![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brdgt
Percy L. Julian (1899-1975), a pioneering black research chemist.
Reclaiming a Black Research Scientist’s Forgotten Legacy
By FELICIA R. LEE, The New York Times, February 6, 2007
On the day that Percy L. Julian graduated at the top of his class at DePauw University, his great-grandmother bared her shoulders and, for the first time, showed him the deep scars that remained from a beating she had received as a slave during the last days of the Civil War. She then clutched his Phi Beta Kappa key in her hand and said, “This is worth all the scars.”
Every February, when the curtain lifts on Black History Month, the cast of highlighted lives is often familiar: a Martin Luther King Jr., a Katherine Dunham. But the documentary “Forgotten Genius,” to be broadcast tonight as part of the “Nova” science series on PBS, dramatizes the story of Mr. Julian, a largely neglected black chemist who was nonetheless one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He is played by the Tony Award-winning actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and the moment with his great-grandmother is but one in a film full of the echoes of the country’s painful racial history.
The “Nova” filmmakers’ effort to revive Mr. Julian’s legacy is not only riveting, but also one of the most ambitious projects in the 34-year history of “Nova.” His work included discoveries in the synthesis of cortisone, an anti-inflammatory used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions. In 1999 the American Chemical Society recognized his synthesis of physostigmine, a glaucoma drug, as one of the top 25 achievements in the history of American chemistry. He was the first black chemist ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s been just wonderful,” Paula S. Apsell, the senior executive producer for “Nova,” said of making the two-hour film. “It’s that delicious feeling you get when you know you’re on to something away from the crowd.”
Because there was no full biography of Mr. Julian, Ms. Apsell said, about four years went into original research on his story: finding his unpublished autobiography, gathering speeches in which he talked about his life and work, conducting oral histories around the country with those who knew him. The project director was Stephen Lyons, an independent producer who was a co-writer and co-producer of the film with Llewellyn M. Smith (an associate producer for “Eyes on the Prize”). Mr. Smith is the director of “Forgotten Genius.”
Narrated by the actor Courtney B. Vance (Ron Carver on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”), “Forgotten Genius” relies on a combination of interviews and dramatic re-enactments. Early on, viewers see the sheer odds against Mr. Julian, who was born in Montgomery, Ala., in 1899 and died in 1975.
In one scene he is 12, walking in the Alabama woods, when he discovers a young lynching victim hanging from a tree. He reaches out and touches the body. The adult Julian comments, “He didn’t look like a criminal; he just looked like a scared boy.”
Mr. Smith said, “I think in the film there’s a view of him as a whole human being, and that’s unusual for scientists.”
Mr. Julian’s name came up around 1998, Ms. Apsell recalled, when “Nova” sought to inject some diversity into a series about the lives of scientists, profiles that had included Albert Einstein, Galileo and Isaac Newton.
The dramatic spine of “Forgotten Genius” has Mr. Julian telling his story in flashback before an audience, documenting a life in which accomplishment and oppression took turns.
Harvard awarded him a master’s degree but would not support him in getting his doctorate (he earned it at the University of Vienna); potential employers snubbed him. (“We didn’t know you were a Negro,” the DuPont Company told him after inviting him for an interview.)
After doors slammed and opportunities vanished, Mr. Julian landed a job at Howard University, only to become enmeshed in a sex scandal that ended his employment there: He and his future wife were accused of having an affair while she was still married to one of his colleagues.
He spent years teaching at DePauw, in Greencastle, Ind., where a building is now named in his honor, but was denied a faculty position. After almost two decades at the Glidden company, where his research made possible a fire-retardant foam widely used in World War II and the mass production of synthetic progesterone, the company told him to concentrate on things like nonsplattering shortening.
By the time he became successful enough to move with his wife and two children into Oak Park, Ill., a mostly white Chicago suburb, their home was the target of a bomb and a fire.
