The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, we update the Haiti story, Kwame Holman reports on the hot race for mayor of New York City, Mark Shields joined tonight by Doug Bailey analyze that and many other things political, and Fred De Sam Lazaro examines a frontier of modern medicine. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Firefighters gained the upper hand today over the Southern California wild fires. More than a dozen major fires have burned about 140,000 acres and destroyed some 650 homes since Wednesday. Jeffrey Kaye of public station KCET-Los Angeles has our report.

MR. KAYE: Overnight fires continued, and the hills near Malibu to Tony's seaside town that's home to many of Hollywood's rich and famous. In the Lake Sherwood area and Ventura County north of Los Angeles, a flare up today claimed two costly homes. For a while firefighters lost the use of a water main that burst. Damp onshore breezes from the Pacific Ocean slowed or stopped the raging wild fires that have burned for three days. It was the break firefighters needed so that continuing chemical drops could take effect. In the mountains of Altadena, north of Los Angeles, one of the areas hit hardest by fires, helicopters dumped water on tinder dry brush likely to be in the path of approaching flames. A transient has been arrested and charged with recklessly starting a fire that raged out of control in Altadena. In Laguna Beach, south of Los Angeles, 313 homes were destroyed. This morning, residents were allowed back into the area while a platoon of marines helped the local coroner search the rubble for evidence of fatalities.

STAFF SGT. TRACY JONES, U.S. Marine Corps: The only thing we've found in the last two days is we found two cats, or one coyote and one cat, and that's it.

MR. KAYE: It's believed no people have been killed by the California fires, although 84 have been reported injured, including 67 firefighters, and thousands have been made homeless. The fires for the most part are now away from the residential areas, but the hot, dry Santa Ana winds which pushed the infernos earlier in the week are expected to pick up again this evening. So firefighters remain on alert.

MR. LEHRER: Arson is suspected in at least six of the fires. California Governor Pete Wilson has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the Laguna Beach fire. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: The United Nations envoy to Haiti today proposed urgent new talks to end the political crisis there. Dante Caputo insisted, however, that he wasn't suggesting any change in the basic terms of the U.N.-brokered deal between ousted President Aristide and the military . In the capital today, pro-military Haitians demonstrated against Aristide who was supposed to return to Haiti tomorrow under the U.N. plan. Hard-line elements also called a general strike, and the country's military leader said the U.N. plan may not be valid after tomorrow. President Clinton again warned Haitian military leaders that the U.S. would not let them prevent the restoration of democracy. In a written statement, the President also said he supports the U.N. effort to get the process back on track.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton spoke at the dedication of a new museum at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston today. He said he believed the late President would have supported the North American Free Trade Agreement known as NAFTA. Mr. Clinton said a number of his predecessors had sought better relations between the United States and Latin America.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: President Roosevelt advocated a good neighbor policy toward Latin America. President Kennedy called it the Alliance for Progress. We know -- we know that we cannot have a bad neighbor policy. We know that we cannot have an alliance to protect ourselves at their expense. We know that the people who want to buy our products and share our future ought to have a chance to help us to solve our problems at home even as we help them to pursue their own destiny. Let us not send a signal by defeating this agreement that we are turning our backs on our neighbors and the rest of the world.

MR. LEHRER: Congress is expected to vote on the trade agreement late next month. Mexican President Salinas wants the United States and Canada to implement the treaty by January 1st as scheduled. he said the three nations would lose a once-in-a-generation opportunity if they did not. He said it in a David Frost interview to be broadcast on PBS this evening. Salinas also said he does not favor a Canadian request to re-negotiate the treaty. Canada's new prime minister said yesterday he might not implement NAFTA without changes on energy and other provisions.

MS. WARNER: In economic news, the Commerce Department reported today that Americans' personal income grew a modest .2 percent in September. This follows a robust 1.3 percent increase in August. At the same time, consumer spending rose .3 percent in September. It was the sixth straight monthly increase in consumer spending which represents about 2/3 of all economic activity.

MR. LEHRER: Attorney Gen. Reno met with activists on both sides of the abortion issue today. She has ordered the Justice Department's Terrorism & Violent Crime Unit to investigate attacks on clinics and doctors who perform abortions. Those who attended the meetings spoke to reporters afterwards.

PAMELA MARALDO, Planned Parenthood: We just finished the meeting with Attorney General Reno, and I think it's fair to say we're very heartened. She's, she said that she will conduct a federal investigation, that she'll put all the powers of her office behind the problem of clinic violence.

JANET PARSHALL, Concerned Women for America: We're absolutely delighted that Janet Reno would open her door and invite these pro- life representatives because we reminded the attorney general today that she is, indeed, the attorney general for all the citizens of the United States and not just some special interest groups.

MR. LEHRER: The so-called Brady Bill, which puts a five-day waiting period on the sale of handguns, began moving through Congress today. It passed a House Judiciary Subcommittee by a ten to three vote. It had been part of President Clinton's overall crime bill but supporters asked that it be considered separately to allow an earlier vote. Mr. Clinton has promised to it as soon it reaches his desk. Opponents say the waiting period will not curb gun violence.

