Initial ConditionsEDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Pale Horse

THE

SCIENCESEDITOR

PETER G. BROWN

DEPUTY EDITOR

BURKHARD BILGER

ART DIRECTOR

ELIZABETH MERYMAN

-PETER G. BROWN

FEED BAC K AND CRITICISM ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF SCIENCE, AND THEY ARE

much in evidence this month in Peer Review, our regular department oflet­ters to the editor. The letter writers express their passions-and their passionatedisagreements with our authors-on matters from the philosophical status of enor­mous numbers to the intricacies of thermodynamic theory to the science and poli­tics of race. And as usual, the authors of the original articles fire back, amplifying,re-articulating, correcting, sharpening their arguments.

But the biology and sociology of race hit a special nerve. This issue carries thesecond (and final!) installment ofletters prompted by our special issue on the topiclast year (MarchiApril 1997). This batch, aimed primarily at Alan H. Goodman'sessay "Bred in the Bone?", argues, in the most sensible and sensitive ways imagin­able, why race as a tool for classifying human variation cannot be denied. And inhis reply Goodman states, with great good sense and forbearance, why-as achemist might put it-the categories Asian, Black, Caucasoid and the like are tothe scientific description of human variatio;l as earth, water, air and fire are to theninety-two naturally occurring elements: the vestiges of a world view that haslong since been discredited and superseded.

And I saw, and behold, a palehorse, and its rider's name UJas Death.-Rev. 6:8

I T WOULD BE HARD TO READ A NEWSPAPER THESE DAYS WITHOUT NOTICING

the rise in reports of newly emerging diseases. Even the food and recipepages carry a foreboding undercurrent ofbad news: Salmonella in raw eggs

and, in undercooked chicken, Campylobacter, a bacterium responsible for betweentwo million and eight million cases of food poisoning a year in the United Statesand between 200 and 800 deaths. In France the concept ofprovenance has beenextended from wine and cheese to beef, a dubious distinction arising from the fearofBritish beef and the mad cow disease it allegedly carries. This magazine hasdevoted feature articles in recent years to AIDS and to the newly virulent forms ofmultiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis that have appeared in the inner city. A formof Hantavirus, spread by the excretions ofrodents, was identified in 1993 as theagent of a frightening outbreak of a lethal hemorrhagic fever that began amongNative Americans in the Southwest. In that same year hamburger tainted with alethal variety of Escherichia coli, cryptically labeled 0157:H7, killed four customersof the Jack in the Boxfast-food restaurants. The list goes on: the pale horse ofpestilence and death seems to be straining at the bit.

But wait, the skeptic cautions. Before raising the general alarm, isn't the appar­ent crisis, terrible as the diseases are to the afflicted, chiefly an artifact of superiorrecord keeping? Besides, deadly disease is a darling of the media, which seldommiss the chance to scare the public with the latest threat to life and civilization­what better way to sell papers and airtime? Bottom line: Do the incidence andlethality of the new diseases ever rise above background noise in the greater con­text ofhumanity's historical relations with microorganisms?

The answer, curiously, is both yes and no. George J. Armelagos argues in "TheViral Superhighway" (page 24) that the threats are quite real. "We are," he writes,"living in the twilight of the antibiotic era. Within our lifetimes, scraped kneesand cut fingers may return to the realm of fatal conditions." Yet that same change,what Armelagos calls the third epidemiological transition, is restoring a more tra­ditional, albeit melancholy, relationship between human and beastie. We may bereturning to pre-antibiotic circumstances more familiar to our ancestors than tous, in which sudden, unpredictable and often fatal illness was a way oflife.

• • •

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COMMITTEE ON THE SCIENCES Charles Ramond (Chair),Jacqueline Leo (Vice-chair), Dennis Flanagan (Past chair),David C. Cater, Nicolas Charney, Elizabeth Crow,Francis X. Farrell, Eugene Garfield, Robert Garrett, Wil­liam T. Golden, Richard Goldman,John G. Hahn, CharlesHarris, Milton Lieberman, Mary M. Luria, Bernard Mazel,Tom Nicholson, Shirrel Rhoades, Michael J. Samek,Warren S. Shine, Dale A. Steiger, Richard B. Stolley

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2 THE SCIENCES· jallllary/Febrl/ary 1998