Times: Science Concludes You and All of Your Friends Should Stop Smoking

It's so important to stop the massacre of 400,000 Americans each years that is caused by the cigarette corporations.

Now the Times says that quitting in clusters, social groups, is the most effective way.

So get together with two friends and quit today!

For Smokers, Quitting Is Tied to Social Circles
By GINA KOLATA

For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision.

Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting — quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit.

The study, by Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, followed thousands of smokers and nonsmokers for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003, studying them as part of a large network of relatives, co-workers, neighbors, friends and friends of friends.

It was a time when the percentage of adult smokers in the United States fell to 21 percent from 45 percent. As the investigators watched the smokers and their social networks, they saw what they said was a striking effect — smokers had formed little social clusters and, as the years went by, entire clusters of smokers were stopping en masse. So were clusters of clusters that were only loosely connected.

Dr. Christakis described watching the vanishing clusters as like lying on your back in a field, looking up at stars that were burning out. “It’s not like one little star turning off at a time,” he said. “Whole constellations are blinking off at once.”

As cluster after cluster of smokers disappeared, those that remained were pushed to the margins of society, isolated, with fewer friends, fewer social connections. “Smokers used to be the center of the party,” Dr. Fowler said, “but now they’ve become wallflowers.”

“We’ve known smoking was bad for your physical health,” he said. “But this shows it also is bad for your social health.”

Smokers, he said, “are likely to drive friends away.” more>>>>

Scientists Searching for the Mechanisms of Wisdom

Just what is wisdom? An absolutely provocative inquiry in the Times Science Section.

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain
By SARA REISTAD-LONG

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.”

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.

“For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”

Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others’ yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker’s real impact.

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

In a 2003 study at Harvard, Dr. Carson and other researchers tested students’ ability to tune out irrelevant information when exposed to a barrage of stimuli. The more creative the students were thought to be, determined by a questionnaire on past achievements, the more trouble they had ignoring the unwanted data. A reduced ability to filter and set priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute to original thinking.

This phenomenon, Dr. Carson said, is often linked to a decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Studies have found that people who suffered an injury or disease that lowered activity in that region became more interested in creative pursuits.

Jacqui Smith, a professor of psychology and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the current research, said there was a word for what results when the mind is able to assimilate data and put it in its proper place — wisdom.

“These findings are all very consistent with the context we’re building for what wisdom is,” she said. “If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they’re then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they’re going to have a nice advantage.

Washington Post: Women Who Quit Cigarettes Live Longer

My mom passed away 8 years ago - killed by cigarettes.

If you smoke, please quit and live.

Women Who Quit Smoking Lower Heart Risks Quickly
By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- New research shows that women who quit smoking have a 21 percent lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease within five years of extinguishing their last cigarette.

The risks of dying from other conditions also decline after quitting, although the time frame varies depending on the disease.

"The harms of smoking are reversible and can decline to the level of nonsmokers," said study author Stacey Kenfield, whose report is in the May 7 issue of theJournal of the American Medical Association. "For some conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it can take more than 20 years, but there is a rapid reduction for others."

"It's never too early to stop, and it's never too late to stop," added Kenfield, who is a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Not only does tobacco smoke cause lung cancer, it is also implicated in heart disease, other cancers and respiratory diseases.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 3 million people in industrialized countries will have died as a result of tobacco use by 2030, and an additional 7 million people in developing countries face the same fate.

This research is a continued follow-up on the Nurses' Health Study, a large trial involving more than 100,000 women. Scientists now have 22 years of data on the participants.

Current smokers had almost triple the risk of overall death compared with women who had never smoked.

Current smokers also had a 63 percent increased risk for colon cancer compared with never-smokers, while former smokers had a 23 percent increased risk. There was no significant association between smoking and ovarian cancer.

And women who started smoking earlier in life were at a higher risk for overall mortality, of dying from respiratory disease and from any smoking-related disease.

However, a smoker's overall risk of dying returned to the level of a never-smoker 20 years after quitting. The overall risk declined 13 percent within the first five years of abstaining.

Most of the excess risk of dying from coronary heart disease vanished within five years of quitting.

For chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the return to normal took almost 20 years, although there was an 18 percent reduction in the risk of death seen within five to 10 years after quitting.

And the risk for lung cancer didn't return to normal for 30 years after quitting, although there was a 21 percent reduction in risk within the first five years compared with women who continued to smoke.

Many previous studies on tobacco use had focused on men and on lung cancer, the authors stated. They also only looked at smoking status at the beginning of the study. "We got smoking information every two years, so we feel we have a more accurate estimate of current and past smoking," Kenfield said. "We saw increased risks for current smokers [than previous studies], and we think that's because we know who the current smokers are."

"This shows the power of quitting smoking," said Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "We've known this for a number of years, but the beauty of this study is it is a very large and well-studied group of people. When I tell people to quit smoking, I say the effect of the heart precedes that of the lungs. If you've smoked, you need to be cognizant that you're still at an increased risk of lung cancer."

More information

Visit the American Lung Association for more on women and smoking.

SOURCES: Stacey A. Kenfield, Sc.D., postdoctoral research fellow, department of epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; Jay Brooks, M.D., chairman, hematology/oncology, Ochsner Health System, Baton Rouge, La.; May 7, 2008,Journal of the American Medical Association

Columbia Dean Coatsworth: "Sure I would have invited Hitler to Speak."

It's in the ABC News interview video but not in the printed story.

This guy has been fully appointed on April 29, 2008. He is no longer acting dean.

Columbia Dean Coatsworth is one sick puppy.

Of course when I hear an academic espouse admiration for Hitler I immediately assume he has a Harvard connection. Harvard invited the nazis onto campus from their ships out in the harbor prior to the war.

Here is what his bio at SIPA has to say about his Harvard connection:

At Harvard, he served as the founding director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies from its creation in 1994 until 2006. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies.