MS. WARNER: The Supreme Court today temporarily lifted a lower court ruling that barred discrimination against gays in the military . The action opened the way for implementation of President Clinton's new policy known as "Don't ask, don't tell." His policy bars the military from asking recruits about sexual orientation but allows the discharge of those who are openly homosexual.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Haiti, the New York City mayor's race, Mark Shields and Doug Bailey, and developments in gene research. UPDATE - BROKEN PROMISE?

MS. WARNER: We begin tonight with the latest on Haiti. As we've reported, U.N. officials are struggling to extend an agreement that would have restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power tomorrow but Haiti's military leaders are still refusing to step aside. Freelance Correspondent Claude Adams spent many years covering Haiti for the Canadian Broadcasting Company. He just returned from a week long visit and filed this report.

CLAUDE ADAMS: This was to have been a week in which Haitians rushed to welcome their president. Instead, thousands were fighting to get away, out of a capital city that is low on fuel, short on hope, and in the grip of violence. Some of those who stayed to fight in the gas lines cursed the international embargo and the man they blame for it exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But many more Haitians, too poor even to think about gas line-ups or bus rides to the countryside, stayed in their shanty towns and waited patiently, as they have done since the 1991 coup that overthrew the democratically-elected Aristide. And if they spoke of politics at all, it was in a kind of religious code. Aristide is a name most poor people dare not even mention to strangers. "Jesus Christ is coming soon to stop the killing," this woman says. It's a popular way in which they refer to Aristide. You won't find pictures of Aristide in Port-au-Prince. His name rarely even shows up in graffiti. The most you'll find is the crowing rooster, the symbol of his party. But in Haiti's notorious slums like Cite du Sole, where he draws his greatest support, there's a conviction that Aristide is the country's only hope for democracy. Father Laurence Bohnen is an 80-year-old Soletian priest who taught Aristide as a young man.

FATHER LAURENCE BOHNEN: I have seen changing, the mentality of the people that don't take it anymore. But Aristide conscientizes them, telling them it is not only your right to defend your human right, your human, socio-political human right, they have not only the right to defend them, more than a right. It is your duty to try to defend the human rights.

MR. ADAMS: But Aristide has powerful enemies in Haiti, the army generals who refuse to cede power and politicians of the far right like Emanuel "Toto" Constant. Constant blames Aristide for the suffering that Haiti has endured under international embargoes.

EMANUAL "TOTO" CONSTANT, Politician: History will not forgive President Aristide for what this country is going through. It's impossible. We have -- constitution went down to 12 years old, this is impossible. Kids have been dying every day because of lack of medicine, lack of food.

MR. ADAMS: Others, like businessman Verna take a less extreme view. Yet, they still distrust Aristide.

CLAUDE VERNA, Businessman: I don't believe him as a priest, I don't believe him as a politician, and I don't believe him as a president, but he is my president, duly elected. I will allow him to do his term.

MR. ADAMS: Verna does say that Aristide assumes too much power as many critics feel he did during his seven-month presidency, he should be removed. The business community is furious at the sanctions that have brought havoc at the gas pumps. Especially galling is the refusal of the oil companies to release the stored reserves that could supply Haiti for another two or three months. But the warships just outside the three-mile limit have successfully enforced the blockade. Even the leaky fishing vessels that doubled as refugee boats in recent months are mostly sitting idle. The blockade works both ways. This week the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 15 Haitians who tried to escape the island in a small sailboat. Back at port, they were promptly arrested and whisked away under the noses of the Western media. To escape Haiti, it helps to be rich or to be a member of parliament. This week, there was a roll call for a session to vote on two important laws that would have eased Aristide's return. One law was for an independent police force, the other, demanded by military rulers, was an amnesty for the leaders of the 1991 coup. Most of the chairs in parliament were empty. Deputies allied to Aristide have fled to the United States. They are afraid for their lives. Politicians are not the only Haitians who've been driven into hiding. Anti-government newspapers have closed, human rights activists have gone underground, and many pro-Aristide priests have left the country. On the eve of what was supposed to be a return to democracy, Haitians have been more frightened. It's now apparent that the recent assassination of Justice Minister Gee Mallory and the public killing of a key Aristide backer was a blunt warning to supporters of the president. Haiti's right wing rulers would not be easily dislodged. In spite of a United Nations-mediated deal in which he promised to step down, military strongman Raoul Cedras remains in power. Meanwhile, the military's civilian henchmen, so- called "attaches," stepped up their campaign of after dark terror. Detroit Lawyer Emily Hall is a member of a group that seeks to help the victims of the attaches.

EMILY HALL, Lawyer: When we see people, they're at their wit's end. I mean, many people we literally have to pick up and take where they're going because they cannot be seen on the street.

MR. ADAMS: And they have good reason to be afraid?

EMILY HALL: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are people who have already been targeted, who have been arrested, who have been beaten numerous times, and for some reason they're not dead yet, so they know any moment, the next time it might be them.

MR. ADAMS: But Father Bohnen says that fear may soon give way to open rebellion.

FATHER LAURENCE BOHNEN: And the more they don't have what they want, the more finally it will be exploded. So they've got to hurry up to find a solution. But someday, somehow anyhow they will have the last word, the people.

