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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 4, 1989)
The Battalion FREE FLYING LESSONS With Purchase of Radio Control Air Plane Set 10% discount on any R/C airplane, car or helicopter set with this coupon -Stunt Kites -Plastic Models -Balsa & Bass Wood Hobbies & Crafts 823-0916 -R/C Headquarters ] -Boats & Trains -Art Supplies For The Graduate 20% off all cross pens & pencils 70% off 14K chains (except add-a-beads) We carry ATM dangle rings & charms POST OAK MALL Gold P>ost USAlRL F 3 /££7/77/7/77" Airlines present: It’s your chance to win two free tickets from USAir /Piedmont Airlines. The Airline that takes you to over 100 cities! May S** nriA Directed by: Restricted to those who register at: The MSC. preceding Aggie Basebdll games, and various other locations. The Texas A&M American Marketing Association Produced by: KTAM CarePIusN>*rt Presents Roc, The Good Doc “You’ve absorbed too much sun!” Had too much fun in the sun? Roc, the good doc says swim by CarePlus Medical Center. They’ll soothe and heal your sunburn as well as recom mend an appropiate sunscreen for your next soak in the sun. And don’t forget students receive a 10% discount at Careplus Medical/Dental Cen ters. For any ailment from sunburn to heartburn, come to CarePlus Medical/Dental Centers. CarePIus^fff 1712 Southwest Parkway • College Station, TX 77840 Medical 696-0683 • Dental 696-9578 WORLD & NATION 10 Thursday, May 4, 1989 Decrepit lab houses AIDS research Scientists face disease, exploding lightbulbs, sink with no drain ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Scientists at the world’s busiest AIDS testing laboratory face not only blood samples contaminated with a deadly disease, but peeling paint, exploding lightbulbs and a sink with no drain. There’s even a sign on the elevator warning people not to use it; it gets stuck. New York, a leader in AIDS testing and re search in this country largely because it has more AIDS patients than any other state, does most of this key scientific work in a laboratory built in 1917. Potholes line the driveway leading to the three-story brick building, where gleaming com puters sit alongside equipment rusted with age. Exposed wires run along walls and paint peels from the ceiling. “It’s kind of ironic,” said Colleen Flood, a bac teriologist who runs the program that tests new borns for presence of the AIDS-related human immunovirus (HIV). “We’re down here doing work that’s at the forefront. When people come in here . . . they say, ‘How can you work in such a dilapidated lab?’” Flood and her colleagues have learned to ad just to a job that brings with it certain measures of pride and indignity. They took the job partly because it is more challenging than routine lab work, but they deal with a disease that still carries a taboo and work in conditions dismally unequal to private labs. Virtually any testing needed to combat a pub lic health emergency in New York eventually finds its way to the New Scotland Avenue Labo ratory here, said Donald Berns, director of the Health Department division of clinical sciences. AIDS is overwhelmingly the state’s most pressing health epidemic. It had 20,476 con firmed cases by the end of 1988, one-fourth the national total, and some 300,000 New Yorkers are thought to be infected with the related HIV virus, a possible precursor of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The state conducts nearly 750,000 AIDS-re- lated tests a year here, including a half-million HIV tests, more than any other laboratory any where, Berns said. Five white freezers hum in one of many small rooms. Each contains 20,000 blood serum sam ples, part of the state’s research stockpile. Each sample taken since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic is kept here as a ready resource for tests done on the disease. The freezers stand next to a rusted sink cov ered with a cardboard sign: “Do not use sink. No drain.” It’s one of dozens of little reminders of the building’s limitations. The elevators were in stalled before the Roaring ’20s. The ovens where glass was made for test tubes and beakers have been dormant for years, so outdated the equip ment isn’t safe, Russ Toombs, the lab’s opera tions director, said. Mold sometimes grows on the ceilings, re searcher Diana Schoonmaker said. Lights occa sionally flicker and bulbs have exploded during power surges. “It’s frustrating to me,” Berns said of the building. “It’s a real problem to have to deal with this. But the quality of the people make up fora lot of the problems you have.” “With New York state and all its wealth, it seems they could provide a little better working atmosphere,” Mike Neal, a bacteriologist, said. Berns wouldn’t characterize the building as dangerous, “but I also would be dishonest ill didn’t say the potential for accidents is far higher here.” Modern laboratories are sealed so germs can't escape from floor to floor. New Scotland’s venti lation system is less modern — windows are opened, often in the winter because of inconsis tent heating — and it’s believed this contributed to the TB virus exposure six years ago, he said. Gov. Mario Cuomo has called the lab “obso lete, deteriorating and incapable of meeting modern federal standards for biosafety,” and asked the Legislature for $75 million to rebuild it and six other buildings, all built before 1949. Few people dispute that the building needs to be replaced, “it’s just a question of staying with it,” said state Sen. Joseph Bruno, who sponsored legislation to appropriate the money. The bill is