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President's Council
 As in previous years, Jim Watson invited members of the President's Council to a 1-day meeting
at the Laboratory, to meet the young scientists supported by the Council members and to hear
about interesting advances in biomedical research. The topics for these meetings are carefully
chosen for a combination of high-quality research and general interest, and for 2001 we selected
a topic of importance to everyone Nutrition: Facts and Myths.
The Council began with a talk by Nancy Etcoff (Massachusetts General Hospital) on "The
Evolutionary Basis of Beauty," discussing why we find certain body forms attractive and showing
that there are some fundamental forms that are cross-cultural. She was followed
by Walter Willett (Harvard School of Public Health) who spoke on
"Nutrition and Health" and gave us many good suggestions for improving our
health through our diet including some suggestions that were against our
current wisdoms. Diet and cancer is a very controversial topic, but Bruce
Ames (University of California, Berkeley) presented convincing data that
micronutrients really do have a protective effect against cancer. With "Diets:
Reality and Hype," Marc Jacobson (North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health
System) reviewed diets and what does and does not work, and George Roth
(National Institute on Aging) described how diet affects life span. This was a
truly fascinating meeting and one that had a lasting impact on all participants.
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