Bruce Ames argues that fruits and vegetables are full of natural poisons--but they're still good for us.

The judges at my table were nervous, casting furtive glances at a small, pleasant-looking man across the room.

“Is Bruce eating his cheesecake?” one asked. Another glance. “Yes.”

Smiles appeared around the table, and we all started in on our desserts.

This follow-the-leader took place at a science workshop for federal judges–the men and women around the table represented some of the best legal minds in the country. The man whose actions were being so closely watched was my fellow lecturer, Bruce Ames, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taken the controversial position that the toxins naturally present in our food and elsewhere add up to thousands of times the quantities of man-made toxins we are exposed to, especially the pesticides used on the fruits and vegetables we eat. It is a waste of time to worry about the latter, he says; our bodies can handle most anything nature or we can throw at them. The cells in our body, he tells us, live in a continuous barrage of damaging molecules. Every cell takes a “hit,” as he calls it, about every ten seconds. In the time that it takes you to read this article, your body will have been assaulted tens of trillions of times.

Most of the damaging molecules are inescapable byproducts of the chemical processes in our bodies that enable us to live. Others are toxins, natural and manmade, that we take in. (“The world is full of poisons,” Ames says, “but it doesn’t make any difference.”) Still other damage is done by radiation, whether the ultraviolet component of sunlight or the x rays that produce the diagnostic images ordered by physicians.

Ames’ contention that it is a waste of time to worry about man-made pesticides, air pollution and all the rest is by no means universally accepted by scientists–and certainly not by consumers. But his research on cancer and aging is widely respected. His findings add strength to long-held theories about how well cells repair themselves and offer a better understanding of how we can best evaluate the risks we face.

The membranes that protect both the cell and the nucleus inside it will not allow strange molecules to pass. Only those molecules with the right shape (and that the cell needs) are premitted to enter.

Right now, the 60 trillion or so cells in your body are going quietly about their business, churning out the chemicals needed to keep you alive. In your pancreas, for example, cells are producing insulin and pumping it into your bloodstream. Your thyroid is producing chemicals that govern your metabolism. Your bone marrow and thymus gland are producing antibodies to ward off disease. In all of these cells, the key step in the chemical process is the building up and tearing down of specific molecules to extract energy and useful materials from them. Some of the end products, such as insulin, are exported from the cell to be used elsewhere. Some are used to run the chemical reactions inside the gell, others to replenish and repair the cell itself. In most cells, thousands of these chemical reactions are going on at any given moment, each affecting you in some way.

The facilitators of these life-sustaining reactions are proteins called enzymes. For every one of the thousands of chemical reactions that go on in each cell in your body, there is one specific enzyme–one molecule with just the right intricate shape to bring two other molecules together and let them form bonds. The processes of life depend crucially on the right enzymes being present. Where do they come from? The blueprints for making the enzymes that run the cell’s chemistry are contained in the molecules we call DNA. From these blueprints the cells make the enzymes, and the enzymes drive the chemical reactions that make us what we are.

Under normal circumstances, the process of translating the information on the DNA into enzymes goes smoothly. But, life being what it is, this complex machinery sometimes breaks down. If the enzymes are flawed, they can seriously hamper the cell’s function, perhaps even kill it. Cells die and are replaced all the time.

If, however, the damage is to the DNA itself, the situation is potentially more serious. Alteration of the DNA will not only affect the cell in which it occurs, but when that cell divides, the defective blueprint will be passed on to all the descendants of that cell. And if that defect changes the shape of an enzyme that drives a crucial chemical reaction, the consequences for the organism can be serious.

By far the easiest way for this damage to occur is for other molecules to interact with DNA and upset its complex structure. Where do these “killer” molecules come from? Bruce Ames’ research shows that the overwhelming majority are byproducts of the normal process by which cells turn food into energy. They have been around since life began. If cells couldn’t repair damage to their DNA, Adam and Eve would have died when they ate that first apple, and none of us would be here today. Somehow our cells learned to deal with chemical damage to DNA. It is the details of how these mechanisms work–and how much they work–that molecular biologists are starting to sort out.

The double-helix shape of the DNA molecule is now familiar to everyone. You can think of this shape as a twisted ladder in which the rungs (which chemists call “base pairs”) keep the two sides of the helix from drifting apart. Here and there along the helix are segments of DNA known as genes, where the information about building enzymes is stored. Each gene carries the information needed to assemble one enzyme and hence the ability to control one chemical reaction in the cell. In humans, there are about 80,000 genes. Every single living thing on Earth uses this same DNA molecule and the same code to carry out the business of living. But just as a single code, like the English alphabet, can be used to write an infinite variety of messages, so too can the genetic code be used to “write” everything from a blade of grass to a Nobel laureate.

By far the most common source of damage to DNA is a class of chemicals known as oxidants. When your cells burn the material in food to supply energy, byproducts are produced, including some familiar substances, such as hydrogen peroxide, and some less-familiar substances with names like “superoxide” and “hydroxyl radical.” These are active chemicals–they like to combine with other molecules in reactions chemists call oxidation. It is because oxidants do so much of the damage that scientists such as Ames urge people to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, the foods that contain antioxidants. Ames believes they help reduce the body’s risks to not only cancer but cardiovascular disease, immune system diseases, cataracts and brain dysfunction.

When active molecules attach themselves to the bases in the rungs of the DNA ladder, they change the effective shape of the structure. This means that they introduce the possibility that when the DNA duplicates itself, the base pairs in the copy will be different from the pairs in the original. This is what causes mutation. The DNA in all later generations will have the wrong code, and this could eventually lead to cancer. Cells must have some way of preventing this sort of mistake from being propagated.

The way cells do this illustrates the engineering concept of “defense in depth.” First, the places where oxidants are produced tend to be located in the body of the cell, while the DNA is segregated in the nucleus. So damaging molecules have to travel some distance to get at the DNA. Second, our food contains antioxidants (vitamins C and E and beta carotene are the most familiar). Third, damaged or dead cells are routinely sloughed off before they have a chance to multiply, so that damage is confined to a single cell’s DNA. Finally, even after the damage is done there are ways that the DNA can be repaired.

Complexes of enzymes move constantly along every strand of DNA, searching for trouble. When they find it, they fix it. There are two general types of DNA repair mechanisms, each suited to a specific kind of problem. The one that concerns us most here is called “excision repair” and serves as a jack-of-all-trades for repairing damaged DNA. It swings into action, for example, when benzo[a]pyrene damages DNA. This is one of the compounds in cigarette smoke that can cause lung cancer. When this very large molecule attaches itself to one side of a rung, it distorts the helix; so when it comes time for the helix to split apart and replicate itself, random bases are edited into the new strand, thus creating mutation. The excision repair enzyme snips out the faulty section of the helix so that the gap can be rebuilt with the correct order of bases.

Repair enzymes constantly patrol the six feet of DNA in each of our 60 trillion cells, looking for damage.

The other repair mechanism is “mismatch repair,” which occurs as the helix duplicates itself prior to cell division. It may be, for example, that the two sides of a rung on the DNA ladder get made from the wrong bases or that one side of the ladder slips down a little bit with respect to the other. When this happens, characteristic lumps of mismatched bases and unpaired bases appear on the helix; these lumps are recognized by the repair enzymes. In most cases the molecule that is creating the new strand of DNA, the polymerase enzyme, is actively correcting its own errors as it works–proofreading, so to speak. When bases are not properly paired, it pulls them apart and fills in the correct base molecules in the new strand.

But when the polymerase misses an error, the mismatch repair enzyme goes to work. Its first order of business is to unwind the DNA strands and determine which strand is the new one and therefore has the incorrect base. It then makes a cut in the new strand and removes all the bases back to the original error. The polymerase enzyme then returns and fills in the gap. To date, scientists have been unable to find any kind of DNA damage that cannot be repaired by these two mechanisms.

The general nature of DNA repair is the key to Ames’ arguments. If you eat something that contains a molecule you’ve never encountered before (a new pesticide, for example), your cells don’t have to start from scratch to organize a defense. They will simply react to it as they would to any other molecule that doesn’t belong and, as a last resort, repair any DNA that it damages. General defenses give us a great deal of flexibility.

Working at the limits of measurement

By capturing and weighing the debris from damaged DNA, scientists can measure the rate of repair.

Scientists like Bruce Ames monitor DNA repair by analyzing the debris that is discarded when damaged portions of DNA are snipped out. Eventually, many of these fragments are removed from the cell and leave the body by way of the urine. The amount of any given compound will be very small, and it is only in the past decade that scientists have acquired the ability to detect such small concentrations. But the general advance in analytical ability that has allowed us to detect environmental pollution at the level of parts per billion also allows us to measure these infinitesimal quantities of DNA repair byproducts and thereby estimate the volume of repairs going on in our bodies.

It is much easier to describe this kind of work than to actually do it. You need imagination and creativity (to know what to measure) and an almost fanatical attention to detail (to make the measurement). Ames enjoys the reputation he does because he has both qualities to an unusual degree. He is a “scientist’s scientist.”