“The good side was, as a kid I got to spend more time with my dad and stay up late, because we’d sit in the tree outside,” recalls Percy Julian Jr., now a civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wis. “He’d sit there with a shotgun. And we’d talk about why someone would want to do this, and how wrong it was and how stupid it was.”
Mr. Santiago-Hudson, who is also a playwright, said the project resonated with his desire to mirror the black American journey. He recalled eagerly reading boxes of material as the filmmakers did their research.
“I became Percy Julian,” he said. “These are the stories I want to tell. They straighten us out in a society where the people who write the history books want the heroes to look like them.”
Mr. Julian is certainly a hero by the end of the film, though he laments, “I feel that my own country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through.” By 1953 he had established Julian Laboratories (which he sold for more than $2 million in 1961), and he later formed Julian Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. He won accolades for his support of the civil rights struggle and was able to hire many black scientists and inspire many more.
One was James Shoffner, an organic chemistry researcher, who in “Forgotten Genius” compares Mr. Julian to Jackie Robinson as a barrier-breaker. Mr. Shoffner, 79, said he grew up reading about Mr. Julian in the so-called Negro press and met him in the late 1950s at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. He helped the society organize a symposium on Mr. Julian in 1999 and aided the “Nova” effort.
“Why he was not well known has to do with a series of factors, the first being the color of his skin,” Mr. Shoffner said in a telephone interview. “Also, he did his science in a small liberal arts college in the middle of the country, and he did his science in industry. Those are two places not thought of as producing world-class science.”
Already, because of the interest generated by the making of the film, Gerry Walanka, a Chicago lawyer and businessman, has begun a fund called In Search of Genius Foundation to help minority students interested in science. “We want to build on his story in a way that motivates young people,” Mr. Walanka said. “Nova” is turning over more than 2,000 pages of transcripts from the film to an archive of the Julian family’s choice so that there can finally be a chance for a scholarly look at Mr. Julian.
“It certainly gives hope to young people about what you can be if you never, ever, ever give up,” Mr. Julian’s son said. “That was the message our father gave us.”
Second Opinion: Girl or Boy? As Fertility Technology Advances, So Does an Ethical Debate
By DENISE GRADY, The New York Times, February 6, 2007
If people want to choose their baby’s sex before pregnancy, should doctors help?
Some parents would love the chance to decide, while others wouldn’t dream of meddling with nature. The medical world is also divided. Professional groups say sex selection is allowable in certain situations, but differ as to which ones. Meanwhile, it’s not illegal, and some doctors are already cashing in on the demand.
There are several ways to pick a baby’s sex before a woman becomes pregnant, or at least to shift the odds. Most of the procedures were originally developed to treat infertility or prevent genetic diseases.
The most reliable method is not easy or cheap. It requires in vitro fertilization, in which doctors prescribe drugs to stimulate the mother’s ovaries, perform surgery to collect her eggs, fertilize them in the laboratory and then insert the embryos into her uterus.
Before the embryos are placed in the womb, some doctors will test for sex and, if there are enough embryos, let the parents decide whether to insert exclusively male or female ones. Pregnancy is not guaranteed, and the combined procedures can cost $20,000 or more, often not covered by insurance. Many doctors refuse to perform these invasive procedures just for sex selection, and some people are troubled by what eventually becomes of the embryos of the unwanted sex, which may be frozen or discarded.
Another method, used before the eggs are fertilized, involves sorting sperm, because it is the sperm and not the egg that determines a baby’s sex. Semen normally has equal numbers of male- and female-producing sperm cells, but a technology called MicroSort can shift the ratio to either 88 percent female or 73 percent male. The “enriched” specimen can then be used for insemination or in vitro fertilization. It can cost $4,000 to $6,000, not including in vitro fertilization.
MicroSort is still experimental and available only as part of a study being done to apply for approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The technology was originally developed by the Agriculture Department for use in farm animals, and it was adapted for people by scientists at the Genetics and IVF Institute, a fertility clinic in Virginia. The technique has been used in more than 1,000 pregnancies, with more than 900 births so far, a spokesman for the clinic said. As of January 2006 (the most recent figures released), the success rate among parents who wanted girls was 91 percent, and for those who wanted boys, it was 76 percent.
