A. Meteor, Yes -- Death
Star, No
Narrator: This is Science Today. Recent
discoveries confirm that 65 million years ago, a
huge meteor slammed into the earth. But it didn’t
kill off the dinosaurs, says paleontologist William
Clemens of the University of California, Berkeley.
Instead, Clemens points to a changing climate, lots
of volcanoes -- and the fact that being big always
puts a species at risk.
Clemens: You can see the problem today in
trying to maintain populations of elephants or rhinos
in Africa. Big animals need lots of room and they
need a minimum population size to get together and
reproduce, so changes in the topography, the climate,
cutting down ranges or breaking them up -- that
could be a problem.
Narrator: And whatever killed the dinosaurs,
birds and amphibians survived just fine.
Clemens: Yes, you may well have had an impact,
it may have had catastrophic effects locally, but
to paraphrase a writer in the New York Times who
described this discovery as a record of a catastrophic
blowtorch of death and destruction -- no, no, that’s
way too extreme.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa
Branin.
B. Protease Inhibitors:
A Lifetime Commitment
Kahn: It’s very important to take these
medicines very precisely.
Narrator: This is Science Today. New drugs
called protease inhibitors, which seem to eliminate
the HIV virus from the body, have revolutionized
AIDS treatment for those lucky enough to receive
them. But Dr. James Kahn of the University of California,
San Francisco says there’s a stiff price: besides
risking serious side effects, you literally can’t
afford to skip a single dose, or else there’s a
strong chance the virus will become resistant to
the drug.
Kahn: This is not a kind of medicine where
you can skip doses, where you can take drug vacations
from. You really have to embark on a lifetime commitment
of this therapy.
Narrator: And sometimes, says Kahn, the
virus becomes resistant anyway.
Kahn: Sometimes the drug’s simply not effective
because of a poor match between the virus and the
drug, sometimes the drug is given at a low dose
or not in the best combination, or sometimes the
person’s virus is too hearty.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa
Branin.
C. Bad Air May Lead
to Bad Skin
Narrator: This is Science Today. If you
have dry, itchy or scaly skin and live in a big
city, chances are ozone, a major air pollutant,
may be the reason. University of California, Berkeley
researcher Jens (YENS) Theile (TEE-LA) says pollution
is already known to cause respiratory problems such
as asthma.
Thiele: So we hypothesized that this very
strong oxidant, ozone, may also affect the skin.
So we started off doing experiments looking at different
layers of the skin and looking at anti-oxidants
and found that ozone depletes vitamin E and vitamin
C only in the outermost layer of the skin.
Narrator: That layer is the barrier between
the skin and the rest of the body. In the lab, ozone-exposed
mice also suffered damaged lipids, or fatty molecules.
Theile: So, at this point, we have found
the first evidence that ozone in addition to UV
light may be another environmental source of oxididative
stress in the skin.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa
Branin.
D. Back on the Chain
Gang?
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new study
on crime policy says legislators should focus more
on locking up violent criminals, as opposed to non-violent
felons. University of California, Berkeley law professor
Edward Rubin led the study.
Rubin: There are alternative ways of punishing
non-violent offenders that are more cost-effective,
equally effective in terms of punishment and do
not create a risk of public safety because essentially,
you’re dealing with a relatively non-violent population.
Narrator: Rubin agrees that non-violent
offenders such as burglars or drug users should
be punished, but says prison alternatives and treatment
programs may be more effective and are not as costly.
Rubin: For example, prison typically costs
22 thousand dollars a year. Boot camp programs,
which have lower security, but just as effective
in terms of stopping people from committing crimes,
cost about half that. House arrest with electronic
monitoring costs a quarter to a third of prison.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa
Branin.
E. Physician-Assisted
Suicide: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Narrator: This is Science Today. Dr. Donald
Abrams of the University of California, San Francisco
led a survey of doctors who care for AIDS patients.
The subject was physician-assisted suicide, and
over half the doctors said they’d helped at least
one patient end his or her life. But it’s not something
doctors talk about with each other.
Abrams: We asked physicians how often they
discussed the issue of physician-assisted suicide
with their colleagues, their peers. And among respondents
in 1990, the mean response was 3.8 times. And in
1995 it was 2.7 times. So the perception that this
is something that we don’t discuss amongst ourselves
as health care providers is correct.
Narrator: Abrams says there’s one good reason
why that may be so.
Abrams: What we do know is that the Board
of Medical Quality Assurance in October of ‘96 issued
a brief, if you will, from the Attorney General’s
office reminding us all that physician-assisted
suicide is tantamount to murder and hence a felony
in the state of California.
Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa
Branin.