When I asked why the cell was able to snip out damaged sections and make repairs, his reply surprised me. Instead of quoting up-to-the-minute biological theory, his answer went back more than a hundred years to Charles Darwin and evolution. Taking his current research on natural plant pesticides as an example, he pointed out: “Every plant has 40 or 50 pesticides it makes to kill off predators and fungi. They couldn’t survive if they weren’t filled with toxic chemicals. They don’t have teeth and claws, and they can’t run away. So throughout evolution they’ve been making newer and nastier pesticides. They’re better chemists than Dow and Monsanto.”

Human beings and other animals have evolved in a world in which not only do their own bodies produce damaging oxidants, but their main food supply is loaded with potentially deadly chemicals. The laws of natural selection dictate that in such a situation we would either develop ways of dealing with these toxins or lose the evolutionary battle to someone who did. Furthermore, the defenses would have to be general–otherwise we’d be at risk every time a plant evolved a slightly new version of an old pesticide.

By and large, we’ve been very successful at countering nature’s attempts to kill us off. We’ve not been completely successful, though, as the occasional newspaper stories about someone dying from eating mushrooms illustrate. So there are some reminders in our daily lives seek energy from plants, and the plants themselves, seeking to keep from being eaten.

Seen this way, the layered defenses of the human cell make sense, as do the busy enzymes patrolling the DNA: we needed them to survive as plants became better at self-defense. But if you’re going to invoke Darwin to explain one thing about the cell, you’re going to have to follow through and see what he has to say about other things as well. For example, it’s true that the human body is a marvelous machine, designed to survive and prosper in a hostile world. In an evolutionary sense, the purpose of this marvelous machine is to reproduce–to place its genes in the next generation. Once this has been done, there is no evolutionary advantage for keeping the organism alive and in good repair. As a middle-aged scientist, I have often brooded on the inequity of this state of affairs, but it remains a basic tenet of evolutionary theory.

The DNA repair mechanisms we’ve described play a crucial role in keeping us alive. If damage to DNA is allowed to go uncorrected until a cell divides, all succeeding generations of cells will carry the defective blueprint, and the final outcome may be disease or malignant growth. The cell doesn’t have forever to effect its repairs, then–it has to do so before the next division. This constraint forces the cell to set priorities in its repair operation, with crucial repairs being done first, others if the opportunity arises.

Repair work is strictly prioritized

Plants cannot run from those that would eat them, so they have evolved some lethal chemical defenses.

First come repairs to genes that are actually being used by the cell. In the pancreas, for instance, the gene that codes for the production of insulin will be first in line. Damage to inactive genes or to other parts of the DNA not in current use will be put off until crucial repairs can be made.

In his studies on rats, Ames finds an interesting pattern to repairs. At any given moment, there may be a million or more damage sites on the DNA in a rat cell. About 100,000 are repaired each day, but a little more than 100,000 new “hits,” or lesions, appear. Thus, over time, the uncorrected damage accumulates. There may be, for example, as many as two million DNA lesions in an old rat.

“Is this true in humans as well?” I asked.

“We don’t know about humans yet,” Ames said. “There are too many variables. You can’t put human subjects on a strictly controlled diet. You have to put in a tremendous amount of time to get things worked out in rats first, before you can even think about moving on to humans. ”

In Ames’ view, both the process of aging and the incidence of cancer can be attributed in large part to the accumulation of damage to DNA. “Most [researchers] think that both aging and cancer have something to do with damage to DNA,” he says. “Cancer is a disease whose rate increases with age.”

There is evidence to back up this view of aging and cancer. Measurements of repair rates show that small mammals have a much higher number of hits to their DNA than do humans. Rats and mice, for example, seem to be making 100,000 repairs to each of their cells per day (versus 10,000 for humans). These rodents live only a few years and are typically full of tumors when they die.

In addition, there is strong evidence that many (if not most) human cancers are related to processes that stimulate the division of cells. The most striking example of this phenomenon is the constant irritation of lung tissue from smoking, but there are many others, including the effect of alcohol on the liver and other chronic irritations and inflammations. The more often cells divide, the shorter the time there is for repairs to be made and the more likely it is that a mutation will occur.

DNA repair is more than a fascinating science story. Its ramifications spill over into the politics of our everyday lives, and Ames has never hesitated to make the leap from laboratory to public arena. Back in the 1960s, he developed the Ames test, an elegant, simple way of determining whether a chemical produced mutations in the DNA of bacteria. It has since become a universal screening technique for potential carcinogens. Ames never patented–or made a nickel from–his test. “In those days, people didn’t worry about things like that,” he says. “Besides, I wouldn’t have any way to spend the money. Going to scientific meetings provides all the travel I want.” (A new version of the Ames test is about to be patented, however, at the insistence of the University of California.

When the cancer-causing potential of chemicals was first recognized, attention turned to man-made compounds, such as pesticides. Tests on animals established that about half of the synthetic materials tested could, indeed, produce cancer in rodents. The human race suddenly found itself awash in a sea of apparently carcinogenic chemicals. In the 1970s Ames himself was arguing that humans should not be exposed to even one molecule of any substance that causes mutations in bacteria.

Little attention had been paid to natural pesticides. Ames and his colleagues began to look at the chemicals naturally present in foods from the plant kingdom, and they found that half of them caused cancer in rodentsa proportion similar to that of synthetic chemicals. By the late 1980s Ames had reversed himself, and the group began ranking suspected carcinogens by an index that relates cancer caused in rats to the risk for humans. In the process, he began to question the massive doses given rodents in animal cancer tests. It had become standard to submit animals to the maximum tolerated dose (the most a rodent can ingest without dying). Ames and others now believe that megadoses of anything accelerate cell division, and this in itself leads to cancer. For that reason, they feel, the results from rodent tests cannot be extrapolated to the low, everyday doses to which human beings are exposed.

When the repair forces can no longer keep up with the damage occurring, we experience what we call aging.

Today in his lab Ames tells me, “Almost every plant product in the supermarket is likely to contain natural carcinogens.” He estimates that an American eats about a gram and a half of these natural pesticides every daytimes 10,000 more than the residues of man-made agricultural pesticides ingested. In other words, about 99.99 percent of the pesticides we take in every day are natural, only 0.01 percent are man-made. “For example, when you eat cabbage, you ingest 49 different natural pesticides and metabolites,” Ames says with that same disarming smile, and goes on to produce a list of 43 foods that contain at least ten parts per million of chemicals that are carcinogenic in rodent tests. Ranging from anise to lettuce, the list even includes parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Even a cup of coffee doesn’t escape his attention. “There are over a thousand chemicals in a cup of coffee,” he says. “We’ve tested 26 of them, and half of those cause cancer in rats.”

“Life is full of “one in a hundred thousand’ risks,” Ames states. “If the EPA is spending all its time trying to protect the public against `one in a million’ hypothetical risks–which it is doing to a large extent–it’s spending its time on trivia. We’re spending $150 billion a year trying to control pollution. Although much of this is useful, I think it will have little influence on cancer rates” (SMITHSONIAN, November 1995).

At bottom Ames, the consummate scientist, wants Americans to recognize all the risks in their lives and adopt a rational approach to controlling them. Instead of worrying about a minor (and perhaps even nonexistent) risk, we should think about eliminating major causes of cancer. What are these causes? Ames ticks them off on his fingers: “First, of course, is smoking. Then there is the lack of fruits and vegetables in the diet. And, finally, chronic infections.”

Needless to say, Ames’ views have not gone unchallenged. One critic is Bailus Walker Jr. He is a professor of environmental and occupational toxicology at Howard University Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. He says: “You’ve got to look at total exposure to everything that the body receives through the air, the food, the water. We can no longer look at these pieces in isolation. We’ve got to look at the total load.”

Others argue that human beings, through the process of evolution, have gotten used to metabolizing natural toxins but haven’t yet had time to develop similar defenses against man-made chemicals. Ames responds that there is no chemical difference between the actions of synthetic and natural substances in the cell. An oxidant is an oxidant, regardless of its source, and the general nature of the cell’s defenses can handle both. “To a toxicologist, the idea that nature is benign and only manmade things are bad is crazy,” he says. To back up this statement, he points out that “most humans are eating plants their ancestors did not–for example, cocoa, tea, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, avocados, mangoes, olives and kiwi fruit. ” There simply hasn’t been time for the human body to adapt to all of the new natural pesticides in these foods, he argues, so the fact that they are considered safe is evidence for the efficacy of the cell’s general defenses.

These sorts of arguments have won many scientists over. James Duke, of the National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was once one of Ames’ harshest critics but changed his view as new information came in. “I have come around to believe him,” Duke says, and then goes on to note that his own work on natural pesticides suggests that “Ames may be understating his case.” Looking at oregano, for example, Duke finds that there is 100,000 times as much natural pesticide present as there is synthetic pesticide residue.

