The Manhattan Mercury from Manhattan, Kansas • 7

The Manhattan Mercury OPED Wednesday, March 13,1991 A7 Shopping for medical rights Ellen Goodman BOSTON There is a father in Missouri who wants to take his daughter shopping. The trip he has in mind is a grim one. He wants to find a doctor and a state that might allow her to die. The father is Peter Busaiaechi. The daughter is Christine, the second most famous patient in the place where Nancy Cruzan once lay.

It took a Supreme Court decision and then some, before Nancy Cruzan won the "right to die." The feeding tube was removed only after her family proved that the young woman had left "clear and convincing evidence" thatshe wouldn't want to live in a persistent vegetative state. Christine left no such evidence before the car crash that severely damaged her brain at age 17. So last fall her father decided to move her from the strict and highly charged atmosphere of Missouri to a doctor he trusted in man went to Michigan to use the suicide machine, because there was no law against assisting suicide there. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, abortion would be the next right that became a mere matter of geography.

But when you talk about ending treatment and ending life, you have entered a Middle-Eastern bazaar of medical ethics. It is as if every state carried a different message on its license plate, some macabre variation of the theme on cars in New Hampshire: Live Free or Die. Not only do states have different laws and guidelines, so do counties, hospitals, even doctors. In some places, a family can walk down a hospital hallway and find a second and third contradictory opinion. As Arthur Caplan at the University of Minnesota says, "if consistency is a fundamental prerequisite of ethics then it is taking a long holiday with respect to the termination of treatment." Few of us are comfortable with the idea of ethical border-crossing in this case.

Some say 20 year-old Christine Busaiaechi smiles and feels. Others say that her responses are just reflexes. If she is in an irreversible vegetative state, Missouri would keep her alive forever. Minnesota has no such blanket law. How can it be right to remove a feeding tube in one place and not in another? How can it be right to stop treatment here and continue it there? But if the states are to be the "laboratories" in which we experiment during a time of uncertainty, if these labs reflect the range of our moral debate, then we cannot be forbidden access.

In the end there is something worse than the difficult, disturbing, free-ranging ethical marketplace. What is worse is a ban against shopping for medical rights. Minnesota. Now the Missouri Court of Appeals has said that Peter Busaiaechi doesn't have that right. Last week, the jurdges ruled that a lower court must look into the father's motives and the daughter's condition before they decide whether to let this unhappy pair out of the state's borders.

Christine Busaiaechi has become a ward or is it a prisoner? of the State of Missouri. Peter Busaiaechi, who could take his child to any doctor anywhere if she were competent, has lost that chance because she is not. And the State of Missouri has determined that it doesn't trust the morality of the State of Minnesota. As Judge Gerald M. Smith wrote in a harsh dissent, "There is a parochial arrogance in suggesting, as the state does, that only in Missouri can Christine's medical, physical and legal well- ten in between, Americans are learning to be comparison shoppers.

We go across the border from one ethical marketplace to the next. Back in the 1970s, families traveled with brain-dead children to a state that would recognize their death. Today a couple in search of a surrogate mother will find one state open for business and another closed. A teenager can find an abortion in one state without her parents knowing, but not in another. Last summer, an Oregon wo being be protected." The dilemma that faces this Missouri father was set up by the Supreme Court's decision.

The justices left the life-or-death fate of people like Christine those who never stated their wishes to the "laboratory of the states." As a result, they ensured that we would go shopping through these laboratories for a full selection of our rights. Indeed, this is now part of the process for "consumers of health care" and their families. At either end of the life cycle and of neatly dressed. A young man with a college degree in biology, working in the local alderman's office, plans to go to law school so he will be better able to help the community. Even in this place of lost hope, then, there are those who bel ieve in the promise of American soc iety.

And that connects with Nicholas Lemann's message in the final chapter of The Promised Land, which appears in somewhat briefer form in the March issue of The Atlantic. "American society in the wider We on the Anthony can yt give up ghettos Lewis CHICAGO "They are now among the worst places in the world to live." That stark epitaph for the black urban ghetto in America comes at the end cf Nicholas Lemann's stunning new book, The Promised Land. I thought of it as I visited North Lawndale, on Chicago's West Side. North Lawndale was one of the first parts of Chicago to become home for blacks moving up from the South in the great migration that is the subject of Lemann's book. The idea of a city slum brings to mind densely packed buildings, a teeming population.

