Kautzman’s AP GO PO Blog

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
November 4, 2007

You might want to wash your hands after reading this.

After all, many other folks touched this paper (or screen, as the case may be) before you, and you don’t know where their hands have been.

For all you know, the last person to touch the paper was carrying Entamoeba histolyca, a parasite that causes amebiasis. You could end up with stomach cramps, bloody stools and an abscess on your liver. And that’s assuming the disease doesn’t spread to your lungs and brain.

Or maybe the last person to use the computer recently came into contact with African green monkeys. You could contract Marburg hemorrhagic fever. It brings rash, vomiting, chills, chest pain, sore throat, fever and diarrhea. And jaundice, pancreatic inflammation and severe weight loss. And delirium and shock. And liver failure and multi-organ dysfunction. And then you might die.

You think I’m trying to scare you? You’re right. Why should I be the only journalist in America who isn’t?

Consider what happened about two weeks back when every news organization in the country suddenly, simultaneously, discovered that staph infections kill people.

You could not turn on the television or pick up any publication this side of TV Guide without encountering alarmist stories about Staphylococcus aureus. Like flocks of birds that turn in the same direction at the same time in response to some invisible stimulus, it was as if every news editor in the country got the same memo at the same time: this is staph week.

Most of the stories were about MRSA, i.e., Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph strain that does not respond to common antibiotics. This made the so-called “super-bug” a headline magnet.

You know how many times staph was mentioned in U.S. newspapers in the first two weeks of October? According to a computer search: 155. Know how many times it was mentioned between the 15th and the 31st? 1,650.

So did staph somehow become deadlier in the last two weeks than it was before? No.

“Staph is not new,” says Nicole Coffin, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “Even MRSA is not new. In the hospitals it’s been around for 30 years. In the general population, it’s been around for at least 10 years.”

According to Coffin, the media’s staph infection stemmed from a story in the Journal of the American Medical Association nearly a month ago. JAMA reported on a study that found there were 19,000 fatal MRSA infections in 2005.

The number was higher than researchers had expected. But even that comes with a caveat: researchers cautioned that the methodology they used was significantly different than that of earlier studies, so direct comparisons with earlier data are dicey.

Am I making light of staph? Far from it: One of my family had a serious bout with the infection just this year. So I’m not diminishing staph. I am, however, ridiculing media.

As in the people who bring us shark attacks! Poison gases in your home! Bacteria lurking in hotel sheets! The pedophile next door!

We live evermore in the United States of Fear. We are entertained by it. Titillated by it. Distracted by it.

And we have learned to move as media move, together like birds in a flock, attention changing constantly and for no apparent reason. Already, fear of staph is fading. Tomorrow there will be fear of something else.

Meanwhile, in other news, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, the number of hate groups in this country has risen by 40 percent in seven years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are projected to cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to wash your hands.

James P. Pinkerton
Newsday
November 4, 2007

Al Gore and Newt Gingrich are very different figures, but they are both going through a similar process: They are becoming elder statesmen.

And how does one become an elder statesman, anyway? It’s an easy, two-step process: First, have something important to say and be tireless in saying it. Second, stop running for president, because then people will let their guard down; they will listen to the substance of your message, not worry about tracking your upward political mobility.

Oh, and a third thing: Optimism sells better than pessimism. So while the former Democratic vice president is getting most of the glory, worldwide, with his message of profound eco-repentance, it’s the former Republican House speaker’s message of practical problem-solving that is ultimately going to play better in America.

Everybody knows about Gore, of course. But most didn’t know of his interest in global warming until relatively recently. Yes, he has been thinking about the issue for decades, but when he got to the White House in 1993, he was relatively quiet; maybe his quietude had something to do with future political ambitions.

And so, for example, in 1997, when the U.S. Senate, including Barbara Boxer and Teddy Kennedy, voted 95-0 to reject the Kyoto international global warming treaty, Vice President Gore didn’t say much. With public opinion lopsided against the treaty, how could he speak up in protest — and still preserve his political viability for 2000?

In fact, Gore didn’t become his own emancipated man until he left the White House in 2001, finally free to argue for drastic action against greenhouse gases.

Yet, while Gore does a great job of telling us what we’ve done wrong, he’s less effective at outlining a plausible action plan that would solve the problem: reduce the world’s carbon dioxide, as opposed to just America’s CO2. The dilemma is that if we reduce and they increase, nothing is gained.

But, of course, Gore is out of office now, with no plans to run again. He can say what he wants, leaving others to admire him without having to worry about voting for him.

Meanwhile, Gingrich, who retired from Congress in 1998, has trod his own path toward greater environmental awareness. His latest book, “A Contract With the Earth,” co-authored with Terry Maple, former chief of the Atlanta Zoo, carries a friendly foreword from Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, one of the most important and influential biologists of the 20th century.

Yet, Gingrich is not Gore. He does not reach a final conclusion as to whether human beings are causing climate change — and thus many environmentalists will dismiss him. Yet at the same time, Gingrich wants to implement a green agenda, his way. He and Maples write, “We favor reducing carbon loading in the atmosphere as a bold forward step and positive public value.”

So what’s Gingrich’s alternative solution? First, nuclear power. And second, big prizes for inventors who come up with, for example, a workable hydrogen engine. As he points out, there’s a long history of offering prizes. Past awards have fostered advances in construction, navigation and aviation. So why not the environment?

More technology, more incentives — that’s Gingrich’s approach. And interestingly, in his post-presidential run mode, the Georgian is being well received, because people hunger for real solutions, not just feel-good or feel-bad rhetoric.

On Monday, Gingrich spoke at Johns Hopkins University, receiving an overwhelmingly friendly response.

Gore and Gingrich, enjoying their “elder” status, now must watch as their White House-hopeful juniors wrestle with their enviro-ideas. But here’s a prediction: Those who follow Gingrich’s techno-optimism will have an easier time than those who put on Gore’s hair shirt.