craschworks

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-022502eggs.story

Fertility in Reserve
  After years of technical obstacles, scientists have found ways to freeze
eggs for later use, helping women whose ability to have babies is threatened
by disease or aging.

  By SHARI ROAN, Times Staff Writer

  The bad news piled up on Shannon Lee faster than she could absorb it. At
31, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Not only would she need a
double mastectomy, the subsequent radiation and chemotherapy could leave her
sterile, ending her dream of having a baby.
 
But Lee's doctor also gave her hope. Confident that she would beat the
cancer, he urged her to undergo an experimental procedure in which some of
her eggs would be removed prior to chemotherapy, then stored for
fertilization at a later date, thereby preserving the possibility that she
could have a child. Heartened, Lee had 12 eggs extracted and frozen at an
infertility clinic.
 
“It's something I had to do,” the Buena Park woman said. “I may not need the
eggs, but it's nice to know they're there.”
 
Although the technology is in its early stages, egg freezing–called egg
cryopreservation–is now an option for women like Lee who face an imminent
loss of fertility. And soon, experts say, the procedure should become a
popular alternative for an even larger pool of women, those who risk losing
their eggs to normal aging before getting the chance to have a baby.
 
“There is growing optimism about egg freezing,” says Dr. Patrick Blohm, a
Jacksonville, Fla., doctor who is among the most successful U.S. researchers
pursuing egg freezing. “We're still not there yet, but we're getting close.
There is momentum behind it now.”
 
At least a half-dozen reproductive health clinics nationwide have established
egg freezing programs, some of them as part of research projects. Many other
clinics perform egg freezing on a limited basis, such as for young cancer
patients.
 
“These people have nothing to lose,” Blohm says of women whose fertility is
threatened by illness. “We still have not opened up egg freezing to the
masses, but we're not too far away from doing that. We are encouraged that
some major hurdles have been overcome.”
 
A handful of infertility clinics nationwide are already touting the service
as an exciting new option for any woman who wants it. But that kind of
marketing, as well as highly publicized announcements of a few births after
egg freezing, has been criticized by some doctors as premature. Published
reports put the number of births worldwide after egg freezing at 30, but some
doctors say recent progress has pushed that number closer to 100.
 
“I think many of us are taking a wait-and-see attitude,” says Dr. Richard
Paulson, an infertility specialist at USC who does not offer egg freezing.
“It's an unproven technology, and the success is hit or miss as compared to
embryo cryopreservation, which has an established track record and for which
national statistics are available.”
 
But Dr. William Keye Jr., president of the American Society of Reproductive
Medicine, says perfecting the ability to freeze unfertilized eggs will be a
major milestone in reproductive health care.
 
“This will be the last group for whom we don't have good answers,” Keye said.
“I think we will finally have something to offer them.”
 
The Ability to Put Fertility on Hold
 
Infertility doctors largely agree that egg freezing could have vast medical
and social implications.
 
Men have long been able to freeze sperm, but preserving oocytes–eggs–has
proved to be a far different, and difficult, task. Girls are born with 40,000
to 200,000 eggs, a supply that begins to dwindle when menstruation begins.
Medicines to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and some other diseases can
destroy eggs. And an estimated 3% of women have a genetic disorder called
premature ovarian failure, in which the ovaries shut down 10 to 20 years
before what is considered normal.
 
Often, women who are about to lose their fertility undergo in vitro
fertilization, in which eggs are removed from the ovaries and fertilized and
the resulting embryos frozen. But many single women do not have that option
unless they agree to use sperm from an anonymous donor or an acquaintance,
and others do not want to create embryos that may not be used.
 
Besides providing hope to these women, routine egg freezing has significant
practical benefits. Women who wish to postpone childbearing because of career
demands could bank their eggs in their 20s or early 30s, when the eggs are
healthier, for later use. Recent research has found that egg quality begins
to decline in the mid-30s.
 
“There is massive interest among women who are around 38 and haven't found
their life partner and who want to lay down a few eggs for later in life,”
says Michael Tucker, an Atlanta embryologist who made headlines in 1997 when
he announced the birth of twins after freezing eggs and fertilizing them with
a needle via intracytoplasmic sperm injection. That development was
considered a critical advance, and Tucker says the announcement spurred
thousands of inquiries from single women.
 
Karen, an unmarried businesswoman who asked to remain unidentified, had eggs
frozen at a Southern California infertility clinic last year.
 
“I've been so busy with my career,” she says. “Relationships have been there,
but none where I wanted to have a baby with someone. But family is very
important to me, and all of a sudden I'm 37 years old. I thought I had better
stop time right now.”
 
Egg freezing also could eventually curb the use of donor eggs, often required
by older women who wish to become pregnant. For couples who will still
require donor eggs (if egg quality is poor, for example), cryopreservation
could reduce its expense and inconvenience. Couples often pay about $20,000
for a single donor's fresh eggs, but those costs could be reduced by as much
as two-thirds if the eggs could be frozen and divvied up among several
couples, says Tucker.
 
And routine egg cryopreservation could help resolve the growing dilemma of
what to do with tens of thousands of unwanted frozen embryos stored in
infertility clinics worldwide. Some people consider embryos human life and
feel it's morally wrong to discard them.
 
Lee, for example, was in a serious relationship when diagnosed with cancer
and could have had her eggs fertilized and frozen as embryos. But both she
and her boyfriend (they later married) were uncomfortable with that option.
 
“My husband didn't like it that we were basically creating a child and then
would be killing it if we didn't use it. An egg isn't a life yet,” says Lee.
 
Lee, who completed cancer treatments a few months ago, still hopes the cancer
therapy did not destroy her fertility and that she and her husband, Todd, can
have a baby the natural way. But, she says, she was willing to hedge her bet
despite the $9,000 cost of egg freezing.
 
Proper Thawing Is Critical to Egg Survival
 
The growing enthusiasm for egg freezing rests largely on recent progress in
thawing eggs. In the past year, several researchers have reported that 60% to
80% of eggs survive the critical thawing process. That is comparable to the
survival rate of thawed embryos, says Blohm, who has produced several births
from frozen eggs. Prior to 1994, only 10% to 20% of eggs survived thawing.
 
Unlike sperm, the egg is a large, fluid-filled cell that can become riddled
with damaging ice crystals when frozen. Now, however, researchers are
experimenting with a flash-freezing process, called vitrification, that
prevents ice crystal formation.
 
Other researchers are injecting sugar solutions into eggs before freezing to
better preserve them. A recent report in the journal Fertility and Sterility
showed that, in a study of 158 eggs, 63% of eggs with a sugar solution
survived freezing and subsequent thawing, compared with only 13% in a control
group.
 
Doctors have also been able to dramatically improve the fertilization rate of
thawed eggs by using intracytoplasmic sperm injection, Tucker says. The outer
shell of the egg, the zona, often becomes impenetrable after freezing, but
the procedure bypasses that problem because the sperm is injected into the
egg using a needle.
 
“We've always known what the limitations of egg freezing were, but we've now
learned a lot more about how to circumvent the problems,” says Tucker.
 
Thawing and fertilizing frozen eggs is just half the battle, however. Much
less is known about the success of implanting the ensuing embryos in the
uterus and producing a baby. Only a portion of thawed, fertilized eggs become
viable embryos, says David Hill of the ART Reproductive Center in Beverly
Hills.
 
“It's a numbers game,” Hill says. “The more eggs you have to start with, the
more likely you'll have a normal, healthy, cleaving embryo by the time it's
all done.”
 
Patients Should Note Procedure Is Still New
 
Women interested in egg freezing should be aware of its unproven track
record, experts caution.
 
People considering egg freezing should ask the doctor about his or her
thawing and fertilization success rates and if he or she has produced any
babies.
 
“It does appear that there are some sites that do it better than other
sites,” says Susan Lazendorf, an infertility specialist at the Jones
Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va. “It should be made clear
to a patient that there are no real known success rates. And the best bet is,
if you have a partner identified, to go ahead and make embryos.”
 
While predicting that egg freezing will become as useful as embryo freezing
“in the very near future,” Blohm says the procedure should still be
considered experimental until data can show that birth defects are not higher
among children born from frozen eggs.
 
“We have to have data that supports the safety of the process before we open
it up to wider use,” he says.
 
In contrast, cancer patients should be alerted to the option despite the
unknowns, says Dr. Beth Ary of the Reproductive Specialty Center in Newport
Beach.
 
