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July 26 - Doctors once thought that the placenta would shield a fetus from harmful chemicals and pollutants. But new research shows that may not be the case. A study published this month by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an advocacy group based in Washington DC, found traces of 287 chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of 10 infants. They included mercury, pesticides and the chemicals used in stain-resistant coating and fire-retardant foam. The findings prompted concerns since children’s smaller brains, developing organs and more porous brains put them more at risk from such toxins than adults. "A child's brain is very vulnerable and developing very rapidly in utero and during the first two years of life," says Jane Houlihan, co-author of the study.

While former threats like smallpox and polio are now under control, conditions like autism and asthma are on the rise. Autism rates are up tenfold, asthma cases have doubled and incidences of childhood cancers like leukemia and brain cancer are also high. No one has pinpointed the cause of the increases yet. But reports like this one may leave many parents feeling like they need a PhD in chemistry just to keep their children healthy in an unhealthy, even toxic, world. The EWG study detected perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), for example, in all 10 of the newborns' blood at a range of 3.37 to 10.7 parts per billion. It's not clear whether chemicals at this ratio can cause cancer or birth defects or precisely what, if any, levels would be safe in such a young population, but these levels are certainly not naturally occurring. The samples also contained up to 14,200 parts per trillion of polybrominate dephenyl ethers (PBDEs), which have been linked to brain and thyroid development problems.

The sample of cord blood in the EWG study is too small to be conclusive.  (There are not many studies of cord blood because it is hard to get and expensive to test.)  But the findings got some support from a comprehensive study of chemicals in Americans' bodies done by the Centers for Disease Control. The report, which came out last week, involved tests of some 2,400 people aged six or older for 62 of the same chemicals, as well as 86 not included in the EWG report. Though levels of lead in children had decreased from previous studies, the report also found some doses of some chemicals in children, including DDE (an industrial pesticide) and phthalates, which are found in nail polish and some plastic toys.

Dr. Lynnette Mazur, who is on the American Academy of Pediatrics environmental health committee, acknowledges that all these studies can be very confusing to parents. "There are a lot of huge names and all these numbers next to them, but there is no clinical correlation with these numbers."  In other words, kids aren't showing up at her office in Houston with obvious effects from pesticide poisoning. But she notes that it takes science awhile to figure out what's going on. "And by then it's usually too late," she says.

That was the case in the coastal town of Minimata in Japan, where residents in the 1940s and 1950s unwittingly ate seafood that had been contaminated with mercury compounds dumped into the bay by a local chemical company. In the early 1950s, residents began suffering brain damage and neurological effects. But it was not until 1959 that researchers realized the victims were suffering the effects of mercury poisoning, and the connection was made to the contaminated seafood and the company that had dumped the waste. 

The mercury found in the infants' blood in the EWG report was not nearly as concentrated as the levels found in Minimata residents. But doctors have long been worrisome about its effects. Pregnant women--and toddlers--are now routinely advised to avoid fish with potentially high mercury content like swordfish, shark and tilefish. These large fish eat little fish that eat the algae that may be contaminated by pollution. Dr. William Weil, who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrician’s Committee on Environmental Health, says he would also put tuna steaks on the list of fish to avoid. Some fish, he says, also accumulate PCBs--industrial pollutants also found in the EWG study--in their fat, but, “the inexpensive canned tuna kids eat is probably safe."

Weil and Mazur aren't alarmists. But they both support the ban-first, study-it-later "precautionary principle," adopted in some countries in Europe when there are any questions about the safety of a chemical. In the United States, it's the opposite scenario: science has to first prove something is harmful before it is banned. The European Parliament, for example, recently banned phthalates. But the Toy Industry Association in the United States scoffed at that move since it says that the risk of phthalates is still being studied. Weil isn't worried about pregnant women using nail polish, but he's concerned about pesticides--especially those used to treat lawns and parks where kids play. "Live with a few dandelions," he says.  He also recommends frequent hand washing. The average two-year-old puts his hands in his mouth nine times an hour, according to Environmental Protection Agency data.  

The good news, and there is some, is that both PCB and lead levels are going down in all age groups. In fact, another study released last week by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics found that lead levels in children 1 to 5 years old had declined 89 percent since the mid 1970s, when the government took lead out of gasoline after it was found to lower IQs (though lead paint remains a worry). PCBs were also banned in the 1970s, but they linger in the environment for decades. As PCBs are waning, however, PBDEs and PFCs are taking their place and again showed up in the cord blood samples. The first is the chemical in fire retardants; they're often used in furniture foam, for example. So Houlihan recommends that parents should immediately fix any rips that expose the foam. The second is used in stain-resistant clothing and plastic food containers.  To avoid the chemicals, Houlihan suggests parents buy clothes that get dirty and avoid heating food in plastic containers in the microwave. "All this information can seem overwhelming, but there are some simple things that parents can do," she says.

c.c. 2005-07-29 12:39 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 1 - Joanne Bennett, 34, used to leave her 4-year-old daughter in the babysitting center at her gym while she worked out. But this winter, Bennett thought better of leaving Caitlin to sit for an hour while she was getting fit. Bennett’s gym, New York Sports Club of West Nyack, N.Y., was offering new kids classes, so she enrolled Caitlin in gymnastics. “It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” says Bennett. “I don’t want my children to be couch potatoes. Some kids we know are 7-years-old and already on calorie-restricted diets because they are just vegging. And even I used to be like: ‘Oh, God, the gym’. But I don’t want it to be that way for Caitlin, so we’re going together.”

Bennett isn’t the only one looking to avoid the 21st century plagues of childhood obesity and an overly sedentary lifestyle for her child. The alarming statistics are well known. Sixteen percent of American kids are obese and obesity among 6-11-year-olds has more than tripled in the past 30 years, according to the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit organization associated with the National Academy of Sciences. The institute also reports that fewer than 10 percent of schools offer daily physical education. These are the kind of numbers that are prompting fitness-conscious parents to look for ways to get more physical activity into their kids' lives—even if it means scheduling exercise the way they might a violin lesson.

In response, the fitness industry is undergoing a huge makeover. Upscale health clubs that used to cater to professional adults are adding everything from video dance classes for kids to prep for sports-team tryouts. And it’s not just gyms. Personal trainers and exercise equipment makers also have a new focus on kids and families. From 1998 to 2003, the number of health club members under 18 in the United States rose by 25 percent, according to the  International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.

“We realized that we needed to provide parents with an opportunity to involve their kids in some kind of activity while they were working out to relieve some of the guilt,” says Cheryl Mueller Jones, a vice president at Town Sports International, which owns New York Sports Clubs. The 140-club chain began offering kids club classes in the fall of 2000 and now has 15,000 children enrolled. “The growth in our kids programs is dramatic—more than double what we’re seeing with adults,” says Jones.

Bally Total Fitness, which used to be known more for sexy ads featuring glossy twentysomethings, is also seeking younger members. “We only had a few children’s programs in four cities four years ago, now we have 15 or 16 cities,” says Norris Tomlinson, national director of group exercise. “We’re finding that with all the phys-ed cutbacks at schools, parents are looking for an alternative. We see this as a great area to grow.”

Along with new kid-friendly attitudes at traditional gyms, there’s a crop of familycentric clubs spreading kudzulike across the country. One of the most successful, Life Time Fitness Inc., is almost a megachurch of family wellness. The company’s standard facility is a $22.5 million dollar, 150,000-square foot space featuring multiple pools, spas, gymnasiums, cardio centers, restaurants and a 6,000-square-foot children’s activity area with rock climbing, basketball and swimming classes. Life Time’s 40 clubs in eight states have 535,000 members in total.

“We generally see 2,500 to 3,500 unique visitors per day through each of these centers,” says spokesman Jason Thunstrom.  The Minnesota-based company even runs a “Life Time University” to train its 8,500 staff. Family memberships are a reasonable $120 per month with no cap on the number of kids. “People are getting more savvy about health and the fact that we’ve been family-focused from day one only helps us,” says Thunstrom. The 13-year-old company went public in June 2004 with an opening price of $18.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. By May of 2005, shares were trading just above $28.00. Thunstrom reports that the company will open six new clubs this year.

The Little Gym, an Arizona-based company that caters exclusively to kids under 12, has also seen extraordinary growth. It plans to open 42 new clubs in the United States this year for a total of 195. “For a second year in a row we’ll increase our total number of gyms by about 40 percent and we’re just thrilled,” says Karen Gray, the company’s marketing manager.

Exercise equipment makers are getting into the youth-fitness game with new kid-size products. Pro*Fit Enterprises and HOIST Fitness are two manufacturers that have recently come out with child-size circuit-training machines. HOIST, which proposes that its equipment is part of the “solution to the youth obesity problem,” sells a nine-piece kids circuit-training package with safety features like weight stacks that don’t pinch small fingers and seats that move like a ride. “We know that it’s inactivity along with diet that’s causing the prevalence of overweight kids and we thought there would be a need for this kind of fitness equipment,” says HOIST cofounder Randy Webber.

Personal trainers for kids, even at $50 to $100 per hour, have become increasingly popular, especially amongst sports-minded teens. “Nationwide, we’re seeing an increase over the past two years of at least 50 percent in adolescents training with trainers,” says Ron Clark, President of the National Federation of Professional Trainers. Children who use trainers are usually on two tracks. “There are parents who say, I want my kid to be on a sports scholarship, and others who say that they just care about their child’s health,” explains Todd Durkin founder of Fitness Quest 10 in San Diego. “Overall, the number of kids coming in here has quadrupled.”

Dave Golia, 44, has three sons working with Durkin’s trainers. Two are high-school athletes intent on honing skills for elite sports teams. The third, 13-year-old Taylor, is more scholarly. “Guys like Taylor can get lost on school teams,” says Golia. “The coaches want to win and they will pay more attention to the best athletes,” he adds. “Taylor wants to increase his body strength and gain confidence, and that’s not necessarily going to happen at school.” Golia began twice-weekly personal training sessions with Taylor a few months ago, and both are thrilled with the results. “It’s had a really positive effect on his health and more importantly, we’ve really bonded,” says Golia.

But what about families that don’t have hundreds of dollars per month for trainers or gym memberships?  That’s where moderately priced places like the YMCA come in. To improve the fitness of the 3 million kids in their after-school programs, the Y worked with the Centers for Disease Control to develop its Youth Health and Fitness Training Program which will roll out this month. It aims to incorporate one hour of physical activity into their afternoon routine. “We’re responding to the reports about children’s health and requests from parents,” says Mike Spezzano, the YMCA’s national health and fitness program specialist. “Our focus is let’s go for the masses rather than go for the select few that can afford a service.” 

For parents in the middle, like Joanne Bennett, whose kids are neither sedentary, nor without recreational options, exercise classes are more of a pre-emptive measure. Bennett hopes that an early emphasis on fitness might help the whole family avoid those dreaded extra pounds later. “It’s so easy for kids to sit down in front of the TV and do nothing,” says Bennett. “I don’t want it to be that way for Caitlin. I want her to grow up and be excited about exercising.” And the fitness industry does too.

c.c. 2005-07-01 14:25 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 28 - At 14, fair-skinned, blue-eyed Charlie Guild got a bad sunburn after she forgot to reapply her sunscreen at a pool party. When she was 16, she mistakenly fried herself on a family Christmas vacation trip to Puerto Vallarta. Charlie was just 25 when she learned she had melanoma. She died from it eight months later. "I never had the faintest idea that literally a burn could cause you to get a fatal disease. It can," says her mom, Valerie Guild, president of the Charlie Guild Melanoma Foundation (charlie.org), a national advocacy group trying to raise awareness about skin cancer prevention and detection through sun-safety education for children and other efforts. 

Getting tan may not be as harmful as smoking. But unprotected exposure to its ultraviolet rays in the teen years dramatically increases the risk of skin cancer, the most common form of the disease in America today. And doctors are concerned about the rising rates of skin cancer, particularly sunburn-linked malignant melanoma—now the top cancer killer of women aged 25 to 30. One in 70 Americans will get melanoma in his or her lifetime now, according to the American Cancer Society. That's up dramatically from the 1930s and 40s, when pale skin and conservative clothing were in vogue, and Americans had a one-in-1,500 chance of getting the disease.

Last year doctors diagnosed more than 59,000 new cases of malignant melanoma and about one million new cases of basal or squamous cell carcinoma, believed to be the result of cumulative sun exposure. "The stage for this stuff is set when you're 18, when you're in the tanning bed, thinking this makes you look cool," says Dr. Mark Jewell, president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. 

But it's been tough to get that message to image-conscious teenagers. Despite warnings, they continue to bake in the sun—and in tanning booths. A June 2002 study in the journal Pediatrics found that more than one third of 17-year-old girls use tanning salons. Among 14-year-olds, that number was 7 percent. When teens, aged 12 to 17, were asked during a recent survey by the American Academy of Dermatology if they were aware that getting a suntan can be dangerous for their skin, an overwhelming majority (79 percent) said "yes." And 81 percent said that they know that childhood sunburns increase their risk of developing skin cancer as an adult. Still, 60 percent of the teens surveyed admitted that they had suffered at least one sunburn during the summer of 2004 and  47 percent said they think people look healthier with a tan. And 66 percent believed that people appear physically better with a tan. 

"Our simple prevention message has largely fallen on deaf ears," says Dr. James Spencer, educational spokesman for the Skin Cancer Foundation and director of the division of dermatologic surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Some state legislatures have stepped in to help curb one popular form of teen tanning—indoor beds. Twenty-two states now limit teen access, requiring parental consent or banning the use of tanning beds altogether by those under 14. As of January 1, 2005, for example, a new California state law prohibits kids under 14 from using a tanning salon and requires parental consent for 14- to 17-year-olds. North Carolina and New Hampshire also prohibit kids under 14 from using booths. Health professionals like Spencer would like to see even tighter restrictions.
"We do not sell tobacco and alcohol to teenagers, not even with parental permission," he says. Tanning booths, he adds, should fall into the same category. 

Monitoring teens' behavior outdoors is much harder. It's too simplistic to merely warn kids to just say no to sun. In fact, teens—and adults—need some sun to get vitamin D, which helps build strong bones and protect against lymphoma and prostate, lung and colon cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and type I diabetes, says Dr. Michael Holick, author of "The UV Advantage" and professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University. "Sensible sun exposure is really important for teenagers. That's their formative years for when they accrue the most bone," he explains.

The salon industry has jumped on that argument, touting moderate indoor tanning as a healthy activity. "Some sun is not only good for you, it's essential for good health," says John Overstreet, executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association, which represents salon operators. "We're not allowed to make health claims. But the evidence is pretty clear that ultraviolet [light] has health benefits." 

Health officials have tried to counter such claims. Spencer points out that teens can also boost their Vitamin D levels by taking a vitamin and drinking more milk. And the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Dermatology advise teens to avoid tanning salons completely.  Even Holick warns teens not to overdo their sun exposure; just a quick walk to the store can provide Vitamin D benefits.

No one's recommending teens avoid the sun altogether—just that they take precautions. Thick sunscreen absorbs or reflects UV light, so you're not getting the penetrating rays that are damaging the skin. Doctors recommend using sunscreen with both ultraviolet A and B protection and an SPF of 15 or higher, and re-applying it every two hours. While it's possible to get a tan through sunscreen—albeit at a slower rate—the lotion helps to prevent burning and decreases the risk of developing skin cancer later in life. Not wearing sunscreen, "is like not wearing a bicycle helmet," says Dr. Daniel Krowchuk, professor of pediatrics and dermatology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' section on dermatology.

But while one bike accident may be enough to convince a teen to wear a helmet, a sunburn doesn't always have the same effect. Only about 35 percent of teens use sunscreen, according to a June 2002 report in Pediatrics.

A safer option:  self-tanning lotions. The products contain dihydroxyacetone (DHA), which interacts with the dead cells on the skin's surface and darkens them. "Within a few hours, you start to see a color change, and it tends to fade over a week or so," says Krowchuk. He recommends that teens read the labels and buy a self-tanner that's non-acnegenic or non-comedogenic so it doesn't block pores and cause blackheads and whiteheads.

The best option, of course, is "taking a leap of faith and saying, 'I don't need to look so tan,'" says Krowchuk.  But even he admits "that is not an easy thing to get people to buy into."   

Ashley Charmichael, 20, who will be a junior this fall at the University of Northern Iowa, knows about the potential dangers but says she loves being tan. "I like the way that my skin looks. I feel healthier, although I know it's not healthier," says the former lifeguard, who used tanning booths and natural sunlight throughout her teens to achieve her glow.  "Right now it's worth it for me to have the color and feel good about myself...It's winning over now, the instant
gratification." 

"[Teens tan] because they want to look sexy for the prom this weekend.  You're telling them to worry about something when they're 45. That's a million miles away, and the prom is this weekend," says Spencer. "One thing that would help is if it wasn't sexy to be tan." Pale skin was in during the mid-20th century, but many young celebrities today look like they just stepped off the beach—even in the middle of winter.  Teen icons like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have been blamed for perpetuating the rise in "tanorexia" (a term that's come to be associated with people who never think they're sufficiently bronzed).

