The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 21

Feopfe THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION Advice 3,4 Movies 8 Comics 6 TodayTV 10 SECTION 0 Thursday, January 29, 1981. The Virus erpes i. Roger Cdestine -A Witherspoon That Doemi Die Isibley Hralth and Science Writer mm TSfflR-; "a None Could Be Faulted In Birth Dispute Voice Brings Back Memories Of Sweet Apple She had a low, pleasant voice and she was chuckling. "You wrote about me the other day," she said. I tried to think.

She didn't keep me in suspense. "That old house site where you went to the hog-killing and another shooting with the county police. Don't you remember? I was the one doing the shooting." "Your husband!" I whooped. She modestly acknowledged it and we fell to reunioning. It was in the fall of 1947, late one afternoon.

I was covering the Fulton County courthouse and wandered into the office of Chief Neal Ellis looking for news. "Come ride with us," invited an offi- cer. "Some lady has done shot her husband." She chuckled, remembering it the other day. "Not bad," she said. "I didn't shoot him too bad that he didn't get over it We lived together about six months after he got out of Grady Hospital but he was a man that just couldn't resist a 15-year-old girl.

Married me when I was 15 the second one he'd married at that age and when I got to be an old woman of 22 he took out after another 15-year-old. Spent the day with her that day of the hog-killing and come home mean and drunk." Details Vivid The details of that day in Sweet Apple settlement my introduction io my future home, although it took me about 15 years to know it are as vivid in her mind today as they were then. She and her husband and their three babies, one a newborn of a week and a half, lived on the old Corbett place and she farmed a little; At least she tried to. The husband wasn't much of a hand to she pointed out She raised a few hogs and V'l 'i T-l- T- tr.n. i inn-' I WHETHER THE BABY lived or died troubled everyone at Griffin-Spalding Hospital who was involved but that was notlthe main problem.

The mother was. The mother was Jessie Mae Jefferson, a Baptist preacher's wife and nine months pregnant Hospital officials were convinced she was going to lose the baby and then come to the Griffin hospital; hemorrhaging uncontrollably and, -because of her religious beliefs, they would have to stand there and watch her die: If This, they decided, they would not do Last Friday, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld two lower court orders granting the Butts County Department of. Children and Family Services temporary guardianship over an unborn child being carried by Mrs. Jefferson, a resident of that county, and granting Griffin-Spalding medical personnel the right to use any means they deemed necessary to. preserve the life of the mother and child: It appeared that the issue hinged on th right to life, and the state's interest' Iff protecting the unspoken rights of a fetus, even if that meant stepping on the rights of the mother.

And it raised ethical and legal issues of primacy, the right to control one's body, the right to choose how to live and die, and the right to exercise a religious belief, even if it required human sacri-; fice. But the core of the case, according to-the participants, was something else. The! core of the case was the unwillingness of medical personnel to eschew their years of training and watch somebody die. xj As assistant hospital administrator Marshall Nero recalls it, Mrs. Jefferson was given an ultrasound scan at the hospital clinic late in December and then again on Jan.

9. The scanner, which pro- vides an outline of a picture of what is taking place inside the womb, showed a condition known as placenta previa, in which the placenta is partially or totally blocking the birth canal. 1 It is not an uncommon ailment The" placenta, providing food and nourish-1 ment to the developing tends to migrate within the womb as the fetus grows and the uterus expands. In the lat-T ter weeks of a pregnancy, when the uterus has already reached its final size, the migration stops. In one of every 200 pregnancies, the final location of the placenta is blocking up to 30 percent of the" birth canal; and in one of every JO of these cases, the blockage is almost total In that type of case, said Dr.

John Turrentine, Mrs. Jefferson's physician, "there is no way the baby can be dcliv-; ered vaginally." The placenta could break off and come down the birth canal first but that; i would result in the baby suffocating and bleeding to death Inside the womb. This would trigger a hemorrhage in the; mother, which is often fatal. See WTTHERSPOON, Page S-B: By Roger Witherspoon Constitution Hcdllh and Scienci' Writer fTTIHEY'BEGAN as ubiquitous but relatively mild vi- The trend away from 'f l)ieast-f ceding is 1 Iblamld ftr today's early days of lite on mis planet. Ana tor eons, they have remained that way.

