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naturally refer to the USC virus as a cat virus, but more serious evidence of rivalry was a second claim to have discovered a human virus, announced simultaneously and in direct reaction to the USC claim by scientists at Georgetown University under contract to another segment chairman, W. Ray Bryan. (Both claims were announced before appearing inLthe. scientific litera- ture.) Although it would doubtless be inapposite for SVCP management to try to control the release of informa- tion by their contractors, closer co- ordinatiori between the two rival camps could at least establish a set of mini- mum criteria for announcing a human cancer virus. A more serious lack of management control is evident in the segment work- ing panels that are supposed to review all SVCP contracts. Rauscher and Mo- loney point to the existence of these panels as evidence of outside review. Most of the panels draw half of their members from the NCI staff and half from outside, but in practice it is al- most impossible for the outside scien- tists to vote down a contract of which they disapprove. According to one panel member, whose account is confirmed by a second member of the same panel, the voting procedure on contracts is that a favorable vote may be given without explanation, an abstention counts with the majority (in effect, as an affirmative vote), but negative votes must be jus- tified in writing. Since materials relating to a contract are often distributed only on the morning of the panel's meeting, members have to read and listen simul- taneously; thus, the segment chairman, who can usually count on the votes of the NCI members, is rarely overruled. "The outside consultants are likely to end up approving things after the fact," says a former panel member, who indi- cates that most of the decisions on con- tracts are taken by segment chairmen before the working panel meets. B riIs fin g employment and to strive for a stronger voice for bench scientists in corporate personnel policies. "There's a fairly broad feeling, and not only among chemists, that com- panies have almost completely washed Chemists Pick Nixon Alan C. Nixon, the maverick chemist from Berkeley who wants the American Chemical Society to take a inore active interest in its members' livelihood, has won the presidency of the 110,000- member ACS by a lopsided margin. As president-elect, Nixon will not take office until 1973. But next month he joins the society's board of directors and will remain on the influential board for the next 3 years. A genial man of 63, Nixon has spent nearly his entire career as a researcher and a research supervisor for the Shell Development Company near Berkeley. He left Shell in 1970 and is now a consultant. . As a dark-horse candidate last fall, Nixon broke society tradition and cam- paigned vigorously for its presidency (Science, 24 Sept.). Backed by a small organization called the "Chemical Grassroots," he distributed campaign leaflets and toured nearly a third of the society's 174 local sections. Along the way he built a platform on what he saw as the professional needs of chemists caught in a national economic recession-the need for organizations like the ACS to work to alleviate un- their hands' of responsibility for tech- nical employees," Nixon says. "Indus- try doesn't talk to technical employees as they do to hourly, unionized erri- ployees. But why should we be treated differently?" He obviously struck an appealing chord. A record 44,300 ACS members sent mail ballots into the society's Washington headquarters in Novem- ber. Nixon snared just under half the total votes, with the remainder divided about evenly between the two front- running candidates, William A. Mosher of the University of Delaware and George S. Hammond of Caltech. The ACS now devotes most of its money and energy to publishing books, journals, and Chemical Ab- stracts, and to running a variety of educational programs in chemistry. Over the past 2 years, the society has also taken a new interest in employee- employer relationships and, as one measure of this "interest, is currently spending an average of $500 for each jobless member who seeks help in finding work. But these stirrings have not been vigorous enough to satisfy Alan Nixon and his supporters. Another awkward feature of the working panels as founts of independent advice is the practice of having con- tractors -as panel members. Asked how panel members were selected, Rauscher told Science that Huebner, for example, will ask his panel members to suggest names of outside scientists, which are then submitted for approval first to Mo- loney, then to Rauscher, and finally to Baker. The membership of Hueb- ner's working panel, as approved by Moloney, Rauscher, and Baker, is as follows: Maurice Green, St. Louis Uni- versity, holder of a $750,000 contract from Huebner's segment; Leonard Hay- flick, Stanford University, holder of a $175,000 contract from Huebner's seg- ment; Karl Hellstrom, University of Washington, holder of an $83,000 con- tract from Huebner's segment; Ed-win Lennette, California Department of Public Health, holder of a $33,000 con- tract from Huebner's segment; Hans Meier, Jackson Laboratories, holder of As president-elect, Nixon says he intends to begin prodding the society and its staff into making "selective contacts" with state and federal legis- lators to encourage the flow of money into job and other relief programs for out-of-work chemists. He says he doesn't want the ACS to engage in a "large lobbying effort " but he thinks that a shift of 5 percent of its budget, or about $1.5 million, into various pro- fessional activities would be appropri- ate. Later on, he said, he will work to foster new and more comprehensive working agreements between chemists and their corporate employers to do "more than protect patent rights." He has also expressed an interest i.n lim- iting the number of chemists in the nation, perhaps, if necessary, by insti- tuting a system of professional licens- ing and by controlling the number of licenses. "My election is certainly no reason for the society's 'establishment' to stand up and cheer," he admits. "I'm obviously not a typical president-elect, and my views differ from others the ACS has had. But I'm not advocating that we tear down the society's edu- cational and scientific arms. I simply want to step up our professional activ- ities. I think our board understands that this is what the members want." -R.G. 24 DECEMBER 1971 1309