That may change as the celebrities age. As Spencer points out, "By their mid- to late 30s, they're starting to look like leathery old women." (Compare that to beautiful, 30-something stars like Nicole Kidman whose smooth skin is often described as "luminescent" or
"porcelain"). But until then, teens are more likely to listen to their iPods than warnings about wrinkles and skin cancer. Too bad. It may be true that you can never be too rich, but you can be too tan. Lindsay, are you listening?

c.c. 2005-06-29 16:31 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

July 4 issue - Millions of Americans now have a new reason to dread the mailbox. In addition to the tried-and-true collection of Letters You Never Want to See—the tax audit, the high cholesterol reading, the college rejection letter—there is now the missive that reveals you are on the fast track to becoming a victim of identify theft. Someone may have taken possession of your credit-card info, Social Security number, bank account or other personal data that would enable him or her to go on a permanent shopping spree—leaving you to deal with the financial, legal and psychic bills.

Deborah Platt Majoras got the pain letter last week, from DSW Shoe Warehouse. Hers was among more than a million credit-card numbers that the merchant stored in an ill-protected database. So when hackers busted in, they got the information to buy stuff in her name—and 1.4 million other people's names. "It's scary," she says. "Part of it is the uncertainty that comes with it, not knowing whether sometime in the next year my credit-card number will be abused." Now she must take steps to protect herself, including re-examining charges closely, requesting a credit report and contacting the Federal Trade Commission to put her complaint into its extensive ID-theft database. The latter step should be easy for her, since Majoras is the FTC chairman.

Somewhere, Willie Sutton is smiling. Sutton was the sly swindler who, when asked why he robbed banks, was said to reply, "Because that's where the money is." Today the easy money is still in banks—databanks: vast electronic caches in computers, hard disks and backup tapes that store our names, Social Security numbers, credit-card records, financial files and other records. That information can be turned into cash; thieves can quickly sell it to "fraudsters" who will use it to impersonate others. They visit porn sites, buy stereo systems, purchase cars, take out mortgages and generally destroy the credit ratings of innocent victims, who may be unable to get new jobs, buy houses or even get passports until the matter is painstakingly resolved. And since the crime is all done remotely, modern ID thieves suffer little of the risk that Sutton shouldered a half century ago when he robbed banks with a machine gun.

We've become accustomed to the digital grease that smooths transactions, loans and eBay bids, but worries about identity theft quietly shadow us, often leading us to restrict our activities and be extra careful with our credit cards and personal information. In recent weeks, though, there's been something different, a cascade of reports about big break-ins and bungles where the booty is our secrets. Suddenly things seem out of control: instead of losing our identities one by one, we're seeing criminals grabbing them in massive chunks—literally millions at a time. "It only makes sense that criminals would go where information is collected," says Martha Stansell-Gamm, head of the DOJ's computer-crime division. The biggest heist of all may have been the one revealed last week, where an Atlanta-based company called CardSystems was lax in protecting the credit cards from transactions it processed. As a result, a possible 40 million Discover, Visa, MasterCard and American Express numbers (along with the secret code numbers printed on the actual cards, which makes it easier to counterfeit new versions) were exposed to hackers who have already begun the process of turning the digits into cash and prizes.

"Over the last nine years, criminals have gotten a better understanding of the power of information," says Rob Douglas of PrivacyToday, a security consulting firm. "Instead of selling drugs, so much can be made so quickly with identify theft, and the likelihood of getting caught is almost nil." The Department of Justice has reprioritized to fight the plague, but it's a big challenge; Avivah Litan of research firm Gartner Group speculates that fewer than 1 in 700 identity crimes leads to a conviction. This goes a long way toward explaining why it's the fastest-growing crime of this century. Chairman Majoras, now suffering anxiety simply because she bought some shoes, has testified before Congress that crooks rack up $53 billion a year in ID theft. Consumers are stuck with $5 billion directly, but the rest of it is mainly paid by retailers and businesses—which pass it back to us in higher prices.

Losing your credit card can be a huge hassle, but the law limits losses. In more distressing forms of ID theft, someone swipes not just your card but also your entire financial persona. Jamie Llanes, a 28-year-old mother of six in Chetek, Wis., has been living a nightmare since last September, when she was turned down for a loan because of a "substantial address difference" in her file—namely, a house in her name in Rialto, Calif., a state she had never set foot in. She also discovered that her doppelgnger had taken out an $8,700 car loan, and paid it back "to make my credit boost up so they could buy the home." Meanwhile, Llanes can't even get approved for a Victoria's Secret card, and the local police won't help her.

"To a certain extent you can't do anything," says Essita Holmes, a D.C. public defender whose years of shredding documents seemed wasted after ID thieves established a phony bank account in her name to cash bad checks at Target and Wal-Mart. "We're all victims in waiting."

For years, the primary cause of ID theft has been good old-fashioned analog crime. Thieves rifle mailboxes, snatch purses and dive into Dumpsters for discarded bank statements or credit-card receipts. More recently, we've seen a plague of "phishing"—sending bogus e-mails that look like they come from legitimate companies, asking us to supply supposedly lost or outdated personal information. Last week phishers, trying to capitalize on the news, sent out e-mails supposedly from MasterCard, asking people to update their information. "They played on the fear that consumers had when the announcement was made," says Susan Larson of SurfControl, an Internet-security firm.

By now, savvy computer users know the requisite defense against a phishing attack: never respond to a request for your personal information. This wisdom is part of the standard tool kit of protections against ID theft. Check your credit-card bills with an eagle eye. Request your credit report. Shred your information with the fervor of an Enronite. Every aspect of this regime makes perfect sense for each of us to protect the identity we call our own. But when it comes to companies charged with safeguarding millions, sometimes even billions, of records, what do they do?

They leave it unencrypted on computers, where malicious hackers get hold of it. The DSW Shoe Warehouse is far from the only hacked database owner. According to an FTC consent order, BJ's Wholesale Club, a Massachusetts-based firm operating big-box stores and gas stations, not only failed to encrypt, but stored records in violation of bank-security rules, didn't use a firewall to prevent wireless intrusions and protected the information with the easy-to-guess default passwords that came with the system. Result: credit cards ripped off in early 2004 were used to fraudulently charge millions in goods.

They inadvertently sell it to crooks. ChoicePoint is an information broker that keeps, or can electronically access, 19 billion records on American consumers, almost certainly including you. It prides itself on the security of its databases—but that didn't matter when it sold the secrets of at least 145,000 consumers to a fake company last year, including the Social Security number of Kei Kishimoto, a Boston biotech researcher. ChoicePoint gave Kishimoto a year of free credit monitoring, but then he's on his own. "Those numbers could be in a million places by now," he says.

They pack it in boxes and put it in a UPS truck. That's what CitiFinancial, a unit of Citigroup, did with the financial secrets of 3.9 million customers last May. The box never arrived at its destination, and now CitiFinancial's telling customers that their identities are at risk. For Jessica Jerwa, a Seattle paralegal, who's a previous victim of ID theft, learning that her records were lost by Citi was a scary deja vu.

They leave it on laptops that get stolen. Last March at UC Berkeley someone made away with a computer holding personal information of almost 100,000 grad students and applicants.

They don't monitor what insiders may do with it. In April, Hackensack, N.J., police arrested eight employees at Bank of America, Wachovia, PNC and Commerce banks for selling customer-account numbers to an unlicensed collection agency run by a convicted criminal. The operation snared data on more than 676,000 people, including customers from six additional banks.

They just plain lose it. Bank of America is still looking for backup tapes with information on 1.2 million government workers, discovered lost in December. Maybe they're in the same place as the records Time Warner lost in March, containing 600,000 missing records on past and current employees and their families.

One reason we're hearing about all these breaches is that a 2003 California law required companies for the first time to disclose the failures that affect residents of that state. "Before the disclosure law, we were in the dark," says Beth Givens, head of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "The general public is just now learning about how insecure the computer networks are that hold our sensitive personal information."

Without that law, we may not have even heard about the mother of all breaches, CardSystems. The privately held company processes an estimated $15 billion credit- card transactions a year (between the merchant and the bank). In direct violation of its agreement with MasterCard and Visa, CardSystems retained 40 million credit-card numbers "for research purposes," as its CEO John Perry initially told the press. These were sucked out of the system by digital invaders. CardSystems's clients admit that protection was lax: "Obviously there were deficiencies and other issues," says Josh Peirez, head of government affairs for MasterCard. Since the break-in, CardSystems has reportedly installed a new "intrusion-prevention product" (hey, thanks).

Obviously, an elaborate infrastructure of crime has emerged to collect and distribute stolen records. "It's not the lone gunman of the past," says Chris Painter of the Department of Justice. "There are highly structured criminal organizations operating." When it comes to attacking databases, malicious hackers either use automated software "bots" to methodically probe the Internet for vulnerable databases or target companies that are likely to harbor honey pots. Most often, they enter systems through preventable security flaws, like guessable passwords (example: "Dave" or the default password that came with the program) or known vulnerabilities in software.

Once records are stolen, they are passed on or sold in fleeting digital dark alleys—chat rooms or instant-messaging sessions where transactions are quickly, stealthily enacted. Sometimes the crooks are sufficiently brazen to post their offerings on Web sites that are sort of fraudster eBays. At one site posted by a member of the Shadowcrew organization (which was shut down by the Feds last year in the biggest ID-theft bust to date, code-named Operation Firewall), $200 gets 300 credit cards without the CW2 security codes printed on the back of the card. If you want card numbers with the security code, it will cost you $200 for 50 of them. If you want the fraudster equivalent of a Happy Meal—a card packaged with the owner's Social Security number and date of birth—that will cost you $40 apiece.

After fraudsters buy the purloined numbers, they commonly use them to grab goodies as fast as possible. It's kind of a high-tech form of supermarket sweepstakes, where the crook keeps stealing until the fraud-management software of the credit-card companies kicks in. "The method is smash-and-grab," says Cybertrust VP Bryan Sartin. "The turnaround time is amazing."

As bad as the recent exposures have been, they may well wind up helping spur some very long-needed reform. Though identity theft is a devilishly difficult crime to fight, the key to fighting these huge cyber-raids is making the databases that hold our private records more secure. "We have not built a culture of strong security around our data," says FTC chairman Majoras, and a big reason is that the companies charged with safeguarding the information don't suffer the consequences when it's compromised. For instance, ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith got a $1.8 million bonus for the company's performance last year—after it sold the information to thieves. And credit-card firms that use CardSystems are continuing to work with the company. "They've been extremely cooperative in working with us and other entities to address the vulnerabilities in their system," says MasterCard spokesperson Sharon Gamsin.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is sponsoring a bill that would set a national standard for mandatory disclosure when consumer rec-ords are compromised. (The American Bankers Association opposes it: "Unnecessary warnings could create a cry-wolf attitude," says the lobbying group's John Hall.) But that's only a first step. "The notification law works by shaming the companies, and while that can be a good incentive, it's dependent on publicity," says Bruce Schneier, founder of the Counterpane security firm. "Since we're seeing so many big breaches, there's a higher standard for something to be newsworthy."

A stronger solution would make the companies liable for its failings. Sens. Charles Schumer and Bill Nelson hope to pass a bill that, among other things, would slap fines on companies that lose records. Other approaches would invoke penalties if companies did not follow what are known as best practices in protecting information, like regular security audits and use of encryption. (White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says ID theft "is a major issue for the administration," but while the president did sign legislation for tougher sentencing of credit-card crooks, the Bush team has not thrown its support behind efforts to force tighter security on the handling of personal data.) If Congress doesn't do it, maybe the legal system will; a class-action suit is underway in the ChoicePoint breach, and Melvyn Weiss (famous for his stock-fraud litigation) says "the phone has been buzzing" with potential clients whose secrets were lost by corporations. In general, anything that increases the cost of losing information to the company, as opposed to the consumer, would give firms an incentive to protect consumer secrets as closely as they do their cash. (Government databases should also be fortified; an April GAO probe found that the IRS's computers were vulnerable to data thieves.)

Identity theft would also be more difficult if companies weren't so dependent on using people's Social Security numbers, the skeleton key for ID crooks. "It was never meant to be an identifier to the general public," says Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida, who for the fourth time is introducing a bill to limit its use. And Senator Feinstein would like to give consumers the power to keep their records out of databases. "Companies have no right to use your personal data without your permission," she says. Industry advocates claim that this would severely slow down the rapid pace of commerce we're accustomed to, but the "opt-in" approach is the law in Europe.

Each time we hear of another huge data breach—and each time a form letter goes out telling someone that his or her secrets were exposed—the pressure increases to tighten up security and fight the ID crooks. But change, if it comes, will come too late for Daniel Bulley, who's spent months trying to distance himself from a home he never owned, a job he never held and a portfolio of credit cards and accounts he never opened. Bulley is angry—at the crooks, at the cops (no one would investigate his case) and the corporations who let his information fall into evil hands. He's especially steamed at the billion-dollar industry that has emerged to sell people protection against data theft—run by parts of the same industry that fails to protect the information in the first place. "Corporate America needs to realize it needs to be tighter with our personal information," says Bulley. "Why should we pay them to do their job right?"

Reported by William Lee Adams, Holly Bailey, Jennifer Barrett, Juliet Chung, Temma Ehrenfeld, Charles Gasparino, Andrew Horesh, Nicole Joseph, Susannah Meadows, Ben Whitford and Kathryn Williams

c.c. 2005-06-27 14:51 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 27 issue - As first dates go, this one couldn't have been more awkward. Last month John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster, flew to Manhattan to dine with Carl Icahn, the billionaire and former corporate raider. For weeks Icahn, who owns 9 percent of Blockbuster's shares, had publicly railed against Antioco's plans to invest millions to get the lagging movie-rental company growing again. Instead of trying to rejuvenate Blockbuster, Icahn argued, Antioco should just milk the mature business for cash. The two men's clash over the future of the company had recently culminated in a dramatic proxy fight, in which Icahn's side won three seats on Blockbuster's eight-member board. But at the dinner a few nights later, as both men recounted to NEWSWEEK, they called a truce. "I hope we're going to have a good working relationship," Icahn told Antioco, who replied, "Carl, for better or worse, we're in this together."

If that sounds like something less than the start of a beautiful friendship, it's a testament to how challenging times have become at the chain that's provided Americans with Saturday-night entertainment for the past two decades. Blockbuster, with $6 billion in annual revenue, still dominates the movie-rental industry, but lately that business has been shrinking faster than Lindsay Lohan's waistline. As DVDs have replaced VHS tapes, more Americans have shifted to buying movies instead of renting them—and most don't buy them at Blockbuster. In 2003 U.S. movie rentals were an $8.2 billion business, but by 2009 that will shrink to $6.3 billion, according to industry analysts at Kagan Research.

Other threats loom. Netflix, the online DVD-by-mail rental company, is still small and unprofitable, but Blockbuster admits that the upstart has the potential to steal many of its best customers. And each month more cable subscribers gain access to video-on-demand, which allows customers, for a fee, to watch a movie without the hassles of planning ahead or returning a DVD afterward. Blockbuster, says Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff, "is getting nibbled away at from all sides."

Now Antioco's team is biting back. After years of trivializing these threats, Blockbuster has launched a series of programs to try to counteract them. Last August the company began promoting an online program similar to Netflix's—but offering lower prices, as well as two coupons each month for free in-store rentals. And for movie buffs who like Netflix's pricing concept (in which customers pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited rentals) but prefer renting from a brick-and-mortar store, Blockbuster now runs a flat-price Movie Pass program. Some stores have also begun letting customers trade in their old DVDs to get credit toward new ones; the trading program should open in most locations by late this year. The chain has also made a big push into videogames, which now account for nearly 20 percent of its business.

In its most controversial move, in January Blockbuster stopped charging customers late fees. Well, sort of. Customers can keep a movie without penalty for more than a week—more than twice the old rental period. But after that, Blockbuster's new system assumes they've decided to buy it and automatically debits their account for the purchase price minus the rental fee. (Customers who balk can still return the DVD within 30 days for full credit, less a $1.25 restocking fee.) Blockbuster insists its customers understand and like the plan—indeed, since its inception, rental transactions are up 20 percent. But several state attorneys general have declared it misleading, forcing the company to spend millions to advertise and clarify the arrangement. Even before the legal spat, the so-called End of Late Fees program was a risky move, since eliminating the charges will cost Blockbuster more than $250 million. It's hoping to make that up in volume as customers who hated being gouged by the late fees rent more.

Whether these strategies work will rest on how customers ultimately decide they want to receive and pay for their entertainment—and that's one reason Blockbuster's problems are not just a tale of a business struggling with technological obsolescence, but a compelling illustration of how more general changes in consumer behavior can affect a business. Consider Blockbuster's tussle with Netflix. How much of the movie-rental business eventually migrates online will depend largely on how many Americans become organized enough to plan ahead for their entertainment needs. Traditionally, most renters pick up movies on impulse a few hours before watching them—say, because the family drove by a Blockbuster store on the way home from the mall or realizes it has nothing to do on Saturday night.

