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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 17, 1987)
The Battalion Dne itfoi Vol. 82 No. 162 USPS 045360 8 pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, June 17,1987 u as pan lennis. ic All-b, llie y cl him mi li loom; .on lilt i unless It The House That Jack Built? No, it’s not the inside of a spaceship or a close-up view of a spider, but part of the water-cooling system located at the Physical Plant on cam- Photo by Sarah B. Cowan pus. The system helps keep Texas A&M faculty and students cool, de spite the hot Texas summer. Jury’s verdict: Goetz innocent in heated case NEW YORK (AP) — A jury found Bernhard Goetz innocent of at tempted murder Tuesday for shoot ing four young men he said were about to rob him on a subway car, convicting him only of carrying an unlicensed handgun. Goetz, who claimed he fired in self-defense, showed no emotion as jury foreman James Hurley read the verdicts, capping a case that ignited a nationwide debate over urban vio lence and vigilantism. The 39-year-old electronics tech nician could be sentenced to no time in prison or receive any term up to a maximum of two and one-third to seven years. State Supreme Court Justice Stephen Crane set sentendng for Sept. 4 and allowed Goetz to re main free on $50,000 bail until then. As the verdicts were read, a buzz became audible in the crowded court chamber, but there were no displays of approval or disapproval. Goetz leaned over and was over heard asking a member of the de fense team, “How does one thank all these people?” In all, Goetz was acquitted of 12 charges, including second-degree at tempted murder, first-degree as sault and reckless endangerment. He was found guilty of third-degree weapons possession, a Class D fel ony, for using the unlicensed .38-cal- iber revolver in the Dec. 22, 1984 shootings. The eight men and four women of the jury deliberated 32 hours over four days after a seven-week trial. Goetz was escorted by court offi cers to a car and left without speak ing to reporters. “He felt as if a great burden was lifted off his shoulders,” said de fense attorney Barry Slotnick, who met briefly with reporters outside the courthouse. “All he wants to do right now is fade into the woodwork. This has been a terrible chapter in his life.” Crane called the case “one of the most difficult of our time” and told the jurors that there has been and will be “faction and criticism . . . but you have been seen to do justice.” “You have attended to your duties in the way that the American court system was meant to operate,” Crane said.“You are the finest jury I have ever had the pleasure of having be fore me.” Assistant District Attorney Gre gory Waples, who prosecuted the case, refused to comment on the ver dict, saying only: “My thoughts on the case are my own, and I don’t care to share them.” In a brief statement, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgen- thau said the case involved “complex and tragic circumstances, but our system of justice is based upon the belief that no man can escape an swering for his actions. id I'm i :<)urt le (ogw Mcoholic beverages with detectable sulfites soon must be labeled By Yvonne DeGraw Staff Writer ftl™ 0,11 ^ deadly. i liliifl No, this is not another story about ll( ".linking and driving. S inks A It,s a k° ut a food additive that 5 rhl Ki(»B ercent to *0 percent of asthmatics 1 j,may be sensitive to. In some cases, J the allergic reactions are strong is oi -I. 8 lenough to kill them. 1 lirsi B I Clements: Laws to help iconomy ter iiW'i ii one he he# yel)iw ; i S|# nil. :«),n» iiiiii 1 AUSTIN (AP) — Gov. Bill Clem- mts signed several bills into law Tuesday which he said will get the tale’s stalled economy moving igain. “What we are doing here today is iterally putting our derailed Texas :onomy back on the tracks of eco- omic prosperity,” Clements said, ;ated before a large sign saying, Texas is open for business.” 