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Horse kilted by gunshot Owner suspects hunters; shot was fired near house. Page 13 Republican etown Newspaper of H Clinton, Essex, Franklin Counties The Hometown Newspaper of Vol. 103 - No. 108 © Copyright 1996, PrtM-Republiean Plottsburgh, NY 12901, Friday, December 8,1995 Suggested Price: 50 c 30 Pages Potent new AIDS drug By LAURAN NEERGAARD Assocititfed Press Writer J WASHINGTON (AP) - AIDS patients will be able to buy by Saturday the first of a long-an- ticipated new generation of AIDS drugs, the most powerful yet to stall but not cure the deadly virus. The Food and Drug Ad- ministration approved sa- quinavir Thursday, the first pro- tease inhibitor approved any- where in,-the world,, to be used with older medicines to slow the HIV virus- and boost patients' immune systems. This new class of drugs crip- ples an enzyme vital to the late stages of HIV's reproduction while older AIDS medicines work at the front end — meaning doc- . tors finally can deal the virus a one-two punch. . \This is ... perhaps the most important class of drugs in the fight against HIV so far,\ said FDA Commis.sioner David Kessler, who approved sa- quinavir in a record 97 days. Manufacturer Hoffman-La Roche Inc., of Nutley, N.J., said saquinavir will be on pharmacy shelves nationwide by Saturday. Sold under the brand name In- virase, a year's supply will cost $5?8&0- ; wholesale, although. Roche could not give*a retail price. • . Some AIDS activists were outraged at the price and pledged protests to try to lower it. \It is unconscionable,\ said Martin Delaney of Project Inform, which got the price of.the first AIDS drug, AZT, cut from $8,000 to $2j000 several years ago, But Roche noted that it takes 15 months to make saquinavir. The company started a. new pro- gram Thursday to push insurers to pay for saquinavir promptly and give it free to the uninsured. All other AIDS drugs sold to- day are nucleoside analogs, which block a protein active in the early reproduction cycle of the virus until HIV develops resistance to them. They are: AZT, 3TC, dfdl, ddC and d4T. Protease inhibitors block an enzyme called protease, which is vital to the final stages of HIV replication. Administering the two types of drugs together allows doctors for the first time to attack HIV in two separate places. ...Patients - who took saquinavir together with AZT had an average 30- to 40-cell boost in their level of vital immune cells, and an 85 percent drop in the HIV in their blood, Saquinavir does not work Continued Page 12 Flying into the future Staff Photo/Mike Dowd Santa Claus watches as a huge replica of himself is hoisted by crane to be placed on the B-47 Strato-Jet Bomber \Pride of the Adirondacks\ at the Clyde A. Lewis Air Park Thursday. Santa on the bomber will remain, at least for now, a lasting tradi- tion of the former Pittsburgh Air Force Base. Clinton budget offered NASA awaits more data on orbiting moons By JANE E.ALLEN AP Science Writer PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - A; 746-pound probe released from the Galileo spacecraft entered, the harsh, whirling gases of Jupiter's atmosphere on a suicide mission Thursday and began sending back long-awaited data. A cheer went up among NASA,, workers and there were hand- shakes and back slaps all around - when it was confirmed at 3:15 • p.m. that the probe was trans-' mitting information back to its trailing Galileo mother ship. \Fantastic!\ said Torrence Johnson, Galileo project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labo- ratory in Pasadena. \Wow! You never really believe it till you see it.\ _ After slamming into -the at- mosphere at 106,000 mph, the giant, squat cone was to \drop more than 125--miles by parachute, sending data for 75 minutes before being crushed by air pressure 20 times greater than Earth's. ' AP'Photo An an artist's rendering, the Galileo probe approaches Jupiter, heading for the indicated impact target drawn on this photo of the giant planet. \We've never, never sampled a • giant planet. We'll figure out what this atmosphere is made of over 600 million miles away,\ said Wesley T. Huntress, .NASA associate administrator for space science. Previous space missions have analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Venus. But Jupiter is different; the giant planet is sur- rounded by powerful magnetic fields and intense radiation, and is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, the elements in the primordial mix that once con- densed into the solar system. After receiving weather and chemical data from the probe, Galileo was to fire its engine and Jupiter swing into orbit around Jupiter for two years of study. The varying orbits are expected to provide images of eight of the planet's 16 known moons. By illuminating those moons, as well as Jupiter's rings, its in- tense magnetic field and its swarms of dust and charged par- ticles, the mission could give the \best view ever of the planet's composition. Up to now, the best glimpses of extraterrestrial bodies have come from the Hubble Space Tele- scope, whose mirror is less than 8 feet across. - \You would need a Hubble Space Telescope over 10 m-iles in diameter to get images of the moons as good,\ Johnson said. \There's no substitute in this business for getting your instru- ments up close.