United Press International - December 10, 2002
Phil Berardelli

The Bush administration -- over the objections of Nevada officials but based on the best science available -- decided to go ahead with construction of a centralized repository for America's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain 100 miles from Las Vegas, America's fastest-growing metropolis.

Expected to be operational within 10 years, the site is supposed to contain and isolate about 40,000 tons of extremely dangerous waste products from nuclear reactors for up to 10,000 years -- longer than the entire history of civilization. Of the merits or demerits of this particular scientific effort one can say, literally, only time will tell.

Other, unambiguously ominous developments have marked the year. First and foremost: AIDS has become a truly worldwide epidemic.

The disease, which already has claimed more than 20 million lives over about as many years, threatens to double that toll within a much shorter time as many sub-Saharan Africa's countries, as well as India and China, have acknowledged the spread of HIV infection within their borders is out of control. In addition, U.N. researchers reported in 2002, for the first time, women accounted for half of the victims of AIDS.

Investigators, meanwhile, still have been unable to trace the origins of the anthrax spores that made their way through the U.S. mail in the fall of 2001 and infected 22 people, killing five. A year later, anthrax remains a potential threat as an instrument of bioterrorism, as does smallpox and two other related organisms -- camelpox and monkeypox - that might be used instead because smallpox vaccines might not be as effective against them.

Two other diseases made headlines this past year: West Nile virus, the mosquito-borne illness that claimed 216 lives in 23 states and the District of Columbia in 2002, and chronic wasting disease, an illness, whose means of transmission continues to elude researchers, that has infected an unknown but presumed large number of deer and elk across a vast section of the nation's heartland.

In the United States and other developing countries, another epidemic has begun to threaten human health: obesity, a condition that has pervaded all economic classes and brings with it increased risks of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. One culprit, according to health organizations, is the burgeoning popularity of "super-sized" portions at restaurants and fast-food outlets.

Bad news for post-menopausal women arrived with several studies showing the practice of taking artificial estrogen puts them at increased risk for both ovarian and breast cancer.

Much of the U.S. medical research community took as a major setback the decision by the White House to limit human embryonic stem cell research to about 70 select lines of cells that existed before the decision. All other research must be conducted on cells taken from live donors, a prospect that has elicited almost no interest by the venture capital community.

This ethics-based attempt to block certain areas of research might succeed only in isolating U.S. researchers as efforts continue unimpeded overseas. Reports have persisted -- albeit unsubstantiated -- that doctors have succeeded in implanting cloned human embryos into women who are expected to give birth any day now.

As in every year, 2002 in science also was marked by hopeful news, as well as some spectacular discoveries.

Researchers reported progress both in understanding the mechanism of the human immunodeficiency virus and in developing new ways to fight it. For example, a new vaccine that can defeat the equivalent of HIV in cats is showing promise to fight the virus in humans -- although it is several years away from clinical trials.

The fight against cancer took some important steps forward. One new experimental treatment that involves transplanting disease-fighting T-cells, while at the same time neutralizing the immune system, has been shown to wipe out tumors in terminally ill patients. Another treatment technique under study, based on an organic compound, has been shown to destroy tumors by starving them to death.

Following publication of the human genome in 2001 has come a flood of new discoveries. Researchers have tracked the role of genes in the growth of the brain, in deafness, in body shape, in how we sleep and remember, in conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism and even stress, in diseases such as malaria, asthma, heart disease and many types of cancer.

Just this month, genetic scientists achieved another milestone: sketching the map detailing the genome of the humble house mouse, a heroic effort that required placing in proper order some 2.5 billion subunits of DNA that make up the rodent's complete set of genes. The achievement places some 25 million laboratory mice -- which share about 80 percent of their genes with humans -- at the disposal of researchers seeking to reveal the secrets of a wide range of ailments, from heart disease, diabetes and obesity to schizophrenia, learning abnormalities and memory disorders.

In the transportation area, several car-makers announced plans to move forward with fuel-cell-powered vehicle projects. Fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water, are virtually pollution-free. A prototype vehicle actually made a successful run from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., last spring powered only by its fuel cell and retaining all its original parts.

Perhaps the most astounding discoveries of the year occurred not on Earth but in space by two of the jewels in NASA's crown -- the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The orbiting spacecraft have proven a super-massive black hole does indeed lurk at the center of our galaxy. They also have detected a pair of the monsters drifting in tandem at the heart of one of the Milky Way's neighbors, a phenomenon that might prefigure the fate of our own galaxy.

Using Hubble's exquisitely sensitive instruments, astronomers have been able to measure the mass of a distant planet with unprecedented precision, and Chandra's ability to peer inside vast clouds of interstellar dust has allowed scientists to spy planets and stars in formation, including the stunning discovery of Jupiter-sized planets that seem to be able to congeal within mere centuries instead of eons.

Also, despite several more bumps and compromises along the way, construction of the International Space Station continues.

Last, in a disclosure that speaks volumes about the human tendency to hold irrational fears, experts reported last summer that, worldwide, people are about 15 times more likely to be killed by falling coconuts than by sharks. Maybe that statistic will inspire a new blockbuster movie: "Clonks."

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