Islamabad – The secrecy maintained by the Ministry of Health as it silently submitted to the tobacco industry’s demand for relaxation of deadline for printing of picture-based health warnings on cigarette packs has given out a clear message: ‘While the tobacco industry is honest to its cause, the Ministry of Health is not.’

The industry is vigorously and successfully pursuing its initial demand for grant of a ‘lead time’ of at least three years for printing of graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and outers, and the government is readily and obediently extending one deadline after the other to appease the mighty industry.

After the latest relaxation allowed to the tobacco industry, picture-based warnings will now appear with effect from May 31, 2010, rather than the earlier February 1, 2010 deadline notified through a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO), and the January 2010 deadline announced on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, 2009. As such, the industry has already gained a whole year. If the Ministry’s current trend of empathizing with the industry persists, there is all likelihood of the decision not being implemented at all.

For the third time in less than a year, the tobacco industry has succeeded in buying time from the Ministry of Health on the pretext of their inability to import the machinery and wherewithal required for high-resolution printing of picture-based warnings.

The Ministry of Health grabbed global attention in 2009 when it announced several landmark decisions for tobacco control. The decision to make it mandatory for the tobacco industry to print graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and outers was just one of the measures announced on the occasion of a World No Tobacco Day seminar held on May 31, 2009. At that time, Mir Aijaz Hussain Jakhrani, the then minister for health, had announced January 1, 2010, as the deadline for implementation.

The intervening period was marked by hectic lobbying by the tobacco industry, which barely left any stone unturned to maneuver a delay in implementation of the decision. The deadline was first extended by a month, and now with barely 15 days left for the industry to show compliance with the government’s directive, it has transpired that the deadline has been extended once again — this time, by another five months. The revised SRO has been approved and is currently in the printing pipeline, it is learnt.

This correspondent made numerous attempts to get the comments of Secretary Health Khushnood Lashari, who is familiar with all ongoing developments like the back of his hand, but since he was on an official trip to Punjab with the president, he remained inaccessible. His absence was duly compensated by Director General Health Dr. Rashid Jooma who frankly admitted how “truly disappointing” it is for the Ministry of Health to have allowed a delay of half a year to implementation of pictorial warnings.

Dr. Jooma attributed the delay to legal procedures such as finalisation of the SRO and an analysis of how the new law would impact other existing pieces of legislation. “However, we anticipate that starting from February 2010, you will start seeing pictorial health warnings on some cigarette packs. Tobacco companies using a simple white packing without glossy backgrounds will have these warnings printed by February, while others will follow. I assure you that by May 31, all cigarette packs and outers available in Pakistani markets will have pictorial warnings printed on them,” he stated.

The DG Health further assured that technical oversight will be maintained over the entire process in the days to come. “Once that is done, we will keep a closer eye on all developments,” he said.

Newly-appointed Director General of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Yusuf Khan said: “The industry had requested for more time to import and install the machinery and infrastructure for printing of pictorial health warnings. We had to give them that time.” It is pertinent to mention that the decision for postponement of the deadline was taken in mid-December when the Ministry of Health was headed by Jakhrani and the Tobacco Control Cell by Shaheen Masud.

When ‘The News’ contacted Shaheen Masud, who is now working in the education sector, she said: “When I left charge of the Tobacco Control Cell, the SRO had already been issued and notified. This is very disturbing news for me too. How they could have done this, is beyond my comprehension.”

Speaking on behalf of the civil society, Khurram Hashmi, national coordinator of the Coalition for Tobacco Control (CTC-Pakistan), expressed shock over the development. “The civil society is shocked to learn that the Ministry of Health and the tobacco industry have secretly managed to push back the efforts made during the last one and a half years for introduction of pictorial health warning on cigarette packs. The Ministry even issued an SRO for introducing the warnings; the same is still present on its website and in the gazette.”

Khurram said, “We were on board when all the technical details were drafted for implementation of these warnings. And now, they have not only backed out of their international commitment, but have ironically done so in a secretive manner. This means that implementation will be postponed time and again, and for an unlimited period of time. The step has betrayed the pro-tobacco industry behaviour of the Ministry of Health.”

All eyes are now fixed on the newly-installed Minister for Health Makhdoom Shahabuddin. One can only hope that he will order an end to all clandestine moves being engineered to appease the tobacco industry at the cost of public health. The Ministry of Health’s failure to withstand and frustrate the designs of the tobacco industry is surely not a befitting start to 2010.

