A Latino woman in her early eighties fighting for environmental justice in Los Angeles and an author in Nigeria imprisoned more than a year for leading a peaceful movement for the environmental rights of people whose land has been ravaged by oil companies are among this year's winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize.
The Goldman Prize, which is the world's largest award program honoring grassroots environmentalists, is given annually to six environmental heroes, one from each of the inhabited continental regions. The prize was founded in 1990 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, "to offer environmental heroes the recognition, visibility, and credibility, in addition to financial assistance, which enables them the freedom to pursue their visions for a better world. "
Goldman winners. (left to right) Noah Idechong, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Yul Choi, and Emma Must. (Not pictured are Aurora Castillo and Richard Navarro.)
This year's prize recipients, who were nominated by a network of 19 internationally known environmental organizations, including the Environmental Defense Fund and Worldwatch Institute, and a confidential panel of environmental experts from more than 30 nations, received a "no strings attached" award of $75,000.
Africa: Ken Saro-Wiwa. As president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Ken Saro-Wiwa, a well-known Nigerian writer, has fought for the land rights of the Ogoni people, an ethnic group of about 550,000. Since 1958, when oil was discovered on Ogoni land in coastal Nigeria, an estimated $30 billion worth of oil has been extracted. In exchange, the Ogoni have received virtually nothing to compensate for damage to their once-fertile farmland by oil spills and acid rain. Saro-Wiwa has addressed United Nation committees and parliamentarians about the Ogoni's worsening plight. In January 1993, he gathered 300,000 Ogoni to march peacefully to demand a share in oil revenues and compensation for past damage. On 22 May 1994, he was jailed along with other MOSOP leaders in connection with the murder of four Ogoni leaders, for which he is facing the death sentence. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have raised questions about the fairness of the charges brought against Saro-Wiwa.
Asia: Yul Choi. As a college student in Seoul, South Korea, Yul Choi was a student activist. He has since become his nation's most prominent environmentalist. After being imprisoned for his activism during the late 1970s, Choi established South Korea's first nongovernmental environmental organization, the Korean Research Institute of Environmental Problems, in response to the widespread pollution caused by his nation's rapid industrialization. Through this organization, Choi inspired South Koreans to demand their rights to a healthy environment and succeeded in bringing about the evacuation of 10,000 households affected by toxic waste-related illness in the city of Onset. In 1988, he became the first chair of the Korean Anti-Pollution Movement. Because South Korea is highly dependent on nuclear power, Choi resolved to inform the public about the problems with nuclear waste disposal. Although he was put under house arrest for these activities, antinuclear activism grew. In 1990, a demonstration of 20,000 people stopped a nuclear waste facility planned for Amnion Island. In 1993, Choi launched the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, Korea's largest environmental organization, and now serves as the group's secretary-general.
Island Nations: Noah Idechong. The island of Palau, located in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles east of the Philippines, is home to coral reefs considered to have the highest species diversity in the Pacific. Although coral reefs cover only 0.17% of the ocean floor, they are home to an estimated quarter of all marine species. Palau recently became the world's newest nation, and foreign investors are rushing to develop the area before environmental regulations are in place. Noah Idechong, the former chief of Palau's Division of Marine Resources, developed a model for marine conservation to protect the island's coral reefs and fisheries. Idechong convinced the chiefs of Palau to reinstate the conservation traditions known as bul, which limit fishing in the spawning channels within the villages' reefs. He also oversaw the installation of mooring buoys at scuba-diving sites to save coral from destruction by boat anchors, and helped to secure passage of a national sustainable marine resources bill, the first government attempt in Palau's 2,000-year history to place restrictions on fishermen. In 1994, Idechong resigned from his government post to become the director of the Palau Conservation Society, Palau's major non-governmental environmental organization.
Europe: Emma Must. On her way to Winchester, England, every day to work as a children's librarian, Emma Must passed Twyford Down, a hillside that was known for its unique natural habitats and archeological significance. In 1992, highway construction through the down was begun, despite local opposition. Must joined a small group of people opposed to the construction who camped on the hill to prevent its destruction. After the group was forcibly removed from the site, Must began to organize large protests. By actions such as chaining herself to a bulldozer, Must brought national attention to the issue. Though Twyford Down was not saved, it served as a turning point in the issue of road construction policy. Must continued to organize the anti-road movement and press for policy reforms. As a result, 60 proposed road projects have been canceled, and the road building budget has been cut. In 1994, the Department of Transport acknowledged that building new roads increases traffic and environmental hazards and is developing a national transport strategy that is not based on building new roads.
