IHT Rendezvous: Hints of Taiwan Leading the Way on Same-Sex Marriage in Asia

BEIJING — Will Taiwan become the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage in 2013?

Perhaps, judging from recent developments on the island, where the legislature has held its first hearings on the issue, a move that signifies “a major step towards becoming the first Asian territory to approve marriage equality,” the Shanghai-based Web site Shanghaiist reported, citing Gay Star News.

In another sign that change may be on the way for Taiwan, senior judges recently asked for advice from the country’s constitutional court, the Grand Justices, on whether to legalize same-sex marriages after two men from Taiwan, Nelson Chan and his long-term partner, Kao Chih-wei, filed an administrative lawsuit last year following the rejection by a local registration office in Taipei of their application to marry.

As The Taipei Times reported late last month, the Taipei High Administrative Court had been expected to hand down a decision on Mr. Chen and Mr. Kao’s case, “but instead said it was seeking a constitutional interpretation while holding further debates before making a judgment.”

To Mr. Chen, that was a victory. “I think this is a good decision. I’m happy to see it,” he told The Taipei Times. “I am confident and hopeful of the outcome of the constitutional interpretation, because the world is changing. I hope Taiwan would be the first Asian country to recognize same-sex marriages through a judicial ruling.”

The moves come as more states in the United States have legalized gay marriage – Maine and Maryland becoming the latest, with Maryland’s new law taking effect Jan. 1. Same-sex marriage is now legal in nine states and Washington, D.C.

One of the most socially and politically progressive societies in Asia, “Taiwan is moving closer to allowing same-sex marriage,” predicted Gay Star News, though it pointed out that top judges in Taiwan had said that the proposed changes did not go far enough and that legislation needed to be rewritten and expanded before that could happen – and that it would not be a simple matter.

Current proposals for change affect only the articles of the Civil Code that pertain to marriage in gendered language, and propose “altering the words from ‘male’ and ‘female’ to gender-neutral language,” Gay Star News reported.

It quoted a senior judge, Hsu Li-ying, from the Supreme Court’s Juvenile and Family Department (the court is known in Taiwan’s complex political-legal system as the Judicial Yuan) as saying that the new legislation might “need to be more comprehensive.”

The deputy justice minister, Chen Ming-tang, said it was not just the Civil Code that would have to change, but also laws regarding parentage, taxes and health insurance. That means the Justice Ministry could not do it alone, the report said.

Others believed the road ahead will be long and same-sex marriage difficult to achieve, with the decision to seek advice from the constitutional court a way of avoiding making a decision.

Taiwan has a flourishing civil society and a gay community that has long been pressuring the government to legalize gay marriage. Many believe it is a matter of time. Taiwan hosts Asia’s biggest gay pride parade, with the one held last October drawing more than 50,000 participants from across the region.

Taiwan even has its own gay god – the Taoist Rabbit God, to whom homosexuals can pray for love and good fortune (there is a small temple to the Rabbit God near Taipei). As The Taipei Times reports, the rabbit deity is based on the real-life figure of Hu Tianbao, an official in 18th-century Qing dynasty China.

And last year, two women in Taiwan were “married” in a Buddhist ceremony by a Buddhist master, Shih Chao-hwei, who is also a professor at Hsuan Chuang University. Homosexuality is not prohibited in Buddhism, the professor said: “It’s difficult enough to maintain a relationship,” the professor said in a telephone interview with The Taipei Times. “How could you be so stingy as to begrudge a couple for wanting to get married, regardless of their sexual orientation?”

A poll in September by The United Daily News found that 55 percent of those surveyed approved of gay marriage laws, with only 37 percent against. But the poll also found that 61 percent could not accept their children being gay, with only 37 percent saying they could.

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Media Decoder Blog: New York Observer Makes Ken Kurson New Editor

It will come as no surprise to those who follow the Manhattan media scene that The New York Observer has picked a new editor. After all, the newspaper has already had five editors in the seven years since Jared Kushner, a New York real estate developer, acquired the newspaper at the age of 25 in 2006.

