The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, two Americans and a Britain shared the Nobel Prize for research that led to drugs for AIDS and other diseases, a Ugandan airliner crashed near Rome, killing 30 people, the U.S. Treasury said it's ready to make a $3 1/2 billion emergency loan to Mexico. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, we have a News Maker Interview with Dr. Gertrude Elion, who with two others won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, then Energy Department Official Joe La Grone and Congressman Thomas Luken look at the causes and consequences of a leaking nuclear weapons plant in Ohio. We have a George Bush Stump Speech, and we close with a Spencer Michels report from San Francisco about the cosmetics of staying young.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Three researchers, two American, one British, today shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine for helping to develop drugs to fight a range of diseases from AIDS to malaria. The two Americans were Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings, who began collaborating in 1945 at Wellcome Research Laboratories in North Carolina. They were cited for helping find drugs for leukemia, organ transplant rejection, gout, herpes virus, malaria, and AIDS. The British doctor, Sir James Black, was named for a drug called a beta blocker for heart disease. At a news conference in New York, 83 year old Dr. Hitchings had this comment.

GEORGE HITCHINGS, Nobel Laureate: On the cover of the Wellcome Journal was a little Pakistani girl in her wedding dress, and her story was that she had a febrile illness and the doctors had given up and predicted death within a few hours, and then a doctor remembered that a Burroughs-Wellcome representative had left a few tablets of septra on his desk, and he said, what have I got to lose, and he gave them to her, and her fever began to break within two hours and she was cured. So that's the kind of thing, that's more reward than medals and placards and all the rest.

MR. MacNeil: The three scientists will share a cash price worth $393,000, and we'll be talking to Dr. Elion later in the program. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: There was an anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon this morning. Some 1,000 people opposed to U.S. military aid to El Salvador blocked entrances to the Defense Department headquarters in Washington. Police arrested more than 200. One officer was knocked to the ground by the demonstrators. Officials said all Pentagon employees found ways to make it to their offices without much difficulty.

MR. MacNeil: In Rome today, a Yugandan Airlines jet crashed while trying to land in heavy fog. Thirty people were killed, but twenty-two escaped, most of them injured. One survivor, Uganda's former Ambassador to the Vatican, said the 707 made one landing attempt, but aborted because of the fog and crashed on the second try. The plane came down south of the runway at Fumichino Airport, plowing through houses and a garage before bursting into flames and coming to a halt.

MR. LEHRER: There is a new Philippine bases deal. Secretary of State Shultz and the Philippine Foreign Minister signed the agreement this afternoon at the State Department. It extends U.S. use of Clark Air Force Base and the Subic Bay Naval Base for two years in exchange for a substantial increase in U.S. aid to the Philippines. Mexico will also be getting some help from the United States. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board today announced the formation of a $3.5 billion loan package for Mexico. The short-term loan is designed to help the Mexican Government cope with the unexpected impact of low oil prices.

MR. MacNeil: In Haiti, an official at the President's palace said that two army officers tried to seize power on Sunday morning, but failed. The spokesman said several soldiers were wounded and 30 arrested in the attempt against Haiti's President, Lt. General Prospere Avril. Avril assumed power in a coup last month. In Yugoslavia, the Communist Party's Central Committee met urgently to consider weeks of ethnic and economic unrest and disputes among the country's republics and provinces. We have a report from Tom Brown of Worldwide Television News.

TOM BROWN: The Communist Party leaders of Yugoslavia met to solve the country's worst crisis since the war. Party Chief Stephes Duva opened the session with a challenge. He urged the delegates to unite or face destruction, listening intently with Serbian Leader Slobodan Mileschevish, whom many believe has been chiefly responsible for the current troubles. Apart from encouraging ethnic unrest, Mileschevish has been accused of wanting more power. It was his challenge to the federal leadership that led to this special session. Yugoslavia's economic ills add another dimension to the political crisis. Federal President Raif Desdanovich has a difficult task ahead. He has to find ways of reducing the country's huge debts and rising inflation.

MR. MacNeil: In Moscow today, the Soviet military came under criticism for too much secrecy. Yorgei Arbatov, a senior Soviet policy adviser, writing in the newspaper Pravda, said that the military kept details of positions put forward in arms talks with the United States secret even from experts who had to explain them.He called for a Committee of the Supreme Soviet or Parliament to oversee defense matters.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country, a Georgia Congressman was indicted today. Rep. Pat Swindall was charged with lying to a federal grand jury in Atlanta investigating money laundering. The indictment alleges 10 counts of perjury against Swindall, a Republican who represents a suburban Atlanta district. He has admitted that he participated in negotiations for an $850,000 loan of drug laundered money. He said it was a mistake in judgment but involved no wrongdoing.

MR. MacNeil: Residents of Barrow, Alaska, have been working all weekend to help free three gray whales trapped in arctic ice before they could migrate to the open sea. The three young whales of a variety facing extinction were battered and bleeding, and appeared to be weakening, witnesses said, from trying to butt their way through the jagged sea ice. Workers used chain saws to enlarge breathing holes, while a military helicopter was sent out to guide an ice breaking barge to the scene.

MR. LEHRER: And in the Presidential campaign today, both George Bush and Michael Dukakis put in a heavy day of campaigning. In Denver, Bush accused Dukakis of running down U.S. defenses. He said his opponent had a total lack of understanding of military matters.

VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, GOP Presidential Candidate: My opponent, for example, emphasizes conventional defenses, while he is viscerally uncomfortable with anything related to the nuclear arsenal, but the truth is that conventional defense alone cannot do the job of deterring war. We've kept the peace for 40 years because we have understood the relationship between conventional forces and nuclear forces.

MR. LEHRER: Bush today received the endorsement of the Teamsters Union. Teamsters President William McCarthy said the endorsement was based on a mail-in ballot of union members. Democratic Presidential Candidate Dukakis was in Ohio today speaking before a labor audience. He told workers at a brass and copper plant Vice President Bush had deserted the Midwest.

GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, GOP Presidential Candidate: His record says to rural America, the fewer family farmers the better. His record says to middle class families the glory days are over, your kids may not do as well as you're doing. He tells the people of our inner cities, we can't see you, we can't hear you, stay where you are. His record tells America's industrial heartland, let it rust.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary. Now a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, a leak at a nuclear weapons plant in Ohio, a Bush stump speech, and staying young through cosmetics. NEWS MAKER

MR. LEHRER: We begin tonight by talking to a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Dr. Gertrude Elion. She and a longtime colleague, Dr. George Hitchings, today won it for their discoveries that led to drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. They shared the award with a British doctor. Doctors Elion and Hitchings first began collaborating in 1945 at the Burroughs-Wellcome Research Laboratories in North Carolina. Dr. Hitchings spoke to reporters at an afternoon news conference in New York City.

GEORGE HITCHINGS, Nobel Laureate: More than prizes, more than statistics, are the chance encounters of people who have been cured by drugs that came of my experiments, and some very personal ones. For example, on the cruise, my wife and I sat across from a couple from Houston, and they said they were from Houston. I said I had just been there and they said what for, AmericanAssociation for Cancer Research Meeting. What is your connection with cancer research? Well, I invented the third drug useful in the treatment of leukemia. What was it? Merkepto Curin. When our daughter was seven years old, she had acute leukemia. I used to take her in for bone marrow surveys. She went into complete remission with Merkepto Curin and Pregdasone and never released, and now we have three wonderful grandsons, she's 28 years old, I want to kiss you.

MR. LEHRER: Dr. Elion now joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina. First, congratulations, Dr. Elion.

DR. ELION: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: How did you find out about this? What were you doing and when did you get the word?

GERTRUDE ELION, Nobel Prize Winner: Well, I was getting dressed this morning at 6 o'clock. The phone range and a reporter informed me that did I know I'd won the Nobel Prize, and I said, no, but stop your joking, this is a practical joke.

MR. LEHRER: That's how, there was no official word?

DR. ELION: No. I've still not gotten any official word.

MR. LEHRER: Well, I can confirm what the other reporter told you.

DR. ELION: You can?

MR. LEHRER: Yes. It's on the wire. Again, congratulations.

DR. ELION: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Did you have any hint or hunch that this might be happening?

DR. ELION: No, I didn't. I didn't even know I'd been nominated.

MR. LEHRER: I mean, how does that happen? Who nominated -- do you know now who nominated you and how --

DR. ELION: I think I know but I'm not sure.

MR. LEHRER: I see, I see. How would you describe what you and Dr. Hitchings did to win this award?

DR. ELION: Well, I think we pursued a line of research which was self-consistent and where one thing progressed to another, and where one discovery led to another and really didn't let go until we'd made the most of each of the discoveries, and I think that the reward comes in seeing all the people who've benefited from it more than the award, itself.

MR. LEHRER: What kinds of discoveries were there? There were a series, as you say, over the course of years.

DR. ELION: Yes. Well, there was the drug for the treatment of acute leukemia in children, and then this was followed by the drug which made kidney transplantation possible, prevented rejection of kidneys and other grafts, the drug for the treatment of gout, Alopurinal, the anti-bacterial agent, Trimetheprim, and finally the anti-herpes drug, Acyclovere.

MR. LEHRER: Now all of these drugs are related scientifically, are they not?

DR. ELION: They are.

MR. LEHRER: Explain the scientific relationship.

DR. ELION: Well, they all are compounds which resemble the building blocks of nucleic acid and nucleic acid, as you know, DNA, is the genetic make-up of cells that's required that they reproduce DNA in order to replicate, and what we were trying to do was to fool these cells into taking fall building blocks and, therefore, stopping their growth and multiplication, and this was true in every case. Sometime it was a malaria parasite, it was bacterium, it was a virus, it was a cancer cell, and the central theme was to prevent nucleic acid formation in these organisms.

MR. LEHRER: So you interfered in the growth of the bad bacteria.

DR. ELION: Exactly.

MR. LEHRER: And made the bad bacteria think it was growing more bad stuff and it was actually good stuff, is that --

DR. ELION: Right, exactly. Dr. Hitchings used to refer to it as the "rubber doughnut" that they were eating, didn't know it wasn't a doughnut.

MR. LEHRER: Was this a kind of oh, eureka, we've got it, kind of thing, where the two of you turned and the music played and all of that?

DR. ELION: No. Science isn't like that unfortunately.

MR. LEHRER: What is it like? What was it like?

DR. ELION: Well, what it's like is a little bit of knowledge progressing from the test tube to an animal, and eventually to man, and you keep your fingers crossed the whole time, and you say, yes, it works and this, but will it work in man and will it work on sick people, and eureka is usually eight to ten years after the original discovery.

MR. LEHRER: You probably had many occasions today to think back on this, but do you remember any time when you as an individual or you and Dr. Hitchings as a team realized, hey, we are on to something truly important?

