Winner: For those of you waiting for a miracle to help you lose weight, the news this week from Stanford University was encouraging. Researchers there have isolated a hormone that can reduce a body's desire to eat.
Before you get too excited, this discovery has opened a lot of questions. First, it has been tried only in laboratory mice so far. No one knows whether it will work on humans, although some suspect it will. Second, the mice who took this hormone ate much less than normal, but didn't seem to lose a lot of weight.
That sounds suspiciously like the kind of diet with which a lot of people already have experience.
Loser: Internet pornography already is a worldwide scourge, but the worst of it may yet be to come. That was part of a message BYU doctoral student Jill Manning delivered to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee this week. Because the Internet hasn't yet been around for a full generation, the full impact such pornography can have on families and marriages is yet to be seen.
But the world already has seen enough. Manning suggested Congress take several measures to tackle the problem, including funding education campaigns, greater research and a greater law-enforcement effort. If not, she said, many young people may never be able to enjoy healthy relationships.