Regardless of the method, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes sex selection except in people who carry a genetic disease that primarily affects one sex. But allowing sex selection just because the parents want it, with no medical reason, may support “sexist practices,” the college said in an opinion paper published this month in its journal, Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Some people say sex selection is ethical if parents already have one or more boys and now want a girl, or vice versa. In that case, it’s “family balancing,” not sex discrimination. The MicroSort study accepts only people who have genetic disorders or request family balancing (they are asked for birth records), and a company spokesman said that even if the technique was approved, it would not be used for first babies.
The obstetricians group doesn’t buy the family-balance argument, noting that some parents will say whatever they think the doctor wants to hear. The group also says that even if people are sincere about family balance, the very act of choosing a baby’s sex “may be interpreted as condoning sexist values.”
Much of the worry about this issue derives from what has happened in China and India, where preferences for boys led to widespread aborting of female fetuses when ultrasound and other tests made it possible to identify them. China’s one-child policy is thought to have made matters worse. Last month, Chinese officials said that 118 boys were born for every 100 girls in 2005, and some reports have projected an excess of 30 million males in less than 15 years. The United Nations opposes sex selection for nonmedical reasons, and a number of countries have outlawed it, including Australia, Canada and Britain, and other nations in Asia, South America and Europe. Left unanswered is the question of whether societies, and families, that favor boys should just be allowed to have them, since attitudes are hard to change, and girls born into such environments may be abused.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a group for infertility doctors, takes a somewhat more relaxed view of sex selection than does the college of obstetricians. Instead of opposing sex selection outright, it says that in people who already need in vitro fertilization and want to test the embryos’ sex without a medical reason, the testing should “not be encouraged.” And those who don’t need in vitro fertilization but want it just for sex selection “should be discouraged,” the group says.
But sperm sorting is another matter, the society says. It is noninvasive and does not involve discarding embryos of the “wrong” sex. The society concludes that “sex selection aimed at increasing gender variety in families may not so greatly increase the risk of harm to children, women or society that its use should be prohibited or condemned as unethical in all cases.” The group also says it may eventually be reasonable to use sperm sorting for a first or only child.
Dr. Jamie Grifo, the program director of New York University’s Fertility Center, said that he opposed using embryo testing just for sex selection, but that it was reasonable to honor the request in patients who were already having embryos screened for medical reasons, had a child and wanted one of the opposite sex. In those cases, he said, the information is already available and doesn’t require an extra procedure.
“It’s the patient’s information, their desire,” he said. “Who are we to decide, to play God? I’ve got news for you, it’s not going to change the gender balance in the world. We get a handful of requests per year, and we’re doing it. It’s always been a controversy, but I don’t think it’s a big problem. We should preserve the autonomy of patients to make these very personal decisions.”
Dr. Jeffrey M. Steinberg, from Encino, Calif., who has three clinics that offer sex selection and plans to open a fourth, in Manhattan, said: “We prefer to do it for family balancing, but we’ve never turned away someone who came in and said, ‘I want my first to be a boy or a girl.’ If they all said a boy first, we’d probably shy away, but it’s 50-50.”
“Reproductive choice, as far as I’m concerned, is a very personal issue,” Dr. Steinberg said. “If it’s not going to hurt anyone, we go ahead and give them what they want.”
Many patients come from other countries, he said. John A. Robertson, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Texas, said: “The distinction between doing it for so-called family balancing or gender variety would be a useful line to draw at this stage of the debate, just as maybe a practice guideline, and let’s just see how it works out.”
In the long run, Mr. Robertson said, he doubted that enough Americans would use genetic tests to skew the sex balance in the population, and he pointed out that so far, sperm sorting was more successful at producing girls than boys.
He concluded, “I think this will slowly get clarified, and people will see it’s not as big a deal as they think.”
Idaho's wolf population is now around 650.