Virtually everyone has been infected with one or viciousness of a disease mojetheir variations, such jw sore throaty when cold weather set was time tokiU xne ol them! Hpr'hus- that affects virtually Is everyone "But we as a society have cut down on breast-, feeding," said Nahmias, and "50 percent of those in high socioeconomic groups are not protected and, there-, fore, do not protect their Dr. Paul ffeisnef; ai) Jmmunftlogist at the r-1 Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, virus invades a human cell, turns the machinery of that cell -on to reproduce the virus, instead of the human cell, tand also makes the human cell produce I protein coating to protect Jhe newly produced viral cell." How the yiral cells invade their hosts, and how they select which cells to attack, is not known. "It is no accident that Type 2 simplex viruses are more commonly seen in the genital area," said Weisner, "and Type 1 are seen in the mouth or lips. And it is no accident that the chicken pox is spread by coughing and found in the respiratory system. But there is a Nobel Prize for the person who figures out how the viruses select their prey." "-x y.

A second characteristic of the Herpes viruses defies other scientific principles: They do not die. Once it's infected, a disease recurs periodically throughout One'slife. Said Weisner "A young person gets the chicken pox and then, later on in life usually when the person is in adulthood the person will get shingles (a rash of blisters). This is not a new infection; it is the same virus that has been sitting there, sleeping. "The second Nobel Prize associated with herpes," Weisner said, "will go to the one who can figure out the latency of the virus just how it can stay in the body K' ''iyii'iyMVW -v lantf'tht class pf virus known as Is' no longer mild; It It incurable.

"It is one of the most virulent generators of disease in America. And though there are drugs used to treat some of the diseases, such as' chicken pox, they do not destroy the viral invaders. "The way to look at these viruses is to consider the way they have adapted over millions of years," said Dr. Andre Nahmias, chief of the division of infectious diseases, allergies and Immunology at the Emory University School of Medicine. "Herpes traditionally caused very mild diseases.

"It is only through the changes in culture and medicine notably transplants of organs that they became vicious. We see, for example, a low incidence of mononucleosis among lower socioeconomic groups, and very little at Grady Memorial Hospital (the county-run hospital In Atlanta). But we see a lot of it at Emory University Hospital (a private hospital). "The reason is that the virus is very commonly found in children of low socioeconomic groups, and by the time they get to their late teens, they are protected." 'The protection comes from the fact that children in low-income families are likely to have been breastfed from birth, and their mothers passed on certain immunities developed from their own bouts with various types of herpes viruses. As a result when the children are infected, the disease is relatively mild.

nana went to gei a neignoor jieip ana did not return. Other neighbors assembled so she took the gun and killed the hog herself so they could scald it and dress it. "I had it dressed out and the tenderloin cooked," she remembered. "You always cooked the tender first and made gravy and hot biscuits to serve the ones that came to help out I took some out to the workers and HE was there and drunk. I put it down and started back in the house and I felt something zoom by my head.

It was half a pint of white I walked on and something else come zooming at me. A rock as big as my fist zooming by my head. I got to the door and turned around and he come at me hitting me. I fell over a tub of meat there on the kitchen floor and my eyes fell on the gun I had used to kill the hog. I picked it up and turned around and pulled the trigger." Exoneration, The husband, a man 17 years older than she was, exonerated her and I remember they left Grady Hospital arm-in-arm.

But the marriage didn't last He returned to the 15-year-old who had for years and years without being destroyed by the body's immunological system. Just how does it select that rerfect biding place?" During its dormant phases, the viruses stop forcing host cells to multiply and reproduce more viral cells. See HERPES, Page 7-B Above, Dr. Paul Weisner, an Immuoohglst at the aational Centers tor Disease Control la Atlanta. At top, a microscopic view of herpes Ch.