Tobacco, a crop under siege as the number of smoking bans in the United States continues to increase, may be turning a new leaf as a possible source of home insulation and biofuel.

At Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, researchers at its Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories have figured out how to tweak the genes in tobacco plants to increase their oil production, which could help spur their use as biofuel.

“Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production,” said study co-author Vyacheslav Andrianov, assistant professor of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College. He added:

We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves…

Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising ‘energy plant’ platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.

The preliminary research has been published online in Plant Biotechnology Journal.

A giant cigarette butt in London’s Trafalgar Square in April 2008 is meant to highlight the scale of England’s largest litter problem and to launch a campaign to stop smokers from dropping their used cigarettes on the streets.

Tobacco, in the form of cigarette butts, is also being studied as a way to better insulate homes.

The London Evening Standard recently reported that the London borough of Harrow is studying innovative technology to recycle the butts into rolls of home insulation. Currently, the butts, about 4,000 of which are dropped in the town center every day, end up in landfills.

Harrow plans to collect them, sterilize them and break them down into insulation “pillows.” It got the idea from recycling company Igloo Environmental, set up by environmental researcher Shaun Grimes, who said he was inspired by seeing birds line nests with cigarette butts.

“When the cigarette ban came in suddenly we were knee deep in the things,” Grimes told the paper. “Our ultimate task is to rid our streets of ugly, toxic cigarette butts and recycle them into useful loft insulation after the removal of all the toxins.”

Reynolds American Inc. said today that it plans to buy Niconovum AB — a company that specializes in products that help people quit smoking — for $44 million.

Reynolds is purchasing all outstanding shares of Niconovum, the companies said. They expect the deal to be completed by year’s end.

Reynolds’ interest in the Swedish company surfaced Nov. 9 from comments made by David Sweanor, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and a tobacco analyst. Sweanor’s estimate of the deal price was just $500,000 off.

Susan Ivey, the chairwoman, president and chief executive of Reynolds, said that Niconovum would operate as a separate company.

Analysts have said they were curious about how Reynolds would potentially use and market cigarette-replacement products in gum, pouch and spray form made by Niconovum.

“Niconovum’s products have great potential in meeting consumer demand and public health objectives,” Ivey said. “This acquisition extends the harm-reduction strategies Reynolds American and its operating companies have been developing over the past several years.”

Ivey said that by adding Niconovum, it would enable Reynolds to “provide adult tobacco consumers with innovative cessation products that have the potential to reduce the risks of diseases and death caused by tobacco use.”

Ivey said that Reynolds intends to provide Niconovum “with the investment capital it needs to focus on product development and the testing required to enter additional markets.”

Niconovum was formed in 2000 by Karl Olov Fagerstrom, who is considered a leading expert on smoking cessation and nicotine dependence. It is managed by many of the individuals who were pivotal in the development of Nicorette, a nicotine-replacement gum.

Reynolds said it plans to retain Niconovum’s management team and keep its headquarters in Helsingborg.

“We believe the technology used in our Zonnic products better meets consumer preferences than other nicotine replacement therapies currently on the market,” said Nils Siegbahn, the president and chief executive of Niconovum.

“With today’s announcement, Niconovum will have access to the capital it needs to expand distribution of Zonnic to additional markets, and accelerate product refinements and new product development.”

Stephen Pope, the chief global-market strategist with Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, said when talk of a deal first surfaced that it made sense as part of tobacco manufacturers’ increased reliance on smokeless products as cigarette demand declines.

Government figures show that fewer than 44 million Americans smoke, down from a peak of 53.5 million in 1983.

Ivey wants to make Reynolds into what she calls “a total tobacco company.” The biggest step that Reynolds has taken in that direction was buying Conwood, a smokeless-tobacco company, for $3.5 billion in April 2006.

Reynolds also has gone national with Camel Snus, a spitless tobacco product, and it has introduced orbs, sticks and filmlike strips for the tongue in test markets.

By Richard Craver
December 2, 2009

RONAN – Rick and Vicki Wheeler recently got their first letter from the Lake County Health Department saying someone had complained that people were still lighting up in their Ronan bar, The Club, despite a statewide smoking ban that took effect on Oct. 1.

