Word: normalization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this mouse is anything but ordinary. One after another, it knocks off a variety of tasks designed to test a rodent's mental capacities--and almost invariably learns more quickly, remembers what it learns for a longer time and adapts to changes in its environment more flexibly than a normal mouse...
...rounds, they showed signs of fear from just being in the box, having learned that a shock was likely to follow. They learned in similar fashion to be afraid when a bell sounded--a variation on Pavlov's dog experiments. In each case, the Doogies learned faster than normal mice. The same happened with a novel-object test: after becoming familiar with two plastic toys, the Doogies would show special interest when one was replaced; normal mice tended to be equally curious about a familiar object...
...fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy; one day they may be able to treat them in utero. But correcting is one thing, perfecting is another. If doctors can someday tinker with a gene to help children with autism, what's to prevent them from tinkering with other genes to make "normal" children smarter? Technology always adapts to demand; prenatal sex-selection tests designed to weed out inherited diseases that strike one gender or the other--hemophilia, for instance--are being used to help families have the son or daughter they always wanted. Human-growth hormone was intended for children with...
...awareness is going down. An ironic possibility is that we've spent so much time obsessing about cholesterol levels that we've forgotten about blood pressure. That's kind of like throwing baking soda on a grease fire in the kitchen but forgetting to turn off the burner. Under normal circumstances, blood vessels in your body will last about 100 years. The extra wear and tear from high blood pressure makes them brittle before their time. Then cholesterol deposits start to build up over the damaged sections, restricting blood flow even more. The bottom line: high blood pressure...
...seem to have concluded that securities day trader Mark Barton's murderous rampage was due to his financial losses [THE ATLANTA MASSACRE, Aug. 9]. But that's probably as wrong as the assumption that the Internet or rock music compels kids to go gunning. America clearly accepts violence as normal behavior, both in entertainment and as a way to resolve conflict. Don't expect a decline in mass killings until there is lower attendance at bloody ice-hockey games and action movies. GEORGE BOHMFALK Texarkana, Texas...