Now it has a sixth. Ken Kurson, an author and editor who once worked with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, was named editor in chief of The Observer and editorial director of the Observer Media Group on Friday.

Mr. Kurson, 44, a longtime friend of Mr. Kushner’s, takes over from Aaron Gell, who has served as interim editor since Elizabeth Spiers resigned last August.

In a letter to The Observer staff, Mr. Kushner said: “Ken knows the ideas, stories and voices that make up New York better than anyone. He is a journalist and an author and through his years as a consultant observed the figures who create the framework of business, politics, media, tech, culture and real estate in our city.”

As Mr. Kushner has churned through editors and financial losses, he has struggled to find a landing place for The Observer, which faces increased competition from a revitalized New York Magazine and any number of Web sites staffed by young writers cracking wise and sometimes wisely about current events in New York.

“I took a company that was losing a lot of money and run as a hobby and turned it into a business,” Mr. Kushner said in a telephone interview Friday. “If you take a conventional approach in the media business, you are going to get slaughtered. It’s true that I’ve broken some eggs along the way, but in the process I’ve preserved an important editorial voice, not just in New York but in the rest of the country.”

Mr. Gell was surprised by the move, but was aware that editorial changes have become common at the weekly.

“I have loved every minute of editing the Observer, and I’m really proud of what we’ve done here, especially in terms of boosting readership to our web properties and our coverage of Hurricane Sandy,” Mr. Gell said. “I know Ken. He’ll do a great job, and I look forward to helping him out however I can.”

Mr. Kurson has been a contributing editor at Esquire magazine since 1997 and has written a column there. He was an intern at Harper’s Magazine, started and sold a personal finance magazine, and has written four books.

Still, one of those books was “Leadership,” which he co-wrote with Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Kurson worked at Giuliani Partners in 2002 after completing the book and then joined Mr. Giuliani’s failed campaign for president in 2008. Since then Mr. Kurson has worked at Jamestown Associates, a New Jersey political and communications firm, where he ran media operations for a number of Republican House and Senate candidates.

Given his close ties to Mr. Giuliani and the former mayor’s keen interest in advancing the candidacy of Joseph J. Lhota, the former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Mr. Kurson says he knows he will be closely watched.

“People will think what they want,” he said in an interview. “I will have to earn their trust. I have had a long and honorable journalistic career, calling it like I see it and being a straight shooter.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/05/2013, on page B3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: The New York Observer Names Author as Editor.

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The New Old Age: Murray Span, 1922-2012

One consequence of our elders’ extended lifespans is that we half expect them to keep chugging along forever. My father, a busy yoga practitioner and blackjack player, celebrated his 90th birthday in September in reasonably good health.

So when I had the sad task of letting people know that Murray Span died on Dec. 8, after just a few days’ illness, the primary response was disbelief. “No! I just talked to him Tuesday! He was fine!”

And he was. We’d gone out for lunch on Saturday, our usual routine, and he demolished a whole stack of blueberry pancakes.

But on Wednesday, he called to say he had bad abdominal pain and had hardly slept. The nurses at his facility were on the case; his geriatrician prescribed a clear liquid diet.

Like many in his generation, my dad tended towards stoicism. When he said, the following morning, “the pain is terrible,” that meant agony. I drove over.

His doctor shared our preference for conservative treatment. For patients at advanced ages, hospitals and emergency rooms can become perilous places. My dad had come through a July heart attack in good shape, but he had also signed a do-not-resuscitate order. He saw evidence all around him that eventually the body fails and life can become a torturous series of health crises and hospitalizations from which one never truly rebounds.

So over the next two days we tried to relieve his pain at home. He had abdominal x-rays that showed some kind of obstruction. He tried laxatives and enemas and Tylenol, to no effect. He couldn’t sleep.

