SERVICE ADVISORY. I had a discussion with Editor Martin the other day. He's down in Georgia working with the CDC on public health issues. He marveled at the CDC's effectiveness, and especially marveled that the incompetence that emanates from the Bush Administration like stink lines from a cartoon skunk had not damaged the CDC as it has so many other Federal entities. We speculated that perhaps even the Bushies balked at imposing their maladministration upon agencies of public health -- and then we thought of the FDA and Walter Reed Hospital.

Well, who knows. CDC is perhaps both good at its job and good at holding the line. I suspect the same of the National Institutes of Health, which I visit every year as a subject in their Von Hippel-Lindau study. Their facilities are amazing, their staff top-notch, and they accomplish amazing things.

I hope I'm of some help, though my interest is not entirely altruistic. The good news is, if they find tumors in you, they take them out, and they're very good at it. The bad news is, they sometimes find tumors. I've had a few pheochromocytomas out, and for ten years I've been running on only a tiny sliver of adrenal tissue. Pheos tend to recur, so chances are one of these years I'll come back from Bethesda an Addisonian, like JFK. Again it's a good news-bad news situation -- your face gets puffy and you have back problems, but you get to run the country and ball Marilyn Monroe (or, I am assuming, her contemporary equivalent).

Tomorrow I'm off for four fun-filled days in Medical Disneyland, during which time posting will be light.