The Michigan Daily - Monday,_March 7, 1994 - 3
'U' study: Alcohol intake aggravates
injuries incurred in auto accidents
JOE WESTRATE/Daily
University Law School graduate, William M. Brodhead, addresses students
in the Union yesterday. Brodhead is campaigning for the U.S. Senate.
Grad gar erS Student
support for U.S. Senate
By MAGGIE WEYHING
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Bill Brodhead, a 1967 University
Lawgrad, came to the Michigan Union
last night to tell about 40 University
students he needs their help to become
Michigan's newest U.S. senator.
He hopes to replace U.S. Sen.
Donald Riegle (D-Flint) in the
November election.
Brodhead, a Democrat and six-
year member of the U.S. House, called
for a "major shift in priorities" by the
federal government.
He explained that more money
and time should be invested in young
people. Brodhead expressed his
fervent support for "Head Start," a
federally funded program that
supports needy students beginning at
the age of three.
Brodhead said the federal
government should provide money
for students who want to continue
their education after high school, but
cannot for lack of money.
"We are the richest country in the
world, no one should be denied higher
education because they don't have
enough money. I know that these
programs are going to cost billions, but
it will be money well-spent," he said.
Brodhead complimented President
Clinton's courage to address the health
care issue and encouraged students to
support his efforts.
He tied the welfare problem
directly to the problem of health care,
saying the cure for one would
ultimately be the ,ame for the other.
He explained that health care should
be made available for everyone.
"We have the most expensive
health care system in the world. There
are 39 million U.S. citizens who don't
have any health care protection. Eighty
percent of the people who don't have
protection are the working poor who
are trying to better themselves."
Brodhead emphasized the need for
the re-development of the economy
of the state. He said he supports the
development of tax incentives that
would provide for investment in job
creation.
Brodhead also side-stepped some
issues raised by the audience.
"iThe legalization of drugs would
certainly reduce the crime rate, but it
would also increase drug use, which
is something that I don't think our
society is ready for!"
Although assisted suicide is not
yet a federal issue, Brodhead
recognized its national importance.
"If a person wants to commit
suicide, they should be able to.
However, some people become
depressed or vulnerable and can then
be taken advantage of - we need to
write a law that would protect people
who are vulnerable."
By RACHEL SCHARFMAN
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
An ongoing study at the University
has concluded that alcohol - a factor
in more than half of motor vehicle
crashes involving people under the
age of 20 - exacerbates injuries
incurred in automotive accidents.
"Alcohol worsens any injury from
an impact - it renders the person
more vulnerable," said Patricia
Waller, director of the University
Transportation Research Institute, in
a report issued by the University's
Medical Center.
Waller is currently chief
investigator of the three-year study
by the Medical Center's Department
of Emergency Services and Alcohol
Research Center. The study aims to
discern the biological ramifications
of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol use
on bodily reactions to injury.
Unlike other injury studies, the
extensive research currently being
conducted takes into account many
variables. Among the factors being
considered by the team are the
immediate circumstances of the
Spielberg
revives talk
of Holocaust
in Germany
LOS ANGELES TIMES
FRANKFURT, Germany-Young
Germans often call it "the big silence."
At home, among family, talk of the
Holocaust was taboo. Children learned
quickly that the subject was too painful,
too shameful for their parents and
grandparents to face. And most stopped
asking.
Now, Steven Spielberg, an Ameri-
can film director who lost 10 relatives
in the Holocaust, gives them
"Schindler's List" and tells them that it
is not only OK to ask questions, it is
essential to look history in the eye with-
out shame.
"Germany is ready and waiting and
willing - the new generation of
Germans-to look at their past and not
put it behind them but bring it with them
throughout their lives," Spielberg said
at the film's German premiere Tuesday
in this city where Schindler spent his
last years. "Not as a way of paying
penance or expressing guilt or shame
but as a way of understanding that we
cannot put the present or future to right
until we make peace with our past."
Will his messagebe heeded? Seldom
in Germany has a film generated such
emotion and soul-searching as
"Schindler's List," the storyofthe "good
German," entrepreneur Oskar
Schindler, who did what most Germans
could not or would not do: Save Jews
from the Nazi extermination.
"Everyone should see this film," the
conservative daily newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine stated
categorically in a front-page review.
Spielberg's film "is an event of
contemporary history," added the liberal
Die Zeit newspaper critic.
But at the same time, many German
reviewers are askingwhy a German has
never made this film. And some
Germans say "Schindler's List" is too
long and too sad to bother seeing.
As in other countries, German
audiences are filing out of theaters at the
end of the three-hour film in stunned
silence, like mourners leaving a funeral.
"I am totally shattered," Thomas
Schreier, an insurance agent, said after
opening night in Berlin.
The film gives Germans a hero
through which they can look at the
Holocaust, a pain-reliever they have
not always had. But it also raises
uncomfortable questions: If Schindler
resisted the Nazis, why didn't so many
others?
accident at the moment of impact.
These include the crash scale
employed by police, which measures
the severity of impact on a scale from
one to seven and the physical location
of the impact.
These determinants are of critical
importance, as the force of impact and
the specific organs damaged are closely
linked to the body's reaction to injury.
Accordingly, automobile accidents
provide the perfect models for studying
these physiological reactions.
"The motor vehicle crash gives
you a ready-made model because it
has the independent measures that
enable you to get a rough estimate of
the physical forces involved. There is
no other injury type for which you can
do that," Waller said.
Since alcohol is a contributory
factor in at least 320,000 automotive
accidents each year, the pool of
available case studies is abundant. To
date, 1,250 patients have been studied,
with a projected goal of 1,500 victims
to be examined by the end of the study
next year.
