The Who says ‘goodbye’
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SWC Football wrap-up
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The Battalion
Serving the University community
76 No. 67 USPS 045360 20 Pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, December 6, 1982
ew heart poses ethical questions
United Press International
. Questions triggered by the first
Khnanent implant of a man-made
mean in a human being go like this:
■— Are the clicks from the plastic
heaitin61-year-old Barney B. Clark’s
chest the first ticks of an immortality
lick?
■ — With science promising more
man-made parts to replace worn out
hi|man ones, is the conquest of mor-
taliiv a dreamable dream?
Or is the truly bionic human — a
merging of person and machine —
still just fantasy?
The questions were put to experts
in bioethics and medicine in the wake
of the historic heart operation in Utah
this week.
“We have not crashed the old-age
barrier,” said Dr. Amitai Etzioni,
founder of the Center for Policy Re
search and professor at George
Washington University in Washing
ton, D. C.
Life extension through bionic
parts such as an artificial heart is pos
sible but don’t look for anything
beyond about 120 years, Etzioni says.
“We are a long way from replacing
or rejuvenating the slow decline of
the brain,” he said. “But I would not
want to have doctors stop ex
perimenting.”
Dr. Paul Beeson, professor of
medicine, University of Washington
Medical School, Seattle, said the
world’s first implanted artificial heart
did not persuade him of man’s even
tual immortality.
Beeson, a distinguished geriatri
cian and editor of the Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society, said:
“The body ages and dies. Eighty-
five years seems a reasonable goal.
Probably no one lives beyond 115
years.
Beeson said the heart implanted
the other day would be looked on as
primitive 10 years from now.
If it should become widely avail
able, he saw no ethical problem with
its use in appropriate cases.
“It really is no different than a hip
replacement,” he said. “The question
on use should be — does it better the
quality of life?
“The man who had the first artifi
cial heart implant knew the many
risks and took the step because he
wanted to live on for a few more
months or years.”
To Prof. Robert Paul Ramsey,
emeritus professor of religion, Prin
ceton University, the triumph that
took place in a surgical suite in a Utah
hospital did not signal victory over
mortality.
The idea that a person was dead
when his heart was no longer beating
in his chest was confronted years ago,
Ramsey said.
That was when people undergoing
heart surgery were put on heart-lung
machines so their bad hearts could be
stopped, fixed, then started again.
The heart-lung machines were per
forming the work of the stopped
heart.
Besides, Ramsey said, the life cen
ter has shifted from the heart to the
brain. That is a result of the widely
accepted Harvard Criteria for Death.
This holds that brain death — flat
brain waves on a brainwave machine
— is death, even though a person’s
heart may still beat.
What bothers Ramsey is spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to de
velop the artificial heart.
Ramsey said he had a doctoral stu
dent who argued the money could be
better spent on health promotion —
selling people on the idea of jogging,
for example.
“She argued,” he said, “that this
would produce more healthy hearts.”
At the Kennedy Institute, George
town University, the Rev. Richard
McCormick, S.J., said perfection of
an artificial heart to the point where it
would be available to just about any
one who could afford it raised serious
social justice questions.
McCormick, Rose Kennedy pro
fessor of (Christian Ethics, said the
question was — with finite resources,
how should national funds be di
vided.
“How should this pie be split be
tween health care and other priori
ties,” he said. “And within health care,
how much should be for spent for
prevention and how much for crises.
And, in the case of exotic, expensive
technologies such as the artificial
heart the question is — who gets what
when all cannot get it?”
“We don’t know how to handle our
technology,” he said. “Take the re
spirator as one example. Some are
kept on respirators far longer than
needed.”
On the immortality question,
McCormick said:
“Where I come from, we’re on a
pilgrimage and death is not an end.”
See related story page 6
Keys to heart pumps
give patients a choice
staff photo by Octavio Garcia
A chair for Monday night
Julia Sullivan, a sophomore majoring in
English from Humble, is not sitting on a
real helmet. Instead, this is one of the
Aggie chairs for sale in the MSC Bookstore.
The chairs are made one at a time upon
request by a California company especially
for Texas A&M. The price of this one is
$425 and it has already been sold.
Justice gives views
on abortion decision
■
United Press International
[WASHINGTON — Justice Harry
Blackmun, in an unusual television
imerview broadcast Saturday, said he
resented being called a “butcher” and
; “murderer” for the historic 1973 de-
Irision legalizing abortion.
