Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier (Newspaper) - April 2, 2000, Waterloo, Iowa Kosovo Success or NATO campaign hi Kosovo stirs up opposing opinions Focus Fl SUNDAY Then there were two April 2 2000 Michigan State Florida to face off for Sports 01 178 pages Farm injury Disabled Ackley fanner helps others cope with injuries Business Cl WATERLOO CEDAR FALLS Airport acrobats Waterloo Airport employees must wear many hats Metro Bl GREG BROWN Courier Stall Photographer Martin and Martha Miller spend a quarter of their monthly income on prescription medications a hearth care cost that isn't covered by Medicare The Millers situation is typical of millions of elderly Americans whose plight has prompted lawmakers to consider adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare The next great human rights battle won't be about humans at all Drug costs a drain on financial health For fixed-income seniors prescriptions can eat up half of annual income By META Courier Staff Writer In 199.8 Miller spent more prescription drugs For the Millers live on a little Politicians more than S 1 battling over a year it was how to cover ly half of their bills for pills annual income Page AS Martin 82 takes 13 in the morning and eight at night to treat emphysema ma diabetes and congestive heart failure Martha 78 is legally blind and takes medications for high blood pressure poor circulation and roid problems Thanks to free drug samples from their doctor the Waterloo couple spent just on prescriptions last year but that's still a hefty sum they said When one little bottle of 30 pills costs you spend a lot of money in a said Martin a retired farmer Martha retired from Allen tal after 14 years as a housekeeping supervisor and receives a small monthly pension It pays the electric she said The couple relies on Medicare Part A Medicare Part B and mental Blue Shield insurance to cover medical costs Medicare Part A for which there is no out-of-pocket cost pays for care in hospitals skilled nursing facilities hospice and some home health care Medicare Part B for which there is a monthly premium covers doctors outpatient hospital care and physical and therapy Neither Part A nor Part B covers prescription drugs The couple's Blue Shield policy acts as supplemental Rising drug prices Prices for the prescription drugs most often used by older Americans are skyrocketing far beyond inflation generally says Families USA an advocacy group that wants Congress to add drug benefits to Medicare University of Minnesota released last November In 1998 wholesale prices for 50 filled by the elderly rose more than four times the overall inflation rate Between January 1994 and January 1999 prices for the same prescriptions rose nearly double the overall inflation rate Among prescriptions rising the most from 1994 to 1999 all prices are for a year's 0.13 mg tablets used heart failure rose from to an 88 percent increase Imdur 60 mg tablets used to treat the chest pain angina more than doubled in cost from to Furosemide 40 mg diuretic tablets used to treat high blood pressure more than doubled in price from to 20 mg tablets used to combat ulcers rose from to Zocor 10 mg tablets used to control cholesterol levels rose from to KNIGHT PHOTO A pair of chimpanzees have a snack at oldest ape retirement village in San tekas Animals at the facility come from a variety of the space program Hollywood movies and medical experiments Today COURIER graphic insurance for the Millers covering additional medical services that care Part A or Part B don't cover But that insurance comes at a high cosl every three months and it doesn't cover prescriptions either At an average of a month prescription drug costs eat up a quarter of the couple's monthly Social Security income We're making Martha said The Millers aren't alone According to the Wall Street nal prescription drags are the single See DRUG COSTS page A6 The Seattle Times Sometime in the next decade a chimpanzee will have its day in court and on that day it will be decided whether chimps are people too At this is the goal of an ambitious group of lawyers fighting to tle the legal principle that animals are mere property with no mental rights The lawyers call it the Great Ape Legal Project Its supporters hail from some of the most prestigious ties and law schools in the land The goal what see as the next logical step in the movement is to raise the status of great apes from property to legal sons with rights to life and liberty and perhaps even the pursuit of happiness Says Joyce Tischler founder of a national network of We're pushing the lope until we can press a case in which the animal is the plaintiff Some of the more theatrical voices in the movement describe a scenario in which a great ape would testify on its own behalf in a protesting its life behind bars The ape would use sign language or