North America: Aurora Castillo. In 1984, Aurora Castillo, an East Los Angeles native in her early eighties, learned that what would be the eighth prison in her Latino community was being planned. Castillo joined with two other women to oppose construction of the proposed facility, forming the group the Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA). MELA began organizing women throughout the community, who flooded public hearings to oppose the prison construction and demand public meetings in Spanish. In 1992, the state of California decided to locate the prison in another community. MELA, which now has over 400 members, continued to pressure the government to relocate other undesirable facilities such as a toxic waste incinerator being planned for construction upwind from the East Los Angeles community. MELA has also been working in conjunction with local industries to help create a more environmentally responsible community.
South/Central America: Richard Navarro. Twelve years of civil war has devastated El Salvador's environment. Recognizing the critical need to address his country's environmental problems, Richard Navarro founded the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology (CESTA). CESTA works with rural and urban communities on projects such as construction of dry-composting latrines to end chronic water contamination and promotes organic agriculture to cut down on the need for costly chemical inputs. For the last several years, Navarro has been engaged in a highly politicized struggle to protect the last forested area near the capital, San Salvador, from development. Navarro is also coordinating a living memorial to the 75,000 people who have died in the civil war. Young people in Guazapa, a region left barren by heavy napalm bombing, are working to plant a "Forest of Reconciliation," in which a fruit or medicinal tree will be planted for each individual who has died in the war.
In a marriage of strange bedfellows, scientists at one of the country's most contaminated nuclear waste sites are collaborating with medical researchers to turn nuclear waste into an experimental therapy for cancer. Patients with Hodgkin's disease and brain, ovarian, and breast cancers may be able to receive the new radiation-based treatment in the next five to ten years.
The Hanford nuclear site in Richland, Washington, at one time produced plutonium for the U.S. Department of Defense. Plutonium production has been halted, but cleanup of the waste will cost over $50 billion and take more than 30 years. In an effort to defray some costs and provide a marketable product from the waste, Pacific Northwest Laboratories (PNL) and Westinghouse Hanford Company have entered a joint venture to investigate radioisotope production from the waste. Radioisotopes are unstable elements that emit particles of radiation. Currently, about 90% of all medical radioisotopes used in the United States are imported from countries such as Russia and Canada.
Recently, scientists at the Hanford site found a way to chemically extract a pure form of the radioisotope yttrium-90 from strontium-90, a by-product of plutonium production. Yttrium-90 is being tested in clinical trials at medical centers around the country as a treatment for various types of cancers, and the initial results are encouraging.
Radioactive materials have been used in medical procedures for decades, but treatments have often been dangerous and results unsatisfactory. Advances in medical technologies currently allow radioisotopes to be used safely and effectively for over 36,000 diagnostic procedures per day in the United States. These procedures use very low levels of radiation to diagnose heart disease, cancer, complications of AIDS, epilepsy, and infections.
The technique to extract pure yttrium-90 from strontium-90 was discovered by Lane Bray, a Hanford chemist. This technique produces the purest form of yttrium-90 in the world. The advantage of yttrium-90 over other radioisotopes is its short half-life. Its radioactive emissions are halved every 64 hours. Within a few days, the amount of radioactivity it generates is too small to be measured. The use of this isotope for treatment of patients with recurring Hodgkin's disease began in the early 1990s.
Radioactivity destroys cancer cells by emitting particles that physically damage any surrounding cell. Therefore, for successful treatment with minimal side effects, the radioisotope must be targeted specifically to the tumor cells. This is accomplished by the use of monoclonal antibodies or proteins referred to as "smart bullets." These proteins circulate in the body and lock onto tumor cells, allowing the attached radioisotope to act primarily on the diseased tissue.