Rick Wheeler says they demanded to know who had turned them in – the law entitles them to that, he said.

Then he lit a cigarette while tending bar.

Here on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the Montana Clean Indoor Air Act has run into some hazy skies.

Tribally owned bars and casinos are exempt from the state’s smoking ban. That means the Grey Wolf Peak Casino north of Evaro and the Kwa Taq Nuk Resort in Polson, owned by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, still offer both smoking and nonsmoking casino areas.

But here on the Flathead Reservation, some enrolled tribal members who own liquor licenses also allow smoking in their bars.

“The way I understand it, the state and health department won’t pursue it if we allow it, because they have nowhere to take it,” says Lori Peterson, an enrolled member of the tribes and owner of the Pheasant Lounge in Ronan.

Rick Wheeler’s bar sits a block away, on the other side of Ronan’s Main Street.

“Ninety percent of my customers smoke,” says Wheeler, who is not a tribal member. If he enforces the smoking ban, Wheeler says, virtually all of them will simply cross the street to a bar where they can light up inside, and the business he’s owned for 20 years will go belly-up.

“That’s not right,” he says. “This bar is my retirement – do they want to take that away from me, too? It’s racial discrimination.”

The majority of bars on the Flathead Reservation had either already gone smoke-free or did so on Oct. 1 when the ban on smoking in enclosed public places was extended to those that serve liquor.

Even Peterson pressed a “smoke-free establishment” sign on the window of her door and put away the ashtrays for a week, before learning it was up to her whether she would enforce it.

“We did lose customers” when the Pheasant initially went nonsmoking, Peterson says. “I have nowhere for smokers to go, except into the street or the alley. Most of the other bars have a deck or a beer garden where they can smoke outside.”

Her business hasn’t gone up from pre-Oct. 1 levels since the ashtrays returned to the bar and tables, but it did allow her to recoup the business she had lost.

“It just lets us keep our own customers,” Peterson says. “It’s not like Missoula, where if there was just one bar where you could smoke, it’s where all the smokers would be.”

That’s because Peterson isn’t the only tribal member on the reservation who owns a bar and allows smoking.

Neither is Wheeler the only nontribal member who owns a bar on the reservation but is not enforcing the smoking ban.

He’s just not afraid to admit it.

“The next thing they’ll go after is the obese thing,” Wheeler says. “If you’re 10 pounds overweight they won’t be allowed to serve you anything but water and vegetables in a restaurant. They’ll get it to where they won’t let you eat what you want. This country is turning into a dictatorship.”

Wheeler, 65, says he’s smoked since he was 15 years old. His wife smokes, two of his three bartenders smoke, and the third chews smokeless tobacco – also banned under the Clean Indoor Air Act.

Like Peterson, Wheeler says business isn’t up because he still allows smoking – it just hasn’t gone down. Of the 10 percent of his regulars Wheeler says don’t smoke, only one has quit coming into The Club.

Likewise, Peterson says her nonsmoking patrons have remained loyal since she removed the “smoke-free establishment” sign and replaced it with one that says “smoking allowed.”

“If people want to smoke, they should have that right,” Wheeler says. “It’s their choice. We have rights, too. There are plenty of places for nonsmokers to go.”

One of them is the Second Chance Saloon, which sits next door to the Pheasant Lounge and doesn’t allow smoking. The Second Chance has a deck and fire pit out back where customers who smoke can go outside and stay relatively warm in the winter months.

Owner Rod Smart, who has had the Second Chance for nearly 30 years, says the recession has hurt local bars more than the smoking ban. His friend and next-door competitor, Peterson, agrees.

“It isn’t gaming, it isn’t smoking, it’s the recession,” she says. “We lost Plum Creek, which was a big employer here. People don’t have the money for groceries, gas, lights and heat.”

Still, both Peterson and Wheeler say they know bar owners on the reservation who enforce the smoking ban, and who say their businesses are off as much as $1,000 since their smoking patrons were directed outside every time they want to light up.

“It never should have been passed,” Peterson says of the smoking ban in bars. “The state’s not paying our bills, what gives them the right to step in and tell people how to run their businesses? I think if people aren’t allowed to smoke, the state shouldn’t be allowed to sell cigarettes.”

Wheeler says he invested in high-dollar exhaust systems at The Club.

