• Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in America.  Twenty percent of Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime.  That’s 1 in 5, people! Forgoing sunscreen can be very dangerous!
• Basal cell carcinoma is the most common kind of skin cancer.  It’s usually not fatal, but treatment can be very disfiguring.  Plus, did you know that 90 percent of wrinkles and sun spots come from exposure to the UV (ultraviolet) rays of the sun?  Forgoing sunblock can make you ugly!
• The second most common form, squamous cell carcinoma, kills 2,500 people a year. Well, I’m sure you understand this one, but I will say that even though 2,500 is not a big number, it’s big enough.

By Claudia Kalb

Medicine is so much more than mere science, especially when it comes to the highly charged matter of Lyme disease. Since 1975, when Lyme was first recognized, two things have ramped up: the number of cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (27,444 in 2007) and the controversy over almost every aspect of the disease—how many people have it, how to treat it, even what, exactly, it is.

The debate has all the ingredients of a medical sensation: politics, science, ethics, and money. This week, the Lyme drama comes to a head with a daylong hearing in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). (Watch it here.)  

One of the most contentious issues to be aired is the proper use of antibiotics to treat the disease. Some patients, who have joined forces through local support groups and the Internet, believe a long course of drug treatment is critical to recovery of what they call “chronic Lyme disease.” The therapy can last a few months to several years. Most infectious-disease specialists, on the other hand, say that the vast majority of Lyme cases can be treated quickly. Lingering symptoms like fatigue and joint pain aren’t caused by Lyme, the doctors say, but fall into a category called “medically unexplained symptoms.” They argue that long-term antibiotic treatment is not only unwarranted, it’s unsafe.

The hearing was prompted by an antitrust investigation into IDSA by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. (Connecticut is home to the town of Lyme, where the disease was first identified.) This is highly unusual: A.G.s don’t usually go after esteemed medical organizations. But after hearing from concerned patients, who said IDSA’s 2006 treatment guidelines—which recommend against long-term antibiotic treatment and which are used by insurance companies to assess coverage—defined the disease too narrowly and were denying them the care they needed, Blumenthal launched his investigation. He charged that IDSA’s guidelines were approved by experts who had conflicts of interest with insurance groups or drug companies. The investigation ended last year with IDSA agreeing to assemble a new panel to review its guidelines and revise or update them if necessary.

Eighteen speakers, most of them physicians, are scheduled to appear before the panel today, which is chaired by Dr. Carol Baker, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Baker has never treated Lyme patients. “To say I’m unbiased is an understatement,” she says. Among the speakers: attorney Lorraine Johnson, who was diagnosed with Lyme in 2002, and is now chief executive officer of the California Lyme Disease Association. Johnson says her symptoms—cognitive impairment, fatigue, shortness of breath, depression—improved only after she received intravenous antibiotics over a period of nine months. “After 30 days, I started getting markedly better,” she says. “You could really see the progress.” Dr. Ray Stricker, who treats about 1,800 Lyme patients in his practice in San Francisco, says long-term antibiotic treatment has helped the majority of his patients. “They’re pretty happy after being miserable,” he says. Stricker says IDSA members “don’t want to admit they’re wrong,” but they are limiting treatment. He believes the guidelines should be revised.

But infectious-disease specialists—nearly 9,000 of whom are IDSA members—vehemently disagree and point to NIH-sponsored studies that show little or no benefit to long-term therapy. Dr. Phillip Baker, who managed three of the NIH trials and is now head of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, says he is amazed that the scientific data haven’t resolved the debate. “I just can’t stand it,” he says, “so many people are being misled.” He and others, including Dr. Gary Wormser, chief of infectious diseases at New York Medical College in Valhalla, and chair of IDSA’s 2006 guidelines panel, worry about the side effects of longterm antibiotics, which range from diarrhea to life-threatening allergic reactions. Overuse of antibiotics can also lead to a growing public-health concern: drug resistance, which can spread throughout communities and make people vulnerable to disease. And then there’s cost: Baker says longterm therapy can total as much as $50,000 a year. Doctors who prescribe it, he says, are taking advantage of patients and benefiting financially. “The net result is that people are paying a lot of money for something that’s not doing them much good,” he says.

The focus of the hearing is science, and that’s what Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a Yale pediatrician who served on previous IDSA guidelines panels, plans to talk about. Many patients who have received diagnoses of chronic Lyme disease do not even have the condition, Shapiro says. And the ongoing symptoms they struggle with are simply unexplained and unrelated. “It’s understandable that patients feel frustrated,” he says, but the science should prevail. “What you need to realize is that our primary concern is the health of patients,” he says.

The new committee will listen to the speakers and read piles of letters and reports. “My dining-room table is completely covered by documents submitted by patients and physicians,” says Baylor’s Baker. The panel has three choices: do nothing, revise portions of the current guidelines, or rewrite them altogether. Baker says they plan to make a decision by the end of the year. No matter what the outcome, however, you can bet that there will be plenty of debate to come.

The author, and her shapeless ankles (Courtesy Kathleen Flynn)

 

by Kathleen Flynn

I have cankles.

There, I said it.

Disparage me as you will—it’s currently all the rage to poke fun at cankles. That's the term, of course, for the strange disorder of the lower body where one's calf descends into one's foot without narrowing. (The effect is that of giving it the appearance of a doughy peg leg.

Last week, Gold’s Gym announced that July is National Cankles Awareness Month. “By the year 2012 Cankles will surpass Love Handles as the number one aesthetic affliction in the world,” Gold's states on its new Web site, Saynotocankles.com. The Wall Street Journal followed up with a front-page story, fully exposing the phenomenon of cankle-bashing. Good Morning America even ran a story about it, coyly titled “The New Muffin-Top?” It’s the worst thing that’s happened to big-ankled women like me since Hollywood debuted the silly, hybrid word “cankle” (calf-plus-ankle) in the 2001 movie Shallow Hall. (Before that, my fat ankles were my own secret shame.)

Now ankleless women everywhere are being told that we either have to get in shape or hide our mutated stumps under loose jeans and long skirts.

Along with Gold’s Gym, personal trainers throughout the blogoshpere are currently writing posts on “cankle-busting moves!” such as squats, calf raises, and walking.

I’m all for exercising, and I work out regularly. But I want to set the record straight: I'm a size zero. Cankles are not necessarily the result of eating too many snickers. For many women, they are a genetic mishap and criticizing them is akin to kicking a little person in the shin.

More on Kathleen's life with cankles, after the jump...

In 1997, when the FDA allowed prescription drug manufacturers to actuallytell people what their pills and potions did via television ads, did theyforesee the consequences? Did they anticipate the flowering of an entirely newgenre of short-form drama that would grace the airways every night throughout America,bringing tales of tragedy and heroism and wonderful pills into our livingrooms?  
Prescription drug ads are like sonnets: the artistry is constrained by therules of the form. In this case, the form demands that the stories play outquickly enough that viewers at home don't change the channel, and that a bevyof terrifying side effects be explained in a manner both informative andreassuring. And, just as you may have found the Cliff Notes helpful as youworked your way through Shakespeare's poetry in high school, so too you mightlike to have the nuances of these drug ads explicated for you. On behalf of TheHuman Condition, Josh Fruhlinger is here to help. We begin with this adfor EpiDuo.

But what does it all mean? Find out, after the jump!

Just as I suspected, my time on The Takeawaythis morning discussing the impact of reality TV on teenagers had mesounding very much like an old-fashioned school marm. There I wastalking about values and judgment and parental supervision, while17-year old Grace stole the show with her concise analysis of thecurrent reality lineup.

Initially, I thought the issue wasmore about what kind of bad behavior kids could learn from reality TV.Teenage brains aren’t fully developed, meaning they’re not as able tomake sound decisions as (some) adults. They’re also in a process offiguring out who they are and what they like—a process that can beinfluenced by what they watch, what they listen to, and what they seetheir friends doing. Would seeing good looking, well-edited, casual-sexhaving, AMEX-toting, underage drinking teens on TV ruin the moralcompass of “normal” kids?

As host John Hockenberry pointedout, however, kids aren’t stupid. They know that these shows arestaged, that the producers intervene, and that situations are plannedahead of time for maximum conflict. Superstar Grace wished that showswere a bit more real, rather than trying to cram an entire week’s worthof experiences into 22-minute chunks.

So the issue is not whether watching self-absorbed teens on TV will turn your kids into similarly miserable humans.

What is the issue? Find out after the jump. 