Hodgkin's disease is a cancer of the lymph nodes that is often successfully treated with the traditional methods of chemotherapy and radiation. Patients who were not helped by traditional treatments were enrolled in a clinical trial of yttrium-90 at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Smart bullets. Monoclonal antibodies tagged with radioisotopes target cancer cells for diagnosis and treatment.
In the trial, patients were injected with a diagnostic isotope linked to the treatment antibody. This procedure determines whether the treatment antibody will deliver the yttrium-90 specifically to the cancer site. So far, the antibody used in this trial has been successful in targeting the cancer in 100% of test cases. This same antibody was then linked to yttrium-90 and injected. Patients were monitored by weekly blood tests. Patients returned to the clinic at two-month intervals for further injections of yttrium-90 if the cancer was still present.
Yttrium-90 treatment produced positive results in about 85% of the 80 Hodgkin's disease patients that participated in the trial. Huibert Vriesendorp, a radiation oncologist at MD Anderson who conducted the trial, is encouraged by these results. "The patients in the trial had failed all other conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. These patients have previously received very aggressive treatments and are relieved to find that the yttrium-90 treatment has relatively few side effects and is patient-friendly. The average survival rate of this group of patients is six to eight months longer than without treatment. A few patients have successfully reached two years with no recurrence of the cancer, but most do have recurrences."
Most patients on the yttrium-90 treatment respond after three or four series of injections over several months. Although currently used in patients with late-stage cancers, Vriesendorp expects the treatment to be at least as effective for patients in earlier stages of the disease.
Another advantage of this type of outpatient therapy is that it is highly cost effective. According to Vriesendorp, "Radiolabeled antibodies are much cheaper than traditional cancer therapies. Insurance companies are willing to pay for these procedures."
Additional trials using yttrium-90-linked monoclonal antibodies are underway at 10 cancer centers, including Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, and the University of Nebraska Medical Center. According to Dennis Wester, senior research scientist at PNL, it may take four more years of human clinical trials before the FDA approves yttrium-90 as a standard cancer therapy.
The MD Anderson Cancer Center has applied for a $5 million NCI grant over five years to expand its study of yttrium-90 as a weapon against brain and ovarian cancers and should begin these studies shortly. More trials for small-cell lung and breast cancer patients are expected to begin in the next year or two. "Another exciting application of yttrium-90 therapy is for rheumatoid arthritis," noted Vriesendorp. "The stabilized isotope is injected directly into the joint to attack the inflammatory cells that are at the root of the disease."
On the horizon is a new isotope being developed at Hanford called radium-223. PNL researcher Darrell Fisher compares the effect on cancer cells of yttrium-90 to radium-223 as the difference between hitting a house with a pellet gun and a wrecking ball.
It is easier to bring patients to the isotope than to send the treatment to patients. Because of the isotope's extremely short half-life, Robert Schenter, medical and research project manager at Westinghouse Hanford, envisions a future pilgrimage of cancer patients to a world-famous radioisotope clinic in the Richland area.
Researchers in Arizona are beginning a two-year study to determine how rodent infection with hantavirus varies with the seasons, habitat, and temperature in hopes that such information may help health authorities better understand the risks to humans.
Hantavirus is contracted by humans, health authorities believe, by direct contact with infected rodents or their urine or feces. The disease caused by the virus, known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), has killed 54 people in the United States, primarily in the West, although James Mills, an epidemiologist specializing in rodent-borne zoonotic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, says rodents carrying the virus have been found throughout the country. HPS surfaced approximately two years ago in an outbreak in the Southwest.
The study, funded by the CDC, will focus on a number of different habitats throughout Arizona, including the higher elevations in northern Arizona and lower, more arid regions in the southern part of the state. Researchers will attempt to answer a range of questions, according to Michael Morrison, adjunct associate professor of wildlife biology at the University of Arizona and one of the project's researchers: "The CDC would like to know how the frequency of the viral antibody changes in rodents throughout the year. In summer, do twenty-five percent of them have it? In winter, do ten percent of them have it? The CDC would like to correlate that with various changes in the animal population, weather conditions, and the like."
