Faculty Bibliography

The worldwide epidemic of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, threatens to infect 40 million to 120 million people by the year 2000, and international efforts to stop the spread of the fatal disease have stalled, a leading AIDS research group said yesterday. Dr. Michael Merson, who heads the AIDS program at the organization, said its estimates were based on government reports. Many countries suppress reports about AIDS and other diseases, but Merson said the organization would stand by its estimates. Merson responded that the annual meeting of the World Health Organization last month had adopted 'a new global AIDS strategy' that gives countries a framework for battling AIDS

Unlike conventional CPR, which involves compressing the chest to force blood through the heart, the device both compresses and actively decompresses the chest. The disk in the rubber-and-plastic device works like a plunger, alternately pushing down and pulling up. With the new device performing both compression and decompression actively, more blood is pumped through the coronary arteries than with CPR. It has the further advantage of drawing air into the lungs. Ten cardiac arrest victims who were not revived by standard CPR were then chosen by lot to receive two minutes of resuscitation with either standard CPR or the device, followed by the alternative technique

A new device for reviving people whose hearts have stopped that was inspired by the suction power of a toilet plunger is discussed. The device, called Cardiopump, which was developed by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, will be tested by rescue workers in several cities in the US

Unlike traditional CPR, which involves compressing the chest to force blood through the heart, the device both compresses and decompresses the chest. The disk in the rubber-and-plastic device works like a plunger, alternately pushing down and pulling up. The Cardiopump is placed on a victim's bare chest. Gripping the device with both hands, much as in using a steering wheel, the rescuer pushes and pulls on it the same 80 times a minute as in standard CPR. Because standard CPR fails to revive the overwhelming majority of cardiac-arrest victims outside a hospital, scientists have sought new ways to improve the standard CPR technique used since 1960

In one of the first systematic looks at how prescription drugs are advertised, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles reported that advertisements in medical journals were often misleading about the safety and effectiveness of new drugs

HHV-6, a recently discovered herpes virus, has been found to be a major cause of high fever and illness in children under the age of three, according to a new study released in the New England Journal of Medicine

An assessment of the eyewitness account recently given, 28 years after the fact, by physician Charles A. Crenshaw, a surgeon on the trauma team that tried to save President John F. Kennedy, is presented. Crenshaw has co-authored 'J.F.K. Conspiracy of Silence.'

Dr. Crenshaw was also on the team that tried to resuscitate Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassin was shot, and one of Dr. Crenshaw's most astonishing assertions is that he answered a call from the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, who asked about Oswald's condition. Johnson also demanded a 'death-bed confession from the accused assassin,' Dr. Crenshaw wrote. 'I vividly remember someone said, and I can't say who it was, the White House is calling and President Johnson wants to know what the status of Oswald is,' Dr. [Phillip E. Williams] said, adding, 'I heard the statement in the operating room, and it was not Dr. Crenshaw's book or anyone else who revived my thoughts about this because I have said this for years.' A bizarre aspect of the new account is why Dr. Crenshaw waited more than 28 years to break his silence. He said the chief reasons were 'career-mindedness' and an edict from superiors that no surgeon involved was to profit from his experience such as saying 'you treated the President of the U.S. to get a leg up in establishing a surgical practice.' He wrote, 'To this day, I do not understand why the Warren Commission did not interview every doctor in President Kennedy's room.'

Dr. [James J. Humes] said his original notes were indeed 'missing,' but only because he had copied them verbatim and then burned them because they were spattered with [John F. Kennedy]'s blood and he didn't want them to survive to become a ghoulish collector's item someday.

Two pathologists who conducted the autopsy of slain President John F. Kennedy reaffirmed their original findings that Kennedy was hit by only two bullets from above and behind his motorcade. Recent interviews conducted by James J. Humes and J. Thornton Boswell, in which they attacked assertions to the contrary made by physician Charles A. Crenshaw, author of the recently published 'J.F.K. Conspiracy of Silence,' are cited