During the turn of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth, spas for the wealthy that purported to "cure" people of contemporary ills were all the rage. Sometimes they offered genuine service but often they were full of quackery, poised simply to siphon off money from trusting clients. Kenneth V. Iserson, in Demon Doctors, and Gregg Olson, in Starvation Heights, offer an account of a female doctor who used her "medicine" for sinister ends.
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard set up her operation in 1907 in Seattle, Washington, and offered several versions of a published manual of her special method. One of the few female doctors in the country (trained as an osteopath), she presented herself as the only licensed fasting therapist in the country, and her final domain was a sanitarium, Wilderness heights, in the small town of Olalla, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. It was an isolated place, with no way to communicate with the outside world. Exuding self-confidence, Dr. Hazzard assured people that her method was a panacea for all manner of ills, because she was able to rid the body of toxins that caused imbalances in the body. As strange as it may seem, she managed to persuade people to go without food, aside from some water and a thin tomato and asparagus soup, for long periods of time. As their bodies shed "toxins," she required enemas (a fashionable purgative in many such places) and provided vigorous massages meant to accelerate the process.
As patients weakened, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire found ways to encourage them to turn over to her their accounts and power of attorney. Not surprisingly, several died under her "care" and she grew richer. Her bigamous husband, Sam, helped get the patients, once they were very weak, to change their wills to make Dr. Hazzard their beneficiary. Yet when attacked for her methods as patients died, she insisted that they had been near death when they came, and she could not be expected to work miracles. Even with these dire stories, she still drew both disciples and patients from around the world. Local residents dubbed the place Starvation Heights, and it caught the attention of authorities when two wealthy British sisters came to "take the cure."
Friday, December 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
sweating 4.swe.00200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
On April 29, 1990, at nearly 2:00 in the morning, a patrol officer discovered the nude body of Carol Dowd, 46, in an alley behind Newman's Sea Food at 4511 Frankford Avenue. Her head and face were battered and she had been viciously stabbed 36 times in the face, neck, chest, and back. In addition, her stomach was cut open, allowing her intestines to spill out through a long wound, and Newton reports that her left nipple was removed. She also had defensive wounds on her hands, as if she had warded off her attacker. The officer who found her had been checking the area due to a prior burglary, and it was estimated that Dowd had been murdered some time after midnight and before 1:40 A.M.
Police sketch of suspect
Police sketch of suspect
She had resided not far from the scene, and a witness told the police she had seen Dowd walking with an older white man only a few hours before. Her clothing was found near her body, and her open purse was in the alley, with its contents spilled partly onto the ground. Because nothing had been taken, robbery was ruled out as a motive (although it would later be reconsidered).
Her brother told reporters that Dowd's life had been uneventful until the late 1960s, when their brother died and she began hearing voices. She was then diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and institutionalized. After being released into a community-based program, she moved into an apartment, where she was raped. Lately, however, she had been living in a community facility where she appeared to be happy.
The police immediately suspected the same killer from the seven previous cases in that area. They hypothesized that he had followed each of his victims after they left area bars at night, or grabbed them before they got to some destination. Asking around, they interviewed the employees of the fish market, and Leonard Christopher, who worked there and also lived nearby, told reporters that the store had been burglarized several times recently. When he had seen the police in the alley that morning, he said, "I just thought they broke in again." Either that, he mused, or they were busting someone for drugs or prostitution; both activities were a frequent occurrence in the alley. When he learned that the police were in fact investigating a murder, he talked with them and admitted that he also had known one of the earlier victims, Margaret Vaughan.
His apparent acquaintance with the area and the victims soon placed him under suspicion. When asked where he was during the evening before, he claimed he was with his girlfriend, but she told detectives that she had spent the night alone at home. That inconsistency triggered more intense questioning, and investigators located a witness who had seen Christopher with Dowd in a bar on the same night that she had been killed. A prostitute who had initially lied finally admitted that she, too, had seen them together outside the bar, while another placed him coming out of the alley by the fish store. She said that he had been sweating and had a large knife in his belt.
A search of his apartment turned up clothing with blood on it. Christopher called a friend at the store to tell them that the police suspected him. That person, who remained anonymous, told the newspaper that their boss had told Christopher to clean up blood in the alley, so of course he had blood on his clothing. Others who worked with him vouched for his good character and humanitarian nature, feeling that it was wrong to pin the murders on him. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Christopher's landlord confirmed these positive impressions, saying only that he sometimes made too much noise.
Although he was a black man and not the middle-aged white man seen with other victims, on May 5, Christopher was arrested and arraigned on charges of robbery, abuse of a corpse, murder, and possession of an instrument of a crime. He was ordered held without bail. Yet even as he sat in jail, another woman in the Frankford Avenue area was about to receive the same treatment as the other victims.
Police sketch of suspect
Police sketch of suspect
She had resided not far from the scene, and a witness told the police she had seen Dowd walking with an older white man only a few hours before. Her clothing was found near her body, and her open purse was in the alley, with its contents spilled partly onto the ground. Because nothing had been taken, robbery was ruled out as a motive (although it would later be reconsidered).
Her brother told reporters that Dowd's life had been uneventful until the late 1960s, when their brother died and she began hearing voices. She was then diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and institutionalized. After being released into a community-based program, she moved into an apartment, where she was raped. Lately, however, she had been living in a community facility where she appeared to be happy.
The police immediately suspected the same killer from the seven previous cases in that area. They hypothesized that he had followed each of his victims after they left area bars at night, or grabbed them before they got to some destination. Asking around, they interviewed the employees of the fish market, and Leonard Christopher, who worked there and also lived nearby, told reporters that the store had been burglarized several times recently. When he had seen the police in the alley that morning, he said, "I just thought they broke in again." Either that, he mused, or they were busting someone for drugs or prostitution; both activities were a frequent occurrence in the alley. When he learned that the police were in fact investigating a murder, he talked with them and admitted that he also had known one of the earlier victims, Margaret Vaughan.
His apparent acquaintance with the area and the victims soon placed him under suspicion. When asked where he was during the evening before, he claimed he was with his girlfriend, but she told detectives that she had spent the night alone at home. That inconsistency triggered more intense questioning, and investigators located a witness who had seen Christopher with Dowd in a bar on the same night that she had been killed. A prostitute who had initially lied finally admitted that she, too, had seen them together outside the bar, while another placed him coming out of the alley by the fish store. She said that he had been sweating and had a large knife in his belt.
A search of his apartment turned up clothing with blood on it. Christopher called a friend at the store to tell them that the police suspected him. That person, who remained anonymous, told the newspaper that their boss had told Christopher to clean up blood in the alley, so of course he had blood on his clothing. Others who worked with him vouched for his good character and humanitarian nature, feeling that it was wrong to pin the murders on him. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Christopher's landlord confirmed these positive impressions, saying only that he sometimes made too much noise.
Although he was a black man and not the middle-aged white man seen with other victims, on May 5, Christopher was arrested and arraigned on charges of robbery, abuse of a corpse, murder, and possession of an instrument of a crime. He was ordered held without bail. Yet even as he sat in jail, another woman in the Frankford Avenue area was about to receive the same treatment as the other victims.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Mr. Hubertus van Mook 4.hvm.0002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
274. Japanese Negotiators Recommend Acceptance of Dutch Proposals. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
At the same time that the Netherlands' reply to the Japanese proposals was sent to Tokyo, the Japanese Consul in Batavia, on June 7, 1941, suggested the acceptance of the Dutch proposals since they were the best that Japan could hope to get, though the Dutch had not agreed to Japanese demands concerning oil, rubber, and bauxite. [1056]
At a conference between Mr. Hubertus van Mook, Director of Economic Affairs in the Netherlands East Indies, and Tokyo's representatives on June 10, 1941, the Japanese Minister discovered that the intentions of the Dutch officials were considerably more liberal and elastic than the document of the Netherlands' reply had indicated. [1057] However, on June 12, 1941, Tokyo informed its diplomats throughout the world that the Dutch had definitely rejected Japan's proposals, and had refused to export all the raw materials desired by the Japanese. Furthermore, they threatened to cut off all exports, if Japan reshipped them to Germany. [1058] Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[1053] II, Ibid.
[1054] II, Ibid.
[1055] II, 1051.
[1056] II, 1052, 1053.
[1057] II, 1054.
[1055] II, 1055.
191
275. Japanese Security Precautions for Diplomatic Codes.
Japan began early in June 1941 to safeguard its state secrets in regard to the Netherlands Indies by adopting new security precautions. When the Japanese Consul in Soerabaya returned a safe to Japan, it was examined by Dutch officials; and as a result, the Japanese Consul in Batavia asserted on June 7, 1941 that there was little prospect of sending secret documents to Japan without inspection by the Netherlands' government. [1059]
To ensure safe communications with the home office, the Japanese Minister in Batavia suggested that reports be exchanged verbally as much as possible, rather than by telegrams. To avoid difficulties with Dutch officials, he was particularly insistent that official couriers coming into the Netherlands Indies be members of the Foreign Office. [1060] To expedite the special handling of messages for military attachés, on June 28, 1941, Tokyo ordered that a caption word including A or M as its second and fifth letters be used as a designator. [1061]
On July 10, 1941, Foreign Minister Matsuoka notified Batavia that a courier, Mr. Zoku Nomoto, who was carrying with him secret documents and cipher machines for both Batavia and Singapore, would have to be passed through the customs. Mr. Ishizawa had already informed Tokyo that baggage could be passed through without examination, provided official seals were attached. [1062]
On August 4, 1941, Tokyo sent out a circular covering the destruction of obsolete codes and the care of the current ones. [1063] During this month, the existing code was also to be replaced by a new and more secret system. [1064]
276. Japan Discriminates Against Dutch Firms.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, agreements with Dutch business interests were reached as of June 5, 1941, and negotiations were begun with the leaders of the Japan‑South Seas General Merchandise Export Guild. In order to insure the Guild's participation and concurrence in Japanese trade negotiations, it was stipulated that its branches in Japan should not be assessed by the Finance Ministry, as were the Dutch firms. The Japanese anticipated that this would dissatisfy Dutch business establishments in Japan, though other Japanese export guilds would probably join the agreement because of the new conditions. [1065]
On previous occasions Japanese guilds had refused to admit Dutch firms, but in late June 1941, as a result of Tokyo's intercession, the Dutch received better treatment from the guilds. [1066]
277. Japanese Business Methods in the East Indies.
Tokyo was informed on June 9, 1941 that branches of the Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Nomura, Iwai, and Kasho companies in Batavia had made competitive offers for June loadings of rubber, and immediate counteraction was suggested. [1067]
[1059] II, 1056.
[1060] II, 1057.
[1061] II, 1058.
[1062] II, 1059.
[1063] II, 1060.
[1064] II, 1061.
[1065] II, 1062.
[1066] II, 1063.
[1067] II, 1064.
192
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
Three members of a large Japanese banking and investment corporation had gone to the Netherlands East Indies to establish a joint stock company dealing with rubber plantations in Borneo and Soerabaya. Directing the Japanese Minister to obtain another month's stay in the East Indies for these gentlemen, Tokyo, on June 12, 1941, expressed the hope that they would accomplish their objective. By such close supervision of Japanese business interests was Japan striving to control the East Indies' rubber market. [1068]
278. Japan Foresees the Discontinuance of Negotiations.
Tokyo stated on June 14, 1941 that it was becoming impossible for the two countries to successfully carry on further negotiations, since the reply of the Dutch East Indies' authorities reserved the right to alter at will the export volume of those materials which the Japanese regarded as indispensable. Japan asserted that no international agreement could be made on the basis of such an attitude.
Although the Dutch claimed that the object of its foreign policy was based on furthering the progress and prosperity of its own peoples, Japan felt that the Netherlands East Indies could accomplish much more by firmly establishing commercial cooperation with Japan, and in this way contributing to the peace of the Far East. Claiming to be the economical benefactor of the Dutch East Indies, Japan insisted that merely out of consideration for the unity of purpose existing between the two countries, it had contributed generously to the development of these islands. [1069]
279. Japan Plans to Publicize the Discontinuance of Its Negotiations.
Batavian authorities revealed to the Japanese Minister on June 14, 1941 that Tokyo was planning to publish the results of the negotiations between the two countries without first informing the various Dutch authorities that a diplomatic rupture was inevitable. The Japanese Minister at Batavia warned his Foreign Office that the result of such unilateral action would be detrimental to future agreements. [1070] Tokyo replied on June 14, 1941 that since the negotiations had failed, publicity in regard to the matter was solely a responsibility of Tokyo and was no concern of the Dutch.
The Japanese also pointed out that during the meetings of November 1940, when a compromise had been reached regarding the purchase of petroleum, joint communiqués issued by Dutch petroleum interests had advised the public of the quantities involved. Furthermore, Tokyo stated that the Netherlands Indies, according to authoritative intelligence, had kept the United States and Great Britain constantly informed regarding every detail during the discussions.
In addition the Japanese were indignant because the Netherlands East Indies had sent to its ministry in Tokyo both the Japanese proposal of May 14, 1941, and the Netherlands' reply of June 6, 1941 in plain text. [1071] This was very irritating to the Japanese because their code clerks in Batavia had spent ten hours in enciphering the message which the Dutch had already transmitted in plain text. [1072] In view of the dangers to their cryptographic systems from this procedure, Tokyo thereafter permitted its representatives to send foreign text messages in a simpler code system or even in plain text. [1073]
[1068] II, 1065.
[1069] II, 1035.
[1070] II, 1066.
[1071] II, 1067.
[1072] II, 1068.
[1073] II, 1069.
193
280. Japanese Minister in Batavia Protests Against Tokyo's Procedure.
Japanese Minister Daihyo in Batavia warned Tokyo on June 16, 1941 that if the Japanese were to publish the results of the conferences with the Dutch government, extreme care must be taken in wording the report lest a bad impression be created, particularly since they were breaking off negotiations with the Dutch. The Foreign Office in Tokyo should not give the impression that Japanese public opinion, contrary to the policies of the Japanese government, was in any way controlling its actions, since this would impair the dignity of Japan.
Because there were at least 7,000 Japanese living in the Netherlands East Indies, Minister Daihyo desired to continue normal relations, at least with the Dutch government. At the same time, however, he pointed out that to declare openly that Consul General Ishizawa was to continue the negotiations after the negotiations had failed would be a black mark against Japanese prestige. Therefore, until more natural circumstances permitted, Minister Daihyo suggested that no revelation of the Japanese desire for further talks with the Dutch be made. While the needs of Japan demanded that the petroleum question be settled immediately, it could not be considered separately, since it was but one part of the trade negotiations. [1074]
281. Tokyo Accedes to Minister Daihyo's Request.
Tokyo replied promptly to Minister Daihyo's protest on June 16, 1941, and requested him to assure the Dutch East Indies that any further negotiations would not be an attempt to save the Japanese Cabinet from embarrassment. By discontinuing the talks and recalling its representatives, Tokyo was endeavoring to prevent the rise of circumstances which might infuriate the Japanese people and turn them against the Dutch East Indies. In addition, the Japanese government wished to avoid giving the world the impression that normal relations with the Dutch East Indies had been disrupted, and that the two countries were not at swords' points. Therefore, Japanese Consul General Ishizawa was to indicate in any public announcements that discussions would be continued from time to time with the Dutch. [1075]
282. The Netherlands East Indies and Japan Issue a Joint Communiqué (June 17, 1941).
On June 17, 1941, after a conference between Mr. Yoshizawa, Mr. Ishizawa, Mr. van Mook and Mr. Hoogstraten which did not change the answer of the Netherlands in any way, a joint communiqué was issued as follows:
Both the Netherland and the Japanese delegations greatly regret that the economic negotiations, which has been conducted between them, has unfortunately come to no satisfactory result. It is needless, however, to add that the discontinuation of the present negotiation will lead to no change in the normal relations between the Netherlands Indies and Japan. [1076]
Although no agreement had been drawn up between the two governments as a result of their extended conferences, Foreign Minister Matsuoka expressed the opinion on June 18, 1941 that the Japanese would be able to obtain through ordinary business deals the types of goods that the Dutch considered unimportant. However, as a political gesture to warn the Dutch that Japan needed vital raw materials, the Japanese representative, Mr. Yoshizawa, urged the Governor General of the Indies to reconsider his stand. Nothing came of this, and the Japanese negotiators were ordered to withdraw. [1077]
[1074] II, 1070.
[1075] II, 1071.
[1076]Hubertus J. van Mook—op. cit., p. 122.
[1077] II, 1072.
194
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
283. Japan's Urgent Need for Petroleum and Tin.
In view of the Japanese need for petroleum, on June 18, 1941 the Chief of the Japanese Fuel Bureau requested his petroleum representative, Mr. Ito, to remain in Batavia even after other delegates had returned home. Since the international situation was extremely delicate, he directed Mr. Ito to obtain fulfillment of oil contracts which had already been made by the Dutch.
Mr. Matsuoka promised that Japan would not make any direct demands for future oil purchases or for the development of oil fields in the East Indies. [1078] But on June 21, 1941, the Japanese Consul General was instructed by Tokyo to protest immediately to the Dutch authorities against the concentration of Dutch oil products and transportation in British hands. [1079]
To take advantage of any possible diplomatic change after the breakdown of negotiations in June 1941, the Japanese desired to keep their commercial representatives in Batavia so as to be able to renew negotiations for oil rights with the Dutch. Problems other than oil rights, according to the Chief of the Japanese Fuel Bureau, were to be given secondary considerations for the time being. [1080]
A difference of opinion arose on June 19, 1941 between two Japanese representatives in Batavia. Mr. Hatanaka felt that because the negotiations had been discontinued, the acquisition of raw materials could be handled by the local branch of Mitsui, and Mr. Ito could return to Tokyo, leaving Mr. Hatanaka to carry on alone. On the other hand, Mr. Ito believed that the Dutch were just about to accept the Japanese separate proposal and wished, therefore, to remain until the affair could be finished. [1081] But on June 22, 1941, Mr. Ito reported that he was returning to Tokyo since he could do nothing more concerning the petroleum question. [1082]
By virtue of the rupture of the negotiations, Mr. van Mook, the Director of Economic Affairs in the East Indies, had explained that the negotiators had no authority to enter discussions pertaining to other matters of trade. Thus, questions regarding the shipment of fuel would come as usual under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Mines and would be discussed by competent industrialists. However, Mr. van Mook pointed out that at present the Bureau had been divested of the authority to deal with such matters because of the political aspects involved. Regardless of whatever point of view the Japanese might take concerning future acquisition of rights and interests, Mr. van Mook insisted that present agreements were impossible. [1083]
The withdrawal of Saito, a Japanese fuel negotiator, a few weeks later attested to the belief of Japanese authorities that the decision was irrevocable. [1084] Nevertheless, some time later on July 30, 1941, the Chief of the Netherlands East Indies Trade Bureau assured the Japanese Minister that his government had no intention of abrogating the existing oil agreement; nor did he believe that the Dutch oil company would refuse to sell the product. Regarding this latter point, the Japanese official stated that the company was delaying the loading of oil for which payment had already been made. Assuring the Japanese Minister that the company was undoubtedly discussing the provisions which called for payment in dollars, the Dutch official stated that Mr. van Mook and representatives of the oil company were to confer on the following day. Although company officials would be heard before any decision were made, it was hoped that an agreement, satisfactory to all parties, would be concluded. [1085]
[1078] II, 1073.
