10A
Friday, January 31, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Japanese fight to perform transplants
Doctors seek aid from U.S. bases
The Associated Press
TOKYO — Masanori Suzuki says a prayer of gratitude every night for the kidney transplant he received from a U.S. citizen 12 years ago.
"It's as though I live with an American I don't even know," said Suzuki, 54, one of the few Japanese to have had a transplant operation in Japan.
Hundreds of Japanese die each year awaiting heart and liver transplants that are routine in the United States. But the transplants are not done in Japan because of laws and traditions governing death.
Only one heart transplant has been performed in Japan in the last 30 years. Patients can only get part of a liver from a living donor and hope it will grow in them. And just 800 kidney transplants are done a year, most from living donors, compared to more than 10,000 a year in the United States.
There are no laws banning transplant operations in Japan, but there is a big obstacle: the definition of death.
In Japan, death is declared after the heart stops beating. At that point, the heart and liver die quickly and cannot be donated. Doctors elsewhere use machines to keep the heart of brain-dead patients beating so their organs can be donated, but Japanese doctors often will not sign death certificates for brain-dead patients.
Doctors also face strong resistance from families who don't want their loved ones cut open, even though most Japanese are
Autopsies are done in criminal cases, but are not performed nearly as often in Japan as in the United States.
cremated.
In addition, Japanese watchdog groups often seek murder charges against doctors who perform transplants by filing complaints with prosecutors. None of the complaints have resulted in criminal charges.
in the past two years, at least three organ donations have come from the U.S. military, two kidneys and one cornea.
For Japanese in need, the only glimmer of hope may come from organs donated at one of the four U.S. military hospitals in Japan.
The latest American organ donor was a 5-year-old boy who loved The Lion King, pizza and his rock collection.
Alex Van Cleave, the son of a naval officer at the Yokosuka base near Tokyo, died after an accident fall while going to school four months ago. Two Japanese youngsters —
Many surgeons hope the story of little Alex will help win over a skeptical Japanese public.
one 10 years old, the other 19 — received his kidneys.
"It could be the breakthrough transplant," said surgeon Hikaru Matsuda, the spokesman for 4,000 doctors who want to perform more transplant operations in Japan. "We hope it will get people thinking about why we have to turn to a foreign country."
Jimmy Jones, a pediatric surgeon at the U.S. Naval Hospital on the southern island of Okinawa, is working with Japanese doctors to outline procedures for future U.S. organ donors and Japanese recipients.
"It has been a challenge. And I think we have made a difference." Jones said.
Jones has already helped coordinate two successful transplants on Okinawa with organs donated from naval hospitals.
Legislation now before Japan's parliament would clearly define the rules that doctors should follow in extracting organs from brain-dead patients for transplant operations. However, a similar bill failed last year, and it is not clear if this new bill has any chance of passing.
The bill's supporters include Satoru Todo, a professor of surgery at Hokkaido Medical University.
He recently returned to Japan after 13 years at the University of Pittsburgh, where he performed more than 1,200 liver transplants from brain-dead donors.
"The biggest difference is that the United States is a society made up by the people. Japanese society is made up by the powers above." Todo said, explaining his nation's hesitancy on the issue of transplants.
Suzuki, who received an American kidnife, is harsher.
"There is no spirit of giving in Japan," he said.
Repression rate rising in China,report says
India pegged for executions corrupt police
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — China has silenced all public dissent through intimidation, exile, prisons and other means, the State Department said yesterday. Its human rights report also alleged severe repression in Nigeria, Cuba and Burma.
China's policy of zero tolerance for dissent, as described in the report, is certain to be a major topic of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to Beijing in late February.
"The Chinese government in 1996 continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses in violation of internationally accepted norms, stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest and the continuing absence of laws protecting basic freedoms," the report said.
Issued annually, the report covers human rights conditions worldwide. It concluded that dictatorships of the left and the right are guilty of repression as are, to a lesser extent, some democracies.
The report found some shortcomings in countries such as Israel and Germany, but the democracy with which the report appears to deal most harshly is India.
