title: Ruckelshaus on accountability.
abstract: In an address to the American Chemlical Society on 13 Septemeber, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus said that "Decisions such as the fate of DDT are not decisions solely within the purview of the scientist to make in his laboratory. Rather they are basic societal decisions about what kind of a life people want and about what risks they are willing to accept to achieve it." He went on to discuss in the following passage his own conception of the accountability of himself and of scientists to the public: