SOME NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR PROMISE FOR THE LIFE SCIENCES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP66R00546R000200100002-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 10, 2002
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 23, 1963
• Content Type: REPORT

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Some New Technologies and
Their Promise for the Life Sciences
THE LIFE SCIENCES PANEL
PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
January 23, 1963
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25, D.C. - Price 15 cents
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THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JANUARY 23, 1963.
This report on "Some New Technologies and Their Promise for the
Life Sciences" was prepared at the request of the President's Science
Advisory Committee. Because of its general interest for the scientific
community at large, it is being released for publication.
JEROME B. WIESNER,
Special Assistant for Science and Technology.
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SOME NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR PROMISE
FOR THE LIFE SCIENCES
PREAMBLE
During the past 100 years man has gained an astonishing understanding
and control over the physical world, but he has made slower progress in
controlling and understanding himself as an individual and as a member
of society. But the means for improving the human condition are today
more nearly within our grasp than ever before. Discovery of the principles
of organization, communication, and control which underlie the life sciences
will deepen our insight into the nature of men and their societies. The
wise application of these insights should result in more comprehensive
control of disease and hunger, more effective methods of education, and,
by eliminating or channeling man's destructive impluses, more opportu-
nities for the free development of individual personalities.
This appraisal has its roots in the fertile ground now being opened by
the new technologies drawn in part from recent striking advances in the
physical sciences and in almost equal measure from developments within the
life sciences themselves. This report attempts to clarify the relations
between some of the life sciences and technological change, and to evaluate
their significance.
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Part I
THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
ON THE LIFE SCIENCES
The digital computer epitomizes the new information technology in the
range and diversity of information processing it makes possible and in the
startling suddenness with which it has been thrust upon us. Its impact on
the life sciences occurs in many places and in many guises: as traditional data
analysis; as data processing of huge volumes of records; as networks for
gathering primary data; as techniques for building responsive experimental
arrangements; and as a basic theoretical tool in the simulation of complex
systems.
Much of the impact is still only potential yet sufficient evidence is at hand
to support the judgment that information technology will have an impact
on the life sciences as significant as the technologies derived from thermo-
dynamics did in an earlier period. It will do this, not by replacing other
technologies, but by permeating them and becoming part of each attempt
to advance the life sciences.
An understanding of the role of information technology requires some
description of its basic nature and power. The digital computer is, in
essence, a machine for following instructions. In the past, a machine
merely responded to the setting of a switch or the position of a lever, but a
computer responds to a language: this is the revolutionary development.
In processing information, the computer deals with a collection of spe-
cialized symbols that can be distinguished, compared, copied, remembered,
and formed into expressions. What gives meaning to these symbols is the
set of processing instructions. In principle, an astonishingly small set of
primitive instructons suffices for information processing, but a typical com-
puter can have scores of different instructions. In either case, the elemen-
tary built-in instructions can be concatenated into long sequences. Only a
machine for processing information can obey a language and, conversely,
only such a machine can form new instuctions for itself and thus change its
mode of operation in intricate ways.
The capability of a computer is measured by the amount of information
it can store, the number of basic instructions it can perform per second,
and the reliability with which it operates. The first large commercial
computer, which appeared in 1951, did about 4,000 additions per second and
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had 1,000 10-digit numbers stored and accessible at high speed. Today's
biggest machine does about a million additions per second and has over
100,000 10-digit numbers accessible at high speed. Thus, in 10 years speed
has been increased by a factor of 250, and memory by a factor of 100.
Reliability has increased correspondingly, so that today's machines run
with billions of operations between errors. Even without the further
advances that are sure to come, machines are already powerful enough
to bring about several revolutions in the application of information
technology to the life sciences.
The figures quoted represent pure potential. For a computer to do
sophisticated things it must have a sophisticated instructor. Fortunately,
paralleling the increase in capacity there has been a growth of know-how
in instructing the machine, or "programing." In areas of significance to
the life sciences, an extraordinary range of numerical computations can be
made with great facility: standard statistical analyses, matrix inversions,
spectra and cross spectra, auto- and cross-correlation of time series, the
numerical solution of ordinary and differential equations, and so on.
Other operations have been carried out in a few experimental programs
and will soon become routine: the recognition of fixed type fonts for direct
input of printed material, the simulation of neural networks, and the
extraction of meaningful data from background "noise." Speech recogni-
tion, inductive inference, and language translation are in exploratory stages.
The price paid for the general-purpose computer is the headache of
writing sequences of tens of thousands of elementary instructions. The
tedium involved in instructing computers has prompted the development
of automatic programing procedures and languages whereby the machine
assumes some of the burden of instructing itself. With numerical problems
the results are often impressive. When it comes to the manipulation of
more complex symbols the obstacles are of a more fundamental nature.
What processes are useful in analytically manipulating linguistic expressions?
in discovering proofs to theroems? in reasoning? As long as we are unable
to formulate these problems effectively it is not easy to instruct the computer
and still more difficult to instruct the machine to instruct itself.
The pressure to develop new instructions must come from potential
users who have a clearly expressed need. Almost certainly, the most con-
venient programing for the life sciences will reflect some of the individualities
of the language of biology--individualities that can be unearthed only by
the life scientist in the course of actual programing and experimenting.
The need for effective and fairly rapid two-way communication with the
machine is a major stumbling block. In all but a few instances today, 24
hours or more intervene between the gathering of experimental data and the
retrieval of the results of their analysis. Such delays make impossible the
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adequate incorporation of the computer into experimentation. Either we
must learn how to let many users have almost immediate access to a single
large computer or we must supply each experimenter with a device of his
own.