The new vision of the dynamic, self-repairing cell is going to force not only scientists but policymakers as well to rethink their ideas. But what direction is there for the rest of us? How can we go about controlling the risks in our diet in the face of the sort of media hoopla we encounter all the time? I ask Bruce Ames how he would answer these questions.

“Don’t smoke at all,” he says. “If you drink, drink moderately. Eat a balanced diet, with lots of fruits and vegetables.” Then, with a smile, he adds: “Just do what your mother told you.”

For long and healthy lives, biochemist Ames suggests that we just follow the prescriptions of Dr. Mom.

James Trefil, the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University, eats his fruits and vegetables in Fairfax, Virginia.

Bruce Ames argues that fruits and vegetables are full of natural poisons--but they're still good for us.

The judges at my table were nervous, casting furtive glances at a small, pleasant-looking man across the room.

“Is Bruce eating his cheesecake?” one asked. Another glance. “Yes.”

Smiles appeared around the table, and we all started in on our desserts.

This follow-the-leader took place at a science workshop for federal judges–the men and women around the table represented some of the best legal minds in the country. The man whose actions were being so closely watched was my fellow lecturer, Bruce Ames, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taken the controversial position that the toxins naturally present in our food and elsewhere add up to thousands of times the quantities of man-made toxins we are exposed to, especially the pesticides used on the fruits and vegetables we eat. It is a waste of time to worry about the latter, he says; our bodies can handle most anything nature or we can throw at them. The cells in our body, he tells us, live in a continuous barrage of damaging molecules. Every cell takes a “hit,” as he calls it, about every ten seconds. In the time that it takes you to read this article, your body will have been assaulted tens of trillions of times.

Most of the damaging molecules are inescapable byproducts of the chemical processes in our bodies that enable us to live. Others are toxins, natural and manmade, that we take in. (“The world is full of poisons,” Ames says, “but it doesn’t make any difference.”) Still other damage is done by radiation, whether the ultraviolet component of sunlight or the x rays that produce the diagnostic images ordered by physicians.

Ames’ contention that it is a waste of time to worry about man-made pesticides, air pollution and all the rest is by no means universally accepted by scientists–and certainly not by consumers. But his research on cancer and aging is widely respected. His findings add strength to long-held theories about how well cells repair themselves and offer a better understanding of how we can best evaluate the risks we face.

The membranes that protect both the cell and the nucleus inside it will not allow strange molecules to pass. Only those molecules with the right shape (and that the cell needs) are premitted to enter.

Right now, the 60 trillion or so cells in your body are going quietly about their business, churning out the chemicals needed to keep you alive. In your pancreas, for example, cells are producing insulin and pumping it into your bloodstream. Your thyroid is producing chemicals that govern your metabolism. Your bone marrow and thymus gland are producing antibodies to ward off disease. In all of these cells, the key step in the chemical process is the building up and tearing down of specific molecules to extract energy and useful materials from them. Some of the end products, such as insulin, are exported from the cell to be used elsewhere. Some are used to run the chemical reactions inside the gell, others to replenish and repair the cell itself. In most cells, thousands of these chemical reactions are going on at any given moment, each affecting you in some way.

The facilitators of these life-sustaining reactions are proteins called enzymes. For every one of the thousands of chemical reactions that go on in each cell in your body, there is one specific enzyme–one molecule with just the right intricate shape to bring two other molecules together and let them form bonds. The processes of life depend crucially on the right enzymes being present. Where do they come from? The blueprints for making the enzymes that run the cell’s chemistry are contained in the molecules we call DNA. From these blueprints the cells make the enzymes, and the enzymes drive the chemical reactions that make us what we are.

Under normal circumstances, the process of translating the information on the DNA into enzymes goes smoothly. But, life being what it is, this complex machinery sometimes breaks down. If the enzymes are flawed, they can seriously hamper the cell’s function, perhaps even kill it. Cells die and are replaced all the time.

If, however, the damage is to the DNA itself, the situation is potentially more serious. Alteration of the DNA will not only affect the cell in which it occurs, but when that cell divides, the defective blueprint will be passed on to all the descendants of that cell. And if that defect changes the shape of an enzyme that drives a crucial chemical reaction, the consequences for the organism can be serious.

By far the easiest way for this damage to occur is for other molecules to interact with DNA and upset its complex structure. Where do these “killer” molecules come from? Bruce Ames’ research shows that the overwhelming majority are byproducts of the normal process by which cells turn food into energy. They have been around since life began. If cells couldn’t repair damage to their DNA, Adam and Eve would have died when they ate that first apple, and none of us would be here today. Somehow our cells learned to deal with chemical damage to DNA. It is the details of how these mechanisms work–and how much they work–that molecular biologists are starting to sort out.

The double-helix shape of the DNA molecule is now familiar to everyone. You can think of this shape as a twisted ladder in which the rungs (which chemists call “base pairs”) keep the two sides of the helix from drifting apart. Here and there along the helix are segments of DNA known as genes, where the information about building enzymes is stored. Each gene carries the information needed to assemble one enzyme and hence the ability to control one chemical reaction in the cell. In humans, there are about 80,000 genes. Every single living thing on Earth uses this same DNA molecule and the same code to carry out the business of living. But just as a single code, like the English alphabet, can be used to write an infinite variety of messages, so too can the genetic code be used to “write” everything from a blade of grass to a Nobel laureate.

By far the most common source of damage to DNA is a class of chemicals known as oxidants. When your cells burn the material in food to supply energy, byproducts are produced, including some familiar substances, such as hydrogen peroxide, and some less-familiar substances with names like “superoxide” and “hydroxyl radical.” These are active chemicals–they like to combine with other molecules in reactions chemists call oxidation. It is because oxidants do so much of the damage that scientists such as Ames urge people to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, the foods that contain antioxidants. Ames believes they help reduce the body’s risks to not only cancer but cardiovascular disease, immune system diseases, cataracts and brain dysfunction.

When active molecules attach themselves to the bases in the rungs of the DNA ladder, they change the effective shape of the structure. This means that they introduce the possibility that when the DNA duplicates itself, the base pairs in the copy will be different from the pairs in the original. This is what causes mutation. The DNA in all later generations will have the wrong code, and this could eventually lead to cancer. Cells must have some way of preventing this sort of mistake from being propagated.

The way cells do this illustrates the engineering concept of “defense in depth.” First, the places where oxidants are produced tend to be located in the body of the cell, while the DNA is segregated in the nucleus. So damaging molecules have to travel some distance to get at the DNA. Second, our food contains antioxidants (vitamins C and E and beta carotene are the most familiar). Third, damaged or dead cells are routinely sloughed off before they have a chance to multiply, so that damage is confined to a single cell’s DNA. Finally, even after the damage is done there are ways that the DNA can be repaired.

Complexes of enzymes move constantly along every strand of DNA, searching for trouble. When they find it, they fix it. There are two general types of DNA repair mechanisms, each suited to a specific kind of problem. The one that concerns us most here is called “excision repair” and serves as a jack-of-all-trades for repairing damaged DNA. It swings into action, for example, when benzo[a]pyrene damages DNA. This is one of the compounds in cigarette smoke that can cause lung cancer. When this very large molecule attaches itself to one side of a rung, it distorts the helix; so when it comes time for the helix to split apart and replicate itself, random bases are edited into the new strand, thus creating mutation. The excision repair enzyme snips out the faulty section of the helix so that the gap can be rebuilt with the correct order of bases.

Repair enzymes constantly patrol the six feet of DNA in each of our 60 trillion cells, looking for damage.

The other repair mechanism is “mismatch repair,” which occurs as the helix duplicates itself prior to cell division. It may be, for example, that the two sides of a rung on the DNA ladder get made from the wrong bases or that one side of the ladder slips down a little bit with respect to the other. When this happens, characteristic lumps of mismatched bases and unpaired bases appear on the helix; these lumps are recognized by the repair enzymes. In most cases the molecule that is creating the new strand of DNA, the polymerase enzyme, is actively correcting its own errors as it works–proofreading, so to speak. When bases are not properly paired, it pulls them apart and fills in the correct base molecules in the new strand.

But when the polymerase misses an error, the mismatch repair enzyme goes to work. Its first order of business is to unwind the DNA strands and determine which strand is the new one and therefore has the incorrect base. It then makes a cut in the new strand and removes all the bases back to the original error. The polymerase enzyme then returns and fills in the gap. To date, scientists have been unable to find any kind of DNA damage that cannot be repaired by these two mechanisms.

The general nature of DNA repair is the key to Ames’ arguments. If you eat something that contains a molecule you’ve never encountered before (a new pesticide, for example), your cells don’t have to start from scratch to organize a defense. They will simply react to it as they would to any other molecule that doesn’t belong and, as a last resort, repair any DNA that it damages. General defenses give us a great deal of flexibility.

Working at the limits of measurement

By capturing and weighing the debris from damaged DNA, scientists can measure the rate of repair.

