Document pmYgMYR2eB1QO5kO2ONrpMka

TIME, May 13, 1974 MEDICINE Capsules Puffing through I puk or pant ing along a highway,joggers are unques tionably helping their hearts But arc they shedding poundage as well? No. say three U.S. Air Forceresearchers in the A.M.A. Journal: exercise alone can't do it A runner of medium weight who wishes to shed a pound of fist on a oneshot basis must expend 3,500 calories, which means that he must run far well over an hour. Still, say the doctors, exercise is an important element of any weight-con trol program. The trio figured the ac tual caloric consumption for men of var ILL ,1T-- U,f MAM JOO IN TEXAS Ten pounds o year. ious weights running a jogger's common distance of 1.5 miles in times ranging from eight to 16 minutes. They found that a 170-lb. manxvho can cover this distance in eight minutes bums 175 cal ories. This may not teem like much, but the Air Force physicians note that a run ner who does this regularly can lose ten pounds a year--if he does not increase his caloric intake. In fact, if a runner on a 2.600-calorie-per-day diet can bum off 200 calories a day. he can treat him self to a small piece of cake every night and still keep his weight constant. Large numbers of Westerners have come to accept the idea Lhat acu puncture can help alleviate pain. But doctors have expressed doubts about an other claim advanced for the ancient Oriental art: needle wielding can relieve nerve deafness, a hearing loss caused by damage to the craruar nerve that serves 64 ear. Their skepticism has been bolreared by two new reports. A team ofMichigan State University researchers states in the A.M.A.s Atdives of Otolaryngology (a journal for ear. nose and throat Specialists) that it observed an acupuncturist with 15 years of experience administer eight treat ments to a deaf World War II veteran. Testing the man's hearing before, dur ing and after the treatments, the re searchers could discern no measurable improvement The other report--to the American Laryngology, Rhinology and Otology Society--was presented by Dr. Samuel Rosen. a New York City otologist who teamed acupuncture three years ago as ooe of the first American physicians to wt Communist China. Rosen studied 40 children who received acupuncture Ihrnpr for their hearing disorders and (Band that only two showed improve ment and that was slight. Doctors have long been puzzled about the cause of primary dyslexia, a common learning disorder that afflicts between 2% and 5% of all US. school children with average or superior intel ligence, and interferes with their ability to read. Most researchers assume that fte root of the problem is in the cortex, site of the brain centers involved with tfcmfring and teaming. But two New York City doctors offer a different ex planation--one that could lead to ear lier diagnosis of this disorder. Drs. Jan Frank and Harold Levin son of Downstate Medical Center report m the Journal of Child Psychiatry that primary dyslexia is caused by some as yet unexplained defect in the nerve pathways that connect the inner ear. which helps control balance, with the cerebellum, the part of the brain that anotrois coordination. The result of this defect, they claim, is a sort of perma nent motion sickness that affects a child's balance and scrambles incoming visual signals. In fact, they say, 112 out <rf 115 New York City children known to have primary dyslexia were tested and found to be afflicted with an innerear disturbance. Frank and Levinson have devised an instrument that a school nurse can use to detect the ear disturbance. Thus, they suggest, primary dyslexia can now be diagnosed in preschool children. The rwo doctors are also searching for a physiological treatment for the disorder: in a small pilot program, they have be gun to study the effect of cyclizine. a mo- tion-sickness drug, on the reading abil ity of dyslexic children. Many marijuana users claim that smoking pot improves their sex lives. That widely held belief has now been challenged by the findings of a group lhat includes researchers from St. Louis' Reproductive Biology Research Foundation, the outfit headed by Dr. William Masters and Virginia' Johnson. The research team, which includes Mas ters. reports in the New England Jour nal of Medicine that marijuana smok ing appears not only to reduce the production of male sex hormones but also to impair both the fertility and po tency of males. The conclusion is based on a study of 20 men. age 18 to 28. who used mar ijuana (but no other drugs) at least four times a week for six months. At the end of that period the testosterone levels among the pot smokers were an aver age of 43% lower than they were in a group of nonsmoking controls. Six of the marijuana users had lowered sperm counts, and two of them reported that they had become impotent. Alter ab staining from marijuana for two weeks, several subjects regained normal hor mone levels and sexual function. One preferred thepleasures of pot to those of the pad. Despite a potency problem, he declined to give up marijuana. The Plastic Peril Vinyl chloride is a colorless gas that has been used ss a propellant in such popular products as hair, disinfectant and insect sprays. It is also the prin cipal ingredient