FAULTY TREATMENTS

Abuse. Lindsay Earls was active in two choirs, the academic team and
Future Homemakers of America at her small-town Oklahoma high school.
All while scoring the high grades that got her into a prestigious Ivy
League college last year.

Yet, in a crazy logic, her worthy activities also targeted her for
mandatory drug tests.

The Tecumseh school board had no evidence of cocaine dealing in the
choir or pot-laced-brownie bakeoffs by future homemakers. In fact,
there was scant evidence of any drug problem in the school.
Nevertheless, the district was in the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday
defending its right to drug-test students in any extracurricular
activities. This in spite of the fact that in two years its program
turned up only four positive tests out of 500 - less than 1%.

Years of academic and government studies suggest kids involved in
extracurricular activities are less likely to use drugs than teens
generally. And pediatricians and social workers point out that testing
programs like Tecumseh's can deter those who are dabbling in drugs
from getting involved in more worthwhile uses of their time.

Surely, anti-drug efforts should aim at helping those most at risk,
not imposing Big Brother government on all active students.

Overuse. Spotting those who don't require medical intervention is as
important as focusing on those who do. A new study found that
identifying and treating people who don't need health care could save
billions in medical costs.

In fact, the imagined maladies of hypochondriacs, those frequent
complainers whose symptoms have no physical cause, account for 15% of
the nation's medical tab.

Studies suggest psychological intervention can help. Harvard Medical
School psychiatrist Steven Locke reported on an experiment in which
114 hypochondriacs were enrolled in a six-week group-therapy program
aimed at helping them break their self-defeating behavior. In the
following year, participants' doctor visits dropped by half, and their
medical costs averaged more than $1,000 less than those in an
untreated control group, even including therapy costs.

One study is far from conclusive, and convincing people who firmly
believe they're medically ill to get psychological help may not be
easy. But the employers and HMOs who pay for so much of the nation's
medical care should learn the same lesson as educators who worry about
students' drug use: the need to concentrate on the real problem, not
the delusion.