4 |]| Clements signed legislation that: • Merges seven economic devel- pment agencies into a unified De- rtment of Commerce. • Provides regulatory relief for mall businesses. • Creates an Economic Planning mmission to chart a long-term i cniii' course for development, pjekir • Enacts so-called “tort reform” to revamp the civil justice system, he new law will will change court •rocedures governing personal in jury and damage lawsuits and is de igned to limit punitive damages in me cases. • Deregulates the trucking indus try within Texas, a move backers Said should spark increased competi tion and help lower costs, f Clements said economic devel opment bills were needed to rebuild an economy beaten by low oil prices and high unemployment rates. “Business, in partnership with ite government, will help forge the :onomic foundation in which all exans will prosper,” Clements said. “The need to foster an economic irnaround certainly was one of the gislative topics that all state leaders igreed on,” he said. As for the tort reform bills, Clem- tnts said that is a good sign to the na tion’s businesses. “This legislation sends a positive lignal to the business community it we are serious about holding lown the cost of doing business in •ur state,” Clements said. rd on Until now, alcoholic beverages that contained this class of chemicals — sulfites — did not label their products. As of July 9, the Bureau of Alco hol, Tobacco and Firearms will re quire alcohol products that contain 10 or more parts per million of sul fites to say just that on the label. John Linthicum, coordinator of the beer and wine branch, says this will affect wine more than beer or distilled spirits. “Just about all the wine in the world contains sulfites at this level,” he says. “Sulfur dioxide is a natural byproduct of alcoholic fermenta tion.” Because of its lower alcohol con tent, beer rarely contains high con centrations of sulfites. The distilla tion process removes sulfites from stronger liquors, Linthicum says. The chemical names — sulfur di oxide, sodium sulfite, sodium bisul fite, potassium bisulfite, sodium metabisulfite and potassium metabi sulfite — blend in with the rest of the alphabet soup that follows the recog nizable items in most ingredient lists. Actually, sulfites were used as food preservatives long before they had chemical names. Most people are not affected by them at all. Currendy, most wine coolers have ingredient lists that include sulfites, but wine labels do not include ingre dient lists. The new labels will say “contains sulfites” in letters at least 2 millime ters high. The agency also is considering regulations to reduce the amount of sulfites allowed in alcohol from 350 parts per million to an undeter mined level. The bureau is only the latest to add sulfite regulations. Since a nationwide survey by the Food and Drug Administration turned up 500 reports of reactions to sulfites and 13 deaths associated with sulfites, more and more gov ernment agencies have required food producers to label products containing sulfites. Within the past few years, the FDA has banned the use of sulfites as preservatives for raw fruits and vegetables. This removed them from salad bars — the main culprit in the 13 reported deaths. But 14 percent of the reactions had been caused by packaged foods eaten at home. Early this year, the FDA required labeling of any prod uct that contains sulfites in detecta ble amounts. Other products that contain sul fites include: baked goods, dried fruits, starches and fruit juices. A&M professor shows possible cure for Parkinson’s disease won’t work Diagram A Caudate nucleus and neostriatum „ Location of dopamine- producing cells This is a diagram of a rat brain. Rats represent only one of the lab animals used in the study of Parkinson’s disease. “A” represents the place where the dopamine-producing cells (clustered at “B”) release their dopamine. Once released, the dopamine carries messages be tween the neurons in the brain and is necessary to coordinate movement. Parkinson’s disease develops when the brain, for un known reasons, fails to produce dopamine, resulting in characteristic tremors and muscle rigidness. Diagram B III. llli III! II 1 ' H 1 ' N 1 ' Diagram B represents the normal firing pattern caused by dopa mine in the brain. To cure Parkinson’s disease, this pattern must be duplicated by the grafted dopamine-producing cells. Diagram C Diagram C represents the abnormal rapid-firing of the nerve end ings caused by grafts of adrenal tissue. Because this pattern does not match the normal firing pattern, Dr. Trulson says this method of grafting will never produce a cure for Parkinson’s disease By George Weissenberger Reporter A Texas A&M associate professor has shown that the enthusiasm over a possible cure for Parkinson’s dis ease following a Mexican study is premature. According to Dr. Michael Trul son, associate professor of anatomy, the Mexican doctors used a tissue- grafting technique in which adrenal medullary tissue from their patients was grafted onto the neostriatum of the brain. In the New England Journal of Medicine, the Mexican study pro claimed a vast improvement in pa- dents. This study, Trulson