Levin Izhak Rosenbaum (Kevin Hagen/New York Daily News)

One of the more intriguing aspects of Thursday’s massive corruption arrest in New Jersey was the case of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, accused of brokering illegal deals to buy kidneys from living donors. His story got us wondering: how much can you harvest from your own body?  NEWSWEEK's Jeneen Interlandi lists some of the organs one can donate while still alive (and, when the data were available, how much they go for):

Kidneys: You have two. You can live with one. As the most in-demand organ, kidneys fetch a high price: $30,000 in the U.S. (in which case the alleged customers of Rosenbaum were getting totally ripped off┴he’s accused of selling kidneys for $160,000 each).*

Liver: You have only one, but if you slice some off, it will grow back. Livers are the second most in-demand organ, bringing about $10,000 in the U.S.

Lung: Each lung has five lobes. You can safely part with one lobe, but any recipient would need a second lobe (from a second donor) to benefit from your gift.

Eyes: Whole eyes cannot be transplanted. But individual components of the eye┴namely the lens and the cornea┴can. Some anthropologists and human-rights workers have reported the sale of lenses and corneas from living donors.

Intestine: It’s possible, but the risks are so great and the need so rare that intestine donations almost always come from deceased donors. The vast majority of intestine recipients are young children with rare disorders.

Pancreas: Another organ of which you can donate a segment. Pancreas transplants are often done to improve quality of life (by reducing or eliminating the need for constant insulin injections in diabetics, for example). They still come mostly from deceased donors, but the number of living donors is growing as the transplant technology improves.

Skin: For a long time, the feeling was that taking skin from living donors was impractical. Nowadays, people who have excess skin after significant weight loss can donate that skin, usually to burn victims for skin-graft surgery. As with eye trafficking, rumors have long circulated about a black-market trade in human skin.

Bone marrow: Harvested inside the bone, this tissue regrows in healthy donors but is killed off by chemotherapy in patients with certain types of cancer. Donated marrow allows doctors to pursue more aggressive treatments.

Blood: Another non-organ, but blood is probably the easiest, safest, and most common type of donation.


* The price for healthy kidneys on the black market varies depending on the region. In 2005, the watchdog group Organs Watch report listed the following black-market rates for healthy kidneys:
U.S.: $30,000
Israel: $10,000-$20,000
Peru: $10,000
Turkey: $7,500
Brazil: $6,000
Moldova and Romania: $2,700
India: $1,500
Philippines: $1,500
Prewar Iraq $750-$10,000

Guess who was thinking of running a Q&A on organ sales Wednesday, only to decide that it wasn't newsy enough?  I'll give you a hint: her giant head is smirking at you in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen right now. Still, any coverage we might have surreptitiously planned would likely pale in comparison with the fantastic story Jeneen Interlandi wrote in January of this year. Called "Not Just Urban Legend," it looked at the very real practice of organ trafficking in America, and mixed sobering stats with crazy true-crime detail. To wit:

... a Brooklyn dialysis patient purchased his kidney from Nick Rosen, an Israeli man who wanted to visit America. Unlike some organ sellers, who told of dingy basement hospitals with less equipment than a spartan kitchen, Rosen found an organ broker through a local paper in Tel Aviv who arranged to have the transplant done at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. An amateur filmmaker, Rosen documented a portion of his odyssey on camera and sent the film to [anthropologist Nancy] Scheper-Hughes, whose research he had read about online. The video excerpt that NEWSWEEK viewed shows Rosen meeting his broker and buyer in a New York coffee shop where they haggle over price, then entering Mount Sinai and talking with surgeons—one of whom asks him to put the camera away. Finally, after displaying his post-surgery scars for the camera, Rosen is seen rolling across a hotel bed covered in $20 bills; he says he was paid $15,000.

As for the ethical objection that poor people shouldn't be tempted into selling spare body parts for cash, running a small but measurable risk to their health, [law professor and organ-sales advocate Lloyd Cohen] suggests a comparison with other valued commodities that are dangerous to obtain, like tuna fish. People risk their lives on fishing boats because they're paid for it. By the same token, says Sally Satel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who debated on Cohen's team at the IQ2 U.S. event, "we don't think firemen are any less heroic because they are paid to save us." 

by Jeneen Interlandi

About the arrest of a handful of rabbis from New York and New Jersey on charges of organ trafficking, I have two things to say: One, I knew it! And two, nobody cares.

When we reported on organ trafficking late last year, my main source for the story, a medical anthropologist by the name of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, told me that a couple of rabbis and synagogues in Brooklyn, N.Y., had been repeatedly been cited by her informants as well-known organ brokers. Nancy has done an extraordinary amount of detective work in the past two decades mapping the organs trade across the globe. She's gone undercover in Turkish slums, tracked down leads in Argentinian mental hospitals, and interviewed potential sources in Israeli prisons. She has also routinely reached out to the FBI and analogous law-enforcement bodies in other countries─usually to no avail. Maybe because she is a mere medical anthropologist, maybe because she had nothing more than word-of-mouth reports (albeit hundreds of pages of them, often from admitted criminals), the FBI did not seem to take her calls seriously (organ-trafficking allegations in yesterday's bust were the byproduct of a larger investigation on money laundering).

And without real prodding from a greater authority than this Berkeley professor, transplant surgeons caught in Nancy's cross hairs have been equally happy to discount her claims. As we wrote back in January, Scheper-Hughes has confronted at least three U.S. hospitals with evidence that their surgeons have been transplanting illegally brokered kidneys. Her field notes include the names of several people picked up in yesterday's raid─people whose charity organizations purported to pair altruistic donors with dialysis patients in need, and who had close working relationships with some very good U.S. hospitals. In response to her charges, and in response to inquiries from NEWSWEEK, officials from those hospitals have insisted that their transplant programs take every precaution against organ trafficking, and that intentional deceit is almost impossible to uncover. The wiretap evidence released yesterday will be less easily dismissed. It will be interesting to see if the FBI or anyone else follows the organ-trafficking trail to these hospitals, or to any number of Web sites that make similar claims of altruism and charity, but have been implicated in the work of Nancy and others.

For obvious reasons, our story names only the hospital where we could substantiate Nancy's claims─with a video, of all things, sent to us by a man who proudly sold his own kidney through an illegal broker.

Which gets me to my second point. The vast majority of readers who responded to our story saw nothing wrong with the idea of organ selling. I received dozens of e-mails (and some calls) from people wanting to know what the big deal was. Several even asked where they could sell their own "extra kidney." (FYI: Just because you can survive without it, doesn't mean it's "extra." Most doctors will tell you that you really ought to keep both, if you can.) Sorry, but this mentality only works if you happen to live in a First World country with a comparatively decent health-care system. Most of the people who sell their organs, through rabbis or gangsters or whoever, don't live in developed countries. And most of them aren't selling their kidneys to get out of credit-card debt or to buy a bigger car. When organ brokers come to their neighborhoods, offering cash for their kidneys or for slices of their liver (or, according to some rumors, for one of their eyes), most of those who sell are doing it so they can buy food, or medicine, or a place to live. You might disagree, but I can't help thinking that a system which forces one to chose between two kidneys and food for their family is an inherently flawed one. And that's not even accounting for the fact that some thug from Jersey posing as a clergy member gets most of the money.

Henry Louis Gates' booking photo

Editor's note: This article was originally published on July 21 at 3:23 ET. It was republished, with expanded content, on July 22 at 12:40 ET.

I would rather be Gov. Mark Sanford than the Cambridge police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct. Can you imagine putting handcuffs on the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University and executive editor of The Root? This after questioning him about the possibility that he’d broken into his own house! Honestly, I’d rather eat a handful of change. A lot of thought-provoking things have been said about this situation elsewhere, but I am most struck by Adam Serwer’s perspective in The American Prospect. He argues that of all the terrible facts of this situation, the most disturbing one is that Gates's own neighbor was the one who called the police. “I'm not ascribing malice here—it's the nature of race that people react to it without forethought—but the idea that a black man can be mistaken for a criminal trying to enter his own house in his own neighborhood should remind us all that we're hardly living in a post-racial paradise,” he writes. Would the incident have occurred had Gates been white? Probably not, says Serwer. Even worse, “I can imagine the entire situation degenerating into something horribly tragic had Gates not been middle-aged, had he not been a college professor, and had this not occurred a nice neighborhood in Cambridge.”

What Serwer alludes to, but does not say outright, is that racial profiling is a blunt and clumsy tool. It relies on the grossest generalizations derived from the basest stereotypes. And therefore, this method of profiling is bound to be wrong all the time. If Gates had been white, would his neighbor have assumed that there was a robbery happening or even thought that his behavior was suspicious? Probably not. Because a snap racial judgment of a white person would probably have led her to the correct assumption: the door was stuck. Now, of course, the elephant in the room is the assumption that black people commit all the crime in America.  They don’t. They don’t even commit a majority of the crimes in America (according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report of 2007). It just seems that way on TV.

