UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of
February 28.1979
Hospital is worth cost
After years of inattention and frustration, the Wichita branch of the University of Kansas Medical Center appears to be headed toward a full share of the spotlight.
The branch finally found a home when the Kansas Board of Regents recently voted to by E.B. Allen Hospital in Wichita from Sedgwick County and permanently house the branch there. The branch previously had rented space in E.B. Allen.
And to make the picture for the branch even brighter, Regents officials are optimistic that the Kansas Legislature will appropriate the money required for a badly needed renovation of the site.
A PERMANENT HOME and sweeping renovation could mean a rebirth for the Wichita branch, which has suffered in recent years from its ugly-ducking status.
The lack of a permanent home and updated equipment have effectively relegated the Wichita branch into the shadows of its partner in Kansas City, Kan. But renovation of the hospital, which would be augmented by reorganization and expansion of the branch's residency programs and expansion of the faculty, could change all that.
THE DECISION to house the branch permanently in E.B. Allen hospital was made after an exhaustive search by the University and the Regents for a suitable site. But the high cost of buying a new site, and the fetching price of $1 offered by Sedgwick County, which was disillusioned with the county hospital business, eventually convinced the Regents to keep the branch in E.B. Allen.
The cost for the renovation obviously will be somewhat high. It has been estimated that expanding and operating the hospital for 20 years could cost as much as $17.2 million.
But talk of spending lids and decreased government spending should not deter the Legislature from supporting the Wichita branch. The health care problems of Kansas, including a rural doctor shortage, cannot be overlooked.
A vital medical branch in Wichita could go a long way toward solving some of those problems. The Legislature, which has shown its concern for health care in Kansas before, should not let the increasing cries for governmental austerity affect its judgment on the Wichita medical branch.
Like a midsummer torrado, a direction of a health federation whirled through Lawrence last week telling of the danger of cancer through the use of fluoride in the city's water system, and in the process of cleaning up the city commission and local residents.
Careful choice needed on fluoridation
But before the city commission decides to act, it should first question its motive for acting.
As a result of his warnings and the subsequent alarm, city commissioners are considering placing the issue on the April elections ballot. It even has been suggested that fluoridation be stopped without a public vote.
Igniting this abrupt concern about fluoridation was John Yiamoupiynia, science director of the National Health Federation in Delaware, Ohio.
In a surprise appearance before the city commission, Yiamouyianmu humbly begged the commission to remove fluoride from water supplies. An epidemiology studies that have indicated higher cancer rates in cities that have fluoridation, Yiamouyianmu, a nation-wide activist against fluoridation, claimed there was no evidence of “ear” due to fluoride in public water supplies.
A I 1975 study by Yiamoulianis and an associate, Yiamoulianis found that 25,000 students in cities that fluoridate water supplies than in those that do. That study was based on death rates for specific cancers in counties where the fluoridated compared with some that were not.
A second 1975 study indicated that the overall cancer death rate for 10 large cities with fluoridation was found to have increased by 10 percent during a 20-year period, while cities that did not fluoridate had no increase in the cancer death rate.
However, the National Cancer Institute challenged the studies. The institute said the first study did not take into account accepted risk factors, such as socio-economic status and geographic location, and that the second study ignored age, sex and race in
Peace Corps caught in bureaucracy
In the beginning, there was something about the Peace Corps that was exciting and invigorating. But 18 years after its founding in 1961, the Peace Corps sees its ranks filled with many new faces and a despair that things may not improve much in the future.
The despair has existed in the Corps since 1971, when Richard Nikon stripped the Peace Corps of its autonomy by placing it with other government volunteer programs in an agency he named ACTION. But despite the viciousness of the name, ACTION produced little that the Peace Corps workers could get excited about.
And a major disappointment of the program has been the fact that Mr. Brown, who President Carter appointed when he came into office,
Indeed, the disillusionment about the direction of the Peace Corps may explain a 3$ per worker turnover rate in the United States.
"This place was euphoric, absolutely overjoyed, about the appointment," said one ACTION worker. "We all thought he
BROWN PERHAPS exemplified the spirit of volunteerism, having served as director of Eugene McCarthy's "children's crusade" in 1908 and later as director of the Vietnam War in Washington. In Washington, Observers in Washington hailed his appointment.
But the commitment was less than expected, and Brown turned out to be less than a savior. In fact, he did not hire a Peace Corps director for some months, and that one lasted little more than one year.
With a Democrat in the White House and Brown at the helm, so the logic went, there would be a new and refreshed commitment to ACTION—and the Peace Corps—that had been desperately needed.
Carolyn Payton, the director, resigned under pressure last November after longstanding differences with Brown. Recently, she warned that the overseas volunteer program had "strayed from its mission of losing its unique image" to the United States and the world.
IN AN EFFORT to correct a system that recruited some 5 to 20 percent of its volunteers over the phone in 1977, Payton improved the screening and selection process by restoring procedures abandoned during the Nixon years.
