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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 1979)
P’age 8 THE BATTALiON TUESDAY, JANUARY 16. 1979 HATE DOING LAUNDRY? Let Frannie's do it for you Aunt Frannies Laundromat #Holleman at Anderson 693-658: IHrtt '★★★★★★★★★★♦★★★■A: She did good turn scouts objected Radio /haok MANAGER S RED TAG SALE Battalion Classified Call 845-2611 United Press International WANTAGH, N.Y. — In the best scouting tradition, Andrea VVeitman tried to do a good turn, and in the process disclosed to the chagrin of national Boy Scout officials that she was perhaps the only female ever to join their organization. Andrea’s 11 merit awards have now been declared “null and void.” Last month, 13-year-old Andrea became upset when she read a newspaper story about an 8-year-old girl whose attempt to join the Cub Scouts was rebuffed. At her mother s suggestion, Andrea wrote a letter of protest to the Long Island newspaper News- day, stating she had joined the Cub Scouts when she was 10 and had had “a lot of fun” during a membership of almost two years. Newsday assigned a reporter to intei’view Andrea, and when the story appeared, it came to the atten tion of Harvey Smith, director of support services for the Nassau County Council of Boy Scouts. Smith forwarded a clipping of the story to the National Council of Boy Scouts office in North Brunswick, N.J., and officials there declared as “null and void” the 11 achievement awards which Angela had won. “I have 11 pins for achievement and a roster listing my name with the boys who won them,” she said. Andrea said it was her idea to join the “VVebelos,” the older Cub Sc outs, because Girl Scouts “just sit around at meetings and make paper dolls.” Andrea said she filled out an ap plication for the Boy Scout sub sidiary, “using my full name,” and her mother signed it. Her father, Paul, was the leader of her group. Pack 330, which meets in a local school, but she said he had no part in the submission of the application. “At first people laughed about it — you know, ‘ha ha, we have a girl in our troop, ” she said. “But then I was treated like everybody else.” Andrea voluntarily left the “Webelos” about two years ago. She was a “Brownie” Girl Scout, from the age of 8 to 10, but has no desire to return to scouting. “Not unless they have a better and more active co-ed program for younger kids,” she said. Andrea, an eighth-grade student, said she hopes to become a social worker or a lawyer. Smith said someone “apparently slipped up” in processing Andrea’s application. “Boys and girls’ names are often very similar or perhaps the name was more or less illegible,” he said. Smith noted that while the appli cation does not have a box listing sex, the words “boy” and “son” are contained in it, making it readily apparent membership is exclusively for boys. “The real point is that some adult, either knowingly or unknowingly, filed the application, and it is il legal,” he said. Housing for miners Chalets in Appalachia? United Press International GRUNDY, Va. — When the coal miner of old sang his bitter refrain about owing his soul to the company store, he wasn’t hauling the groceries he bought there to a new $60,000 home. The boom is on in Appalachia and things may never again be quite the same. Grundy is a typical coal mining community. It’s the sort of town city-slickers refer to when they talk about the “boondocks” or the “sticks.” It is steep and mountainous — and remote. In some places, it’s too hard to ship in phone service by lines strung on telephone poles, so the signals come through the air by microwave. Richmond, the state capital, is more than 500 miles to the east. Lexington, Ky., is 220 miles to the northwest. There’s not much reason for any body to move to Grundy. Except for coal — the black gold of Appalachia. Housing is virtually nonexistent. With the American coal industry experiencing yet another “boom” and an influx of some 200,000 new miners expected by the mid-1980s, substantial new housing is needed in some areas of the county. To workers of the area. Is land Creek Coal Co., America’s fourth-largest coal producer, has announced a project to drop a bit of Switzerland into hillbilly country. Island Creek is putting up $25 mil lion to start the development in an area where it now employs some 2,300 workers. The development will offer mountain-style chalet homes, cost ing $50,000 to $60,000 apiece, on a 1,223-acre track high atop Keen Mountain, a few miles east of Grundy. There’ll also be less- expensive apartments and trailer pads. And it will all house 1,600 families by the mid-1980s. It will be called Buchanshire. In Grundy, where no buildings are higher than three stories, coal is the community’s lifeblood. Grundy came of age in 1931 when, as a dying timber industry threatened to dry up, coal mining began and the N&W installed the first railroad. The boom doubled the county population as coal companies moved in and built communities such as Red Ash, where cheap shanties sat by the river and often were flooded after heavy rains. In the mid-1950s, the demand for coal subsided and Grundy once again was threatened with extinc tion. But Grundy began growing again with Island Creek’s invest ment in black gold. Today, one county