WORTH NOTING.

* After a decade as the sole distributors of the sterilization pill quinacrine, Stephen Mumford and Elton Kessel are finally being recognized for their efforts to reduce the ballooning growth in world population. The two contraception researchers have been distributing the inexpensive and easy-to-use pill in developing countries where fertility rates are as much as twice that of the United States, maternal mortality rates as much as eight times higher, and infant mortality rates as much as ten times higher.

However, a captious front-page feature in the June 18, 1998, Wall Street Journal seems more interested in discrediting Mumford and Kessel than applauding how much success they've had on a relatively small budget. Headlined "Population Bomb, Two Americans Export Sterilization to the Third World, More than 100,000 Women Undergo Procedure; Cancer Risk Is Feared, Secret Doings in Vietnam," the WSJ story focuses mainly on possible and unsubstantiated side effects of the pill, opposition to its use, and cases of possible abuse by foreign medical personnel. It also makes repeated mention of where the sole supply of quinacrine is located, almost begging sterilization opponents to act.

The United Nations Population Fund said in September that world population will continue to grow by over 80 million a year for at least the next decade.

* The Senate in September sustained President Clinton's second veto of the so-called partial birth abortion ban (see "The `Partial-Birth' Debate in 1998" in the March/April Humanist). By a vote of sixty-four to thirty-six, all senators maintained their previously stated positions on the ban.

* The American Civil Liberties Union has launched the National Freedom Scorecard to reveal the frequency of congressional attacks on the Constitution. Calling it a powerful new tool to help hold politicians accountable, the scorecard (available on the web at score card.aclu.org) lists congressional representatives and their votes on freedom issues such as racial equality, privacy rights, and a women's right to choose.

* The number of Americans without health insurance is rising. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 43 million Americans went without health insurance last year. That's up half a percentage point from 1996. Among those least likely to be insured are young adults aged eighteen to twenty-four, part-time workers, and Hispanics. The Census Bureau also reports that about one in ten children aren't currently covered by health insurance.

* University of Georgia Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson and Washington Times reporter Larry Witham have published more results of their study on the religious beliefs of scientists in the July 23, 1998, issue of Nature (see also Edd Doerr's "Scientists and Religion" in the "Upfront" of the July/August 1997 Humanist). Despite Newsweek's recent pronouncement that science has found God, Larson and Witham report an even lower degree of traditional religious belief among "greater" scientists than studies done by psychologist James Leuba in 1914 and 1933. The most recent research shows belief in a personal deity and personal immortality highest among mathematicians (14.3 percent and 15 percent, respectively) and lowest among biologists (5.6 percent, 7.1 percent), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5 percent, 7.5 percent). Leuba found that belief in a personal deity among greater scientists had dropped from 27.7 percent in 1914 to 15 percent in 1933.

Marian Hetherly is an editor at the Humanist. Mail your submissions--including your name, address, and phone number--to Worth Noting, the Humanist, P.O. Box 1188, Amherst, NY 14226-7188.