And, after working with the Peace Corps since the early 1960s, she strove to steer it back in the direction it had taken in those early years—toward educating people to help themselves instead of leaving them dependent on foreign technology.
"I take umbrage at creating a welfare state of mind in these countries," says Payton. "We've done this here. We've robbed people of the initiative to do for themselves. It's not the role of the Peace Corus."
So, the most un bureaucratic agency of the 1900s has become just another bureaucratic agency of the 1900s, finding its goals and satisfying its needs.
PAYTON, ALONG with others in ACTION and in Congress,
thinks that only by returning the autonomy that it had before
Nixon can the Peace Corps fulfill the goals that were so much
a part of it in the beginning.
Indeed, by by fulfilling those goals can the Peace Corps awake from the dildards that if experienced in the 1970s.
Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps' first director, says 'the Peace Corps has to be bureaucratically independent. If you leave the Peace Corps within the normal government bureaucracy the decisions made by the director are going to be influenced by considerations that are not Peace Corps considerations.'
Several proposals to pull the Peace Corps out of ACTION have been presented in Congress recently and would give the Peace Corps an important opportunity.
The Peace Corps seems to have lost its directions. But the idealism of the volunteers that spurred their birth in 1961 should not be lost with the disorientation of the program's leadership in 1972.
However, we must realize that an independent Peace Corps is a prerequisite for restoring the idealism—and effectiveness—of our work.
STATE U.
BY T. M. ASLA
Purpose of gun law confuses some
In reply to a letter to the editor on Friday, Feb. 23, on gun control, I glad that Greg Ernzen feels that he has used guns for the right purpose. He is of a minority and I think he has made a mistake in the purpose of a gun law. Gun laws aren't to restrict so-called people like Ernzen, but to control the flow of guns into criminal hands. Most people feel they need a gun for 'protection' but the only reason we want protection is from someone else with a gun.
To the editor:
Now about the "sport" of firing a gun, either Kratzen enjoys hunting, or he genie-
zed to have a machine gun.
that "beautiful" explosion and feeling the sheer power of that bullet accelerating out of that barrel at hundreds of miles an hour. Now that's beautiful!
If Erzen is a hunter, then I don't support his sport at all. I can't find any beauty in moving up on a cove of quail and then, from 10 feet away, blowing them into a bloody mess or taking my "handsome" high-powered rifle and blowing a hole in the
As far as the West being won, Ernzen is again confused. If he is referring to the early settlers, they had guns for survival, not for sport. Now if Ernzen needs his gun to survive, I say send him to the supermarket and let him shoot frozen dinners.
side of a deer. Yes, sir, that's a real pretty
sight and what fierce competition!
I believe that if we have stronger gun laws then maybe we can choke off the supply of guns getting into the wrong hands. We can't ban all tools that kill because then we would register our hands and feet and minds! Our weapon is like a shark; it's only purpose is to kill
Kevin Kennedy Topeka junior
determining the cancer death rate. The institute claimed it took the same data used in the Yiamoyauyi studies, incorporated into their reports, breakdowns, and found opposite conclusions.
MOREOVER, STUDIES by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found no evidence linking fluoridation and cancer. There has not been a study in the 28 years that Lawrence has fluoridated its water
suggesting that the city has a higher cancer rate than comparable cities that do not
So what we have are claims and counterclaims about the cancer causing potential of fluoridation. To be sure, the public should be aware of any cancer causes that can be avoided, and the fluoridation debate should continue. But at this point, there is no absolute proof that fluoridation causes cancer. In his anti-fluoridation fight, Yannick Schlegel argues that fluoridate to fluoridate. But instilling fear in the public with power-laden words based on questionable evidence is not fair or in the best interest of the human race.
IF LAWRENCE voters want to decide on the fluoridation issue, perhaps they should
sase their decision on no on whether fluoride causes cancer but on why it's needed to do so.
Fluoridation is, of course, an accepted aid in dental hygiene, specifically for reduction of tooth decay. It is a natural enamel. It is not a water treatment chemical. If fluoridation is stopped, those who want it can receive vitamin drugs with fluoride that are highly issued in cities that are not fluoridated.
If the city commission is going to place the issue before the public it should do so for pertinent reasons. It should not let alarming statistics, which are questionable and exacerbate health risks, come into it placing the issue on a bailout or removing fluoridation without a public vote.
Cambodia: Nixon, Kissinger at fault
N. Y. Times Feature
BY WILLIAM SHAWCKOSS
LONDON-Prince Norodom Shanuko,
the former ruler of Cambodia, said
recently. "There are only two men
there. The tragedy in Cambodia:
Nixon and Kissinger."
This seems a provocative analysis but it requires examination. First because the Cambodians themselves deserve an exhortation to become more responsible, become. Second because there is a popular belief, which Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger naturally encourage, that their management of foreign policy was less successful than that of the Carter administration.
THE COMMUNISTS spread further into Cambodia, clashing with the Shanouk army, whose generals became more and more disaffected with his compromises. In March 1970 his prime minister, Gen. Lon Lor, overthrew him.