For Wolves, a Recovery May Not Be the Blessing It Seems
By JIM ROBBINS, The New York Times, February 6, 2007
HELENA, Mont., Feb. 5 — The news for the wolf last week was the opposite of a cloud with a silver lining. At first glance, it seems like a win for conservation that wolves are now successful enough that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list.
But the price of success may be high. In Idaho, the governor is ready to have hunters reduce the wolf population in the state from 650 to 100, the minimum that will keep the animal off the endangered species list. “I’m prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” Gov. C. L. Otter said, according to The Associated Press.
Of all the protected and endangered species in the United States, none has provoked stronger feelings than the wolf, reviled or revered, depending on the person. And few have been as visible a success. The proposed delisting, as it is called, comes because the population of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains is surging.
It is growing in other states as well, including Wyoming. But wolves in that state will continue to have federal protections under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials say, because the state’s policies are not adequate to keep the wolf from becoming endangered again.
“The service is committed to ensuring that wolves thrive in the northern Rocky Mountains after they are delisted, and will continue to work with the states to ensure this successful recovery is maintained,” said H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The public has 60 days to comment after the proposal is published, probably sometime next week.
At the same time, the service announced that the delisting process for wolves in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota was complete. At 4,000 total, the wolf population in those states is considered fully recovered, and the comment period is finished.
Many people in the northern Rockies would like to see large numbers of wolves killed as soon as possible, which is why Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group that played a pivotal role in the wolf’s return, opposes the delisting.
“We don’t support the delisting at this time,” said Jamie Clark, executive vice president of the group. “Hunting is fine. But you have to be judicious about where you hunt and when you hunt. Wyoming and Idaho say they are going to kill wolves, but there’s no mention of population science or monitoring. Its politics, not science.” She said the group was not ruling out a lawsuit to keep the delisting from going forward.
Ms. Clark is also critical of the lack of protection afforded wolves that find their way from the Rockies to Oregon, Washington and Utah, where there are very few of them.
On the other hand, some officials say that federal protection has resulted in far too many wolves and that delisting is needed to cull the excess.
Hunters and state officials throughout the region say the animals are decimating elk herds, and ranchers say they kill too many livestock.
Wyoming officials also adamantly oppose some federally imposed protections and refuse to adopt them, which is why animals there aren’t proposed for delisting. While wolves in the wilderness areas around Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are managed as trophy animals, the state wants wolves outside those areas to be classified as predators, which means that they could be shot without any state regulation.
State officials feel that their hands are tied when it come to controlling wolves that prey on wildlife. “Our elk population is showing decline, and we’re concerned about those declines,” said Terry Cleveland, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Wolves also chase large herds of elk that are fed on feed grounds operated by the state. Because the elk are fed in large numbers, they have high levels of a disease called brucellosis. If wolves scatter them, Mr. Cleveland said, they end up in cattle herds and may spread the disease.
Some people have been spooked by close encounters with wolves. In Idaho, Forest Service employees called for a helicopter rescue when they were surrounded by howling wolves, and a man collecting elk horns said he was stalked by wolves. But there are plenty of people in the West who love the re-established populations. People flock to Yellowstone to watch wolves hunt and play in the wild, and one economist estimates that the wolf watchers leave behind $35 million annually.
If the wolf is delisted, state wildlife agencies will assume full responsibility. They already have most of the management responsibility in Montana and Idaho for the endangered wolf.
The Fish and Wildlife Service does not walk away. If wolf numbers fall below the limits set in the recovery goal, the service could undertake an emergency relisting and take back authority from the states.
Nonetheless, there may well be a large-scale reduction of wolves in store. Governor Otter said wolf kills of elk were hurting Idaho’s hunting economy.
A bill has been introduced in the Idaho Legislature to allow hunters to take wolves for a $26.50 license fee. That is well within a state’s prerogative, federal officials say, as long as minimum numbers are maintained. “Any wolves above that, it’s up to the state to manage,” said Ed Bangs, coordinator for the wolf recovery project at the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wolves that get into trouble killing livestock, and there are plenty, are hunted now by federal agents, usually from airplanes. Last year, 12 percent of the total population was killed. A hunting season is seen as a way to control wolves after delisting in all states.