This research is part of a larger program in which scientists are gathering as much information as possible on hantavirus. "We're slowly putting together the picture of a geographic location, habitat--be it desert or chaparral or alpine tundra--and seasonality, and looking at risk patterns through time and space," says Mills. "We can try to identify specific habitats and specific times of year when risk is likely to be higher than in other habitats and times of year."
Researchers from the Arizona Department of Health Services reported in March that they found hantavirus-infected rodents in a variety of habitats. In a preliminary study, conducted in the summer and early fall of last year, researchers led by Craig Levy, program manager of the department's vector-borne and zoonotic disease section, found the highest infection rates among rodents in a variety of vegetated habitats in the northern part of the state at elevations ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. Infection rates ranged from 8.4% to 13%.
In the desertlike southern part of Arizona, infection rates were sharply reduced, ranging from 0 to 4.0%. However, researchers are unsure whether this difference is a function of habitat or season and believe the low infection rate may be because the animals were trapped and tested during the summer. During winter and spring, researchers found higher infection rates among rodents in southern Arizona while conducting follow-ups of suspected HPS cases. In one southern Arizona county, 19% of rodents trapped in January were positive for hantavirus. The reason for the seasonal difference is unknown. Temperature, humidity, and rodent activity may all play a part, says Mira Leslie, an epidemiologist with the Arizona Department of Health Services. But, Leslie notes, strains of hantavirus generally do follow a seasonal pattern of infection.
Research on the impact of habitat on rates of rodent infection will focus on a dry area in southwestern Arizona that is primarily a mesquite grassland. Trapping sites will include an area around a seasonal creek as well as on a hillside. "What we'll be able to do within that mesquite grassland is look at more micro-site conditions to see if when the populations are lower, there is a certain segment of the rodent population that has a higher or lower prevalence [of infection] than the ones that live in the hillsides in the winter," Morrison says.
Already, Morrison says, preliminary evidence points to wild mice of the genus Peromyscus that live along rivers and creeks as possibly having a higher prevalence of hantavirus infection than those living on hillsides. "We have no idea why," said Morrison. "It would just be wild speculation to give a reason." Mice belonging to this genus include deer mice, brush mice, and white-footed mice. They generally weigh about an ounce and are a few inches long.
Morrison says his findings will be compiled with those of researchers doing similar studies in different geographical regions of the state to try to determine when hantavirus infection is highest in rodents and thus when it may most likely be spread to humans. With such information, people can be told to be careful in certain habitats or to avoid being near rodents during certain times of year.
Although the chances of contracting HPS are low, according to Levy, concern is high because one out of two people who get the disease die. For the present, Levy advises avoiding all contact with rodents and making sure homes are rodent-proofed by caulking and sealing holes and other possible entrances.
In November 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) to deal with environmental issues along the U.S.-Mexican border. Last February, the U.S. State Department and the Mexican government formally approved Roger Frauenfelder as the BECC's first general manager.
Frauenfelder will direct the BECC's efforts in assisting border communities to develop and implement environmental infrastructure projects and to certify projects for financing by the North American Development Bank (NADBANK), the BECC's sister organization, also established under NAFTA.
"Historic and unprecedented," is the way Linda Taylor, one of the BECC's 10 directors (5 each from Mexico and the United States) described the commission's establishment. "The BECC is the first international entity set up by countries to address the environmental and social issues surrounding liberalized trade," explained Taylor, an environmentalist with the New Mexico-based Southwest Research and Information Center, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
The border area that encompasses the BECC's scope of activity was defined by the 1983 La Paz agreement as a corridor 100 kilometers on either side of the U.S.-Mexican border, stretching 2,000 miles from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, to Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico. The corridor is bordered by six Mexican states and four U.S. states (Arizona, California, Texas, and New Mexico). Ten million people live within the area. The commission is based in Juarez, Mexico.
Frauenfelder, a native of the border region (the Yuma Valley in Arizona), is fluent in Spanish. He has a background in engineering, regional and local planning, and a military career that includes working as a construction manager on environmental issues at various naval institutions in the United States and around the world. Immediately prior to his BECC appointment, Frauenfelder worked as deputy city manager for San Diego with responsibility for the city's water supply and wastewater treatment system. Frauenfelder will oversee a support staff that includes a deputy director, an outreach coordinator, a civil engineer who is the general project manager, an environmental project manager, and an information systems specialist.