This business wasn't so complicated when Blockbuster opened its first store in 1985. Founder David Cook's idea was to offer a well-stocked, uncluttered, porn-free and family-friendly alternative to mom-and-pop video stores. Wayne Huizenga, who'd already made millions founding Waste Management, bought the 20-store company in 1987 and built it up to 3,600 locations and $2 billion in sales before selling out to Viacom in 1994. From there Blockbuster began to lose focus. In one ill-fated move, the company hired a Wal-Mart executive who filled stores with T shirts, movie posters and other merchandise. As profits fell, in 1997 Viacom chief Sumner Redstone hired Antioco, a retailing veteran of 7-Eleven, Pearle Vision and Taco Bell, to fix the mess. As an unhappy Blockbuster customer himself, Antioco immediately recognized the chain's biggest problem. "I'd quit going to Blockbuster on weekends because I could never get the movie I wanted," he says.

To boost inventories, Antioco persuaded movie studios to sell VHS movies to Blockbuster for a fraction of the usual price, in return for a share in the rental revenue. To promote its deeper selection, he launched a Guaranteed In Stock program, in which customers who couldn't find the movie they wanted got a rain check for a free rental. The plan worked, and revenue started rising again.

But as Antioco and his Viacom overseers celebrated, new threats were emerging. By 1999 Reed Hastings, a Silicon Valley veteran, had created Netflix, partly out of anger when Blockbuster charged him $40 in late fees on his overdue rental of "Apollo 13." Its biggest selling point: customers could return movies by mail —whenever they wanted, with no extra charges.

Hollywood presented other challenges. By the late 1990s, studios were buying into the vision of Warner Home Video chief Warren Lieberfarb, the so-called father of the DVD. Since DVDs cost less to manufacture than videotapes, Lieberfarb convinced studios that instead of selling copies mostly to rental chains for $50 or more (as they'd done with VHS), the studios should sell DVDs directly to consumers for $20 or less. His plan caught on. By 2002 Americans were spending more to buy movies than rent them, mostly at places like Wal-Mart and Best Buy. For Blockbuster, which was slow to jump on the DVD bandwagon, the shift has hurt badly. Its stock recently traded below $10, a third off the price of a year ago.

Blockbuster's attempts to fight these trends haven't come cheap. Advertising the End of Late Fees program, for instance, has cost $50 million. To see how this spending is playing out, stroll up to the Blockbuster store in the Detroit suburb of Plymouth, Mich. In one window hangs a yellow banner: welcome to life after late fees. Store manager Matt Penhollow says the program has caused a spike in rentals (as it has at most Blockbuster locations). Inside, to the right of the entrance, is a large, segregated part of the store called Game Rush, its shelves lined with videogames. Blockbuster plans to incorporate it as a subsection of many stores. While the walls of the store are lined with new DVDs, as in every Blockbuster location, a growing section of the interior aisles sells used DVDs. Many of those films were traded in by customers, who get $3 and up for each title. Blockbuster hopes to sell them at double or triple that price.

Along with the online program, that means there are now many different ways to take a movie home from Blockbuster. In a sense, the company is trying to become customers' entertainment concierge, in a strategy similar to how stock brokerages evolved from processing trades into serving as clients' financial advisers. Antioco articulates Blockbuster's strategy as wanting to serve customers regardless of whether they choose to buy, rent or trade movies—and whether to do it online or in a store.

For customers who want to buy new DVDs, though, Blockbuster executives admit they'll have a hard time matching Wal-Mart's prices. Because of that, it appears much of the chain's new strategy rests on their belief that some customers will shift back from buying to renting DVDs. By year-end, Americans will own 3 billion DVDs, the chain says. Consumers really do watch some of them—like "The Matrix"—over and over. But some viewers can't help but wonder whether that $18 investment in "Legally Blonde 2" was really a smart move after all. Over time, Blockbuster suggests, this accumulated buyers' remorse will lead people to realize that renting offers better value. "You'll eventually see a slowdown in the number of DVDs consumers buy," says Antioco, suggesting that will boost rentals.

Outsiders are skeptical. "When you have seven years of [rising DVD sales] data, that suggests a pretty strong trend," says Lieberfarb, the former Warner Home Video chief. He says that for busy families, in which not everyone can watch at the same time, buying DVDs will remain more appealing. For years Lieberfarb has been saying Blockbuster is doomed, and despite all its new marketing initiatives, his opinion hasn't changed.

Bigger issues lie ahead. Video-on-demand provided by cable companies may one day be the home-entertainment industry's killer app. Blockbuster is unfazed. It believes that because studios can earn more from DVDs than video-on-demand, the studios will have a vested interest in supporting the older technology. If video-on-demand really catches on, however, it's hard to see how Blockbuster would compete.

Some investors, including Icahn, see the current challenges as an opportunity. "With a lot of companies, the time to buy is when people don't like them—that's what I've done all my life," Icahn told NEWSWEEK. Just a month ago he was lambasting Blockbuster's management over its failed merger with Hollywood Video and Antioco's $54 million compensation package. (Blockbuster says that figure mostly represents future bonuses that assume big stock increases; his cash compensation last year was $7 million.) But now that Icahn is a director, his views have softened. He even offers measured praise for Antioco's strategies.

And though the company seems like an endangered species, Jennifer Illes, a Harvard Business School researcher who has coauthored case studies on Blockbuster, refers to the classic '80s song "Video Killed the Radio Star." "I still listen to radio all day long," she says. Sometimes even obsolete technologies survive longer than you think.

With Ramin Setoodeh

c.c. 2005-06-23 17:04 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 27 issue - When you're making a $135 million movie about aliens invading Earth, it's good to have some rules. So in 2003, while Steven Spielberg was shooting "The Terminal" in Montreal, screenwriter David Koepp flew north with a list of cliches that he believed "War of the Worlds" had to avoid. "Here are the things we could not have in this movie," Koepp says. "One: no destruction of famous landmarks. Two: no unnecessary beating up of New York City. Three: no politicians or scientists or generals as main characters. Four: no shots of military leaders pushing ships around on a big map with sticks. And five: no shots of world capitals." If they'd been able to peek into the future, they might have added six: no star who's going to have a Howard Dean moment on "Oprah," and turn prerelease publicity into a referendum on his love life.

The good news is that the debate over Tom Cruise—who last week proposed to Katie Holmes atop the Eiffel Tower—will seem far less pressing once audiences get a look at the massive, terrifying spectacle that Spielberg has created in "War of the Worlds." "Every time Steven embarks on a genre movie, he reinvents the genre," says producer Kathleen Kennedy. "He never wants to be derivative." She laughs. "If he ever gets derivative, he's only derivative of himself." "War of the Worlds" marks a return to the crowd-pleasing fare that made Spielberg the most successful director in history: think "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with a far more sinister edge. There are images here—the wreckage of an airplane, an alien tripod rising to full height behind a ferryboat, a river of corpses, the clothes of the dead floating down through trees like snow—that are just breathtaking. And, OK, Cruise is pretty great.

Based on the 1898 science-fiction novel by H. G. Wells—the first alien-invasion story ever written—"War of the Worlds" isn't really a battle between planets. It's more like the annihilation of ours. Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a divorced, blue-collar guy more interested in fast cars than in his young daughter (Dakota Fanning) and teenage son (Justin Chatwin). But then huge alien tripods begin destroying everything in their path, and Ray finds himself on the run with his kids. "Tom's played so many characters that are capable and cocky, and I thought it would be fun to write against that," says Koepp. "Ray is someone whose life didn't pan out the way he thought it would, and who became kind of a jerk as a result." (Cruise himself declined to be interviewed for this story.)

While details have been changed from Wells's novel, the fear at the core of it remains intact. In 1938, Orson Welles's radio adaptation seemed so real that people famously wept in terror and fled their homes. Even the now campy 1953 movie, produced by George Pal, frightened audiences at the time. "There's always been something in the air before this title has reared its ugly head," Spielberg says. "They were all times when the world was heading to an uncertain future. Wells's book was a political statement about the invasion of British colonialism. Orson Welles did his radio show several years before America was drawn into World War II. The Pal movie came out during the cold war, when we were afraid of being annihilated by nuclear weapons. And this movie, my version, comes out in the shadow of 9/11." As the aliens launch the first wave of destruction, Fanning, 11, screams, "Is it the terrorists?"

If it irritates some critics that, as in Wells's novel, Spielberg's movie never explains why the aliens feel the need to incinerate man-kind, the director says it's all about amping up the tension. "Having no idea why they're killing hundreds of thousands of people is scarier than having them arrive, make an announcement and then go to work," he says. Koepp, in any case, has a private theory. "I think the whole war is about water," he says. "I figure their planet ran out. Wars tend to be fought over very elemental things: water, land, oil."

Despite the epic scale of the film, Cruise gets to skip (most of) the heroics, and play a man just barely holding it together. In one scene, Ray and his daughter hide in a basement that belongs to a crazed survivalist (Tim Robbins). Terrified, the girl asks her dad to sing her a lullaby, and he realizes that he doesn't know any. Cruise looks heartbroken. "Every director's dream is when an actor stops thinking and starts living," Spielberg says. "Tom did that in one take. Something very real happened in that moment. He sort of gave it up, and probably didn't even know what he was giving up until it was too late and I said, 'Cut'."

Which is not to say that Cruise never gets the chance to be a stud. When NEWSWEEK visited the set in February, a shirtless Cruise was strapped into a stunt harness for the film's climax. The harness suspended him, face down, high above the concrete floor. "I don't like my actors doing stunts," said Spielberg, holding an unlit cigar. "I did five takes with the stuntman, but then Tom came in and saw that I was shooting a scene without him and immediately put on the harness." He shrugs. "If the stuntman deems it safe, I'm OK with it. I have a real tough time stopping Tom Cruise." It's amazing that anyone, from any planet, still tries.

c.c. 2005-06-21 14:56 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

Summer 2005 - Scientific medicine has a special pull on our imaginations. Like religion, it embraces our pain and our fears, and assures us that things can be better. And for all its missteps, it often fulfills its promise. You need only look back 20 years to see a world in which HIV/AIDS was essentially untreatable, depression went largely untreated and the U.S. death rate from heart disease was a third higher than it is today. Science has sparked transformations in each of those realms and now stands on the verge of even greater ones. As the stories in this NEWSWEEK Special Edition make clear, the prospects for improving human health have rarely been so bright. Yet even as we hurtle toward personalized prescriptions, stem-cell therapies and silver-bullet cancer drugs, the bedrock challenges of making medicine safe, affordable and accessible loom as large as ever.

What breakthroughs could the new century bring? For cancer patients, the excitement centers on a new generation of treatments designed not for massive conquest but for narrowly targeted strikes against tumor cells. Targeted therapy is an emerging ideal in psychiatry as well. Researchers are working to devise different treatments for different subtypes of depression—a trend that could help millions who get no relief from Prozac and its cousins—and applying the same principle to other afflictions as well. As science reveals more about the chemistry of mental function, diseases ranging from addiction to Alzheimer's could become as manageable as high blood pressure. With luck, several drugs that target the underlying mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease could reach the clinic before the first baby boomer turns 70.

That's just the beginning. The mapping of the human genome has set the stage for an era in which doctors use gene tests to determine which patients are most likely to benefit from a particular treatment or lifestyle regimen. And researchers are now working their way —from the genome to the proteome—the vast array of biologically active protein molecules encoded by our DNA. Proteins are the microscopic workhorses behind everything from respiration to cogitation. By cataloging the 100,000 or so proteins that human genes produce, and pinpointing their functions, researchers will gain a surfeit of targets for drug molecules. And if the new art of therapeutic cloning fulfills its early promise, embryonic stem cells may someday help our ailing bodies produce whatever proteins they lack. The approach is still years from clinical use, but the tools are evolving fast. In an experiment reported this spring, South Korean researchers used DNA from ordinary skin cells to produce 11 lines of embryonic stem cells—each one genetically matched to its donor and theoretically capable of producing anything from insulin to dopamine.

The possibilities are endlessly seductive. But technological progress is not a complete recipe for better health, and there is real danger in equating newer with better. America has built the world's highest-tech medical system, yet the nation ranks 46th in life expectancy (behind Japan, Singapore, Canada and virtually all of Europe and Scandinavia). And 41 countries, including Cuba, have achieved lower rates of infant mortality. "Without systemwide health-care reform," says Dr. Henry E. Simmons of the non-partisan National Coalition on Health Care, "we're missing massive opportunities to create a healthier population."

New treatments can advance that cause, but they're only as good as our ability to manage them. Amid all the public debate over the ethics of stem-cell research, for example, there are safety issues to think about, too. Materials that originate in people or animals can spread everything from infections to malignancy, even when handled with some care. And as the British Medical Journal cautioned recently, stem-cell companies are now "springing up around the world with all the fervor of a new dotcom era." Costs are exploding, meanwhile, as technology expands and the population ages. Some 15 percent of the U.S. economy is now devoted to medical care, up from 10 percent in 1987. And America's uninsured population (45 million at last count) is growing in lock step with total expenditures. It doesn't take an expert to see where that trend leads. The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 Americans now die every year for lack of health coverage.

What is a person to do? The forces shaping the health system are far beyond our reach as individuals, but those shaping our own well-being are not. Even as scientists explore the frontiers of biomedicine, they keep confirming the truism that health is easier to preserve than it is to repair. Wonder drugs aside, most of us can still achieve longer, better lives by exercising, eating well and managing our weight. In other words, medical science can light the path to optimal health. Walking it is still up to us.

c.c. 2005-06-20 15:50 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

May 5 - Journalist Giuliana Sgrena thought her monthlong Iraq hostage ordeal was over when Italian intelligence agents rescued her on March 4. But just 25 minutes after her release, she faced another danger—this time from U.S. troops. The soldiers, stationed at a military roadblock on the way to Baghdad’s international airport, opened fired on her car, killing agent Nicola Calipari and injuring Sgrena and the Italian driver of the car.

Italian outrage over Calipari’s death has escalated in recent days, following the release of two contradictory reports into the shooting. An American report, released last weekend, exonerated the U.S. soldiers and claimed the Italians had failed to inform them about the operation to free Sgrena. An Italian report, released Monday, rebutted the charges and blamed the killing on fatigued and inexperienced G.I.s staffing poorly run roadblocks.

The incident has caused tensions in the alliance between Rome and Washington, increasing Italian calls for the removal of their country’s 3,000 troops in Iraq. Sgrena spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Cristiana Fabiani about the shooting and her experience as a hostage. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK:  To what extent do you agree with the U.S. and Italian reports about the shooting?
SGRENA: They are very different reports even though they have some parts in common. The American report tries to justify and totally absolve American troops, while, to my pleasant surprise, the Italian one is very documented, even though some parts of it are missing because they are classified. The Italian report takes into consideration several accounts that also appear in the U.S. report, but the [U.S. report] does not highlight some of the contradictions in the accounts made by the U.S. patrol soldiers.

Could you give an example of the contradictions?
One is, for instance, the car’s speed. There was no posted speed limit [and] the fact is that the car could not have gone at a high speed given the road conditions. Moreover, if the car had been going as fast as the U.S. soldiers claim, they would not have had time to make any of the signals they insist they made. The real problem is that the Americans did not make any signal. [Also, according to the U.S. report] only one person in the patrol was in charge of lifting the spotlight, shouting, warning us to stop, shooting warning shots and then shooting straight at us—and all of that within a few seconds. It is clear that he would not have had the time to do all this,

Did you see a light signal?
No. There was no light signal.

Did you see a laser signal?
No. They shot straight at us.

They fired warning shots, didn’t they?
No. The shots arrived straight at us.

What happened when the car approached the roadblock?
We didn’t see any roadblock. We saw nothing. At a certain point, we were on this road and there was a curve. The driver had just said that we were 700 meters [about 770 yards] away from the airport and suddenly we were hit by a light and strafed by a machine gun.

So there was a light?
It was at the same time we were hit, at the time we were shot. The bullets and a beam of light hit us simultaneously.

What happened during and after the shooting?
The driver said, “We are under attack.” Frankly I could not understand who could attack us in that area. The driver shouted, “We are from the Italian Embassy,” from inside the car. Calipari threw himself over me. I fell through the seats. When the fire stopped—it did not last very long, I believe they calculated 15 seconds, but it seems like an eternity when you are there—at some point the soldiers approached….

I was in the back. The soldiers came, looked and realized that Calipari was dead. Calipari wasn’t speaking any longer. I felt his body heavy on me. I tried to lift him up and heard him gasping. Then the soldiers arrived and shook him a little bit. They took me out from the other side, because I was injured. They laid me down outside. They tore off my clothes to see where the injury was because I was bleeding heavily.

The Italian report talks about the involuntary killing of Calipari. But you have said that the shooting could have been intentional.
I can’t say that the killing was intentional, but from the report it seems to me that the creation of an incident was intentional. In any case, all the conditions existed for an incident to happen. Nobody warned the patrol that we were on our way, even though the U.S. command knew at 8:30 p.m. that we were coming on that road.

Why would the Americans have wanted an incident?
You should ask them, but the convoy escorting [U.S. Ambassador John] Negroponte had already arrived at Camp Victory before 8 p.m., so why did [the U.S. command] tell the soldiers that they could not leave their positions? … The road was not closed anymore by the time we arrived [at 8.45 p.m.]. They had closed it previously but at that point it was not closed anymore.

Why would the incident been intentional?
The big controversy is the Italian policy toward hostages: the fact that Italians negotiate with kidnappers and pay ransoms. Americans don’t want it, they’ve always been opposed to it.

