Capsules

Too many deaths are being attributed to heart attacks on insufficient evidence, said the New England Journal of Medicine, because doctors find it convenient to enter coronary disease on death certificates. When 911 such certificates in Pennsylvania were checked, probable errors were found in at least 27% and perhaps as many as 63% of them.

P: In contrast with most specialists in disorders of the digestive tract, who prefer to hide behind polysyllables in writing of their work (e.g., the American Journal of Gastroenterology), the British Medical Association announced that it will soon publish a learned specialty journal entitled simply Gut.

P: Smallpox has broken out in Moscow, Soviet officials reported to the World Health Organization, with nine victims and one death so far. This week, travelers buying railway tickets to leave Moscow will need vaccination certificates.

P: Named to succeed the late Dr. Cornelius Packard Rhoads (TIME, Aug. 24) as president and director of Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute: Seattle-born Dr. Frank Lappin Horsfall Jr., 53, vice president and physician in chief of the Rockefeller Institute, specialist in virology and efforts to find drug treatments for viral infections.

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