MR. ADAMS: Like many others close to Haiti's urban poor, Father Bohnen says they will not have a clear idea of what democracy is. It's enough that it promises a change in the poorest and one of the most repressive countries in the Western hemisphere.

MS. WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the New York mayor's race, political analysis by Mark Shields and Doug Bailey, and researching genes. FOCUS - BIG APPLE - SWEEPSTAKES

MR. LEHRER: We turn now to U.S. politics. This weekend state and local candidates across the country will be making their final efforts before next Tuesday's voting. One of the closest and most closely watched elections is in New York City. Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: On the surface, it looks like nothing's changed from 1989. The same two candidates who battled their way across hotel ballrooms, ethnic neighborhoods, churches, synagogues, and subway stops are at it again, fighting to claim the mayor's office of the biggest city government in America. The Democrat is Mayor David Dinkins, who won a narrow victory four years ago. He has great political strength but also glaring weaknesses. He is running on a record even his backers admit is mixed.

MAYOR DAVID DINKINS, [D] New York City: I think frankly that our city is more at peace than some would think. I think that the focus of attention on a few instances leads some people to make the comment that, that tensions are greater. The fact is people, seven and a half, eight million people, from a hundred and seventy-eight separate backgrounds, speaking a hundred languages, rub shoulders together on subways and buses and elevators, work together day in and day out. Frankly, I think our city is in pretty good shape, and I will do all I can to keep it that way.

MR. HOLMAN: The Republican, who also is running as the candidate of the New York State Liberal Party, is Rudolph Giuliani, the high profile, former U.S. prosecutor, who lost by less than 2 percentage points in 1989 and has spent his time since getting ready to run again.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI, [R-L] Mayoral Candidate: The present mayor seems problems as things as things that you kind of make excuses about to avoid. I see problems as a challenge to do better.

MR. HOLMAN: What's changed, of course, is the city, itself, safer than it was four years ago by some measures, poorer by others. In the last four years, Mayor Dinkins has increased police staffing to record levels. An FBI study says the number of major reported crimes in New York has dropped for two straight years. Dinkins found money to keep public libraries open six days a week for the first time since 1947. In neighborhoods across the city, he kept public schools open after hours, turning them into community centers. And despite the ongoing recession, Dinkins got through four fiscal years without major cuts in the city's workforce. But the city also has been racked by a series of ethnic upheavals that have left New Yorkers as racially divided as at any time in recent history and drawn blistering criticism of Dinkins' leadership. In 1991, three nights of street violence erupted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. A black child had been killed by the car of a Jewish motorist. Then a group of blacks attacked and killed a Jewish man. A state commissioned report later absolved Mayor Dinkins of direct blame for the city's worst riots in 20 years but also said the mayor had been slow to act. In the winter of 1990, an altercation between a Korean grocer and a black customer grew into a black boycott of Korean stores and related violence. The mayor did not intervene openly for months. Then in the summer of 1992, three nights of violence followed the police shooting of a man in the Spanish-speaking community of Washington Heights. That kind of polarization added to the deep racial divisions that already existed in New York in 1989. In that first election, Dinkins won big in predominantly black neighborhoods like Brownsville and Bedford Stiveson in Brooklyn. This map shows block after block that went for Dinkins by large to overwhelming margins. Today blacks still are Dinkins' biggest source of support and the base from which he's trying to build a majority. Just a few neighborhoods away are places like Bensonhurst, Bayridge, Canarsi, and Flatbush, older areas of mostly white, working class residents. Most of these blocs went heavily for Giuliani in 1989. Here, voters are socially and fiscally conservative. They feel strongly a sense shared by many New Yorkers that no matter the falling prime rate, aggressive street beggars, continuing drug-related shootings, and even graffiti and litter are lowering the quality of life. And the former crime fighter, Giuliani, has aimed his appeal at being a champion of their values, if not a savior.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: This city has too much crime. This city is too dangerous. The present mayor runs away from that and suggests that he doesn't understand. I know it. I understand it. I mean it. I've had to fight it, and I want to fight back for all of you so that we can use our streets again and not have to be worried.

MR. HOLMAN: In the political middle are places like Ocean Parkway.

WOMAN: [1989] Since I don't care what anybody says, since the color has entered into this election, no matter how big you are, and everything, you have that feeling he has to prove himself if he does get in, and I think he will work even harder towards proving himself than another person getting into office.

MR. HOLMAN: Four years ago, we visited the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center and found this group of senior citizens about evenly split between the candidates. This week, we returned to the center and showed some of the same people a tape of that first meeting, then asked them the same question.

MR. HOLMAN: How many of you voted for David Dinkins four years ago? [approximately seven hands in group go up] Okay. How many of you will vote for Mayor Dinkins this time? [no hands in room go up]

MR. HOLMAN: Among these Jewish voters, anguish from the anti- Jewish violence in Crown Heights lingers. They say they aren't necessarily Giuliani admirers but have had it with Mayor Dinkins.

WOMAN: I would like to see a change. We know what we got. Let's try somebody else for a change, maybe a new broom sweeps better.

MR. HOLMAN: Does his apology and acknowledgement of having made a mistake make a difference for you about Crown Heights?

