The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 18

18 I OBITUARIES The Guardian Tuesday November 25 1997 Jorge Mas Canosa Norman Topping Into combat against typhus Tightening the screw on Castro fc. I ORMAN Topping now with Beijing, according to Wayne Smith, a diplomat who headed the US interests department in Havana during Jimmy Carter's presidency in the late 1970s. An astute manipulator of the Washington lobby system, Mas Canosa delivered a large proportion of the two million Cuban voters resident in the US. He became a godfather figure to a new generation of Cuban-American Republican the Cuban refugee "raft" crisis. Mas Canosa was born in Santiago de Cuba and saw himself as the epitome of the American dream while, at the same time, claiming to be a foreign exile who had lived in the US for more than 30 years.

As a young man, he joined the movement to fight the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, toppled by Fidel Castro. But he turned against Castro after the breaks during the second world war. It was known that, without regular boosters, vaccine-induced immunity fades and that, in any case, there is litde cross-immunity between rickettsial diseases. Although protected against epidemic typhus, allied forces in the Pacific suffered many fatalities from scrub-typhus, a related disease of long grass, jungle and swamp that is antigeni-cally distinct, has no intermediate host and is transmitted by tick larvae (chiggers). However the rickettsia were found to be highly sensitive to antibiotics, while the newly available pesticides could control lice and other vectors.

By 1948, when he was appointed NIH associate director, Topping's horizon embraced the deficiencies of national and international public health policies, the financing of research institutes and, above all, the need to modernise medical and professional public health training. Believing that evolution would have to spring from the universities, he left the NIH in 1952 to serve as vice-president JORGE Mas Canosa, who has died in Miami aged 58, was the leader of a powerful lobby against Fidel Castro which forced the United States to maintain a hardline policy on Cuba. He was particularly close to Ronald Reagan, and during the Reagan presidency set up the National Cuban American Foundation. This devised many of the measures adopted by the US against Cuba, most recently the Helms-Burton embargo law which could, just as accurately, have been named the Mas Canosa law. Mas Canosa's death is a relief for the Castro regime, which considered Mas Canosa its enemy number one.

It recently accused him of being behind a bombing campaign of tourist hotels in Cuban resorts. Mas Canosa, who liked to compare Castro to Hitler. or Saddam Hussein, was a darling of the American right. But many Democrats blamed him for keeping US-Cuban relations locked in the past. Had it not been for him, the US would probably have had relations with Havana similar to those it established with communist Moscow or ous and intelligent, he built up a business empire centred on telecommunications.

He was listed, together with his son, Jorge Jr, in the American magazine Hispanic Business as one of the 10 richest Hispanics in the US. His Miami radio and television station, Radio Television Marti, which broadcast anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba, was a running sore for the regime. Mas Canosa always denied the Cuban allegation that he was an American tool. While subscribing to the American economic dream, he claimed to be proud of his Hispanic origins. His attempt to set up a Spanish branch of his foundation last year proved controversial and short-lived.

He blamed its demise on a campaign against him in the Spanish press, accusing him of corrupt business practice, which made the conservative government led by Jose Maria Aznar distance itself from the project. Although some Cuban exiles considered Mas Canosa too intransigent and condemned his refusal ever to consider any rapprochement with Castro, they recognised the energy and leadership he Mas Canosa was a darling of the American right, but many Democrats blamed him for keeping US-Cuban relations locked in the past Mas Canosa astute manipulator of Washington lobby from a centralised system to a William Alland An obituary from Xanadu I who has died aged 89, I XI developed, with I 1 Cox, the typhus vac cine given to 15 million Allied servicemen in the Pacific, Far East and Middle East in the second world war. Today typhus can be controlled through antibiotics and pesti cides, but vaccine of this type is still held tor emergency use. The career of Topping, one of America most distin guished academic administra tors and public health scien tists, spanned half a century It focused initially on infec tious disease research at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) where the typhus vaccine was developed Later, at the University of Pennsylvania, he concen trated on the improvement of medical and public health training and then, for almost 30 years from the early 1960s he developed and imple mented the grand plan to raise the University ot southern California (USC) to its present high status. In guiding the evolutionary flowering of the university, where he took his first degree in 1933, Topping probably achieved his most important and satisfying ambition.

