Page 6- The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday. October 29 . 1998
Five-year coma
patient gives birth
By Pamela Ferdinand
Special to The Washington Post
BOSTON. Oct. 24 - A 24-year-old
woman who has been in a coma for
the last live years gave birth to a pre
mature baby girl Friday, several
months alter she was apparently raped
while in the care of a Massachusetts
nursing home.
Police and state health officials
have begun an investigation into the
alleged sexual assault, which an in
formed official said is believed to
have occurred about five months ago
at a long-term care facility in
Lawrence. Mass.. 30 miles north of
Boston. The unidentified woman was
taken to Lawrence General Hospital
after she went into labor and her le
gal guardians were notified.
Her child was flown to New En
gland Medical Center in Boston later
Friday and remained in critical con
dition in the neonatal intensive care
unit Saturday, according to a hospital
spokeswoman.
This is the first recorded case in the
state and the second in the country
- of a woman in a chronic vegetative
state becoming pregnant and giving
birth, said Mark Leccesc. a spokes
man for the Massachusetts Depart
ment of Public Health. In 1996, a 29-
year-old woman from Rochester,
N.Y., who had been in a coma for 10
years gave birth to a baby boy.
"We've never experienced a case
like this," Leccese said. “People in
nursing homes are the most vulner
Norwegian
support by
By T. R. Reid
The Washington Post
OSLO -- There is no special pros
ecutor hounding Kjell Magne
Bondevik, no grand jury, no impeach
ment proceeding underway. The
prime minister's approval ratings are
near historic highs. The burning po
litical problem he is dealing with this
fall is one that most leaders would
love to face: how much of the budget
surplus to spend now, and how much
to save for the future.
You might think all this good news
would make for a happy head of state.
In fact, Norway's prime minister has
found his job depressing - so much
so that he took two unprecedented
steps.
First, the 51-year-old political vet
eran took 3 1/2 weeks of sick leave.
Then he admitted his sickness was
psychological: a “depressive reac
tion" to the constant stress of running
a country.
“When I was put on sick leave,”
Bondevik announced bluntly in a
statement, “the reason was simply that
my strength was gone. ... I did not
have the energy I needed to meet the
challenges.''
“I fell I had unlimited capacity," he
continued. “Naturally, I did not.”
After a healing interlude of sleep
ing late, walking in the country and
meditating, Bondevik came back to
work late last month for parliament’s
debate about the budget surplus. And
he discovered he was a hero.
“I wondered at first whether he
should talk publicly about depres-
Free Classifieds
BEHRCOLL4 @ AOL.COM
able citizens in the state, anti it's very
important to us to sec that they arc
protected."
A doctor detected the woman's con
dition Monday alter attendants at the
Town Manor Nursing and Rehabili
tation Center noticed she appeared to
be uncomfortable and suspected she
might be pregnant. The woman has
been comatose and quadriplegic for
five years because of a drug overdose,
according to one source familiar with
the case.
"This is a highly unusual case, no
matter what facility you're dealing
with," said Karen Gilliland, spokes
woman for the Sun Healthcare Group
in Albuquerque, which has operated
the Town Manor nursing home since
1994. "Wejust want to make sure ev
erything is handled appropriately. The
most important tiling for us right now
is protecting the woman's privacy and
her family's privacy."
Gilliland declined to provide fur
ther details and there was no infor-
mation about a suspect.
Essex District Attorney Kevin M.
Burke said he is appalled by the situ
ation, which has prompted investiga
tions by local police, prosecutors and
health department regulators into pos
sible patient abuse and criminal rape.
"In my 20 years as district attorney,
I have never seen anything like this,"
said Burke in a statement. "We are
outraged and will continue to vigor
ously prosecute this case.”
In the New York case, a former
nurse's aide in a health care center
prime minister wins
publicizing
sion,” said Cultural Affairs Minister
Anne Enger Lahnstein, leader of
Norway's Center Party, one of three
parties in Bondevik s coalition gov
ernment. “But he's gotten very good
feedback for declaring his problem.
People consider him both courageous
and honest."
The latest opinion surveys show 85
percent of Norwegians think their
prime minister did the right thing
when he told the public what was
troubling him.