Aha. Suspicions confirmed. This buddy is new to Columbia, fresh from Harvard.

What a disgrace.

Nextbook: Gershom Scholem Diaries Reveal Cult of Friendship with Walter Benjamin

A new book and a tantalizing review....

...That is why the publication of Scholem’s youthful diaries by Harvard University Press, under the apt title Lamentations of Youth, comes as such a revelation. These passionate, tumultuous, deeply moving journals document the most important phase of Scholem’s life—the years 1913 to 1919, as he grew from a fifteen-year-old boy into a twenty-one-year-old man. This was the period when Scholem first discovered the subjects and ideas that would consume his adult life; it is also when he first became acquainted with Benjamin, and established the cult of friendship that would last until his death. To look on as Scholem evolves his highly personal understanding of Judaism and Zionism is like watching a painter lay down the first tentative strokes of what will become a masterpiece.

BBC: Cigarette-Holcaust Kills 5 Million People Every Year

It is a disgrace that we allow this to continue year after year.

BBC NEWS: Smoking 'kills five million a year'

Almost five million people died from smoking-related diseases across the world in 2000, researchers estimate.

A study published in The Lancet found that for the first time, deaths from smoking that year were as high in the developing world as in industrialised countries.

Over three-quarters of deaths among smokers worldwide were among men.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston say the only way to stop deaths increasing is to improve education and prevention work.

They looked at smoking deaths globally, including the developing world, where an estimated 930m of the world's 1.1 billion smokers live.

The researchers estimated that there were 4.83m premature deaths from smoking in 2000 - 2.41m in developing countries and 2.4m in industrialised countries.

In developing countries, 84% of deaths were among men.

Increase expected

Cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of death, killing 1.69m people, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (970,000) and lung cancer (850,000).

The researchers used US data on deaths from lung cancer as an indication of smoking-related risk, plus data from 125 individual countries.

Dr Majid Ezzati from Harvard School of Public Health, said an accumulation of the health risks of smoking plus population growth and ageing would mean smoking-related deaths in developing countries would increase over coming decades.

He said: "Mortality as a result of smoking will rise substantially unless effective interventions and policies that curb and reduce smoking among men and prevent increases among women in these countries are implemented."

Amanda Sandford of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health told BBC News Online there were a number of factors involved in the increase in smoking-related deaths in developing countries.

"Partly it's because in a growing population, so there are more people are smoking.

"But it also stems back to the actions of the tobacco companies,

"They are aggressively marketing their products to developing countries.

"I think we'll be seeing this until the countries themselves put a stop to it."

Ms Sandford added education and prevention measures were essential to reduce smoking-related deaths.

Global killers
Cardiovascular disease - 12m a year
Cancer - 6.2m a year
HIV/Aids - 3m a year
TB - 2m a year
Malaria - 1m

Times: Harvard Muslim Students' Complaints

You know that Harvard is a secular university. You are a fundamentalist Muslim and yet you enroll at Harvard. Then you decide to complain.

There is no Islamic law that says that Islamic women must work out in a Harvard gym. Indeed the consensus among Imams I am sure is that Harvard is the Muslim equivalent of treyf.

Solutions: Don't go to Harvard. Don't go to the Harvard gym (there are others). Wear modest clothes when you work out. (You've heard of the Burqini, haven't you? See picture.) Wear normal workout clothes and let the men worry about temptation.

Aside: Why is there no Islamic University in the US? Lack of money. I think not. Something to ponder.

At Harvard, Students’ Muslim Traditions Are a Topic of Debate
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two issues of Muslim practice — whether the call to prayer should ring out across Harvard Yard and whether the university should grant women separate gym hours — have unleashed small waves of controversy over how Harvard practices tolerance.

Heated discussions have erupted on dormitory chat rooms, students said, while various opinion articles in the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, have denounced both practices.

“I think that because Harvard is a secular campus, there is a fear among some students that religious beliefs or practices might be imposed on people who don’t want anything to do with them,” said Jessa Birdsall, a 20-year-old sophomore who said she thought the university should accommodate the beliefs of all students.

The debate began in early February, when the undergraduate college restricted one of the three largest gyms on its main campus, the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center, to women only on Mondays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Tuesdays and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The college spokesman, Robert Mitchell, would not describe how the decision was reached, but various students said a small group of Muslim women undergraduates living in the Leverett House dormitory asked for the change.

The group of women felt that workout clothes violated the Muslim prescription that both sexes wear modest dress in shared environments. So they asked that the dormitory set aside its mini gyms for women a few hours each week. The request eventually made its way to the Harvard College Women’s Center and it was decided that the Quadrangle center, which Mr. Mitchell called the college’s least-used athletic facility, would be restricted to women only at certain times. He said the change was an experiment that would be re-evaluated in June.

The second controversy occurred after the adhan, or call to prayer, was once again broadcast across Harvard Yard at noon from the steps of the Widener Library for several days late last month. The broadcast was part of Islam Awareness Week, sponsored by the Muslim student club, the Harvard Islamic Society.

On March 13, an op-ed article by three graduate students denounced the practice, which has been going on for several years. They wrote that while pluralism was fine, the adhan espouses Muslim intolerance toward other faiths by stating that the Prophet Muhammad is God’s messenger. Calling it proselytizing, the op-ed article said, “The adhan, it seems, is the exception to Harvard’s unspoken rule of religious tolerance and respect.”

The arguments over both issues boiled down to whether Harvard was being admirably tolerant or was disrupting the lives of everyone to placate a vocal minority.

Rauda Tellawi, a 21-year-old senior who veils her hair, said that the animated arguments about the gym hours that unrolled on her dorm’s in-house chat room noted that even some men felt intimidated by the presence of women in the gym if they were, say, not bench-pressing as much as a buddy. Ms. Tellawi said she habitually left the gym if men were hovering nearby while she ran or did sit-ups.