MAN: The mayor of the city or the governor of New York has to act promptly upon the situation. He cannot dawdle or he cannot just spend time thinking about it. He must be able to be decisive and act immediately and act swiftly.

OTHER MAN: Like the presidential election, I'm not too thrilled with either one, but what chance have I got, what choice have I got?

MR. HOLMAN: with middle ground or swing voters already leaning toward Giuliani, the remaining swing districts become even more important, perhaps decisive in a race the polls show is very close. John Mollenkopf is a professor of political science at the City University of New York.

JOHN MOLLENKOPF, Political Scientist: I think in the final analysis his selection will be won or lost in the white liberal communities of New York City, and secondarily in the Latino communities. On the one hand, the, the white Catholic and other borough constituencies are solidly in Giuliani's camp, and on the other, the African-American community is solidly in Dinkins's camp. So it's going to be in these other two groups where the cookie will finally crumble.

MR. HOLMAN: One of those groups live in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, the 24,000 voters here split right down the middle in 1989. This is an old but stable district of two and three-family homes that's been heavily Hispanic for a generation. This week, political messages in Sunset Park had to compete with salsa music drifting out of the shops on Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue. Many peaceful blocks here feel like something out of the New York of the 1940s. Yet, Tony Giardano, who lives on 52nd Street, says people's perceptions differ from the reality.

TONY GIARDANO: There's a perception of crime in Sunset Park that's far greater than the actual crime rate. I was looking at some of our recent statistics, and on a monthly average, we have about a hundred burglaries amongst 86,000 people in this neighborhood. So that's not a tremendously high rate. But all you need is one apartment on a block to be robbed, and everybody on that block has been robbed, and all of their relatives on other blocks have now been robbed because of that perception.

MR. HOLMAN: The Spanish language Mass is the biggest Sunday service at St. Michael's Church on 4th Avenue. Traditionally, many Hispanics have seen their political aspirations as tied to those of African-Americans and have voted accordingly. But this year, polls suggest many more Hispanics will split from blacks and support Rudolph Giuliani heavily. In Sunset Park these days, people talk in worried tones about prostitution and a crack house just a block from this church. With the Hispanic vote up for grabs, Giuliani made an appearance in Sunset Park a few days ago. He picked up endorsements from several community leaders and his running mate for city controller is Herman Bedillio, the city's first Puerto Rican borough president and a prominent figure in local Hispanic politics. Will Giuliani's targeting of Hispanic swing voters work. Prof. Mollenkopf doesn't think so.

JOHN MOLLENKOPF: My view that Latino voters will ultimately gravitate towards the mayor is really just a personal hunch, however, it's based on the fact that Latinos are the poorest community in New York City, that like blacks they're at the bottom of the ladder oftentimes, that despite whatever tensions there may be between black leaders and Latino leaders, Latinos believe that they and blacks ought to cooperate politically for their mutual benefit.

MR. HOLMAN: A world away from Sunset Park is the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the heart of affluent, white, liberal New York and another key constituency in this election. Voters here gave David Dinkins a 57 percent majority in 1989. But there are signs that here too traditional allegiances may be changing. The panhandler outside Zebar's Gourmet Deli isn't anything new to the Manhattanites shopping inside for culinary treats from six continents. What's new for many is a hard to quantify sense that there is no refuge from ever larger numbers of ever more aggressive panhandlers, homeless people, vandalism, and the like. Such subtle things have combined with unsubtle events like the Crown Heights riot to create a feeling many of these well off voters say they no longer can tolerate.

MAN: Although I consider myself a Democrat and a liberal and have pretty much uniformly voted for Democratic candidates, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with the way that Mayor Dinkins has been running the city from a management point of view.

WOMAN: I voted for Mayor Dinkins very happily, and I really wanted him to do very well. I'm kind of disappointed that he hasn't done as well as I had hoped for.

SECOND WOMAN: I voted for David Dinkins four years ago, and I'm going to vote for him again. And why am I voting for him? I think what I'm responding to is my impressions of the goodness of the man. I think his heart is in the right place, and that's the primary thing.

MR. HOLMAN: This is the neighborhood that sent Bella Abzug to Congress in 1970 but no one we spoke to was for Mayor Dinkins without reservation. The big question is whether the book store browsers and Broadway shoppers will warm up to Reagan era Republican Giuliani, who has been working furiously to overcome a perception that he is rigid, authoritarian, uncaring, even racist.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: New York City today by every poll and every indication is more racially, religiously, and ethnically divided than it was before David Dinkins became the mayor. Unfortunately, the promise of racial healing has become the reality of the Korean boycott, Crown Heights, Washington Heights, and a sense that the mayor doesn't reach out and try to help all of the people of all the cities with the same, equal commitment, and desire. That is very much a part of me. That's what I'm about. I'm about one standard for all people, fair treatment and equal treatment for everyone. I really do think that the cynics and the critics are going to be very surprised if I get the opportunity to be mayor at my ability to be fair and to be decent and to be equal in my treatment to all people, and that is going to bring this city together.