There have been declines in elk and responses from angry hunters near Yellowstone as well. Before wolves were reintroduced in January 1995, there were 19,000 elk in the park’s northern herd. Those numbers have declined by about 6 percent a year. In December, biologists counted 6,738 elk in that herd during an annual survey.
“There are a few areas where elk are impacted,” said Mr. Bangs, who has led the reintroduction effort since it began. “But so far it’s been in the not-a-big-impact realm in most places.”
Part of the perception, he said, is that elk may be harder to hunt. “Research shows that when they are stalked by wolves, elk behave more like wild animals than livestock. They are more alert and spook easier and so hunting is more difficult.”
Essay: On the Climate Change Beat, Doubt Gives Way to Certainty
By WILLIAM K. STEVENS, The New York Times, February 6, 2007
In the decade when I was the lead reporter on climate change for this newspaper, nearly every blizzard or cold wave that hit the Northeast would bring the same conversation at work.
Somebody in the newsroom would eye me and say something like, “So much for global warming.” This would often, but not always, be accompanied by teasing or malicious expressions, and depending on my mood the person would get either a joking or snappish or explanatory response. Such an exchange might still happen, but now it seems quaint. It would be out of date in light of a potentially historic sea change that appears to have taken place in the state and the status of the global warming issue since I retired from The New York Times in 2000.
Back then I wrote that one day, if mainstream scientists were right about what was going on with the earth’s climate, it would become so obvious that human activity was responsible for a continuing rise in average global temperature that no other explanation would be plausible.
That day may have arrived.
Similarly, it was said in the 1990s that while the available evidence of a serious human impact on the earth’s climate might be preponderant enough to meet the legal test for liability in a civil suit, it fell short of the more stringent “beyond a reasonable doubt” test of guilt in a criminal case.
Now it seems that the steadily strengthening body of evidence about the human connection with global warming is at least approaching the higher standard and may already have satisfied it.
The second element of the sea change, if such it is, consists of a demonstrably heightened awareness and concern among Americans about global warming. The awakening has been energized largely by dramatic reports on the melting Arctic and by fear — generated by the spectacular horror of Hurricane Katrina — that a warmer ocean is making hurricanes more intense.
Politicians are weighing in on the subject as never before, especially with the advent of a Democratic-led Congress. It appears likely, if not certain, that whoever is elected president in 2008 will treat the issue seriously and act accordingly, thereby bringing the United States into concert with most of the rest of the world. Just last week, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a presidential aspirant and the co-author of a bill mandating stronger action, asserted that the argument about global warming “is over.” Back in the day, such words from a conservative Republican would have been unimaginable, even if he were something of a maverick.
I’ve been avidly watching from the sideline as the strengthening evidence of climate change has accumulated, not least the discovery that the Greenland ice cap is melting faster than had been thought. The implications of that are enormous, though the speed with which the melting may catastrophically raise sea levels is uncertain — as are many aspects of what a still hazily discerned climatic future may hold.
Last week, in its first major report since 2001, the world’s most authoritative group of climate scientists issued its strongest statement yet on the relationship between global warming and human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years. In the panel’s parlance, this level of certainty is labeled “very likely.”
Only rarely does scientific odds-making provide a more definite answer than that, at least in this branch of science, and it describes the endpoint, so far, of a progression:
- In 1990, in its first report, the panel found evidence of global warming but said its cause could be natural as easily as human.
- In a landmark 1995 report, the panel altered its judgment, saying that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
- In 2001, it placed the probability that human activity caused most of the warming of the previous half century at 66 percent to 90 percent — a “likely” rating.
And now it has supplied an even higher, more compelling seal of numerical certainty , which is also one measure of global warming’s risk to humanity.
