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Today's News Today's News This Issue Letters to the Editor Writers Eminent Domain Reform To Be Introduced in U.S.House of Representatives Property Owners Still Left Unprotected from Federally Funded Abuses Two Years After Kelo By The Castle Coalition Arlington, Va. - July 12, Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2007 to stop taxpayer funding of eminent domain abuse. This bipartisan bill would counter the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which allows governments to use eminent domain to seize private property on behalf of private developers in hopes of increasing tax revenue. The Act would deny for two fiscal years economic development funds to state and local governments that use eminent domain for private development. In 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 4128, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005, by a vote of 376 to 38. The bill was co-sponsored by representatives from across the political and ideological spectrum, including Representatives Waters, Sensenbrenner, John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), and Henry Bonilla (R-TX). Despite unprecedented bipartisan political and public support, the bill languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee and ultimately died. "Federal protections from eminent domain abuse are long overdue," said Bert Gall, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which argued the Kelo case on behalf of the homeowners. IJ and the Castle Coalition - a nationwide grassroots organization of property owners and activists dedicated to stopping eminent domain abuse - have led the fight to reform state and federal eminent domain laws. "Even though the vast majority of Americans oppose the abuse of eminent domain for private development, the federal government still funds that abuse." June 23 marked the two-year anniversary of the Kelo decision. In every poll since that ruling, the public is overwhelmingly against eminent domain for private use. Forty-two states have passed eminent domain reforms reining in the Kelo decision, including 10 states where voters passed ballot measures by wide margins in last year's elections. But many of those reforms

After all, richer people could be living there and paying more taxes

Why It’s Important to Monitor Vaccine Safety John Iskander, MD, MPH, acting director, Immunization Safety Office, and Robert T. Chen, MD, MA, blood safety specialist, Epidemiology Branch, NCHHSTP, wrote a chapter in the new book Infectious Disease Surveillance to explain why it is important to monitor vaccine safety. Rare Reactions. The most important reason is to detect rare reactions. Although vaccines are tested extensively before they are licensed for use in the United States, not enough people are included in the tests to detect reactions that happen only rarely. If serious reactions are found when the vaccine is in widespread use, the vaccine may be withdrawn. Higher Risk Groups. Vaccine safety monitoring also makes sure new vaccines are safe for groups such as the elderly, those with chronic medical conditions, and pregnant women. Vaccine trials may deliberately exclude members of these groups. Public Confidence in Vaccines. Monitoring vaccine safety also helps to maintain public confidence needed to keep enough people vaccinated to prevent disease outbreaks. How We Know If Vaccines Are Safe Vaccine safety cannot be measured directly. Instead, it is estimated by the number of "adverse events" reported. An adverse event is "... a medical incident that takes place after an immunization ... and is believed to be caused by the immunization."1 Adverse events include— True reactions to the vaccine. Events that would have occurred even if the person had not been vaccinated (unrelated coincidences). Reactions related to mistakes in vaccine preparation, handling, or administration. Events that cannot be related directly to the vaccine; their cause is unknown. A formal scientific study usually is required to distinguish between coincidences and true reactions. It is rarely possible to say for sure whether a vaccine caused a specific adverse event. Almost all national immunization programs have a system for reporting adverse events. The United States Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)2 and the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS)* are examples. People who report a vaccine reaction to VAERS or CAEFISS are asked if the reaction led to hospitalization, life-threatening illness, disability, or death. These events are classified as "serious," and are often subject to further study that yields important information. For example, reports to CAEFISS identified a common illness among people who received flu vaccines from one Canadian manufacturer in one season.3 Equally important, such systems have supported the safety of new vaccines such as the new meningococcal B and C vaccines in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Other monitoring programs include the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) project, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Network, and the Brighton Collaboration. The VSD project is a collaboration between CDC's Immunization Safety Office and eight large managed care organizations that allows for planned vaccine safety studies as well as quick investigation of possible issues. The CISA Network of six medical research centers conducts clinical research on vaccine-associated health risks, and the Brighton Collaboration develops standard case definitions for problems following immunization as well as guidelines for data collection, analysis, and presentation. Vaccine safety monitoring becomes more important with new vaccines, expanded vaccine recommendations, and new global immunization initiatives. Reporting systems like VAERS will continue to be used to monitor adverse events, so vaccines can continue to be held to very high standards of safety.

