1836 



officially or unofficially linked with political decision-making bodies, 

 whether in the East or West." "« 



Carried too far, this symbiotic relationship between science and 

 government may be seK-defeating. The author quotes Dr. T. O. Jones, 

 director of National and International Programs, National Science 

 Foundation: "It has been my experience in dealing with international 

 science activities over the years, that whenever one contrives a 

 scientiJEic program purely for the purpose of political advantage or 

 motivation it frequently fails, because the science is contrived and not 

 genuine, and is not really of interest to the scientific community." "' 



Although scientific exchanges tend in general to have the effect of 

 promoting interdependence, they result from mainly nationahst 

 motivations. Thus, although the administration in recent years has 

 inclined somewhat more toward the multilateral approach, tradi- 

 tionally it has had a marked preference for bilateral agreements, as 

 has the Congress. Paradoxically, however, the United States has 

 not sought to benefit systematically from the exchanges or — what 

 would be more to the point — to establish parallel bilateral programs 

 centering on teclmology. (As noted in the Brain Drain study, it has 

 instead inadvertently gained by attracting technologically trained 

 human talent from other countries, especially physicians.) Such 

 programs might further legitimate U.S. independence interests 

 through the import of technologies developed in other countries, in 

 subjects in which U.S. industry is less advanced. 



ISSUE five: brain drain 



This study ^'* deals with the problem of talent migration — essen- 

 tially, migration from areas where the talent, though needed, i? 

 not held in place by economic and other attractions, but is drawn 

 to where it is less needed by the prospect of financial and other 

 rewards. 



The relationship of the brain drain issue to the question of inde- 

 pendence versus interdependence focuses on the fact that the sum 

 of trained intelligence is a global resource. The problem is that like 

 almost every other resource it is unevenly distributed. And the prob- 

 lem is compounded by the extent to which human mobility across 

 national boundaries is unrestricted. There is thus a tendency on the 

 part of donor states to view the brain drain in international terms — a 

 problem of interdependence calling for common efforts at solution — 

 while the states attracting the talent tend to see it as a national 

 problem — a failure on the part of donor states to make themselves 

 attractive to those persons who desire to leave. 



Of all the resources which contribute to the building of a civiliza- 

 tion, the trained human mind is the most indispensable. From time 

 to time throughout history, cultures have been strengthened, re- 

 newed, or transformed by infusions of fresh talent from outside — often 

 deliberately induced, and sometimes massive. Thus, the Ptolemies 

 made Alexandria a center of learning by attracting the best brains 

 of Greece, and during the Middle Ages in Europe the spread of 



516 Ibid., 887. 



6" Ibid. 



5H Whelan, Brain Drain: A Study of the Persistent Iss^ie of International Scientific Mobility, vol. II, 



pp. 1037-1318. 