On Friday, we agreed to go to the emergency room for a CT scan. Maybe, I thought, there’s a simple fix, even for a 90-year-old with diabetes and heart disease. But I carried his advance directives in my bag, because you never know.

When it is someone else’s narrative, it’s easier to see where things go off the rails, where a loving family authorizes procedures whose risks outweigh their benefits.

But when it’s your father groaning on the gurney, the conveyor belt of contemporary medicine can sweep you along, one incremental decision at a time.

All I wanted was for him to stop hurting, so it seemed reasonable to permit an IV for hydration and pain relief and a thin oxygen tube tucked beneath his nose.

Then, after Dad drank the first of two big containers of contrast liquid needed for his scan, his breathing grew phlegmy and labored. His geriatrician arrived and urged the insertion of a nasogastric tube to suck out all the liquid Dad had just downed.

His blood oxygen levels dropped, so there were soon two doctors and two nurses suctioning his throat until he gagged and fastening an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

At one point, I looked at my poor father, still in pain despite all the apparatus, and thought, “This is what suffering looks like.” I despaired, convinced I had failed in my most basic responsibility.

“I’m just so tired,” Dad told me, more than once. “There are too many things going wrong.”

Let me abridge this long story. The scan showed evidence of a perforation of some sort, among other abnormalities. A chest X-ray indicated pneumonia in both lungs. I spoke with Dad’s doctor, with the E.R. doc, with a friend who is a prominent geriatrician.

These are always profound decisions, and I’m sure that, given the number of unknowns, other people might have made other choices. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide; I could ask my still-lucid father.

I leaned close to his good ear, the one with the hearing aid, and told him about the pneumonia, about the second CT scan the radiologist wanted, about antibiotics. “Or, we can stop all this and go home and call hospice,” I said.

He had seen my daughter earlier that day (and asked her about the hockey strike), and my sister and her son were en route. The important hands had been clasped, or soon would be.

He knew what hospice meant; its nurses and aides helped us care for my mother as she died. “Call hospice,” he said. We tiffed a bit about whether to have hospice care in his apartment or mine. I told his doctors we wanted comfort care only.

As in a film run backwards, the tubes came out, the oxygen mask came off. Then we settled in for a night in a hospital room while I called hospices — and a handyman to move the furniture out of my dining room, so I could install his hospital bed there.

In between, I assured my father that I was there, that we were taking care of him, that he didn’t have to worry. For the first few hours after the morphine began, finally seeming to ease his pain, he could respond, “OK.” Then, he couldn’t.

The next morning, as I awaited the hospital case manager to arrange the hospice transfer, my father stopped breathing.

We held his funeral at the South Jersey synagogue where he’d had his belated bar mitzvah at age 88, and buried him next to my mother in a small Jewish cemetery in the countryside. I’d written a fair amount about him here, so I thought readers might want to know.

We weren’t ready, if anyone ever really is, but in our sorrow, my sister and I recite this mantra: 90 good years, four bad days. That’s a ratio any of us might choose.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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The New Old Age: Murray Span, 1922-2012

One consequence of our elders’ extended lifespans is that we half expect them to keep chugging along forever. My father, a busy yoga practitioner and blackjack player, celebrated his 90th birthday in September in reasonably good health.

So when I had the sad task of letting people know that Murray Span died on Dec. 8, after just a few days’ illness, the primary response was disbelief. “No! I just talked to him Tuesday! He was fine!”

And he was. We’d gone out for lunch on Saturday, our usual routine, and he demolished a whole stack of blueberry pancakes.

But on Wednesday, he called to say he had bad abdominal pain and had hardly slept. The nurses at his facility were on the case; his geriatrician prescribed a clear liquid diet.

Like many in his generation, my dad tended towards stoicism. When he said, the following morning, “the pain is terrible,” that meant agony. I drove over.