[1079] II, 1074.
[1080] II, 1075.
[1081] II, 1076, 1077.
[1082] II, 1078.
[1083] II, 1079.
[1084] II, 1080.
[1085] II, 1081.
195
As a result of Mr. Ito's report, [1086] loan the Chief of the Fuel Section, expressing his appreciation for their difficult experiences, directed both Mr. Ito and Mr. Hatanaka to return home. [1087] A report from Minister Daihyo, which stressed the futility of keeping Japanese oil negotiators in Batavia in the face of the Dutch refusal to deal with them, probably had much to do with their return. [1088]
The Japanese were concerned about other vital materials as well as oil. Though the Mitsubishi Company had previously obtained a year's contract to export 3,000 tons of tin from the Netherlands East Indies, the Dutch had reduced that amount to a mere 2,300 tons. However, even after the negotiations had been broken off, the Japanese were hopeful that the Dutch might change their uncompromising attitude concerning tin and manganese. [1089]
284. The Netherlands Indies Reduces Shipping to Japan.
Mr. Ishizawa reported on June 21, 1941 that the Dutch were cutting down on all shipping to Japan in an attempt to apply a wartime embargo act. Instructions had been issued by the Finance Minister to limit material sent to Japan to 20,000 tons per month. According to the Japanese, this reduction of shipping was connected with Netherlands national defense and had been ordered by Dutch shipping authorities in New York, and therefore, it was hard to discover the reasons for it. [1090] In order to conceal Japanese purchases in the East Indies, on June 21, 1941 Mr. Ishizawa suggested that all telegrams regarding such matters be sent secretly to him in Batavia. [1091]
285. Japan Suspects American Support of Netherlands Indies.
Because Holland was one of the nations joined against the Axis, and because its own fundamental policies were closely akin to those of England and the United States, the Netherlands East Indies was greatly affected by the position of the United States in regard to the Japanese "New Order" in Asia. As early as June 22, 1941, according to the Japanese Ambassador in Rome, an intelligence report, sent to the Vatican by the Apostolic Delegate to Batavia, had indicated that the United States, at first, had brought pressure to bear upon the Netherlands East Indies in a scheme to obtain an excellent bargaining position, so as to force Japan into neutrality, if the United States went to war.
Later, however, the United States, with Great Britain, had made the Netherlands East Indies part of a defensive line that included the Philippines, China and Thailand, and thus, by cooperative encirclement, had attempted to force Japan to accept its material aid. Because of this action, according to Ambassador Horikiri's version of the report, the Netherlanders became still more certain that Japan would attack their territory. [1092]
Military cooperation between America, Great Britain, and the Netherlands government was announced by a Japanese report of July 17, 1941, which also indicated that an American air base was being built in Papua, New Guinea! [1093] The Japanese Minister to Batavia reported a
[1086] II, 1078.
[1087] II, 1082.
[1088] II, 1083.
[1089] II, 1084.
[1090] II, 1085.
[1091] II, 1086.
[1092] II, 1087.
[1093] II, 1088.
196
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
week later, on July 26, 1941, that if the United States should carry out a general embargo, the Dutch people were convinced that Japan would extend its southward march to include Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies. On the other hand, although there was to be a blackout for three days of an area centering on Batavia and Baitenzorugu in preparation for any future air raid, the people of Batavia, as a whole, showed little concern over a possible breach of diplomatic relations with Japan. [1094]
286. Reaction of Netherlands Indies to German‑Russian War.
After war began between Germany and Soviet Russia, the Japanese Consul in Batavia stated in an interview with Mr. Hoogstraten on June 23, 1941 that now the Dutch could cease being anxious over the re‑exportation to Germany of material purchased in the Indies, and that they could ship supplies to Japan in an unlimited amount. Still uncertain of the Japanese position, however, the Dutch were not willing to make agreements on the hypothesis that Japan would not aid its German partner. On the other hand the Japanese feared that the Netherlanders would lend their full support to Russia, because they were fighting Germany.
According to the Japanese Minister in Batavia, the Dutch believed that the conflict between Germany and Russia would serve to dissipate Nazi strength, while the fighting power of the British, aided by the United States, would increase. In answer to the Japanese Consul's statement that Europe would then come under the control of Commissar Stalin instead of Hitler, Mr. Hoogstraten asserted that Russia had no great ambition in western Europe. Furthermore, with the destruction of Hitlerism and the cooperation of Great Britain, his mother country, Holland, could be restored. [1095]
When the Japanese Consul was questioned by Mr. Hoogstraten regarding Japan's attitude toward the Russo‑German conflict, he replied that the Tripartite Pact with Germany stipulated that the relations between the respective treaty powers and Soviet Russia were in no way to be affected by the alliance; therefore, the present hostilities would have no immediate effect upon Japan. In spite of the reassurance which the Japanese gave Dutch officials regarding their neutrality in the European war, the Japanese Minister still feared that the Netherlands East Indies would become more anti‑Japanese and that exports to Japan would be reduced to permit large‑scale shipments to Soviet Russia. He suggested that Japan formulate and maintain a definite policy with regard to this situation. [1096]
Since there was always the possibility of Japan's attacking Russia, Mr. Ishizawa made inquiries to sound out the effect of such a move upon the Netherlands East Indies. In his report to Tokyo on July 15, 1941 he announced that if Japan did not commit any direct hostile acts against the Netherlands Indies, there was little chance of war between the two countries, although further regulation of exports to Japan would be inevitable if a Japanese‑Russian war broke out. Mr. Ishizawa pointed to the friendly attitude of the Netherlanders toward Italian residents, in spite of Italy's alliance with Germany, as proof that the Japanese would be treated in the same way. [1097]
[1094] II, 1089.
[1096] II, 1090.
[1096] II, Ibid.
[1087] II, 1091.
197
287. After Effects of Discontinuance of Japanese‑Dutch Negotiations.
Ten days after the publication of the joint communiqué which announced the discontinuance of the Japanese‑Dutch economic negotiations, the Japanese Minister in Batavia, on June 26, 1941 reported to Tokyo that the atmosphere had become more favorable to Japan and that Japanese residents in the East Indies were not much perturbed. [1098] However, the Japanese-Dutch Society was to be closed in late July 1941, [1099] and about July 15, 1941 the Mitsubishi Company ordered its officials in Batavia to evacuate their families. [1100]
As a result of this prospective exodus, the Japanese Minister inquired whether the order of the Mitsubishi Company stemmed from the Japanese Foreign Office or was issued independently. In addition, the Mitsubishi representative informed his home office that general conditions were calm in the East Indies, and for this reason Japanese families did not desire to return to Japan. He also pointed out that the sending of evacuation orders in plain language, as had been done in this instance, would disturb the Dutch government, would not make it change its decision, and would only damage Japanese interests by lessening production. [1101]
288. Netherlands Indies Resent Japanese Intelligence Activities.
When the second Japanese economic mission had come to the Netherlands East Indies, Colonels Maeda and Oga, and Lt. Col. Ishii of the Japanese army had accompanied it. The Netherlands army had been very disturbed by their arrival, but the Dutch refrained from refusing them admittance to avoid affronting Japan. However, after Minister Yoshizawa departed with his associates, on June 27, 1941 Mr. Hoogstraten pointed out that the officers had been more engrossed in inspecting all parts of the Netherlands Indies than in taking part in the negotiations, and he requested Mr. Ishizawa to arrange for their departure on a ship leaving for Japan on July 3, 1941. [1102]
Tokyo inquired, on July 3, 1941, whether the refusal of the Netherlands Indies to permit a certain Japanese naval officer to return was based on the undesirability of the officer or on a general policy of not accepting Japanese language officers. [1103] The refusal of the Dutch to permit the return of a Japanese Vice Consul was because of his previous activities among the radical elements of the native population. [1104]
Whether the visit of the Japanese army officers had been valuable in securing vital information regarding military strength in the East Indies cannot be definitely ascertained, but it was known that the activities of Japanese spies in that area were attaining some measure of success. According to one spy report on July 18, 1941, details of airfields south of Batavia, west of Serang and on the western tip of Java were known. [1105]
Cooperation between the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, England and the United States was noted in a Japanese message from Batavia on July 18, 1941. United States naval officers stationed in a certain section of Soerabaya and Java, as well as British and Australian army officers in Bandon and Batavia, were conducting military training at this time. It was suspected that at other points on the island, allied officers acted as instructors or liaison officers. [1106]
[1098] II, 1092.
[1099] II, 1093.
[1100] II, 1094.
[1101] II, 1095.
[1102] II, 1096.
[1103] II, 1097.
[1104] II, 1098.
[1105] II, 1099.
[1106] II, 1100.
198
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
In order to direct the military efforts of the Dutch Indies, Sir Robert Brooke‑Popham, the British Commander in Chief of the Far East forces, and a United States Naval aviation officer, Normer, as well as one officer each from the Australian army and navy, arrived in that vicinity some time before July 23, 1941. [1107]
289. The Netherlands East Indies Reduces Exports to Japan.
Though business conditions appeared to be normal, [1108] cancellation or postponement of exports which had already been agreed to by the Dutch drew protests from Tokyo. Listing palm oil, kapok, tannin, scrap iron, rubber and kopra among the products affected by the reduction of exports to Japan, Japanese representatives in Batavia insisted in mid‑July 1941 that the Dutch had failed to carry out their contracts since in the case of all vital products, almost half the quantity ordered had been stopped. [1109]
The Dutch authorities promised to reconsider their decision in view of these previous commitments. [1110] Hoping to receive as much as possible, Tokyo directed on July 18, 1941 that all articles already contracted for were to be exported immediately, aboard the Nichiran Maru and the Chirubuto Maru which had been assigned to the Netherlands East Indies. [1111]
290. Dutch Reprisals Against Japanese Communications.
Around July 26, 1941 Tokyo was informed that the Netherlands East Indies threatened to carry out reprisals if Tokyo decreed that only English or Japanese could be spoken in telephone conversations to the East Indies. The Netherlands government in turn would forbid the use of the Japanese language over its international telephone wires. The Dutch put the order prohibiting the use of the Japanese language into effect on July 29, 1941, and Tokyo hastened to negotiate with Batavia immediately in an attempt to have it retracted. [1112]
291. Japan Allays Dutch Fears Concerning a Japanese‑British War.
According to a statement made on July 26, 1941 by Mr. Utuheren of the Dutch Immigration Office, the occupation of southern French Indo-China by Japan had damaged Japanese relations with England and the United States, and if war broke out between the Japanese and the English, there was little doubt that the Netherlands East Indies would fight on the side of England. The Japanese Minister replied that the United States and England had been increasing their assistance to China, and that the Chinese, in turn, were hindering Japan from procuring necessary French Indo‑Chinese goods. Though asserting that if Japan had not acted immediately, British economic and military influence would have dominated French Indo-China, the Japanese Minister expressed the opinion that the possibility of war between Japan and
England was remote. Certain Netherlands Indies' officials were also convinced that Great Britain and Japan would not war over the French Indo-China issue, but they considered the concentration of Japanese
[1107] II, 1101.
[1108] II, 1102.
[1109] II, 1103.
[1110] II, 1104.
[1111] II, 1105.
[1112] II, 1106, 1107.
199
forces in the southern part of French Indo-China to be a potential threat toward the Netherlands Indies. A meeting of important officials at the Governor's mansion made it apparent that the Netherlands Indies was giving deep consideration to its official attitude regarding the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. [1113]
292. Japan Releases a Confiscated Cargo.
In an attempt to checkmate any movement of war materials to the Chungking government, in the early part of July 1941 the Japanese in Shanghai had held up and investigated a ship with a cargo of machinery purchased by the Dutch. This occasioned a protest from the Netherlands East Indies and Great Britain. Stressing the importance of the matter, Mr. Hoogstraten, the Dutch Commerce Bureau Chief, had then requested that the machinery be handed over immediately to the Netherlanders. [1114]
According to the Japanese, the exportation had been illegal, since no permit had been obtained from the proper military authorities, [1115] and in addition, the vessel had acted contrary to the orders of the Japanese water police. Furthermore, a bank connected with this transaction was in alliance with the Chungking regime. However, since Japan had no wish to incur the hostility of such an important trading country as the Netherlands East Indies, and because Japanese enterprises in the area were too valuable to be endangered by retaliation for one shipment of goods, Tokyo decided against confiscating this machinery. [1116]
On July 25, 1941 the Netherlands Indies' director, Mr. van Mook was informed that the machinery had been released and he expressed his appreciation to Japanese authorities. [1117] A promise of increased trade had previously been made by the Netherlands Indies' authorities who agreed not to transfer the machinery in question to Chungking. [1118]
293. The Netherlands Indies Freezes Japanese Funds.
The Netherlands Indies learned on July 26, 1941 that the United States and Great Britain had suspended monetary and economic intercourse with Japan. After much hurried activity, the Netherlands Indies was able to issue measures, on July 28, 1941, which suspended the monetary agreement and all monetary transactions with Japan, applied the Export Licensing Law to all exports to the Japanese Empire, Manchuria, occupied China, and Indo-China, and subjected all banks to a system of permits affecting monetary or credit transactions with Japanese subjects. [1119]
294. Economic Cooperation of the Netherlands Indies With England and the United States.
The Japanese Minister in Batavia reported to Tokyo on July 28, 1941 that despite some laxness in enforcing economic sanctions, the Netherlands East Indies was cooperating with England and the United States in economic warfare against Japan. Furthermore, Mr. van Mook
[1113] II, 1108.
[1114] II, 1109.
[1115] II, 1110.
[1116] II, 1111.
[1117] II, 1112.
[1118] II, 1110.
[1119] Hubertus J. van Mock‑op. cit., pp. 126‑127.
200
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
asserted that if the Japanese continued their aggression, the Indies might conclude a military alliance with the United States and England. Nevertheless, the Japanese Minister believed that the Netherlands Indies was anxious to avert an attack by Japan. [1120]
Since the betterment of Japanese‑Dutch relations was a matter of extreme urgency, Mr. Hoogstraten and Mr. Ishizawa met on July 30, 1941 to seek a solution of the problem. To explain Japan's southward sweep into French Indo-China, Mr. Ishizawa stated that its purpose was to cooperate with the government of France in facilitating the defense of that territory. However, Mr. Hoogstraten assumed that Japan's antagonism toward his country was increasing because Japan had established military bases there.
In spite of Japanese protests that no ulterior motives were involved, the Netherlands East Indies viewed Japanese army, naval, and air bases in the southern part of French Indo-China as a threat to her territorial integrity. At this point Mr. Ishizawa reminded Mr. Hoogstraten that the Dutch had boasted of the firm establishment of an American‑British‑Chinese‑Dutch joint front, and in view of the strong defense which the Dutch had attained by these alliances, Japan could not understand their fear of Axis strength.
In spite of the Japanese Minister's remarks, Mr. Hoogstraten insisted that curtailments of military supplies to Japan were necessary for the defense of the Netherlands Indies. Mr. Ishizawa then advised Mr. Hoogstraten that Japan would find other means of obtaining these essential materials. [1121]
After his conversation with Mr. Hoogstraten on July 30, 1941, the Japanese Minister in Batavia declared emphatically that as long as Japanese forces remained in French Indo-China, the Netherlands Indies would treat Japan as an enemy. In order to combat the punitive trade embargoes imposed by the Dutch, he suggested certain Japanese counter‑measures. Although the freezing order regarding Japan's assets had thus far been strictly enforced, the Japanese Minister felt that since the Netherlanders were also being greatly inconvenienced by it, negotiations between Mr. Imagawa of the Specie Bank, and officials of the Administrative Bureau and the Java Bank might produce a favorable solution. In the meantime, however, trade between the two countries was becoming more restricted, and Mr. Ishizawa felt that decisive measures should be initiated against the Netherlands East Indies. [1122]
295. Japan Retaliates by Freezing Netherlands Assets.
In retaliation for the economic measures which the Dutch had taken against the Japanese, Tokyo froze Netherlands assets throughout the Japanese Empire. On July 30, 1941, Mr. Hoogstraten and the Japanese Minister at Batavia discussed various points connected with the freezing orders of both countries. The Dutch official claimed that the Japanese should permit the exportation of not only goods which had been paid for, but also goods under contract, since their title had been transferred to the Netherlands East Indies. If, as a result of the freezing order, the Dutch merchants lost the entire stock of goods purchased from Japan, Mr. Hoogstraten warned that the Netherlands East Indies would use the frozen Japanese funds as collateral for the twelve million guilders involved. [1123]
Replying that Japan did not intend to prevent shipment of goods which had been already purchased, the Japanese Minister stated that his country was at present experimenting with the first export embargo it had ever imposed. Furthermore, he insisted that the Netherlands' government had no justification for taking any retaliatory measures against Japan.
[1120] II, 1113.
[1121] II, 1114.
[1122] II, 1115.
[1123] II, 1116.
201
Mr. Hoogstraten assured Mr. Ishizawa that if Dutch merchants were permitted to ship their goods from Japan, not only would certain Japanese funds be released, but sugar and similar products would also be shipped from the Netherlands Indies to Japan. However, because the Japanese occupation of the southern part of French Indo-China constituted a direct threat to the Indies, a comparatively strict limitation would still be observed on the exportation of petroleum and other war materials in which the Japanese Minister was particularly interested. Regarding the abrogation of the petroleum agreement, Mr. Hoogstraten stated that his government had no intention of permitting the oil companies to export the undelivered portion of the oil under contract. [1124]
Since the Japanese Minister in Batavia felt that the Netherlands East Indies would still continue to tighten restrictions on exported commodities to Japan, he again suggested on August 1, 1941 that strict counter‑measures be taken. Knowing that an embargo against food supplies, such as salt‑fish from French Indo-China, would give rise to a serious problem for the Netherlands Indies, the Japanese planned to prevent this and other essential items from reaching the East Indies. [1125]
Further discussion by the Japanese Minister with Mr. Hoogstraten finally won some concessions, according to a report to Tokyo on August 2, 1941, for the Netherlands Indies granted permission for one shipment of rubber, tin, and ilmonite. [1126] Nevertheless, during the first few days of August 1941, growing anxiety was evident among Japanese residents. Because of the constant stream of applicants for passage aboard ships bound for Japan, the South Seas Shipping Company considered dispensing with cargoes until Japanese nationals could be evacuated. [1127]
296. Japanese Nationals Are Evacuated From The Netherlands Indies.
On previous occasions, at the direction of the Japanese Minister, the leaders of Japanese associations had advised Japanese residents owning firmly established enterprises to remain in the Netherlands Indies and continue their business. On July 31, 1941, however, he planned to advise many of them to return home since in the event that improvement in Japanese-Dutch relations became impossible, a disorderly evacuation would disgrace Japan. Judging from recent trends, and because of the danger of arrest for Japanese residents, it was also felt that all Japanese subjects acquainted with the situation in the Netherlands Indies and able to speak the Malayan language would be of great value to the military authorities, and should, therefore, return to Japan and register immediately. [1128]
297. East Indian Merchants Purchase Japanese Stocks.
Upon hearing rumors that the government of the Netherlands Indies would freeze Japanese funds, Chinese and Arabian merchants in the East Indies realized that Japanese merchants would encounter difficulties in future importations and would be interested, therefore, in cash
[1124] II, Ibid.