But that is not North Lawndale. What strikes the eye here is emptiness: burned-out buildings, vacant lots, stores boarded over. And everywhere the ground littered with shards of glass. On Roosevelt Road and other main streets, stores were destroyed in the 1968 riots and sense is not a presence in the ghettos," he writes, "except on television. Policemen don't walk the beat, most schools don't teach, fathers don't live at home, crime goes But that can change, Lemann argues.

The ghettos can be brought back into the society. It would be a large undertaking, so comprehensive that it would sub-stantially affect all aspects of life in a ghetto: "The rather casual official attitude toward street crime, for example, which has existed for as PEOPLE Historic Los Angeles shows have a plot once again theater theater. The cost: $158,000. Harout planned to inaugurate the theater with a new William Saroyan play, "The Muscat Vineyard." Saroyan was scheduled to direct, and he cast Harout's family in this tale about an Armenian clan with a Fresno vineyard. Harout wasn't able to open the show, though, because Saroyan left town before completing script revisions.

Harout leased the Ivar to other producers, and the theater opened on Feb. 5, 1951, with a production of "The Barretts of Wimpole show, about Elizabeth Barrett's courtship with fellow poet Robert Browning, played to a packed house. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who would launch television's "I Love Lucy" a few months later, were in the audience. The pressures of the restaurant business prevented Harout from producing many shows at the Ivar. Occasionally, he and his family performed plays in Armenian for the local Armenian community.

Mostly, however, he left the presenting to others. He leased the theater to a succession of producers, several of whom lost money, according to accounts in the trade paper Variety. Then as now, theater was a risky business. Still, the Ivar housed many popular shows, including "The Lady's Not for Burning," "The Fantasticks," "Under the Yum-Yum Tree," "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off," "The Odd Couple," "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," "The Boys in the Band" and "Godspell." Opening nights were always magical, recalled Harout's daughter, Magda Harout. "Everyone came in furs and jewels," she said as she thumbed through photographs from the good old days.

"We'd have klieg lights out front. It was an event. Everyone was so excited." Magda Harout, who followed in the family career of acting, considered the Ivar a second home. "You know, they say that every theater has a ghost," she said. "I always thought we had a happy ghost because there were never any accidents.

It was always a happy atmosphere." Stan Seiden, who operated the Ivar for a half-dozen years in the late '50s and early '60s, fondly remembers it as "a lovely little theater." Seiden, by the way, is still involved in Hollywood theater. He is president of the James M. Nederlander Cos. on the West Coast, which operate the Pan-tages and Henry Fonda theaters. In addition to live shows, the Ivar presented a movie for a short time in 1967.

The theater was equipped for a short-lived movie 1 99 1 Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES If the walls of the Ivar Theatre could talk, what a tale they would tell. The theater, near the corner of Ivar and Selma avenues in Hollywood, has led a varied and sometimes tawdry life. It opened in 1951 as a legitimate theater, and, over the next 20 years, it housed everything from "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" to "Godspell." In its glory days, stars such as Luise Rainer and Sam Jaffe performed on the stage, and celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and Jack Benny watched from the audience. In 1974, the Ivar became a strip joint, hosting such performers as Carol Connors, the nurse from the X-rated classic "Deep Throat." The facade was adorned with a huge painting of a woman wearing a bikini top with silver stars, and signs advertised special camera nights, when patrons photograph the performers. Nowadays, the Ivar's shows once again have a plot, and the performers have clothes.

The building has returned to its Original use as a legitimate theater, owned and operated by the Inner City Cultural Center. The building is undergoing renovation, and, so far, it has been never rebuilt. On the side streets there are gaps where houses and small apartment buildings decayed or were abandoned: sometimes more gaps than buildings. It is as if thegreat flat prairie of Illinois were trying to re-emerge. Drug users filter into a crumbling hotel.

A dozenyoung men hang out in an empty lot, getting through the empty day. A prostitute struts on a street corner. It isa desolate scene.But something unexpected, and powerful, strikes the visitor. Some people in North Lawndale do not accept the desolation as inescapable. They have not given up on the place.

