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October 5,1990 University of Nebraska-Lin coin Vol. 90 No. 29
“----—- ^--“T!sa PytliK. Dally Nebraskan
Carlos Fuentes makes a point during his speech at The Lied Center for Performing Arts
Thursday afternoon. Fuentes spoke at an E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues.
Author urges U.S.
to improve relations
with Latin America
By Sara Bauder Schott
Senior Reporter
The United States must learn to
treat Mexico with respect in
stead of with arrogance and
force, said a former Mexican ambas
sador and well-known author Thurs
day.
Carlos Fuentes, speaking at an E.N.
Thompson Forum on World Issues,
said the two countries will share a
destiny as the year 2000 approaches,
but that destiny will be determined by
how the United States treats its neigh
bor to the south.
Fuentes spoke to a nearly full house
at the Lied Center for Performing
Arts.
The United States often has dealt
badly with Mexico and the rest of
Latin America, Fuentes said. U.S.
intervention in the affairs of Latin
American countries has resulted in
tcasion between Mexico and the United
Stales, he said.
Mexico serves as a border between
the United States and the rest of Latin
America and U.S.-Mexican relations
arc a barometer of the relations be
tween all of Latin America and the
United States, Fuentes said.
Typically, the United States has
used communism as an excuse to
meddle in the affairs of Latin Amer
ica, Fuenies said. With the end of the
Cold War, he said, the U.S. govern
ment has found another excuse: drugs.
Manuel Noriega, the ousted leader
of Panama, is an example of the new
“drug excuse,” Fuentcs said,
. . He was crooked, he was a
drug lord, he was ugly, but he wasn’t
a Communist.”
Mexico and the United States share
many problems, including drugs,
migration and urban problems, Fucn
tessaid. MexicoCity, which serves as
the point of destination for millions
of rural Mexicans, has problems with
crime and unemployment, he said.
One of Mexico’s problems is a
population growth rate of 2.3 percent,
compared to the .8 percent popula
tion growth in the United States.
Fuentcs said a predominately Roman
Catholic population makes birth con
trol a touchy subject in Mexico. The
pope tells people not to use birth
control and to have as many children
as they want, he said.
People must be persuaded to use
birth control to solve the problem of
rapid population grow th, Fuentcs said.
Persuasion already has worked par
tially, he said. In 1970, Mexico’s
population growth rale was 3.9 per
cent.
See FUENTES on 6
Officials require researchers to use women
By Mindy Wilson
Staff Reporter
An aspirin a day keeps the heart doctor
away - but maybe only for men.
The study that discovered the benefi
cial aspects of aspirin was done only on male
subjects, said Ernest Prentice, the assistant
dean for research and vice chancellor of the in
stitutional review board at the University of
Nebraska Medical Center.
Most research projects only use males, so
researchers don’t know if the results of these
studies can be applied equally to females, he
said.
The National Institutes of Health in Wash
ington recently reissued a policy that requires
scientists to include more women in medical
research, an N1H official said.
UNMC examined the enrollment of women
in its human subject research projects eight
months ago to comply with the institute’s pol
icy, Prentice said. It adopted a policy that
advocates using women in research, provided
there are no risks.
The NIH’s policy first came out in 1986,
said Ann Dicffcnbach, NIH information offi
cer. The institute has reissued the policy to tell
scientists that it was “serious business,’’ she
said.
The institute now plans to enforce it more
rigorously, she said.
Recipients of federal grants arc told that if
they don’t include women in their medical
research, their grants will be taken away, she
said.
Currently, NIH is meeting with the Institute
of Medicine in Washington to develop guide
lines to safely include women, she said.
William Bcrndl, vice chancellor and dean
of the University of Nebraska Medical Center,
said that although UNMC was not dependent
on NIH for clinical research support, officials
still arc trying to increase the number of women
used in research.
Most of the clinical research done at UNMC
is financed by industrial groups, he said. Clini
cal research is research done on patients using
new drugs.
Prentice said some sponsors of research
projects, such as pharmaceutical companies,
prohibit women because they fear litigation.
Dicffcnbach said the fear of endangering
women of childbearing age has kept women
out of research. Birth defects caused by the
drug thalidomide, a sedative marketed in Eu
rope in the 1950s, made researchers wary of
using women in medical research, she said.
The UNMC Institutional Review Board is
asking drug companies that exclude women
from clinical research to give documented reasons
for doing so, he said.
“We concentrate on if any researcher re
stricts research only to men,” Prentice said.
“Then we ask why.’*
Researchers take several precautions to ensure
that participants in the study aren't pregnant,
he said. Women arc given pregnancy tests and
also arc provided with adequate birth control
during the research project, he said.
See STUDIES on 6
UnlL unites with Cairo
Exchange will provide tractor technology for Egypt
By James P. Webb
Staff Reporter
The UNL Institute of Agricul
ture and Natural Resources is
linking up with its Egyptian
counterpart to beef up Egypt’s out
dated technology in testing agricul
ture equipment, an official said.
Glenn Hoffman, head of UNL’s
biological systems engineering de
partment, said the Agncultural Mecha
nization Research Institute in Cairo,
Egypt, will exchange faculty and
graduate students with UNL to ac
quire technology for testing farm
equipment.
The Egyptians’ testing facilities
arc 15 years old and their equipment
is obsolete, Hoffman said.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort to
bring their equipment back up to
operating condition and to train people
on what they need to do,’’ Hoffman
said.
The U.S. Office of International
Cooperation and Development and
the U.S. Agency for International
Development arc sponsoring the pro
gram. 'Mie agencies will provide about
S550,(XX) to both institutions for re
search, equipment and training,
Hoffman said.
The OICD/AID selected the Uni
versity of Nebraska- Lincoln agricul
ture equipment testing laboratory
because of its worldwide reputation,
Hoffman said. UNL has the only lab
in the United States that is approved
by the U.S. Department of Commerce
to test tractors.
The exchange program will run
for about three years and could be
extended if necessary, he said. Egyp
tian representatives visiting UNL will
observe research done in the IANR
departments.
One UNL faculty member already
has visited Egypt under the exchange
and has written a proposal for the
program.
Louis Leviticus, a professor of
agricultural engineering and associ
ate director of the center for agricul
tural equipment, met U.S. represen
tatives and members of Egypt’s Min
istry of Agriculture last week in Alex
andria and Cairo to discuss agricul
ture equipment problems from design
to performance testing.
Leviticus said he visited manufac
turing sites and found that engineers
don’t know how to measure the effi
ciency, traction and other perform
ance variables of the tractors they
build.
The industry needs technology to
make its equipment more competi
tive because tractors arc a big invest
ment for farmers and imported trac
tors arc expensive, he said.
But the challenges facing the
Egyptians arc more complex than
testing alone. Leviticus said design
research is costly and unsafe.
Currently, the method of manu
facturing in private industry is to copy
foreign machines without paying at
tention to research, he said. If a ma
chine fails after a manufacturer tests
it, the manufacturer may go under, he
said.
“They do not have the where
withal to lest whether the metals and
the materials they use arc any good,’ ’
he said.
Premature breakdowns because of
wrong selection of metals and poor
See EGYPT on 6
UNL professor Louis Leviticus sits on a tractor being tested for
its braking ability. The tests are being performed on the tractor
test track on East Campus.