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The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network): Bush should manage war, not news

The Bush administration should refrain from pressuring news outlets and TV networks about not airing messages from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, wrote former ABC News Pentagon correspondent Bob Zelnick, a COM professor and acting chairman of the department of journalism, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on October 17. Two days later he appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Network. "I'm concerned on two fronts," Zelnick told Bill O'Reilly (COM'75). "Front number one is the early tendency of the administration to seem to manage the news. I'm talking not only about Condoleezza Rice's intervention on the interview with bin Laden, but the early attempt by the administration to cut the flow of information to Congress, and a couple of other instances that at least seem to me to be starting off on the wrong foot. The other concern, I think, is something more traditional, and that is that in the early stages of this conflict, it seems that once again the press will be denied access to significant areas of combat where access is possible. I don't think that every area can be open to the press in a war of this nature, but the early indications are that they're going to be frozen out again."

The possibility that anthrax has been released intentionally in the United States focuses attention on the only U.S. maker of a vaccine for the disease -- BioPort of Lansing, Mich., which has a Pentagon contract to supply anthrax vaccine for the military. But the company is not actually delivering any vaccine, reports the National Public Radio show Marketplace on October 9. "The United States government has relied on a single pharmaceutical company, which is really that industry's equivalent of ValuJet," says Andrew Bacevich, a CAS professor and director of the Center for International Relations. "BioPort is a firm that since it came into existence in 1998 has failed to produce any vaccine that meets FDA standards." Nevertheless, he says, the government has continued to pour cash into the company -- to date, according to Pentagon figures, to the tune of $126 million.

New Scientist: Age when drinking starts critical

The younger you start drinking, the more likely you are to have an alcohol-related crash, according to an article in the October 20 New Scientist. Researchers at the School of Public Health and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Landover, Md., asked 42,862 people at what age they started drinking and whether they had ever had a drunk-driving accident.

The results showed that people who started drinking before the age of 14 were more than five times as likely to have crashed in the past year as those who started drinking after they turned 21. This was true even when the researchers excluded alcoholics from their study.

Boston Herald: Urban myths on terrorist attacks abound

Potentially alarming e-mails have been circulating since September 11. A friend of a friend's boyfriend or girlfriend vanished on September 10 but left behind a note warning everyone to avoid the World Trade Center, and come Halloween, shopping malls. Another featured a bartender who was warned of bloodshed to come on September 22 by a group of drunken Arab men. Such e-mails, with the same cataclysmic themes, are only urban myths, says the October 21 Boston Herald. Tobe Berkovitz, a COM associate professor in the department of mass communication, advertising, and public relations, sees these overblown rumors as nothing new -- but points out that their mode of transmission has evolved from the locker room, barbershop, and post office to the Internet. "Whether it's the old murder on lovers lane with a hook, or anthrax spread by a devious source, it's the scope that has changed dramatically," he says. "As soon as I receive one of these, I hit the delete button."

Worldwide Biotech: New drug to help treat ED

Bayer Corporation has submitted to the FDA a new drug application for vardenafil, an investigational compound for the improvement of erectile function, according to a report in the November Worldwide Biotech. "Current estimates suggest more than half of all men over the age of 40 experience some level of erectile dysfunction," says Irwin Goldstein, a MED professor of urology and an investigator in the drug's trials. "Erectile dysfunction is a complex medical condition for which physicians and patients are in need of new treatment options." Erectile dysfunction (ED) -- the inability to sustain an erection sufficient for sexual intercourse -- is a medical condition that affects an estimated 30 million men in the United States, but research shows that only an estimated 11 percent are being treated. Pending FDA approval, Bayer hopes to launch vardenafil in the second half of 2002.

26 October 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations