National Labs Are a National Treasure
The letter to the editor (Feb. 28) from Martin Blume, deputy director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, in defense of the national laboratories was timely and appropriate.
But the really difficult issue here, as far as I am concerned, is the “brain drain” our country would experience if the laboratories were allowed to fall by the wayside because of ignorance on the part of the general public and their equally ignorant, I fear, elected government officials.
One of the aspects of the national labs that makes them so unique--so important--is the store of truly gifted individuals who have worked for them in many different capacities. These individuals have been working with technology that most of us have never considered or even dreamed of in our wildest dreams. And some of this may be the very technology that saves the world.
Hopefully, we can look beyond the immediacy of the moment to the future generations and not have our gifted thinkers booted out to pasture because of our own ignorance.
CAROL KIESSIG
Avila Beach
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