Theodore J. Kaczynski believes there is a fate worse than death: having the whole world think you’re crazy. In a handwritten brief recently filed by Kaczynski, better known as the infamous Unabomber, he objects to his lawyers’ “portrayal of him as a grotesque lunatic,” a portrayal that was “broadcast nationwide.” Kaczynski refers to himself in the third person, and counted every word (10,892) in the 69-page document (as the filing process requires). Then he explained his counting method in three pages. Being widely thought of as insane, he adds, “was a prospect that anyone might have found unendurable. Suicide to avoid public humiliation is by no means unknown.” What Kaczynski wants is to submit a not-guilty plea. He pleaded guilty in January 1998 to three counts of murder and several lesser charges. He says the only other choice given to him was to claim mental illness. He received a sentence of life in prison without parole. If he is allowed to plead not guilty and is convicted, he could now receive the death penalty.
MEDICINE
Not surprisingly, leading AIDS researchers shared disturbing news last week at the annual Retrovirus Conference in San Francisco–everything from HIV complacency to the scary case of a man who appears to be “superinfected” with two separate strains of the virus. But there was optimism, too, about new classes of drugs in the pipeline that may offer hope to patients whose virus has become resistant to powerful protease inhibitors. Fusion inhibitors, now being tested in humans, target HIV as it gloms onto a cell, before it invades and multiplies.
Perhaps the biggest buzz was about the virus’s origin. Based on a complex computer analysis, Bette Korber, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, reported that the emergence of HIV dates back to around 1930. The timing of the virus has become the topic of a fiery debate: a recent book, “The River,” makes the case that HIV may have been introduced into humans through an experimental polio vaccine campaign in Africa in the late 1950s. The new data does not disprove the theory, says Korber, but it makes it an “unlikely scenario.”
WELFARE
Welfare reform has pushed a million preschoolers into mostly low-quality day care, and many are already showing evidence of developmental delays. Those are among the disturbing findings of the first study to focus on the young children of former welfare mothers.
A team of researchers from Yale University and the University of California interviewed nearly a thousand mothers in California, Connecticut and Florida, and rated the care their 2- to 4-year-olds were receiving. The study found that care provided in the homes of relatives and baby-sitters was generally worse than in day-care centers. In both centers and private homes, toddlers appeared to be wandering aimlessly or watching TV; hardly any were regularly read to or offered a chance to play with stimulating toys. Fewer than two in five could even identify a picture of a book, compared with the national norm of four out of five. Many of the mothers said they couldn’t find or afford better alternatives.