“We have protocols involving males [with cancer] where they are informed that
they can store sperm,” says Ary, who later this month will freeze the eggs of
a woman with colon cancer. “Most of these [female] cancer patients would like
to have known about egg cryopreservation and IVF. Our big issue now is
educating cancer doctors about this.”
 
There is less agreement among infertility specialists on whether egg
freezing–as the technology stands now–should be encouraged among single
women who wish to store eggs as a way of putting fertility on hold. Egg
extraction is a low-risk procedure, although it does involve minor surgery
and temporary use of strong medications. And it is expensive.
 
Dr. David Diaz, of West Coast Fertility Centers in Fountain Valley, is one of
the few doctors who now urge single women to consider egg banking if they are
concerned about advancing age. A woman can have a blood test to determine if
her ovaries are losing function.
 
“Age is very much a factor in what we do,” Diaz says. “Women often come in at
40 and want to freeze their eggs, but we really need to see them much
earlier.”
 
Increasingly, infertility doctors may accept these women for egg freezing
because the science is advancing and the demand is high, says Lazendorf.
 
“I think a lot of patients are storing their eggs now and are hoping for
improvements in technology so they can use them,” she says. “They are waiting
for the technology to catch up.”

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=753&e=5&u=/nm/20020418/sc_nm/health_allergies_dc_1

Worms May Be Key to Curing Allergies, Experts Say
Thu Apr 18, 2:23 PM ET

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Worms may hold the secret to finding a way to prevent allergies, researchers said on Thursday.

Doctors have for years been saying a little dirt may be good for children, helping “prime” their immune systems and preventing allergies from developing.

This so-called hygiene hypothesis is based in part on the observation that people in developing countries and those who live in the countryside are much less prone to allergies than people who live in modern towns, with their sanitized floors and filtered air.

Allergies are on the rise worldwide. “Currently more than 130 million people suffer from asthma, and the numbers are increasing,” Dr. Maria Yazdanbakhsh of Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, Netherlands, and two colleagues wrote for Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Efforts to pin down a cause have failed to find an explanation, not least because, microbiologists say, all the scrubbing in the world makes barely a dent in the number of bacteria and viruses that get into the body.

But one big difference between people living in poor countries and people living in rich ones is in the number of parasites — especially roundworms, flatworms and pinworms, known collectively as helminths — found in their bodies.

Those parasites may be doing something to the body's immune system to help prime it, and understanding that may be the key to dealing effectively with allergies, Yazdanbakhsh said in a telephone interview.

“It's not that the hygiene hypothesis is incorrect — it's that the immunological explanation up to now is not correct,” she said. “The body needs a certain amount of challenge from pathogens. It has to reach a certain set point and if that set point is not reached, something goes wrong.”

Yazdanbakhsh, who studies immunology and parasites, said helminths provoke a certain inflammatory response by the body when they infest a person or when a person is simply exposed to them without having the worms set up house.

IMPORTANT ANTIGENS

She has found some evidence the worms carry important antigens — proteins to which the immune system responds — that provoke a long-term response.

“They live 10 years in your body. Every day they are throwing out these antigens,” she said. Perhaps some of these proteins actually slow down some components of immune system reaction, she said.

It may not be just worms, Yazdanbakhsh said. “I think viruses and bacteria, some of them can do it, too,” she said.

Allergies — and autoimmune diseases such as juvenile diabetes — are a “friendly fire” response by the body, when it mistakenly attacks a pollen particle or a healthy cell.

Yazdanbakhsh and colleagues have some theories about what the parasites are doing that helps prevent this immune system overreaction. “We are working on some molecules,” she said. “We have a class of substances that seem to be very potent in inducing anti-inflammatory responses.”

Such a molecule might be developed to mimic the immune-priming effects of a parasitic infection “without paying the price of becoming infected with noxious pathogens,” Yazdanbakhsh and colleagues wrote.

It might be included with childhood vaccinations, said Yazdanbakhsh, who said she treated her own 7- and 9-year old children for worms when they picked up a case.

“I shouldn't have,” she joked, adding she did allow a certain amount of dirt into their lives. “My children always picked up the pacifier from the floor and put it back in their mouths,” she laughed.

This is the statistic that caught my eye:

Women generally know their fertility declines with
age; they just don't realize how much and how fast. According to the Centers
for Disease Control, once a woman celebrates her 42nd birthday, the chances
of her having a baby using her own eggs, even with advanced medical help, are
less than 10%. At age 40, half of her eggs are chromosomally abnormal; by 42,
that figure is 90%.”

April 15, 2002 Vol. 159 No. 15
 Making Time For A Baby
 For years, women have been told they could wait until 40 or later to have
babies. But a new book argues that's way too late
 BY NANCY GIBBS

 Listen to a successful woman discuss her failure to bear a child, and the
grief comes in layers of bitterness and regret. This was supposed to be the
easy part, right? Not like getting into Harvard. Not like making partner. The
baby was to be Mother Nature's gift. Anyone can do it; high school dropouts
stroll through the mall with their babies in a Snugli. What can be so hard,
especially for a Mistress of the Universe, with modern medical science
devoted to resetting the biological clock? “I remember sitting in the clinic
waiting room,” recalls a woman who ran the infertility marathon, “and a
woman–she was in her mid-40s and had tried everything to get pregnant–told
me that one of the doctors had glanced at her chart and said, 'What are you
doing here? You are wasting your time.' It was so cruel. She was holding out
for that one last glimpse of hope. How horrible was it to shoot that hope
down?”

 The manner was cold, but the message was clear–and devastating. “Those
women who are at the top of their game could have had it all, children and
career, if they wanted it,” suggests Pamela Madsen, executive director of the
American Infertility Association (A.I.A.). “The problem was, nobody told them
the truth about their bodies.” And the truth is that even the very best
fertility experts have found that the hands of the clock will not be moved.
Baby specialists can do a lot to help a 29-year-old whose tubes are blocked
or a 32-year-old whose husband has a low sperm count. But for all the
headlines about 45-year-old actresses giving birth, the fact is that “there's
no promising therapy for age-related infertility,” says Dr. Michael Soules, a
professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and past
president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). “There's
certainly nothing on the horizon.”

 This means, argues economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her new book, Creating a
Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (Talk Miramax Books),
that many ambitious young women who also hope to have kids are heading down a
bad piece of road if they think they can spend a decade establishing their
careers and wait until 35 or beyond to establish their families. Even as more
couples than ever seek infertility treatment–the number of procedures
performed jumped 27% between 1996 and 1998–doctors are learning that the
most effective treatment may be prevention, which in this case means
knowledge. “But the fact that the biological clock is real is unwelcome news
to my 24-year-old daughter,” Hewlett observes, “and she's pretty typical.”

 Women have been debating for a generation how best to balance work and home
life, but somehow each new chapter starts a new fight, and Hewlett's book is
no exception. Back in 1989, when Felice Schwartz discussed in the Harvard
Business Review how to create more flexibility for career women with children
(she never used the phrase Mommy Track herself), her proposals were called
“dangerous” and “retrofeminist” because they could give corporations an
excuse to derail women's careers. Slow down to start a family, the skeptics
warned, and you run the risk that you will never catch up.

 And so, argues Hewlett, many women embraced a “male model” of single-minded
career focus, and the result is “an epidemic of childlessness” among
professional women. She conducted a national survey of 1,647 “high-achieving
women,” including 1,168 who earn in the top 10% of income of their age group
or hold degrees in law or medicine, and another 479 who are highly educated
but are no longer in the work force. What she learned shocked her: she found
that 42% of high-achieving women in corporate America (defined as companies
with 5,000 or more employees) were still childless after age 40. That figure
rose to 49% for women who earn $100,000 or more. Many other women were able
to have only one child because they started their families too late. “They've
been making a lot of money,” says Dr. David Adamson, a leading fertility
specialist at Stanford University, “but it won't buy back the time.”

 Recent Census data support Hewlett's research: childlessness has doubled in
the past 20 years, so that 1 in 5 women between ages 40 and 44 is childless.
For women that age and younger with graduate and professional degrees, the
figure is 47%. This group certainly includes women for whom having children
was never a priority: for them, the opening of the work force offered many
new opportunities, including the chance to define success in realms other
than motherhood. But Hewlett argues that many other women did not actually
choose to be childless. When she asked women to recall their intentions at
the time they were finishing college, Hewlett found that only 14% said that
they definitely did not want to have children.