In India, the report cited serious rights abuses, including nonjudicial executions and other political killings; excessive use of force by security forces; torture, rape and deaths of suspects in police custody; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest; and incommunicado detention.
India's neighbor and rival, Paki
stan, was rated as having a "poor" record. "Security forces committed extrajudicial killings, used arbitrary arrest and detention, tortured or abused prisoners and detainees and raped women," the report said. Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck said respect for human rights increased globally in 1996, which should not be overlooked. Included, he said, are such countries as Bosnia, Romania, Haiti, Guatemala, Ghana, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone.
Albright indicated that religious persecution and intolerance will be a hallmark of her tenure.
"These are plagues that, from ancient times, have fomented war and deep-seated resentment," she said. "In too many countries, from Sudan to Vietnam to Iran, this form of repression persists. In a few, including China, it has increased."
The China section of the report is certain to fuel further debate about whether the United States should distance itself from China or show its displeasure over its human rights record in other ways.
Since 1994, the administration has virtually ruled out linking U.S. trade policy with Beijing to human rights.
"All public dissent against party and government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile or the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention or house arrest," The report said. "No dissidents were known to be active at the year's end."
Albright will visit China at the end of a nine-country tour encompassing Europe and other Asian countries.
She said the U.S. relationship with China was too important to be "held hostage" by any one issue.
isolation of China. Quite the contrary."
Making the case for continued engagement with China, Shattuck said, "Never has the human rights situation in China improved by the
Highlights of reports on other countries:
Nigeria — The rights performance of the military government remains dismal. It regularly relied on arbitrary detention, arrests and wide-scale harassment to silence its many critics.
Cuba — It remains a totalitarian anachronism, where human rights deteriorated in 1996 and suppression of dissent worsened. Cuba's Interior Ministry maintains a pervasive system of vigilance.
Burma — Authorities stepped up systematic repression of human rights despite formally ending the house arrest of the nation's leading activist for a democratic state, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The report offered a mixed picture of Russia's rights situation. It noted that free elections were held for a president and a parliament, but prison conditions worsened and lengthy pretrial detention continued.
"Violent hazing of military conscripts sparked new protests," the report said. "Journalists throughout Russia covering controversial issues were subjected to pressure, physical violence and even death, while the government appeared unresponsive to requests for investigation of these cases."
In Germany, the report said the government fully respects the human rights of its citizens. But the report noted that members of the Church of Scientology alleged that they suffered both government-condoned and societal harassment, including expulsion from a political party and loss of employment.
The report said the Israeli government generally respects human rights but added that authorities detain and mistreat Palestinian security detainees.
Ashes of Mohandas Gandhi poured into Ganges River
The Associated Press
ALLAHABAD, India — Chanting Hindu prayers, Mohandas Gandhi's great-grandson tipped a copper urn filled with the last remains of India's independence leader into the Ganges River on Thursday, 49 years after his murder.
Tushar Gandhi, sitting cross-legged with his wife and two children, ferried the urn on a barge decorated with flowers and draped with India's national colors. Priests and senior Indian politicians stood behind him, their hands folded in deference.
In a 20-minute ritual, Tushar Gandhi put holy water, milk, sweetmeats, fruits and flowers into the urn before tipping the gray ashes into the Ganges.
Devout Hindus believe immersing the ashes into a sacred river ensures eternal peace for the soul. The confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna at this central Indian town is considered one of the holiest sites in Hinduism.
Gandhi, known as the Mahatma, or great soul, was assassinated Jan. 30, 1948, by a Hindu fanatic who opposed his acquiescence to India's partition and the creation of Pakistan.
His ashes were divided and sent to all the states of India to be scattered in rivers.
For unexplained reasons, the urn that went to the state of Orissa was instead placed in a bank safety deposit box in Cuttack, 1,100 miles southeast of New Delhi.
The urn's discovery led to a court battle by his great-grandson for the right to dispose of the ashes.
It also prompted much reflection on Gandhi's message of non-violence, secularism and simple living, and the place in Indian history of the man still called "the father of the nation."