MR. HOLMAN: Almost drowned out in the anger over social issues is an equally deep problem, the economy. New York lost nearly 400,000 jobs in the last four years as the contraction of the financial industry rippled through other local businesses. Raymond Horton is a professor at Columbia University and head of the Citizens Budget Commission.

RAYMOND HORTON, Political Scientist: Whomever is elected mayor on November 2nd is going to wake up, just as David Dinkins did four years ago, with a deficit to close in the current fiscal year of, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four hundred million dollars. Now, you can deal with that problem, and the city in one way or another will have to deal with it by raising taxes, which is hard to do in an economy that is not growing, at least as measured by jobs and, in fact, it's still declining, or you can do it by reducing expenditures, which is also difficult because many municipal expenditures are mandated by state and federal programs, or third, you can, you can close that deficit by making your government more productive. And that's difficult to do because it's a powerful bureaucracy, and it doesn't want its lifestyle in a sense to be diminished.

MR. HOLMAN: As the campaign draws to a close, the candidates' themes remained the same. Mayor Dinkins portrayed himself as the great conciliator. He also reminded voters of Giuliani's appearance at a police rally last year in which thousands of off duty officers, most of them white, stormed the steps of city hall. Some shouted anti-black slogans. Giuliani was photographed making an angry speech, leaving the impression with some that he was whipping up the crowd. For his part, Giuliani portrays Dinkins as detached, indecisive, and a blame shifter who can't handle a tough job.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: Now it's time for a man that stands up and says, it is my responsibility to try to solve your problems better, hold me accountable for it.

MAYOR DAVID DINKINS: I deliberate sufficiently long to make an intelligence choice. I don't mean I've never made a mistake. But God's not finished with me yet, and I'm not perfect, but as the New York Times has observed, as New York Newsday has observed, he doesn't have the temperament and the appropriate attitude to be mayor of our city.

MR. HOLMAN: The city's largest newspaper, the New York Times, has endorsed Dinkins. The other major dailies have endorsed Giuliani as has former Democratic Mayor Ed Koch. Mayor Dinkins has brought in a score of national Democrats to campaign for him, including President Clinton, the First Lady, Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, and a second appearance by President Clinton. The two candidates have never debated face to face because of Dinkins' insistence that a third party candidate, conservative George Marlin, be included and Giuliani's demand that he not be. In 1989, polls showed Dinkins ahead by double digits just before the election, yet he barely eked out a win. This time the polls say it's neck and neck. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now how the New York City race and all kinds of other political things look to our regular analysts, syndicated columnist Mark Shields joined tonight by Doug Bailey, former Republican political consultant, now a publisher of the Hotline and the Healthline, two daily news reports. Let's start with these elections on Tuesday. Mark, Giuliani or Dinkins in New York?

MR. SHIELDS: Giuliani.

MR. LEHRER: Why?

MR. SHIELDS: I think Kwame Holman put his finger on it in that telling excerpt of asking people who they voted for last time, and whether they intended to vote for David Dinkins this time. It was a 50/50 race, a dead heat four years ago. There seemed to be precious few people in 1993 who voted in 1989 for Rudy Giuliani who this year are going to vote for David Dinkins, and I think there are quite a few who have been disaffected with Dinkins's stewardship. There is an overwhelming sense that New York is not a better or safer or happier or more prosperous place four years later.

MR. LEHRER: And so when the incumbent always pays for that.

MR. SHIELDS: It's a referendum on the incumbent.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Doug, do you agree?

MR. BAILEY: I think I do agree for one additional reason. I think that Giuliani four years ago the polls going in as the report showed had a double digit lead for Dinkins and yet he won by 1 or 2 percent. There is some reason to believe that white voters will indicate that they will vote -- to a pollster -- will indicate that they will vote for a black candidate and end up voting for a white candidate. I think that happened last time. It's one of the reasons that the race was close. Also, what will the black turnout be this time? If the black turnout is down because even blacks have been a little bit disappointed with Dinkins, then he's got big problems. And I think the turnout will be down. His campaign has been a parade of surrogates, including the President, not a very strong campaign. Gov. Cuomo called surrogates nothing but "diddlies" that don't amount to very much in a campaign. The one surrogate that matters is Jesse Jackson working in the black churches and working in the black communities, and can he drive the black turnout up enough to save Dinkins? I doubt it. I think it's Giuliani.

MR. LEHRER: Let's move south to two governors races, first to New Jersey. Here you have a case -- another incumbent, Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio, challenged by a Republican, Christine Whitman. We had a piece on their race last night. Is it, is it the same problem for the Democratic incumbent?

MR. SHIELDS: Jim Florio was written off. I mean, he was dead on arrival long before the arrival two years ago. After running in 1989, winning with a statement during the campaign that he didn't see any need for a tax increase, and once in office laying on a tax increase of historic proportions, 2.6 million to the state of New Jersey, recall, all efforts organized all across the state, he was a sitting duck. I think he'll be reelected next Tuesday. He has successfully made the issue his opponent, and a peculiar problem that Christie Whitman has in New Jersey that Mary Sue Terry in Virginia has the same problem, a woman candidate running for an executive office of governor or president or mayor needs a different set of credentialing done for her at that office than a woman candidate running for the Senate or the House of Representatives. The reason is that a presumption among voters that women are more honest and more compassionate than men may or may not be valid. That's a presumption that voters have. But the question that voters have reservation they have is about the toughness, and I think that Florio has been able to get to the right of her, the tough side, on both welfare and, and crime, and I think he's going to win next Tuesday.

