January 26, 1992

POLITICIANS are instinctively drawn to compromise, which helps explain their discomfort with the issue of abortion. Even a master strategist like the late Lee Atwater had a hard time managing the abortion issue, when he tried to recast the Republican Party for the 1990 elections as a "big tent" where both sides could feel at home. Last week, the Supreme Court might have guaranteed that the issue will be even hotter in 1992. The court set the stage for an election-year ruling that could further weaken or even overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case recognizing a constitutional right to abortion.

DR. PETER DIAMANDOPOULOS, president of Adelphi University in Garden City, has a reputation for being dynamic, brash and arrogant. In 1985, when he was named to lead the university out of its academic languor and severe financial problems, he also made it his goal to transform Adelphi from a mediocre institution into a nationally recognized liberal-arts college. As part of the transformation, an advertising agency developed a campaign for Adelphi that exhibited some of the same impudent qualities Dr. Diamandopoulos is known for. The ads promoted Adelphi as "the most interesting university in the country," where "the whole man and the whole woman" are developed and prepared for life, not just a place where minds are occupied for "the years between high school and postpubescence."

As the United States and other Western nations get ready to send large amounts of aid to the former Soviet Union, people here are struggling to overcome inexperience and disorganization at both ends of the pipeline, as well as a strong temptation to divert scarce food, clothing and medicine to a hungry black market. Rushing to stitch together some kind of safety net for the needy and to keep up with the foreign response to their country's growing emergency, Russian Government officials have created a Ministry for Social Protection.

Consumer groups and Federal officials are raising disturbing questions about whether the Food and Drug Administration has adequate powers to protect the public from dangerous drugs and devices. Recent cases involving silicone breast implants, the sleeping pill Halcion and the sedative Versed suggest that the agency and the public are sometimes the last to learn of reports of dangerous side effects. The Federal agency does no testing of its own, and in making decisions it must rely entirely on the test results submitted by manufacturers. Officials of the agency and consumer advocates both say that the F.D.A. lacks the subpoena power, which virtually every other Federal agency has, to obtain drug company documents when suspicions are aroused.

A CASE OF CURIOSITIES By Allen Kurzweil. 358 pp. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $19.95.