 For most women Hewlett interviewed, childlessness was more like what one
called a “creeping nonchoice.” Time passes, work is relentless. The travel,
the hours–relationships are hard to sustain. By the time a woman is married
and settled enough in her career to think of starting a family, it is all too
often too late. “They go to a doctor, take a blood test and are told the game
is over before it even begins,” says A.I.A.'s Madsen. “They are shocked,
devastated and angry.” Women generally know their fertility declines with
age; they just don't realize how much and how fast. According to the Centers
for Disease Control, once a woman celebrates her 42nd birthday, the chances
of her having a baby using her own eggs, even with advanced medical help, are
less than 10%. At age 40, half of her eggs are chromosomally abnormal; by 42,
that figure is 90%. “I go through Kleenex in my office like it's going out of
style,” says reproductive endocrinologist Michael Slowey in Englewood, N.J.

 Hewlett and her allies say they are just trying to correct the record in the
face of widespread false optimism. Her survey found that nearly 9 out of 10
young women were confident of their ability to get pregnant into their 40s.
Last fall the A.I.A. conducted a fertility-awareness survey on the women's
website iVillage.com. Out of the 12,524 respondents, only one answered all 15
questions correctly. Asked when fertility begins to decline, only 13% got it
right (age 27); 39% thought it began to drop at 40. Asked how long couples
should try to conceive on their own before seeking help, fully 42% answered
30 months. That is a dangerous combination: a couple that imagines fertility
is no problem until age 40 and tries to get pregnant for 30 months before
seeing a doctor is facing very long odds of ever becoming parents.

 In one sense, the confusion is understandable: it is only in the past 10
years that doctors themselves have discovered the limitations. “I remember
being told by a number of doctors, 'Oh, you have plenty of time,' even when I
was 38,” says Claudia Morehead, 47, a California insurance lawyer who is
finally pregnant, using donor eggs. Even among fertility specialists, “it was
shocking to us that IVF didn't work so well after age 42,” admits Dr. Sarah
Berga, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Pittsburgh School
of Medicine. “The early '90s, to my mind, was all about how shocked we were
that we couldn't get past this barrier.” But even as doctors began to try to
get the word out, they ran into resistance of all kinds.

 One is simply how information is shared. Childlessness is a private sorrow;
the miracle baby is an inevitable headline. “When you see these media stories
hyping women in their late 40s having babies, it's with donor eggs,” insists
Stanford's Adamson, “but that is conveniently left out of the stories.” The
more aggressive infertility clinics have a financial incentive to hype the
good news and bury the facts: a 45-year-old woman who has gone through seven
cycles of IVF can easily spend $100,000 on treatment. But even at the best
fertility clinics in the country, her chance of taking a baby home is in the
single digits.

 In hopes of raising women's awareness, ASRM launched a modest $60,000 ad
campaign last fall, with posters and brochures warning that factors like
smoking, weight problems and sexually transmitted infections can all harm
fertility. But the furor came with the fourth warning, a picture of a baby
bottle shaped like an hourglass: “Advancing age decreases your ability to
have children.” The physicians viewed this as a public service, given the
evidence of widespread confusion about the facts, but the group has come
under fire for scaring women with an oversimplified message on a complex
subject.

 ”The implication is, 'I have to hurry up and have kids now or give up on
ever having them,'” says Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization
for Women. “And that is not true for the vast majority of women.” Gandy, 48,
had her first child at 39. “It was a choice on my part, but in most ways it
really wasn't. It's not like you can create out of whole cloth a partner you
want to have a family with and the economic and emotional circumstances that
allow you to be a good parent. So to put pressure on young women to hurry up
and have kids when they don't have those other factors in place really does a
disservice to them and to their kids.”

 To emphasize a woman's age above all other factors can be just one more
piece of misleading information, Gandy suggests. “There are two people
involved [in babymaking], and yet we're putting all the responsibility on
women and implying that women are being selfish if they don't choose to have
children early.” She shares the concern that women will hear the research and
see the ads and end up feeling it is so hard to strike a balance that it's
futile to even try. “There is an antifeminist agenda that says we should go
back to the 1950s,” says Caryl Rivers, a journalism professor at Boston
University. “The subliminal message is, 'Don't get too educated; don't get
too successful or too ambitious.'”

 Allison Rosen, a clinical psychologist in New York City who has made it her
mission to make sure her female patients know the fertility odds, disagrees.
“This is not a case of male doctors' wanting to keep women barefoot and
pregnant,” she says. “You lay out the facts, and any particular individual
woman can then make her choices.” Madsen of A.I.A. argues that the biological
imperative is there whether women know it or not. “I cringe when feminists
say giving women reproductive knowledge is pressuring them to have a child,”
she says. “That's simply not true. Reproductive freedom is not just the
ability not to have a child through birth control. It's the ability to have
one if and when you want one.”

 You can trace the struggle between hope and biology back to Genesis, when
Abraham and Sarah gave thanks for the miracle that brought them their son in
old age. “She was the first infertile woman,” notes Zev Rosenwaks, the
director of New York Presbyterian Hospital's infertility program. “It was so
improbable that an allegedly menopausal woman could have a baby that her
firstborn was named Isaac, which means 'to laugh.'” The miracle stories have
fed the hope ever since, but so does wishful thinking. “It's tremendously
comforting for a 34- or 36-year-old professional woman to imagine that she
has time on her side,” says Hewlett, which can make for resistance to hearing
the truth.

 This is the heart of Hewlett's crusade: that it is essential for women to
plan where they want to be at 45 and work backward, armed with the knowledge
that the window for having children is narrower than they have been led to
believe and that once it begins to swing shut, science can do little to pry
it open. And Hewlett argues as well that employers and policymakers need to
do more to help families make the balancing act work. “The greatest choice
facing modern women is to freely choose to have both, a job and a family, and
be supported and admired for it, not be seen as some overweening yuppie.”

 As it happens, Hewlett knows from personal experience. She says she didn't
set out to write about how hard it is for professional women to be moms. She
planned to do a book celebrating women turning 50 at the millennium and to
look at what forces had shaped their lives. Then she discovered, in interview
after interview with college deans and opera divas, a cross section of
successful women in various fields, that none of them had children–and few
of them had chosen to be childless. Many blamed themselves for working too
hard and waiting too long–and waking up to the truth too late. “When I
talked to these women,” she recalls, “their sense of loss was palpable.”

 Hewlett had spent most of her professional life writing and lecturing on the
need for business and government to develop more family-friendly workplaces;
she has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. And she has had children and lost
them and fought to have more. As a young Barnard professor with a toddler at
home, she lost twins six months into her pregnancy: If only, she thought, I
had taken time off from work, taken it easier. A year and a half later, she
writes, she was turned down for tenure by an appointments committee that
believed, in the words of one member, that she had “allowed childbearing to
dilute my focus.” Hewlett was lucky: she went on to have three more children,
including Emma, to whom she gave birth at 51 using her own egg and
infertility treatments. Hewlett says she understands “baby hunger.”

 At least she understands it for women. Men, she argues, have an unfair
advantage. “Nowadays,” she says, “the rule of thumb seems to be that the more
successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a
child. For men, the reverse is true. I found that only one-quarter of
high-achieving men end up without kids. Men generally find that if they are
successful, everything else follows naturally.” But that view of men doesn't
quite do justice to the challenges they face as well. Men too are working
harder than ever; at the very moment that society sends the message to be
more involved as fathers, the economy makes it harder–and Hewlett's
prescription that women need to think about having their children younger
leaves more men as primary breadwinners. They would be fathers as far as
biology goes, but they wouldn't get much chance to be parents. “A lot of my
friends who are men and have had families are now divorced,” Stanford's
Adamson admits. “When you ask them what happened, the vast majority will say,
'Well, I was never home. I was working all the time. I didn't pay enough
attention to my family. I wish I had, but it's too late now.'”

 Hewlett still insists that men don't face the same “cruel choices” that
women confront. “Men who find that they have no relationship with their adult
kids at least have a second chance as grandfathers,” she argues. “For women,
childlessness represents a rolling loss into the future. It means having no
children and no grandchildren.” While her earlier books are full of policy
prescriptions, this one is more personal. She salts the book with cautionary
tales: women who were too threatening to the men they dated, too successful
and preoccupied, too “predatory” to suit men who were looking for
“nurturers.” The voices are authentic but selective; taken together, it is
easy to read certain passages and think she is calling for a retreat to home
and hearth, where motherhood comes before every other role.