MR. LEHRER: How do you read it?

MR. BAILEY: I don't think Ann Richards would like what you just said, but the fact of the matter is I do agree in New Jersey that it's probably Florio, although the Whitman campaign, which has been awful, I mean, it really has been just awful, has been getting better and better and better. Their own tracking gets it down to about three points. They feel very, very upbeat at the moment that they have the possibility of pulling it out, and they're going to put a campaign ad over the air over the weekend with John Kean, the very popular former Republican governor, strongly endorsing Whitman, and they think that that may carry the day. I think, however, it's probably Florio but --

MR. LEHRER: Tom Kean said on the tape piece that we had last night that he didn't think that -- he didn't say it quite as directly as you did -- but the Whitman campaign had not been able to make, get its message over very well. All right, Doug --

MR. SHIELDS: Just one other thing about that. Florio had a big lead. I think what really caused this late to tighten up is that Jim Florio in one poll was given a 15 point lead. And that point I think that because he's been such a controversial figure, polarizing figure, enough people in the state said, hey, I don't want to be part of a landslide for this guy. You know, 50/50, I'll vote for him, but, you know --

MR. LEHRER: It sends the wrong message.

MR. SHIELDS: Exactly.

MR. LEHRER: Okay, let's go to Virginia. You mentioned it, Mark, but to you first, Doug. Mary Sue Terry is a Democrat, former attorney general, being challenged by a Republican, George Allen, a former member of Congress. The polls here show that Terry started out ahead. Now Allen is sizably ahead or in the lead.

MR. BAILEY: The only campaign worst than Christie Whitman's has been Mary Sue Terry's campaign. Unbelievable. This is the dullest campaign of a major candidate that I can remember. It does not mean that the Republican candidate, George Allen, has not run an effective campaign. He has. He's been a good candidate. He's been a good campaigner. He's had something to say. He's run a competent campaign. The Allen campaign -- the Terry campaign has been truly awful, and she has two additional problems. One is -- and this goes back to something Mark said -- they don't know her as governor. They know her as attorney general. They don't know her as governor. They have not presented a biography of a sense where the voters know who she is, even though they know the name very well, and secondly, the incumbent governor of her party does not want her to win. Doug Wilder doesn't -- wants a Republican governor to be sitting there when he goes after Robb.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, are there any trends or overviews that tie these three major races together? Are they, as you all have demonstrated, very special situations in New York, very special situations in New Jersey, a very special situation in the race in Virginia?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, if you win, Jim, all right, if you're in the White House and your party wins these three -- say David Dinkins were to eke out a victory in New York and Jim Florio wins in New Jersey, and Mary Sue Terry were to stage this comeback, and then as a Democrat in Virginia, then at that point, the White House, the Clinton White House would say this has obviously been a referendum on the President, and the President carried Jim Florio over the line. He was absolutely written off. David Dinkins, all the wise guys, or the pundits, including the MacNeil-Lehrer Hour, said that he was gone, and Bill Clinton, in a moment in need, when these guys really needed help, he went in there. If, of course, they lose, then it was local issues, local issues completely, and Bill Clinton made it close by going in. But I, I think it's certainly not encouraging news. The worst news for Democrats this week, for incumbents, and most incumbents are Democrats, came out of Canada where the ruling party went from 154 seats out of 495 in the parliament to two. Not a good, not a resounding vote of confidence.

MR. LEHRER: And the guys in charge --

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. And I think if, in fact, Dinkins and Terry were to lose as well, it would not certainly --

MR. LEHRER: Let's move quickly to, to -- speaking of the people in charge -- the Senate on Monday, Doug, is going to take up what some people say its most difficult question ever is the, the question of the Packwood diaries, whether to support the Ethics Committee and go ahead and subpoena those, or at least try to subpoena them through the district courts and through the federal courts. Is, is this going to be, in fact, a bloody, difficult day for the United States Senate?

MR. BAILEY: It's going to be a difficult day for the United States Senate, although the vote won't be closed.

MR. LEHRER: They're going to vote for it, are they?

MR. BAILEY: Absolutely. The only way to avoid it being a difficult day is if Bob Packwood does the thing that he ought to do and not, and not fight this. There's something very strange, Jim, about an adult human being who keeps a diary about the sexual peccadilloes of his colleagues or his staff members. That's, that's just weird. Bob Packwood has been an embarrassment throughout all of this to the state of Oregon. He is going to be an embarrassment to the Senate. He's an embarrassment to himself. The details of the diaries that were first presented to the Ethics Committee by Packwood and Packwood's people, himself, it's Packwood's lawyers who have leaked the fact that this information about other Senators and other political figures are in the diaries as if to threaten other members of the Senate that if Packwood goes down, he's going to take them all down. I frankly believe -- and I'm a great supporter of what Bob Packwood has done to women and for many issues over the years -- but I agree with the Oregonian that editorialized today that if he does not release the diaries by himself, he really ought to resign.

