ITEMS FROM RECENT.HTM POSTED DURING 2004

The article below really says it all 'between the lines' -browser-formatted at recent (my own mid-'90s take on the subject at afroamer).

perryb

January 2005 Scientific American Magazine December 20, 2004 Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth Boosting people's sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, researchshows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior. By Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs People intuitively recognize the importance of self-esteem to their psychological health, so it isn't particularly remarkable that most of us try to protect and enhance it in ourselves whenever possible. What is remarkable is that attention to self-esteem has become a communal concern, at least for Americans, who see a favorable opinion of oneself as the central psychological source from which all manner of positive outcomes spring. The corollary, that low self-esteem lies at the root of individual and thus societal problems and dysfunctions, has sustained an ambitious social agenda for decades. Indeed, campaigns to raise people's sense of self-worth abound. Consider what transpired in California in the late 1980s. Prodded by State Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, Governor George Deukmejian set up a task force on self-esteem and personal and social responsibility. Vasconcellos argued that raising self-esteem in young people would reduce crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, school underachievement and pollution. At one point, he even expressed the hope that these efforts would one day help balance the state budget, a prospect predicated on the observation that people	with high self-regard earn more than others and thus pay more in taxes. Along with its other activities, the task force assembled a team of scholars to survey the relevant literature. The results appeared in a 1989 volume entitled The Social Importance of Self-Esteem, which stated that "many, if not most, of the major problems plaguing society have roots in the low self-esteem of many of the people who make up society." In reality, the report contained little to support that assertion. The California task force disbanded in 1995, but a nonprofit organization called the National Association for Self-Esteem (NASE) has picked up its mantle, aiming (according to its mission statement) to "promote awareness of and provide vision, leadership and advocacy for improving the human condition through the enhancement of self-esteem." Vasconcellos, now a California state senator, is on the advisory board. Was it reasonable for leaders in California to start fashioning therapies and social policies without supportive data? Perhaps so. After all, practicing psychologists and lawmakers must deal with the problems facing them, even before all the relevant research is done. But one can draw on many more studies now than was the case 15 years ago, enough to assess the value of self-esteem in several spheres. Regrettably, those who have been pursuing self-esteem-boosting programs, including the leaders of NASE, have not shown a desire to examine the new work, which is why the four of us recently came together under the aegis of the American Psychological Society to review the scientific literature.
In the Eye of the Beholder Gauging the value of self-esteem requires, first of all, a sensible way to measure it. Most investigators just ask people what they think of themselves. Naturally enough, the answers are often colored by the common tendency to want to make oneself look good. Unfortunately, psychologists lack any better method to judge self-esteem, which is worrisome because similar self-ratings of other attributes often prove to be way off. Consider, for instance, research on the relation between self-esteem and physical attractiveness. Some findings even suggest that artificially boosting self-esteem may lower subsequent academic performance. Several studies have explored correlations between these qualities, generally finding clear positive links when people rate themselves on both properties. It seems plausible that physically attractive people would end up with high self-esteem because they are treated more favorably than unattractive ones--being more popular, more sought after, more valued by lovers and friends, and so forth. But it could just as well be that those who score highly on self-esteem scales by claiming to be wonderful people all around also boast of being physically attractive. In 1995 Edward F. Diener and Brian Wolsic of the University of Illinois and Frank Fujita of Indiana University South Bend examined this possibility.	They obtained self-esteem scores from a broad sample of the population and then photographed everybody, presenting these pictures to a panel of judges, who evaluated the subjects for attractiveness. Ratings based on full-length photographs showed no significant correlation with self-esteem. Head-and-shoulders close-ups fared slightly better, but even this finding is dubious, because individuals with high self-esteem might take particular care to present themselves well, such as by wearing attractive clothing and jewelry. The 1995 study suggests as much: when the judges were shown pictures of just the participants' unadorned faces, the modest correlation between attractiveness and self-esteem fell to zero. In that same investigation, however, self-reported physical attractiveness was found to have a strong correlation with self-esteem. Clearly, those with high self-esteem are gorgeous in their own eyes but not necessarily so to others. This discrepancy should be sobering. What seemed at first to be a strong link between physical good looks and high self-esteem turned out to be nothing more than a pattern of consistency in how favorably people rate themselves. A parallel phenomenon affects those with low self-esteem, who are prone to floccinaucinihilipilification, a highfalutin word (among the longest in the Oxford English Dictionary) but one that we can't resist using here, it being defined as "the action or habit of estimating as worthless." That is, people with low self-esteem are not merely down on themselves; they are negative about everything.
This tendency has certainly distorted some assessments. For example, psychologists once thought that people with low self-esteem were especially prejudiced. Early studies, in which subjects simply rated groups to which they did not belong, seemingly confirmed that notion, but thoughtful scholars, such as Jennifer Crocker of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, questioned this conclusion. After all, if people rate themselves negatively, it is hardly proper to label them as prejudiced for rating people not like themselves similarly. When one uses the difference between the subjects' assessments of their own group and their ratings of other groups as the yardstick for bias, the findings are reversed: people with high self-esteem appear to be more prejudiced. Floccinaucinihilipilification also raises the danger that those who describe themselves disparagingly may describe their lives similarly, thus furnishing the appearance that low self-esteem has unpleasant outcomes. Given the often misleading nature of self-reports, we set up our review to emphasize objective measures wherever possible--a requirement that greatly reduced the number of relevant studies (from more than 15,000 to about 200). We were also mindful to avoid another fallacy: the assumption that a correlation between self-esteem and some desired behavior establishes causality. Indeed, the question of causality goes to the heart of the debate. If high self-esteem brings about certain positive outcomes, it may well be worth the effort and expense of trying to instill this feeling. But if the correlations mean simply that a positive self-image is a result of success or good behavior--which is, after all, at least as plausible--there is little	to be gained by raising self-esteem alone. We began our two-year effort to sort out the issue by reviewing studies relating self-esteem to academic performance. School Daze At the outset, we had every reason to hope that boosting self-esteem would be a potent tool for helping students. Logic suggests that having a good dollop of self-esteem would enhance striving and persistence in school, while making a student less likely to succumb to paralyzing feelings of incompetence or self-doubt. Early work showed positive correlations between self-esteem and academic performance, lending credence to this notion. Modern efforts have, however, cast doubt on the idea that higher self-esteem actually induces students to do better. Such inferences about causality are possible when the subjects are examined at two different times, as was the case in 1986 when Sheila M. Pottebaum, Timothy Z. Keith and Stewart W. Ehly, all then at the University of Iowa, tested more than 23,000 high school students, first in the 10th and again in the 12th grade. They found that self-esteem in 10th grade is only weakly predictive of academic achievement in 12th grade. Academic achievement in 10th grade correlates with self-esteem in 12th grade only trivially better. Such results, which are now available from multiple studies, certainly do not indicate that raising self-esteem offers students much benefit. Some findings even suggest that artificially boosting self-esteem may lower subsequent performance.
Even if raising self-esteem does not foster academic progress, might it serve some purpose later, say, on the job? Apparently not. Studies of possible links between workers' self-regard and job performance echo what has been found with schoolwork: the simple search for correlations yields some suggestive results, but these do not show whether a good self-image leads to occupational success, or vice versa. In any case, the link is not particularly strong. The failure to contribute significantly at school or at the office would be easily offset if a heightened sense of self-worth helped someone to get along better with others. Having a good self-image might make someone more likable insofar as people prefer to associate with confident, positive individuals and generally avoid those who suffer from self-doubts and insecurities. People who regard themselves highly generally state that they are popular and rate their friendships as being of superior quality to those described by people with low self-esteem, who report more negative interactions and less social support. But as Julia Bishop and Heidi M. Inderbitzen-Nolan of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln showed in 1995, these assertions do not reflect reality. The investigators asked 542 ninth-grade students to nominate their most-liked and least-liked peers, and the resulting rankings displayed no correlation whatsoever with self-esteem scores. A few other methodologically sound studies have found that the same is true for adults. In one of these investigations, conducted in the late 1980s, Duane P. Buhrmester, now at the University of Texas at Dallas, and three colleagues	reported that college students with high levels of self-regard claimed to be substantially better at initiating relationships, better at disclosing things about themselves, better at asserting themselves in response to objectionable behaviors by others, better at providing emotional support and better even at managing interpersonal conflicts. Their roommates' ratings, however, told a different story. For four of the five interpersonal skills surveyed, the correlation with self-esteem dropped to near zero. The only one that remained statistically significant was with the subjects' ability to initiate new social contacts and friendships. This does seem to be one sphere in which confidence indeed matters: people who think that they are desirable and attractive should be adept at striking up conversations with strangers, whereas those with low self-esteem presumably shy away from initiating such contacts, fearing rejection. One can imagine that such differences might influence a person's love life, too. In 2002 Sandra L. Murray of the University at Buffalo and four colleagues found that people low in self-esteem tend to distrust their partners' expressions of love and support, acting as though they are constantly expecting rejection. Thus far, however, investigators have not produced evidence that such relationships are especially prone to dissolve. In fact, high self-esteem may be the bigger threat: as Caryl E. Rusbult, Gregory D. Morrow and Dennis J. Johnson, all then at the University of Kentucky, showed back in 1987, those who think highly of themselves are more likely than others to respond to problems by severing relations and seeking other partners.
Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll How about teenagers? How does self-esteem, or the lack thereof, influence their love life, in particular their sexual activity? Investigators have examined this subject extensively. All in all, the results do not support the idea that low self-esteem predisposes young people to more or earlier sexual activity. If anything, those with high self-esteem are less inhibited, more willing to disregard risks and more prone to engage in sex. At the same time, bad sexual experiences and unwanted pregnancies appear to lower self-esteem. If not sex, then how about alcohol or illicit drugs? Abuse of these substances is one of the most worrisome behaviors among young people, and many psychologists once believed that boosting self-esteem would prevent such problems. The thought was that people with low self-esteem turn to drinking or drugs for solace. The data, however, do not consistently show that low adolescent self-esteem causes or even correlates with the abuse of alcohol or other drugs. In particular, in a large-scale study in 2000, Rob McGee and Sheila M. Williams of the University of Otago Medical School in New Zealand found no correlation between self-esteem measured between ages nine and 13 and drinking or drug use at age 15. Even when findings do show links between alcohol use and self-esteem, they are mixed and inconclusive. A few studies have shown that high self-esteem is associated with frequent alcohol consumption, but another suggests the opposite. We did	find, however, some evidence that low self-esteem contributes to illicit drug use. In particular, Judy A. Andrews and Susan C. Duncan of the Oregon Research Institute found in 1997 that declining levels of academic motivation (the main focus of their study) caused self-esteem to drop, which in turn led to marijuana use, although the connection was rather weak. Interpretation of the findings on drinking and drug abuse is probably complicated by the fact that some people approach the experience out of curiosity or thrill seeking, whereas others may use it to cope with or escape from chronic unhappiness. The overall result is that no categorical statements can be made. The same is true for tobacco use, where our study-by-study review uncovered a preponderance of results that show no influence. The few positive findings we unearthed could conceivably reflect nothing more than self-report bias. Another complication that also clouds these studies is that the category of people with high self-esteem contains individuals whose self-opinions differ in important ways. Yet in most analyses, people with a healthy sense of self-respect are, for example, lumped with those feigning higher self-esteem than they really feel or who are narcissistic. Not surprisingly, the results of such investigations may produce weak or contradictory findings.
Bully for You For decades, psychologists believed that low self-esteem was an important cause of aggression. One of us (Baumeister) challenged that notion in 1996, when he reviewed assorted studies and concluded that perpetrators of aggression generally hold favorable and perhaps even inflated views of themselves. Take the bullying that goes on among children, a common form of aggression. Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen was one of the first to dispute the notion that under their tough exteriors, bullies suffer from insecurities and self-doubts. Although Olweus did not measure self-esteem directly, he showed that bullies reported less anxiety and were more sure of themselves than other children. Apparently the same applies to violent adults, as Baumeister discussed in these pages a few years ago [see "More to Explore," below]. After coming to the conclusion that high self-esteem does not lessen a tendency toward violence, that it does not deter adolescents from turning to alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, and that it fails to	improve academic or job performance, we got a boost when we looked into how self-esteem relates to happiness. The consistent finding is that people with high self-esteem are significantly happier than others. They are also less likely to be depressed. One especially compelling study was published in 1995, after Diener and his daughter Marissa, now a psychologist at the University of Utah, surveyed more than 13,000 college students, and high self-esteem emerged as the strongest factor in overall life satisfaction. In 2004 Sonja Lyubomirsky, Chris Tkach and M. Robin DiMatteo of the University of California at Riverside reported data from more than 600 adults ranging in age from 51 to 95. Once again, happiness and self-esteem proved to be closely tied. Before it is safe to conclude that high self-esteem leads to happiness, however, further research must address the shortcomings of the work that has been done so far. People with high self-esteem are significantly happier than others. They are also less likely to be depressed.
First, causation needs to be established. It seems possible that high self-esteem brings about happiness, but no research has shown this outcome. The strong correlation between self-esteem and happiness is just that--a correlation. It is plausible that occupational, academic or interpersonal successes cause both happiness and high self-esteem and that corresponding failures cause both unhappiness and low self-esteem. It is even possible that happiness, in the sense of a temperament or disposition to feel good, induces high self-esteem. Second, it must be recognized that happiness (and its opposite, depression) has been studied mainly by means of self-report, and the tendency of some people toward negativity may produce both their low opinions of themselves and unfavorable evaluations of other aspects of life. In other instances, we were suspicious of self-reports, yet here it is not clear what could replace such assessments. An investigator would indeed be hard-pressed to demonstrate convincingly that a person was less (or more) happy than he or she supposed. Clearly, objective measures of happiness and depression are going to be difficult if not impossible to obtain, but that does not mean self-reports should be accepted uncritically.	What then should we do? Should parents, teachers and therapists seek to boost self-esteem wherever possible? In the course of our literature review, we found some indications that self-esteem is a helpful attribute. It improves persistence in the face of failure. And individuals with high self-esteem sometimes perform better in groups than do those with low self-esteem. Also, a poor self-image is a risk factor for certain eating disorders, especially bulimia--a connection one of us (Vohs) and her colleagues documented in 1999. Other effects are harder to demonstrate with objective evidence, although we are inclined to accept the subjective evidence that self-esteem goes hand in hand with happiness. So we can certainly understand how an injection of self-esteem might be valuable to the individual. But imagine if a heightened sense of self-worth prompted some people to demand preferential treatment or to exploit their fellows. Such tendencies would entail considerable social costs. And we have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today's children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.