American media have reported that the Italian government paid a large ransom to release you. CNN mentioned an amount of $10 million.
I don’t know if a ransom was paid. In any case this amount seems an exaggeration. I believe that there could have been some ransom paid. From what I understood, my kidnappers did not take me to get money—they were more politically motivated. It is very likely that they negotiated on other terms, not only financial.

The fact is that you have been released while French journalist Florence Aubenas and her interpreter Hussein Hanoun have been held hostages in Iraq since Jan. 5.
I believe that Calipari’s killing has contributed to the fact that Florence hasn’t been released yet. Our intelligence had a big presence on the field, because it had already released several hostages. They knew people. Italians were better positioned than the French there. The obstacles put in place by the Americans are even stronger for the French then they are for the Italians, who are strong [U.S.] allies … After our incident, even kidnappers will be more reluctant to get in touch with intelligence officers.

Did your driver make it somehow clear, through his phone calls, that the Americans knew that you were on that road?
As you know, Italians don’t contact Americans directly. They go through a liaison officer. The driver was making phone calls to the officer who was in touch with the Americans, so it was clear that the Americans knew of our arrival … During the entire time I was in the kidnappers’ car waiting to be [handed to the Italian agents] I had an American helicopter stationed over my head. With all the technological means they have at their disposal, do you really believe that they were up there without knowing what was going on below? I don’t think so.

What do you think of the way the shooting inquiry was carried out?
I believe it was done to appease the Italians, although in the end we were not happy with it. Moreover, the Americans destroyed some evidence [by] cleaning up the area where the incident happened. In order to calculate the car’s speed, all one had to do was leave it there and one would have known immediately how fast it was going. Also, if they had left the bullets there they would have known exactly how many had been fired.

Do you have any idea of the identity of the group that kidnapped you?
I have no idea, but I can exclude that it was a terrorist group like [that run by Al Qaeda’s] al-Zarqawi or common criminals.

How long had you been in Iraq, this time, before you were taken hostage?
Ten days

Did you fear for your life during your captivity?
Yes. They never threatened to kill me. On the contrary they always told me that they would not have killed me, unless there had been a rescue attempt. But how can you trust anybody in a situation like that one?

Did they treat you well?
I was a prisoner, locked up, but in material things they treated me well. I was not blindfolded.

Are you undergoing daily physical therapy for the shoulder injured in the shooting? 
Yes, for my shoulder and my arm. My shoulder was totally reconstructed and they did a good job, too. I had a bullet hole with a 4cm [almost 1.6 inches] diameter. I had surgery at the military hospital in Rome.

Do you have any idea of when you’ll be able to go back to work?
No, they tell me I need to wait for months. I hope it will be less. It’s very hard. I cannot use the computer, and I am still very confused mentally, I cannot write nor read. I cannot read a book.

Will you go back to Iraq?
I will not go back to Iraq unless the situation changes. I have no prospects of working there under the current conditions. If I go there I want to have the chance to talk to people, I don’t want to remain in a hotel. And I don’t want to go around escorted by the military. This is not the way I work, and I discovered that there I cannot do otherwise.

Would you go back to another war zone as a journalist?
Yes, as soon as I get well.

What’s your wish for the future of Iraq?
I wish all the troops would withdraw.

And your wish for your own future?
I know my life has changed and so have my priorities, but I am unable to make plans or projects at this point. I need to get over this phase. After my release I had a moment when I felt free from the nightmare, and then the shooting stopped everything. I don’t feel free yet.

c.c. 2005-06-15 16:03 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 20 issue - His ocean-blue eyes and pale white skin, topped by a head of light brown hair, can throw you off. You're certain when you look at him that you are beholding a guero (white man). But after just a few sentences, his accent is hard to miss.

Bruno Sandoval came to this country from Mexico almost 50 years ago. He was a strapping 18-year-old lad, aiming for something as great as his six-foot-tall frame. The United States offered that. Hard work did not intimidate him, so he took a job in Texas driving a tractor for 50 cents an hour. He returned home to finish his schooling, then ventured back in 1962, this time to Chicago, where he worked for a dollar an hour in a cold-storage warehouse. Then for $1.25 an hour in an auto-parts factory. Then $1.50 an hour storing Christmas decorations in a warehouse, $1.75 an hour as a welder for General Motors and $2 an hour as a punch-press operator for General Electric. His life continuously illustrated that hard work pays off.

Ultimately, he put his talents to work in the rail yards as a mechanic for Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and then Santa Fe. He met my mother, Carmen, at a neighborhood dance and they married in 1967, when she was 20 and he was 27. A year later, daughter Marie arrived. Five years later, I was born. By then my dad owned a three-flat apartment building in the city. When he sold it in 1976 to move us to California (the warm climate enticed him) for a job with Amtrak, he was able to pay cash for our new house. Bruno would never know a mortgage payment.

My dad is retired now. But what I remember most about his working days is that he never complained about his job. He was up at 5 every morning without an alarm clock, and back at 3 or 4 in the afternoon to mow the lawn, chat with neighbors and watch his beloved documentaries on PBS.

He may be strong in stature, but my dad has always had a gentle spirit. The neighborhood kids used to line up so he could lift them one at a time into the air with one arm. He was known as Big Bruno, and he remains the most patient man I have ever known. He is slow to anger and has a heart of gold. You rarely hear insults or criticism from his mouth. He may not have the most sophisticated vocabulary (his native Spanish will always be more familiar to him), but that has not stopped him from accumulating a multitude of friends throughout the years. Phone call after phone call comes from former co-workers or gym buddies or neighbors. My normally quiet father chats and laughs exuberantly, and I imagine that they are doing the same. These men have found a treasure in my father. A role model and a true friend.

They say that actions speak louder than words, and observing the kind of life that my father has lived has influenced me more than any lecture he could have given. I do not remember a time when he sat me on his lap and imparted a life lesson, but spending even an hour with him leaves me with the feeling that he is a man who understands his role in the world. He defines that role as being someone who does good, loves everyone and doesn't expect anything in return.

At times his temperament has confounded me. How could life's ups and downs not cause Big Bruno to raise his voice or get his feathers ruffled? Shouldn't the man who could bench-press 405 pounds act gruff or angry or macho? About the extent of his gruffness toward me was when we'd go to the beach and he'd put me on his shoulders and run straight into the ocean—as I screamed all the way. I didn't like the deep, scary water. He never seemed to fear it.

My brother, who was born in 1980, is now the spitting image of my father. He's also named Bruno, and at 6 feet 7 inches tall, he, too, is a gentle giant. In church on a recent Sunday, as the pastor spoke about "running the good race" and living a life that would please God, my brother turned to me in tears. Our dad had completed a 26-mile bike ride that morning (he's in better shape at 64 than many 24-year-olds). My brother said, "Liz, that's Dad. He's finishing the good race."

Baseball players like Sammy Sosa can earn more in one game than my father did in any given year of his life. I compare the toiling and sacrifice of Sosa and Sandoval and, well, there is no comparison. I look around at those we call heroes, and I am convinced that the title is handed out too freely. Professional athletes and singers and movie stars can provide inspiration, but the title "hero" should be reserved for a man like my father, who shows us what it means to work tirelessly for his loved ones. That is a life to be admired. That is a hero. So here is a thank-you to all the Bruno Sandovals of the world. Happy Father's Day.

Sandoval lives in Whittier, Calif.

c.c. 2005-06-14 15:48 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 20 issue - In the photo, Agnes Long looks drop-dead gorgeous. She's on vacation at the Jersey shore with her husband. He is tall, tan and trim; she wears a zebra-stripe bikini, a floppy hat and sunglasses. The sea breeze has blown her platinum hair across her face and she is smiling. The picture says it all. In the mid-1970s, Agnes Long was a happily married, affluent, middle-aged woman with three children and a weakness for expensive clothes.

Today, Agnes Long is a Roman Catholic hermit. She lives alone in a thickly wooded section of Madeline Island, in northern Wisconsin. Her beloved husband is dead; she hasn't seen her children in years. She wakes before dawn, prays throughout the day, eats small meals, works outside, makes religious paintings, and rises in the middle of the night to pray. Although she sees people when she drives her little truck to the grocery store or to mass, she has no one you might call a friend. And though she answers her phone when it rings, she doesn't often engage in what you would call conversation. "I feel that my whole life has been in preparation for where God has me now," she says, as she slips the old photo back into the pages of her prayer book. "When you go into solitude, you find out who you really are."

Long's life may look radical, but she is following an ancient path. Christianity has a long tradition of hermits, dating back to the third and fourth centuries, when Saint Anthony and thousands like him fled the hardships of the cities for the desolation of the Middle Eastern desert. There they fasted and prayed with the sole intent of getting closer to God. They believed stringent solitude would help them glimpse heaven; the pilgrims who visited them said they looked like angels. These ascetics are known as the Desert Fathers, and there is not a contemplative monk or nun in the world who does not treasure their legacy.

In recent decades, the word "hermit" has come to mean anyone who lives off the grid, from Emily Dickinson to the Unabomber, and the hermits following the ancient Christian tradition have been found mostly living on monastery grounds. Now a tiny but growing number of Catholics—regular people like Long, with children, marriages and careers in their pasts—are embracing the hermit life as it was conceived in the desert 16 centuries ago. They are choosing solitude, celibacy and asceticism in order to focus full time on God.

To accommodate their life choices, some dioceses have recently developed guidelines where would-be hermits go through a rigorous process that involves interviews, psychological testing and counseling. In the end, after taking vows similar to those of a priest or a nun, the hermit lives in isolation but maintains an official connection with a bishop. The number of these hermits is probably in the double digits, but that's not the only route. Nine hundred people subscribe to Raven's Bread, a newsletter for people interested in the hermit life, up from 700 last year, and many of them are leading some kind of ascetic exist-ence, says Karen Fredette, who coedits the newsletter with her husband. Most subscribers are Catholic, but some are Protestant and others are Hindu, Sufi and Buddhist. Recent issues contain testimonials from a 51-year-old psychotherapist in New Jersey, a New York City dweller and a hermit who lives in a hut without plumbing or electricity in the hills of Pennsylvania.

Fredette likes to say that there are as many ways to be a hermit as there are hermits, and while that may be true, some generalities apply. Hermits tend to be older than 50, with a life-changing tragedy in their past. They tend to have had an intensely religious phase in their lives, which was overtaken by the demands of adulthood. Sister Marlene Weisenbeck, who drafted hermit guidelines for the diocese of LaCrosse, Wis., in 1997, says many people are simply sick of the overwhelming busyness that characterizes so many lives. "Sometimes we're just tired of working so hard at a career, and something about pushing back—finding out who and what are at the center of our being—appeals to us."

Until its extraordinary turn, Agnes Long's life was similar to that of many American Catholic girls growing up before Vatican II. A dreamy, devout child, she went to parochial schools and fantasized about becoming a nun. Instead she married at 20 and had three children. Her marriage, she says, was awful. After 17 years, she betrayed her church and filed for divorce. Then she stopped going to mass.

Everything changed in 1972, when she met Marlin Long, the man she still calls "the love of my life." At the time, she was living in New Jersey, working during the day, being a mom to her kids and going to college at night. She loved clothes, and men, and often stayed out all night, dancing. Marlin was a friend of a former beau. "He had this beautiful body and he had this beautiful tan," she says. They married in 1976, and two years later moved to east Texas, where he worked for the rubber industry. They had an enormous house, three cars in the garage and an ultramodern bedroom set, made mostly of glass. Agnes wore white boots with her jeans. Church wasn't part of the story.

In 1984, things began to unravel, and Agnes couldn't understand why. Marlin became moody, began to pick fights with her that lasted all night. In her anguish, Agnes turned to a friend, who took her to a church where Agnes began to feel the stirrings of her faith again. One afternoon, while she was miserably working in her swampy backyard, trying to dig a pine stump out by its roots, Agnes believed she heard the voice of God. As she sits at the folding kitchen table in her little house on Madeline Island, Agnes tells the story steadily and in a clear voice. "I'm on my knees in the water, and I hear a voice saying, 'Here I am. I am here.' And every sin I ever committed flashed before my eyes." She ran back into her house and began to sob. "That presence," she says, "has never left me."

The explanation for the mood swings was simple. Marlin had a brain tumor, and when he died six months later Agnes gave her life to God. She sold the house and donated most of the furniture to Goodwill. She took a leave from her job and moved to Tanzania, where she worked for a bishop and then, after a few years, went back to New Jersey where she drifted from place to place. By 1994, she had spent her inheritance and was living in a one-room cabin in Pennsylvania, surviving with her $800 Social Security check and the wages she earned working at a monastery gift shop. She became interested in painting religious icons and at one class she met a hermit. That afternoon she went home and asked the Lord, "Is that what I am? A hermit?"

In 1997, after several years of careful deliberation, she committed herself to a life of solitude, unceasing prayer, penance, poverty, chastity and obedience at a mass in the diocese of LaCrosse. All three of her children attended the ceremony. In a document she wrote at the time, she promised to speak only when necessary, eat meat just once a week and fly east to see her children once a year. She chose to wear a blue denim habit; blue, the color of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and denim because it is the fabric of working people.

But things haven't turned out exactly as planned. Agnes Long eats more meat than she intended, because her neighbors shoot deer and give her venison. She hasn't been East in years; she speaks to two of her three children infrequently. She still lives on her Social Security check, and gets considerable help in the way of little favors from the people of Madeline Island who pitch in when she needs to use a fax machine. It's a strange life. "The Desert Fathers say, 'Go into your cell and it will teach you everything'," she says. And for her, that everything is profound, indeed. A decade of solitude has taught her, she says, that she is as broken as anybody and that God's love is unconditional.

c.c. 2005-06-14 11:31 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 20 issue - Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno comes from a military family. His father was a World War II Army sergeant. His son Tony served as a platoon commander with the First Cavalry; Ray served as commander of the Fourth Infantry Division in Iraq. As a family, they had shared joyful news from the front. Ray's wife, Linda, was asleep in a hotel room in Lubbock, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2003, when her husband awoke her, calling from his base in Tikrit. "Turn on the TV," was about all he could say. It was still a secret that his men had captured Saddam Hussein. Linda and Tony, who was still in Texas getting ready to shove off for duty in Iraq, were watching when Saddam's capture was announced.

But not all calls from the war zone are so happy. About eight months later, Ray and Linda were up in New Jersey visiting his father when the phone rang. It was General Odierno's old friend Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the First Cav. Chiarelli came right out with it: "Tony was in an ambush, and he was injured pretty seriously." The medics weren't sure if they could save Tony's left arm.

General Odierno is one of about 300 Army generals in the U.S. military. About a third of them have sons or daughters who have served or are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. "Pretty amazing, isn't it?" says Odierno. It is not unusual in military families for children to follow their parents into the service. History is full of heroic examples. Driven by his father's legacy—Arthur MacArthur won the Medal of Honor for charging up Missionary Ridge at the age of 18 during the Civil War—Gen. Douglas MacArthur relentlessly sought glory and victory. Theodore Roosevelt won the Medal of Honor for leading the charge up San Juan Hill in 1898; his son Teddy Jr. won it for leading the troops ashore on Utah Beach at D-Day in 1944 (and five days later died of a heart attack). The father-son tradition of inherited sacrifice and honor goes on and on, and now includes some mothers and daughters as well.

But it also underscores the isolation of the military from the rest of society. Increasingly, it seems, America is divided between the vast majority who do not serve and the tiny minority who do. The shared sacrifice of World War II is but a distant memory. During World War II, 6 percent of Americans were in uniform; today, the Pentagon says, the figure is four tenths of 1 percent. On military bases, wives warily watch for a pair of somber-faced officers emerging from a car, a sign that bad news is about to arrive at the front door. At military hospitals, young men and women missing limbs are an increasingly familiar sight. But for the rest of us, going about our daily lives, it can be hard to tell there's a war on.

Soldiers are widely honored, not scorned as they were during Vietnam. But mothers, horrified by grisly TV images, do not want their children to join up. Since February, the Army—Regular, Reserves and National Guard—has been missing its monthly recruiting goals by as much as 42 percent. On the other hand, re-enlistment rates are up, especially for those serving in combat arms in Iraq. Incongruous as it may seem for the millions whose closest brush with battle is on cable, soldiers and Marines on the front line are proud to be there and willing to serve again. The overall effect is to heighten the sense that the military is becoming a proud cult that fewer and fewer outsiders want to join.

"The whole country's undergoing patriotism lite," says Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University professor generally recognized as the nation's leading military sociologist. Moskos suggests one solution would be for leaders to set a better example with their own children. "If Jenna Bush or Chelsea Clinton joined the military," he says, "the recruiting problems would be over."

Military sons tend to spout worthy bromides about duty when asked why they followed their fathers to war. But their more personal motivations are not hard to divine. Combat has been a test (in some cultures the test) of manhood for millennia. There is no better way to win a father's respect than to defy death just the way he did. Indeed, the effort to surpass one's father's or brother's bravery has gotten more than a few men killed. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., a Navy pilot, cried himself to sleep when younger brother Jack became a hero for his PT boat exploits in World War II. Then Joe Jr. went out and volunteered for what was basically a suicide mission.