They have not given up on themselves. Some of the small three-story houses are nicely maintained. One has white pillars in front, freshly painted, with ayellow ribbon for the soldiers in the Persian Gulf. A boy and girl carrying school books scurry across a vacant lot, used mostly for talks and one-night arts events. The first play to appear there for a regular run is the Celtic Arts Center's production of Sean O'Casey's "The Shadow of a Gunman." The Ivar's history is filled with as much drama as many of the shows that have been staged there.

The story begins more than 40 years ago, with the dream of an actor from a family of actors. The Ivar was the longtime dream of Yeghishe Harout, an Armenian immigrant whose family performed together as a repertory company. His family moved across the country, finally settling in Los Angeles to be near the movie industry. Harout landed roles in several films, but he needed a more dependable career to support his wife and two daughters. So, he branched into the restaurant business, opening the Har-Omar, at 1605 N.

Ivar in the early 1940s. The restaurant was a success, yet Harout longed to serve something more than fine Armenian food. He added theater to the menu in the early 1950s by building a theater in front of the restaurant. The facility contained fewer than 400 seats, and it was equipped with an orchestra pit and a two-story fly space unusual amenities for such a small geenan, a common food additive made from seaweed, The Street Journal reported today. The process devised at Auburn University in Alabama uses car-rageenan to bind the beef, allowing water to replace fat.

The McLean Deluxe, including condiments, contains about 310 calories and derives 29 percent of its calories from fat, the Times reported. That compares with 410 calories for the Quarter Pounder, with 44 percent of its calories as fat. The cost will probably be as much as a McD.L.T., which varies widely around the country, the papers said. Phil Sokolof, an anti-cholesterol crusader who in the past assailed the fat content of McDonald's fare, praised the prospect of low-fat burgers as a "dramatic breakthrough." "I'm elated that McDonald's is going national with a truly low-fat hamburger," said Sokolof, president of the National Heart Savers Association. given upon the problem.

We have come to think that government programs don't work, that we have no answers. But the facts are otherwise, Lemann persuasively argues. We know that some ideas do work. Head Start works. Job training works.

Care for expectant mothers works. We have just not had the will to make the needed effort. It is easy to understand why those of us who are comfortable tend to write off the afflicted, indeed forget them. Comfortable Chicagoans do not often, or ever, visit North Lawndale. But the existence of this and other ghettos nevertheless affects everyone's quality of life.

American society is less safe and less decent while this corruption endures. And there is the question that nags at us: Why should the richest country in the world have in it some of the worst places in the world to live? The theater was in bad shape when the cultural center took it over, according to executive director C. Bernard Jackson. Since then, the group has given the place a makeover with paint, carpeting and seats. The balcony is being restored so that the house will hold about 300 people.

More renovation is planned, including another balcony expansion that would increase seating to about 499. "We're attempting to bring it back to its former glory and to surpass its former glory," Jackson said. The cultural center, which takes a multi-ethnic and multi-disciplinary approach to the arts, hopes to present its own shows there by early fall, once the initial renovation is complete. The center will transfer successful theatrical productions from the smaller stages in its New Hampshire Avenue facility, and it will present music, dance and other performing arts activities. In addition, it will rent the theater to other arts groups, such as the Celtic Arts Center.

Magda Harout is happy to see that, once again, the Ivar is the type of place her father dreamed it would be. "I think it's wonderful," she said. "That theater was built with so much love. It should go on being a legitimate theater." By alerting parents to this problem, Ann, I hope other young adults will not be inconvenienced or possibly placed in a dangerous situation as my son was. Thanks for sounding the alert.

Mrs. J.R.G., New Orleans Dear Mrs. J.R.G.: We checked with several motel chains and were told they do not rent rooms to anyone under 18 years of age. Those between 18 and 21, how-, ever, will be able to get a room if they appear to be mature and respectable. Maybe your son had the bad luck to encounter a room clerk with Gentof the Day: The way to live longer is to stop doing all the things that make you want to live longer.

Do you have questions about sex, but no one to talk to? Ann Landers' booklet, "Sex and the Teen-Ager," is frank and to the point. Send a self-addressed, long, business-size envelope and' a check or money order for $3.65 (this includes postage and handling) co Ann Landers P.O. Box 11562, Chicago, 111' 60611-0562. (In Canada, send $4.45.) ANN LANDERS (R) COPYRIGHT 1991 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. long as there have been ghettos, could finally change; policemen could be put back on the streets, and criminals quickly punished.