Many difficulties arise at the point of data generation. Original data must
be converted and stored, too often in written form, and then must undergo
yet another conversion (usually manual) to a form acceptable to the
remotely located machine.
Output is variably useful and appropriate. High-speed printers, which
are enjoying a widespread vogue at present, can emit several full-size books
per hour, but if our computer output is the product of very many minutes
of printer time, the uncomfortable probability is that we are misusing the
computer, or at least formulating our questions inefficiently. Other
techniques of display are not so far advanced, most computers lacking
even an adequate cathode-ray scope for producing and copying graphs.
These difficulties in communication and access are by no means incurable
and are attracting much attention. For example, though no such system
exists today, real progress can be expected from a proposed system involving
small satellite computers that communicate intermittently with a large
central computer. Another move toward solving these problems is to con-
struct instruments for elementary processing, editing, and conversion of
data. The fundamental point to be made is that the "new information
technology" is not just a euphemism for the large high-speed digital com-
puter. It implies the ability to construct processing devices in response to
specific demands, and in combination with whatever other techniques are
appropriate.
The life sciences are still relatively remote from the computer. Con-
sistently, the barriers to use of the computer are the bother and infrequency
of communicative encounters and the fact that most biological observations
are not naturally adapted to the limited means of input and output now
available. The basic need is for adaptation of the technology to the
life scientist's unique requirements, such as programing systems that fit nat-
urally the problems and concepts of biology, and advances that will permit
the scientist and the machine to communicate back and forth while an
experiment is in progress.
These advances will come about only from the pressures that arises as life
scientists try to use new techniques in the course of actual experimentation
and fieldwork. The state of the art can be traced directly to efforts of the
various groups?physicists, statisticians, businessmen?who have needed
information processing devices badly enough to grapple with the problems
of using them. Experience in the life sciences cannot be different.
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Part II. LIFE SCIENCES TECHNOLOGIES: AREAS OF
NEED AND PROMISE
There are many procedural differences between technologies in the life
sciences and in the physical sciences. The simplicity and elegance the
physicist expected to find and which often served as criteria for the "truth"
of a generalization are usually foreign to the study of complex interacting
systems. For the biologist, observation and recording are often more difficult
and often more subjective.
While traditionally the physical sciences have been indispensable for
dissecting life processes into their physical and chemical reactions, they
have offered little to the biologist whose principal concern is what is most
peculiar to life, the behavior of the animal as "a whole," and the phenomena
of growth, differentiation, and evolution. Recent developments in informa-
tion technology and in the various technologies developed by the life
sciences themselves have begun to erase the earlier distinctions. More and
more parameters of living systems are coming under the sort of precise
observation and control that have long been the hallmark of investigation
in the physical sciences. In the following section, attention is given to
specific subject areas in which the new technologies offer special promise.
Health Record Systems
The application of computer technology to the recording, storage, and
analysis of data collected in the course of observing and treating large num-
bers of ill people promises to advance our understanding of the cause,
course, and control of disease. The need for a general-purpose health
information technology stems in large part from increasingly rapid changes
in the pattern of illness in the United States and from equally significant
changes in the way medicine is practiced. The acute infectious diseases
from which the patient either recovered or died have largely given place
to chronic disorders which run an extremely variable course dependent on
many factors both in the environment and within the patient himself. The
varying degree of disability allows and sometimes requires the sufferer to
participate in the constant internal migration which is such a striking feature
of modern life. The result is that records of medical observations and
therapeutic procedures are compiled over long periods of time and at many
different places.
The bulk of the recorded material is further increased by the complexity
of modern medical treatment. Scientific advance has made it possible and
relevant to observe many more variations in the functioning of the body
and has required the distribution of the medical task among numerous
medical specialists and technicians.
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As the public has recently seen, there is a pressing need for evaluating
new ways of treating disease. Many current therapeutic procedures have
far greater power than those available a decade or two ago, but this new
power is two edged. For example, a wonderworking drug may on occasion
produce illnesses and malformations far more serious than the condition
it is supposed to cure. The recent history of the introduction of thalidomide
is only an unusually dramatic example of what may happen when any
effective compound comes into widespread use without the most careful
sort of preliminary appraisals. Some unfortunate side effects will always
be found, but their devastation could be kept to a minimum by devising
careful methods of distribution to trained experimenters and more compre-
hensive methods of observation. The new information technologies would
appear ideally suited to prompt recording, analyzing, and reporting of any
untoward effects.
Within any sizable community there are numerous administrative organi-
zations charged with providing health services. It is not uncommon for a
single patient to be cared for by a large number of agencies in a single city,
and workers in any one agency usually cannot find out about the activities
of others; sometimes they even fail to learn that other agencies are active
at all.
Modern data-processing techniques make it possible to assemble all the
necessary information about all the patients in a given geographical or
administrative area in one place with rapid access for all authorized health
and welfare agencies. Such a system would produce an immediate and
highly significant improvement in medical care with a simultaneous reduc-
tion in direct dollar costs of manual record processing and an even greater
economy in professional time now wasted in duplicating tests and procedures.
Even greater benefits will accrue from the use of such a file as a source
of information for research in epidemiology and on the natural history of
disease within individuals. But the value of such material for research
is critically dependent on the coverage and accuracy of the original data.
Much of the information in existing hospital records is unfortunately
gravely defective both in quantity and quality. Later on we will have
something to say about the development of automatic methods of recording
laboratory analyses and certain elements of the physical examination, but
even these promising possibilities cannot compensate entirely for human
error in the collection of the all-important data on the origin and early
course of any given illness. Here, one can only urge that medical schools
redouble their efforts to train physicians in accurate methods of observation
and recording. It may also be pointed out that the existence of machine
methods for data analysis should serve as a stimulus to everyone responsible
for the original data collection, much as the invention of the motortruck
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has required the truckdriver to master skills and exhibit habits of sobriety
which were largely unknown to coachmen and stage coach drivers.