That’s why I can’t imagine why cops use racial profiling. I mean, do you have to go to an actual police academy to learn it? You can’t build a profile around "two black guys pushing a door." I watch a lot of crime dramas, from CSI to Cold Case, and I have never seen a cop say, “Well, arrest a bunch of black people. I’m sure one of them will have done it.” And if one were going to use profiling, can’t it be a little more sophisticated than “any guy of color”? Can you imagine the FBI’s Behavorial Science Unit producing profiles that say, “What we’re looking for is a black guy standing, living, sitting, driving, or eating in a mostly white, upper-middle-class neighborhood.” It’s ridiculous. 

Profiling may catch some criminals, but it also erodes the trust and respect that must exist between police officers and the people they serve and protect, and it divides members of a community. Now Gates has to live in that house knowing that his neighbors are watching him suspiciously and may call the police if he gets out of line. That’s going to take more than a block party to fix. Wouldn’t it have been much easier for the police to figure out who lives there before you knock on the door? And don’t give me that nonsense about a crime in progress. If the officer had time to meet the 911 caller outside of Gates’s home (as he stated in the police report), he had time to do a little more due diligence before he knocked on the door. Suspecting people of a crime based on no more than the color of their skin is dehumanizing and, it seems to me, a lot of effort for not much result.  

And just a quick question while I’m thinking about this case: is it against the law to yell at a police officer?  I’m no constitutional scholar; but I’m fairly sure that we Americans have not only “freedom of speech,” but the freedom to modulate our volume as well. Arresting people for shouting (on their own porch and in broad daylight) seems like bullying—or at the very least, a waste of police resources. 

The downside to profiling is always easiest to see when absurd situations like this one occur, but we need also be cognizant of the damage it does to the less well-known. The charges against Gates have been dropped, and so I wonder if people will just shake their heads and laugh instead of worrying, like I am, about the next time a black man with a backpack has to push on his front door to get it open.

Gates's lawyer speaks about the incident at The Root.

By Jenny Hontz     

      The IRS has ruled that a woman medically incapable of breast-feeding after a double mastectomy may not set aside the cost of infant formula as a pretax medical expense, NEWSWEEK has learned exclusively.

      “To explicitly deny women this deduction is a shameful interpretation of their regulations, especially when they’re interpreting them to accommodate footpads and condoms and Viagra,” says Dan Harrison, 39, of Los Angeles, who asked for the IRS to rule on the issue. “I think women should be pissed off.”

      Harrison’s wife, Libby, 39, had both breasts surgically removed in 2006, two years before the birth of her second daughter, Hannah. While Libby breast-fed her first child, she had no choice but to purchase infant formula for Hannah, which cost about $1,000 over the course of a year.

       Dan Harrison, an executive at NBC Universal, was looking through a list of approved medical expenses under his flexible spending account provided by Ceridian, the company that manages his employee benefits. Flexible spending accounts allow taxpayers to set aside up to $5,000 per year as pretax income for medical expenses not covered by insurance.

       Dr. Scholl’s footpads, sunscreen, birth control, and prescription sunglasses all qualify as medical care for the “diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease,” according to the IRS. People with hearing impairments are allowed to include the cost of equipment to help them watch TV, and anyone who has lost a limb can count the cost of modifying a car as pretax income. Hypnosis, yoga, colon cleansing, massage, and even dancing lessons are also considered medical costs with a doctor’s note. However, infant formula for women medically unable to breast-feed because of breast cancer or HIV is nowhere on the list.

      Harrison wrote to the IRS asking for clarification, and he received a letter last September confirming his suspicions that formula under no circumstances is considered a medical expense. “Food, including infant formula, that satisfies your nutritional requirements is a personal expenditure,” the letter said.  Harrison saw a double standard at work. Breast-milk supplements are considered a medical expense with a doctor’s note, as are breast pumps and hot and cold packs to ease breast-feeding pain. Patients allergic to wheat may also count as a medical expense the difference between the cost of wheat-free and regular foods.

      “This special food is deductible with a doctor’s certification,” Harrison says. “How is infant formula any different?”

      The IRS had never considered a case of a woman who had to purchase formula because of a double mastectomy, and Harrison believed a principle of fairness was at stake. He challenged the IRS by requesting a formal ruling and traveling to Washington to make his case last November.

      Former California governor Gray Davis, a family friend, put Harrison in touch with Rep. Henry Waxman, who wrote a letter to the IRS supporting the Harrisons. The breast-cancer survivor organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure, also urged the IRS to reconsider, and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis took the case pro bono, putting one of its top tax attorneys, Todd Maynes, on the job. Despite having such heavy hitters in his corner, the IRS ruled July 1 against the Harrisons, saying infant formula is food, and because it’s for the baby, it doesn’t mitigate the disease of the mother. The Harrisons received the decision in the mail this week.

      “It’s food for a healthy infant,” IRS branch chief Christopher Kane told Newsweek.com. “The mother is the one with the medical problem. It’s the same expense a [healthy] woman who chooses not to breast-feed incurs,” Kane said.

      That argument doesn’t sit well with Harrison. Buying infant formula was not a choice for his family. Without it, his child could not have survived.

       “There’s no doubt, if you don’t have breast tissue, you can’t breast-feed,” he says. “There is no alternate product to give the baby. It’s not like the baby can eat a granola bar and get developmental nutrition from a prescription product, which would be deductible. It’s breast milk or formula or the kid dies.”

      Harrison also takes issue with the idea that formula is merely food. “Infant formula is so highly regulated, in my mind, it’s closer to a medicine,” he sasys. “They tell you what ingredients must be in infant formula [and in what amounts]. There’s a real care that goes into the manufacture and oversight that you don’t have in the traditional food chain.”

       To Kane’s assertion that formula doesn’t mitigate the mother’s disease because it’s for her child, Harrison points out that the health of mothers and young infants is intertwined. “This has a lot of support in medical literature and even in government hospital regulations,” he says. “It is called the mother-child dyad.”

      The tax code, however, treats mothers and infants as separate people, Kane says. “We’re constrained by the law. That’s our job.”

      Harrison isn’t giving up. He’s taking his case to Congress and has a receptive ear in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), herself a breast-cancer survivor. "This ruling clearly shows a lack of understanding of the medical implications of breast-cancer treatment in young women," Wasserman Schultz says.  "I am exploring options that will allow women adversely affected by this ruling to utilize the money they've set aside in their FSA accounts for what is clearly a medically necessary expense."

 

(Andy Attenburger/Corbis)

Apparently, no one in this country knows what a naked woman looks like. At least, that’s what media outlets including CBS, the New York Post, and Fox News seem to think. In reporting the story of Erin Andrews, the ESPN reporter who was surreptitiously taped au naturel in her hotel room, these outlets and others found it necessary to include stills from the tape making its way around the Internet. It probably seems incredibly naive to ask why (naked ladies increase ratings, duh), but the answer may be a little more complicated—and disturbing—than that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the outlets showing the most Andrews’s flesh are also the ones expressing the most shock and dismay over the tape. “It is many women’s worst nightmare,” The Early Show’s Julie Chen said, introducing the tape, which then played, with parts of Andrews’s body fuzzed out, during the rest of the segment—despite the fact that ESPN has sought to block websites from showing the tape, and threatened legal action against websites posting stills from the footage. The Post also used the term "nightmare" to describe the actions of the "creepy cameraman" who taped the "sideline siren"—and accompanied its story with three stills from the video.

Other journalists have been more straightforward about the prurient aspect of the story. In the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, blogger Bob Norman calls the video “Disgusting, repulsive, absolutely offensive, and outrageous. And I'm very happy to report that the video has been taken down from the web. I know because I looked for it. For like a half an hour.” He’s being sarcastic, but his comments echo the tone of much of the coverage of the video, and many of the comments on the stories: for someone to tape Andrews is completely sick. For someone to watch that tape is, hey, just human nature.

But really, what’s so interesting about the tape? Andrews has a nice body, but so do lots of other naked women you can find on the Internet, and in much higher-resolution pictures. In the video, she appears to be getting ready to go out: brushing her hair, looking in the mirror. It's not super-racy stuff. The quality of the video is so poor, it’s hard to tell Andrews’s identity. In fact, the tape has been online for months, and generated interest only when ESPN’s lawyers confirmed Andrews’s identity as the woman in the hotel room.

Obviously, the fact that Andrews is a celebrity has a lot to do with it. The fact that we’ve seen her face before somehow makes her body more interesting. And certainly, the fascination with naked celebrities is nothing new. Playboy understood that when it put Marilyn Monroe on the cover of its inaugural issue. But it’s doubtful Andrews would have caused such a stir had she posed for the magazine. What’s really provocative about the Andrews tape, what makes it good copy for Fox et al. is not that she’s naked, but that she thinks she’s alone.

