Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Tuesday, December 3, 1968
Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Tuesday, December 3, 1968
theatre
FDA warns diet foods
Czech will see his PTP premiere may be health hazard
Ivan Klima, Czech liberal leader and playwright whose work,
The Castle, opens tonight at Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, arrived in
Ann Arbor Friday and will attend the American premiere of his
play.
Klima, a reform leader in the Czech Writers' Union, was in-
vited to the University by Robert C. Schnitzer, executive director of
the Professional Theatre Program, to participate in the premiere
under a special grant. He will return to Prague following the close
of The Castle's Ann Arbor run, Dec. 8.
The play was first produced in 1964 during the Stalinist reign
of ousted Czech premier Antonin Novotny. It was immediately hailed
as a daring, powerful contribution to traditional Czech drama and
became a key factor in the early stages of the struggle for cultural
liberalization.
Following The Castle's success in Prague, it was produced
widely in West Germany. Kenneth Tynan, literary editor of the
British National Theatre, praised the Czech production, and it also
earned mention in dispatches in the New York Times and the New
Yorker as a factor in the drive for cultural reform.
Klima, 37, began his literary career after attending Charles
University in Prague. Unique among his Czech contemporaries, his
work has dealt with current social problems. A major influence on
Klima's work was the official "rehabilitation" of Frank Kafka,
whose work was long banned in his native Czechoslovakia. He has
also been influenced by western absurdists like Harold Pinter, Eu-
gene Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett.
Klima's second play, The Master, continued to examine the
Stalinist socialist system in terms of dramatic parable. His other
important works include Klara, The Jury, Sweet-Shoppe Myriam
(all dramas), and a collection of short stories, A Faultless Day.
WASHINGTON 0P-The Food'
and Drug Administration, con-
cerned by a new finding that ar-
tificial sweeteners may have
harmful effects, is pressing ahead
with a research project to settle
the issue.
The finding is that a substance
widely used in det foods and
drinks may cause genetic dam-
age that could lead to birth de-
fects.
FDA scientists emphasize that
the finding, which became known
to them in recent weeks, is pre-
liminary. And they noted that
the evidence so far has been
found only in laboratory and ani-.
mal studies - not in humans.
Dr. John J. Schroge, acting
director of the FDA's division of
research and liaison, said the
agency is moving quickly to set
up tests with human volunteers.
Once the tests begin, he said, the;
results should be available in
about three months.
"We are not alarmed about it
- we are concerned," Dr. Schro-
gie said in an interview "We aret
in contact with most of the in-
vestigators and are doing work on'
our own."
The finding, made by the FDA's
Dr. Marvin Legator, was that a
substance produced by sweeten-G
ers causes significant breaks in
animal chromosomes when it is!
given n moderate amounts.
Chromosomes are the heredi-
tary carriers that determine what
offspring are going to be like. If
chromosomes break and get put
back together improperly, birth
defects can result.
The substance involved is call-
ed cyclohexylamine. It is form-
ed in the bodies of about one-
third of the people who use the,
sweeteners, other studies have in-
dicated.
The sweeteners involved are
called cyclamates. Ten parts of
cyclamates are usually mixed
with one part of another sweet-
ener, sacharine, in diet foods and
drinks.
Schrogie said another concern
is that cyclohexylamine, which he
described as a toxic substance, is
sometimes used to produce cycla-
mates and that it can revert to
its original form.
He said FDA researchers are
sampling various artifically
sweetened products to see whe-
ther cyclohexylamine is present
in significant amount.
So far, the FDA's official posi-
tion on the sweeteners remains
unchanged since it was last stat-
ed in 1965: "There is no evidence
that cyclamates, ,at present use
levels, are a hazard to health."
