AAAS:
Seaborg Controversy
Charges of a possible conflict of in-
terest are fueling a controversy that
could be more apparent than real in
the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science presidential
election. The issue, raised by a few
members of the AAAS board of di-
rectors in October, questions the can-
didacy for president-elect of Dr. Glenn
T. Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission.
The controversy has such a low pro-
file in AAAS that Dr. Philip Abelson,
editor of Science magazine, the AAAS
official publication, comments that not
one letter to the editor has been re-
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ceived protesting Dr. Seaborg's can-
didacy. Still, the issue has prompted
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Dr. Seaborg to consider withdrawing
from the race.
Dr. Seaborg tells C&EN's Fred Zer-
kel that he didn't hear about the op-
position until the time the ballots were
mailed in November. Then, he says,
"it was really too late to withdraw.
They couldn't have found another can-
didate. I was urged by other mem-
bers of the board that it would be
embarrassing to AAAS to have a one-
man race and that I shouldn't with-
draw at that time."
Dr. Seaborg turned down nomina-
tions to run for president of AAAS in
1963 and again in 1968. If he wins
the election, he would be president-
elect next year, president in 1972, and
chairman of the board in 1973. Last
summer he agreed to chair AEC for
another five years.
Dr. Seaborg says he hasn't had any
conflict of interest problems while he
has been chairman of AEC and would
be "meticulous" never to get involved
in a conflict of interest situation as a
top-level AAAS official.
The current AAAS president, Dr.
Athelstan Spilhaus, tells C&EN that
the conflict of interest charge is "ri-
diculous" and Views the whole matter
as a "tempest in a teapot." He says
the conflict of interest question cen-
ters on three issues. One issue, he
says, concerns discussions which have
been going on for about a year about
the possibility of AAAS taking over
Science Service. Dr. Seaborg is pres-
ident of the board of trustees of Sci-
ence Service. Dr. Spilhaus says AAAS
has voted not to take over Science
Service, so this issue is dead.
Another issue, which is yet to de-
velop, concerns fulfillment by AAAS
of a request by Sen. Edmund S. Mus-
kie (D.-Me.) that AAAS adjudicate
whether Dr. John Gofman and Dr.
Arthur Tamplin—who are critical of
U.S. radiation standards and some
AEC policy—have received unfair
treatment by AEC.
16 C&EN DEC. 7, 1970
Dr. Spilhaus points out that AAAS
has never gotten into the question of
adjudicating between parties before
and "we decided not to do this until
we have discussed the question of this
kind of activity as a policy."
The third issue, Dr. Spilhaus says,
is a feeling that people in very high
and visible public positions, in gen-
eral, and in the tenor of today's
charged atmosphere, might not be
good to have on the board of AAAS.
It's not at all new to have distin-
guished people in government office
as president of AAAS, Dr. Spilhaus
points out. For example, in 1963 Dr.
Alan Waterman was president of
AAAS and director of the National
Science Foundation at the same time.
Dr. Richard H. Bolt, the other can-
didate for the office of president-elect
next year, has "no comment" on the
whole matter. Dr. Bolt is a lecturer
in political science at MIT, and a
member of the AAAS board.
The controversy was brought to
public attention by a front-page story
in The Washington Post on Nov. 29—
about midpoint in the balloting which
ends Dec. 10. Results of the election
will be announced later this month.
ASTROCHEMISTRY:
Biomolecules in Space
A question that has been nagging sci-
entists for years is whether or not
amino acids might be synthesized in
the primitive environments of outer
space. Now, a strongly affirmative
answer comes from Dr. Cyril Ponnam-
peruma at NASA's Ames Research
Center, Moffett Field, Calif. He and
coworkers have amassed a convincing
body of evidence that points to the
presence of a variety of amino acids
and hydrocarbons in a meteorite sam-
ple they have studied.
The evidence could provide the
first conclusive proof that amino acids
are present in a carbonaceous chon-
drite, contends Dr. Ponnamperuma,
chief of the exobiology division's chem-
ical evolution branch at Ames. "The
results of our investigation . . . support
the contention that the organic mole-
cules identified here are abiotic and
possible extraterrestrial in origin," he
says [Nature, 228, 923, 926 (1970)].
Cooperating with the Ames group were
Dr. Carleton Moore, director of the
Center for Meteorite Studies at Ari-
zona State University, Tempe, and Dr.
Isaac R. Kaplan of the University of
California, Los Angeles.
The analysis reveals the presence of
seven amino acids, five of them fun-
damental units in protein structure.
NASA's Ponnamperuma
Secret of Murchison meteorite
Their abundance is high, at least when
measured against the standards so far
set by previous examinations of extra-
terrestrial matter. Dr. Ponnamperuma
pegs the meteorite's glycine content,
for example, at 6 micrograms per gram.
The finding is significant on a num-
ber of counts. It supports the hy-
pothesis of chemical evolution put for-
ward some 50 years ago by the Soviet
Union's Dr. Alexander I. Oparin and
the late Dr. John Haldane of England.
These scientists postulated the forma-
tion of organic compounds as a fore-
runner to the appearance of life on
earth. "Their contention is theoreti-
cally valid since many molecules of
biological significance have been syn-
thesized in the laboratory under con-
ditions that might have existed on a
primitive planet," Dr. Ponnamperuma
notes. "But to date, available evi-