Epidemiology has usually been associated with the study of the spread
of an infection through a population, the tracking clown of the causative
agent, the examination of the interplay of factors determining natural
resistance, and the appraisal of preventive and therapeutic measures. Simi-
lar methodology is now being extended to noninfectious diseases, such as
mental illness, arteriosclerosis, and cancer. Indeed, epkiemiology has proved
its value in drawing attention to possible causative agents in a number of
important diseases. Most dramatic perhaps is the association of tobacco
smoking with the current high incidence of coronary heart disease and of
certain kinds of cancer. The statistical study of large numbers of cases may
be essential in assessing the relative importance with which many variables
appeal to be involved in the etiology and pathogenesis of chronic diseases.
Human genetics can be viewed as a special case of epidemiological study
in which genetic material is the controlling variable. Except in the simplest
cases, genetic epidemiology requires the accumulation of data for several
generations on related individuals. Occasionally, important questions can
be answered by analyzing data on normal individuals and their living rela-
tives. One simple example is the determination of mutation rates by
observing deviations from the expected inheritance of normal blood groups.
An extensive study of this sort, which depends on the recording of the blood
groups of mothers and their children, is underway in Italy.
The importance of improving our knowledge of human genetics is self-
evident, not only because of problems of chronic illness but also because of
the questions arising out of our ignorance of human mutation rates and
the influence on them of radiation and other mutagenic agents.
The collection of demographic data on which epidemiological studies are
based has long been recognized as an obligation of government. The
recently established National Health Survey enlarges this obligation to meet
modern requirements. But the Survey needs to enlist the cooperation of
many groups outside Government to make its efforts better known and
more effective. Even more comprehensive efforts?involving more agencies
(the Census Bureau and the Social Security Agency, for instance) and
more sophisticated technology, especially in obtaining and recording basic
health data?will be necessary in order to realize the potential benefits of
epidemiological studies.
Diagnosis and Prognosis
That computers might aid physicians in the diagnosis of difficult cases
has occurred to many physical scientists familiar with the capacity and speed
of these instruments. We think that efforts to explore this potential should
be more widely and actively supported.
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It must be remembered, however, that the practice of clinical medicine
is a combination of components which are measurable with components
which are intangible. Communication between the physician and patient
is so beset by such intangibles and the interpretation of critical histories
involving so many personal judgments that the use of machine methods in
the management of individual patients is likely to remain limited in the
foreseeable future.
Perhaps the most important clinical potentiality lies in the ability of data
processing techniques to provide analyzed information in the natural history
of diseases in relation to varying constitutional and environmental factors.
Such analyses are especially important for the understanding and manage-
ment of chronic conditions in which the diagnosis is not closely coupled to
prognosis or an understanding of etiology.
The prognosis for multiple sclerosis, for example, varies from as little
as 1 year to 30 or even 40 years. On the basis of current knowledge it
appears likely that coronary heart disease probably does not stem from a
single identifiable cause but is rather the outcome of a complex interaction
between genetic constitution, diet, and habits of life.
In such conditions, the physician needs to know the long-term relation-
ship between the individual variables he observes now and the future course
of the illness. Particularly important is the ability to predict the changes in
course that might be expected in response to any one of several different
therapeutic regimes. Physicians have long realized that different patients
with the same disease follow different courses and respond differently to a
given therapy.
Conventional methods of recording and storing the relevant information
for solving the problems of prognosis and therapy have been inadequate,
but mechanical data-processing now provides the means for making complex
analyses. The difficulties in designing a useful system should not be under-
estimated. The mere recording of the necessary data in processable form
will tax the capacity of the largest available computers. Much more
difficult will be the myriads of decisions about what to record and the
devising of accurate methods for recording it. While all this is going on
still other workers must produce analytic programs involving logical
problems of the greatest challenge. Finally, and most formidable of all,
there is the human problem of persuading practicing physicians to change
procedures and habits of mind which have proven themselves over centuries.
It is likely that the larger the body of data accessible to the machine the
more useful it will be. An integrated nationwide system should be the
ultimate objective, but the task of designing such a system is too enormous
to be grasped at once. The problem must be divided into a progression
of limited objectives, the initial steps of which need to be clearly defined.
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Automatic Recording of Elementary Health Data
The utility of data processing and retrieval for the purposes discussed is
dependent on the accuracy of the information originally obtained, the form
in which it is recorded, and its pertinence to some stated objective. Now
that effective processing of health data is on its way to becoming a reality
it is more important than ever to find ways of (1) reducing observer and
instrument errors, (2) standardizing the recording of observations, and
(3) establishing in advance the usefulness andj appropriateness of the data
to be recorded.
At present, progress in the methodology of data collection and recording
is lagging behind progress in the machinery of data processing. Automatic
recording can both reduce the cost of recording elementary data and im-
prove its accuracy. Already in the pilot stage, for example, is a device for
recording the electrocardiogram, expressing it in digital form, carrying out
the usual set of measurements, and comparing the results with a set of
standards to provide a complete analysis and diagnosis. Less far along in
development is a machine for carrying out all the standard clinical chemi-
cal analyses on a single small sample of blood with greater reliability and
at a lower cost than is attainable by standard procedures.
Development of these promising methods and their extension to pro-
cedures for monitoring blood pressure and flow, the activities of the intestinal
tract, skin temperature, and the electrical activity of the brain depend on
collaboration between physicians, biologists, engineers, and mathematicians.