[1125] II, 1117.
[1126] II, 1118.
[1127] II, 1119.
[1128] II, 1115.
202
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
transactions. These traders attempted to buy up all the articles which Japanese firms had on hand, and in this way obtained a monopoly on many materials. The Netherlands Indies' government, fearing the increased prices that would result from such reckless buying, prohibited the transfer of woven and knitted goods, fabricated materials and other articles. Although these restrictions were designated to curb the transactions of the Chinese and other merchants, the Japanese Minister felt that inflation was now an imminent danger in the East Indies, and would cause more trouble to the Dutch themselves than to Japan. [1129]
298. Japan is Urged to Further Retaliation Against the Dutch.
On August 3, 1941 the Japanese Minister in Batavia reported to Tokyo that the Netherlands East Indies was concerned about food for the Dutch residents in Japan, and about the shipment of goods out of Japan which had been contracted and paid for by Netherlands Indies' merchants. Although Tokyo had so far been indecisive concerning these questions, Dutch firms nevertheless placed considerable reliance on the influence of Mr. Ishizawa.
Believing that Japan's delay was responsible for the issuance of the Netherlands freezing order, Mr. Ishizawa suggested again that Japan retaliate immediately when any actions contrary to her national well‑being were undertaken by the Netherlands Indies. He requested, therefore, on August 3, 1941 that decisions reached by the Foreign Office concerning such action be wired to him without any delay. [1130] Furthermore, if time were wasted while he waited for specific instructions, a general embargo might be imposed by the Dutch with the result that Japan would be prevented from obtaining even those materials which were procurable. Such action on the part of the Dutch would possibly freeze Japanese assets indefinitely. [1131]
At the same time that the Netherlands' reply to the Japanese proposals was sent to Tokyo, the Japanese Consul in Batavia, on June 7, 1941, suggested the acceptance of the Dutch proposals since they were the best that Japan could hope to get, though the Dutch had not agreed to Japanese demands concerning oil, rubber, and bauxite. [1056]
At a conference between Mr. Hubertus van Mook, Director of Economic Affairs in the Netherlands East Indies, and Tokyo's representatives on June 10, 1941, the Japanese Minister discovered that the intentions of the Dutch officials were considerably more liberal and elastic than the document of the Netherlands' reply had indicated. [1057] However, on June 12, 1941, Tokyo informed its diplomats throughout the world that the Dutch had definitely rejected Japan's proposals, and had refused to export all the raw materials desired by the Japanese. Furthermore, they threatened to cut off all exports, if Japan reshipped them to Germany. [1058] Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[1053] II, Ibid.
[1054] II, Ibid.
[1055] II, 1051.
[1056] II, 1052, 1053.
[1057] II, 1054.
[1055] II, 1055.
191
275. Japanese Security Precautions for Diplomatic Codes.
Japan began early in June 1941 to safeguard its state secrets in regard to the Netherlands Indies by adopting new security precautions. When the Japanese Consul in Soerabaya returned a safe to Japan, it was examined by Dutch officials; and as a result, the Japanese Consul in Batavia asserted on June 7, 1941 that there was little prospect of sending secret documents to Japan without inspection by the Netherlands' government. [1059]
To ensure safe communications with the home office, the Japanese Minister in Batavia suggested that reports be exchanged verbally as much as possible, rather than by telegrams. To avoid difficulties with Dutch officials, he was particularly insistent that official couriers coming into the Netherlands Indies be members of the Foreign Office. [1060] To expedite the special handling of messages for military attachés, on June 28, 1941, Tokyo ordered that a caption word including A or M as its second and fifth letters be used as a designator. [1061]
On July 10, 1941, Foreign Minister Matsuoka notified Batavia that a courier, Mr. Zoku Nomoto, who was carrying with him secret documents and cipher machines for both Batavia and Singapore, would have to be passed through the customs. Mr. Ishizawa had already informed Tokyo that baggage could be passed through without examination, provided official seals were attached. [1062]
On August 4, 1941, Tokyo sent out a circular covering the destruction of obsolete codes and the care of the current ones. [1063] During this month, the existing code was also to be replaced by a new and more secret system. [1064]
276. Japan Discriminates Against Dutch Firms.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, agreements with Dutch business interests were reached as of June 5, 1941, and negotiations were begun with the leaders of the Japan‑South Seas General Merchandise Export Guild. In order to insure the Guild's participation and concurrence in Japanese trade negotiations, it was stipulated that its branches in Japan should not be assessed by the Finance Ministry, as were the Dutch firms. The Japanese anticipated that this would dissatisfy Dutch business establishments in Japan, though other Japanese export guilds would probably join the agreement because of the new conditions. [1065]
On previous occasions Japanese guilds had refused to admit Dutch firms, but in late June 1941, as a result of Tokyo's intercession, the Dutch received better treatment from the guilds. [1066]
277. Japanese Business Methods in the East Indies.
Tokyo was informed on June 9, 1941 that branches of the Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Nomura, Iwai, and Kasho companies in Batavia had made competitive offers for June loadings of rubber, and immediate counteraction was suggested. [1067]
[1059] II, 1056.
[1060] II, 1057.
[1061] II, 1058.
[1062] II, 1059.
[1063] II, 1060.
[1064] II, 1061.
[1065] II, 1062.
[1066] II, 1063.
[1067] II, 1064.
192
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
Three members of a large Japanese banking and investment corporation had gone to the Netherlands East Indies to establish a joint stock company dealing with rubber plantations in Borneo and Soerabaya. Directing the Japanese Minister to obtain another month's stay in the East Indies for these gentlemen, Tokyo, on June 12, 1941, expressed the hope that they would accomplish their objective. By such close supervision of Japanese business interests was Japan striving to control the East Indies' rubber market. [1068]
278. Japan Foresees the Discontinuance of Negotiations.
Tokyo stated on June 14, 1941 that it was becoming impossible for the two countries to successfully carry on further negotiations, since the reply of the Dutch East Indies' authorities reserved the right to alter at will the export volume of those materials which the Japanese regarded as indispensable. Japan asserted that no international agreement could be made on the basis of such an attitude.
Although the Dutch claimed that the object of its foreign policy was based on furthering the progress and prosperity of its own peoples, Japan felt that the Netherlands East Indies could accomplish much more by firmly establishing commercial cooperation with Japan, and in this way contributing to the peace of the Far East. Claiming to be the economical benefactor of the Dutch East Indies, Japan insisted that merely out of consideration for the unity of purpose existing between the two countries, it had contributed generously to the development of these islands. [1069]
279. Japan Plans to Publicize the Discontinuance of Its Negotiations.
Batavian authorities revealed to the Japanese Minister on June 14, 1941 that Tokyo was planning to publish the results of the negotiations between the two countries without first informing the various Dutch authorities that a diplomatic rupture was inevitable. The Japanese Minister at Batavia warned his Foreign Office that the result of such unilateral action would be detrimental to future agreements. [1070] Tokyo replied on June 14, 1941 that since the negotiations had failed, publicity in regard to the matter was solely a responsibility of Tokyo and was no concern of the Dutch.
The Japanese also pointed out that during the meetings of November 1940, when a compromise had been reached regarding the purchase of petroleum, joint communiqués issued by Dutch petroleum interests had advised the public of the quantities involved. Furthermore, Tokyo stated that the Netherlands Indies, according to authoritative intelligence, had kept the United States and Great Britain constantly informed regarding every detail during the discussions.
In addition the Japanese were indignant because the Netherlands East Indies had sent to its ministry in Tokyo both the Japanese proposal of May 14, 1941, and the Netherlands' reply of June 6, 1941 in plain text. [1071] This was very irritating to the Japanese because their code clerks in Batavia had spent ten hours in enciphering the message which the Dutch had already transmitted in plain text. [1072] In view of the dangers to their cryptographic systems from this procedure, Tokyo thereafter permitted its representatives to send foreign text messages in a simpler code system or even in plain text. [1073]
[1068] II, 1065.
[1069] II, 1035.
[1070] II, 1066.
[1071] II, 1067.
[1072] II, 1068.
[1073] II, 1069.
193
280. Japanese Minister in Batavia Protests Against Tokyo's Procedure.
Japanese Minister Daihyo in Batavia warned Tokyo on June 16, 1941 that if the Japanese were to publish the results of the conferences with the Dutch government, extreme care must be taken in wording the report lest a bad impression be created, particularly since they were breaking off negotiations with the Dutch. The Foreign Office in Tokyo should not give the impression that Japanese public opinion, contrary to the policies of the Japanese government, was in any way controlling its actions, since this would impair the dignity of Japan.
Because there were at least 7,000 Japanese living in the Netherlands East Indies, Minister Daihyo desired to continue normal relations, at least with the Dutch government. At the same time, however, he pointed out that to declare openly that Consul General Ishizawa was to continue the negotiations after the negotiations had failed would be a black mark against Japanese prestige. Therefore, until more natural circumstances permitted, Minister Daihyo suggested that no revelation of the Japanese desire for further talks with the Dutch be made. While the needs of Japan demanded that the petroleum question be settled immediately, it could not be considered separately, since it was but one part of the trade negotiations. [1074]
281. Tokyo Accedes to Minister Daihyo's Request.
Tokyo replied promptly to Minister Daihyo's protest on June 16, 1941, and requested him to assure the Dutch East Indies that any further negotiations would not be an attempt to save the Japanese Cabinet from embarrassment. By discontinuing the talks and recalling its representatives, Tokyo was endeavoring to prevent the rise of circumstances which might infuriate the Japanese people and turn them against the Dutch East Indies. In addition, the Japanese government wished to avoid giving the world the impression that normal relations with the Dutch East Indies had been disrupted, and that the two countries were not at swords' points. Therefore, Japanese Consul General Ishizawa was to indicate in any public announcements that discussions would be continued from time to time with the Dutch. [1075]
282. The Netherlands East Indies and Japan Issue a Joint Communiqué (June 17, 1941).
On June 17, 1941, after a conference between Mr. Yoshizawa, Mr. Ishizawa, Mr. van Mook and Mr. Hoogstraten which did not change the answer of the Netherlands in any way, a joint communiqué was issued as follows:
Both the Netherland and the Japanese delegations greatly regret that the economic negotiations, which has been conducted between them, has unfortunately come to no satisfactory result. It is needless, however, to add that the discontinuation of the present negotiation will lead to no change in the normal relations between the Netherlands Indies and Japan. [1076]
Although no agreement had been drawn up between the two governments as a result of their extended conferences, Foreign Minister Matsuoka expressed the opinion on June 18, 1941 that the Japanese would be able to obtain through ordinary business deals the types of goods that the Dutch considered unimportant. However, as a political gesture to warn the Dutch that Japan needed vital raw materials, the Japanese representative, Mr. Yoshizawa, urged the Governor General of the Indies to reconsider his stand. Nothing came of this, and the Japanese negotiators were ordered to withdraw. [1077]
[1074] II, 1070.
[1075] II, 1071.
[1076]Hubertus J. van Mook—op. cit., p. 122.
[1077] II, 1072.
194
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
283. Japan's Urgent Need for Petroleum and Tin.
In view of the Japanese need for petroleum, on June 18, 1941 the Chief of the Japanese Fuel Bureau requested his petroleum representative, Mr. Ito, to remain in Batavia even after other delegates had returned home. Since the international situation was extremely delicate, he directed Mr. Ito to obtain fulfillment of oil contracts which had already been made by the Dutch.
Mr. Matsuoka promised that Japan would not make any direct demands for future oil purchases or for the development of oil fields in the East Indies. [1078] But on June 21, 1941, the Japanese Consul General was instructed by Tokyo to protest immediately to the Dutch authorities against the concentration of Dutch oil products and transportation in British hands. [1079]
To take advantage of any possible diplomatic change after the breakdown of negotiations in June 1941, the Japanese desired to keep their commercial representatives in Batavia so as to be able to renew negotiations for oil rights with the Dutch. Problems other than oil rights, according to the Chief of the Japanese Fuel Bureau, were to be given secondary considerations for the time being. [1080]
A difference of opinion arose on June 19, 1941 between two Japanese representatives in Batavia. Mr. Hatanaka felt that because the negotiations had been discontinued, the acquisition of raw materials could be handled by the local branch of Mitsui, and Mr. Ito could return to Tokyo, leaving Mr. Hatanaka to carry on alone. On the other hand, Mr. Ito believed that the Dutch were just about to accept the Japanese separate proposal and wished, therefore, to remain until the affair could be finished. [1081] But on June 22, 1941, Mr. Ito reported that he was returning to Tokyo since he could do nothing more concerning the petroleum question. [1082]
By virtue of the rupture of the negotiations, Mr. van Mook, the Director of Economic Affairs in the East Indies, had explained that the negotiators had no authority to enter discussions pertaining to other matters of trade. Thus, questions regarding the shipment of fuel would come as usual under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Mines and would be discussed by competent industrialists. However, Mr. van Mook pointed out that at present the Bureau had been divested of the authority to deal with such matters because of the political aspects involved. Regardless of whatever point of view the Japanese might take concerning future acquisition of rights and interests, Mr. van Mook insisted that present agreements were impossible. [1083]
The withdrawal of Saito, a Japanese fuel negotiator, a few weeks later attested to the belief of Japanese authorities that the decision was irrevocable. [1084] Nevertheless, some time later on July 30, 1941, the Chief of the Netherlands East Indies Trade Bureau assured the Japanese Minister that his government had no intention of abrogating the existing oil agreement; nor did he believe that the Dutch oil company would refuse to sell the product. Regarding this latter point, the Japanese official stated that the company was delaying the loading of oil for which payment had already been made. Assuring the Japanese Minister that the company was undoubtedly discussing the provisions which called for payment in dollars, the Dutch official stated that Mr. van Mook and representatives of the oil company were to confer on the following day. Although company officials would be heard before any decision were made, it was hoped that an agreement, satisfactory to all parties, would be concluded. [1085]
[1078] II, 1073.
[1079] II, 1074.
[1080] II, 1075.
[1081] II, 1076, 1077.
[1082] II, 1078.
[1083] II, 1079.
[1084] II, 1080.
[1085] II, 1081.
195
As a result of Mr. Ito's report, [1086] loan the Chief of the Fuel Section, expressing his appreciation for their difficult experiences, directed both Mr. Ito and Mr. Hatanaka to return home. [1087] A report from Minister Daihyo, which stressed the futility of keeping Japanese oil negotiators in Batavia in the face of the Dutch refusal to deal with them, probably had much to do with their return. [1088]
The Japanese were concerned about other vital materials as well as oil. Though the Mitsubishi Company had previously obtained a year's contract to export 3,000 tons of tin from the Netherlands East Indies, the Dutch had reduced that amount to a mere 2,300 tons. However, even after the negotiations had been broken off, the Japanese were hopeful that the Dutch might change their uncompromising attitude concerning tin and manganese. [1089]
284. The Netherlands Indies Reduces Shipping to Japan.
Mr. Ishizawa reported on June 21, 1941 that the Dutch were cutting down on all shipping to Japan in an attempt to apply a wartime embargo act. Instructions had been issued by the Finance Minister to limit material sent to Japan to 20,000 tons per month. According to the Japanese, this reduction of shipping was connected with Netherlands national defense and had been ordered by Dutch shipping authorities in New York, and therefore, it was hard to discover the reasons for it. [1090] In order to conceal Japanese purchases in the East Indies, on June 21, 1941 Mr. Ishizawa suggested that all telegrams regarding such matters be sent secretly to him in Batavia. [1091]
285. Japan Suspects American Support of Netherlands Indies.
Because Holland was one of the nations joined against the Axis, and because its own fundamental policies were closely akin to those of England and the United States, the Netherlands East Indies was greatly affected by the position of the United States in regard to the Japanese "New Order" in Asia. As early as June 22, 1941, according to the Japanese Ambassador in Rome, an intelligence report, sent to the Vatican by the Apostolic Delegate to Batavia, had indicated that the United States, at first, had brought pressure to bear upon the Netherlands East Indies in a scheme to obtain an excellent bargaining position, so as to force Japan into neutrality, if the United States went to war.
Later, however, the United States, with Great Britain, had made the Netherlands East Indies part of a defensive line that included the Philippines, China and Thailand, and thus, by cooperative encirclement, had attempted to force Japan to accept its material aid. Because of this action, according to Ambassador Horikiri's version of the report, the Netherlanders became still more certain that Japan would attack their territory. [1092]
Military cooperation between America, Great Britain, and the Netherlands government was announced by a Japanese report of July 17, 1941, which also indicated that an American air base was being built in Papua, New Guinea! [1093] The Japanese Minister to Batavia reported a
[1086] II, 1078.
[1087] II, 1082.
[1088] II, 1083.
[1089] II, 1084.
[1090] II, 1085.
[1091] II, 1086.
[1092] II, 1087.
[1093] II, 1088.
196
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
week later, on July 26, 1941, that if the United States should carry out a general embargo, the Dutch people were convinced that Japan would extend its southward march to include Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies. On the other hand, although there was to be a blackout for three days of an area centering on Batavia and Baitenzorugu in preparation for any future air raid, the people of Batavia, as a whole, showed little concern over a possible breach of diplomatic relations with Japan. [1094]
286. Reaction of Netherlands Indies to German‑Russian War.
After war began between Germany and Soviet Russia, the Japanese Consul in Batavia stated in an interview with Mr. Hoogstraten on June 23, 1941 that now the Dutch could cease being anxious over the re‑exportation to Germany of material purchased in the Indies, and that they could ship supplies to Japan in an unlimited amount. Still uncertain of the Japanese position, however, the Dutch were not willing to make agreements on the hypothesis that Japan would not aid its German partner. On the other hand the Japanese feared that the Netherlanders would lend their full support to Russia, because they were fighting Germany.