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Attached is an article on the making of 'The Keys To The House' currently playing in Los Angeles -a nose-rub into another aspect of 'the human condition' -a film most people can not walk out of and some might, in a way, prefer not to have seen.

perryb

December 26, 2004 Los Angeles Times WORLD CINEMA Of disability and nobility An Italian director receives a performance of quiet strength and humor from a teen with multiple disorders. By Susan King, Times Staff Writer When Italian director Gianni Amelio set out to cast the role of a disabled teenage boy in his haunting drama "The Keys to the House," he knew exactly where to scout for likely candidates.    "Swimming is kind of a therapy with this kind of illness," says the veteran director through a translator. "I knew I would find a boy like that in a swimming pool. So I went to a swimming pool near Cinecitta [studios], and on the first day, I met Andrea. It was kind of a sign of destiny."    Andrea Rossi, who was 16 then, was competing in a race the day he caught Amelio's eye. Rossi, who possesses a smile that doesn't quit, has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and mental retardation. But his disabilities didn't stop him from racing against children who had no such disabilities. "He came in first," says Amelio, laughing. "Why did he come in first? He had challenged the 'normal' kids. He said to them, you can race me, but you have to swim with just one arm and a leg. That's a formidable piece of personality. That is when I became aware that I would have to make the film from a positive point — that he is winning against the handicap in some way."

"The Keys to the House," which opened Wednesday, stars Kim Rossi Stuart as Gianni, a young man who had abandoned his baby 15 years earlier when the mother died in childbirth and he learned that the child had problems.    Vivacious, inquisitive and mischievous, Paolo (Andrea Rossi) is both physically and psychologically disabled from the difficult birth and has been living with relatives.    But now Gianni wants to meet Paolo and agrees to take him to a hospital in Berlin for tests in hopes of reconciling and getting acquainted with him. At the hospital, Gianni meets Nicole (Charlotte Rampling), who has spent years taking care of her disabled daughter and helps Gianni come to terms with the grief and guilt he feels over abandoning Paolo    Amelio ("Stolen Children") was originally approached to do a film based on the book "Born Twice," which follows the life of a disabled boy from birth to age 32. But he told the producer, "I wouldn't be capable of telling the same story in a film version. It needed a personal experience of my own on the subject to be able to do that. I think I would have strayed from the spirit of the book. I asked if it was possible for me to write my own story."    He wanted to tell about an "extreme" father and son — "the story of a father who refused his son as soon as he was born.    "On screen, we practically see this feeling of guilt on his face. This practically deformed child somehow personifies the sense of his guilt. That is why I wanted the role of the father to be played by a very handsome actor, handsome in a classical way. Because being handsome would make that fact stand out more, that his child is deformed."

Film Work As Therapy During the 10-week production of the film, Rossi underwent a metamorphosis, Amelio reports. "Andrea, like many kids with the same type of problem, is always treated from a physical point of view because adults keep thinking he is mentally unable to develop his own ideas. I had the feeling that Andrea did have some intelligence to express, and the feeling was right."    Making the movie was mental therapy for Rossi, who turns in a performance of quiet strength, humor and nobility. "This was confirmed by Andrea's doctors," says Amelio. "He has a more adult attitude. He is less detached from things, and he thinks about things more. He has become more mature."    Rossi's father stood beside Amelio on the set every day.    "He said, 'I want to be beside you because I want to make sure what point Andrea can reach, and the things he is unable to do,' " recalls Amelio. "Each day I asked Andrea to do something a bit more but always stopped when I knew Andrea couldn't have gone beyond that part."    Rossi's life, says Amelio, is vastly different from Paolo's. "He lives with a splendid family — with a mother, father and younger sister. They have brought him up as if he was a completely healthy person."    And he attends regular school. "In Italy, all children are required to go to normal school," Amelio explains. "They have a special teacher that kind of follows them during the day."    Still, he says, "there is a real problem with regard to disabled children because almost spontaneously we feel sorry for them. So we try not to ask too much of them. I demanded some kind of effort from [Rossi] and he managed to do this. My greatest joy having made the film is that he has something that has gone beyond the screen."

Amelio didn't spend time rehearsing Rossi and Stuart. "I think the relationship of the actor with the director is more important than the relationship between the actors among themselves. Professionally, actors are very fragile people, even at the level of jealousy. So every actor needs to have the feeling that the director is looking exclusively at him. I wanted to give this feeling to Kim and Charlotte because they are actors."    Alla Faerovich, the severely disabled young woman who plays Rampling's daughter Nadine, has been a friend of Amelio's since 2001, and he elicits a touching performance from her, as well.    "She has a different syndrome than Andrea's," he says. "Her situation is worse, but mentally she's completely healthy. She speaks four languages and has an important job in Berlin. She reads a lot. She loves music."    Amelio chose to set the film's hospital for the disabled in Berlin because he wanted the story to unfold in a city that would be strange for both father and son. "I wanted a disability for the father as well, the disability of being in a foreign city," says the director. "For us Europeans and for some Americans, Berlin reminds us of the Holocaust — a time when children like Andrea were eliminated."    Rossi is now 17, and, Amelio happily reports, he does his homework. "He didn't used to in the past. All he did before was watch TV. Sometimes he comes over to my house to study. His father told me when the film came out in Rome, a kind of miracle has occurred. Before, Andrea was a disabled child. Now he is a person."

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December 19, 2004 The Economist Magazine The servant problem A modest proposal How to solve the biggest issue in modern politics FORGET Iraq and budget deficits. The most serious political problem on both sides of the Atlantic is none of these. It is a difficulty that has dogged the ruling classes for millennia. It is the servant problem. In Britain David Blunkett, the home secretary, has resigned over an embarrassment (or one of many embarrassments, in a story involving his ex-girlfriend, her husband, two pregnancies and some DNA) concerning a visa for a Filipina nanny employed by his mistress (see article). His office speeded it through for reasons unconnected to the national shortage of unskilled labour. Mr Blunkett resigned ahead of a report by Sir Alan Budd, an economist who is investigating the matter at the government's request. In America Bernard Kerik, the president's nominee for the Department of Homeland Security, withdrew last week because he had carelessly employed a Mexican nanny whose Play-Doh skills were in better order than her paperwork (see article). Mr Kerik also remembered that he hadn't paid her taxes. The nominee has one or two other “issues” (an arrest warrant in 1998, and allegations of dodgy business dealings and extra-marital affairs). But employing an illegal nanny would probably have been enough to undo him, as it has several other cabinet and judicial appointees in recent years. There is an easy answer to the servant problem—obvious to economists, if not to the less clear-sighted. Perhaps Sir Alan, a dismal scientist of impeccable rationality, will be thoughtful enough to point it out in his report. Parents are not the only people who have difficulty getting visas for workers. All employers face restrictive immigration policies which raise labour costs.