The Vaccine Page provides access to up-to-the-minute news about vaccines and an annotated database of vaccine resources on the Internet. A word of caution: The news link above will take you to the latest published news items about vaccines. The Vaccine Page does not control the content of those news items, or of any commercial offerings you may encounter on those pages. We encourage you to validate any information you find there by contacting reputable, science-based sources—such as the members of the Allied Vaccine Group—for trustworthy information about vaccines and immunization. -The Editor  

"Marijuana unlocks the ability of my mind to think in new and creative ways, takes me to new heights of ecstasy in the appreciation of music and art, and provides a catalyst for the exploration and deepening of my relationships with others. When marijuana prohibition is ended and the experience of marijuana becomes more free and open, I believe that our culture and society will benefit more from the creative ways of thinking and the more intimate ways of interacting with others that are encouraged by the use of marijuana."

I personally use marijuana for a number of reasons. Marijuana unlocks and opens up parts of my mind and psychology that I otherwise would not be aware of, and encourages me to think in new and untested ways. Sensory stimulation, in the form of music, food, sex, and the like, becomes more vivid and pleasurable. The combination of new patterns of thought with more vivid sensory stimulation leads to an enhanced appreciation of art. I sometimes get high and spend my time simply enjoying the experience of listening to music or browsing a collection of artistic works.

WASHINGTON, DC, October 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, yesterday released new documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing a total of as many as eleven deaths related to Merck's HPV vaccine Gardasil.  Those deaths resulted between June 8, 2006 - when the vaccine received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - and August 2007 when the latest data was available. The adverse reports coming from the HPV vaccine are increasing daily at an alarming rate.  A LifeSiteNews.com report which scanned a publicly available database of adverse affects coming from the HPV vaccine found 3,137 adverse effects reported on September 28, 2007.  Today the US Government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) lists 3,779 adverse effects.  52 of the cases were deemed "life threatening" and 119 required hospitalization. In one case highlighted by Judicial Watch a 17 year old girl who was vaccinated in June 2007 died the very day she was vaccinated.  According to the report, she "was vaccinated with a first dose of Gardasil…During the evening of the same day, the patient was found unconscious (lifeless) by the mother. Resuscitation was performed by the emergency physician but was unsuccessful.  The patient subsequently died." Other serious reported side effects associated with Gardasil include paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures.  Says one report: "Initial and follow-up information has been received from a physician concerning an "otherwise healthy" 13 year old female who was vaccinated with her first and second doses of Gardasil.  Subsequently, the patient experienced…paralysis from the chest down, lesions of the optic nerve…At the time of the report, the patient had not recovered." "In light of this information, it is disturbing that state and local governments might mandate in any way this vaccine for young girls," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  "These adverse reaction reports suggest the vaccine not only causes serious side effects, but might even be fatal." The toll from the HPV vaccine may be greater still.  Judicial Watch filed its request on August 20, 2007, and received the adverse event reports from the FDA on September, 13 2007, in what the agency described as a "partial response." On October 3, 2007, Judicial Watch filed a new lawsuit against the FDA for its failure to fully respond to Judicial Watch's FOIA request as required by law.

CDC backpedals on vaccination recommendations Healthcare workers oblivious to their participation in mass medical experimentation COEUR D'ALENE -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Immunization Update for Sept. 14, broadcast via satelite to public health institutions all over the nation, was an installment of the periodic program which served two specific functions: It served notice that influenza vaccine will be late and in short supply this year and it cleverly backpedaled on several aspects of previous CDC vaccination recommendations because too many people have died or become permanently damaged as a result. The CDC must have known it would have to play hardball with health professionals to overcome recent failings with regard to vaccination policy: Mercury-based preservative thimerosal has been banned from vaccines amid claims that it may be harmful and news that the oral polio has been responsible for spreading the disease rather than preventing it and contains the carcinogenic monkey virus SV-40. To compel audience participation and compliance, the CDC urged the health professionals in the audience to fill out the form to receive continuing education credit for watching the program and fill out the evaluation form and send them both in to the CDC. For their trouble, the CDC promised to mail them a collectible “Star Wars” pro-vaccination poster. The ruse apparently worked as the 25 women and one man in attendance accepted the explanations from program host CDC National Immunization Program Director Dr. William Atkinson for vaccination policies that may have been responsible for the injuries and deaths of thousands of people in over the last 30 years. Promise of a “collectible” poster from the 70s also helped these healthcare professionals to accept the new recommendations without questioning whether or not they might be lethal as well. Pneumococcus vaccine