When he graduated as a doc tor in 1936 he went into viral and rickettsial research at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland The Rickettsia are a family of small bacteria which enter cells and multiply within them until they burst as do viruses but which, in the main, are transmitted to hu mans from natural animal hosts by lice, ticks and fleas, They cause a range of diseases of which epidemic typhus estimated to have killed over 20 million people in eastern Europe alone during the first world war has until recently been the most important. Bacteriologists point out that, since Roman times typhus has defeated more armies than any general. The typhus organism is endemic in the animal world, the roots of human disease lie in squalor, famine, overcrowd ing and the proliferation of vectors, wherever these occur. Historically, no effective treat ment was known. In the 1930s, with the devel opment of laboratory methods ot identifying distinct groups and.

strams of rickettsial bac teria, an effective vaccine be came a possibility. The small est members of this bacterial family, which are indistin guishable under the micro scope, cause a range of dis eases including endemic murine typhus and "spotted With the Great War typhus pandemics dominating public health memories, a vac cine became the prime target. Attempts based on extracts from rickettsia-rich lice and ticks were ineffective. Worse, the rickettsial bacteria proved difficult to culture outside the lice and ticks of their natural vectors. Then, in 1938, HR Cox found that several of the disease-causing rickettsia would multiply rapidly in the yolk sac of the developing chicken embryo.

Topping, by then head of the rickettsial group, encouraged Cox, and with him showed that killed yolk sac extracts triggered the specific and powerful immune response needed for a vaccine. Unlike earlier approaches, this method could be used for bulk vaccine production. With the approach or war and the threatened re-emergence of epidemic typhus, small scale production soon began on both sides of the Atlantic. Topping extended NIH research into essential field diagnostics, and persuaded the US government to prepare for a huge expansion of vaccine production. So, outside the concentra tion camps, there were no major epidemic typhus out the world labelling bottles containing similar momentous atmospheric events Berlin as the wall came down, or Hong Kong as it was handed back to China.

The day Princess Diana died, he was outside Buckingham Palace at 7am and in Paris by lunchtime. But, he says, "Those bottles won't be exhibited for at least 10 years." there, however, that Hitler received Stalin's "assent to the non-aggression pact which enabled him to launch the invasion of as it said in Ian Traynor's report. Stalin indicated his assent in a telegram. The cost of the complex' there was also garbled in editing. It was built at a cost of half a billion marks, not 500 billion marks, a figure which rendered the translation into pounds sterling nonsensical.

IN A racing story on Page 12 of Guardian Sport yesterday, an editing error made the market economy." His early death, from cancer and a de generative bone disease leaves a leadership vacuum Without his hardline influ ence, the US may even soften its policy towards Cuba. Adela Gooch Jorge Mas Canosa, political ac tivist, born September 21, 1939; died November 23, 1997 a scene from Citizen Kane vived by three children, two step-children and five grandchildren, all of whom must have thrilled to his ability even in old age to do that booming voice, the call of 1930s radio, that was made to proclaim the death of heroes (and scoundrels). David Thomson William Alland, actor and producer, born 1916; died November 11, 1997 prano, 47; Imran Khan, former cricketer, 45; Dr Elizabeth Laverick, electrical engineer, 72; Tony Millson, ambassador to Macedonia, 46; Paul Murphy, Labour MP, 49; Tony Neary, rugby player, 49; Richard Seifcrt, architect, 87; Laurence Shur-man, former banking ombudsman, 67; Lord (Bernard) Weatherill, former Speaker of the Commons, 77; Sir Peter Wright, former director, Birmingham Royal Ballet, 71; Prof Frances Young, theologian 58. Gazza cried, football was transformed into a national obsession. When Stuart Pearce missed the penalty that knocked England out, Miles Mclntire quietly removed the top and emptied the methanol from inside a small glass bottle thereby drawing in and preserving a sample of air from the Stadio delle Alpi.

Mclntire travels jigsaw puzzle William Alland (left) with Paul Stewart in revolutionary leader cancelled the trial of some air force pilots accused of counter-revolution. The judge who had cleared them killed himself and another, chosen by Castro, condemned them. Mas Canosa left Cuba in 1959 and later took part in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion but never disembarked. He arrived in Miami penniless and worked as a milk delivery boy. Industri Another piece in the Rosebud than Welles.