The heart of an army has always been its enlisted men (and now women), and many is the master sergeant who has proudly sewn chevrons on the sleeve of his son. Military families come from all ranks. And blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionately large number of our servicemen and women, and a disproportionately small number of the top brass. Their courage under fire for generations—particularly in World War II, when African-Americans were defending a system that excluded them from the mainstream of life in many parts of the country—is honorable and noteworthy.

Conversations with officers at the top—most of whom are white—show that there is a special poignancy to the stories of fathers and sons in the military, because a guy with heavy hardware on his chest knows that his decisions can get his own kid killed. Former chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. agonized over the death by cancer of his son Elmo III, who patrolled past shores denuded by Agent Orange. The toxic defoliant had been ordered up by Admiral Zumwalt when he was commander of riverboats in Vietnam.

Career service members often see themselves as a breed apart. "You know, you don't make a lot of money, but there's a lot of good things about it," says General Odierno. "It's good people, it's very rewarding, you feel a great sense of service, duty, personal discipline." The Marines, in particular, have their own culture of duty, honor, sacrifice. These ideals are both noble and actually lived up to in the Marine Corps, but as Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks noted in his book "Making the Corps," many Marine officers harbor a disturbing disdain for the decadence and selfishness of modern American society. And it's not just Marines: Army officers for some years have passed around copies of "Once an Eagle," a 1968 novel by Anton Myrer about a duty-bound Army officer who tries to rise above back-stabbing civilian harpies.

No matter how noble, a soldier who is also the father of a soldier must weigh parental pride against the fear that his progeny is heading into harm's way. Ray Odierno, West Point '76 (he was a tight end on the football team), never put pressure on his son Tony, West Point 2001, to follow in his footsteps. "I'd never go out of my way to tell him war stories," says Odierno. As a rebellious teenager, Tony wasn't listening anyway: "For a little while, I really didn't want to get into the Army because he was in the Army." Ray's daughter became an architect, and another son, a high-school senior, has no military plans. But Tony ended up joining the Long Gray Line. After West Point, he was sent to the First Cavalry Division. His father's Fourth ID is also based at Fort Hood, Texas, but most of Tony's comrades had no idea who his father was, and Tony did not tell them.

Tony was a 26-year-old Airborne Ranger-trained platoon leader in the First Cav when he arrived in the Middle East in March 2004 for duty in Iraq. His father, whose tour was over, was just leaving. They had time for a 90-minute dinner in a mess tent at Camp New York in Kuwait. "We talked," Ray said, shrugging. Once Ray was home, they exchanged e-mails every week. Lieutenant Odierno was able to give General Odierno a junior officer's-eye view of what a combat infantry platoon needed in the way of equipment and support.

For Linda Odierno, it was different. "It was hardest on her," Ray says. "Her husband was over there for a year and her son was going right in when I was leaving." Tony did not share with his mother in quite the way he did with his father. "To his mother," Ray says, "he'd say, 'Everything's fine, nothing's going on.' Then he'd talk to me and say, 'I was on three raids; I was on 12 patrols'."

There's a long history of generals and their wives worried about their fighting sons. (Harry Hopkins, FDR's top aide during World War II, lost a teenage son in combat in the Pacific, prompting Winston Churchill, who also had a son and daughters under fire in uniform, to send Hopkins these lines from "Macbeth": "Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt;/He only liv'd but till he was a man/ ... But like a man he died.") Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose son John was with the 71st Infantry Division in World War II, is said to have feared nothing more than telling his wife that their son had been killed or wounded. He couldn't very well move John to the rear without devastating morale, but he was saved when Gen. Omar Bradley did it for him. Ray Odierno says that he did not share Eisenhower's fear. "My wife," he says, "understands the risks."

It was around midnight on a stultifying summer's night in Baghdad when the rocket-propelled grenade hit Tony Odierno's Humvee. Odierno had been "in country" for five months, patrolling the deadliest turf in Iraq, the airport road. He was riding on the passenger side, leading a column of Bradley fighting vehicles. He heard a whizzing sound, then an explosion. The RPG ripped through his door, clipped the bicep in his right arm and nearly severed his left arm before lodging in the chest of the driver. Gunfire rang out, along with the deadly whoosh of more RPGs.

Odierno tried to move his left arm and realized it was hanging by only a few strands of muscle. Around him his driver was mortally wounded, his gunner in the back was knocked unconscious and his door was smoking, shredded metal. Odierno's training and instincts kicked in. "I'm the platoon leader. I have to take control of the situation," he recalls thinking. "It's hard on my men, too. I've got to be the strong one, I don't want anyone to freeze." He had to get moving and giving orders. "If I don't get out and do this, the situation's going to get a lot worse," he thought.

The only way out was up. Cradling his mauled left arm, he snaked out of the gunner's hatch and hit the ground running for the nearest radio. His own was dead. Calling for reinforcements and medevac support, he directed his men to lay down suppression fire. After 15 minutes or so, the blood loss finally hit him; he lay down and waited for the chopper to safety. As he lifted off, his thoughts drifted to his parents. He hoped that he'd get to see them again.

Ray Odierno recalls his reaction when General Chiarelli called him at his parents' in New Jersey. "The first thing I thought was, 'I just wanna get home'." On the drive back, Chiarelli called again. "Tony just finished surgery, and he lost his left arm." Odierno could feel that Chiarelli was crushed by being the bearer of such bad tidings, and he tried to reassure him. "You're doing a great job over there. I understand the risks and Tony understands the risks, and we'll work through this together." Odierno tried to stay focused: his son was alive.

It helped through the long months of convalescence and rehab for father and son to both know that Tony had handled himself well under fire and in extreme pain. "I was happy with how I reacted," says Tony, who was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. "They always told me how physically tough and mentally tough he was, and what kind of lead-by-example kind of person he was, which always made me feel good," says Ray Odierno, "because that's the kind of son you want to have."

Father and son acknowledge that Tony has had some bad moments, but he never complained. "He's never once said, 'Why did this happen to me?' " says Ray. "I'm sure he's said it to himself, but he's never said it out loud."

Just because fathers and sons don't express their worries doesn't mean they don't have them. "It affected me more than I would have thought," says Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, whose son Scott, 31, served under him (five command echelons removed) as a reconnaissance officer, a risky frontline post. Another son, Brandon, 33, served nine months in Iraq as a rifle-company commander. "I got awakened every night," says Conway. "Among the 10 things I thought was, 'Gee, how am I going to tell their mother?' "Conway, like Odierno, would not have dreamed of taking any step to remove his sons from the line of fire, and their sons would have been incensed if they had. But, says Conway, "you never stop being a father." Both his sons won Bronze Stars for their bravery under fire. How did their mother deal with her fears? "She immersed herself," says Conway. As a volunteer at Camp Pendleton, Calif., she met every returning wounded Marine, no matter what time of day or night.

The Conways are a warrior clan. At Christmas, they discuss whether Humvees have enough armor and what an RPG round looks like when it's arcing toward you. Their view of the civilian world is mixed. General Conway says he "doesn't buy" the idea that Marines feel somehow superior or isolated from the civilian world. Yet his son Brandon says that when his buddies get out of the service, most are unimpressed by the civilian work ethic. "They just don't have as high expectations of civilians," says Brandon. On the other hand, most Marines recall the abuse heaped on Vietnam vets returning from war and are grateful for the support they now get. "You wind up with more care packages than you know what to do with," says Brandon.

General Conway recalled that when the Marines were about to "jump off" into Iraq, the "No. 1" question his troops asked was: "Is the country behind us?" The answer was, and is, a qualified yes ... but. While the troops enjoy support, the Bush policy in Iraq is now opposed by a small majority. And it remains true that an important segment of society has chosen to largely sit out the war.

During Vietnam, many colleges and universities kicked out their Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs. Elite schools including Harvard, Yale and Brown still have no ROTC on campus (though their students can take ROTC courses at other schools). In both the world wars, graduates of schools like Harvard and Yale gave their lives in disproportionate numbers. Not today: among the 1,175 students who graduated from Princeton last year, eight went into the military. "America's elite would prefer somebody else's daughter to die rather than one of their own sons," says Moskos.

Many schools still ban military recruiters from coming on campus on the ground that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy discriminates against gays. "I've always had a degree of resentment against Ivy League schools for preventing recruiters on campus," says Sen. John McCain. "It is the height of elitist snobbery." McCain's argument for letting ROTC back on Ivy League campuses is "not because it gives us career officers, but because it gives future leaders of our country military experience."

Congressional action has threatened federal funding for schools that bar military recruiters, and the issue is coming before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, the military will continue to grow its own leaders. Despite the military's difficulty in meeting recruitment goals, no one in a position of authority seems to think that a draft will be necessary, at least any time soon. Generous cash bonuses (up to $150,000 for some highly trained Special Forces operatives) have helped persuade valuable soldiers to re-enlist. In the Third ID, which bore the brunt of the early fighting in Iraq, re-enlistment rates are twice what was expected. To help boost faltering enlistment rates, the military is increasingly offering cash bonuses—and for the first time since Vietnam, lowering the test scores required to join the military.

The modern military is demanding on families. During the cold war, the military was essentially a "garrison force," meaning that soldiers could stay put on base with their families for long periods of time. But in the high-tempo war on terror, the military has increasingly become an "expeditionary force," which means that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines must leave their families for long tours overseas in places like Bosnia or Iraq. There are signs of stress: divorce rates are up, particularly among officers.

Marine Corps duty is especially hard on families. A Marine could once expect to be home 18 months for every six months spent deployed abroad. Now he or she is gone half the time. And yet General Conway, who is now the chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was surprised to learn that young married Marines re-enlist at a greater rate than unmarried troops. The only explanation is that for many, the Marine Corps is a world in which they wish to raise their families, despite the dangers and frequent moves.

There is no doubt that the military can encourage family values. There are undoubtedly a few fathers right out of Pat Conroy's "The Great Santini," about his abusive Marine Corps dad. But there are many more who fit the model of the Conways, or Ray and Tony Odierno, father and son trading tips on body armor and inexpressible love as they passed an ancient torch, in a tent in Kuwait, on the way to war.

With Martha Brant and John Barry

c.c. 2005-06-13 16:12 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 13 issue - In the Gare de l'Est, one of the elegant old train stations of Paris, there are reminders of why the European Union was created. They are the plaques commemorating the dead. Today tourists coming from Germany and points east take little notice of the inscriptions that call on them to remember the thousands of French who left this station for the "torture and death camps" of Nazi Germany in World War II, and the "70,000 Jews, among them 11,000 children," who were sent to their extermination. Then Europe's borders were lines of death. Today they barely seem to exist. The trains do not stop at the frontier. Nobody asks for the papers of the passengers onboard. Tourists, business people, commuters and students buy their tickets with the same euro currency in Paris they would use in Berlin or Rome or Madrid. Asked what those plaques might have to do with the current vision of a single European Union, 18-year-old Jean Mayant says, "I don't see any relationship. Those are from ancient times."

Max Kohnstamm, 91, one of the founding fathers of what has become the European Union, remembers when all the bitter memories were still fresh. "There was an enormously strong feeling after 1945: 'This cannot happen again'," he said from his home in Belgium's Ardennes forest. And for 60 years that sentiment helped drive Europe toward ever-closer cooperation and unity. But last week it was suddenly obvious that as the bad old memories have faded, no clear vision of the future has taken their place. In two stunning votes, first in France, then in the Netherlands, citizens massively rejected ratification of a European constitution that required approval by all 25 member states. After five decades' moving toward a more complete Union, the European experiment has been plunged into serious confusion.

The consequences are important not only for the people of Europe, but for the United States. Despite bitter disputes with France and Germany before the Iraq invasion in 2003, Washington has come to rely on the European Union over the last year as "a kind of lodestar," in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's words, that inspires and attracts democratic movements from Ukraine to the Middle East. "Everybody has a stake in Europe," she said last week, adding in measured language: "We understand that this has been a difficult period and that there will be some period of reflection going forward, but we continue to hope for an outward-looking Europe, not an inward-looking one."

At European Union headquarters in Brussels, top politicians were shaken, even teary-eyed, as they groped for explanations. "The constitution was—is—we don't even know what tense to use when we talk about it," said one staffer. Newspaper headlines fueled a sense of panic: EUROPE IN TURMOIL, trumpeted the Financial Times; STATE OF SHOCK, proclaimed the Nouvel Observateur. The euro spiraled down to an eight-month low against the dollar, and Italy's Labor minister even raised the possibility his country would go back to using the lira. "We are seeing a return of economic nationalism," says French author and economic analyst Erik Izraelewicz. Many people want more protection for their farms and businesses. They are suspicious of immigrants, resentful of the countries that have recently joined the Union, fearful about the prospect that populous Muslim Turkey will someday be a member. "There is no longer the binding factor of 'peace,' which is now considered a given; there are no longer enemies to the east," says Izraelewicz. "It is an end of the Europe of the first 50 years. A new Europe must be built."

As the European Union moves from unconvincing damage control to finding a new way forward, few people agree on the solutions—or even the problem. "The 'no' forces said they were not against Europe, just against this Europe," says Ben Crum, a political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam. "The problem is, it isn't clear what 'Europe' means. Some want a retreat, others want to move forward in a different direction. But I don't hear many people saying we should stay where we are."

On the one hand, there is what's been called "Core Europe," led by France and Germany, which cherishes a continent of protectionist social-welfare states. Then there's "New Europe," led by postindustrial Britain, which is determined to free up European economies to better meet the challenge of emerging powers like China and India. When the European Union was enlarged by 10 members a year ago, taking its population to 450 million and giving it a combined GDP slightly larger than that of the United States, the old core countries felt threatened. France and Germany, with unemployment stuck around 10 percent and pension systems sinking deeply into debt, are ill equipped to address the problem of massive immigration and the competition of cheaper labor. Nor are the richer countries, with stalled economies, happy about paying subsidies to the poorer ones, which are growing faster.

The challenge of reconciling these differences among 25 members was always enormous, and the constitution, with its hundreds of pages of confusing compromise solutions, was often almost incomprehensible. But with the referendum votes in France and the Netherlands, the alternative appears to be indecision and further stagnation. Elections are planned in several of Europe's largest countries: Germany this fall, Italy within a year and France in 2007. While these electoral dramas are playing out, defining any clear new direction for Europe probably will require "two or three years of reflection," says John Palmer, director of the Brussels-based European Policy Center. Yet, the pace of global change continues to grow. Hence Rice's real concern that Europe will become too "inward-looking."

"The Bush administration is increasingly interested in a Europe that is united and strong," says Simon Serfaty, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. From the Balkans to Afghanistan, the Sudan and even Southeast Asia, Europe has been called on to help end conflicts and restore stability. It has led the way in negotiations aimed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while its funding underwrites much of the Middle East peace process. So there's frustration in D.C. at the distraction of this constitutional crisis. "At the very moment the president said, 'Hey, EU, I need you'," says Serfaty, "Europe is replying, 'Whoops, we have to clean the house and pack our luggage before we get on board.' And it's not that Bush is being impatient, it's that the issues have a real urgency."

Many will strive now to find a silver lining. However strained European integration may be at the moment, it is much farther along than it was during its last big political crisis in the early 1990s. "There's actually quite a lot in the bag, now," says Mark Leonard of the London-based Centre for European Reform: the open borders, the widespread use of a single currency. The constitution rejected by France and the Netherlands would have given Europe a more clearly identifiable face, replacing the "rotating presidency" that changes from country to country each six months, with a president named for 2½ years. There would also be a single foreign minister and a diplomatic corps. "The constitution would give us additional instruments," says an aide to Javier Solana, currently the leading foreign-policy representative in Brussels. "But we have lived without those instruments before."

For Max Kohnstamm, the nonagenarian who helped found the organizations in the 1950s that eventually became the EU, the setbacks of the last week seem almost like business as usual. None of the founding fathers had any illusions that it would be easy to build Europe through consensus and common interests, instead of war and conquest. But that didn't deter them then, and shouldn't now, he says. "I have seen so many crises—and seen so many crises overcome—that I am absolutely certain that this process will go on." Whatever the present Union's failings, the coming generation can safely recall the war-ravaged Europe that existed before 1945 as nothing more than ancient history.

With Stryker McGuire in London and Tracy McNicoll and Eric Pape in Paris

c.c. 2005-06-07 10:45 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 13 issue - When police arrived on the scene of a fatal stabbing last week in Brooklyn, N.Y., they were stunned by what they saw. The victim, an 11-year-old girl, lay crumpled on the floor, the front of her "Dora the Explorer" T shirt bloodied. The weapon, a steak knife, was in the kitchen sink. And the perpetrator, visibly upset and clinging to her mother, police say, was a little girl in a ponytail, only 9 years old. A few days later, she stood in white socks and shiny black dress shoes before a judge, listening as her lawyer entered a plea of not guilty.

The tragic event, which took place after the girls came to blows over a pink rubber ball, was a sad reminder that children can possess the same brutal instincts as adults. But for experts on youth crime, the killing was another instance of what they view as a burgeoning national crisis: the significant rise in violent behavior among girls. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, the number of girls 10 to 17 arrested for aggravated assault has doubled over the last 20 years. The number of boys arrested for weapons possession rose 22 percent between 1983 and 2003, while the number of girls increased by a whopping 125 percent. Today, one in three juveniles arrested for violent crimes is female. "Girls are not what people think they are," says Dr. Howard Spivak, director of Tufts University Center for Children and coauthor of a new book, "Sugar and Spice and No Longer Nice: How We Can Stop Girls' Violence." "The change in girls' behavior is overwhelming."