His doctor shared our preference for conservative treatment. For patients at advanced ages, hospitals and emergency rooms can become perilous places. My dad had come through a July heart attack in good shape, but he had also signed a do-not-resuscitate order. He saw evidence all around him that eventually the body fails and life can become a torturous series of health crises and hospitalizations from which one never truly rebounds.

So over the next two days we tried to relieve his pain at home. He had abdominal x-rays that showed some kind of obstruction. He tried laxatives and enemas and Tylenol, to no effect. He couldn’t sleep.

On Friday, we agreed to go to the emergency room for a CT scan. Maybe, I thought, there’s a simple fix, even for a 90-year-old with diabetes and heart disease. But I carried his advance directives in my bag, because you never know.

When it is someone else’s narrative, it’s easier to see where things go off the rails, where a loving family authorizes procedures whose risks outweigh their benefits.

But when it’s your father groaning on the gurney, the conveyor belt of contemporary medicine can sweep you along, one incremental decision at a time.

All I wanted was for him to stop hurting, so it seemed reasonable to permit an IV for hydration and pain relief and a thin oxygen tube tucked beneath his nose.

Then, after Dad drank the first of two big containers of contrast liquid needed for his scan, his breathing grew phlegmy and labored. His geriatrician arrived and urged the insertion of a nasogastric tube to suck out all the liquid Dad had just downed.

His blood oxygen levels dropped, so there were soon two doctors and two nurses suctioning his throat until he gagged and fastening an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

At one point, I looked at my poor father, still in pain despite all the apparatus, and thought, “This is what suffering looks like.” I despaired, convinced I had failed in my most basic responsibility.

“I’m just so tired,” Dad told me, more than once. “There are too many things going wrong.”

Let me abridge this long story. The scan showed evidence of a perforation of some sort, among other abnormalities. A chest X-ray indicated pneumonia in both lungs. I spoke with Dad’s doctor, with the E.R. doc, with a friend who is a prominent geriatrician.

These are always profound decisions, and I’m sure that, given the number of unknowns, other people might have made other choices. Fortunately, I didn’t have to decide; I could ask my still-lucid father.

I leaned close to his good ear, the one with the hearing aid, and told him about the pneumonia, about the second CT scan the radiologist wanted, about antibiotics. “Or, we can stop all this and go home and call hospice,” I said.

He had seen my daughter earlier that day (and asked her about the hockey strike), and my sister and her son were en route. The important hands had been clasped, or soon would be.

He knew what hospice meant; its nurses and aides helped us care for my mother as she died. “Call hospice,” he said. We tiffed a bit about whether to have hospice care in his apartment or mine. I told his doctors we wanted comfort care only.

As in a film run backwards, the tubes came out, the oxygen mask came off. Then we settled in for a night in a hospital room while I called hospices — and a handyman to move the furniture out of my dining room, so I could install his hospital bed there.

In between, I assured my father that I was there, that we were taking care of him, that he didn’t have to worry. For the first few hours after the morphine began, finally seeming to ease his pain, he could respond, “OK.” Then, he couldn’t.

The next morning, as I awaited the hospital case manager to arrange the hospice transfer, my father stopped breathing.

We held his funeral at the South Jersey synagogue where he’d had his belated bar mitzvah at age 88, and buried him next to my mother in a small Jewish cemetery in the countryside. I’d written a fair amount about him here, so I thought readers might want to know.

We weren’t ready, if anyone ever really is, but in our sorrow, my sister and I recite this mantra: 90 good years, four bad days. That’s a ratio any of us might choose.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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App City: Taking Stock of Mobile Apps

Testing apps from week to week, it’s easy to fill my phone with a seemingly endless number of theoretically helpful programs. But how many of them do I actually use? To start off 2013, I decided to take stock of my apps, with a focus on those that relate to my life as a New Yorker. Here are my favorites, many — but not all — of which I reviewed for App City. — JOSHUA BRUSTEIN

Christoph Hitz

Embark NYC

Free for iOS and Android

For directions, the default is Google Maps. But Embark, which helps you chart a trip on the New York City subway, is the other transportation app I use regularly, largely because it can generate directions without a data connection. After all, plans can change while you are underground. Offline, you can get only directions between stations, not for street addresses, but it’s a start.