Commenting on the environmental health of the border-area communities, Frauenfelder said, "Services Americans take for granted, such as running water and waste water collection systems, are totally lacking in the area. It's going to take a lot of money to bring the border area up to the standard we think of as normal." Frauenfelder added that studies done by the U.S. Department of Commerce estimate the task will cost $6-$8 billion over the next 10 years.
NAFTA set four major priorities for the BECC: encourage the prevention of water pollution, improve waste water treatment, manage municipal solid waste, and work to resolve other environmental issues related to the first three.
The BECC is already considering projects that might qualify for its support. The Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, for example, may get BECC support because it has a water treatment system nearing completion, but lacks the money to finish the project. "It takes some time for an organization with our scope of activity to get going and to put an infrastructure in place," Frauenfelder said. "We are refining the project submission process and establishing our criteria for project approval."
Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, NADBANK is supported by the U.S. and Mexican governments and provides $3 billion in new financing to supplement existing sources of funds and to help encourage the participation of private capital in BECC projects. "Not every project is going to have a revenue stream to repay the loan," Frauenfelder said. "We may have to go to private sources for help, if necessary, especially for those projects that might put a burden on small rural communities."
Despite the many challenges and heavy workload ahead, the BECC will not become an "overly bureaucratic operation," Frauenfelder pledged. "We plan to keep the project submission and review processes as simple and straightforward as possible," he explained. "We want to be open, supportive, and responsive to border residents."
Big Bird and his "Sesame Street" friends have educated children for years on a variety of topics. The National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center (NSC-EHC) is now looking to these characters for help in spreading the word about the dangers of childhood lead poisoning.
In February, the Prudential Foundation awarded a $1.2 million grant to the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) and the EHC to develop and launch a nationwide campaign to raise public awareness about lead poisoning. The groups are working to produce an educational video, an audio cassette, and print materials in which characters from the children's educational television show, "Sesame Street," will discuss the dangers and sources of lead poisoning and urge regular testing for blood-lead levels. The campaign will also inform adults of measures they can take to lower children's exposure to lead in the home and in child-care settings. The video and materials will be distributed free of charge to families, child-care professionals, educators, health care professionals, hospitals, community-based clinics, and public health facilities.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lead poisoning is the most preventable pediatric health problem today. Lead poisoning can cause severe damage to a child's developing brain and nervous system and may result in mental retardation, hearing loss, anemia, and kidney and liver damage. The EPA estimates that 9% of children under the age of six, some 1.7 million children, are currently adversely affected by exposure to lead. The primary means of childhood exposure is through lead-based paint dust in homes.
Elmo says. A project by the Children's Television Workshop and the National Safety Council is using "Sesame Street" characters to educate children and families about lead.
"While substantial progress has been made in removing lead from the environment, it's still a significant problem in many inner-city areas," said Digna Sanchez, vice president of Community Education Services, the CTW's educational outreach division. "Through this combined effort--The Prudential Foundation's concern and generosity, the National Safety Council's expertise in this issue, and CTW's proven record in reaching children--we hope to make a difference in young lives."
The NSC-EHC will advise the CTW on key messages about lead poisoning for the educational materials and ensure that the information is consistent with current scientific understanding of lead poisoning. The CTW will be responsible for research and development of the television and audio components and for the outreach and distribution to the public. The NSC-EHC will also develop an adult brochure and help with outreach and distribution to the health care community.
The project will target children ages three to six, as well as the families and child care providers of children from birth to six years of age. "The project is unique because of its outreach to young children as well as adults," said Sanchez.
Because of the increased risk of lead poisoning in inner cities, special efforts will be made to reach children and families in those areas. The CTW has developed a three-pronged approach to reach these people, said Ellen Morgenstern of the CTW. First, they will distribute materials through the "Sesame Street" public education programs that exist in inner-city areas. These programs distribute information to child-care facilities. Second, the CTW will distribute materials directly to clinics in inner-city areas. Third, they will target individual physicians in inner-city areas. The campaign is expected to be launched in the spring of 1996.