of polyvinyl chlorides, the plastics that go into a host of fa miliar products including food wrappers and containers, suitcases, detergent bot tles and garbage bags. No one questions vinyl chloride's utility, but a growing number of doctors now suspect its safe ty. Increasing evidence links vinyl chlo ride to a crippling bone disease and a rare but invariably fatal form of cancer. Evidence of vinyl chloride's toxicity has been around for years. Production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was begun in 1938 by B.F. Goodrich Co That year experiments showed that the vinyl chlo ride gas used at the plant was danger ous to animals. A 1949 Russian study showed that vinyl chloride (VC) caused nonmalignant liver damage m 15 of 48 workers exposed to the chemical: sur veys m other European countries over the next decade and a half confirmed the connection. In 1966 and 1967 Brit ish scientists examining PVC workers reported a high incidence of acro-osteolysis, a condition partially character ized by distortion of the skin and bones of the fingers and feet. Mini-Epidemic. The connection be tween VC and cancer was first made in 1970 by Public L. Viola of the Univer sity of Rome, who found tumors in the lungs, skin and bones of rats exposed to high concentrations of the gas. The link was strengthened in 1973 when re searchers from Bonn University found evidence of liver damage in 19 out of 20 PVC workers at a single plant. The bombshell really burst early this year when B.F. Goodrich Co. reported that TIME. MAY 13, 197, i v*75. BOR 006946 rraiflt I , ***; '.1^' t- 4 r?>* i ' * ::3 XT k '- < .&, '*a .v.'.,-*. 'T -w*> a W iV- PINhEATON* me The Wild Bunch tits fora familypprtrmt. Left. The Sundance tSeL Butch Cassidy is at right. This swashbuckling crewplagued bank* and rutlnuds all oner the West until+e Pinkerton*farced them out ofkuttness. 1897. Butch Cassidg and The Sundance Kid bedevil the railroads. And Old Crow is 62 years old. Men knew the taste of real Bourbon whiskey then.You know it today. Old Crow.. .since 1835 it% been the original sour mash n Bourbon. The Bourbon. /- Mellow. Smooth. Aged a lull With a flavor the man SIX who knows Bourbon has OUMlDMXCl SRTRO.V*W** Il y7eVaarls5.* k&a> appreciated for generations. Accept no substitutes. Whenyou know OLD CROW ` you knowBourbon. ^ RfNTUCUY JTRAtONT DOUAAON WNiWEfY m rh***, Dftt'UEO *NO CTTLCQMf Twf fAMQUS OLD CROW OUTiLLOlY Co nUNKPCWT, rft medicine three mm who worked with VC in iu Louisville, Ky., plastics plant had died ofangknarcoma of the liver since 1971. Since then doctors have identified nine more cases of the cancer in the U.S., one in Orest Britain and another in Norway. Their findings are all the more sig nificant because angiosarcoma of the liver is to rare that it has been re ported only about 100 times in med ical history, a major hospital in Los Angeles found only one case in 52.000 autopsies. The discovery of a dozen closely linked cases thus constitutes a sort of mini epidemic of the disease. Since such cancers may not develop for at least 15 years after initial ex posure, environmental health research ers suspect that more cases will be un covered. Says J. William Lloyd, of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH): "I would suspect that this is going to be the oc cupational disease of the century'' His prediction could prove correct, for in the UiL alone-some 6.500 work ers are involved in making VC gas or converting the gas into PVC: thousands more are engaged in converting the plas tic into finished products. European and Japanese firms are also heavily involved in VC production. Whopping Levels. So far, at least, there is no clear evidence that consum ers are in any danger from VC. The UJS. Food and Dnig Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have, as a precautionary measure, put a halt to the distribution of spray products us ing VC propellants.* The fda had al ready ordered companies to stop bot tling whisky in PVC bottles: whisky dissolves the plastic. Other PVC prod ucts offered to the consumer have yet to be proved unsafe. But the risks to plastics workers are teaL A research team headed by Dr. Ir ving Selikoffof New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine has found that work ers at one plant arc exposed to VC lev els of 400 to 500 pans per million of the gas, more than enough to cause liver dis ease in rats. Workers involved in clean ing the reactors in which VC is conven ed to PVC are exposed to even higher concentrations of the gas. One study showed that VC levels in these cookers range from 600 to a whopping 1.000 para per million. Neither Japan nor the European na tions have done more than sum studies on VC. but American authonties are moving to reduce the risks from the plas tic peril. The Department of Labor's Oc cupational Safety and Health Admin istration has issued emergency regula tions reducing allowable VC levels to 50 parts per million. Whether this is ad equate to provide long-term protection for plastics workers remains to be seen. An industry-sponsored study has shown that when mice are exposed to those lev els, they develop angiosarcoma. "The majority of ipray-product manufacturer weFraonfu. TIME, MAY 13, 1W4 m BOR 006947