Ahmed Rashid is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. His book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, was written before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

In the last 20 years, corporate funding in the fields of information technology and biotechnology has grown faster than support from any other source, and there is growing concern over possible corporate interference and industrial pressures that could inappropriately influence the direction, interpretation, and outcome of research. This past summer, several organizations took measures to examine and address this situation.

In our book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, we reported on a PR campaign by the U.S.