Scientists from 44 nations cut Soviet ties

In what amounts to unprecedented escalation of U.S. and foreign scientists' reactions to violations of the human rights of Soviet colleagues, some 7900 scientists and engineers from 44 countries have pledged to suspend scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union. Announced at simultaneous press conferences earlier this month (C&EN, Oct. 20, page 32) in Washington, D.C., London, Paris, and Geneva—with statements also issued by scientists in Rome and Hamburg—the moratorium protests in particular the arrest and internal exile early this year of Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov and the heavy prison terms now being served by dissident scientists Yuri Orlov and Anatoly Scharansky. The effort was organized in the U.S. by an ad hoc organization, Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, and Scharansky (SOS). At the Washington, D.C., press conference, SOS spokesmen included the group's chairman, Morris Pripstein of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Nobel Laureates in chemistry Paul J. Flory and Christian B. Anfinsen. Pripstei...