Library of Congress science policy unit downgraded

One of the most respected science and technology policy units in Washington, D.C., has been downgraded as part of a major but controversial shake-up of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service (CRS). The unit is CRS's Science, Technology & Medicine Division. Two-thirds of it will be folded into the existing Environmental & Natural Resources Policy Division, which will be renamed the Natural Resources, Science & Infrastructure Division. Its director is John L. Moore. The current science division director, Eric A. Fischer, will become a senior analyst in the new arrangement. The remaining portion of the unit, the medicine section, will move into a new Domestic Social Policy Division. Many within the medicine group are unhappy over that decision, because most of their work involves biomedical research analysis whose proper home, they believe, is within a science policy group, and not in one devoted to such issues as Medicare, Social Security, housing, education, ...