Word: coppers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Wilson's disease, after the doctor who first described it. But by any name it is still one of the most mysterious and devastating defects in the body's complex chemistry. It can be inherited from outwardly healthy parents and involves the metabolism of minute amounts of copper. As recently as 1960, medical textbooks stated: "The course of the disease is inexorably downhill if untreated." Most baffling is the fact that the inherited defect may either produce severe illness within the first year of life, or lie dormant like a slowly ticking time bomb for as long...
...defective gene, the child will not develop the disease, though he may pass on the gene. But if both parents have it, an average of one child out of four will have a deficiency of ceruloplasmin-a little-understood blue component of the blood, in which eight atoms of copper are bound into a large protein molecule. A deficiency of ceruloplasmin leads to a piling up of copper in such sensitive organs as the liver and brain...
Only recently have doctors been able to slow down Wilson's disease with drugs to leach copper out of the body, and a low-copper diet (no liver, mushrooms, nuts or oysters). How much better it would be, say Drs. Irmin Sternlieb and I. Herbert Scheinberg of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, to spot the inherited defect before illness has time to develop...
...given to any suspected cases and all relatives of known victims. It takes only one drop of blood. Anybody with a normal ceruloplasmin level can forget about Wilson's disease. But anybody with an abnormally low level, the Bronx doctors say, should have a further test for copper in the liver. If this registers high, the patient is assumed to have the chemical defect and is promptly put on drugs and diet in the hope of preventing the development of full-blown disease...
Appeals Endured. Harry Oppenheimer is the wealthiest and mightiest businessman in Africa. Besides his global hold over diamonds, Oppenheimer, through the Anglo American Corp. (of which he is also chairman), controls or holds substantial interests in a $2.4 billion empire of 150 gold, copper, uranium, coal, chemical, explosives and banking companies. A member of South Africa's Parliament for ten years, he left politics to run the business after his father's death in 1957. Because he controls South Africa's chief source of foreign exchange, and is a man with an international reputation, the nationalist government...