Welfare could become a temporary program leading to a "We could try to ensure that every ghetto child is born healthy, learns to read and write in grade school, graduates from high school, has a private or government-created job waiting at the end of the The concept is simple, Lemann concludes: "The government should be trying to break the hold of those aspects of the ghetto culture that work against upward mobility, by constantly and powerfully encouraging ghetto residents to consider themselves part of the social structure of the country." To speak of a comprehensive government effort to rescue the black ghettos is to go against the grain of politics today. For our political system has essentially experiment known as 4 or Space-Vision. The featured film, "The Bubble," told the story of a young married couple and a flier who are lost in a strange world when their plane pierces an enormous plastic bubble around a section of Earth. Meanwhile, the bubble burst for Los Angeles theater, and activity slowed across the city. The Ivar presented its last play in 1973.

The Ivar became a strip joint the next year. Harout, who had sold the theater, died the same year. The Ivar turned seedy, along with the rest of Hollywood, and, instead ofcelebrities.the theater began featuring performers with names like Pretty Poison, Brown Sugar and Susannah of Savannah. By 1977, these women, whose average age was 19, earned $203 to shed their clothes 29 times a week, according to a news account. Most of them stayed with the job for about three weeks.

The strippers occasionally wandered next door, to the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library, though "not in huge numbers," recalled special collections librarian Sally Dumaux. The Ivar remained a strip pa-, lace until 1989, when the Inner City Cultural Center purchased it for just under $1 million. was perfect. Dear Ann Landers: Did you know that many motels will not rent rooms to anyone under the age of 21? Even if they have a major credit card? Our son, 20, was traveling from Worcester, to Pensacola Beach, Fla. Like most college students, he had planned to drive as long as he was able, then look for a place to sleep.

He contacted us around 10 o'clock in the evening and said he hoped to make it to Atlanta that night and avoid the heavy traffic. At about 2:00 a.m. he spotted a motel along the interstate that looked good and requested a room. After filling out the form and producing his credit card and driver's license, he was informed by the night clerk that because he was under 21, he could not check in. Since he was not familiar with the area and was extremely tired, he stopped at the first rest area he found, locked the car doors and slept in the car.

The possibility of his being robbed, beaten or murdered is the reason I am writing to you. Parents of college-age students should kndw that this is the policy of many motel chains. McDonald's to debut lower-fat hamburger Voice of experience Ann Landers Associated Press OAK BROOK, 111. McDonald's will soon introduce nationally a low-fat hamburger called McLean Deluxe, according to published reports. Analysts said it could start a trend, and at least one health activist hailed the menu addition.

The McLean Deluxe, which underwent test-marketing beginning in November in Harrisburg, and eventually four other cities, will be available nationally April 26, The New York Times said today. It cited unidentified McDonald's franchisees. McDonald's Corp, refused to confirm the reports but scheduled a news conference today at its test kitchens in this Chicago suburb to announce the national introduction of what it described as "a major new product." Low-fat burgers have been offered before, but they relied on soy substitute for meat. Meat in the McLean is made from a new process using carra- you." She mentioned taking me to a counselor but she never did. That summer I became sexually active.

I married at 16, had three children, divorced, ran wild and neglected my kids. When I was 30, 1 married a nice man and put my life in order. But it has taken me until now, at age 49, to finally get myself to a therapist and deal with those feelings deep inside. Please tell that mother in Minneapolis to apologize to her daughter for reading the diary, tell her daughter that she loves her, show her daughter this column and then take her for counseling immediately. It will be the greatest gift that mother could give.

Been There Myself in Norfolk, Va. Dear Bless you for sitting in my chair today. Your answer 1 99 1 L.A. Times Syndicate Dear Ann Landers: I am writ: ing in response to the letter from "Perplexed Mother in Minneapolis." The mother had found her daughter's diary which recounted incidents involving sex, drinking, shoplifting, etc. The mother knew the stories were untrue.

You urged her to get profes-sional counseling for the daughter at once. Your advice was right on the money. When I was 14, 1 did exactly the same thing. That letter could have been written by my mother, but instead of writing to Ann Landers, she confronted me. I admitted that I was making those stories up, although some of them were pretty close to the truth.

Mom's response was, "I don't know what in the world to do with.