“Even if you have loose clothing on, they are going to see things that we are not supposed to let them see,” she said, adding, “Islam doesn’t encourage you to physically lie down in front of men.”

Ms. Tellawi did not consider it discriminatory to set aside some hours at the gym for women. Instead, she views it as a healthy accommodation. She noted that students who follow kosher eating rules have a separate area in her dining hall and said that some non-Muslim women also supported the separate gym hours.

The new system has been criticized for not attracting enough women to warrant separate hours, and several students said perhaps only 15 people use the center during peak periods at night, despite the fact that it offered its own locker rooms, squash and basketball courts, weights and aerobic machines.

Nicholas J. Wells, a junior who used to work out in the morning, said he thought the change was “unfair to men and inconvenient for women.” While he was all for supporting Muslim women, he said there had to be a more practical way so that Quad residents did not lose access to their main gym.

A junior, Lucy M. Caldwell, echoed those arguments. She criticized the hours for women only as too drastic an accommodation to make for a religious minority, dismissing the idea that many non-Muslim women supported it.

When word of the new gym hours became public, Harvard was attacked in the blogosphere for being a bastion of liberalism run amok.

As to the call to prayer, Muslim students said the adhan was a basic statement of their creed and had nothing to do with denying other faiths. The debate focused mostly on whether Muslims were getting a right denied to people of other religions.

One student wrote in the comments section of The Crimson’s Web site that Harvard Yard was not a comparative religion class, while another said if students could romp there naked and urinate on the statue of John Harvard, surely forbearance toward other cultures was warranted.

Many students seemed oblivious to either issue, saying they were preoccupied with midterm examinations.

Taha Abdul-Basser, the Muslim chaplain at Harvard, said both episodes were indicative of the growing number of Muslims in the United States.

“There are some people who are not just comfortable that Muslims, by virtue of the change of demographics, are going to become more and more visible,” he said.

Yeshiva University Shoots Self in Foot - Dis-Invites Ari Goldman

Shame. Ari Goldman, a true YU success story and a contemporary of mine at YC, was dis-invited last summer from speaking at the campus. Why? Because somebody says that now he is trayf? Oy vey. Rabbis have gone wild.

Caution: These Ideas Are Too Dangerous For Today's Yeshiva
Ari Goldman

Over the summer I got a call from the Office of Student Life inviting me to spend a Shabbat on the Wilf Campus to give talks on Friday night and Shabbat. I have a firm policy when it comes to Yeshiva: I never say no. I am a proud and loyal graduate and will always do what I can to help the school. Over the years, I have been a guest speaker in many classes in the college and I was even a scholar-in-residence at Stern for a semester in 2003. We picked the weekend of Nov. 30-Dec. 1 for my Shabbat visit. I was also looking forward to connecting with today's yeshiva students.

My visit never happened. The day before I was supposed to go, I got a call from my hosts at the Office of Student Life informing me that there was a "problem" with my appearance. Apparently some students had copied pages from my memoir "The Search for God at Harvard" (first published in 1991) in which I wrote about pre-marital sex and chilul Shabbat, two things that I indeed discussed but never endorsed. A debate was raging on campus about whether I was an appropriate speaker. The matter was taken to one of the roshei yeshiva who deemed me trayf....more

Now Goldman publishes his thoughtful not-given-speech in the student newspaper.

Bang, bang. Yeshiva shoots itself in the foot again.

Ill Timed Junket Cruise for Yeshiva University Administrators

Bad timing at best.

Whilst major universities are under investigation for scandals in their overseas programs, two top administrators at Yeshiva University are advertising their junkets aboard a cruise ship to Europe.

Received in an email from Alumni Office :

Set sail aboard the Costa Concordia

with Yeshiva University's

President Richard M. Joel and

Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter

June 29-July 6, 2008

Hosted by Lasko Family and Suite Life Cruisesunder the kosher supervision of the London Beit Din

Explore the rich heritage and Jewish historical significance of sites in Rome, Sicily, Malta, Tunis, Barcelona and more. For more information, please visit www.slkosher.com/kosher_cruise_spain_and_italy.aspx or contact xxxxxxx.

The Cruise line web site informs us: "Special Guests: Yeshiva University President Richard M. Joel & Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter"

Unfortunately coming close upon the heels of this news story:

College study abroad is corrupt, subpoenas say

News | Sabrina Porter

Fifteen university study abroad offices have been charged with traveling too much, not from their home countries, but rather, from the law. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued subpoenas to these colleges and universities for entertaining corrupt alliances with specific third-party programs.

Subpoenas were issued to three third-party programs in August and September, and the investigation continued last Friday at several college and universities. The list of colleges in question includes Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and Brown universities, among others.

Of the 15 colleges and universities questioned, only Alfred State University publicly acknowledged its subpoena. Alfred State’s list of associations with third-party providers included the three first targeted by Cuomo. Although the subpoenas were issued last Friday, most of the colleges and universities have not yet revealed the exact contents of the subpoena nor publicly acknowledged their acceptance....

Don't blame me - Business Week asks, Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?

I sure as heck don't know the answer. But as predicted by me yesterday (and by who knows how many others) because of the Vytorin-Zetia scandal, the whole cholesterol-to-coronary-artery-disease connection is now fair game for skeptics. A BW Cover Story ---

Cover Story January 17, 2008
Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?
Research suggests that, except among high-risk heart patients, the benefits of statins such as Lipitor are overstated

Martin Winn's cholesterol level was inching up. Cycling up hills, he felt chest pain that might have been angina. So he and his doctor decided he should be on a cholesterol-lowering medication called a statin. He was in good company. Such drugs are the best-selling medicines in history, used by more than 13 million Americans and an additional 12 million patients around the world, producing $27.8 billion in sales in 2006. Half of that went to Pfizer (PFE) for its leading statin, Lipitor. Statins certainly performed as they should for Winn, dropping his cholesterol level by 20%. "I assumed I'd get a longer life," says the retired machinist in Vancouver, B.C., now 71. But here the story takes a twist. Winn's doctor, James M. Wright, is no ordinary family physician. A professor at the University of British Columbia, he is also director of the government-funded Therapeutics Initiative, whose purpose is to pore over the data on particular drugs and figure out how well they work. Just as Winn started on his treatment, Wright's team was analyzing evidence from years of trials with statins and not liking what it found.

