Special HEW committee to study school-government relationship

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The task force is made up of the Deputy Undersecretary of HEW, four Assistant Secretaries, the Commissioner of Social Security, the Acting Commissioner of Welfare, and the Surgeon General. The chairman is Dr. Philip R. Lee, Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs. The task force has no prior commitment to recommend for or against the inclusion of prescription drugs in the medicare program, Secretary Gardner says. Its directive is first to investigate and then to make whatever recommendations it considers appropriate. "In all of its work, I have asked the task force to measure the value of possible solutions not only in terms of dollars to be saved, but also in the quality of health care to be delivered," he adds. One of the major problems the task force will tackle is the current controversy about the pharmacological equivalence of high-cost tradename drugs and their allegedly equivalent low-cost generic-name counterparts. But this is only one of the problems that Secretary Gardner has asked the task force to study and report on. Some major areas marked for study are: patterns of drug prescription by physicians; present resources used to meet drug costs (including personal resources, aid from relatives, insurance, and government aid); present drug cost coverage programs (including federal, state, commercial insurance, and union programs); distribution systems (independent pharmacies, mail-order distribution, physician dispensing, and hospital dispensing); and the impact of proposed methods of purchasing prescription drugs on costs and quality of patient care, on the medical profession, the pharmacy profession, the drug industry, and the Government. The task force may have to make its decision sooner than expected if the Senate Finance Committee holds hearings this summer, as seems likely. Sen. Russell B. Long (D.-La.), chairman of the committee, is pushing a bill to require purchase of generic-name drugs for all federally financed welfare programs. And the committee also has before it a bill to put prescription drug costs under medicare.

Special HEW committee to study school-government relationship Last week, Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary John W. Gardner disclosed the formation of a 15-member advisory committee on higher education. This group, representing U.S. colleges and universities, junior colleges, foundations, and other public

and private institutions, will conduct a one-year study to evaluate the relationship of academe to the Federal Government. According to Secretary Gardner, the growing partnership between the Government and institutions of higher learning must be a relationship in which neither side exploits the other. "If we are to reap the benefits and avoid the dangers in the relationship/' he says, "we shall have to understand it far better than we do now." The committee will study institutional responsibilities in the advancement of learning, the development of solutions to community problems, and contributions to both cultural life and international affairs. In addition, the group will examine the present quality of relationships between higher education and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Federal government recognition of institutional responsibilities has led to an increase in the Government's investment in higher education over the past five years. For the current fiscal year, this investment will total about $4.6 billion; by contrast $1.6 billion was spent in 1962, Secretary Gardner says. The advisory committee, with its membership drawn from institutions across the nation, will be chaired by Dr. Clarke Wesco, chancellor of the University of Kansas. Under Dr. Wesco's direction, the committee, in reviewing the overall relationship, will place special emphasis on identifying problems that may exist and formulating proposals for solving these problems. The committee is scheduled to report its findings to Secretary Gardner in July 1968.

Polyether resins plus epoxies give epoxy-based elastomers 3M chemists have produced a series of new polyether resins which may give epoxy makers a big new outlet for their resins. When cured with conventional epoxies, the new 3M resins yield what the St. Paul, Minn., company claims to be epoxy-based elastomers of high quality. The company is offering the new polyether diprimary amines in development quantities of up to a few thousand pounds at $3.75 per pound. Eventual commercial price could be about $1.25, 3M says. This price would make the epoxy elastomer systems competitive with some elastomeric polyurethanes now on the market. The new resins are linear polymers. They contain tetramethylene oxide as the principal recurring unit and they

3M's Samuel Smith Similar to isocyanate chemistry

have a primary amine group at each end. Their cure cycle with epoxy resins can be varied from one day at 70° F. to 10 minutes at 350° F. Samuel Smith, of 3M's chemical division and a codeveloper of the new polyethers, says the new epoxy elastomers should find wide use in coatings, foams, adhesives, and elastomer castings. They are better than castable polyurethane elastomers in their resilience; in their resistance to steam, heat, and ultraviolet light; and in their compression set and adhesion properties, he says. They are about as good as the polyurethanes in resistance to abrasion, he adds. But they are poorer in some tensile properties, tear strength, and solvent resistance. The 3M chemist points out that epoxy chemistry is similar to isocyanate chemistry in that the epoxy group, like the isocyanate group, will react with various compounds bearing active hydrogens to give straightchain adducts. It would therefore seem possible to make epoxy elastomers by reacting epoxy resins with either polyester or polyether resins— the same way that polyurethane elastomers are made by reacting isocyanates with such resins. However, earlier efforts to make epoxy elastomers this way have failed, according to Mr. Smith. Critical to the success of the new 3M polyether resins in this reaction are their molecular weight and their primary-amine/end-group ratio of almost one. This means that almost every end group is an amine. Also, there are only very few amine groups along the polyether chains. 3M chemists have made these polyJUNE 5, 1967 C&EN

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