None of North Carolina's 2.6 million private industry employees is guaranteed complete protection
from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, says a study by epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study examined the effect of a 1993 law passed by the state--the nation's largest tobacco producer--requiring that smoking be permitted in at least 20% of the space in state-controlled buildings and prohibiting localities from passing more restrictive regulations for public and private buildings. The study concluded that "instead of being a victory for tobacco control, [the law] has been a setback for public health in North Carolina."
The study has drawn attention to the potential public health effects of preemptive state laws across the country. Twenty-five states have preemption laws regarding smoking; 17 of these states preempt smoking regulations in the workplace. "Preemption has a devastating effect on the public's health because it creates weak standards that cannot be strengthened by local communities," says study co-author Michael Siegel, epidemiologist for the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. According to Siegel, North Carolina's law is the most harmful to public health because, he says, it forces public employees to be exposed and, at the same time, leaves communities powerless to enact protection.
The requirement of smoking areas and a three-month window in which local regulations could be passed before the law went into effect make North Carolina's law unique. No other state has passed a bill that requires smoking areas, says Elizabeth Conlisk, the study's lead author and the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for North Carolina. "The bill itself did not restrict smoking at all. It actually required that smoking be permitted."
The CDC study, reported in the March 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed 89 local nonsmoking regulations in North Carolina, passed in the three-month window before the law took effect. The study found that by the year 2000, when all the local regulations have been phased in, 59% of private employees will not be guaranteed any protection from work site environmental tobacco smoke; 19% will have minimal protection in work sites that restrict smoking to separate areas but that do not have a separate HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system; 22% will have partial protection at work sites where smoking is restricted to designated areas with separate HVAC systems; and none will have complete protection. Private workplaces were studied because they employ about 83% of North Carolina's nonagricultural workforce.
During the 3-month period, the number of local regulations increased from 16 to 105, including rural as well as urban areas. This flurry of legislation indicates the depth of North Carolinians' concern about secondhand smoke, say opponents of the law. "Contrary to what the tobacco industry is trying to portray, there isn't monolithic pro-tobacco sentiment in North Carolina or anywhere," says Kevin Goebel, manager of legislative programs for Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, a lobbying organization for local, state, and federal smoking restrictions. "Nonsmokers are the majority, and the desire to protect nonsmokers is prevalent everywhere. It crosses all geographic groups, age, sex, race, every demographic profile you can think of." Goebel's organization reports that more than 200 communities nationwide have smoke-free ordinances and more than 100 communities have smoke-free workplace ordinances.
In terms of protecting public health, however, the explosion of local regulations in North Carolina may have been a red herring. "There are more policies, but not much more protection," says Conlisk. "The three-month deadline created an unnatural timeframe for communities to organize, debate, and adopt smoking regulations. The adoption of local smoking regulations is usually an incremental process, with increasingly protective measures being adopted over time, usually years. In North Carolina, as in other states where preemptive legislation has passed, communities have their hands tied and cannot take further steps to protect their citizens more completely from a known human carcinogen."
North Carolina State Health Director Ron Levine was critical of the study, maintaining that the JAMA article is speculative and that no one knows what the pace of enacting local ordinances might have been without the law, which resulted in "many, many communities having some protection they didn't have before." He also observes that the study doesn't take into account workplace smoking restrictions provided voluntarily by employers. Levine calls the law disappointing because it lacks any requirement that smoking areas be separately ventilated. "Many of us would have preferred a stronger law," he says.
Conlisk and others are concerned that other states debating preemptive bills may write in similar delays as a concession, presuming that localities will quickly adopt strong regulations. They charge that preemptive state laws are actually a tobacco industry strategy. "They can't possibly go into every community and fight off these local ordinances," says Siegel. "It's much easier to use their influence to get the state to pass a law that preempts local communities from passing smoking restrictions, and once that's done, they don't have to worry about that state any more."
Preemptive bills have been introduced in 17 state legislatures this session, according to Siegel. Bills in Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Rhode Island have been defeated.
Opponents of the North Carolina law say it effectively leaves work site protection for nonsmokers up to employers. "Environmental tobacco smoke is a known human lung carcinogen. With our current state law, the only way people can receive additional protection from this health threat is through corporate and other nongovernmental policies that restrict smoking," says Sally Malek, project manager for the North Carolina American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST). ASSIST is a 7-year project funded in 17 states by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society in partnership with state and local health departments and volunteer organizations.