But use of diet foods - espe-
cially diet soda pop - has in-
creased many times in recent
years and FDA officials say con-
elusive new evidence could lead
to a new federal position,pos-
sibly including- labeling require-
ments.
m:
Richard Clarke and Henderson Forsythe, in "The Castle"
NEW PREMIER SUBTLE CHANGES:
Portugal may enter the 20th Century
By DAVID MAZZARELLA
LISBON (IP)-Portugal has be-'
gun to stir after 40 years of dic-
tatorship. A mood of change and
excitement has taken hold in a
country that somehow had gotten
through most of the 20th Century
without sampling many of its
thrills or frustrations.
In two months Prime Minister
Marcello CGaetano has cautiously
projected the possibility of great-
er political freedom, and of the
kind of economic expansion the
rest of Western Europe has seen
since World War II.
But he has by no means re-
versed the past. Portugal today
is in a sense two Portugals, the old
and the new, uneasily coexisting
side by side.
There is much uncertainty as to
how the new times will end.
Little of this is evident on the
surface. If Portugal is living
through a revolution it is doing it
as tranquilly as it lived through
four decades of one-man rule by
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.
Nothing was changed outward-
ly in this city with its curiously
mixed European-Arabic-African
flavor, but ghost Portuguese seem
to sense that an era has ended.
Salazar had not named a suc-
cessor, perhaps characteristically
in this partriarchal society where
even in family businesses fath-
ers tend to remain in charge until
they die. With Salazar's condi-
tion hopeless, President Americo
Thomaz, a tough, 72-year-old re-
tired admiral, finally announced
he was naming a new prime min-
ister.
Into office next day, Sept. 27,
came Caetano, 62, an educator
and lawyer. A drafter of the Port-
Fall and winter. subscription rate:
$4.50 'per term by carrier ($5 by mail);
$8.00 for regular academic school year
.9 by mall).
uguese "corporate state" consti-
tution, he was once Salazar's ap-
parent protege but in recent
years had established his inde-
pendence from the regime.
Overnight, the strictly censor-
ed press became more free. It be-
gan asking for a better life in a
more dynamic society aligned
with the rest of Europe, for poli-
tical amnesties, for less govern-
ment secrecy.
Days after entering office, Cae-
tano promised a press law abol-
ishing most forms of censorship.
He increased the flow of inform-
ation from the government to the
press.
He has returned exiled opposi-
tion leader Mario Soares from an
equatorial island where Salazar
sent him. This seemed to herald
a freer role for the opposition,
possibly the right to unobstruct-
ed campaigning in next year's
National Assembly elections.
The business community is op-
timistic that Caetano will mean
modernization and more empha-
sis on economic growth. The gov-
ernment already has promised
more public investments to off-
set a serious lag in private invest-
ment.
It also promised to implement
a six-year development plan that
nominally came into force Jan.
1.
Indeed, some Portuguese f e e 1
that the Salazar-Caetano transi-
tion has somehow begun an evo-
lution that will bring the kind of
economic boom and free-wheeling
society seen elsewhere in Wes-
tern Europe.
But economists agree it is not
time to talk of boom yet, with co-
lonial wars in Africa still drain-
ing the economy and defense ac-
counting for 40 per cent or more
of the budget.
On the home front, Caetano
has courted labor with promises
of a national minimum wage and denouncing a conservative hier-
freedom for unions to elect their archy they associate with Sala-
own officers. zar's time, Their faction may be
He has launched an investiga- the making of a powerful politi-
tion into the educational system cal instrument.
covering everything from cramp- But the old Portugal is still
ed grammar schools to inade- here, too.
quately staffed universities. Two Hard-liners did not hide their
important student associations bitterness over Salazar's removal
were given the right to chose their from office, even though he was
leaders. Under Salazar these were incapacitated.
appointed by the government. Censorship itself has become er-
Evolving along with civil life is ratic. The over-all effect is of
the religious community in this a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't
predominantly Roman Catholic kind of liberalization. There is
country. evident confusion even among of-
Dissident laymen are openly ficials.
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Sunday, December 15
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TICKETS $4.50, 3.50, 2.50
MAIL ORDER
Please send check or money order to:
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