 Hewlett replies that she is simply trying to help women make wise choices
based on good information. She is not proposing a return to the '50s, she
says, or suggesting that women should head off to college to get their MRS.
and then try to have children soon after graduation. “Late 20s is probably
more realistic, because men are not ready to commit earlier than that. And
the 20s still needs to be a decade of great personal growth.” She recommends
that women get their degrees, work hard at their first jobs–but then be
prepared to plateau for a while and redirect their energy into their personal
lives, with the intention of catching up professionally later. “You will make
some compromises in your career. But you will catch up, reinvent yourself,
when the time is right.”

 The problem is that Hewlett's own research argues otherwise: in her book all
of the examples of successful women who also have families gave birth in
their 20s. These women may escape the fate of would-be mothers who waited too
long, but they encounter a whole different set of obstacles when it comes to
balancing work and family. Biology may be unforgiving, but so is corporate
culture: those who voluntarily leave their career to raise children often
find that the way back in is extremely difficult. Many in her survey said
they felt forced out by inflexible bosses; two-thirds say they wish they
could return to the work force.

 Much would have to change in the typical workplace for parents to be able to
downshift temporarily and then resume their pace as their children grew
older. Hewlett hopes that the war for talent will inspire corporations to
adopt more family-friendly policies in order to attract and maintain the most
talented parents, whether male or female. Many of her policy recommendations,
however, are unlikely to be enacted anytime soon: mandatory paid parental
leave; official “career breaks” like the generous policy at IBM that grants
workers up to three years' leave with the guarantee of return to the same or
a similar job; a new Fair Labor Standards Act that would discourage 80-hour
workweeks by making all but the very top executives eligible for overtime pay.

 Hewlett calls herself a feminist, but she has often crossed swords with
feminists who, she charges, are so concerned with reproductive choice that
they neglect the needs of women who choose to be mothers. In the history of
the family, she notes, it is a very recent development for women to have
control over childbearing, thanks to better health care and birth control.
But there's an ironic twist now. “In just 30 years, we've gone from fearing
our fertility to squandering it–and very unwittingly.” The decision of
whether to have a child will always be one of the most important anyone
makes; the challenge is not allowing time and biology to make it for them.

Reported by Janice M. Horowitz, Julie Rawe and Sora Song/New York

…and in honor of the season, I present Tom Lehrer's Poisoning Pigeons in the Park:

I'd like to take you now on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab wretched lives. Here is a song all about springtime in general, and in particular about one of the many delightful pastimes that the coming of spring affords us all.

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes every Sunday a treat for me.

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Every Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Everything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety
And lack of prop riety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment,
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strych'nine
We feed to a pigeon.
(It just takes a smidgin!)
To poison a pigeon in the park.

Phrases that bristle my nappy hairs:

“the Other”
“social justice”
“family values”
“rule of law”

the use of the word “free” to describe tax subsidized anything: “free healthcare”, “free education”, etc.

http://rehphome.tripod.com/careeradv.html

Several Retire Early visitors have asked, “What exactly did you do in your career that allowed you to retire so young?” Good question. Obviously, the best advice would be to find the next Microsoft or Dell, get hired into a position with stock options, then retire once you're allowed to sell your shares after the IPO. Failing that, here's what I've found useful.

The Retire Early strategy for collegians.

Choose the “right” major. Educators say, “do what you love”, but let's face it, some jobs pay more than others. Your prospects of getting a high paying job after graduation are better in law, medicine, engineering, and computer science rather than, say, art history or medieval literature.

A demanding course of study may not be financially rewarded. At the engineering school I attended, some majors were more difficult than others. Chemical Engineering was regarded as the most demanding program, while something called “Management Engineering” was the easiest. (Some people even questioned whether “Management Engineering” was really engineering at all.) The cruel irony is that the highest starting salaries don't always go to the students who took the toughest courses. If “rocket science” pays the same as “pouring concrete”, it may not be financially worth your while to expend the additional effort required to “shoot for the stars.”

I studied Civil Engineering, and was able to take two extra courses per semester since the work was less demanding (at least to me) than some of the other Engineering disciplines. By doing so, I graduated after three years. Not only did this save me a year's worth of tuition, but it also allowed me to earn an engineering salary one year earlier. When I graduated in 1977, tuition and room & board were around $5,000 per year and the starting salary for an Engineer was about $15,000 per year. In effect, by going to work a year early, I almost got my education for free compared to a student that took four years to get a degree.

Is an expensive private college worth it? With Bill Gates and Michael Dell dropping out of college and becoming billionaires, a university education may not be worth its opportunity cost at all. Tuition at a private university is often 2 to 3 times the cost of a public university, yet the starting salaries for new graduates and the lifetime earnings for alumni are much the same. If you're getting a full scholarship to Harvard, take it. If you (or your parents) are paying the full tuition at a private college, sit down and do some arithmetic — click here. If you saved the difference in cost between a public and private university and invested that incredible sum of money for 20 years, you'd be well on the way to retiring before age 40.

Grad school is even less likely to be financially rewarding. While you are likely to do well as a graduate of law school, medical school, or a Top 5 MBA program, many with graduate degrees from more pedestrian schools don't get much of a return on their investment.

When I was working for Exxon in the early 1980's, an Engineer with a Bachelor's degree started at salary Grade 23 and was usually promoted to Grade 24 in two years. Someone with a Master's degree also started at salary grade 23, but was promoted to the next grade in one year. Assuming it took one year of full-time schooling to get a Master's in Engineering, both employees were at about the same salary level two years after earning their Bachelor's degree. Financially, the Master's degree holder was way behind. He's paid a year's worth of tuition and lost one year of an Engineer's salary (up to $50,000 per year in today's market.)

I avoided this opportunity cost by getting my MBA at night while working full-time. My employer paid the tuition (at an “expensive” private university, to boot.)

But wait, you ask, “Wouldn't someone with a Master's degree get promoted faster and eventually rise much higher in an organization?” Well, maybe. That's certainly the hope of many graduate degree holders. Unfortunately, the business world doesn't always work that way. Once an employee has 5 or 10 years worth of experience, work history and accomplishments become more important than university degrees and where you went to school. Of the group of 15 or 20 young engineers I worked with at Exxon in the early 1980's, by far the most successful is a former colleague who went on to become a Senior Vice President at a major international oil company. And he only has a Bachelor's degree from a state university!

For more on “Why Stay in School?”, see Andrew Hacker's Money: Who has how much and why. The chart on page 218 is particularly revealing. Fully 20% of workers with only a high school diploma earn more than 30% of the people holding graduate degrees. I suspect these results would be even worse (for the case that graduate school pays) if the analysis excluded MDs, JDs and MBAs from the Top 5 business schools.

Should I be a “Company Man” or a “Job Hopper?”

When I graduated from college in 1977, the conventional wisdom was you should get a job with a “blue chip” company (i.e., IBM, Exxon, AT&T), keep your mouth shut and kiss up to the boss for 30 years, and then retire to Florida. Mercifully, few new graduates are under this delusion today. And a decade of “downsizing” and the introduction of “cash balance” pensions have dissuaded most baby boomers of the notion that being a “company man” was ever a good idea in the first place.

The joys of “Job Hopping.” I'm very proud of the fact that the longest time I spent with one employer during my 17 year corporate career was about 5 years. I was always willing to jump to a new employer for a minimum 10-15% raise. I've never seen a company that gave bigger raises to the employees that loyally stayed with the company. If your boss doesn't have to pay more to keep you, he won't.

Can I make money on a job switch without getting a raise? You sure can. Many people don't realize that living and housing costs vary much more than salaries. Having worked in New York, California, and several places in between, I've seen this first hand. Monetarily, the best job switch I ever made was moving from San Diego, CA to Baton Rouge, LA. (I know, living near the beach in Del Mar is nice, and one of my California neighbors asked “Isn't Louisiana kind of like Saudi Arabia with regular cable TV?”) He may have a point, but the move was a financial bonanza. In addition to my 10% salary increase, my housing costs were cut in half, and state income taxes were much lower in Louisiana. This allowed me to increase my savings to 40% to 50% of my gross salary. Five years later, I retired at age 38.

