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The Augusta News-Review - November 1. 1973, ■Walking fl ml I H Dignity by Al Irby I MEDICAL DOCTORS ARE FINDING OUT THAT NATURE HAS USE FOR EVERY ORGAN IT PUT IN THE HUMAN ANATOMY. RECENT RESEARCH HAS TURNED UP EVIDENCE THAT TONSILS PLAY AN IMPORTANT PART IN THE BODY’S IMMUNITY SYSTEM. THE DEBATE OVER WHEN SURGERY IS JUSTIFIED RAGES IN MEDICAL CIRCLES. Not very many years ago, removing children’s tonsils was a medical-religious must. Now it turns out that many top-flight doctors assail tonsillectomy as dangerous and useless. In 1972, this ambiguous surgery was the result of 300 deaths at a cost of $375 million to the victims families. This operation is still the most common surgical procedure in our nation, with over a million performed every year. Inspite of the fact that these operations have been performed for over 2500 years, they have in recent years become one of the most controversial issues in medical annals. TONSILS HELP THE BODY FIGHT OFF MANY AILMENTS-The exact immunization by which tonsillectomy alters the progress of polio showed that tonsillectomy reduced poliovirus antibody levels, which protected against the disease for periods up to seven months after the operation. Also medical researchers are linking tonsillectomy to Hodgkin’s Disease. Although the Hodgkin’s disease debate is just beginning, a clear lurk between tonsillectomy and subsequent development of bulbar-poliomyelitis has been observed for many years. The most dramatic evidence that tonsillectomy increases the risk of this crippling and often fatal form of polio is an ipidemiological study of an Akron, Ohio, family in 1942. Five of the family’s six children had their tonsils and adenoids removed during the summer of 1941. Within the few weeks after the operation, all five had become acutely ill with bulbar polio, and three of the children died. The parents and the child who hadn’t had a tonsillectomy remained well. Epidemiologists investigating the case determined that the children were all carrying the polio virus at the time of their operation. The operation they concluded, caused what otherwise would probably have been a mild form of the disease to develop into the severe bulbar polio. A group of researchers led by Nicholas Vianna of the New York State Department of Health’s Bureau of Cancer Control recently published a study showing the people who had tonsillectomies were nearly three times as likely to develop Hodgkin’s disease. (Os course, the risk of contracting the disease under any circumstances is very slight; less than 5,000 cases are reported each year in the United States.) tn their report, the doctors suggest that the tonsils act as a barrier to many diseases, and that their removal weakens the body’s defense. These results were supported by several subsequent studies one of these studies was conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Health's National Cancer Institute. In a study of 200 patients, Drs. Sandra Johnson and Ralph E. Johnson found definite correlation between the tonsillectomy history and the clinical features of Hodgkin’s disease. Several scienctists, who were a bit reluctant at first corroborated the Johnsons’ findings. “Ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the T and A’s being done today are absolutely unnecessary.” Dr. A. Frederick North, Jr., visiting professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said, “some 300 children die each year from complications arising out of the futility of tonsilllectomy senseless surgery.” And he added, “The benefits are too small and uncertain, while the costs are real and substantial.” THE STAGGERING COST IS AN ISSUE AS WELL-States should pass drastic laws to force “operating happy” surgeons to study this vital medical problem more thoroughly. Because there are too many physicians who argue that it’s often hazardous not to operate. Dr. Joseph L. Goldman, a New York Otolarnyngologist who is professor and director emeritus of the Department of Otolaryngology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Mount Siani Hospital, made this statement: “Because the operations represent one-fourth of the surgery performed on children in this country each year, and two-thirds of the operations are on children under ten years of age, many cases could be treated successfully.” This great medical controversy amounts to more than a technical non-philosophical debate on an arcane subject. It’s significant economic issue as well; with about $375 million spent annually on a surgery that has not been researched sufficiently. This operation, that is so important to thousands of American families, is a laughing affair among medical students in the Medical Schools