February 19, 1989

OH, GREAT: I went to a UC Extension class in Berkeley last weekend called “Biotechnology: Who Risks? Who Gains?” and boy, if that doesn’t sum it up, I don’t know what does. Rebecca Goldburg, a scientist for the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, made a very interesting disclosure during her presentation, “Green Revolution or Green Monster: The Public’s Perception of Biotechnology.”

Though once verboten, university researchers can now profit from the work they do. In other words, they can invent something in campus labs and “license” it to private firms for a royalty. On the surface, this looks like a pretty good idea, another way that free enterprise can encourage marketable research. (Stanford University last week said it expects to make $4.9 million from its recombinant DNA patent alone in 1988-89.)

Because of their lab expertise, academics often end up as advisers to the Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health and other agencies. What Goldburg thinks is “terrible” is that these academic advisers aren’t required to publicly disclose their affiliations with the profit sector. In fact, EPA has even gone to court (vs. the Washington Post) to keep those affiliations private.

Worse yet, a National Academy of Sciences committee is preparing a report for Congress on the consequences of genetically engineered releases. Goldburg says the academy’s roster is public and that the Environmental Defense Fund knows that at least half of the academy’s members have industry affiliations. The Fund and other groups wrote a letter a couple months ago requesting public disclosure of those affiliations. They were refused.

Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund are particularly worried about the influence such advisers may have on public policy regarding the monitoring of releases.

“When we put something into the environment ˆ even if we expect it to be totally safe ˆ logical scientific thinking dictates we should monitor it to see if it conforms to our expectations. People affiliated with industry see that monitoring takes money, time and effort,” so they tend to downplay its importance, Goldburg says. “Most academicians on advisory committees have high integrity. It’s not that they’re immoral. But when one consults for industry, one sees things from industry’s point of view. As a result, universities that we’re dependent on for reasonably objective examination suddenly can’t be depended on, and there’s no one to take their place.”

But nothing’s happened yet, so why worry? “There’s no crisis in genetic engineering at the moment,” Goldburg agrees. “On the other hand, if we don’t pay attention today, are we going to end up with a bunch of biotech Superfund sites 10 years from now?”

DO THE TIGHTEN-UP: Racal-Vadic of Milpitas, one of the Valley’s better known dial-up modem companies, is reorganizing, to be announced April 1 or so. The changes also involve a sister company, Racal-Milgo in Florida, and a couple of Racal companies in Europe. The changes essentially merge Vadic’s sales and marketing with Milgo’s. (Racal Electronics, a British conglomerate, owns the whole banana.)

The upshot is that Vadic, which employs about 1,000 people and makes modems and other datacom equipment, will become a “technology” center for Racal Data Communications group. So will the engineers stay and the sales folks move south to Milgo? “We’re just going through the transition, so we don’t have any idea” about layoffs, said a corporate rep from Racal Corp. in New York.

Insiders blame the changes on overall flatness in the dial-up data market, as well as the fact that gargantua like AT&T and IBM are buying datacom companies. “I don’t think Racal felt threatened. It’s very much a sign of the times,” says Larry Cynar, industry analyst for Dataquest in San Jose.

STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION DEPT.: A PC-compatible software package written by Santa Clara author Guy LeSage intends to give kids a new “birthday peer group.” Called “Who Was Born When: The International Calendar of Notable Births,” the program runs on PC compatibles and works with most word processing, database and spreadsheet programs. If your birthday is today, for example, you share it with Nicolas Copernicus, Justine Bateman, and Smokey Robinson. LeSage gleaned his info from encyclopedias, biographies, astrology books and fan magazines. He admits there aren’t many women in his program and figures it is because history writers never paid much attention to women. The program costs $29.95. It’s available at 1025 Jefferson, Suite 777, Santa Clara, CA 95050. P.S. If you know a good text that has biographies of notable women, maybe you could recommend it to him.

Write to Denise Caruso, Business Desk, San Francisco Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120. Or contact her by computer using MCI Mail (Denise Caruso), CompuServe (73037,52) or MacNET (Caruso).