Yes, Wright saw, the drugs can be life-saving in patients who already have suffered heart attacks, somewhat reducing the chances of a recurrence that could lead to an early death. But Wright had a surprise when he looked at the data for the majority of patients, like Winn, who don't have heart disease. He found no benefit in people over the age of 65, no matter how much their cholesterol declines, and no benefit in women of any age. He did see a small reduction in the number of heart attacks for middle-aged men taking statins in clinical trials. But even for these men, there was no overall reduction in total deaths or illnesses requiring hospitalization—despite big reductions in "bad" cholesterol. "Most people are taking something with no chance of benefit and a risk of harm," says Wright. Based on the evidence, and the fact that Winn didn't actually have angina, Wright changed his mind about treating him with statins—and Winn, too, was persuaded. "Because there's no apparent benefit," he says, "I don't take them anymore."

Wait a minute. Americans are bombarded with the message from doctors, companies, and the media that high levels of bad cholesterol are the ticket to an early grave and must be brought down. Statins, the message continues, are the most potent weapons in that struggle. The drugs are thought to be so essential that, according to the official government guidelines from the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), 40 million Americans should be taking them. Some researchers have even suggested—half-jokingly—that the medications should be put in the water supply, like fluoride for teeth. Statins are sold by Merck (MRK) (Mevacor and Zocor), AstraZeneca (AZN) (Crestor), and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) (Pravachol) in addition to Pfizer. And it's almost impossible to avoid reminders from the industry that the drugs are vital. A current TV and newspaper campaign by Pfizer, for instance, stars artificial heart inventor and Lipitor user Dr. Robert Jarvik. The printed ad proclaims that "Lipitor reduces the risk of heart attack by 36%...in patients with multiple risk factors for heart disease."

So how can anyone question the benefits of such a drug?

For one thing, many researchers harbor doubts about the need to drive down cholesterol levels in the first place. Those doubts were strengthened on Jan. 14, when Merck and Schering-Plough (SGP) revealed results of a trial in which one popular cholesterol-lowering drug, a statin, was fortified by another, Zetia, which operates by a different mechanism. The combination did succeed in forcing down patients' cholesterol further than with just the statin alone. But even with two years of treatment, the further reductions brought no health benefit.

DOING THE MATH

The second crucial point is hiding in plain sight in Pfizer's own Lipitor newspaper ad. The dramatic 36% figure has an asterisk. Read the smaller type. It says: "That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."

Now do some simple math. The numbers in that sentence mean that for every 100 people in the trial, which lasted 3 1/3 years, three people on placebos and two people on Lipitor had heart attacks. The difference credited to the drug? One fewer heart attack per 100 people. So to spare one person a heart attack, 100 people had to take Lipitor for more than three years. The other 99 got no measurable benefit. Or to put it in terms of a little-known but useful statistic, the number needed to treat (or NNT) for one person to benefit is 100.

Compare that with, say, today's standard antibiotic therapy to eradicate ulcer-causing H. pylori stomach bacteria. The NNT is 1.1. Give the drugs to 11 people, and 10 will be cured.

A low NNT is the sort of effective response many patients expect from the drugs they take. When Wright and others explain to patients without prior heart disease that only 1 in 100 is likely to benefit from taking statins for years, most are astonished. Many, like Winn, choose to opt out.

Plus, there are reasons to believe the overall benefit for many patients is even less than what the NNT score of 100 suggests. That NNT was determined in an industry-sponsored trial using carefully selected patients with multiple risk factors, which include high blood pressure or smoking. In contrast, the only large clinical trial funded by the government, rather than companies, found no statistically significant benefit at all. And because clinical trials themselves suffer from potential biases, results claiming small benefits are always uncertain, says Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a longtime drug industry critic. "Anything over an NNT of 50 is worse than a lottery ticket; there may be no winners," he argues. Several recent scientific papers peg the NNT for statins at 250 and up for lower-risk patients, even if they take it for five years or more. "What if you put 250 people in a room and told them they would each pay $1,000 a year for a drug they would have to take every day, that many would get diarrhea and muscle pain, and that 249 would have no benefit? And that they could do just as well by exercising? How many would take that?" asks drug industry critic Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman, professor of clinical medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Drug companies and other statin proponents readily concede that the number needed to treat is high. "As you calculated, the NNT does come out to about 100 for this study," said Pfizer representatives in a written response to questions. But statin promoters have several counterarguments. First, they insist that a high NNT doesn't always mean a drug shouldn't be widely used. After all, if millions of people are taking statins, even the small benefit represented by an NNT over 100 would mean thousands of heart attacks are prevented.

That's a legitimate point, and it raises a tough question about health policy. How much should we spend on preventative steps, such as the use of statins or screening for prostate cancer, that end up benefiting only a small percentage of people? "It's all about whether we think the population is what matters, in which case we should all be on statins, or the individual, in which case we should not be," says Dr. Peter Trewby, consultant physician at Darlington Memorial Hospital in Britain. "What is of great value to the population can be of little benefit to the individual." Think about buying a raffle ticket for a community charity. It's for a good cause, but you are unlikely to win the prize.

