``Kids First'' was an explicitly defined back-up strategy in case the Clinton ``Health Security'' Act failed (see AAPS News, Jan 1996, and J Med Assoc GA, Apr 1996, pp. 95-97). The Minnesota version, derived from a Children's Defense Fund model, started out as a $1.3 million/year program for poor children and soon became a $1 billion/year mandatory managed (rationed) care program for all.

Clinton's Option 3 has a characteristic fingerprint that has been appearing in state legislation. Certain features that have so far been seen at least in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida, Maryland, or Arizona include:

In Pennsylvania, health-care reform funded under Medicaid seeped in through the Department of Education. Because funds can be used for ``mental health'' services for anyone defined as disabled (perhaps due to failure to achieve the goals of Outcome Based Education), any child can be covered. Parental consent may not be required at all if treatment is classified as ``education'' and may be presumed for almost any type of treatment if not explicitly refused.

One Pennsylvania mother, Mrs. Anita Hoge, discovered that her son was undergoing intrusive psychological tests under this program, in the name of educational assessment. Such tests have been called a ``mental strip search for values and beliefs.'' The results can be recorded as part of a student's permanent record, which could be used to dictate his ``appropriate career path.'' While the ``providers'' desire expansive authority to know all about their subjects, the details of their own activities are veiled in secrecy.

Although some educators may be as well-intentioned as they profess, the computer tools they have at their disposal, with the synergistic authority held by the government ``education'' arm and the government ``health'' arm, provide a tremendously powerful tool for indoctrinating young students.

``Another area of potential development in computer applications is the attitude-changing machine,'' stated the National Education Association in a 1963 report (De Weese Report, Dec 1995).

The direction of desired change is clearly stated by some: ``Every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with allegiance toward...our founding fathers, toward our institutions...[T]he truly well individual is the one who has rejected these things and is what I would call the true international child of the future'' (Dr. Pierce of Harvard University addressing 2000 teachers in Denver, Colorado, 1973, DeWeese Report, vol. 1, #1).

One specific area targeted for attitude change is the Environment. Again utilizing the two-pronged health and education strategy, Physicians for Social Responsibility organized a media event for the Children's Environmental Health Final 1995 Report Card. Children are ``more vulnerable to health hazards in the environment,'' stated a generic press release to which physicians could attach their name. Suggested activities included caroling by children at congressional offices, with a political ditty sung to the tune of a ``well-known holiday song'' such as Jingle Bells.

The agenda to use children as warriors was most eloquently described by Representative Andy Nichols, M.D., a PSR member, at an Environmental Education Curriculum Review Committee in the Arizona legislature, Nov 29, 1995:

``The larger concern is to save the Planet. I'd like to see more environmental warriors out there. And I don't know if you create warriors by telling them some say this and some say that....I can just visualize a boot camp in which we have a little training program for our Marines and say...`We don't like to kill people but that's what you've got to do.' Then...we might have the local peace group come in and say..., `Killing is really bad...and we just want you to hear this point of view'....

``I guess I'm concerned about making available a series of materials to our students which some people would think to be good science,...coupling with that less good science, and saying `let's consider both of these in our curriculum and form our own conclusions.' You'll certainly not create any warriors in that way, you certainly will have lousy Marines, and I think there's a good chance you'll lose the ship of state....[W]e don't present counter theories necessarily to our students as we are going along.''

Organizations, including government, use money as a lever for expanding their influence. As Bismarck recognized, the use of paternalism through government-sponsored social insurance could accomplish far more than brute force in consolidating the Kaiser's power.

It's easiest to sell such benefits for the most vulnerable first. Who wishes to deprive a child of health or education? But who is also most vulnerable to manipulation?

A person who cares for children puts honor, virtue, and truth first. And when it comes to battle, the children go last.

Red China shoots missiles toward Taiwan (and could lob some toward Los Angeles if it chooses), but Bill Clinton vetoed the 1996 Defense Bill with its requirement to deploy a missile-defense system by 2003. He regards as sacrosanct the ABM Treaty that enshrines the immoral Mutual Assured Destruction policy of Robert McNamara and puts all Americans, children and adults, on the front lines of any nuclear conflict. He also fears that an anti-missile defense would keep the Russian Duma from ratifying the START II treaty. This Treaty was belatedly ratified by the U.S. Senate, in a lopsided vote of 87 to 4, 3 years after it was signed by Yeltsin and Bush, who was undeterred by Russia's backing away from mutual inspections and data exchanges on nuclear material (Washington Post 1/21/96).

