***f News Digest
■ .
Monday, March 25,1996 Page 2
McDonald’s bans burners in Britain
LONDON — Worried Britons sit
ting down to their Sunday roasts were
likely to be eating pork, lamb or even
ostrich instead oftheir traditional beef.
Fears of the deadly mad cow dis
ease have driven beef off many menus
in Britain and badly damaged the ex
port market. At least 20 countries have
banned British beef, including the two
biggest markets — France and Italy.
McDonald’s fast-food chain, which
spends $37.5 million a year on British
beef, dealt the industry a severe blow
on Sunday with its decision to switch
to foreign beef.
The chain, worried about customer
confidence, stopped serving hamburg
ers in its 660 British restaurants and
said it wouldn’t sell them again until
Thursday, when new supplies of beef
could be imported.
McDonald’s main rival in the UK,
Burger King, said it would continue
offering hamburgers made from Brit
ish beef.
The government announced
Wednesday that scientists believed the
cattle disease, formally known as bo
vine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), is the “most likely” source of a
new strain of a similar brain disease
that has struck 10 young Britons. At
least eight have died.
A scientist who has researched BSE
said Sunday that the British govern
ment was probably correct in linking
the cow disease to the illness in hu
mans.
Stanley Prusiner, who is based at
the University of California in San
Francisco, said it would take five to 10
years and millions of dollars to find a
treatment for the illness. For now, the
only way to avoid it is to not eat the
meat of stricken cows, he stressed.
A poll conducted for the British
Broadcasting Corp. said 46 percent of
respondents were “less inclined” to
cat beef. Just under 40 percent said
they would continue to eat it. The poll,
based on interviews with 502 adults
Saturday, had a margin of error of 4.5
percent.
A panel of 13 scientists who will
advise the government on its policy
toward BSE resumed talks on Sunday
to draw up guidelines on the risk to
children.
The scientists arc also discussing
whether further information shouldbc
given to the public and whether more
can be done to eradicate BSE, which
has infected British herds over the past
decade.
The committee is to report to the
government’s chicf nicdical officer,
who will inform ministers.
An announcement was expected
“I think it’s a sensible
move. Until we know the
truth it's better to be
cautious. ”
JUDITH BROWN
Belfast resident
Monday, and the government has made
clear it will follow the experts’ pro
posals, even if they call for the mass
slaughter of cattle.
Sir Richard Southwood, an expert
on animal infection who headed the
first government inquiry into BSE, was
quoted in The Mail on Sunday as say
ing a million cattle should be slaugh
tered.
“Serious consideration ought to be
given to destroying all cattle bom be
fore 1990 when a lot of infected mate
rial was getting into cattle feed,” he
was quoted as saying. “They could
still be incubating the disease.”
Southwood’s 1989 inquiry con
cluded there was a slight risk of BSE
being transmitted to humans. At that
time, Britain banned the practice of
enriching cattle feed with sheep
, * ' .W ' *
byproducts, because of the sheep dis
ease scrapi, similar to BSE.
On Saturday, shoppers throughout
the country turned their backs on beef
and bought pork, lamb or poultry for
Sunday’s big meal.
Butchers who sell organic meats
and novelty meats such as ostrich and
alligator—at a much higher price than
standard supermarket beef — were
predicting an increase in sales. All
Britain’s major supermarket chains
reported a slump in beef sales.
McDonald’s said its nine Northern
Ireland restaurants and 25 in the Irish
Republic would continue to sell Irish
beef products, in which BSE has never
been detected.
At the McDonald’s in central
London’s Victoria Rail Station, appe
tites appeared undented and custom
ers were sympathetic to the chain’s
ban on British beef.
“1 think it’s a sensible move. Until
we know the truth it’s better to be
cautious,” said Judith Brown, 18, from
Belfast, Northern Ireland.
But at a McDonald’s in Nottingham,
central England, Andy Campbell, 33,
was less concerned.
“I’ve been eating beef all my life
and I feel fine,” Campbell said. “If it
was going to do me any harm I would
have noticed by now.”
Flurry of AIDS drugs brings new hope
WASHINGTON — Fifteen years
into the AIDS epidemic, patients fi
nally have the promise of not curing
but controlling the deadly virus —
thanks to a sudden influx ofnew drugs
unlike that ever marshaled against any
other disease.
“It’s such an extraordinary time of
both discovery and hope,” said Gor
don Nary, executive director of the
International Association of Physicians
in AIDS Care.
“For many people today with HIV
disease, there is a very good possibil
ity ... it’ll be a chronic disease” instead
of a quick killer.
These new drugs, called protease
inhibitors, don’t cure the HIV virus
that causes AIDS. But they attack it
very differently than all other medi
cines — and the two newest ones can
almost eliminate virus lurking in pa
tients’ blood.
The new drugs give patients un
precedented choices in battling HIV.
More importantly, combining them
with older medicines deals the.virus a
one-two punch that doctors hope —
although they haven’t proved it yet —
will suppress HIV enough that pa
tients can live with AIDS fbr decades,
just as they control other chronic dis
eases.
The headlines started in December
when the Food and Drug Administra
tion approved Hoffman LaRochc’s
saquinavir, the first but weak protease
inhibitor, in a record 97 days.
That record quickly fell. On March
1, the FDA approved Abbott Labora
tories’ more powerful ritonavir in 72
days. Two weeks later, indinavir got
the nod just 42 days after manufac
turer Merck & Co. filed an FDA appli
cation.
Protease inhibitors weren’t the only
good news. Patients also gotanew eye
implant to prevent AIDS-related blind
ness, the FDA passed a better method
to screen blood donations for HIV,
-—-1
and the first oral HIV test is expected
in months.