“You can have it full of smokers, and not see much smoke,” he says. “I do what I can to keep secondhand smoke out of here.”

That, Wheeler says, includes the use of high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters, and he changes the filters each week.

Diana Schwab of the Lake County Tobacco Prevention Program was out of town attending meetings Tuesday and Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. The director of the Lake County Health Department, Emily Colomeda, did not return a phone message Wednesday.

Likewise, Linda Lee, a supervisor with the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program, did not return messages left on her phone Tuesday and Wednesday.

But last week, in a Billings Gazette story about smoking being allowed in the Little Bighorn Casino on the Crow Indian Reservation, Lee told reporter Diane Cochran, “Reservations are sovereign governments. Unless they pass their own similar smoke-free laws, native-owned casinos on reservations have the choice whether to be smoke-free.”

Wheeler maintains he should have the same choice.

“Let them fine me, I’m not going to pay it,” he says. “They can appoint me an attorney and I’ll take them to court. Are they going to come in and fine my customers? Maybe they can fill the jail in Hardin up with smokers.

“This is a smoking establishment,” he continues. “Are they going to push me out of business because of that? I don’t know. Is that what they want? How many more taxpayers do they want to put on the street?”

Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
October 29, 2009

THE National Assembly adopted the Tobacco Products Control Bill with one amendment on Thursday, the last sitting day of the year.

The Bill will now go to the National Council, the House of Review. In a moment of rare agreement between the opposition and the benches of the ruling Swapo Party, Members agreed to a small, but important change of words in Clause 3, which originally stipulated that a member of the umbrella labour movement NUNW, should sit on one of the supervisory boards to be created once the bill is promulgated.

Tsudao Gurirab of the official opposition party CoD proposed that the words should be changed to “a member of organised labour” and thus would avoid the name of a specific labour union.

“For the first the Member talks sense and I agree,” said Deputy Health Minister Petrina Haingura. The House then adopted the amendment and the Tobacco Products Control Bill was passed.

Parliament went into recess about five weeks earlier than planned because MPs wanted to go and campaign for the upcoming elections.

The National Assembly will again convene on February 9 next year, which is also the Day of the Constitution in Namibia. It will then be 20 years since the Constituent Assembly had adopted the final draft of the country’s Constitution in 1990.

By Brigitte Weidlich, 12 October 2009, Allafrica

Ontario and Quebec — Canada’s two largest provinces — have announced that they are suing tobacco companies for a total of $80 billion.

The lawsuits are the latest in an effort by the Canadian government to reduce smoking and recover some of the health care costs associated with smoking.

Hide-And-Seek Cigarettes

Customers can buy cigarettes at Wally’s Smoke Shop in Toronto’s West End, but you wouldn’t know it when you walk through the door, because the cigarettes are behind the counter. A law passed last spring means store manager Susan Pak has to keep them hidden behind a bank of white metal doors.

“We don’t have to show the customer,” Pak says. “See, we’re hiding. Over here.”

The government’s idea is that if people don’t see cigarettes, they won’t be tempted to buy them. According to Pak, that policy has helped her sales drop by as much as 10 percent.

The out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy is just one of the things that make Ontario a tough place to buy and sell cigarettes. Over the past few years, the province has put strict limits on advertising, legislated graphic warning labels on cigarette packages and outlawed smoking everywhere except on the street or at home.

Last week, Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley announced that the government is suing tobacco makers for $50 billion. He pointed to several issues that are in question, including, “What did the tobacco companies know? When did they know it? And what did they tell the people of Ontario about the addictiveness and related effects of tobacco use?”

The Ontario lawsuit draws heavily on secret tobacco company documents released in 1998, when the U.S. government won a $200 billion settlement to recover health care costs. Ontario officials claim that tobacco companies have known since at least 1950 that smoking is addictive and causes disease, and that those facts were deliberately kept secret.

Hypocritical?

Bentley says the province needs the money to pay for smoking-related health costs, which he estimates at $1.6 billion a year. Anti-tobacco campaigners hope the lawsuit will yield even bigger results.

“It will show the industry not to be in the bounds of normal business behavior,” says Michael Perley, director of the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco. “There’s no other industry that produces products that have no safe level of use at all, that kill half their long-term users, all with the manufacturer’s full knowledge. So the revelation of that information then creates a huge climate for further regulation of the industry.”

