NATURE MEDICINE • VOLUME 6 • NUMBER 6 • JUNE 2000 613

NEWS

Australia wants to emulate the US successstory Research!America by setting up the country’s first umbrella group forgrassroots community advocacy of med-ical research. Stakeholders in ResearchAustralia held an inaugural meeting lastmonth, securing broad support from re-search institutes, disease foundations, thepharmaceutical and biotechnology sectorand the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

The creation of a body to engage thepublic in setting the scientific agenda fol-lows the federal government’s endorse-ment last year of the Wills report, chairedby Garvan Institute of Medical Researchchairman Peter Wills (Nature Med. 5 9;1999). At the time, Prime Minister JohnHoward indicated that he was “attractedto how this is done in the US through theResearch!America alliance.” Wills toldNature Medicine, “Now I’ve taken thebaton and run with it.” He says althoughinspired by the “simplicity and power” ofthe US lobby, the Australian versionwould be tailored to reflect different po-litical and social realities and would advo-cate for public health as well as laboratoryresearch.

Since its inception in 1989, Research!America has lobbied congressional mem-bers relentlessly, commissioned publicopinion polls, funded advertising cam-paigns and sponsored awards, all to boostresearch dollars. Its muscle has been rec-

Australia to create biomedical lobby group

Baylor faculty upset over science and religion centerOne year after a Kansas Board ofEducation banned the study of evolution-ary biology in its public schools, the latestclash between evolutionists and creation-ists—those who believe God createdlife—has erupted at Baylor University inWaco, Texas. At issue is the establishmentof the new Michael Polanyi Center,which aims to be an “an active partici-pant in the growing dialogue between sci-ence and religion.”

Critics say Baylor’s president, Robert B.Sloan Jr., set up the program with no for-mal input from the faculty, and they areperturbed that it will be dominated byproponents of ‘intelligent design’, a the-ory that draws on physics, mathematicsand philosophy to argue that living thingsare so complex, evolution could not haveproduced them. Thus, life had to havebeen the work of a higher power. The cen-ter’s director, William Dembski, is one of

the theory’s chief proponents.Unlike creation science, which holds

that scientific evidence proves the Bible’screation story, ‘intelligent design’ stopsshort at giving God credit and shies awayfrom biblical references. Still, someBaylor science faculty argue that ‘intelli-gent design’ is a fringe theory thatdoesn’t have any real standing in the aca-demic community. “We are mainstreamscientists and we’re concerned that thePolanyi center casts us as something thanother than that,” says Charles Weaver, anassociate professor of neuroscience andpsychology.

“The directors of the center claim to bedoing science; that is, they argue for in-troducing intelligent design into scienceas an explanatory category,” RobertBaird, chairman of the Faculty Senate,wrote in the senate’s newsletter. “Yet theCenter was created without consultation

with colleagues in the sciences.”Sloan rejected a 26–2 vote by the sen-

ate to dissolve the center, and instead isputting together a review committee tostudy the issues raised by faculty. In anofficial statement, Sloan says he rejectscreation science and would never baranyone at Baylor from teaching evolu-tion. He does, however, believe that Godcreated the world.

Baylor, which houses an Institute ofBiomedical Studies in affiliation withBaylor College of Medicine, is the coun-try’s largest Baptist university. Theschool’s commitment to the sciences in-cludes plans for a new $60 million sci-ence building and $20 million inrenovations to existing laboratories. Thedirector of the biomedical institute,Darden Powers, who is also chairman ofthe physics department, says he supportsthe president’s position on the Polanyicenter but declined to comment further.

The clash comes at a time when an in-creasing number of universities are revis-iting the uneasy relationship betweenreligion and science. Programs rangefrom the American Association for theAdvancement of Science’s decidedly pro-evolution “Dialogue on Science, Ethicsand Religion,” to the three-year-old Godand Computers course and lecture seriesat the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, to the graduate school pro-gram at the Institute for CreationResearch in southern California.

Tinker Ready, Boston

With only weeks to go before the biennial WorldAIDS Conference begins in Durban, South Africa(9–12 July), stakeholders in the sub-Saharan epi-demic are increasing their activities. PresidentThabo Mbeki’s controversial advisory panel ofAIDS ‘experts’ (Nature, 405, 105; 2000) will pre-sent its report on the reasons for the spread ofthe disease in the region prior to the start of themeeting. Meanwhile, an 11 May ExecutiveOrder by President Bill Clinton, announcing thatthe US will allow sub-Saharan Africa special lee-way to import and manufacture patented AIDSdrugs, plus a same-day statement by five lead-ing pharmaceutical companies and UNIADSthat they will slash the price of AIDS drugs toAfrica, may calm potentially vociferous demon-strations by activists.

Nature Medicine will be in Durban coveringthe conference—proposed boycott by theWorld’s HIV scientists permitting—to bring younews of the meeting via our website atwww.medicine.nature.com and in the nextissue of the journal.

ognized by the Wall Street Journal, whichreported, “the driving force behind thehuge 15% increase in the NIH budget toUS$15.6 billion (in 1998) was an um-brella organization called Research!America.” Wills believes corporate phil-anthropy and government spending willincrease in response to the enthusiasm ofordinary Australians, with polls alreadyshowing 80% of people want to hearmore about medical research.

The ASX wants to play a lead part in en-couraging the diversion of some corpo-rate sponsorship dollars from sport andthe arts to medical research, says MichaelRoche of ASX. It will offer seed fundingto Research Australia, whose initial oper-ating budget is estimated at A$500,000(US$290,000).

The Australian Society for MedicalResearch backs the new group, pledgingthat far from the prospect of a ‘turf war’,its members look forward to benefitingfrom a broadening of the base of politicaland corporate support for medical re-search. “At this point there’s plenty ofpeople within the research sector who areactive, but the public hasn’t been in-volved, and that’s the key distinction,”says ASMR board member PeterSchofield. A business plan for ResearchAustralia will be drawn up by August,with a formal launch later in the year.

Rada Rouse, Brisbane

© 2000 Nature America Inc. • http://medicine.nature.com©

200

0 N

atu

re A

mer

ica

Inc.

• h

ttp

://m

edic

ine.

nat

ure

.co

m