Instapaper

$3.99 for iOS; $2.99 for Android

Instapaper is not new, but the idea of setting aside articles that I see online so that I can read them when I get stuck on the subway never gets old.

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Seamless

Free for iOS and Android

This tool for placing orders for delivery or takeout food through a smartphone app has drastically increased the likelihood that I will order in on any given day. I do not know if this is a good thing, but it is certainly a testament to its effectiveness.

Christoph Hitz

Immaculate Infatuation

Free for iOS

Apps for finding restaurants are plentiful, but most of them leave me feeling overwhelmed. I want someone to choose for me, and I trust the authors of this app to do that. Their taste has never led me astray — although unlike them, I have no problem with the immense popularity of brussels sprouts.

Christoph Hitz

Taskrabbit

Free for iOS

One of the neatest things to come from the current generation of tech companies are informal communities where strangers do things for one another, like share a ride or a spare room. Taskrabbit allows people to hire one another for odd jobs. These jobs can be pretty much anything, but for tasks like taking in clothing for donation, I would much rather give $20 to a neighbor with a car than figure it out myself. Getting tasks done may be easy, but becoming someone who does the tasks isn’t: there are 1,500 people on the waiting list in New York City.

Songkick

Free for iOS and Android

It analyzes the music you listen to and tells you when bands you may like are playing nearby. It has successfully kept me away from Seamless on a number of nights. But being constantly reminded of great shows has the potential to be somewhat expensive.

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Nike+ Fuelband

Wristband $149, app free for iOS and Android

This setup serves as a pedometer for the digital age, keeping track of your physical activity 24 hours a day. The app’s graphical representations of miles walked and calories burned are addictive. While the Fuelband does not do a good job of measuring exercise in a gym, it is a great way to keep a tally of all the walking you do. And if I’m going to spend my life wandering around the city, I might as well get credit for it.

Christoph Hitz

Craft Beer New York

$1.99 for iOS

This app is great when deciding which bars to visit. Of course, it works only for beer drinkers; good bars without good beer selections do not make the cut. There is a nice coffee app designed by the same team, and I use it in essentially the same way, although a bit earlier in the day.

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Plane Carrying Vittorio Missoni Lost Near Venezuela

A small plane carrying four Italian tourists, including the head of the Missoni fashion business, disappeared off the coast of Venezuela on Friday morning, prompting a sea and air search mission that continued Saturday.

Vittorio Missoni, 58, an owner of the family-run label famed for its zigzag knitwear, and his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni, were aboard the plane, which was missing after takeoff from the island resort of Los Roques, the company confirmed in a statement on Saturday. The plane was bound for the international airport near the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, normally a half-hour trip.

Venezuelan officials said that four passengers and two crew members were aboard.

The interior minister, Nestor Reverol, said Friday night on Venezuelan television that the plane, a BN2 Islander, took off from Los Roques at 11:29 a.m. and that its last known position was 10 nautical miles south of Los Roques, an archipelago that is a popular destination among wealthy Europeans, particularly Italians.

The Missoni family is widely revered in the Italian fashion industry for its kaleidoscopic knits applied over the years to sweaters, home furnishings, beach towels and even water bottles. A wildly popular collaboration with Target in 2011, which revitalized interest in the label internationally, included a Missoni print bicycle.

The company was founded in the 1950s by Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, who by the 1970s were among the most prominent designers in Italian fashion. Their three children — Vittorio, Angela and Luca — took over the company in the 1990s, when the family business had lost some of its appeal, and are credited with turning it around.

Missoni’s sales have been reported as modest, around $100 million annually, but the label holds the prominence of a far bigger business as a result of the family’s dashing personalities. Mr. Missoni spearheaded the brand’s global expansion, first as general director of marketing and then as the company’s top executive in the United States and Italy.