A quick look at recent headlines is overwhelming indeed. On April 20, a 17-year-old from Lexington, Mass., allegedly slashed open the neck and face of another girl with a bottle of Twisted Tea. The next day, three teenage girls in Ayden, N.C., were charged with first-degree murder for participating in a drive-by shooting that left a 10-year-old boy dead. On May 3, a 17-year-old from Chicago was stabbed in her left breast and right armpit; a 16-year-old female classmate has been charged. And the teen daughter of former "Law & Order" star Dianne Wiest was recently arrested in Manhattan with two girlfriends for allegedly roughing up a male classmate and stealing his iPod. A court hearing is scheduled.

Schoolyards, where boy bullies once reigned supreme, are increasingly arenas for skirmishes between girls. "There are actually more physical girl fights now than between boys," says Bill Bond, a former school principal in Paducah, Ky., who travels the country studying safety issues for the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "I was just on a Cheyenne reservation yesterday and the principal said he had had one fight this year between boys and six between girls." Jennifer Clayton, 14, was beaten up in May by three other girls as she walked home from her school in Guelph, Ont. "I could hear them saying, 'Punch her in the face'," she told the local newspaper.

Jennifer Orangio, the 18-year-old slashing victim in Massachusetts, says that when she came upon her boyfriend hanging out with an ex in the school parking lot, the heat of her own reaction took her by surprise. Orangio went up to the other girl, Jamie Pelletier, and pushed her. Pelletier "threatened to smash a bottle over my head ... I was, like, 'Go ahead, do it!' And she did it." Pelletier, 17, now faces felony charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (to which she pleaded not guilty). She declined to comment.

Part of this spike in violence is related to evolving sex roles. Historically, boys have received messages from the culture that connect masculinity with physical aggression, while girls received opposite messages, encouraging passivity and restraint. Now girls are barraged with images of "sheroes"—think Sydney Bristow on ABC's "Alias" or Uma Thurman's the Bride in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"—giving them a wider range of role models and tacit permission to alter their behavior. Accordingly, says Spivak, some girls have "shifted from internalizing anger to striking out."

The women's movement, which explicitly encourages women to assert themselves like men, has unintentionally opened the door to girls' violent behavior. "I was at a JV lacrosse game, watching my granddaughter. We cheered like hell because she was being aggressive on the field," says Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of history, human development and gender studies at Cornell. "I don't want to blame women's liberation for violence among girls," cautions Brumberg, but "traditional femininity and passivity are no longer valued in young females." James Garbarino, professor of human development at Cornell, puts it more bluntly. "We rely on boys to get out there and block a football, go in the Army and defend the country, carry guns and be cops. One of the side effects is that some boys take [physical aggression] too far." Now that girls have the same opportunities, he says, they can encounter the same blurry boundaries.

Research suggests that the best predictor of violent behavior, however—for girls and for boys—is not hours logged playing videogames or competitive pressure, but firsthand exposure to violent behavior. And social scientists warn that the number of children who see guns, fights and other kinds of physical abuse on a day-to-day basis is on the rise. "Violence in girls, like violence in boys, is really rooted in the individual and the individual's situation. I don't think you can blame the culture entirely for this phenomenon," says Brumberg.

After Ella Speight's 17-year-old daughter was attacked by a 16-year-old classmate last month, she spent hours in the hospital, tending to her child. Speight says she isn't angry: she prays for the assailant and even embraced the girl's mother when they met in court. "My heart hurts for her family," says Speight. "I know her mother didn't send her out to do that." Sugar and spice and everything nice: maybe Speight's forgiving nature represents an ideal that even boys can aim for.

With William Lee Adams

c.c. 2005-06-06 16:24 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

May 17 - Early one morning in July of 2003, Linda Dublin’s 77-year-old father walked into the backyard of his home in rural Arkansas and shot himself in the head. Neighbors who heard the blast immediately called police. But by the time they’d arrived, he was dead. Dublin, who lives near New Orleans, got the news at work. “I was devastated,” she says, stifling a sob. “He’d promised he wouldn’t do it.”

Her father, Billy Coker, who had been suffering from degenerative osteoporosis of the spine, knew how painful suicide could be on those left behind. Two years earlier, his 75-year-old wife, Pauline, had shot herself in the chest days after being discharged from the hospital after surgery for peripheral vascular disease. In November 1992, his daughter Bobbie—Dublin’s only sibling—shot herself in the head after sending her 5-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter off to school. Bobbie had been suffering from depression, but “insisted she could pull herself out of it,” remembers Dublin. Seventeen years earlier, when Dublin was still a teenager, her mother’s sister had also killed herself.  “My family is unusual,” she acknowledges, “but not that unusual.”

About 30,000 Americans kill themselves each year, or 80 people each day, making it the 11th-leading cause of death in the country. An estimated 90 percent of suicide victims suffer from a diagnosable psychiatric condition—typically depression or bipolar disorder—at the time of their death. “But they’re not recognized or they’re untreated or incompletely treated,” says Dr. Dwight Evans, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Pennsylvania and current president of the board of directors for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).

Depression often runs in families, so it is not uncommon to have more than one suicide in a family. What’s unusual about Dublin, who was diagnosed with depression several years ago, is not only that she has survived the suicides of her closest family members but that she has gone on to have, as she puts it, “a good life.” Dublin credits a combination of counseling, medication and a support network that includes her longtime partner, Mary-Ellen Harwood, as well as friends she’s made through groups like SOLOS-Sibs (Survivors of Loved Ones' Suicides) and SCOLOS (Surviving Children of Loved Ones' Suicides). “There were times I would not have uttered that I had depression. But suffering through the suicides changed that,” says Dublin. “There comes a point where you have to speak out, be proactive and do something positive.”

One of those steps: this summer, the 49-year-old survivor—as those who’ve lost close friends or family members to suicide call themselves, will fly with her partner to Chicago to spend a night walking 20 miles through the city. At least 2,400 people are expected to join them in the second AFSP-sponsored “Out of the Darkness Overnight” walk (theovernight.org) on July 16 to raise funds and awareness for suicide prevention and education. It will be Dublin’s second walk. She was one of more than 2,200 who participated in the first, held in Washington, D.C., in 2002, which raised more than $1 million. Dublin says she and her partner are hoping to raise $1,000 for each member of her family she’s lost to suicide. “I want to turn my pain into something positive,” she says.

That’s one reason Bob Thomson is doing the walk again, as well. The 62-year-old, who runs a wholesale bakery and a real-estate agency in Vermont, lost his first wife to suicide 23 years ago. His sister killed herself four years ago, overdosing on drugs and alcohol. “For awhile I thought, I’d been through this before, why didn’t I see it?” says Thomson, who went through therapy after the deaths. “But I’ve learned it wasn’t my fault.”

Guilt often haunts the survivors. But the stigma of suicide can make it even worse. When Dublin’s aunt killed herself in 1975, she says, “No one talked about it at all.” And while that’s changing, suicide survivors and prevention advocates say: not fast enough. “Death from suicide is now recognized as a major public-health problem,” says Evans. “But we have a long way to go in terms of awareness and education and directing the necessary resources toward the underlying illnesses and prevention of suicidal behavior.”

Researchers are now stepping up efforts to study suicide prevention. The University of Rochester and the University of Nevada have set up specific centers to examine suicide, and other universities have conducted substantial research in the area. In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a national strategy for suicide prevention (mentalhealth.org/suicideprevention), a collaborative effort between several agencies, advocates, researchers and survivors. And the Suicide Prevention Resource Center
(sprc.org) lists links to eight national and international suicide-prevention organizations.

Still, in terms of funding, research and awareness, suicide remains far behind other deadly health problems like breast cancer and AIDS (which kill about 40,580 and 18,000 Americans a year respectively). But AFSP executive director Bob Gebbia is hopeful. “There are definite parallels with breaking down the barriers and showing that there’s no shame in seeking help and getting treatment. The more we can show depression is an illness, not anyone’s fault, the more we can reduce the stigma,” he says. “Most people with depression can be successfully treated.”

Dublin, and many others who will join her in Chicago, are living proof of that.

“People need to know that you can have a good life—even after something like this,” she says. “I know it is important for me to speak up as a survivor of suicide, but it is also important to speak out as a survivor of depression. It’s important people know that there is help out there.”

c.c. 2005-06-06 15:21 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

June 6 issue - Kathy Peck has some great memories of her days playing bass and singing with The Contractions, an all-female punk band. The San Francisco group developed a loyal following as it played hundreds of shows, and released two singles and an album between 1979 and 1985. Their music was fun, fast and loud. Too loud, as it turned out. After The Contractions opened for Duran Duran in front of thousands of screaming teeny-boppers at the Oakland Coliseum in 1984, Peck's ears were ringing for days. Then her hearing gradually deteriorated. "It got to the point where I couldn't hear conversations," says Peck, now in her 50s. "People's lips would move and there was no sound. I was totally freaked out."

Peck the punk rocker lived out one of her generation's musical fantasies two decades ago; Peck the hearing-impaired has been living out one of its fears ever since.

Over the years she has battled her problem, a combination of noise-induced hearing loss and a congenital condition (diagnosed after the traumatic concert), with a variety of strategies and interventions, including sign language, lip reading, double hearing aids and, eventually, surgery on the tiny bones in her middle ears. Today Peck, who used to cry with frustration at movies because she couldn't hear the dialogue, still has ringing in her ears (tinnitus) and mild hearing loss, but gets by without help.

Aging rockers aren't the only ones struggling with diminished hearing these days. More than 28 million Americans currently have some degree of hearing loss, from mild to severe, and the number is expected to soar in the coming years—reaching an astounding 78 million by 2030. While that looming surge is mostly a baby-boomer phenomenon, the threat of hearing loss—and the need for prevention—isn't limited to a single age group. We are all caught in the constant roar of the 21st century. It's the rare kid today who doesn't have wires snaking out of her ears as she rocks through the day to her own personal soundtrack. Televisions are bigger and louder than ever, and so are movie theaters. One study estimates that as many as 5.2 million children in the United States between 6 and 19 have some hearing damage from amplified music and other sources. If they don't take steps to protect their hearing, the iPod Generation faces the same fate as the Woodstock Generation. Or worse.

Thanks to their years of living loudly, many boomers are ahead of schedule when it comes to hearing loss, showing symptoms in their late 40s and 50s. (In the past, patients usually weren't diagnosed until their 60s or later.) "We're seeing hearing loss from noise develop at an earlier age than we used to," says Dr. Jennifer Derebery, immediate past president of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. "It's a huge problem." The good news: though hearing loss can't be reversed, reducing exposure to excessive noise, like quitting cigarettes, can improve your health and quality of life, no matter your age.

Of course, noise isn't the only culprit. "Even if you spent your life in the library, you wouldn't hear as well when you're 70 as you do when you're 20," says Dr. Robert Dobie, professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at the University of California, Davis. But who spent their lives in the library? Not Kathy Peck and her fans; not the folks riding jackhammers on road crews, and not the firefighters and cops dashing to the rescue with their sirens screaming. Even pediatricians have been known to develop hearing problems after years spent around crying babies. When you combine the excessive noise they have experienced at work, home and play with the natural effects of aging, boomers end up on the receiving end of what Dr. Peter Rabinowitz at the Yale School of Medicine calls a "double whammy that makes people much more symptomatic."

But progress is being made on many fronts. Awareness and prevention efforts—community-based, state and nationwide programs—are gaining support around the country as hearing loss is increasingly recognized as a public-health issue. Advances in digital technology have dramatically improved hearing aids; they are smaller than ever, with far better sound quality. And clinical trials are now underway on permanent, implantable hearing aids for the middle ear which will offer sound that is superior even to the best external aids. On the biological front, scientists are busy trying to unlock the genetics of hearing to find a way to regenerate the sensitive hair cells, essential for hearing, that line the cochlea, the spiral, seashell-like structure located in the inner ear. And way out on the horizon of the cutting edge, researchers have created an experimental brain-implant system that bypasses the ear altogether and sends sound from an external receiver to the part of the brainstem that processes sound.

The product of extraordinary, even beautiful, anatomy, hearing is a natural wonder and exactly the sort of gift we tend to take for granted. "Unfortunately, a lot of people do not value their hearing," says Dr. William Slattery, director of clinical studies at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles. Hearing may also be too good for its own good. Human ears were originally meant to pick up the faintest sounds of predators stalking our long-ago ancestors—the snap of twigs in the forest, the rustle of grass on the savanna. The crash and racket of modern life, both urban (motorcycles, subway trains, car alarms) and rural (chain saws, snowmobiles, shotguns), assault and insult these gorgeous instruments.

Most common types of hearing loss occur at the higher frequencies and are caused by damage to hair cells. Slattery describes the cochlea as "a piano, with 15,000 keys rather than 88." Different parts of the cochlea process different frequencies of sound, so when you have hearing loss at a certain frequency, it's as if that part of the keyboard is not functioning. Various levels of noise affect hair cells in various ways. If a rocket-propelled grenade goes off right next to you, you can experience "acoustic trauma" that kills hair cells and causes the instant loss of a great deal of hearing. (Hearing loss is the third most commonly diagnosed service-related ailment, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.) Hanging out directly in front of the speakers at a Green Day concert could result in a less serious "temporary threshold shift," in which the hair cells are stressed but not permanently damaged. Such stress is often accompanied by ringing in the ears that can last for hours or even days. (Derebery notes that repeated threshold shifts can lead to permanent hearing loss.) And then there's what might be called noisy-world syndrome. While an individual's noise exposure may not reach the official danger zone, the worry is that the chronic din of daily life could lead to deterioration over time. "There's not a lot of data about it," says Rabinowitz, "but our concern is that there is less and less time for the ears to rest, and so the hair cells are going to be prematurely exhausted."

Protecting your hearing starts with understanding how noise works. The classic "formula" for assessing the risk of hearing loss is the intensity of the noise, measured in decibels (the danger starts at 85 decibels, roughly the sound of a lawn mower), multiplied by duration, the time of exposure. In other words, the louder the noise, the less time you should be exposed to it. Prolonged exposure to any noise above 85 decibels can cause gradual hearing loss. According to what experts call the "five-decibel rule," for each five-decibel increase, the permissible exposure time is cut in half. So one hour at 110 decibels is equivalent to eight hours at 95 decibels. And sound levels above 116 decibels (snowmobiles are about 120, rock concerts about 140) are unsafe for any period of time.

For millions of Americans, excessive noise in the workplace is a daily threat. Angelo Iasillo, 45, has worked in road construction since 1989, operating jackhammers and a "road grinder" to tear up Chicago's streets. He first noticed a problem with his hearing when he was in his early 30s and found himself asking more and more people to repeat themselves. He also demonstrated another classic symptom. "I was always putting the TV up louder," he recalls. Worried, he went to the doctor and was told, at 32, that he had the hearing of an 80-year-old. Today, Iasillo wears a hearing aid, uses a vibrating alarm clock that he keeps under his pillow and has his doorbell rigged to a lamp—it blinks when someone rings.

While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has made great headway against noise-induced hearing loss in the past 20 years, compliance with federal regulations can be a problem in some occupations. Earplugs would certainly help protect road workers like Iasillo, but to be safe at busy work sites they also need to hear what is happening around them. And some professions are louder than we think. Truckdrivers, for example, have a high incidence of hearing loss in their left ears from traffic noise, says Hinrich Staecker, professor of otolaryngology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The National Institutes of Health runs a campaign against noise-induced hearing loss, called "Wise Ears," that emphasizes basic steps like wearing earplugs when operating power tools and moderating the volume on personal listening devices. The ubiquitous music players, which send sound directly down the ear canal, are a potential problem for millions of Americans, young and old. In a recent informal study at the House Ear Institute, researchers found that the new generation of digital audio players, with their exceptional clarity, allow listeners to turn up the volume without the signal distortion that occurs with traditional analog audio. Without distortion, which serves as kind of natural volume governor, listeners may be exposed to unsafe sound levels without realizing it. In preliminary observations, the music at the eardrum topped 115 decibels. Exposure to noise that loud for more than 28 seconds per day, over time, can cause permanent damage.

Kathy Peck, who learned the hard way about the dangers of loud music, has dedicated herself to helping other musicians avoid her fate. Along with Dr. Flash Gordon, the physician from the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic who helped with her hearing loss 20 years ago, Peck cofounded Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers (HEAR). Since its inception in 1988 (with seed money from the Who's Pete Townshend, whose hearing was also trashed by loud music), the group has helped thousands of young rockers, distributing free earplugs at clubs, concerts and music festivals, and providing free screenings by audiologists.

For more than 6 million Americans, hearing aids are the best available solution for everything from mild to profound hearing loss. Today's digital devices, like the analog instruments that preceded them, amplify sound and transmit it down the ear canal to the eardrum. But the similarities end there. Thanks to digital technologies, modern aids offer better sound quality (above). Top-of-the-line models feature "directional" or "high definition" hearing. These devices use two microphones and an algorithm to enhance sound coming from the front (the person you are talking to), while tuning down sound coming from behind (the rest of the noisy party).