Statin proponents also argue that when NNTs are calculated after the drugs have been taken for just three or five years, they're misleadingly high. Pfizer says that even though only one heart attack was prevented per 100 people in its trial, "it may be a possibility that several or even all [100] benefit" by reducing their risk of a future heart attack. And the benefit grows when the drugs are taken for more years, backers believe. "It does not make sense to take a statin for five years," says Dr. Scott M. Grundy, chair of the NCEP committee that called for more aggressive statin treatment and director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "When you take a cholesterol-lowering drug, it is a huge commitment," he says. "You take it for life." Grundy figures the chances of having a heart attack over the course of a lifetime are about 30% to 50% (higher for men than women). Statins, he argues, reduce that risk by about 30%. As a result, taking the drugs for 30 years or more would bring 9 to 15 fewer heart attacks for every 100 people. So only 7 to 11 people would have to take the drugs for life for one to benefit.

Critics reply that this rosier picture requires several leaps of faith. A 30% reduction in heart attacks "is the best-case scenario and not found in many of the studies," says Wright. What's more, statins have been in use now for 20 years, and there's little evidence yet that the NNT decreases the longer people take the drug. Most important, the statin trials of people without existing heart disease showed no reduction in deaths or serious health events, despite the small drop in heart attacks. "We should tell patients that the reduced cardiovascular risk will be replaced by other serious illnesses," says Dr. John Abramson, clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and author of Overdosed America.

LIFESTYLE CHANGES

In its written response, Pfizer did not challenge this key assertion: that the drugs do not reduce deaths or serious illness in those without heart disease. Instead, the company repeated that statins reduce the "risk of death from coronary events" and added that Wright's analysis was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

If we knew for sure that a medicine was completely safe and inexpensive, then its widespread use would be a no-brainer, even with a high NNT of 100. But an estimated 10% to 15% of statin users suffer side effects, including muscle pain, cognitive impairments, and sexual dysfunction. And the widespread use of statins comes at the cost of billions of dollars a year, not just for the drugs but also for doctors' visits, cholesterol screening, and other tests. Since health-care dollars are finite, "resources are not going to interventions that might be of benefit," says Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine.

What would work better? Perhaps urging people to switch to a Mediterranean diet or simply to eat more fish. In several studies, both lifestyle changes brought greater declines in heart attacks than statins, though the trials were too small to be completely persuasive. Being physically fit is also important. "The things that really work are lifestyle, exercise, diet, and weight reduction," says UCLA's Hoffman. "They still have a big NNT, but the cost is much less than drugs and they have benefits for quality of life."

Difficult risk-benefit questions surround most drugs, not just statins. One dirty little secret of modern medicine is that many drugs work only in a minority of people. "There's a tendency to assume drugs work really well, but people would be surprised by the actual magnitude of the benefits," says Dr. Steven Woloshin, associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School.

A good example: Beta-blockers are seen as essential in treating congestive heart failure. Yet studies show that an average of 24 people must take the drugs for seven months to prevent one hospitalization from heart failure (thus, an NNT of 24). And 40 people must take it to prevent one death (NNT of 40). "Even for medications we consider effective, we see NNTs in the 20s or higher," says Dr. Henry C. Barry, associate professor of family medicine at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

For many other drugs, the NNTs are large. Take Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) drug for preventing the deadly progression of diabetes. The blockbuster, with $2.6 billion in U.S. sales in 2006, made headlines in 2007 when an analysis of clinical trial data showed it increased the risk of heart attacks. The largely untold story: There's little evidence the drug actually helps patients. Yes, Avandia is very good at lowering blood sugar, just as statins lower cholesterol levels. But that doesn't translate into preventing the dire consequences of diabetes, including heart disease, strokes, and kidney failure. Clinical trials "failed to find a significant reduction in cardiovascular events even with excellent glucose control," wrote Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, chair of the Food & Drug Administration committee that evaluated Avandia, in a recent commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine. "Avandia is almost the poster child for everything wrong with our system," says UCLA's Hoffman. "Its NNT is close to infinite."

Regarding Avandia, Dr. Murray Stewart, Glaxo's vice-president for clinical development, says that the evidence of its benefits against heart disease and other major complications of diabetes "is still inconclusive." But the drug has other benefits, he argues, such as delaying the need to take insulin.

When other medications widely believed to be effective were put to the test of a clinical trial, they flunked. Hormone replacement therapy didn't protect against heart disease. Anti-psychotic drugs were actually less effective than a placebo in reducing aggression in patients with intellectual disability.

The truth about drugs' effectiveness wouldn't be as worrisome if consumers and doctors had an accurate picture of the state of knowledge and could make rational decisions about treatments. Studies by Darlington Hospital's Trewby, UBC's Wright, and others, however, show that patients expect far more than what the drugs actually deliver.

Why the mismatch? Some of the blame goes to the way results are presented. A 36% decline in heart attacks sounds more dramatic and important than an NNT of 100. "It comes as a shock to see the NNT," says Dr. Barnett S. Kramer, director of the office of medical applications of research at the National Institutes of Health. Drug companies take full advantage of this; they advertise the big percentage drops in, say, heart attacks, while obscuring the NNT. But when it comes to side effects, they flip-flop the message, dismissing concerns by saying only 1 in 100 people suffers a side effect, even if that represents a 50% increase. "Many physicians don't know the NNT," says Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a fan of using NNTs.

The whole statin story is a classic case of good drugs pushed too far, argues Dr. Howard Brody, professor of family medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The drug business is, after all, a business. Companies are supposed to boost sales and returns to shareholders. The problem they face, though, is that many drugs are most effective in relatively small subgroups of sufferers. With statins, these are the patients who already have heart disease. But that's not a blockbuster market. So companies have every incentive to market their drugs as being essential for wider groups of people, for whom the benefits are, by definition, smaller. "What the shrewd marketing people at Pfizer and the other companies did was spin it to make everyone with high cholesterol think they really need to reduce it," says Dr. Bryan A. Liang, director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at the California Western School of Law and co-director of the San Diego Center for Patient Safety. "It was pseudo-science, never telling you the bottom-line truth, [which is] that the drugs don't help unless you have pre-existing cardiovascular disease." The marketing worked, Liang says, "even in the face of studies and people screaming and yelling, myself included, that it is not based on evidence."