A lot of Norwegians, in fact, seem
downright proud of what their leader
did.
Watching that reaction, Bondevik's
political opponents -- and there are
many, because the Christian People's
Party leader heads a minority govern
ment with just 42 out of 165 seats in
parliament -- have been conspicu
ously quiet.
The closest thing to outright criti
cism has come from Norway’s most
outspoken politician, Carl Hagen,
leader of the Progress Party.
“Obviously, we can't have a prime
minister who is not strong enough to
be prime minister," Hagen said.
“Bondevik is popular, and he can ad
mit to this -- but only once."
Hagen also raises a question that
probably would occur to most foreign
leaders observing Oslo's political
scene. “What does our prime minis
ter have to be depressed about any
way?” he snorted. "We have a big
state surplus, no debt, full employ
ment, inflation of 2 or 3 percent. What
Norway has, most countries wish they
had."
World and Nation
near Rochester raped and impreg
nated a patient who had been in a
coma for a decade. He was convicted
on the basis of DNA tests and impris
oned.
That woman, known only as Kathy,
delivered a baby boy who was nine
weeks premature and died a few
weeks before his first birthday. At the
time, doctors said it was unlikely she
had any awareness of the rape, preg
nancy or birth.
Town Manor is part of a chain of
390 long-term nursing care facilities
in 30 states operated by Sun
Healthcare Group, which has a num
ber of New England nursing homes
that are operated by its Sunßise
Healthcare subsidiary.
A resident in one of the nursing
homes south of Boston was arrested
last year for manslaughter after fatally
striking a fellow resident in the head.
In New Hampshire, a nurse’s aide was
charged in June with severely abus
ing patients. Last month, 140 employ
ees at two Massachusetts homes went
on strike, demanding higher wages.
The state Department of Public
Health has not registered any serious
problems at the Lawrence facility,
which employs 120 people and has 96
residents. Earlier this year, the nurs
ing home received the highest rating
possible in the department’s annual
survey, which evaluates everything
from nurses’ services to patient safety
during unannounced inspections,
Leccese said.
depression
It is, in fact, a common observation
here, where the ice-blue fiords stretch
past forested hills beneath a powder
blue sky, that Norway has unusual
blessings. “The standard line here is
that God must be a Norwegian,”
laughed Per Egil Hegge, a political
expert at the national newspaper
Aftenposten. “He gave us oil, he gave
us fish, he gave us timber, and he gave
us a beautiful land to enjoy it in.”
But Bondevik, a Lutheran minister
who has been in politics for 25 years,
is saying that running a country, even
Norway, might be too demanding for
ordinary people.
As part of a new regimen designed
to ration his time, the prime minister
is no longer granting interviews. But
in a statement about his illness, he
cited the “numerous tasks” he faced
and the inability to find any private
space in his life.
By admitting his depression,
Bondevik said, he wanted “to
demystify something which is fairly
common, but which many people
have problems talking about openly.”
He also hoped to start a debate “on
the boundaries between what is pub
lic and what is private.”
British psychiatrist Anthony Storr
has observed that depression is fairly
common among national leaders.
Former British prime minister Win
ston Churchill wrote movingly about
his bouts with the “black dog.” Rus
sian President Boris Yeltsin has writ
ten of times when “everything within
me was burned out.”
Gunmen fire on funeral of
11 -year-old killed in Kosovo
By R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Sharp
shooters believed to be part of a gov
ernment security force fired on
gravediggers and several hundred
mourners and journalists at a funeral
Sunday in central Kosovo for an eth
nic Albanian boy who was believed
slain by Serbs on Saturday, said wit
nesses and Western diplomatic ob
servers.
Four U.S. diplomatic observers
were among those present Sunday in
the village of Krajkova, 18 miles west
of Pristina, where the 11-year-old
boy’s family lives. But they declined
a request from his relatives to use the
observers’ armored car as a shield
during the funeral. The observers,
who were unarmed, said they could
not ensure the family’s safety and
drove off after urging the family to
bury him elsewhere.