of our nation. The lay-population knows very little of tonsils and adenoids, and less about their functions. The tonsils are two masses of lymphoid tissue, each about the size of an unshelled peanut, that are embedded in the sides of the throat behind the tongue. The adenoids are a mass of tissue about half the size of the tonsils, located on the throat. Healthy tonsils and adenoids are believed to act as a barrier to infections that enter the body through the nose and mouth. Maybe the ease with which the operation is performed is an incentive to most operation happy doctors. Surgery to remove them even when they beomce infected takes about an hour, and is usually accompanied only by a day or two in the hospital. HOW NAIVE CAN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION BE ?-Much of the controversy surrounding the faddish operations have been centered on charges by many doctors that the criteria for doing it are confusing and contradictory and shift with fashion, in the late 19205, for example, the operation was though by some to be a cure for goiter, diabetes and epilepsy. As recently as 1956, it was recommended in one study as a treatment for nightmares, night sweats, snoring and bad breath. Even today, standard pediatric textbooks differ on this subject. Generally speaking, tonsillectomies are suggested treatment for chronically infected or abscessed tonsils only; and denoidectomies are recommended only for repeated ear infections and breathing difficulties or deafness caused by enlarged or obstructive adenoids. As evidence for the iack of firm knowledgable criteria for the operations, many critics say that the frequency with which most of these operations are performed varies sharply from community to community. One study showed that in Newburgh, New York, the proportion of young children who had tonsillectomies was three times greater than adjacent Kingston, N.Y. DOCTORS PLAY IT COOL ECONOMiCALLY-Although poor families have “Medicaid Cards”, tonsillectomy is notably higher in white middle-class children. ALLEN UNIVERSITY SEEKS LOST ALUMNI “We Need You” Name Address Year Please send mail to: « Alien Um. . IS3? Harden St, Columbia, SC 29204 Page 4 I PLACES W’ I with Philip Waring fl BLACK POWER AND AUGUSTA Last summer when visiting Augusta, I had several discussions with friends about “Black Power”. What is meant by “Black Power” for America’s 25 million Negroes, here for 350 years, helped build the nation, fought in every war to defend the republic but yet are not yet free? 1 would like to share with our News-Review readers a column on this subject written by Frank Stanley, Publisher of the Louisville Defender, co-founder and past president of the NNPA, member of many presidential commissions, and a elderstatesman of the Black Press. When you read Frank’s column go through it a second tune and see how this would apply to the CSRA. Make notes! Now let’s read Frank Stanley: BLACKS MUST ACT FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE RACE We continue to hear rhetoric about Black power and its practical uses to open new doors of opportunity for 25 million Black Americans. Throughout history we have been struggling as a group to amass Black Power. We have even been mindful of many existing powers such as; Catholic Power, Political Power, Jewish Power, and more certainly Money Power. By living continuously in an atmosphere of power constellations, we have been constantly aware of the forces which have direct effect upon their very existence. Power of itself is not evil. It is the misuse of power which should result in fear, however, in this land, whites continually associate Blackness with sordid and evil intent; once “Power was associated with the adjective “Black”, the white majority, guilty of decades of misuse of white power, became tearful that Black Power would be used in a form of retribution. ... So we ask ourselves: What does it avail us if we have access to a restaurant but have no money to pay for a meal? What does it avail us if segregated schools are illegal and yet the majority of our children still are required to attend segregated and inferior schools because we are forced, for the most part, to live in discriminatory housing, and what does it avail us, if the only means of acquiring even a modicum of school desegregation - busing - becomes such a false emotional political issue, that even non-thinking Blacks are caught up in the “anti” tide against it? What does it avail us if Black unemployment is consistently more than twice as high as white unemployment? 