OREGON
DAILY
voi. lxxii. no. n
Emerald
■■I I I\j*I Ca 1^1
University of Oregon, Eugene, Wednesday, January 13,1071
Enjoy the snow, for it shan’t be here long.
The weather bureau predicts heavy snow for today, turning to
snow showers tonight. A warming trend tomorrow and Friday should
turn the falling snow into the usual Oregon rain. The high today is
expected to be 36 degrees, tomorrow, 40 degrees. Showers are
predicted for Saturday and Sunday.
Offers multiple landuse plan
Sierra hosts forester
By ALLAN WALTON
Of the Emerald
Members of the Eugene chapter of the Sierra
Club were addressed Wednesday by a member of
what has more often than not been considered the
opposition.
Speaking at the monthly meeting was Zane
Grey Smith Jr:, the new supervisor of the
Willamette National Forest. A member of the
Sierra Club, Smith most recently was supervisor of
the Sierra National Forest in California. In his
career as a forest management official, he has
worked with nine different forests in five different
states.
Smith cited three stages in the evolution of what
is today’s National Forest Policy: the pre-World
War era during which the natural resources of the
country were recognized and dedicated to public
use; the era durine World Wars I and II, during
which the emphasis was placed on using and
developing the country’s natural resources (hydro
electric power, wood products, etc.); and the
present era in which the emphasis has shifted to
include the preservation of resources, both tangible
and intangible and the utilization of these resources.
“We now seem to have a shortage in the public
land pie,” said Smith, turning from past history to
present affairs. He added that “people have an
uneasy feeling about enough land being left for
everyone,” noting that various interest groups,
such as logging firms, conservationists, and rec
reation groups all tend to feel encroached upon by
each other. He said that “people are now going to
the courts” to ensure the availability of land to
pursue their interests.
However, Smith felt that turning to the courts to
resolve these issues would result in a “parcelling
out” of public lands, and that the National Forest
Service could provide a better solution. He said that
the National Forest Service’s “multiple land use
program,” whereby the Service tries to coordinate
and provide for a number of different uses of public
lands, was a valid and useful concept which could
“effectively serve long-range public interests.”
Smith went on to say that the “multiple use
concept is not now justifiable in the eyes of the
public,” as each interest group generally feels that
such a policy is only a means by which other
groups’ interests will be favored.
He concluded by saying that one of the keys to a
more intelligent and publicly acceptable policy in
the use of natural resources is public involvement,
specifically during the early development stages of
any given area. “Neither the public nor the Forest
Service is skilled at making die multiple land use
policy work,” he said. “We need public involvement
in making decisions as to the values and objectives
for our resources.”
Reader’s Digest policy rapped
New medicines not always better
WASHINGTON—The Reader’s Digest, conservative
in its approach to manners, mores, labor unions,
government and politics, is frequently radical in its
approach to medicines: If they’re new, they’re better.
Along with some admirable medical reporting, the
files of the Digest itself sometimes argue a contrary
proposition: If they’re new, they might be no better and,
maybe, not as good.
Commonly, proponents of radical ideas get carried
away. This can be of more consequence in the case of the
Digest than in that of most publications, for a variety of
reasons.
For one thing, the Digest reprints gee-whiz pieces on
new drugs from other publications, thus vastly
broadening their readership. For another, the Digest
generates exuberant articles of its own.
But the primary reason for focusing here on the
Digest—a reason entwined with the others—is that its
immense circulation gives it the potential to influence an
audience of unmatched size in whatever direction the
Digest cares to influence them.
TTiree years ago, the Digest got carried away by the
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PMA) and
an advertising agency, which together had worked up a
plan to offset the adverse publicity from some senate
hearings with a series of quarterly eight-page ad
vertisements for trade-named prescription medicines.
The gimmick—a familiar one in many
publications—was to present the ad in the regular
editorial format of Digest articles. Somehow, the Digest
failed the first time around to tell its readers that the
eight articles were advertisements.
It may not have made too much difference, because
some of the Digest’s non-advertising articles on drugs
over the years could just as well have been ads.
