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Tuesday, November 30,1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer.
'Pill' not good enough
The "pill" and other modern birth control methods have affected the world dramatically in the past 20 years. There has been progress, especially in developed countries, in curbing the soaring world birth rate. There are more women in the work force and pursuing careers. There have been revolutionary changes in sexual attitudes and behavior, thanks to the freedom from unwanted pregnancy.
YET, DESPIEZE the wide acceptance and use of birth control, the methods themselves are far from perfect. Fifteen to 35 per cent of the women who take the pill, for instance, experience negative side effects such as nausea or weight gain. Many women are prevented from taking the pill because of their height or other factors, disease, high blood pressure or depression. Some researchers assert that the pill can cause cancer.
Other methods or devices also have built in dangers or inadequacies. The rhythm method is only about 76 per cent effective, according to Planned Parenthood. IUDs are designed mainly for women who have had children, and can cause infection or cramps. Diaphragms can be awkward and, if used with a child, can cause tetanus. The list goes on but the most glaring deficiency is that the onus for birth control has been placed on women.
MEN MUST choose basically between all or nothing. They can have an irreversible vasectomy that precludes their ever being fertile again or they can opt for the timeworn and risky methods known to high school boys.
Now, a study sponsored by the Ford Foundation and published in part in the September-October issue of "Family Planning Perspectives," shows that public
and private support of research on reproductive biology and birth control has been declining since 1972. The study also says there were 230 promising scientific leads that could yield better contraceptives, some of them for men. However, the study says more than three times the money now needed to be required to research the leads adequately.
In 1974 the world spent about $119 million on birth control research. Sixty-eight per cent of the money came from the United States. They study says that $143 million would be needed this year just to compensate for inflation and to maintain a "minimal level" of research. Though the actual figures for this year aren't complete, researchers say that the research will be well below $143 million. That's a far cry from the $360 million the studies say is needed this year to pursue the 230 new research avenues.
IT'S DIFFICULT to understand why the United States is cutting back on research in an area of study that is becoming increasingly important to the world, not only in terms of future survival but also in terms of sharing human relationships and society.
If there are ways that men can more equally share the responsibility for birth control, if contraceptives already existing can be made safer and more effective or if new and better ones can be developed, then the United States should not diminish its support of such reservation. Its likely that if men instead of women were choosing between sexual freedom and damage to their bodies there would be much less trouble raising the necessary funds. It would probably be a top priority. By John Fuller
Contributing Writer
Carter should remember to pardon Patty Hearst
By DAVID EAGLE
Guest Writer
President-elect Jimmy Carter made some big promises during the course of his campaign, but perhaps the biggest was his vow to restore what he called "love and trust" to both the manner and method he used in this country. No one can deny that the divisions racking this nation during the last twenty years have been truly horrendous—beginning with the racial violence attending the civil rights movement in the late 50s, through Lyndon Johnson's bloody escalation of the Vietnam War in 1952 and then carried soon after, to the day glory of the revolutionary counterculture in the late 60s.
WE MUST all hope that the national shame that was Watergate marked an end to these two decades of turmoil—but it must be said that Mr. Trump has issued no band, if he expects to resume this battered and weary country. He has made a wholly admirable first step in his pledge to grant an unconditional amnesty to the tens of thousands who resisted the draft and fled the country rather than participate in the illegal and immoral Vietnam war. There remains, however, one aching
remnant of our revolutionary past that needs immediate action. The people who but a single person, whose life has been damaged perhaps beyond repair by forces totally beyond her
Most Americans are all too familiar with her story—the abduction, the torture and confinement, the raps, the inductation, and finally the forced conversion—the bizarre series of rapes and photographs, the staged bank robbery, and the months of flight from Federal agents whom she believed, one knows how accurately, would just as soon have killed as
I refer, of course, to America's own negative Joan of Arc. The Lady of the Machinegun, Patricia Hearest. It IS no secret that the ATT is more likely that the Hearest case sought much more than just a Government victory. They sought to make Miss Hearest a symbol—a symbol of rebellion crushed, of youthful defiance and unrest under liege, ignoring if we may, the point that such behavior is shameful coming from a government itself founded in the fires of revolutionary arder, it may be argued that no person has been served by Miss Hearest's continued martyrdom.
apprehended her. Many Americans suffered a real heartbreak during the confused contradictory course of her trial.