AIDS patients until now had five
choices: AZT,ddI,ddC,d4T and 3TC.
All worked the same way, targeting an
enzyme called reverse transcriptase
that is important for HIV to reproduce.
But the drugs help only modestly, and
HIV quickly mutates to resist them.
So scientists designed drugs to tar
get a second enzyme, protease, which
is vital to another key step in HIV’s
reproduction. When combined with
older medicines, the two most power
ful protease inhibitors can cause the
amount of HIV floating in many pa
tients’ blood to plummet by as much as
98 percent.
HIV still lurks elsewhere in the
body, so the drugs are not a cure.
Still, the idea is that keeping pa
tients’ HIV blood levels low for years
would postpone AIDS symptoms. To
do that, three-drug cocktails of either
ritonavir or indinavir plus two older
medicines became the most recom
mended AIDS therapy this month.
But that recommendation could
change within the year:
• A fourth protease inhibitor,
Agouron Inc.’s nclfinavir, is in final
testing and expected to be approved
by 1997. Roche is creating a stronger
saquinavir, also expected soon, and
three other protease inhibitors are in
earlier testing.
• Abbott and Roche arc studying
the efleets of taking two protease in
hibitors together, ritonavir plus
saquinavir. Preliminary results are ex
pected in July.
• Doctors arc beginning studies of
a four-drug mixture.
• And companies have begun test
ing two drugs, nevaripinc and
delvaripinc, in a third new class of
AIDS medicines.
“It is an exciting time,” said FDA
AIDS expert Dr. David Feigal.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hcrzegovina
—Facing the threat of economic sanc
tions, Bosnian government and Serb
officials tried to work out differences
Sunday over the release of their final
war prisoners.
The government released 109 Serbs
just before a midnight Saturday dead
line. But the release fell short of free
ing all POWs, as required. _
World powers meeting in Moscow
on Saturday warned that unless the
wartime enemies comply, the Serbs
and the Muslim-Croat government
would face sanctions instead of the
economic aid they so badly need to
rebuild Bosnia.
On Sunday, Amor Masovic, the
head ofthc Bosnian government POW
commission, and his Bosnian Serb
counterpart, Dragan Bulajic, met on a
former front line south of Sarajevo and
affirmed their commitment to release
all prisoners in the next eight days.
“The sanct ions they are threatening
really will be imposed,” Bulajic said.
“After this war, after peace came, we
all need this economic injection.”
In the years
ahead, what
kind of memo
ries will you have
when you see your
school odors?
If you choose the Army
National Guard, some of your best memories will
probably be in different shades of green.
There was the green you earned to help pay
for college by serving in the Army National Guard.
Over $6,000 in education assistance eligibility
under the Montgomery GI Bill Plus a minimum
salary of $11,000 during the course of your enlistment
Then there was the green you wore as you mounted roaring helicopters and powerful
tanks. The green that hid you from the ‘fenemy” in rugged terrain. And the green that
represented your friends’ envy about the skills you were learning—in computers,
electronics, communications and other technical fields.
AD it took out of your college life was about two days a month and two weeks each
year. But it was one unforgettable experience — and a lot of colorful memories.
Put Army National Guard in your coDege plans. CaD
„ 471-7238 or 471-7239
Nebraska
The Army N«tio«»IGuw'di» tnKqnri Opportunity Employer.__
Budget war
negotiations
to test Dole
WASHINGTON—As Presi
dent Clinton and Congress
square off this week in perhaps
the finale of their 1996 budget
war, there will be an interesting
subplot involving firebrand
House Republicans and Bob
Dole’s White House aspirations.
Facing a Friday deadline,
administration officialsand GOP
leaders will try to broker a deal
on a $160 billion bill financing
dozens of agencies for the rest of
fiscal 1996 and avoiding another
federal shutdown. As they do,
the measure will be a test case of
whether Dole — the party’s
leader in November’s election
—can persuade confrontational
House Republicans to compro
mise with Clinton on some of
their most heartfelt principles.
The odds are Dole will suc
ceed because it would be too
costly for him and congressional
Republicans to fail. A new shut
down would tarnish his reputa
tion as an achiever, encourage
support for a third-party candi
date like Ross Perot, and wound
efforts by GOP lawmakers to
appear reasonable, not extrem
ist. '
But getting there won t be
easy. There remains a deep
seated reluctance among many
conservative House Republicans
to compromise with Clinton on
central GOP issues like spend
ing cuts and government regula
tion—even though Dole, House
Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.,
and other House leaders want
them to.
“He’s got to run a presiden
tial campaign, but he doesn’t
have to win my congressional
seat,” said Rep. Mark Souder,
R-Ind., one of the most conser
vative of the 74 House GOP
freshmen. Souder says that while
he and other Republicans want
to avoid another shutdown, strik
ing a deal “is like business as
usual again”—anathema to first
term Republicans who pledged
to change Washington’s ways.
Negotiators struggle to formulate plan
to release final Bosnian war prisoners
But there are differences to be re
solved before more prisoners arc re
leased,mainly a stalemate over whether
to release prisoners suspected of war
crimes. There also are conflicting re
ports over how many POWs are being
held.
According to the Red Cross, which
is monitoring the prisoner releases, a
total 152 Serb, Muslim and Croat pris
oners should have been freed Satur
day. Itsays warringpartiesare holding
62 other prisoners for possible war
crimes investigations.
I NetJraskan
Editor J. Christopher Hain Night News Editors RebeccaOltmans
472-1766 Melanie Branded
Managing Editor Doug Kouma £n2?^
