When a Picture is Worth a Thousand Lives

My generation did not "kick the habit" because for every "We Mind Very Much If You Smoke" jingle, we had another one about coming a long way. Those acoustic memories intermingle with memories of friends and loved ones whose lives were extinguished by the tobacco industry.

There is a global movement underway toward graphic warnings about disease on tobacco packaging. What follows is my letter to the editor of a North Carolina newspaper.

Sunday, May 31st is the World Health Organization’s annual World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is the implementation of pictorial warning labels on tobacco products. Other countries, including India, Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil, already place pictures of diseased patients on tobacco packages, making the health risks of tobacco use hard for the consumer to overlook. The United States lags behind. Currently textual warnings are all that are in place on tobacco products.

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. I witnessed this firsthand at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where I diagnosed thousands of cases of disease caused by tobacco.

World No Tobacco Day is an ideal time for all individuals to consider their own possible contributions to the WHO’s MPOWER initiatives to “Monitor tobacco use and the policies to prevent it; Protect people from tobacco smoke; Offer people help to quit tobacco use; Warn about the dangers of tobacco; Enforce bans on tobacco, advertising, promotion and sponsorship; Raise taxes on tobacco.”

Let us act responsibly and proactively for the benefit of our country’s children by advocating for picture warnings on tobacco products.

Dolley Madison and Maureen Dowd

We were having dinner with some friends on Saturday night and I was enjoying the company of a bright 5-year-old who sat to my right at the dinner table and held forth with me on the topics of his selection, namely, the war that won’t end, Dolley Madison, and Hotel for Dogs. When he mentioned Madagascar 2, I said I thought the plot was a little too similar to The Lion King. I told him I felt like I was back with Scar and the hyenas all over again. Because the boy is an accomplished writer, who had shown me several books before dinner that he had written on first grade paper, I introduced him to the word plagiarism.

Plagiarism. Well first, he wanted to spell it. You know the schools are really creating brave spellers these days because now there is a theory called something like experimental spelling in usage in the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools whereby students are not penalized for using a word that they cannot spell correctly in their writing. Thinking back to my days of typing term papers at Sacred Heart Academy on a typewriter, I wish this educational coup would have occurred decades earlier.

So the experimental speller gave it a crack: P-L-A-Y-G-E-R and so on. This spelling makes plagiarism seem like child’s play. A quick check on Webster’s online says that the word is from the Latin word for kidnapper.

And the taking of the idea must be willful. I made that point very clear at the table.

Did Maureen Dowd willfully take from another and fail to credit him in her NYT column? I personally find it doubtful. According to an AP article I read this morning, she told the Huffington Post that the material she wrote was an acoustic memory. She did not use my term acoustic memory. That might have gotten my goat. She did say it was something she heard and then wrote. The AP article does not go on to say if she intended to credit the speaker or if she didn’t feel it was necessary.

I am such the idea purist that I do fault people who steal others' ideas. But what under the sun is new today? Still I think there is a line that does get crossed too often. Having been around many writers in the past five years or so, I once witnessed a writer discussing a topic at a coffee and then saw a very near exact quote of his concept in another writer’s work, uncredited, the very next day by a writer who was at our table.

But what of aging brains and acoustic memories during the creative process? For example, have I heard someone posit this question and failed to credit him? Does Maureen Dowd sometimes forget she did not create an idea and then fail to credit it? At my age it would be plausible. My son constantly tells me that I forget because I am OLD. His caps. His emphasis. There, I gave credit.

The Dalai Lama and My Mama

I've been reading Barbara Walters' memoirs, Audition. An elderly friend of mine bought the book for two dollars from the Chapel Hill Public Library and passed it on to me.

Every time I think of Barbara Walters, I think of my dad. My father was on his deathbed in Baptist East Hospital in the fall of 2003. I had flown to Louisville to visit him. I had plans to meet two friends, Susan Ward and Kim Maddox, for lunch. My dad was short of breath because he was dying from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It was my second day in his room, and we'd been over the important stuff. It didn't seem appropriate to waste breath on small talk, so my dad asked me what I would like to watch on his television in his hospital room. I said The View.