Pfizer replies that the industry is "highly regulated" and that every message in ads and marketing "accurately reflects Lipitor's labeling and the data from the clinical trials."

Drugmakers, however, do make sure that the researchers and doctors who extol the benefits of medications are well compensated. "It's almost impossible to find someone who believes strongly in statins who does not get a lot of money from industry," says Dr. Rodney A. Hayward, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. The NCEP's 2004 guideline update garnered headlines by recommending lower targets for bad cholesterol, which would put more Americans on the drugs. But there was also a heated controversy in the medical community over the fact that 8 of the 9 experts on the panel had financial ties to industry. "The guideline process went awry," says Michigan State's Barry. He and 34 other experts sent a petition of protest to the National Institutes of Health, saying the evidence was weak and the panel members were biased by their ties to companies.

EASY METRICS

The appearance of conflict of interest is "very important to organizations like ours, and we are all taking it seriously," responds NIH official and NCEP coordinator Dr. James I. Cleeman. "But the facts of the science were entirely correct."

Yet Cleeman's confidence is not universally shared. To statin critics, Americans have come to rely too much on easy-to-grasp health markers. People like to have a metric, such as cholesterol levels, that can be monitored and altered. "Once you tell people a number, they will be fixated on the number and try to get it better," says University of Texas' Brody. Moreover, "the American cultural norm is that doing something makes us feel better than just watching and waiting," says Barry. That applies to doctors as well. They are being pushed by the national guidelines, by patients' own requests, and by pay-for- performance rules that reward physicians for checking and reducing cholesterol. "I bought into it," Brody says. Not to do so is almost impossible, he adds. "If a physician suggested not checking a cholesterol level, many patients would stomp out of the office claiming the guy was a quack."

Yet Brody changed his mind. "I now see it as myth that everyone should have their cholesterol checked," he says. "In hindsight it was obvious. Duh! Why didn't I see it before?"

Cholesterol is just one of the risk factors for coronary disease. Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Oakland Research Institute, explains that higher LDL levels do help set the stage for heart disease by contributing to the buildup of plaque in arteries. But something else has to happen before people get heart disease. "When you look at patients with heart disease, their cholesterol levels are not that [much] higher than those without heart disease," he says. Compare countries, for example. Spaniards have LDL levels similar to Americans', but less than half the rate of heart disease. The Swiss have even higher cholesterol levels, but their rates of heart disease are also lower. Australian aborigines have low cholesterol but high rates of heart disease.

Moreover, says MSU's Barry, cholesterol-lowering medications other than statins "do not prevent heart attacks or strokes." Take Zetia, which blocks absorption of cholesterol from the intestines. Marketed by Merck and Schering-Plough, the drug brought in $1.5 billion in 2006, with sales climbing 25% in the first half of 2007, says IMS Health (RX). The companies combined it with a statin to create a drug called Vytorin, with over $2 billion in sales in 2007.

In an eagerly awaited trial completed in 2006, the companies compared Zetia plus a statin with a statin alone in patients with genetically high cholesterol. But the drugmakers delayed announcing the results, prompting scientific outrage and the threat of a congressional investigation. The results, finally revealed on Jan. 14, showed the combination of Zetia and a statin reduced LDL levels more than the statin alone. But that didn't bring added benefits. In fact, the patients' arteries thickened more when taking the combination than with the statin alone. Skip Irvine, a spokesman for the joint venture, says the study was small and insists there's a "strong relationship between lowering LDL cholesterol and reducing cardiovascular death."

IRRELEVANT LDL?

If cholesterol lowering itself isn't a panacea, why is it that statins do work for people with existing heart disease? In his laboratory at the Vascular Medicine unit of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. James K. Liao began pondering this question more than a decade ago. The answer, he suspected, was that statins have other biological effects.

Since then, Liao and his team have proved this theory. First, a bit of biochemistry. Statin drugs work by bollixing up the production of a substance that gets turned into cholesterol in the liver, thus reducing levels in the blood. But the same substance turns out to be a building block for other key chemicals as well. Think of a toy factory in which the same plastic is fashioned into toy cars, trucks, and trains. Reducing production of the plastic cuts not only the output of toy cars (cholesterol) but also trucks and trains. In the body, these additional products are signaling molecules that tell genes to turn on or off, causing both side effects and benefits.

Liao has charted some of these biochemical pathways. His recent work shows that one of the trucks, as it were—a molecule called Rho-kinase—is key. By reducing the amount of this enzyme, statins dial back damaging inflammation in arteries. When Liao knocks down the level of Rho-kinase in rats, they don't get heart disease. "Cholesterol lowering is not the reason for the benefit of statins," he concludes.

The work also offers a possible explanation of why that benefit is mainly seen in people with existing heart disease and not in those who only have elevated cholesterol. Being relatively healthy, their Rho-kinase levels are normal, so there is little inflammation. But when people smoke or get high blood pressure, their Rho-kinase levels rise. Statins would return those levels closer to normal, counteracting the bad stuff.

Add it all together, and "current evidence supports ignoring LDL cholesterol altogether," says the University of Michigan's Hayward. In a country where cholesterol lowering is usually seen as a matter of life and death, these are fighting words. A prominent heart disease physician and statin booster fumed at a recent meeting that "Hayward should be held accountable in a court of law for doing things to kill people," Hayward recounts. NECP's Cleeman adds that, in his view, the evidence against Hayward is overwhelming.

But while the new analyses may rile those who have built careers around the need to reduce LDL, they also point the way to using statins more effectively. Surprisingly, both sides in the debate agree on the general approach. For anyone worried about heart disease, the first step should always be a better diet and increased physical activity. Do that, and "we would cut the number of people at risk so dramatically" that far fewer drugs would be needed, says Krauss. For those people who still might benefit from treatment, a recent analysis by Hayward shows that statins might better be prescribed based on patients' risk of heart disease, not on their LDL cholesterol levels. The higher the risk, the better the drugs seem to work. "If two patients have the same risk, the evidence says they get the same benefit from statins, whatever their LDL levels," Hayward says.