a voice sizer While the ape may not win the presence of a chimpanzee in a room could rattle some age-old pre- suppositions about the differences between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom A more realistic scenario says Bellevue Wash attorney Steve Ann Chambers a leader of the ape ject would be videotaped testimony of a chimpanzee in its own setting The videotape then be shown in court to demonstrate the capacity to communicate complex thoughts and emotions The question at the core would be whether chimpanzees and other great apes possess the tics that qualify them as legal sons The property status of mals is what allows humans to buy and sell them breed and ment on them eat them and make their body parts into trinkets and briefcases If animals gain legal standing it would allow for dramatic changes in the way animals could be protected Not that animals would file suits but as legal persons they could be represented in court by human guardians who could do the filing and fighting in the animals behalf Broader movement The ape project is the leading point in a broader movement that ly hopes to bestow legal standing to many different kinds of animals The movement in concert with other campaigns to protect animals arid fueled by discoveries in ics and neuroscience has given rise to a burgeoning new legal specialty Animal law is where tal law was 25 years ago Chambers says The area has been called the next legal frontier courses are now taught at Harvard Yale See RIGHTS page A8 Serial killer art for sale on the Internet Local police say victims of former Waterloo man's crimes should get profits By JEFF REINITZ Courier Staff Writer Artwork by an executed suburban Chicago serial killer who once lived in Waterloo is up for sale on the Inter- net But some local authorities say the proceeds from paintings and other items associated with the late John Wayne should go to the people he harmed Any money should go to the tims said Capt John Sewick with the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office There should be no profit from his crimes Sewick was involved in the gation that busted Gacy for sodomy in Waterloo in 1968 Gacy served a prison sentence for that crime and then moved to Illinois where he killed 33 people males from 1975 to 1978 burying many of the bodies in a crawl space under his Des Plaines home He was convicted of 33 murders in 1980 sentenced to death for 12 of them and life imprisonment on each of the rest and executed by lethal injection in 1994 Sewick doesn't know how anyone can look at artwork mostly ink drawings and oil paintings of See GACY page A9 Courtesy photo This painting of Pogo the Clown by serial killer John Wayne Gacy sate on the Internet along with other Gacy memorabilia Spring forward Did you i remember to set your clocks and watches forward one hour for saving i It's a life and we keep stepping on the accelerator Frenetic pace of modem life has us in a rush to get nowhere and fast Knight Ridder Newspapers DALLAS One morning as Dana Gibson drove through traffic at a sonable speed a car zipped past her She watched as the hothead at the wheel wove in and out among moving vehicles I remember wondering where he was going in such a says son a Dallas real-estate agent and mother of two A few miles later I stopped for gas And who should pull in behind me but that guy Ah the rush to nowhere We inch through red lights slink out of church before the benediction pound the essentially useless close door ton on elevators And all for what? To rush somewhere else we'll be in a hurry to leave With the rush most Americans are in even if Moses was on the news for the 10 Commandments Dan Rather would go on the air and boil it down to the four main says Matthew Felling media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington Maybe he's not Stores start bringing out Christmas merchandise around the time most of us are carving pumpkins St Patrick's Day decorations go on shelves before Valentine's Day Less than a year after the 1996 tion presidential hopefuls Steve Forbes Dan Quayle and Lamar Alexander took tentative steps toward running on the 2000 ballot In that case however the early birds did not get the nomination worm Popular TV sitcoms last only a hour But apparently that's too long for many folks to sit shows may be in the wings Felling says People get visibly upset when an elevator doesn't arrive within seconds Ditto for how long the door takes to close once they're inside Actual time About four seconds ing to research by Otis Elevator Co Books show how to slash time on everything from reading to our dren One-Minute Bedtime Stories to therapy Shortcut Through 10 Principles of See RUSH page A9 Bridge Cipher Crossword Class Daily Record n B5 Horoscopes a Iowa B CIO Lifestyles Markets B H A2 Opinion B s F5 I I I Metro a I Obituaries a I Sports a I Travel a
