"Get a Whiff of This!'' by James Bovard in The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, December 27, 1995, p 10 discusses the new en-viromania, "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity'' or MCS. One Julia Ken-dall, coordinator of the "Chemical Injury Litigation Project,'' in San Francisco is quoted as saying, "No one should be wearing perfume to theaters. Why should we have brain damage because people are wearing toxic chemicals? ..... Basically, we want to destroy the fragrance industry.'' The Human Ecology Action League has announced, "Perfume is going to be the tobacco smoke of tomorrow.''
Fueled by the Americans with Disabilities Act under which they are bringing lawsuits and pandered to by HUD which is giving them tax money, MCS activists are on a roll. Apparently, if these people can smell it, they file suit - and some of them have very sensitive noses.
"New Limits to Scientific Immigration'' by J. Kaiser, Science 271, p 281 (1996), reports that Senator Alan Simpson has sponsored a bill that would specifically limit the immigration into the United States of skilled workers and require special fees to be paid by employers of such workers. The goal is to keep people with scientific and technical skills out of the country. Perhaps you thought that these nuts were only only trying to keep out inexpensive farm laborers or welfare cases?
Henry Gee, "The Moon's a Balloon,'' Nature378, p103 (1995), uses the occasion of a review of two books about Apollo 13 to ridicule the manned space program. For a full page in Nature, Gee derides the greatest engineering accomplishment in human history. Gee says he was eight years old in 1970 - he has apparently regressed since.
