NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Planned Parenthood launches ads
Organization seeks support in covering women's health care The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a new 810 million ad campaign, Planned Parenthood seeks to build support for coverage of women's medical needs — including reproductive services — in any health reform legislation.
"For women, reproductive health care is basic health care," said Planned Parenthood President Pamela Maraldo." Congress must not turn its back on the women of America."
Anti-abortion groups denounced the campaign and are asking lawmakers to sign pledges to oppose any plan that covers abortion.
"Don't try to make abortion the same medical need as bone marrow transplant or open-heart surgery." said Janet Parshall of the conservative Concerned Women for America.
directly mention abortion, instead saying that all reproductive health care must be covered under any national health system.
Planned Parenthood's ads don't
But they are meant to counter anti-b abortion efforts, including 81.4 million that the Christian Coalition, a Pat Robertson group, spent in newspaper ads this winter, said representative Bebe Bahnens.
And they're meant to help Americans focus on just what will be covered under a new system. a question that got lost in the uproar about how to finance health reform, she said.
The campaign begins today with a full-page ad in The New York Times in which 19 female members of Congress support full coverage of reproductive care—and warn that 50 percent of voters are women.
"Our daughters and our mothers, our sisters and our nieces have a right to comprehensive reproductive health services," Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif, says in the ad.
Tomorrow, television commercials begin in Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, New York City and Washington, D.C. featuring local
women.
"If I'm not healthy and I don't feel good about myself, I can't take care of the rest of my family." says Barbara Lisher of Shawnee, in one ad. "If my needs are not met, I have no incentive to vote for them (the politicians) again."
The ads are targeted to states with either influential lawmakers, such as Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, or with lawmakers still uncommitted to a plan, such as Rep. Jim Slattery.
The campaign will air ads in every state by the end of the year.
Planned Parenthood expects the ads to compete favorably with the insurance industry's $14 million "Harry and Louise" campaign against the Clinton plan because its ads feature real people, not actors.
Lisher said she did not think that Congress realizes that women usually make medical decisions for their families. She tells of grappling with an insurance plan that forced her to find a new specialist in attention deficit disorder for her two young children. It also wouldn't pay for repeat gynecological exams for her.
French blood test fails to detect rare AIDS strain
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A rare strain of the AIDS virus wasn't detected by a blood test used in France, U.S. health authorities said yesterday. They said the strain had been found almost exclusively in patients from Cameroon and posed little risk elsewhere.
Eleven cases of infection with the virus have been reported in France, and "almost all involve patients from Cameroon," according to a report last week in "Science" magazine.
On March 14, French health authorities recalled a single brand of an AIDS test that was unable to detect the virus. They ordered an "urgent re-evaluation" of other tests used there, "Science" magazine reported.
The group O strain of HIV-1 has been known for about four years, said Gerald Myers, director of the AIDS virus genetic database in Los Alamos, N.M., and an authority on the "family tree" of the human immunodeficiency virus.
The group O virus differs from both HIV-1 and HIV-2 and resembles the chimpanzee AIDS virus, Myers said.
Harold Jaffe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed that the rare virus was "not likely to be an important problem in the United States."
There are few Cameroun residents in the United States, Jaffe said, and they cannot donate blood because of the prevalence of malaria in the African country.
Even in Cameroon, the strain is responsible for fewer than 10 percent of AIDS virus infections, Jaffe said.
In 1990s, heroin could replace cocaine as illegal drug of choice
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A government report warned yesterday of a possible U.S. heroin epidemic in the 1990s and said traffickers from Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America were poised to cash in.
"In the past five years, there has been a steady increase in the flow and purity of heroin to the U.S., suggesting that the taste for the drug is growing." The State Department report said.
It said this was a logical consequence of more than a decade of cocaine abuse because it was normal for a depressant drug such as heroin to succeed a stimulant such as cocaine.
The implications are serious, the report said, because heroin can hold its prey for decades whereas the staying power of cocaine is usually limited to five years.
"With the likelihood that heroin will be to the 1990s what cocaine was to the 1980s, Latin American trafficking organizations are poised to cash in on a heroin epidemic," the report said.
Economics also are contributing to the revival of heroin.
It added that heroin brokers in
Southeast and Southwest Asia collaborated with Nigerian drug enterprises to emulate the marketing success of the Medelinin and Cali cocaine cartels.
Tuesday, April 5, 1994
Countries on the list are prohibited from receiving U.S. backing in their requests for assistance from international lending institutions. There are other economic penalties, as well.
On Friday, President Clinton added Nigeria to the list of countries he says are not cooperating in U.S. anti-drug efforts. The other countries, held over from last year, are Burma, Iran and Syria.
Elaborating on the Nigerian role at briefing yesterday, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gelbard said Nigeria had become a large source of trafficking around the world.
He said 35 percent to 40 percent of all heroin coming into the United States was brought by Nigerians.
The report pointed out that a large difficulty in controlling heroin at the source was that the greatest opium producers were countries where the U.S. government has limited political leverage or physical presence.
In this category the report cited Burma, where the U.S. diplomatic presence is limited because of human-rights violations.
'Few Good Men' Marine dead
MEDFIELD, Mass. — An ex-Marie whose court-martial case was the true story behind the movie "A Few Good Men" was found shot to death three months after he disappeared.
The Associated Press
David V. Cox, 27, was reported missing by his girlfriend on Jan. 4. He left behind an uncashed paycheck and the keys to his truck.
His decomposed corpse was found Saturday about a mile from the nearest road after a canoe spotted a white sneaker on a remote riverbank.
Seven Marines accepted plea bargains, but Cox and two others opted for courts-martial. Cox was acquitted and later received an honorable discharge.
"A Few Good Men," starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, was based on an attack in which Cox and several other Marines were accused of beating another Marine to death.
Cox had been shot once in the back of the neck and three times in the torso, said William Delahunt, Norfolk County district attorney.
Cox had considered suing filmmaking company Castle Rock Entertainment, his lawyer, Neil Kane, said shortly after Cox disappeared.
Police had no suspects. Delahunt said that the motive was unknown but that he didn't think the film had any connection to Cox's death.
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