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An oddball trio of health-related features aired, one on each newscast. Blue Cross of California is in trouble with the state's physicians for seeming to ask them to snitch on their own patients. In a letter the insurer asked doctors to report any undisclosed preexisting conditions. CBS' Ben Tracy reassured us that "hardly any doctors have ever sent back info on their patients." For its part Blue Cross insisted that its sole concern was accuracy of patient records; it disavowed any intention of looking for pretexts for canceling coverage. On NBC, Robert Bazell filed the second part of his Who We Are series on genetic testing of our individual DNA. Yesterday he looked at genealogy; now he turns to Myriad Genetics Labs' program for screening for cancer risk. Bazell warned us that the results are easy to misunderstand without professional counseling. ABC's A Closer Look turned to the $2bn business of selling human growth hormone to babyboomers for unauthorized cosmetic use. "Up to 30,000 healthy Americans are taking it with prescriptions," David Kerley calculated. Celebrities are part of the marketing effort, including Suzanne Somers' book The Sexy Years and actor Sylvester Stallone's preparations for his latest Rambo role. "There are reports," Kerley hinted from Capitol Hill, where baseball's Roger Clemens is about to deny doping under oath, that pitcher's wife took HGH to prepare for a bikiniclad Sports Illustrated photo shoot.
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