editors:
wary long
jo marcotty
barb cornell
Sunday
magcazine
inside:
page four-hooks
page five-profile
Number 1 Page Three September1
FEATUR
14, 1975
ES
One month later:
e
Daily Photo by KEN FINK
Warhok The persc
Pop Art comes to
Afaof
town
story
By JO MARCOTTY
and BETH CONLIN
THEY KNEW SOMETHING was
wrong by late July. Too many
patients at Ann Arbor's Veteran's
Administration Hospital had suf-
fered unexplainable respiratory
arrests. The nursing and anesthe-
siology units began checking for
faulty equipment and anaesthetics,
but found nothing conclusive. Even
the nine 'code 7's' - the call board
signal for respiratory failure -
which flashed through the building
on the night of August 13, failed to
jar the staff into the realization
that the arrests were intentionally
induced.
Dr. Anne Hill, director of VA
anesthesiology, responded to a re-
spiratory code on August 15. Her
growing uneasiness over the fail-
ures in intensive care and post-op-
erative patients prompted her to
test the patient for the presence
of drugs used to inhibit breathing.
Dr. Hill discovered the answer af-
ter one try - pavulon, a drug
stocked in most hospitals. A mus-
cle relaxant. it is routinely used in
surgery and research.
But it has no place in the blood-
stream of intensive care and post-
operative patients. That someone
had been tampering with the pa-
tients at the hospital was now a
cerainty, but the perpetrator and
motive remained enigmas even
crime specialists have not been
able to solve.
By STEPHEN HERSH
EVERYTHING Andy Warhol does
is art. Even if what he is doing
is standing in front of an Ann Ar-
bor book store, on a table in the
middle of a crowd, signing auto-
graphs.
Why did he keep his mouth shut
firmly during his appearance at
the Maynard Street Centicore
bookshop last week? Were the
questions shouted r at him continu-
ously during his three impassive
hours on that table too inane to
merit response? Was he too shy
to talk? Afraid that yelling would
hurt his throat? Or was his silence"
intended to make some sort of en-
igmatic pop art statement?
But the reasons don't matter:
that's the essence of pop art. War-
hol was conducting a mid-'60's-
style happening, and that's that.
VA
A to B and Back Again)? Could it
be for the money involved?
"There's no money in it," he says.
Then why do it?
"It's just more work." Or more
art. Warhol is in the fortunate situ-
ation of being a pop celebrity. His
every move, his every comment,
therefore, is a new piece of art.
Is there really no money to be
made on his tour? Centicore sold.
200 to 300 copies of the book dur-
ing his visit. It is possible that his
touring expenses will be greater
than his financial gains. It's pos-
sible, but can we be sure Warhol
was telling the truth?
ONE THING WE can be sure of
is that he's submitting to inter-
views. He answers questions, brief-
ly, in one sentence or maybe three
sentences, in a voice of infinites-
mal quietness.
He's small and fragile-looking,
with light golden hair styled so
neatly, so cleanly. Warhol is ele-
gant, even though he's wearing
blue jeans and a pair of old un-
shiny black lace-up shoes of a plain
old style, from any era.
He travels with an entourage of
assistants and friends who are in-
scrutable and exotic. His business
manager, Fred Hughes, opened the
door to the Ann Arbor apartment
where Warhol received his inter-
viewers in a way that was pure
theatre: as the door swung open,
it revealed Hughes' head nodding
slightly, somewhat bee-like, behind
a pair of dark-lensed aviator
glasses. He permitted that image
to last for only a short moment,
and took off the glasses. And then
he smiled slightly, and said, "Wel-
come". Excellent.
AND THEN WARHOL, with the
glasses framed with clear pink
rims, shaking hands as limply as
is humanly possible, holding a tiny
cassette recorder which he uses to
interview people for his magazine
Interview, sitting with his legs to-
gether and his recorder in his lap.
His voice is as tiny as a pinpoint.
"Yes, I still do some painting, but
my main work now is in our office.
We have about 30 people working
for us. The films and the magazine
come out of the office. What I my-
self do mostly is interviews."
HIS BOOK, TOO, is spontaneous.
It's composed of transcriptions
of monologues he recorded on his
tape machine, cute little ideas
without much substance. At best
they sound sort of neat, often they
sound vacuous. The "Andymats"
idea is probably the most widely
quoted: the plan for the " 'Restaur-
ant for the Lonely Person.' You
get your food and then you take
your tray into a booth and watch
television."
What are all these "strange but
true" ideas and autobiogranhical
But Warhol says he has no axe to
grind. He isn't revolutionary; he
isn't even a progressive. Were those
Campbell's pictures really a pro-
test against advertising or business
or some such establishments?
"No," Warhol said. "They were
just a form of comedy, of enter-
tainment."
THE ARTIST'S non-revolt isn't
restricted to the area of soup
advertising. About politics in gen-
eral he says, "I try not to get in-
volved in that." He did make a
poster supporting McGovern's pres-
idential campaign. But that has
been his only public political act.
About his trip to the White
House, Warhol commented, "It was
nice going there. Ford seems a lot
nicer than Nixon."
What does he think about Ford's
politics?
"I don't know. I haven't been fol-
lowing what he's been doing."
THAT DOES WARHOL really feel
about the companies that pro-
duce Campbell's and Coca Cola and
McDonald's burgers and the rest of
our mass consumer products?
