Inquiring Minds: Body Mysteries

Just when hormonally-driven teens will be getting excited about the title, the narration reveals the "body mysteries" here to be blood types, vision, and left-handedness. An interracial cast of twentysomethings traces how medical science slowly learned about hematology from the days of bloodletting, to early transfusions and later blood typing. In the eyesight section, viewers will learn why corrective lenses are needed by some, but curiously, never hear the common terms myopia/nearsightedness or hyperopia/farsightedness. The section on left-handedness starts out with sinister music and a faux sci-fi touch ("they're everywhere; they're involved in everything"), accompanied by video clips of famous southpaws, including George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton. The tape mentions some prejudices lefties face in a rightist world, but omits several that VL contributor and friend Kathleen Glaser could add: spiral notebooks, door knobs, and school desks among them. While right-handed people get their language skills from the brain's left hemisphere, left-handed people can get theirs from the left or right or both--a mystery which continues to stump the scientific/medical community. Recommended. Aud: I, J, H. (R. Reagan)