DR. ELION: Yes, I think it was with the first drug. It was with Merkapto Purine and seeing children with leukemia go into remission, and even when they relapsed and we realized that these were not necessarily cured, it was the feeling that we were on the right track and we were going to make it, we just would have to be a little more persistent.

MR. LEHRER: You've been doing this kind of work now, what, since 1944, is that right?

DR. ELION: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: When you started as a young research scientist, did you ever in your wildest dreams think that you might win the Nobel Prize?

DR. ELION: Never.

MR. LEHRER: That was not part of your work plan?

DR. ELION: No, that's not an aim. That's something that happens by the way, but the aim is to find new drugs that are of use in medicine, and if you can do that, the rest is all just extra.

MR. LEHRER: What do you, anything in your life going to change as a result of today?

DR. ELION: I don't think so. People keep saying, what are you going to do with the money, and I say, I haven't the vaguest idea, probably take a trip.

MR. LEHRER: You get roughly a hundred thousand dollars, right, if you split it three ways?

DR. ELION: I gather that, yes.

MR. LEHRER: But from a professional standpoint, this won't change anything?

DR. ELION: I don't think so. I want to go on doing what I'm doing, which is to try to help some of the young people in the laboratory and medical students that I'm working with to make further discoveries, and if you don't do that, what else do you do?

MR. LEHRER: What kinds of things are you working on now?

DR. ELION: Well, I'm doing some work at Duke with brain tumors, trying to find out how some of the drugs work in animals, so that we can hopefully apply it to man.

MR. LEHRER: Is there a good hope along those lines?

DR. ELION: You know, you never know. You can make it work in animals, and that's all you can say at the moment, but when you get to the children with brain tumors, each one is a case in itself and there are no two alike.

MR. LEHRER: And is this also, the brain tumor research, is it also related to the same principles of --

DR. ELION: Yes, it is, yeah. It's really looking at the biochemistry of the cells and trying to figure out what kind of drugs you can use to interfere with them.

MR. LEHRER: What about its use with AIDS? That was mentioned today in the story.

DR. ELION: It was mentioned, but actually our contribution to AIDS was more of a foundation laid in anti-viral research and learning how to interfere with viral replication, but it wasn't directly involved with the AIDS virus. That came afterwards.

MR. LEHRER: But it does relate directly to cancer, does it not?

DR. ELION: Oh, yes, yes.

MR. LEHRER: Give me an example of how it works in cancer up to this point.

DR. ELION: What do you mean?

MR. LEHRER: How your medicine, what particular cancer it works against.

DR. ELION: Well, it works, you means AIDS?

MR. LEHRER: No, no, cancer.

DR. ELION: You mean AZT.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

DR. ELION: Well, with cancer, the drugs that we worked with were mainly purine analogs, they were things which were interfering with replication of tumor cells, of leukemia cells, and this is again since all cancer cells have to divide and have to replicate DNA, it's the same story. It's a case of really finding the right drug for the right tumor and delivering it, and that's much more difficult with solid tumors than it is with leukemic cells which are floating around in the bloodstream.

MR. LEHRER: Do you believe that somewhere down the line this kind of research is going to lead to that magic cure for cancer?

DR. ELION: I think it will be more than one magic cure. I think cancer is not one disease, it's many diseases, and I think we'll peg away at it one disease at a time, one tumor at a time, and I think eventually, I hope I live to see the day when we can really cure solid tumors the way we can leukemias.

MR. LEHRER: Again, Dr. Elion, my congratulations to you along with all the others you have received and good luck on your brain tumor and other projects.

DR. ELION: Thank you very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the Newshour, dangerous leaks from a nuclear weapons plant, George Bush on the stump, and a report on the battle against aging. SERIES - '88 - ON THE STUMP

MR. LEHRER: Now a stump speech from the Presidential campaign. It is one by Republican candidate George Bush. The Vice President delivered it today to workers at a defense industry plant in Denver, Colorado.

VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, GOP Presidential Candidate: I see four essential questions that must be answered correctly if America is to have a secure future. First, how are we going to modernize our land-based deterrent? My opponent, trying desperately to jump into the mainstream, now says he recognizes that we need such modernization to preserve our triad of land, sea, and air nuclear forces, but there is strong reason, historical reason, to doubt that he would do it, especially when it comes to modernizing our land-based missiles. He still opposes the MX and he thinks the Midgetman costs too much, so he says he's going to work with Congress to find yet another way. Wake up, Governor. We've done all that. In 1983, we developed a bipartisan consensus on the road to modernization called the Scowcroft Commission. Sen. Nunn supported it, Sen. Bentsen supported it. The Commission called for the deployment of a certain number of MX's as a stop gap and then the development of a mobile ICBM called the Midgetman as the basis for a new generation of deterrent forces. More recent studies favor an MX on rail garrison. The real choice now is to find a possible mix between the two, not to reopen the issue all over again. And now the second question we've got to answer. Are we going to continue the Strategic Defense Initiative? My opponent has discovered belatedly what he calls, has called, a fantasy, those are his words, a fantasy. It's no fantasy to America. I want to research and deploy a missile defense system as soon as it is practical, and the White House Science Council, a bipartisan group of eminent scientists, has just reported that there is solid technical progress in just about every facet of SDI. And I'm determined to press ahead. I will not leave America defenseless against ballistic missiles. And then third, how are we going to further improveour conventional forces? He's talked about a conventional defense initiative to be financed from savings and by that he means cancellation of the Strategic Defense research, and other strategic programs. But here are the facts. We already have a conventional defense initiative it's called the conventional defense improvement program, the real CDI, and it was approved by NATO in 1985. It covers all those items, the ammunition stocks, the war reserves, the early mobilization of European forces, armor penetrating munitions that my opponent has suddenly just discovered. And now for the fourth question, how to reform the Pentagon and their procurement process to give the American people a more effective defense. On this issue, I think my opponent and I share what has become a rare agreement. We both denounce fraud, waste and abuse. We both favor the Packard Commission reforms, and the real issue, who best to carry them out. America history tells us that we've always done best in defending our country when we've been united. And I think that lesson applies not only in war, but also in peace. So the way to carry out the Packard reforms is not to point the finger of blame, but to extend a hand of partnership, to establish a new compact with the Congress, and to work together, so that we can give the American people a more efficient and a more capable defense. And that's why if I am elected President, I pledge to work with the Congress of the United States to carry out our national security goals.