Canadian tobacco manufacturers have not answered the allegations in the lawsuit, but say the government is being hypocritical. Eric Gagnon, a spokesperson for Imperial Tobacco, said Ontario already collects around a billion dollars every year by taxing cigarettes.

“This is sheer hypocrisy by the government,” Gagnon says. “They’re the ones who are licensing the industry, legislating the industry and collecting billions of dollars of taxes. So for them to turn around and with one hand legislate the industry and collect all the taxes, and on the other hand just to turn around and sue the industry is sheer hypocrisy.”

Some smokers say they think Gagnon has a point.

Carol Bragagnolo huddles in the rain outside her office in downtown Toronto, taking a furtive mid-day smoke break.

“I just ran the treadmill this morning,” she says. “If my trainer knew I was doing this.”

Bragagnolo says she started smoking at 19 and doesn’t think the tobacco companies are to blame.

“I think that smoking starts with the individual,” she explains. “My father smoked inside the house, and so I’ve been growing up with secondhand smoke every day of my life, and I know I’m doing it to myself.”

British Columbia and New Brunswick are also planning to sue, and all but one of Canada’s 10 provinces has passed legislation that would allow them to join in the lawsuit. With the tobacco companies gearing up to fight, it will likely be years before the cases are resolved.

© by Anita Elash Npr

Sidewalk smokers, beware: The D.C. Council might be coming after you.

And people who buy cheap cigars — whether for legal or illegal purposes — you, too, should be on guard.

Three years after the council approved a ban on smoking indoors at bars and restaurants, the council is now considering a proposal to give business owners the right to ban smoking within 25 feet of the front door of an establishment.

The legislation, which also makes it a crime for anyone younger than 18 to possess tobacco, represents another step in the District’s efforts to curb smoking.

“I think it is reasonable to say to a proprietor you can put up no smoking signs if you’ve got a problem with people standing on the sidewalk in front of your establishment,” said council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), a sponsor of the bill.

In addition to Mendelson’s bill, council member Yvette D. Alexander (D-Ward 7) is proposing to ban the sale of single, cheap cigars, which she says are increasingly being used to roll marijuana.

“I am killing two birds with one stone,” Alexander said. “To make them unattainable to young people and, let’s face it, a lot of young people are using them to smoke marijuana.”

At a hearing Tuesday before the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, supporters and opponents of both measures faced off over how far the District should go in controlling tobacco and drug use.

Mendelson, the chairman of the committee, said he wants to discourage young adults from taking up smoking while protecting non-smokers from the effects of secondhand smoke.

Several advocates for health organizations, including the American Lung Association, testified in support of Mendelson’s bill. Altria, the parent company of Richmond-based Philip Morris, also announced its support for the legislation, even though it would be the city’s first effort to allow restrictions on smoking in outdoor public spaces.

“It doesn’t go far enough,” said Bob Summersgill of Smokefree DC. “In California, they don’t allow smoking on beaches and [in] public parks, and I would love to see that here, even though we don’t have that as a goal.”

But Joan Jackson, smoking in front of an office building on Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday, said she thinks the council is “going a little overboard.”

“The business owner, they don’t own the area out here; they shouldn’t be able to say who can smoke out here,” said Jackson, 53. “It’s a public street. . . . I think the government is getting a little too involved.”

Concerns about unnecessary government interference also dominated the discussion on whether to ban many single cigar sales.

Under the legislation, the ban would not apply to the city’s five tobacco shops that sell high-end cigars. Mendelson and Alexander said Tuesday they are also open to exemptions for cigar bars and restaurants.

The bill is aimed at convenience stores and other vendors who sell single cigars for $5 or less, which are associated with “blunts,” the street term for marijuana rolled in cigar paper.

Colin Ganley, a freelance reporter and cigar aficionado, told the committee he worries the proposed ban would unfairly target the city’s poorest residents.

“We have to be somewhat careful not to throw everyone who purchases these products, and may not have the incomes to buy other [cigars], under the bus,” Ganley said.

Alexander countered that few residents in her ward buy cigars for the tobacco. Instead, she said, companies are “targeting disadvantaged young people to promote drug use.”

But Darrell D. Gaston, an ANC commissioner in Ward 8, questioned how the proposed ban would be enforced, noting single cigars are often sold out of ice cream trucks in his neighborhood.

