Friday, September 29, 2006 - The Michigan Daily - 7 63 Kazakh children . infected with HIV Medical negligence from corruption, illicit sale of blood blamed SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan (AP) - This industrial city is reeling after learning that at least 63 children have been infected with HIV through medical negli- gence many blame on corruption and the illicit sale of blood. At least five infected toddlers have died after receiving injec- tions or blood transfusions in hospitals in Shymkent, a city in Kazakhstan's most densely popu- lation region 1,000 miles south of the capital. Valentina Skryabina, leader of the nongovernment group Nade- zhnaya Opora, which works to pre- vent AIDS among drug addicts, is convinced the illegal sale of blood is the source of the HIV in Shym- kent's hospitals. "Blood is an article of trade.... Hospitals are offered blood, and not always through the (official) blood center. People trade in blood like they do in human organs." Skryabina said addicts and the homeless have been accepted by the regional blood center because they agreed to be paid less than the official rate of $47 for about a half-pint of blood. "Was their blood properly checked? We are not sure;" she said. Officials say they cannot com- ment on Skryabina's allegations until their investigation is over. Authorities do say, however, that five blood donors who are suspected to be HIV-carriers weren't found at their registered addresses. Parents in this city of 400,000 are trying to conduct their own investigation. They say regional health officials were aware of the outbreak in March, and have been trying to cover it up by pulling pages from the infected toddlers' treatment records to eliminate any mention of blood transfusions. The parents allege that up to 40 HIV-infected children aged 3 and under have died, but the true cause of the deaths was being concealed or attributed to diseases such as cirrhosis. Authorities declined to comment on these allegations, too, pending ,the investigation. Some 13,000 children who were possibly infected have yet to be tested. Adults, too, could be infected: so far, three mothers of infected toddlers have tested posi- tive for HIV. Lawmaker Satybaldy Ibragimov says nothing will improve until Kazakhstan roots out corruption, which penetrates even universities where future doctors are graded according to the amount of money they give professors _ and later treat people based on their ability to pay. President Nursultan Naz- arbayev's government has taken tough action. The health minister and the regional governor were fired this month, and several top regional health officials, the head of the regional blood center and several senior doctors are under criminal investigation. New governor Omyrzak Shukeyev, former mayor of the capital Astana, called the situation in Shymkent's health care system "a catastrophe." He ordered an appraisal of medical staff in the region to root out incompetent or corrupt staff. Shukeyev, under orders from Nazarbayev to urgently resolve the crisis, pleaded with experts at an AIDS crisis meeting this week: "I'm waiting like nothing else for a moment when you say that the virus has been contained." "We cannot give you a time frame. This is going to be alinger- ing epicenter of disease," replied Vyacheslav Dudnik, the region's new health chief. Shukeyev said the government would restructure and modernize the region's medical institutions. Each infected toddler's family will be given about $800 - twice the average monthly salary - in com- pensation and all treatment will be paid for by the government. The most immediate problem is the lack of local expertise on how to treat young children with the AIDS virus. Four AIDS specialists from UNICEF and several experts from Russia have been asked to help. But for now, said Sagdat Masau- rov, whose 18-month-old grand- son is infected, "nobody can tell us where to go, what to do and how." Officially, by the end of 2004 Kazakhstan had about 4,700 HIV/ AIDS cases, but the real number is believed tobe higher. In the first six months of this year, the coun- try recorded 828 new HIV car- riers and 70 AIDS patients, a 70 percent increase over 2005. Parents carrying toddlers come in a steady flow to the rundown two-story AIDS center in Shym- kent for HIV tests. COURTESY OF REBECCA SCOTT History Prof. Rebecca Scott won a $25,000 award for her book on slavery, "Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after slavery." S A Rviduals' lives. She studied Rosalie book apart. next February. from France. "I think that my book was in part The prize, sponsored by the Continued from page 1 Although she could not say why fueled by the stimulating experi- Gilder Lehrman Institute, is the To research the book, Scott spent time in neighborhoods near sugar plantations in Cuba and Louisiana. She talked with several families about the effects of slav- ery on their lives and the lives of their ancestors. Since her book was published, Scott has continued to research slavery's impact on indi- her book was chosen over the other two finalists, "Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in Ameri- can Life" by Steven Deyle and "The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820-1860" by Richard Follett, Scott speculated that the time she spent with these families and the relationships she developed set her ence of collecting oral histories," she said. "If I could tell someone else's story, that made me feel suc- cessful." Named for Frederick Douglass, a man who escaped slavery to become one of the 19th Century's great abolitionists, writers and ora- tors, the award will be presented to Scott at a dinner in New York City