By The
Associated Press
Edited by Michelle Gamer
Tuesday, January 30, 1996 Page 2
New AIDS drug treatment shows
promise in stalling deadly disease
WASHINGTON—A triple-punch com
bination of an experimental new AIDS drug
and two others already on the market is by far
the most potent treatment yet for people
infected with the deadly virus, researchers
reported Monday.
The therapy does not cure AIDS. At best,
it will slow and perhaps stall the disease for
long periods. Even this could be a significant
advance, since currently available virus medi
cines do little to extend AIDS patients’ lives.
The treatment involves one of a new class
of drugs called protease inhibitors and is still
in early stages of human testing. Neverthe
less, AIDS researchers who have seen many
promising initial results go sour in the past
are enthusiastic about the latest findings.
“It’s wonderfully exciting. It’s a mile
stone,” said Dr. Gerald Friedland of Yale
University.
The key to the new combination is
indinavir, a still-experimental protease in
hibitor developed by Merck & Co. It is
combined with the standard AIDS medi
cines AZT and 3TC.
Dr. Roy Gulick and colleagues from New
York University gave the combination to 26
patients. After six months, they could find no
measurable trace of the AIDS virus in 24 of
them. Their treatment is continuing, but re
searchers say it is still too soon to know how
long this effect will last.
Gulick planned to present his results in
detail Thursday at the annual Conference on
Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections,
an AIDS meeting sponsored by the Infec
tious Disease Society of America.
However, Dr. Emilio Emini of Merck
released some of the findings at the meeting
Monday at a standing-room-only session on
protease inhibitors.
“This is the best response of any anti
retroviral therapy that has been seen to date,”
said Gulick, and several other AIDS experts
at the meeting agreed.
“We all share the'excitement of the mo
ment that long-term suppression of this virus
is real,” said Dr. Paul Volberding of the
University of California, San Francisco.
Other AIDS drugs on the market work by
“We all share the excitement
of the moment that long
term suppression of this
virus is real ”
DR. PAUL VOLBERDING
University of California, San Francisco
Dr. Douglas Richman of the University of
California, San Diego, speculated that be
cause the combination so sharply suppresses
growth of the virus, it will hold down the
evolution of resistant strains of HIV, as well,
intercepting the virus at a different stage in
its reproduction. These standard medicines
can inhibit the virus briefly but quickly lose
their punch as mutant forms of HIV evolve
that are immune to their effects.
A major question is whether — and how
quickly — HIV will become resistant to
protease inhibitors, too.
News
in a l\
Minute*1
Police search
i on-line records
WASHINGTON—A killing in New
Jersey that led authorities to a gay “chat
room” on America Online resulted in a
search of the company’s headquarters.
Police in Fairfax County, Va., per
formed what was described as the First
such search of the on-line service records
as part of the murder investigation.
The incident underscores how on-line
computer discussions and e-mail, which
many computer users regard as private,
are vulnerable to routine criminal investi
gation.
Law enforcement sources, however,
said that to obtain most computer records,
investigators will have to seek search
warrants under the same standards that
now apply to searches of private homes.
Thieves snatch
Henson’s Muppets
ERFURT, Germany — Miss Piggy
was under police protection Monday, af
ter her colleagues Ernie and Bert were
abducted.
Thieves knocked through a wall and
plundered an exhibit of original Muppet
puppets overnight Sunday at the Erfurt
Garden Show. They also smashed a glass
case, trying to rip Miss Piggy from her
display, but were unsuccessful.
“We have not yet determined how ex
tensive the damage was” to Miss Piggy,
said exhibit organizer Adolf Blaschka.
Miss Piggy was placed in police cus
tody Monday.
Police said no ransom note was left for
the puppets.
Fire destroys
opera house
VENICE, Italy — A fire Monday
evening destroyed the opera house La
Fenice, a 204-year-old treasure that was
one of Italy’s greatest artistic institutions.
La Fenice means “the phoenix,” and
like the mythical bird for which it was
named, the theater has burned before and
risen from its ashes. A blaze slowed con
struction ofthe theater before it opened in
1792, and it was rebuilt after a fire in
1836.
“Let’s hope this bird rises again from
the ashes,” tenor Luciano Pavarotti told
RAI state television. “I’m devastated. It
really was a jewel of Italy.”
--------J
Kevorkian attends suicide
of 48-year-old MS patient
PONTIAC, Mich. — Dr. Jack Kevorkian
took part in suicide No. 27, that of a 48-year-old
woman with multiple sclerosis whose bathrobe
clad body was found in Kevorkian’s battered
van outside the coroner’s office Monday.
Linda Henslee, 48, of Beloit, Wis., died of
carbon monoxide poisoning, Medical Exam
iner L.J. Dragovic said.
Her body was found around 6 a.m. after
someone called the office and said to “check out
the vehicle in the parking lot,” Sheriffs Capt.
Barnett Jones said.
It is the third time in the past year that a body
has been left in one of Kevorkian’s vehicles
near the medical examiner’s office, in an area
Sheriff John Nichols said has been nicknamed
“Kevorkian Drive.”
“There’s no observation of dignity to have
the body of a woman dropped off at the morgue
at 6 in the morning on a freezing day. It shows
a ghoulish disrespect for the sanctity of human
life,” prosecutor Lawrence Bunting said.
Fieger refused to say how, where or when the
woman died. He said she was brought to Michi
gan last week by two daughters and an uniden
tified friend. The three, with Kevorkian, were
present when she died.
Henslee was diagnosed with multiple sclero
sis 20 years ago, and by the time she died was
completely incapacitated, unable to eat or use
the bathroom without help, Fieger said.
