To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Y2K movie
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:32:00 -0400

From: research-bpr@philologos.org (Moza)

TV movie to focus on Y2K problem
By DAVID HAYES and FINN BULLERS - Columnist
The Kansas City Star
Date: 10/22/99 22:15

http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/business.pat,business/3773f278.a22,.html

On Jan. 1, 2000, computers malfunction in unexpected ways, causing global
chaos, catapulting the Washington, D.C., Y2K crash team into a nonstop race
to keep the most frightening consequences from happening...

Promos like that one began running this week for "Y2K," a Year 2000 suspense
thriller on NBC. Unable to resist the temptation to exploit Y2K anxiety, NBC
will air the made-for-TV movie on Sunday, Nov. 21, during ratings sweeps.

It has already alarmed some Y2K experts, whose greatest remaining fear is
the potential for public panic in the weeks building up to Jan. 1, 2000.

"It's akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater," said John Castagna,
spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute in Washington, a trade
association of electric utilities that has spent billions fixing year 2000
problems. "It's absolutely the wrong thing to do."

Edison Electric has launched an aggressive letter-writing campaign to NBC
affiliates -- including KSHB-TV Channel 41 in Kansas City -- urging them to
either rethink airing the movie or provide free rebuttal time.
Relax, says NBC.

"If there is a concern, it's only because people haven't seen the movie
yet," said Rosalyn Weinman, the network's executive vice president for
broadcasting, who has seen rough cuts.

"I can assure you, it's a classic thriller. And if people in Y2K worry about
this movie, it's like the transportation authority worried about the movie
'Speed' and what it says about buses."

KSHB-TV's programming director, Dana Boyd, said she wasn't aware of any
controversy and would take the issue up with her boss. And Y2K planners with
the Mid-America Regional Council also plan to discuss what they can do to
ease the potential for panic.

The Warner Bros. studio had earlier rejected a similar Y2K project.
In the NBC movie, actor Ken Olin ("L.A. Doctors") is crackerjack computer
expert Nick Cromwell, who is recruited to work on the government's "Z2"
(think zero-zero) project. And as the minutes tick down, he persuades his
boss to ground all airplanes, just before the Eastern seaboard suffers a
serious power outage.

By using old-fashioned ingenuity, Cromwell saves the day. A happy ending.
"Remember," one NBC spokeswoman says. "We work for General Electric, and
they care very much about how this is perceived."

But the fear, the electric institute's Castagna said, is that "some
audiences will not be able to separate fact and fiction." And without
disclaimers running before the show airs, he envisions a "War of the Worlds"
reaction in which some viewers will make bad decisions based on "bad
television."

The North American Electric Reliability Council has added its own words of
caution.

"We hope NBC will be a good corporate citizen and recognize the dangers
involved in hyping a negative situation that could feed people's concerns,"
spokesman Eugene Gorzelnick said.

Don Meyer, spokesman for the Senate's Y2K committee, doesn't make too much
of the movie, saying viewers are smart enough to separate fiction from fact.
"The movie," he said, "is not likely to blur the lines anymore than the
ripped-from-today's-headlines genre we see on 'Law & Order.' "

John Hall of the American Bankers Association, a group that in the past has
been thin-skinned about Y2K, agreed.

"Of course, we would prefer the movie not be shown, but we're confident that
people will see this as strictly entertainment," he said, "just as they did
with 'Terminator II.' "

via: nhney2k@onelist.com

_________________________
To subscribe to BPR send a message to bpr-list@philologos.org
with the word "subscribe" in the subject. To unsubscribe send a
message to the same address with the word "unsubscribe" in the
subject.

See http://philologos.org/bpr for additional info.

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - High-Fashion Genes
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 16:36:36 -0400

From: "research-bpr" <research-bpr@philologos.org>

From http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/modeleggs23.htm
-
Published Saturday, October 23, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News

High-Fashion Genes
Photographer to stock genetic runway by auctioning models' eggs on Web
BY CAREY GOLDBERG
New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- To the horror and disgust of mainstream infertility
groups, a longtime fashion photographer has begun offering up models as egg
donors to the highest bidders, auctioning their ova via the Internet to
would-be parents willing to pay up to $150,000 in hopes of having a
beautiful child.

``It screams of unethical behavior,'' Sean Tipton of the American Society of
Reproductive Medicine said of the Web site, Rons Angels
(www.ronsangels.com), which was already up on the Web on Friday and is to
officially premiere Monday.

