Superior Court Judge Joan M. Lewis issued a temporary order preventing the San Diego Reader from publishing details about Polyheme, a blood substitute still in testing, that were obtained under the California Public Records Act. Northfield Laboratories Inc. had sued the Reader last month to stop publication of the information, which Northfield calls "trade secrets." On July 28, the Reader had published an article saying that Polyheme was being tested in downtown San Diego and in poor minority neighborhoods, on trauma patients who were unable to consent. A Northfield spokesperson said the two sides would meet next week in an attempt to reach an agreement.
In a piece focusing primarily on his support for a statewide ballot initiative requiring parental notification prior to an abortion, the Times also tells us this about the owner of the San Diego Reader: His friends say he's a "a cerebral man who tilts libertarian but is defined mostly by his deep religious beliefs. He attends Mass daily and counts priests among his close friends. He once took an extended leave from his newspaper to work with a missionary group on Los Angeles' skid row." And, "(d)espite his substantial wealth," Holman (pictured) -- who served with the Navy in Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart -- "takes the bus to work, eats sack lunches and lives modestly."
San Diego Reader senior editor Judith Moore's book, "Fat Girl," got the full-page treatment in last week's New York Times Book Review. Jane Stern writes that Moore's book "just might be the Stonewall for a slew of oversize people who do not fit the template of what every ostensible expert on beauty, health and nutrition tells us we should strive to be," and judges it "brilliant and angry and unsettling."