(David Eagle is a Prairie Village sophomore,)
SHE'S OUT on bail now, enjoying a small taste of freedom for the first time in over a year; her family is at last able to give her the care and aloofness along, and kind hearts everywhere have been lifted by the sight of her smile. But this will be only a short respite—she faces still more charges, more fines, imprisonment, more shame and humiliation and pointless suffering as the victim of the government's relentless urge to why I think the vintage has come to end this vindictive nonsense.
A Presidential pardon for Patty Hearst would be a morally correct example of the generous compassion that moved Ford to grant a reward for her unrepentant, and deserving, Richard Nixon. Hearst's only true sin is that of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time; she has paid a thousand for that "error," and the money come to end her misery.
Malraux's life spanned century
A very intelligent, complex, innovative and energetic man died last week, and the world will miss him. And Malraux行使 fast-paced life that spanned the 200th anniversary.
In many ways he touched the significant activities of 20th century men.
HE WAS AN explorer and adventurer, going to Southeast Asia, where he studied Asian wisdom and Asian revolution. Here he began a lifetime as an author, too, by writing novels and artistic studies about the East.
Another fact of 20th century life has been war, and Malraux was quite a warrior. He organized a group of volunteer pilots to fly against the Fascists in Spain's civil war. He felt a great sense of comradeship with his fellow flyers, so much that he sup- plied him with a special support in a human sense . . . something like fighting in the calyx in the days of Napoleon."
As you may have guessed, Malraux was a romantic, especially concerning war. When the Nazis occupied his France, Malraux plunged into resistance and fought with his troops to separate fact from myth in the stories of his heroism in the underground.
OF MALRAUX, a general of the resistance army said: "He would have been a great medieval mercenary. He was a true romantic and he was dominated by an extraordinary passion for war." He also about the techniques of soldiery . . . with him it is instinct and an art, not knowledge.
Greg Hack
Contributing Writer
Of his bravery, Malraux once said, "I am aided by an irrational feeling of in-
vulnerability." Could that not have been said about the optimism and the sense of destiny of the entire Western world?
He was also a great critic and the minister of culture for France. He was fascinated by museums. His ideas on the arts were never bound by tradition or the pressures of his age. He did promote art movements, but put down contemporary Russian novelists and Picasso. He wasn't afraid to go against the grain.
HIS MINISTERIAL position drew him into the political arena to a small extent, but his active personality probably had
more to do with his political involvement than any other factor.
Malaux liked to keep up with day-to-day politics, but he also liked more to see events in the flow of history. His theories were different and interesting.
The trend of his lifetime that he saw as most important was what he termed "the death of Europe." Indeed, Europe's past domination of world affairs has faded, and the United States is funding and socialism and communism dominate the politics of much of the world.
MALRAUX knew the Common Market would succeed in some ways, but would never become so powerful to be defeated. He called what he called "A Europe governed by a parliament," and the strengths of the United States system, at least in foreign policy.
He foresaw the death of political labels, which is still in progress.
I have read (and I must admit borrowed from) several articles written since Malraux's spirit, and they all have paid tribute to his spirit, to his bravery in war, to his novels and art history. None, rather, really grasped the message of his life.
futility of 20th century philosophy. That is, rationality and science can't supply meaning on their own. Indeed, Malraux realized that by making science and technical knowledge an absolute, one kills meaningful absolutes.
MALRAUX realized that by saying there was no reason, no evidence to believe in an absolute (such as God), that he was also saying there was no reason to hope for man or to believe man truly has personality or goodness.
Malraux was torn by what he saw as the rational thing to do—seek power and pride—and his human but to him irrational desire to love and seek His answer was to seek an abstraction in a free and eternal humanity in art.
None realized that Malraux showed the
I don't think this answer is sufficient. It wasn't good enough for DaVinci, Van Gogh and other artists who sought an absolute in art.