\ Detailed data from the at- mospheric encounter won't be available until mid-December at the earliest. Scientists speculated that after the probe passed through a high layer of ammonia crystal clouds, it would reach a stew of ammonia compounds swirling in hurricane winds/up to 200 mph. After that, scie'ntists said, the probe would probably encounter heavy rain and lightning before Continued Page 12 Benefits shrink; GOP calls plan too optimistic By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) - Under Republican pressure, President Clinton reluctantly presented a seven-year balanced-budget plan Thursday that would shrink Social Security raises and offer Republicans less than they want in tax cuts or savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans quickly criticized Clinton's offer. . House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, said it was \a minimum $400 billion in the hole\ from a balanced budget. \This is a tremendous disap- pointment and frankly they're going to have to come back to the table again, and they better do it quickly because we are running out of time,\ he said. In a meeting with congres- sional leaders, Clinton described his plan as \a good place to start discussions. I made a proposal. Now I'd like to see what theirs is.\ As for Kasich's reaction, Clin- ton said, \I don't think that's very constructive.\ • •.'••• Clinton's revised offer would ,,save $141 billion more than the budget he unveiled in June, with most of the new reductions in welfare, housing and transporta- tion. It was Clinton's third budget this year and marked another round of White House conces- sions in an increasingly bitter fight with the Republican Con- gress. \There darji better be some movement on the part of the Republican congressional negotiators now,\ said presiden- tial spokesman Mike McCurry. \If there's not, this will be a very short negotiation, I suspect.\ White House chief of staff Leon Panetta presented Clinton's latest offer to GOP budge.t negotiators in a \V-i hodr meeting on Capitol Hill. \There is not a lot of negotiating room here,\ Panetta said. Republicans plan to offer an alternative budget based on revised economic forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office next. week. Clinton personally explained his plan to a pivotal group of con- servative Democrats whose votes are being courted by both the White House and Republican \ leaders. The president coupled his plan with a request for a temporary spending bill to keep the gov- ernment running until Jan. 26. Continued Page 12 WEATHER Today, mostly sunny ; and cold. Highs near 20. Northwest winds around 1Q mph. Tonight, clear with increasing clouds late. Lows around zero. > ^ Classified ...20-24 Comics, Landers i.18 Entertainment 10 Arts, ....„.., 6,7 Pufclic Record 8,9 Sports^ 14-17 •Weather,^ 11 i . . • Lately: 768. 'Pick 4': 0115. ': 456. 'Pick 4': 6410. The Stupid Cat Who Stole Christmas Dec. 8 17 shopping days to Childhood friend donates kidney to dying classmate ByJUDIEGLAVE Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - They took piano lessons together as children. They sang in the high school chorus. But Susan Keams Benner and Bennett Scott lost -touch for 32 years,-until she gave her old friend the-ultimate gift: a kidney to save his life. At first, Benner's offer over- w.h e 1 me d' S.c o 11, 5 1, a transplanted Southerner who how lives in Midland Park, N.J. \I was so very sick,\ Scott said, sitting next to. Benner in her hospital room at Columbia Pres- byterian Medical Center, where the/transplant operation was pejfppmed. \I can remember %$|&fltoit ltt My if d I pejfppmed. I can remember r%$|&fltoit letter. M wife and I held tacjibother and cried.\ liili doctors — surgeon Dr. Marjt Hardy ; and internist Dr. David Coheif' — say Scott had just a 50-50 chance of surviving another three years without a new kidney. Scott offered his own diagnois: \I was dying.\ Scott, a diabetic for 23 years, learned .in 1992 that he was a victim of the.mo&t common cause of kidney fai-1-ure: ch.r-o-n.ic, diabetes. He began dialysis — a gruel- ing, time-consuming task that flushes waste from the body when the kidneys give out — in 1994. Twice, the cure nearly kill- ed him; he suffered infections caused by long-term dialysis. Then his angel appeared in the form of Benner: a petite woman with frosted hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a generous smile that makes her eyes crinkle and her, face light up. The two were reunited when Benner, 51, now of Stevensville, Md., began organizing the Myrtle Beach High School Class of 1962's 33rd class reunion — an odd number. But Benner said no one orga- nized a 25th or 30th get-together. After receiving an uplifting call from an old classmate, she fig- ured, \Why wait?\ There was no way of knowing that one call would save Scott's\ life. Looking back, she believes there* was divine intervention:' \God did this.\ Hers is not only a gift, but a rare one at that. In the past 10 years, doctors at Columbia have done about 700 kidney transplants. Nearly all- were relatives donating to rela- tives, Cohen said; only three were friends giving to friends. Though Scott still faces the risk of rejection and his underlying diabetes problem--will likely contaminate this kidney in 10-15 years, his illness can be managed with daily insulin shots and a strict diet, Hardy says. Benner will be out of work for about six weeks but should have few restrictions after that, the doctors said. Both are scheduled to go home on Friday. Although they were friends since elementary school, \We were never what you'd call bosom buddies,\ says Scott, a soft Southern twang still evident after decades of living up north. They shared the same piano teacher as children. They sang in the high school chorus together. They worked together on the high school yearbook; she was the editor, he \a lowly typist.\ After high school the two went their separate ways: She into a marriage that didn't last and an undergraduate degree in music education from the University of North Carolina; he to the Uni- Continued Page 12 . t >
