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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 28, 2004)
| Global update Serving our patrons for 20 years Fine Italian & Northwest Cuisine Live Jazz Nightly (no cover, Monday - Thursday) Kitchen open 'til bar closes K. Lunch Tues-Thurs jofeds.com 259 E. 5th Ave. • 343-8488 Dinner 7 Nights A public lecture - mCIXIUKI Part of a nationwide series on governmental politicization of science Douglas Osheroff Professor of Physics, Stanford University 1996 Nobel Laureate in Physics Tuesday, September 28 4:00 pm 100 Willamette Hall University of Oregon ★ AMERICA VOTES 2004 ★ Doctors donate record fund 3 for ballot measure A medical malpractice award cap measure is one of several to garner millions from activists BY BRAD CAIN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SALEM — A ballot measure to re store Oregon’s $500,000 cap on med ical malpractice awards has sparked a record $7 million campaign, with doctors far outpacing trial lawyers in donations to the fight. Meanwhile, campaign finance re ports show the battle over a meas ure that would abolish SAIF Corp., the state-owned workers’ compen sation insurer, has reached almost $4 million. And national gay rights groups have given big donations to defeat a gay marriage ban, one of the six ini tiative measures on the Nov. 2 ballot. The big spending on the malprac tice measure should come as no sur prise to Oregonians who have been hit with several weeks of TV ads from both sides of the measure intending to place a $500,000 limit on “pain and suffering” awards. The Yes on 35 campaign has raised $5.1 million to date, about 90 percent of it from hospitals, medical groups and 3,000 doctors who say limits are needed to curb rising malpractice in surance rates. The group that is leading the op position to Measure 35 reported raising nearly $2 million. Campaign spokesman Charlie Burr said about 75 percent of it comes from trial lawyers and law firms who say such limits violate people’s rights to have juries decide damages in medical malpractice cases. Meanwhile, in the battle over Measure 36 — the proposed ban on gay marriage — opponents have re ported raising nearly $1.1 million — about half of it from national gay rights groups. The reports showed that the Na tional Gay and Lesbian Task Force in New York has chipped in $500,000 to the effort to defeat the measure while another $139,000 comes from the Human Rights Cam paign in New York. The group that’s sponsoring the measure reported raising and spend ing about $660,000, in hopes of per suading voters to make Oregon the latest state to ban same-sex marriage. The largest single donation was $15,000 from Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Portland, campaign spokesman Tim Nashif said, adding that the campaign also received a $200,000 loan. Opponents of Measure 37, which would require governments to either pay compensation to landowners when government rules reduce prop erty values or waive the rules, have raised more money than backers. The No on 37 committee reported income of more than $1.1 million and spending $473,000 as of mid September. The group 1,000 Friends of Ore gon, an organization that watches over government enforcement of the state land use planning laws, contributed the most against the ini tiative at $111,000. John Gray, a retired Portland businessman and resort developer, and Edmund Hayes of Portland each donated $100,000 to the oppo sition campaign. The main group backing Measure 37 is the Family Farm Preservation political action committee, which is heavily funded by the timber indus try. The organization reported cam paign income of $811,000 including money carried forward from a pre vious report. The biggest contribution was $65,000 from Seneca Jones Timber Co., Eugene, followed by $50,000 each from RSG Forest Products, Kala ma, Wash., and the Swanson Group wood products company of Glendale. Proponents of the initiative to ex pand Oregon’s medical marijuana law reported raising $521,000 — al though most of it came in the form of a $476,925 “in-kind” contribu tion from the Marijuana Policy Pro ject, a Washington, D.C.-based ad vocacy group. In-kind contributions generally are in the form of donated services or office space in lieu of campaign contributions. Hurricane leaves thousands injured, dead in Haiti slums 200,000 are without shelter and many have no water one week after Tropical Storm Jeanne blasts Gonaives BY PAISLEY DODDS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS GONAIVES, Haiti — Doctors are performing amputations without electricity or running water while waste from this city’s shattered sewage system contaminates mud and floodwaters, infecting wounds that threaten to turn gangrenous. More than a week after the pas sage of Tropical Storm Jeanne, the calamity in the northwest city of Go naives has overwhelmed Haitians and foreign rescue workers. Thousands remain hungry. Jean Claude Kompas, a New York doctor who rushed to his native Haiti to vol unteer his services this past week, says he has treated 30 people for gun shot wounds received in fights over scarce food. Another of his patients was a child whose finger was chopped off with a machete — possi bly also over food. Jeanne killed more than 1,500 and left 200,000 homeless in the north west city of Gonaives. With another 1,000 people reported missing, the toll is sure to rise. “It’s sad but true that the missing will slowly be started to be counted among the dead,” Brazilian Army Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira said. On Saturday, Pereira rushed 100 Uruguayan and 50 Argentine troops to Gonaives, where gangsters and or dinary citizens have been looting food aid. They reinforced 600 inter national troops and police in the city. Still, Pereira said he could use more help to ensure security of food convoys and at food distribution points, which he said increased from two to four on Monday for the 250,000 residents. “If we had help from the National Police of Haiti, we could possibly in crease the aid distribution points,” he said. But Haiti’s police force remains de moralized, understaffed and poorly equipped, since rebels chased them from their stations, killing dozens, in a February uprising that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haitian riot police sent to help keep or der last week were stoned by hungry and traumatized residents. Pereira said many storm survivors are suffering from diarrhea, while others, including many children, had infected wounds. Some had gan grene, and Argentine doctors had performed at least three amputations under primitive conditions, he said. Most injuries are gashes from collaps ing roofs or pieces of zinc roof hidden by the mud that still covers the city, where most walk barefoot. “They have minimal conditions,” Pereira said. “You have to understand that there isn’t even a hospital there. It’s very difficult.” Gonaives’ general hospital was half buried in mudslides and floodwaters believed to have killed many patients. A makeshift hospital has been set up in two rooms of the State Univer sity, with six stretchers on the floor of one room serving as a ward, and two tables in the second room an operat ing theater. On Sunday, doctors am putated the gangrenous leg of a man who died the next morning. Kompas, who wore green surgeon scrubs drenched in perspiration, said most cases he treated were open wounds infected by bacteria in the contaminated water, including ones that can lead to gangrene. He expected to see cases of tetanus soon he said, and without X-ray ma chines, not enough antibiotics, not enough anesthesia and bacteria in the water, he expected the situation to grow worse. Many nations and aid groups have sent planeloads of relief supplies to Port-au-Prince. But getting them to Gonaives, and then to the people who need them most, is a challenge. Normally, it would take four hours to drive the concrete road — worn to bedrock in parts — that runs 90 miles northward from the capital to this city. Since the storm, a 4-feet-deep lake has formed just before the en trance to Gonaives; the lake is now littered with mired aid trucks that could not make it through. Successive Haitian governments, greedy and corrupt, never have provid ed fundamental services for Haitians, who always managed to fend for them selves in the informal sector that ac counts for 80 percent of the economy. Even before the storm, most resi dents of Gonaives, as in other Haitian cities, used wells and springs for wa ter. There are always shortages of running water and electricity in Haiti. Associated Press reporter Alan Clendenning contributed to this report from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