MR. LEHRER: We will have other stump speeches from the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates during the last three weeks of this campaign. FOCUS - HIDDEN DANGER

MR. MacNeil: Next we look at the problem of safety at the nation's nuclear weapons plants. Three of the country's thirteen plants have been shut down for safety reasons in recent months, and last Friday, the Energy Department revealed it knew that a fourth plant in Ohio had been leaking radioactive material into the environment for a long time. Tonight we discuss who's responsible for that. The plant is in Fernald, Ohio, about 25 miles Northeast of Cincinnati. Its main function is producing uranium for nuclear weapons. The plant is 37 years old and has been the source of community concern for several years. Studies have shown that radioactive uranium has been leaking into the area's water supply and atmosphere for decades. The particles are deadly if inhaled and can cause serious health effects if they get into the body through the water supply. At a Congressional hearing on Friday, the Department of Energy supplied documents admitting prior knowledge of the radioactive leaks. The Committee Chairman had this reaction.

REP. THOMAS LUKEN, [D] Ohio: The allegations of DOE and the court action constitute a statement that DOE was waging a kind of chemical warfare against the community of Fernald. It admits that it knew for over 20 years that its waste pits were leaking and now admits that it knew the plant's pollution control system was obsolete and deteriorated for years before it was refurbished. It now admits that it knew that heavy rain swept urnanium contaminated water into a nearby stream and then into groundwater. But most important of all, it admits that most of the last 35 years, during that time, DOE sat on its hands and did nothing to fix these problems and to take care of the life threatening situation which exists at that plant.

MR. MacNeil: Specifically, the DOE documents showed that the company that managed the plant, National Lead of Ohio, repeatedly warnedgovernment agencies of the contamination. According to the documents, the government rejected warnings in the early 1950's about the danger of burying nuclear waste pit in pits at the plant, rejected a 1962 proposal to stop contamination from leaking burial pits, allowed a cracked storage tank to leak radioactive materials, and continued to use the tank despite warning that the damage was irreparable, stored 2500 tons of radioactive waste at the plant in corroded steel drums from 1979 until the present, and allowed tons of uranium particles into the air without proper filtering. The General Accounting Office estimates a cost of 450 to 600 million dollars to correct the problems. Here to discuss the situation at the plant is Joe LaGrone, manager of the Energy Department's Oak Ridge operations, and he's responsible for oversight of the Fernald plant. He joins us from public station WSJK in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is joined by Democratic Congressman Thomas Luken of Ohio who chaired Friday's hearing. He is Chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism & Hazardous Materials. Congressman Luken is at public station WCET in Cincinnati.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. LaGrone, first of all, have you discovered any explanation of why the Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, took such an attitude, ignoring the warnings and keeping this information secret? Can you explain why it did that?

JOE LA GRONE, Energy Department: I don't have a good explanation for you today, but my view is that since the beginning when I joined this program at Oakridge in 1983, what has happened in that facility in the past was a shared responsibility between the contractor, the Department of Energy, the Atomic Energy Commission, and that the problems that are there today could have been avoided. Of course, that's all the advantage of hind sight. The direction I've been moving in along with my staff is to try to fix those problems, identify the current problems, and get them done, ranging all the way from changing the way things are managed, working on air problems, working on soil problems, working on water problems. Our budget for the last five years in terms of environment, safety, and health comes up somewhere in the neighborhood of $367 million. We have moved the equivalent of over 100,000 barrels of waste off site. There are still many things there to be done, but we have done substantial work toward preparations for emergency preparedness, worker safety and training, but the fact is there are still serious problems there which need to be fixed as Mr. Luken has pointed out in other hearings which I've had the opportunity to appear before.

MR. MacNeil: Well, we'll come on to the present in a moment. Just keep on to the past for a moment. Congressman Luken, what is your explanation? You've now had time to digest all this information. What is your explanation of why these government agencies didn't act and why they kept the information secret from the public?

REP. THOMAS LUKEN, [D] Ohio: Well, Mr. LaGrone I believe is trying individually, but his answer to your question that he has no explanation, that is really a shocking kind of a thing for a representative of an agency of the United States Government to be faced with admission of a litany of violations of the environmental laws of this country, as you indicated, of releasing lethal stuff into the atmosphere, into the ground, which is right over an aquifer, and after admitting all of this, which does constitute a declaration of some kind of war on thepeople in that neighborhood and does bespeak an attitude of considering the public as an enemy. I mean, this Department of Energy has a bunker mentality towards the whole thing, and if they don't do anything else, then they'll stonewall it, which I think Mr. LaGrone, as sincere as he is, has done it again right now. He's just simply tried to explain all of these things away by saying let's look to the future. But there are people out there right now who have filed suit, but whether they've filed suit or not, there are people who claim cancers who have been exposed repeatedly over this period of time. There's a water system, which is the largest in the State of Ohio, which is in danger and may be contaminated. I think the Department of Energy needs to give us a better explanation of what it has done than Mr. LaGrone has just given.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. LaGrone, just looking at it from a layman's point of view, a person might ask, over all those 30 years or so, did the various agencies simply regard the production of nuclear weapons materials as a much higher priority than the safety of the public?