Hepititis B There is a new, two-dose, thimerosal-free hep B vaccine manufactured by Merck and Smith/Kline. The CDC recommends that all infants be vaccinated against hep B before leaving the hospital. “Infants have been our emphasis over the last few years,” explained Atkinson. Hep B is primarily spread through intravenous drug use and promiscuous sex. For the CDC to recommend that all infants receive hep B vaccine must be because the federal agency expects babies to start sharing needles and engaging in promiscuous sex immediately upon leaving the hospital or the CDC believes it is safer, for the sake of the children, to assume that all mothers are intravenous drug abusers with multiple sex partners. The American Association of Pediatricians (AAP) recommended that hep B vaccine be delayed until six months of age due to thimerosal content. But, since thimersal has been removed, the AAP recommends that infants begin receiving the shots by no later than two months.

Polio vaccine “Today may be the last day we talk about polio vaccine,” Atkinson said. The CDC no longer recommends the administration of the oral polio vaccine (OPV) since it has been proven the vaccine causes outbreaks of the disease and contains the carcinogenic SV-40 monkey virus. Atkinson did mention OPV may be used in the event that parents refuse to have their child injected with the third and fourth doses of Inactivated Polio Vaccine, or if the child is traveling to a country where polio may be present within 4 weeks -- but that will be only until the end of this year as supplies of OPV will run out and they will not be replaced. Atkinson promised that in a few more years polio will be wiped out forever and will not be part of the recommended vaccination regimen. “The end of polio disease is in sight,” he said and added that China was just certified “polio free” this year. Historical references to 200 years of polio eradication efforts show that polio has never been controlled through vaccination. The definition of the disease just changes to become paralytic meningitis based upon the vaccination status of the individual.

his Web site was launched in early 1995, and was amongst the first sites dedicated to, not only providing&nbsp; alternative theories of addictive behavior and change, but providing addiction information in general. HabitSmart has been alive and kicking since its debut, despite occasional objections to its non-twelve step focus, and primarily because of the hundreds of positive responses to the site.&nbsp; The site offers an abundance of information about addictive behavior: theories of habit endurance and habit change as well as tips for effectively managing problematic habitual behavior. Many people grappling with addictive behavior are not aware that, as opposed to just one,&nbsp; there are many potentially effective routes to change.&nbsp;&nbsp; In as much as AA and associated 12-step approaches have been useful to many, one size does not fit all. Furthermore, many who align themselves with the 12-step model can augment their recovery with other information and tools. INFORMATION DRIVES CHANGE &nbsp; The Self Scoring Alcohol Check-up is an on-line questionnaire for people concerned about their alcohol&nbsp;&nbsp; consumption. It is hoped that filling out the form will enable respondents to examine important aspects of this behavior and consider various change options. This is not a diagnostic assessment, but an opportunity to examine "the facts" about your drinking (e.g. quantity consumed, unique triggers, consequences) and hopefully find some route to change which is commensurate with your needs and goals.. Includes the SADD (Short-Form Alcohol Dependence Data Questionnaire). &nbsp;The Codependency Idea: A Disease of Caring This lengthy article offers an alternative to the "codependency mentality" and tips for people in relationships with addicted individuals. &nbsp; &nbsp; The Cognitive Therapy Pages This new addition to HabitSmart is designed to be an introduction to cognitive therapy of emotional problems. Articles address the cognitive model, depression, anxiety, anger management, as well as tips on thought monitoring and cognitive disputation. Under Construction: THE COGNITIVE MODEL OF DEPRESSION: A MULTI-MEDIA PRESENTATION First in a series of presentations to educate the principles of cognitive therapy. NEW&nbsp; &nbsp; Kicking Depression's Ugly Butt&nbsp; Chapter summary and excerpt from Dr. Westermeyer's depression self-help book, available Summer, 2004 at bookstores and directly from Quick Publications. Tipping the Scale This exercise and accompanying documents were written to help you understand and counter ambivalence. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Push Harm Reduction: This was the first site on the WWW dedicated to providing information about Harm Reduction and associated interventions. Check it out! Assimilate and spread the word! Nine articles dealing with outreach, needle exchange, methadone,&nbsp; as well as dieting and clinical implications of harm reduction. &nbsp; Jump Starting that New Years Resolution Failed your January change agenda? Here's some tips for getting back on track. By the way, You don't have to wait until 1-1 to make a resolution! &nbsp;Memory Model of Problem Drinking: This empirically-based document offers an information-processing conceptualization of craving, urges and loss of control. &nbsp; &nbsp; Coping With Urges: The article offers tips for "out-smarting" the various breeds of urge. Coping with Addiction is an excellent article that provides answers to many questions people have about drug and alcohol abuse plus some useful advice on methods of change. <

