Minerva

Cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, whose brands include Marlboro, is trying to clean up its nicotine stained image with a change of corporate name to the healthier sounding Altria. Antismoking campaigners are calling this the tobacco industry's newest smokescreen. They have launched a video depicting the famous Marlboro man undergoing plastic surgery to become a new Marlborough girl who uses her image to peddle cigarettes alongside healthy snacks to kids.

Adolescents who watch more than an hour of television a day are more likely to turn into aggressive adults than those who don't, with boys behaving worse than girls. Young women who watch television for more than two hours a day also do badly. The researchers say the association between television watching and aggression remains intact after potential confounding factors such as childhood neglect, poverty, and mental health disorders are accounted for (Science 2002;295:2468-71).

For people working with families affected by rare disorders or anyone else who might be interested, the charity Contact a Family has produced a CD-Rom version of the CaF Directory. It contains information about over 800 rare disorders, ranging from abdominal extrophies to xeroderma pigmentosum, and it includes details of support groups, …