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The National Institute of Mental Health recently gave $6 million to a consortium of research institutions to conduct experiments on the use of the drug Ritalin on preschoolers who may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Critics worry that researchers will offer money to attract subjects and give parents false hope that their children will be cured. They also worry that the unknown long-term side effects may harm the children. In a story in the February 12 New York Post, LAW Professor Leonard Glantz says, "Obviously, if it's the researchers doing the diagnosis, it is in their interest to diagnose kids with ADHD because they need them for the study. Unlike doctors, researchers don't have the best interest of the patient in mind." The impetus for the study was a March 2000 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that said that about two million children nationwide take Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs, as well as concerns expressed at that time by First Lady Hillary Clinton over this alarming trend.

In a recent study that may shed light on the causes and possible treatment of Alzheimer's disease, researchers have found that U.S. blacks have a far higher incidence of the disease than blacks living in Nigeria. MED Neurology Professor Lindsay Farrer says in the February 14 Seattle Times that the findings "favor the idea that environmental or cultural factors, in concert with genetic predisposition, strongly influence susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease. If modifiable factors such as diet were found conclusively to modulate the risk to the degree suggested by this research, then we would all indeed rejoice at the implications. In the seemingly endless tug-of-war between genetic and nongenetic influences in disease, new emphasis will emerge not only on the environmental factors, but also on the complex interactions between genetic predisposition and environmental triggers."

The February 9 announcement by researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory about a subatomic particle deviating slightly from its expected behavior has drawn attention worldwide. The research, conducted in part by College of Arts and Sciences Physics Professor James Miller, could provide support for such theories as supersymmetry, which hypothesizes that every particle has a much heavier, yet-to-be-observed counterpart. "I would say it's a glimpse or a suggestion that there's supersymmetry out there," says Miller in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger February 9. Physicists caution that the case is not yet proven. Much of physics today is based on the Standard Model of Particle Physics, a complex set of equations that describes how all fundamental forces except gravity interact with known particles. "If you find an experiment that disagrees with it," says Miller, "then that's fairly significant."

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

23 February 2001
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