GOEBBELS HATED LASER PRINTERS

Last October the New York Times Book Review published a review of a book "Racial Hygiene" about Nazi Germany, into which New York Times science reporter Malcolm Browne inserted his own box with the remarkable title "Health-Loving Nazis." Here he quoted the author of the book that "Nazism had a normal side, too," the normality apparently shown by "Nazi leaders [who] campaigned and legislated against artificial coloring, preservatives, chemical fertilizers, DDT, radiation and such environmental con-taminants as asbestos and heavy metals." The entire statement is very likely false; the "campaigned and legislated" suggests that Browne thinks of the Nazis as he does of the Democratic Party (a forgivable error); but the DDT part is a flat impossibility, since its discovery was totally unknown to the Nazis, and thousands of Nazi lives were, in fact, saved by the allies who used it to control typhoid and other diseases as they advanced through Germany.

Prof. Thomas Jukes therefore asked the NYT how "normal" you can get, and what the explanation of the DDT item was. In answer the NYT's Department of Resident Neanderthals con-ceded that it might have been nicer if Browne had used or instead of and in "campaigned and legislated"and that Mr. Browne was "an experienced and reliable science reporter."

No literate adult would, of course, expect any better from the country's leading brainwash with all the news printed to fit; how-ever, when you see "Even the Nazis condemned genetic engineer-ing," you will know how the myth got started.

Genetic engineering was also blamed for a large hole in a rudder of a glider made of fiberglass. According to a letter to Soar-ing, Dec. 88, the fiberglass was chewed up by termites who were irradiated in a nearby lab to make them sterile, but genetic muta-tions turned them into fiberglass chewers who chewed their way to freedom and.. . The editor commented that the story had been refuted, but it does not need much refutation, since it is a biologi-cal absurdity. Nevertheless, it will be difficult to prevent the fiberglass chewers from chewing their way into Hollywood's lowest sewers. Watch for Jane Fonda and Jack Lemon starring in "Chew me, baby, till I scream."

Among the journals that played up the Gould-Sternglass hoax (see editorial) last year was the American Medical News, pub-lished by the AMA, but its views (says microscopic print) not necessarily endorsed by it.

I would hope not. Their issue of 10/14/88 not only utterly distorts the ongoing investigation of genetic damage in Hiroshima, but reveals that the AMN reporters have little idea what genetic damage means: genetically inherited damage to offspring. The ar-ticle deals largely with the cancers of the survivors.

Greenpeace has published an "Energy index," claiming that the US treasury spent $200 million on energy conservation R&D and $15 billion on subsidizing the nuclear power industry. The lat-ter is a flat lie of the type to be expected from Greenpeace. (The nuclear industry gets not one cent for power production, and com-paratively small amounts for co-financed projects at the DoE). The interesting thing here is that the statement was re-published by Science (12/23/88), signed by a newcomer, Gregory Byrne. Atta boy! Stay dose to Eliot Marshall, and be a Science scribbler, too!