Some may respond by trying to fiddle the immigration system, but most deal with the matter by exporting jobs. In the age of the global economy, the solution to the servant problem is simple: rather than importing the nanny, offshore the children. Make mine a monoglot Many working parents would hardly notice the difference, and there would be clear advantages beyond lower child-care costs. Freeing up rich-country real estate currently clogged with cots and playpens would lower rents; liberating time currently wasted in story-telling and tummy-tickling would raise productivity. For parents who wished to be present at bed-time, video-conference facilities could be arranged. Luddites and sentimentalists will whinge about the disadvantages of raising a brood in, say, Beijing. Language, for instance: what if one found oneself in possession of a posse of mini-Mandarin speakers? Yet in the age of global culture, few sensible modern parents are susceptible to such small-mindedness. If they were, they wouldn't so commonly leave their offspring in the care of monoglot Mexicans or Poles. Unthinking conservatism may spawn resistance to this eminently sensible idea. But politicians, the people most often embarrassed by the servant problem, should be keen to popularise it—not just for themselves, but also in the national interest. Offshoring could help solve several problems afflicting rich-world economies, including that of ageing populations: after all, you get more bairns for your buck in Bangalore. And why stop at toddlers? Difficult teenagers, the offspring most liable to vex political parents, could be conveniently removed: imagine how much easier George Bush's life would have been had his twins been confined to, say, Pyongyang.

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December 20, 2004 Los Angeles Times THE STATE Getty Deal Raises Questions Conflict-of-interest specter haunts land sale to Eli Broad, a close friend of the trust's CEO. By Jason Felch, Robin Fields and Louise Roug, Times Staff Writers The J. Paul Getty Trust sold a valuable piece of Brentwood real estate in 2002 for $700,000 less than its appraised value to billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a close friend and professional associate of Getty Chief Executive Barry Munitz, according to trust documents and officials.    Munitz directed his aides to delay listing the property so that he could discuss a transaction directly with Broad, despite what Getty records call "many requests to purchase the property," which is adjacent to Broad's hilltop estate.    Getty executives now say they conducted a proper sale and received full value for the wooded half acre. Broad received no discount, they said, adding that they had consulted counsel to make sure they followed the law.	Eli Broad Barry Munitz    "I played no meaningful, no material, no in-any-way-relevant role in the transaction," Munitz said in an interview. "Everything I did was to try to have the lawyers and the appraisers and the third-party people be sure that there was no conflict of interest for me."
But Getty documents show Munitz spelled out negotiating strategies to his deputies, even as he acknowledged that his relationship with Broad required him to stay out of the deal. He also discussed the property in person with Broad, he said.    A 2000 appraisal put the property's value at $2.7 million, $700,000 more than the sale price in 2002. Median home prices increased 12% in Brentwood during that time, according to a real estate information service.    Getty officials say the land was worth less than the $2.7 million appraisal because a number of limiting conditions would have made it costly and difficult to develop.    Penny Cobey, the Getty's acting general counsel at the time, refused to comment on her advice regarding the land sale, citing attorney-client privilege. But she said: "It should not be concluded … that I approved the proposed sale or advised that it go forward."    Munitz's connection to Broad, which included working vacations abroad with their wives, gives the Getty president entry into a tight-knit group of leaders in education, philanthropy and politics. Broad's ties to Munitz and the other Getty board members gives him sway with those who run the world's richest museum.	Foundation executives and tax law specialists consulted by The Times about the sale said it raises legal and ethical questions that could trigger scrutiny from the state attorney general's office or the Internal Revenue Service, which regulate tax-exempt organizations.    Private foundations such as the Getty are exempt from paying taxes because their assets are dedicated to public use, not private benefit. When selling property, they are required to get fair market value.    "The obligation is to always put the interests of the trust first," said Arthur Rieman, managing director of the Law Firm for Non-Profits in Los Angeles, a center that advises foundations nationwide. "If someone gets a discount because of a personal relationship, then that duty is violated."    Munitz's ties to Broad created a conflict of interest that should have kept him from having any role in the transaction, Rieman and other experts said.    "It could be argued that Munitz breached his duty to the organization as a trustee," Rieman said. Munitz's relationship with Broad began over a decade ago and has deepened since he came to lead the $6.8-billion Getty Trust.
They met soon after Munitz arrived in California to become chancellor of the California State University system in 1991.    Munitz asked his staff for a list of 10 influential people with ties to CSU, and invited them to a small dinner party at his house in Long Beach. One of them was Broad, a former CSU trustee and one of the nation's largest philanthropic donors.    Rooted in education, their association soon branched into other realms.    In 1994, Broad recommended Munitz for a position on the board at SunAmerica Inc., his giant insurance conglomerate.    In 1997, Munitz left CSU for the Getty. Two years later, after AIG acquired SunAmerica, Munitz was appointed to the board of KB Home, a position that pays $80,000 a year plus stock options. Broad was chairman of that company until 1993.    Not long after Munitz took the Getty's helm, Broad invited Munitz to sail along the coast of southern France on his yacht, mixing recreation with visits to a string of small museums.    " 'Don't you think it would be nice if you actually knew something about what you are about to get into?' " Munitz recalled Broad, a noted art collector, teasingly asking him. Munitz came to the Getty with no background in the art world.	It was Munitz's first invitation to join Broad's "boat trip summers" and travels to such places as Croatia, Greece and Cuba with a circle of entrepreneurs and philanthropists. The group sometimes included then Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan and billionaire investor Ronald W. Burkle.    Back in Los Angeles, Munitz and Broad's collaborations in the arts, education and politics continued.    Munitz was among a small group of power brokers who walked down Grand Avenue with Broad on a Saturday morning in 1999, helping to inspire the billionaire's vision for downtown revitalization.    Munitz said Broad's interests never extended to the Getty. The period of art that Broad collects is not featured at the Getty, Munitz said, and Broad has never expressed interest in becoming a trustee.    "Eli is a tenacious, impatient, extraordinary person — I love him dearly," he added. "But I would never expect that I was going to look up around my board table and see Eli."    But Getty expense records show that Munitz has a business relationship with Broad that involves the Getty.    In August 1998, after a tour of Greece on Broad's yacht that included visits to Getty-sponsored projects, Munitz was reimbursed by the trust for a $3,200 check he wrote to Broad to cover "gratuities and the use of the phone" on Broad's boat.
A cover letter to Broad from Munitz said the check was "only a very small token of adequate participation, and stands only to reflect our gratitude for your support and for your elegant energy."    The Getty paid for Munitz and his wife to dine at Valentino in Santa Monica with Broad and his wife, Edythe, Getty trustee Louise Bryson and her husband, John Bryson, chairman of Edison International, and another couple. The "working dinner" included conversations about the Getty, education and public television, expense records show.    In 2001, expense records show, Munitz was reimbursed $5,000 by the Getty for "yacht expenses" after another trip to Greece, this time with the Broads, Riordans and Burkles, as well as AIG SunAmerica Chief Executive Jay S. Wintrob and his wife.    During Munitz's tenure, more than half the seats on the Getty's board of trustees have opened up. Some of those who traveled with Munitz and Broad have filled those spots. Today, at least six of the 13 trustees have links to Broad.    Burkle and former Univision President Luis Nogales sit with Munitz on the board of KB Home. Wintrob, added to the Getty board earlier this year, is chief executive of AIG SunAmerica, where Broad is chairman.	In addition, Ramon C. Cortines, former interim superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, who was on the Getty board when Munitz arrived, and USC President Steven Sample, who joined the board this year, are advisors to Broad on education initiatives. In the late 1990s, the Getty did what officials say was a routine review of the trust's property holdings and decided to sell the land across the street from Broad's front gate. The trust had acquired the land years earlier.    Today, Munitz downplays the value of the lot. "At an 89-degree angle to the earth, this is not an attractive lot to build on," he said.    But an independent appraisal obtained by the Getty in 1992, which only considered about 60% of the land included in the 2002 property sale, painted a different picture.    The land is located in "the most prestigious neighborhood in West Los Angeles and the standard by which all others are measured," it said, estimating its value at $1.55 million. Despite the "moderately steep terrain" on its eastern side, the property's "highest and best use … is as a site for a single-family residence."
In 2000, a second appraisal done for the Getty put the value of the full lot at $2.7 million.    The initial plan was to list the property publicly, soliciting competitive bids, Getty documents show. The asking price was $2.295 million.    Real estate broker Joan McGoohan said the Getty asked her to approach Oakmont Drive residents first to assess their interest. Specifically, she was asked to approach Broad.    "He basically said, 'Not interested, too expensive,' " McGoohan said.    At the same time, Broad's representatives say he made it clear that he did not want the Getty property developed. A former Getty employee said Broad's attorneys raised a gamut of potential building and fire code issues that could stall construction indefinitely.    Broad's interest in blocking development on the land would be obvious to anyone who has visited his home, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry. A large new home there could have crowded the dramatic entrance to Broad's estate and detracted from the sense of space surrounding it.    Broad would not agree to an interview. Through a spokeswoman, he said he counteroffered $1 million for the land.	At that point, the Getty reversed its plan to list the property publicly, McGoohan said, instead opting to negotiate directly with Broad.    "They didn't want to offend Mr. Broad," she said. "They didn't want to upset him."    Officials at large nonprofits say there are ways to protect a foundation's interests when dealing with potential conflicts of interest and property of debated value.    "I would advise that it be marketed publicly," said Janne Gallagher, vice president and general counsel for the Council on Foundations.    "We would certainly have it appraised and sell it through an established broker or independent source," said Nancy Feller, associate general counsel of the Ford Foundation. "We would not do it ourselves."    In fact, Ford Foundation policy prohibits the sale of foundation property to employees, their friends or relatives, even at fair market value, she said.    In the case of the Getty property, Munitz stepped into the process.
In a document obtained by The Times, he instructed two senior deputies on options for dealing with Broad and directed them to send a formal memorandum back to him that included those options.    Munitz's draft ordered his staff to delay listing the property and proposed several alternatives to a direct sale to Broad. One option he suggested was for the Getty to promise not to develop the property in exchange for a tax- deductible donation from Broad.    Another was for Broad to donate "an appropriate residence, named for the donor" to the Getty in exchange for a commitment not to develop the land. The only negotiating partner mentioned in the outline was Broad.    Yet, aware of his ties to Broad, Munitz also instructed his deputies to include a sentence saying, "It is essential to emphasize that our attorneys and advisors feel very strongly about certain alternatives that would not be beneficial to either party, and there [sic] concern that you [Munitz] must maintain some reasonable distance from this decision given your close relationship with Eli."    Munitz sent his draft to Stephen Rountree, the Getty's chief operating officer, and Russell Gould, the senior vice president for finance and investments.	They responded on Jan. 12, 2000, with a final memo addressed to Munitz. "At your request, we have now delayed the listing of the Oakmont properties with Joan McGoohan in order to allow you a chance to discuss the property with Eli Broad next week," it began.    The Gould-Rountree version dropped Munitz's idea of a swap or donation from Broad, but otherwise closely followed his draft.    It added that the Getty had set the asking price on the land at $2.295 million, factoring in the obstacles to its development. It said the trust already had interest from multiple potential buyers, including from an employee of the Getty Center's own architect, Richard Meier.    "We have received many requests to purchase the property, so our expectation was that the property would sell fairly easily for the construction of one great house or as additional personal property for one of the neighbors," Rountree and Gould wrote.    Stressing the property's sharply increasing value, Rountree and Gould suggested that the trust might simply hold on to it.    The yardstick for whether the Getty had received fair market value would be the appraisals and the real estate agent's assessment, the memo said: "As you know, our auditors and the attorney general will examine any sale of the property to determine that the board acted as responsible fiduciaries."
Negotiations with Broad continued for two years.    Broad said he did not recall meeting with Munitz to discuss the property, and said he never negotiated with Munitz himself, only with Rountree, Broad's spokeswoman said.    The Getty did not seek a new appraisal for the Oakmont land, a step the state attorney general's office recommends that all foundations take in such circumstances.    "If you're exercising good business judgment, why would [you] sell it without a current appraisal?" asked Belinda Johns, senior assistant for the attorney general's charitable trust section. Although Johns would not comment on any specific case, she said in general, "You'd want to maximize your assets. In fact, you have an obligation to."    In April 2002, Rountree approved the sale of Getty land to Broad. The final price: $2 million.    The board did not vote on the transaction but was informed of it, Getty officials said. John Biggs, the current chairman of the board of trustees, referred questions about the land sale to the Getty spokeswoman.        The Getty says the documents demonstrate that Munitz handled the sale ethically and responsibly.	In a written response to The Times, Getty general counsel Peter Erichsen defended the trust's actions. "The lot was sold at arm's length for fair market value to the most practical and possible buyer," he said. "Dr. Munitz suggested to Messrs. Rountree and Gould language for them to include in a memorandum to Dr. Munitz, that he could then share with Mr. Broad, to make abundantly clear that it was essential for Mr. Broad and his representatives to work directly with Messrs. Rountree and Gould, because Dr. Munitz could not negotiate or conclude any transaction with him."    Erichsen said the Getty had received a lower valuation for the land in 1999 that put its worth between $1.5 million and $2 million, depending on the usability of the lot.    Further, he said, the property would have required a variance to develop, and as a neighbor Broad would have been able to protest any proposed development with the city.    Broad also may have been able to prevent access to Oakmont Drive, a private road maintained by a neighborhood association, Erichsen said. Claymont Drive, which also borders the property, is a public road.    By negotiating directly with Broad, the Getty saved a broker's commission, Erichsen noted. Realtors say they usually get 5% of the sale price, in this case $100,000. It also saved on other transaction costs, he added.
Rountree is now president of the Los Angeles Music Center, where Broad and Getty trustees Burkle and Lloyd E. Cotsen are among 12 honorary directors.    Rountree said the Getty got a fair price because the Getty's appraisals did not factor in a number of limiting conditions on how the land could be used, such as unresolved questions about access to the two roads it abuts and the lot's steep terrain.    The statement from Broad's representative also said "the appraisal did not take into account that the lot could not be developed because it was in a ravine and on a private street."    Real estate professionals sometimes do factor in such limiting conditions. The Getty would not provide The Times with a copy of the $2.7-million appraisal written in 2000.    "We were overjoyed to sell the parcel for $2 million," Rountree said. "Mr. Broad was well aware of the negative factors affecting the lot, and I know that he felt that $2 million was a very stiff price under the circumstances."	* (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) Land Deal In 2002, the J. Paul Getty Trust sold Eli Broad a Brentwood property for $2 million. Two years earlier, an appraisal had said it was worth $2.7 million. Getty Chief Executive Barry Munitz, a close friend and professional associate of Broad, personally directed the early stages of the deal, Getty documents show. Experts say the deal raises legal and ethical questions. * The Getty Trust sold the property to the Broad Revocable Trust on April 23, 2002, for $2 million. * The property totals 26,392 square feet, or 0.6 acres.

