)tember 9, It tesday • September 9, 1997 O The Battalion PINION iem tics, Montreal ays, Kansas Cityi ardinals, Florida J y Devil Raysandli ton Astros, nt of the fans said lore because of iiij igs. Seventeen ngs made them id 42 percent sai rence. en National le: atening to bloci Ve got a new drug 'harmaceutical industry relies on propaganda, not product information, for sales m the other league percent of fans etting sick -used to be a pain in the |s, the head or terever else, but a w breed of mass edia prescription ^position has fe ug advertisements ington to considei ikes illness seem isals, in which fe e something to be would shift. ppy about, play, which last) Unfortunately, the irst season, wasati >ss and goofiness h team played 15t the new ads has games thisyearag ueezed out some of the medical rigor. Jeremy Valdez columnist One of the best examples of this new nd is the marketing campaign for Pfizer f P 1 be more interim larmaceuticals’new drug Zyrtec. Prime- ear and 9 percent m TV viewers have probably seen this be fewer. Forty-s? mmercial where a guy is climbing a lie total should re: - sa an d yells “ZYRTEC!” when he gets to top. I A bold narrator says something like his year you’re going to discover some- fng BIG. VERY BIG. If you’d like more in itiation about how you might use pre- from Page? Icription Zyrtec call 1-800-BIG-8989.” The made me watdi*^ P ro bl em is the commercial never d to practiceal- If 5 what Z y rtec is used t0 treat - r. I hated it." I Tae sac charin recording on the toll- ce her father’s ^ ee num t>er doesn’t say either. Based on dedication to he® mountain climbing metaphor and the paid off. II |>nstant references to “BIG”, I guessed | one of th r th at Zyrtec was eitlier an anti-depressant, players on Bonstipation drug or something that soccer team Bikes people large. On the Bh took a trip to the Internet at Bowedoesn Bvvv.zyrtec.com to find that Zyrtec is ac- sider hersetfuallya prescription antihistamine. So y doesn’t the commercial say what the ig is for? t best, its a fumble on the part of the ertising agency; the ad writers may e simply forgot to include a vital piece nformation. However, considering the irmous amounts of money and atten- |n that get poured into a national prime- e commercial, it’s more likely the ission was a calculated maneuver. scorer? She her role as a disher sets the ball scorer. She: to play lay. e really good tei trope,” Bowesaid. re no professi] ;uesin ihc‘United$i|p er | ia p S advertisers thought that ut a lack of 'v'MJwers who don’t usually take prescrip- oi stopped her bel| n antihistamines would mentally dis- she may decide» , thc commercial if , h were u ; ld of J.S. Mens soccer tr drug . spurpose - :BVitli its teasing strategy Pfizer stands u t ^ led more Zyrtec to garden variety ch f h nc tI 0, . te' be destroyed. I Our planet is under assault and the time has Come to save the Earth from environmental lunacy. 1 When asked just how serious the “heat-in duced freezing” problem is, the German group’s Stefan Rahmstorf said, “...we cannot calculate that risk.” In other words, “I dunno.” “I can promise that in 10 years we will know a lot more about it,” Rahmstorf concluded. Again, he ipeans, “We’re just guessing here, but send us money anyway in the unlikely event we’re right.” The Institute should focus its attention on late- light infomercial suckers. The we’re-going-to- freeze-because-of-heat movement is typical of every environmentalist scare campaign preceding it. Environmental extremists start with a theory, either create evidence or distort fact, scare people into believing them and urge lawmakers to pass the legislation they want. 1 Environmentalists have spent the past two decades bludgeoning the public into believing “the Earth is fragile” and the only way to save mankind from imminent destruction is to fight technology and capitalism. These apocalyptic Statements are often based on junk science or outright assumptions, usually to either influence iwmakers or rake in more grant money. Two re cent studies in particular show environmental ex tremism for what it is, a ilimsy, pseudo-science quickly going the way of the dodo to extinc- The currently popular ozone hole hysteria and its “Northern European freeze” offspring are classic cases in environmentalism’s junk science birth and mass hysteria effects. The Earth’s ozone hole was first identified in the early 1900s, decades before the production of chlorofluorocarbons. Anyone bold enough to question how a heavy, sinking gas which quickly drops to the ground can affect a four billion year old ozone layer miles in the stratosphere is shouted down as an unfeeling eco-villain. Even more interesting is the fact that minor volcanic eruptions emit thousands of times the amount of CFCs mankind has ever produced. The Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines did just that, the result was a possible, minor fluctuation in ozone levels, but no perma nent damage occurred. After four billion years of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, which have dumped more CFCs into our atmosphere than mankind will ever release, our ozone level still holds. Researchers at Tulane University are not faring much better than their CFC-banning comrades. The university recently retracted a June 1996 study claiming a “synergy effect” among ordinary pesticides, which supposedly causes mutations and boosts estrogen levels. The report received national attention as it influenced state and fed eral legislation and sent environmentalists into a more frantic panic than usual. The apocalyptic study claims male alligators in a Florida lake exposed to pesticides suffer with ered