Policy Involvement
According to author Michael Moorcock, in 1967 Niven was among those Science Fiction Writers of America members who voiced opposition to the Vietnam War. However, in 1968 Niven's name appeared in a pro-war ad in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.
Niven was an adviser to Ronald Reagan on the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative anti missile policy, as covered in the BBC documentary Pandora's Box by Adam Curtis.
In 2007, Niven, in conjunction with a group of science fiction writers known as SIGMA, led by Pournelle, began advising the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as to future trends affecting terror policy and other topics. One of his suggestions as a member of SIGMA was that hospitals stem financial losses by spreading rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants, in order to reduce illegal immigrants' use of emergency rooms.
Read more about this topic: Larry Niven
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