Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 5 April 2001 — Page 6

The Munde Times, April 5, 2001, page 6

NEWS BRIEFS

government by a small group,” Conyers emphasized that each complaint must be analyzed, because so little attention is being given to what he perceives to be the most important challenge to this Congress. “Neither the president, the attorney general, nor the speaker of the House has said one word about election reform,” Conyers said. Brown added, “Never again will what happen in Florida happen in this country.” The passionate 5 hour hearing, held on Capitol Hill, featured an all-star witness panel, including 18 top civil rights and congressional representatives. It was the first congressional hearing on reports of thousands of voting irregularities in Florida. The hearing was held to obtain detailed reports of wrongs suffered by some voters on Election Day and to establish guiding principles of election reform legislation to go before Congress. The next congressional move will be to hold heanngs and town hall meetings around the country to gather information, before introducing reforms by July’s summer recess. Kweisi Mfume, chairman and CEO of the NAACP, testified that at a public hearing held by the NAACP in Miami. “We heard tearful testimony about polling officials challenging African American voters and

demanding that they produce photo identification, without doing the same to white voters.”’ Representatives of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the AFL-CIO, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, People for the American Way, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Linder Law, and the National Organization for Rehabilitated Offenders (NORO) also testified. Maynard Jackson, development chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the “sophistication of the oppression in America is getting greater and greater.” The challenge now, said Jackson, is “to compile the facts, a bill of particulars.” Reform ideas tentatively on the table are uniform voting machines, bilingual poll workers, voter education programs, and making it a felony to impede someone’s right to vote. NORO President Henry W. Richardson of Richmond, Va., who asked the CBC to include legislation for voting rights for convicted felons in its election reform, encouraged the group to persist with its goals. “Make no mistake about it: Congressional Black Caucus intends to keep this issue before us,” said Caucus chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. The Texas Democrat

made it clear in her opening statement that voter disenfranchisement is not a racial issue. “This is not a black, white or brown issue. It is an American issue,” she said, “This is our number one legislative priority.” The caucus was joined by several white Democrats, including House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), who has established a Special Democratic Caucus Committee on Election Reform. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), will chair the panel which, Gephardt said, “will explore the issues of updating voting machinery, educating voters, enforcing and strengthening voting laws and disseminating bestelection practices.” New breast cancer treatment offers hope For the first time, a genetic test can quickly determine which type of breast cancer a woman has, raising the possibility for new, effective treatments. This technology could soon enable doctors to select the most promising treatment, with the fewest side effects, according to researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). “This powerful new technology gives us a snapshot of exactly which genes are active in a tumor cell,” said Jeffrey Trent, NHGRI scientific director and head of the NHGRI Cancer Genetics

laboratory. “This capability will have important implications for both diagnosis and treatment.” The recently reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, that examining the activity of 51 genes enabled them to distinguish, with surprising ease, among three types of breast cancer: the non-inherited form, and inherited forms caused by the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. Five to 10 percent of breast tumors are hereditary, and usually strike younger women. Women with a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have about an 80 percent lifetime risks of getting breast cancer. Currently, determining breast cancer types is difficult to do by examining tumors under a microscope. And using gene sequencing, or looking for a misspelling in a gene’s long alphabet code, to find mutations in the two huge genes known to cause breast cancer is expensive and time consuming. While the Human Genome Project has determined nearly the entire code spelling, out of the 30,000-some genes in humans, scientist still must learn what most genes do. The new technique uses computers and fluorescent “labels” placed on DNA from tumors. It is called geneexpression profiling because genes express, or make proteins. The technique will allow

doctors to “short-circuit the need to know the sequence and function of every gene” to find the best treatment. “Instead of saying, trying a toxic drug with only a 30 percent success rate, doctors could determine which drug is most likely to work for an individual woman, or whether to perform a bone marrow transplant instead,” said Marvin Schwalb, director of the Center for Human and Molecular Genetics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. “The research will enable development of drugs that precisely target genes involved in the mechanisms of cancer. Standard cancer drugs indiscriminately kill dividing cells, causing nausea, hair loss, even death,’’Trent said. Last year, according to Trent, one-third of the cancer drugs approved, his specific target. 3 Chattanooga men appeal convictions Three black anti-police brutality activist convicted of disrupting a meeting of the Chattanooga, (Tenn.) City Council almost 3 years ago said they would appeal their convictions. After less than an hour of deliberations, a criminal court jury of seven whites and three black, found Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Damon McGree and Mikail Musa Muhammad (Ralph P. Mitchell) guilty of disrupting the May 19,