But what about my pension? There is nothing more disheartening than seeing a young employee soldier on in a job he hates because he wants to collect a pension. It might make sense for a 53 year old to hang on for a couple of years if he's fully vested at age 55, but a 30 year old? The sad truth is that even before the advent of “cash balance” pensions, the standard “defined benefit” pension plan wasn't the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” that most people thought it was. A 25 year old could probably duplicate his expected company pension benefit by saving and investing as little as 2% of his salary. See, “Should I stick around for 40 years to collect a pension?”

The Retire Early take on handling day-to-day workplace issues.

Should I adopt the “yuppie” work ethic? Since I almost never arrived at work early, nor stayed in the office late, I was always amused at colleagues who bragged about how many hours of overtime they worked — especially since they weren't paid for it. Maybe this behavior makes sense if you're on the partnership track at Goldman Sachs, but for the average “wage slave” working for free is rarely financially rewarding.

Most of these folks working nights and weekends were also a dull and clueless bunch. Some put in extraordinary hours because they had nothing better to do with their time. Others hid out in the office to avoid spending hours with their wives and family. Only rarely did this frenzy of activity result in anything productive.

What's the return on “uncompensated overtime?” One of the biggest “crocks” in the corporate world is being an “exempt employee.” That means that, for the most part, you don't get paid overtime. If you are not paid wages and salary for overtime work, the near term return on your investment of time is zero. Working overtime may be financially productive if you get stock options or a big year end bonus. But, if the difference between a 40-hour and 60-hour work week is the difference between at 3% raise and a 6% raise at year end, the overtime is obviously not doing much for you. Ask yourself, “Would my boss sign a contract to do 50% more work for a 3% increase in revenue?” I thought not. You probably shouldn't either.

Organizations have different cultures. If “nights and weekends” are the norm and the company highly values “face time” (meaning that the boss expects to see your face in the office at a lot of odd hours) make sure that the 40-hour salary quoted compensates you for all the “fluff.”.

Managing “face time.” Despite your best efforts, you are likely to encounter a boss at some time in your career that demands “face.” These are the guys that just love calling Saturday morning meetings to handle tasks that easily could have been completed in 5 minutes on Thursday. (Discerning readers will now begin to recognize that “face time” and “uncompensated overtime” are often intertwined.) Even highly valued employees in secure positions have to put up with some of this nonsense. I used to settle my “face time/uncompensated overtime” account by applying the “Three for One Rule” — for each hour of “uncompensated overtime” imposed on me, I spent three hours during the work week “goofing off.”

Here are some of my favorite “Three for One” activities. Playing tennis and golf didn't make the list. Regrettably, you need to have your head down and look busy when the boss passes the door to your office.

Read magazines or newspapers at work. (Hint: Magazines work better since they are small enough to put inside a three-ring binder.)
balance your check book
play computer games. (Hint: Make sure the game has a “boss” switch that quickly changes the screen graphic to a spreadsheet.)
learn about financial planning, manage your personal investment portfolio. (Editor's Note: this is the highest value item on the list.)
write a screenplay.
just about anything you can do at your desk that looks like work to your boss qualifies as a potential “Three for One” activity.
I learned most of what I know about the stock market and financial planning from studying these topics during my spare time at the office. So much so, that one supervisor actually criticized me during an annual performance review for spending too much time “working my stocks.” Turns out that “working my stocks” was exactly the right thing to do. The time I spent at work learning about financial markets were undoubtably the most highly compensated hours of my career. I retired early while my former supervisor is still at the office worrying about the next round of “downsizing.”

Other Career Planning Resources.

24 Things to Do Before You Die. – an excellent article from Worth magazine. I've already done No. 13 on the list and been rewarded beyond all imagination or expectation.

Corporate Career Advice…Cautionary insights for those lost in the bowels of some large bureaucracy.

John Andersen's Essays – thought provoking ideas on work, school, and retirement.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Retire Early's Career Advice.

Question 1:

Q: If you hated working in a corporation so much, why didn't you start your own business?

A: Starting a business isn't for everyone. Most successful business owners I know work 60 to 80 hours per week. I haven't found any activity I'd be willing to devote that much time to. Also, customers and clients can be even more demanding than bosses. There's an old Irish saying, “The Devil you know is better than the one you don't.”

Question 2:

Q: I have a problem with your “Three for One” rule. Isn't it unethical to conduct your personal business on company time?

A: No more than it's unethical for the company to let its “business” encroach on your personal time. I hate to get biblical with you, but our Lord said “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's. (Luke 20:25, Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:21, King James Version — I guess more than one apostle heard Jesus recite this timely phrase.) If your employer is paying for 40 hours, its not “unethical” to “work” your 40 hours and no more.

Question 3:

Q: How did you graduate from engineering school in only three years? Are you some kind of “genius” or something?

A: My SAT scores were just about at the median for the freshman class at the school I attended. So half the students there were “smarter”, at least by that measure. Yet, I'm aware of only 1 or 2 other students out of a class of 600 that graduated in three years or less. Being able to graduate early depends more on focus and the ability to manage your time, rather than possessing a great intellect.

Question 4:

Q: It can't be this easy, did you win the lottery or cash in on an IPO?

A: It's not easy, but no, I didn't win the lottery, receive a big inheritance, or cash in on an IPO. (Heck, I didn't even get stock options when I was working.) It was simply a matter of living below my means, being a long term buy and hold (LTB&H) investor in computer and pharmaceutical stocks, and minimizing the fees and commissions I pay on my portfolio.

While I bought Dell and Pfizer in the early 1990's (some would say that's the equivalent of winning the lottery) those two stocks didn't really take off until after I retired in 1994. Prior to my retirement, my investment returns only exceeded the S&P500 by about 1%. I can't say that it was “beating the market” that allowed me to retire early. Minimizing my living expenses and saving played a much larger role.

I'm also convinced that not owning a home (I prefer to rent an apartment) was a big help, but that depends on where you live. There are at least a few parts of the country where owning a home can be a good investment. However, on a nationwide basis, the stock market has offered much higher investment returns. (Over the past 30 years, S&P500 13.67% annually vs. 5.71% annually for residential real estate. Source: Chase Investment Performance Digest, as quoted from How to Retire Rich, by James P. O'Shaughnessy, page 23.)

Paula Houston, Utah's “Obscenity and Pornograhy Complaints Ombudsman,” on the Role of the Citizen in Obscenity Law Enforcement

The Utah State Legislature created the office of “Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman” in the State Attorney General's office, starting in 2001. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff appointed former city prosecutor Paula Houston to the position earlier this year.
Some of the duties that the Legislature assigned to the “porn czar” include: providing citizens advice and information on options for obscenity complaints, remedies to address pornography, and the dangers of obscenity and pornography; assist local prosecutors if requested; provide expert advice on strengthening local ordinances; and draft a comprehensive moral nuisance law and model ordinance to discourage obscenity and pornography.

Contact information for Miss Houston's office is at the end of this article.

QUESTION: Could you tell us about your background and education?
ANSWER: I grew up in Montana. I graduated with my bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University, and went to law school also at BYU, the J. Reuben Park Law School.

QUESTION: Did you immediately go into prosecuting when you left law school?
ANSWER: While I was in law school, I started as a law clerk for the West Valley City, Utah, prosecutor's office, and started prosecuting cases for them while I was in law school, and once I graduated and got my license, they hired me as an attorney for them.

QUESTION: So you're saying that in Utah, individual municipalities have their own prosecutor's offices?
ANSWER: The cities have their own local prosecuting attorney's offices. They handle the misdemeanor cases, and in the case of [obscenity] they can handle the felony cases as well. There are a few exceptions in the law [in Utah] where they can handle felonies.

QUESTION: And then there are county district attorney's offices that handle the more serious felonies?
ANSWER: There are.

QUESTION: Describe West Valley City. What kind of a place is it?
ANSWER: It's just a suburb of Salt Lake City, the west side.

QUESTION: And it's organized as its own municipality.
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: I understand that while you were working for West Valley City, you prosecuted a number of obscenity cases. Could you go into more detail about the obscenity cases you prosecuted?
ANSWER: The cases that I prosecuted were videotape cases. The first one was actually while I was a law clerk. We began working on that case—it was videotapes that were being rented out of a “back room,” that were the hard core pornography tapes. We had to use an undercover officer to get the trust of the store owners so that they would start renting to him, get the information that we needed to prosecute the case.

