Can Britain’s Mad Cow Disease Come Here? At first, Doug McEwen forgot things—like, in the summer of 1998, his phone number and address. The symptoms got worse, but doctors still couldn’t find anything wrong. Finally, the otherwise healthy 30-year-old quit his job, since he felt he could no longer perform well. Six months later, when […]
As More Women Take Up Hunting, Is This Deadly Sport Becoming More "Ethical"? Is there such a thing as “ethical hunting”? A growing number of outdoor sportsmen (and, increasingly, women) say there is, and they decry the tendency to lump all hunters together as thrill killers motivated by bloodlust. “We’ve been tolerant of the negative […]
Don Carlos Mendez: One Guatemalan’s Fight Against Slash-and-Burn Farming
Native Rights and Water Fights in Albuquerque Sonny Weahkee, a young Navajo with long flowing hair and a very gentle manner, pointed to the faint painted image of a dancing man in the volcanic rock of West Mesa, in a quiet national monument that seemed worlds away from the bustle of nearby Albuquerque. The images, […]
The Sierra Club Votes Down an Immigration Initiative There are few issues more politically charged than immigration policy, so it’s hardly surprising that voices were raised and names were called when the Sierra Club debated the subject last spring. At issue was a ballot initiative proposed by an insurgent group within the club, Sierrans for […]
A "Green" Gas Additive May be Causing More Problems Than It’s Solving When Freda and Jim Kubas bought their Glenville, California home, they thought they would be spending the rest of their lives there. In 1993, they began using their private well and noticed a turpentine-like odor and peculiar taste, so they installed a $4,000-water […]
An Exercise in Democracy Pits Conservation Against Animal Rights On the parched outskirts of Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe, Mabale villagers were screaming epithets, flailing arms and legs, and beating drums and pots, creating an unearthly din. This wasn’t some ritualistic African dance—the villagers were trying to intimidate a herd of elephants. The same […]
Dissection’s Deadly Toll Hits Frogs Hardest For most high school students, dissecting a formaldehyde-soaked frog is an educational rite of passage. But the practice has decimated the population of frogs and other wild-caught animals, and more and more kids are refusing to do it. “I don’t think it’s right to kill animals,” says Amanda Swann, […]
Are Sterile Seeds a Threat to Small Farmers? They escaped from a laboratory in the dusty confines of Lubbock, Texas. But now they plan to colonize the world. If a newly-patented seed technology is on the market by 2005, many of the new millennium’s crops will carry an intentional genetic defect: the seed they produce […]
Primetime TV Programs Educate Viewers on the Environment A carton of recycled copier paper sits on the counter of the ER nurses’ station. The cast of Friends pours milk out of a reusable glass bottle. Law and Order’s Detective Briscoe asks his lieutenant to guess what the blue fleece found at the crime scene is […]
