Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Health and light (was Re: Office Survey Results)
Message-ID: <3069@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 21:26:16 GMT
References: <10440004@hp-lsd.HP.COM> <6474@pdn.paradyne.com> <3065@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <632@amc-gw.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 34

Mark Freeman (markf@amc-gw.UUCP) writes:
+--
| Ott's assertions about our need for natural light, and
| especially ultraviolet, are certainly interesting.
| However, much of his evidence to support his theory
| (at least in 1987, when I did a little research on the
| subject) is anecdotal.  At the time, no scientific
| experiments with humans were reported.
| ...Still, his conclusions may be correct; I am not
| yet convinced.
+--

Thank you for being open-minded about it, and I appreciate
your skepticism.  I'm not convinced, and I believe further
research is needed.  Ever since my college course in
experimental psychology, I tend to ignore claims of
scientific veracity until and unless I have looked at the
experimental design.

I am aware of one well-designed, controlled experiment
involving mice.  A population of cancer-prone mice was
divided into one group that lived under full-spectrum light,
and groups that lived under various colors of fluorescent
lights.  There was a significant increase in longevity for
the full-spectrum group.

Given the estimate that one out of four people alive today
will die of cancer (and they say AIDS is an epidemic!), I
found this result quite interesting.
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john  CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from
past over-machined societies...the devices themselves condition the users to
employ each other the way they employ machines.'' --Frank Herbert