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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1984)
Thursday, January 9, 1984/The Battalion/Page 3 Students volunteer for flu research I "Al By PAM BARNES Reporter When ll\e first flu case of 1984 was diagnosed at the Texas A&M student health cen ter on the first day of the spring semester, a phone call was made to the Baylor College of Medi cine’s Infuenza Research Cen ter in Houston. Doctors who had spent the previous week setting up on the second floor of the health cen ter left Houston and came im mediately to begin the fourth year of flu research here. The one flu case was soon re placed by an epidemic. The doctors involved with this re search have been working day and night treating flu patients — a pace that is likely to con tinue until March when the flu season is expected to end. HDr. Greg Willis, a clinical as sociate with the research pro gram, admits that because of the epidemic the pace is tiring. "We’ve seen more patients in the last nine days than last year’s researchers saw in two months," Willis said. “The first couple of weeks fell like a month.” Willis, along with Nancy Hayes and Leon Dure, make up the team of clinical associates who examine the flu patients. Working closely with them is m Wilson, an associate pro- Bor at Baylor College of Med- ne. Wilson designed and built e machine that plays a key irt in the research program. The three clinical associates om Baylor are recent medical Itool graduates awaiting their itcrnship assignments in (arch. They have left families M friends to spend three jonths here working on the re arch program. They are living in the health enter and eating in the health enter cafeteria. Wilson said ware being treated great. “The food is excellent," Wil- tm said. “The people really out for us. We really like dies,’ the cook,”he said. “The people here are really terrific,” Hayes said. “The peo ple at the medical school and the health center and especially the student body. I don’t know what we would do without the outstanding cooperation.” The doctors haven’t been able to enjoy the campus or city much and all laughed when Wilson told about one of their few outings together. They remembered seeing a “chicken place” close to campus and thought a meal out would be a nice change. They had, of course, seen the infamous Dixie Chicken at Northgate and found rattlesnakes, burgers and beer instead of fried chicken. T he research team’s day be gins at (> a.in. when they make their first rounds of the clay and it doesn’t end until around 11:30 that night. Then one of the associates is on call during the night. They take turns be ing on call every third night. Their days are busy. The pa tients are seen twice a day by two of the doctors. Between rounds there is paper work and new patients have to be ad mitted, examined, and assigned to a room with one of the re search machines. The machine mixes the in vestigational chug. Ribavirin, with a mist and sends it through a mask to the patient. The pa tient wears the mask 12 to 16 hours a day to breathe the drug into the respiratory passages where the virus is. “We don’t like to call the drug experimental,” he said. “We call it investigational be cause we know it works.” Leon Dure said that because the drug is administered through a mist and is given in relatively low doses it has no known side ef fects. The research program is a joint effort between the Texas A&M College of Medicine and the Baylor College of Medicine. All samples are sent to the med ical school here to be evaluated. Then they are either stored for Day students get their news from the Batt. Dr. Leon Dure, left, and Dr. Greg Wil lis, right, check on Clay LaGrone, a freshman biochemistry major from Photo by ERIC EVAN LEE Tulsa, Ok. The doctors are part of a group from Baylor College of Medi cine in Houston. A wild and wooly workout using joyful jazz dance move ments and swinging music for fitness, friendship and fun! Class Schedule Mon. & Wed. 4:30 pm * 5:30 pm * 7:00 pm Tues., Thurs. 9:30am * 6:00pm 'Babysitting available 9:30 Saturday Morning Class Starting Feb. 11 CONTINUOUS CLASSES REGISTER IN CLASS Corner of Wellborn Rd. &Grove ST., College Station 822-2349 696-1886 furtheruse or dispensed to other areas of flu research. It’s a double blind study, Wil lis said. This means that neither the patient nor the observing doctor knows whether the drug is being administered. This way there’s an accurate and fair ac count of the drug’s effect, he said. Those patients who receive the mist without the drug get plenty of bedrest and other usual treatments, so they get well anyway, Hayes said. “That’s why the study is be ing done on college students,” Hayes said. “They have stamina and are generally healthy, other than the flu.” Other reasons why the re search is being done at Texas A&M is because it is close to Houston and it is predictable, Hayes said. “College students come back from spending Christmas in all parts of the country and breathe on each other,” she said. “The researchers know that every year at least some stu dents wifi get the flu.” To be eligible for the study a patient must be diagnosed at the health center as having a temperature of 101 degrees or more, must be at least 18 years old and must not have had the flu for more than 24 hours. The flu victim is paid $72 for spending three days in the hos pital and participating in the program. After three days the patient is encouraged to return for occasional follow up visits and is paid $20 a visit. The study will pay up to $ 132. The health center has 12 of the machines used in the study and prefers to have 14 volun teers. Volunteers are needed and encouraged to participate in the study, Willis said. The Corps of Cadets gets its news from the Batt. -lot ,ra | M loans A&M industrial robot system University News Service |The International Business :hine Corp. has turned to jexasA&M for research on ro les applications. ipM’s Austin plant has jSlied Texas A&rM’s engi- feering technology department h industrial robot system va- icd at more than $ 150,000 and iill provide $50,000 a year for liree years to fund various re- carch projects, department ead Dr. Kenneth Gowdy says. The department has three thei industrial robots which re used for research anti for aching students who will work ith the sophisticated machines ter graduation. Texas A&M is the first Texas tivetsity to be included in M s joint studies programs tich involve MIT, Stanford, rdue, Carnegie Mellon and several other leaders in high- technology research. Gowdy said a key factor in Texas A&M’s selection for the IBM robotics program was Jack Henry, assistant professor of engineering technology, who is on a leave of absence to work for IBM. “Prof. Henry has been doing r ^P/iegnomt? some excellent work at IBM and will return to our depart ment in June to work on re search and return to teaching,” Gowdy said. Until Henry re turns, other researchers in the department will become famil iar with the IBM 7565 manufac turing system. consider afl? tfce afle/tnalit/es O Among projects under con sideration are a study of the practical uses and limitations of vision in manufacturing assem bly operations, a comparison of system efficiency using differ ent computer languages and a study of flexible manufacturing cells. 0a^ ce \ v a^ ce %T.ce V\s LC Ae* aS Nve’ S- ■> v'° e o\a cC . „ L FREE PROFESSIONlAL COUNSELING Adoption is a viable alternative SOUTHWEST MATERNITY CENTER 6487 Whitby Road, San Antonio, Texas 78240 (512) 696-2410 TOLL FREE 1-800-292-5103 Sponsored by the Methodist Student Movement through the Wesley Foundation t* - -XK- Find Out for Yourself. Get the inside story on the latest success in the computer industry. Tandem. Tandem Computers has set new standards for reliability, data integrity, flexibility, and on-line processing for large-scale data processing. 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