largest one awarded in the field. Larry Hudson, who chairs the committee that selected the win- ners, said the ample prize should be considered in terms of "the esteem in which Frederick Doug- lass's life and work is held by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and by the academy and the country as a whole." Mexico opposed to U.S. border fence DONATION' Continued from page 1. riculum development in the his- tory department, expanding the distinguished speaker series and recruiting distinguished profes- sors for fellowships. One of the institute's priorities this year is extending its outreach beyond campus to elementary, mid- dle and high schools in the area. "We want to make our faculty available to pre-college teachers" Canning said. "We'd like to have professors running summer pro- grams and workshops, which would provide for these teachers access to cutting-edge information." In the coming months,the insti- tute will feature presentations by various history scholars as part of its program "The Thursday Series." Discussions in the series will cover a variety of topics, including urban history, cultural hegemony in Europe and global Christianity. The lectures will explore the institute's theme this year, "History and the Visual." Although the Eisenbergs' dona- tion is the largest ever received by the history department, it's only a quarter of the amount of LSA's largest donation. The larg- est was a $20 million donation to LSA for the creation of the Fran- kel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. The University's history department is frequently ranked as one of the top five programs in the country. Canning said she believes the department, aided by the Eisen- bergs' donation, will eventually take the number-one spot. "We definitely think we can reach it," she said. "In fact, I think the dean would like to see us reach it." MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico warned yesterday that the U.S. pro- posal to build miles of border fence will damage relations between the two countries. The Foreign Relations Depart- ment said it was "deeply worried" about the proposal, which is work- ing its way through the Senate, adding it will "increase tension in border communities." "These measures will harm the bilateral relationship. They are against the spirit of co-operation that is needed to guarantee secu- rity on the common border," the department said in a statement. The House of Representatives and Senate are maneuvering to speed construction of a 700-mile fence along the United States' southern border aimed at keeping migrants and criminals from enter- ing the country illegally. A House-Senate homeland secu- rity funding bill containing $1.2 billion to begin building the fence could be passed and sent to Presi- dent Bush before lawmakers depart Washington this weekend. Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said that only a com- prehensive immigration reform would stop millions of Mexicans sneaking across its northern des- ert and swimming over the Rio Grande into the United States. "A partial measure that is exclu- sively focused on security does not deal with reality and represents a political answer rather than a viable solution;'it said in the statement. President Vicente Fox has rallied against the wall, calling it "shame- ful" and comparing it to the Berlin Wall, which divided Germany. CODE Continued from page 1. opposed the amendment said legal representation for students could make the academic hear- ing resemble a criminal or civil procedure. This year, Holzrichter said MSA's Code of donduct Adviso- ry Board plans to put the right- to-counsel amendment back on the table, but with a few changes he hopes will make the proposal more palatable to administra- tors. "We're going to try and find a compromise over what types of cases and in what circumstances a lawyer can be involved," he said. "We may not get every- thing, but we'll at least make some progress." Currently, a student is allowed to have a personal adviser - who may be an attorney - present at hearings. However, the personal adviser cannot speak for the stu- dent or question witnesses. The advisory board also plans to tackle the code's alcohol pol- icy. Infractions such as illegally possessing, distributing, manu- facturing or selling alcohol are subject to the same consequenc- es as other violations listed in the statement. The advisory board plans to propose that first-time offend- ers for alcohol-related violations be referred to counseling or to University Health Services rath- er than undergoing disciplinary action. "It's important to address alcohol issues on this campus, but we have to be educational and fair to their records," Hol- zrichter said. "Any time you're found to have violated the state- ment, it goes on your record. Your record can be disclosed to grad schools and future employ- ers." Some students have reser- vations about both the current statement and the proposed changes. LSA senior Kaitlin Towner said she didn't believe counsel- ing is necessary for students who are caught drinking. "I don't think that most people drinking on campus are alcohol- ics," Towner said, pointing at a copy of the statement. "Drink- ing is just a part of college life. Nobody really thinks about this before they're going to drink." Others believe loosening the alcohol policy could be benefi- cial to students. "I think you should definitely not get punished your first time for alcohol," Kinesiology fresh- man Jerald Wolff said. Other issues being considered by the advisory board include whether gender expression should be protected, the Uni- versity's stance on fake IDs and allowing students to wait a day