Privacy, it seems, is the new nudity. This is why, when Jennifer Aniston poses topless for the cover of GQ no one does more than shrug, but when paparazzi catch her sunbathing topless, it's tabloid fodder for weeks. Same with Britney Spears. Same with Janet Jackson. It’s not so much a desire to see nudity as it is to see candor, to see what the person looks like when she’s unaware she’s being watched. It’s the impulse behind “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” and Gawker Stalker. It’s voyeurism, pure and simple. No matter how much access a celebrity gives us—posing naked, appearing on a reality TV show, revealing her deepest secrets in an interview—we’re more interested in whatever part she wants to keep to herself, no matter how tiny or inconsequential. It’s as though in some sense we’re suffering from so much celebrity overexposure, the only time we’re truly interested in watching is when they don’t want us to look.

In statements from ESPN spokespeople, Andrews has asked the press respect her privacy. What she doesn’t understand is that’s the thing we want most.

There is no ribbon for salivary-cancer awareness. That's probably because the disease is so rare—fewer than 1 percent of cancer cases attack the salivary glands. But after Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (MCA) revealed that he had recently been diagnosed with the disease, its profile went way up. NEWSWEEK's Matt Berman asked Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, for more information about the ailment. Excerpts below:

How common and threatening is salivary-gland cancer?
Salivary tumors are extremely rare. Using [National Cancer Institute] data from the years 2002 to 2006, malignant salivary tumors had an annualized incidence rate of 1.2 per 100,000 people. Death rates of malignant salivary tumors are 0.2 per 100,000 overall. Eighty-five percent of salivary-gland tumors are parotid [i.e., in the gland were Yauch's tumor is located].

A newly released study commissioned by the Israel Dental Association has found a link between increased cell-phone use and a rise in the incidence of salivary-gland cancer in Israel. Do you think there is anything to this?
They did not find a link, they found a time-wise association. They conclude maybe the increase is due to cell phones. They wrote, “We haven't gathered data on the use of cell phones on the part of the patients, but the rise [in cancer cases] absolutely could indicate increased exposure to cellular telephones and damage caused by radiation.” That is a very weak accusation. Many other things have changed over the past few years. I have seen other cancers flare in incidence because of changes in how a population prepares and stores food, how a population smokes, or even changes in sexual habits. While it is impossible to be definitive, it is still an open question as to whether cell phones cause parotid tumors, and it’s safe to say most epidemiologists with knowledge of the subject doubt that cell phones cause parotid tumors.
 
Are there any particular causes for the disease?
There is no known reason why people get parotid tumors. They are not associated with the typical head and neck cancer risk factors like smoking, alcohol, and HPV. The only real, established risk factor for parotid tumors is radiation therapy, which is an ionized form of radiation unlike cell-phone radiation. Ionized radiation is used to treat head and neck cancers and, ironically, parotid cancers. There were some folks who are now about 50 to 70 years of age who got radiation to the tonsils in the 1950s and 1960s who are at increased risk of radiation-induced cancer.

What are the different treatment options?
The treatment options depend on whether the cancer is benign or malignant, the stage of the cancer, the type of salivary gland the cancer is in, how the tumor looks under a microscope, and the patient’s age and general health. Some are treated with surgery, others with surgery and radiation therapy.

What are the major symptoms and long- or short-term setbacks related to the cancer?
I worry the most about dry mouth, which is a frequent side effect of surgery and radiation. 

How are these cancers discovered?
These cancers are almost always found when the patient notices a lump in the jaw or cheek. Any change on the side of the mouth or face should be reported to one's physician and checked out.

NEWSWEEK's health-care coverage has been amazing this past week, both online and in the magazine. And for those of us who are more interested in petty manners of dating etiquette than one of the most important political and social issues of our time, reading the assorted NEWSWEEK articles has been a great way to quickly feel like a health-care expert. Still unsure if you have the time or dedication to dive in? Allow me, a newly minted health-care expert, to summarize.

First, Jacob Weisberg argues that a country’s health system reflects its values, and ours is currently falling short in three key areas: moral, economic, and socioeconomic. Moral because the "random unfairness that condemns the uninsured to bad health and the risk of untimely death offends the national conscience," economic because we already spend way too much for a system that doesn't really work, and sociological because it doesn’t recognize the character of the American workforce:

America has always been a mobile society, with a labor market that grows more fluid over time. Once, the norm was to work for a single employer for one's entire career. Today, people change jobs an average of 11 times before they reach 40. Fear of losing health coverage keeps people in jobs they would otherwise leave, creating a drag on economic efficiency.

Unfortunately, Weisberg then claims, the plan the Democrats are about to usher into law is one that costs trillions while failing to address any of these concerns.

Ted Kennedy thinks otherwise, and makes his case for American health-care reform in this week's cover story. He explains the significance of the fight for him and his family, many members of which have suffered through serious medical issues. While the Kennedy clan has pretty good insurance, their assorted trips to the hospital over the years have highlighted the importance of solid coverage for all Americans. Kennedy has been in the fight since the 1960s, and writes that “incremental measures won’t suffice anymore.” He then lays out the main objectives for a successful public health-care plan: Insuring the uninsured by requiring coverage and subsidizing premiums. Cutting the cost of health care by ensuring that the federal government can negotiate rates and foster competitive pricing. Rewarding doctors for thrift and preventive care, not multiple tests and visits. Kennedy also notes that:

Social justice is often the best economics. We can help disabled Americans who want to live in their homes instead of a nursing home. Simple things can make all the difference, like having the money to install handrails or have someone stop by and help every day. It's more humane and less costly—for the government and for families—than paying for institutionalized care. That's why we should give all Americans a tax deduction to set aside a small portion of their earnings each month to provide for long-term care.

It's an impassioned, compelling argument (though dissenters will find plenty of company in the article's comments section), and a very different picture from the one being painted in advertisements by the opposition. Factcheck.org has several articles examining those ads, including one debunking claims that President Obama wants to bring Canadian-flavored (that is, Canadian-flavoured) health care to the U.S. The author provides a lengthy analysis, but let's cut to the chase: does the president embrace Canadian-style health care?

The truth of the matter is that the president has repeatedly said he doesn't. In fact, since being sworn in as president, Obama has riled advocates of such single-payer systems by largely excluding them from the health care debate.

(Factcheck.org also debunks the idea that the number of uninsured Americans is closer to half the 45 million figure that's being used by Democrats, that the uninsured are mostly young, healthy 20-somethings, and that health-care CEOs receive $119 million in bonuses.)

Of course, if opponents are really looking to derail health care, they can always go for the moral-outrage/social-issue M.A.D. route. Lead republican negotiator Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has been quoted as saying that when it comes to public debate, "abortion is about the only issue I know of that's not compromisable." Of course, guess what writer J. Lester Feder discovered Grassley was discussing behind closed doors?

With negotiations between Grassley and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat, seemingly deadlocked over the fundamental structure and financing of reform, NEWSWEEK has learned that Grassley has also been pushing for the inclusion of measures that would prevent reform from leading to "taxpayer-subsidized abortion."

Yikes. But to read Howard Fineman, one might come away thinking that Obama is doing a good job derailing health care on his own, thanks to the nation's sudden apprehension about increasing the national debt and the plan's lack of real reform:

The original idea was to rethink the entire convoluted and overly complex system, and to find ways to truly change the way we think about health care to both improve care and save money. There ought to be ways to do that. But the three bills to emerge so far seem like more of an attempt to buy off existing constituencies than a real rethinking of the mess.  

Once you take the time to learn about it, the health-care debate does have a lot of the same intrigue, political high stakes, pathos, and drama of a typical prime-time Fox lineup: the issues are compelling and the arguments on both sides fascinating. But if you still can’t bring yourself to care about health care, and aren't required by the obligations of your employment to blog about it, don't feel bad. You’re not alone. Sharon Begley, as always, cuts through the nonsense to explain why we tune out when we start hearing about “single-payer options" versus … whatever the other thing is.

A threat needs to have certain properties "to ring our alarm bells," says [Daniel] Gilbert, author of the 2006 bestseller Stumbling on Happiness. One is that it needs to come with a human face—preferably an evil-looking one; extra points for beard and mustache—since evolution shaped the brain to pay attention to and leap into action at threats posed by humans. (Evolution is too slow to have shaped us to become outraged by, say, lower reimbursement for branded drugs than generics.) But the mess that is the current health-care system in the United States "hasn't been visited upon us by an evil monster," says Gilbert. "It's the fault of a faceless 'system,' and that's not something we're wired to jump up and down about." If a bin Laden or any other specific villain were behind the troubles with the current system, you can bet that the percent of people calling reform a top priority would soar. (Indeed, when an individual doctor denies some poor soul ER care or when a hospital dumps a poor patient on the street, public outrage boils over, because the victim and villain come with a face and a name.)