Scientists like Bruce Ames monitor DNA repair by analyzing the debris that is discarded when damaged portions of DNA are snipped out. Eventually, many of these fragments are removed from the cell and leave the body by way of the urine. The amount of any given compound will be very small, and it is only in the past decade that scientists have acquired the ability to detect such small concentrations. But the general advance in analytical ability that has allowed us to detect environmental pollution at the level of parts per billion also allows us to measure these infinitesimal quantities of DNA repair byproducts and thereby estimate the volume of repairs going on in our bodies.

It is much easier to describe this kind of work than to actually do it. You need imagination and creativity (to know what to measure) and an almost fanatical attention to detail (to make the measurement). Ames enjoys the reputation he does because he has both qualities to an unusual degree. He is a “scientist’s scientist.”

When I asked why the cell was able to snip out damaged sections and make repairs, his reply surprised me. Instead of quoting up-to-the-minute biological theory, his answer went back more than a hundred years to Charles Darwin and evolution. Taking his current research on natural plant pesticides as an example, he pointed out: “Every plant has 40 or 50 pesticides it makes to kill off predators and fungi. They couldn’t survive if they weren’t filled with toxic chemicals. They don’t have teeth and claws, and they can’t run away. So throughout evolution they’ve been making newer and nastier pesticides. They’re better chemists than Dow and Monsanto.”

Human beings and other animals have evolved in a world in which not only do their own bodies produce damaging oxidants, but their main food supply is loaded with potentially deadly chemicals. The laws of natural selection dictate that in such a situation we would either develop ways of dealing with these toxins or lose the evolutionary battle to someone who did. Furthermore, the defenses would have to be general–otherwise we’d be at risk every time a plant evolved a slightly new version of an old pesticide.

By and large, we’ve been very successful at countering nature’s attempts to kill us off. We’ve not been completely successful, though, as the occasional newspaper stories about someone dying from eating mushrooms illustrate. So there are some reminders in our daily lives seek energy from plants, and the plants themselves, seeking to keep from being eaten.

Seen this way, the layered defenses of the human cell make sense, as do the busy enzymes patrolling the DNA: we needed them to survive as plants became better at self-defense. But if you’re going to invoke Darwin to explain one thing about the cell, you’re going to have to follow through and see what he has to say about other things as well. For example, it’s true that the human body is a marvelous machine, designed to survive and prosper in a hostile world. In an evolutionary sense, the purpose of this marvelous machine is to reproduce–to place its genes in the next generation. Once this has been done, there is no evolutionary advantage for keeping the organism alive and in good repair. As a middle-aged scientist, I have often brooded on the inequity of this state of affairs, but it remains a basic tenet of evolutionary theory.

The DNA repair mechanisms we’ve described play a crucial role in keeping us alive. If damage to DNA is allowed to go uncorrected until a cell divides, all succeeding generations of cells will carry the defective blueprint, and the final outcome may be disease or malignant growth. The cell doesn’t have forever to effect its repairs, then–it has to do so before the next division. This constraint forces the cell to set priorities in its repair operation, with crucial repairs being done first, others if the opportunity arises.

Repair work is strictly prioritized

Plants cannot run from those that would eat them, so they have evolved some lethal chemical defenses.

First come repairs to genes that are actually being used by the cell. In the pancreas, for instance, the gene that codes for the production of insulin will be first in line. Damage to inactive genes or to other parts of the DNA not in current use will be put off until crucial repairs can be made.

In his studies on rats, Ames finds an interesting pattern to repairs. At any given moment, there may be a million or more damage sites on the DNA in a rat cell. About 100,000 are repaired each day, but a little more than 100,000 new “hits,” or lesions, appear. Thus, over time, the uncorrected damage accumulates. There may be, for example, as many as two million DNA lesions in an old rat.

“Is this true in humans as well?” I asked.

“We don’t know about humans yet,” Ames said. “There are too many variables. You can’t put human subjects on a strictly controlled diet. You have to put in a tremendous amount of time to get things worked out in rats first, before you can even think about moving on to humans. ”

In Ames’ view, both the process of aging and the incidence of cancer can be attributed in large part to the accumulation of damage to DNA. “Most [researchers] think that both aging and cancer have something to do with damage to DNA,” he says. “Cancer is a disease whose rate increases with age.”

There is evidence to back up this view of aging and cancer. Measurements of repair rates show that small mammals have a much higher number of hits to their DNA than do humans. Rats and mice, for example, seem to be making 100,000 repairs to each of their cells per day (versus 10,000 for humans). These rodents live only a few years and are typically full of tumors when they die.

In addition, there is strong evidence that many (if not most) human cancers are related to processes that stimulate the division of cells. The most striking example of this phenomenon is the constant irritation of lung tissue from smoking, but there are many others, including the effect of alcohol on the liver and other chronic irritations and inflammations. The more often cells divide, the shorter the time there is for repairs to be made and the more likely it is that a mutation will occur.

DNA repair is more than a fascinating science story. Its ramifications spill over into the politics of our everyday lives, and Ames has never hesitated to make the leap from laboratory to public arena. Back in the 1960s, he developed the Ames test, an elegant, simple way of determining whether a chemical produced mutations in the DNA of bacteria. It has since become a universal screening technique for potential carcinogens. Ames never patented–or made a nickel from–his test. “In those days, people didn’t worry about things like that,” he says. “Besides, I wouldn’t have any way to spend the money. Going to scientific meetings provides all the travel I want.” (A new version of the Ames test is about to be patented, however, at the insistence of the University of California.

When the cancer-causing potential of chemicals was first recognized, attention turned to man-made compounds, such as pesticides. Tests on animals established that about half of the synthetic materials tested could, indeed, produce cancer in rodents. The human race suddenly found itself awash in a sea of apparently carcinogenic chemicals. In the 1970s Ames himself was arguing that humans should not be exposed to even one molecule of any substance that causes mutations in bacteria.

Little attention had been paid to natural pesticides. Ames and his colleagues began to look at the chemicals naturally present in foods from the plant kingdom, and they found that half of them caused cancer in rodentsa proportion similar to that of synthetic chemicals. By the late 1980s Ames had reversed himself, and the group began ranking suspected carcinogens by an index that relates cancer caused in rats to the risk for humans. In the process, he began to question the massive doses given rodents in animal cancer tests. It had become standard to submit animals to the maximum tolerated dose (the most a rodent can ingest without dying). Ames and others now believe that megadoses of anything accelerate cell division, and this in itself leads to cancer. For that reason, they feel, the results from rodent tests cannot be extrapolated to the low, everyday doses to which human beings are exposed.

When the repair forces can no longer keep up with the damage occurring, we experience what we call aging.

Today in his lab Ames tells me, “Almost every plant product in the supermarket is likely to contain natural carcinogens.” He estimates that an American eats about a gram and a half of these natural pesticides every daytimes 10,000 more than the residues of man-made agricultural pesticides ingested. In other words, about 99.99 percent of the pesticides we take in every day are natural, only 0.01 percent are man-made. “For example, when you eat cabbage, you ingest 49 different natural pesticides and metabolites,” Ames says with that same disarming smile, and goes on to produce a list of 43 foods that contain at least ten parts per million of chemicals that are carcinogenic in rodent tests. Ranging from anise to lettuce, the list even includes parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Even a cup of coffee doesn’t escape his attention. “There are over a thousand chemicals in a cup of coffee,” he says. “We’ve tested 26 of them, and half of those cause cancer in rats.”

“Life is full of “one in a hundred thousand’ risks,” Ames states. “If the EPA is spending all its time trying to protect the public against `one in a million’ hypothetical risks–which it is doing to a large extent–it’s spending its time on trivia. We’re spending $150 billion a year trying to control pollution. Although much of this is useful, I think it will have little influence on cancer rates” (SMITHSONIAN, November 1995).

At bottom Ames, the consummate scientist, wants Americans to recognize all the risks in their lives and adopt a rational approach to controlling them. Instead of worrying about a minor (and perhaps even nonexistent) risk, we should think about eliminating major causes of cancer. What are these causes? Ames ticks them off on his fingers: “First, of course, is smoking. Then there is the lack of fruits and vegetables in the diet. And, finally, chronic infections.”

Needless to say, Ames’ views have not gone unchallenged. One critic is Bailus Walker Jr. He is a professor of environmental and occupational toxicology at Howard University Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. He says: “You’ve got to look at total exposure to everything that the body receives through the air, the food, the water. We can no longer look at these pieces in isolation. We’ve got to look at the total load.”

Others argue that human beings, through the process of evolution, have gotten used to metabolizing natural toxins but haven’t yet had time to develop similar defenses against man-made chemicals. Ames responds that there is no chemical difference between the actions of synthetic and natural substances in the cell. An oxidant is an oxidant, regardless of its source, and the general nature of the cell’s defenses can handle both. “To a toxicologist, the idea that nature is benign and only manmade things are bad is crazy,” he says. To back up this statement, he points out that “most humans are eating plants their ancestors did not–for example, cocoa, tea, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, avocados, mangoes, olives and kiwi fruit. ” There simply hasn’t been time for the human body to adapt to all of the new natural pesticides in these foods, he argues, so the fact that they are considered safe is evidence for the efficacy of the cell’s general defenses.