reproductive organs and estrogen levels equal to female alligators. A senior Tulane re searcher has humbly withdrawn the study, as re sults could not be reproduced in other experi ments. Junk science like this has become a trademark of the environmentalist fringe. They attempt to terrify those who cannot be influenced by com mon-sense conservation groups like Ducks Un limited with Chicken Little claims of certain de struction. Embarrassments like the alar pesticide scare, the “population bomb,” global cooling sup posedly caused by global warming and other foul- ups are relegating environmental extremists to the endangered list. Our fantastic planet and mankind’s way of life are indeed in danger. Not by CFCs, automobiles or Styrofoam coolers, but by a horde of ecological terrorists who seek to pervert American life through junk science. Donny Ferguson is a junior political science major. America On Line subject to same laws as other forums A sk the average independent netzien, or net-citizen, .their Stephen Llano columnist opinion of America On Line, the mega-corpo rate Internet service provider, and usually some sort of vio lent response of disgust will be im mediate. America On Line, however cheesy or mainstream it has be come to the regulars on-line, has provided society with the one thing it needs to properly deal with the Internet: A very public forum. Throughout history, Ameri cans have relied on public fo rums as the standard methodolo gy to work through issues that confront everyone. The newspapers carried the debate on ratification of the Con stitution, the radio carried Presi dent Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s weekly messages to people hard hit in the Great Depression and television brought the war in Vietnam from the eastern hemi sphere to the living room. Of course, no such monumen tal event has been carried by the still young Internet. At best, the Internet is in toddler phase, pos sibly entering what many parents refer to as “the terrible twos.” Yes, the Internet is finally get ting the gumption to challenge some of the rules that have been left undefined in the flurry of electronic haste and excitement. America On Line has been the unlucky pioneer of defining what unlimited access means, as well as forcing local phone companies to deal with an increase in additional phone lines reserved for the newest resident, the computer. America On Line’s national ad vertising campaigns, ease of use, pretty colors and graphics and spoon-fed Internet access have allowed the same people with a VCR continually flashing the time as noon to surf right along side the superuser. This large clientele also comes with a large amount of attention, as Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge recently discovered. Currently, Drudge is in the middle of a $30 million lawsuit for defamation due to a column claiming, “New White House re cruit Sidney Blumenthal has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up.” The allegation was completely untrue, and the libel suit was quick in coming even though Drudge pulled the column 24 America On Line has been the unlucky pioneer of defining what unlimited access means... hours after it ran and apologized. If this was a newspaper, it would be a cut and dried case. The concept of being able to pull a libelous writing right off of the means of publication is pretty much science fiction in the con text of current print libel laws. But the question remains: What is America On Line? As a service provider to Inter net access, the company basically takes users to a certain informa tion destination. Logically, much like an airline, they would be held responsible if something went wrong during transit, but passengers are on their own when they reach the destination. As for dangerous destinations, the Federal Aviation Administra tion regulates which airlines and airports are viable for U.S. citizens to use or select as a destination. But for netziens, the Supreme Court’s striking down of the Com munications Decency Act has set the awesome precedent of regu latory protection. But this law really applies to the Internet as a whole, and America On Line also provides in-house prepared content for subscribers. This is getting foggy. According to a report in the Washington Post, Blumenthal be lieves that America On Line is a publisher in this respect, and should be handled as such. As far as information that America On Line produces exclu sively for members, it is acting in the capacity as a publisher. It is irrelevant whether said content appears in physical print or not. If it is accessible to read ers, it doesn’t matter if it can be magically wiped out or not. People are going to have to drop the mythical status associat ed with the Internet. As more people sign on and discover the ease of up-to-the-minute news and information on every subject imaginable, the seriousness of accuracy has to come to light. Just as in the past, the transi tion from town crier or local pub for news to print as the literacy rate increased, the computer lit eracy rate will spur people to de mand stricter interpretations of libel and defamation with regard to electronic media. This case has yet to be decided within the court. In the minds of many, America On Line has al ready been judged as the vehicle of the masses, not to be consid ered by the serious computer user as a valid means to access the Internet. But as more people are intro duced to the Internet, and em brace it as a primary source of in formation, there can be no choice for the courts than to de mand revision in our outdated, print view of defamation. Stephen Llano is a senior history major.