Veritas, Vol. 19, No. 04, October 9, 1978

              Vol. 19 No. 4 October 9 1978
Morrison named director of public relations
Richard E. Morrison
Richard E. Morrison will join the University of Miami on Oct. 16 as director of public relations. He has served for the past two years as director of university relations at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
He brings with him seven years’ experience in all aspects of academic public relations. From 1974-76, he was director of public relations for Elmira College, Elmira, N.Y.; was editorial director in the office of public relations at Boston College from 1972-74; and
from 1971-72 was administrative assistant to the dean of the School of Education at Boston College where he studied for his Ph.D. in higher education administration.
A veteran with the rank of captain in the Army, he was public information/ press relations officer from 1968-70 in Vietnam and from 1967-68 was personnel management officer in Stuttgart, Germany.
Morrison earned his Master of Education degree in English education
from Boston University in 1970 and his A.B. in English with minors in philosophy and classical languages in 1966 from St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, N.Y. He continues as a doctoral candidate at Boston College.
Morrison, 35, will head the newly established Office of Public Relations organized to coordinate liaison between the University and the media and other constituency groups. It will include the University News Bureau.
Symposium set on Camp David's aftermath
A “Symposium on the Aftermath of Camp David” will be presented by the University’s Center for Advanced International Studies, Thursday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. in UM’s Gusman Concert Hall. The Symposium is free and open to the public.
Dr. George S. Wise, director of the Center, will chair the symposium. Dr. Wise said, “The Camp David negotiations and agreements clearly are having enormous repercussions, but the issues remain extremely complex and
General faculty meeting set for Oct. 10
The traditional general faculty meeting on The State of the University has been called by President Henry King Stanford for Tuesday, Oct. 10.
The meeting will start at 4 p.m. in Brockway Lecture Hall, Otto G. Richter Library.
All faculty members and administrators are invited to attend.
are far from resolved. - The noted authorities who will speak to these issues will help put the meeting and hopes for peace in the Middle East into perspective.”
Dr. Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern
Studies at Princeton University, will speak on Camp David’s “Impact on and Reaction of the Arab Countries.”
“The Impact of Camp David and its Implications for Israel” will be discussed by Dr. Itamar Rabinovich, visiting professor of political science
and history and of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
The topic of Dr. Leo Labedz, editor of Survey: A Journal of East and West Studies, will be “Soviet-Arab Relations in Light of Camp David.”
Bernard Lewis	Itamar Rabinovich	l-eo l.ahedz
New drug for heart patients being tested by UM pharmacologists
by Jack Oswald School of Medicine
Clinical pharmacologists at the School of Medicine are excited over the potentialities of a new drug for heart patients which is more potent than digitalis as a heart stimulant, but has a much lower toxicity range.
Called amrinone, the drug resembles dry mustard in color and texture and can be given intravenously when mixed with water and lactic acid, or orally in capsule form.
“This is a drug that’s definitely going to make it,” says Dr. Roger F. Palmer, professor and chairman of the department of pharmacology, which is performing Phase I clinical tests on the drug.
“We’ve already gotten magnificent effects intravenously in 20 subjects and now we’re starting oral tests.”
Phase I is the first administration of a new drug into man. following completion of extensive pharmacologic and toxicologic testing in animals. In
this case, the subjects are normal, healthy male volunteers. Phase II involves testing the drug’s clinical efficiency in a limited number of patients with heart disease.
Two classes of drugs, digitalis and adrenaline, are currently the only drugs used to stimulate the hearts of patients who suffer “pump failure,” a major cause of cardiovascular-related deaths, said Dr. Palmer.
Amrinone promises to become a third class in this drugarmamentorium. “Its mechanism is entirely different, so it’s an addition to digitalis and adrenaline,” he said.
The relative safety of drugs is measured on what is called a “toxic-therapeutic ratio.” With digitalis, currently the only oral stimulant, about one milligram is therapeutic; but about one-and-a-half milligrams may be toxic, giving the patient little leeway to avoid an overdose. Dr. Palmer said.
Amrinone. on the other hand, has a toxic-therapeutic ratio of about 10()-to-
I, he said. “That is, if one milligram is therapeutic then 100 milligrams may be toxic. With this wide toxic-therapeutic range, we have a broad area to work in. If someone takes a couple extra pills, it shouldn’t hurt him.”
In capsule form, the drug may have to be taken three times a day—“We don’t know yet, but we’d like it to be one a day," Dr. Palmer noted.
Tests of amrinone were started in February on a contract basis with the pharmaceutical house which developed it. Only UM pharmacologists are performing the Phase I studies. (Two other medical schools in the northeast are just starting Phase II tests.)
The work is carried on in facilities set up personally by Dr. Palmer on the second floor of the former John Elliott Blood Bank Building in the medical center. Out-patient examining rooms, a 12-bed in-patient ward and supportive laboratories make up the unit.