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> Smoking marijuana is frequently called a mind-blowing experience, and that description may be more than a metaphor. A team of British researchers has reported in the Lancet that ten habitual marijuana users were found to be suffering from cerebral atrophy, or irreversible shrinkage of the brain tissue. The patients, all between 18 and 28, were under treatment for various neurological symptoms and drug abuse. Using a special X-ray technique to measure the volume of the patient's brain tissue, the physicians found all ten to have significant atrophy, a condition frequently found in the elderly, people with degenerative nerve disease and those with histories of severe head injury. Because all the patients had also taken other drugs during the years preceding the study, the doctors were cautious about blaming the brain damage solely on marijuana. But their report left little doubt that they held cannabis responsible. Amphetamines and LSD are quickly metabolized and passed out of the system; marijuana is not. Though the patients had used other drugs in varying amounts, all puffed pot regularly.

> A California urologist has developed a procedure that could make vasectomy, or male sterilization, more easily reversible. Most surgeons perform the operation by removing a section of the vas deferens, the tubes that carry sperm. Some men later change their minds, but fertility frequently cannot be restored. Dr. Stanwood Schmidt of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center has a different approach. Removing no tissue and sealing the center of the severed vas by electric cauterization, he leaves the muscular wall of the tube intact. To reverse the procedure, Schmidt simply removes the scar tissue and rejoins the tube. Schmidt has attempted to undo vasectomies in 150 patients. Of these, 75% experienced resumption of sperm flow, while at least 25% succeeded in fathering children.

> Sun, wind and the natural effects of aging are generally blamed for causing the crow's-feet and worry lines that most youth-conscious Americans would prefer to avoid. Now a California internist suggests that another factor may be responsible for wrinkles. Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Harry Daniell reports a definite correlation between early and heavy face wrinkling and habitual cigarette smoking. Daniell bases his finding on a yearlong study of 1,104 people. Daniell asked everyone who visited his office to fill out a questionnaire about his smoking habits, exposure to the sun and medical history. He then studied each patient's face to arrive at a "wrinkle score," and compared the patient's scores with their questionnaires. In each age group, cigarette smokers with indoor occupations exhibited more wrinkles than non-smokers who worked outside.

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