The process of examination
LET'S GO PLAY
involves blood-drawing and in-depth
interviews conducted by social
workers, which aim to establish what,
if any, history of alcohol or drug abuse
exists. The interview also attempts to
discern whether a difference between
the effects of chronic vs. sporadic
drinking injuries exists.
"It may be that people with higher
blood alcohol levels at the time of the
crash have a heavier drinking history
and have developed a better tolerance
that enables their body to respond
better. We don't know for sure,"
Waller stated.
This type of ambiguity has been a
stumbling block in the study's
progress, noted Dr. Ron Maio, the
project's principal. co-investigator.
While he said he is certain that long-
term drinking effects blood
coagulation, he said there "is not an
exact linear relationship" binding the
severity of injury to the amount of
alcohol consumption or the length of
alcohol history of the patient.
However, Maio did state
conclusively that "alcohol potentates
injury."
This conclusion is supported by
the animal research by Dr. Brian Zink,
an emergency medicine specialist.
These studies also aim to measure the
effects of alcohol on bodily reactions
to injury, but are performed on
laboratory pigs that are anesthetized,
then hit with machines which deliver
mechanically controlled blows. Half
of the specimens are used as controls,
the other half given alcohol.
The results of the tests confirmed
that alcohol exaggerates injury. Zink's
findings, noted in the report, state that
alcohol intake prolongs the period of
apnea, or cessation of breathing, which
commonly occurs after a brain injury.
In addition, intoxication will
accelerate the shock process, disrupt
cardiac regulation, and aggravate
spinal swelling, should any occur.
Should the final study results show
that even low levels of alcohol
consumption significantly "enhance
injury" and raise hospital costs, the
research team expects Michigan
would be more apt to lower the legal
blood alcohol limit from its present
level of 0.1 percent.
SARAH WHITING/Daily
First-year student Abigail Goodman and her dog, Lucky, enjoy the warmth of the sun on the Diag yesterday.
New Yorkers mourn death of Hasidic youth
Local lobbying organization
voices concerns of homeless
By REBECCA GORDON
FOR THE DAILY
Seated in a small room every
Thursday afternoon, Paul Lambert
works to alleviate Ann Arbor's
homelessness problem.
Lambert is an active member of the
Homeless Action Committee (HAC)
- an organization that advocates aid
for the homeless. Its tactics include
lobbying to influence government
policies to provide additional services
for the 1,500 homeless in Ann Arbor.
One of the committee's main
projects was to put pressure on the city
to reopen the Ann Arbor Inn. Once a
202-room hotel, the Ann Arbor Innwas
vacated four years ago after its owners
declared bankruptcy. The Ann Arbor
City Council endorsed a plan Nov. 15
only recently finalized to convert the
inn to housing units for low-income
senior citizens.
HAC members said they do not
believe the housing plan was a victory.
"Many homeless people will still not be
able to afford the rents that the Inn
charges," Lambert said.
HAC also picketed Great Lakes
Bancorp, trying to get the bank to lower
its mortgage rates.
HAC member Jeri Schneider said
that while "direct services are important
to deal with short term effects of
homelessness, in order to deal with long
term effects one has to look at the root
of the problem, such as uneven
distribution of wealth." This is the
reason why the committee has chosen
not to be a service-providing
organization, she said.
There are other organizations in
Ann Arbor that concentrate upon
providing direct service to the
homeless in the city. The Ann Arbor
Shelter on Huron Street offers a warm
place for the homeless to rest safely.
The hours of the shelter have been
extended on weekends during the
winter months. Also, the Interfaith
Hospital Network is an organization
that provides a different church each
week in which homeless families are
able to sleep.
NEWSDAY
NEW YORK - The wide boule-
vard of Eastern Parkway was thick with
mourners yesterday, its great breadth
swelled with grieving Jews who walked
behind and beside the shroud-draped
casket of Aaron Halberstam.
Thousands of people jostledto touch
the coffin of the Hasidic 16-year-old
who died Saturday night from wounds
he suffered in a shooting last week on
the Brooklyn Bridge. Aaron's parents,
crying and bent with grief, released a
statement saying that the suspected killer
should be charged as a terrorist and put
to death for killing their boy.
"There must be consequences for
this untimely and brutal murder so that
a clear message is sent that wanton
violence and anarchy will not be toler-
ated on American soil," the statement
read.
New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attended the
ceremony, but did not make any com-
ments as part of the service.
In a separate statement, a spokes-
person for the Lubavitch movement
described the young man as "a martyr
who died because he was a Jew."
Aaron's place in the Hasidic com-
munity is a special one, because he was
taught as a young boy by Rabbi
Menachem Schneerson, the leader of
the Lubavitch sect believed by the de-
vout to be the Messiah.
Police are holding Rashid Baz, a 28-
year-old Lebanese-born taxi driver, in
the shooting of Aaron and three other
boys who were traveling in a van full of
15 young Hasidic Jews. Two other men
with allegedly lesser roles in the attack
are also being held.
No motives were officially ascribed
in the attack, although some have specu-
lated the shooting was a retaliation for
the mass shooting by an American-
born Jewish physician at an Arab
mosque in Hebron in the Israeli-occu-
pied West Bank.
As of last night, police had not
amended charges of attempted murder
against Baz to include murder. Law-
enforcement officials said that a grand
jury will determine what, if any, further
charges will be filed against Baz.
Aaron's coffin was unloaded from a
hearse yesterday afternoon in front of
the six-story brick apartment building
off Brooklyn Avenue where the
Halberstams live as his father, Chespd,
his mother, Devorah, and four siblings
looked on.
Several Hasidic men in dark coats
and hats hoisted the coffin onto their
shoulders and began walking along the
parkway one block east to Kingston
Avenue, site ofthe Lubavitch sect head-
quarters.
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