The reason why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

**** HEALTH NEWS ****

   Middle age no picnic for women  

WASHINGTON, -- Surveys by Washington researchers indicate  
there are good reasons middle-aged women in the United  
States are not as happy as the rest of the population.  
Independent pollsters Pursuant Inc. found that from the  
mid-30s to the mid-50s, U.S. women are stressed out trying  
to meet the needs of aging parents and other family members,  
USA Today reported. Worrying about an elderly relative's  
health and not having enough time for others is likely to  
result in depression, the study said. Of more than 1,100  
women who have at least one living parent, only approxi-  
mately 20 percent indicated they were happy compared to 34  
percent for the U.S. population overall. The poll of women  
aged 35 to 54 was commissioned by the New York Academy of  
Medicine and the National Association of Social Workers.  
Its bleak conclusions are no surprise to social worker Deb  
Rubenstein who counsels "sandwich generation" women in  
Washington. Typically when emergencies with aging parents  
hit, "these women already have their plates 110 percent  
full," Rubenstein told USA Today.   
   
Heart attacks treated too slowly  

BETHESDA, Md., -- Only one in three U.S. hospitals provides  
emergency care to heart attack patients quickly enough to  
meet guidelines for saving lives, a study said Monday. The  
study, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood  
Institute, found even top-performing hospitals do not meet  
American Heart Association and American College of Cardi-  
ology guidelines for care in half of their cases. They  
often do not perform balloon angioplasty within 90 minutes  
of a severe heart attack, USA Today said. Angioplasty is a  
way of reopening clogged arteries by inflating a tiny bal-  
loon at the site of a blockage in a severe heart attack.  
Performing the procedure within 90 minutes can cut a  
patient's risk of dying by 40 percent, studies have shown.  
If every hospital met the guidelines, doctors could save  
about 1,000 lives each year, Yale cardiologist Harlan  
Krumholz says. Eighty percent of people in the United  
States live within an hour's drive of a hospital that  
provides balloon angioplasty.   

Contact lenses check blood sugar  

BALTIMORE, -- A scientist in Baltimore has developed a con-  
tact lens that can provide diabetics with a non-invasive  
way to monitor blood sugar. Instead of using blood, Dr.  
Chris Geddes of the University of Maryland Biotechnology  
Institute has produced contact lenses that change color in  
response to the glucose level in the wearer's tears, KENS-  
TV in San Antonio reports. Tears have a tiny concentration  
of glucose, about 1-10th of that of blood and there's a lag  
time of about 15 minutes before the eye registers the level.  
"We've developed very special molecules that sense glucose  
at very low levels," said Geddes. "We've incorporated these  
inside commercially available contact lenses. The test is  
completely non-invasive and it's continuous." A person wear-  
ing the glucose-sensitive lenses would see a small trans-  
lucent dot on the left side of the visual field. That dot  
would change color, warning the patient of dangerously low  
or high blood sugar levels. Before the lenses can be com-  
mercially available, further testing is needed. The  
Baltimore scientists are also working on contact lenses  
that sense cholesterol levels.  

Most of us want other people's children to behave the way ours should.