Despite such encouraging technical advances, there are about 21 million people in the United States who could benefit from hearing aids, but don't use them. Many simply can't afford them. Their costs range from a few hundred dollars for a basic analog device to $3,500 for high-end instruments, and are rarely covered by insurance. Another reason some folks eschew aids is discomfort—they simply don't like the feeling of walking around with a plugged ear canal. And even with digital technology, people can still have difficulty separating speech they want to hear from the background noise, a common hearing-aid problem. Yet another obstacle to wider use is stigma—many people associate hearing aids with aging, Slattery says, and would just as soon cup a hand behind their ear. "They're afraid to look old, but they don't mind looking dumb."

A new generation of implantable and semi-implantable hearing aids, currently being developed and tested, could solve many of these problems. Unlike conventional aids, the new devices transmit sound vibrations directly to the bones in the middle ear, bypassing the eardrum and improving speech perception. "You can amplify the higher frequencies without feedback problems," says Slattery, "and that gives a richness to the sound. It's the high frequencies that help you localize sound and hear better in noisy situations." Other pluses: no clogged ear canal and no visible sign of infirmity. But until insurance companies start paying for hearing aids (they are under increasing pressure to do so), the $15,000-to-$20,000 devices—intended for those with moderate to severe hearing loss—will remain out of reach for most.

A more permanent solution to hearing loss—regenerating damaged cochlear hair cells—is the shared goal of a scattered band of researchers around the country. Unlike birds and other lower vertebrates, which can regenerate hair cells, humans and other mammals get one set, and that's it. If scientists can discover a way to grow new hair cells in humans, exciting new treatments could be devised. Already, researchers at the University of Michigan have used gene therapy to grow new hair cells in guinea pigs. At the House Ear Institute, Andrew Groves and Neil Segil are studying the embryonic development of hair cells in genetically engineered mice. If they can unravel the process, figure out how it starts and why it stops in mammals, they may eventually be able to reactivate the cells and have them make new hair cells. In a related experiment, they have managed to coax some embryonic cochlear cells in mice to restart and become hair cells. "This is new stuff," says Segil, with the calm that often masks excitement in scientific circles.

"If you are going to have a hearing loss, this is the best time to do it," says Char Sivertson, who began to lose her hearing without discernible cause when she was a teenager. Sivertson is downright enthusiastic about things like closed captioning. "It's incredible; now I'm not left out of TV," she says, and ticks off other high-tech advances, such as digital hearing aids and phones that can be "tuned" to improve the clarity of the caller's voice.

But Sivertson, an activist member of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), a support group, wasn't always so gung-ho. "I was in denial for years and years," she says. "I tried to pass for hearing, which was ridiculous." Sivertson was using hearing aids by the age of 24, but it was another 20 years before she fully accepted her fate. And there were some dark days in between. Every few years, her hearing would suddenly get worse. After one such drop, "I was very depressed," says Sivertson, now 57. "I wasn't exactly suicidal, but I was thinking, 'I'm not sure life is going to be very meaningful for me from this point on'."

Sivertson faced a myriad problems while raising her two sons, Dak and Matt. When there was a school matter or some other issue to discuss, her sons tended to bypass her and go to their dad, Larry, who has normal hearing. "Kids don't want to repeat themselves and stuff like that," says Larry Sivertson. "It's up to the hearing spouse to make sure that the person with hearing loss is involved." Char Sivertson found peace of mind through her association with ALDA. Joining such a group, she says, "is the No. 1 thing you can do for yourself" if you develop hearing loss later in life.

And here's something you can do before you reach that point—learn to appreciate what you already have. Says Yale's Rabinowitz: "If you are watching your diet, if you are exercising, then protecting your hearing should be part of your lifestyle." Sounds good to us.

With Josh Ulick, Karen Springen and Julie Scelfo

c.c. 2005-06-02 08:55 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

May 11 - When a Florida man, in anticipation of the naming of the new pope, registered the Web site BenedictXVI.com, the Vatican was in luck. Rogers Cadenhead, who has since used the site to publicize a nonprofit organization and plans to transfer control to the Vatican, could have been an investor looking to get in on a booming business: the domain market. Indeed, owners of similar sites such as Benedict16.com and PopeBenedict-16.org, are looking to sell to the highest bidder.

With the advent of the Internet, speculators went wild for what they saw as prime virtual real estate. Paying $100 registration fees, they scooped up generic and popular brand-name domains by the thousands, looking to sell them off at 10 to a 100 or more times the price. With the 2000 dot-com crash, it seemed those investments were simply that, wild speculation. In some cases courts and arbitration boards ruled against cybersquatters who registered domain names of famous brand or celebrities. Just last week, actor Morgan Freeman was awarded control of morganfreeman.com by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations panel. But a turnaround last year suggests that a legitimate domain market may be booming again.

Sedo.com, a leading domain marketplace, estimates that the number of secondary (already registered) domain transactions nearly tripled between 2003 and 2004. While most sites there sell for around $1,600, the British-based Dotcom Agency has seen its average minimum offer more than double to around $3,500 since the beginning of 2004. Five- and six-figure sales are common, according to the Domain Name Journal, which tracks the transactions. Last year, CreditCards.com sold to Texas-based marketing firm ClickSuccess for $2.75 million, one of the highest reported selling prices since the bubble burst.

“This is a totally different market than in 1999,” says Matt Bentley, Sedo.com CEO. “Today it’s really a much more stable, mature market based upon existing revenue streams. These domains are actually generating money.” These days potential domain investors can quantify the value of a site by its traffic and, while they’re waiting for a buyer, register with a domain “parking service” that will create the page and set up pay-per-click advertisements. So if a Web surfer looking for a drum set types in DrumSets.com, he or she is taken to a page of sponsored-link ads. Each time a user clicks on a sponsor’s link, the domain owner receives a fee. For domain owners, “it’s a win-win situation,” says Bentley, who compares the parked domains to making rent off real estate.

Rick Schwartz, the self-proclaimed “Domain King,” also argues that Web domains are a good investment. He got in on the domain marketplace pre-bubble. “I looked at domains from the get-go as a commodity,” he says. “I was a believer that after everything collapsed and burned, that domain names would be the epicenter of the new Internet [boom].”

Schwartz says his portfolio of around 5,000 domain names has earned him tens of millions of dollars. Ron Jackson, publisher and editor of Domain Name Journal, credits Schwartz’s 2004 sale of Men.com with jumpstarting the “rebirth” of the domain market. The sale, for $1.32 million, represented an 88-fold return on Schwartz’s 1997 investment of $15,000. It’s an opportunity he believes others have been foolish to miss out on until now. “They’re 10 years late to the game,” says Schwartz, “but at least they came.” And he believes there’s still plenty of time to play. “We’re still on the ground floor.”

Perhaps a bigger indicator that the domain market is on the rebound is the recent interest shown by venture capital firms. In November, online marketing services firm Marchex, announced its purchase of a portfolio that expanded their holdings to over 100,000 domains with 17 million users a month. The price was $164.2 million, approximately eight times the sites’ current annual revenue (a rate insiders say has set a new bar for asking prices).

The company has since expanded its portfolio to more than 200,000 domains. “Traffic is a critical element in driving product sales and advertising revenue,” says Marchex Chief Strategy Officer Peter Christothoulou, who says he’s noticed “heightened awareness and interest” in the market since the publicly traded company’s announcement of the acquisition. Jackson says to expect more deals like Marchex’s. “It seems like every venture capital company in the world is nosing around in this space right now,” he says.

Marc Ostrofsky, for one, is looking to cater to that interest. The veteran domain speculator behind the record-breaking $7.5 million sale of Business.com in 1999, is forming a $250 million “Internet real estate investment trust.” He and his partner, Houston investment banker Bob Martin, have spoken with interested hedge fund managers and venture capital firms in New York, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. “When the investment community heard what we’re playing with, they liked it,” says Ostrofsky. “They liken it to a land rush.” But Ostrofsky, who says he lost millions in the dot-com crash, is confident there’s no bubble to burst this time around. “I’m going to put 40 percent of my own net worth in this market,” he says. “The bust was made up of companies that were overvalued. We're buying in at the very early stages of a growing industry, nowhere near the top."

Not everyone is so sure. Jody Westby, managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers says, “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps there’s renewed interest, [but] holding domain names and using them for hyperlink advertising space, to me that’s nothing new.”

Regardless, trade publications like DNJournal.com and the German site Domain-Spiegel.de, are filling the need for industry analysis. In October of last year, Schwartz helped organize the first domain trade show in Delray Beach, Fla. A second will take place this month in Las Vegas.

With new extensions, like the .biz and .info suffixes added in 2001, and registration fees down to around $8, the marketplace is expanding. Earlier this month, domain data aggregator Whois Source announced that the number of global top-level domains (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and .us) had passed 50 million. Everyday tens of thousands of domain names expire and become available again. “Trees don’t grow to the sky,” says Jackson, but he’s not alone in believing that there’s a lot more space for this boom to grow.

c.c. 2005-05-17 17:45 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

May 5 - Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee knew he was overweight. His doctor had told him so. And at more than 280 pounds, he had trouble fitting into airplane seats and restaurant booths.

But his weight problem was made painfully evident in early 2003 at a meeting in a State Capitol conference room. The room had just undergone a renovation to restore its nearly century-old design and Huckabee’s usual seat had been replaced with an antique chair. When the governor sat down, there was a collective gasp among the attendees. The chair had collapsed under his weight. Huckabee laughed it off at the time, joking, “They sure don’t build them like they used to!” But, in his new book, “Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork,” he admits, “Deep down, I knew it wasn’t the chair that needed rebuilding—it was me that needed a major overhaul.”

To lose about 110 pounds, the governor developed what he calls a “12-stop” program with tips like: stop procrastinating, making excuses or fueling yourself with contaminated (a.k.a. junk) food. Now he’s sharing his experiences in his book and in a new childhood obesity campaign launched last week with former president Bill Clinton and the American Heart Association. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with Huckabee, a Republican, about his personal and political efforts advocating weight loss. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why did you and President Clinton decide to focus specifically on childhood obesity?
Gov. Mike Huckabee: It’s the long-term goal of the American Heart Association to try to address this. People underestimate the epidemic of childhood obesity and the growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes [which is linked to obesity] among preteens. Type 2 used to be called adult onset diabetes, but we can’t call it that anymore because it is onsetting with adolescents and even preteen kids. The way I put it is: when preteens are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, they can expect to have vision problems in their 20s, a heart attack by the time they’re 30, total renal failure by the time they’re 40—and they’ll be dead by 50.

How did you get involved with the campaign?
President Clinton called me three weeks ago out of the blue. I was stunned. We have a good relationship, but I’m not expecting him to pop in and say howdy. He said the AHA had approached him and he said that what I was doing in Arkansas with the Health Initiative and what I’d done personally was impressive, and he asked me to serve with him as co-chair of this campaign. I thought it really fit with what I am immersed in myself.

You recently said that two years ago you would have been “about the worst role model you could have had." What changed?
There were actually several factors. There was [good friend] Gov. Frank White’s death from a heart attack, my own diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and a heart catheterization, which scared the daylights out of me—though [the test came out] clear, thank God. I was at my heaviest in the spring of 2003, at least 280 pounds at the time. I knew I was unhealthy and I didn’t want to be this way. I’d tried all those [weight-loss] programs and they hadn’t worked for me. It’s not that any are bad; they can all be incorporated into a lifestyle. But I looked at it like I just needed that one program, just needed to lose weight. Then I realized it was more about what went on in my mind than what went into my mouth.

You’ve lost more than 100 pounds. How long did it take to lose the weight?
About a year. And I don’t take any medication for diabetes now. I was able to completely reverse that.

Your book about the experience comes out this month. What makes it different than other weight-loss books?
I tell readers in an honest way that there is no quick fix, it comes down to taking charge of your health. I lived a lifetime of bad habits, and I figured out how to turn it around. I don’t want this book to be a replacement for the South Beach or Atkins diet books, I think my book complements any weight-loss plan and takes it a step further. There are great books on dieting, nutrition and exercise. My book explains how to bring it all together. We need to change from saying, “I need to lose weight,” to saying, “I need to get healthy.” Because with weight loss, you typically have programs with a start and an end. But health and fitness are lifetime commitments.

How did you come up with your “12-stop” program?
I wanted to focus on something people could remember, and I wanted it to be progressive.

What was the hardest step—or stop—for you?
The hardest for me was: stop sitting on the couch. I loathed the idea of exercise. I would think, I have a dozen things on my to-do list and here I am walking around the block. I thought that if I was exercising—and here’s where my type A personality comes through—and if I was not producing or accomplishing something from the activity, then what was the point? I hadn’t realized I could quantify my health.

So how did you motivate yourself to exercise?
I realized that if it was important for me to take care of myself and to live longer, I had to set aside time dedicated to exercising and keep it as religiously as any appointment on my calendar that day. People ask me how I find the time to exercise. I tell them, I don’t. I make it.

Has it been tough to stick with it?
It’s a critical part of my life now. I’d never been athletic. My last run was in the eighth grade when sadistic gym teachers forced us to run the mile. I hated it. But in March, I ran 26 miles for the Little Rock Marathon. I still can’t believe I did that. And I did it and felt terrific … When my wife, Janet, and I were in D.C. for President Bush’s inaugural activities, we were invited to sit in the president’s box during the parade. I was training for the marathon then, and I had to run five miles that day. So my wife went to the parade while I watched it on TV as I ran five miles on the treadmill at the hotel. I started laughing midrun because it hit me, wow, I must be really serious about this [to give up that invitation].

You’ve said you’ll make health care a top priority when you take the helm of the National Governors Association this summer. Are you going to focus on obesity?
I will be taking on obesity and other issues involving changing the culture of health from treating chronic disease to seeking to prevent them. If you look at the early 1900s when most Americans were dying prematurely from infectious diseases like smallpox, malaria, whooping cough and diphtheria, the public-health community and government came together and said we need to deal with these issues—vaccinate people, find cures, clean up the water supply and the food supply. They tackled it as a public-health problem and, in a reasonably short period of time, we eliminated most of these diseases. We need to do the same thing with chronic disease [such as obesity].

How well has the Healthy Arkansas initiative worked?
We starting giving employees $20 off their insurance premiums each month for doing a health-risk assessment. And 18,000 signed up for that. Then we figured, we were giving people breaks to walk outside and smoke, so why not give employees 30 minutes a day to exercise that’s not on their lunch hour? We provide cessation tools to smokers like nicotine gum and patches. We’re doing that with state employees and with Medicaid patients. Last month, on our Web site, we listed every walking trail in the state by county.

How do you plan to implement the initiative on a national level?
No one state has all the answers, but everyone has a piece of the puzzle. It’s important to get together and share ideas. We look at what other states are doing, too. The heart of this initiative is about changing the culture of health, not just creating a program for health. We have a culture of disease: how to treat it, how much to spend on it, how to cure it. But we don’t focus on how to prevent it.

Can we legislate healthier lifestyles?
Attitude changes behavior, not the other way around. I personally don’t think the government should put a tax on cheeseburgers or regulate the size of a steak. That would create absolute disaster. Then you shift the debate to one of personal rights from one of good health … We should make it the cultural norm to practice healthy habits. No one ever asked me how to gain weight. But thousands have asked me how I lost weight.

c.c. 2005-05-13 14:51 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - In the first time that a federal judge has struck down a state constitutional provision limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon on Thursday declared void a provision of the Nebraska constitution that defined marriage as only between a man and a woman and that banned same-sex civil unions, domestic partnerships and other similar relationships.

Bataillon declared in his ruling that under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Nebraska cannot ban same-sex marriages and civil unions.

The ruling may call into question similar provisions in other states’ constitutions. 

Nebraska voters enacted the provision five years ago, with 70 percent approving it.

Will rekindle debate in Congress
The ruling is sure to rekindle debate in Congress over judicial power and may re-energize the forces backing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit marriage to man-woman couples.

In a statement, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said the state would appeal Bataillon’s ruling.

“Seventy percent of Nebraskans voted for the amendment to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and I believe that the citizens of this state have a right to structure their constitution as they see fit,” Bruning said.

Bataillon, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1997 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, based his ruling on two Supreme Court decisions, Romer v. Evans in 1996 and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, with the majority opinion in both written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Nebraska could not limit the rights of gays and lesbians “to obtain legal protections for themselves or their children in a ‘same-sex’ relationship ‘similar to’ marriage,” said Bataillon.

The Nebraska constitutional provision, he said, “attempts to impose a broad disability on a single group” and the Romer decision bans such disabilities, he said.

The Nebraska provision “is at once too broad and too narrow to satisfy its purported purpose of defining marriage, preserving marriage, or fostering procreation and family life,” Bataillon wrote.

He called it “too narrow” because “it does not address other potential threats to the institution of marriage, such as divorce.”

And it is “too broad in that it reaches not only same-sex ‘marriages,’ but many other legitimate associations, arrangements, contracts, benefits and policies.”

The judge said the amendment’s “broad proscriptions could also interfere with or prevent arrangements between potential adoptive or foster parents and children, related persons living together, and people sharing custody of children as well as gay individuals and people inclined to align with them to promote changes in legislation.”

