Breast cancer is a raging and deadly epidemic killing ever-greater numbers of women in the United States and other industrialized countries every year. Breast cancer tops the list of cancer deaths among women in this country, annually claiming the lives of more than 40,000 women. The incidence of cancer overall has climbed to such epidemic proportions during recent decades that a man living in the United States now has a fifty-fifty chance he will have cancer during his lifetime. For a woman, the chance is 1 in 3. Within a single generation we have seen an increase in cancer of approximately 56 percent for men and 22 percent for women!

The curious front-page story that had me scratching my head concerned the intrepid scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who claim to have carefully studied the question of daily multiple vitamin/mineral use and found the evidence supporting this practice to be “especially thin.”

Occasionally, the government asks us for help in its thankless task to reduce the unintended collateral damage caused by good-hearted, but busy, medical professionals.

Archaeologists have always been known to check the waste of societies for important clues about life. Now they’ve got company. A recent news article, describing new activity by government scientists, caught my eye. These federal investigators in white coats have developed a taste for waste-testing. They have begun the fascinating task of studying America’s wastewater, intent on finding out just how much cocaine people might be snarfling up their noses.

When training for a marathon, many marathoners will suggest it is important to have a goal. Some professionals even divide goals into three categories with those categories being acceptable goals, challenging goals, and ultimate goals.