Seminars in New Course to Investigate Social Problems Created by Biologists

Last year's March 4 science research stoppage is indirectly paying off at Harvard.

This Spring, students in Nat Sci 26-a new course proposed by graduate students after the stoppage-will study the political and social context of biology.

Students in the course are assigned to seminar sections, each of which will concentrate on a different topic. These include population control, air and water pollution, food and drug safety, chemical and biological warfare, drugs, malnutrition, heredity, and behavior.

Course instructors feel that Nat Sci 26-"Biology and Social Issues"-represents a profound change in the kind of subject studied at Harvard, although they do not plan to use the course as a model for new teaching methods.

"We're not trying to be revolutionary in our method." said Fotis C. Kafatos, professor of Biology and lecturer in the course along with John T. Edsall '23, professor of Biological Chemistry.

Nat Sci 26 will be similar to Soc Rel 148-149, the radical course taught last year, in the sense that its sections will be autonomous and that future activism is a desired by-product.

However, activism will not be required or given credit in Nat Sci 26, Kafatos said. He wants the course to be used for information and stimulation, but not as a "cover" for activity.

Kafatos does hope that students will later become involved in the social issues. "If one half of our students become activists on these problems I think that would be the greatest thing that could happen," he said.

More Freedom

The teaching fellows, Kafatos said, will probably have more freedom than in most courses, but their autonomy will be "not, quite analogous to Soc Rel 149."

Kafatos said that he and Elsall know and agree with the program planned for each section. One teaching fellow is a Radcliffe undergraduate; others are grad students in the sciences and law students.

Graduate students from the different sciences suggested the idea for a course on the relation between science andsociety last spring after what Kafatos calls the "catalyzing effect" of the work stoppage.

Edsall and Kafatos worked with them to develop a course proposal, which was submitted to the Committee on General Education. The course was originally planned to cover all of the sciences, but the organizers later decided to focus solely on biology.

Biology concentrators can petition to count Nat Sci 26 as a related course. Kafatos said that the Biology department faculty readily agreed to this.

Students are allowed to take the course pass-fail, but Nat Sci 26 will have a final and will be graded. Yet Kafatos said he dislikes giving grades. "I think the fact that we are not trying to fight all our battles in this course is important," Kafatos said.

Nat Sci 26 turned out to be extremely popular. Over 700 students applied for the 175 available places.

More of the applicants for the course were non-science than science concentrators. Kafatos is pleased with the mixture, since he did not want the course to be just "what science is all about" for non-science people or just "the implications of their work" for scientists.

"Seience has been sold for too long as a purely intellectual endeavor." Kafatos said. He hopes to show in the course that science is relevant to social issues.

Lectures by Edsall, Kafatos, and others will provide an overview for the course. Other topics will be discussed in five or six lectures delivered in the evening and open to the public. For example, Matthew S. Meselson, professor of Biology, is scheduled to speak about chemical and biological warfare (CBW). Meselson reportedly persuaded President Nixon to destroy much of the nation's CBW stockpile.