Through the 1960s, Prince Sishanko took his weak country out of the Vietnam War by sending an attack force inside his border with South Vietnam and also ignored many small-scale American attacks on him. In March 1968 Nixon began large-scale secret B-22 bombing of the base
AS EARLY as August 1970, the CIA station chief in Phoenix Penn warned that the United States' plants were now widespread that the generals ran the war "from their Mercedes cars and restaurants while the young people, civilians and soldiers, are dying."
Kissinger maintains that the coup was an unwelcome surprise. In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency, which I do not believe arranged the coup and which reported very well from Cambodia from 1970-75, had detected its preparation.
After the coup, Washington made no attempt to have Sihanouk returned; he allied himself with Hanoi and his former enemies, the Cambodian communists or Khmer Rouge. A few weeks later, the United States invaded Cambodia, spreading the war across the country. Then Hanoi began to recruit foreign troops, while Washington gave unremitting support to Lon Nol, a dreamy incompetent who tolerated official corruption.
Nonetheless, the White House underwrote
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should state its home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
Lon Nol whi the traditional Kmmer society disintegrated and about hathe population, the rest remained.
Prince Sihanouk says that American policy forced Cambodians into the Khmer Rouge. This argument ignores the enormous importance to the Khmer Rouge of the prince's alliance with them. But it is true that in March 1970 the Khmer Rouge were insignificant, numbering only some 2,000 or 3,000, and were subsequently defeated by the establishment of January 1971, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that "the communist infrastructure will probably continue to grow."
But Kissinger insisted in 1973 that Hanoi could deliver the Khmer Rouge to the French to encourage them the White House conduct a large bomb ended it in August 1973—a huge bomb campaign against Cambodia. It destroyed the central system and hardened the Khmer Rouge.
DURING THE war, Nixon and Kissinger consistently disregarded Prince Shankou in Peking and argued that Hanoi controlled the Khmer Rouge. In fact, the CIA reported from the start that there were serious frictions between the two allies. One station report in the summer of 1972 related that one Khmer Rouge slogan was, "We all Vietcong-North Vietnamese Army out of Cambodia."
THROUGHOUT THE second half of 1974; Ambassador John Gunther Dean kept warning Kissinger of the Khmer Rouge's increasing violence and pleaded for a
"control solution" to avoid outright communist takeover.
Kissinger paid inadequate attention, arguing that he could not "negotiate from weakness." In April 1979 Dean's worst fears for the United States erupted against bering 70,000 new, now uncontrolled victory.
The problems any government would then have faced were noted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and are slipped in less than five years from a significant exporter of rice ... to the brink of starvation ... if ever a country needed to beat its swords into plowshares in a race to survive. This is not prospects that it can do so are poor ... slave labor and starvation rations for half the nation's people ... will be a cruel necessity for this year, and general deprivation and stretch over the next two or three years."
FACED WITH such difficulties and menaced by Cambodia's ancient enemy, Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge—a callow xenophobic group without real experience of the French in their service and began to rule by terror. Kissinger often called them "murdered." True, but whose policies nurtured the murders and finally allowed them to win control of a desolated country? Those who cast nostalgic glances at the past might remember that Nixon called his Cambodia policy "The Nixon Doctrine in its preform."
William Shawers wrote the forthcoming book 'Side Show Kissinger, Nike and the Mafia' for The New York Times.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
(USFS 600-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and March through Thursday during June and July except Saturday, and Sunday and October through November; $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 a year county. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the university.
Send changes of address to the University, Daily Kannan, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 60045
Editor
Barry Massey
Assistant Campus Editor
Dirk Stemmel
Campus Editor
Mary Keenan
Pam Manson
Assistant Campus Editors
Carol Hunter
George Dorney
Russy Oppen
Sr. Section Editors
Diane Porter
Marcia Thomas
Sports Editor
Mary Thurber
Nancy Dreher
Associate Sports Editor
Cathy Lindsay
Wire Editors
Cydia Hughes, Barb Koering, Caroline Cattie
Editorial Writers
Mary Freed, Philip Garcia, Veronica Smith, Jack Larson
Lori Linney, Kathleen Smith
Chef Photographer
Anthony Dan Winter
Chef Cartoonist
Bill Franke, Trish Lewis, Barbara Kinsey
Dan Martin
John Whitehead
John Whitedes
Business Manager Karen Wenderott
Retail Sales Manager
National Advertising Manager
Classified Advertising Manager
Assistant Classified Advertising Manager
Advertising Manager
Classified Make-up Manager
Staff Artist
Staff Photographer
Team Management
Sales Representatives
Rob Alman
Brazil
Kitty McMahon
Duncan Bute
Britain
Dalton Cavazos
Dalia Gurri
Della Doyle
Allen Blair, Paul Keil, John Knott,
Brenda Paston, Cindy Ray Allen, Jaime Joanne
Advertising Adviser Chuck Chowins