■ “You can think of any name to call
pomeone, and I have been called it —
Butcher of Dachau, murderer, Pon
tius Pilate, King Herod — you name
it," said the author of the decision.
| Blackmun made the comments in
an interview with Cable News Net
work as the court began its first
sweeping review of the abortion con
troversy in a decade.
I Blackmun said he agonized over
the decision that legalized abortion in
the first three months of pregnancy.
He noted he was denounced after
wards in an avalanche of mail. The
ruling became the prime target of the
anti-abortion movement.
The interview was the first inside a
justice’s office on court matters;
O’Connor gave a brief interview last
year on another topic.
Giving a glimpse into the secret
workings of the court, Blackmun said
the justices, including himself, are
“prima donnas” and admitted “there
are times when it gets a little tense.”
“I’m sure that we all play hardball a
little too much on occasion,” he said.
“But if someone’s going to play hard
ball with me, I’ll play hardball back.”
Blackmun, 74, was appointed by
Richard Nixon in 1970. He has been
edging toward the liberal wing of the
court.
In recent months Blackmun has
clashed with Justice O’Connor,
appointed by President Reagan as the
court’s first woman and newest jus
tice.
Blackmun noted O’Connor
appears to have joined the conserva
tive wing. “The justice is able, articu
late,” he said. “She gives no quarter,
she asks no quarter and she’s a fine
justice.”
Blackmun recalled accidentally
brushing his hearing aid and causing
a beep to go off during the court’s
secret weekly conference.
“I did it a second time and Justice
O’Connor said, ‘I think the room is
bugged.’ And Justice (John Paul)
Stevens immediately supported her.”
Blackmun said he mischievously
said nothing until another justice saw
him brush the device during cour
troom arguments. “Then, of course,
the secret was out and we all laughed
about it.”
United Press International
SALT LAKE CITY — Artificial
heart recipients will be given keys to
turn off their life-support pumps in
case they decide against living
tethered to machinery, bionics
pioneer Willem Kolff said.
Such a key will be given to Barney
Clark, 61, a retired Seattle dentist
who became the first recipient of the
permanent, plastic replacement heart
Thursday.
“If the man suffers and feels it isn’t
worth it any more, he has a key that he
can apply,” said Kolff, head of the
University of Utah’s Artificial Organs
Division, inventor of the artificial kid
ney, and founder of the artificial
heart program.
“I think it is entirely legitimate that
this man, whose life has been ex
tended, should have the right to cut it
off if he doesn’t want it, if life ceases to
be enjoyable,” he added.
“The operation won’t be a success
unless he is happy. That has always
been our criteria — to restore happi
ness.”
But Kolff predicted that Clark and
future patients will find life enjoy
able.
“My guess is if they feel well, they
will be delighted,” he said. “They will
enjoy life possibly more than they
have done before when they were ill.
If you should be dead and you are
given another lease on life, you look at
that life with quite different eyes.”
When Clark signed the consent
form for the operation approved by
the Food and Drug Administration,
he was specifically given the right to
withdraw from the experiment at any
stage, including after the surgery.
“Of course the only way to make
the decision afterwards is to have the
option of turning the juice off,” said
Dr. Robert Jarvik, developer of the
Jarvik-7 heart placed in Clark.
Jarvik and Kolff discussed the phi
losophical implications of the life
extending heart replacement surgery
in interviews Friday.
Jarvik said the philosphers argued
it would be impossible to fully inform
a patient prior to the operation about
all of the ramifications of living
tethered to a 375-pound power unit
that will severely limit mobility.
“There are people who would say
that for us to have a program that
condones suicide is morally wrong,”
Jarvik said. “But in practice, of
course, the key has nothing to do with
it. People can die in many ways and
they are amazingly creative about it.
“There is no way we could deny
that patient his basic capability and, as
far as I am concerned, his right to
choose for himself,” said Jarvik.
Rape, assaults reported
by Patti Schwierzke
Battalion Reporter
A rape and two assaults were re
ported on the Texas A&M campus
Sunday night and early Monday
morning.
One student reported that she
was raped about 11:15 p.m. near All
Faiths Chapel. The suspect was de
scribed as a white man with dark
hair between 30 and 35 years old.
She said he was about 6 feet 1 inch
tall, weighed about 230 pounds and
was wearing dark pants, a dark
windbreaker and cowboy boots.