A spokeswoman for Missoni said that the family had been informed by the Venezuelan Consulate that the plane had disappeared, but that they had not given up hope as the search continued. Italian news media staked out the company headquarters in Sumirago, Italy, in the foothills of the Alps, where the management met on Saturday. The news agency Ansa reported that family members had congregated in their nearby villa, while Luca Missoni had flown to Venezuela.

The company’s offices in Milan were closed on Saturday, but an employee, who declined to give her name, was answering the phones “because a lot of employees are calling to get information,” she said. “But we have very little news to tell them.”

Several Italian news broadcasts led with the disappearance of Mr. Missoni, noting that another plane, carrying eight Italians, disappeared after leaving Los Roques five years ago, on Jan. 4, 2008.

Mr. Missoni, an avid sports fisherman, and his wife were on vacation with friends, according to the company. The other passengers have been identified in Italian news reports as Elda Scalvenzi and Guido Foresti.

The Missoni siblings jointly own the company. Vittorio has managed the company’s commercial and manufacturing operations; Angela is the designer; and Luca the creative director.

Part of Mr. Missoni’s strategy has been to focus on the Missoni lifestyle, opening about 40 stores around the world and creating ad campaigns featuring many of the family’s glamorous members. In one image, Margherita Missoni, a daughter of Angela, appears with Ottavio and Vittorio, who are relaxing on a zigzag weave couch. The family’s compound in Sardinia has been featured in countless articles.

In 2005, the company created a successful fragrance business with Estee Lauder and, under Mr. Missoni’s direction, expanded into the hotel business with the Rezidor Hotel Group. The first Hotel Missoni opened in Edinburgh in 2009.

William Neuman contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

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Google’s Lawyers Work Behind the Scenes to Carry the Day

SAN FRANCISCO — For 19 months, Google pressed its case with antitrust regulators investigating the company. Working relentlessly behind the scenes, executives made frequent flights to Washington, laying out their legal arguments and shrewdly applying lessons learned from Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle in the 1990s.

After regulators had pored over nine million documents, listened to complaints from disgruntled competitors and took sworn testimony from Google executives, the government concluded that the law was on Google’s side. At the end of the day, they said, consumers had been largely unharmed.

That is why one of the biggest antitrust investigations of an American company in years ended with a slap on the wrist Thursday, when the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation of Google’s search practices without bringing a complaint. Google voluntarily made two minor concessions.

“The way they managed to escape it is through a barrage of not only political officials but also academics aligned against doing very much in this particular case,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of antitrust law at the University of Iowa who has worked as a paid adviser to Google in the past. “The first sign of a bad antitrust case is lack of consumer harm, and there just was not any consumer harm emerging in this very long investigation.”

The F.T.C. had put serious effort into its investigation of Google. Jon Leibowitz, the agency’s chairman, has long advocated for the commission to flex its muscle as an enforcer of antitrust laws, and the commission had hired high-powered consultants, including Beth A. Wilkinson, an experienced litigator, and Richard J. Gilbert, a well-known economist.

Still, Mr. Leibowitz said during a news conference announcing the result of the inquiry, the evidence showed that Google “doesn’t violate American antitrust laws.”

“The conclusion is clear: Google’s services are good for users and good for competition,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote in a company blog post.

The main thrust of the investigation was into how Google’s search results had changed since it expanded into new search verticals, like local business listings and comparison shopping. A search for pizza or jeans, for instance, now shows results with photos and maps from Google’s own local business service and its shopping product more prominently than links to other Web sites, which has enraged competing sites.

But while the F.T.C. said that Google’s actions might have hurt individual competitors, over all it found that the search engine helped consumers, as evidenced by Google users’ clicking on the products that Google highlighted and competing search engines’ adopting similar approaches.