The final section of this report makes specific recommendation for facili-
tating such cooperation. The emphasis here is on the importance of devel-
oping instrumentation as rapidly as possible to improve the quality and
standardize the form of medical records for mechanical processing; to
improve the quality and decrease the cost of medical care; and to extend
scientific medicine to areas which now almost entirely lack the trained
technicians to carry out laboratory studies in the old-fashioned way.
Biology of Behavior
Recent advances in the life sciences are establishing a base for under-
standing, predicting, and controlling the behavior of organisms. Progress
is uneven, and the accumulated knowledge does not fit into a distinct pattern.
Until recently, in fact, there has been little contact among the approaches
made by several disciplines to the understanding of how and why animals
behave as they do.
It is possible to discern a series of bridges between the tropisms of the
biologist, the nerve impulses and reflexes of the physiologist, and the cog-
nitions, perceptions, and memories of the psychologist. Somewhat to one
side of this continuum, but by no means out of touch with it, is the develop-
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of getting one first-rate one has long been the plague of "interdisciplinary"
programs.
Second, we recommend that existing graduate and postgraduate
fellowships be administered in such a way as to encourage specialists
in one field to acquire some experience, or possibly complete expert-
ness, in another. The continuous type of support developed by the
National Institutes of Health will be required.
MEMBERS OF THE PANEL
Dr. Robert Morison, Chairman, Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Joseph V. Brady, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
Dr. Paul M. Fitts, University of Michigan
Dr. Keith F. Killam, Stanford University
Dr. Frederick J. Moore, University of Southern California
Dr. Allen Newell, Carnegie Institute of Technology
Dr. Murray D. Rosenberg, Rockefeller Institute
Professor Walter Rosenblith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Oliver G. Selfridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. B. F. Skinner, Harvard University
Consultants
Dr. Stephen Aldrich, Central Intelligence Agency
Dr. Jesse Orlansky, Institute for Defense Analyses
Dr. Herbert Pollock, Institute for Defense Analyses
Technical Assistant
Dr. James B. Hartgering, Office of the Special Assistant for Science and
Technology
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.1963
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is needed. Under present rules and regulations such subcontracting is
difficult to carry out effectively. Accordingly,
The Panel recommends that Government agencies responsible for sup-
port of the life sciences be encouraged to foresee meds for new types of
instruments, and to support the development of such instruments both
by direct contracts with industry and, where appropriate, by allowing
grantee institutions to subcontract for such scrvices.
Manpower and the Training of Scientists
Changes in traditional administrative arrangements, the provision of
laboratory buildings, and so on, can provide a suitable environment for
research, but the point of focus should always be the relatively small number
of first-class human minds that will formulate the proper questions, develop
the necessary apparatus, and manipulate the dials in the experiments. A
question of first importance, then, is how to increase the number and
quality of the scientists who can work comfortably and effectively in areas
that require the synthesis of concepts and technologies derived from very
diverse fields. Some few men will always be found who have mastered at
least the elements of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and one or another
of the special areas of the life sciences sufficiently to do the job of synthesis
by themselves, but they will always be rare. Such individuals are capable
of leaps into the future which provide the starting places for new sciences.
The Panel has two suggestions to encourage the development of personnel
with the requisite capabilities.
First, we recommend a program of advance fellowships to enable cer-
tain individuals already thoroughly familiar with one discipline to be
trained in another.
This program need not be a large one. Presumably, it could fit easily
into the present fellowship programs of the National Science Foundation
and the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, several such fellowships
have already been given under existing arrangements. On the whole, it
is probably wise to restrict such opportunities to individuals of outstanding
quality. Anything less than the most careful selection presents the danger
of attracting candidates who are failing to establish satisfactory careers
in their original field and who nourish the hope that they will do better
if they apply their partial mastery of one field to the problems of another.
This effort to add two separate second-rate qualities together in the hope
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our universities in the development of modern research programs. The need
is particularly critical for interdisciplinary groups, which have no depart-
ments to champion their needs. Contributions to building funds are at
least as constructive and as much needed as are large research and training
grants. Therefore:
We recommend increased flexibility in appropriations by Government
agencies for construction and maintenance of university buildings for
both teaching and research.
The Role of Industry
The panel sees two important roles for industry in the support of the life
sciences. One is the development and sale of general- and special-purpose
instruments. The other is research in areas closely related to the develop-
ment of man-machine systems, such as large data-processing systems, or in
areas that supplement the work in universities, institutes, and Government
laboratories.
Under our system of private enterprise, the manufacture and distribution
of standard scientific apparatus has been left almost entirely to private
industrial establishments, while the design and development of new equip-
ment is shared in a rather complicated way between industry and nonprofit
research organizations. In general, industry is reluctant to embark on any
project which does not promise to yield a return on investment within, at
most, 5 years. The many relatively small companies that have recently
grown up to exploit the development of new ideas, especially in the field of
electronics, are, of course, strictly limited in their ability to support research
with their own funds.
The Panel is convinced that both large and small industrial organizations
have an important contribution to make toward the development of special-
ized apparatus for the new era in the life sciences. The policy adopted by
the military services, of supporting necessary research on new equipment
through contracts to industry, should be followed in the areas of life science
equipment.
In some cases a particular new device can be easily foreseen to have a
wide applicability?a machine for doing clinical biochemistry, for example.
Contracts for the development of such items could appropriately be placed
directly by a central agency such as the National Institutes of Health. In
other instances involving the development of special-purpose instruments,
the responsibility for initiating and supervising the work might better be
delegated to a university department or research institute deeply engaged
in the particular biological problem for the solution of which the new device
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salary, and tenure should be based on the individual's standing in his own
field without regard for his professional competence in the nominal discipline
represented by the department employing him. Ideally, personnel of this
sort should be supported by the free funds of the university and not by
outside grants.