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December 16, 2004 Los Angeles Times COLUMN ONE An Ethnic Center's New Pull Koreatown was once the place one left. Now, focused on a shiny strip of Wilshire, it's a mecca for suburbanites and wealthy immigrants. By K. Connie Kang, Times Staff Writer Set between the Byzantine Revival dome of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the dancing neon lights of the Art Deco Wiltern Theatre, a new landmark is taking root along the storied avenue.    With its futuristic glass facade and two-story television screen flashing Korean ads, the Aroma Spa and Sports Center is a stark visual contrast to the neighborhood's faded gems like the Ambassador Hotel and Bullocks Wilshire department store. But it is a sign that luxury is returning to Wilshire, and that Koreatown itself is on the move.    Aroma, a five-story shopping center, spa and athletic club, is a replica of a similar facility in Seoul, where pampering affluent customers is a fine art.    Up its marble-floored courtyard, Aroma offers massages, baths, saunas and steam rooms, including some with jade floors and mud walls of red clay imported from South Korea's Cholla province. With the push of a button, golfers can summon a waitress to bring freshly squeezed orange juice while they practice at the indoor driving range.

Koreatown - Tim Cho, 15, practices his swing in the indoor/outdoor golf range at Aroma Spa and Sports Center in Koreatown. The driving range, which is open to the public, features three levels and automatic ball feeders. The five-story, glass and steel building which houses the golf range is a stark contrast to the neighborhood's faded gems like the Ambassador Hotel and the Wiltern Theatre.