Google outlined these kinds of arguments to regulators in many meetings over the last two years, as it has intensified its courtship of Washington, with Google executives at the highest levels, as well as lawyers, lobbyists and engineers appearing in the capital.

One of the arguments they made, according to people briefed on the discussions, was that technology is such a fast-moving industry that regulatory burdens would hinder its evolution. Google makes about 500 changes to its search algorithm each year, so results look different now than they did even six months ago.

The definition of competition in the tech industry is also different and constantly changing, Google argued.

For instance, just recently Amazon and Apple, which used to be in different businesses than Google, have become its competitors. Google’s share of the search market has stayed at about two-thirds even though competing search engines are “just a click away,” as the company repeatedly argued. That would become the company’s mantra to demonstrate that it was not abusing its market power.

Claire Cain Miller reported from San Francisco, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Common Sense: Google Finds a Line Between ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Evil’

“Don’t Be Evil,” the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, proclaimed in their 2004 “Owner’s Manual” for prospective investors in the company. Despite widespread cynicism, criticism and even mockery, the company has never backed down on this core premise, reiterating in its most recent list of the “things we know to be true” that “You can make money without doing evil.”

Yet the company has been dogged for years by widespread allegations that it violates its own pledge by manipulating the search results that remain the core of the company and primary source of its enormous profits.

Google insists that its results have always been “unbiased and objective” and that “our search results are the best we know how to produce.” But for competitive reasons, it never disclosed the secret algorithms that produce those results, so no one outside the company knew for sure. A growing chorus of complaints from companies like Expedia, Yelp and, especially, Microsoft that Google manipulates the results to favor its interests at the expense of competitors led both the United States government and the European Union to take up the issue. On Thursday, after nearly two years of investigation, the Federal Trade Commission rendered a verdict: Google isn’t evil.

It may have been “aggressive,” as the commission delicately put it. But “regarding the specific allegations that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the commission,” said Beth Wilkinson, outside counsel to the F.T.C. “The F.T.C.’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”

The decision is “a huge victory for Google,” Randal Picker, a professor of commercial law at the University of Chicago Law School and a specialist in antitrust and intellectual property, told me just after this week’s decision. It’s also a vindication of the integrity of Google’s search results and the company’s credibility. “There’s never been any evidence that consumers were harmed by Google’s practices and no evidence that Google ever engaged in any manipulation that violates antitrust law,” Eric Goldman, professor of law and director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of  Law, said.

The decision is also likely to set standards for competition on the Internet for years to come. It’s a blow to competitors like Microsoft, which has been stirring up opposition to Google for years, not to mention newer rivals like Facebook, Apple and Amazon. “The gloves will be off,” Professor Picker predicted. “The F.T.C. has indicated it’s going to be taking a very cautious approach toward regulating competition on the Internet.”

But will the decision ultimately prove to be good for consumers?

The F.T.C. did secure some concessions from Google regarding patent licensing and advertiser options. But to call those a slap on the wrist would be an overstatement. What mattered most to both Google users and competitors was Google’s search practices, which had never been put under the regulatory microscope to such a degree and which the F.T.C. left untouched.

Google’s search results have evolved significantly from its early, simpler days. When I typed “flight JFK to LAX” on Google this week, I got three categories of results: paid ads at the top and on the right; a Google-produced chart comparing flight options with the disclaimer, which you need to click on, that “Google may be compensated by these providers”; and so-called organic results below that. The first two organic results were entries for Expedia, a rival to Google’s travel site. But given the layout and size of my screen, none of the organic results were visible unless I scrolled down.

However clearly labeled, the prominence of Google’s own travel results gives pause to some antitrust experts. “Location is important,” Professor Picker said. “No one thinks otherwise. Years ago, it was important for airlines’ reservations systems to be on the first screen. But I’m not sure this is an antitrust problem.” Still, the issue is likely to be a focus of the European Union’s investigation of Google, and the European Union will probably be less sympathetic to unbridled competition on the Internet than the American authorities, and more inclined to protect competitors.

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