These sorts of arguments have won many scientists over. James Duke, of the National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was once one of Ames’ harshest critics but changed his view as new information came in. “I have come around to believe him,” Duke says, and then goes on to note that his own work on natural pesticides suggests that “Ames may be understating his case.” Looking at oregano, for example, Duke finds that there is 100,000 times as much natural pesticide present as there is synthetic pesticide residue.

The new vision of the dynamic, self-repairing cell is going to force not only scientists but policymakers as well to rethink their ideas. But what direction is there for the rest of us? How can we go about controlling the risks in our diet in the face of the sort of media hoopla we encounter all the time? I ask Bruce Ames how he would answer these questions.

“Don’t smoke at all,” he says. “If you drink, drink moderately. Eat a balanced diet, with lots of fruits and vegetables.” Then, with a smile, he adds: “Just do what your mother told you.”

For long and healthy lives, biochemist Ames suggests that we just follow the prescriptions of Dr. Mom.

James Trefil, the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University, eats his fruits and vegetables in Fairfax, Virginia.

As George Bush prepares to leave office, he and his aides are trying desperately to rewrite history, especially on Iraq. Nearly six years after invading Iraq on the basis of lies that were manufactured inside the White House, the Bush Administration adamantly insists the lies were all innocent mistakes. Were they?

Originally, the invasion of Iraq was justified primarily on grounds that Iraq had substantial quantities of chemical and biological weapons and had “reconstituted” its nuclear weapons development program, and that it could give terrorists “weapons of mass destruction.”

But there was no actual evidence Iraq had such weapons, and the White House knew it.

In 1995, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel informed U.S. and British intelligence officers that all Iraqi biological, chemical, missile, and nuclear weapons had been destroyed under his direct supervision. After U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Scott Ritter wrote, “The chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-ranged missile programs that were a real threat in 1991, had by 1998 been destroyed or rendered harmless.” Ritter’s conclusion was confirmed by the DIA in September 2002: “A substantial amount of Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 … [T]here is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons.”

In September 2002, CIA Director George Tenet personally told President Bush that Iraq’s Foreign Minister Naji Sabri – whom the CIA had recruited and persuaded to remain in place – said Iraq had no WMD. That fall, the CIA sent Iraqi-Americans to visit Iraqi weapons scientists, and they reported all weapons programs had ended. In January 2003, Iraq’s intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush told British intelligence the same thing.

Thus the evidence against Iraq’s possession of WMD’s was overwhelming. What was the evidence for WMD’s?

The source for biological weapons was the German informant “Curveball,” whose interrogators informed the Bush Administration that Curveball was not “psychologically stable,” was a heavy drinker, had had a mental breakdown, was “crazy,” and was “probably a fabricator.”

One source for nuclear weapons was a letter about an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger that was given to the CIA in Rome in 2001, but the CIA quickly rejected it as a forgery. Ambassador Joe Wilson visited Niger in early 2002 and further discredited the claim of an Iraqi uranium purchase. The other source was the capture of aluminum tubes in Jordan in 2001, which Bush administration hardliners claimed were intended for uranium-enriching centrifuges. But experts in the Energy and State Departments insisted the tubes were for conventional battlefield rocket launchers.

Thus the weight of evidence was solidly against Iraq WMD’s; the evidence for WMD’s lacked credibility. So who is responsible for the lies – the intelligence agencies or the White House?

In June 2008, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence blamed the White House and said the statements about WMD’s made by Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were not substantiated by evidence. According to Chairman Jay Rockefeller, “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

Moreover, the White House directly pressured intelligence agencies to twist the evidence. Cheney made several visits to the CIA to pressure analysts. Numerous intelligence officials have testified about White House pressure, including Robin Raphel and David Dunford of the State Department, Richard Kerr and Paul Pillar of the CIA, and former national security official Kenneth Pollack.

The elaborate White House scheme to manufacture WMD lies was best summarized by Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of Britain’s MI6, upon his return from meeting with CIA director George Tenet in Washington in July 2002. According to minutes of Prime Minister Blair’s cabinet meeting on July 23, Dearlove reported “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe of historic proportions. George Bush and senior White House officials may never admit they deliberately lied about Iraq’s weapons, but history has already concluded otherwise.

–

Bob Fertik is president of Democrats.com. David Swanson is Washington Director of Democrats.com.

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

Banks leaned in: “But do you clean it after every shower? Do you really scrub it?”

“Well,” the woman confessed, “I have a 2-year-old. I don’t always have time.”

Such chagrin is no surprise to writer Katherine Ashenburg, who heard cleanliness confessions throughout a tour promoting her book The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History (North Point Press, 2007). “I don’t shower every day,” people sheepishly whispered to her. That experience only reinforced her belief that “we are obsessed with cleanliness” to “a point of absurdity. Today there seems to be no resting place, no point at which we can feel comfortable in our own skins for more than a few hours after our last shower. Clean keeps receding into the distance.”

Interest in home and body hygiene has waxed and waned through the ages, from early Egyptians who frolicked in pools for hours to Enlightenment Europeans who never bathed a day in their lives, believing that water spread diseases such as the Plague. But ever since deodorant and mouthwash entered the American marketplace in the 20th century, standards of cleanliness have steadily ratcheted up.

Now, nearly a decade into the 21st century, we are convulsed by full-on germophobia and personal hygiene mania. Office supply stores sell germ-resistant highlighters and scissors. Ten years ago, hand-sanitizing gels could be found only in hospitals. Now they’re flying off the shelves of every grocery and drug store. In 2005, more than $67.3 million in sanitizers were sold, a 54 percent increase over 2004.

Why the massive panic over invisible threats? On the surface, it seems an earnest effort to promote health. But a closer look suggests that we feel a deep distrust of our bodies and profound pessimism about human nature: The backyard is a hotbed of creepy crawlies, my body is brimming with toxins, and the germs in my kitchen are just waiting to rise up and infect me!

We scour and scrub in an attempt to alleviate our anxieties and exercise control over an environment we perceive as hostile—a futile act that gives a whole new meaning to germ warfare. Our battles against what is by far the largest population of living things on earth—the weight of all microbes is 25 times that of all multicelled animal life combined—also misunderstands the role of dirt and the place of germs on the planet. Without bugs we wouldn’t be drawing breath.

Because we seem never to feel clean enough, all our scrubbing and scouring only stokes the anxiety it is meant to allay. But it may be sabotaging our physical health as well. Just as overprotecting children can keep them from developing coping skills, sanitizing ourselves may be undermining the immune system, which requires germs to keep it viable. What’s more, overuse and misuse of cleaning products directly expose us to toxic chemicals. And, quite possibly, they even encourage what germophobes fear most—the rise of resistant “superbugs.”

It’s their world

“They’re lying in wait for you at the ATM machine and on your computer keyboard at work. Secretly, they attach themselves to your hands when you push a shopping cart at the store. The little pests will even attach themselves to your children’s hands when they romp on playground equipment.” So warns materials sent to the press by a maker of hand-sanitizing gels.

Titled “99 Places Where You Need to Watch Out for Germs,” it is 100 percent intimidating. Who could possibly keep an eye on all 99? More surreptitiously the material perpetuates a fundamental misconception about germs. The idea of watching for and banishing creatures that are literally everywhere is patently preposterous.

The adult human body contains an estimated 100 trillion cells, points out microbiologist Lynn Bry, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. But only 10 percent of those cells actually belong to us! The rest are—are you ready for this?—germs. Most are bacteria that live in the digestive tract and help you break down food and secure nutrients as they protect you from the minority of disease-causing bug groups.

“If you were germ-free this moment,” says Bry, “you’d be dead within two weeks.” Microbes living in the gut, for example, make vitamin K, essential to the proper clotting of blood. “We have an irrational fear of germs and dirt,” she contends. “And in the grand scheme of things, the very oxygen we breathe is a byproduct of blue-green algae”—scum—”that evolved millions of years ago.”

Our internal flora may even be able to cure some of our most perplexing diseases. A molecule naturally produced in the gut completely eliminates the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in animals, researchers reported in Nature. Human trials of the substance are in the works.

“I fully advocate appropriate hygiene and cleanliness,” says Bry. “Don’t suck on your fingers after you cut open a chicken. But you don’t need to scrub yourself until you’re sore.”

On her press tour, Ashenburg suggested to audiences that we really don’t need to wash above the wrists very often. She was scolded by her listeners. But if you’re looking for a way to prevent illness, nothing beats regular hand washing with hot water and plain old soap. So says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s—and perhaps the world’s—highest authority on infectious diseases.