“We must stop putting band-aids on social problems,” Gaston said. “If you want to smoke, you will.”

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 30, 2009

Government’s move to increase to cost of alcohol and tobacco will help save lives, says Minister in the Ministry of Finance Mariano Browne.

Browne defended the increases at the Senate sitting yesterday saying that Government intends to promote healthy living and in effect reduce the amount of money it spends on health care.

He also said this measure would prevent young adults from consuming too much alcohol and tobacco.

“We are acutely aware and we are sensitive to the fact that cheap booze puts it in easier reach of young adults and in some instances children. On this basis alone we consider that the new rates on excise duties on alcoholic beverages and tobacco are indeed long overdue and well justified,” he said.

He said this initiative will steer young smokers and drinkers away from these habits as they tend to be more responsive to price.

“Raising the duties on alcoholic beverages and on cigarettes is justified because the $1.6 billion on tobacco and alcohol tax revenue over the past three years does not even come close to off-setting the staggering public health and safety cost of alcohol and tobacco consumption,” he added.

Browne stressed that alcohol consumption causes a number of diseases to the heart, stomach and liver.

With respect to smoking, Browne said people who stop the habit even well into middle age avoid the risk of lung cancer. He said those who stopped smoking before avoid 90 per cent of the risks related to tobacco consumption.

“It is in fact this Government’s objective to reduce the financial budget of the State for health care treatment of medicinal or medical conditions associated with lifestyle health risks that emanate from alcohol and tobacco consumption,” said Browne.


© September 29th 2009 Trinidadexpress

Q: Plants can nourish and heal, but what are a few of Mother Nature’s truly “Wicked Plants,” such as the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother?
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A: Cows that eat white snakeroot produce the poison milk that likely undid Nancy Hanks Lincoln, leaving behind 9-year-old Abraham, says Amy Stewart in her book of the above title. Milk sickness was so common that Milk Sick Ridge and Milk Sick Cove are still attached to Southern locales where the disease was rampant. Stewart points also to a tree that sheds poison daggers, a glistening red seed that stops the heart, a shrub that causes paralysis and a vine that can strangle — “you don’t want to meet these in a dark alley.”

Other historical wickednesses include the poison hemlock that killed the Greek philosopher Socrates; ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and causes wild hallucinations, perhaps underlying the deranged behavior leading to the Salem witch trials; monkshood, with a toxin so powerful Nazi scientists used it in poison bullets. Even simple corn, when grossly overeaten, can cause the ghastly symptoms of pellagra, a syndrome that may have inspired European myths of vampirism in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”: pale skin that erupted in blisters when exposed to the sun, sleepless nights brought on by dementia, and a morbid appearance just before death.

“Yet without question,” Stewart concludes, “the world’s most wicked plant is tobacco (nicotiana tabacum), responsible for the deaths of 90 million people worldwide.”

Q: When is laughter NOT the “best medicine,” far from it, in fact? Gelotophobes know this one all too well.

A: “Gelotophobia,” from the Greek “gelos” for laughter, means the fear of being laughed at and describes people hypersensitive to others’ negative moods, Constance Holden says in Science magazine. They mistrust smiling faces and are unable to discriminate between friendly and hostile laughter, i.e., between teasing and ridicule. This was no laughing matter in recent school shootings in Germany, in which the perpetrators reportedly had a horror of being mocked. About 10 percent of the population has some degree of gelotophobia, researchers Ilona Papousek and Willibald Ruch said in the journal “Personality and Individual Differences.”

Q: Love might be “blind,” but wouldn’t even blind lovers prefer pairing up with attractive partners?

A: Some do, as discussed by University of Birmingham professor John Hull, who himself went blind, David G. Myers says in “Psychology.” A colleague’s remarks on a woman’s beauty would strongly affect how Hull felt. He found this “deplorable. … What can it matter to me what sighted men think of women … yet I do care, and I do not seem able to throw off this prejudice.”

Overemphasis on looks seems unfair and unenlightened. An analysis of 100 top-grossing films found attractive characters were portrayed as morally superior to unattractive ones. But Hollywood’s modeling doesn’t explain why even babies — judging from their measured “gazing times” — prefer looking at attractive over unattractive faces!

Send questions to strangetrue@cs.com.