"I would like to focus the attention of the country on Gandhi's ideals," said his 37-year-old greatgrandson, a graphic designer from Bombay. Tushar Gandhi said his court action had nothing to do with his own political ambitions.
Using a kitchen knife, Tushar Gandhi cut open strings binding the wooden box that had held the urn for 49 years. A priest with sandalwood paste and vermilion smeared on his forehead held burning incense sticks and led Gandhi through the prayers.
Another priest helped him remove the white cotton cloth, now yellowed with age, that was wrapped around the urn. Family members and politicians leamed across to touch it, then folded their palms in respect.
Hundreds of people, standing in waist-deep water near the bank, chanted "May Mahatma Gandhi remain immortal."
Earlier Thursday, hundreds of people paid homage to Gandhi by walking past the wooden box containing the urn. Leaders of various religions sat in an all-faith prayer session.
Gopalij Balmiki took the day off from work to join the procession.
"I don't want to miss this chance," he said, helping policemen put flowers on the truck that would take the urn to the river.
CD smuggling increasing
The Associated Press
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Customs officers seized 36,000 CDs that were found stuffed in the ceiling of a passenger train bound for Moscow on Thursday, the official BTA news agency said.
The seizure was the largest of three in the past two days. European trade officials say production and smuggling of music discs in the Balkan country costs the recording industry millions of dollars a year.
train crew nor passengers knew anything about the CDs, and that an investigation had begun into an unidentified suspect.
Customs officers said neither the
The CDs were found as the train was crossing the border from Bulgaria to Romania.
smuggling has increased rapidly in recent months, customs officials said. Bulgaria's high inflation makes goods cheap for people with foreign currency, and they can make enormous profits by smuggling goods out of the country and selling them elsewhere.
On Wednesday, customs officers on the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border seized 3,000 CDs concealed in a secret compartment of a Czech-registered bus, and another 675 hidden in a train bound for Budapest.
Bulgaria is a major producer of CDs, but has been sharply criticized for not implementing strict copyright rules.
Last year, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry estimated that European record companies were losing about $100 million a year because of Bulgarian piracy.
Shop now for Valentines Day fun!!
Pocket-protector optional
100% pre-shrunk cotton Beefy-T from Hanes with the ever useful pocket. The Pocket-T available in white, grey and navy Only $7 $750 everyday at Sunflower.
We Buy, Sell, Trade & Consign USED & New Sports Equipment
Make Use of White Space
You want your ad to catch their attention?
the visual whisper
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
For Singers and Dancers
AUDITIONS
Live on Stage...it could be YOU! From our 60's and 70's rock review Stax of Wax, to our spectacular country music show in the Tivoli Music Hall, you could be in the spotlight for the '97 season, entertaining millions of Worlds of Fun guests. If you work the entire season (six days per week in the summer & weekends in the spring and fall) you could earn over $8,000!
AUDITION INSTRUCTIONS
If you are a singer, please sing one verse and chorus of two contrasting styles of song; one up-tempo and one ballad. Sing any type of music you
color print country shows tunes (No Ran).
please limit your material to no more than three minutes total in length. Dancers should prepare one song to sing and a jazz routine no longer than two minutes.
You must provide your own accompaniment whether it be a pianist or a cassette tape. We will provide a cassette deck and a piano. Acapella auditions will not be accepted.
We are not auditioning bands, solo instrumentalists or dramatic actors.
THE CLOSEST AUDITIONS:
Lawrence, Kansas
Kansas City, Missouri
iuesday, February 11 - University of Kansas
Kansas Room (level 6) in the Kansas Union
3:00 p.m. (Registration closes at 5:00 p.m.)
Saturday, January 25 - Park Place Hotel
1601 N. Universal Avenue
(Just off Front Street at 1-435)
9:00 a.m. (Registration closes at 1:00
9:00 a.m. (Registration closes at 1:00 p.m.)
Kansas City, Missouri
Sunday, February 9 - Adams Mark Hotel
9103 E. 39th Street
(l-70 at Truman Sports Complex)
1:00 p.m. (Registration closes at 4:00 p.m.)