Languages are territorial. They tend to occupy homogeneous, well bounded areas. When they do not, they lessen their chances of survival, especially if they are languages of minority groups. Reaching beyond the usual sociological causes of this phenomenon, this article searches the neurophysiological and the psychological literature for explanation of the tendency of closed, equalitarian systems with a high density of communication to move toward unilingualism. The search is guided by the questions: are bilinguals less brain-lateralized than unilinguals? Are different languages stored in different “containers” in the bilingual memory? Are the reaction times for coding and encoding slower in a second language than in a dominant language, slower in multilingual compared to unilingual settings? What are the psychological costs and benefits of bilingualism?

The hypothesis that the bilingual brain is different from the unilingual brain is not supported by the literature, but some fascinating studies keep the question open. Only two sets of findings emerge to offer likely explanations of language territoriality: the findings that measure the declining level of performance in a second as compared to a first language when the complexity of the task is increased, and the findings that show multilingual communication to be less efficient, due to interferences and delayed reaction times, than the same communication in a single language.

This article examines the development of generic cancer risk assessment guidelines, or cancer policy, from 1976-1984. Risk assessment is considered the objective determination of the degree of risk from a substance. Risk management is the subjective determination of acceptable risk. However, uncertainties in the scientific foundations of cancer policy necessitate risk assessment inference choices, for example, over appropriate dose-response extrapolation models. Those choices are only partially scientific; they are also partially political. There is, as a result, an inevitable mixture of facts and values in cancer policy. The article explores ten inference controversies and evaluates how nine cancer policy documents resolved those controversies. It then traces the course of cancer policy development, showing how the Carter and Reagan administrations produced policies with difference emphases and considers several major challenges to cancer policy. The article then provides several justifications for cancer policy in the face of those challenges. It suggests, in the conclusion, that the controversies are unlikely to be resolved by science alone and politics will continue to influence the content of cancer policies.

This essay represents our latest annual update of the biopolitical literature and of related developments (see also Somit et al., 1980; Peterson, Somit, and Slagter, 1982; Peterson, Somit, and Brown, 1983; Peterson and Somit, 1984). Our count for 1984 is 78 items: 3 monographs or books (Axelrod, 1984; Blank 1984f; Vanhanen, 1984a), 13 articles, 2 chapters in a book, 44 conference papers, 16 review essays, commentaries, etc., and 0 master's theses or Ph.D. dissertations.