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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.