It caters to a new generation of affluent Koreans who are changing the city center.    Some are immigrants from South Korea, concerned about economic instability in their country, who invest in California businesses and real estate. Such moves entitle them to an investment visa, known as an E-2, which enables them to stay in the United States.    Others helped form the community in the 1970s and '80s, but then left it for bigger homes and better schools in the suburbs. With their children now in college or working, they are coming back.    "In the old days, it was a status symbol to live away from Koreatown," said Sun-Kil Pak, who moved to Koreatown a year ago from the Westside, where she had lived since the late 1980s. "These days, you're almost embarrassed to live far away. When you go to meetings at night, people tease you, 'Why do you live so far away? Why are you driving home so late?' "    The influx is helping shift Koreatown's geography. The community was formed in the late 1960s and early '70s along a dilapidated stretch of Olympic Boulevard near Western Avenue. But now, Wilshire is emerging as the main drag, especially for the newcomers.    Developers are converting several high-rise office buildings along Wilshire Boulevard into luxury apartments. A few blocks away, the shuttered I. Magnin department store, for generations a hangout for white-gloved ladies who lunched, has become Wilshire Galleria, an upscale Korean arcade featuring high-end jewelry and apparel, beauty treatment boutiques and an art gallery.	The eight California-chartered Korean banks in Koreatown are all within several blocks of Wilshire, sometimes called the "Korean Wall Street." They now have combined assets of about $9 billion.    The 2000 Census found 92,000 Koreans in Los Angeles — about half of them within the traditional Koreatown boundaries of Hoover Street on the east, Norton Avenue on the west, Pico Boulevard on the south and Beverly Boulevard on the north.    But real estate brokers, bankers and community leaders estimate that several thousand more have arrived in the last few years — from South Korea and the suburbs. The local banks also report an increase in investment from South Korea, a sign that immigrants are purchasing property and businesses.    Koreatown has been known for its hip and exotic night spots, but the district has also seen a boom in businesses geared toward the older generation. In addition to the steam rooms at Aroma, patrons now crowd into a variety of "song rooms" in Koreatown, where they can belt out nostalgic 1950s and '60s-era songs from their youth.    "There are two cultures in Koreatown," said Charles J. Kim, a child of Koreatown who is national president of the Korean American Coalition. "Sauna culture and cafe culture."    For Jung-In Lee, 53, the decision to move back to Koreatown, where her family lived in the early 1980s, came within months after their younger son, Jim, started at UC Berkeley in 1998.    During the nearly 12 years the family lived in Walnut, Lee often spent three hours a day commuting to and from her Koreatown job in publishing, she said.
Lee said her family moved out of Koreatown because of schools and crime. She said that when she saw one of her sons go into a liquor store with a classmate after school, she realized it was time for the family to move.    But during her time in the suburbs, she was so stressed out from the commute that she barely had time to enjoy their four-bedroom "dream house."    "Now, I have a life," said Lee, who lives a mile from her office. "I can play tennis before going to work. I can even get up at 8 o'clock and make it to work on time. Can you imagine that?"    Their younger son lives at home while working and attending graduate school. But the older son, John, an associate at the downtown law firm Nossaman, Guthner, Knox & Elliott, lives in the Miracle Mile — "a 20-minute jog" from his parents' place.    "I enjoy being right in the middle between downtown and Westside," he said. "It's 15 minutes door-to-door" from his apartment to his office.    There are trade-offs, of course. Her husband, Sang-Chul Kim, a 55-year-old business consultant, said he misses the spaciousness of Walnut and a backyard with fruit trees.    "Koreatown is congested and doesn't look clean," he said.    But its proximity to the mansions of Hancock Park makes up for it, he said. "Every evening after work, I take a walk in Hancock Park. I enjoy all those beautifully tended gardens without paying a gardener."    Insurance agent Nam-Tai Cho, who lived in Northridge, Van Nuys and Calabasas for two decades while raising his family, likens living in Koreatown to "coming home."	He and his wife, Hea-Kyung, bought a condo on Wilshire Boulevard near his office 18 months ago.    "Sometimes I go home for lunch," Cho said. "If I have a meeting at night, I go home to take a short break first." On Monday evenings after work, the Chos attend a weekly Bible class at their church nearby — something they couldn't even consider when they lived in the San Fernando Valley.    Since they moved to Koreatown, they have changed homes twice, settling a year ago not far from Aroma.    A leader in the transformation of Wilshire is David Y. Lee, 50, an internist turned real estate tycoon.    His Jamison Properties Inc., which owns 27 high-rise buildings on Wilshire, is by far the largest landlord in Koreatown. Lee began buying in 1995, when insurance companies such as Travelers, John Hancock and Equitable were leaving the area.    Over the last few years, those office buildings have been filled by a mix of tenants, including government agencies and trade schools as well as Korean entrepreneurs and professionals.    His current projects include a shopping center behind the Equitable Plaza at Wilshire and Alexandria, and three condominium complexes, with 190 units.    Lee believes that the recent influx of Korean professionals has helped the revival, though he said it is by no means complete.    Concerns about crime remain a nagging issue that keeps people away — especially young families.
Moreover, the area has yet to attract high-end non-Korean restaurants, boutiques, bookstores and movie theaters. Lee and others had once hoped the Ambassador Hotel site could be used to lure upscale retailers to the area. But the Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the land, intends to build a school there.    "Not getting the Ambassador Hotel was a loss for the Korean community," he said.    Despite these shortcomings, there is no question that Koreatown is in demand.    "All of a sudden, the area is becoming hip with places to go," said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.    Real estate agents are hard pressed to locate newer condos and townhouses near Wilshire for their clients.    The scarcity of desirable residential stock has hiked condo prices to $550,000 and up, according to real estate agents.    "They're overpriced, but it's a case of supply and demand," said Suky Lee, a real estate agent with Nelson, Shelton & Associates in Beverly Hills, who has many Korean clients.    Adding to the crunch are investors from South Korea, who see Koreatown as a safe harbor to invest a portion of their assets. To people from Seoul, where an average condo runs $1 million, even the most expensive condos in Koreatown can seem like a bargain.	"They may not look that nice from the outside, but on the inside, they have nice wooden floors and beautiful kitchens," said E.J. Kim, president of Calvest Realty. "So, they don't mind spending $750,000 for a condo or a townhouse."    For visitors from South Korea, one way to remain in the United States is by investing in residential property, restaurants, coffee shops, factories, strip malls or other businesses, say Koreatown bankers and lawyers.    Then, they can apply for the E-2 investment visa.    That's what Scott Hwang, 32, did soon after arriving in Los Angeles from Seoul in 2001 on a student visa. He bought a restaurant in Koreatown and operated it for nearly two years. Earlier this year, he sold it and bought Cafe Spot at the corner of 6th and Catalina streets. He also bought a condo on Wilshire at the edge of Hancock Park.    The Spot, with oak paneling and tables, and an extensive menu of beverages and desserts, is dignified enough to attract older customers by day and hip enough to draw younger Koreans by night.    Hwang's investment enabled him to get an E-2 visa, which means he can stay here as long as he continues to own a business.    He spends most of his time running the cafe, which is open until 4 a.m., and handling other business matters. He heads to Aroma each day to work out.    Hwang, who was in the car repair business in Seoul, said his days are busy but rewarding. He regrets not having family close by to help make decisions, though he adds he is looking for a wife.
"In America, you are rewarded for the work you do. It gives me much joy to work," he said.    To qualify for an E-2 visa, an applicant is required to make a "substantial investment," which means about $150,000 to $250,000, said immigration law attorney David Y. Kim. The visa also enables the investor's spouse to get a work visa and their children to come live here.    It also could mean huge savings in tuition for Korean students in the University of California system. Some South Koreans buy condos in Koreatown for their children who attend colleges in the area.    Benjamin Hong, president and chief executive of Nara Bank, estimated that up to a third of the assets of the eight Korean banks in Los Angeles come from South Korean investments. At least 10% of customers at the bank's Olympic Boulevard branch making loan requests are seeking E-2 visas, said branch manager Young K. Oh.    No one knows how many E-2 visas are issued to Korean nationals, because the federal immigration agency does not maintain statistics by country.    But several prominent Koreatown immigration lawyers said the number of clients seeking E-2 visas has more than doubled in the last two years.	The changes have created a Koreatown that is heavy on Korean adults but light on children. Even parents who work in the area complain about the schools and lack of parks.    But there are some signs that this too is slowly changing.    Ophthalmologist Paul C. Lee, 41, his wife, Candice, and their two young children are relatively recent arrivals.    Lee opened his Lasik surgery clinic in Koreatown four years ago, commuting from the family's home in Temecula. The drive was so long that he ended up renting an apartment in Torrance.    The Lees then bought a townhouse on Wilshire, a five-minute drive to his office and their children's school at St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire. Recently, they traded in the townhouse for a house, committed to raising Bryanna, 7, and Brennan, 5, in Koreatown.    Koreatown doesn't offer the athletic fields and other suburban amenities of Temecula. But it's close to his mother, offers plenty of Korean food and culture for Lee's family, and feels like home.    "I've come to appreciate the confluence of different cultures," Lee said. "I want my children to be exposed to that."

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December 11, 2004 The Economist Magazine Floods in the Philippines The usual suspects MANILA The government has few options bar rhetoric AS THE toll of dead and missing from landslides and flash floods in the north-east of the country passed 1,500 last weekend, President Gloria Arroyo led a chorus of blame directed at illegal logging. It was a familiar refrain, heard almost every year since 1991, when floods killed at least 5,000 in the eastern district of Ormoc, and since when little has been done to counter deforestation. Hundreds of logs that appeared to have been felled by saws lay amid the wreckage of the most ravaged communities, in the provinces of Quezon and Aurora, suggesting that deforestation did, indeed, contribute to the destruction brought about by a not untypical series of tropical storms. However, this is still an assumption. Given the human suffering, it is politically more palatable for Mrs Arroyo to blame businessmen engaged in illegal logging, rather than government officials for taking bribes to allow them to do it, or her own reluctance to tackle population growth. A fast-growing population means there are more poor slash-and-burn farmers, and more people living in marginal areas liable to flooding or landslides. President Arroyo reacted by ordering the suspension of all logging, legal or illegal, although subsequently exceptions began to emerge. She compared illegal loggers to terrorists, and put Victor Corpus, a former military-intelligence chief and one-time communist guerrilla, in charge of a drive to stamp it out. Mrs Arroyo pressed Congress to pass a law putting an end to all logging. The Philippines already has laws to prevent the indiscriminate cutting of timber, but they are not properly enforced.

Besides, action against logging is probably too late. It is thought that more than half the Philippines' land area of 300,000 square kilometres (116,000 square miles) was forest a century ago. Now only about 70,000 sq km remain. If the thousands who have perished since the Ormoc disaster were the victims of deforestation, it is likely that the floods and landslides that killed them were the result of damage done to hillsides and river beds years beforehand. The best solution is to plant trees on a heroic scale. But the billions of dollars required to do it are not available to a government in the throes of a fiscal crisis from which it does not expect to escape until 2010. The sad truth is that years of floods and landslides lie ahead.