The panel recognizes that many objections have been raised to contribu-
tions by the National Government to the free funds of universities. Never-
theless, in the belief that establishment of interdisciplinary appointments in
certain areas of the life sciences is highly important to the national interest,
The panel recommends the use of Federal funds to support university
appointments in such areas, with due provision for long-term support
that would insure academic tenure where the latter is appropriate. As
a possible, though perhaps less desirable, alternative, it suggests inclu-
sion of such interdisciplinary positions in the present "career investi-
gator" program of the National Institutes of Health.
The number of small- to moderate-sized interdisciplinary groups that
might deserve support in universities during the next 5 years is not known,
but most of the Nation's universities and colleges, including separate medi-
cal and engineering schools, could justify support of a unit in at least one
of the subject areas, and at least half might wish to support units in two or
more areas. Such a program should start in a small way, and grow.
Many existing interdisciplinary groups will need expanded laboratory
facilities sometime during the next 5 years, and new groups will require
extensive facilities. All the universities in the country are hard pressed to
provide new buildings for housing and instructing a rapidly expanding
number of students. Demands for research space have increased at an
even greater rate, in response to the ever-growing complexity of research
activity and the forced draft provided by greatlYI expanded research grants
from Government and other sources. Until rec'ently the universities have
been expected to finance such construction from their own resources. Funds
for building purposes are now provided through the National Institutes of
Health in modest amounts and in a more restrictive way through the
National Science Foundation. The matching provisions required in the
distribution of these funds frequently prevent their use where the need is
greatest, and no provision is included for maintenance. In regard to the
latter point, some of the institutions which have ;been most enterprising in
trying to respond to the Nation's needs for new university buildings now find
that their maintenance budgets have increased so much that they must
sharply curtail their plans for future expansion.
We feel strongly that lack of adequate funds for the construction and
maintenance of buildings is one of the principal financial problems facing
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computation center greatly superior to one designed from purely a priori
considerations.
The third concern about independent centers is their effect on the next
generation of research workers. It is often impossible for such organizations
to develop sound graduate training programs of their own, and by their
very existence they tend to draw some of the best teachers away from univer-
sities, and thus away from students.
The Role of the University
One of the most likely places for productive interdisciplinary research
groups to grow is in the larger universities, where ordinarily most of the
important disciplines are represented and where there are opportunities for
contacts between men in different departments. Furthermore, a university
is accustomed to supporting work directed at long-term objectives. Unfor-
tunately, the classical structure of most universities is not well adapted for
encouraging interdisciplinary studies. Specialists in one field who elect
to work on problems originating in another department may find difficulty
in maintaining academic status in either. Clearly, the support of such work
requires administrative flexibility and inventiveness in the development of
university policies that will provide the proper setting for research, new
appointments in developing fields, and changing combinations of disciplines
to attack new problems.
One mechanism for circumventing the departmental structure is the
establishment of "university appointments" that carry academic tenure and
all the usual perquisites but allow the individual to work outside his depart-
ment. So far this procedure has been limited to a few top-level appoint-
ments in a handful of outstanding universities, but, to judge from the
results, further experimentation is desirable. At present, however, few uni-
versities command the funds to provide this type of program on a substan-
tial scale.
Another mechanism is to create new institutes or departments within
universities. Such organizations could share many of the defects of inde-
pendent institutions. If, as is usually the case, the institutes draw a substan-
tial part of their support from outside the regular university budget, the
members of such groups are frequently regarded, both by themselves and
by other members of the faculty, as occupying a special status?a fact that
defeats rather than encourages cooperative work. Further, overemphasis
on the research function will lead to the neglect of teaching.
While these handicaps can be overcome by administrative foresight and
adequate, long-term funds, it may often be easier and just as effective, in
the promotion of interdisciplinary work, to encourage existing departments
to add personnel with the necessary qualifications. In such cases, status,
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At present the various elements in this complex process are pursued in
more or less complete isolation from one another and receive their financial
support from entirely different sources.
We therefore recommend that serious attention be given to setting
up a suitable administrative mechanism to encourage and finance
coordinated research on the process of learning and the application
of such knowledge to education.
Interdisciplinary Institutes or Centers.
We take a conservative view of attempts to solve the problem of inter-
disciplinary research at one blow. We have heard many suggestions for
embarking at once on the creation of large, relatively independent centers
for biological computation, bioengineering, and the like. We favor an
orderly growth in close relation to existing institutions. The ultimate
size and composition should emerge as a result of natural evolution.
There are at least three reasons for this view. In the first place, pro-
ductive associations among scientists usually result from internal pulls
rather than from external pressures. Almost always the original contacts
grow out of mutual interest in a problem whose general outline has already
been defined by one or more members of the group. The cooperation of
others is then elicited through discussion of the pbssibilities. A key element
is the willingness of all participants to accept redefinition of the original
problem in terms of the additional disciplines represented by the new arrivals.
Interchanges of opinion and attitudes of this sort involve an intimacy and
mutual trust that cannot be created quickly or by administrative fiat.
A second reason for caution is the fact that few people have satisfactorily
thought through the proper functions of such institutes. We are reason-
ably clear about the sorts of objectives that the life sciences may reach in
the next several decades, but we have little more than an impression of
how they are going to get there. For example, it seems certain that his-
tories can be taken and physical and laboratory examinations can be made
on patients in such a way that the results can be fed into a computer which
will predict the future course of the individual's illness in response to a
variety of treatments and do this far more accurately than is possible now.