before they accept responsibility for an accusation leveled against them. Because MSA is in the early stages of the amendment pro- cess, University administrators declined to comment on the pro- posed ideas. The Office of Student Con- flict Resolution, which enforces the statement, is playing a sup- portive and consultative role in the process. Holzrichter said the advisory board welcomes students' input and encouraged students to become involved in drafting the amendments. "This reflects our community values, these are the rules that govern our day-to-day lives," STUDY Continued from page 1 to diversity weakens feelings of threats from other races. Even people who live in diverse neighborhoods and say they have friends from other races often reported feelings of competition, Hutchings said. "If the aim is to reduce percep- tions of intergroup threats by fos- tering intergroup contacts, our data suggests that's not going to hap- pen;' he said. Less than 20 percent of whites said they believed more political influence for other racial and ethnic groups threatened their own politi- cal influence, while more than half of all Hispanics, Asians and blacks said more influence for whites threatened their own influence. To a lesser degree, minor- ity groups also view each other as political competition. Such feelings of competition can lead to a lack of cooperation among groups on important politi- cal issues, Hutchings said. "People are more likely to see folks in these groups as competi- tion rather than partners," he said. "And it undercuts the incentive to work together." The study, conducted by the Institute for Social Research, marks the first time such a large amount of multi-racial and multi- ethnic national political data has been collected, Hutchings said. "The literature in politi- cal science about why people behave politically has been generated almost exclusively by looking at white Americans," Hutchings said. "We're curi- ous as to what theories used to explain political behavior in whites also apply to Asian- Americans or Latinos." Some types of political behav- iors differ across races, the study found. For example, the study shows that whites who identify them- selves as more religious tend to be Republicans, while blacks who identify as more religious tend to be Democrats. Other races show little corre- spondence between faith and polit- ical preference. FBI Continued from page 1 making wise decisions - a tra- dition started by former head coach Bo Schembechler. "Life is tough, it's tougher when you're stupid," Stejskal says, quoting John Wayne. "I tell them that. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't." The Ann Arbor FBI office frequently works with campus police investigating high-pro- file criminal cases and doing background checks on students applying to work for the federal government. Stejskal has a long history of working on cases involving the University. He worked on the Ted Kaczyn- ski investigation in the late 1990s. Kaczynski, a University alum, is better known as the Unabomber. Stejskal still keeps a copy of part of Kaczynski's diary at home. In 1998, Stejskal tracked down a thief who stole a meteor- ite from the University's Muse- um of Natural History. In 1967, he helped investigate the theft of Picasso and Henry Moore paintings from the University's Museum of Art. When former University stu- dent Jake Baker posted dark fantasies on the Internet about raping, torturing and killing college-age women, including one of his classmates, Stejskal headed the investigation. Baker, who was acquitted based on his right to free speech, was the first person in the world to be prosecuted for making threats on the Internet. The Ann Arbor FBI office, a branch of the main Michigan office located in Detroit, covers five counties and over a million people. Stejskal has worked on crime investigations throughout the state and collaborated on cases all over the continent. "The thing I enjoy the most is making cases from nothing and putting bad guys in jail," Stejs- kal said. During Stejskal's first year at the FBI, he tackled one homi- cide investigation and four high- profile kidnappings, including the mysterious disappearance of legendary mafia boss Jimmy Hoffa. The walls of his office are cov- ered with news clippings, maga- zine articles and photographs that chronicle his achievements during his time at the FBI. Stejskal was involved in the largest steroid investigation in U.S. history. A decade before baseball star Jose Canseco admitted to using steroids in 2005, Stejskal uncovered evi- dence of Canseco's drug use. Major League Baseball offi- cials did nothing, even though the results of Stejskal's inves- tigation were published in the New York Daily News. The three-year undercover operation began in 1990. Stejs- kal tracked down dealers all over the country and into Canada and Mexico. Labels torn from the bottles of seized counterfeit ste- roids hang on Stejskal's walls. Stejskal also volunteered with the FBI's Special Weap- ons Assault Team for 20 years. Stejskal has a framed Newsweek article hanging on his wall with a headline that reads "Clever- ness - and luck." The clipping features a photo of Stejskal's unit storming the house of Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber, two days after they blew up most of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., killing 168 people. Senior Resident Agent Michael Brennan will take over Stejskal's position at the end of next month, but the man in the corner office has yet to make any post-retirement plans. For now, Stejskal has more pressing issues at hand. Looking around the office, he said: "I don't know where I'm gonna put all this stuff."