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December 12, 2004 The Daily Breeze A vicious cycle The United States is deporting gang members but there's a boomerang effect: The culture is spreading across the Americas and winning recruits who see Los Angeles as the promised land. By S. Lynne Walker Copley News Service TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Marlon Fuentes is a big man in his cell block at Honduras' largest prison. His face is tattooed. His talk is tough. He menaces with threatening stares.    A gang member from Hollywood, Fuentes spends his time behind bars impressing Honduran "homies" with his exploits in California. He joined Los Angeles' infamous 18th Street gang when he was 12, was arrested for selling dope and brandishing a deadly weapon, then deported in 1995.    Fuentes, 27, is the United States' violent export, a Honduran citizen shipped home under an immigration policy that Central American governments insist has helped spread the deadly gang culture throughout the Americas.    From Honduras to Hollywood and back to Honduras again, Fuentes moved in a distorted world where gang members identify themselves with tattoos and build networks via the Internet that bypass international borders.    Two decades ago, gangs were rare in Central America.    But in the mid-1990s, the United States stepped up deportations of criminals, many of them gang members from the 18th Street and rival Mara Salvatrucha 13.	Marlon Fuentes, 27, joined Los Angeles' 18th Street gang when he was 12 and built a 13-page rap sheet. He was deported in 1995.    Today, gangs are Central America's No. 1 crime problem.    Thousands of violent young men experienced in handling sophisticated weapons and evading law enforcement have been sent back to countries they haven't seen since they were children.    Some are dropouts. Many barely speak Spanish.    They survive by building networks of teenagers who are abandoned, unemployed and devoid of hope.    For these new gang members, as well as the deported veterans, the goal is the same: to make their way back to the United States and reach the gang mecca of Los Angeles.    L.A. gang members teach their new recruits what they know best -- robbing, stealing cars, selling drugs and, sometimes, killing.    "We've done a great job of exporting the gang culture all over the world," said Al Valdez, supervising investigator of the Orange County District Attorney's Office gang unit. "Now the gang phenomenon is international."
Today, more than 35,000 youths are members of gangs in Honduras, a country of 7 million people. El Salvador has approximately 30,000 gang members and Guatemala has 14,000. In Mexico, where nearly 1,000 Central American gang members have been arrested in the past two years, gangs are taking hold in cities on the southern and northern borders, including Tijuana.    The deportations haven't slowed the growth of gangs in the United States. Since 1992, the number of gangs has increased 625 percent, according to U.S. immigration officials.    The National Youth Gang Center estimates the United States now has 750,000 gang members. California has roughly 365,000 members, 100,000 of them in Los Angeles County. Every state in the nation now reports being plagued by gangs.    "I sound like Paul Revere riding across the country and shouting the alarm, 'The gangs are coming. The gangs are coming,' " said Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.    Gang members deported from the West Coast sometimes sneak back across the border and head for East Coast cities. Since they are not known by local police, they can extend the reach of their gangs into virgin territory.    "We're everywhere," boasted a Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS 13, gang member in Los Angeles. "Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, L.A., Washington, New York, Denver. There's a few in Missouri. There's homies in Canada, too. Wherever we go, we recruit more people. There's no way they can stop us. We're going to keep on multiplying."    Gang experts said U.S. immigration officials failed to anticipate the effect of deportations on other countries.    "The world is too global to export a problem and not expect it to come back," said David Brotherton, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who has authored two books on gangs.	"In El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, there's a whole new inner city youth subculture that originated in the First World," he said.    "We've created this insoluble problem and these countries can't respond. There's no social work infrastructure. There's no rehabilitation. There's no money. They have enough trouble just providing basics for their own people."    For Central America's countries, the problem is certain to grow early next year when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, launches a nationwide gang-enforcement program.    "We're trying to come up with ideas and different strategies" to combat gangs whose violent activities "pose a serious threat to national security," said Michael Keegan, the ICE spokesperson in Washington, D.C., on gang enforcement.    Already, ICE agents are patrolling U.S. cities and rounding up foreign-born gang members.    In Charlotte, N.C., more than 100 gang members were arrested during an ICE operation last year. In San Diego, ICE agents arrested 45 gang members during a five-week operation in October and November.    In Los Angeles, where more than half the homicides are gang-related, ICE set up an international gang crimes unit three months ago and began exchanging intelligence with the police department.    Bratton favors the new initiative. "I think deportation works," he said.    With more gang members being sent home, Central American countries are desperately searching for their own strategies to combat gang violence.    The Honduran congress last year unanimously passed one of the toughest anti-gang laws in the hemisphere.
El Salvador followed suit with its own version of what has become known as the Mano Dura, or "firm hand" law, which allows police to detain any young man with a gang tattoo. Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas moved in that direction in May, approving five-year prison sentences for simply belonging to a gang.    The crackdown has raised international concerns that gang members are being hunted down and killed by police. Even so, governments throughout the Americas are pushing ahead to forge a united front against the 18th Street and MS 13 gangs.    Mexico City's former police chief spent a week in Honduras earlier this year studying gang-fighting methods. El Salvador's consular representatives in Los Angeles recently asked L.A. police officials for a briefing on their anti-gang strategy.    In the South Bay, gang investigators from Torrance, Redondo Beach and Inglewood met earlier this month for a two-day workshop that drew law enforcement officials from across the nation.    The focus was on the MS 13 because the gang is "up and coming," said an Inglewood detective who asked not to be identified.    "We'd better know who we're dealing with. If we don't, we're going to get saturated."	Gang violence touched Torrance in May, when a suspected gang member was shot at Sur La Brea Park.    The Torrance Police Department was so concerned about the potential for violence during a hearing on the case earlier this month that 10 officers were sent to the courthouse.    Torrance Detective Henry Flores said as law enforcement cracks down, "gangs are migrating and continuing their criminal enterprise."    Every time gangs are uprooted, they surface in another neighborhood, another city, another country. They move with the assurance that no matter where they go, fellow gang members will feed them, house them, orient them and possibly provide them with weapons.    As the gang culture spreads, people in the Americas find themselves linked in a new and uncomfortable way. Residents are frightened to walk their neighborhood streets at night, police aren't adequately staffed or trained, parents are grief-stricken by the senseless deaths of their children.    From Honduras to Hollywood the story is the same.    Residents watch with fear, frustration and helplessness as gangs take their neighborhoods -- and their children -- away.
Melrose Hill is an idyllic Hollywood neighborhood of bungalows and vintage streetlamps, a showpiece listed for historic preservation. Last year, Los Angeles Magazine called the 42-home neighborhood one of the 10 best in the city.    But at night, when residents of this tight-knit community lock their doors, they hear gunfire in the distance. The MS 13 has encircled their neighborhood, making it an island of middle-class American life in the center of random and relentless violence.    Hollywood is home to the largest MS 13 clique in Los Angeles.    Gang members drift in "fresh from Central America," police say, and stand outside the Hollywood Video near the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue until a homie steps out of the shadows to help them.    "There's another world around us," said a lifelong Melrose Hill resident who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals against his family.    "You see what's going on in the surrounding streets, you see young Latino men posturing and you think, 'Oh, God.' And you drive on. You wonder if the prudent thing wouldn't be to flee like other white people."    A woman was shot in the head just a mile from Melrose Hill last year as she drove her husband and three children home after a Thanksgiving dinner. Police suspect an MS 13 gang member from El Salvador fired the fatal bullet.    At Melrose Hill Neighborhood Organization meetings, the gang problem is always at the top of the agenda, said Brian Brady, 48, who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years with his wife and three children.	"Everybody knows they're not going away," Brady said. "If there's an answer to this problem, then it's pushing them to other places because there are always going to be gangs."    A few miles away, Hollywood Boulevard has become the 18th Street gang's turf.    The gang members hawk their drugs and sometimes shoot at rivals who slip in among the hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through every year.    Frank Flores, 30, who works the gang detail in the LAPD's Hollywood precinct, has seen scores of immigrant children join gangs, get arrested and then get sent back to countries they barely remember.    "We have seen some who've come full circle -- here in L.A., deported, then back again," he said. "It's frustrating."    Jorge Potter is one of those who has come full circle.    After being deported in 1989, the Hollywood gangbanger introduced the 18th Street gang to his neighborhood in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula.    Potter's role as an 18th Street leader eventually made him a target of Honduran police, so he returned to the United States illegally and made his way back to Hollywood.    There, Potter said he had a religious conversion -- the only way a gang member can leave his gang without being killed -- and started working in a Hollywood discount store.    In June, however, he was deported to Honduras again. He was detained by immigration agents in Las Vegas, where police had twice arrested him on misdemeanor charges.
Potter said he was going to divide his time between working at a clothing factory and witnessing to youths in San Pedro Sula -- which now has one of the highest murder rates in Latin America -- about the evil of gangs.    But when he stepped off a chartered plane guarded by U.S. marshals, he was wearing a muscle shirt that showed off his elaborate tattoos, including the number 18 tattooed on his right arm.    His voice carried a touch of pride as he talked about his gang.    "The 18th Street is No. 1 in Los Angeles," said Potter, now 36. "It's the biggest in the world." Latino kids living near downtown Los Angeles formed the 18th Street in the late 1960s to defend themselves against established gangs.    The MS 13 sprang up in the late 1980s, created by the children of Salvadoran immigrants who fled to California during a bloody civil war.    The MS 13, which now operates in 30 states, is "a little more violent and a little more calloused" as well as more experienced in protecting members than its 18th Street rivals, said Joseph Esposito, one of the top deputies in the hard- core gang division for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.    "If their members commit serious crimes, they are organized enough to move them to Minneapolis or Seattle or another city and start an enclave there," he said.	Jessica is a member of the MS 13, born in Guatemala and trained in the streets of Los Angeles. She has been the target of gunfire more times than she can remember. She is also a full-time office worker and the mother of an 8-year-old daughter.    She came to Los Angeles when she was 5 years old, brought by her mother, who saw Los Angeles as a city of endless opportunities.    While her mother struggled to support the family, young Jessica discovered a different Los Angeles.    She started touching up her eyes with heavy black liner and slipping into gangster clothing after she left home in the morning. Eventually, she stopped going to school and started hanging out.    She took a 15-second beating during an initiation ritual when she was 14 and became an official member of the Mara Salvatrucha 13.    Now 26, Jessica has survived longer than most of her homies.    But her safety zone has been reduced to a series of city blocks whose boundaries are set by rival gang members.    "On every block, on every corner, a homie has gotten shot and killed," said Jessica, who asked that her last name not be published for fear of losing her job.    After 12 years as a gang member, she can't decide which direction her life should take.
"Being bad is so easy and being good is so hard," Jessica said. "I get bored by the routine. For me, it's the street, the adventure, the thrill of danger. People tell me that to change I have to get away. But I like being here.    "Anyway, I'd probably go to another state and find the 'hood again. You can always find someone from the MS because it's so big."    Jessica had a chance to start over after she posted her profile on the Yahoo personals page and met a Camp Pendleton Marine.    The young Texan took an instant liking to her, even flying her to Houston to meet his parents and paying for her trip to a Marine gala in Las Vegas.    But Jessica didn't love him, so she broke off the romance.    "I had a choice of a good man, benefits for life, or a guy from the street with no papers," she said.    She chose a 25-year-old gangbanger who goes by the name of "Puppet." Like Jessica, Puppet is an immigrant. He was already a member of the MS 13 when he arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 13.    Puppet was deported to El Salvador in June. Three weeks later, he called Jessica and told her he had killed a rival gang member.    He's trying to get back to the United States, but Jessica is terrified that 18th Street rivals will kill him before he makes it across El Salvador's border. In September, he was in surgery for six hours after 18th Street members hacked at his head, ribs and back with machetes.	Jessica paid for his surgery with money collected from L.A. gang members. Now she's trying to scrape together Puppet's $3,000 passage back to Los Angeles.    Meanwhile, MS 13 members in El Salvador are urging Puppet to be their leader. And local cops are watching him because he's from Los Angeles.    "The new law (in El Salvador) is locking up the guys who are getting deported. The cops think they're the leaders," Jessica said.    "Some of them are. Like Puppet. He will be one of them." The Rev. Arnold Linares ticks off the gangs that held residents hostage in his Honduras neighborhood of Rivera Hernandez before the anti-gang law went into effect.    The MS 13. The 18th Street. And the Normandies, named for Normandie Avenue in Los Angeles.    "All this came from the United States," Linares said, shaking his head. "One 18th Street member killed (rival gang members) with an AK-47 his gang sent him from the United States especially for the job."    For five years, Linares, the 35-year-old pastor of the Place for Everyone Baptist Church, has tried to lead young men out of gang life.    Charitable organizations gave him six computers. A church in Memphis, Tenn., bought uniforms, balls and trophies for the soccer league he started for gang members. But he gets no government support for his efforts and in June, government officials evicted his league from the community soccer field.
Linares often confronts danger as he struggles to help gang members.    When he stood at the gate of gang leader Mario Montalban's house, he found himself looking down the barrel of a homemade shotgun.    Linares raised his big, worn Bible above his head and Montalban, trailed by his second in command, lowered the shotgun.    Montalban, 26, started his Barrio 11 gang when he was 16 years old after a failed attempt to migrate illegally to the United States. He was attacked by gang members when he crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico, then sent home by Mexican authorities.    Montalban said he was "one of the worst," making homemade shotguns and forcing the working people of Rivera Hernandez to pay "rent" before they could walk down his street. He was high on drugs from morning to night. And he murdered at least six people. He stabbed his last victim in the throat with a screwdriver.    After Montalban accepted Linares' offer to join the soccer league, he disbanded his gang and converted to Christianity. But his decision to go straight didn't mean Montalban was given a job and welcomed back into society.    As a criminal, Montalban made enough money to feed his two young daughters and elderly mother. Now that he has gone straight, they sometimes go hungry.    When Linares walks the streets of Rivera Hernandez, he worries about Montalban and the others he has pulled away from gangs.	"We have so many kids in the streets doing nothing. If they can't find work to feed themselves, they do the easiest thing -- they rob people," Linares said. "We are asking the government to give them a place for recreation, to give them work. This is not just a spiritual matter. It is question of jobs." In Southern California, which has had gangs for nearly 100 years, the solution is just as elusive.    "We live in a nation where we want instant results. Unfortunately, the programs -- suppression, intervention and prevention -- take a little while to gestate," said Valdez, of the Orange County District Attorney's Office.    Although gangs have now sprung up in every state in the nation -- the MS 13 and the 18th Street have been reported as far away as Hawaii -- Valdez said "there is a tendency for the very affluent communities of America to deny that gangs exist. It's always somebody else's problem."    Los Angeles County, which has almost 1,000 different gangs, has responded with more police, more crackdowns, more arrests under gang injunctions.    In Redondo Beach and Wilmington, injunctions have resulted in a marked decrease in crime. Since the Wilmington injunction went into effect in March, at least 75 gang members have been arrested.    But the injunctions, which allow police to arrest gang members simply for hanging out together in court-designated "safety zones," have drawn criticism from civil rights activists.
"Injunctions are a way of outlawing normally legal behavior," said Los Angeles civil rights attorney Constance Rice. "You can't gather. You can't drink together. You can't talk together. You can't go to a restaurant together. It's a suppression method."    City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo acknowledged that, "we are imposing on their civil liberties. That's the whole idea. We do that all the time in our society for safety reasons and the Supreme Court says that's OK. People in our communities deserve protection, too."    But pushing gang members from one place to another is not the solution, said the Rev. Gregory Boyle, who works with gang members in East L.A. Nor are massive deportations the answer to the international gang problem, he said.    "The police are passing them off to the INS. And what do folks do? They get deported and they come back," said Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries to help gang members break their criminal ties.    "The idea is to banish them, to demonize them. Tell me how that approach will keep a 15-year-old from doing it again."    Lately, Boyle has been receiving phone calls from foreign-born gang members locked inside the immigration detention facility on Terminal Island, waiting to be flown to the nations where they were born.    Among the deportees waiting nervously in the facility in June was Oscar Zapata, who was to be sent home to Honduras. Zapata, 42, said he was out of the 18th Street gang, but a routine "stop and frisk" by L.A. police showed he was wanted by immigration authorities.	Zapata joined the 18th Street gang in the early 1970s, shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles. His childhood in Honduras had prepared him for gang membership.    At age 9, he was tortured by police and incarcerated with adult men in San Pedro Sula's prison. At 12, he was conscripted into the Honduran Army and taught to fight with an M-16 rifle. When he was released by the army, he lived on the streets of Honduras until his mother took him to California.    By the time Zapata got to Los Angeles, "I wasn't afraid of anything. I had lost my fear. I came here with a different mentality," he said.    He was deported to San Pedro Sula two years ago after being arrested on drug charges, but he quickly returned to California. Zapata is appealing a judge's order to deport him this time because he's afraid he cannot survive the tactics of Honduran police.    Beads of sweat stood on Zapata's forehead as he remembered how the Honduran police kicked the body of a gang member and said, "This one is dead."    "I am afraid of the police. Nobody can stop them," he said. "If they send you to prison in Honduras you are going directly to your death."    Nearly 1,500 tattooed young men have been arrested since Honduran President Ricardo Maduro began his anti-gang campaign 16 months ago.    Almost 200 of them died in two separate prison fires -- one in an 18th Street cell block and the other in an MS 13 cell block -- in which the guards were either found negligent or directly responsible. In the most recent fire, on May 17 in San Pedro Sula, 61 of the 107 gang members who died hadn't been convicted of a crime.
Aida Rodriguez blames the Honduran government for the death of her 24-year-old son, Alan, who died in the inferno. A veteran of the MS 13, Alan was serving a 69-year sentence for double homicide.    "If the government was going to have an anti-gang law, then they should have prepared prisons for them because they knew they were going to capture a lot," she sobbed.    Ramon Custodio, who heads Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights, calls the incarceration of the gang members "a massive illegal detention" and vowed to ask the Supreme Court to declare the law unconstitutional.    "Because you're tattooed or because you behave this way or the other, you can be captured and taken to prison," Custodio said. "The principle of innocence doesn't exist any more in this country." Christian Antunez hides from Honduran police in the single room he shares with his wife and 18-month-old daughter.    He has tattoos on his biceps, forearms, back and stomach. Above his right eyebrow are the faint letters NLS, or Normandie Street Locos, for the MS 13 clique he identified with in Los Angeles.    Antunez has never been to the United States. He was introduced to gang life by his cousin, who grew up in L.A., joined the 18th Street and then became a leader. When the cousin was deported to Honduras, he brought back his expertise in gang warfare.    By his own admission, Antunez was a violent gang member. He was given a distinctive nickname: Mr. Crime. He murdered one man and said he participated in the deaths of others.	"Sometimes you have to kill or be killed," he said.    Antunez, 25, says he is out of gang life now, but until he burns off all his tattoos, he is in constant danger of being arrested under Honduras' anti-gang law. The only time he ventures out of his house is for his monthly trip to a clinic in San Pedro Sula called Adios Tatuaje, or "Goodbye Tattoo."    "It's a human hunt in this country," Antunez said.    "You know what they are doing with the anti-gang law? They are putting all the young people in jail. There is no rehabilitation. You know what rehabilitation is for the government? To kill them like dogs in the street."    Suyapa Bonilla, who runs Adios Tatuaje out of a room in her house, said many of her patients "came here crying because companies would not give them a job." Some had tried to gouge out their tattoos with a knife or the tip of a hot machete.    The demand for tattoo removal is so great that Adios Tatuaje has clinics in El Salvador and Guatemala and is about to open one in Nicaragua. Even men and women who've never been gang members feel compelled to remove their tattoos.    Juan Carlos Brito, 24, pulled up the sleeve of his T-shirt to show the heart on his bicep that he'd gotten in the Merchant Marine.    "I am sorry I have one," he said as he waited at Bonilla's clinic for his treatment to begin. "I have never been a gang member. But this law affects me, too."    Oscar Alvarez, the country's minister of security, shrugs off accusations by human rights activists that the gang crackdown is turning Honduras into a police state as it was in the 1980s when hundreds of suspected leftists were tortured and murdered by a secret military unit.
Law and order, not human rights concerns, are on the public's mind, he said. And Alvarez, who is rumored to be considering a presidential bid, is at the vanguard of the politically popular effort.    "The public was crying out, 'I want security,' " he said, "because this affects the people who are the least protected in the country."    Demographics underscore the seriousness of the problem, he said. In Honduras, 51 percent of the population is younger than 18. In El Salvador, more than half the population is under the age of 24.    "We have to stop more youngsters from becoming gang members," said Alvarez. "If we don't do something about it, we are predicting a very grave future for our country." At Honduras' Tamara National Penitentiary outside the capital of Tegucigalpa, an 18th Street gang member named "Lucifer" mocks officials who believe they can stem gang violence.    "If you can't control gangs in the United States, how are they going to end it in this (expletive) country?" cackled the 22-year-old convicted murderer as gangsta rap throbbed and inmates pumped iron in the searing Honduran sun.    Paul Antonio Zelaya is an example of the problems faced by both countries.	Born in Honduras, his mother took him to Los Angeles when he was 3. At age 11 he joined the 18th Street gang.    On his bulging right bicep, Zelaya, who also goes by the name Ricky Alexander, shows off the tattoo bearing his California prison number.    He was deported to Honduras in 2003 after being paroled from Imperial County's Centinela State Prison. Three months later, he was arrested by Honduran police for robbery.    Zelaya and his fellow Los Angeles inmates talk about going back to the United States, to the city they consider home.    So does a prisoner who calls himself Looney, even though he has never set foot in the United States.    Looney is one of 18 children in his dirt-poor family. Four of his brothers are also in gangs -- two in the MS 13 and two in the 18th Street.    In 1995, family members who had already settled in Los Angeles sent him money to make the trip. But he got arrested for stealing and has been in prison off and on ever since.    He imagines Los Angeles as "a beautiful city" where homies can find "a blessed peace," because "there is not a lot of violence against them."    "They have cars, TVs, food on the table. Everything. Everything. Everything," he said.    "Los Angeles is a paradise."

