Friday, June 27, 2003

1. HYDROGEN SCAM? NUCLEAR POWER, WE'RE TOLD, IS A HYDROGEN WELL.
Many readers of What's New took umbrage with last week's diatribe called "The Hydrogen Scam." They point out that hydrogen can be produced in ways that do not produce greenhouse gases. Sure, but will it be? 95% of the hydrogen currently produced in the United States comes from steam methane reforming (WN 31 Jan 03), which belches CO2 and does nothing to promote energy independence. Is a hydrogen economy an idea whose time has come? Maybe, but we need a more open congressional discussion of the administration plan, and less docile coverage by the media.

2. DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS: PENTAGON PLANNERS MAY NEED GINKO BILOBA.
The New York Times on Monday described the shoddy research done in support of scientific claims made by supplement makers. Under the 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, supplement makers aren't required to prove that their product is either safe or effective, so they don't really need to do any research. But if they make scientific claims for their product, and they all do, they may have to back it up in court. They won't be able to: recently, NIH has begun to subject one magic herb after another to randomized double-blind testing, which one after another have failed miserably (WN 23 Aug 02). Yet, also on Monday, the Washington Post ran a totally credulous story on a project of the Pentagon's Combat Feeding Program to put herbal substances into lozenges and transdermal patches, to get the healthful properties of the natural remedies flowing in the bloodstream as quickly as possible.

3. PUBLIC ACCESS TO SCIENCE: WITH LIBERTY AND RESEARCH FOR ALL.
On Wednesday, Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-MN) released a draft of the Public Access to Science Act, which will eliminate copyright protection for publications stemming from federally funded research. The laudable goal of this measure is to make research easily accessible via the internet. Sabo's move appears to further the goals of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), chaired by Harold Varmus, a group that wants to see scientific publishing move away from the subscription-based economics, which they claim limit the availability of the research. PLoS will release its first "open-access" journal, PLoS Biology, in October, and plans to release PLoS Medicine next year.

4. POWER LINES AND CANCER: DEAD HORSE IN HAMPTONS FLOGGED AGAIN.
Long Island turns out to be just like the rest of world: power lines don't cause cancer there, either. That is the not entirely unexpected result of a large study, to be published next Tuesday. The study began in 1996 and studied the exposure of over 1000 women to magnetic fields; no correlation with breast cancer showed up. Does this result reassure the local activists? Not in the least. "I don't think anyone should be satisfied," the president of a local activist group told the Associated Press. "I think we need to push on."



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.