The incident, which came two days
before a NATO-imposed deadline for
the Yugoslav government to withdraw
its security forces from Kosovo prov
ince, underscore the difficulties Wash
ington and its allies face as they try
to get Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic to comply with an Oct. 12
agreement or face possible airstrikes.
And it demonstrates the difficulties
the observers may face as they moni
tor troop withdrawals.
One Western official here called
Sunday’s incident “appalling” but said
that if U.S. observers or a team of
Finnish forensic experts who visited
the site earlier had helped protect the
family, their action would have risked
leaving an impression that the observ
ers were “on one side” of the bitter
ethnic conflict that has engulfed
Kosovo since March.
Intensive talks between NATO Su
preme Allied Commander in Europe
Wesley Clark and Yugoslav military
Gene linked to right-handedness
By Jamie Talan
Newsday
Scientists scouting for genes to ex
plain whether a person feels more
comfortable using his left hand or
right have always come up empty
handed. Now, a geneticist says he may
have an answer.
Amar Klar of the National Cancer
Institute says researchers have prima
rily sought genes linked to the 15 per
cent of the population born left
handed, since by percentage alone this
would be considered an anomaly. But
“this has been a big mistake,” he says.
At a recent symposium, Klar re
ported that a mathematical study of
about 50 families over three genera
tions modeled on a computer sug
gests that there’s a gene link to being
right-handed, but none to being left
handed.
That gene, dubbed RGHT by Klar
and his colleagues at NCl’s Frederick
Cancer Research and Development
Center in Maryland, expresses itself
when it is located on both chromo-
Students with
By Linda Perlstein
The Washington Post
Low-income students who used
vouchers to attend New York private
schools showed slightly greater im
provements in math and reading tests
than their peers who remained in pub
lic elementary schools, according to a
report released Tuesday.
The study, conducted by Harvard
University and Mathematica Policy
Research, boosted the case of voucher
supporters, who believe poor children
should have the same opportunity to
benefit from a private school education
that wealthier children do.
Researchers evaluated the academic
performance of about 700 children at
tending private schools with the finan
cial assistance of a scholarship foun
dation, and compared their test scores
with those of students who had applied
but were not selected in the program’s
lottery. The students were given the
a same standardized math and reading
t, tests at the beginning and end of the
officials about the troop withdrawal
ended in Belgrade Sunday morning,
and Clark returned to Brussels to brief
diplomatic officials.
“They said a lot of things, but we're
waiting to see what they’ll do,” a se
nior U.S. official said.
Other Western officials said no ad
ditional forces were pulled out of
Kosovo Sunday. Instead, some forces
were shifted to new locations, includ
ing elements of three armored units
in the southern Drenica region,
roughly surrounding an area where
members of an ethnic Albanian guer
rilla movement known as the Kosovo
Liberation Army have been active in
recent weeks.
The Central Drenica region, where
the shootings took place, has also been
tense, despite a cease-fire pledge sev
eral weeks ago from government se
curity forces and the Kosovo Libera
tion Army. The group is fighting for
Kosovo’s independence from Serbia,
the dominant republic in Yugoslavia,
on behalf of ethnic Albanians who
make up more than 90 percent of
Kosovo’s population but have no po
litical or police powers.
During a late-summer offensive,
government forces smashed dozens of
villages in the region that had sup
ported the rebels, and since then they
have erected bunkers along most of
the major roads and taken up positions
in strategically located, abandoned
houses.
Witnesses said that they did not see
the shooters Sunday but that the shots
appeared to come from an enclave of
Serbian security forces that had
moved into homes at the edge of town
three weeks ago. Relatives of the slain
boy, Shemsi Elshani, told those at the
scene that Saturday's gunshots ap
peared to come from the same direc
tion.
Government spokesmen in the pro
vincial capital of Pristina said they
somes handed down from parents.
When it is missing from both chro
mosomes, referred to as a double re
cessive by geneticists, the choice is
random: about half will be right
handed and half will be southpaws.
“It’s like a genetic fork in the road,”
Klar said. “A toss of the coin.”