So, you see, it's not your fault that you're not automatically compelled by the health-care debate. It's Osama bin Laden's. But don't let the terrorists win: pick up the latest issue of NEWSWEEK and visit Newsweek.com and read up on the biggest public debate of our age.

MCA, a.k.a. Adam Yauch, will need surgery and radiation to attack the cancer, which is located in his parotid gland and lymph node. The good news: Yauch says the cancer is localized, and that treatments won't affect his voice. He describes the diagnosis as a "setback and a pain in the ass," but a treatable one.

According to the American Cancer Society, salivary gland cancer is rare: about 2 cases per 100,000 people per year in the United States, which is less than 1 percent of all cancer diagnoses. Says the ACS, "Two out of three salivary gland cancers are found in people who are 55 or older. The average age at the time of diagnosis is 64." Yauch is 45.

The American Cancer Society's Salivary Gland Cancer Facts 

Right now, in the Museum of Modern Art's second-floor auditorium, is a pile of junk: empty toothpaste tubes, bottle caps without bottles, used Styrofoam containers, slivers of soap. Thousands of items—piles of clothes, pots, pans, toys, books—overwhelm the 3,000-square foot display space. Collectively, these items are a new installation, called "Waste Not," by Chinese artist Song Dong. But before these items were art, they were all the contents of the house of his mother, Zhao Xiangyuan. Zhao grew up during the Chinese Revolution, a time when the government ran massive campaigns emphasizing the values of frugality and thrift. She took the maxims to the extreme, wasting nothing, even a tattered pair of work boots that her son tried to throw away. As her children grew, she saved their tiny shoes and jackets. She saved used tea leaves and shopping bags, soda bottles and toothbrushes. Over fifty years, their small house outside Beijing came to resemble "a landslide with a path through it," says the installation's co-curator, Sarah Suzuki. So Song, a conceptual artist, made a suggestion to his mother: turn the contents of her home into an art exhibition, a way to explore his mother's life and the larger cultural forces that shaped it. 

It's a pile of junk, but it's not. Take a step back and Song's installation is a complete life on display, no longer a landslide, but categorized and clean. It's an exploration of what happens when frugality goes extreme. And it's fascinating. On a recent Sunday afternoon, few would wander by the installation without stopping. Onlookers pointed out various items, constantly commenting the sheer volume of the installation. "Do you think you have this much stuff?" one teenager asked another. One woman videotaped the entire exhibit, with her own running commentary: "Here are the pots and pans. And here are all the shoes the family owned."

"I think a lot of people are fascinated and horrified by the level of stuff," says Suzuki. "It's just the sheer volume." 

Why humans are compelled to hoard, and why artists are drawn to the compulsion, after the jump. 

(ydhsu/Creative Commons)

This weekend, I made a cameo appearance in The Boston Globe Magazine's "Coupling" column. Written by the very funny Steve Calechman, the article examines the modern dilemma of texting while dating. Calecheman argues that:

A line needs to be drawn, because keypads have been showing up too often as a third wheel. By no means is this a gender issue, but since I go out with women, they’ve been the culprits. Women texting while walking into the restaurant. Women texting while I go to the bathroom and not stopping before I return. And women having their BlackBerrys on the table, checking mid-conversation.

I don’t think the stuff should be banned. There’s just a time and place when the outside world needs to be shut out, and a first date isn’t a bad place to start.

My take on this topic is that while mid-conversation texting is rude and tacky, I don't think a first date has to exist under some electronic cone of silence. It's nice to get so wrapped up in someone that you don't check the BlackBerry all weekend, but that's a privilege usually reserved for a few weeks after date one. In the meantime, why shouldn't I check my e-mail while you're off at the bar getting drinks?

You tell me why, after the jump

(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Editor's Note: Since posting this article on Friday, Watson played some more fantastic golf, coming from behind to finish the Open tied for first with Stuart Cink, a 36-year old America. After missing a 10-foot putt in the playoffs, Watson placed second—not bad for a man who will be kicked off the tour next year, when he turns 60, but not enough for me to win the bet I made with my editor. Tom Watson, you owe me a dollar.  

Tiger who? For most of yesterday, the British Open was dominated by Tom Watson, the 59-year-old American who has been playing professional golf for 38 years. (Watson ended the day one stroke behind the leader, and was in an eight-way tie for fourth place as play continued today.) While hitting the links is sometimes unfairly maligned as a hobby for retirees, competitive golfers usually hit their stride before 40. Older golfers have had their moments: at 53, Greg Norman held the lead for most of the 2008 British Open before tying for third place, and Jack Nicklaus continued to excel professionally until he was 60, then played another five years on the Senior Tour.

“Golf is much more of a lifetime sport; one that relies on technique and tactical ability,” says Mark Verstegen, founder and chairman of Athlete's Performance, a strength and training facility for professional athletes. “You can constantly improve your tactical ability and get smarter about how you play the game. With age, you may continue to improve on a technical and tactical level at a greater rate than your physical strength decreases.” Golf relies on precision and consistency, skills dependent on a cooler head that can come with age. The longer professional golfers play the best courses, the more they become familiar with each green’s idiosyncrasies, which can be more advantageous than a 20-year-old’s upper body strength. Still, 59? Pretty impressive. So in honor of Watson’s stellar performance yesterday, we collected a list of some of the greatest older athletes in their fields.

 See the list, after the jump: 

by Johannah Cornblatt

A patient who couldn’t pay Dr. Regina Benjamin in cash once dropped off a sack of oysters to thank her for treating him. The gift didn’t come as a surprise to Benjamin, who after medical school started a family practice in her hometown, the small shrimping village of Bayou La Batre, Ala.

Dr. Kim Edward LeBlanc, who worked with Benjamin on the Federation of State Medical Boards, recalls how Benjamin would laugh, telling colleagues that she loved seafood─while understanding that shellfish were sometimes all that her patients from the “seafood capital of the world” could give. “She sees anyone,” LeBlanc says. “It doesn’t matter if you can pay or not.” 

Since starting her practice in 1990, Benjamin, 52, has become an advocate for patients everywhere. She became the first African-American woman to lead a state medical society and has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" and a Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. Still, she never strayed far from her roots, and currently serves as the CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, which she founded. This week, President Obama tapped Benjamin to serve as surgeon general. Specialists in rural medicine say the experience she gained as a small-town physician will translate well to the high-powered world of Washington politics.

Find out why, after the jump ...

 

The Food and Drug administration yesterday approved a new advancement in reproductive health. Starting next month, women 17 and over can purchase Plan B One-Step, a one-dose version of the emergency contraception. (Women under 17 can access the medication only with a prescription). With Plan B: Original Flavor, the pills—which contain a high dose of the hormone levonorgestrel—had to be taken 12 hours apart. Not a problem if you're an early riser who makes it to the pharmacy before work, then slips the second pill just before the latest episode of Top Chef: Masters. But for everyone else ...

"It makes intuitive sense that the one dose would be an obvious way to increase compliance," says Jennifer Rogers, acting executive director for Reproductive Health Technologies Project. "Sometimes, with two doses, women would delay taking their first pill. If you buy it at 2 p.m., but don’t want to wake up at 2 a.m., you may wait another six hours to begin the course of treatment," she says. Though emergency contraception can be effective up to 120 hours after unprotected sex, effectiveness does decreases hour by hour, so the sooner it's taken, the better. 

"For us, one pill makes the most sense," says Rogers. "A lot of providers tell their patients to take it off-label [using a medication in a way not approved by the FDA] and just take both pills at one time, and that has helped compliance."

Unfortunately, halving the dose probably won't halve the cost of the drug, which rings up at about $50. Pricing for Plan B One-Step has yet to be finalized, but will likely by similar to the original Plan B, says a rep for the company. However, the patent for the original Plan B expires Aug. 24, which means cheaper generics may soon be available for the two-pill combination. While the FDA also lowered age limit for women to buy the the One-Step OTC (as opposed to with a prescription) to 17 from 18, the fact that it's prescription-only for younger women means Plan B lives behind the counter at the pharmacy, making access and ease of purchase more difficult.

by Johannah Cornblatt

Fans of Nintendo Wii use the videogame’s wireless remote to polish their virtual tennis serves or golf swings. Unfortunately, those feats of athleticism don’t translate well in the real world—even a championship Wii boxer shouldn’t consider taking her game to the local Golden Gloves. But soon anyone with the controller will be able to hone a real-life—and lifesaving—skill: CPR.

