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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1984)
Monday, November 12, 1984/The Battalion/Page 3 Committee reports to be heard The Texas A&M Faculty Sen ate holds its monthly meeting to day at 3:15 p.m. in 701 Rudder Tower. Items on the agenda include curriculum additions and revi sions as well as reports from seve ral Senate committees. Dean of Faculties Clinton Phil lips will address the Senate on tenure and promotion policies and international programs. Any interested students, fac ulty or staff are welcome to at tend the Senate meetings. Child with baboon heart has brief rejection period Baby Fae could receive another heart United Press International TOMA LINDA, Calif. — Tiny Baby Fae underwent a brief reject ion episode when her immune sys tem tried to reject the baboon heart keeping her alive, but she responded to medication and was doing well Sunday. The 3-week-old infant who had historic cross-species transplant sur gery 16 days ago may receive an other baboon heart if she rejects the one implanted, a doctor said. “We have diagnosed an episode of rejection,” said Dr. Robin Doroshow, a pediatrician at the hospital, on the television news show ‘Face The Na tion.' “It is not critical. Her clinical condition appears normal.” A spokeswoman at Loma Linda Medical Center said the baby was di agnosed as of Sunday morning as “showing a favorable response to anti-rejection treatment and no new signs of rejection. “They (doctors) feel the baby con tinues to do well clinically in spite of this brief rejection episode,” the spokeswoman said. “She feeds, grasps at objects, cries when she’s hungry and shows normal heart function.” The hospital also said that Bttby Fae showed no signs of infection and that her antibiotics had been discon tinued. Doroshow said doctors have known that the infant was in the early stages of rejection for “just a couple of days,” and confirmed the condition late in the week. She said the hospital has been au thorized to perform another baboon heart transplant, but that another such operation is dependent on the results of the transplant already per formed. Doctors will consider another ba boon heart or a human heart im plant if she rejects her current ani mal organ. “If she has a rejection to the point we cannot control, we would con sider another transplant,” Doroshow said. “She is registered for a human heart. Another baboon heart could also be considered at that time.” Baby Fae was born with hypoplas tic left heart syndrome, a fatal condi tion. The highly experimental surgery drew world wide attention and sparked questions about its ethics. The baby’s real name and her par ents have never been identified. They are known only to be Barstow, Calif, residents, and the hospital has taken great pains to protect their privacy. Jack Provonsha, head of the hos pital’s ethics department who also appeared on the CBS show, said the secrecy of the parents’ identification was vital to protect the rights of the infant. He said doctors did not make any guarantees to the baby’s parents be fore the operation. Asked what they were led to ex pect, he said, “We told the parents we really don’t know and certainly can’t promise anything.” Son spreads Gandhi’s ashes over mountains ler glass. :ry mem- tow peo- le rareli ;0 prison ent if she Doyle ijj- ronment n’t seem officials ■e consti- he said, saw was > wanted 1 hand® :: Abiiui th-gradf ish a sta id to the erred to inent ol more to to free- . Unfor- s. views ol ^s, free- ■ iheop- ).se free- predate V.U M' ,<• «f a«- iib i% kituh' h /c-wy' ll.liHlui". nil im 1 ' 1 nlili’ 1 - hill;" lllllill;": . filliJ pci I'll 1 United Press International NEW DELHI, India — Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi scattered the ashesof his slain mother Indira Gan dhi over the glistening Himalayas Sunday front a plane with a jet fighter escort, fulfilling her final wish to be entrusted to “The Great Lord of the Snows.” Gandhi, who succeeded his mother as prime minister hours al ter she was assassinated Oct. 31, dropped the ashes from a special platform on a Soviet-built AN-12 air force plane as it flew at 26.()()() feet across the skies of northern India ac companied by two air force fighters. Gandhi said his mother had asked that her remains be scattered over the glaciers where the holy Ganges River begins its descent to the Bay of Bengal and be “entrusted to the care ofThe Great Lord of the Snows.” “In near freezing temperatures and absolute stillness, under the shade of massive ice walls glistening in the azure blue sky, the prime min ister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, struggling to maintain his composure, carried out his mother’s last wish,” the Indian news agency PTI said in a report ra dioed from the plane. With the 30-minute flight ending the official 12-day mourning period for the woman who led India for al most two decades, the party she molded to reflect her personality as well as her name — congress-1 — prepared to meet today to name her son as successor. Gandhi is expected to be formally elected president by the entire party at today’s meeting in a unanimous vote, putting him in position to con test general elections that by law must take place before January. He was elected head of the party’s parliamentary board two days after his mother was murdered by two of her Sikh bodyguards. 