The Michigan Daily-Thursday, August 14, 1980-Page 5
Egyptian gov't
official opens
Romanian talks
By The Associated Press
Egypt's foreign minister opened a
mission yesterday to Communist
Romania, which has mediated between
Israel and Egypt in the past, but Saudi
Arabia's crown prince said peace with
the Jewish state is an "illusion" and the
time for moderation has ended.
The trip to Bucharest by Boutros
Ghali, minister of state for foreign af-
fairs, came amid growing signs that
Romanian President Nicolae
Ceausescu was renewing his Middle
East efforts, which include a possible
summit meeting here between
President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin and a call for an international
conference as part of a "global political
solution."
IN A STATEMENT to the official
Saudi press agency reacting to the
Israeli decision to make a unified
Jerusalem its permanent capital,
Crown Prince Fahd said, "An urgent
closing of Arab ranks has become
foremost on the list of Arab priorities."
Fahd said moderation has failed to
"benefit" the Arabs in their struggle
against Israel and they could not be
blamed if "we took the matter in our
own hands and rose to defend" their in-
terests.
"Hasn't the call - on Arabs and
Moslems for a long and persistent holy
jihad (holy war) become the only an-
swer to this Zionist religious and racist
arrogance?" he said.
THE CROWN prince indirectly called
on Egypt to admit failure in its peace
effort with Israel and withdraw from
talks on Palestinian autonomy in Arab
lands occupied by Israel in the 1967
Middle East War.
The crown prince indicated his coun-
try was trying to arrange an Arab
summit meeting to achieve a unified
stand on Jerusalem.
The statement was the strongest yet
from Saudi Arabia, generally con-.
sidered a moderate influence in the
Middle East.
In Washington, State Department
spokesman David Passage said: "The
United States doesn't accept, nor has it
ever accepted, unilateral national
legislation dealing with Jerusalem."
This is the planet...
In this satellite photo, released yesterday in Washington by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, an extraordinarily cloud-free picture
of Earth is shown. The photo was taken last week, while Hurricane Allen
roared through the Gulf of Mexico towards Texas.
Study shoWS in nity
can be transferred
BOSTON (AP) - By isolating and in-
jetting an obscure substancefrom the
blood, doctors have shown they can
transfer imunity to disease from one
person to another - a discovery that
may have many uses in preventing
illness.
The material is called "transfer fac-
tor," a part of the white blood cells that
protects people from getting measles,
mumps, and many other diseases more
than once.
ALTHOUGH researchers have been
experimenting with transfer factor for
years, doctors at the University of
Arkansas conducted the first major test,
of the substance as a method of preven-
ting disease.
They found that it prevented chicken
pox among children with leukemia,
youngsters at high risk of severe com-
plications from this common disease.
Dr. Russell Steele, who directed the
research, said transfer factor may
eventually be used to prevent many
other hard-to-control diseases caused
by viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Among
them are tuberculosis, mononucleosis,
hepatitis, and herpes infections.
HIS STUDY, conducted on 61
children, was published in today's issue
of the New England Journal of
Medicine.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr.
Charles Kirkpatrick of the National
Jewish Hospital in Denver called the
results "impressive" and added, "This
report suggests that transfer factor
may provide an alternative method for
immunization against certain infec-
tions for which no effective vaccines
are available."
In their study, the doctors randomly
injected the children, none of whom had
had chicken pox, with either transfer,
factor or an inactive substitute called a
placebo.
OVER THE next two years, 15 of the
children in the placebo group were ac-
cidentally exposed to chicken pox by
relatives or playmates and 13 of them
contracted the disease. However, 16 of
the children who had taken a single shot
of transfer factor also came in contact
with the disease, and only one of them
got sick.
Transfer factor is sometimes
described as the immune system's
memory.
"When you extract transfer factor
from white blood cells, you take out all
the memory to foreign antigens that the
person has ever encountered," Steele
said in an interview. "You have the
memory for measles and mumps and
millions of things."
WHEN THE substance is taken from
one person and given to another, the
recipient acquires all of the donor's
immunities that have built up over a
lifetime of exposure to germs.
Steele said one of the first practical
uses for transfer factor may be in
protecting cancer patients. Since these
people's natural immunity has been
weakened by drugs, such common
ailments as chicken pox and penumonia
can be fatal. But vaccines may also
make them dangerously ill.
Transfer factor was discovered in
1955 by Dr. H. Sherwood Lawrence at
New York University. Doctors are not
sure exactly how transfer factor works.
but Steele said it attachecs itself to
Tolymphocytes, newly formed white
blood cells, in the recipient's body.
The doctor said that one drawback of
using transfer factor may be that
allergies, a defect of the body's immune
responses, may also be passed on when
the suhatance is iniected
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