But not a single element in this complex process is available now. Primary
emphasis must be given to working out the individual steps, and very prob-
ably this initial stage should be carried out by relatively small units.
There should be some contact among these units, but their association
should be loose enough to allow each one considerable choice of method and
direction. As solutions are reached, the need for new and more complex
associations will become clearer and may lead to establishment of a medical
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and much planning. A few pilot studies are already underway, but they
lack adequate financing and proper coordination with one another. Many
of the relevant administrative groups that must ultimately be brought into
the plan are scarcely aware of the possibilities. At present, the development
even of pilot studies is in danger of falling between two stools. Research
panels tend to brush them off as "not research," and public health groups
dismiss them as insufficiently related to practice.
We recommend the establishment of a special standing committee or
panel, located within the Department of Health, Education, and Wel-
fare, to guide the development of a general-purpose health record
system. This committee should broadly represent both the research and
practical aspects of this problem, keep in close touch with new develop-
ments, acquaint the relevant agencies with the possibilities as they
arise, and recommend allocation of funds for an orderly development
of the new field.
Such a group would be primarily concerned with encouragement and
support of agencies outside the Federal Government, but it should
maintain close relationship with a similar panel, perhaps set up under
the Federal Council for Science and Technology, to coordinate the
efforts of Government agencies, the Department of Defense, the Vet-
erans' Administration, and the United States Public Health Service,
with responsibilities for the medical care of large numbers of people.
In the near future the sums needed should not be very large in comparison
with the total spent on health, care, and research (perhaps a few million
dollars per year) . Much larger amounts will be necessary, particularly for
capital equipment, as the system moves from the pilot phase to the stage
of practical operation. Maintenance and operational costs, however, will
be considerably less than those incurred by the increasingly inadequate
pencil-paper, filing-cabinet, messenger-boy system we have at present.
Research on Learning and the Effectiveness of Education
The devising and applying of new technologies to education holds great
promise. To realize this promise, much more research and development
is needed. Research in the basic processes of learning should be brought
more closely in touch with development of new classroom methods. Spe-
cialists in the content of the disciplines to be imparted must be brought
into close cooperation with those who are primarily concerned with teach-
ing, especially at the elementary and secondary level. Particularly im-
portant, perhaps, is the development of much better methods than we
have now for evaluating the actual results of different teaching methods
in practical classroom situations.
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Our major recommendation is simple:
That the evolution of the life sciences toward increased involvement
with the new technologies be recognized and its course facilitated.
We would first draw attention to the importance of providing support
for planning and feasibility studies. Such studies might be at any one of
several levels?the planning of a university unit for a computation center
to be used in solving specified life sciences problems, the consideration of
alternate designs for a major piece of apparatus, or the formulation of an
interdisciplinary group.
Although most institutions have one or more persons versed in one or
another facet of such problems, any new venture wilLI require skills not
available locally. Planning grants should provide, among other things,
for the expenses of visiting consultants and for some of the local group to
visit other institutions. Too often, private foundations and Government
agencies have been reluctant to make grants for planning or feasibility
studies on the grounds that these do not fall within the definition of
"research" under which such groups are supposed to operate. This atti-
tude led the late Alan Gregg to remark that itL is usually easier to get a
million dollars with which to do something than $10,000 with which to find
out what would be worth doing. We recommend that advisory groups and
research administrators be encouraged to support planning and feasibility
studies, to be carried out by full-time teams of scientists and engineers.
These projects could be implemented through appropriate grants or con-
tracts to universities, private research groups, or industry.
Since so much of the promised technological revolution in the life
sciences seems to depend on appropriate exploitation of computer tech-
niques, we have given special thought to ways and means of giving both
the present and the oncoming generation of biologists a "fingertip" familiar-
ity with these new devices. We strongly endorse the plans of the National
Science Foundation to make appropriate facilities available on a generous
scale, and we recommend that the program be enlarged to include those
liberal arts colleges with an interest in developing he ability to utilize com-
puters effectively for educational purposes.
Health Records
In the health sciences, a general-purpose record system would serve to
improve the quality, the planning, and administration of health services;
to help in evaluation of comparative therapies; and to forward research on
epidemiology and human genetics, and problems of diagnosis and especially
on the natural-history of disease.
The development of such a system on a countrywide basis is a long-term
objective that can only be reached after experimentation on a limited scale
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Among contemporary stressful environments the space capsule commands
overwhelming topical interest. The capsule constitutes, as the submarine
did and still does, a special instance of the everyday problem of adapting
machines to men, and vice versa. Considerable progress has been made in
designing levers, dials, and other displays to fit human sensory and motor
capacities and in training men in the new skills required by new machines.
Man finds it difficult to make the adjustments required by the incessant
transfer to machines of what were regarded as peculiarly human skills and
capacities.
Massive technological change affects, however, not only man's interaction
with his machines, but also the reciprocal relations between man and the
world of men in which he lives. Automation and the concomitant pressures
demand that we employ our best available techniques for analyzing the
changing human condition and that we dare experiment?albeit under
proper safeguards?in order to preserve human worth and dignity. We
can hardly expect to attain this conservative goal unless we are willing to
reexamine traditional value systems and to rethink and even redesign the
functioning of human communities.
Part III. PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION
The preceding sections have outlined several areas in the life sciences
which promise important advances. If society is to make the most of the
benefits of scientific knowledge, it must take a conscious responsibility for
the ordering of these advances. More effort must be made to foresee the
results of new technologies before they burst upon us unannounced. More
effort must also be made to develop new kinds of knowledge so that the
new technologies can be better fitted to society's needs and purposes.
