<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I presume folks used to die -- more frequently than we do now -- of illnesses other than cancer. </BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, because we died a lot younger, before cancer got to us. Prostrate cancer in men over 70 is phenomenally high, but also -- in most cases -- rather slow acting. We die of something else first. For all of the human-created pathogens and causes of illness we face now, we are clearly very much better off than when we faced only natural pathogens and cause of illness without the benefit of technological means to ward them off.   Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>