Any advanced technology creates new threats as well as new potentials. The Internet offers enormous opportunties, which are being exploited by communities, and increasingly also by business enterprises. It also harbours risks to the privacy of personal data and communications, as marketers seek to profile their electronic customers, and governments seek to impose themselves on people they see as miscreants. This paper describes the kinds of threats that exist and are emerging. It also outlines measures, both fair and foul, that are being adopted to counter those threats.

AHRP's stated rationale for objecting to a policy mandating Merck's HPV vaccine in 11 year old girls [Link] is validated by an internationally recognized expert in the field who tested the vaccine in clinical trials.Dr. Diane M. Harper, a lead researcher in the development of the human papilloma virus vaccine, who says giving the drug to 11-year-old girls "is a great big public health experiment." Dr. Harper, a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, said: "It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue." All of her trials have been with subjects ages 15 to 25. "This vaccine has not been tested in little girls for efficacy. At 11, these girls don't get cervical cancer - they won't know for 25 years if they will get cervical cancer."

She believes the ideal way of administering the new vaccine is to offer it to women ages 18 and up. At the time of their first inoculation, they should be tested for the presence of HPV in their system. If the test comes back negative, then schedule the follow-up series of the three-part shots.

But if it comes back positive? "Then we don't know squat, because medically we don't know how to respond to that," Harper said.

The argument of utilizing marijuana as a herbal remedy and naturopathic solution for sufferers of various serious and often chronic illnesses has overshadowed the previously dominant picture of marijuana as a drug primarily used for recreational highs. Recent organizations who picture marijuana with medicinal properties that should be supported and advocate legal access to marijuana include. AIDS Action Council American Academy of Family Physicians American Bar Association American Public Health Association California Medical Association California Legislative Council for Older Americans California Pharmacists Association California Society of Addiction Medicine Consumer Reports magazine Lymphoma Foundation of America Multiple Sclerosis California Action Network National Association of People With AIDS New England Journal of Medicine Plus state Nurses Associations like California, New York and Virginia The public's picture of marijuana has been greatly influenced as evidenced by ballot initiatives that have received a majority of votes in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state. The picture of marijuana is now a changing and improved landscape that holds much promise with growing public as well as professional support.

Shots In The Dark by Barbara Loe Fisher&nbsp;&nbsp; The worldwide acceptance of mass vaccination to suppress infectious childhood diseases once fiercely resisted is one of the most successful public relations stories in the history of medicine. As a result, epidemics of smallpox, which once swept through 18th- and 19th-century port cities such as Halifax, New York, and Boston without warning and cut down entire families, are now dry facts relegated to medical books. Images of children struggling through whooping cough, walking down the street coughing spasmodically, and stopping at curbs to spit up sticky mucus are only fading memories for grandparents alive to talk about what their parents told them.&nbsp; Baby boomers and their parents still remember lining up in school in 1955 for polio vaccinations, with the hope that this magic bullet would keep them out of the dreaded iron lung.&nbsp; Mass vaccination has dramatically suppressed childhood diseases. In Canada, recorded diphtheria cases dropped from 9,000 in 1924 to two to five by 1994.&nbsp; When measles vaccination began in the United States between 1963 and 1965, doctors reported more than 400,000 cases annually; by 1995, that number had dwindled to 309. Cases of tetanus are almost unheard of in North America and Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet the universal use of vaccines as a worthy goal that prevents needless suffering and that benefits all mankind has begun to be challenged.&nbsp;&nbsp; The voices of critics are heard in the living rooms of families whose children have been injured or have died from reactions to routine childhood vaccinations, and in courtrooms, where parents are suing vaccine makers and challenging mandatory vaccination laws. In the U.S. Congress, legislators who have heard them have set up a vaccine injury compensation program. At scientific conferences and in the pages of prestigious medical journals, researchers and physicians are risking their careers by discussing vaccine side effects.