11 the 40-year-old former airline pilot is re-elected prime minister he will continue until 1990 the nearly unbroken Gandhi dynasty begun at independence in 1947 by his grand father, Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi is considered relatively in experienced for the task of running a nation of 720 million people. But opposition parties are weak and Congress leaders say he is the only person — by virtue of his ances try — to mend the wounds opened when Hindu mobs attacked Sikhs across northern India to avenge Gandhi’s killing. More than 1,200 people, mostly Sikhs, died in the most widespread communal violence since indepen dence. T he rioting pitted Hindus and Sikhs for the first time and offi cials fear the rift between the tradi tional allies will have long-lasting ef fects on Indian politics. Officials said more than 3,000 people have been arrested in con nection with the rioting and $6 mil lion worth of stolen property recov ered. World’s Fair Uncollected trash marks end of bankrupt World's Fair United Press International NEW ORLEANS — The bank rupt 1984 World’s Fair came to an end of its six-month run Sun day with subdued ceremonies in a cold wind swirling trash uncol lected because the exposition could not pay its maintenance workers. Pavilions began shutting down at mid-afternoon and the last of the nightly fireworks were sched uled for 8 p.m., nearly three hours earlier than usual. Officials said stragglers would be shooed out the gates by 10 p.m. The end of the exposition, originally billed as a six-month March Gras, was to be marked with a quiet evening ceremony — all the fair could afford — in the open-air amphitheater alongside the Mississippi River. Even the weather marked an end to the festive season, with a biting wind sweeping from the north across Lake Pontchatrain and the temperature struggling to reach 60 despite sunshine. The wind swirled trash left by throngs of last-minute fair visi tors, strewn on the ground be cause the expo laid off most of its maintenance workers weeks ago when attendance plunged to re cord lows. If crowds in the fair’s final days — topping 200,000 the last few weekends — had been as high throughout, the debt-ridden expo might have avoided filing for bankruptcy last week. But total attendance only squeaked to 7 million, when 12 million had been expected. Monday, the fair’s payroll will drop from 1,200 to 1/8 workers whose main duty will be to make sure no one carts away fair prop erty. Fair officials hope to defray some of the $140 million debt by selling bits and pieces of the ex po’s whimsical decorations before work begins on the city’s new con vention center and a riverfront shopping complex, permanent le gacies of the fair. The cupids, peacocks, urns and Greek and Roman busts that decorated the Wonderwall — cre ated by Blaine Kern, who designs Mardi Gras floats — will be sole!. Fair made serious mistakes in dealing with media United Press International An analysis by ROB GLOSTER NEW ORLEANS — One of the biggest mistakes World’s Fair of ficials made in dealing with hun dreds of reporters and photogra- phers was holding a media day while the exposition was still a construction site. One day before the May 12 opening, the nation got its first glimpse of the $350 million fair — incomplete pavilions, report ers in hardhats and piles of gar bage. By presenting an anfinished product, fair officials tarnished the image of their extravaganza, which lost $140 million and filed for bankruptcy days before its Sunday closing. But probably the worst mistake fair officials made was assuming they could save advertising dol lars by encouraging the media to promote a positive image for the expo, whicn originally budgeted only $5 million for advertising. Journalists who flocked to the fair found their responsibility to report the news —even when it was bad — outweighed any desire to promote the expo. With an absence of positive ad vertising, the fair’s publicity was dominated by images of em ployee layof fs, grand jury investi gations and disappointing atten- dance. Fair President Peter Spurney said that led to a “Catch- 22.” Spurney and other fair officials accused reporters of not support ing the exposition, but journalists responded they could not respon sibly ignore the financial prob lems that affected hundreds of workers and millions of taxpay ers. Even when the fair had oppor tunities for positive publicity, it often stumbled because of inex perience and lack of cooperation by expo officials. “Good Morning America,” seen each day by 6.5 million peo ple, planned to do a series of live reports from the fair. But the ex po’s public relations officials “just were not prepared to handle it” and the reports were cancelled, a spokeswoman for the show said. Fair officials generally were in accessible to reporters during the opening weeks of the exposition. By the end of the expo, how ever, officials were pleading for coverage and Spurney claimed “the press wrote what they saw. They didn’t create the financial problems, though they added to them.” MSC • TOWN • HALL w Thursday Nov. 29 9:00 p. m. illie Nelson After nfire ' V ^ ■! 1 mSm if mm ' iv, x *11111 Vis® TV: IliiliS m 1 * v G. Rollie White $13 50 $11 50 S SALE NOW MSC Box Office 845-1234 iM' : t