Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

UNLICENSED ON THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY JOHN H. FELTS* Several years ago while still a sexagenarian, I responded affirmatively to my department chairman's question, "Geriatrics? But why?" offering evidence to support my answer, "Geriatrics? Why not?" [1, 2]. Now three years retired and well into my seventies, any possibility of my carrying out formal research in aging is indeed excluded. But I have been accumulating anecdotal data, which I hope are at least semi-objective, observations about life in these United States in this our last decade before the millennium. Since my response to my chief's question, the information highway with all its ess curves, cloverleaves, by-passes, detours, and dead ends has threatened to enrich my life and link me with my kind in a paradise of facts and files. Along this road lie exit ramps to music, museums, financial security, nutritional enlightenment, and amusements and entertainments beyond measure. No wonder this traffic network has been described as the ultimate blending of metaphysics and chronology. But what of "roadkill on the information highway," as Ken Auletta has described what is left after wrecks and wrong-turnings on the main arteries and minor branches ofthe system? [3] Can virtual reality today offer stimuli to our senses of taste, smell, and feeling? The eye of course is fixed on the monitor screen, and the ear is attentive to electronic sound which now provides 100 recordings ofVivaldi's Four Seasons and, from Deutsche Grammophone , nine Beethoven symphonic cycles, three under the direction of Herbert von Karajan [4]. How does the traveller with such bounty at hand make selections to fulfill immediate and long-term emotional and intellectual needs? And even to recognize what they are and when they are necessary for his or her well-being? Still, one should not be surprised. E)arwin is said to have had abstracts of Mendel's papers unread on his desk at Down. Since then the scientific literature has proliferated at a rate almost beyond *Department of Internal Medicine, Bowman Gray School ofMedicine, Wake Forest University , Winston-Salem, NC 27106. Correspondence: 3335 Paddington Lane, Winston-Salem, NC 27106.© 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/97/4003-1010$01.00 98 John H. Felts ¦ Unlicensed on the Information Highway measurement. And a productive and thoughtful chemist has recently observed that Chemical Abstracts in 1995 identified 687,789 articles he should have read. Of these he glanced at abstracts of "18.56% of them ... a mere 126,244, a mere 349 per day [5]. As if metaphysics weren't busy enough linked with chronology in cyberspace , it has now beenjoined in mysterious ways with another of our modern preoccupations: nutrition, as these quotations indicate: "What is life but gossip and nutrition"?" (Attribution is not easy along the information capillaries. According toJoseph Brodsky, this question was asked by E. M. Cioran, whereas my notes creditJoseph McComb in a contribution to the New Yorker.) "What is life but gossip and metaphysics?" Sir Isaiah Berlin (Which might syllogistically equate nutrition with metaphysics.) "Eat dessertfirst. Life is uncertain." Billboard Advertisement "He who understands baboons would do more toward metaphysics than Locke. " Charles Darwin There has been in the last decade of this century an increase of 10 pounds in the average adult weight, so that these comments are certainly apposite. When a television commercial promises us fulfillment by eating a double-cheese, double-bacon oversized hamburger—without identifying that delicacy as a coronary by-pass special—untold troubles may lie ahead. When three categories of books remain bestsellers—cookbooks for beginners , diet books for those who have succeeded as cooks by gaining weight, and Bibles for prayer for those whose diet books have failed them—what is to be done about a solution to the weight problem? But I am overage now with a normal Quetelet index, blood pressure, and blood sugar and a serum cholesterol of less than 150 mg/dl through the courtesy of my ancestors and the valiant efforts of my wife. Still some of my friends worry Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 41, 1 ¦ Autumn 1997 99 about my eating habits, particularly at breakfast when I often enjoy the traditional Southern...