Not everyone has a long memory for specific cases,
so it might be useful to look at a few examples. Articles
that promote the use of prescription drugs, and that
incite laymen to demand drugs of their physicians, can
bear heavily, and sometimes adversely, on health and
life.
“L-Dopa has set me free,” said a headline in the
Digest last August. The subheadline, referring to Floyd
Miller, the author, said, “he was a guinea pig for a
powerful new drug, a drug that can now bring blessed
relief to two out of three victims of Parkinson’s disease.”
For the most part, the piece is a testimonial, com
plete with a free plug, by name, for two suppliers, and an
observation that one of them offers L-Dopa “without
charge to indigent patients of physicians in private
practice.”
Toward the end, the article does acknowledge that
little is known about the toxicity of L-Dopa in long-term
use, that it doesn’t work for one patient out of three, that
side effects are frequent, and that these effects
sometimes are severe.
This disclaimer, dropped as it is into a sea of
tranquil praise, is not likely—nor was it intended—to
reverse the thrust of the proclamation from one victim
of Parkinson’s disease to his fellow sufferers: a new
drug “set me free.”
In the normal course of events, the good news about
potent new drugs comes first, usually with a lot of
hoopla. The bad news usually comes later, usually
piecemeal, and usually unwanted by physicians and
patients who have put their hopes and money into them.
There is at least a possibility that this may be the
case with L-Dopa, if a letter from three researchers in
the Aug. 31 Journal of the American Medical Association
is an indicater.
After studying L-Dopa for 15 months in 60 severely
disabled patients, the scientists, who initially had been
fairly hopeful, said they had found the benefits to be “of
limited duration,” and to have been followed “in all
cases by adverse effects, the latter often progressive,
sometimes serious and occasionally dangerous ... we
therefore have reservations about the release of the drug
at this time.”
Careful, controlled scientific studies, not
testimonials, are the proper basis for therapeutic
claims. One hopes that Floyd Miller continues to get
“blessed relief,” but if he doesn’t will the Digest tell us
about it?
Regrettably, the Digest’s use of experts as authors
often has produced results in questionable or more so
than, the proclamations of victims.
The most impressive recent case of the Digest
commissing an expert to say new-is-better was a piece
entitled “Perspective on the Pill.”
The article appeared in the issue of last October—at
just about the moment the Food and Drug Ad
ministration (FDA) was disclosing that two brands were
being taken out of production because they had caused
an abnormally high number of growths in the breasts of
beagles.
The writer of the article, which was mainly an at
tack on hearings on the pill held by Sen. Gaylord Nelson
(D-Wis.), is a physician who is herself a member of the
FDA’s advisory committee on contraception. She is
Elizabeth Connell, an associate professor of obstetrics
and gynecology at Columbia University who also directs
family planning research and development at its in
ternational institute for the study of human
reproduction.
In a telephone interview, Dr. Connell acknowledged
that she had received research grants from all of the
manufacturers of birth control pills. She was unable to
recall the amounts but said the net for herself was “very
little.”
Similarly, Dr. Edward Tyler, associate professor of
obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California
and medical director of the family planning centers of
greater Los Angeles, who co-authored a piece much like
Dr. Connell’s in the June 30 Look Magazine, has been
getting grants from all of the manufacturers since 1958.
Neither Dr. Connell nor the Digest, in its
biographical note about her, mentioned her connection
with the companies. Neither conceded any need to do so.
A Digest spokesman said the editors knew the industry
had financed her work, but noted that this is true of most
contraceptive researchers. He added that the editors
were unaware either of the identity of her sponsors or of
the content of her studies.
The “editorial judgment” waS t«2t disclosure would
not have been “especially pertinent,” the spokesman
added.
The editors of Look said that the failure of the
magazine to meuuon Tjlei's industry grants did not
violate “any code of ethics.”
They said that the grants were for research “on
virtually all methods of contraception” and said that his
“qualifications or objectivity” as a “recognized expert”
were in no way affected.
Sen. Nelson, who held his hearings in January and
February to find out if women were being adequately
informed of the pill’s known and suspected hazards, said