University Daily Kansan, March 9, 1982
Opinion
This year's warning rekindles feud
Every year since 1964, the surgeon general has condemned cigarette smoking as a prin-
tiple and called for more taxation.
And each year since about the same time, the tobacco industry coughs up an annual report that refutes the surgeon general's warnings. "These ones we are different."
The surgeon general's principal medical findings released last week differed little in substance from previous reports. They were just more sober: Cigarette smoking was named as the single biggest cause of cancer mortality and was projected to be responsible for 30 percent of the nation's 430,000 deaths from cancer this year.
The Tobacco Institute responded to the latest conclusions of the surgeon general by reiterating its stance that cancer statistics are an accurate evidence that tobacco use caused cancer:
"While statistical associations may raise valid questions and suggest possible leads for further research, they do not prove a cause-effect relationship or harce Horace Korrengay, institute chairman.
That statement isn't surprising nor difficult to explain. Nodine habitates are the lifeline of the patient, and if he is a smoker, this can be fatal.
What is puzzling is that some smokers not only continue to smoke in face of such overwhelming statistical evidence, they insist just as adamantly as tobacco growers that a statistical convergence does not prove a causal link between smokers and cancer diseases.
Some smokers reason that if cigarettes were carcinogens, then every smoker would be exposed to them.
Some people also dodge into heavy traffic without looking either way and still make it across the street alive. However, such a person might have the probability of having a fatal accident.
live to their 90% and die of boredom, not cancer," they say.
Several factors contribute to the attitude of many smokers. The most important one is cigarette advertising, which has made smoking not only socially acceptable, but socially attractive, through ads, which promise a nicotine-free form a camacho look to coming "a long way baby."
The U.S. government does its own share of
promoting smoking, although in a more oblique fashion. Its practice of price supports and subsidies for tobacco growers has been around since the 1960s and is still being started warning the public about lung cancer.
TERESA
RIORDAN
By continuing to subsidize tobacco crops through federal money instead of providing incentive to convert tobacco fields into other crops, the government aids in the questionable practice of distributing a potentially carcinogenic product to its citizens.
The government makes an awkward attempt at conciliating the differences between its surgeon general's findings and its tobacco cigarette packages to carry warning labels.
Warning-label bills currently in Congress would step up the general health warnings now required on cigarette packages and advertising.
The House version of the bill would mandate six statements that include: "WARNING: Cigarette smoking is the number one cause of emphysema and lung cancer" and "WARNING: Cigarette smoking is a major cause of heart disease."
Onietylly, even if the government reserves the contradiction between what it preaches and what it practices, the choice of whether or not to smoke agrees with the individual.
That individual choice affects all of us-smokers and non-smokers alike.
It concerns non-smokers because, although the issue remains "unresolved," according to the government's report, "involuntary may pose carcinogenic risk to the non-smoker."
But more important—much more important—is the moral issue that non-smokers confront when they watch their friends and promote amit a sort of slow-motion suicide by smoking.
That thought becomes painfully accute at this time each year when the surgeon general convenes a meeting.
Perhaps this year—for all our sakes—snorklers will take heed the report, because that is what needs to be done.
Letters to the Editor
Classes in reactor center worry student
To the Editor:
I am writing this letter in response to the article that appeared in the Feb. 23 University Daily Kansan, "Nuclear reactor center declared safe."
When I first contacted Edward Shaw, professor of radiophysics, he refused to meet with me anywhere but in his office, which is located in the reactor center. We did discuss several points over the telephone, at which time I learned that the computer required the class were invalid. He also said that it was his class and he would schedule it anywhere he wanted.
One reason he gave for holding class inside the reactor center was that he didn't want to carry his overhead projector and transparencies across campus. I expressed my belief that as an instructor he is a tool of the University for the education of its students. It appears that his convenience is more important than the welfare of the students.
Next I contacted Gunther Schlager, chairman of the biology department, and told him of my concerns about the location of the classroom. Schlager encouraged me to pursue the matter until Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs, changed the policy, and prohibited classes from being held inside the reactor center.