Meanwhile, according to secret congressional testimony, Russia has finished a new underground command and control center, part of a vast new system for conducting nuclear war with America. The center at Kosvinsky Mountain is said to be designed to resist new U.S. penetrating warheads (Understanding Defense, Jan 1996, 1574 Coburg Rd., Suite 242, Eugene, OR 97401).

General Daniel Graham, one of the nation's foremost advocates of the High Frontier, died on Dec 31, 1995. He at least lived to see the now-vetoed bill pass Congress. And the program does live on, the House of Representatives having rejected an attempt to halt funding altogether.

Around the turn of the century, cities like New York and Chicago had to dispose of thousands of dead horses every day. Manure, of which a horse produces about 45 pounds every day, was a major public health problem, attracting flies and vermin (the Heartland Institute, at http://www.heartland.org).

Back issues of Civil Defense Perspectives can now be accessed through the Internet at:

http://www.oism.org

When two scientists published a report in the Jan. 3 issue of JAMA, suggesting ``a significant risk of cancer in humans treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs,'' Merck and Company and the academic community swung into high gear. Cardiologist James Dalen, M.D., dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, cautioned patients not to stop their gemfibrozil or lovastatin. Extrapolation of findings in rodents to human beings is a ``controversial and uncertain process at best,'' and the rats in question had ingested 312 times the equivalent dose used in humans.

There is evidence that lowering cholesterol levels lowers the risk of heart attacks, at least in high-risk patients, so the drugs are probably of some benefit. However, caution is needed simply because the drugs have been used for less than ten years. Interfering with the body's metabolic machinery might well have unanticipated effects. This is probably of far more concern than an increase in rat cancers after ingestion of megadoses.

But where are Merck and Dr. Dalen when the government bans unquestionably useful compounds, ingested in minuscule quantities with no demonstrable effect on human metabolism, because of the same type of extrapolation from animal studies?

And where are they in the debate over the Delaney Clause, which focuses on animal testing as the determinant of cancer risk? Fortunately for our ability to eat any food whatsoever, federal regulators exempt raw agricultural products. You may continue to drink beer because Congress directed the EPA to reclassify dried hops, which contain concentrated added carcinogens, as a raw product (even though they really are processed). See Modernize Our Food Safety Laws: Delete the Delaney Clause, by the American Council on Science and Health, 1995 Broadway, 2nd Floor, NY, NY 10023-5860.

A truckload of 20,000 smoke detectors has been sitting in the lot of American Shippers since 1983. The cost of waste disposal is $40,000, so there they sit.

Steve Jones of Utah called the Colorado Division of Radiation Control and explained to him that school teachers have to pay $35 for poor quality alpha sources from science supply houses. The knowledgeable ones go to K-Mart and buy a smoke detector for $7. The contents of that truck amount to half a million dollars worth of desperately needed teaching aids. Each detector contains a one microcurie americium source on a small rivet. A shoebox would hold all of the sources in the truck.

Although teaching nuclear physics was just mandated in Utah, the sale of radioactive lantern mantles, used for more than 40 years in cloud chambers, was banned in 1995 by the U.S. government. What good is it to require teaching a subject if all the tools are outlawed and dumped in landfills, Mr. Jones wonders. He is hoping that by some miracle, government officials will allow him to use the smoke detectors.

In its recent annual report on compliance with arms control agreement, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) stated that some former Soviet biological weapons facilities ``may be maintaining the capability to produce biological warfare agents.'' There was also a secret report that flatly accused the Soviet Union of violating the 1972 treaty and continuing this research. In a p. 18 story, reporter R. Jeffrey Smith quoted ACDA Director John Holum as denying that the Administration had attempted to suppress its conclusions about treaty [non]compliance. Later, Smith stated that the public ACDA report had also ``omitted or altered'' references to arms treaty violations by China. Holum denied that the agency's public language had anything to do with legislation that would restrict aid to Russia until it ends work on biological weapons.

Additionally, there is evidence that US aid to Russia for the purpose of destroying nuclear weapons is actually being diverted to weapons production (AIM Report, Sept B 1995).

A report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency stated that ``dual-use facilities for wartime agent production of large quantities of BW agents are found at multiple sites belonging to [the biotechnology consortium] Biopreparat'' (Chemical Weapons Convention Bulletin, Sept 1995).