1 submit that we no longer want civil rights alone we want civil liberties as well. We demand civil justice. Liberty for us must mean more than the freedom to beg bread or sleep in the park: Equality must provide more than an even grip on two ends of a dry bone. This is certainly not enough. Yes, we have torn down barriers. Now we must do what is even harder: We must build. We must educate the illiterate, train the unemployed, rebuild the ghettos, and bring new hope to the forgotten. It is a job of grand dimensions and great demands, it requires the acceptance of distinct personal responsibility. The civil rights struggle has no relevance for the child in the inferior school, the family in the slum, or the man in the relief line, until it helps them obtain a better education, better home, better job, and better medical care. Some time ago I read about a study made by two psychologists - one Black and one white on “Self Esteem and Racial Preference in Black Children”. They found, as we all knew, that Black youth have developed a higher self-esteem and consequently prefer people of their own color. These psychologists concluded: That the relationship between self-esteem and racial preference suggest that “Black is truly beautiful” and that Black children have come to appreciate then uniqueness, beauty and special value-experiencing some level of self love. This is good because “personal pride is essentially the expression of group pride.” But let us use this same Black pride to motivate us to not only think and talk Black, but to act Black, at all times, for the advancement of our race. One of the greatest by-products of Black pride and concerted Black action is “Black Power” Os course, i mean more than a symbolic clinched fist, or an afro or dashiki. I am talking about utilizing our Blackness, our pride, our buying power of $45 billion and our political power of over 15 million votes as unifying forces in leading all Blacks to demand complete self-determination. Meaningful Black power means: 1. Full development of the concept of negritude. 2. The demand for equitable political power which will only materialize when we Blacks of the midwest, north and west come to cherish the ballot as dearly and usefully as our Black brothers and sisters of the south and establish ourselves as co-equals of whites in the development of political action. 3. The Black Power demand tor economic and social control of Black ghettos, in short, since we are forced to live in the blighted neighborhoods of the cities, while whites flee to suburbia, then we must control their every aspect. This means active participation in civic programs, serving and working on committees and boards, financially supporting community projects and initiating beautification, rehabilitation and clean-up campaigns as well as wholesome recreation and cultural programs and the like. ■■MM■i / 722-6661} SA VE GAS ! r7 5/4VEMONEYINONESTOP SALE PRICES Floor Covering (No-Wax) '2?9£L 2.59 sq. yd. Cordless Hedge Trimmers 19.99 Premier 2.79 Paeon Vinyl Flat 3.99 Mansfield Closet Combination 28.99 Precut Studs 3/16 Vinyl Shield Panel G.P ■. 3.49 3/16 Coco Paneling U.S. Plywood 3.79 Mark II Vanities 69.95 10% off regular prices on other vanities 30 gal. Water Heaters 69.95 3-pc. Bathroom Set 89.95 Apt. sized Gas Ranges 139.95 42" Metal Kitchen Sinks .'BStOIL 74.95 Medicine Cabinets 4.99 3% x 16 Insulation ..." .'4rSa. 3.99 Vinyl-Shield Paneling ~»h9BL 3.49 1 /2x12x16 Lap Siding Primed 200.00 per M 3.20 3/8 Plywood 3.49 1/2" Plywood 3.99 Indoor Outdoor Carpet 1-99 sq. yd. OPEN 7:30 - 6:00 7:30 - 5:00 Sat. to be BY VERNON E. JORDAN, JR. J/ k ATLANTA SHOWS POLITICAL MATURITY I’ve known Atlanta’s new mayor-elect, Maynard Jackson, since the days when we both attended the segregated David T. Howard High School in Atlanta, a school whose textbooks were hand-me-downs from white schools that discarded them, a school that for a long time had no gym, a school whose Black students were often bused past half-empty all-white schools to maintain segregation. Maynard and 1 were in the school band together - I played trumpet, he played trombone. Now he seems to be playing the right kind of music for Atlantans, who just elected him the first Black mayor of a major Souther city in an election that has national significance. The lessons to be drawn from the Atlanta election are many, but perhaps the most immediately significant is the sophisication and maturity of Atlantans in general and Black voters in particular. Jackson’s opponent went all out in a campaign that appealed to the hidden racism of many people. He tried to tie Jackson to a more militant Black, Hosea Williams, running for council president, and took out scare ads in the papers that were headlined: “Atlanta is too young to die.” As other desperate politicians have learned, this approach backfired. In a city whose population is evenly divided between Blacks and whites, there