QUESTION: And this undercover officer would discuss the matter—in other words, to establish scienter. [Ed. Note: Scienter, a legal term meaning a defendant's "guilty knowledge," is a prerequisite for a successful obscenity prosecution.]
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: Were all of these cases video cases, or were there other kinds?
ANSWER: Actually they were all video cases, and they were all in the “back room.” The last one that I did was a gentleman who was selling them out of a swap meet, and he had them in separate boxes, either under the table or behind a curtain, so if he saw somebody he thought might be interested, he'd say, “I have some better tapes over here if you want to look,” and he didn't let everyone see those. So we had officers working there, and he happened to ask one of them, and so then they started working undercover and getting more tapes from him, to see what kinds of things he was selling, and developed the case from there.

QUESTION: With regard to the stores that you prosecuted, you say that they had “regular” videos up front, and the infamous “back room” with the porn videos.
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: Are those stores — the ones that you prosecuted—are they still selling porn videos, or were the prosecutions that you brought forward sufficient to deter them for the future?
ANSWER: The first time—we prosecuted the same store twice, several years apart, and the first time they stayed in business, the second time—shortly after we prosecuted them, they went out of business.

QUESTION: So there were how many video stores altogether in West Valley City?
ANSWER: There were two different video stores that we prosecuted.

QUESTION: Out of how many video stores in the municipality?
ANSWER: Oh, I don't even know.

QUESTION: But plainly not all of them had the “back rooms.”
ANSWER: At least we didn't get information on the others. And the only way you found out about them was a complainant, somebody filing a complaint.

QUESTION: So a citizen would come in and file a complaint with your office and ask for an investigation?
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: Could you tell us about your appointment to your new state-wide position?
ANSWER: Well, it was a job that the Legislature created, that mandated the Attorney General's office to hire somebody for this position to carry out the duties they set out. So I was aware of it as it went through the Legislature, and I thought it that might be an interesting job, that it was something that I might be interested in doing, depending on how they wanted to develop the office, what they were going to expect the person to do. And I kind of just watched it, and when it came open I applied for the job, was interviewed by Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and discussed different ways to develop the job, and what kind of things he would expect, and decided it was something I would really like to do, and I felt I could make a difference in this area, and he offered me the job and I took it.

QUESTION: And you started your job when?
ANSWER: February 12th.

QUESTION: This past February 12th?
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: What are your general and specific goals for your office?
ANSWER: My general goal is to bring awareness of the issues of pornography. The Legislature set out specifically that my job is to educate, it's to help citizens understand the dangers and harms of pornography and obscenity, it's to help them understand ways that they can restrict it or even eliminate it from their community, and it's to help them understand what their rights are, and what their duties are in dealing with these community issues of pornography and obscenity.

Then along with that it's also to work with the Government agencies in helping them to understand all those same things, and ways that they can address these issues legally, in their community. And so, the first thing that I'm working on is with all the cities and counties on their sexually-oriented business laws, and making sure that they have them in place, or that they're updated, so that they have current laws in place. That's one of the big projects that I'm working on.

And then community awareness is the other big project.

QUESTION: What kind of staff and resources do you have?
ANSWER: Well, I'm part of the Attorney General's office, so I have some of their resources available to me. But specific for this position, my self and I have a paralegal to assist me.

QUESTION: But you can draw on the staff of the AG's office.
ANSWER: For example, most of my calls are directed to the main line number, which is the receptionist's desk. So she takes those calls and refers them to whomever they need to go to. But it was pretty limited. They [the Legislature] set a budget of $150,000 a year.

QUESTION: You mentioned earlier that you were able to get the prosecutions started because people made referrals, they called you and said, “Can you make these investigations?” Has that happened since you've come into your new office?
ANSWER: It has.

QUESTION: Roughly how many?
ANSWER: Well, it depends on what kind of complaint you're asking about. I get approximately five calls or e-mails a day, with people complaining about e-mail porn spam. I get a lot in that area. On the bookstores and videotapes, and other sexually oriented businesses, I may get an average of maybe five a month. So that hasn't been real high, but most of them have worked pretty well with their local agencies. And that's what I do, working with the local agencies in addressing those issues.

QUESTION: So there have been some prosecutable referrals that you've received.
ANSWER: Right. And I get the calls generally when I've been on a TV show talking about it, or there's been some media thing, where someone can say, “Well, I can call her.” So getting my name out there, and that they can file complaints with me is a big part of what needs to happen here.

QUESTION: Do you handle, or do you intend to handle, at least some prosecutions yourself, or are you generally leaving it to the municipal and county prosecutors who are in place?
ANSWER: My prosecutorial powers are limited to when a local agency asks for assistance. So I have to work with them, and if they want assistance then I will be here to provide whatever type of assistance they need, which may be just research and background kind of information, and then in some cases they may want somebody to help them with the trial.

QUESTION: So you're limited by statute; they have to make the call to ask for your assistance.
ANSWER: Right.

QUESTION: One thing that we've been wondering about here—a prosecutorial instrument called a “generic warrant.” Could you tell us more about that, and whether you intend to promote the use of generic warrants?
ANSWER: Well, I've never called them “generic warrants.” I don't like that term.

QUESTION: Okay, what do you call them instead?
ANSWER: Well, when I talk to people about it, I call it the “Sequoia Book” method. That's what it's based on. The case was out of Illinois, that actually, I read about in your Obscenity Law Bulletin. And they were warrants that they used, and they won in the Supreme Courts, and [we] liked the idea, so we started using them.

QUESTION: Could you describe what a “Sequoia Books” warrant is like? What makes it different from other kinds of warrants?
ANSWER: Traditionally, [in order to get a search warrant], you had to view the material in its entirety, and then do a summary of that for the judge, so the judge is getting the full view of what the material is, to make the determination whether there's “probable cause” to believe that it's obscene or not, that it violates your state's standards, or your community standards.

For example, in our video cases, we would rent five or ten different videos from the obscenity videos that were in the “back room.” And we would go through and do specific warrants on those videos. So they'd be very detailed, listing all of the sex acts, the content, the story line, all of that kind of information in those videos.

And then after we had viewed those, and done those warrants, then we would do another warrant, that would be what we called the Sequoia warrant, and we would do say, “All of these videotapes are together in the same location, they're all on the same list, they're all represented by the person we're renting them from as being the same type of videos, and every one of them have had all of these different sexual explicit acts in them, with no story line, with nothing to indicate that it has any kind of value to it when you view it as a whole, and we have reason to believe, based on that information, that all of those videos will be of the same context and the same type of material.

So what we do is then ask for authority from the court to then search those videos, and that if they have these same type of acts in them, that we have the right to seize them, and so that's how we do it. We take in TVs, VCRs, pop the tape in the machine; if they show any kind of explicit sex acts, we take them, and then do the return to the court.

QUESTION: About how many of these kinds of warrants have you used since you've come into your new office?
ANSWER: No, those were all done when I was at West Valley.

QUESTION: Have other prosecutors in Utah used them? Are you promoting the use of these kinds of warrants?
ANSWER: Definitely.

QUESTION: How often are they using these kinds of warrants?
ANSWER: I have no idea. I know that the prosecutors have told me that they really like the idea of using those, that they intend to use them, but I have no idea if any of them have ever actually used them.

QUESTION: Have other states contacted you or AG Shurtleff about setting up porn czar's offices in their states?
ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Can you say how many?
ANSWER: I'm not sure how many states—I know that Mark Shurtleff has indicated he's had several calls from states on it, and I know that I've talked with at least three different states on it. The representative that sponsored the bill to create my position has now just sent out a letter to all of the State Legislatures encouraging them to adopt the same kind of legislation, with a copy of the legislation and a letter from, I think, the Speaker of the House.

QUESTION: Do you know if there's been any response to that?
ANSWER: He just sent it out this last week.

QUESTION: I understand that you participated in obscenity prosecution workshops in Utah that were given by our Paul McGeady and Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Children and Families. Did you find them useful?
ANSWER: Oh, very useful, yes.

QUESTION: How useful?
ANSWER: Well, on a scale of one to ten, compared to other conferences, a ten. They were much more practical, with the how-to kind of information, and what to deal with, and the issues that you can address, and I just found them to be extremely helpful.

QUESTION: What about the Obscenity Law Bulletin? How useful are you finding the materials from the Law Center?
ANSWER: I find them extremely helpful.

QUESTION: And you're using them in very practical ways.
ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Such as?
ANSWER: Well, that's where the Sequoia Books method came from. We liked it a lot. Just staying up on what all the states are doing, kind of as a guide to know where you're fitting in with everything, because you're always challenged, especially since they've created this position. For me, one of the common things people say is, “Oh, it's just Utah being really conservative and prudish, and it's the influence of the LDS church, it's all these different reasons why we're doing this stuff,” and it's helpful for me to be able to say, “Look, this is what other states are doing across the country. We're not doing anything really unique. Creating the position was unique, but the enforcement itself is not unique.”