Infertility specialists deplored the Web site as exactly the kind of
``commodification'' of human egg donation that they hope to avoid. Just this
spring, signs of movement in that direction came when a couple advertised
that they would pay $50,000 for an egg from a tall, athletic, top-college
student with high SAT scores.

The photographer, Ron Harris, justifies the egg auction as a natural
outgrowth of the urge humans have to mate with genetically superior people
and produce babies with evolutionary advantages.

``If you could increase the chance of reproducing beautiful children, and
thus giving them an advantage in society, would you?'' he asks on the site.
In an interview Friday, he described the objections to egg auctions as
``politically correct.'' Not all women are the same, he argued, so the
amount they are paid for their eggs ``should be a price that floats based on
perceived value.''

EBay, Playboy and Darwin?

Harris' melding of eugenics, Playboy sensibilities and eBay-type commerce
struck some infertility specialists as the most worrying sign yet of where
the partly unregulated field of ``assisted reproduction'' may be going.
(EBay does not auction eggs, sperm or body parts.)

``It's frightening and horrible,'' said Shelley Smith, director of the Egg
Donor Program, a center in Los Angeles, ``and the worst part for me is to
think there might be something worse still beyond our imagination. It seems
to escalate, and ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly,
this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs.''

She and others said that as far as they knew, Harris' site was legal.
Federal law expressly forbids trafficking in human organs but not in sperm
and eggs, they said. Research by Harris' attorneys reached the same
conclusion.

The site has already received a serious bid of $42,000 from a couple who
found it through a search engine, said Harris, 66. The models receive the
full bid price, and Rons Angels takes a commission of an additional 20
percent.

The bid price includes no medical costs, the site specifies, also saying
that it takes on no medical functions. But it does list scores of
specialists who might possibly be willing to perform the procedure once an
agreement is reached.

Harris said the models could not be interviewed Friday because of an
exclusive agreement with another newspaper until the site is launched
Monday. But each of the eight displayed luminously on the Web site offered
their reasons in print for selling their eggs: They ranged from ``to not be
dependent on a man'' to ``to support her 4-year-old son'' to ``I want to
help others.'' Several were from other countries.

Harris is probably best known as the creator of Aerobicise, a bestselling
1980s exercise video featuring fit models in leotards, and ``The 20 Minute
Workout,'' a television show with similar appeal. He has been a fashion
photographer for 40 years, he said, and has also done some television
directing for Playboy.

The use of donor eggs by infertile couples remains relatively rare.
According to Resolve, the National Infertility Association, about 1,700
babies were born from procedures involving egg donation in 1996. Those
numbers have been growing only slightly since then, experts say.

But the compensation for egg donors is a burning issue these days, one that
is being looked at by the ethics panel of the American Society for
Reproductive Medicine and by Resolve.

Members of both groups said they had recently discussed Harris' Web site,
which has been posted in various forms for about two months, as an example
of the kind of thing that needs to be stopped.

It is routine for egg-donation centers to offer would-be parents an
extensive profile of the egg donor, including photographs and descriptions
of their talents and personalities. Several post donor catalogs online, and
West Coast centers report an overabundance of donors.

But mainstream infertility groups deem it acceptable only to choose an egg
donor based on her traits and then compensate her -- usually between $2,500
and $5,000 -- for her time, inconvenience and discomfort. (Donors receive
hormone shots to hyper-stimulate their ovaries and have a dozen or so eggs
removed with a needle.) The groups tend to frown on anything that seems like
actually trying to buy extra-nice genes -- though the line does seem
blurred.

Ethical guidelines urged

``Basically what it comes down to is we're selling human tissue and
somewhere along the line we've got to bring ethics into it,'' said Karen
Synesiou, director of Egg Donation, a private company in Beverly Hills. ``I
don't know where the line is because I want to balance the needs of the
infertile community vs. society at large, but I think a bidding game crosses
the line.''

Harris responded that it was ``very unfair to put a limit on a girl's
ability to make money.'' Synesiou and others pointed out that in addition to
other concerns, mating with a model might bring tremendous disappointment to
some couples if the genetic dice fell against them and their child turned
out unattractive.

``It's the same as couples who go to the genius sperm banks,'' she said.
``How will the child feel when the child's no genius?''

via: isml@onelist.com

_________________________
To subscribe to BPR send a message to bpr-list@philologos.org
with the word "subscribe" in the subject. To unsubscribe send a
message to the same address with the word "unsubscribe" in the
subject.

See http://philologos.org/bpr for additional info.