X-Message-Number: 7603
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7590 - #7598
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:51:26 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

To Mike Darwin:

Many thanks again for publishing the details of one more suspension.

As to "proof" and my comments about Platt's posting, as I remember it, the
main complaints about Visser were not that she failed to follow good
SCIENTIFIC procedure but that she did not get the proper permissions from
the proper regulatory authorities. It seems to me then and it still seems
that we should ignore that when we try to evaluate her actual work (and
I will say parenthetically that I've begun to wonder about her work
myself, not because she hasn't followed the Correct Regulatory Procedure
but for the same reasons Mr. Metzger mentions in his own posting just
now).

As for Virodene, the context (perhaps wrongly) made me believe that it was
a version of her cryoprotectant --- as I said at one point, this begins
to seem awfully shaky, if it not only will be a good cryoprotectant but
protect us from AIDS too. To extend that comment: will we next hear that
it cures cancer and heart disease too? But as I noted just now, I may have
been wrong in thinking that.

We ourselves, though not actually doing things the Regulators have forbidden,
run awfully close to that line. And we are right to do so. Doing so does not
imply that we are fraudulent or anything of the sort, though some Regulators
I'm sure want to conclude that it does. Yet there are other much better
ways not only to judge if someone is a fraud but also as to whether, despite
the opposition of a large part of the scientific community, they are following
good scientific procedure. Openness about what you are doing is one, and
no matter what the medium of communication, an honest attempt to tell
everything you know about what you are doing, and let others inspect your
work. And it is those grounds, not the opinion of Regulatory Authorities or
even whether their Established Procedures have been violated, that I have
become increasingly suspicious of Dr. Visser.

			Best and long long life, .
				Thomas Donaldson


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