Famine, a complex phenomenon with multifactorial causes, produces starvation and associated diseases resulting in unusually high mortality from a lack of food. Devastating famines in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s may have provided an impetus for scholars to find additional analytical tools for predicting famines. Two predominant theories of famines causality are (1) food availability decline (FAD), a supply failure; and (2) the entitlement approach based on a demand failure. Findings from both theories are applied to specific examples from Ethiopian famines to analyze the composition and effects of famine. The limited success of contemporary famines studies in anticipating famine suggests the need for improved analytical tools. Risk factor analysis, used successfully in the social sciences and the medical sciences to predict the occurrence of complicated phenomena, is developed to identify controllable, uncontrollable, and contributing factors to famine. Based on the experience of Ethiopia in 1983-86, categorical cutoff values for identifying a high risk of developing famine are formulated.

If the millions of words being written to define famine, identify and debate its causes, and outline complex approaches to its early identification and prevention could be eaten there would be far fewer hungry people in the world. This is particularly the case for Africa. Already an enormous number of conference papers, journal articles, institutional monographs, and commercial books have been published on topics related to food shortages and famine on that continent. Beneath this generally available strata of publications lie a vast number of internal reports, studies and evaluations done by the staff of or consultants to international agencies, major donors and non-governmental agencies. (For example, simply consult the growing output on early warning systems and drought administration systems being produced by the staff and consultants to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development located in Djibouti and created in 1986 to serve assist six drought prone countries of the Horn of Africa.)

Vestal's study of the Ethio-African famine process inspires comment along several lines. As a not-policy scientist writing about policy science matters I beg tolerance in what follows, consistent with my express intention to focus on famine in perspective, including alternative ones. But first, in the spirit of Science.

For all the insights reported in the preceding article by Vestal, the author leaves the impression that he is dissatisfied that our current level of understanding adequately addresses the complexity of famine. Vestal's article ranges widely across the research on famine, provoking a revisitation of some controversies and inviting further thought on the world's level of famine vulnerability and what researchers might do to reduce that vulnerability.

In recent decades, development economists have devoted much of their analysis to understanding a number of microeconomic issues, facing the less developed countries. Those issues range from straightforward poverty analysis to a more sophisticated exercise of optimal economic planning. By and large the body of research which has been done can be grouped into two broad categories: (1) exercises devoted to spelling out the various nuances and shades of poverty, which explain either the dimensions or the causes of poverty and related phenomena, and (2) those attempts aimed at developing solutions to the issues of poverty from the perspective of planners. Obviously, famine studies in general, belong to the first category. There has been substantial literature devoted to explaining “What is meant by famine?” Of course, one's position in this regard determines one's policy perspectives as well. The article under review purports to analyze “Risk Factors and Predictability of Famine in Ethiopia.” The discussion by the author of “what famines are and the theories of famine causality,” provides perspective only for the issue under focus, that is the risk factors and predictability.

I thank the respondents for their thoughtful insights from such exotic places as Kenya, India, Southern California, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The geographical origins of the replies brought in by the broadly cast net of this journal underscore the global concern with the phenomenon of famine and its study. The objective of my article was to stimulate discussion about risk factor analysis that takes into account both FAD and entitlement approaches to famine. The four reviews represent an extensive and helpful array of responses that suggest further refinements of research possibilities utilizing the risk factor concept. All offered abundant food for thought about how to address the riddle of what to do about famine, and in their references, the respondents have included first-rate additions to a bibliography of recent famine studies.

In recent years policymakers in a number of American states have chosen biotechnology as a key element in their economic development efforts. With visions of business growth and new jobs, state officials have targeted biotechnology as an important industry of the future. In this paper we focus on the political dynamics that underlay the choice of biotechnology in eleven states. With those states providing examples, we identify three major models of policy choice. The first involves an interest-based process in which state policymakers respond to explicit or implicit pressures from different parties. The second involves a strategic planning exercise in which state officials analyze the economic structure of the state and seek to develop a comparative advantage in the field of biotechnology. And the third starts with a strategic analysis but then relies upon a competitive, interest-based process to determine the allocation of state funds. We conclude by briefly discussing major issues for science policymaking at the state level.

John Portz and Peter Eisinger have provided a valuable conceptual overview of state government initiatives for economic development through biotechnology. Their three major models of policy choice - - based on interest-group processes, strategic planning, and competing interest groups in the allocation of planned development initiatives — seem to be sound theoretically and are convincingly examined empirically. Further, Portz and Eisinger provide a wealth of information regarding comparative state efforts at stimulating economic innovation, the differing state political dynamics underlying alternative development strategies, and differences in how such strategies have been implemented. Their analysis represents an important contribution to the current literature on comparative state economic development policy.

When finally U.S. political archives are reviewed comprehensively and definitively, one confusing point will still linger unresolved: were the artisans of politics crafting policy in response to visions of a public or a private interest? Portz and Eisinger's comparative analysis of state economic development efforts, with hopes pegged on biotechnology, grapples with that distinction at least by implication. Their instructive article needs revisiting - - and their useful findings and conclusions need follow-up research — because there is logical reason to fear that the strategic planning process is no more or less directed toward the public interest than is private interest advocacy.

In their respective commentaries Browne and Shelley raise a number of important questions and issues. While each critique has a different perspective and orientation, there is also significant common ground. Our response is organized around four points common in each critique.

In deciding whether and to what extent surrogate parenting contracts should be recognized, states are faced with three legislative options. First, they may criminalize surrogacy, in effect punishing those who enter into or facilitate surrogate contracts by fine or imprisonment. Second, states may adopt the nonenforcement option. Under this approach, surrogate contracts are not subject to criminal sanction, but neither will they be enforced. The legal effect of such a rule is to leave the surrogate free to carry through with the contract or to refuse to relinquish custody of the child born of the arrangement as she wishes. In the event the surrogate decides that she wishes to keep the baby, the courts will decide the issue of parental rights in accordance with the best interests test much like that which is employed in divorce cases. This was the approach taken in In the Matter of Baby “M” (537 A.2d 1225 (N.J. 1988)). Finally, the third legislative alternative is regulation and enforcement of surrogate contracts. This would have the effect of requiring the surrogate to turn over the child she has borne for the intended parents even where she has changed her mind, a la Mary Beth Whitehead, and wishes to retain custody of the child.

As Professor Hill says, there is one important respect in which he and I agree with each other and disagree with what most states would do today. Faced with a surrogacy arrangement involving a dispute over custody, most state courts would decide the dispute on its own facts, according to the court's view about which parents seemed best for the child. Hill and I both stress that custody battles should be avoided, that parties should not have to go to court to find out who will prevail, and that courts should not decide disputes by comparing the parental characteristics of the particular parties. Instead courts or legislatures should formulate a rule of law that predetermines which party will receive custody in the event of a dispute.