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The Rice Thresher
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The second religion of our society is the media. Everyone has the right to know everything anytime, with no consideration of possible consequences. An "if you have a thought, put it in print" mentality has taken over.

Left to their own devices, both fields have serious problems, but their danger is fairly limited. The real problems occur when they work together, a fact which has become increasingly clear in the last few months.

We all know about the cloning controversy. Around the world, the word instantly spread as television and print news sources spoke of the "miracle" modern science had made in cloning a mammal. No one stopped to ask whether spreading this information was a good thing or not until the deed was done.

Now the idea is out there, and people see financial and medical gains in more cloning. Had the media waited a bit, perhaps the legal and ethical issues involved could have been discussed by the scientific community, which is better qualified to look at such issues. As it stands now, no one can be sure what the next step will be.

This particular issue touches few of our lives. I certainly have no intentions of working with or working on a clone any time in the near future, and I assume most of you feel the same. However, this science-media problem is not limited to such far-away issues.

Recently, a topic which affects a large number of people everywhere has been debated and discussed on newsprint rather than within the medical community, causing concern and confusion.

You may have heard about the mammogram controversy. Some doctors are telling women to wait until they are 50 years old for yearly mammograms while others are saying to start at 40 years of age.

Not only are women confused by these conflicting views, but health management organizations and other health care institutions are perplexed as well. The public nature of this fight could have extreme consequences on the availability of services for a large group of women who are at risk for breast cancer.

As a student newspaper person myself, I strongly support the media's right and responsibility to print the news. I also firmly believe that good science and proper medicine can make the world a better place.

However, I worry about the interaction between the two. It is one thing when overly open media coverage simply bores people (i.e., current Court TV), but when the coverage crosses the line into possiblly dangerous territory, I cannot help but cringe.

Then the idea of news as educating people to make their own decisions gets lost, and publicity hounds start making the decisions for us. Science and the media could make a good pair, but only if both remain responsible.

It is far past time for members of both professions to start asking, "Should we?" before and not after they do something new and possibly controversial.

The consequences are too high otherwise, and once it has been done, there is no going back.

Anne Kimbol is a Baker College junior and the business manager.

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 21, 1997 issue.