8 Betide fa I Richard eliminate the often-wasteful duplication of: FBS programming in Atlanta where both Channel 8 and Channel 30 carry many of the same often at the same time. The bill recommends to solution to that problem. But it could ultimately re-, suit in the removal of either Channel 8 or Channel 30 from the Atlanta area, or a clearer separation of. their functions (for example, Channel 8 might telecast only the "mass PBS fare, while Channel 30 would concentrate on minority-affair! and community programming). Aside from the Atlanta duplication problem, however, the bill would do much more, It would, See ZOGIJN, Page li-B The bill, which last week passed the state Senate and will shortly go before the House, would place both Channel 8 and the Georgia ETV Network under i newly created Public Telecommunications Commission.

The five-member commission would include two members chosen by the Board of Regents, two chosen by the Board of Education and one chosen by the governor. Channel 30, which is not now under state auspices, would be encouraged to join the new state network. The Atlanta station would most likely approve such a move, according to public TV sources thus consolidating all public TV operations in the state for the first time. One goal of the proposed reorganization is to WGTVChannel 8, one of Atlanta's two public TV stations, has launched a last-ditch campaign to defeat a piece of legislation that nearly everyone else involved in Georgia public television regards as long overdue. The bill, a product of recommendations made last year by the governor's Public Telecommunications Task Force, is an effort to consolidate Georgia's confusing and inefficient public TV system into a single state agency.

Three separate public TV entities now operate in the, state, often at cross-purposes: Channel 8, operated by the University of Georgia's Center for Continuing Education, which Is based in Athens but, with its transmitter atop Stone Mountain, is seen in engrossed his attention the day of the hog-killing and subsequently married her, then left her for yet another young woman guess what 15 years old. He was found dead on the street several years ago and his ex-wives rallied 'round and saw to the expense of "putting him away nice." "He must have been a charmer," I rev. marked to my caller. "He was nice enough looking and had a nice personality," she said. "He was just sorry.

Wouldn't work. I didn't con-' tribute to his funeral. I'm the mean one. I told the police they could throw his body in the river and let the buzzards pick his bones as far as I was cerned." The old house is gone, burned to the ground. The barn where she penned up her hogs has also vanished.

Subdivisions are moving in, new houses with new people, paved streets. Only Johnson's Rock is unchanged. rr. cy.tjx "Neighbor of ours had a whiskey still there," she recalled, "and my hogs got into it I went looking for them and they were drunk on mash. I bad to sit down and wait for them to sober up!" the Atlanta area; Atlanta's WETVChannel 30, operated by the Atlanta and Fulton County school boards; and the Georgia Educational TV Network, a -confederation of eight PBS stations around the state, operated by the state Department of Education.

''i-'-, ftX'v j. Mrs: Humphrey Tp HighjSchool Pal Tin Auociittd Pru Minneapolis "URIEL HUMPHREY, 68-year-old widow of former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, said Wednesday Inside plans to marry businessman Max Brown, a former "Our families have kept track of each other over the years," she said. Both Mrs. Humphrey and Brown are widowed.

Hubert Humphrey died Jan. 13, 1973, and Brown's wife Vera died in May 1979. Brown is former manaj-r of KRVN Radio ia Lexington and also owns a condominium in Lincoln, Neb. Mrs Humphrey was appointed by then-Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich to fill a portion of Humphrey's unexpired term in the U.S.

Senate following his death. She was sworn in on Feb. 6, 1978, and served until November 1378 when Republican David Durenberger was elected to fill oxl the remaining four years of the term. She sold her Waverly, home for in April 1S79 and subsequently built a home in the Lake Minnetonka area. high school classmate.

Mrs. Humphrey, who served briefly in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to succeed her late husband, said in a statement. that the private ceremony would take place next month with only immediate family members attending. Mrs.

Humphrey, who visited Iter hometown of Huron, S.D., last September, grew up in the same neighborhood as Brown, who now lives in Lexington, Neb They attended elementary and grade school together, graduating from Huron High School in 1930. Brown's sister Dona, -who lives in Huron, said the two never dated in high school but had remained good friends. Academy To Offer Atlanta Premieres Of Four Scripts 'V Page 12-B mt lIM.rt 1 Former Classmates Muriel Humphrey And Max Brown.