Wiping away anxiety

Why, then, do we see all germs as evil? It could be that being the most sparkling person around confers moral superiority, offers psychologist Robert Leahy, director of The American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York and author of The Worry Cure (Three Rivers Press, 2006).

But what Leahy really sees in those preoccupied with cleaning is an excess of anxiety. Cleaning is the “go to” activity for the anxious. That explains its popularity with those on the extreme end of the anxiety scale, those suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder; it classically manifests as excessive, ritualistic hand-washing. People resort to it in a futile attempt to calm themselves simply because it’s there, Leahy says. Given the ubiquity of indoor plumbing, it’s an activity everyone has access to. And from an early age we’re taught that washing is a good thing. The physical act of cleaning is a compelling stand-in for getting rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings.

The problem is, it doesn’t work—or not for long. Anxious people think that intrusive thoughts about, say, the need to wash the kitchen counter for the third time must be obeyed or they will grow more insistent. “‘If I don’t get rid of the anxiety now, it’s going to get worse,’” Leahy says. But giving into that voice is what makes it stronger. Ignoring it weakens it—once the person comes to see that nothing terrible actually happens when an urge is resisted.

Normal life ipso facto involves risk and uncertainty, even occasional regrets, says Leahy. But the anxious seek to avoid all risk, uncertainty, and regret by doing all they can to keep bad things from happening. Risk misperception is at the root of their disorder. They distort real probabilities. The chances of dying from a severe case of salmonella are far lower than the chances of dying from obesity-related causes.

“But no one runs away screaming from a Big Mac,” says Leahy. We do, however, watch in horror reports of the latest bacterial breakout.

Real life is a balancing act of competing risks, adds Leahy. There is a risk of getting an infection if you don’t clean, but too much cleaning increases your risk of developing OCD. “I shake hands with everyone who comes into my office,” he reports. “Maybe I get an extra cold per year—but that trade-off is worthwhile because I want to be warm and friendly toward my patients. There is no escaping risk altogether.”

Why we worry

Significantly, our dreams of disinfection parallel the rise of anxiety in our culture. After analyzing anxiety levels measured among young people in 1952 and 1993, psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University concluded that levels of anxiety in today’s average teenager are equivalent to those in patients treated for a psychiatric disorder 50 years ago. Other studies have documented the rise of anxiety among college students and adults.

Twenge points to social isolation as one cause. Studies show we have fewer close friends and dwindling social networks—and spend less time with them than we did, say, 20 years ago. “People who feel interpersonally connected are less likely to be anxious,” says Leahy.

And just as our communities are becoming more transient and fragile, they are also becoming more diverse. Though we may not be consciously aware of it, says John Portmann, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, our hygiene obsessions may disguise a residual fear of mingling with people different from ourselves. He points to a study by University of Montana historian Jeff Wiltse, “Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America,” which argues that widespread fear of insufficiently chlorinated water in the ’60s in the South was really the expression of irrational beliefs about African-Americans finally being granted access to public pools.

If cleaning is an expression of our neuroses, it also assuages our psyches. Buffing and polishing can give rise to feelings of spiritual purity and even ease guilt. Enter: the “Macbeth effect.” Researchers find that subjects who are prompted to focus on unethical behaviors such as lying, stealing, or betraying friends are subsequently more likely to engage in activities suggesting they feel physically dirty. For example, they wash their hands more than controls do.

The late anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her classic book Purity and Danger (Taylor, 2002), argued that a preoccupation with dirt runs through all of the major religions. But it’s not principally about hygiene. Rather, cleanliness is a way of keeping chaos at bay.

“You can’t get rid of your daughter’s boyfriend that you don’t like,” says journalist Margaret Horsfield, author of a social and psychological history of housecleaning, Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). “You can’t sort out the fact that your mother is dying or that you’ve gained 10 pounds. But you can get that sink looking better.” The process of cleaning might be frustrating, she adds, but it does make us feel that we’ve achieved some small thing in an unmanageable world. “It gives an illusion of order.”

A spotless mirror

Obsession with cleanliness is also an ill of affluence. Overworked we may be, but we worry about microorganisms because we can afford to. So we remodel our bathrooms to accommodate an apothecary-size supply of potions for youth, beauty, and cleanliness.

“I live in an area where a lot of money has poured into the local economy,” says Horsfield, “and many women I know run big houses. I’m shocked at how high their cleaning standards are. I think they feel they have to live up to the prosperity they’ve acquired.” They are aided and abetted by a clique of domestic goddesses on TV, along with the proliferation of high-end home and garden magazines, glamorizing household toiling.

Cleanliness, however, doesn’t stop at the surface. It’s also taking a highly invasive course. A growing trend among upper-class women is getting a colonic enema or vacuuming at the spa, along with a manicure and pedicure. Vegan blogger Kathy Freston advocates dietary detoxification. “Doing the cleanse delivers one to a fresh start,” she insists. “It’s like a vacation, a reprieve, from our old and tired ways… a way to let your body rid itself of all the stored up junk it has had to process throughout the years. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s worth it.”

In fact, the body has intricate mechanisms for cleaning itself without vacuums or extreme diets. The mucosal cells lining the digestive tract, for example, replace themselves frequently. Embodiment is the very heart of our existence; it is entirely likely that envisioning the buildup of “junk” in our bodies is a way of expressing cumulative emotional damage. Get rid of that and perhaps you can purge personal heartaches, too.

Big and bigger

It’s one thing to experience anxiety, a need for control, a fascination with “fresh starts,” even self-focus. But media and marketers have exploited those concerns, and in doing so have exacerbated them. “We’ve developed a paranoia in the last five to 10 years,” says Andrea Gardner, author of The 30-Second Seduction: How Advertisers Lure Women Through Flattery, Flirtation, and Manipulation (Seal Press, 2008).

Gardner points to TV shows in which an expert shines a black light on a seemingly tidy hotel room and then exclaims, “This mattress looks completely clean and yet look at all the dust mites!” Their eyes opened to invisible threats, the audience gasps in horror at the tiny interlopers.

Marketers are also tapping into parental vigilance. If you aren’t disinfecting to protect your kids and they get sick, the message is you’re a bad mom, says Gardner. Advertisers also remind parents that by keeping the family well, they won’t have to miss work themselves.

“The definition of clean is expanding.” This from no less an authority than Packaged Facts, the marketing research firm. They conclude: “The relationship between cleanliness and health is clearer than ever in the minds of consumers in a time of germ warfare where life-threatening asthma, allergies, SARS, avian flu, and superbugs are a daily reality.”

Casualties of war

The pursuit of purity, like the quest for perfection, can have consequences. Escalating standards of cleanliness disproportionately burden women, who still bear the brunt of domestic chores despite working full-time. Women in relationships do two-thirds of the housework, a continuing source of personal stress and family friction.

But the most serious consequence of the cult of clean may be that it undermines the immune system, which, like the brain, grows and develops only when presented with challenges. Exposure to infectious agents is essential. It prompts the immune system to create specific antibodies and then store them so they can be readily summoned to defensive duty when a similar bug poses a threat.

Many scientists believe that our sanitized surroundings are fostering allergic disorders in children, which have doubled in the last decade. According to the so-called hygiene hypothesis, children who lack exposure to dirt, bacteria, and other microorganisms develop weak immune systems and are thus prone to asthma and allergies.

Studies show that children with many siblings, those who live on farms, those who enter day care in their first year, or who have a cat—circumstances that expose them to bacteria in soil or air—are much less likely to develop allergic diseases than children who face none of those circumstances. Bodies with no bacteria, viruses, and parasitic diseases to fight off turn on innocents like peanuts and pollen and do battle with them.

Christopher Lowry takes the hygiene hypothesis further and contends the lack of exposure to germs harms our minds as well as our bodies. An assistant professor of physiology at the University of Colorado, he points to growing evidence that disorders such as depression and anxiety, like asthma and allergies, are set off by inflammatory processes within the body. The high incidence of depression and anxiety in developed countries could be due to diminished contact with benign microorganisms to which we were exposed throughout our history—organisms that raise the bar for setting off inflammatory processes.

“The hygiene hypothesis is widely accepted among immunologists,” says Lowry. “It suggests that we have less exposure to certain organisms in the soil and water than we used to. In the case of the soil, the organisms are still there.” But unless they live on farms, kids don’t play much in the dirt anymore. As for water, he observes, municipal water sources have been purified and sterilized. Lowry “can imagine that if a child goes out to play in the field and gets wiped with sanitizing cloths as soon as he comes in, it could be limiting his exposure to those microorganisms in the soil.”

At the same time that it is weakening us and our children, the overuse of cleaning products is beefing up the germs around us, turning garden-variety microbes into superbugs. “If you routinely expose microbes to cleaning agents, over time the microbes could evolve to tolerate more of the stuff,” says Bry.

Germs, after all, are far more adaptive than we are. A carton of milk left out of the refrigerator overnight will host thousands—thousands!—of generations of germs. In just hours, they will have evolved characteristics to help them thrive in that carton.

