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> Though American doctors are still debating the risks, virtues and mysteries of acupuncture, two major U.S. insurance companies have already decided that for their purposes the ancient Chinese medical art is a legitimate procedure. Chicago-based Continental Assurance and Continental Casualty companies have given their aye to the needle by announcing that they will pay for acupuncture when it is administered by a licensed physician in accordance with law. Needle treatment by unlicensed practitioners--the kind given in some Chinatown dispensaries--would not be covered. The insurance companies have no idea what their decision will cost them in claims, but they do not expect to be overwhelmed. The few doctors in the U.S. currently wielding needles are doing so on an experimental basis for the most part. They are generally so eager to understand acupuncture that they have not yet become concerned with its costs.

> Smallpox was the first disease shown to be preventable by vaccination, but doctors are still searching for an effective way of treating it when it does erupt--usually among the unvaccinated. A team of Bangladesh and Canadian physicians believe that they have now found a way. They report in Lancet that cytosine arabinoside (ara-C), a drug known to check the multiplication of several viruses that have DNA cores, may be potent against variola, the virus of smallpox. During the April-May epidemic in Bangladesh, they gave ara-C by continuous-drip injection to nine victims. Seven made rapid recoveries with minimal scarring, one showed no benefit, and one died (apparently of variolar pneumonia). By contrast, among 97 untreated cases in the district, there were 42 deaths. The doctors suggest that these preliminary results are encouraging enough to warrant further tests.

> A healthy person normally breathes fairly deeply, and spontaneously takes in an extra-deep breath every five or ten minutes. A patient flat on his back after major surgery, however, breathes less deeply and omits the extra inspirations. His lungs get less oxygen and, as a result, parts may collapse and eventually stop functioning altogether. To overcome this problem, Dr. Robert Bartlett of the University of California at Irvine proposes a simple solution: yawning. Bartlett urges doctors to teach and encourage patients to yawn deeply every five minutes or so, filling the lungs to near ideal capacity. He has invented a spirometer that registers the depth of breathing to encourage patient cooperation, but admits that most patients should be able to go it alone. The boredom of a hospital stay may be enough, he says, to keep them yawning their way to recovery.

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