According to the Japanese Minister in Batavia, the Dutch believed that the conflict between Germany and Russia would serve to dissipate Nazi strength, while the fighting power of the British, aided by the United States, would increase. In answer to the Japanese Consul's statement that Europe would then come under the control of Commissar Stalin instead of Hitler, Mr. Hoogstraten asserted that Russia had no great ambition in western Europe. Furthermore, with the destruction of Hitlerism and the cooperation of Great Britain, his mother country, Holland, could be restored. [1095]
When the Japanese Consul was questioned by Mr. Hoogstraten regarding Japan's attitude toward the Russo‑German conflict, he replied that the Tripartite Pact with Germany stipulated that the relations between the respective treaty powers and Soviet Russia were in no way to be affected by the alliance; therefore, the present hostilities would have no immediate effect upon Japan. In spite of the reassurance which the Japanese gave Dutch officials regarding their neutrality in the European war, the Japanese Minister still feared that the Netherlands East Indies would become more anti‑Japanese and that exports to Japan would be reduced to permit large‑scale shipments to Soviet Russia. He suggested that Japan formulate and maintain a definite policy with regard to this situation. [1096]
Since there was always the possibility of Japan's attacking Russia, Mr. Ishizawa made inquiries to sound out the effect of such a move upon the Netherlands East Indies. In his report to Tokyo on July 15, 1941 he announced that if Japan did not commit any direct hostile acts against the Netherlands Indies, there was little chance of war between the two countries, although further regulation of exports to Japan would be inevitable if a Japanese‑Russian war broke out. Mr. Ishizawa pointed to the friendly attitude of the Netherlanders toward Italian residents, in spite of Italy's alliance with Germany, as proof that the Japanese would be treated in the same way. [1097]
[1094] II, 1089.
[1096] II, 1090.
[1096] II, Ibid.
[1087] II, 1091.
197
287. After Effects of Discontinuance of Japanese‑Dutch Negotiations.
Ten days after the publication of the joint communiqué which announced the discontinuance of the Japanese‑Dutch economic negotiations, the Japanese Minister in Batavia, on June 26, 1941 reported to Tokyo that the atmosphere had become more favorable to Japan and that Japanese residents in the East Indies were not much perturbed. [1098] However, the Japanese-Dutch Society was to be closed in late July 1941, [1099] and about July 15, 1941 the Mitsubishi Company ordered its officials in Batavia to evacuate their families. [1100]
As a result of this prospective exodus, the Japanese Minister inquired whether the order of the Mitsubishi Company stemmed from the Japanese Foreign Office or was issued independently. In addition, the Mitsubishi representative informed his home office that general conditions were calm in the East Indies, and for this reason Japanese families did not desire to return to Japan. He also pointed out that the sending of evacuation orders in plain language, as had been done in this instance, would disturb the Dutch government, would not make it change its decision, and would only damage Japanese interests by lessening production. [1101]
288. Netherlands Indies Resent Japanese Intelligence Activities.
When the second Japanese economic mission had come to the Netherlands East Indies, Colonels Maeda and Oga, and Lt. Col. Ishii of the Japanese army had accompanied it. The Netherlands army had been very disturbed by their arrival, but the Dutch refrained from refusing them admittance to avoid affronting Japan. However, after Minister Yoshizawa departed with his associates, on June 27, 1941 Mr. Hoogstraten pointed out that the officers had been more engrossed in inspecting all parts of the Netherlands Indies than in taking part in the negotiations, and he requested Mr. Ishizawa to arrange for their departure on a ship leaving for Japan on July 3, 1941. [1102]
Tokyo inquired, on July 3, 1941, whether the refusal of the Netherlands Indies to permit a certain Japanese naval officer to return was based on the undesirability of the officer or on a general policy of not accepting Japanese language officers. [1103] The refusal of the Dutch to permit the return of a Japanese Vice Consul was because of his previous activities among the radical elements of the native population. [1104]
Whether the visit of the Japanese army officers had been valuable in securing vital information regarding military strength in the East Indies cannot be definitely ascertained, but it was known that the activities of Japanese spies in that area were attaining some measure of success. According to one spy report on July 18, 1941, details of airfields south of Batavia, west of Serang and on the western tip of Java were known. [1105]
Cooperation between the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, England and the United States was noted in a Japanese message from Batavia on July 18, 1941. United States naval officers stationed in a certain section of Soerabaya and Java, as well as British and Australian army officers in Bandon and Batavia, were conducting military training at this time. It was suspected that at other points on the island, allied officers acted as instructors or liaison officers. [1106]
[1098] II, 1092.
[1099] II, 1093.
[1100] II, 1094.
[1101] II, 1095.
[1102] II, 1096.
[1103] II, 1097.
[1104] II, 1098.
[1105] II, 1099.
[1106] II, 1100.
198
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
In order to direct the military efforts of the Dutch Indies, Sir Robert Brooke‑Popham, the British Commander in Chief of the Far East forces, and a United States Naval aviation officer, Normer, as well as one officer each from the Australian army and navy, arrived in that vicinity some time before July 23, 1941. [1107]
289. The Netherlands East Indies Reduces Exports to Japan.
Though business conditions appeared to be normal, [1108] cancellation or postponement of exports which had already been agreed to by the Dutch drew protests from Tokyo. Listing palm oil, kapok, tannin, scrap iron, rubber and kopra among the products affected by the reduction of exports to Japan, Japanese representatives in Batavia insisted in mid‑July 1941 that the Dutch had failed to carry out their contracts since in the case of all vital products, almost half the quantity ordered had been stopped. [1109]
The Dutch authorities promised to reconsider their decision in view of these previous commitments. [1110] Hoping to receive as much as possible, Tokyo directed on July 18, 1941 that all articles already contracted for were to be exported immediately, aboard the Nichiran Maru and the Chirubuto Maru which had been assigned to the Netherlands East Indies. [1111]
290. Dutch Reprisals Against Japanese Communications.
Around July 26, 1941 Tokyo was informed that the Netherlands East Indies threatened to carry out reprisals if Tokyo decreed that only English or Japanese could be spoken in telephone conversations to the East Indies. The Netherlands government in turn would forbid the use of the Japanese language over its international telephone wires. The Dutch put the order prohibiting the use of the Japanese language into effect on July 29, 1941, and Tokyo hastened to negotiate with Batavia immediately in an attempt to have it retracted. [1112]
291. Japan Allays Dutch Fears Concerning a Japanese‑British War.
According to a statement made on July 26, 1941 by Mr. Utuheren of the Dutch Immigration Office, the occupation of southern French Indo-China by Japan had damaged Japanese relations with England and the United States, and if war broke out between the Japanese and the English, there was little doubt that the Netherlands East Indies would fight on the side of England. The Japanese Minister replied that the United States and England had been increasing their assistance to China, and that the Chinese, in turn, were hindering Japan from procuring necessary French Indo‑Chinese goods. Though asserting that if Japan had not acted immediately, British economic and military influence would have dominated French Indo-China, the Japanese Minister expressed the opinion that the possibility of war between Japan and
England was remote. Certain Netherlands Indies' officials were also convinced that Great Britain and Japan would not war over the French Indo-China issue, but they considered the concentration of Japanese
[1107] II, 1101.
[1108] II, 1102.
[1109] II, 1103.
[1110] II, 1104.
[1111] II, 1105.
[1112] II, 1106, 1107.
199
forces in the southern part of French Indo-China to be a potential threat toward the Netherlands Indies. A meeting of important officials at the Governor's mansion made it apparent that the Netherlands Indies was giving deep consideration to its official attitude regarding the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China. [1113]
292. Japan Releases a Confiscated Cargo.
In an attempt to checkmate any movement of war materials to the Chungking government, in the early part of July 1941 the Japanese in Shanghai had held up and investigated a ship with a cargo of machinery purchased by the Dutch. This occasioned a protest from the Netherlands East Indies and Great Britain. Stressing the importance of the matter, Mr. Hoogstraten, the Dutch Commerce Bureau Chief, had then requested that the machinery be handed over immediately to the Netherlanders. [1114]
According to the Japanese, the exportation had been illegal, since no permit had been obtained from the proper military authorities, [1115] and in addition, the vessel had acted contrary to the orders of the Japanese water police. Furthermore, a bank connected with this transaction was in alliance with the Chungking regime. However, since Japan had no wish to incur the hostility of such an important trading country as the Netherlands East Indies, and because Japanese enterprises in the area were too valuable to be endangered by retaliation for one shipment of goods, Tokyo decided against confiscating this machinery. [1116]
On July 25, 1941 the Netherlands Indies' director, Mr. van Mook was informed that the machinery had been released and he expressed his appreciation to Japanese authorities. [1117] A promise of increased trade had previously been made by the Netherlands Indies' authorities who agreed not to transfer the machinery in question to Chungking. [1118]
293. The Netherlands Indies Freezes Japanese Funds.
The Netherlands Indies learned on July 26, 1941 that the United States and Great Britain had suspended monetary and economic intercourse with Japan. After much hurried activity, the Netherlands Indies was able to issue measures, on July 28, 1941, which suspended the monetary agreement and all monetary transactions with Japan, applied the Export Licensing Law to all exports to the Japanese Empire, Manchuria, occupied China, and Indo-China, and subjected all banks to a system of permits affecting monetary or credit transactions with Japanese subjects. [1119]
294. Economic Cooperation of the Netherlands Indies With England and the United States.
The Japanese Minister in Batavia reported to Tokyo on July 28, 1941 that despite some laxness in enforcing economic sanctions, the Netherlands East Indies was cooperating with England and the United States in economic warfare against Japan. Furthermore, Mr. van Mook
[1113] II, 1108.
[1114] II, 1109.
[1115] II, 1110.
[1116] II, 1111.
[1117] II, 1112.
[1118] II, 1110.
[1119] Hubertus J. van Mock‑op. cit., pp. 126‑127.
200
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
asserted that if the Japanese continued their aggression, the Indies might conclude a military alliance with the United States and England. Nevertheless, the Japanese Minister believed that the Netherlands Indies was anxious to avert an attack by Japan. [1120]
Since the betterment of Japanese‑Dutch relations was a matter of extreme urgency, Mr. Hoogstraten and Mr. Ishizawa met on July 30, 1941 to seek a solution of the problem. To explain Japan's southward sweep into French Indo-China, Mr. Ishizawa stated that its purpose was to cooperate with the government of France in facilitating the defense of that territory. However, Mr. Hoogstraten assumed that Japan's antagonism toward his country was increasing because Japan had established military bases there.
In spite of Japanese protests that no ulterior motives were involved, the Netherlands East Indies viewed Japanese army, naval, and air bases in the southern part of French Indo-China as a threat to her territorial integrity. At this point Mr. Ishizawa reminded Mr. Hoogstraten that the Dutch had boasted of the firm establishment of an American‑British‑Chinese‑Dutch joint front, and in view of the strong defense which the Dutch had attained by these alliances, Japan could not understand their fear of Axis strength.
In spite of the Japanese Minister's remarks, Mr. Hoogstraten insisted that curtailments of military supplies to Japan were necessary for the defense of the Netherlands Indies. Mr. Ishizawa then advised Mr. Hoogstraten that Japan would find other means of obtaining these essential materials. [1121]
After his conversation with Mr. Hoogstraten on July 30, 1941, the Japanese Minister in Batavia declared emphatically that as long as Japanese forces remained in French Indo-China, the Netherlands Indies would treat Japan as an enemy. In order to combat the punitive trade embargoes imposed by the Dutch, he suggested certain Japanese counter‑measures. Although the freezing order regarding Japan's assets had thus far been strictly enforced, the Japanese Minister felt that since the Netherlanders were also being greatly inconvenienced by it, negotiations between Mr. Imagawa of the Specie Bank, and officials of the Administrative Bureau and the Java Bank might produce a favorable solution. In the meantime, however, trade between the two countries was becoming more restricted, and Mr. Ishizawa felt that decisive measures should be initiated against the Netherlands East Indies. [1122]
295. Japan Retaliates by Freezing Netherlands Assets.
In retaliation for the economic measures which the Dutch had taken against the Japanese, Tokyo froze Netherlands assets throughout the Japanese Empire. On July 30, 1941, Mr. Hoogstraten and the Japanese Minister at Batavia discussed various points connected with the freezing orders of both countries. The Dutch official claimed that the Japanese should permit the exportation of not only goods which had been paid for, but also goods under contract, since their title had been transferred to the Netherlands East Indies. If, as a result of the freezing order, the Dutch merchants lost the entire stock of goods purchased from Japan, Mr. Hoogstraten warned that the Netherlands East Indies would use the frozen Japanese funds as collateral for the twelve million guilders involved. [1123]
Replying that Japan did not intend to prevent shipment of goods which had been already purchased, the Japanese Minister stated that his country was at present experimenting with the first export embargo it had ever imposed. Furthermore, he insisted that the Netherlands' government had no justification for taking any retaliatory measures against Japan.
[1120] II, 1113.
[1121] II, 1114.
[1122] II, 1115.
[1123] II, 1116.
201
Mr. Hoogstraten assured Mr. Ishizawa that if Dutch merchants were permitted to ship their goods from Japan, not only would certain Japanese funds be released, but sugar and similar products would also be shipped from the Netherlands Indies to Japan. However, because the Japanese occupation of the southern part of French Indo-China constituted a direct threat to the Indies, a comparatively strict limitation would still be observed on the exportation of petroleum and other war materials in which the Japanese Minister was particularly interested. Regarding the abrogation of the petroleum agreement, Mr. Hoogstraten stated that his government had no intention of permitting the oil companies to export the undelivered portion of the oil under contract. [1124]
Since the Japanese Minister in Batavia felt that the Netherlands East Indies would still continue to tighten restrictions on exported commodities to Japan, he again suggested on August 1, 1941 that strict counter‑measures be taken. Knowing that an embargo against food supplies, such as salt‑fish from French Indo-China, would give rise to a serious problem for the Netherlands Indies, the Japanese planned to prevent this and other essential items from reaching the East Indies. [1125]
Further discussion by the Japanese Minister with Mr. Hoogstraten finally won some concessions, according to a report to Tokyo on August 2, 1941, for the Netherlands Indies granted permission for one shipment of rubber, tin, and ilmonite. [1126] Nevertheless, during the first few days of August 1941, growing anxiety was evident among Japanese residents. Because of the constant stream of applicants for passage aboard ships bound for Japan, the South Seas Shipping Company considered dispensing with cargoes until Japanese nationals could be evacuated. [1127]
296. Japanese Nationals Are Evacuated From The Netherlands Indies.
On previous occasions, at the direction of the Japanese Minister, the leaders of Japanese associations had advised Japanese residents owning firmly established enterprises to remain in the Netherlands Indies and continue their business. On July 31, 1941, however, he planned to advise many of them to return home since in the event that improvement in Japanese-Dutch relations became impossible, a disorderly evacuation would disgrace Japan. Judging from recent trends, and because of the danger of arrest for Japanese residents, it was also felt that all Japanese subjects acquainted with the situation in the Netherlands Indies and able to speak the Malayan language would be of great value to the military authorities, and should, therefore, return to Japan and register immediately. [1128]
297. East Indian Merchants Purchase Japanese Stocks.
Upon hearing rumors that the government of the Netherlands Indies would freeze Japanese funds, Chinese and Arabian merchants in the East Indies realized that Japanese merchants would encounter difficulties in future importations and would be interested, therefore, in cash
[1124] II, Ibid.
[1125] II, 1117.
[1126] II, 1118.
[1127] II, 1119.
[1128] II, 1115.
202
THE "MAGIC" BACKGROUND OF PEARL HARBOR
transactions. These traders attempted to buy up all the articles which Japanese firms had on hand, and in this way obtained a monopoly on many materials. The Netherlands Indies' government, fearing the increased prices that would result from such reckless buying, prohibited the transfer of woven and knitted goods, fabricated materials and other articles. Although these restrictions were designated to curb the transactions of the Chinese and other merchants, the Japanese Minister felt that inflation was now an imminent danger in the East Indies, and would cause more trouble to the Dutch themselves than to Japan. [1129]
298. Japan is Urged to Further Retaliation Against the Dutch.
On August 3, 1941 the Japanese Minister in Batavia reported to Tokyo that the Netherlands East Indies was concerned about food for the Dutch residents in Japan, and about the shipment of goods out of Japan which had been contracted and paid for by Netherlands Indies' merchants. Although Tokyo had so far been indecisive concerning these questions, Dutch firms nevertheless placed considerable reliance on the influence of Mr. Ishizawa.
Believing that Japan's delay was responsible for the issuance of the Netherlands freezing order, Mr. Ishizawa suggested again that Japan retaliate immediately when any actions contrary to her national well‑being were undertaken by the Netherlands Indies. He requested, therefore, on August 3, 1941 that decisions reached by the Foreign Office concerning such action be wired to him without any delay. [1130] Furthermore, if time were wasted while he waited for specific instructions, a general embargo might be imposed by the Dutch with the result that Japan would be prevented from obtaining even those materials which were procurable. Such action on the part of the Dutch would possibly freeze Japanese assets indefinitely. [1131]
Monday, May 25, 2009
Inserting a gene 2.ins.01001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Inserting a gene into gut cells in mice enabled those cells to take over the pancreas’s job, producing insulin after meals, according to unpublished research announced June 18 in San Diego at the Biotechnology Industry Organization International Convention. The work may offer a novel way to treat diabetes.
"This is the first time that we've engineered a tissue that is not the pancreas to manufacture insulin" in animals, says researcher Anthony Cheung, a molecular biologist and cofounder of enGene, a biotechnology company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"It's going to be very beneficial to patients," comments Christopher Rhodes, research director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago, who enGene asked to critique the research. "It's a very promising approach." Cheung says that he and his colleagues hope to begin safety trials in people by 2010.
People with diabetes don't produce enough insulin to properly control their blood sugar. Often, the pancreatic cells that produce the insulin have become damaged, either from attack by the immune system or from chronic overtaxing because of poor diet.
"This is the first time that we've engineered a tissue that is not the pancreas to manufacture insulin" in animals, says researcher Anthony Cheung, a molecular biologist and cofounder of enGene, a biotechnology company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"It's going to be very beneficial to patients," comments Christopher Rhodes, research director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago, who enGene asked to critique the research. "It's a very promising approach." Cheung says that he and his colleagues hope to begin safety trials in people by 2010.
People with diabetes don't produce enough insulin to properly control their blood sugar. Often, the pancreatic cells that produce the insulin have become damaged, either from attack by the immune system or from chronic overtaxing because of poor diet.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
insightful 3.ins.0001002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
From CT, PET and MRI to the original X, a vast alphabetical arsenal of tools tells doctors what is going on inside the body. But despite their successes, these tools often fail to detect the subtle changes that signal the imminent onset of illness. Mischief at the molecular level often evades doctors’ current imaging and detection abilities. So for sensing such changes, biomedical scientists are taking a tip from chemists. Using a method known as Raman spectroscopy, medical detectives are moving ever closer to exploiting the power of light to improve disease detection.
