Is the shuttle worth it?
     The space shuttle Atlantis was to roll out to the launch pad for a trip to the international space station. Instead, NASA must decide when  the grounded fleet should fly again, and the nation whether it should fly at all. 
     Their discussion of the future of the shuttle will likely include a reexamination of its original role and whether it has lived up to expectations. 
     Will NASA ground the fleet more than two years as it did after the Challenger disaster in 1986? Possibly not, considering the international space tation is currently the home of three men and requires frequent visits from shuttles. 
     Full Story: CNN.com

JANUARY 2003

Anti-war demonstrators rally around the world

       At least tens of thousands of people rallied on the Mall in Washington, and a similar-size group crowded downtown San Francisco. 
       The rally was one of dozens organized in 25 countries by the group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER). The group said it had organized transportation from more than 200 cities in 45 states for the rallies in Washington and San Francisco. Organizers estimated the crowd at about 200,000. Washington park police would not offer an estimate. 
     British Parliament member Jeremy Corbyn traveled to Washington for the rally. "In Britain there is enormous opposition to this war," he said. "This is a war with no support, no public recognition for it, and I  think the leaders, particularly President Bush and Prime Minister [Tony] Blair, are going to have to recognize they're on their own on this one." 
    Full Story: CNN.com

Possible clue to Gulf War illnesses
     A U.S. researcher may be on the way to unraveling the mystery of Gulf War illnesses, and he says the ailment may be linked to low levels of chemical agents. 
     Gulf War illnesses include a collection of symptoms such as chronic fatigue, skin rashes, muscle and joint pain, memory loss and confusion. 
     The Department of Defense says about 20,000 veterans suffer from those illnesses. Veterans' advocates say the number is tens of thousands higher. 
      The Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses declared in 1996 that "Stress is likely to be an important contributing factor to the broad range of illnesses currently being reported by gulf war veterans." Other possible, physiological causes were discounted. 
      Dr. Robert Haley of the Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, says the stress theory is wrong. Haley suspects the veterans are suffering from a brain disorder, a theory that the Pentagon has resisted for several years.  Haley was able to come to this conclusion because of one man: Ross Perot, a longtime veterans' advocate. 
      "He said he had been seeing something that he had never seen before," Haley recounts, "special forces troops who were tough as nails before the war and now looked pitiful in their inability to function." 
      Perot funded Haley's studies to the tune of $2.5 million to see whether the causes of Gulf War syndrome were physical instead of mental. 
     Now, 12 years after the war, Haley's findings are turning the stress theory upside down.  Conventional MRI scans showed nothing unusual, but through a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy, he found damage deep in the brains of the sick veterans. 
      "The symptoms that we see are characteristic of well known diseases of the brain, for example in the basal ganglia, Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease," Haley says. 
      Defense officials concede Haley may have discovered something important, but still insist stress may have played a role in Gulf War Illness. 
      Haley believes the deep brain damage probably was caused by low-level exposure to the nerve agent sarin. The level of the nerve agent was so low, he says, that the veterans' problems may not have shown up for months. 
     The Pentagon acknowledges that more than 100,000 troops were exposed to low levels of sarin when the Iraqi chemical depot at Khamisiyah was destroyed shortly after the war. 
      It took the government six years to make that concession because officials apparently asked the wrong troops about the contents of Khamisiyah. 
     Full Story: CNN.com

Bush chooses anti-gay former Bob Jones employee for AIDS panel
     The Bush administration has chosen Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the "gay plague," to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.
     Thacker, a former Bob Jones University employee and graduate, says he contracted the AIDS virus after his wife was infected through a blood transfusion. In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" rather than a lifestyle and asserted that "Christ can rescue the homosexual." After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. 
     Carl Schmid, a Republican gay activist who worked on President Bush's 2000 campaign, said he is disappointed and frustrated that HHS disregarded warnings that Thacker's selection would overshadow the commission's valuable work. Aside from the harshly anti-gay tone of Thacker's rhetoric, Schmid said, his major objection to Thacker is his aggressive lobbying for abstinence-until-marriage education.
     "Abstinence-until-marriage does not help anyone in the gay community, because we can't get married," he said. "If you are a gay youth, who is addressing your concerns?"
     In September 2001, Thacker returned to his alma mater to give two "Chapel Messages." The speeches, summarized on the university Web site, focused on the "sin of homosexuality."
     Thacker's beliefs on homosexuality are known as "reparative therapy," a philosophy that considers homosexuality aberrant behavior that can be modified through religious faith. 
     "Be compassionate to those caught up in this sinful deathstyle," the Bob Jones summary said. "Only when homosexuals know it is a sin can they repent."
    Full Story: Washington Post