MR. LA GRONE: I believe the record will show that the Department and its predecessors in the past put too much emphasis on production and not enough on environment, safety and health.

MR. MacNeil: So you're saying yes in answer to my question?

MR. LA GRONE: The short answer to that question is yes, and let me respond to the point that Mr. Luken was talking about a while ago. It is not my purpose to try to stonewall the issue. To speak specifically in terms of what happened at Fernald and other facilities which I am intimately familiar with, very frankly the contractors nor the federal people did their jobs.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman.

REP. LUKEN: What he is doing here is letting DOE off the hook by admitting DOE's at fault, because what he hasn't said is that there's a contract here in which DOE is responsible for the negligence for the crime for fault to third parties, to the public, DOE is responsible if the contractor is held liable. Now the contractor has been sued and DOE comes in exculpates, lets the contractor off the hook, that lets DOE off the hook.

MR. MacNeil: Now, Mr. LaGrone, it is true that DOE released this document, these documents admitting all this prior knowledge, as an effort in a court suit to get a summary judgment letting the contractor, National Lead of Ohio, off the hook, isn't that correct? I mean, the reason you issued the documents and made them public is, it's because of your effort in court to absolve National Lead of responsibility. Is that too simple?

MR. LA GRONE: That may be a little bit too simple. The thrust of that summary judgment, our request for summary judgment on that motion, that is the thrust of that, but as I've indicated, including in testimony last Friday, I believe what has happened at Fernald in the past, the responsibility of that has to be placed squarely on the shoulders of both parties. I've reflected that in the actions I've taken to strengthen the management of that facility. For example, from back in the early to the mid 70's, until about 1985, there was no on-site presence of any federal managers. We now have a site office today which I set up beginning in 1985, 12 full-time people. We changed the contractor. We have changed the award fee structure. We've changed the way that we deal with the public, the regulators, with public elected officials, the way we disseminate information. We have now filed all of our permits to become current, over 400 permits. We've entered into anextensive fellow facility compliance agreement which has enforcement provisions. We've also, as I mentioned, shipped substantial waste off site. We have increased air monitoring of stacks in terms of radon, radioactive emissions. We have done substantial work on worker safety and health. In terms of water pollution, storm, lagoon, run-off control procedures, storm water retention basins, bio-denitrification facilities, all have received considerable attention.

MR. MacNeil: Those are things that would stop further polluting of the water or the air from the time you started taking those actions.

MR. LA GRONE: Correct.

MR. MacNeil: Where do the people go who may have been injured, the people who have been bringing suits, if the company is absolved of responsibility and the DOE is not responsible because it can't be sued? Where do the people go?

REP. LUKEN: That's the point. Mr. LaGrone is saying that it's a shared responsibility by DOE and the company, but the result of its actions in this lawsuit in coming in and letting the contractor off the hook is that DOE is also let off the hook because of the contract and the indemnification process, so it's the property owners and the nearby residents who may have been injured, and some of them claim injury, they're the ones who are holding the bag, and there is no shared responsibility at all. It's completely irresponsible and it's a lack of accountability. And that's the big issue that we want to get into, because we have legislation, Mr. LaGrone, and you know it, pending before the Congress of the United States, which would make you accountable. And this administration is objecting to that, is holding up that legislation, which would make the employees and the Department of Energy responsible and accountable so that their employees could be fined, could be sent to jail, just like employees of other companies -- but right now --

MR. MacNeil: But they couldn't be responsible retroactively, Congressman, in a law that just passed.

REP. LUKEN: That's right.

MR. MacNeil: So what happens to --

REP. LUKEN: Well, that I meant to take care of in the earlier part of my statement with reference to what it's done in this lawsuit. But now I'm looking forward to a solution or at least an improvement, and that is to make them accountable. And we do have legislation that's gotten through our committee. And right now if the Department of Energy and this administration would agree to allowing that legislation to go through, we could put it in and there would be an improvement and a better guarantee for people in the future who live near defense plants.

MR. MacNeil: But, Mr. LaGrone, where do the people go now? Suppose the court accepts your request for summary judgment, the company is absolved, you can't sue the government. Where do the people go?

MR. LA GRONE: I don't know the answer to that question. I'm really not a lawyer and to be quite honest with you, I have not and am not focusing on those legal issues. The focus and the thrust of my efforts are to managerially and as an administrator try to determine fixes to fight the fight that needs to be fought to get the money to fix things, to make sure the contractor and the federal people who are responsible to me, do their jobs, so that 10 years, 12 years down the line, we don't turn around and find the mess that I found there in 1984.