GOP senator sees ‘threat’
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, an advocate of a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage, reacted to Bataillon’s ruling by noting that, when the Senate debated the proposed federal marriage amendment last year, “opponents claimed that no state laws were threatened, that no judge had ever ruled against state marriage laws. They claimed that the states and their voter-approved laws defending marriage were under no threat. After today’s ruling, they can no longer make that claim.”

Matt Daniels, president of Alliance for Marriage (AFM), a group that has urged Congress to approve a federal constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexuals, said the debate over marriage “is going to come down to a race between AFM’s marriage protection amendment and the federal courts.”

He predicted that "all of these state marriage amendments are going to be struck down in federal court, they are all going to go the way of Nebraska. The folks filing these lawsuits are taking this to the level of the Constitution, and we have to meet them at that level if the values of most Americans — and the common-sense understanding of marriage as the union of male and female — are going to be protected under our laws.”

More limited interpretation
But Amy Miller of the Nebraska American Civil Liberties Union had a far more limited interpretation of the ruling.

“This decision doesn't mean that gay people can marry, get a civil union or a domestic partnership, but it guarantees gay people the right to lobby their state lawmakers for those protections," she said.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a group that advocates legal recognition of marriages between gay couples, praised Thursday’s ruling.

“The court was right to do what courts are supposed to do — guarantee each of us our right to equal justice under law and equal citizenship in our country and home state,” Wolfson said.

“Government has no business putting obstacles in the path of people seeking to care for one another under law, and the court correctly found that Nebraska's sweeping anti-gay constitutional amendment offended basic American values of fairness, equality, family protection and access to the government,” he added.

c.c. 2005-05-13 10:16 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

Tom began acting up when he was 3 years old. He would refuse to go to bed and insist on having the television on all night. His mother, worried that Tom might have ADHD, took him to the family physician, who referred him to a specialist at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in London for an assessment. Psychologists went to nursery school to observe the little boy and grew perplexed. Tom played quietly with other children and attended carefully to lesson tasks. Nursery teachers said they considered him developmentally advanced for his age. "It was clear this boy was a very different child at nursery than he was at home," says Sheila Redfern, a child psychologist at the service to which Tom was referred. What accounted for this discrepancy?

Redfern began to see Tom along with his mother. "It was clear she was depressed," says Redfern. As they talked, it became clear that she hadn't wanted to become pregnant with Tom. She already had several older children and was struggling to cope as a single parent. She had almost deliberately been neglecting him, and in turn Tom was provoking her to get attention. Mom is now receiving counseling, and Tom is already becoming less belligerent at home. Although Tom's mother had firmly believed Tom had some kind of diagnosable disorder, she's slowly coming to understand that the crux of her son's problems lies instead in the family.

We tend to think of health as a private blessing, sickness as a solitary curse, but the truth isn't nearly so simple—either for kids or for adults. "The myth is that health is all about individual choices and individual treatments," says Dr. Robert Ferrer of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio. "But we're embedded in families and communities, and they have a big effect on our options." Families affect not only the stresses we encounter but the genes we carry and the environments we live in. And though science has yet to disentangle these influences, it has amply documented their impact. In a newly published analysis of health records from across the United States, Ferrer calculates that family forces may explain up to a quarter of the variation in individual health. And as the articles in this Special Report make clear, that finding is more than a curiosity. The "family effect" has profound implications for patients, for physicians and even for policymakers.

Some of the best-known family influences are genetic ones. As Harvard's Dr. Howard LeWine writes in this issue, your chances of developing heart disease or breast cancer double if one of your parents or siblings is affected. The risk is even higher for people with two stricken family members. But family history is not written in DNA alone. Household income is an equally strong health predictor, and not just because wealth buys more medicine. "It has little to do with money per se," says Sir Michael Marmot, a British epidemiologist who has spent a career chronicling what he calls the "status syndrome." "More wealth means more autonomy, less stress and more opportunities for social participation." No one knows exactly how those factors get translated into lower rates of AIDS, obesity and heart disease, but the effects can be dramatic. Life expectancy is some 20 years greater in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, than in downtown Washington, D.C. And recent studies suggest that people raised in poor families have less resistance to infection as adults—even if their circumstances improve.

Status aside, people who live under the same roof often experience the same health problems, even if they're not genetic relatives. When researchers at Nottingham University analyzed the health records of 8,400 married couples, they found that the spouses of people who suffered from asthma, depression, ulcers or hypertension were at sharply increased risk of developing the same conditions. In those instances, the couples' common problems probably resulted from their shared diets, lifestyles and environments. But researchers have also documented numerous instances in which one family member's health problems affect the well-being of —others. "A traumatic event within the family can have consequences for everyone," says Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School. "The collateral effects can include real, biological illness—even though the causes are entirely social."

We're all more prone to illness and death when our family members are in trouble. Surviving spouses die at twice the normal rate during the first year of bereavement, as they become more isolated and less motivated to take care of themselves—and the risk of suicide increases 22-fold for people whose spouses take their own lives. The loss of a child has a similar impact, roughly doubling a woman's odds of being hospitalized for depression even after five years have passed. And family crises can have a range of consequences for kids. Girls who lose a parent through death or separation are prone to depression and anxiety disorders as adults. And kids with depressed mothers exhibit more than their share of psychiatric and behavioral problems as teenagers—an outcome that researchers have tied directly to the poor parenting they receive.

The outcomes aren't always so dire. Living with a disabled or chronically sick child may not kill anyone, but the experience can change parents' and siblings' lives indelibly. When a son or daughter is diagnosed with a condition that can last a lifetime—juvenile diabetes, cancer, Down syndrome, autism—parents face an array of practical and emotional issues. Can the child attend a mainstream school? What will his future be like? Can the family afford his next treatment? Many parents put their jobs and lives on hold to become full-time caregivers, shuttling the child back and forth to hospital appointments and therapy sessions. Some families go bankrupt, and many more feel isolated and helpless. The strain on a marriage can be overwhelming, says Evan Imber-Black, director of the Center for Families and Health at the New York-based Ackerman Institute for the Family. The mother often becomes the child's full-time companion and advocate, leaving the husband to wonder, "What happened to our relationship?"

Siblings get eclipsed, too. "They feel forgotten and insignificant," says Melanie Goldish, the director of SuperSibs!, a support group for the brothers and sisters of kids with cancer. "There's a sense of abandonment or isolation." And though they're the first to acknowledge that a sick brother or sister has overwhelming needs, they end up aching for attention. Goldish recalls a woman named Stacy who spent her teens watching her brother fight a losing battle with cancer. Stacy told Goldish her name in school was "Greg's sister," and her nickname was "the well one." Anyone would resent that—but for kids with sick siblings, the resentment is often compounded by guilt. Frankie Romano was 10 when he and his little brother, Michael, then 4, spent an afternoon at the park with their grandfather. Frankie remembers tackling the little one and hurting his stomach. Several months later Michael was diagnosed with an abdominal neuroblastoma. "I was really broken down," says Frankie, now 17. "I thought that was my punishment." Frankie's mother, Sharon, confirms his account. "I remember the nurse holding him," she says. "He was crying, saying, 'Did we fight too much? Did we wrestle too hard? Did I hurt him?' "

We may never fully grasp all the forces that families exert on our health. But there are practical lessons in what we know already. An obvious one for anyone confronting a loved one's illness is to look beyond the patient. "Parents need to be as aggressive in seeking help for themselves and other family members as they are in focusing on the affected child," says Dr. Ed Clark, chair of pediatrics at the University of Utah. Some hospitals now sponsor support groups for family members, and organizations like the Seattle-based Sibling Support Project offer workshops where kids with special-needs siblings can learn strategies for coping. They have lifelong responsibilities, says founder Don Meyer, "and a lifelong, ever-changing need for information."

Thinking beyond the patient is especially important as the end of life approaches. Most people define a good death as one that doesn't burden the rest of the family, says Harvard's Christakis. Yet a third of U.S. families lose all or most of their savings the first time somebody dies. Hospice care can reduce the cost substantially—and studies suggest it can even help ward off depression and death in surviving spouses. In a study involving 35,000 couples, Christakis found that bereaved widows and widowers were less likely to die within 18 months if their partners had received high-quality palliative care. "Anything that happens to me has consequences for the people around me," he says. "To gauge the true value of my treatment, you have to consider its effect on the family and the community."

In other words, sickness and misfortune aren't the only family forces that merit attention. Just as individual problems can have repercussions for others, an intervention that improves one life can have big collateral benefits. Consider what happened in Elmira, New York, when University of Colorado psychologist David Olds dispatched nurses to drop in every few weeks on 400 high-risk, low-income teenage girls during their first pregnancy and their first two years as mothers. The nurses counseled the moms on nutrition, and helped them cut back on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. They also offered basic instruction in life skills and infant care, and worked to keep fathers and grandparents involved. Olds and his colleagues figured the program would help kids as well as mothers, but the results surpassed their highest hopes. The program sharply reduced abuse, neglect and injuries in the participating families—and the benefits were still accruing when researchers followed up 15 years later. As teenagers, the kids had 81 percent fewer criminal convictions than peers from similar backgrounds, not to mention fewer sex partners, less substance abuse and fewer instances of running away from home.

Programs based on the Elmira experience are now reaching 20,000 high-risk mothers in 20 U.S. states through a group called the Nurse-Family Partnership. That's a tiny fraction of the number who could benefit; there are 26,000 in New York City alone, says director Clay Yeager. But the effort stands as a testament to what health care can accomplish by focusing on families. "It can change whole life trajectories," says Dr. Jeffrey Kaczorowski of the University of Rochester. That's a goal to aspire to.

With Claudia Kalb, Anne Underwood, Karen Springen and Tara Pepper

c.c. 2005-05-12 10:16 发表评论

  MSNBC.com

May 16 issue - As I write this, I am listening to one of my many mood-sensitive playlists from the iPod library on my computer. I'm not one of the hip, trendy twenty- (or even thirty-) somethings you see gyrating wildly in the TV ads; I am a busy 43-year-old stay-at-home mother of three active boys. I am not alone in my obsession. Everywhere you look you will find us, "soccer moms" ferrying our kids to sports practices and games and whiling away the long hours of waiting by eagerly comparing accessories and trading songs with other baby-boomer moms. Even Radio Shack has picked up on the trend—it now advertises iPods for "moms and grads." Not moms and dads, mind you, moms and grads.

My husband realized long ago (to his eternal financial relief) that I am not a jewelry-wearing kind of wife. For my 43rd birthday, he came through with the gift of my dreams: a gorgeous gem of modern audio technology. Accessorize myself? I'd rather accessorize my iPod. This little treasure has enabled me to revisit my past and groove to the present; it has provided me with an ever-evolving soundtrack for my life.

My iPod can hold up to 4,000 songs. I never thought I'd accumulate that many, but I'm well on my way (I have about 800 so far). I gleefully tease my buddy Andrea about her puny mini, which can hold only 1,000 songs. She is already at the limit and will have to streamline her library, poor thing. No foresight there.

When I was in my teens and 20s, so much of my life was tied to music. It made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. I loved going out to dance clubs and seeing bands play live. My gal pals and I can't listen to Bowling For Soup's "1985," a song about a woman in the throes of a midlife crisis, without giggling and exchanging knowing glances. Are we, '80s music goddesses turned professionals turned moms, "still preoccupied with 1985"? While I never wanted to shake anything on Whitesnake's car, Bruce Springsteen, the Pretenders, U2, Duran Duran, Blondie, the Bongos, Talking Heads and AC/DC commanded my utter devotion.

I fondly recall an episode of "Ally Mc-Beal" in which Ally's therapist exhorted her to find her own "theme song," which she could conjure up in her head when needed. I (and many of you, I suspect) have more than one theme song. My life has a soundtrack as much as any film does, and different songs have defined me throughout different phases of my life.

With a light thumb spin, I can transport myself back to any age or stage of life. I revel in some of these memories and cringe at others. I see who I was and who I am now—and how I haven't changed so much. I once heard that when women hit their 40s, they find themselves re-evaluating their pasts and speculating on their futures, redefining themselves at that critical juncture midway through their lives. That's been true for me. My playlist has kicked open a big, padlocked door and helped me connect with a part of myself I feared was gone. Now I know that although I am a reasonably mature adult, inside me lives the free-spirited, carefree college girl I once was.

Like that carefree college girl, I get a kick out of creating playlists for my friends. I include all their favorite songs and give them titles like "Kelly Rocks!" and "Samantha Rocks!" and we all have a good laugh. Then we all go take care of our families and attend to other grown-up matters with a song in our hearts and a secret smile on our lips. My kids love the iPod, too; not only have I introduced them to some of the great music of my youth (and before), I've learned to appreciate some of theirs as well. They create playlists and burn them onto CDs for the car, and we groove and sing and talk about things both trivial and profound while we drive.

I love that you can create a soundtrack for any mood. At any given time, I can be found enjoying pop, rock, classical, gospel, hip-hop, oldies, country, you-name-it. Whether it's the Beatles or the Wiggles (yes, I'm a fan), Debussy or Dvorak, Usher or 3 Doors Down, R.E.M. or T. Rex, Norah Jones or Evanescence, I enjoy it all. And housework is so much less boring with music along, for my mind is someplace else.

Though the number of middle-aged moms who are addicted to their music players seems to be steadily growing, I still catch some people doing a double take when they see me clutching mine and looking serene while jogging or sitting in the bleachers at a sporting event. But who else except a boomer could possibly fill up an iPod that has 20 or 40 gigabytes? Save the MP3s and iPod minis for the youngsters. We'll take the heavy-duty hardware and maximum memory. By the way, I just updated my darling iPod in the last few minutes; I now have 822 songs and counting.

Gong lives in Hudson, Ohio.

c.c. 2005-05-11 20:59 发表评论

April 22 - Alex Turnbull has been to America only once. He spent 36 hours in New York City two years ago on a business trip. But today the Web designer for kilt company Scotweb in Edinburgh, Scotland, travels to the U.S. every single day.

Turnbull, 28, his younger brother James, and their office mate Olly have invented an exotic and growing Internet activity called Google Sightseeing. Their motto: “Why Bother Seeing the World for Real?” In just the past few weeks, they have visited the resplendent Mormon temple in Bethesda, Md., experienced the parched Black Rock desert of Nevada where the Burning Man festival is held annually and enjoyed the glittering lights of Las Vegas. All from outer space, and at the same time, from the comfort of their cubicles back in Scotland.

How are these virtual expeditions possible? Last October, Google acquired Keyhole, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup that lets Internet users view and manipulate geographic images collected from satellites and airplanes. Earlier this month, Google integrated the feature into its mapping service. When users enter a physical address into Google, they have the option of seeing a detailed satellite image of the location. Try it out at google.com/maps and check out the color of your own roof. Understandably, privacy-concerned Internet observers reacted with anxiety about the potential for snooping. Alex and his Scottish crew responded a bit differently. They decided to take a trip to America.

“As soon as it happened, I started looking at places in America I’d like to go,” Alex says. He viewed satellite pictures of Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam. Then his brother James suggested turning this fascination with Google Maps into a regular blog. They set it up on James’ Web site and started traveling.

They began with the obvious American tourist destinations: Disney World, the Hollywood sign and the Golden Gate Bridge. That was the easy stuff. Exploring further, Alex became enthralled by an aerial image of the St. Louis Arch—he pronounces it “St. Louiey”—and the massive shadow it lays onto the grounds of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park. And he marveled at the Rainbow Bridge, the world’s longest natural bridge, which stretches over surreal, rocky terrain in Utah. “It’s completely real, which is why it’s so exciting,” Alex says.

Word of the Google Sightseeing project quickly spread around the net. A link was posted to del.icio.us, a site where Web users share their favorite bookmarks. Even Google itself noticed and appreciated the effort, linking to it on its corporate blog. In just a few days, thousands of Web surfers had crashed the Google Sightseeing site, and the Turnbulls had to find a more robust Web hosting service. When the site came back online a few days later, readers began sending in their own suggestions. “We were in awe of the stuff people were sending in,” Alex says. “We didn’t know what to look for, and that made this much more interesting.”

Thanks to the submissions, visitors to the site were treated to a photo of the three-mile long ion collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. They also got a good shot of the infamous Nevada military installation known as Area 51. Alex also posted a satellite image of a field in Bunker Hill, Ill., where a guy named Dave had carved his first name in giant letters—perhaps the world’s largest graffiti tag.

Today, the Google Sightseeing site draws 15,000 virtual tourists a day. The boys from Edinburgh post many images in thematic groups: major sports stadiums, and rocket facilities such as the Space Shuttle launch pad at Cape Canaveral. They’ve got hundreds of reader submitted photos queued up, waiting to make the cut. Alex is particularly excited about a satellite image of the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles, where the “Desperate Housewives” neighborhood is actually visible in the photo.

Alex is beginning to feel well-traveled. “It’s total escapism for us,” he says. But it’s not a replacement for grabbing the passport and getting on a plane. In fact, it’s feeding his itch to travel the world. But first, he has more countries to explore. Google is planning to expand the Keyhole service to other countries, beginning with the U.K. Turnbull’s readers are already packing their bags.

c.c. 2005-05-11 17:32 发表评论

c.c. 2005-05-10 12:57 发表评论

c.c. 2005-05-10 09:59 发表评论