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Port Angeles Evening News from Port Angeles, Washington • Page 3

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Port Angeles, Washington
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3
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An independent newspaper tdward B. Wtbtttr 1MI.19M Charm N. Wttottr Esther B. Webster, president and publisher Murlln B. Spencer Helene Phlfer Editor and Associate publisher Controller Thursday, August 5, 1971-2 Inflation escalating Labor peace has come to two major U.S.

industries, and for that the nation is grateful. But the cost to both the steel and rail industries goes far beyond the inflationary terms agreed upon. The 42 per cent increase gained the United Transportation Union t'over 42 months follows the pattern of reached with other rail 'unions earlier. The frank admission by one rail executive that he didn't know how the industry was going to absorb higher labor costs at the rate of one per cent a month for the duration of the contract was not No one else does either. As for steel, it took only about 12 hours for the $1.11 per hour wage increase over three years and a handsome package of fringe benefits to show up in higher prices.

The 8 per cent price increase announced by U.S. Steel and soon followed by most of the other producers is an extraordinary rise in the face of the steel import flood. But even that could not be expected to recover the $10 billion the new contract is expected to cost the industry by the end of the third year. Agreements such as these, while buy labor peace, compound the problem large American industries Let's sta well are having in meeting foreign competition. The base hourly steel rate is only one-half in Europe what it is here, and less than one-fourth as much in Japan.

Is it any wonder freighters are unloading record volumes of steel from these sources at American docks, and that American jobs are disappearing as a direct result? American steel lost an estimated 11,000 jobs just this past spring, when the mills were enjoying boom times. How many more have now been eclipsed? Labor agreements such as these two go far beyond the effect in their own industries. They quickly become pace setters for a host of other industries. No one not labor, management or the administration wants a totally managed economy, with price- wage controls and all the rest of the bureaucratic maze that entails. But none is doing much to prevent that final verdict from falling heavily upon all.

So far as these agreements are concerned, the inflation escalator is shifting into high gear, with effects that reach far beyond the two industries. Cigarette ads ban is totally ineffective i By EUGENE SCHEIMANN, M.D. When the big campaign against began some years ago, I was all for it, and all against it. I was in favor of people being made aware of the dangers of cigarettes, and of told ways other people had stopped smoking. At the same time, I didn't want to see cigarettes banned, as liquor was in this Icoiintry many years ago.

First, because I believe that people 'should be allowed to choose their vices. I'm a doctor and I'm all for people 'following good health habits, but I'm not forcing them to be healthy. I'd rather 'have a free country with some unhealthy 'people, than a slave state where 'everybody lives to 90 but doesn't enjoy it. When cigarette ads were banned from TV, I was against it. On the one hand, I think newspapers, books and good honest outdoor recreation are something that enrich us far more than sitting in front of a television set five hours a day.

STILL, I COULD see that if cigarette ads were banned from TV, newspapers might be next, and then a total prohibition could even take place. And, not only did I think this was immoral, I didn't think it would help. Well, the first figures seem to support me. The leading cigarette company has actually spent lesson advertising since the TV-radio ban, and its sales are up! To me, this shows that people will do what they want to do pretty much. Nor do I advise my patients who want to smoke completely against it.

What I do tell them is that if they can just stick to smoking for relaxation, and not as a nervous habit, they'll wind up only taking half a dozen or a dozen cigarettes a day. AND THE STATISTICS on an average, of sayJnine cigarettes a day, whether it's for lung cancer, heart disease or anything else are the same as for a person who doesn't smoke at aU. So, really, cigarettes are not the culprit we've made them out to be. We're the culprits, because we don't smoke properly, just as we don't eat properly, drink properly and make love properly in this country. And what's the reason for this? The basic reason is that for too long we Americans have been badgered and bullied into doing what's "good" for us by people who usually don't know what's good, or by people who can't tell us why it's good for us.

As long as we think that virtue is its own reward, we won't smoke less, or do anything else less, even though cutting down on our cigarettes without cutting out could be a boon to both our emotional and physical health. Dr. Eugene Scheimann and Paul G. Neimark have written a 16-page booklet, "Teens and Smoking," telling the dangers and suggesting ways to stop smoking. For a copy, send 25 cents and a stamped, self- addressed envelope to LET'S STAY WELL, in care of The Evening News.

(A Bell-McClure Syndicate Feature) BELOW OLYMPUS By Interlandi Roscoe Drummond Vietnam War inquiry is needed By ROSCOE DRUMMOND WASHINGTON The way things are now going, it looks as if the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation of the Pentagon Papers and other matters is simply going to produce more confusion, more controversy, more heat and little light. That isn't good enough. A searching, probing inquiry is needed and can be immensely valuable. The opportunity shouldn't be thrown away by allowing the investigation to be turned into an empty, partisan, accusatory wrangle. It isn't too late to turn this thing around and head it toward a credible, fair-minded examination of what went wrong and what went right and why so that Congress and the country can get something worthwhile out of it.