Klar presented his evidence at a
neurobiology symposium Monday
sponsored by the Whitehead Institute
in Cambridge, Mass. He found fami
lies where the parents, both right
handed, had children who were left
handed. When these children married
right-handed spouses, he said, 23 per
cent of the children are born left
handed. If handedness is due to non
genetic factors, then only 8 percent
of these children would have been
left-handed, Klar said.
These children of right-handed par
ents are producing as many lefties as
a mixed-handed couple would, he
added.
Now, with this model in place, Klar
hopes to recruit families in an effort
to pinpoint the right-handed gene.
vouchers show slight gains
1997-98 school year. On average, the
voucher students boosted their scores
about two percentage points more than
the students in the control group, most
of whom attended public schools.
The difference was greatest in math
for private school fourth graders, who
raised their scores nearly seven per
centage points more than the control
group, and in reading for fifth graders,
who improved their scores by six per
centage points.
“If you can get these same effects
over the next five years, you can elimi
nate the differences between blacks and
whites,” said Paul Peterson, the
Harvard professor who led the study.
Almost all of the students in the
voucher program were either black or
Latino.
Bella Rosenberg, assistant to the
president of the American Federation
of Teachers, (AFT) dismissed the study
as the product of “an avowed voucher
advocate.” She said the reported effects
were small, and could be explained by
the smaller class sizes found in the pri-
had no comment on either shooting
incident, but according to ethnic Al
banian sources and a journalist who
arrived at the scene Saturday, it oc
curred while Shemsi, his father
Rashit, 37, and cousin, Zymer. 17,
were chopping wood on a hillside
overlooking Krajkova at midday.
The sources said the weather was
clear enough for a sharpshooter to
know he was firing at the blond-haired
boy, who was found dead with bullet
wounds in his head, chest and neck.
To retrieve the boy’s body, a relative
enlisted the assistance of journalists
in an armored car rented by a Span
ish television network.
Zymer was also shot but was not
seriously wounded.
Witnesses said seven villagers were
digging the boy’s grave in light fog
Sunday morning when the shots rang
out. The family pleaded unsuccess
fully with the U.S. diplomatic observ
ers. who had come to see the body and
attend the funeral, to use their car as
a shield.
A spokesman for the observers de
clined to allow team leader Norman
Olsen to answer questions about the
incident Sunday evening. But U.S.
officials and witnesses said Olsen told
the family that government troops had
shot at U.S. observers in the past and
that he did not want mourners to con
clude his presence meant they would
not be attacked.
After consulting by radio with su
periors in suburban Pristina, Olsen
said that as an observer, he had no
authority to protect them, the officials
and witnesses said.
Shemsi’s father spurned sugges
tions that the boy be buried elsewhere
because the family had buried the
boy's uncle at the same site after he
was killed by troops a month ago. The
father said he wanted his son to be
with the uncle.
After he collects enough families
he is looking for right-handed couples
who produced at least two left-handed
children -- it will take six months to a
year to test their DNA for a gene for
right-handedness.
Klar said he suspects that the left
ies born into these families have a
mutation of the RGHT gene. If there
is no genetic information at the fork
in the road, the person makes the
choice what direction to go.
The federal researchers will scan
the entire genome since at present
there are no candidate chromosomes
on which to start the hunt. Ultimately,
he hopes the finding will help the field
understand why the two hemispheres
of the brain have such specialized
functions. For instance, 97 percent of
people who are right-handed have a
dominant left-hemisphere devoted to
language compared to 70 percent of
lefties.
Lefties with right-handed parents
can e-mail the federal researcher at:
klar@ncifcrf.gov.
vate schools these children attended
Voucher opponents such as the AFT
claim such programs drain funds that
could be helping to improve public
schools
Peterson said that there is no evi
dence the New York program is hav
ing a significant impact on younger
childrefi. Third-graders in the program
actually did not improve as much pub
lic school students did.
In the upper grades, private school
parents reported less tardiness, cheat
ing and destruction of property. “It may
be that the private schools are better
able to sustain an educationally produc
tive climate for older children,”
Peterson said.
Two U.S. cities Milwaukee and
Cleveland provide vouchers for stu
dents to attend private schools using
taxpayer money. Although several
studies have been conducted, there is
no consensus on whether vouchers
improve students’ skills.