Long used in labs, spectroscopy employs light and other types of electromagnetic radiation to analyze matter. The various spectroscopic techniques reveal a molecule’s unique chemical fingerprint by measuring the wavelengths of light that the molecule absorbs or emits, or by tracking how radiation scatters after interacting with a molecule. For 30 years, scientists have been eager to harness the power of Raman spectroscopy, a type of scattering spectroscopy, to image the body at the level of individual molecules. The method holds promise for pinpointing the beginnings of dental cavities and tumors. And it could even help forensic investigators nab killers sooner by lifting latent fingerprints from corpses.
A variety of researchers, from dentists and doctors to chemists, now report some of the first successes using Raman spectroscopy to probe chemicals and minerals within and on living — and dead — bodies. “Raman spectroscopy is a very powerful tool,” says Cristina Zavaleta, a molecular imaging radiologist at Stanford University. But, she adds, the technique still needs some time to develop.
In recent years, scientists have rapidly overcome many of the hitches holding up the widespread use of Raman-based instruments. That progress leads many to speculate that within a few years doctors and dentists could be wheeling new, Raman-based tools into the examining room, or detectives could even be driving them to the scene of a murder.
Imaging humans’ insides
In Raman spectroscopy, scientists shoot a laser light at a target molecule and measure how the wavelengths of scattered light, in the form of photons, coming off the target compare with the laser’s original wavelength. Only one in 10 million of the photons hitting the target shows an increase or decrease in wavelength. Detecting these rare photons is the challenge — and ultimately the payoff — for scientists seeking to harness the Raman effect for clinical applications.
The wavelength change is called the Raman effect in honor of Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who first showed in the 1920s that measuring the changes in wavelengths of scattered photons can help scientists identify a compound’s molecular makeup. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1930 for his work. Currently, geologists, chemists and archaeologists use the technique to study minerals in the soil, identify new materials and determine the pigments in ancient paintings, manuscripts and other artifacts.
“At this point, Raman spectroscopy is good for surface scans,” says David Batchelder, a Raman researcher from the University of Leeds in England. Unlike X-rays and CT scans, existing Raman tools have yet to let doctors look inside the body. “To penetrate deep into tissues,” Batchelder says, “the equipment has to be very good.”
But Stanford University researchers, including Zavaleta, are on track to engineer inward-probing Raman tools. The key, the scientists discovered, is in using nanoparticles. By wrapping cancer antibodies around gold nanoparticles, the team used Raman spectroscopy to detect tumors in a living mouse.
Zavaleta and colleagues injected the nanoparticles into the mouse. Each specific antibody attached to a specific type of tumor cell. When the researchers shone laser light across the animal’s body, the cells with attached antibody-coated nanoparticles showed a change in wavelength compared with the laser.
Signals coming from the antibodies are very weak, Zavaleta says. But the gold in the nanoparticles boosts the signal because the laser excites the gold cores and the metal actually shows an intensity increase in its surrounding electric fields. The Stanford team scanned the mouse’s body for the excited electric fields and pinpointed the locations of the nanoparticles using a Raman microscope.
The microscope looks like a standard optical microscope. But researchers added the laser and a sensitive detector to the instrument to read the spectral fingerprints of the nanoparticles and then compute where in the body there were excited electric fields and changes in photons’ wavelengths. Ultimately, the team’s device formed an image of the mouse’s internal tumors.
And, because the injected nanoparticles attached to different tumor types, the scientists were able, in one scan, to identify where different cancer cells were in the mouse’s body. That single scan for many types of cancer is the novel aspect of this research, Zavaleta says. She and her colleagues reported their progress in the April 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Aside from CT scans and X-rays, doctors are using fluorescence imaging with quantum dots to take a peek at the finer details of the human body. But the Raman technique, Zavaleta says, could exceed the capabilities of quantum dots. Doctors would need to inject only one one-thousandth the number of nanoparticles required for imaging using quantum dots. Showing that scientists can image living subjects with fewer nanoparticles has never been done successfully before, the Stanford radiologist says.
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TESTING TEETHDental researchers shine laser light on an extracted tooth. A Raman spectrometer (not shown) will measure scattered photons bouncing off the tooth and read the spectral fingerprint of the tooth¹s minerals to detect signs of damage.Choo-Smith
Oncologists could eventually use Raman spectroscopy during surgery to scan diseased tissue. Injecting the new nanoparticles or a variation of them into the body during an operation would show surgeons where the tiniest abnormal cells are just beginning to form. The surgeon could remove these developing cancer cells and perhaps prevent future growth and spread of the tumor, Zavaleta says.
Raman spectroscopy could also replace visual checks for tumors and diseases like cervical cancer. “In Pap smears doctors just look for cancer cells,” says Batchelder, “but certain types of tumors are hard to identify. Raman technology could pick out the particular molecular processes related with this type or a particular type of tumor, making it easier to catch.”
The developing technique, though, will never completely replace PET scans, MRI, ultrasound and other imaging methods, Zavaleta says. Each technique brings its own advantages to figuring out what’s going on inside the body. Yet some doctors are trying to rid their offices of X-ray machines, at least the doctors that poke at people’s teeth.
No drilling for the dentist
In addition to ridding the body of cancer cells, Raman spectroscopy may rid dentists of their drills.
No one likes having cavities filled. So, to avoid putting patients “under the drill,” Lin-P’ing Choo-Smith and her colleagues at the National Research Council Canada’s Institute for Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg are studying how to use Raman spectroscopy to spot cavities much sooner than currently possible.
Working with extracted teeth, the Canadian dental researchers have detected tiny cavities by using Raman spectroscopy to search for slight decreases in calcium hydroxyapatite, the dominant mineral component of teeth. The team presented its latest work at a meeting in June sponsored by the European Organisation for Caries Research and then discussed it again in July at a conference of the International Association for Dental Research.
Cavities, which often result from dental caries, are spots on the tooth where minerals have leached out. Bacteria in plaque play a key role in cavity formation by producing acids that leach the minerals. With less minerals in the tooth structure, the tooth begins to dissolve and can rot.
Dentists usually use X-rays and dental probes — the metal picks that can scratch at the teeth — to detect cavities. But with these tools, dentists can detect only major damage to the tooth and cavities as big as a millimeter in size. And by this stage, Choo-Smith says, the tooth can be in pretty bad shape.
“Using Raman, however, would let dentists detect small changes in mineral levels of the tooth long before a cavity actually became a cavity,” Batchelder says. Dentists could detect precursors to cavities and weak spots with lesions only 100–250 micrometers deep, about the size of an individual grain of sand. The Raman tool might also detect troublesome spots between teeth.
Catching the problem areas at an early stage could eliminate the dentist’s need to drill, Choo-Smith says. Instead patients could self-treat the tiny, trouble areas with fluoride or antimicrobials.
Using spectroscopy coupled with an imaging technique called optical coherence tomography to detect a speck of a cavity might seem like overkill to some patients, says Cecilia Dong, a dentist at the University of Manitoba in Canada and one of Choo-Smith’s collaborators. But the more information dentists have, the more accurate their diagnoses will be. That could mean less pain for patients, she adds.
What’s more, Raman spectroscopy does not use ionizing radiation like X-rays do, so pregnant women and small children could be safely scanned, Dong notes. With no radiation exposure to worry about, dentists could use Raman testing every time a patient comes into the office. Frequent scanning, she says, will truly show dentists and hygienists who is doing their daily brushing and flossing.
But adapting Raman spectroscopy for the dentist’s office, Choo-Smith explains, would require that dentists have a portable Raman-based unit and a miniature wand or probe to use in the mouth. Engineering and manufacturing probes for reading scattering spectroscopy emissions, specifically ones small enough to scan a tooth, is one of the greatest challenges for current Raman spectroscopy researchers.
And, while ever-smaller fiber optic cables and, in medicine, nanoparticles may help scientists add Raman spectroscopy to their disease-detecting arsenal, the development work is far from over. Still, each round of probe design and research yields clearer results. Within the next year and a half, Choo-Smith expects to take prototype probes into dentists’ clinics for testing. “I think it will still be another three to five years before they will have a product to wheel into their examining rooms,” she says.
Lifting latent prints
From inside the body to inside the mouth, Raman spectroscopy shows promise for detecting the molecular fingerprints of disease. But it also could prove useful for identifying real fingerprints — such as the prints a killer leaves on a victim’s body.
“Prints are really hard to lift from corpses,” says Linda Lewis, a chemist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “Our goal, though, is to detect fingerprints on surfaces where they are not traditionally detected.”
Lewis is developing a device based on Raman spectroscopy that would enable detectives to trace the chemical signatures of certain residues left by human hands — on corpses or even hard-to-analyze evidence. Working with researchers at ChemImage in Pittsburgh, Pa., and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., Lewis is using silver-coated nanowires, similar to Zavaleta’s gold nanoparticles, to mark a killer’s prints, or at least, right now, human prints left on dead animal skin.
The nanowires target specific fingerprint components — such as eccrine, a watery substance that comes out of the pads of human fingers and is not well detected using current forensic methods — that give off Raman scattering emissions. “The most active signal we get right now is actually from urea,” she says.
In theory, Lewis says, detectives would spray the silver-coated nanowires onto a corpse in the field and then use a Raman microscope-laser device to scan the body. The nanowires would detect particular molecules in urea, eccrine and possibly other substances. Passing the laser over the body would trigger the silver coating on the nanowires to amplify the signals emanating from the laser’s scattered photons by changing the electric field. Using the microscope, which would register the chemical spectrum and locate the signals, the investigators could isolate a killer’s fingerprint.
Lewis says analyzing the Raman spectroscopy scans is similar to looking at the individual pixels from a picture. Not every pixel has high peaks of light on it. Similarly, not everything gives off a Raman scattering signal. When the pixels are put together, though, the image appears in a matrix of light and dark spots. On the skin, the scattering signals from the 1-by-1-inch laser-light blocks can come together to show a fingerprint, like the pixels show the image, she says. And, once the Raman tool reveals the location of the left-behind molecules, detectives could collect the print for further analysis, just as they do now from hard surfaces.
Lewis and her colleagues are currently writing up their early results on the spectroscopy device for submission to the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Her team next needs to look for prints on actual decaying bodies instead of preserved pig and human skin, she says. Scanning for prints will help her team design a Raman spectroscopy device that could detect killer’s prints left on bodies found 24 to 48 hours after death.
“We need to see if the prints decompose as the body does or if heat or other factors affect the signals we can get from the prints,” she says.
And, although the Raman spectroscopy print identification tool is still in its testing phase, Lewis says the team wants to have something ready to go in about two years.
But corpses are not the only crime scene evidence detectives could scan for the signatures of fingerprints. Investigators could also do Raman-based analyses on explosive residues from terrorist attacks or even on heavily contaminated drug evidence. “Prints are hard to lift from these places too, and we want the device to work on all tough surfaces,” Lewis says. “My far out vision, probably in 10 years, though, is to scan live skin. That would identify abuse criminals.”
But creating a forensics Raman tool for widespread use means engineering nanowires more efficiently and at a lower cost. Researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory can make small quantities of nanowires, with a lot of effort, Lewis says. “The challenge is making large batches of the silver nanowires” more quickly, she says.
Medical applications for Raman spectroscopy, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Batchelder notes, face similar delays. Don’t expect to see Raman tools in a dentist’s or doctor’s office tomorrow, he says, adding that while he has seen technology improve immensely in the past 10 years, each biomedical application for Raman-based tools has had its holdups.
For medical researchers, probe design is a struggle. No commercial companies are currently invested in developing the probes, even though there is a major market for them, dental researcher Choo-Smith says. Researchers are basically going it alone, trying to build something that will bring the sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy to the examining and operating rooms. Still, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire scientists and doctors are optimistic, and while they recognize the obstacles, most are confident that soon they will be able to add an “R” for Raman spectroscopy to the alphabetical arsenal they use to explore the human body and catch criminals.
Long used in labs, spectroscopy employs light and other types of electromagnetic radiation to analyze matter. The various spectroscopic techniques reveal a molecule’s unique chemical fingerprint by measuring the wavelengths of light that the molecule absorbs or emits, or by tracking how radiation scatters after interacting with a molecule. For 30 years, scientists have been eager to harness the power of Raman spectroscopy, a type of scattering spectroscopy, to image the body at the level of individual molecules. The method holds promise for pinpointing the beginnings of dental cavities and tumors. And it could even help forensic investigators nab killers sooner by lifting latent fingerprints from corpses.
A variety of researchers, from dentists and doctors to chemists, now report some of the first successes using Raman spectroscopy to probe chemicals and minerals within and on living — and dead — bodies. “Raman spectroscopy is a very powerful tool,” says Cristina Zavaleta, a molecular imaging radiologist at Stanford University. But, she adds, the technique still needs some time to develop.
In recent years, scientists have rapidly overcome many of the hitches holding up the widespread use of Raman-based instruments. That progress leads many to speculate that within a few years doctors and dentists could be wheeling new, Raman-based tools into the examining room, or detectives could even be driving them to the scene of a murder.
Imaging humans’ insides
In Raman spectroscopy, scientists shoot a laser light at a target molecule and measure how the wavelengths of scattered light, in the form of photons, coming off the target compare with the laser’s original wavelength. Only one in 10 million of the photons hitting the target shows an increase or decrease in wavelength. Detecting these rare photons is the challenge — and ultimately the payoff — for scientists seeking to harness the Raman effect for clinical applications.
The wavelength change is called the Raman effect in honor of Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, who first showed in the 1920s that measuring the changes in wavelengths of scattered photons can help scientists identify a compound’s molecular makeup. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1930 for his work. Currently, geologists, chemists and archaeologists use the technique to study minerals in the soil, identify new materials and determine the pigments in ancient paintings, manuscripts and other artifacts.
“At this point, Raman spectroscopy is good for surface scans,” says David Batchelder, a Raman researcher from the University of Leeds in England. Unlike X-rays and CT scans, existing Raman tools have yet to let doctors look inside the body. “To penetrate deep into tissues,” Batchelder says, “the equipment has to be very good.”
But Stanford University researchers, including Zavaleta, are on track to engineer inward-probing Raman tools. The key, the scientists discovered, is in using nanoparticles. By wrapping cancer antibodies around gold nanoparticles, the team used Raman spectroscopy to detect tumors in a living mouse.
Zavaleta and colleagues injected the nanoparticles into the mouse. Each specific antibody attached to a specific type of tumor cell. When the researchers shone laser light across the animal’s body, the cells with attached antibody-coated nanoparticles showed a change in wavelength compared with the laser.
Signals coming from the antibodies are very weak, Zavaleta says. But the gold in the nanoparticles boosts the signal because the laser excites the gold cores and the metal actually shows an intensity increase in its surrounding electric fields. The Stanford team scanned the mouse’s body for the excited electric fields and pinpointed the locations of the nanoparticles using a Raman microscope.
The microscope looks like a standard optical microscope. But researchers added the laser and a sensitive detector to the instrument to read the spectral fingerprints of the nanoparticles and then compute where in the body there were excited electric fields and changes in photons’ wavelengths. Ultimately, the team’s device formed an image of the mouse’s internal tumors.
And, because the injected nanoparticles attached to different tumor types, the scientists were able, in one scan, to identify where different cancer cells were in the mouse’s body. That single scan for many types of cancer is the novel aspect of this research, Zavaleta says. She and her colleagues reported their progress in the April 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Aside from CT scans and X-rays, doctors are using fluorescence imaging with quantum dots to take a peek at the finer details of the human body. But the Raman technique, Zavaleta says, could exceed the capabilities of quantum dots. Doctors would need to inject only one one-thousandth the number of nanoparticles required for imaging using quantum dots. Showing that scientists can image living subjects with fewer nanoparticles has never been done successfully before, the Stanford radiologist says.
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Enlargemagnify
TESTING TEETHDental researchers shine laser light on an extracted tooth. A Raman spectrometer (not shown) will measure scattered photons bouncing off the tooth and read the spectral fingerprint of the tooth¹s minerals to detect signs of damage.Choo-Smith
Oncologists could eventually use Raman spectroscopy during surgery to scan diseased tissue. Injecting the new nanoparticles or a variation of them into the body during an operation would show surgeons where the tiniest abnormal cells are just beginning to form. The surgeon could remove these developing cancer cells and perhaps prevent future growth and spread of the tumor, Zavaleta says.
Raman spectroscopy could also replace visual checks for tumors and diseases like cervical cancer. “In Pap smears doctors just look for cancer cells,” says Batchelder, “but certain types of tumors are hard to identify. Raman technology could pick out the particular molecular processes related with this type or a particular type of tumor, making it easier to catch.”
The developing technique, though, will never completely replace PET scans, MRI, ultrasound and other imaging methods, Zavaleta says. Each technique brings its own advantages to figuring out what’s going on inside the body. Yet some doctors are trying to rid their offices of X-ray machines, at least the doctors that poke at people’s teeth.
No drilling for the dentist
In addition to ridding the body of cancer cells, Raman spectroscopy may rid dentists of their drills.
No one likes having cavities filled. So, to avoid putting patients “under the drill,” Lin-P’ing Choo-Smith and her colleagues at the National Research Council Canada’s Institute for Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg are studying how to use Raman spectroscopy to spot cavities much sooner than currently possible.
Working with extracted teeth, the Canadian dental researchers have detected tiny cavities by using Raman spectroscopy to search for slight decreases in calcium hydroxyapatite, the dominant mineral component of teeth. The team presented its latest work at a meeting in June sponsored by the European Organisation for Caries Research and then discussed it again in July at a conference of the International Association for Dental Research.
Cavities, which often result from dental caries, are spots on the tooth where minerals have leached out. Bacteria in plaque play a key role in cavity formation by producing acids that leach the minerals. With less minerals in the tooth structure, the tooth begins to dissolve and can rot.
Dentists usually use X-rays and dental probes — the metal picks that can scratch at the teeth — to detect cavities. But with these tools, dentists can detect only major damage to the tooth and cavities as big as a millimeter in size. And by this stage, Choo-Smith says, the tooth can be in pretty bad shape.
“Using Raman, however, would let dentists detect small changes in mineral levels of the tooth long before a cavity actually became a cavity,” Batchelder says. Dentists could detect precursors to cavities and weak spots with lesions only 100–250 micrometers deep, about the size of an individual grain of sand. The Raman tool might also detect troublesome spots between teeth.
Catching the problem areas at an early stage could eliminate the dentist’s need to drill, Choo-Smith says. Instead patients could self-treat the tiny, trouble areas with fluoride or antimicrobials.
Using spectroscopy coupled with an imaging technique called optical coherence tomography to detect a speck of a cavity might seem like overkill to some patients, says Cecilia Dong, a dentist at the University of Manitoba in Canada and one of Choo-Smith’s collaborators. But the more information dentists have, the more accurate their diagnoses will be. That could mean less pain for patients, she adds.
What’s more, Raman spectroscopy does not use ionizing radiation like X-rays do, so pregnant women and small children could be safely scanned, Dong notes. With no radiation exposure to worry about, dentists could use Raman testing every time a patient comes into the office. Frequent scanning, she says, will truly show dentists and hygienists who is doing their daily brushing and flossing.