The American Heart Association has pledged $50,000 to fund the work of four undergraduate biomedical engineering students who designed a computer program that teaches CPR using only the handheld Wii remote and a computer screen. (The team is currently working on identifying a proper stand-in for a practice dummy—most likely a basketball or pillow.)

Students James McKee, Jack Wimbish, Haisam Islam, and Zach Clark began working on the program in January as part of their senior design project for the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The university plans to make the program available to the public next spring or summer, and researchers hope the program will help improve the quality of CPR self-instruction.

 “We’ve discovered as we’ve done research in CPR that when you just tell people to push two inches at 100 times a minute, they aren’t very good at being able to do that,” says Greg Wallcott, a project adviser.  “The hope is that if you can give people feedback and tell them how they’re doing in a real-time fashion, then they are able to complete the task much more effectively.”

The development of Wii CPR is part of the American Heart Association’s larger attempt to use technology as an education tool. The association launched an application for the iPhone this week and a YouTube video earlier this year.

Clark says that the program will allow people not only to learn CPR, but also to help those who know CPR to keep their skills fresh.

“Even if you’re certified, there has been research that shows if you don’t practice your skills, you tend to lose your effectiveness even over a span of a couple months,” he says. “You need recurrent practice to keep up your skill.”

Dr. Vinay Nadkarni, a spokesman for the American Health Association, says the organization hopes that the initiative will bring CPR training to a wider—and younger—audience.

 “When parents and grandparents collapse at home, they are frequently found and attended to by a young person,” he says. "And so, if we don’t reach those young people, then unfortunately a lot of lives may be lost.”

About 70 percent of cases of adult cardiac arrest occur in and around the home, according to Nadkarni, who also works in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “A lot of professionals were taking courses, but they weren’t necessarily reaching people in the homes in an easy and simple way." By launching these initiatives, Nadkarni says, “we can quadruple the number of lives saved.”

(Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

by Adam Weinstein

“This is not going to end nicely,” my fellow contractor whispered behind me, nervously. We’d already been on Camp Victory in Baghdad for seven months, and we were blessed enough not to see any real nastiness in that time. But that looked like it was about to change. A riotous buzz ahead of us was expanding fast, like bacteria on a lab slide. A few soldiers paced angrily, their pupils small, their lips moving without sound. Some ran hands over the trigger guards of their rifles. A gaggle of Iraqi interpreters chattered hotly, their hands arcing in unpredictable gestures. All looked ready to pounce on a hapless merchant who’d lost control of the situation. I glanced behind me to locate quick cover, fearing that a fist or a steel slug might soon be loosed.This wasn’t Sadr City. We were in the PX—the base’s convenience store—and a new tax had just been slapped on cigarettes, jacking the price of a carton up by five bucks. That scene ended without bloodshed, only a few muttered obscenities. But it was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about a government study released last week that recommended a ban on smoking in the military, to be policed with urine tests. The general reaction to the study among soldiers I know was: Bullets and mortars. Desert heat and polluted Mideast air. And now this? Shut up, do-gooders; go hug a tree someplace, and let me have my menthols.

The second thing that came to mind was how many of my own military memories revolve around smoking. I took up the habit in the Navy. Later, as a contractor in Iraq, tobacco built a bridge between me and the soldiers I worked with. We smoked to celebrate. We smoked to commiserate. We smoked when we worked hard. We smoked to avoid work. We smoked because in a foreign country, where Uncle Sam owned our butts and Al Qaeda wanted to torch them, the ritual of lighting up made us feel whole, safe, individual, like we controlled our own destinies—even if that control was an illusion. Like John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima, who blazes up after storming a hill—then gets his ticket punched by a lone Japanese sniper.

Sounds a bit like a cigarette ad, all rawhide and grit, doesn’t it? Like the Marlboro man, the mythos of the American warrior has always rested on romantic contradictions. He (and the archetypal warrior is always a “he”) takes personal initiative, but always follows orders. He is capable of terrible violence, but only in the name of peace and justice. He’s egalitarian, but in a male-driven, largely homophobic sort of way. And he keeps his body in peak shape—except for his chemical vices.

And today’s soldier has vices aplenty. You can attack smoking, but it’s only one symptom of a larger self-destructive trend. A 2007 study found that service members are twice as likely to use smokeless tobacco as civilians, using four cans of snuff a week on average. Most service members are accustomed to seeing a uniform pocket with the permanent circle of a Skoal can crimped into the cloth. Some, like me, have mistaken a shipmate’s dip-spit can for a perfectly good can of Coke. Dipping is as much a sport in the military as target shooting or complaining about one’s lot in life. The government’s report mentions smokeless tobacco in passing, but focuses nearly all of its recommendations on burning butts.

Our new wars have suborned new dangerous vices, too. The military’s base-exchange stores recently reported that sugary carbonated energy drinks like Monster and Rock Star have surpassed Gatorade, Coke and even water as the deployed soldier’s drink of choice. In a war zone, where survival requires hypervigilance, often on little or no sleep, it’s par for the course to see service members walk out of the PX with pallets of the fizzy rotgut, along with caffeine pep pills and dietary supplements—which until recently included the controversial Hydroxycut. Even inside the wire, where the guard is down a bit, it’s not unusual to see caffeine-fortified soldiers tweak, get shaky, exhibit heart issues, faint or lose hydration and good judgment. A nicotine ban likely will just push more sleep-deprived soldiers toward Red Bull and Ephedra substitutes, whose side effects remain largely unstudied. In this drug-addled environment, attacking cigarettes is kind of a larger metaphor for our Iraq adventure: win a battle, lose the war.

But military culture can—and should—change, no matter how long it takes. The doctors who wrote the military smoking report recognize this: they acknowledge that it could take 20 years to implement a total ban. It took a world war and a civil-rights movement to erase institutional racism from the ranks, and the fight against sexism and homophobia is ongoing. It took several years of slogging in Iraq and Afghanistan to adapt the military to 21st-century warfare, but it was well worth it. Likewise, if the health risks of smoking among soldiers can be done away with, even incrementally, then it’s time to start. It would lead to a fitter force. It would cut down on the staggering health-care costs for veterans. And it would save lives in the long term—an oft-stated priority for the generals and admirals who command America’s serving sons and daughters. Sure, it would signal the end of an era. Sure, there would be more tense moments like mine in the Camp Victory PX. And there would be angry sergeants muttering, “What would John Wayne say?”

But John Wayne isn’t saying anything. He’s dead—lung cancer. Go figure.

Adam Weinstein served four years in the Navy and is a journalist specializing in defense affairs. He is currently at work on a memoir of his time as a military contractor in Iraq. He smoked half a pack of cigarettes while writing this story.

by Kate Dailey and Rebecca Shabad

After four days of speculation, the Nashville police department confirmed on Wednesday what many people had already assumed: Steve McNair was shot and killed by his girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi, who then turned the gun on herself. It was a shocking death, and the fact that a former NFL All-Pro quarterback died at the hands of a 20-year-old waitress seemed more shocking still, defying both preconceived stereotypes about women and violence and criminal profiles of these types of crimes.

Though the U.S. government doesn’t keep specific stats on murder-suicides, the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based foundation focused on gun control, puts out a report every few years devoted to tracking such crimes. According to the latest one, published in 2008, in the United States 1,000 to 1,500 deaths per year are the result of murder-suicide. The overwhelming majority of these deaths involve firearms, and the violence is often the last act in a long pattern of domestic and emotional abuse. The Violence Policy Center found that 95 percent of murder-suicides were perpetrated by men in 2007, a number that has stayed pretty constant since the center started keeping statistics in 1992. “It’s very unusual for the woman to be a shooter in a murder-suicide,” says Kristen Rand, the center’s director of legislation.

In fact, it’s unusual for women to commit any violent crime. Homicides by a woman were never large to begin with but have declined by almost 50 percent between 1976 (when there were 3,295 homicides committed by women) and 2005 (1,826 by women), according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In that same time, the chance of a man being shot by a woman decreased by 75 percent.

That’s primarily due to an improvement in social services that removed women from violent and dangerous homes, says Jack Levine, professor of criminology at Northeastern University and coauthor of The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder (Allyn and Bacon 2008). “Now they have shelters, restraining orders, and police intervention,” he says. “Those things were not available 20 or 30 years ago. A woman who was abused or battered over a period of time didn’t really see a lot of options, and killing their partner was sometimes the only option they saw,” he said.

When women do kill today, they’re likely to kill someone they know well, says Levine, and in cases of murder-suicide, they usually kill just one other person—as opposed to “family annihilators,” men who kill their entire family (or office or church group) before turning the gun on themselves.

