Faculty Bibliography

Penetrating Hollywood, the Radoshes note, was a major Communist goal. Lenin himself had described the motion picture as the ideal outlet for political propaganda, and movies were now the leading form of popular culture in the United States. Those who worked in the stratified, dictatorial world of the Hollywood studios were seen as ideal recruits for the movement -- powerless folk keenly aware of the lopsided distribution of wealth. What the American Communist Party offered was a sense of shared values, a whiff of equality in a wildly unequal town. "I found myself collecting Party dues from Dalton Trumbo and other famous writers," a fellow member noted. "Dalton was making five thousand dollars a week but we were comrades.... I was welcome at the 'red table' at MGM where all the left-wingers ate." There was more to this, however, than the generosity of gullible celebrities. Indeed, the Radoshes demolish the portrait of Hollywood as a place where Reds were akin to fuzzy idealists. During World War II, they note, Communists exerted strong influence over the Screen Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild and the back-lot production unions. Led by screenwriter John Howard Lawson, its cultural enforcer, the party rode herd on its legions, deciding, for example, that [Budd Schulberg]'s classic novel, "What Makes Sammy Run?," was an affront to the working class or that an essay by [Albert Maltz] recommending greater artistic freedom for Communist writers was an offense against Stalin himself. A defiant Schulberg decided to quit the party; a penitent Maltz issued one of the most obsequious public retractions on record. The payback came in 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee, taking full advantage of early Cold War tensions, began its circus-like probe of communism in Hollywood. The Radoshes portray HUAC as a pack of bigots and retrogrades looking to smear the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and to earn publicity for themselves. What makes "Red Star Over Hollywood" stand out from most other accounts, however, is its contention that those who refused to testify before HUAC -- the so-called Hollywood Ten, which included Maltz, Lardner, Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk and several other distinguished figures -- sealed their own fate and helped bring on the blacklist. The book argues that they did this by shamelessly portraying themselves as wounded patriots and champions of free speech when others considered them hard-line Stalinists who were following every twist and turn of the ever-changing communist line

The greatest problem among my patients right now isn't bird flu; it is fear of bird flu. The greatest risk of an epidemic is of a fear epidemic. For one thing, comparisons to the terrible scourge of 1918 -- when another bird flu mutated and passed human to human -- have dilated the sense of danger. But there are many differences between 1918 and now. Many of the 1918 flu victims died of pneumonia because of a lack of antibiotics, which we now have in ample supply. There were also no flu vaccines or antiviral drugs back then, and people lived (and died) in wartime conditions of deprivation and sometimes squalor. This is how fear works, how the fear epidemic -- as opposed to a flu pandemic -- spreads. Fear is supposed to be our warning system against imminent dangers, but as a deep-rooted emotion, it interferes with our ability to make sound judgments. And if anything is contagious right now, it's judgment clouded by fear

Lawrence K

Trying to calm worldwide alarm about the spread of an avian influenza virus to Europe from Asia, an official of the World Health Organization cautioned yesterday that there were still no signs of an influenza pandemic in humans. The A(H5N1) avian strain is expected to spread to additional countries, and the agency remains concerned about the longer-term potential for the virus to mutate or combine with a human influenza virus to create a new one that could cause a human pandemic, the official, Dr. Mike Ryan, said. A pandemic is an epidemic that is prevalent across a wide area. As he spoke, Greece reported what may be its first case of A(H5N1) avian influenza. Initial tests showed that a virus collected from a turkey farm on the Aegean island of Inousses near the Turkish coast was an A(H5) virus. Additional testing is under way to determine if this virus also has the additional feature of the strain, the N1 protein

He acknowledged my suggestion that he go see a gastroenterologist, writing down the doctor's name -- but he never made an appointment. [FRANK] returned to his lifestyle of heavy eating and smoking. He said the negative results in the ER had reassured him, and now he seemed to be in even more denial. He popped a Prevacid whenever he felt the slightest discomfort. He continued to experience chest pains, and after a few months, he was back in the ER. The initial tests were once again negative, but this time I kept him overnight for observation and arranged for a stress test before discharging him. Frank's cycle of worry and denial is common among men with a poor self-image and untreated depression. Many fail to respond to the warning signs, no matter how serious. Luckily, in Frank's case, the second shock of the ER was enough

Now [David Chan] is drawing on her epidemiology skills and business school training to convince countries that preparing for an influenza pandemic is a wise investment despite the cost. The preparations include buying anti-influenza drugs, developing a vaccine against the pandemic virus and improving the monitoring of respiratory and other illnesses in people and animals. Now [David Chan] is drawing on her epidemiology skills and business school training to convince countries that preparing for an influenza pandemic is a wise investment despite the cost. The preparations include buying anti-influenza drugs, developing a vaccine against the pandemic virus and improving the monitoring of respiratory and other illnesses in people and animals

With bird flu, scientists have been working on the structure of the viruses in an attempt to protect us. Studies published in the journals Nature and Science over the past six years have given scientists a road map with which to track the current bird flu and alert health officials if it mutates further. It is reasonable to try to control the bird flu while it remains in the bird population. There is great value in improving our emergency health response system and upgrading our vaccine-making capacity. Government subsidies in these areas could make the public safer. But, right now, there is no value in scaring the public with Hitchcockian bird- flu scenarios

When two Australian scientists set out in the early 1980s to prove that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, caused stomach inflammation and ulcers, they met opposition from a medical- industrial complex entrenched in the belief that psychological stress was the cause. Also, Tagamet and similar drugs, known as H2 blockers, safely made ulcers and their symptoms disappear. But the H2 blockers were not one-shot cures. Ulcers often recurred, requiring repeated courses of the drugs, providing a steady stream of profits. 'The opposition we got from the drug industry was basically inertia,' said Dr. Barry Marshall of the University of Western Australia, the other Nobel winner, and 'because the makers of H2 blockers funded much of the ulcer research at the time, all they had to do was ignore the Helicobacter discovery

With bird flu, scientists have been working on the structure of the viruses in an attempt to protect us. Studies published in the journals Nature and Science over the last six years have given scientists a road map with which to track the current bird flu and alert health officials if it mutates further. It is reasonable to try to control the bird flu while it remains in the bird population. There is great value in improving our emergency health response system and upgrading our vaccine-making capacity. Government subsidies in these areas could make the public safer. But, right now, there is no value in scaring the public with Hitchcockian bird flu scenarios. The public must be kept in the loop, but potential threats should be put into context. The worst case is not the only case