REP. LUKEN: The lawyer who came into the hearing the other day expressed no regrets, expressed no willingness to cooperate. The lawyer for the Department of Energy stonewalled the whole issue, and he didn't make any more revealing or any more helpful comments on the lawsuit, or on the rights of the property owners or the nearby residents than Mr. LaGrone has. And Mr. LaGrone at one time in the hearing said, I don't know the answer, and we said to him, in effect, there are 12,000 employees of the Department of Energy, and in order to get the answer, it appears that we'd have to call 12,000 people into a hearing.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Congressman, what are you recommending to your constituents, who are claiming they've been injured by that? Where do you tell them to go?

REP. LUKEN: I'm hoping that the Department of Energy would take a different attitude towards it, but perhaps these are very involved laws and there may be some retroactivity to it since they are environmental laws. It's not a sudden happening and there may be an opportunity if we pass these laws which set responsibility on the Department of Energy and its employees and waive the sovereign immunity defense, there may be a possibility that there would be an opening there for the nearby residents to collect.

MR. MacNeil: Is the Department considering waiving the sovereign immunity defense which makes that, going back to days of the kings, that the government is immune from lawsuit, Mr. LaGrone?

REP. LUKEN: Well, Mr. LaGrone will tell you he's not a lawyer, but I can tell you that the lawyers for the Department of Energy who came into the hearing indicated that they absolutely were not considering any kind of action of waiving that sovereign immunity defense.

MR. MacNeil: Do you understand it the same way, Mr. LaGrone?

MR. LA GRONE: I heard the arguments. I cannot begin to tell you that I understand the legal parts of their argument, but let me make one comment. I came to this job. I am a career servant, started as a trainee in 1962. I bring one thing to the job and I hope to leave with one thing, that's credibility and integrity, and that credibility and integrity I place squarely on the line to fix those problems which I believe this Department, its contractors and others are responsible for.

MR. MacNeil: Do you accept the General Accounting Office figure that it's going to take 450 to 600 million dollars to clean that plant alone up?

MR. LA GRONE: No, I do not accept the GAO figure of 500 million. As a matter of fact, our figures indicate it's going to cost over a billion dollars to fix that particular problem Fernald.

MR. MacNeil: And as the -- are you going to request that money?

MR. LA GRONE: We will be seeking those funds as a matter of fact as a part of the general line item. The Department will be as a part of the environmental restoration dollars.

REP. LUKEN: And this has been a notorious public matter now for three years since a major accident, and there has been no real progress, for example, on characterizing and doing something about the 9 million pounds of mixed waste, of mixed nuclear waste, which is in the pits, pits that are not lined, pits that are so close and may be leaching into an aquifer there. There has been no real progress there. I'm sorry, Mr. LaGrone, I know that you believe that there has been, but when you come in and testify each time in each successive hearing, you can't tell us that you've done anything about that poison which is in the ground right above the aquifer.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. LaGrone.

MR. LA GRONE: Not to quibble or parry the point, but we have as a matter of fact now characterized all six of the pits which are there that have been used historically over the time that has been done as a part of the federal facility compliance agree with the Environmental Protection Agency.

REP. LUKEN: Which isn't worth the paper it's written on, and you admitted that in the hearing. The compliance agreement cannot be enforced, and you admitted that.

MR. LA GRONE: The compliance agreement can be enforced per the provisions that were added as of June 1988, and maybe we have not communicated our story on these points as well as we should, but certainly my intent is not to argue. I believe we're on the same wave length. There are serious problems there which need to be fixed, and I believe that there is just demonstrable progress, but that is not to declare victory.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. LaGrone, can I ask you this question. Finally, something that just puzzles me, if you've been over the documents, and if you haven't, somebody familiar with them must have in order to present them the other day at the hearings, do they show that over 30 years, that's going back to the Eisenhower administration, no head of the department, your department, or the Atomic Energy Agency, ever went to the administration, to the White House, and said, hey, this isn't so good, or this is dangerous? Did no, did it never get any higher than this?

MR. LA GRONE: I don't know if anyone ever took it that high to be quite candid with you. As I mentioned a while ago, I think the priorities were quite different, and I think the hearings that Mr. Luken has held has helped to focus us and certainly it has me in terms of where our priorities need to be.

REP. LUKEN: You know, there's one other aspect of this, and I don't know whether Mr. LaGrone can answer it or not, but the people who have been exposed to this radiation, to these poisons in this area, have been pleading with the Department of Energy to make an epidemiological study, in other words, to study the people in the neighborhood to find out how many people have cancers and other illnesses which may have resulted, to make a survey, case history of all those cases, in order to find out more about it so these people can prove their case. And the Department of Energy refuses to make such a study. They're doing it in one of the other federal facilities.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. LaGrone, the CDC is doing it for the residents around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Are you going to authorize a similar survey as the Congressman suggests/

MR. LA GRONE: Absolutely. Sir, as a matter of fact, going back to 1985, Sen. Glenn requested the Center For Disease Control to come in and do a study, an epidemiological study, we have collected substantial data, turned that over to them in terms of air releases, water releases. It is my understanding that the CDC is still in deliberations as to whether they will do that study, the scope and the extent, but --

REP. LUKEN: You're talking about the preliminary to an epidemiological study. You're not talking about having done or being engaged in an epidemiological study.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman, I hate to cut you off, but we have already run over our time on this this evening. Thank you very much for joining us.

REP. LUKEN: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: And, Mr. LaGrone, thank you.

MR. LA GRONE: Thank you. FINALLY - NEW WRINKLE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight the American struggle to stall the ravages of time, expenditures for lotions, potions, and plastic surgery are soaring as baby boomers enter middle age. We have a report from one of our ageless correspondents, Spencer Michels of public station KQED, San Francisco.