The subjects we have selected as illustrative examples involve close
cooperation by individual scientists representing different disciplines. We
feel that such cooperation is both desirable and urgent. While the necessary
cooperative effort can scarcely be forced, neither can it be expected to arise
fortuitously.
Fortunately, the basic mechanisms for the support of science in our
country have been developed from a broad base. The young physical,
biological, or behavioral scientist is receiving a sound education. The
amazing advances within individual disciplines attest to the validity of this,
but also make us impatient as it is clear that even more rapid advances
could be made in areas of critical importance to our national welfare. We
need to find a workable approach to the solution of problems requiring
contributions of more than a single discipline.
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ments may well lead to disillusionment and a reaction that will block later
acceptance of effective programs.
Admittedly, teaching devices can only contribute to a part of the educa-
tional process; how large a part no one can tell. They are emphasized
because of their apparent effectiveness in certain circumstances, and even
more because the method grows out of a large body of carefully controlled
biological experiments on learning. Time-honored educational techniques
and such recent innovations as movies, filmstrips, and television rest on a
much less firm experimental base. Indeed, it is embarrassing to discover
how little reliable information there is about the relative effectiveness of
any teaching methods as employed in actual classroom situations. Much
more research is needed both on the basic nature of human learning and
on the practical problems of teaching.
Problems of Special Environments
Classical ecology has given us qualitative descriptions of the way in which
living organisms exchange water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and a number
of other inorganic elements with the environment and of the means by
which some species adjust their numbers to the existing means of support.
Much is known about competition between species, the effects of crowding
on fertility, dynamics, and cellular ecology, but quantitative work is in its
infancy. A few workers have begun to apply modern instrumentation to the
study of homogeneous groups of cells in tissue culture to control the compo-
sition of the substratum and the physical characteristics of the environment.
The scattered results suggest that extension of these precisely controlled
observations can tell us much about how cells interact with one another,
differentiate in order to perform specialized functions, and form themselves
into organ systems. As a byproduct, artificial cultivation of unicellular
organisms has provided highly sensitive methods for assaying certain essen-
tial food elements in very dilute solutions.
Far too little is known about the interaction in complex mixed communi-
ties such as those that occupy an isolated arm of the sea,. A given species
may at one time contribute essential food elements for consumption by other
members of the community, or it may at another time protect its living
space by excreting a specific antibiotic. Since the number of species is very
large, the permutations and combinations run far beyond conventional
methods of analysis. Examination of such systems is important, not only
because of their intrinsic theoretical interest, but also because of the possi-
bility of increasing the production of food substances and biological products
useful to man. New technologies should permit continuous monitoring and
control of isolated environments. Once the significant parameters are
defined, ecological studies should prove amenable to computer simulation
techniques.
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now possible to devise precisely defined situations in which experimental
animals or, in some cases, human subjects can be made to produce new
behavior patterns with a high degree of precision and at quite unprecedented
speeds.
Beginning with such simple cases as the training of a rat to press a
lever in order to gain the "reward" of a small bit of food, methods have
been devised for manipulating the total environmental situation in such
a way as to produce behavioral repertoires of great complexity. Techno-
logical advances in the analysis of behavior under total and continuous
environmental control have had rather dramatic consequences. Behavior
can be more accurately shaped and maintained for longer periods of time
than was possible with conventional techniques. More complex situations
can be established, and with considerably less time and effort. For example,
a recent experimental report describes a sustained performance of two
monkeys under complex conditions of choice and discrimination on a
1-hour-work, 1-hour-rest schedule 24 hours a day for approximately 2 years.
The increased experimental control afforded by these advances in behavioral
technology has made it possible to analyze the complex interactions between
two or more organisms.
The concepts and principles of this type of experimental analysis of
behavior are stated in terms of environmental variables. By confining
itself to objective variables, such an analysis maintains the closest possible
relations with other experimental sciences dealing with the same variables.
Teaching Machines and Programs
Techniques for continuous shaping of behavior by reinforcement are
now used to teach human beings. They appear to facilitate the learning
process and to save teaching time. The most obvious place for such methods
is in the learning of factual material; for example, the multiplication table
or certain routine industrial operations. Less obvious, but apparently quite
real, is their effectiveness in imparting certain kinds of theoretical knowledge.
It is scarcely necessary to emphasize the importance of any method for
improving teaching effectiveness. The most advanced countries are seri-
ously short of capable teachers. The newly emerging nations are straining
national budgets to provide perhaps a third, maybe as much as a half, of
their children with teachers who themselves have scarcely mastered the
elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
It is not surprising that any promising innovation in method is grasped
with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the construction of an effective teaching
program demands painstaking effort and close cooperation by experts in
the theory of the method, and scholars thoroughly familiar with the subject.
Materials prepared and distributed without regard for these critical require
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scribing the changes in operational terms have been opened?some precise
enough to guide the synthetic chemist in the production of new compounds
with more of the desirable and fewer of the undesirable effects.
The new substances are powerful tools for analyzing the function of the
nervous system and promise much for the control of certain forms of mental
illness. It appears, however, that much recent work has been undertaken
in the search for quick results, while too little has been directed toward more
fundamental understanding. In addition, behavioral techniques for meas-
uring more exactly, in animals and men, the changes produced by these
drugs, need to be improved.
Genetic Background of Behavior
Although much "common sense" observation and a good deal of scattered
scientific analysis point to the importance of genetic factors in the determina-
tion of behavior, this field of study continues to lack cohesiveness and vigor.