As director of strategic initiatives at AmeriCares, Ella Gudwin grapples first-hand with the adaptability of germs and the tenacity of infectious diseases such as dysentery in disaster regions. “They evolve in response to treatments—and only become stronger,” she observes. “The whole world is covered in a small film of fecal matter,” she adds. “Just get used to it.”

December 12, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

To understand how my country of birth could now be leading the list of nations (like England, Canada, Australia, old Rhodesia, South Africa, and New Zealand) whose legacy of personal freedom and individual firearm ownership is becoming but a distant historical footnote, is to understand how light is forever swallowed into a gal axial “black hole.”The light of freedom has been extinguished by the rogue elements of a national conspiracy so deep and pervasive that it seems it has always been with us. In a way, it always has. The conspirators began their quest centuries ago in Europe as the enlightened ones or the “Illuminati.”

They were bankrolled by the Rothschild money dynasty and emerged as our present day “ruling families” including generations of Rockefellers, Kennedys, the Bush family, and lynchpin “wise men” like Kissinger, Scowcroft, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the change-gang crew on Premier Obama’s cabinet secretary short list. The much anticipated Hussein change is simply “changing” one CFR regular appointee for another.

We are now looking forward with great anticipation for the Democratic Party, everything to everyone and positioned everywhere dream team, that will usher us into the latest incarnation of failure and socialistic blathering. This will insure generations of slavery for those “lucky” enough to keep their jobs so that the working class can continue to provide perpetual unearned entitlements to the “disadvantaged” morons, all of which is coming from Washington. The idiots who voted in this nightmare will say or do anything to turn on their patriotic hard working neighbors to get a bonus in their checks, especially if you own a firearm or have some stored food. The police state generals and their Gestapo agents will be more than happy to see to it that your efforts to remain free and provide honestly for your families will be a thing of the distant past. Make no mistake; this is your new United Socialist Amerika.It is as if the Mafia (no insult intended) had nominated every cabinet level post available with its worst enforcers to “lead” us for the next four years. Considering that the mob had already captured the leadership on Capital Hill and at Treasury, the Pentagon, the FBI, within the IRS, the Federal Courts and of course our role model boys at the Federal Reserve Bank, what more could we hope for? Hillary at the State Department? Mr. Eric Hold-up as the “pro-second amendment” Attorney General? It just doesn’t get any worse. It is as though every child molester in the nation just got all available teaching and day care center jobs within three thousand miles of Washington. Are you feeling better yet?

I know you don’t want to hear this again, but many of us have been warning of this day for years. It has arrived just as we said it would and in just the configuration we described. All of our paranoia has been absolutely correct. All of the wild-eyed predictions have come true. So,……….now what?

Being prepared will save your life. Waiting and denying the truth will get you dead. Dead from someone’s desperate act or dead from not having what you needed when the lights went out. Either way you are dead.

The newly established North American Command of our armed forces had insured that the final days of old America were numbered. When the nation of our past finally slipped into oblivion, we barely noticed that as Jesse Jackson wept in Grant Park (either from the “vindication” he felt as a black man observing a newly elected Pope, or perhaps it was the sorrow he felt for having said those nasty things about the Anointed One into a live microphone). Now that the final plans for the implementation of Amerika’s new dynasty are being unveiled, the same ignorant dolts that created this mess through the “electoral” process, are defending their choice and ignoring the placement of howitzers aimed at the suburbs in our cities. Entire armories have been emptied in western states and the ordinance moved to underground storage sites in Arkansas and elsewhere. It is circulating (I am waiting for my copy of the “call-up”) that retired or inactive yet highly trained army personnel are being recalled and special forces units beefed up to several times their normal strength. They are now ready to keep Amerika safe from internal strife once the markets and banks complete their rape of the people. I have received numerous affirmations of these events, yet I cannot state emphatically or conclusively that I have the “evidence” in hand. I LIKE evidence, since it leaves little room for argument. Until then, I will refrain from suggesting it as fact, but I do not believe it will be long before that it is fully revealed.

Fortunately for us, as I have stated many times, I believe that significant numbers of police officers and troops will NOT obey clearly criminal and unconstitutional orders that require them to illegally enter your home, arrest you without cause, incarcerate you in inhumane conditions or summarily execute you. However, WHEN martial law comes, there will be many who ARE taken, and that is where you must be adequately prepared. That time is approaching and it is the new world order elite’s last chance to eradicate the final patriotic front in Americka.

Although criticism may come my way for again putting many on the spot, I am willing to accept that, if it will cause you to re-think your views. Please take the time, and make the investment to protect yourselves from the coming onslaught.

Have you assessed what a martial law situation would do to you and your family? Have you also considered what a “false flag” (pirates would run up a friendly or neutral flag to gain the trust of a vessel or shoreline community it was about to assault—thus flying a false flag) event perpetrated by home grown illegals or black ops details would do to your city, home, job and family? What would you do in the event of an actual nuclear attack by a rogue state? Can you escape the devastation? Where would you go? As I have asked many times, do you have the defensive firearms and supplies to withstand lawless gangs or body count captains checking identity papers door to door? I suspect many do not. After January 20, 2009, you may find the simple act of purchasing a firearm and ammunition VERY costly if it is possible at all.The “grim” factor has gone up several points since the election. It is the inevitable result of merciless propaganda from the democrats and equally merciless stupidity by the republicans and it has gift wrapped the nation like a pathetic package of molded fruitcake. As corrupted scandal after scandal in the banking industry, the automobile sector, bankrupted state governments and the national debt now totaling well in excess of a very conservative fifty trillion dollars, the damage assessment is unthinkable. Meanwhile, Amerika is still waiting to see the indisputable, valid, actual, public, U.S., state birth certificate of its King Obama I.

Holiday gifts and parties will pretty much end this year, as in the years to follow, just providing food and keeping the lights on will prove to be more than many will be able to achieve. I believe unemployment will reach 15% by next fall. The North American Union will be looked at as inevitable and even desirable. We will all be reduced to second or third world status and savings, 401’s, IRA’s, state, local and private retirement plans, and social security will all be thrown into one giant pot split up by the government as it sees fit. Health care will be rationed and medications will go to those who must work to try and pay for all of this socialized CHANGE!! If you think I am just reaching for the most absurd possibilities, then hang around the good old USA. for another year.

We are witnessing the emergence of a regime so vile and destructive in Washington as to defy description. The social, political and economic agenda of this new illegitimate administration and its Creep Show cast will sow the seeds of insurrection in this nation without a doubt. The final act of the murder of our personal and national sovereignty is being achieved on a scale never seen before and at a pace that is truly breathtaking. The robbery of our wealth is on the level of a war crime. It should be treated as such and dealt with by an armed citizenry with a mission to avenge the death of all of our family’s earned wealth, land, and prosperity.

This may very well be your absolute last opportunity to prepare and face this situation with the tools to see you through some very difficult days. Only you can judge your level of preparedness for what is coming. Police officers sense its approach. Troops abhor the thought of patrolling Amerikan streets.

Employers are preparing pink slips by the hundreds. Strained city and state budgets are gearing up for legions of dispossessed and emotionally unstable people wandering their neighborhoods. Doctrinally lost churches are closing their doors when they are needed the most. Older generational households are strained to the breaking point to take in displaced adult children and their families. Banks are foreclosing, food stores will run short with bare shelves, and it was mostly all avoidable.

America burned under the weight of its own trash. Out of the ashes has come the mutated Phoenix Amerika. It now sweeps the skies as a predator and not the great honorable eagle of protection and moral strength our Founders dreamed about. Our national flag now represents the scars and stripes of its beleaguered enslaved masses. God help us.

For many, Christmas this year will carry a new and almost forgotten meaning. We are painfully reminded that in the end, the only thing that really matters is the memory of that tiny child born unto Mary so that we who have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, may seek His forgiveness, and have a perpetual place in his unending, unscarred Kingdom. Thank you, Lord, for sending your Son Jesus, to save us from this wicked, fallen world. We are rich indeed this December after all. In spite of the situation we find ourselves in, help one another, do the right things in the right way for the right reasons, and remember……….you can still make a positive difference that alone is worthy and honorable. Blended together with millions of others who believe in and will strive to achieve the same goal of the rebirth of a Godly America, is a gift unmatched except for the gift of God’s love…..Amen.

© 2008 Greg Evensen – All Rights Reserved

Greg Evensen is an award winning former Kansas State Trooper and Kansas Marshal. He speaks across the nation for Patriot groups and is available to come to your area as well. Call 906-367-0505 or e-mail him at greg@theheartlandusa.com.

Website: TheHeartLandUSA

E-Mail: greg@theheartlandusa.com

As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

The Agriculture Department — and the agriculture committees in Congress — have traditionally been handed over to industrial farming interests by Democrats and Republicans alike. The farm lobby uses that perch to inflict unhealthy food on American children in school-lunch programs, exacerbating our national crisis with diabetes and obesity.

