More modest efforts can help people now.

FORBES: Why Digital Health Is Different From Any Other Business

Amazingly, some of those same people -- including Spurgeon Keeney , president of the Arms Control Association and Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes , a former U.S. Arms Control Agency lawyer, who are quoted in today's Washington Post -- are sharply critical of even these modest efforts to understand and begin to address the threat that they purport to regard as a serious one (at least when opposing missile defenses).

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center For Security Policy

Newer gene therapy efforts have more modest goals and use techniques that so far appear to avoid the downside of earlier efforts.

FORBES: Glaxo Brings Gene Therapy Back From The Dead

The NRA, one of the most powerful lobbies in U.S. politics, has made no secret of its anger at Democrats' efforts to enact even modest gun-control laws and said Thursday the TV ads would begin running this weekend and continue through the Democratic convention in Los Angeles next week.

CNN: U.S. gun lobby ads to blast Democrats at convention

Efforts to stem the toxic plume have met with only modest success (see briefing).

ECONOMIST: American politics and business

Yet the combined efforts of four successive finance ministers have secured only a modest 10% reduction.

ECONOMIST: The French president

His efforts to alter the situation would appear to have been relatively modest.

BBC: 'Mistimed coup' in Honduras?