PLASTIC SURGEON: [Talking to Patient] I plan to do it heaviest here and here, lighten up as I come out over your cheeks and forehead.

SPENCER MICHELS: This woman is about to have the skin of her face burned off with carbolic acid by San Francisco Dermatologist Sam Stegman.

PATIENT: I'm still shaking like a leaf.

DR. STEGMAN: Here we go and now it's going to start to sting and also I'm going to come onto your lip, and don't let that worry you.

MR. MICHELS: The 41 year old patient allowed the camera to document the procedure on condition that her name not be used. She is submitting to the pain in order to smooth out wrinkles and rough textured skin caused by years in the sun.

PATIENT: I shouldn't care about. You know, I really shouldn't. Why shouldn't you just be how you are? Every day I would look in the mirror and go, good God, what is going to happen today? You know, every day you get new wrinkles and you go, what in the hell is going on?

MR. MICHELS: The procedure will take about two hours. The acid burn will disfigure her face for several weeks. It will gradually peel off, then heal with soft, new skin. Union Square, the heart of San Francisco's shopping district. The area surrounding this city block supports the highest concentration of plastic surgeons in the world. Well heeled professionals and free spending visitors can inject their lips for a fuller pout, transplant fat cells from stomach to face for plump cheeks -- or smooth out frown lines with moldable filler. San Francisco epitomizes an anti-aging phenomenon that has been sweeping the country. Cosmetic surgery has jumped 24 percent nationwide in the two years between 1984 and 1986, and make-up merchants have created a whole new industry in products that claim to combat aging of the skin with science. Expensive moisturizers in space age packages claim to intercept signs of aging and nourish the skin, to penetrate inter-cellular layers with anti-aging ingredients, to reduce wrinkles by as much as 45 percent. [Clerk talking to customer]

MR. MICHELS: This marketing strategy works. Annual sales of skin care products doubled in the past decade. They're expected to top $3 billion soon.

JIM BROOKS: The consumer doesn't have anywhere to go to get information, except the department stores.

MR. MICHELS: Jim Brooks has been an executive for several major cosmetics firms. To him, scientific sounding advertisements are an effective way of convincing customers to consider a company's promotional material, expert information.

JIM BROOKS, Cosmetics Company Executive: From a marketing standpoint if you can get that message to the consumer, they aren't going to be happy with anybody else's product. They'll come back and buy your product and buy it and buy it. And that's, you know, that's the only thing a manufacturer has is creating consumer demand for his brand name.

MR. MICHELS: The Shiseido Company's counter in Macy's Union Square store is styled as a high-tech skin analysis center where the customer makes an appointment as though seeing a doctor.

SALES PERSON TALKING TO CUSTOMER: This is a little imprint of your skin that's magnified to 30 times. You can see a little hint of beginnings of dehydration where these lines are --

MR. MICHELS: After she's told what's wrong with her skin, the customer is instructed what to buy as a remedy.

SALES PERSON TALKING TO CUSTOMER: So to remove your make-up at night, I would recommend our facial cleansing cream [$18.00], and then in the morning, just go ahead and using our cleansing foam [$18.50]. So I'm going to recommend our moisturizing lotion rich for you [$23.50]. Then what I would follow with would be a toner [$23.50].

MR. MICHELS: By law, the ingredients in over the counter moisturizers, expensive or cheap, may penetrate only the surface of the skin, and make no physiological changes. In a blind preference test conducted for Consumer Reports Magazine, these common drugstore moisturizers won out over far pricier brands. [Sea Breeze; Nivea; Youth Garde] Yet, department store customers willingly pay for expensive packaging, sales staffs, and exotic anti-aging promises. Creme De la Mer retails for $88 an ounce. It's made out of kelp by Max Huber, a former rocket engineer, who developed the cream to heal acid burns he received in a laboratory accident. His sales pitch sounds like a chemistry lecture.

MAX HUBER, Inventor: Oxygen and hydrogren transfers by contact at the skin, its oxygen and hydrogen through the hydrogen existing at the skin. Now the skin makes its own moisture H20. It receives one hydrogen and one oxygen --

MR. MICHELS: However, to government watchdogs, such molecular lectures are unproven, scientific slight of hand, and anti-aging cosmetics are suspect. Last year, the Food & Drug Administration officially admonished cosmetics companies that products claiming to make structural changes in the skin must be tested, proven effective, and registered as drugs. Not one company initiated the formal testing process for its products.

DAN MICHELS, FDA Drug Compliance Director: There are proper ways to gain approval through the new drug evaluation processing, and drug monograph process to permit these sorts of claims to be made with appropriate scientific data. That's not happened here.

MR. MICHELS: After a year of legal wrangling over the wording of promotional materials, the FDA delivered an ultimatum this spring.

DAN MICHELS: We are very serious about this and if there is not a good faith, prompt corrective effort on the part of any firm, then I expect to entertain recommendations for seizures of products or injunctions to go to the courts.

DR. ALBERT KLIGMAN, Dermatologist, Univ. of Pennsylvania: Where's the data? They don't have any data. The marketing division just creates the data. That's why they're called the creative directors of marketing. They just make it up.

MR. MICHELS: When Albert Kligman de-bunks anti-aging cosmetics, he offers an alternative. It was Kligman who first verified reports from patients that some of their wrinkles were reduced by Retin-A, a vitamin A derivative used to treat acne. Retin-A is the only substance prove to reverse mild skin damage and fine wrinkles caused by the sun. Despite serious side effects, which can include severe skin irritation and sun sensitivity, Retin-A is literally a marketing sensation.