But let’s be clear. The problem isn’t farmers. It’s the farm lobby — hijacked by industrial operators — and a bipartisan tradition of kowtowing to it.

I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where my family grew cherries and timber and raised sheep and, at times, small numbers of cattle, hogs and geese. One of my regrets is that my kids don’t have the chance to grow up on a farm as well.

Yet the Agriculture Department doesn’t support rural towns like Yamhill; it bolsters industrial operations that have lobbying clout. The result is that family farms have to sell out to larger operators, undermining small towns.

One measure of the absurdity of the system: Every year you, the American taxpayer, send me a check for $588 in exchange for me not growing crops on timberland I own in Oregon (I forward the money to a charity). That’s right. The Agriculture Department pays a New York journalist not to grow crops in a forest in Oregon.

Modern confinement operations are less like farms than like meat assembly lines. They are dazzlingly efficient in some ways, but they use vast amounts of grain, as well as low-level antibiotics to reduce infections — and the result is a public health threat from antibiotic-resistant infections.

An industrial farm with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a town with 20,000 people. But while the town is required to have a sewage system, the industrial farm isn’t.

“They look profitable because we’re paying for their wastes,” notes Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “And then there’s the cost of antibiotic resistance to the economy as a whole.”

One study suggests that these large operations receive, in effect, a $24 subsidy for each hog raised. We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?

The need for change is increasingly obvious, for health, climate and even humanitarian reasons. California voters last month passed a landmark referendum (over the farm lobby’s furious protests) that will require factory farms to give minimum amounts of space to poultry and livestock. Society is becoming concerned not only with little boys who abuse cats but also with tycoons whose business model is abusing farm animals.

An online petition that can be found at www.fooddemocracynow.org calls for a reformist pick for agriculture secretary — and names six terrific candidates, such as Chuck Hassebrook, a reformer in Nebraska. On several occasions in the campaign, Mr. Obama made comments showing a deep understanding of food issues, but the names that people in the food industry say are under consideration for agriculture secretary represent the problem more than the solution.

Change we can believe in?

The most powerful signal Mr. Obama could send would be to name a reformer to a renamed position. A former secretary of agriculture, John Block, said publicly the other day that the agency should be renamed “the Department of Food, Agriculture and Forestry.” And another, Ann Veneman, told me that she believes it should be renamed, “Department of Food and Agriculture.” I’d prefer to see simply “Department of Food,” giving primacy to America’s 300 million eaters.

As Mr. Pollan told me: “Even if you don’t think agriculture is a high priority, given all the other problems we face, we’re not going to make progress on the issues Obama campaigned on — health care, climate change and energy independence — unless we reform agriculture.”

Your move, Mr. President-elect.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S.Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don’t have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.

Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t rated AAA.

‘Been Bamboozled’

Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on bailout, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had “been bamboozled.”

Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on collateral posted from April 4 to May 20. The central bank said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg didn’t receive a formal response that would let it file an appeal within the legal time limit.

On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request, expanding the range of when the collateral was posted. It filed suit Nov. 7.

In response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing “an unprecedented crisis” in which “loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects.”

Data Provider

The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.

While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as “IDC.” One of the e-mails’ subject lines refers to “Interactive Data — Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008.”

Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.

“Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure,” Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

‘Dangerous Step’

“In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information,” she wrote.

New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would meet congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.

The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The Bloomberg lawsuit, filed in New York, doesn’t seek money damages.

‘Right to Know’

“There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed,” she said.

The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.

Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country’s biggest bank by assets.

Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.

‘Complete Truth’

“Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore,” Mendez said in an interview. “They don’t want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t take all the pain right now.”

The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”

In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.

“I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it’s all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system,” Johnson said.

The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

As the storm roars out to sea today after deluging the region with 2 to 4 inches of rain, it is leaving a wide swath of damage. Hardest hit was northern Worcester County, where 119,000 people are without power and some roads are impassable in communities such as Fitchburg and Leominster.

“There’s tons and tons of debris out there, which is impacting the utilities’ ability to restore power,” said Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. “It’s as bad as we’ve seen at least over the last 10 years.”

No deaths or serious injuries have been reported, and officials are still determining how much havoc the storm caused. Governor Deval Patrick has declared a state of emergency, which allowed him to mobilized 500 members of the National Guard to help clear roads and provide support. Power outages in Massachusetts have hit 350,000, Patrick said, and it would be “ambitious” to think power would be restored by Monday.

“This is not going to be a couple of hours,” Patrick said in a news conference at the state’s emergency management center in Framingham. “It’s likely to be several days.”

A state of emergency has also been declared in New Hampshire, where more than 265,000 are in the dark, according to Public Service of New Hampshire and New Hampshire Electric Co-op. Central Maine Power Co. reported that 100,000 of its 590,000 customers were without electricity. Connecticut Light & Power reported that nearly 17,000 of its 1 million customers are without service.

In Worcester, there have been more than 200 reports of roads blocked by fallen trees, with the Burncoat and Greendale neighborhoods especially hard-hit.

“I have never seen anything like this in 30 years,” said Deputy Chief Peter Bergstrom of the Holden Fire Department, where the entire town is without power.

In Western Massachusetts, the towns of Otis, Becket, and Ashfield sustained the most damage. It could take several days to restore power because downed trees are preventing repairs, said Lacey Girard, spokeswoman for Western Massachusetts Electric Company, which has 21,000 customers without power.

In addition to New Hampshire, massive electricity outages have been reported in Vermont and Maine. In Massachusetts, the problems are not limited to ice. Wind gusts near 50 miles per hour are buffeting Cape Cod and the South Coast, where temperatures are in the 60s. Flooding is a major concern inside Interstate 495 with small streams swollen from the rain.

“This is ending. It’s on its way out,” said Eleanor Vallier-Talbot, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Taunton. “The heaviest stuff is pretty well over.”

The rain is expected to taper off and give way to cold. High temperatures are expected to creep above freezing in the portions of the state blanketed by ice, which could help thaw some cities and towns. Temperatures are expected to plummet this evening, with lows hitting the teens in the central and western part of the state. Temperatures in Boston are expected to slip into the 20s. 

Material from the Associated Press is included in this report.

The share of mortgages 30 days or more overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.99 percent while loans already in foreclosure rose to 2.97 percent, both all-time highs in a survey that goes back 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. The gain in delinquencies was driven by an increase of loans with payments 90 days or more overdue.

“Until we see a turnaround in the job situation, we’re not going to see these numbers improve,” said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist of the Washington-based bankers group, in an interview. “We’re seeing more loans build up in the 90-days bucket as lenders work to modify loans and states put in place programs that delay foreclosures.”

The U.S. economy has shed 1.91 million jobs this year, while falling home prices have made it difficult for people who can’t pay their mortgages to sell their property. Payrolls declined in each month of 2008 through November, the Labor Department said today in Washington.

New foreclosures fell to 1.07 percent from 1.08 percent in the second quarter as some states enacted laws to temporarily stop home repossessions and lenders increased efforts to modify the terms of loans, Brinkmann said.

Home Sales Sink

“Some servicers keep a loan in a delinquent state until they see customers carrying through on their agreements, and then they’ll switch it to performing,” Brinkmann said.

U.S. home sales and prices began to tumble in 2006 after a five-year boom, dragging the economy into a recession that began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The median home price in the fourth quarter probably will be $190,300, down 19 percent from the record $226,800 in 2006’s second quarter, according to a Nov. 24 forecast by Fannie Mae, the world’s largest mortgage buyer.

Purchases of existing homes in October slid to an annual rate of 4.98 million, lower than forecast, the National Association of Realtors said in a Nov. 24 report. The median price fell 11.3 percent from a year earlier, the most since the group began collecting data in 1968.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday urged using more taxpayer funds for new efforts to prevent home foreclosures, saying the private sector is incapable of coping with the crisis on its own.

Bernanke’s Plans

The Fed chief outlined four possible options, including buying delinquent mortgages and providing bigger incentives for refinancing loans. He called for addressing the “apparent market failure” where lenders aren’t modifying mortgages even in cases where it’s in their own economic interest to do so.

Bernanke’s proposed changes would go beyond those announced last month by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steve Preston, who oversees the FHA. The agency will change the amount of the loan a lender must forgive and allow banks to extend the payback time of a mortgage.

There were 111.7 million occupied housing units in the U.S. in the third quarter, 68 percent used by owners and the remainder leased by renters, according to the Census Bureau. One in three U.S. homes has no mortgage, the bureau said.

The bankers’ report cites percentages without providing the number of mortgages. The U.S. had $11.3 trillion of outstanding home loans at the end of June, according to Federal Reserve data. Mortgage lending fell to $80.8 billion in the second quarter, down from $764 billion a year earlier, the Fed said.

The Mortgage Bankers report is based on a survey of 45.5 million loans by mortgage companies, commercial banks, thrifts, credit unions and other financial institutions.