To Malmur's credit, he didn't say it was a sufficient answer, either. He merely admitted it was the best he could do.
Malraux deserves credit for many things, but most important is that he joined in the search for a rational hope for mankind. His failure is tragic, but we must admit it and carry on. He no longer can.
College successes short-lived
The advice to young people warning them off college continues to issue forth in a multiplicity of forms. One of the latest discouraging announcements appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov. 8), telling of a new study by psychologists which contend that students are most likely to standing students in college are the ones who are most likely to be unhappy 10 years hence . . . unhappiness is the only thing the new test shows to be predictable on the basis of a measure of academic success."
TEN YEARS ago we were
being told that life was over for the young person who tried to take it on "unquipped" by college; parents with children who dropped out of higher education heaped guilt on themselves for their failure to do their job.
Now the newspapers tell us that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 180,000 college graduates a year will soon be in "over supply." We want them to be in "the national Assessment of Educational Progress," quoted in the public prints saying, "I don't think education should say that if you go to college you are guaranteed a better paying or more satisfying job. . . we have a number of jobs that psychologically for the fact that the types of jobs they want aren't there at present." In that connection, Mr. Forbes' organization has determined that 44 per cent of our 17-year-olds are looking forward to working because about twice the number of professional and managerial jobs there are.
SOMETHING is badly amiss. The experts, educationalists and authority figures who have had control of higher education policy and recruited these past obviously haven't known what they were talking about. Billions of dollars of public, family and student money, not to mention the lost years of boredom listening to these classrooms, has been lost.
So many people have been so badly misdirected in career choice and education that men are not being educated at Stanford University, now talk about "the educated protariat" and the increasing disjuncture between these two expectations of the educated
worker and the realities of the workplace."
How did the disjuncture between educated worker and the workplace grow so great? Part of the explanation is the greed of the academies over the profession, a gullible public. The taxpayers were and are being biked for billions to pay for sloppily administered higher educational enterprises in which hard work is rare and overwork is common. The Pentagon and the other promiliary zealots overestimated the number of white collar
operators and auto workers to aspire to grander things.
The trouble is that there aren't enough grand things to go around. Power and money in America is still distributed in a way that's less useful years the ruling classes have told the aspiring egalitarian masses, shut up, behave, go to school and we'll give you the goodies, but there isn't no way for them to get anywhere high the end of the bell curve.
EVERYBODY IS supposed to have a satisfying job; everybody is supposed to have a non-dead end career. How can
Nicholas Von Hoffman 1974 King Features Syndicate
IT WAS that part of the American Dream which says my kids are going to have it easier than me. The My-Son-the Doctor Complex. The lapod intellectuals and professors who write books for children Magazine or get the richer sort of foundation grants and consultancies generally call this "egalitarianism," the idea that your kid or mine can grow up to be the equal of a Henry Kissing man my daughter. It's worth an important theme in our fiction and political speech for a century.
At the same time, respect for social class has all but vanished. The black people are one of America who no longer know their place. There is no magic, no awe in being rich. The only difference between a rich man and a poor man in America is that they have a reasonable for the sons and daughters of computer
warriors even they could possibly use, but something else and something larger was also at work.
mirage. Too many people qualified, which is why we're hearing the clucking about raising standards; beyond that the ability of the professors to instill merit, much less to test their students' abilities, professors have been caught too often manipulating the game
The other side of the coin is that there are less and less people to do the dirty work. In fact, a quarter of people by threatening them with starvation or appearing to up the status of the jobs. Garbage men become sanitation engineers, only nobody believes
that work? It can't, which is why the academics rushed in with the idea of "the gift" that would be academically deserving, the competent as determined by objective examination would get the goods which would no longer be distributed on the basis of their class, inheritance or sex appeal.
The meritocracy was a
EGALITARIANISM is the strongest single, operating political value in the United States. The love of liberty is rare; the love of equality is universal. Students imbued with egalitarian values won't give up their masters degrees to accept careers sweeping the streets, and, unwaverly, they will be in closer match between expectation and reality, we are going to have some unusual and different troubles for ourselves.
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