official said, there are more than 500 coal companies in Bucha nan County alone, from tiny two- man jobs to the giants employing more than 500. ^ The town is squeezed into a val ley, the river and railroad on one side and steep mountains on the other that block out the winter sun except from 10 a. m. to 4 p.m? Every third vehicle, it seems, is a coal truck. The trucks rumble back and forth through Grundy’s two- lane main street, delivering tons of coal daily to the huge coke ovens outside town on Dismal Creek. Some are old and nondescript, others are spanking new and sport names like “Daddy’s Little Boy,” “Midnight Possum,” “The Stud” and “Bad News.” Grundy lives for coal. The wealth it brings also brings a curious jux taposition with the town’s inherent poverty. Sleek Mercedes, Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs ply the streets bordered by ramshackle homes. Grundy’s Buchanan County straddles the borders of Kentucky and West Virginia, and available housing “just doesn’t exist,” said county program director Arlen E. Rice. That’s because only a tiny per centage of the county’s more than 500 square miles of land is usable for housing. UFOs mWes new hert£ rue says groi United Press Intcrnatiod Western no history of the , D f Nv h EK r T 11 !;? travelers have buzzed earth! r T furies, but are waiting for hut X progress scientifically and^.-T , cally before introducing then fi ti j ’ it c an Aerial Phenomena nespanl 'pj le | )()() j < ganization spokesman said ti p ublis ’ h Visitors from outer spaced J which Som layed direct contact because T i > > panic it would cause, aeeda bec , u ,se of the Tom Be lone a researcher L a return to Arizona-based organization liters chroni He said APRO investigate ment ings of space visitors and atis T'Western n counters rather than inerej|| ere are som , sightings. j s ( be f eebn g “If we get a report of lightsi scenarists who sky, there’s not much we “They have about it. But we re received! as frontier G; reports that contain physic* peace officers dence and people who claim tic j n their true i had physical contact to kec; To show ho busy,” Bellone said. e m fiction, ha I he disappearance of Aik ; whom he desc pilot Frederick Valentich dun His novel “ report on the small green ligkj ma ny honors, lowing his aircraft has trit anc l Wallace S more public interest, he said “With all th "We may haw an explanata# 100,000 coj Valentich’s disappearance* Sonnichsen the next week. I don't yet be only tempi what the explanation will h^^WTri years t learned last night something* today may be upcoming soon on it,' he sac what is to be. McMurtry am llllllllll Study blames mothers^ pain hiUers Birth drugs harm hopes, ideals Sonnichsen frontier, the f< much bigger t babies’ brains Picl Editor’s Note: The following exc lusive dispatch is based on report ing by Richard Hughes, UPI’s New York-New Jersey editor, and Robert Brewin, a free-lance writer. They are coauthors of “The Tran- quilizing of America” to be pub lished by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in September. The study — submitted for publi cation eight months ago but still de layed by the government — makes a “clearcut” link between obstetric medication and impairment of brain development, particularly thinking ability, motor skills and behavior in children born during the last cen- tury. childbirth cause an average IQ loss of 4 points. With an annual U.S. birth rate of 3.7 million, this comes to a total na tional loss of 14 million IQ points a year, which “should put the prob lem of obstetric medication at the head of the class of national health priorities,” Brackbill said. Give every NEWBORN the advantage United Press International NEW YORK — Painkilling and anesthetic drugs routinely given American women during childbirth cause brain damage to their babies, a government study shows. A government health officer ad mits this may mean many children are being born with “less than a full deck.” “It is difficult to avoid concluding that the damage is permanent,” said Dr. Yvonne Brackbill, author of the study, in an interview. The effects are subtle in most children and they appear to function normally, she said. But, she said, even the subtle ef fects of these pyschoaetive active medications administered during The study — submitted for publication eight months ago but still delayed by the govern ment — makes a “clearcut” link between obstetric medication and impairment of brain de velopment, particularly thinking ability, motor skills and be havior in children born during the last century. SHIRTS Woodstone Center March of Dimes i 693-9308 907 Harvoy Rd. (Hwy. 30) “We Sell Shirts" Open 9-9 wmim (surey feUiD^iEU [Mpj INTERESTED IN FRATERNITIES? FREE BEER TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY “The behavorial effects of obstet ric medications are not transient and the direction of the effects is un- iformally that of interference of normal function and behavioral de gradation.” Brackbill said in a sum mary of her conclusions. Brackbill, a pyschologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, specializes in the study of the effect of drugs on the brain. Her study constitutes the largest-based test in medical litera ture of the effects of obstetric medi