Neuroscientists bring the skills of electrophysiology, cellular biology, molecular biology, and communications theory to bear on studies of information processing in the nervous system. Oncologists, focusing on the essential nature of the transformation of normal cells into malignant ones, are similarly a group apart, borrowing from every major discipline that may be of help, while vascular physiol- ogists necessarily borrow from hydrodynamics and studies of urban traffic flow as they study the operation of a capillary bed or a major blood vessel. Physical anthropology is a subdiscipline that contributes to the total en- deavor while it provides a bridge from the biological to the social sciences. In bringing about man's present diversity. The biological anthropologist aims to understand human physical variation and to apply his knowledge for human betterment through medicine and engineering.
Past effort is minuscule compared with the magni- tude of the problem.
Since the problems increase with increasing population density and developing technology, efforts at controlling the environment, and thus the health of the population, must keep pace. Indeed, in a very real sense, students of environmental health serve technology by providing the knowledge permitting its benefits to be enjoyed without adventitious adverse effects on the health of man and, more broadly, on the environment of man. Thus, support of an adequate level of competence in environmental health is indispensable to a society that elects to make optimal use of the fruits of technology. Accordingly, the environmental-health resources of the nation must first be expanded to catch up with the problems now with us and thereafter be developed, along with technological development, to provide an adequate preventive program. Only with such a policy will it be possible to develop in an orderly way the required training programs to supply the personnel needed for both research and practice, both within and outside the government, necessary to build a strong foundation for effective control programs against environmental-health hazards, a foundation that must rest on the entire current understanding of the life sciences.