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P lastics and ecology—Are these in conflict with each other? Apparently, plastics are quite friendly to the environment—they are not hazardous to nature, they do not contribute any essential contamination to the air, water, or ground. We may regard these materials as nonpollutants. Yet there appears to be an increasing bias against plastics in public opinion, due to the fact that more and more plastic packages are observed in litter or in domestic wastes. The problem of litter, can be solved both by regulation and education. As to the growing appearance of plastics in domestic (as well as industrial and agricultural) waste streams, in contrast to other organic components (including paper), plastics are stable towards biological attack, and have a very long lifetime. Now, plastics do not represent the largest component in domestic wastes, yet as containers and packages they are bulky and therefore consume relative large volumes. In conclusion, the conflict between plastics and ecology may be confined to the accumulation of plastics (mainly from packages) in landfills that are becoming crowded and scarce. The treatment of domestic wastes in an economical way has become a major issue, while ecologists fight for a clean and pleasant environment. The various solutions and a survey of the state of the art will be discussed.

Marmosets and tamarins, small monkeys native to Central and South America (Hershkovitz, 1966), have been used extensively in biomedical research during the past decade (Wolfe and Deinhardt, 1972; Deinhardt, 1973; Falk, 1974; Wolfe, Deinhardt, Ogden, Adams, and Fisher, 1975). In 1965, a nursery for hand-rearing neonatal marmosets was established in our laboratory, in conjunction with establishment of a breeding colony of marmosets for production of neonates for viral oncology studies. The nursery was required for rearing parentally neglected, uninoculated animals and animals inoculated with oncogenic viruses. Neonates were used in the experimental studies because of their greater susceptibility to selected oncogenic viruses and, once inoculated, were reared in isolation from the breeding colony to avoid contamination of the breeders and to permit closer monitoring for experimentally induced disease. Subsequently, hand-reared animals also were used in our laboratory in studies of slow virus diseases of the central nervous system.