Dry Stream

"The Congress [of Genetics'] asks the International Committee not to recommend that the next congress be held in any country to which it may be expected that scientists would be refused permission to enter on grounds of race, nationality, religion, place of birth, or political associations past or present."

This resolution, passed by the International Congress of Genetics at its last summer's meeting in Italy, was directed not against the U.S.S.R., but against the U.S.A. The geneticists did not want to be exposed to the harassment and delay that await foreign scientists who try to visit the U.S. Other scientific organizations have taken the same attitude. Largely because of the McCarran Act, the once broad stream of foreign scientists bringing their ideas and knowledge to the U.S. has almost run dry.

In the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Professor (of physics) Victor F. Weisskopf, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "Whereas there are now numerically fewer refusals of visas, there are considerably fewer applications, as many foreign scientists react against the needless indignities and delays accompanying them. Rather than become involved in long, drawn-out procedures . . . [they show] complete reluctance to visit the U.S. for meetings . . ."

Dr. Weisskopf believes that the growing isolation of U.S. scientists is serious. "The development of science is based on cross-fertilization of ideas and informal discussion between scientists. The reading of manuscripts and papers is of very little help. The main ideas are transmitted by personal contact . . . For each scientist who passes up an invitation to visit the United States, scientific exchange is lost, to the unqualified and complete disadvantage of the Western world."

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