But adapting Raman spectroscopy for the dentist’s office, Choo-Smith explains, would require that dentists have a portable Raman-based unit and a miniature wand or probe to use in the mouth. Engineering and manufacturing probes for reading scattering spectroscopy emissions, specifically ones small enough to scan a tooth, is one of the greatest challenges for current Raman spectroscopy researchers.
And, while ever-smaller fiber optic cables and, in medicine, nanoparticles may help scientists add Raman spectroscopy to their disease-detecting arsenal, the development work is far from over. Still, each round of probe design and research yields clearer results. Within the next year and a half, Choo-Smith expects to take prototype probes into dentists’ clinics for testing. “I think it will still be another three to five years before they will have a product to wheel into their examining rooms,” she says.
Lifting latent prints
From inside the body to inside the mouth, Raman spectroscopy shows promise for detecting the molecular fingerprints of disease. But it also could prove useful for identifying real fingerprints — such as the prints a killer leaves on a victim’s body.
“Prints are really hard to lift from corpses,” says Linda Lewis, a chemist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “Our goal, though, is to detect fingerprints on surfaces where they are not traditionally detected.”
Lewis is developing a device based on Raman spectroscopy that would enable detectives to trace the chemical signatures of certain residues left by human hands — on corpses or even hard-to-analyze evidence. Working with researchers at ChemImage in Pittsburgh, Pa., and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., Lewis is using silver-coated nanowires, similar to Zavaleta’s gold nanoparticles, to mark a killer’s prints, or at least, right now, human prints left on dead animal skin.
The nanowires target specific fingerprint components — such as eccrine, a watery substance that comes out of the pads of human fingers and is not well detected using current forensic methods — that give off Raman scattering emissions. “The most active signal we get right now is actually from urea,” she says.
In theory, Lewis says, detectives would spray the silver-coated nanowires onto a corpse in the field and then use a Raman microscope-laser device to scan the body. The nanowires would detect particular molecules in urea, eccrine and possibly other substances. Passing the laser over the body would trigger the silver coating on the nanowires to amplify the signals emanating from the laser’s scattered photons by changing the electric field. Using the microscope, which would register the chemical spectrum and locate the signals, the investigators could isolate a killer’s fingerprint.
Lewis says analyzing the Raman spectroscopy scans is similar to looking at the individual pixels from a picture. Not every pixel has high peaks of light on it. Similarly, not everything gives off a Raman scattering signal. When the pixels are put together, though, the image appears in a matrix of light and dark spots. On the skin, the scattering signals from the 1-by-1-inch laser-light blocks can come together to show a fingerprint, like the pixels show the image, she says. And, once the Raman tool reveals the location of the left-behind molecules, detectives could collect the print for further analysis, just as they do now from hard surfaces.
Lewis and her colleagues are currently writing up their early results on the spectroscopy device for submission to the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Her team next needs to look for prints on actual decaying bodies instead of preserved pig and human skin, she says. Scanning for prints will help her team design a Raman spectroscopy device that could detect killer’s prints left on bodies found 24 to 48 hours after death.
“We need to see if the prints decompose as the body does or if heat or other factors affect the signals we can get from the prints,” she says.
And, although the Raman spectroscopy print identification tool is still in its testing phase, Lewis says the team wants to have something ready to go in about two years.
But corpses are not the only crime scene evidence detectives could scan for the signatures of fingerprints. Investigators could also do Raman-based analyses on explosive residues from terrorist attacks or even on heavily contaminated drug evidence. “Prints are hard to lift from these places too, and we want the device to work on all tough surfaces,” Lewis says. “My far out vision, probably in 10 years, though, is to scan live skin. That would identify abuse criminals.”
But creating a forensics Raman tool for widespread use means engineering nanowires more efficiently and at a lower cost. Researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory can make small quantities of nanowires, with a lot of effort, Lewis says. “The challenge is making large batches of the silver nanowires” more quickly, she says.
Medical applications for Raman spectroscopy, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Batchelder notes, face similar delays. Don’t expect to see Raman tools in a dentist’s or doctor’s office tomorrow, he says, adding that while he has seen technology improve immensely in the past 10 years, each biomedical application for Raman-based tools has had its holdups.
For medical researchers, probe design is a struggle. No commercial companies are currently invested in developing the probes, even though there is a major market for them, dental researcher Choo-Smith says. Researchers are basically going it alone, trying to build something that will bring the sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy to the examining and operating rooms. Still, Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire scientists and doctors are optimistic, and while they recognize the obstacles, most are confident that soon they will be able to add an “R” for Raman spectroscopy to the alphabetical arsenal they use to explore the human body and catch criminals.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
loring 6.lor.00.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Stem cells’ unassuming, bloblike appearance makes them hard to identify, but new research offers a way to blow their cover.
The technique can distinguish embryonic stem cells — which are pluripotent, meaning they can become any kind of cell in the body — from “adult” stem cells that reside in people’s organs and have a much more limited repertoire.
Using the new test, Jeanne Loring of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and her colleagues also provide fresh evidence that stem cells made by “reprogramming” a person’s skin cells without ever making or destroying an embryo are truly pluripotent, just like embryonic stem cells.
The findings, reported online August 24 in Nature, suggest that these reprogrammed, embryonic-like stem cells could be used for future stem cell therapies in place of embryonic cells, which are more controversial because they are extracted from embryos.
Scientists have debated whether reprogrammed cells truly have all the abilities of cells taken from embryos.
“You can do a pretty simple test now and discover if it’s pluripotent, and you couldn’t do that before,” Loring says.
To distinguish adult stem cells from pluripotent cells, Loring’s team compared the gene activity of about 150 stem cell samples of various types, including reprogrammed cells, embryonic stem cells and neural stem cells. Out of this comparison popped 299 interacting genes that form what the researchers call a pluripotency network, or PluriNet. Measuring the activity of these genes could reliably distinguish the different kinds of stem cells, the team reports.
“This is an exhaustive documentation of the essential gene expression features of pluripotency and will be a helpful roadmap for scientists working in this hot new area of biomedical research,” says George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
The way scientists have been testing the pluripotency of reprogrammed mouse cells is to add reprogrammed cells to mouse embryos and see whether the cells give rise to every type of body cell in the newborn pups. Such tests are difficult to perform with human cells for ethical reasons.
“People are always arguing about the differentiation potential and therapeutic potential of each of the various stem cells,” says Robb MacLellan, a cardiologist at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. The new test is “going to help and speed up the development of this whole field.”
In 2006, Japanese researchers discovered a set of four genes that when injected into skin cells reprogram those cells into an embryonic-like state. Many of the 299 PluriNet genes encode proteins that are activated by this process, Loring says.
The test also found distinctions among neural stem cells that scientists had thought were the same, MacLellan notes. “There was a lot of divergence in terms of what other people were calling neural stem cells,” he says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Identifying these previously unrecognized subtypes could help scientists better understand the various roles that the cells play in creating new nerve cells for the brain. “This test will help to clarify some of that.” http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
The technique can distinguish embryonic stem cells — which are pluripotent, meaning they can become any kind of cell in the body — from “adult” stem cells that reside in people’s organs and have a much more limited repertoire.
Using the new test, Jeanne Loring of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and her colleagues also provide fresh evidence that stem cells made by “reprogramming” a person’s skin cells without ever making or destroying an embryo are truly pluripotent, just like embryonic stem cells.
The findings, reported online August 24 in Nature, suggest that these reprogrammed, embryonic-like stem cells could be used for future stem cell therapies in place of embryonic cells, which are more controversial because they are extracted from embryos.
Scientists have debated whether reprogrammed cells truly have all the abilities of cells taken from embryos.
“You can do a pretty simple test now and discover if it’s pluripotent, and you couldn’t do that before,” Loring says.
To distinguish adult stem cells from pluripotent cells, Loring’s team compared the gene activity of about 150 stem cell samples of various types, including reprogrammed cells, embryonic stem cells and neural stem cells. Out of this comparison popped 299 interacting genes that form what the researchers call a pluripotency network, or PluriNet. Measuring the activity of these genes could reliably distinguish the different kinds of stem cells, the team reports.
“This is an exhaustive documentation of the essential gene expression features of pluripotency and will be a helpful roadmap for scientists working in this hot new area of biomedical research,” says George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
The way scientists have been testing the pluripotency of reprogrammed mouse cells is to add reprogrammed cells to mouse embryos and see whether the cells give rise to every type of body cell in the newborn pups. Such tests are difficult to perform with human cells for ethical reasons.
“People are always arguing about the differentiation potential and therapeutic potential of each of the various stem cells,” says Robb MacLellan, a cardiologist at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. The new test is “going to help and speed up the development of this whole field.”
In 2006, Japanese researchers discovered a set of four genes that when injected into skin cells reprogram those cells into an embryonic-like state. Many of the 299 PluriNet genes encode proteins that are activated by this process, Loring says.
The test also found distinctions among neural stem cells that scientists had thought were the same, MacLellan notes. “There was a lot of divergence in terms of what other people were calling neural stem cells,” he says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Identifying these previously unrecognized subtypes could help scientists better understand the various roles that the cells play in creating new nerve cells for the brain. “This test will help to clarify some of that.” http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Saturday, May 2, 2009
quakes 1.qua.098 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Clothing divas have fashion week, film enthusiasts have Sundance and for science journalists there’s the New Horizons in Science — a four-day meeting of presentations and field trips that provide an in-depth look at cutting-edge research in fields from genomics to psychology. Sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, the annual conference is being held in Palo Alto, Calif., this year. Here’s a sampling of research discussed on Day One, October 26:
Powerful, if subconscious, biases
Tall men are more likely to run corporations than shorter men, people with good teeth make more money — these are just some manifestations of the biases that shape decision making in our daily lives. While rational thinking is supposed to be a hallmark of being human, from a young age people develop implicit attitudes that cloud their thinking, says psychologist and neuroscientist Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University. “To what extent do they leak into our behavior, unbeknownst to us?” Banaji asks. She has recently been investigating this question using conjoint analysis, a technique that asks a volunteer to choose between two scenarios with several variables, such as living in San Francisco while making $35,000 per year with a strict boss named Jennifer versus living in Detroit while making $40,000 per year with a relaxed boss named Jason. Changing the variables in the questionnaire and running several iterations revealed that the majority of participants “chose” to make $3,400 less, on average, to work under a male boss. Yet when the subjects were asked directly if their supervisor’s gender was important the answer was a resounding “no,” Banaji reports.
Putting emphasis on variables that, consciously at least, we do not think are important, can have serious implications on decision making, says Banaji, citing studies showing how race influences people’s perceptions of how “American” someone is, including current presidential candidates. Can we fight these subconscious biases? “Yes, they are elastic,” says Banaji. But are they plastic? Can we consciously remold our thinking to eliminate these biases? She’s not sure. “That work needs to be done,” she says. Try taking a test at https://implicit.Harvard.edu. —Rachel Ehrenberg
Virus tracking on a chip
Many respiratory infections and diarrheal illnesses are caused by an unknown virus, making them difficult to diagnose and treat.
Joseph DeRisi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco, has developed an identity chip for viruses. The chip contains genetic information for a wide range of known viruses. The scientists can use the chip to screen viral DNA and some RNA in mucus, blood or other samples collected from sick patients — both human and animal. Matching an unknown viral genetic sequence to that of a well-studied virus helps narrow down the identity of the unknown virus. Then the researchers can decode the genetic blueprints of the new virus to learn more about how it causes disease.
DeRisi and his colleagues have already used the chips to track down the cause of a disease that kills parrots. The disease, called proventricular dilation disease or PDD, paralyzes the part of the bird’s digestive system that moves food into the stomach. Food gets stuck and the bird dies of starvation.
A bornavirus related to viruses that cause sad horse disease (also known as Borna disease) is responsible for PDD in parrots, the researchers discovered. Several different bornaviruses infect birds. No one knows where the viruses come from and how they spread to parrots and horses. DeRisi plans to test samples from ducks and other migratory birds to learn whether they may be carrying the viruses.
These viral testing chips are still experimental, but DeRisi hopes to produce them for use in clinical laboratories where they could aid in diagnosing illness and help doctors design better treatment plans for their patients. —Tina Hesman Saey
Quake Ready?
Geologist Tom Brocher has a message for Californians: “Are you ready for this earthquake? Because it’s ready for you.” And he isn’t talking about the San Andreas fault. The Hayward Fault, which also runs through the San Francisco Bay Area, experienced a major quake in 1868, 140 years ago. And it’s due for another big one soon, Brocher said.
The fault has, since 1315, experienced five quakes with magnitudes greater than 6.3. The average number of years between each quake was 138. “It’s not like clockwork, but it’s very constant,” said Brocher, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and chair of the group 1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance.
The fault starts at San Pablo Bay and, running east of San Francisco Bay, stretches south to Freemont. “The Hayward fault is probably the most urbanized fault in North America,” Brocher said, adding that rupture of the fault would break both the Bay Bridge and the BART system. About 2.5 million people live within a stone’s throw of the fault, added Brocher, who is the USGS regional coordinator for Northern California Earthquake Hazards Investigations.
Brocher reported USGS estimates of a 63 percent chance that a magnitude-6.7 or higher quake will hit the Bay Area in the next 30 years, and a 67 percent chance for the Los Angeles area.
Even with work already done to retrofit buildings and infrastructure, Brocher shared estimates that $150 billion in damage could result from just the ground shaking of a big Hayward quake, not including damage from fires or landslides. Reports suggest that ground shaking and damage in 1868 was strongest in and around the cities of San Leandro and Hayward. Also, areas built over landfill, such as the San Francisco financial district, are at risk because landfill material essentially acts like a sand-filled liquid when stirred by a quake, Brocher said. —Kristina Bartlett Brody
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Voices in the car
If Herbie the car could talk, he probably would be less lovable. Robotic voices — like those found on car navigation systems, for example — can trigger strong responses among human users. (Irritation comes to mind.) But Clifford Nass of Stanford University thinks he could engineer these voices to play off people’s dispositions and encourage safer driving.
In a recent study, Nass found that happy drivers get in fewer accidents when a chipper voice talks to them in a vehicle than when a morose voice makes conversation. Unhappy or upset people do better with less-cheery voices.
“Voices in cars manifest more than just content; they manifest emotion,” Nass says. “Upset drivers could benefit from a subdued voice. Happy drivers were screwed up by that subdued voice.”
Software that could detect drowsiness, distraction, emotion and personality of a car’s operator could adjust its voice accordingly, Nass said. It could deliver a male voice for a male driver, or even adjust to imitate its driver’s voice exactly, making it more likeable.
Nass’s studies also reveal that humans may be more willing to cooperate with robots if the machines display paralinguistic skills that more closely mirror human skills. When people disagree with others, those people tend to avoid eye contact and distance themselves from any disapproving statements they deliver. Nass found people are more likely to take advice from a robot when the robot acts in the same way.
“The fact that it didn’t stand right up, and say ‘I disagree with you,’ made people feel better about the robot,” Nass said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The work extends beyond a car criticizing its owner’s driving to any context in which humans interact with robots.
In other affective technology research, Nass has found that male avatars perform better than female avatars on math tests in a virtual world regardless of whether the person actually taking the test is a man or woman, suggesting people play into stereotypes. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG He also mentioned an upcoming study that reveals how the brain multitasks, which psychologists have long called an impossibility. Such multitasking, he says, has changed the way people think and perform in basic psychological tests.
Powerful, if subconscious, biases
Tall men are more likely to run corporations than shorter men, people with good teeth make more money — these are just some manifestations of the biases that shape decision making in our daily lives. While rational thinking is supposed to be a hallmark of being human, from a young age people develop implicit attitudes that cloud their thinking, says psychologist and neuroscientist Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University. “To what extent do they leak into our behavior, unbeknownst to us?” Banaji asks. She has recently been investigating this question using conjoint analysis, a technique that asks a volunteer to choose between two scenarios with several variables, such as living in San Francisco while making $35,000 per year with a strict boss named Jennifer versus living in Detroit while making $40,000 per year with a relaxed boss named Jason. Changing the variables in the questionnaire and running several iterations revealed that the majority of participants “chose” to make $3,400 less, on average, to work under a male boss. Yet when the subjects were asked directly if their supervisor’s gender was important the answer was a resounding “no,” Banaji reports.
Putting emphasis on variables that, consciously at least, we do not think are important, can have serious implications on decision making, says Banaji, citing studies showing how race influences people’s perceptions of how “American” someone is, including current presidential candidates. Can we fight these subconscious biases? “Yes, they are elastic,” says Banaji. But are they plastic? Can we consciously remold our thinking to eliminate these biases? She’s not sure. “That work needs to be done,” she says. Try taking a test at https://implicit.Harvard.edu. —Rachel Ehrenberg
Virus tracking on a chip
Many respiratory infections and diarrheal illnesses are caused by an unknown virus, making them difficult to diagnose and treat.
Joseph DeRisi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, San Francisco, has developed an identity chip for viruses. The chip contains genetic information for a wide range of known viruses. The scientists can use the chip to screen viral DNA and some RNA in mucus, blood or other samples collected from sick patients — both human and animal. Matching an unknown viral genetic sequence to that of a well-studied virus helps narrow down the identity of the unknown virus. Then the researchers can decode the genetic blueprints of the new virus to learn more about how it causes disease.
DeRisi and his colleagues have already used the chips to track down the cause of a disease that kills parrots. The disease, called proventricular dilation disease or PDD, paralyzes the part of the bird’s digestive system that moves food into the stomach. Food gets stuck and the bird dies of starvation.
A bornavirus related to viruses that cause sad horse disease (also known as Borna disease) is responsible for PDD in parrots, the researchers discovered. Several different bornaviruses infect birds. No one knows where the viruses come from and how they spread to parrots and horses. DeRisi plans to test samples from ducks and other migratory birds to learn whether they may be carrying the viruses.
These viral testing chips are still experimental, but DeRisi hopes to produce them for use in clinical laboratories where they could aid in diagnosing illness and help doctors design better treatment plans for their patients. —Tina Hesman Saey
Quake Ready?
Geologist Tom Brocher has a message for Californians: “Are you ready for this earthquake? Because it’s ready for you.” And he isn’t talking about the San Andreas fault. The Hayward Fault, which also runs through the San Francisco Bay Area, experienced a major quake in 1868, 140 years ago. And it’s due for another big one soon, Brocher said.
The fault has, since 1315, experienced five quakes with magnitudes greater than 6.3. The average number of years between each quake was 138. “It’s not like clockwork, but it’s very constant,” said Brocher, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and chair of the group 1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance.
The fault starts at San Pablo Bay and, running east of San Francisco Bay, stretches south to Freemont. “The Hayward fault is probably the most urbanized fault in North America,” Brocher said, adding that rupture of the fault would break both the Bay Bridge and the BART system. About 2.5 million people live within a stone’s throw of the fault, added Brocher, who is the USGS regional coordinator for Northern California Earthquake Hazards Investigations.