Ways to fine-tune this approach may be coming soon. The company that first sequenced the human genome, Celera Group (CRA), has found a genetic variation that predicts who benefits from the drugs. Perhaps 60% of the population has it, says Dr. John Sninsky, vice-president of discovery research, and for everyone else, the NNT is sky-high. "It does not relate at all to your cholesterol level," Sninsky adds.

If the drugs were used more rationally, drugmakers would take a hit. But the nation's health and pocketbook might be better off. Could it happen? Will data on NNTs, the weak link to cholesterol, and knowledge of genetic variations change what doctors do and what patients believe? Not until the country changes the incentives in health care, says UCLA's Hoffman. "The way our health-care system runs, it is not based on data, it is based on what makes money."

JTA: Cholent by Kugel is Top Banana

'How to Read the Bible' wins top honor

JTA- A controversial examination of biblical scholarship and literalism was named the Jewish Book of the Year.

"How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now," by James Kugel, an emeritus professor of Hebrew literature at Harvard University, earned the Everett Family Foundation honors when the Jewish Book Council announced its 2007 National Jewish Book Award winners Wednesday.

We previously have commented on this book in this blog...

NY Times Book Review: Church and State, Capitalism is Good, and How to Read the Bible

Kugel Publishes a Cholent

Kugel Publishes a Cholent

james kugel's new book How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now is a best seller.

what is the book in question? kugel simply publishes his lecture notes, adds footnotes, and then concludes that traditional bible study and modern bible criticism are not compatible (meaning that they better not get married, i presume).

800 pages to tell us that apples are not noodles. ahh but if you mix them together and add some cinnamon and bake, then you have a kugel!

i have read the kugel appendix and the orthodox pamphlet  in this confused book by this confused author. of course that has led to a confused thread of discussion. this whole mess shows again why learning should never be equated with understanding.

the pamphlet on orthodox assimilation on campuses is quite hilarious. from it you'd think that jewish studies leads to sex at the hillel; but do it quick and stay away from kiruv and stay home altogether or just go to grad school and don't forget the year in israel and if we had more time we'd write something that makes sense.

kugel actually wrote an erudite book on how not to read the bible, i.e., instead of the parsed and nuanced understandings that centuries of intelligent minds have reached on each individual book and problems inherent in them, throw all your learning into one big kugel - okay his name should be cholent - but it is not - warm it over and serve it. or as one review says "Refreshingly undogmatic and often witty, Kugel brings an intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Bible to illuminate small points as well as large." those little beans and chick peas taste just as good as those cubes of meat.... another review: "by the end of his introductory course, readers will have met all the major biblical figures" mmm aren't they tasty and spicy too?

if you are confused you ought to be. the book does not fit into a discipline. it's idiosyncrasy in 2.2 pounds of paper. granted that after 20 years of teaching at harvard kugel has the right to engage in this, and to have a bestseller and make a living. people who buy and read it have the right to enjoy it or, more likely, to be confused and intimidated by it.

finally who could disagree with the review that says, "Geared to both the specialist and the general reader, this is an indispensable guide to a complex subject"? feint praise indeed.

Calls to US Authorities to Arrest Ahmadinejad

This JTA article describes one effective way to protest the visit of Ahmadinejad.

Pressure to arrest Ahmadinejad
Published: 09/20/2007

Israel's friends are calling for the arrest of Iran's president in advance of his arrival next week in New York City

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be in New York for the opening of the new session of the United Nations General Assembly.

On Monday, a team of lawyers and diplomats who want Ahmadinejad tried for inciting genocide will call on the U.S. Department of Justice to arrest the Iranian president when he arrives on American soil.

"He is an international war criminal," said Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz. "He has repeatedly violated the anti-genocide convention. He is as guilty as the Rwandans who are convicted and sentenced to years in prison for inciting genocide."

Ahmadenijad's visit has been roiling New York for days. A scheduled appearance at Columbia University has prompted calls for the school to rescind the invitation. Columbia refused, invoking the principle of free speech. The New York City Police Department also announced that it would not accompany Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero as he had requested, though some reports suggest he plans to travel there anyway.

California Law School Fuzzballs Hire/Fire New Dean and Meanwhile Harbor AntiSemitism

The NY Times ran an editorial about UCI Chancellor Michael Drake:

Editorial
A Bad Beginning in Irvine

A law school would be mighty fortunate to have Erwin Chemerinsky, a distinguished Duke Law School professor, as its dean. The University of California, Irvine, realized this when it asked him to head up its new law school. This week, however, it rescinded the offer, evidently because of his political views. It’s a disgraceful decision. The University of California system should admit its mistake and, with apologies, extend the offer again.

Mr. Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and much-admired teacher, is one of the shining lights of legal academia. He has also taken his profession’s public service obligations seriously, working tirelessly for civil liberties. He argued in the Supreme Court against the constitutionality of California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law and agreed to represent Valerie Plame Wilson, the C.I.A. operative exposed by the Bush administration.

His record made him an ideal choice to run the law school that U.C.-Irvine plans to open in 2009. Chancellor Michael Drake offered him the job, and Mr. Chemerinsky signed a contract. But the job was withdrawn this week. Mr. Chemerinsky says that Mr. Drake told him he was “too politically controversial” for the appointment, which still had to be confirmed by the California regents. Mr. Drake does not dispute those words, but he insisted “it was no one thing” that led him to withdraw the job, and said vaguely that he doubted he and Mr. Chemerinsky could work toward a common goal.

Applying an ideological litmus test for academic appointments is offensive. Good deans also understand their institutional responsibilities. At Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, a former Clinton administration lawyer, has been embraced by both liberals and conservatives for her inclusive management style. Professor Chemerinsky made clear that he intended to create a law school that was neither liberal nor conservative, and he had already recruited prominent conservatives to serve on its advisory board.

