Wednesday, October 4. 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Nation
Section A · Page 9
9
For comments, contact Lori O'Toole at 864-4810 or e-mail editor@kansan.com
Congress agrees to national limit for blood alcohol
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators have agreed to a tough national standard for drunken driving with penalties for states that don't abide. President Clinton called it a "common sense nationwide limit" that will save an estimated 500 lives a year and prevent thousands of injuries.
Under the measure, states would be required to adopt a 0.08 blood alcohol content standard as the legal level for drunken driving by 2004. Those that don't comply would stand to lose millions of dollars in federal highway funds.
"Congress has realized that what happened to me and what has happened to others is wrong," said Millie Webb, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Webb lost a nephew and a daughter, and she her husband and her then-unborn baby were severely injured in a crash with a driver with a 0.08 blood alcohol content.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., a chief proponent of the legislation, said even a 2 percent loss would be considerable, noting that his state gats $750 million a year in federal highway money.
Lauenberg and House sponsors including Reps. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and Frank Wolf, R-Va. introduced the legislation three years ago. It ran into solid resistance from lawmakers who said it infringed on states' rights and a strong lobbying effort from beverage and restaurant associations.
John Doyle of the American Beverage Institute said the national standard would "have no impact whatsoever" because the average body alcohol content for drunks involved in fatal crashes is 0.17. Doyle also cites National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures in saying that a 120-pound woman would reach the new legal inebriation level by drinking only two six-ounce glasses of wine during two hours. "It demonstrates we are not talking about the product abuser," he said.
Under the final compromise, states that don't implement 0.08 blood alcohol content by 2004 would lose 2 percent of their federal highway money, with the penalty increasing to 8 percent by 2007.
Made-to-order baby created to save sister
The Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS — In the first known case of its kind, a Colorado couple created a test-tube baby who was genetically screened and selected in the hope he could save the life of his 6-year-old sister.
The sister, Molly Nash, has a rare genetic disease, Fanconi anemia, that prevents her body from making bone marrow. But last week, doctors gave her an infusion of umbilical-cord blood from her newborn little brother, Adam, to try to correct the disease.
Doctors should know in a whether the infusion is helping Molly develop healthy marrow cells.
Screening laboratory-created embryos for genetic diseases before implanting them in a woman is not new. But this is the first known instance in which parents screened and selected an embryo in order to find a suitable tissue donor for an ailing sibling.
"People have babies for lots of reasons: to save a failing marriage, to work the family farm," said Charles Strom, director of medical genetics at the Reproductive Genetics
Institute in Chicago, where Adam was conceived. "I have absolutely no ethical problems with this whatsoever."
University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics:
http://www.bioethics.unm.edu
Molly was just beginning to show signs of leukemia, which is frequently associated with the disease, when she had the transplant, said John Wagner, her physician at the University of Minnesota. The infusion procedure between siblings has a 90 percent success rate.
ON THE NET
"Molly's doing very well," Wagner said yesterday, although she had a slight cold. She was playing on a computer, he said.
As part of her disease, Molly was born without thumbs, but surgeons built some from a finger on each hand. She also had no hip sockets but now can walk with the use of heavy braces.
Fanconi Anemia Research Fund Inc.: http://www.fanconi.org
Her parents, Jack and Lisa Nash of Englewood, Colo., wanted more children but were afraid to conceive because both carry a faulty version of the Fanconi gene, meaning each child would have a 25 percent chance of developing the disease.
"People have babies for lots of reasons; to save a failing marriage, to work the family farm. I have absolutely no ethical problems with this whatsoever."
The Nashes used
Charles Strom
director of medical genetics at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago
a process called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. Embryos were created from Lisa Nash's eggs and her husband's sperm. Fertilized eggs were analyzed, and when one was found to be disease-free and a tissue match, it was implanted. The couple had to try the procedure several times before she became pregnant.
the world with the disease.
Lisa Nash, who works as a neonatal nurse, said she and her husband could not knowingly bring another child into
"We wanted a healthy child," she told the Star Tribute newspaper last month. "And it doesn't hurt him to save her life."
Adam was born Aug. 29. On Sept. 26, umbilical cord blood cells from Adam were given to Molly at the University of Minnesota.
If the transplant doesn't take, the next step could be to repeat the process with Adam's bone marrow.
When Molly is healthy, the Nashes plan to have more children through test tube fertilization. Strom said.
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said he didn't see anything morally wrong in the Nash case.
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