says, caused inidal excitement among the general public and some profession als. However, this enthusiasm was dampened, Trulson says, when he had a study published in the May 25 issue of Life Sciences. His study showed that adrenaline, produced by the grafted adrenal tis sue, causes an abnormal response between the nerve endings that coordinate movement. “I don’t think this sort of grafting will get very far,” he says. In the 1970s, tissue grafting was seen as a way of providing a cure for Parkinson’s disease, Trulson says. This followed studies in the 1950s in which dopamine, a brain chemical that carries messages between neu rons and coordinates movement, was found to exist in the brain, he says. Following this, Trulson says, au topsies of Parkinson patients showed an 80 percent to 90 percent deple tion of dopamine in the brain. Therefore, the relationship between dopamine depletion and Parkinson’s disease was established, he says. The area of the brain that the do pamine-producing cells occupy was pinpointed by Swedish scientists in the early ’60s, he says. Trulson says early treatment of Parkinson’s disease involved replen ishing the depleted dopamine in the patient’s brain. However, dopamine cannot just be injected or taken as a pill because it can’t pass the blood- brain barrier to be absorbed by the brain, he says. To overcome this problem, scien tists developed the chemical Levo dopa, whicn can cross the blood- brain barrier and is converted into dopamine in the brain. This treatment can reduce the shaking caused by Parkinson’s dis ease and allow some victims to walk again, but it doesn’t provide a cure, he says. The problem is that the dopamine is distributed throughout the brain and is not concentrated in the area where it is needed, he says. “The dopamine is needed in the right places at the right times and in the right amounts,” he says. To accomplish this, grafting has been used in the last few years to place dopamine-producing nerve cells within specific areas of the brain, which allows dopamine to be released when needed. Currently, grafts have been placed on the caudate nucleus where they grow to form connections with the neurons that coordinate movement, he says. These grafts have caused im provement in lab animals but do not reverse or cure Parkinson’s disease, he says. A neural toxin is used in these lab animals to destroy the dopamine- producing cells in test animals, thereby inducing a Parkinson-like state. Grafts of dopamine-producing cells then are taken from fetal tissue and transplanted onto the caudate nucleus. The reason these grafts are not placed in the right location is that the dopamine cells will not grow into the caudate nucleus to make the proper connections, he says. This is why grafts are placed on the caudate nucleus, where they do not have to grow as far to make con tact with the nerve endings that coordinate movement, he says. In the Mexican study, adrenal tis sue was used rather than the graft ing of fetal dopamine cells. The adrenal tissue does not pro duce dopamine but does piroduce adrenaline, which, due to similiar chemical properties, acts upon the neurons in the brain, he says. However, there are fundamental problems with grafting adrenal tis sue, and Trulson says he believes the practice will never lead to a cure. His studies show that adrenaline produces an abnormal response be tween the neurons by causing a steady, rapid firing of the neurons. Normally, dopamine produces a pat tern of bursts in which the neuron fires about five times in decreasing amplitude, pauses, then repeats. Due to the abnormal response adrenaline causes, it will never lead to normal-functioning neurons and a cure, he says. The answer lies in putting grafts of fetal dopamine-producing celb back where they belong, he says. To overcome the problem of grafts not growing into the caudate nucleus, the logical step is to take pe ripheral tissue out of a leg or some other part of the body and place it in the brain, he says. This tissue then would act as a path to guide the growing grafts of dopamine-producing cells into the caudate nucleus, he says. “I think we’re closing in,” he says. To get the grafted cells to grow, Trulson says, a nerve growth factor compound will be used. He says this compound would be collected and placed in the brain along with the grafted tissue to induce growth. Dr. Trulson will be in New York this summer at a neurological sci ences symposium at which he will join scientists from around the world submitting their newest findings in the batde against Parkinson’s dil ease.