malaria— which now kills about 2 million people each year—by 1 million annually.

Paul R. Epstein, professor of tropical medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&EN that if s not just warmer tem­peratures that expand the range of infec­tious diseases, but the increase in weath­er extremes that accompany global warming. Prolonged droughts remove predators that control disease vectors, and torrential rains supply more breed­ing places for mosquitoes.

The world's population has never been more vulnerable to the threat of in­fectious diseases, said Joshua Lederberg, professor and president emeritus at Rockefeller University. The most impor­tant changes that led to this situation, Lederberg said, are the unprecedented movement of people and the "sheer ex­pansion of our species," with high pop­ulation densities "egregiously stratified" economically.

To combat disease threats, Lederberg urged concerted global and domestic surveillance of disease outbreaks, vec­tor management, and the provision of safe food and water supplies. He also urged the pharmaceutical industry, which has developed very few new an­tibiotics in recent years, to become ful­ly involved in creating new antibiotics and vaccines.

Bette Hileman

Federal shutdown and blizzard bury NSF in mail The National Science Foundation had to put its mailroom technicians on over­time last week as it returned to work to find thousands of backlogged research proposals jamming its offices. Normally, NSF receives about 240 proposals per day. So the 22-day federal furlough followed by four days of blizzard-induced closings left some 4,000 research proposals stacked in the mailroom and in doz­ens of mail carts lining the corridors and filling other rooms. With its mailroom staff working 12-hour shifts, NSF predicts it will take at least two weeks just to eliminate the mail backlog, and the 2,000 research institutions that rely on NSF funding may still be feeling the impact in six months. NSF says each day the government was shut down meant lost or delayed support to some 200 scientists, engineers, students, and teachers. Moreover, during the shutdown many con­tinuing grants ran out of money, and funding gaps are expected for some renew­als as well as substantial delays in funding new awards.

David Hanson

JANUARY 22,1996 C&EN 9