I was recently informed that both solid and liquid radioactive materials are inside the same classroom in which my class was held. So I feel that regardless of what Shaw would like me to believe, my fear that there should be anywhere in the class inside a reactor center where radioactive substances are present.
Schäger also told me he felt that in order for a safety inspection to occur, and be completely impartial and valid, an official from outside the University should be hired to check out the safety, as well as the levels of radiation, inside the classroom.
I'd also like to know how Ann Calovich and Lisa Gaitrezer, two reporters for the Kansan, felt they could declare the reactor center safe without doing any previous research.
In the article, Hohart Woody, operator of the nuclear reactor center, was quoted as saying, "It gives off some radiation and radiation is what we measure from the samples. But the radiation is very marginal."
What are minimal levels of radiation? According to Helen Cal迪塞t, a pediatrician from Australia and lecturer on the effects of radiation, "No levels of radiation are safe—and anyone who believes or states they are is medically ignorant."
Ernest Sternglass, research physicist from Pittsburgh, has also done work with low level radiation and has stated that no levels of radiation, no matter how low or minimal, are safe.
How can I trust my life in the hands of these men who are not concerned about my health in the least? These same men we are supposed to blindly trust, knew about radium spills inside the concrete floor of the Radiosite Research Laboratory, near Nalort Hall, for twenty years without cleaning them. State health officials said radium was fixed in the concrete and could
not be removed unless chunks of the floor were broken off.
"Minor radium spills during experiments conducted by radiation biophysics researchers in the late 1950s were partially responsible for low level contamination on floors of three rooms in the building." Benjamin Friesen, professor of history at Columbia University in a Lawrence Journal World article last year.
According to Friessen, during the past twenty years the University of Kansas hasn't informed all researchers using the laboratory of its conclusion that it had occurred, but he could not say how many.
I am urging all students, faculty, and concerned people who question the use of room 218 in the reactor center as a classroom, which subjects people to "minimal radiation" amounts, to contact Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs, and voice vow opposition.
What other building on campus is insured for $160 million?
Teddi McCullough Lawrence junior
Helping farmers
To the Editor:
1. intend this letter to suggest to the local academic community an option for federal government action that would directly affect the state's policy,—not to propose a fully fleshed out policy option.
The federal government wishes farmers to restrict their planting of some crops, including cereal grains, so that surplus production and the realization of diminishing returns at the market will not continue to supply a consumer surplus to the mercantile class realized in low agricultural profits and a high margin for food refiners and other ancillaries.
However, by its inability to guarantee the farmer market price supports, the government has created for the farmer a type of "prisoner of the dilemma" in which, if all farmers do restrict their crop size, all will benefit marginally (so to speak) in the market; but if only one farmer does it, they will lose those worse in a still-large market than these whose crops are still large.
Farmers are rarely known for their knowledge of academic economics, and they are not, as a class, well organized for such massive cooperation (witness the effect of the attempted agricultural strike a few years ago). Also, even if the farmers successfully realize the governments overheard in the form of taxes and interest on their then-fallow land would not change.
- Land taken from production, up to a set percentage of any given farmer's land (i.e. productive at any time in the last year of farming) should not be taxed. Federal block grant money would
I suggest that the federal government create block grants to the states, proportional in value to the number of acres of land in each to be taken from production to fund the following:
replace current state or local revenues lost in the reassessment.
- Land taken from production (as above) upon which any interest may fail due while fallow, such as mortgages, should, for the duration, be the financial (and only financial) burden of the federal government. The due date of the interest and principal owed on this land should be extended for the time it lies fallow. Block grant funds may be used to fund federal bodies to the banks involved for additional interest introduced in the fallow period.
Thus farmers' costs and overhead will be guaranteed to be reduced, and the fixed-cost pressures for higher production are eliminated. This suggestion would be expensive to the government, but the government must realize its present alternative is costly to the farmer in a tough measure to be admitted into factual. Also, this alternative has several advantages.
Farmers can in fact see the logic and economic pressure in raising their marginal revenue, and realize a secure market. No answer would be given. And they need lose his shirt to high overhead if he reduces his crop size, but the total market volume would remain high. The Feds wouldn't have to worry about selling lots of leftover meat to anyone who wants it, consider not to deserve the right to eat bread.
