THE NCHRI BULLETIN BOARD SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER, 1998.
The NCRHI Bulletin Board is sent to members and complimentary media recipients only. It is intended to stimulate and aid in activism against health fraud, misinformation and quackery at the state & national levels.
NEW GENERAL COUNSEL
Morse Mehrban has agreed to replace Michael Botts as NCRHI's General Counsel. Mr. Mehrban is a public interest attorney who has made himself known to NCRHI Newsletter and Bulletin Board readers through articles that he has written and actions that he has taken utilizing California's private attorney general act. Mr. Mehrban works as a volunteer just as do NCRHI officers and board. Members may contact Mr. Mehrban for general counsel and advice of matters related to consumer protection without charge. However, if legal services are required, members must be prepared to enter into some kind of contract with him. The details are entirely up to the parties involved to arrange. Mr. Mehrban may be reached at: the Law Offices of Morse' Mehrban, 3700 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 480, Los Angeles, CA 90010; tel: 213-382-3183, fax: 3430; e-mail: mehrban@earthlinknet; home: earthlink.net/~mehrban. NCRHI officers and board members thank Mr. Botts for more than 10 years of voluntary service. Mr. Botts offered his services to NCAHF because of his commitment to consumer protection. Botts had served as a deputy attorney general for the State of Iowa and seen the pernicious nature of quackery and its harm to citizens. He now has gone on to another area of law which requires a great deal of study and preparation. NCRHI wishes him well in his new endeavors.
KID'S TT EXPERIMENT STILL HAVING RIPPLE-EFFECT
Eleven year-old Emily Rosa's school science experiment continues to spark commentary. According to Larry Sarner, Emily's project has stimulated 100 distinct print pieces, including the front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and syndicated stories by the Associated Press, UPI, and Reuters. People magazine's article "Touchy, Touchy" revealed the sensitive nerve Emily's little experiment had pressed. The reason that Emily's test become a media event is because it involved a child challenging the delusions of adults. Some skeptics have attacked the design as flawed, or and Emily as biased by her parents anti-TT involvement. Larry Sarner takes on the top ten objections to their paper, with a series of retorts in "The `Emily event'," (Skeptic, 1998, vol.6, #2, pp.32-7). NCRHI leaders believe that focusing upon flaws in a kid's school science project is misdirected. Its publicity provides the opportunity to challenge TT nurses to perform under controlled conditions as simple in concept as the test conceived and demonstrated by an 11-year-old.
