Community Briefs

Friday, November 13, 1998

Community Briefs

Phen-fen causes

only small injury

Patients who took the diet drug Redux (dexfenfluramine) or a
drug combination known as phen-fen for longer than three months
showed some cardiovascular abnormalities, but at levels not
currently regarded as clinically significant, according to a study
to be presented by a UC Irvine College of Medicine researcher at
the American Heart Association’s Annual Scientific Sessions.

The study was sponsored by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, the
company that marketed Redux and Pondimin (Wyeth’s trade name for
fenfluramine). The combination of fenfluramine and another drug,
phentermine, was commonly known as phen-fen.

The study, presented by Dr. Julius M. Gardin, chief of UCI’s
Division of Cardiology, showed that patients taking the drugs for
longer than three months had an increase in a cardiovascular
problem called valvular regurgitation, or "leaking" ­ but at
levels that are currently not considered harmful. Patients who had
taken the drugs for fewer than three months showed no increase in
one form of regurgitation, but those taking phen-fen showed
increases of a mild degree of another type of regurgitation.
Further studies are planned to obtain additional data on these
issues, Gardin said.

Scholars study

gap between races

Reducing the gap between white and black performance on academic
achievement tests is one of the few feasible policy measures most
likely to move America toward real racial equality ­ yet the
issue has been ignored by social scientists and the federal
Department of Education.

A major commitment to new research is needed to obtain what we
now lack ­ a basic understanding of why the gap persists,
argue two scholars from the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social
Research and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in
their new book, "The Black-White Test Score Gap" (Brookings).

"The available evidence shows that traditional explanations for
the gap do not work very well," write Meredith Phillips, an
assistant professor of policy studies at UCLA, and Christopher
Jencks, the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard,
co-editors of the book.

"Current research raises as many questions as it answers. Most
social scientists have chosen safer topics and hoped the problem
would go away. It hasn’t."

While research has failed to identify the chief causes of the
problem, it does show that there is cause for optimism, Phillips
and Jencks assert in the book, which the New York Times called
"masterful" and "sobering" in a recent review.

"The black-white test score gap does not appear to be an
inevitable fact of nature," they wrote. "While it is clear that
eliminating the test score gap would require both enormous effort
by both blacks and whites and would probably take more than one
generation, we believe it can be done."

Nobel Laureate receives UCLA Medal

Nobel Laureate William F. Sharpe, who earned three academic
degrees from UCLA’s economics department, was awarded the
university’s highest honor, the UCLA Medal, Nov. 2.

Sharpe, the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance at Stanford
University’s Graduate School of Business, received the medal at an
event inaugurating the newly appointed Armen A. Alchian Chair in
Economic Theory. Sharpe, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic
Sciences in 1990, was a student of Alchian’s at UCLA and considered
him to be a valuable role model as well as his thesis adviser.

"He taught his students to question everything," Sharpe said of
Alchian. "In his classes we were able to watch a first-rate mind
work on a host of fascinating problems. I have attempted to emulate
his approach to research ever since."

Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports

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