Please consider this a working proposition. I invite the editors, students and other members of the editorial board to participate.
Richard W. Lungstrum,
Salina graduate student
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Spring break brings out animal in students
However, spring is more than a date and a time. It is a state of mind, and people have welcomed it with ceremonies and rituals since prehistoric times.
Spring does not officially begin until March 20 at 12:56 Greenwich Mean Time, the last Saturday of spring break, when KU students will be packing to return to classes.
One of those rituals for many KU students has involved buying a new bathing suit, packing a suitcase and cooler of beer, setting up a car pool truck or renting a trailer. Padre Island has been a popular destination.
Once there, everybody chases about madly,
trying to get in all the sunbathing, swimming,
partying and general enjoyment they can before
they have to head back to school.
Some might say they appear to be as "mad as March Hares" during this season, when hares really do race madly about the hills and can run on their hand legs to box with their foreworms.
The hares' behavior is all part of their springtime courtship ritual, and although humans are too complex to have their behavior simplified to diagrams and patterns, the annual springtime courtship rituals with Padre Island seems remarkably similar to courtship behavior in other animals.
For instance, a new bathing suit and beach clothes are practically a prerequisite for showing off on the beach. In many other animals, such color displays are essential to attracting a
Male three-spined stickleback fish acquire bright red throats and cheeks during the mating season.
The female red-necked phalarope bird is more colorful than the male, and she is the one who does not cry.
Male satin bowteries make up for their lack of colorful plumage by decorating the nests with iridescent feathers.
Male and female blue-footed boobies wiggle their big feet about to attract their mates.
And on Padre Island beaches, human beings dress in bright skimpy bathing suits, apply
makeup, don jewelry and spend hours with blow dryers, curtains, combs and brushes to make up.
When the sun goes down, the activity merely moves from the beaches to the discos and bars, where it hangs.
In many primitive societies, dancing is used by members of one sex to convince members of the other sex to join in.
Some primitive dances even mimic mating rituals of birds and other animals.
Although people may mimic the rituals of other animals, their own rituals are far more
JOLYNNE WALZ
complex, They no longer have a biological necessity for courtship behavior like that exhibited in the animal world, and people use their superior intelligence to further their luck
Among many animals, brute force establishes dominance among males and decides who will rule.
Elephant seal bulls, for instance, joust by banging together their chests, which are so thick with blubber they wiggle like bowls of Jello under the impact.
Necking giraffes are not two members of the opposite sex making out, but two males in a couple do it.
Also, women are just as aggressive as men in
Animal behaviorists have pointed out that men have no natural weapons such as sharp teeth, claws or horns, but have been forced to use their intelligence and cunning to attract a mate.
When Grey kangaroos dispute dominance, they signal the beginning of their contest by waving their paws, then kicking at each other with powerful hind legs.
using their intelligence and cunning to attract a mate, which is unusual in the animal world.
While studying the attraction process between men and women, scientists have discovered that vision is the most important sense. People survey the gait, body form and face of other people closely, and all of those visions may be enhanced by clothes, makeup and jewelry.
According to one study, people spend about five seconds sizing up a member of the opposite sex, and one-quarter of that time is spent gazing at the face.
The sense of smell is also important in attraction between men and women, although more study needs to be done on the subject. Women, seem to be more sensitive to scents, than men. Scientists are using scientists to propose that people may exude a musky odor of their own to attract a mate.
However, sensual information is not the only criteria people use to pick a mate or a date.
For a long time, scientists thought sex was the most important ingredient in a male/female relationship among animals, and they extended the concept of sex to relationships between amphibians, too.
Nevertheless, animal behavior studies have not confirmed that theory. Animals in the wild appear to bond together for mutual protection against enemies, cooperation in foraging, and, most importantly, sociability and the need for company.
Although many people cringe when scientists try to extend theories about animal behavior to human beings, that's one theory many people might be proud to prove—that people value the friendship of their partners more than anything else.
So, while all those students flock to the beaches, at Padre Island to flaunt their attractiveness and make themselves more attractive by bronzing in the sun, that's only a small part of what's going on.
Mostly, everybody will just be there to have fun and enjoy the company of friends.