Watching the World
‘An Overmedicated Society’
◆ The new U.S. Commissioner of Food and Drugs plans to wage a campaign to reduce the intake of prescription drugs in the country. Dr. Jere E. Goyan, the first pharmacist ever to head the Food and Drug Administration, recently stated: “Too many people in this country are taking too many drugs without proper understanding of their potential harmful effects. Our society has become overmedicated.” He plans to use various avenues, such as “education” methods, to reduce drug intake. “Americans must learn there is not a pill for every ill,” he said, “and that they need not get a prescription every time they visit their doctors.”
Kidney Cancer and Painkillers
◆ A recent Australian survey has indicated that people who took massive amounts of compound painkillers had 9,000 times greater chance of getting kidney cancer than those who did not use these analgesics. Australian doctors have thought that phenacetin in such compound painkillers was the cause of kidney cancers, but now they believe that it is the combination of chemicals in the analgesics. Said Dr. Cartmill, urology registrar at the Brisbane hospital: “We feel the greatest incidence of the disease is in Queensland (which has the highest incidence of analgesic use in the world),” he said. “Overall Australia probably has the highest incidence of this cancer in the world.”
Losing “the Fight Against Illiteracy”?
◆ On the recent “14th International Literacy Day,” the director general of the U.N.’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called on all countries to combat illiteracy. “The fight against illiteracy,” he stressed forcefully, “must take on a planetary dimension.” Presently the situation is gloomy, he indicated. “If the present trends were to continue,” he explained, “the number of illiterate persons would continue to increase because of the population growth and it would pass from 742 million in 1970 to 814 million in 1980 and to 844 million in 1990. So humankind, of which 800 million adults do not know how to read and write (about 3 out of every 10 [adult] persons), would enter the 21st century with 954 million illiterate adults.”
On the Wings of Music
◆ In Australia a driver was recently stopped by police and charged with driving too fast. “I am not a fast driver normally,” explained the driver to the court. But while driving he was listening to Joseph Haydn’s “Divertimento for Two Horns” in B-flat major. “I became so elated,” he told the court, “that I felt my soul being transported to a higher region, while my foot became heavy on the petrol pedal.” The court ruled that, in view of the driver’s previous good record and the effect of the music upon him, the charges could be dismissed.
Methodists Accept Homosexual Pastor
◆ The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church, the Church’s highest court, has ruled that an avowed homosexual may remain as pastor of the Washington Square church in New York city. The Council ruled that the homosexual pastor is in “good standing” and in “effective relation” with his congregation in the Greenwich Village area. The congregation itself is made up mainly of homosexuals.
Hydrogen Maser Clock
◆ The Smithsonian Institution’s Astrophysical Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has built a hydrogen maser clock. Based on the natural oscillations of hydrogen atoms, it is thought to be possibly the most stable clock ever built. Over a period of 300 million years, it would vary by only one second.
Expensive Prayers
◆ The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to pay a Lutheran clergyman $50,000 a year for opening each session of the House with a prayer. The previous chaplain received $25,000 a year for such prayers. Commenting on the matter, news columnist Jim Bishop wrote: “The president’s wage and price guidelines seem not to apply to a devout man whose duties consist of opening each session of the House with a suitable (ergo: terse) prayer. . . . The reverend is not alone in this scam [swindle]. We are in an age where the clergyman is as interested in tax-exempt bonds as he is in the daily struggles of the Los Angeles Dodgers. When some ministers pop off to claim their eternal reward, they leave sizable estates.”
Highway Deaths Among Young
◆ The World Health Organization has reported a disproportionate number of deaths from traffic accidents among those in the 15 to 24 age group. A study covering 30 countries revealed that deaths from accidents in this age group increased considerably when the 1955-59 period was compared with the 1970-74 period: 608 percent in Mexico, 448 percent in Thailand, 379 percent in Portugal, 52 percent in Italy, 48 percent in Sweden, 41 percent in the Federal Republic of Germany. As for the United States, deaths in the 15 to 24 age group rose from 8,770 in 1955-59 to 17,440 in 1970-74—an increase of 95 percent. The study, which included all kinds of motor vehicles, attributed the increased fatalities among the young mainly to abuse of alcohol.
