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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 26, 1978)
Decrease of ‘right’ »births may cause lower standards THE BATTALION Page 11 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1978 V »•-..I yL?/ cfaff ien, atch (lie Staff pk* that will la a Pluto ft ! I r4 J i 7 / United Press International WASHINGTON — Because the right people are not having babies now, children born to many other Americans may have a lower stan dard of living when they grow up, says a Georgetown University re searcher. The problem is not that “the wrong people are having children — its that the right people are not hav ing them, says Dr. Andre E. Hel- legers, director of Georgetown’s Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics. The American middle and upper dasses — those who can most afford to have children — are less likely to have them, he said in an interview. They are the people most apt to produce children who will have adequate incomes as adults and cron- tribute to the social security system, he added. Hellegers specializes in the biological and social problems of obstetrics. He said the crunch will come be cause the number of older Ameri cans is increasing and they are living longer than ever before, while the hirth rate is declining. About three million babies are born yearly, compared with slightly more than four million a year in the late 1950s. The problem facing the United States is the opposite of the popula tion explosion in Third World coun tries, Hellegers said. Instead of too many hungry children demanding care, there are too many older people in proportion to the work force. “As a consequence, fewer people are becoming responsible for more people,” he said. “Then the ques tion is to look at the competency of those who will do the supporting.” Twenty percent of the children of today’s smaller families will be born to teenagers, whose parenthood often interferes with continued schooling. At the same time, professional couples or well-educated young adidts who have been brought up with the concept of zero population growth are having fewer children or , postponing them or deciding against parenthood. Hellegers said the teenage birth rate has been decreasing for a de cade and people over 20 are having even fewer children. "The ability of these children of teenagers to make it into an advan tageous economic grouping is highly questionable,” he said. “This puts an even greater burden on the re maining children to contribute.” Hellegers expects the future to bring higher taxes and a lower stan dard of living unless affluent people produce enough children to support the so-called dependency burden or unless that dependency burden is decreased. After Rockies, Mississippi was easy, says modern Huck Finn Battalion photo by Ed Cunnius Glowing work Students can be assured that Texas A&M University will be a well-lit campus, especially when men work on Saturday to repair a street lamp. Norman Gentry, with glasses, and Cur tis Holder fix the light beside the bus stop in front of the Reed McDonald Building. Rabbit’ test finds disease treatment, not pregnancy United Press International NEW ORLEANS — Compared with his sailing trip to the Pacific Ocean that included a 200-mile climb over the Rocky Mountains, Phil Babiak said his 1,300-mile trip down the Mississippi River from Louisville, Ky., in a 27-foot log raft was a snap. Two years ago he rowed from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, with a hike over the Rockies. By comparison, the Mississippi River was an interstate highway, he said. “We ran through the usual stuff you’d expect,” Babiak said Sunday after stepping off his craft near Jackson Square in the French Quar ter. “We got caught in an eddy, we got stuck on a tree floating in the river and there are some dikes in the river between Natchez, (Miss.), and Cairo, (Ill.). “We had some minor repairs to the raft and a tow boat broke up in front of us — the individual barges were floating free right at us — but it was okay.” Babiak, 20, made the last half of his trip with Paul Camuso, who jumped on the raft in Vicksburg, Miss. Camuso was part of a kayak expedition from Brockway, Pa., to New Orleans earlier this summer and when he passed Babiak in the river he signed up for the home stretch. Babiak’s original crewmate, Mark Stano, decided to call it quits at Vic ksburg. “He got tired of the way of life,” Babiak said. “We had to stay in an 8-by-12-foot private cabin. We had a fire box on top where we cooked all our meals. We did it all without ^iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiimimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiinimiii^ 1 MAMA'S PIZZA I A DELIVERS 11 A.M.-11 P.M. DAILY i % United Press International LONDON — The case of the rigid rabbits is a classic example in which basic scientific research has surprisingly led to a treatment for the dreaded neuromuscular disease that may have helped cause the death of Greek shipping millionaire Aristotle Onassis. Two British scientists brought this continuing story up to date in a paper prepared for delivery to the annual meeting of the British As sociation lor the Advancement of Science at Bath. Myasthenia gravis is a disease in which the patient suffers muscular weakness that is accentuated by exercise and can lead in severe cases to death by respiratory failure or choking. There have been many theories to explain its action but the one that now appears to have been closest to the actuality was the suggestion by a British researcher in 1960 that it was an auto-immune disease in which the patient developed antibodies that attacked his own neuromuscu lar apparatus. Dr. Roger Harrison and Dr. George G. Lunt of the University of Bath said it took 13 years for the proof of this theory to appear. This came with an unexpected observa tion in connection with studies into the mechanism by which nerve cells called neurones make contact with other nerve or muscle cells across the specialized junctions named synapses. The chemical messenger involved in the contact is the molecule acetylcholine. It was the isolation of the acetyl choline receptor that led to the awa kening of interest in myasthenia gravis”, the doctors said. The major problem of isolating acetylcholine receptors from mam malian muscles is getting enough of the substance for research. The Bay of Biscay electric fish proved invalu able because, although phar macologically identical to mamma lian muscle, its electric organ has 10,000 times more receptors. There was another ally for the re searchers in the venom of certain cobras which contain small proteins that bond themselves so specifically to the acetylcholine receptors of their victims — paralyzing the skeletal muscles — that they can act as sensitive markers and play a vital role in the complex process of isolat ing the acetylcholine. By the early 1970s, a number of laboratories had used this procedure and were engaged in determining the properties of the acetylcholine receptor. One experiment in the United States involved injecting purified receptor protein into rab bits. During this experiment the rabbits developed muscular paralysis and died. The American researchers noted similarities between the paralysis of their rabbits and that of patients suf fering from myasthenia gravis. They theorized the rabbits produced an tibodies against the injections but these cross-reacted with their own receptors causing a neuromuscular block. If myasthenia gravis acted the same way, antibodies should be pre sent in the blood of sufferers and in 90 percent of tests in Britain these were found. The British then tried plasma ex change in which the blood of pa tients is cleared of antibodies by passing it through a continuous cen trifuge. There have been sharp re coveries maintained for months. But, the doctors cautioned, the technique is not yet generally avail able because it is “time consuming, extremely expensive (it may have to be repeated four to eight times) and carries some risk to the patients. PIZZA, SPAGHETTI, LASAGNA, SALADS, & DRINKS f$5.00 MINIMUM) 696-3380 = 807 TEXAS AVE. piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiimiimiiiiiiiiiiii^ 1° I Do you need spiritual revival in your life? 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