"I like McDonald's," he re-
marked. "We ate there on Maynard
Street today. But I hardly ever go
there. There's one across the street
from our office we never go to. We
have a very good health food
store we've been going to for the
past ten years."
CO WARHOL doesn't disapprove
of any of the practices of big
business.
"Well," he said, "I guess I really
haven't thought about it."
In his book, he writes that he's
in love with television. What does
he like to watch?
"The Mary Tyler Moore Show
is my favorite program, and I like
"All in the Family," and "Phyllis."
And there's a new show called
"The Invisible Man" that's good.
And I like game shows. We seem to
always know somebody on the
game shows."
Doesn't he find the commercials
offensive?
"No."
Would he like to do some tele-
vision work himself?
"Well, we record some of our in-
terviews on video tape. But to do
real visual stuff we make our
movies."
Does he have any new movies in
the making?
"Well, we're working on a movie
called 'Bad,' but we've put that
aside for awhile."
What part exactly does he play
in the making of the Andy Warhol
movies?
"Well," he said, "I work in the
office. Everybody works on all the
movies."
13UT WHAT IS it that he actually
does?
ing day-to-day business of the in-
stitution, there is an undercurrent
of uncertainty and fear.
THE STARTLING ONSET of the
crisis on August 15 sparked
panic and a host of rumors in the
hospital. Lonnie McWhorter, a vet-
eran in and out of the VA five
times since last February, was
scheduled for surgery around the
'15th, but was discharged when the
upheaval occurred. He said he was
"pretty damn well shook up" when
he first heard of the poisonings.
"I was discharged for two weeks
when they cancelled my surgery
and I pretty damn near didn't
come back. My wife wasn't any too
enthused about my coming here
and my sister and mother didn't
want me to return." It was only
McWhorter's curiosity that did
bring him back to the hospital.
'"I don't feel it was
someone I work with ...
I can't believe it," said
nurse Frank Burns.
"1 can't even think it
would be one of us,"
said one administrators
secretary.'
Frank Burns, a nurse in ICU, ex-
plained that the initial panic'
made female blondes and men in
green suits instantly suspect.
"There was a lot of fear . . . ru-
mors. Any women with blonde hair.
immediately lost rapport with their
patients. Also, people scheduled
for surgery became a lot more
scared than they already were."
The lack of reliable information
compounded the rumors, at least
among the patients. "We've got no
means for checking on anything,"
McWhorter complained. "They
don't tell us anything. I asked this
doctor how a friend of mine was
doing who had been transferred to
another ward and he said, 'Oh, he's
doing fine.' Then I find out he's
dead." But maintaining a low pro-
Fosptal
file of the incident was one way of
maintaining calm among the pa-
tients. And the hospital circulated
an explanatory newsletter to allay
any fears.
For the most part, the efforts to
quell uncertainty worked. "I
haven't lost faith in the hospital,"
said one patient. "I've been coming
here for 10 or 12 years and I'm
plenty satisfied. This kind of thing
could happen in any hospital, any-
where."
But not everyone was so con-
vinced. Burns reported that just
after the poisonings made big
black headlines, some patients at-
tempted to pull out their own IVs.
One person, he said, balked at be-
ing transferred to the ICU. "He was
afraid to be treated there. He
would have died. He needed help
to build a rapport with the staff.
He had to have his nurses from
the old ward help him, but once
he established a trust in the (ICU)
staff, he finally adjusted."
XOST PATIENTS WHO enter the
VA are captive subjects who
have little choice in health care
faclifties - under any circum-
stances. But natients recently ad-
mitted to the VA must face the ad-
ditional snectre of the needless
deaths. And if they refuse the
treatment - which the govern-
ment provides as veteran's com-
pensation - they must either re-
main ill, or pay the costs at an-
other medicalinstitution from
their own pockets.
So now they live with it. And
many try not to think about it. One
elderly man sat in a wheelchair
outside his ward last week, smok-
ing a cigarette. "No," he said sadly,
"they don't let us smoke in the
wards. So I come out here." Had he
heard about the pavulon poison-
ings? "Yeah," he chuckled softly.
"I been reading about that in the
papers. But it don't scare me none.
I don't think it could happen to
anyone I knew. Naw, But you get
some mighty long days around
here - some mighty long days."
Burns, who has worked in the
ICU for over two years, pinpointed
the necessity of the patient's de-
tachment. "It's pretty hard to just
See VA, Page 5
*
*
*
The plot rings of an Agatha
Christie story. Yet the situation is
no fantasy. The consequences
penetrate far deeper than 'who
dunnit' for the staff, patients, and
reputation of this highly complex,
highly technical, yet very human
institution. The visual changes in
the hospital are subtle. There is a
security desk on wing three-east-
the intensive care unit, (ICU) -
and all intravenous equipment and
pavulon are now locked up. An oc-
casional inconsnicuous FBI investi-
gator revularly patrols the halls.
But for the most part, a stranger
in the building would never know
that beneath the constantly mov-
You don't have to know the why's
and wherefore's, and you don't
want to know them.
There's a thread of wheels-with-
in-wheels, of mirrors-reflected-in-
mirrors, running through pop art.
Consider the Campbell's soup can,
the most famous and perhaps the
quintessential pop artwork. Is it
really art, or was Warhol trying to
bullshit us?? On the other hand,
does it matter whether or not he
was serious about it? What is seri-
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