Mr. Drake insisted that he made the decision himself, with no outside pressure. But his “too politically controversial” comment suggests otherwise.

If the U.C.-Irvine law school proceeds without Mr. Chemerinsky, it will open under a cloud. Law professors and students should be wary of signing on with a school founded in a spirit of intellectual intolerance. Just as unfortunate, we will never get to see the law school that the talented Professor Chemerinsky would have created.

Susan Estrich writes (The Most Corrupt Man in California) about this fracas - giving it another context:

Dr. Michael Drake, Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, is the most corrupt man in California. His job is, or should be, to protect the "liberty" of both students and faculty, the academic freedom that is the cornerstone of great universities.

But Dr. Drake has a twisted view of academic freedom, one that allows Muslim students to engage in open anti-Semitism, to hold rallies on campus attacking Zionist control of the media, equating Jewish support for Israel with Hitler's Nazis, even (according to campus Republicans) displacing previously scheduled Young Republicans meetings with rallies denouncing Israel's right to exist. But there's no room for a liberal, Jewish law professor who is routinely the object of bidding wars between top-rated law schools vying for his services.

Last February, Hillel of Orange County formed a task force to investigate what it viewed as a troubling number of anti-Semitic speeches and incidents on the UCI campus, including complaints by Jewish students that they were being followed and harassed by their Muslim classmates. That was before UCI's Intifada week this past spring, which included speakers supporting the terrorist group Hamas and a speech entitled "Zio-Nazis." That was before the infamous Ward Churchill, defender of the 9/11 attacks, was invited to speak on campus.

This past June, at a meeting attended by hundreds of concerned members of the Jewish community in Irvine, Dr. Drake told one parent, whose children don't want to attend UC Irvine because of the virulent expressions of hatred, not to worry because these incidents "are not every other day. It's a couple times a year." Asked why he didn't exercise his own right to free speech to "speak directly to statements made on campus" (as former Harvard President Lawrence Summers did when he opposed calls for divestment from Israel by terming such actions "anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent"), Dr. Drake ducked. "We have 1,000 guest speakers on campus every year. Could I evaluate them and say this one is anti-Semitic? I could not. What I could say is that as a person and a campus, we abhor hate speech, period."

On the other hand, we have no room for a liberal law professor — whose views were well known before he was hired, who is squarely in the mainstream of modern constitutional thought — because we're afraid to take the heat that may be coming from some of Drake's biggest donors. While Drake told Erwin it was the Regents he was worried about, that was an out-and-out lie. He later admitted he didn't consult a one of them, and instead pointed to an op-ed Erwin wrote back in mid-August about death penalty procedure — even though he signed a contract with Chemerinsky three weeks after the op-ed was published.

No, this was Drake's call, and it will doom his law school, if it doesn't doom him first.

More Religion at Harvard: The Report is in the mail

Profs Await Report After Mailing Error

Published On 10/5/2006 3:49:10 AM
By LOIS E. BECKETT and ANTON S. TROIANOVSKI
Crimson Staff Writer

The unveiling of the new general education report left many waiting with bated breath.

Hard copies of the much-anticipated proposal to replace the Core Curriculum were set to be delivered to faculty boxes yesterday. But an apparent snafu within the Harvard University Mail system has delayed delivery for at least a day.

“We’re all baffled and plan to double check on this in the morning,” Professor of Philosophy Alison Simmons, a co-chair of the task force that drafted the report, wrote in an e-mail yesterday evening.

Simmons said her committee still had no plans to release the report online. Co-chair Louis Menand, Bass professor of English and American Literature and Language, said in an interview Tuesday that “the idea is we want this to be an internal Harvard document.”

“We’re just reluctant to put it around the world right away,” he said.

Nevertheless, the committee’s preliminary report, which would require students to take courses on religion and U.S. history as part of a new set of 10 mandatory areas of study, started making waves across the nation yesterday. In an evening dispatch, The Associated Press called the task force’s recommendations “surprisingly bold.” And The Wall Street Journal gave prominent treatment to news of the proposal on its website.

On campus, many professors were reluctant to offer their opinions of the report before they had read the actual document.

Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60, a member of the Committee on General Education that drafted earlier reports, said he had obtained a copy of the report yesterday and supported most of its proposals.

But he said the report’s recommendation to replace the three Literature and Arts requirements in the current Core with a single “Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change” course needed further discussion.

“Students need to develop a sense not only of culture as tradition, but an aesthetic sensitivity as well,” he said.

Former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, a frequent critic of the current Core Curriculum, said he was already impressed by the outlines of the proposal as described in news reports. “It’s a structure that proceeds from a sensible rationale, based on observing the ways in which the student body has changed over the years,” Lewis said over the phone last night. More...

Harvard Anti-Semitic Dean Attacks �Israel Lobby�

Thanks Neal for prompting me to address this.

The Harvard Crimson :: Dean Attacks �Israel Lobby�: In an attack on what they termed the �Israel Lobby,� the Kennedy School�s Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago�s John J. Mearsheimer argued in a recent article that supporters of Israel have seized control of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, making it reflect Israel�s interests more than those of the U.S.

The Harvard Crimson :: KSG Seeks Distance from Paper: �Since the furor, Bob Belfer has called expressing his deep concerns and asked that Stephen not use his professorship title in publicity related to the article,� the source told The Sun.

My response is:

The charge of a malevolent organized Jewish conspiracy is the most blatant form of anti-Semitism. In this 21st century, I find it insufficient that the Kennedy School of Government removed its logo from a the scurrilous paper published last week by Academic Dean Stephen M. Walt and the University of Chicago�s John J. Mearsheimer.

I find it insufficient that the most prominent educational institution in the world added a more prominent disclaimer stating that the classic racist views expressed in that work belong only to the authors.

I call on Harvard -- take that paper off your server and issue an apology to all persons of learning and conscience.