Brocher reported USGS estimates of a 63 percent chance that a magnitude-6.7 or higher quake will hit the Bay Area in the next 30 years, and a 67 percent chance for the Los Angeles area.
Even with work already done to retrofit buildings and infrastructure, Brocher shared estimates that $150 billion in damage could result from just the ground shaking of a big Hayward quake, not including damage from fires or landslides. Reports suggest that ground shaking and damage in 1868 was strongest in and around the cities of San Leandro and Hayward. Also, areas built over landfill, such as the San Francisco financial district, are at risk because landfill material essentially acts like a sand-filled liquid when stirred by a quake, Brocher said. —Kristina Bartlett Brody
–
Voices in the car
If Herbie the car could talk, he probably would be less lovable. Robotic voices — like those found on car navigation systems, for example — can trigger strong responses among human users. (Irritation comes to mind.) But Clifford Nass of Stanford University thinks he could engineer these voices to play off people’s dispositions and encourage safer driving.
In a recent study, Nass found that happy drivers get in fewer accidents when a chipper voice talks to them in a vehicle than when a morose voice makes conversation. Unhappy or upset people do better with less-cheery voices.
“Voices in cars manifest more than just content; they manifest emotion,” Nass says. “Upset drivers could benefit from a subdued voice. Happy drivers were screwed up by that subdued voice.”
Software that could detect drowsiness, distraction, emotion and personality of a car’s operator could adjust its voice accordingly, Nass said. It could deliver a male voice for a male driver, or even adjust to imitate its driver’s voice exactly, making it more likeable.
Nass’s studies also reveal that humans may be more willing to cooperate with robots if the machines display paralinguistic skills that more closely mirror human skills. When people disagree with others, those people tend to avoid eye contact and distance themselves from any disapproving statements they deliver. Nass found people are more likely to take advice from a robot when the robot acts in the same way.
“The fact that it didn’t stand right up, and say ‘I disagree with you,’ made people feel better about the robot,” Nass said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The work extends beyond a car criticizing its owner’s driving to any context in which humans interact with robots.
In other affective technology research, Nass has found that male avatars perform better than female avatars on math tests in a virtual world regardless of whether the person actually taking the test is a man or woman, suggesting people play into stereotypes. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG He also mentioned an upcoming study that reveals how the brain multitasks, which psychologists have long called an impossibility. Such multitasking, he says, has changed the way people think and perform in basic psychological tests.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
month 4.mon.9993 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Mothers with no previous history of mental illness face the greatest risk for postpartum psychosis during the first month after childbirth, a new study suggests.
Postpartum depression is a common problem for many women in the days following delivery. But about one in 1,000 new mothers develops postpartum psychosis, a serious mental illness involving delusional thoughts, hallucinations and the inability to distinguish between reality and imagination.
The new study found that first-time mothers who suffer postpartum psychosis faced the highest risk in the first month after delivery, and that the problem can strike women who had no previous history of mental illness.
In the study, published online February 9 in PLoS Medicine, epidemiologist Unnur Valdimarsdóttir of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and colleagues used hospital records to track first-time mothers during the 90 days following childbirth. Of the almost 750,000 women in the study, 892 developed postpartum psychosis, with most cases reported within a month of childbirth. The rapid reduction in hormone levels after childbirth could trigger the psychosis in some women, the authors suggest.
Earlier studies show that schizophrenic women face the greatest risk of psychosis when hormone levels are low. Trauma associated with the pregnancy and birth itself could also contribute to postpartum psychosis, Valdimarsdóttir says.
The study found that about half of the women who developed postpartum psychosis had no previous history of hospitalization for mental illness. “Postpartum psychosis could be the only psychotic episode a woman ever experiences,” says Valdimarsdóttir. “But for a significant number of women, childbirth can set off a recurring psychotic disorder.” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Genetics can also play a role. “Perhaps the hormonal fluctuations trigger psychosis in women who already have a genetic predisposition for developing mental illness,” comments Donna Stewart, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto. “Even women who had never been hospitalized for mental illness could have received outpatient care, or had a family history of psychiatric problems.” http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
The researchers found that the risk of developing psychosis increased for mothers over the age of 35. “This could be because older first-time mothers are more likely to have a problematic pregnancy,” Valdimarsdóttir says. Other factors, such as higher infant birth weight and maternal diabetes, lessened the risk. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Mothers with diabetes tend to have larger babies, says Valdimardóttir, but why maternal diabetes would lessen the risk of postpartum psychosis is not known. “Perhaps it’s because these mothers are more closely monitored throughout their pregnancy,” Valdimarsdóttir suggests. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
Postpartum depression is a common problem for many women in the days following delivery. But about one in 1,000 new mothers develops postpartum psychosis, a serious mental illness involving delusional thoughts, hallucinations and the inability to distinguish between reality and imagination.
The new study found that first-time mothers who suffer postpartum psychosis faced the highest risk in the first month after delivery, and that the problem can strike women who had no previous history of mental illness.
In the study, published online February 9 in PLoS Medicine, epidemiologist Unnur Valdimarsdóttir of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and colleagues used hospital records to track first-time mothers during the 90 days following childbirth. Of the almost 750,000 women in the study, 892 developed postpartum psychosis, with most cases reported within a month of childbirth. The rapid reduction in hormone levels after childbirth could trigger the psychosis in some women, the authors suggest.
Earlier studies show that schizophrenic women face the greatest risk of psychosis when hormone levels are low. Trauma associated with the pregnancy and birth itself could also contribute to postpartum psychosis, Valdimarsdóttir says.
The study found that about half of the women who developed postpartum psychosis had no previous history of hospitalization for mental illness. “Postpartum psychosis could be the only psychotic episode a woman ever experiences,” says Valdimarsdóttir. “But for a significant number of women, childbirth can set off a recurring psychotic disorder.” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Genetics can also play a role. “Perhaps the hormonal fluctuations trigger psychosis in women who already have a genetic predisposition for developing mental illness,” comments Donna Stewart, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto. “Even women who had never been hospitalized for mental illness could have received outpatient care, or had a family history of psychiatric problems.” http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
The researchers found that the risk of developing psychosis increased for mothers over the age of 35. “This could be because older first-time mothers are more likely to have a problematic pregnancy,” Valdimarsdóttir says. Other factors, such as higher infant birth weight and maternal diabetes, lessened the risk. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Mothers with diabetes tend to have larger babies, says Valdimardóttir, but why maternal diabetes would lessen the risk of postpartum psychosis is not known. “Perhaps it’s because these mothers are more closely monitored throughout their pregnancy,” Valdimarsdóttir suggests. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
Saturday, January 10, 2009
urine 2.uri.99919 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Children can eliminate their bodies' loads of agricultural pesticides by eating organically grown products, a 15-day experiment suggests. The finding bolsters the case that people dining on organic food avoid potentially toxic pesticides, but it doesn't directly address whether such foods provide health benefits.
"Organic food is a viable intervention to control pesticide exposure," environmental health specialist Doug Brugge of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston says of the new study. "What you would like, in addition, is evidence that those reductions are associated with health improvements." http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Pesticides known as organophosphates can cause problems in childhood neurological development. In the past decade, the U.S. government has restricted the use of many of these chemicals. However, the organophosphates malathion and chlorpyrifos are still legally used on many conventional crops. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Chensheng (Alex) Lu of Emory University in Atlanta and his collaborators recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle. Before the study, each child, age 3 to 11 years, ate only conventionally grown produce and had no other known exposures to organophosphates. Some of the same researchers had earlier found evidence that switching a child to an organic diet reduces organophosphate concentrations in the body (SN: 2/22/03, p. 120: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030222/bob9.asp).
Lu's team bought organic-food items and gave them to the children's parents. On days 4 through 8 of the study, the families were asked to substitute the organic foods—including fruits and vegetables, fruit juices, cereals, and pastas—for conventionally grown products. The researchers asked parents to use the substitute products to prepare the same meals that each child would normally eat. After day 8, the families resumed using conventional products.
The parents collected two daily urine samples from each child, and the researchers tested the samples for by-products of malathion, chlorpyrifos, and several less-common organophosphates.
Malathion and chlorpyrifos by-products were present in all the children's urine before and after the 5 days of organic eating. During the organic-food period, however, those by-products were undetectable in most of the urine samples, the researchers report in an upcoming Environmental Health Perspectives.
Organic diets might not substantially reduce organophosphate exposure in all children. Some urban homes contain residues of the pesticides left from efforts to battle insect infestations, Brugge says.
Nevertheless, he adds, "in a population that does not have other pesticide exposures, eating organic foods virtually eliminates organophosphate-pesticide burden in the children." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
"Organic food is a viable intervention to control pesticide exposure," environmental health specialist Doug Brugge of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston says of the new study. "What you would like, in addition, is evidence that those reductions are associated with health improvements." http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Pesticides known as organophosphates can cause problems in childhood neurological development. In the past decade, the U.S. government has restricted the use of many of these chemicals. However, the organophosphates malathion and chlorpyrifos are still legally used on many conventional crops. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Chensheng (Alex) Lu of Emory University in Atlanta and his collaborators recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle. Before the study, each child, age 3 to 11 years, ate only conventionally grown produce and had no other known exposures to organophosphates. Some of the same researchers had earlier found evidence that switching a child to an organic diet reduces organophosphate concentrations in the body (SN: 2/22/03, p. 120: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030222/bob9.asp).
Lu's team bought organic-food items and gave them to the children's parents. On days 4 through 8 of the study, the families were asked to substitute the organic foods—including fruits and vegetables, fruit juices, cereals, and pastas—for conventionally grown products. The researchers asked parents to use the substitute products to prepare the same meals that each child would normally eat. After day 8, the families resumed using conventional products.
The parents collected two daily urine samples from each child, and the researchers tested the samples for by-products of malathion, chlorpyrifos, and several less-common organophosphates.
Malathion and chlorpyrifos by-products were present in all the children's urine before and after the 5 days of organic eating. During the organic-food period, however, those by-products were undetectable in most of the urine samples, the researchers report in an upcoming Environmental Health Perspectives.
Organic diets might not substantially reduce organophosphate exposure in all children. Some urban homes contain residues of the pesticides left from efforts to battle insect infestations, Brugge says.
Nevertheless, he adds, "in a population that does not have other pesticide exposures, eating organic foods virtually eliminates organophosphate-pesticide burden in the children." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
joy of 6.joy.0 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . In 1961, the British scientist and physician Alex Comfort wrote a novel (his fifth) called “Come Out to Play,” in which his alter ego, Dr. George Goggins, opens a clinic with his girlfriend to teach patients advanced sexual techniques. There he develops a compound called 3-blindmycin, which has the power to turn people on: “not raise the libido,” Comfort later told a journalist, “but thaw the superego, the part of the mind that says ‘mustn’t.’ ” In a climactic scene, an explosion releases a cloud of 3-blindmycin over Buckingham Palace, leaving throngs of uninhibited Englishmen in its wake. Years afterward, Comfort said he’d always hoped that Peter Sellers would play him if the book were made into a film; for his leading lady, he pictured Sophia Loren.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Hollywood seems not to have been interested in the story. But if someone were to make a bio-pic of Comfort’s own life it might well feature a scene intercutting that aphrodisiacal cloud with images from Comfort’s most famous book, the 1972 best-seller “The Joy of Sex.” That, too, was a kind of explosion, intended to unleash its readers’ sexual potential by counteracting their ignorance and shame. “The Joy of Sex,” which has sold more than twelve million copies worldwide, was an “unanxious account of the full repertoire of human heterosexuality,” according to its author. It was the English answer to Japanese pillow books, illustrated texts designed to show couples where to put what, and was further enhanced by helpful advice: for instance, “Never, never refer to pillow-talk in anger later on (‘I always knew you were a lesbian,’ etc.).” http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com
With its discreet cover and its content divided into Starters, Main Courses, and Sauces & Pickles, the book was loosely modelled on “Joy of Cooking,” the culinary how-to book that had transformed the way its readers thought about food. Comfort wanted to do the same thing with making love—help people gain a sense of proficiency with the subject matter, and ultimately render them capable of “Cordon Bleu sex.” But people had never been ashamed to cook. “The Joy of Sex” was something new. Unbridled eroticism “could well be the major contribution of the Aquarian revolution to human happiness,” Comfort wrote. He cautioned that people who failed to come to terms with an aggressive sexuality were “apt to end up at My Lai or Belsen.”
Comfort’s fellow-Britons were already familiar with his immoderate style of self-expression and his utopian thinking when “The Joy of Sex” appeared. Comfort often aired his “anarcho-pacifist” views on the BBC, and he had published several political polemics, in addition to his novels, books of poetry, and what was at the time the preëminent textbook on gerontology. Comfort was brilliant and multitalented, but there was a certain pat, self-satisfied idealism to much of his nonscientific work. In 1941, George Orwell wrote an eviscerating review of Comfort’s novel “No Such Liberty,” deploring “the argument which is implied all the way through, and sometimes explicitly stated, that there is next to no difference between Britain and Germany, political persecution is as bad in one as in the other, those who fight against the Nazis always go Nazi themselves.” Orwell noted, “If I treat Mr. Comfort’s novel as a tract, I am only doing what he himself has done already.” http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Comfort had a tendency to focus single-mindedly on a given notion or project at the expense of any kind of balance: while he was a student at Highgate School, in London, he became convinced that he could concoct a superior version of gunpowder. He blew off much of his left hand. By the time he was finished with his experiments, his thumb was the only remaining digit. Later in his life, when he was practicing medicine, he said that he found this claw he’d created “very useful for performing uterine inversions.” After he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, his enthusiasms led him to accumulate six degrees, including a doctorate in biochemistry.
Comfort turned his attention to sexual liberation with a similar zeal. He offered readers a creation myth for “The Joy of Sex” on the first page, claiming that the book was based on a manuscript that an anonymous and particularly sexually advanced couple had presented to him in his capacity as a biologist. “I have done little to the original draft apart from expansion to cover more topics,” Comfort wrote. “The authors’ choice of emphases and their light-hearted style have been left alone.” In fact, both the choice of emphases and the lighthearted style were Comfort’s; he wrote every word of “The Joy of Sex,” though his credit on the book says “edited by.” Comfort later claimed that he had made up this randy authorial couple because in England at the time it was frowned upon for physicians to write mass-market books, “an implementation of the principle that doctors don’t advertise—of which I thoroughly approve, by the way,” he remarked to a journalist in 1974. But it was also probably a subterfuge, to protect the feelings of his wife of thirty years, Ruth Harris. For more than a decade, Comfort had been sleeping with Ruth’s best friend, Jane Henderson. (Comfort met both women at Cambridge.) http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com Comfort and Henderson took dozens of Polaroids of their erotic experiments, which they gave to the publisher Mitchell Beazley along with Comfort’s manuscript—originally titled “Doing Sex Properly.” The artists Charles Raymond and Christopher Foss were charged with transforming those photographs into pencil drawings, although the couple they depicted looked nothing like Comfort and Henderson.
If you are a child of the seventies and were raised on “The Joy of Sex,” you are not likely to have forgotten the illustrations. The woman depicted in these drawings is lovely, and, even nearly forty years later, quite chic. Her gentleman friend, however, looks like a werewolf with a hangover. He is heavily bearded; his hair is long, and, it always seemed, a little greasy. His eyelids are usually at half-mast, adding to his feral appearance. In some of the pictures, you can practically smell him. (The smell is unpleasant.)
It isn’t easy watching beauty get pawed by the beast, and our narrator does not help matters. “At a certain level and for all men,” Comfort informs us, “girls, and parts of girls, are at this stimulus level unpeople.” In “The Joy of Sex,” a male is a man, a female is a girl, and a vagina is, to “males generally, slightly scarey: it looks like a castrating wound and bleeds regularly, it swallows the penis and regurgitates it limp, it can probably bite and so on.” Men can get past such fears, of what Freudians called the vagina dentata, but Comfort cautions that “they are the origins of most male hangups including homosexuality.” The penis, by contrast, “has more symbolic importance than any other human organ.” Lest there be any confusion: “Vibrators are no substitute for a penis.” Comfort even enlists his fictional female narrator to argue the point for him. Under the heading “Women (by her for him),” Comfort writes of male genitalia, “It’s less the size than the personality, unpredictable movements, and moods which make up the turn-on (which is why rubber dummies are so sickening).” At times, “The Joy of Sex” has the feel of a penis propaganda pamphlet.
There was not a lot of feminist outcry about the book when it was published, probably because in 1972 there was so much else for feminists to cry about. There was, however, a feminist alternative: the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” The book announced on its original, 1971 jacket that it was “By and for Women,” and with its democratic inclusion of numerous voices it had the vibe of a consciousness-raising group. (In fact, it was the product of one.) “Our Bodies, Ourselves” covered much of the same material as “The Joy of Sex,” just with a different tone. It, too, had illustrations of a hirsute couple having intercourse in a series of positions. Both books said that everybody was bisexual, that sex should be a mutually satisfying, full-body experience, and that the communication of turn-ons could be of great benefit to this enterprise. And both books espoused the (distinctly seventies) notion that sex could be a value-neutral experience, as natural as eating, which undermined the traditional belief that sex ought to be in the service of procreation within the bounds of matrimony. “Our Bodies, Ourselves” added information on health, nutrition, self-defense, childbearing, and a rather more involved section on lesbianism. (“The Joy of Sex” has a drawing of two naked ladies kissing under the heading “Bisexuality,” while “Our Bodies, Ourselves” includes a chapter entitled “In Amerika They Call Us Dykes.”) If “The Joy of Sex” was like “Joy of Cooking”—though in some ways it was closer to Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” what with its strong authorial voice and affection for elaborate undertakings, to which Comfort assigned French names like pattes d’araignée, cuissade, and feuille de rose—“Our Bodies, Ourselves” was like the “Moosewood Cookbook.” http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com Everything in it was healthful, enlightened, nourishing.
Here’s a trick you might try at home sometime: pick almost any recipe in the “Moosewood.” Now add bacon. You will find that the addition of this decidedly unwholesome ingredient makes the food taste much better. “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” likewise, lacked a certain trayf allure. The revised edition of the book—even the original—is a fantastic resource for educating young women (and very sophisticated girls) about their physicality. But as an erotic reference for adults in 2008 it’s a little vegan.
Of course, there are endless alternatives now. If you are young and sassy, for example, you might enjoy “Sex: How to Do Everything,” by two women who call themselves Em & Lo and have a penchant for frisky wordplay. A character in John Updike’s “The Witches of Eastwick” thinks that “marriage is like two people locked up with one lesson to read, over and over, until the words become madness.” If this rings true to you, you might be interested in “The Best-Ever Sex Handbook: Successful Techniques and New Ideas for Long-Term Lovers.” If you are Wiccan, there’s “Wicked Voodoo Sex,” in which the author, Kathleen Charlotte, promises to help you reclaim your “wanga.”