QUESTION: Are you there indefinitely? Do you serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General, or the Legislature, or both?
ANSWER: Both! It started out with a six-month allotment of money and that was it.

QUESTION: And there's been enough support to continue the project.
ANSWER: The Legislature gave additional funding to continue it for another year.

QUESTION: And you see the funding continuing.
ANSWER: I do. I think people are satisfied with what's happening, and with the number of calls from citizens, that it's clearly something that people are seeing as a benefit. And then there are always the dissenters, but the majority of the people, I think, find it helpful. They don't know where to go for this kind of help, and a lot of times, your local prosecutors and police don't always know what to do with a lot of these issues. And citizens have a lot of questions on it.

TO CONTACT PAULA HOUSTON:

Utah citizens with questions and obscenity referrals can send them to:

Ms. Paula Houston, Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman
c/o Utah State Attorney General
State Capitol Building, Room 236
Salt Lake City, UT 84114
Phone: 1-801-538-9600
Fax: 1-801-538-1121
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.attygen.state.ut.us/utah_state_attorney_general_obsc.htm

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Prescribing the drug to workers who work long hours “becomes irresponsible. There might be fewer accidents on our highways, but there might also be long-term health consequences” associated with using Provigil “that we aren't anticipating.”
– JED BLACK
Director of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic

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By TIMOTHY GOWER, Special to The Times

It has become a modern cliché: There aren't enough hours in the day. Americans are struggling to balance work and family commitments while trying to find time for a social life and recreation. A growing number of supermarkets, restaurants, gyms and other businesses are accommodating today's 24/7 culture by staying open all night. Not to mention, of course, that the Internet never shuts down. But what if you could do the same?

What if you could take a pill and stretch your day–by skipping sleep?

That sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but a drug called Provigil could make it possible. Studies have shown that this new medication allows people to remain awake and attentive when their bodies normally crave shut-eye, without suffering the unpleasant side effects and risk of addiction associated with caffeine, amphetamines and other stimulants.

Researchers caution that the long-term health consequences of avoiding slumber by taking Provigil, or any drug, aren't well understood.

And the makers of Provigil go out of their way to state that the drug is strictly for patients who feel sleepy during the day due to diagnosed medical disorders. Yet as its reputation grows, doctors may soon find themselves faced with a difficult question: When is sleepiness a sickness?

“This drug is going to bring up some very interesting ethical dilemmas,” says Dr. Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis and an expert on the causes of daytime sleepiness. “Do you prescribe a stimulant medication for someone who is intentionally sleep deprived?”

Currently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Provigil only for the treatment of one condition, narcolepsy, which causes a sudden and uncontrollable urge to sleep. But Cephalon, the West Chester, Pa.-based company that sells Provigil, hopes to win FDA approval within a few years to market the drug as a pick-me-up for people plagued by sleepiness associated with any medical condition. Many doctors in this country already prescribe Provigil “off-label,” that is, for conditions not approved by the FDA (which is a common and perfectly legal practice). Those conditions include depression, sleep apnea, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

What's more, scientists at sleep clinics across the United States are studying whether Provigil can help those working the swing or graveyard shift, who are sometimes diagnosed with a condition known as “shift work disorder.” Symptoms can include insomnia, headaches and an all-around blah feeling, in addition to problems staying focused on the job.

For 20 years, Jane Jaegers has worked the overnight shift as a 911 dispatcher for Santa Clara County–four days a week, 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. The San Jose resident loves the job, but her body has never adjusted to the odd schedule. In the wee hours of the morning, Jaegers says, her attention occasionally drifts during nonemergency calls. If she takes them in time, caffeine pills such as Vivarin and No-Doz help, but they leave Jaegers staring at the ceiling when she goes home and crawls into bed. Constantly exhausted, she has seen her social life suffer. Go to a movie? “As soon as the theater gets dark, I'm gone,” says Jaegers, 55.

In December, Jaegers heard that scientists at the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Stanford University were studying Provigil, whose name is shorthand for “promotes vigilance.” She signed up right away.

Every night before leaving for work, Jaegers takes two small tablets–she calls them “magic pills.” Because half the people participating in the study are receiving placebo tablets, Jaegers can't be sure she's popping Provigil. But she thinks her pills are the real deal. “I just feel more alert,” says Jaegers, who adds that she sleeps soundly these days too. “I'm tickled with the stuff.”

Drug Is Not Classified as a Stimulant

Provigil was developed in France in the 1970s. Although no one is sure how it works, animal studies show that the medication–unlike other drugs that induce wakefulness–doesn't seem to dramatically increase levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with arousal and alertness.

Caffeine and older prescription stimulants buzz the entire central nervous system, causing jitteriness, insomnia and other unwanted effects. When people who use coffee or amphetamines to stay awake finally doze off, they often remain in bed for much longer than usual, their bodies paralyzed by the need for “rebound sleep.” Provigil, meanwhile, seems to target only the part of the brain that keeps us awake. When its effects wear off, the user resumes a normal sleep pattern.

“Provigil isn't considered a stimulant per se, though it has a wakefulness effect,” says Dr. Jed Black, director of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, who is involved in the shift-work study. Although Black says Provigil isn't effective for all patients, it helps many people haunted by daytime sleepiness keep on their toes. While a few users report mild nausea, most don't feel a thing other than awake and alert. When patients switch from older stimulants to Provigil, says Black, they often return to his office and say, “It's not working. I don't feel revved up.” Yet tests usually show that their ability to stay awake is much improved.

Earlier research found that when healthy people take Provigil they are able to stay awake and on the ball for a long, long time. For example, a 1995 Canadian study showed that subjects taking the drug were able to perform well on cognitive tests while remaining awake and in good spirits for two and a half days. In another study, published in 2000, U.S. Army helicopter pilots stayed awake for 40 hours while being called upon periodically to perform maneuvers on a flight simulator. Unmedicated, the aviators became sloppy and made errors in the early morning hours. But while taking Provigil during a second 40-hour marathon, their skills and focus never wavered.

Army psychologist John Caldwell, who conducted the latter study, says more research is needed to determine whether dosing soldiers with Provigil is a safe and effective way to promote alertness. However, he says, it's possible that one day the drug could be used “as an emergency measure to briefly overcome fatigue in 'must-do' missions where total sleep deprivation is unavoidable.”

What About Students and Working Parents?

But aren't many of us faced with our own “must-do missions” from time to time? If Provigil works for soldiers and pilots, won't it do the same for college students cramming for exams? Medical students on 36-hour rotations? Or a working parent with a sick child and a presentation to finish for tomorrow's big meeting with potential investors?

Cephalon spokesman Robert Grupp emphasizes that Cephalon has no plans to market Provigil to the all-nighter crowd. “It's not for people who work too long,” he says. “It's for people with clinical illness.” But as word spreads of Provigil's powers, it seems inevitable that the healthy-but-harried will be intrigued.

“Silicon Valley will go wild over this thing,” says Andy Serwer, a columnist for Fortune magazine who admits to burning a fair amount of midnight oil when he's on deadline. Instead of swigging Jolt cola and espresso, software designers under the gun could simply take Provigil, which costs about $4 per pill–not much more than the price of a double latte.

But would executives pressure their employees to take a pill for the team? Possibly, says Serwer, if they heard that workers at other firms were pulling Provigil-fueled all-nighters. “You would be at a competitive disadvantage if you didn't,” he says.

If any doctors have begun prescribing Provigil to college students and corporate workers under the gun, they're keeping the practice quiet. But Provigil does raise a difficult question for the medical community. What if people who work in positions where sleepiness can endanger themselves and others start asking their doctors for the drug?

Shift Workers Pose Dilemma for Doctors

Take long-haul truckers, for instance. According to federal regulations, they're supposed to take breaks every 10 hours. But many drivers ignore the law, even if it means navigating an 18-wheeler while bleary-eyed. A recent exposé by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel featured an interview with one driver who admitted to being behind the wheel of his big rig for 36 straight hours.

“Do you give that person the medication to keep him awake and not kill himself and a car full of people?” asks Mahowald, of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center. “Or do you as a matter of principle say, 'No, you cannot have this medication because you don't have the proper sleep disorder'? … Quite frankly, in the interest of public safety, I would be tempted to give the individual stimulant medication.”