Today, vaccinations are big business. In 1995, an international high-technology research firm, Frost &amp; Sullivan, projected that the worldwide human vaccine market will increase from $2.9 billion to more than $7 billion by the year 2001.&nbsp;&nbsp; Public health officials in every country assist the industry�s growth, often by force of laws that ensure citizens use about a dozen different viral and bacterial vaccines, including ones to suppress even generally mild childhood diseases such as chicken pox. Traditional public health measures, improving sanitation, nutrition, living conditions, health education, and access to affordable medical care, especially in underprivileged populations often take a backseat to achieving a 100 per cent vaccination rate.&nbsp;&nbsp; Most medical doctors consider vaccines their single most important tool in protecting public health. Few would question the profound importance of vaccines to public health, wrote Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD, medical director of the March of Dimes and chairman of the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Committee, in a 1994 National Academy of Sciences report,&nbsp;

Adverse Events Associated with Vaccines Not only have deaths from the most common childhood infections been almost eliminated, but also so have the devastating morbidities of diseases like measles, paralytic polio, and congenital rubella. This revolution has . . . led to major savings in medical costs and gains in work productivity, as well as to reductions in deaths and suffering.&nbsp;&nbsp; An ancient philosophical dispute goes modern&nbsp;&nbsp; The whole idea of man versus nature can be traced back to the origins of western medicine more than 2,000 years ago. In a four-volume book series Divided Legacy: A History of Schism in Medical Thought by medical historian Harris L. Coulter, PhD, the centuries-old war between empiricism and rationalism in medicine is revealed as a contest between two competing health philosophies. Is each individual governed by a vital force that, through unique reactions to external stimuli, is capable of participating in the healing process, as empiricists, including Hippocrates, have maintained?&nbsp; Or are all human organisms simply a series of complex chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, as rationalists, including Louis Pasteur, have maintained?&nbsp;&nbsp; Empiricists accept the existence of viruses and bacteria as part of nature and illness as part of the life process. They consider fevers, diarrhea, and runny noses good, not bad, and do not suppress them with chemically based drugs that might interfere with the body�s natural ability to harness the immune system to participate in the healing process. They stress that each individual is unique and that individualized therapeutic techniques can stimulate the body to restore health. Empiricists dislike the one-size-fits-all mass vaccination approach.&nbsp;

"Free Your Mind....From The Vaccine Paradigm" www.vaclib.org document.writeln("Page last modified: - - ",document.lastModified) document.write(document.location) Page last modified: - - 03/02/2008 19:43:13 http://www.vaclib.org/indexdoc.htm#avoid

Women For Sobriety, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping women overcome alcoholism and other addictions. Our "New Life" program helps achieve sobriety and sustain ongoing recovery.

The war on drugs is an expensive battle, as a great deal of resources go into catching those who buy or sell illegal drugs on the black market, prosecuting them in court, and housing them in jail. These costs seem particularly exorbitant when dealing with the drug marijuana, as it is widely used, and is likely no more harmful than currently legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. There's another cost to the war on drugs, however, which is the revenue lost by governments who cannot collect taxes on illegal drugs. In a recent study for the Fraser Institute, Economist Stephen T. Easton attempted to calculate how much tax revenue the Canadian government could gain by legalizing marijuana.