The whole inquiry will have to be reasonably objective to carry any weight. It will have to be thorough and painstaking geared to quick if it is to be profitable. This may seem like quite an order, but the kind of put-them-oti- the-grill investigation which now seems in the making will be a waste of time, and worse. It will perpetuate myths and lengthen the miasmic state of mind about the Vietnamese war while doing nothing to heal it. IT IS NOT TOO LATE, it seems to me, to bring about something better.

Here are some steps which could have merit and might be acceptable to the Senate powers: WHAT SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED? The last thing we need is more investigation of the Pentagon Papers, which. is what the Senate Foreign Relations Committee now to be headed toward. What is truly needed and what can be invaluable is an honest inquiry into the origins of our role in the Vietnamese war and the lessons to be drawn from this whole experience. Who did what and why, and was it wise or unwise under the circumstances then prevailing? What was the basis of the momentous decisions that were taken, how well were the alternatives explored and how thoroughly and how accurately were the costs and consequences weighed in Adele Ferguson State employes moonlighting It was quite a shock to see Rod Belcher's smiling countenance in last Sunday's TV magazine and read where he would give highlights of the qualifying trials of the Seafair Trophy Race this week for Channel 5. Mr.

Belcher, as of Sept. 21 last year, has been drawing $944 a month as a public information officer for the State Highway Department. There was some discussion at the time of his hiring as to whether a public information officer was really needed just to deal with King, Snohomish, Skagit and Whatcom counties, but the personable onetime TV announcer was added to the staff. That makes four of them in there, headed up by William Gasman, who made no apologies for Belcher's moonlighting. Everybody does it, he says, with a kind of "general understanding around the capital campus that it's all right as long as it's on the individual's own time (Belcher is on leave) and it doesn't conflict with the activities of the agency or department.

"He filed the proper personnel forms and I have approved his leave which every employe is entitled to have, one day for each month worked," Gasman said. "I wouldn't allow him to work for the Automobile Club of Washington or write short stories based on highway activities, but hydroplane racing is not a highway activity. In my judgment and the department's, this will not interfere with his regular duties as an information officer for us." He himself does not moonlight, he added, but estimated that 99 per cent of the public information officers employed by the state do. As to why the Highway Department needs four information officers in the first place while some departments have been laying them off, some light is shed on that by a letter sent out July 1 to all legislators by Gasman. At the request of many legislators, he wrote, the department some time ago established a procedure whereby news of highway projects is supplied to lawmakers in the particular area so they can reap good publicity by announcing a call for bids or a completion date.

Trouble 4s, the mail hasn't always reached the legislators in time and the news gets out ahead of them. To correct the situation, Gasman wrote, "It would appear that a telephone can to you, giving you the advance information before it is sent to the news media, will be the only way we can provide this service to you in the future and make it worthwhile "Because this does involve extensive staff time," he said (not to mention telephone bills), he is asking legislators to each send in a couple of telephone numbers where they can be reached. One can only hope that Mr. Belcher hurries back from his moonlighting excursion so he can help get at the more important business of politican building. Population presssure igniting efforts to develop new, safe birth control pills "If we're affected by the full think of the astronauts while they were on it!" EDITOR'S NOTE Worry about the long-term safety on the pill has spurred scientists in their search for a risk-free contraceptive.

On the horizon minipills, morning-after pills and operations to reverse sterilization. The following second of two articles by AP Science Editor Alton Blakeslee on Contraception '72 details these new developments. By ALTONBLAKESLEE Associated Press Science Editor BETHESDA, Md. (AP) Population pressure is igniting an explosion of by imagination and develop new and completely safe and effective methods of birth control. It promises new pills beyond the present pill, and improved devices, and it is prompting a volunteer army of men to undergo sterilization, with future promise of sterilization techniques, for men and women, that could be reversed if people later decided they wanted children.

And totally unexpected discoveries may turn up. "The research people are quite imaginative these days. Many of their proposals look quite interesting, with good ideas for drugs and sterlization techniques," says Dr. Philip A. Corfman, director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development here.

The center spent $28.1 million this fiscal year to support population research. Some spur to expanded research stems from worry about long-term safety of the pill, with authorities disagreeing whether the increased risk associated, for example, with blood clotting warrants turning from the pill. A majority of experts seem to think not, at least until something as effective as pill comes along. The three main avenues of research into new methods of birth control involve drugs, sterilization, and devices. On new drugs: Studies of basic physiology, of what happens in the various intricacies in the mechanisms of human reproduction, will bring insights for new drugs or other techniques for use by men as well as women, some authorities think.

Some such findings will also assist childless couples to at least to be able to conceive. Meanwhile, research is well advanced on a small number of new drug candidates. One is the minipill, containing only a small amount of the female hormone, progesterone, and free of the estrogen which is blamed for causing the clotting tendency in the current pill. The experiment includes putting a year's supply of progesterone in a SUastic capsule, which is implanted under the skin, there to release a tiny amount of hormone daily. Another is the morning-after pill, a large dose of estrogen or progestin which apparently acts to prevent a fertilized egg from becoming implanted.in the wall of the uterus or womb.

