Assessing medical technologies.

A MERICAN SOCIETY believes in and strongly supports technology. AcIcording to a 1974 poll commissioned by the National Science Board,1 75% of the public believed that science and technology have changed life for the better. Technology certainly has changed medical practice. Since 1940 a broad array of medical interventions have entered practice, including antibiotics; antihypertensive drugs; oral diuretics; oral contraceptives; psychopharmaceuticals; corticosteroids; polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines; cardiovascular and open-heart surgery; genetic screening and amniocentesis; automated clinical laboratories; renal dialysis; and cardiac pacemakers. Numerous other examples could be cited.2 The National Science Board poll also found that about half of the respondents thought that technology had caused some of our problems. A large poll reported by Etzioni and Nunn3 found that public confidence in medicine (expressed as a "great deal" of confidence) fell from 56% in 1966 to 37% in 1973. In the National Science Board poll a substantial minority of those polled (28%) favored increased societal control over science and technology.1 The Food and Drug Administration has found that 81% of those polled (in a survey made in 1972) are concerned about the safety of drugs.4