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December 3, 2004 Science Magazine Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1665 Amphibians in Decline The IUCN Global Amphibian Assessment (GAA), which commenced in 2001, has just been completed, and Stuart et al. (p. 1783, published online 14 October 2004) present the key findings. The data set covers 5743 species, and confirms that the current conservation status of amphibians is alarming, with 1856 species (32.5% of the total) being globally threatened, 2468 (43.2%) in decline, 435 (7.6%) in

rapid decline, and 129 (2.2%) having disappeared since 1980 (many of which are probably extinct). These numbers indicate a much worse situation than seen so far for any other taxonomic group. Of the rapidly declining species, 50 are subject to overharvesting, and 183 are facing severe habitat loss. A third group of 207 species has declined catastrophically, even in situations where there are no obvious threats.

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December 3, 2004 Science Magazine Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1665 TOXICOLOGY: Factory Study Shows Low Levels of Benzene Reduce Blood Cell Counts Erik Stockstad Although the workers weren't sick, the results hint that low doses of benzene may alter the bone marrow and could lead to health problems, some experts say. The study also provides the first direct evidence in humans that benzene harms the progenitor cells that give rise to blood cells. "It really breaks new ground on the potential effects of low levels," says toxicologist Bernard Goldstein of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. There's no doubt that benzene, a widely used industrial chemical, can be harmful. Workers highly exposed to benzene fumes, for example, run an increased risk of leukemia and bone-marrow toxicity. But the risk from smaller exposures is unclear. Now a tightly controlled study in Chinese factories, reported on page 1774, provides reason for concern: Workers who inhaled less than 1 part per million (ppm) of benzene--an exposure considered safe under U.S. occupational guidelines--had fewer white blood cells than did unexposed workers.

Hazard? A study of shoe workers in China suggests that even low doses of benzene affect blood cells. (sm4c031.gif) Benzene is ubiquitous. People are commonly exposed to it from secondhand cigarette smoke, gasoline vapors, and air pollution, although typically only on the order of parts per billion. Studies of the chemical's health effects in industrial settings, where benzene is used as a solvent and in chemical manufacturing, led the United States in 1987 to regulate the maximum allowable workplace exposure at 1 ppm of benzene averaged over 8 hours.

