Opinion
Nebraskan
Thursday, August 4,1994
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Matt Woody.
Martha Dunn
Deborah D. McAdams
Editor, 472-1766
. Features Editor
. Copy Desk ChieJ
Derek Samson
Brian Sharp. .
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Takes two to tango
Two people are responsible for a pregnancy
There have always been abortions. There will always be abor
tions. It used to be in the hands of women who knew their
botany well enough to brew a tea that would cause the body to
expel a fetus. When sulfa drugs heralded the age of modem medicine,
self-treatment was replaced by physician care and pharmacology.
Abortions were no longer a secret.
Abortion is a very serious decision. It’s not something women
do for fun, and it’s not a common method of birth control. No one
goes lightly about having something ripped out of their uterus.
Women choose abortion when they know they can’t bear a child,
for whatever reason.
I he continuing demand tor aoortions rcnects a muen oroaocr
reality. People have sex for pleasure.
Before contraception, women took the responsibility for that
pleasure through childbirth. Abortion was the only alternative for
many women who couldn’t care for another child and whose men
remained removed from the responsibility.
We don’t hear too much about the man’s responsibility
in the abortion debate. We hear that a woman “went out and got
herself pregnant,” although most of us know that’s absurd.
An article by Aaron Sachs in World Watch points out
that,’’because men stay fertile much longer than women do, and
because they tend to be more promiscuous, the average man, by
the end of his lifetime, is responsible for more children than the
average woman.”
It stands to reason, then, that men share some degree of respon
sibility now for the demand for abortions. It’s not the men,
however, that cross the picket lines, get spit on or called murder
ers. Usually, when men appear in an abortion scenario, they are
either performing abortions, or, lately, killing those who do.
The paradox of this escalating violence is that the perpetrators
were men. They arc using force to affect a situation that could be
partially alleviated through education. They might better serve
their purpose by teaching others to use condoms and common
sense.
P.S. W rite Buck
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SofT editorials represent tbe official policy of the Summer 1994 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set
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AS KILL Wte CoTO&S....
SAM MJ’I IKI I)
Health Nazis on the march
he recent blizzard of “health
warnings” about everything
from popcorn to fcttucinc
alfredo has some people wondering if
anything is safe to cat anymore. Well,
fear not. and grab a chimichanga,
folks, since facts are the ultimate weap
on in the arsenal against the Health
Nazis.
It all began in the 1970s, when
reports warned of the dangers of sac
charin. It seemed as if those who
drank a six-pack of Diet Coke would
drop dead from cancer the next week.
Never mind that in reality a person
would have had to drink a tanker truck
of Coke each day to get the same level
ofexposureasdid thelab rats. Itdidn't
matter, and saccharin was dead. Then
it was Red Dye No. 2, which also
supposedly caused cancer when taken
in huge doses by laboratory rats. Good
bye to red M & M’s.
In 1989 the Alar scare nearly
wrecked the Washington apple indus
try. Alar, used on foods as a preserva
tive, was ultimately found to be harm
less. But not before a tearful Meryl
Streep appeared before Congress to
sob and lament the terrible injustice
done to our children by the use of
Alar.
Now, within the last year, the food
fascists have blitzed us from all sides.
Chinese food was bad for you. Italian
food was “a heart attack on a plate.”
Now Mexican food is the latest killer,
hot dogs cause leukemia in children,
hamburgers must be irradiated to pre
vent e. col i, movie popcorn popped in
coconut oil is a “silent killer,” Coca
Cola is not nutritious and should be
taken out of schools, and the topper,
just out last week in the Wall Street
Journal, is that mother’s milk may
lead to malnutrition deaths in infants,
or mental retardation. All uncritically
reported by the media.
Before one takes up that starvation
Hot dogs. Hamburgers. Movie
popcorn. Apples. Coca-Cola.
When starving people think of
America, THIS is the food they
see. It’s one of the reasons they
climb into rickety boats and
risk death to cross oceans.
diet, let’s look a bit closer at this so
called “science.” Ifanyonc in the media
or publ ic had cared to dig a bit deeper,
they would have found that science
had nothing to do with any of this.
First off, those reports on Chinese,
Italian and Mexican food were put out
by the Center for Science in the Publ ic
Interest. The CSPI tested sample por
tions larger than what most people
order, much less cat. So you can cut
the amount of fat and other nasties in
half or more. Besides, we need fat to
help digest certain vitamins — so a
very low-fat diet, especially for kids,
can be harmful.
The study showing a link between
hot dog consumption and leukemia
did not control for other factors in the
child’s lifestyle. Ditto for another study
that allegedly showed a link among
women who worked in jobs with high
exposure to electricity and electro
magnetic waves and increased death
rales. Again, the researchers failed to
control for any other factors in lifestyles
— they merely went through death
certificates in a small portion of the
country and made a huge, unwarrant
ed leap in logic.
Why aren’t these things analyzed
critically by the media? Why do they
jump on the wagon train and give this
idiocy air time and credibility? The
media themselves aren’t horribly well
educated, as is the general populace,
in the scientific method. They have no
idea what a control is, or what is a
statistically significant deviation from
the norm. You don’t need to be a math
whiz, but simply conversant in the
concepts. But, when you’re a talking
head, hired for blonde blow-dried good
looks and cheerfulness, scientific lit
eracy is perhaps a bit much to hope for.
And what of the targets of these
attacks? Hot dogs. Hamburgers. Mov
ie popcorn. Apples. Coca-Cola. When
starving people think of America,
THIS is the food they see. It’s one of
the reasons they climb into rickety
boats and risk death to cross oceans.
It’s one of the reasons we won the Cold
War — those Russian teenagers
couldn’t get enough of blue jeans.
Coke and Big Macs.
So why don’t we hear bad things
about fat-laden granola, or tofu and
bean sprouts? It’s politics, folks. The
operative words in the Center for Sci
ence in the Public Interest arc the last
two — “public interest.” Science is
secondary.
What’s a normal person to do?
Think of the words of Benjamin
Disraeli, who noted that “there arc
lies, damned lies, and statistics." And
then go out and get a couple
chimichangas, a side of refried beans
made with lard, and a large Coke. And
ENJOY IT!!!
Kepfleld li a graduate student la history aad
a Dally Nebraskaa columnist