Word: downrightness
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...debate gets downright vicious when the subject turns to "chronic Lyme disease," a catch-all term that means different things to different people. Some patient advocates and their medical allies believe the Lyme spirochete tends to persist in the body even after standard antibiotic treatment. This camp generally favors intravenous antibiotic therapy to treat chronic Lyme. On the other hand, some academic researchers and their allies argue that people with chronic Lyme fall into one of two categories: they either have hypersensitive immune systems that have overreacted to an earlier, no longer viable, Lyme infection--in which case antibiotics...
...very big deal, though there's nary a conventional alien (if there is such a thing) to be seen. The result is a thoughtful, honorably conceived film, with all the best intentions in the world, that, alas, is frequently dull and lacking in imagination, and drags to a downright anticlimactic climax...
DIED. THALASSA CRUSO, 88, TV's prickly mother of all flora; in Wellesley, Mass. The British star of the educational series Making Things Grow practiced tough love: she poked, prodded and downright bullied fading philodendrons and pooped polypodies until they stood at attention...
...meantime, the drug has become a magnet for bad press--most of it unwarranted, if not downright false. In February, after the FDA met behind closed doors with officials from Wyeth-Ayerst to iron out details of the follow-up study, critics cried "cover-up"--as if the FDA never granted drug companies private meetings in order to protect trade secrets. In April the Associated Press reported that a 38-year-old, 120-lb. woman had died after taking Redux for just a few days. It turned out that she weighed 220 lbs. and was in fact murdered--a turn...
...management is unhappy because sales in U.S. stores have been flat as a frozen beef patty in the past two years and profit margins are eroding. Some of the 2,750 franchisees are unhappy--some downright testy--because rapid store expansion has cannibalized sales and the company's advertising and promotion, although ubiquitous, have been ineffectual. Most recent case: a deep-discount program called Campaign 55 (the company was founded in 1955), which hasn't been a rousing success...