The legality of North Carolina's law has yet to be challenged, although some are questioning the basis for the law. Says Siegel, "There's no clear public health, safety, or welfare concern that would really justify the forced designation of areas in which people can expose themselves and others to carcinogens."
One of every four cancers diagnosed in American men is prostate cancer. Once prostatic cancer spreads or metastasizes, it is a fatal disease for which no cure is available. A gene that may provide a marker for early detection of metastasizing prostate cancers was recently identified by researchers at the NIEHS in collaboration with scientists at Johns Hopkins University.
Researchers have shown that suppression of metastasis is normally controlled by genes that are lost or inactivated in malignant cancers. Few of these metastasis-suppressor genes have been identified. In an article in the May 12 issue of Science, researchers Jin-Tang Dong, Pattie Lamb, and J. Carl Barrett of the NIEHS reported the cloning of the first prostatic cancer metastasis gene in collaboration with John Isaacs, Carrie Rinker-Schaeffer, Jasminka Vukanovic, and Tomohiko Ichikawa of Johns Hopkins University. The gene, named KAI1, for kang ai, which is Chinese for anticancer, was isolated from the human chromosome 11p11.2 and was shown to suppress the spread of prostate cancers in rats. The gene has been found in a wide variety of human tissues including prostate, lung, liver, kidney, bone marrow, and mammary gland, suggesting that it has an essential biological function. The gene is not present in human prostate cancers, and the researchers are investigating if its absence can be used to identify potentially lethal human cancers.
Prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, will strike 244,000 American men this year and will kill over 40,000. It is estimated that screening for prostate cancer may identify 10 million American men with early prostate cancer, but only 7% of these men will eventually die from progression of their disease if left untreated. This raises the critical question of which of the remaining 93% of men (over 9 million) with nonlethal, but potentially life altering, prostate cancer should receive therapy. There is currently no way to distinguish prostate cancers requiring immediate, aggressive therapy from those requiring delayed or no treatment. Prostate cancer surgery and treatment can cause impotence, incontinence, or even death.
Prostate cancer deaths are much higher in American men than Japanese men; however, research has shown that if Japanese men migrate to the United States, their prostate cancer rates increase. These results suggest an environmental or dietary cause of prostate cancer. The investigators hope this gene may be used to understand the environmental factors that may influence the progression of prostate cancer.
Recent events such as the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, which has resulted in more than 100 deaths, and the making of the best selling book, The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, into a Hollywood movie about Ebola, have generated considerable interest among the public about viruses. Scientists, however, have long been fascinated by viruses, and a World Wide Web site constructed by the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (URL:
http://www.bocklabs.wisc.edu/Welcome.html) is dedicated to virology. This site provides a tremendous resource for researchers, academic faculty, students, and anyone else interested in viruses.
For the novice, the IMV site contains a comprehensive introduction to molecular virology through a tutorial organized by Ed Rybicki of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Cape Town, which was originally written as a supplement to his "Introduction to Virology" lecture course for second-year undergraduate microbiology majors. Other educational materials including discussions by the world's leading researchers on Ebola, AIDS, hantavirus, and herpes viruses are provided under the hyperlink "course notes and tutorials."
For more advanced users, there are virology-related news and journal articles, computer visualizations of viruses, and digitized images of viruses by electron microscope. The hyperlink "topographical maps" shows how such maps may be used to reconstruct a complete icosahedral (60-face) viral particle from one face (shown in an image on the site). Superior graphics and references to accompanying journal articles make this a valuable link for researchers.
The IMV site also provides a link to several databases housing information on specific virus sequences, alignments, and phylogenetic trees, as well as a link to the classification of viruses by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. Users who wish to contact virus experts may consult a phone book of virologists on the Internet, and users who want to discuss their own research findings with others in the field can sign on to a Bionet.virology USENET news group.
Additional resources beyond the scope of this site are available through links to virology-related resources elsewhere on the Internet including links to emerging viruses information and research, HIV/AIDS information and research, and research organizations such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.
Last Update: May 16, 1997