MR. LEHRER: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: If weirdness were a disqualification for membership in the Congress of the United States, it'd be tough getting a quorum on some days. I don't think that Packwood is exactly an ax murderer. I mean, if the allegations against him -- the 26 women -- separate women are true, then he's a jerk. He's not, he's not a felon; he's a jerk. The only really serious charge that strikes me beyond really gross social behavior, misbehavior, is that he tried to threaten people before the election from coming forward. But I do think that there was a serious tactical mistake made here when they leaked out that there were things in the diary that might be embarrassing to some of his colleagues. At that point, you had a choice. You were either going to be embarrassed, or you're going to be accused of being a part of a coverup, and so I think the onus then came back. The other thing that's working here is it was a 6/0 vote in the Senate Ethics Committee for these. And this Ethics Committee is a place that nobody really wants to serve on, but it's three Democrats and three Republicans, and Dick Bryan, a former governor of Nevada, who is a former public defender, former attorney general, is a guy, a Senator with a reputation of not being a showboat or a grandstander. He's a pretty serious fellah, and as one of his colleagues remarked, if Dick Bryan, to come out like this, he must have really been mad. So that maybe something, a lot more -- this isn't sexual peccadilloes we're talking about on the controversial material.

MR. LEHRER: But would you not agree that no matter what the Oregonian says or even what Doug Bailey says that there's no indication that Bob Packwood has any intention of standing aside.

MR. SHIELDS: I agree totally.

MR. LEHRER: And that everything he has done up till now indicates that he intends to fight this every step along the way.

MR. BAILEY: He's going to fight it totally, and it is going to be a battle royal, and it's going to be -- it is going to further worsen, if that's possible, the reputation of Washington and the Senate and the Congress.

MR. LEHRER: And we'll be here to talk about it when it happens.

MR. SHIELDS: To improve that reputation.

MR. LEHRER: Yes, exactly. Gentlemen, thank you both very much. FOCUS - MEDICAL FRONTIER

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight, a report from the cutting edge of medical science. The topic is gene therapy. Medical Correspondent Fred De Sam Lazaro of public station KCTA-Minneapolis, St. Paul surveys the latest advances.

MR. LAZARO: These are heady times in genetics.

JERRY LEWIS: Dr. Chamberlain told us the following: "We can cure muscular dystrophy."

MR. LAZARO: At his Labor Day Telethon, entertainer Jerry Lewis toasted a scientist who used gene therapy to cure muscular dystrophy in laboratory mice.

JERRY LEWIS: I think I need you to tell the American public that we are border line, that we're close.

DR. JEFFREY CHAMBERLAIN, Geneticist: We are getting close.

MR. LAZARO: Earlier this year, another team of doctors announced it had isolated the gene responsible for Huntington's Disease, a deadly neurological disorder.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, Geneticist: People have compared the Huntington's gene to the big fish that keeps getting away. Darn it, we caught the thing this time, and it has a diamond in its stomach after all.

MR. LAZARO: Dr. Francis Collins first gained fame in 1989 for discovering a defective gene that's responsible for cystic fibrosis. He now heads the Human Genome Project, a federally funded effort to map all 100,000 genes that form life's building blocks, a task Collins predicts will be completed in about a decade.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Once you've found the gene, then there is a window between finding it and knowing what to do with it. This is an era over the next ten or twenty years where there's going to be lots of this.

MR. LAZARO: That lab to clinic leap from finding genes and diagnosing genetic disease to actually fixing it in humans is being taken in small incremental steps. So far, about 100 human gene therapy trials have been federally approved. Few results have emerged but those that have are promising. The case of ADA deficiency, for example, a rare genetic disorder of the immune system.

DOCTOR: [talking to boy in bubble] How are you doing, David?

MR. LAZARO: Its most famous victim, David, had to spend his entire life in a sterile bubble. Lacking the enzyme ADA, David's body was defenseless against routine infection and eventually succumbed at age 14. That would likely have been the fate of six year old Ashanty DeSilva and thirteen year old Cynthia Cutshall who were born with ADA deficiencies. But those these Cleveland area girls lead a nearly normal lifestyle thanks in significant part to a gene therapy treatment designed at the National Cancer Institute Lab of Dr. Michael Blaese.

DR. MICHAEL BLAESE, Geneticist: It's been delightful. The kids have been doing very well. We've seen nice responses to the treatment.

MR. LAZARO: Blaese began by extracting blood cells from the patients. In the lab, a virus fitted with the missing ADA gene was allowed to infect these blood cells, essentially transplanting the gene. The cells, or lymphocytes, were then returned to the patient in a simple transfusion. Blaese says the procedure has worked far more efficiently in Ashanty DeSilva's case. Some 30 to 40 percent of her cells carry the transplanted gene and produce normal amounts of the ADA enzyme. On the other hand, only 1 percent of Cynthia Cutshall's blood cells have taken the transplanted gene. She's been kept well by other, non-genetic therapies.

DR. MICHAEL BLAESE: We simply find that that virus has different levels of efficiency of infecting cells of one person compared to another. And I suppose we could understand that because certainly some people have been very sick with measles, and some people have just a mild case.

