Maurice Goddard, the head of the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters from 1955 until 1979, was the godfather of the State Parks system.In 1955, “Goddard took the position and set a goal of a state park within 25 miles of every resident of Pennsylvania. “We took a big map of Pennsylvania and drew circles around Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the Wyoming Valley, and Harrisburg,” he said.”Today we can improve on Goddard’s primitive geographic information system. I created a series of maps for the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation on Goddard’s theme. The first two maps I produced, using data from the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) website, concentrated on population. One showed the largest cites on Pennsylvania and its parks; the other the most populous year 2000 census tracts.
“How Many Pennsylvanians Live Within 25 Miles of a State Park?”
19 May 2011
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Posted by Paul Statt
A Coke and a Smile?
29 March 2011
How can a law improve public health? In 2011, Public Health Law Research is asking “What is the impact of laws addressing consumption and purchase of sugar-sweetened and citric-acid drinks on oral health? ” The study, based at the Appalachian School of Law, is looking at “Mountain Dew Mouth” in Appalachia, the persistently poor teeth among America’s impoverished hillfolk.
Back in 1911, in a courtroom in Chattanooga, it was caffeine, not sugar, that was on trial. According to Murray Carpenter in today’s (March 28, 2011) New York Times,
The trial grabbed headlines for weeks and produced scientific research that holds up to this day — yet generated no federal limits for caffeine in foods and beverages.
Those levels remain virtually unregulated today. As two researchers recently wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association, nonalcoholic energy drinks “might pose just as great a threat to individual and public health and safety” as alcoholic ones, and “more research that can guide actions of regulatory agencies is needed.”
Nobody used the term “energy drink” in 1911, but the drink that was on trial in Chattanooga contained as much caffeine as a modern Red Bull — 80 milligrams per serving.
The drink was Coca-Cola.
It’s an entertaining story, and also, in the end, enlightening if dispiriting to twenty-first century public health law researchers. “Harvey Washington Wiley, the “crusading chemist” who led the Bureau of Chemistry in the United States Department of Agriculture, had brought a lawsuit against the Coca-Cola Company, accusing it of adulterating the drink by adding a harmful ingredient: caffeine.” The Atlanta company hired its own expert to to test people who drank the stuff, taking advantage of the fact that most existing research had served Coke only to lab rats. The result was
a four-week trial dominated by anecdotal, contradictory or sloppy testimony.
“[The Coca-Cola scientist’s] testimony was by far the most interesting and technical of any yet introduced,” The Chattanooga Daily Times reported. But the jury never issued a verdict based on the science, because a week later the judge granted Coca-Cola’s motion to dismiss.
In court, it’s seldom the science or research that decides the case.
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