To determine whether blood cells are affected at even smaller exposures, a group of researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions compared 250 workers exposed to benzene-laden glues in two shoe factories in China to 140 unexposed workers who sew clothes in other Chinese factories. The researchers carefully gauged benzene exposure by taking urine samples and testing air in the factories, as well as at each worker's home. After 16 months, they took blood samples from the workers. As expected, workers exposed to benzene at levels of 1 ppm and higher had fewer white blood cells, such as granulocytes and B cells, than did unexposed workers. But this also held true for the 109 workers exposed to less than 1 ppm benzene, even after controlling for smoking and other potential confounding factors. These workers had on average 15% to 18% fewer granulocytes and B cells than did unexposed workers--raising concerns about bone-marrow health, says Qing Lan of NCI. Luoping Zhang of the University of California, Berkeley, and others in the research team also studied the effect of benzene on the progenitor cells that give rise to blood cells. They found that the ability of progenitor cells to grow

and multiply declined with higher exposures. "The key point is that high levels of benzene had a more toxic effect on the progenitor cells than on mature cells," says study co-author Nathaniel Rothman of NCI. "That may suggest we're underestimating the effects of benzene by just studying mature cells." But Richard Irons of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver and Fudan University in Shanghai suggests that counting progenitor cells from blood samples probably does not accurately reflect what's happening to such cells in bone marrow. Irons, who leads a $20 million industry-funded study of benzene effects in Shanghai, also says it's possible that the low-dose changes seen in the Science paper stem from exposure to other chemicals or factors such as nutrition. "Because the magnitude of the changes are so small, it becomes difficult to discriminate between transient effects and benzene toxicity," he says. Still, the findings may lead to demands for lowering the benzene exposure standard, says geneticist Gilbert Omenn of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor: "This paper should cause a stir in occupational and environmental health circles."

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December 3, 2004 Science Magazine Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1665 Revisiting the Bhopal Tragedy Twenty years after the event, researchers are returning to the site of the world's worst chemical spill to pick up health studies that some believe were set aside too soon Charlene Crabb* BHOPAL, INDIA--Ashraf lies on a corner bed in the ophthalmology ward of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC), a thick, white bandage covering his left eye. For the second time in 3 years, the 38-year-old is recuperating from cataract surgery. His sight has not been the same since the night 20 years ago when water entered a storage tank filled with methyl isocyanate (MIC) at a pesticide factory here, triggering a runaway reaction that sent a lethal cloud of chemicals wafting through his neighborhood. The vapors attacked his eyes, which led to a severe infection that gave way to chronic tearing and gradually, cataract-clouded vision. The gases also ravaged Ashraf's lungs, and today he suffers from chronic breathlessness and fatigue. Like thousands of survivors, Ashraf has turned to the BMHRC medical staff for help with the injuries he received in the world's worst chemical accident. More than half a million people claim to have been exposed to the MIC-derived cloud on the night of 2 to 3 December 1984. At least 3000 men, women, and children died from breathing the lethal gases. And now at least 5000 survivors line up every day outside clinics and hospitals here to be treated for gas-related illnesses.	Heavy toll: Researchers are planning health studies of those living near the ruins of the pesticide plant. (sm4c032.gif) Despite a flurry of studies in the 1980s documenting the initial effects of MIC exposure, scientific follow-up has waned. An ambitious long-term monitoring effort led by the New Delhi-based Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) ended in 1994 when the council abruptly pulled the plug. ICMR handed oversight of its cohort of 80,021 gas victims and 15,931 nonaffected Bhopal residents to the Madhya Pradesh state government, which still keeps tabs on the original ICMR cohort, now numbering about 50,000 people, through the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies (CRS).
ICMR has never fully discussed why it removed itself from the gas tragedy. But some scientists speculate that the government, eager to modernize India's economy, was concerned that tallying up the health consequences too aggressively would scare away foreign investment. Many still bemoan ICMR's decision. It was "ridiculous," says Nalok Banerjee, research officer at CRS. "The state government has no specific expertise in designing studies." Confounding matters, the Indian government in 1985 filed a civil suit against the Union Carbide Corp. in the United States--parent of the firm that owned and ran the plant--and imposed restrictions on publishing data on the Bhopal incident, deeming some details too sensitive to be released. The legal wrangling dragged on for 6 years, and subsequent disaster-related lawsuits are still in the courts. "Unfortunately, a lot of research never got published because the scientists retired, or moved on, or lost interest," says Indraneel Mittra, director general of BMHRC. In May, ICMR published the first of three promised technical reports on the investigations it carried out through 1994. Checking the data was slow and difficult work, says immunologist Nirmal Kumar Ganguly, director general of ICMR, who adds, "It took a long time for the government to give clearance for publication."	The 117-page document describes the findings of some 20 epidemiological studies, noting that death, miscarriage, and general morbidity rates were higher in exposed areas in the decade following the gas leak. Most long-term complications involved the eyes and lungs, but the report gives few specifics. "After 20 years they should have come out with some complete results," says Bhopal oncologist Shyam Agrawal, a member of a new Indian Supreme Court-appointed advisory panel for the gas victims. More details may be elucidated in the next several months when the technical reports on ICMR's toxicological and clinical studies are published. Researchers in India and North America are poised to conduct a handful of studies that could shed new light on the Bhopal tragedy and its health consequences. Although not lavishly funded, they cover topics from the biology of lung surfactants to the MIC gas cloud. Picking up the pieces BMHRC in a perverse way owes its very existence to the gas leak. The medical complex opened 4 years ago and is operated with interest accrued from about $20 million from the sale of Union Carbide's 50.9% stake in the Indian subsidiary that ran the infamous pesticide plant. Recently, the hospital trust's board members earmarked $1 million to develop research facilities, and
in August, they okayed the start-up next year of an epidemiology and biostatistics department. The department will study the 270,000 gas victims registered at the hospital and its eight outreach clinics. Because each patient is issued a memory chip- equipped "smart card," the potential new cohort is fully enumerated, identified, and easy to track--a situation found nowhere else in India or any other developing country, says Mittra: "It gives us a unique opportunity to do first-class epidemiological studies, whether gas-related or not." Other BMHRC research teams set up shop earlier this year. One group plans to delve into the anomalies in lung surfactants of gas victims. Pulmonary surfactant is a lubricant packed with proteins and phospholipids that fights off respiratory pathogens and aids breathing by keeping a low surface tension in the lungs' tiny air sacs, or alveoli. The researchers will compare the levels of various phospholipids and proteins in exposed and nonexposed patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary fibrosis, bronchial asthma, and pulmonary tuberculosis. Once an internal board approves the $45,000 project, BMHRC will provide start-up funds. Another BMHRC research group aims to use new molecular technology to look for genetic mutations that MIC, a suspected mutagen, or other chemicals in the gas cloud may have triggered in gas victims and their children. Studies	conducted in the 1980s detected alterations in the chromosomes of some gas victims. More recently, cytogeneticist Narayanan Ganesh of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, has noted birth defects such as syndactyly--fused or webbed fingers or toes--and pigeon chest among the offspring of people who were exposed to the lethal cloud. The new research team is awaiting approval to revisit these findings. The health of young adults who were exposed in utero to the gas is the focus of a $75,000 study getting under way at the comparatively cramped offices of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, just west of the derelict pesticide factory. Community health workers are tracking down almost 400 children born to women who were pregnant at the time of the gas leak and participated in a 1985 study led by Daya Varma of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. That study, published 2 years later in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that 43.8% of 865 pregnancies in 3270 families ended in miscarriages. The current project, which Varma is also heading and which is being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, will analyze the health problems of the young people and measure various physical parameters. It builds on work, reported by the team last October in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found growth retardation in young boys, but not young girls, who were exposed to the gas in the womb or as toddlers.
Ramana Dhara, a specialist in occupational and environmental medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, hopes to determine what toxins were unleashed that night by recreating the runaway reaction at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) hazardous materials test site in Nevada. If that study gets funded--it's couched in terms of emergency preparedness for a terrorist attack--scientists at DOE's Frenchman Flats facility will add water to a tank of MIC and monitor the resultant gas cloud. Early autopsy studies as well as analyses of the gooey residue left in the Bhopal storage tank found about two dozen chemical constituents. "But we still don't know exactly what compounds were in the cloud itself," Dhara says. By determining the cloud's contents, Dhara and his colleagues could answer one of the more acrimonious debates that raged for months after the tragedy: whether victims should have been treated with sodium thiosulfate, an antidote for cyanide poisoning. In the days immediately after the leak, there was no information about the toxicity of MIC nor what chemicals could result from its pyrolysis and their toxicities. Doctors suspected that the color of the lungs--"cherry red"--was due to hydrogen cyanide, which binds to hemoglobin and blocks its ability to transport oxygen. A study of 20 gas victims given the antidote found a reduction in symptoms and an increased excretion of thiocyanate in urine, evidence to some that cyanide was present and that the treatment was helping people. But the medical community soon split over the efficacy of administering sodium thiosulfate, saying there was not enough evidence to back up its use, and abandoned it as an antidote for the majority of gas victims when the issue was moot. The potential findings of the experiment in the Nevada desert will have no direct impact on the treatment of gas survivors today because "the chemicals have long since left the bodies of the victims," Dhara says. "But at least the information should be out there, if only to say to the victims that we've finally got some answers." Although the recent ICMR report notes that it would be "desirable" to extend	the long-term observation of the Bhopal cohort to monitor for "cancer and long-term involvement of other organs," that hasn't happened. Banerjee says CRS has little money to do comprehensive epidemiological studies on the cohort of gas victims. "How can you cook food," he says, "without fire." ICMR did set up an outpost of its population-based registries in Bhopal in 1986 to monitor for various cancers that experts thought would ensue after the chemical exposure. Surprisingly, the expected rise in cancers of the blood, bone marrow, and lung never materialized. "There are slight differences between the exposed and nonexposed population, but they are not significant," says Biswajit Sanyal, director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital and Research Centre. Sanyal and other Bhopal doctors nonetheless are bracing for cancers to begin popping up in the gas-affected population in the next 5 years. "A person can get lung cancer 30 years after smoking," says BMHRC's Mittra. "In the same way, it is still possible that the rise in cancer incidence is yet to be." Another source of cancer risk is pollution from the derelict pesticide plant, which looms as a general threat to Bhopal's future. Abandoned shortly after the gas leak, the site was never properly cleaned up. Its remediation is the subject of an ongoing civil suit in U.S. courts by gas victims who claim that chemicals, including some carcinogens, are leaching into the drinking water of some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, where more than 20,000 people live. In May, the Indian Supreme Court directed the state government to supply clean drinking water to the residents. Plans for a pipeline to bring potable water to the affected communities have yet to be drawn up. In the meantime, gas victims are marking the 20th anniversary of the tragedy with demonstrations in Bhopal and New Delhi. "They are thought of as second-class citizens," says Agrawal. "But the gas victims are a scientific treasure. The opportunity to study them should not be wasted." Charlene Crabb is a science writer in Paris. With reporting by Pallava Bagla.

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December 3, 2004 Science Magazine Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1665 BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Naomi Oreskes Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case. The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental

Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)]. IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8). The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members.