MR. LAZARO: Varies response to gene therapy is a major complication facing Blaese's team. One way it may be overcome is to transfer the missing gene into the patient's bone marrow in what are called stem cells.

DR. MICHAEL BLAESE: And sort of the grandmothers of all of the blood cells, and if we could successfully insert a gene into a stem cell, and that theoretically should be a one time treatment, and we would do it, cure the patient for the rest of their life.

MR. LAZARO: This stem cell gene therapy was tried for the first time this past May on a California newborn named Andrew Gobia. It's too recent for any firm results, but if successful, the technique could be used on several other genetic blood disorders. Even with total success, Blaese acknowledges the trials are a small, first step in gene therapy.

DR. MICHAEL BLAESE: With ADA deficiency, we could take the bone marrow or the T-cells out of the body and treat them in the laboratory. For diseases like muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis, you can't remove the tissue. You have to figure out a way of giving the gene to the body.

MR. LAZARO: Cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy have both been cured in the laboratory but they require a different application of gene therapy. Each is caused by a defective instead of a missing gene, and these must be treated in specific tissue in the body. The relatively simple blood transfusion method used in the ADA trials wouldn't work.

DOCTOR: The absence of this one protein leads to muscular dystrophy.

MR. LAZARO: Muscular dystrophy is caused by a defective gene called a dystrophin gene. A team led by Dr. Jeffrey Chamberlain managed to insert a healthy dystrophin gene into embryos of mice that would otherwise have been born with the degenerative muscle disease.

SPOKESMAN: And not only are these mice essentially cured of their muscular dystrophy but they're not showing any side effects, and that's something that I think will be important for the future when we start to think about ways to deliver these genes to human.

MR. LAZARO: Chamberlain says the gene therapy used in the mice embryos is crude and couldn't be safely replicated with humans. So the big hurdle is in finding a way to implant the dystrophin gene in human muscle tissue.

MOTHER: [helping her small child] Oh, there's a cough. That a girl. Cough again.

MR. LAZARO: Cystic fibrosis is also caused by defective gene. The defect causes poor salt transport and a thick mucous to build up in the lungs. New drugs have slowed the degeneration but the sustained lung damage eventually kills the patient. The challenge in developing a gene therapy for cystic fibrosis is that like muscular dystrophy, it must be done inside the body in the respiratory system.

DR. JAMES WILSON, Geneticist: This is a view of the model under the microscope.

MR. LAZARO: Unlike muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis is uniquely human. Lab mice don't get it. So researchers like Dr. James Wilson developed what called a xenograft, human lung tissue from a cystic fibrosis patient transplanted into a mouse.

DR. JAMES WILSON: This resides under the skin in the mouse so that it provides vascularization and nutrients. That's why we do it. We can't grow it in a tissue culture in the laboratory.

MR. LAZARO: Using a virus carrying healthy genes, Wilson was able to transplant some of them into the diseased human lung tissue.

DR. JAMES WILSON: This is the human lung tissue here, with the mucous accumulation here. And these are the cells we want to correct. This cell here, as well as these cells have taken up the gene delivered by the -- that stains the cell blue. Our data indicate that this therapy will be efficient and will persist for a long period of time.

MR. LAZARO: Wilson and two other labs recently began human trials, depositing healthy genes into small areas of the respiratory passages. It's hoped these new genes will make the diseased lung tissue in the patients function normally, as they did to the stained cells in Wilson's experiment. One of the research teams has already reported encouraging results. The pace of progress is astonishing to even the scientists since they still don't fully understand the cause of the genetic defect in cystic fibrosis.

DR. JAMES WILSON: What is it about the defect in these cells in salt water transport that causes the mucous accumulation and stickiness? We don't know that. But this may be a model in which to study that, although to a certain extent one person was quoted as saying we may cure cystic fibrosis without really knowing the basic mechanism of the disease. And that's an interesting thought but it may be true.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: When the gene was found just about exactly four years ago, most of us being asked what the consequences of that were going to be for therapy talked about ten to fifteen year time periods for gene therapy. This field really does not really adapt very well to careful predictions about when things are going to happen.

MR. LAZARO: Amid all the excitement, however, Dr. Blaese warns that gene therapy, though rather simple in concept, involves immense biological complexity and will remain a distant, clinical reality. One of his biggest fears is raising false hope among patients.

DR. MICHAEL BLAESE: These are desperate diseases. People are very concerned and very eager to, to try anything, and so there's a lot of anticipation, perhaps an unnecessary raising of expectations and hopes that these new things will finally be the cure that so many people are waiting for. I hope and believe that they will ultimately be a cure for many of our problems. But it's going to take us a long time.

MR. LAZARO: More immediately, Blaese expects the number of human trials to go rapidly and on several new disease fronts. Experimental therapy is already underway on patients with various forms of cancer, for example, and recently, the first gene therapy trial got underway on a patient with AIDS. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, firefighters gained the upper hand against Southern California wild fires but a forecast of high winds threatened new flare-ups. The United Nations proposed urgent new talks in Haiti to end the political standoff there. President Clinton said he supported that effort. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Margaret. We'll see you on Monday night with full coverage of the Packwood diaries debate in the Senate. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.