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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 01:52pm Aug 1, 2002 EST (#3403 of 3404)

rshowalter - 12:48pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4690 Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

I think an extremely good model of how "redemptive solutions" can actually work in the complicated world -- and an example that I wish some Russians would notice, is involved in some of my history, and some areas where trust is problematic in areas important for military balances. I'm putting it here, because of how it relates to some difficulties, but also because I believe it sets out an exemplar of reasons that we have for careful hope.

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Science in the News #331: rshowalter "Science in the News (Archived)" 12/16/99 6:16pm

"THE NEW YORK TIMES, and its reporters, GINA KOLATA and KURT EICHENWALD, have guided and catalyzed as close to a miracle as is likely to happen in human affairs. http://www.nytimes.com/library/financial/121699insurance-cancer.html .

"" A number of insurance companies have decided in recent weeks to pay for experimental treatments for cancer, but only for policyholders who participate in clinical trials sanctioned by federal health agencies. .......... with these recent decisions, the insurance industry has begun to signal a willingness to finance medical research, a change that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago."

"The more I think about this, the more impressive it seems. A large group of actors, each subject to separate institutional complications and interests, came together and agreed to an important, carefully crafted mutual cooperation, expensive to many involved, because it was the right thing to do.

" They did so under circumstances that were complicated in many ways, on an issue that was important, but not easily grasped or explained. They did so in clear violation of many ordinary expectations. Many different people must have worked, and worked hard, against their direct, material self interest. Many people who might have blocked progress, did not do so, though blocking the change would have been in their direct, material interest. People did what they felt was the right thing to do. By and large, these people agreed on what the right thing was. And they acted, and the action was workable.

"The right thing had been clear to an insurer, to some physicians, and to some others, for a long time - clear, in some cases, for more than a decade. Then, when the TIMES laid the facts and context out, so that many could judge it, and a community of common opinion could come into being, action became possible. The newspapers have a major input into the collective consciousness and conscience of their communities, and THE NEW YORK TIMES is the first among newspapers. When people ask (and not only in Washington)

" What would this look like, written up, in detail, in THE NEW YORK TIMES?"

" they aren't usually thinking of actual coverage, though they sometimes are. They are thinking of the standards of their common culture, and what it would mean to them to be public actors. When people think of this, they may act more in the interest of the commonweal than they might at other times.

" And so, when NYT reporters start asking questions, working through the possibility of a story, they set the people they contact thinking about public spirited action. And when a NYT story prints, they set a big, influential community to thinking. Sometimes good things get done that might never occur without this catalyst.

" Under the leadership of the TIMES, a leadership that must have been difficult for the institution of the TIMES, and for the reporters involved, a human change has occurred that must be expected, over time, to significantly extend the lives of many millions of people in America, and all over the world. It is likely to extend the lives of more people than Kolata or Eichenwald are ever going to pass close to in their physical lives.

"Good show!

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