There are no suspects in the case.
Another female student reported
that she was assaulted about 1:25
a.m. in a dorm room in the base
ment of Mosher Hall by a black man
about 25 years old. She described
the suspect as being about 6 feet 2
inches tall, weighing about 175
pounds and wearing a beige sweater
with rust stripes, tight black pants
and thick high-heeled shoes.
Another Texas A&M student,
who delivers pizza for Domino’s Piz
za, reported that he was assaulted in
Cain Hall about 1:10 a.m.
When the student arrived at
room 306C Cain Hall to deliver a
pizza, he discovered that it was a
custodial closet. As he left, two black
men assaulted him. They both had
cloth bags over their heads and
wooden clubs in their hands. One
man was about six feet tall and
weighed about 190 pounds. The
other suspect was described as being
about 6 feet 4 inches tall and
weighing about 240 pounds.
A police officer walking in the
parking lot of Cain Hall said he saw
the Domino’s Pizza box and insula
tion thrown out of a window in Cain
Hall. The University Police are now
examining the box for fingerprints.
Minorities underrepresented at A&M
by Bonn Friedman
Battalion Reporter
The story of minorities at Texas
A&M University is one of differing
perspectives. Some say the Universi
ty is doing everything it can to re
cruit minority students. Others say
programs to recruit minorities
aren’t working fast enough.
University officials said they are
| working to recruit more black and
[Hispanic students.
On Dec. 2, 1980, Acting Univer-
jsity President Charles H. Samson re-
Ileased a memo that outlined ways to
increase minority enrollment at
Texas A&M.
Three days later, the Board of
Regents held a special meeting.
During that meeting, they passed a
resolution that said:
• The University System has
[been, and will continue to be oper
ated in such a way as to help over
come the effects of past racial discri
mination.
• The University also should
strive to maintain an annual in
crease in the number of minority
students, and submit a plan that will
tell how this can be done.
In his book “Minorities in Higher
Education,” education researcher
Alexander W. Astin said the percen
tage of Hispanic undergraduates at
Texas A&M makes it the most
underrepresented university in the
nation.
According to Astin’s figures, 12.4
percent of all students in Texas col
leges and universities are Hispanic.
At Texas A&M, only 2.3 percent of
the students are Hispanic.
Blacks are underrepresented at
Texas A&M by 9.1 percent, Astin
said. His figures show that 9.8 per
cent of all students in Texas are
black, while only 0.7 percent of the
Texas A&M student body is black.
Astin’s figures include only uni
versities that he designated as flag
ship institutions — those that re
ceive a large amount of research
grants and place many of its gradu
ates in powerful government or in
dustry positions.
In most cases, Astin chose one
flagship institution per state, with
the exception of California, where
he included three, and Texas,
where he included Texas A&M and
the University of Texas.
But Astin’s figures are at least
three years old — the Texas A&M
student body is now 3.75 percent
Hispanic and 1.25 percent black.
Some of that increase may be
attributed, at least in part, to com
pliance with a report from the De
partment of Health, Education and
Welfare that outlined conditions
that minority students face in the
South.
The HEW report was released in
the summer of 1981, after the re
gents’ plan was released. The report
said Texas didn’t comply with Title
VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts,
which stated that discrimination in
federal programs is prohibited on
the basis of race, color or national
origin.
Texas was required to submit a
desegregation plan for the state’s
universities. Each university system
within the state was asked to submit
its own plan.
Texas A&M’s plan called for an
increase of 105 black and 135 Hispa
nic students in 1982, and 525 black
and 675 Hispanics by 1986,
The state plan, which was submit
ted to the Department of Education
in the spring of 1981, has not yet
been approved, but Texas A&M
already has started to implement its
part of the plan.
The ethnic enrollment for the
1982 fall semester included 441
blacks and 1,355 Hispanics. The fi
gures were compiled by the regis
trar’s office from admission applica
tion forms that usually are filled out
by students. The results show an in
crease of 58 blacks and 178 Hispa
nics over 1980 figures.
The increased enrollment of
black and Hispanic students is large
ly a result of efforts by the Office of
School Relations, the director of the
office said.
see MINORITIES page 12
inside
Classified 8
Local 3
National 7
Opinions 2
Sports 13
State 4
What’s up 11
forecast
Today’s Forecast: Clear skies
through today.
High of about 65, with tonight’s
low in the 40s.