NAS-Quasi or not?

It isn't often a public interest group can grab by the tail an institution made up of dozens of Nobel Prize winners, swing it around, and see where it lands. But that is about what three animal rights organizations have done with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in their suit that, on Oct. 3, was brought to petition before the U.S. Supreme Court. Much is at stake here. The animal rights groups, led by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), wants the National Research Council (NRC), the principal operating arm of NAS, to be seen not as an independent entity but as a government agency, subject to the openness requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA requires agencies to supervise the work of their advisory committees, even determine their makeup, and, except for proprietary and personal discussions, keep them completely open for input from the public. The academy contends that if die ...