WWGD? Gandhi’s Spirit Hovers as India Debates Iodized Salt. “India has made

tremendous progress in

eradicating the ancient

scourge of iodine deficiency

— the single most

preventable cause of mental

retardation — by making

cheap, iodized salt available

to most of its billion people.

But a recent government

decision has jeopardized

these advances, medical

researchers say.

Indeed, India’s entire

scientific establishment,

including the Indian Medical

Association and the Indian

National Science Academy,

seems aghast that Prime

Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee

and his Health Ministry lifted a two-year-old ban on the sale

of noniodized salt in September. In doing so, the

government bowed to a lobbying campaign by Hindu

nationalists, Gandhians and small- scale salt producers.

…Those on both sides of iodization claim to be the true

inheritors of Gandhi’s legacy. The scientists say Gandhi

would be happy that salt has become a way to ensure that

even India’s poorest children do not have their intelligence

dulled by a lack of iodine, while some followers of Gandhi

contend that he would object to the compulsory iodization

of salt.” New York Times

Switched on: “In lab mice all over the world, genes are being turned

on and off like light bulbs to find out what they do.

Scientists have rewound Huntington’s disease,

probed the roots of memory and staged the onset of

prion disease. And that’s just in the brain. The man

who made it all possible is Hermann Bujard, chairman

of the Centre for Molecular Biology at the University

of Heidelberg, Germany. With his colleagues, Bujard

developed the Tet system which allows genes to be

controlled remotely–from outside a living organism.

What started as a hobby has spawned two thousand

research papers and contributed to work that led to a

Nobel prize last month–for somebody else.” New Scientist

Making them fit the genital norms: “The rationale for clitoridectomy in (the 19th century) was

straightforwardly terrible, and ridiculously unscientific. By contrast,

modern theories seem slightly more humane, but when you get down to

it, the same question of gender links the Victorian Age’s clitoridectomy

to its Dot-Com Age cousin. We have been altering the healthy genitals

of our children-—boys as well as girls-—for 135 years so that a girl will

look and act like a girl, and a boy will look and act like a boy, according

to social norms. The strict division between female and male bodies and

behavior is our most cherished and comforting truth.

“All over this country there are people whose clitorises have been

removed, either totally or partially. They range from your great-aunt’s

roommate in the nursing home to your neighbor’s two-year-old. They

include hundreds of women from every generation. Some were born

clearly female; some were born clearly male but were reassigned as

female and then had their genitals altered; and some were babies whose

sex was not so easy to define. Although statistics for childhood clitoral

surgery are extremely difficult to gather, one can extrapolate a figure

from the number of babies born each year in the U.S., the number born

with conditions that produce enlarged clitorises, and the number-—most

of them-—who will undergo clitoroplasty. Approximately five times a

day in the U.S., surgeons change the size and shape of a child’s healthy

clitoris. Few of these children are capable of expressing what they want.

Some, if given the choice later in life, might choose clitoroplasty. But

judging from the responses of women who had the surgery done either

without their agreement or at an age when they were too young to know

what they were agreeing to, many would have preferred to stay the way

they were.” Ms. Magazine

A bad place to have schizophrenia? Budgetary concerns in the British National Health Service have led to doctors ‘rationing the best mental health drugs’ in a way that even U.S. “managed care” has not succeeded in doing. The newer atypical antipsychotic medications (clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine and quetiapine) are such an improvement over conventional antipsychotics for the treatment of schizophrenia and related conditions that they have made the older conventional antipsychotic medications all but obsolete in North America and the rest of Europe. They are effective against a broader range of the symptoms with which afflicted patients are beset, and they are far safer and more tolerable. Consultants advise that all patients requiring antipsychotic treatment in the UK receive these atypical medications as well, but in fact fewer than one in eight do. The official NHS position is that there have not been enough trials to establish the superiority of the newer drugs, although this flies in the face of the experience of every clinician treating psychotic disorders.

The real concern is that these newer medications are vastly more expensive — sometimes approaching a hundred times the cost of the older, side-effect-riddled medications, which are often available in generic form. “But if you compare with the cost of long term

treatments for other conditions like diabetes

the atypicals aren’t that expensive,” said a spokesperson for the British National Schizophrenia Fellowship; not to mention the costs of recurrent hospitalization when patients are not compliant with the older less desireable medications. Critics suggest that the

reluctance to pay for newer treatments is a

form of discrimination against people with a

mental illness.

“Part of the problem is that it’s difficult to

measure things like quality of life, but if you

look at other areas of health care, when a new

drug comes along with much fewer

side-effects, then the old treatments are

unceremoniously dumped even if they are

cheaper.” BBC

Tricks and Treats (James Ridgeway): ‘After surviving Gore-inspired “flash attacks” over the weekend, Ralph Nader’s campaign is

now the target of a propaganda wave. One high-profile Gore partisan this morning was spreading a nasty

rumor about the Nader machine. According to the scuttlebutt, Nader operatives had leaked information

that the consumer advocate had been secretly offered $12 million—the amount his Green Party would get

in federal matching funds if he won 5 percent of the vote next Tuesday—to take a fall against Gore in key

states. The whisperer said Nader had refused the money.’ The Village Voice

Moon and his ballet stars. “When the Rev Moon’s son died in a car crash,

the controversial religious leader formed a

dance company for the young man’s fiancée.

With money no object, it has impressed critics

around the world.” The Telegraph

White Light UV Laser Could Replace Current Lighting: “The first ultraviolet (UV) solid-state microcavity laser has been

demonstrated in prototype by scientists at the Department of Energy’s

Sandia National Laboratories, working with colleagues at Brown University.

Among their benefits, UV VCSELS (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers)

coated with phosphors can generate the white light most prized for indoor

lighting — illumination currently provided by gas-filled fluorescent tubes

widely used in offices, schools, factories, and by incandescent bulbs used

in most homes.

Such solid-state emitters will last five to ten times longer than fluorescent

tubes, be far hardier, and perhaps most noticeably, grouped several

hundred to a postage-sized chip, will have aesthetic value: instead of a

single clunky tube, the chips will be arranged in any configuration one might

wish on ceiling, wall, or furniture.”

Steven Pinker said, “I have never met a person who is not interested in language.” Language Miniatures is a regularly-updated set of “mini-essays about human language in its endless kaleidoscope of aspects, such as the social, the mental, the historical, the structural.”

Expo Seeks Greener Pastures Did you even know there was a World’s Fair going on in Hanover, Germany this summer? A far cry from the big deal these expo’s used to be back in the 20th century. Wired

Vote Swapper Swatted Down

“Your website specifically offers to broker the exchange of votes throughout the United States of America,”

said the (letter from the California secretary of state) to site owners Jim Cody and Ted Johnson. “This activity is a corruption of the

voting process in violation of Elections Code sections 18521 and 18522 as well as Penal Code section 182,

criminal conspiracy.” Wired