still pending. Designs have already been drawn up for the new lab. They’re outside Berns' office, awaiting the governmental go-ahead. But money is tight in New York this year, with Cuomo saying he had to deal with a potential $2.6 billion deficit as he prepared a budget proposal for the fiscal year that began April 1. Chinese government refuses to recognize student unions, protestors prepare to march BEIJING (AP) —- Students, an gered because the government re fused to recognize their indepen dent unions, prepared Wednesday to conduct a “historic march” for a freer China on the 70th anniversary of the first movement for democ racy. “Students, let us march together with our heads held high,” said stu dent leader Wu’er Kaixi speaking to a crowd of his classmates at the Beij ing Normal College. More than 40 universities around Beijing were expected to take part in the march Thursday to Tiananmen Square, Wu’er said. If successful, it will mark the sixth time in three weeks that students have marched to the vast expanse, the symbolic politi cal center of China. To ward off the demonstration, Beijing’s Public Security Bureau an nounced it would close the square. Students said they would go anyway. “They tried to close it on April 22nd and look what happened then,” Wu’er said, referring to the day when more than 150,000 stu dents and their supporters occupied the square in defiance of a police or der. “Our protest . . . will show that Chinese democracy has arrived at a new stage. It will be a historic march.” Late Wednesday night, campuses around Beijing were alive with the sounds of speeches and chants as students prepared for the march. More than 500 students crammed in an auditorium at Beijing Univer sity and applauded wildly as student leader Yang Tao said the protest could be larger than on April 28 when 150,000 students and support ers and tens of thousands of onlook ers filled Beijing streets. At the People’s University, the chant was, “Long live freedom! Long live democracy!” Students said they had no inten tion of disrupting the annual meet ing of the Asian Development Bank in the Great Hall of the People, which borders the square. About 60 journalists from state- run newspapers drafted a petition protesting censorship and said they would hold their own demonstration Thursday. Panel questions Wright’s partners in well venture WASHINGTON (AP) — The House ethics committee Wednesday began interviewing a group of Texans involved in a gas-drilling ven ture that has produced little gas but has resulted in large profits for House Speaker Jim Wright. The panel began two days of scheduled inter views by questioning San Antonio businessman Morris Jaffe. Jaffe and his son Doug, who are friends of Wright, allowed the speaker and his business partner George Mallick to buy into the well venture last year. At the same time, a special House ethics task force, created this year to examine House rules and ethics guidelines, opened public hearings in the areas of financial disclosure, outside income, receipt of gifts and use of official resources. Task force chairman Vic Fazio, D-Calif., also a member of the ethics committee, said the panel hoped to learn from lawmakers’ ethics problems to draft clarifications in the rules and achieve bet ter education of House members and staff. While Fazio sought to isolate the hearing from the current atmosphere of the Wright case, for mer Rep. Otis Pike, D-N.Y., did not. “Your preoccupation with each other’s ethics is preventing you from doing your jobs,” Pike testi fied. “It is taking too much of your time, and worse, it is creating an atmosphere and an insti tution in which suspicion, bitterness, personal dislikes and private vendettas make cooperative efforts in writing laws increasingly difficult.” Ethics Committee chairman Julian Dixon, D- Calif., said the session with Jaffe had been pro ductive. Jaffe’s lawyer, Stanley Brand, said the questions generally covered the same ground as a 23-page report on the gas deal which he issued earlier in the week. That report justified the transaction as a legiti mate business venture and noted that the re maining partners in the deal plan to drill another well. It was not, the report contended, a gift to Wright designed to gain favor and influence over legislation. The Wright-Mallick partnership’s $9,120 in vestment last year grew into a $340,000 profit over a period of five months. When it announced last week it was charging Wright with 69 House rules violations, the ethics committee said it was continuing investigation of the gas venture, known as the Sabine Lake project, after its loca tion near the Louisiana-Texas border. The continuing investigation has stalled com mittee progress toward holding a disciplinary hearing for Wright, the trial-like phase of the ethics process in which evidence is presented and Wright has a chance to make a personal appeal. It took Galileo 16 years to master the universe. You have one night. It seems unfair. The genius had all that time. While you have a few short hours to learn your sun spots from your satellites before the dreaded astronomy exam. On the other hand, Vivarin gives you the definite advantage. It helps keep you awake and mentally alert for hours. Safely and conveniently. So even when the subject matter’s dull, your mind will stay razor sharp. If Galileo had used Vivarin, maybe he could have mastered the solar system faer, too w j t h VIVARIN don't let , Vour b ^siness oomb. call 845-2611 to ^vetS Th e battalion Use as directed Contains caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee ® Beecham Inc 1988