Both men and women who commit murder-suicide are often motivated by jealousy, says Louis B. Schlesinger, professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, though often to a pathological or even psychotic degree. These cases are rarely committed in the heat of the moment; there’s a pre-homicidal context that leads to a homicidal break. “I think her world was absolutely falling apart, and she thought he was the reason,” says Carol Oyster, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin and coauthor of Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in Contemporary America (NYU Press, 2000). 

The fact that Kazemi killed McNair in his sleep fits a pattern typical of women killing men. “Most people are going to try to defend themselves,” when a gun is drawn, says Oyster. “Choosing a time when he really couldn’t fight back was, in her mind, the safest way to do it, because even if she wanted to die herself, she didn’t want him to do it,” she hypothesizes. Many women who do murder their partners do so while the partner sleeps, says Schlesinger, and the “battered wife” defense is based on the idea that a woman who kills a sleeping man can still be acting in self-defense, as that's the only time she can safely fight back.

There is no evidence that McNair was abusive to Kazemi, of course, and women don’t just commit crime when they’re being abused. “Women commit all the same types of crime men do, just less frequently,” says Schlesinger. In fact, while the number of homicides committed by women has decreased in the past 20 years (as has the number of overall homicides), the number of women involved in other types of crime has increased.

When talking about Kazemi, however, Oyster suggests that discussing “women” and crime might be a misnomer. “Twenty-year-olds are not cognitive adults,” she says. “The decision making isn’t fully mature until about 24.” 

At 20, it’s illegal to purchase a weapon from a licensed gun dealer. But Kazemi purchased her gun from a private source, and Tennessee law permits those over 18 to carry a weapon. These types of unlicensed sales—and the lack of a central U.S. registry—makes it difficult to determine how many men own guns compared with women, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the women who do own guns are just as active and interested in firearms as their male counterparts.

“I teach women pistol handgun skills, and we’ve had to turn women away because we just don’t have enough instructors to deal with the demand,” says Oyster, who notes that women, like men, purchase guns to protect themselves, their homes, and their families—and warns that stereotypes about gender should not blind us to the capacity of female gun owners to perpetrate the same kinds of violence as men.

Writer Russ Juskalian’s story on cryptomnesia had a lot of readers talking—specifically, about our use of “unconscious” over “subconscious” when discussing the practice of copying other people's work without realizing it. So we asked Russ to further explain the language he used in the article. His response, below:

Unconscious, as a few people pointed out, can mean “not conscious”—as in knocked out. But the term also means unaware of, or “done or existing without one realizing.” Those are adjectives. As a noun, “the unconscious” is the part of the brain that the conscious does not have access to.

In fact, the title of the Marsh study mentioned in the story is “Eliciting Cryptomnesia: Unconscious Plagiarism in a Puzzle Task.” Richard Marsh [a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia] uses the term “unconscious” throughout his paper—but doesn’t use “subconscious” in a single instance. A quick check of the scientific literature turns up many references to cryptomnesia as “unconscious plagiarism.”

Marsh had this to say, via e-mail:

[“Subconscious”] has a historical connotation coming from the subliminal priming literature in visual and auditory perception. The other connotation of subconscious is that the information is sort of hanging around in a sort of activated state, waiting to be used. These connotations are completely antithetical to inadvertently borrowing ideas (or pieces thereof) that one was exposed to months or years before. I just got off the phone with the leading expert in memory and he agrees with the foregoing. The term “unconscious” is correct and the term “subconscious” is wrong.

When I asked Dan Schacter [a professor of psychology at Harvard] about the usage, his response via e-mail was this:

I have never seen cryptomnesia referred to as “subconscious plagiarism” in any of the literature I've read, whereas “unconscious plagiarism” is a commonly used term. In fact, “subconscious” is virtually never used in modern-day cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience to describe any of the phenomena of interest to the article.

Freud even wrote this (as found on Wikipedia, but checked using Amazon.com and searching for “subconsciousness” in the book The Question of Lay Analysis) [Editor’s note: as befitting of someone writing about plagiarism, Russ takes both accuracy and attribution very seriously. I was considering deleting both the Wiki and Amazon references since the quote seems to hold up, but wanted you all to see the dedication.]:

If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically—to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness—or qualitatively—to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious.

For more reading, it’s worth checking out the following Wikipedia entries—not as the final word, but as a good place to start:

The unconscious mind might be defined as that part of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a person’s mind but which the person is not aware of at the time of their occurrence. These phenomena include unconscious feelings, unconscious or automatic skills, unnoticed perceptions, unconscious thoughts, unconscious habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and concealed desires.

The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a meaning-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings.

by Abby Ellin

During the six years that Kay Haskins and Dan Brigham were in a serious relationship, marriage came up only occasionally. Neither one was ready at the same time, and in 2004 they broke up. But in February 2008, Haskins and Brigham reconnected, and fell right back in love. He then told her the grim news—his prostate cancer, diagnosed in 2001, had returned. This time, marriage became the priority. They got engaged two months later, and planned for a May 2009 wedding.

By early spring of this year, it was clear that Brigham was not going to last much longer. Still, Haskins, 54, was determined to give her fiancé–and herself—their last wish as a couple: to be married.
On Thursday, April 16, soon after Brigham, 65, slipped into a coma, an ordained chaplain at the hospice performed a nonbinding ceremony, uniting Brigham and Haskins as man and wife.

"Deathbed marriages"—unions that occur when one party is terminally ill, if not actually on his or her deathbed—have made some very public appearances as of late. The writer Caroline Knapp, author of Drinking: A Love Story (Dial Press, 1997), married her longtime boyfriend a few weeks before she died of lung cancer in June 2002. British reality-TV star Jade Goody—battling cervical cancer, bald from chemotherapy, and barely able to stand—married her boyfriend of four years, Jack Tweed, on Feb. 22. She died one month later.

The most famous recent deathbed marriage was not a marriage at all, but an accepted proposal. Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal were never married before she passed away last month. But, as O’Neal told Barbara Walters in late June, he had repeatedly asked Fawcett to marry him numerous times. Only shortly before her death did she agree—after nearly 30 years and one child together—to be his bride.

Similar to soldiers tying the knot before shipping off to war, a terminal illness may hasten hazy plans for pairs who see marriage in their distant future. But why do some couples—especially those who had been together for so long, whose lives were so clearly entwined, and who had shown no real desire to “make it official”—want to get married when life is almost over? Is it about making something "right" in the eyes of God or society? Is it because people are, ultimately, more traditional than they realize, especially when death comes knocking?

Find out, after the jump. 

Shoppers at Billy Reid's Big Apple BBQ Event on June 13, 2009

by Tony Dokoupil

Beer doesn’t usually take center stage in upscale fashion boutiques. But that didn’t stop six men from recently slashing holes into the sides of Modelo Especial cans, hoisting them to their mouths, and sucking down the exploding contents, frat-boy style, in the rarefied inner sanctum of Billy Reid, a dandyish, mostly men’s clothing store in New York’s Bowery district. The beers, part of a promotional party held in May, add to the alcoholic accent in Reid’s northward-creeping empire of Southern charm. In New York, as well as the store’s other outposts in Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and the Carolinas, men sip free glasses of bourbon—Woodford Reserve and Pappy Van Winkle, among other small-batch brands—while lingering over immaculate $800 bags and $1,500 suits. “It’s like spending time with a friend, hanging in the parlor of a Southern home,” says Billy Reid publicist Megan Maguire.

Such Dixie-tinged descriptions make it easy to forget what actually goes on inside Billy Reid—and that’s the point. Most men still hate to shop. They fear the crowds, the changing rooms, and the sneaking feeling that it’s all a bit unmanly (no matter the state of Vogue intern/New York Rangers left-winger Sean Avery and metrosexual America). Unlike women, they still don't call up a boyfriend to hit the stores, or casually e-mail information about a shirt that “your friend Tommy saw and thought you would like too.” But thanks to a 90-proof nudge, the fashionphobic may be poised to take their first tentative steps toward confident shopping. Over the last few years, in the same way that “grooming lounges” now offer drinks as an alibi for self-conscious guys in need of a little manscaping, a slew of shops have added hooch to haute couture, with an eye toward taking the shame out of clothes buying. And, of course, adding to their own bottom line.

So does it work? Find out after the jump. 

Courtesy of Dr. Wayne Sossin, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University

This image, captured by researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute andHospital, McGill University, and the University of California, shows proteins being created at the brain synapses as a memory is created. These proteins increases the strength of the synaptic connection—the connection between nerve cells—so that the memory is reinforced and easy to access. Never before has this process—essentially "making" a memory in the brain—been captured visually. The full study in which this image appeared was published the June 28 issue of Science.

by Claudia Kalb

The people have spoken, and the NIH has responded. A month ago, we reported that the NIH had received 49,015 comments in response to its draft guidelines for human stem-cell research. Now, after reviewing all the input—from scientists, medical groups, religious organizations, private citizens, and member of Congress—the government’s final guidelines are out, and they’re being applauded for one major change: stem-cell lines that have been ineligible for federal funding in the past may now qualify for government dollars. That’s welcome news for stem-cell scientists who don’t have private money to do their work.

