Health

Child care innovator and reformer Richard Clifford. In 1993-94 he took a year leave from his professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to establish and direct the North Carolina Smart Start Early Childhood Initiative under Governor Hunt. The program is a working model of partnership between public and private groups. It has been considered a success and is being expanded into other counties of North Carolina.

Sexologist Leonore Tiefer has written a new book called "Sex Is Not a Natural Act: and Other Essays." She looks at our society's anxieties towards and ignorance about sex. She also questions what is "normal" sex. Tiefer received a Ph.D. in physiological psychology, and later specialized in clinical psychology to become a sex researcher, sex therapist and an Associate Professor at the Montefoire Medical Center in New York City. Tiefer has also been a sex columnist for the New York Daily News.

Sociology professor John Gagnon co-authored the new book "Sex in America: A Definitive Survey." This two year study overturns common beliefs about sexual practices in America, and finds that "the public image of sex in America bears virtually no relationship to the truth." Gagnon claims that this study is more representative of the population because they used a scientifically selected group, instead of a random sample.

Jonathan Mann, M.D. talks about the connection between health and human rights. Mann is the director and one of the founders of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center For Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was the founding director of the World Health Organization's Global AIDS Program from 1986-1990.

Jazz pianist Fred Hersch. His new solo album is "Fred Hersch at Maybeck." Hersch recently revealed he is HIV positive and appears on several recordings to fund raise for the disease.

Donna Williams. Her first book "Nobody Nowhere" offered a journey through the mysterious condition of autism; it was an international bestseller. Once her case was properly diagnosed, Williams began therapy which took her out of the "world under glass" and into the real world of speech and emotion. This treatment is the subject of her new book "Somebody, Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism" (Times Books).

Writer Elaine Marcus Starkman. Starkman's new book, "Learning to Sit in Silence: A Journal of Caretaking" (Papeir-Mache), is a fictionalized journal of caring for her elderly mother-in-law. Starkman explores the love, guilt, and anger that accompanies aging and death for so many. Starkman has also written "The Best Time" and "Love Scene." (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Journalist Stan Sesser, who details the successful marketing of American cigarettes in Asian countries in a New Yorker article, (September 6, 1993). Sesser claims the continent of Asia consumes half the world's cigarettes. Of particular interest to American tobacco firms is China -- despite explicit laws prohibiting the sale or advertising of foreign cigarettes -- because three hundred million people smoke (more people than the entire population of the United States).

Today's first half is about children who are orphaned after losing their parents to AIDS. Studies estimate that by the year 2000, up to 125,000 U.S. children will be left parentless because of the fatal illness. AIDS workers are now beginning to realize their next step is to help these secondary victims by providing homes, food and counseling. We interview two people on the subject; a single mother with AIDS, and the head of a project designed to address the needs of orphaned kids:

Child Psychologist and an expert on how chronic violence affects a child's growth and development James Garbarino. He's just co-authored a new book, "Children in Danger: Coping with the Consequences of Community Violence," about the children who grow up in the "war zones" of cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Garbarino has also co-authored, "No Place to be a Child: Growing Up in a War Zone, and is president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development.