To say that reasonable doubt is vanishing does not mean there is no doubt at all. Many gaps remain in knowledge about the climate system. Scientists do make mistakes, and in any case science continually evolves and changes. That is why the panel’s findings, synthesized from a vast body of scientific studies, are generally couched in terms of probabilities and sometimes substantial margins of error. So in the recesses of the mind, there remains a little worm of caution that says all may not be as it seems, or that the situation may somehow miraculously turn around — or, for that matter, that it may turn out worse than projected.
In several respects, the panel’s conclusions have gotten progressively stronger in one direction over almost two decades, even as many of its hundreds of key members have left the group and new ones have joined. Many if not most of the major objections of contrarians have evaporated as science works its will, although the contrarians still make themselves heard.
The panel said last week that the fact of global warming itself could now be considered “unequivocal,” and certified that 11 of the last 12 years were among the 12 warmest on record worldwide. (The fact of the warming is one thing contrarians no longer deny.)
But perhaps the most striking aspect of the 2007 report is the sheer number and variety of directly observed ways in which global warming is already having a “likely” or “very likely” impact on the earth.
In temperate zones, the frequency of cold days, cold nights and frosts has diminished, while the frequency of hot days, hot nights and heat waves has increased. Droughts in some parts of the world have become longer and more intense. Precipitation has decreased over the subtropics and most of the tropics, but increased elsewhere in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
There have been widespread increases in the frequency of “heavy precipitation events,” even in areas where overall precipitation has gone down. What this means is that in many places, it rains and snows less often but harder — well-documented characteristics of a warming atmosphere. Remember this in the future, when the news media report heavy, sometimes catastrophic one-day rainfalls — four, six, eight inches — as has often happened in the United States in recent years. Each one is a data point in an trend toward more extreme downpours and the floods that result.
All of these trends are rated 90 percent to 99 percent likely to continue.
The list goes on.
And for the first time, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the panel reported evidence of a trend toward more intense hurricanes since 1970, and said it was likely that this trend, too, would continue.
Some of the panel’s main conclusions have remained fairly stable over the years. One is that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, they will most likely warm the earth by about 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, with a wider range of about 2 to 12 degrees possible. The warming over the Northern Hemisphere is projected to be higher than the global average, as is the case for the modest one-degree warming observed in the last century.
The projected warming is about the same as what the panel estimates would be produced by a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, compared with the immediate preindustrial age. It would also be almost as much warming as has occurred since the depths of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago.
Some experts believe that no matter what humans do to try to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, a doubling is all but inevitable by 2100. In this view, the urgent task ahead is to keep them from rising even higher.
If the concentrations were to triple, and even if they just double, there is no telling at this point what the world will really be like as a result, except to speculate that on balance, most of its inhabitants probably won’t like it much. If James E. Hansen, one of the bolder climate scientists of the last two decades, is right, they will be living on a different planet.
It has been pointed out many times, including by me, that we are engaged in a titanic global experiment. The further it proceeds, the clearer the picture should become. At age 71, I’m unlikely to be around when it resolves to everyone’s satisfaction — or dissatisfaction. Many of you may be, and a lot of your descendants undoubtedly will be.
Good luck to you and to them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 05:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 10:39 pm (UTC)Wrong, wrong, wrong!
I also think it's weird to hunt wolves. They aren't a food animal even...
no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 11:36 pm (UTC)Maybe I'm missing something, but is there a reason why Percy is being referred to as "Mr" and not "Dr".
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-02-07 03:59 am (UTC)We always used to make fun of his bad hair plugs, haha.
"Dr. Jeffrey M. Steinberg, from Encino, Calif., who has three clinics that offer sex selection and plans to open a fourth, in Manhattan, said: “We prefer to do it for family balancing, but we’ve never turned away someone who came in and said, ‘I want my first to be a boy or a girl.’ If they all said a boy first, we’d probably shy away, but it’s 50-50.”
“Reproductive choice, as far as I’m concerned, is a very personal issue,” Dr. Steinberg said. “If it’s not going to hurt anyone, we go ahead and give them what they want.” "