In his early twenties, in New York, yearning for work in the theatre, and calling himself Vakhtan-gov to seem exotic, he followed Welles on the streets begging for a chance. He was taken on and, like many in the Mercury Theatre, he did anything and everthing, on radio, on stage, on film, and at Orson's beck and call. For some time, he was a confidant to the great man, a preferred audience for his soliloquies. later Pierre joined the paper as deputy editor. The World was Britain's first professionally produced weekly targeted at black immigrants and he joined a small, dedicated team of young idealists.

They played an important part in the growth of consciousness that produced a new generation of black leaders. In 1979, Ali quit the paper and set up Caribbean Times. In 1981, Pierre followed him and became the new paper's assistant editor. Later, in the 1980s, he left journalism and growth and processing the leaves." Back in his office in Tez-pur, Assam, Mr Trinick receives hundreds of samples from the estates to taste: He places three grains of the sample in 150cc of boiling water for five minutes. He smells the wet infused leaves for fragrance, checks that the colour of the liquor is even and swills the tea in his mouth to taste for quality, strength, briskness and flavour.

"In Assam tea, I look for depth of colour and strength of body. Darjeeling should be lighter in colour and flavour like the difference between Guinness and lager." Tea tasting in Country Life. Lady's man IF the lives of the famous all too often give us the impression of having been carefully planned in advance, then in the case of Giacomo Giro-lamo Casanova something went fatally wrong. On the basis of his voluminous, unembarrassed, exuberantly readable memoirs, Histoire de displayed in building up a Hispanic lobby. Mas Canosa dreamed of setting up a replica in Cuba of "the democratic and economic model of the United States a system which has allowed me and my family to build up a fortune starting with nothing more than penury and hunger." He claimed to have prepared "an army of 20,000 young Cuban Americans ready to help Cuba move Universal as a producer on low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, some of them full of the gleeful melodrama that had marked the Mercury Theatre of the Air and such things as The War of the Worlds.

So Alland was involved with It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), This Island Earth (1955) and The Deadly Mantis (1957). He retired to Long Beach, and built sailboats. He is sur Birthdays Nat Adderley, jazz trumpeter, 66; Bev Bevan, rock musician, 51; Paul Copley, actor, 54; Sir John Drum-mond, former director of the Proms, 63; Francis Dur-bridge, thriller writer, 85; Michael Feast, actor, 51; Maria Fyfe, Labour MP, 59; Phillipa Harrison, publisher, chief executive, Little Brown, 55; Dickie Jeeps, former chairman, Sports Council, 66; Alan Keen, Labour MP, 60; Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat MP, 38; Yvonne Kenny, operatic so promise and ambition, to embody the energy and brilliance of the period they flamboyantly inhabit. In a unique mixture of persuasive charm with a certain quality of ingenuousness that multiple experience could never quite breed out of him, Casanova's recollections somehow manage to persuade us that he was the 18th century as much as Voltaire, Jefferson, Catherine the Great or Dr Johnson could ever have claimed to be. We need his improvisatory dash and brio, his freewheeling virtuosity and ebullient optimism to round off our prospect of the Enlightenment, and any conspectus of the age that ignores him as a witness must seem maimed or foreshortened.

The posthumous appeal of Casanova, New York Times Book Review. Air head MILES Mclntire "Atmosphere 52" (Glass bottle with label, Air). England Germany in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup was a landmark match: politicians. "Jorge Mas Canosa was a master of the art of knowing which hearts and heads you needed to draw to your cause if you wanted to be heard in the White House and on Capitol Hill," said Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; one of his proteges. No president could afford to ignore him.

He persuaded Bill Clinton to keep up the American economic stranglehold on Cuba and advised him during soft-spoken, not very impressive we rarely see his face. But he's there, on and off, throughout the film, his back to the camera, looking at the manuscripts or trying to persuade people to talk about Kane. And Thompson was also played by William Alland. He has nearly the last word in his futile quest before we, the audience, the people who really felt for Kane, get the pay-off: "No, I don't think so. No, Mr Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it.

Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece." William Alland, in some respects, was just a piece or two in Kane, or in Welles's career; he was one of many people drawn to Welles because they felt they had never encountered such talent, such charm or such irresistible promise of betrayal. And Alland, like others, has his reward: the great voice and that dogged questioning manner may end up.

eternal. At the very least they get him his own obituary in papers never owned by Kane. Born in Delmar, Delaware, Alland was a year younger University, which aimed to decolonise the education system, and make it more relevant to black people. Many liberal and leftist academics gave seminars in hired halls around Notting Hill. Many later prominent figures attended including Maurice Bishop, who became Grenada's socialist prime minister.

The idea was sound, but the money wasn't. In 1973, the project collapsed. In 1974 Arif Ali, founder of the Digest, took over West Indian World, and three years hoof boots, imitation fur trousers, bejewelled pantaloons, cape, and latex Mask of Darkness head. There's a prop head from The Terminator, complete with torn flesh and exposed metal work, and egg from Aliens, the seven-foot-high "Pillar Of Souls" prop from Hellraiser and the hook worn by Dustin Hoffman in, um, Hook. SFgear, going, going, gone, SFX.

Time for tea FOR the past 34 years, John Trinick, aged 69, has been a tea-taster for George Williamson and Co, the world's largest family-owned tea producer. Mr Trinick spends four months each year travelling across Assam and Bengal by light plane, advising estate managers on the cloning of tea bushea, manure-spreading and harvesting the plucking and withering, rolling, fermenting and firing of the leaves. "I can identify changes in taste caused by variation at any stage of the Topping viral research of medical affairs at the University of Pennsylvania until his appointment in 1956 as USC president in Los Angeles, a period during which he also served as assistant US Surgeon General. He became USC's chancellor in 1970, retiring in 1980 yet continuing to steer the developments he had initiated. Topping, like many scientists in public service, was a quiet man, a government and academic adviser who sought little publicity.

He married in 1930. There are two children. Anthony Tucker Norman Topping, public health scientist, born January 12, 1908; died November 18 1997 Death Notices ASHWORTH. Ruth, (noe Colclough), ol Pershore. formerly ol Saltord.

wife of Bob. Died on Thursday Novombor 20lh Meeting lor worship at Worcestor Crematorium on Friday November 28th at 2.30pm. No tlowers please, donations in lieu lor Parkinson's Disease Society maybe sent co Hill Son, Funeral Directors. Per-shore. WRI0 IHZ GREGORY.

On 21st November. Peacolully at Boarbank Hall Nursing Home. Grange-ovor-Sands. Dr James Gregory aged 82 vears. ol Killinahall.

Harroqale. and Ripon Dear husband ol the laic Joyce Etlie tnoo Felton) and brother ol Joyce (Jones). Alec and Ian. Funoral at Lancaster and More-cambo Cromalorium on Friday 28th November at 2.30pm No llowers please, but dona tions to Multiple Sclerosis! may be sent to G. Postlelhwaite.

Funoral Diroctor. Main Street. Grange-over-Sands. LA 11 6DP. MELVILLE, Frank John, diod peacolully on 22nd November 1997 at homo atler a long llnoss.

Hotired Time Magazine correspon dent, dearly loved husband ol Margol and lather ol Goorgina. Fiona and Flour. Grandfather ol Nathalie and Gabrlelta. Frank will be vory widely missed. Family Mowers or donations to Cancer Research.

MICHIE, Brenda May, died Novombor 8th. Bolovod wile ol Joseph, mother ot John. Liz and Alison, molher-in-law to Nina, grandmother ol Cathonne and Alex. Wo will always miss you. Rost In Peace.

WILKINSON, on Novombor peacolully at his parents' homo. Hovinaham. Pelor Joseph, aged 30 years. Boloved youngest son ol Bill and Anno, doarly loved brother ol Nell. John and Mary and brother-in-law ol nm.

hecoived inio bi. Aidan unurcn. Oswaldkirk lor Requiom Mass, Wednesday Novombor 26th at 12 noon. Funeral mass al tho Holy Cross Church. Cottingham.