Killer Diseases Increase in China
◆ Reports from China indicate that high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks are on the increase. In the Shihzhingshan district of Peking, yearly deaths from heart attacks soared 60 percent, from 73.8 per 100,000 people during 1955-59 to 118.4 during 1974-78. Deaths from strokes more than doubled during that same period—going from 43.1 to 97.3 per 100,000. To combat this deterioration in public health, TV, radio, posters and pamphlets now urge the Chinese people to eat less salt and animal fat, to exercise regularly and to stop smoking. China remains the foremost consumer of tobacco products in the world.
Return of the Lullaby
◆ The singing of lullabies to babies seems to have declined over the past few decades. But now Swedish hospitals are endeavoring to revive the practice of lullaby singing in maternity wards. Dr. John Lind of Stockholm’s Karolinska Institut says that lullaby singing “bonds mother and child together, hastens the development of the brain and promotes a healthier parent-infant relationship.” To teach mothers lullabies, Dr. Lind has brought musicians into maternity wards. He points out that a lullaby does not require a sophisticated tune or lyrics; in fact, some lullabies are wordless. The doctor adds: “The baby coos in response to the singing and rocking. This increases the mother’s pleasure in the baby. As a result, they’re observing each other closely and there’s increased communication by means of giggles, cooing, eye contact and smiles. This plays an important part in later speech development.”
Turkey’s Transfusion Toll
◆ Turkish newspapers report that at least 30 persons died in Ankara hospitals during a recent week as a result of blood transfusions. Doctors believe there may have been a mix-up with regard to labeling the blood bottles, or stale blood plasma may have been used. It happens, and not only in Turkey.
Mother Bites Tiger
◆ At a zoo in Kuwait a tiger caught a seven-year-old girl with its claws. Not waiting for other help to come, the girl’s mother sank her teeth into the tiger’s paw until the animal released her daughter.
Inflation Contradiction
◆ Most observers of the soaring cost of living assume that food is a leading contributor. However, though food prices have been rising rapidly, the portion of income Americans devote to food has actually decreased since 1960, when they spent over 20 percent on food and drink. Now they spend less than 17 percent of income on these necessities. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Canada the portion of income spent for food and drink is 21 percent; in France, 23.6 percent; in the Federal Republic of Germany, 27.1 percent; in Britain, 31.6 percent; and in Portugal, 47.5 percent.
Oiling the Pump
◆ At a recent medical congress held in Crete, heart specialists from all over the world noted that on that island, fewer persons, on the average, suffer from cardiac disturbances than in other parts of Greece. The Athens Daily Post says that the scientists “have reached the conclusion that the lower frequency of coronary disturbances and other heart diseases is attributable to the salutary effect on the veins of the [particular type of] olive oil consumed” by Cretans. The meeting of specialists was called “to examine this phenomenon,” said the paper.
Underworld “Ministry”
◆ In late October New York priest and former city councilman Louis Gigante served a 10-day jail sentence for contempt of court. He had refused to answer grand jury questions about his alleged attempts to obtain special in-prison favors for a well-known underworld figure. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down the contention that Gigante was exercising his claimed “duty as a priest” in his relations with the prisoner, who is serving a 62-month federal sentence for interstate gambling violations and was additionally convicted of bribing a prison official. Yet the New York Daily News quotes Gigante as saying of the prisoner that he “is not a mobster, he is not a criminal. If you had the chance to meet him, he’s one of the finest human beings you’d ever meet.” At a funeral Mass in 1978 the priest also eulogized another notorious alleged underworld figure as a “family friend.” While in jail, Gigante was visited ‘secretly’ by New York’s Cardinal Cooke, who also issued a statement regretting the court action as “unconstitutional interference with the free exercise of his religious ministry.”
Soviets Look the Other Way, Too
◆ The failure of citizens to do anything about crimes they witness because they do not want to get involved has been much decried in America. Now the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia complains that some Russians behave similarly. It cited a number of cases of “criminal passivity” on the part of witnesses to crimes who did not want to give information about what they saw.
Counting the Centenarians
◆ According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, nearly 12,000 Americans 100 years old or over are receiving benefits. The oldest of the centenarians, the former slave Charlie Smith, recently died in Florida at the reputed age of 137.
Solar-powered Station
◆ A small radio station in Ohio has begun transmitting with electricity generated by the sun, the first such commercial application of solar energy in the United States. More than 33,000 solar cells, each about three inches (8 cm) in diameter, are spread out on racks over one third of an acre of flat lawn behind the radio station. The racks are positioned so as best to capture the sun’s energy. On cloudy days, the system still produces enough power to charge storage batteries, which can run the station for almost two days. The only time the system does not generate enough power is during rain or heavy fog.