is just too great an interest on everyone’s part in keeping racial hatred out of the picture. Jackson got over 20 percent of the white vote and might have gotten more if his opponent had not had a record and reputation of liberalism. The large number of whites voting for Jackson was a heartening indication of the city’s political maturity, but even more impressive was the Black vote. As expected it went overwhelmingly for Jackson, a qualified, popular Black candidate. But Black voters showed their independence of racial factors in the election for city council president. Over thrity percent voted for a white liberal with a reputation for racial fairness, deserting a Black candidate in the process, so many Blacks voted a split-ticket and brought an integrated team into City Hall. In one majority Black councilmanic district, a progressive white minister won over a popular Black candidate and both men kept race out of their campaign. Thus, we see a remarkable example of political sophistication at work among Black people who, let us not forget, were barred from voting throughout much of the South until only eight short years ago. In the first round of voting, Blacks rejected another Black candidate they saw as a “spoiler” to split the Black vote and united behind Jackson, and then in the run-off, split their votes to back an integrated city government that has a Black mayor, a white council president and a city council evenly divided among the races, 9 and 9. So Atlanta can be said to be the first American city that is truly bi-racial in its government and in its civic life. Hopefully, the Atlanta example will be the model for the nation, instead of the polarizing, hate-filled campaigns and results too common elsewhere. The hallmark of Jackson’s campaign and of his plans for the city is his concern for integrated solutions to the problems facing Atlantans, solutions that benefit whites and Blacks alike. His victory was based on community-wide support of both races and the team that campaigned for him was fully integrated, as well. So the new mayor-elect comes to office with a huge debt to the common people of the city, a gut commitment to integrated approaches to city government, and a heritage of public service. His grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs, was a pioneer in Black politics in Georgia and helped organize the Georgia Voters League and the Atlanta Negro Voters League, and his father, Dr. Maynard H. Jackson, was a leading Atlanta minister and teacher. So the new mayor has not only a deep commitment to the city and its people, but to a family tradition of service and excellence that bodes well for the future. We wish him well. SOUTHSIDE Z\ SHOE REPAIR fl \\ 3240 PEACH ORCHARD RD. |\ \\ zA & HWY. 25 F\Vz NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS SY/,/' ALL TYPES OF SHOE REPAIR, HAND BAG - \ GOLF BAG REPAIR ■ nHHMMHMVWT] i. 'Mv&Jtft -BUT MR. AGNEW IS Jfi GETTING OFF LIGHTLY, X- 2W I WHICH IS MORE THAN I COULD BE SAID FOR THE MFuf - f J INHATES HE SCORNED AT WJjEXf f ATTICA,OR THE STUDENT RADICALS HE CHARACTER- k'lJfi IZED AS BAD APPLES if I® TOBE SEPARATED FROM QiffXil WQ THE BARREL, OR THE jk f fflft STREET MOS GROWING (HffmwlMlCT-aCT ?' UP IN THE GHETTOS HE AVOIDED, HE SAID, IF YOU { YOU'VE SEEN THEM \ dicker lor NO BLACK TEARS ... THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY Mallory K. Millender Editor end PuNlaher Mailing Addraai: Box 953 Augurta, Ga. Phone 722-4656 Second Clan Postage Paid Augusta, Ga. 30901 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Payable in Advance One Year in Richmond County ..... $5.00 tax ipd. 6 Months $2.50 ta>t Ind. Ohe Year elsewhere $6.00 tax Ind. ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT Classified Advertising Deadline 12 noon on Tuesday Display Advertising Deadline 12 noon On Tuesday News Items Printed Free TALL Fashions JD | WDW Pawn Shop e DRESSES • SLACKS 549 Broad St> O *1 WYOS LOAN MONrI TAI fys/uMs'™. 72 8 2°. a 0035 WE SELL EVERYTHING | Entire Stock of Double Knit AMmwckA now WALL one low rnIIRw PR|CE f Oil at ! W W $59.00 NOW ALL * VV Double ' AM- Knit 0 4 Slucks 1 1 ijj AT fLI I ■ $16.00 l ufli 100% Polyester, < i ; 4 % M 100% Wool and Dacron, Wool |||fl| One Group Os FRl’’ Knit Slacks Now f J | 2 For $19.00 Felt Hats $10.95 865 BROAD STREET PHONE 724-7300 Cherokee Pawn Shop We carry all brands of guns. Jewelry, Stereo Equip. We Buy, Sell & Trade Phone 722-2930 416-9th St We De«e But Never Clete -24-Hour Service Jack Dempsey PrefasiMtl BoiNlsflNM Office Phene 724-1204 118 Ninth St. ANNOUNCEMENT Want to Adopt a Black Child ? Call the NAACP Adoption Project, Ask For Miss Joyce Tutt 722-5951 or visit Tabernacle Baptist Church 1224 Gwinnett Street Augusta, Georgia