The key sticking point has been informed consent, the process that walks individuals through the ins and outs of donating their embryos to science. When the draft guidelines came out in April, many scientists expressed concern about the rigid requirements that were outlined, since many of the lines already created—including some of the 21 lines approved for use by President George W. Bush—wouldn’t meet the new standards. In a press conference announcing the final guidelines, the NIH’s acting director, Dr. Raynard Kington, said it became clear that the standards for informed consent had changed over time and that there were also a variety of standards out there, from the National Academy of Sciences to the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Kington said lines exist that “reasonable people would all agree were responsibly derived.” The new guidelines allow scientists to submit a request to a group of nine or 10 experts now being assembled. The group will assess whether or not the stem-cell lines researchers want to use uphold the principles of informed consent; if so, they’ll be approved for federal funding. (New lines that have yet to be created, on the other hand, must follow the new guidelines, which go into effect July 7, 2009.) The NIH will also create a new registry in the next couple of months, which will list all the stem-cell lines eligible for federal funding as they are approved.

The new guidelines still don’t allow federal funding to be used for somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), or so-called therapeutic cloning. Some scientists want to use this technique to create cells that have genetic conditions built in. But Kington said that while there’s been a “strong sentiment” in the country supporting government money for stem cells derived from embryos, there’s been little public discussion about alternative stem-cell sources. He said the NIH will follow public discussions as they evolve and will update the guidelines when they feel compelled to do so.

For now, a new era in stem-cell science begins. The president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation sent an immediate and enthusiastic response: “We thank the NIH and the Obama Administration for renewing our hope for a cure.”

By Rebecca Shabad

Is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford OK? We get that things are a little tense, but he is not handling this well. First, he skips town, next he invents a hike on the Appalachian Trail, then it's an “exotic” trip to Buenos Aires. Now we learn Maria Chapur wasn’t the only one he “crossed the lines” with. His whirlwind of discombobulated statements leaves us a little concerned.

NEWSWEEK's Rebecca Shabad chatted with Dr. Mira Kirshenbaum, the clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston and author of When Good People Have Affairs: Inside the Hearts and Minds of People in Two Relationships. Kirshenbaum has never treated Sanford in a professional capacity, so is only basing her responses on years of experience and what she's seen of Sanford on TV and read in the news. Excerpts:

In a recent AP interview, Governor Sanford said, "This was a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day." Is he nuts, in love, or is he really just a narcissist?
He’s probably nuts, but only in the sense that right now, he’s very emotional, and very confused, and in a panic, which is what all the people in his situation feel. Based on my clinical experience, he may very well think he loves this Maria and may very well want to fall back in love with his wife. It sounds like a complete contradiction, like gibberish. But that is the way people feel. They flip-flop from moment to moment. It really is a kind of insanity.

Sanford is in the 50 percentile of people who are more … I think I’ll just say self-involved; I don’t want to label him. Most politicians are on the narcissistic side of the spectrum. I would guess Sanford is someone who did not get as much affection and love in his marriage as he wanted and he was very, very hungry for it.

If Sanford came into your office, what would you tell him?
"You really, really have to stop and think. Acknowledging your guilt is a good step, but saving a marriage needs a lot more. It needs two people who want to be together. First, you have to stop contact with Maria." He has to regret-proof his decision. And for a certain amount of time, he has to do everything possible, including going to a therapist, including listening to Jenny and doing whatever she needs.

Why would the highest-ranking politician in a state concoct such an unbelievable, bizarre excuse for being absent?
Guys like Sanford got to where they are by doing things that no one thought was possible. You wouldn’t believe the stupid things the smartest men and women in the world have done in the name of love. Things happen in our lives much more often because we’re confused and stupid rather than because it’s what our unconscious really wants. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and why.

At the same time, he seemed to understand that what he was doing was wrong. He was obviously out of touch, especially not being there for his sons on Father’s Day.
I don’t know enough about him to really say, but I do know that he broke three important rules that you should never, ever break:

First, you should never change your story. Once your spouse has found you out, your only good option is to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He made the mistake most people in his situation make. They want to dial back their guilt and culpability so they make things sound better than they were and inevitably more details come out.

Second, you should decide who you want to be with and decide fast. Marriages do and can survive this kind of betrayal.

And third, do all of this in private.

Have you ever seen someone act in such uneven ways while pursuing an affair?
All the time. Most of these cheaters are good people who are in way over their head.

Was the crying during the original news conference genuine or was he begging for sympathy?
Both, maybe? I don’t know. I don’t know him. I don’t judge people. I just assume he’s doing the best he knows how, he doesn’t know what to do, and he’s just making a bigger and bigger mess. 

Do you think he could have kept this secret?
People like Sanford just don’t confess to having an affair because you think that you’ll make yourself feel better or you think that you’ll make your marriage stronger. They think that they’re going to get it off their chest, they think everything is going to be better, but it just makes things worse.

What do you think was really going through his mind?
I’m guessing that he was in a panic and he didn’t have great advisers, they didn’t know what to do. No one knows how to do damage control in a situation like this. He really messed up royally.

by Claudia Kalb

It’s another resignation for Autism Speaks, the largest autism research and advocacy group in the country. In January, Alison Singer, then executive vice president of communications and awareness, quit the group, saying she could no longer support the organization’s investment in vaccine research. This week, Dr. Eric London, a member of Autism Speaks’s Scientific Affairs Committee, follows in her footsteps. In his letter of resignation, London said that Autism Speaks’s argument that “there might be rare cases of ‘biologically-plausible’ vaccine involvement…are misleading and disingenuous.” He goes on to charge the organization with “adversely impacting” autism research.

The longstanding vaccine-autism debate has focused largely on a subset of parents, who believe immunizations triggered their children’s autism, and scientists, whose studies show the shots are not to blame. Now the controversy is morphing into an organizational rivalry. In April, Singer formed a new research group, The Autism Science Foundation (ASF); its board of directors includes Dr. Paul Offit, whose book, Autism’s False Prophets (Columbia University Press, 2008) slams what he calls the “bad science” around claims of an autism-vaccine link. Singer says the Foundation, whose first major fundraising event is planned for May 2010, is focused on genetic research, treatments and support services; it will not devote any dollars to vaccine research. London’s wife is co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation, and London himself has been a member of its Scientific Advisory Board since it was launched. It was ASF that announced London’s resignation this week, posting his letter prominently on their website. Clearly, ASF wants to make its differences known and build its brand.

Autism Speaks, which has awarded millions of dollars in research grants, isn’t making a big deal of the news. In a statement to NEWSWEEK, the organization said: “Autism Speaks is currently pursuing a broad program of research, including studies on both genetic and environmental risk factors and the development of new treatments. We believe that our broad agenda will ultimately provide answers to the cause and treatment of autism spectrum disorders. We wish Dr. London well in his new endeavor.”

More female video gamers are grabbing the controller this year, according to a report released yesterday by the  industry-tracking group NPD. The Gamer Augmentation 2009 report revealed that 28 percent of all console video gamers (those who play games on platforms like Wii, Playstation, and XBox) are now female, up from 23 percent last year. Less substantial research suggests that even more PC gamers are female, with  a Nielsen study indicating that women make up 50 percent of those who play video games on a computer. 

Despite the increasing number of women embracing video games, companies continue to ignore female players. Video-game site IGN recently ran a contest open only to males, offering a trip to Comic Con (in the face of online outrage, IGN opened the contest to women). Many female gamers felt further marginalized after the print version of Electronic Gaming Monthly folded and Dennis Publishing sent the men’s magazine Maxim to subscribers as a replacement.

These are just some of the most recent affronts to women gamers in the industry. Despite their increasingly strong presence, it appears that the only women game companies seem to be interested in are the scantily clad digital ones writhing on screens in games like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.

NEWSWEEK's Johannah Cornblatt talked to award-winning game designer Brenda Brathwaite about the progress that female developers and players have made in recent years, as well as the challenges they still face. Brathwaite, a 27-year veteran of the gaming industry, is a professor of game development and interactive design at the Savannah College of Art and Design and serves on the board of the International Game Developers Association. She was named one of the top 20 most influential women in the game industry by Gamasutra.com last year. A self-proclaimed “fighter not lover,” Brathwaite envisions a world of gaming where both men and women are welcome—and where the sex appeal extends to both scantily clad male and female characters. 

Excerpts after the jump.