cations on infant development and has farreaching social and medical implications. Brackbill estimated that in 1977 “95 percent of births in the United States hospitals nowadays are medi cated. This means 3.5 million medi cated births out of 3.7 million births ing its release and “censoring key portions and watering-down some of my own conclusions by softening the language. “I consider this a violation of my rights as a scientist and the rights of the public to have an accurate asses- sement of medications that affect every human being born in this country in recent years,” she said. NIH said the study had been de layed pending review and approval for publication in a medical journal. Doris Haire, president of the Na tional Organization for Women’s Health Network, said she has been urging NIH for many months to re lease the study to the public. “It would be a crime against American women and children if we waited for a medical journal to pick up on this,” Haire said. Even the more mildly worded conclusions reached by NIH raise serious questions about the de generative effects of most, if not all, medications routinely given to women during childbirth. The NIH study concludes: “There are overall strong associa tions between pharmacological agents administered during labor and delivery and the infants’ de velopment during the first year of life. In some cases, these associa tions decreased with age (of the w country under obstetric may be starting out life \vithaW — less than a full deck.’’ Un . ted Prf Drugs discussed in the sta L1 ; V ELLAN elude all the inhalant an, ian x ^ mi , e drugs used to put women , e flat expanse during delivery as we |ajn is the wo routinely used pamkillerLIj countlv a meperidine (Demerol), P ror i bcram (Sparine), promethazine P jf wasn ’ t her< gan) scopolamine Those, K her wasJoh secobarbital (Seconal fHartin, 36) w According to Brackbill, th, nr r ik m,,k on inlants arc > clalcd u a cou] strength and dosage - the ld , loticed an the drug and the higher theQ ob , isti the more serious the efled|-jt e vvichita, as educated i Asked if in laymen's term,Bar in Nebra means children are being tnded the job i “with less than a full deck. ie * n g a Kenti Samuel Drage, who is r«“ s h vi he-sound sibile for the study at NIH a. * ve en jpyed “Well, if you want to putt*?'" ™ ld re , c< way, it may be that //n- anding 1 r shows that several gem [ ains College c of children born in this «MTh e 2,400-stu under obstetric medication the southern be starting out life icithakt town, is ji — less than a full deck. >untry star jimetown at L And it’s ; most substantial effects folio* in which mothers reeeivt— vay. ^5 z: n n n o f r ^ n Ft o n p- INTERFRATER1S COUNCIL nn ITY vj l>uuljU UUUUUUUUUu^ --PRESENTS : tg> a. OX ATQ ATA AXA ZX FIJI TY K$ ATT Zf>E TTKA ZAE 1 a year. She said contrary to the common belief that natural child birth is in creasing, the number of drugs being given to women during gestation, labor and delivery is rising. She cited a study in Houston which showed the average mother con sumed 19 different drugs during pregnancy and delivery in 1977, up sharply from an estimated 3.6 drugs taken by the average mother in 1963. Brackbill’s study was obtained by UPI, and its substance confirmed by officials of the National Institute of Health under a freedom of informa tion request. Brackbill accused NIH of delay- With an annual U.S. birth rate of 3.7 million, this comes to a total national loss of 14 million IQ points a year, which “should put the problem of obstetric medication at the head of the class of national health priorities,” Brackbill said. child) or even disappeared with some drugs such oxytocin (a uterine stimulant) but with others, princi pally the inhalant anesthetics, they persisted during the first year. The inhalant anesthetics had particularly' strong association with motor func tion.” Asked if in laymen’s terms this means children are being born “with less than a full deck,” Dr. Samuel Drage, who is responsibile for the study at NIH, said: “Well, if you want to put it that way, it may be that this study shows that several generations of children born in this LMtl THE OPENING OF SPRING 1979 RUSH WITH A /\ PARTY AT 813 Wellborn Rd. SUNDAY, JANUARY 21 696-1100 6:00-9:00 P.M. FOR MORE INFORMATION: CALL 693-4371 Ml Gb fajffaifrTJiFJ %ouU\ College Aoe. ******* - \UpfyAftiE aWe- Tuesbty cTttjRSMy •TriCHEJ? BeeR */. ts • ,3o highest potency drugs,’ sheaf The study, entitled The® tionship of Obstetrical Medrf'' and Neurobehavioral Medic® Early in Life,” was sponsoredB National Institute of Neurok® and Communicative Disordefip Stroke of NIH. It is based on a 3,500-ehildfe pie of healthy infants born tof| thy mothers taken from tk;T base of 53,(XK) motherchild of the Collaborative Perinatal?!*? ject of NIH. Brackbill said her study, f P was ready for release last Apr ff' being withheld as a result of«| sure brought by obstetrician® anesthesiologists. “I am very afraid that going to take this study whicP a very clear-cut, cause-and-eft® lationship between the obstp medications and degradatio® behavior and intelligence,■ water it all down by puttingi,p: of qualifiers,” she said. “If tbu that, I will take legal action. 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