Thursday November 27lh al 11am lollowed by intormont, R.l.P. Donations in his momory il desired to the Neuro Fibroma-tosis Association. 82 London Road, Kingston-upon-Thamos. Surrey KT2 6PX. although a plate will bo provided in church.

To place your announcement telephone in or lax uin n3 419 betwoon 9am and 3pm Mon-Fri Esquire gives new meaning to Air Time. Jackdaw wantsjewels. E-mail 01 71- 713 4366; write Jackdaw, The Guardian, lWFarringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Hannah Pool price paid for Pilsudski by the Japanese Breeding Association, It should have been $20m. IN PASS NOTES, G2 yesterday, Descartes was spelled Decartes It's the policy of the Guardian to correct errors as soon as possible.

Readers may contact the office of the Readers' Editor, Ian Mayes, by telephoning 0171 239 9589 between 11am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Fax: 0171 239 9897. E-mail: Ian.Mayesguardian.co. uk WILLIAM Alland, who has died aged 81, was once, and once only, a great obituarist. It was his voice that Orson Welles used to narrate the lengthy and stupendous newsreel obituary to Charles Foster Kane under the "News on the March" banners in Citizen Kane: "Legendary was Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome Today about as legendary is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground.

And so it rolls on, the voice one of those intensely arresting yet hollow clarions of the 1930s somewhere between Hitler and a boxing commentator. Then, of course, in one of that great movie's slyest confidence tricks, we come to the screening room where the "News on the March" guys have been viewing the obituary. It's a rough cut only. And they persuade themselves that it's not good enough yet it is merely colossal, gorgeous and to die for. So a reporter is enlisted to go out into the by-ways of Charles Foster Kane's life, to discover the real truth about the man.

Start with he is told, Kane's last word what did that mean? The reporter's name is Thompson, Jerry Thompson. He's a small, slender man, Russell Pierre RUSSELL Pierre, who has died aged 57, was a pioneering black journalist in this country. Born in Trinidad, he arrived in Britain in 1962 and a decade later joined the monthly West Indian Digest. It was the era of black power, and what the Digest lacked in professionalism it made up for in enthusiasm. In 1972 Pierre, together with black power activists like Roy Sawh and Haroun Jadakhan, set up the ambitious, if largely symbolic Free Sci-fi sale THERE are some top bits of SF and fantasy merchandise up for sale at Christie's Film and Entertainment exhibition on Thursday December 11 if you can afford them.

Among the highest-estimated items are two costumes worn by Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever: a dinner jacket with black and claret patterned silk lapels and a two piece cream linen suit. Alternatively, you could dress in a replica RoboCop costume used to promote the first film in the series or even turn yourself into Tim Curry's Legend character: knee-high He had a lot of little parts in productions, and messages to carry in the daily turmoil of Mercury. But Thompson was his big chance, and the likely shows the' fondness Welles felt for him, for Thompson is like a Fool who has lost his Lear. Alland went away to war, but he kept up with Welles afterwards. He has a small role in Macbeth, and when Welles arrived for Touch of Evil Alland was working at with his wife set up La Ca-ribe, a West Indian restaurant in north London.

Large-hearted and generous, Pierre was a diligent and influential journalist who despised bigotry and was a role model for young journalists. He is survived by his wife Joan, two daughters and a son. Govender Russell Kenneth Pierre, journalist, born February 28, 1940; died Septembers, 1997 ma Vie, posterity has turned him into a household word as the archetypal sexual athlete, a Don Giovanni serenely untroubled by visitations from a hysterical Donna Elvira or vengeful Donna Anna, let alone by the inopportune arrival of a stone Commenda-tore bent on dragging him down to hell. Yet a further scrutiny of the Histoire suggests a role altogether less limited for him, as one of those figures intended, through the sheer abundance of their Start Casanova kiss and tell CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS IN OUR front page report yesterday, headed Prince dodges Diana tax row, an incorrect reference-was made to a "tax-evading It should have read, "tax avoidance Our apologies. IN A REPORT headlined Storm breaks over Hitler's eyrie, Page 12 yesterday, the caption under the picture of the "Eagle's Nest" at Berchtes-gaden wrongly referred to it as the place "where the Nazi leader received Chamberlain and Stalin never visited Berchtesgaden.

It was.