Not all sleep experts feel that's the right choice. “I think that becomes irresponsible,” says Black. “There might be fewer accidents on our highways, but there might also be long-term health consequences” associated with using Provigil “that we aren't anticipating.” Black says he will only prescribe the drug to people whose sleepiness and fatigue are caused by a medical condition or occur as a side effect from another medication. However, Black, Mahowald and other sleep researchers agree that it's unwise to think Provigil or any pill will make shut-eye optional.

“We don't understand the role sleep plays,” says the Army's Caldwell. “It's a bad idea for anyone to rely on a drug of any description to maintain alertness.”

And yet for Jane Jaegers and other shift workers, Provigil may mean the difference between a zombie-like existence and a normal life. And they represent a huge potential market for Cephalon. The number of shift workers in the United States increases 2% to 3% each year, says David Mitchell, a spokesman for Circadian Technologies, a Lexington, Mass., company that advises firms that want to convert to 24/7 operation.

The nationwide shift-work study should be completed by the end of this year. If the results are promising, perhaps Provigil will one day be found in the medicine cabinets of police officers, firefighters, nurses and other people who work nights. And if that happens, what's to stop the son of a shift worker from asking, “Hey, Dad, I've got a history final on Tuesday–can I bum a Provigil?”

Then again, maybe Junior won't bother asking–the medication is on sale through Internet-based pharmacies based overseas, often marketed as a “smart drug.”

In “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” (Vintage, 2000), author James Gleick writes about our changing notion of time. Reached by e-mail, he was dubious about using a drug to lengthen our days. “In a time-obsessed age, this is the Holy Grail,” said Gleick. “Cheating sleep is the closest thing we have to cheating death.” However, until scientists better understand the phenomenon known as sleep, he was quick to add, “Beware of miracles.”

http://www.sciam.com/2002/0302issue/0302skeptic.html

Hermits and Cranks
Fifty years ago Martin Gardner launched the modern skeptical movement.
Unfortunately, much of what he wrote about is still current today

By MICHAEL SHERMER
………..
PHOTO BY BRAD HINES

Martin Gardner's book In the Name of Science is the bible of the modern
skeptical movement.

In 1950 Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled
“The Hermit Scientist,” about what we would today call pseudoscientists.It
was Gardner's first publication of a skeptical nature (he was the math
games columnist for Scientific American for more than a quarter of a
century). In 1952 he expanded it into a book called In the Name of Science,
with the descriptive subtitle “An entertaining survey of the high priests
and cultists of science, past and present.” Published by Putnam, thebook
sold so poorly that it was quickly remaindered and lay dormant until1957,
when it was republished by Dover. It has come down to us as Fads and
Fallacies in the Name of Science, which is still in print and is arguably
the skeptic classic of the past half a century.

Thankfully, there has been some progress since Gardner offered his first
criticisms of pseudoscience. Now largely antiquated are his chapterson
believers in a flat earth, a hollow earth, Atlantis and Lemuria, Alfred
William Lawson, Roger Babson, Trofim Lysenko, Wilhelm Reich and Alfred
Korzybski. But disturbingly, a good two thirds of the book's contentsare
relevant today, including Gardner's discussions of homeopathy, naturopathy,
osteopathy, iridiagnosis (reading the iris of the eye to determine bodily
malfunctions), food faddists, cancer cures and other forms of medical
quackery, Edgar Cayce, the Great Pyramid's alleged mystical powers,
handwriting analysis, ESP and PK (psychokinesis), reincarnation, dowsing
rods, eccentric sexual theories, and theories of group racial differences.

The “hermit scientist,” a youthful Gardner wrote, works alone and is
ignored by mainstream scientists. “Such neglect, of course, only
strengthens the convictions of the self-declared genius.” But Gardnerwas
wrong by half in his prognostications: “The current flurry of discussion
about Velikovsky and Hubbard will soon subside, and their books willbegin
to gather dust on library shelves.” Adherents to Immanuel Velikovsky's
views on how celestially caused global catastrophes shaped the beliefsof
ancient humans are a quaint few surviving in the interstices of fringe
culture. L. Ron Hubbard, however, has been canonized by the Church of
Scientology as the founding saint of a world religion.

In 1952 Gardner could not have known that the nascent flying saucer craze
would turn into an alien industry: “Since flying saucers were first
reported in 1947, countless individuals have been convinced that theearth
is under observation by visitors from another planet.” Absence of evidence
then was no more a barrier to belief than it is today, and ufologists
proffered the same conspiratorial explanations for the dearth of proof:”I
have heard many readers of the saucer books upbraid the government inno
uncertain terms for its stubborn refusal to release the 'truth' aboutthe
elusive platters. The administration's 'hush hush policy' is angrilycited
as proof that our military and political leaders have lost all faithin the
wisdom of the American people.”

Even then Gardner was bemoaning that some beliefs never seem to go outof
vogue, as he recalled an H. L. Mencken quip from the 1920s: “Heave anegg
out of a Pullman window, and you will hit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere
in the U.S. today.” Gardner cautions that when religious superstition
should be on the wane, it is easy “to forget that thousands of high school
teachers of biology, in many of our southern states, are still afraidto
teach the theory of evolution for fear of losing their jobs.” Today
creationism has spread northward and mutated into the oxymoronic formof
“creation science.”

And the motives of the hermit scientists have not changed either. Gardner
recounts the day that Groucho Marx interviewed Louisiana state senator
Dudley J. LeBlanc about a “miracle” cure-all vitamin-and-mineral tonic
called Hadacol that the senator had invented. When Groucho asked the
senator what it was good for, LeBlanc answered with surprising honesty:”It
was good for five and a half million for me last year.”

What I find especially valuable about Gardner's views are his insightsinto
the differences between science and pseudoscience. On the one extremewe
have ideas that are most certainly false, “such as the dianetic viewthat a
one-day-old embryo can make sound recordings of its mother's conversation.”
In the borderlands between the two “are theories advanced as working
hypotheses, but highly debatable because of the lack of sufficient data.”
Of these Gardner selects a most propitious example: “the theory thatthe
universe is expanding.” That theory would now fall at the other extremeend
of the spectrum, where lie “theories almost certainly true, such as the
belief that the earth is round or that men and beasts are distant cousins.”

How can we tell if someone is a scientific crank? Gardner offers this
advice: (1) “First and most important of these traits is that crankswork
in almost total isolation from their colleagues.” Cranks typically donot
understand how the scientific process operatesthat they need to try out
their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses
in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling
discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their
ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to
accept. (2) “A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly
strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia,” which manifests
itself in several ways:

(1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without
exception, as ignorant blockheads…. (3) He believes himself unjustly
persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuseto
let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore hisbooks
or assign them to “enemies” for review. It is all part of a dastardlyplot.
It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to errorin
his work…. (4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the
greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton wasthe
outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently
anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank
theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein…. (5) He often has a
tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms
and phrases he himself has coined.

We should keep these criteria in mind when we explore controversial ideas
on the borderlands of science. “If the present trend continues,” Gardner
concludes, “we can expect a wide variety of these men, with theoriesyet
unimaginable, to put in their appearance in the years immediately ahead.
They will write impressive books, give inspiring lectures, organize
exciting cults. They may achieve a following of oneor one million. Inany
case, it will be well for ourselves and for society if we are on ourguard
against them.” So we still are, Martin. That is what skeptics do, andin
tribute for all you have done, we shall continue to honor your founding
command.
————————————————————————

The Author

Michael Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com)
and author of How We Believe and The Borderlands of Science.

for a complete analysis and instructions on how to win at blackjack (at least theoretically) see:

Playing Blackjack as a Business by Lawrence Revere (ISBN 0818400641 )

also see Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston (ISBN 0897460685 ) as an aside, the late Ken Uston was a stock broker at the Pacific Exchange before becoming a professional blackjack player.

and for those of you who are easily impressed with credentials and academic degrees in science and engineering see The Gambling Times Guide to Blackjack by Stanley Roberts,Ken Uston,Lance Humble,Jerry Patterson,Arnold Snyder,Edward O. Thorp,Julian Braun, etc. (ISBN 0897460154 ) Thorp was the first who applied probability theory to BJ, Braun was the first who applied computer simulation, etc. etc.

(my note: Ed Thorp is also signed up to be cryopreserved by Alcor).