DR. ALBERT KLIGMAN: It's literally an explosion which has resulted in a very considerable sum of money that comes to our department in the form of royalties. We are swimming in cash.

MR. MICHELS: Those royalties are the cut Kligman's University of Pennsylvania lab gets from Retin-A manufacturer Johnson & Johnson whose 1988 revenues from Retin-A are estimated as high as $200 million. More than an hour and a half has now passed in the carbolic acid face peel.

PATIENT: The taping makes it go deeper.

PLASTIC SURGEON: Makes the wound go deeper in the area that's taped, and so without having to do more chemical, more burn, we get a deeper wound.

PATIENT: The pain while he was putting it on wasn't really that bad. It did burn, but then it went away immediately into this numb type of feeling. Of course, afterwards, an hour afterwards, is when the pain really started, and I wasn't prepared for that pain.

MR. MICHELS: Twenty-four hours after her acid treatment, the patient we followed has serious second thoughts.

PATIENT: This thing better make me look halfway normal. I mean, I really don't care about any changes right now. I'll be happy if it just gets back to where it was, truly, you know, and now you're going, oh, my God, if it doesn't go back to where it was, why did I ever do this, you know.

MR. MICHELS: The market for less painful procedures has given a boost to the new field of cosmeseuticals, crossovers between cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Here at the Collagen Corporation in Palo Alto, the skin protein collagen is refined out of cow hides, mixed with an anesthetic and put into syringes. Rubbed onto the face as a cream, collagen is just a moisturizer, but injected under the surface, it can temporarily fill and smooth out wrinkles. That fact has pushed company revenues from $2 million in 1981 to an estimated 25 to 30 million this year.

CAROL ONORATO, Patient: I always like to have you look at me and see what you think would be most advantageous.

MR. MICHELS: In her dermatology office on San Francisco's office on San Francisco's Union Square, Dr. Allen Beth Landow injects as many as a dozen patients a day at $350 per syringe. For those who can afford it, an initial visit usually entails six to eight syringes. Follow-up injections once or twice a year maintain the effect.

DR. LANDOW: Okay. I think the first thing is let's make you smiley, because someone smiley people can forgive you anything if you look friendly and sweet, so let's make you smiley, let's take away the mean, and maybe take away little shadows under your eyes.

MR. MICHELS: Patient Carol Onorato travels 200 miles from Squaw Valley to see Dr. Landow.

CAROL ONORATO: What I like about collagen is, No. 1, it is instantly noticeable, what's been done. I come in and people say, gee, you look good, you look rested.

DR. LANDOW: How are you doing? Does that feel okay?

CAROL ONORATO: Fine.

DR. LANDOW: -- only hurts while I do it.

CAROL ONORATO: I just think it makes you look your very best without actually altering in any way, shape or form your uniqueness.

DOCTOR TO WOMAN PATIENT: That fold looks like it's coming back a bit.

NANCY GARDNER, Patient: Yes --

MR. MICHELS: Injectable collagen dissipates under the skin just as the body's own collagen dissipates, usually in six months to a year. For plastic surgery patient Nancy Gardner, it lasted less than three months.

NANCY GARDNER, Plastic Surgery Patient: My opinion is that collagen is highly over rated and extremely sort of transitory sort of effect.

MR. MICHELS: Gardner is much happier with her more permanent facelift, which included cutting the forehead muscle between her eyes.

NANCY GARDNER: The furrowed brow is a reflection of a troubled mind. People frown when they're disturbed and I can't really do that any more. And it sort of obviates that whole emotion in a way. It's very interesting.

REPORTER: Show me what it's like if you try to frown.

NANCY GARDNER: Okay. That's the most I can get out of it. It's a baby frown and there's an innocence to it and a freshness that I like.

MR. MICHELS: Claudia Resch is Gardner's plastic surgeon.

DR. CLAUDIA RESCH, Plastic Surgeon: I had a patient who came to me who had just spent three and a half thousand dollars on one afternoon of collagen injections. I happen to charge three and a half thousand dollars for a facelift.

PLASTIC SURGEON TO PATIENT: You are coming along fine, as we would expect, with one little complication.

MR. MICHELS: One week after the chemical burn treatment, the patient has developed a superficial infection, but her wrinkles are gone, more so than she had expected.

PATIENT: I don't want to be 20 years old again, I don't want to be 30 years old again. I don't even want to be 35. I want to be my age, but I want to be able to look at myself with a little bit of pride in the morning, but all of my years that I've had, those are my years and I want them. I want my laugh lines, you know. They never bothered me.

MR. MICHELS: One month after the carbolic acid burn treatment, the patient agreed to speak briefly on camera. She asked that only close-ups be used.

PATIENT: There is only one part that I wanted to change and that was the lines around my lip, and that's no different than somebody wanting braces on their teeth, somebody wanting a new haircut. I'm not a different person. You know, my face is essentially the same.

MR. MICHELS: Few patients advertise the fact that they've had cosmetic treatments, but doctors report a continuing boom in business. For those who can afford it, cosmetically tinkering with the natural process of aging has become not just a trend, but a way of life. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, two Americans and an Englishman won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. One of them, Dr. Gertrude Elion, said on the Newshour, winning the prize was never her aim. She said her real reward comes from seeing all who benefit from her research. Thirty persons died in a Ugandan airliner crash at the Rome airport and the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve announced a $3.5 billion short- term loan to the Government of Mexico. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight. And we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.