DON'T MISS
ALEA III, a program of celebration, on Sunday, April 21, at 7 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center
Week of 12 April 2002 · Vol. V, No. 30
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Insight on the News: Codevilla says CIA "fails spectacularly"

In the April 15 "Symposium," in Insight on the News, Angelo Codevilla, a CAS professor of international relations, a former naval and foreign service officer, and a former member of the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the CIA's budget and operations, blasts the CIA, saying it is a "detriment to U.S. national security" and that "through the years, the CIA has done little but fail spectacularly." He cites instances in the past and present of the CIA's "ineptitude, incompetence, gullibility, prejudice, corruption, and self-serving nature," including the agency's ignoring warnings from Czech intelligence in June 2000 about Mohammed Atta's contact with a known Iraqi handler of terrorists and a $100,000 wire transfer to Atta that financed the eventual mission to attack America. For a complete text of Codevilla's comments, go to
http://www.in sightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/221879.html.

Christian Science Monitor: Assur to be dammed

The ruins of Iraq's ancient city of Assur, once the capital of an empire and currently an archaeological window into a key period in the history of human civilization, will soon be under water, reports the April 4 Christian Science Monitor. The ruins lie in the path of a reservoir that will fill when Iraq completes the Makhoul Dam across the Tigris River to provide irrigation to Iraqi farmers. Some archaeologists are calling the loss of the city catastrophic, but Paul Zimansky, a CAS professor of archaeology, sees a more positive outcome. "This is part of a larger pattern in the Near East," he says. "It's not unusual for sites to be flooded. And, in some ways, these are opportunities." He notes that when governments undertake dam projects, it's easier for researchers to get permits and conduct fieldwork because officials want to preserve as much of their country's heritage as possible while meeting developmental goals. Too, Zimansky says, these sites often present young archaeologists with an opportunity for cutting-edge research they might not be able to perform if they focused on Greek or Roman civilizations, which have been exhaustively studied. Still, the loss of Assur and other sites in the surrounding area will be tragic, he says, because "there's an enormous amount of information still in the ground."

Los Angeles Times: Tax deductions for weighty issue

The IRS has recently ruled that people diagnosed as obese will be able to claim a tax deduction for the cost of weight-loss programs associated with treating the disease, says the April 3 Los Angeles Times. In the past, the IRS allowed deductions for weight-loss treatments only when the patient's weight was causing some other ailment, such as hypertension or diabetes. "This is fantastic, important, and significant," says Barbara Corkey, a MED professor of medicine and director of obesity research at Boston Medical Center. "It's time we stopped treating people with this problem like they've been bad, and start treating obesity for the medical condition that it is." The ruling comes four months after the U.S. surgeon general called obesity a national epidemic, affecting roughly 35 percent of adults and 14 percent of children. Corkey says that because most people assume that obesity is caused by overeating - making it a behavioral rather than a medical problem - health insurance and tax benefits available to those with other medical conditions have been denied to the obese. The ruling doesn't specify whether it would also cover gym memberships and exercise equipment.

Wired News: Online doctoring dangerous

Recent research shows that consumers who are frustrated with their prescription medications or physicians' advice are venturing online to explore medical discussion groups and alternative treatments for ailments - and making decisions without telling their doctors, reports Wired News on April 3. A study conducted by BU and MIT researchers, using an online market research technology called ChatMine, examined the highest trafficked online forums. Their major finding: more than half of the online users studied over a six-month period were taking alternative treatments, such as St. John's Wort, instead of, or with, their prescribed medications. And they weren't telling their doctors about it, says Sucharita Gopal, a CAS associate professor of geography and the lead developer of ChatMine. A spokesman for the American Council on Science and Health points out that any change to a person's medical treatments, such as mixing alternative and prescription medications, without consulting a doctor is "a dangerous situation."
       

12 April 2002
Boston University
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