“You couldjust tell she was miserable,” said
Lori Coolidge, a hairdresser whose shop is next
door to the house where Henslee lived with her
“You could just tell she was
miserable. She just couldn’t do
anything. ”
LORI COOLIDGE
MS patient’s hairdresser
daughter Dawn. “She just couldn’t do any
thing.*
Coolidge said she shampooed Henslee’shair.
“The day I came over and did it, we just kind of
had to flop her head over a counter. ... She
couldn’t feed herself. She had no control over
her hands,” she said.
Kevorkian has helped in the suicides of at
least 27 people since 1990. Fieger refused to
say if Kevorkian has attended other,
unpublicized deaths.
Fieger said it was coincidence that Henslee
died two weeks before Kevorkian’s trial on
assisted suicide charges in two 1993 deaths. He
also faces charges in two other deaths.
No immediate charges were filed in the latest
suicide.
“Dr. Kevorkian encouraged her, 'Why don’t
you wait until next week, next month.’... She
insisted, 'My time is now,’” Fieger said.
Fieger refused to say where Kevorkian was.
No one answered the telephone at Kevorkian’s
home and the house appeared to be unoccupied.
San Francisco approves
symbolic gay marriages
SAN FRANCISCO — The city’s Board of
Supervisors unanimously approved a measure
Monday that gives gay couples the right to a
symbolic wedding ceremony beginning in April.
“San Francisco is once again illustrating that
this is a humane, compassionate and equal op
portunity city for all people who live here,” said
Supervisor Carole Migden, sponsor of the pro
posal.
The measure must have another reading
Monday, then becomes law March 21.
The civil ceremonies would recognize do
mestic partnerships, but would not be legal
marriages. They would only solemnize the rights
the city has granted gay couples since its domes
tic partnership law took effect on Valentine’s
Day in 1991.
The measure would not entitle partners to
traditional benefits married people get.
The 1991 ordinance gives domestic partners
visitation rights in hospitals, shared health plans
for city employees and bereavement leave for
city employees when a domestic partner dies.
Private employers are not required to grant the
same benefits.
Only couples registered as domestic part
ners in San Francisco would be eligible for the
ceremony. At least 3,000 unmarried couples,
most of them gay, already have Filed for that
designation, at a cost of $35 a couple.
Weddings would be performed by the county
clerk, or anyone else deputized by the clerk, and
could be held anywhere from City Hall to
churches where clergy members agree to per
form the ceremony.
San Francisco’s effort to recognize long
term homosexual partnerships is at odds with a
state effort. The state Assembly is scheduled to
study a bill Tuesday that would prohibit Cali
fornia from recognizing same-sex marriages,
whether performed inside the state or outside—
for example in Hawaii, where gay marriages
could be legalized next year.
Navy fighter jet
crash kills 5
in Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—A Navy F-14 fighter
jet heavy with fuel crashed in a huge fireball
into a neighborhood Monday, demol ishing three
houses and killing five people. The pilot had
been blamed for a previous accident.
Three of the dead were in a house that took
a direct hit from the Tomcat, as the F-14 is
known. The others killed were the plane’s two
member crew.
The Navy identified the pilot as Lt. Cmdr.
John Stacy Bates, 33, originally of Chatta
nooga. The radar interceptor officer was identi
fied as Lt. Graham Alden Higgins, 28, from
Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
Neither ejected before the crash.
In the earlier crash, off the aircraft carrier
USS Abraham Lincoln, Bates lost control of his
F-14 and crashed into the Pacific Ocean during
maneuvers with another fighter. He and the
radar intercept officer ejected.
Cmdr. Gregg Hartung, a Navy spokesman,
said Monday night that pilot error was the cause
of the April 1995 crash.
Bates went before a Field Naval Aviator
Evaluation Board and was recommended fully
qualified for return to flight status. That judg
ment was based on several factors, such as past
performance, attitude and flying record, Hartung
said.
Bates tighter squadron, VF 213, has had
four accidents in the last 16 months, including
the October 1994 fatal crash involving Lt. Kara
Hultgreen, one of the first women to qualify for
a Navy combat aviation assignment.
The F-14 had taken off Monday from Nash
ville International Airport on a training mis
sion, returning to its base at the Miramar Naval
Air Station near San Diego.
The fighter jet hit one house, engulfing homes
to either side in flames and littering the neigh
borhood with plane parts.
The fireball could be seen for miles from the
wooded, working-class neighborhood of brick
homes where the crash occurred under overcast
skies.
“One guy was just sitting in his couch. He
never had a chance. They were all just sitting
where they were,” said firefighter James Dean.
The cause of the crash was not immediately
known. The Pentagon sent a team of investiga
tors.
Elmer Newsom, 66, and his wife, Ada
Newsom, 63, were killed in their home, police
said. A visiting friend, Ewing T. Wair, 53, also
was killed.
The F-14 is a supersonic, twin-engine fighter
designed to attack enemy aircraft at night and in
any weather. Its crew consists of a pilot and a
radar intercept officer. It typically carries mis
siles, rockets and bombs, but the Navy said the
plane that went down on Monday was not armed.
The jet, built by Grumman, was introduced
in the Navy in the 1970s and is no longer in
production.
According to the Navy, this was the 30th
crash of an F-14 since 1991, including 11 in
1993, five in 1994 and seven in 1995.
It has a better than average safety record
based on the number of “class A mishaps” per
100,000 flying hours. Class A mishaps are those
that result in a death or at least $1 million in
damage to the aircraft.
Nebraskan
Editor J. Christopher Hain,
472-1766
Managing Editor Doug Kouma
Assoc. News Editors Matt Waite
_ Sarah Scalet
General Manager Dan Shattil
Production Manager Katherine Policky
Advertising Manager Amy Struthers
Asst. Advertising Manager Laura Wilson
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