dence as to the indigenous presence of
such biomolecules in meteorites or in
the lunar samples is inconclusive,"
he says.
Dr. Ponnamperuma and his associ-
ates concentrated their efforts on the
Murchison meteorite, so named be-
cause it fell to earth near Murchison,
Victoria, Australia, last year. Select-
ing an inner portion of this carbona-
ceous chondrite ("to reduce the
chances of encountering molecules
picked up by terrestrial contamina-
tion"), the Ames group applied the
extractive and hydrolytic techniques
they developed in connection with
their analyses of lunar samples
(C&EN, Jan. 12, page 42).
Using ion exchange chromatog-
raphy, gas chromatography, and a
combination of gas chromatography,
and molecular spectroscopy, they have
identified and confirmed the presence
of glycine, alanine, valine, proline,
glutamic acid, 2-methylalanine, and
sarcosine. "The presence of almost
equal amounts of the D and L en-
antiomers of valine, proline, alanine,
and glutamic acid minimizes the pos-
sibility of terrestrial contamination
from biological sources in which only
the L-form occurs," Dr. Ponnamper-
uma points out. Further bolstering
this contention and pointing to an
abiogenic mode of origin is the pres-
ence of 2-methylalanine and sarco-
sine, nonproteinaceous amino acids
not generally found in biological sys-
tems but occurring among the prod-
ucts of lab experiments.
SICKLE CELL ANEMIA:
Successful Treatment
Sickle cell anemia—a disease as com-
mon as such highly publicized maladies
as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy,
and acute childhood leukemia, and
typically just as fatal—can now be suc-
cessfully diagnosed and treated as the
result of research conducted under the
leadership of Dr. Robert M. Nalband-
ian, associate pathologist at Blodgett
Memorial Hospital, Grand Rapids,
Mich. The disease is characterized by
aching joints and swollen extremities.
"All of our discoveries have a molec-
ular basis," Dr. Nalbandian empha-
sizes, and stem from the hypothesis
for the molecular mechanism of sick-
ling put forth by Dr. Makio Muray-
ama, research biochemist at National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.
Sickle cell anemia occurs almost ex-
clusively in Negroes and at a rate in
the U.S. of about 0.25%. The dis-
ease is usually fatal with almost none
of its victims living past his 40th birth-
day. Very few whites are struck by
the disease, which is genetically based.
Dr. Murayama's work, which
opened the way for the treatment de-
vised by Dr. Nalbandian and his as-
sociates at Wayne State University,
Detroit, and the U.S. Army Medical
Research Laboratory, Fort Knox, Ky.,
dealt directly with the molecular struc-
ture of hemoglobin S, the red blood
cell molecule involved in sickle cell
anemia. In hemoglobin S, the amino
acid valine is substituted for glutamic
acid in the beta chains. Dr. Muray-
ama constructed a model of the hemo-
globin molecule and showed that the
number 1 and number 6 valines form
a hydrophobic bond at the end of
each beta chain.
These combining sites, one on each
beta chain, are attached to reciprocal
combining sites on the alpha globins
of adjacent hemoglobin tetramers.
These tetramers then polymerize form-
ing a microfilament, and six such mi-
crofilaments form microcables of
sickled hemoglobin.
THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK
The simple, specific, and inexpen-
sive diagnostic test and the treatment
devised by Dr. Nalbandian's group are
based completely on this theory. Hy-
drophobic bonds, such as those at the
beta-chain combining sites, can be de-
stroyed by intrusion of linear hydro-
carbons, pressure effects, or changes
in temperature. Urea, Dr. Nalbandian
knew, will denature such hydrophobic
bonds, and thus the technique of in-
travenous injection of urea in an os-
motically balanced solution of invert
sugar was developed to treat sickle
cell crisis—a period of excruciating pain
brought on by periodic blockage of
small vessels by the crescent-shaped
sickled cells.
REACTION MECHANISMS:
Molecular Narcissism
New terms continue to pop up as
theoretical chemists delve further into
complexities of organic reaction mech-
anisms. Spatial symmetry turned up
in studies of geometrical isomeriza-
tion of cyclopropane that are under
way by Dr. Lionel Salem and his as-
sociates at the Laboratorie de Chimie
Theorique in Orsay, France. The
studies led to his identification of
"narcissistic" reactions.
In another area of reaction mech-
anism research, favoritism in compet-

Great Salt Lake Starts $30 Million Pond-Plant Complex

After eight years of research, testing, engineering, construc-
tion, political problems, and capital investment of about
$30 million, Great Salt Lake Minerals & Chemicals Corp.
(GSL) officially started up its 14,000-acre evaporation pond
and plant complex for extraction of minerals last week on
the east shore of the Great Salt Lake near Ogden, Utah.
The giant solar evaporation installation—largest of its kind
in the world, according to GSL—will have initial annual
capacities of 240,000 tons of potassium sulfate, 150,000
tons of sodium sulfate, and 100,000 tons of anhydrous
magnesium chloride. Magnesium chloride, recovered from
bitterns (liquids remaining after feed salts for potassium
and sodium sulfate are produced from the lake's brines),
will be produced as a high-quality hexahydrate crystal called
Bischofite in a separate GSL multimillion-dollar facility slated
to come on stream at the end of 1971. Sufficient bitterns
are available to produce between 400,000 and 600,000 tons
of anhydrous magnesium chloride annually, GSL says.
Refined magnesium chloride may eventually be shipped to a
$20 million plant being built by Dow in Dallesport, Wash.

DEC. 7, 1970 C&EN 17