The study estimates that the average price of 0.5 grams (a unit) of marijuana sold for $8.60 on the street, while its cost of production was only $1.70. In a free market, a $6.90 profit for a unit of marijuana would not last for long. Entrepreneurs noticing the great profits to be made in the marijuana market would start their own grow operations, increasing the supply of marijuana on the street, which would cause the street price of the drug to fall to a level much closer to the cost of production. Of course, this doesn't happen because the product is illegal; the prospect of jail time deters many entrepreneurs and the occasional drug bust ensures that the supply stays relatively low. We can consider much of this $6.90 per unit of marijuana profit a risk-premium for participating in the underground economy. Unfortunately, this risk premium is making a lot of criminals, many of whom have ties to organized crime, very wealthy. Stephen T. Easton argues that if marijuana was legalized, we could transfer these excess profits caused by the risk-premium from these grow operations to the government: If we substitute a tax on marijuana cigarettes equal to the difference between the local production cost and the street price people currently pay--that is, transfer the revenue from the current producers and marketers (many of whom work with organized crime) to the government, leaving all other marketing and transportation issues aside we would have revenue of (say) $7 per [unit]. If you could collect on every cigarette and ignore the transportation, marketing, and advertising costs, this comes to over $2 billion on Canadian sales and substantially more from an export tax, and you forego the costs of enforcement and deploy your policing assets elsewhere. One interesting thing to note from such a scheme is that the street price of marijuana stays exactly the same, so the quantity demanded should remain the same as the price is unchanged. However, it's quite likely that the demand for marijuana would change from legalization. We saw that there was a risk in selling marijuana, but since drug laws often target both the buyer and the seller, there is also a risk (albeit smaller) to the consumer interested in buying marijuana. Legalization would eliminate this risk, causing the demand to rise. This is a mixed bag from a public policy standpoint: Increased marijuana use can have ill effects on the health of the population but the increased sales bring in more revenue for the government. However, if legalized, governments can control how much marijuana is consumed by increasing or decreasing the taxes on the product. There is a limit to this, however, as setting taxes too high will cause marijuana growers to sell on the black market to avoid excessive taxation. When considering legalizing marijuana, there are many economic, health, and social issues we must analyze. One economic study will not be the basis of Canada's public policy decisions, but Easton's research does conclusively show that there are economic benefits in the legalization of marijuana. With governments scrambling to find new sources of revenue to pay for important social objectives such as health care and education expect to see the idea raised in Parliament sooner rather than later.

Where Do Gender Roles Come From? A person's sexuality comes from within him or her, making a person heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual, depending on the partners he or she is(or is not) attracted to. Unlike sexuality, however, gender roles are imposedfrom without, through a variety of social influences. Formed during the socialization phases of childhood and adolescence, gender role issues influence people throughout their lives; conflict can arise when some one does not feelat ease with his or her gender role. The first and one of the strongest influences on a person's perceived genderrole is his or her parents. Parents are our first teachers--not only of suchbasic skills as talking and walking, but also of attitudes and behavior. Someparents still hold traditional definitions of maleness and femaleness and what kind of activities are appropriate for each. Parents start early in treating their baby boys and baby girls differently. Although baby boys are more likely to die in infancy than girls, and are actually more fragile as infants than girls are, studies have shown that parents tend to respond more quickly to an infant daughter's cries than they are to those of an infant son. Parents also tend to cuddle girls more than they do boys. They are also more likely to allow boys to try new things and activities--such as learning to walk and explore--than they are girls; parents tend to fear more for the safety of girls.

Owens and author Diana Baumrind analyzed data gathered from 100 middle-class white families from 1968 to 1980. The children and parents were interviewed, tested and observed on three occasions by two teams of psychologists when the children were 4, 9 and 14. The study found the majority of families disciplined their preschool children by using mild to moderate spanking. The results showed no negative effects on cognitive, social or behavioral skills of those youngsters and found no difference between them and the 4 percent of children who were not physically disciplined. The study found that 4 percent to 7 percent of parents fell into the "red zone" by disciplining their children frequently and impulsively, by such means as verbal punishment, using a paddle, hitting their children in the face or torso or throwing and shaking them. Those children were found to be not as adjusted socially and more likely to have behavioral problems or experience anxiety or depression, Owens said. She acknowledged that the children studied were from an earlier generation and the results could be different if the same research were done on today's youngsters. A study released last August found that avoiding corporal punishment altogether increases the probability of the child being well-behaved and well-adjusted. Murray Straus, co-director of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory, said spanking could backfire and push a youngster into delinquency.