"That damn Baba Wawa," my dad said, in an exasperated tone of nearly benign disgruntlement, "I never did like her."

After reading Barbara's memoirs, I realize one thing: Men hate her or they try to seduce her. Harry Reasoner--hated her. Fidel Castro--tried to seduce her.

I'd been reading the memoirs in a fairly linear fashion, which is something that I do on rare occasions when I am entirely fascinated. On Mother's Day weekend, I had asked my husband to read me the chapter on Monica, so I had already skipped ahead a bit. Last night I chose to read the chapter on celebrities. Barbara writes of her visit with the Dalai Lama in that chapter.

Now two friends of mine, Troy Campbell and James Protzman, have recently spoken of the Dalai Lama to me. Troy mentioned the Dalai Lama when he told me about the movie Happiness Is (Troy is an associate producer of the film)and James said that he would most like to interview the Dalai Lama when I interviewed James about his first book, Jesus Swept. So I was clearly at attention while reading this passage from the book, even though it was about thirty minutes past my bedtime of ten o'clock Eastern Time.

I got to the part toward the end of the chapter where Barbara interviewed the Dalai Lama, and he told her that the purpose of life is "'to be happy.'" I had to put the book down. I had an acoustic memory.

It was January of 1987, and my mother was on her deathbed. We were both on her deathbed, actually, because I was lying with her in her bed in her bedroom. I was getting ready to leave Louisville to return to Lexington for the spring semester of my first year of medical school. My mother, realizing that the breast cancer was going to win, turned to me and said, "I want you to always be happy." That was it. The last piece of wisdom my mom ever bestowed.

And yet, it did not seem profound to me. I was climbing, climbing, up and up toward a dream of becoming a physician, and my mom was advising me to be happy. The advice seemed so cliche at the time that I filed it away into my memory archives and never really thought of it too much. To be honest, the advice she gave me one day in the Brown Cancer Center, upon watching a rather plain jane physician walk past us ( "Heather, when you are a doctor, at least put on lipstick in the morning") is advice I have mentioned to my daughter and to my friends because I thought it was clever. It was slightly more directive than, be happy. At that age I really craved substantive advice and lipstick seemed more substantive than happiness.

When I was able to pick the book back up, I mused that Barbara seemed fairly surprised that such an important man gave such simple advice.

Upon reflection, my mother's advice about happiness was much harder to follow than her advice about wearing makeup.

And so on this spring day, when the dog took one look at my inbox and whispered, "There's nothing to edit yet, take me on a walk," I did. We saw a mockingbird chasing a crow away from his turf. I felt amused. When the breeze whispered, "This may be the last spring day," I headed to Southern States for soil and fertilizer and worked on my patio garden past noon without sweating. I found the first tomato on the tomato plant. I felt happy.

The Specter of Disease

Well, it’s comforting to know that amid a growing swine flu outbreak in the United States, Arlen Specter can trump a virus. Maybe this isn’t going to be a pandemic. After all, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer covered Specter’s shift to the left before the swine flu tonight.

Since the weekend, the swine flu has spread to more states in the US, and given the incubation period and the laboratory identification lag phase, we can expect that just in time for the this weekend’s run for the roses in Louisville, Kentucky, some folks will find themselves wondering if they should make that trip to Churchill Downs or not. Three weeks from now there will likely be a spike in cases in Kentucky. Who can stay home sick from the Derby?

You can. It bears repeating that the CDC urges all of those who are ill to stay home one day beyond the day all symptoms subside. Yes, that is one day beyond, and not one day into symptoms, as is the usual practice in our capitalistic, thou must not call in sick society. The CDC is asking business owners to proactively consider the flu.

If you are well enough to go to the Derby though, put some money down on Advice for me.

Beware the Barking Pig, Be He Human or Swine

The Center for Disease Control has confirmed cases of swine flu in San Diego, California, and San Antonio, Texas. They will update their case list at 3:00 p.m. today.

