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Vol. 82 No. 162 USPS 045360 8 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, June 17,1987
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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.
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Mcoholic beverages
with detectable sulfites
soon must be labeled
By Yvonne DeGraw
Staff Writer
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S inks A It,s a k° ut a food additive that 5
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I Clements:
Laws to help
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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
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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.