Survival

Recent comments in the news tend to grossly misrepresent the "nuclear winter" theory. Edward Cornish in an Aug. 9 column in the View section asserts that nuclear war survivors "would be able to repopulate the Earth." This conclusion is based on the assumptions that there would be at least a few survivors in holes and remote corners of the world and that there would be some food available somewhere. These assumptions are reasonable but they do not support the repopulation conclusion.

The dwindling Indians of Brazil implored Pope John Paul II on Wednesday to help awaken international awareness of dire threats to their survival. The Pope met with 150 Indian representatives on the sweltering back patio of a Roman Catholic social agency in this western Brazilian city, a gateway to the vast Amazon forest.

Edwards Lifesciences Corp.'s minimally invasive heart valve kept 94% of patients alive a month after surgery, the best results yet for a technology that may grow into a $1.3-billion market for medical device makers. The death rate was half that in past studies of Sapien, a $30,000 valve that can be implanted without open-heart surgery. In another trial, closely held CoreValve Inc. reported a 93% survival rate after 30 days for its device.

Sixty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial established Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection in school curricula and the public consciousness, a new group of Doubting Thomases is taking aim at his doctrine of "survival of the fittest." The challenge is coming not from biblical Creationists, but from scientists themselves, who gathered in Fullerton last week for a conference to try to reconcile advances in molecular biology, genetics and physics with Darwinism.

Selling earthquake survival kits, Roberta Goldfeder has learned, is "like selling funeral plots. You're not the most popular guy in the world." She and Janet Kugel, both licensed vocational nurses, are partners with Gladys Jacques, a registered nurse, in the year-old "Extend-a-Life" Products and Services for Survival.

The sister of a man who said that he and five companions survived 35 days in the rubble of the Dec. 7 Armenian earthquake says the story was concocted so her brother could get into a good hospital, Soviet media reported Saturday. The Tass news agency said reporters had tracked down Aikaz Akopyan's sister, Julietta, who Akopyan said witnessed his rescue Jan. 11 from the ruins of his nine-story apartment building in the city of Leninakan.

Suddenly, time was their most precious possession. And there was precious little left, frequently not enough for mementos, photos, jewelry, even clothing. In the face of Sunday's firestorm, residents who fled the Parkwoods Apartments, a 433-unit complex off Highway 24, focused on one overriding fundamental--survival. "Our whole family history is down the drain," attorney Harold Friedman said Monday after talking with a State Farm insurance disaster team.

It was a New Year's resolution that saved Terry Gosier. Nothing grand, like a midlife career change or a move to Montana, but something simple: saving money. On Jan. 1, just 16 days before the 6.6 earthquake, the nurse and graduate student moved out of her home in the Northridge Meadows apartments and into cheaper student housing on the other side of the Cal State Northridge campus. At 4:31 a.m. last Monday, Terry Gosier's former home, Apt. 238, was destroyed.

A young woman walked into a restaurant last week and sat close enough to get a good look at Anne Hjelle's face. A mountain lion had torn off the left side four years before, leaving it hanging by a flap of skin. Six surgeries hadn't camouflaged the scars. "She saw me and had a deer-in-the-headlights look," said Hjelle, 35, of Mission Viejo. "She quickly got up and moved so she didn't have to look at me." The stranger's reaction didn't hurt Hjelle's feelings.

The people of the Carolinas, brought to ruin by Hurricane Hugo, jury-rigged their lives back together with pluck and ingenuity Saturday as the storm sputtered north, lost its punch as well as its name--and shut its evil eye for good. National Guardsmen by the hundreds patrolled streets. Police arrested at least 119 people for pillaging and breaking curfew. Authorities counted 18 dead in the Carolinas, two in Virginia and one in New York--bringing Hugo's weeklong toll to at least 48.