Here are some important facts about swine flu:

This influenza virus is spread from person to person by respiratory droplet, the same way other respiratory viruses spread. People can also spread the infection to pigs and vice versa. You cannot get the virus from eating pork.

The symptoms of swine flu in people include fever, fatigue, cough, runny nose and sometimes vomiting and diarhhea. The CDC reports that pigs with swine flu appear depressed (don’t ask me) and cough (sounds like barking).

There is no human vaccine for swine flu.

If you have swine flu symptoms, it is important to avoid contact with other people and see your doctor. The current strain is responding to two antiviral drugs, so if you see your doctor within the first five days, you can get tested and potentially treated. That window is ten days for children. At this point the virus is striking mainly adults.

Bottom line for North Carolinians this weekend: Make a trip to the store for some hand sanitizer and be wary of close contact with people who say they have “a cold,” especially if they are just back from Texas or California. It’s safe to go to Allen and Sons Barbecue for pork this weekend. As for the Piedmont Farm Tour, it’s probably more likely that a visitor would infect a pig than a pig would infect a visitor. Nonetheless, steer clear of sad, barking pigs.

With Liberty and Genetic Fairness for All

My DNA still scares me. No, I’m not talking about the untimely deaths of my parents.

Last Sunday the New York Times reported that some states and the FBI are now routinely collecting DNA samples (a cheek swab) from people being detained for crimes. The premise is that they need a database to solve future crimes. The rationale is that it is no different than fingerprints.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I understand that the FBI and even local police departments would like to have DNA databases. Two things: Law enforcement officials could solve all crimes more quickly if we all had a government-placed microchip implanted in our shoulders like prized sporting dogs. Let’s not do that. Secondly, if the people that are detained but then released for crimes are the victims of racial profiling, then the people who are having their cheeks swabbed are also the subjects of racial profiling.

If we need a DNA database to solve crimes, then shouldn't all citizens be on file? And illegal immigrants? Good question: I don’t have all the answers today.

I can’t even think of all the questions, and that’s my point. There should be a multidisciplinary presidential task force taking stock of all applications coming out of the burgeoning field of genetics and considering the ethical and legal ramifications of the technologies to protect us.

In December, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Reviews reported that Obama wanted to create “an inter-agency task force on genomics research,” but the article went on to describe research initiatives that would be improved by the Obama presence in the White House. I would like to see some air of caution in the rhetoric of progress.

While Obama says that he introduced the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed into law in 2008, it would appear that this legislation only protects our rights with employers and insurers, not with law enforcement.

Is there any indication that the Coalition for Genetic Fairness might broaden its purpose to investigate this discriminatory collection of DNA by law enforcement? I'm going to see if they will.

As we translate biomedical research into practical application, there should be some public comfort that we are not headed toward a flawed futuristic society.

Professor Chism and the Sacred Heart Weekend

A crescent moon

A lilting tune

A prayer that soars above

Your daughters sing

While vistas ring

To honor the school we love...

Becky and I go way back to Saturday eighth grade Algebra class at that other high school across town.  We were the French version of the foreign language/science geeks at Sacred Heart Academy, class of 1982.  Together we attended French theater of the absurd plays in downtown Louisville, said the Angelus in French every Friday at noon in Madame Danzig's classroom with the view of the campus dogwoods, and endured the biting sarcasm of Father Wagner's A.P. English class.

In driving rain I picked up Becky in my white Toyota Corolla to go to Showcase Cinemas to see a movie the first night I got my license.  Becky drove me to KFC for senior lunch the first Friday she had her Honda Civic.

I gave up French; she gave up science.  Somewhere along the way we lost touch.

Her flight arrives this afternoon.  Rain is in the forecast.  We're seeing Louisvillian Jon Jory's production of Pride and Prejudice  on the UNC campus. We're taking in a comedy show at Dirty South Improv.  And we're catching up.  Where to begin?  Maybe hello.  Or better still, bonjour!