Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma.

What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress.

Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists.

The problems of financing the universities and their intellectual freedom, threatened by political and bureaucratic interference, are problems which are invariant under the ism transformations: socialism, communism, capitalism, or any other ism or ology.

They cannot count on the press and they cannot count on Congressional committees to bring the problems of the scientific community to their own attention, or to police the scientific community.

If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community.

To address questions of scientific responsibility does not necessarily imply that one needs technical competence in a particular field (e.g. biology) to evaluate certain technical matters.