It has been called effective even if taken a few days after insemination has occurred. Undesired side effects are a hurdle to its general use. Other researchers report high promise from injections of hormones once every three or six months. Still others have synthesized the brain hormone that sets in motion the cycle of release of hormones, essential in ovulation, the menstrual cycle, and maintenance of a pregnancy. Now they hope to make a false substitute for this releasing factor, as it is called, that would prevent the pituitaiy gland from sending out its hormone instructions.

And there's keen interest in hormone- like substances known as prostaglandins, which have been used to induce early or late abortions, by infusion into a vein, or to induce labor when a woman is near term. Sterilization: Last year, 750,000 men voluntarily underwent sterilization by vasectomy, the severing of tubes through which sperm travel, and about 75 per cent of people volunteering for surgical sterilization now are men, says the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. A simplified operation for women, with instruments inserted through two tiny incisions in the abdomen, severs the fallopian tubes pathways of eggs coming from the ovaries and involves only a few hours time in a hospital. Hopefully, new research will produce techniques that could be reversed with a later change of mind One possibility is to block the male or female tubes with plugs that could be removed. Devices: New kinds of mechanical devices that would prevent the mating of sperm and egg are proposed in some of the contract studies, but details have as yet to be kept confidential since they involve propriety rights.

Intrauterine devices: lUD's have found some increasing popularity, and improvements in design, with one major development the discovery by Dr. Jaime Zipper of the University of Chile that the element copptr exerts an anti-fertility effect. So copper has been added to two types of lUD's one a shape, the other a "7." Dr. Howard J. Tatum of the Population Council, who designed the copper- containing says it appears as effective in contraceptive action as the pill itself.

advance? We ought to quit looking for scapegoats and start looking for facts. WHO SHOULD DO THE INVESTIGATING? It seems eminently appropriate that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should have Jurisdiction. But the committee, including its chairman, Sea William Fulbright has become so hostile to the Johnson administration and the officials who shared in making the principal decisions on Vietnam that it is hard to see how it could conduct a detached investigation without reaching beyond itself for shouldn't the committee invite the American Historical Assn. to name three to five of the most fair-minded and respected historians to serve with the committee in conducting the inquiry? Then the committee could select five or more of its own members to make up its panel. WHO SHOULD CHAIR THE INVESTIGATION? I should think that Sea Fulbright ought to be big enough to want to see this crucial inquiry have as its presiding chairman a person who is sufficiently detached so that the testimony and the conclusions would have maximum acceptance.

The almost ideal senatorial chairman would be Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield True, he is committed to a point of view. But, he is one of the most esteemed, fair-minded, fact- respecting and judicious men in the Senate. I feel sure the whole Senate would support him as chairman. If Mansfield felt he couldn't serve, then perhaps Sen. Fulbright would see merit in inviting the most middle-of-the-road of the historians on the panel to preside with Sens.

Fulbright and George Aiken ranking minority member, as co-chairman. What the inquiry should produce is the raw material of history, not the raw material of politics. Copyright 1971, Los Angeles Times Hal Boyle 'Oh, to be 70 again' NEW YORK (AP) "Oh, to be 70 said octogenarian Justice Oliver Wendell as a pretty girl passed by; The yearning for a second try at life comes to all of us now and then. Or at least we feel it would be better to be any other age than the age we happen to be at the moment. What do you think you would actually do if you could relive not all your life over again but just one year for every decade up until now? It's a teasing thought, isn't it? Well, if I were 10 years old, I think Play with girls more often than I did before.

Learn chess instead of checkers. Read fewer fairy tales and more biographies. Ask my father and mother more questions about life and get to know them better as people. What would I do if I were 20 years old? I'd- Climb more balconies than I did before. At least a dozen more I'd say offhand.

Train sedulously to become skilled in at least one sport I could follow all my life. Ridicule my professors less and listen to the best ones more. Strike down the dastard fellow student who told me it makes you feel better to drink straight gin out of a bottle. What about 30 again? This time Still marry for love instead of money. Love may have its lulls, but no man has less manhood than one living on the money of a woman he can't stand.

Settle down to a life task which would be morally acceptable and held the hope of financial comfort. Strike down the dastard who told me that a Martini made of three parts gin and one part vermouth would make life more livable. How about being 40 again? Well, I guess I'd- Cry for six months, then adjust my mind to endure what I could not cure. Finish the correspondence course in ventriloquism I started at the age of 12. Think of old girl friends on rainy afternoons.

Strike down the dastard who told me that a Martini made of four parts gin and one part vermouth could still make life beautiful. And how's about being 50 again? I Get used to seeing girls run from the water cooler when they saw me coming.i Go to more bridge games than cocktail parties. Become accustomed to listening to dull banquet speakers. Strike down the dastard who told me that a Martini made of six parts gin and one part vermouth was the answer to the search for a perfect life. And what about being 60 again? What do you again! That's what I am now.

I have already ordered a 10-speed wheel chair and struck down the dastard who told me that the only sensible solution to the problem of existence is a Martini made by mixing a thimble of vermouth and a full bottle of gin. Man, this is real living! Let your past be past. Oh, to be.

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Pages Available:
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Years Available:
1956-1976