Here and there a psychiatrist has studied the family trees of patients with
mental illness, a psychologist has developed a strain of highly aggressive or
unusually shy mice, or a biologist has observed the assortment of behavioral
characteristics in different strains of dogs. Some penetrating studies have
been made by workers interested in the interaction of inborn and environ-
mental factors in the development of reproductive and migratory behavior
in birds. Much of this study has been carried out by zoologists in relative
isolation from investigators interested in behavior. Ini erestingly, much of
the financial support for the work on animal orientation and migration has
come from the military services because of their concern with navigation.
Many behavioral scientists are preoccupied with the role of environment
if not actually prejudiced against the consideration of genetic elements in
the determination of complex behavior. The field as a whole is in need of
more cooperative studies involving techniques drawn from all the relevant
disciplines.
Learning
One of the most characteristic and at the same time most puzzling capaci-
ties of higher organisms is their ability to elaborate new patterns of adaptive
behavior in response to outside stimuli. During the present century many
investigators have sought to elucidate this capacity in a series of specialized
experimental situations. Depending in part on the experimental procedures
employed and in part on the school of thought represented by the experi-
menter, the results have been described in terms of mernory, learning, or
conditioned reflexes.
Although the mechanism of the process still largely eludes us, each
school of thought has contributed considerably to an understanding of the
conditions under which "learnings" occur. The overall result is that it is
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generated by the normal brain. Computer techniques are quite capable
of solving the problems of analysis and correlation posed by such data, but
in most instances produce their results several days after the original
experiment has been completed. What the physiologist needs is equipment
designed to meet his requirements for analyzed data in time to allow him
to alter his procedures during the course of a single experiment. Devel-
opment of such apparatus has proceeded far enough to demonstrate that
ultimate success is within the reach of existing technology.
No matter how refined our methods for gathering and analyzing neuro-
physiological data become, they now seem unlikely to result in mathematical
formulas for behavior similar to those that "explain" the physical world.
But such data should provide the raw material for advanced simulation
techniques. Indeed, some of the most intellectually stimulating work
going on at present seeks to explore the processes of man's own mind.
There are several approaches. One can try to find out the actual processes a
man uses to solve a problem or compose a poem and then simulate those par-
ticular processes, judging one's success by direct comparison of the results.
One can also examine other processes, such as the recognition of visual or
auditory patterns, and try to construct a process that will produce the same
results. Even when they are successful in reproducing the result of a given
form of mental activity, such simulations provide no assurance that the
intervening processes are the same in simulator and simulated. Neverthe-
less, such work should prove a rich source of hypotheses for understanding
processes that, until now, have remained discouragingly obscure. Con-
versely, the probability is worth noting that, as the neurophysiologist learns
more about the neural networks involved in perception, learning, and
memory, he may provide useful suggestions to those interested in designing
computers to perform ever more difficult and complex tasks. To a large
extent, this two-way interaction will require that the languages used by the
different fields of science coincide to a much greater degree than they do
now. The dialog is being aided by the digital computer, but there is a long
way to go.
Neuropharmacology
Man has sought for centuries to alter his feelings and capabilities by the
ingestion of alcohol, opium, or caffeine, but only recently has it become
possible to describe behavioral effects precisely enough for controlled experi-
mentation. This development coincides with the production of a range of
new substances by synthetic chemistry. We can now identify classes of
compounds that allay or induce anxiety, increase or decrease depression,
induce or delay sleep, and produce confusions of thought closely analogous
to those that occur in psychotic breakdown. Admittedly, however, instru-
ments for measuring such phenomena are primitive. Promising leads de-
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ment of methods for studying the genetic and environmental determinants
of social interactions in insects, birds, and mammals.
Since another panel* has provided an account of the behavioral sci-
ences as a whole, we have limited ourselves to considering new technologies,
many of which have been developed specifically for the solution of special-
ized problems.
For the first time there is reason to suppose that the process of simulation
will play a role in the future development of biology analogous to the
role that mathematical analysis has had in modern physics. In the
physical sciences, mathematics provides conceptual models of great general-
ity, utility, and elegance. Similar formulations are rarely applicable to
biological phenomena determined as they are by large sets of interdependent
variables. When provided with a suitable program, the computer may be
used to model such complex systems and to deliver detailed data on the
probable effects of proposed alterations in the value of ihe several variables
that compose the system. Already the use of simulation has been explored
in systems ranging from nerve cells to economic models and, as the accessi-
bility of computers increases, simulation should become a major theoretical
tool throughout the life sciences.
The first three subjects considered here?neurophysiology, neuropharma-
cology, and the genetics of behavior?are primarily concerned with the
characteristics of the organism and provide an understanding of behavior
in terms of the intrinsic properties of the behaving system. The second
group is concerned with behavior in terms of input-output analysis and
gives less emphasis to events within the organisrn.
Classical neurophysiology has built up a useful body of knowledge about
the routine functions of the nervous system. Much is known about the
characteristics of the nerve impulse, the distribution of different classes
of sensory information within the nervous system,, and the patterns of motor
responses elicited by simple stimuli. An exciting recent development is the
means for studying the neurological correlates of complex adaptive
behavior?the recognition of patterns of stimuli, the learning of new
responses, and the storage of learned material in memory. This develop-
ment has involved the invention of methods for sampling neural activity
by implanting arrays of very small electrodes deep within the brain and
simultaneously displaying the electrical signs of such activity from many
different locations. Such experiments result in an embarrassingly large
number of records. Each signal must be laboriously measured and com-
pared by hand and eye. In many cases significant evoked activity is
obscured by the large number of apparently random signals continuously
*"Strengthening the Behavioral Sciences and Improving Their Use," report to the
President's Science Advisory Committee, dated Feb. 20, 1962, published in Science
magazine, Apr. 20, 1962, vol. 136, No. 3512.
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