What Pregnancy Pacts and LSD Blindness Have In Common

In 1968 a commissioner of the Blind in the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare, himself blind from youth, disclosed that six Keystone State college students had gone blind from staring at the sun after taking LSD.

Holy irises Batman, did this story have legs! This was 1968 in the drug-infested 1960's. This news report didn't have legs, it had jet engines strapped to it. I was a statehouse reporter then and marveled at a story that made the wire with little or no nail-down.

In short notice the LSD-blindness disclosure by Norman M. Yoder, the blind commissioner who "broke" the story, was shown to be a fraud.

When I first heard recent news reports about the so-called pregnancy pact in Gloucester, Massachusetts I remembered 1968 and knew the pregnancy story was BS. I told my son, who is studying for the bar exam, to watch as it fell apart. (I loved one broadcast report in which it was alleged that the girls, starved to be in "a family way," had even resorted to using homeless men to impregnate them.

According to media accounts, Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the Gloucester High School’s on site day-care center, and Gloucester High School Principal Joseph Sullivan, had separately confirmed the pregnancy pact's existence.

Every once in a while a new Piltdown Man comes along. This time 17 of them were found in Massachusetts. Should we call them Piltdown girls?

I wonder what Norman M. Yoder thinks.

Here's a Boston.com article.