But none of those books have been huge best-sellers or cultural touchstones in the way that “The Joy of Sex” and “Our Bodies, Ourselves” were. Partly, this is because “Joy” and “Our Bodies” were a part of a movement that radically reformed the way the English-speaking world conceives of sexuality. At this point, only on Opposite Day is sex under-publicized in America. And there is also the matter of the World Wide Web. As the puppets in the Broadway musical “Avenue Q” sing, “The Internet is for porn.” Of course, the Internet is for everything, but it’s particularly good for quick answers: When was the Ming period? How do you prepare a truly fluffy frittata? And what is “The Flying Camel”? http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.wordpress.com
Into the mobbed marketplace of how-to books and limitless Googling, Crown is releasing a new edition of “The Joy of Sex” ($29.95). Comfort himself revised his book several times; now Susan Quilliam, a British “relationship psychologist and agony aunt” (as her Web site describes her), has endeavored to modernize the text for a new, post-feminist era. Gone are some of the most outrageous Comfortisms, such as “Don’t get yourself raped,” or his dubious assessment of the rhythm method—“It may well account for the slightly higher incidence of abnormal babies among Catholic users through stale eggs getting fertilized.” Deodorant is no longer “banned absolutely,” as it was by Comfort, and armpit shaving is not referred to as “ignorant vandalism.” Finally, and crucially, rear-entry intercourse is no longer called sex “à la Négresse.” http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.wordpress.com
Quilliam has succeeded in bringing “The Joy of Sex” up to current standards. Instead of opening with a crack about “one-legged ladies,” as Comfort did, Quilliam adds a well-written section on special considerations for disabled readers, which is sensitive without being condescending. The book is still emphatically straight, but Quilliam has given it a gay-positive tone, in sharp contrast to Comfort’s advice that if you might be that way inclined it was better not to experiment too much with a partner of the same sex, lest you let the gay genie out of the bottle. The original drawings have been replaced, with a mixture of modest photographs and impressionistic sketches. The hairiness has been eliminated, and the attractiveness gap between the man and the woman has been bridged. But the people in these pictures do not look as if they were in any kind of sexual ecstasy. Rather, they have the smug smiles of a couple whose 401(k)s have just appreciated. They look as if they were in a Viagra commercial, which is to say that they look like two people who have never, ever had sex.
Once you remove those memorable drawings and Comfort’s batty, phallocentric prose, what you are left with is something that bears little resemblance to the subversive, explosive original. “The Joy of Sex” redux becomes generic—Cook’s Illustrated with boobies. What was revolutionary in 1972 seems obvious now, and to present the material otherwise feels silly and square. It is difficult, for example, to take seriously the claim made by the new “Joy” that anal sex is “one of the last taboos,” when it was listed as fair game in Comfort’s text nearly forty years ago—and appears in both the Kamasutra (of the third century) and the Chinese “Rou Pu Tuan,” from the Ming period (1368-1644; I Googled it). Quilliam hews to Comfort’s basic premise that too much weirdness in sex is just as bad as too little, and the new edition retains Comfort’s assertion that “exclusive obsessions in sex are very like living exclusively on horseradish sauce through allergy to beef; fear of horseradish sauce, however, as indigestible, unnecessary, and immature, is another hangup, namely puritanism.” But, if procreation is no longer the goal of sex, why is one erotic practice more nutritious than the next? Who gets to decide what is horseradish and what is beef?
One is reminded of a line in Comfort’s poem “Notes for My Son,” in which he says, “Remember when you hear them beginning to say Freedom / Look carefully—see who it is.” Comfort’s freethinking did not extend beyond the boundaries of his own inclinations, and he said as much in his text. “We have tried to stay wide open, but it is always difficult to write about things one doesn’t enjoy, and we have left out long discussion of the very specialized sexual attitudes . . . which aren’t really love or even sex in quite our sense of the word.”
Comfort and his wife, Ruth, divorced shortly after “Joy” came out: the unpleasantness of his infidelity seems to have been heightened for Mrs. Comfort when her husband became internationally known as “Dr. Sex.” In 1973, a few months later, Comfort married his mistress and muse, Jane, and the two moved to Santa Barbara so that Comfort could assume a post at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal think tank. The move also gave them closer proximity to the Sandstone, a clothing-optional community of utopian swingers in Topanga Canyon, which was reportedly visited by Timothy Leary, Sammy Davis, Jr., Betty Dodson, and the porn star Marilyn Chambers, and which Comfort and Jane had frequented since 1970. “Often the nude biologist Dr. Alex Comfort, brandishing a cigar, traipsed through the room between the prone bodies with the professional air of a lepidopterist strolling through the fields waving a butterfly net,” Gay Talese wrote in “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.”
But Jane, according to a friend who was interviewed by the journalist Pagan Kennedy, eventually tired of group sex and open marriage. (Sexual fads may come and go, but jealousy is forever.) At the same time, Comfort’s relationship with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions soured, and he became involved in lawsuits with the center over breach of contract. In 1985, Comfort and Henderson returned to England, where he lived the rest of his life, more or less monogamously, in Kent.
Comfort suffered a massive brain hemorrhage in 1991, at the age of seventy-one, and Jane died shortly thereafter. From then until Comfort’s death, in 2000, his son from his first marriage, Nicholas, was Comfort’s caretaker and took over the business of managing “The Joy of Sex.” “He was good about talking about sex in the abstract, but when he had to tell me about the facts of life he was embarrassed,” Nicholas Comfort told a reporter on the occasion of the book’s thirtieth anniversary. “He got it all over with quite quickly and hoped I wouldn’t ask any questions.” ♦
Hollywood seems not to have been interested in the story. But if someone were to make a bio-pic of Comfort’s own life it might well feature a scene intercutting that aphrodisiacal cloud with images from Comfort’s most famous book, the 1972 best-seller “The Joy of Sex.” That, too, was a kind of explosion, intended to unleash its readers’ sexual potential by counteracting their ignorance and shame. “The Joy of Sex,” which has sold more than twelve million copies worldwide, was an “unanxious account of the full repertoire of human heterosexuality,” according to its author. It was the English answer to Japanese pillow books, illustrated texts designed to show couples where to put what, and was further enhanced by helpful advice: for instance, “Never, never refer to pillow-talk in anger later on (‘I always knew you were a lesbian,’ etc.).” http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com
With its discreet cover and its content divided into Starters, Main Courses, and Sauces & Pickles, the book was loosely modelled on “Joy of Cooking,” the culinary how-to book that had transformed the way its readers thought about food. Comfort wanted to do the same thing with making love—help people gain a sense of proficiency with the subject matter, and ultimately render them capable of “Cordon Bleu sex.” But people had never been ashamed to cook. “The Joy of Sex” was something new. Unbridled eroticism “could well be the major contribution of the Aquarian revolution to human happiness,” Comfort wrote. He cautioned that people who failed to come to terms with an aggressive sexuality were “apt to end up at My Lai or Belsen.”
Comfort’s fellow-Britons were already familiar with his immoderate style of self-expression and his utopian thinking when “The Joy of Sex” appeared. Comfort often aired his “anarcho-pacifist” views on the BBC, and he had published several political polemics, in addition to his novels, books of poetry, and what was at the time the preëminent textbook on gerontology. Comfort was brilliant and multitalented, but there was a certain pat, self-satisfied idealism to much of his nonscientific work. In 1941, George Orwell wrote an eviscerating review of Comfort’s novel “No Such Liberty,” deploring “the argument which is implied all the way through, and sometimes explicitly stated, that there is next to no difference between Britain and Germany, political persecution is as bad in one as in the other, those who fight against the Nazis always go Nazi themselves.” Orwell noted, “If I treat Mr. Comfort’s novel as a tract, I am only doing what he himself has done already.” http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Comfort had a tendency to focus single-mindedly on a given notion or project at the expense of any kind of balance: while he was a student at Highgate School, in London, he became convinced that he could concoct a superior version of gunpowder. He blew off much of his left hand. By the time he was finished with his experiments, his thumb was the only remaining digit. Later in his life, when he was practicing medicine, he said that he found this claw he’d created “very useful for performing uterine inversions.” After he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, his enthusiasms led him to accumulate six degrees, including a doctorate in biochemistry.
Comfort turned his attention to sexual liberation with a similar zeal. He offered readers a creation myth for “The Joy of Sex” on the first page, claiming that the book was based on a manuscript that an anonymous and particularly sexually advanced couple had presented to him in his capacity as a biologist. “I have done little to the original draft apart from expansion to cover more topics,” Comfort wrote. “The authors’ choice of emphases and their light-hearted style have been left alone.” In fact, both the choice of emphases and the lighthearted style were Comfort’s; he wrote every word of “The Joy of Sex,” though his credit on the book says “edited by.” Comfort later claimed that he had made up this randy authorial couple because in England at the time it was frowned upon for physicians to write mass-market books, “an implementation of the principle that doctors don’t advertise—of which I thoroughly approve, by the way,” he remarked to a journalist in 1974. But it was also probably a subterfuge, to protect the feelings of his wife of thirty years, Ruth Harris. For more than a decade, Comfort had been sleeping with Ruth’s best friend, Jane Henderson. (Comfort met both women at Cambridge.) http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com Comfort and Henderson took dozens of Polaroids of their erotic experiments, which they gave to the publisher Mitchell Beazley along with Comfort’s manuscript—originally titled “Doing Sex Properly.” The artists Charles Raymond and Christopher Foss were charged with transforming those photographs into pencil drawings, although the couple they depicted looked nothing like Comfort and Henderson.
If you are a child of the seventies and were raised on “The Joy of Sex,” you are not likely to have forgotten the illustrations. The woman depicted in these drawings is lovely, and, even nearly forty years later, quite chic. Her gentleman friend, however, looks like a werewolf with a hangover. He is heavily bearded; his hair is long, and, it always seemed, a little greasy. His eyelids are usually at half-mast, adding to his feral appearance. In some of the pictures, you can practically smell him. (The smell is unpleasant.)
It isn’t easy watching beauty get pawed by the beast, and our narrator does not help matters. “At a certain level and for all men,” Comfort informs us, “girls, and parts of girls, are at this stimulus level unpeople.” In “The Joy of Sex,” a male is a man, a female is a girl, and a vagina is, to “males generally, slightly scarey: it looks like a castrating wound and bleeds regularly, it swallows the penis and regurgitates it limp, it can probably bite and so on.” Men can get past such fears, of what Freudians called the vagina dentata, but Comfort cautions that “they are the origins of most male hangups including homosexuality.” The penis, by contrast, “has more symbolic importance than any other human organ.” Lest there be any confusion: “Vibrators are no substitute for a penis.” Comfort even enlists his fictional female narrator to argue the point for him. Under the heading “Women (by her for him),” Comfort writes of male genitalia, “It’s less the size than the personality, unpredictable movements, and moods which make up the turn-on (which is why rubber dummies are so sickening).” At times, “The Joy of Sex” has the feel of a penis propaganda pamphlet.
There was not a lot of feminist outcry about the book when it was published, probably because in 1972 there was so much else for feminists to cry about. There was, however, a feminist alternative: the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” The book announced on its original, 1971 jacket that it was “By and for Women,” and with its democratic inclusion of numerous voices it had the vibe of a consciousness-raising group. (In fact, it was the product of one.) “Our Bodies, Ourselves” covered much of the same material as “The Joy of Sex,” just with a different tone. It, too, had illustrations of a hirsute couple having intercourse in a series of positions. Both books said that everybody was bisexual, that sex should be a mutually satisfying, full-body experience, and that the communication of turn-ons could be of great benefit to this enterprise. And both books espoused the (distinctly seventies) notion that sex could be a value-neutral experience, as natural as eating, which undermined the traditional belief that sex ought to be in the service of procreation within the bounds of matrimony. “Our Bodies, Ourselves” added information on health, nutrition, self-defense, childbearing, and a rather more involved section on lesbianism. (“The Joy of Sex” has a drawing of two naked ladies kissing under the heading “Bisexuality,” while “Our Bodies, Ourselves” includes a chapter entitled “In Amerika They Call Us Dykes.”) If “The Joy of Sex” was like “Joy of Cooking”—though in some ways it was closer to Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” what with its strong authorial voice and affection for elaborate undertakings, to which Comfort assigned French names like pattes d’araignée, cuissade, and feuille de rose—“Our Bodies, Ourselves” was like the “Moosewood Cookbook.” http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com Everything in it was healthful, enlightened, nourishing.
Here’s a trick you might try at home sometime: pick almost any recipe in the “Moosewood.” Now add bacon. You will find that the addition of this decidedly unwholesome ingredient makes the food taste much better. “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” likewise, lacked a certain trayf allure. The revised edition of the book—even the original—is a fantastic resource for educating young women (and very sophisticated girls) about their physicality. But as an erotic reference for adults in 2008 it’s a little vegan.
Of course, there are endless alternatives now. If you are young and sassy, for example, you might enjoy “Sex: How to Do Everything,” by two women who call themselves Em & Lo and have a penchant for frisky wordplay. A character in John Updike’s “The Witches of Eastwick” thinks that “marriage is like two people locked up with one lesson to read, over and over, until the words become madness.” If this rings true to you, you might be interested in “The Best-Ever Sex Handbook: Successful Techniques and New Ideas for Long-Term Lovers.” If you are Wiccan, there’s “Wicked Voodoo Sex,” in which the author, Kathleen Charlotte, promises to help you reclaim your “wanga.”
But none of those books have been huge best-sellers or cultural touchstones in the way that “The Joy of Sex” and “Our Bodies, Ourselves” were. Partly, this is because “Joy” and “Our Bodies” were a part of a movement that radically reformed the way the English-speaking world conceives of sexuality. At this point, only on Opposite Day is sex under-publicized in America. And there is also the matter of the World Wide Web. As the puppets in the Broadway musical “Avenue Q” sing, “The Internet is for porn.” Of course, the Internet is for everything, but it’s particularly good for quick answers: When was the Ming period? How do you prepare a truly fluffy frittata? And what is “The Flying Camel”? http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.wordpress.com
Into the mobbed marketplace of how-to books and limitless Googling, Crown is releasing a new edition of “The Joy of Sex” ($29.95). Comfort himself revised his book several times; now Susan Quilliam, a British “relationship psychologist and agony aunt” (as her Web site describes her), has endeavored to modernize the text for a new, post-feminist era. Gone are some of the most outrageous Comfortisms, such as “Don’t get yourself raped,” or his dubious assessment of the rhythm method—“It may well account for the slightly higher incidence of abnormal babies among Catholic users through stale eggs getting fertilized.” Deodorant is no longer “banned absolutely,” as it was by Comfort, and armpit shaving is not referred to as “ignorant vandalism.” Finally, and crucially, rear-entry intercourse is no longer called sex “à la Négresse.” http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.wordpress.com
Quilliam has succeeded in bringing “The Joy of Sex” up to current standards. Instead of opening with a crack about “one-legged ladies,” as Comfort did, Quilliam adds a well-written section on special considerations for disabled readers, which is sensitive without being condescending. The book is still emphatically straight, but Quilliam has given it a gay-positive tone, in sharp contrast to Comfort’s advice that if you might be that way inclined it was better not to experiment too much with a partner of the same sex, lest you let the gay genie out of the bottle. The original drawings have been replaced, with a mixture of modest photographs and impressionistic sketches. The hairiness has been eliminated, and the attractiveness gap between the man and the woman has been bridged. But the people in these pictures do not look as if they were in any kind of sexual ecstasy. Rather, they have the smug smiles of a couple whose 401(k)s have just appreciated. They look as if they were in a Viagra commercial, which is to say that they look like two people who have never, ever had sex.
Once you remove those memorable drawings and Comfort’s batty, phallocentric prose, what you are left with is something that bears little resemblance to the subversive, explosive original. “The Joy of Sex” redux becomes generic—Cook’s Illustrated with boobies. What was revolutionary in 1972 seems obvious now, and to present the material otherwise feels silly and square. It is difficult, for example, to take seriously the claim made by the new “Joy” that anal sex is “one of the last taboos,” when it was listed as fair game in Comfort’s text nearly forty years ago—and appears in both the Kamasutra (of the third century) and the Chinese “Rou Pu Tuan,” from the Ming period (1368-1644; I Googled it). Quilliam hews to Comfort’s basic premise that too much weirdness in sex is just as bad as too little, and the new edition retains Comfort’s assertion that “exclusive obsessions in sex are very like living exclusively on horseradish sauce through allergy to beef; fear of horseradish sauce, however, as indigestible, unnecessary, and immature, is another hangup, namely puritanism.” But, if procreation is no longer the goal of sex, why is one erotic practice more nutritious than the next? Who gets to decide what is horseradish and what is beef?
One is reminded of a line in Comfort’s poem “Notes for My Son,” in which he says, “Remember when you hear them beginning to say Freedom / Look carefully—see who it is.” Comfort’s freethinking did not extend beyond the boundaries of his own inclinations, and he said as much in his text. “We have tried to stay wide open, but it is always difficult to write about things one doesn’t enjoy, and we have left out long discussion of the very specialized sexual attitudes . . . which aren’t really love or even sex in quite our sense of the word.”
Comfort and his wife, Ruth, divorced shortly after “Joy” came out: the unpleasantness of his infidelity seems to have been heightened for Mrs. Comfort when her husband became internationally known as “Dr. Sex.” In 1973, a few months later, Comfort married his mistress and muse, Jane, and the two moved to Santa Barbara so that Comfort could assume a post at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal think tank. The move also gave them closer proximity to the Sandstone, a clothing-optional community of utopian swingers in Topanga Canyon, which was reportedly visited by Timothy Leary, Sammy Davis, Jr., Betty Dodson, and the porn star Marilyn Chambers, and which Comfort and Jane had frequented since 1970. “Often the nude biologist Dr. Alex Comfort, brandishing a cigar, traipsed through the room between the prone bodies with the professional air of a lepidopterist strolling through the fields waving a butterfly net,” Gay Talese wrote in “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.”
But Jane, according to a friend who was interviewed by the journalist Pagan Kennedy, eventually tired of group sex and open marriage. (Sexual fads may come and go, but jealousy is forever.) At the same time, Comfort’s relationship with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions soured, and he became involved in lawsuits with the center over breach of contract. In 1985, Comfort and Henderson returned to England, where he lived the rest of his life, more or less monogamously, in Kent.
Comfort suffered a massive brain hemorrhage in 1991, at the age of seventy-one, and Jane died shortly thereafter. From then until Comfort’s death, in 2000, his son from his first marriage, Nicholas, was Comfort’s caretaker and took over the business of managing “The Joy of Sex.” “He was good about talking about sex in the abstract, but when he had to tell me about the facts of life he was embarrassed,” Nicholas Comfort told a reporter on the occasion of the book’s thirtieth anniversary. “He got it all over with quite quickly and hoped I wouldn’t ask any questions.” ♦
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