Organ Donation

Police hunting for madman who butchered N.Y. therapist NEW YORK - Police were hunting last night for a man who entered a psychologist's office with a bag of knives and a meat cleaver and hacked her to death. A colleague who responded to the victim's screams was badly wounded, and investigators were trying to determine whether the attacker was a patient at the clinic. Three knives were recovered at the scene, including the cleaver, which was apparently bent from the attack, police said.

Protection for fetuses? Congress's concern for life would be funny if it weren't so hypocritical. These protectors of the "unborn," these champions of life, voted against national health care for children, Head Start and school lunch programs. Save those fetuses, but once they're born, let them starve! These are the same people who voted to cut back welfare benefits to women with children (although corporate welfare is fine) but have nothing to say about making deadbeat dads pay for the children they helped create.

Seemingly ordinary doors can lead to extraordinary places. Just ask Howard M. Nathan. Answering a classified ad 20 years ago - "quite by accident," Nathan recalled - he discovered his mission. The ad was for a coordinator for the Delaware Valley Transplant Program. Since its founding in 1974, the program has coordinated more than 10,000 organ and tissue transplants, including kidneys, hearts, livers, lungs, bone, ligaments and corneas, and become one of the largest organ-donor programs in the United States.

End organ waiting list Pennsylvania's recent effort to pass legislation to become the first state to provide a financial reward for organ donation underscores an unavoidable reality in America: Each day, 10 people on the national waiting list die because they do not receive the organs they need. Rather than try to solve the organ shortage through monetary funds, we should turn our attention toward the real root of the problem. Many of the patients who die awaiting a transplant would live if the families of most medically eligible donors would say yes to donation.

They never dreamed they would compete in sports - much less participate in a national athletic contest. But after years of pain and worry over whether they would even survive, more than 160 organ transplant recipients from eastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware were preparing yesterday for the fifth annual U.S. Transplant Games. The athletes of "Team Philadelphia '98" held their final practice at St. Joseph's University before leaving for the games in Columbus, Ohio, that begin in 10 days.

Walking through the "Body Worlds" exhibition at the Franklin Institute, taking in the diaphragms and slices of human cadavers and fully erect circulatory systems on display, one wonders: Who were these people who donated their bodies to Gunther von Hagens, the German P.T. Barnum of anatomy who authored the traveling show? Shawn Petri can answer that one: Him. Well, not him yet. Maybe not him soon. But Petri, a 31-year-old chief financial officer for a Blue Bell pharmaceutical consulting firm, has signed the paperwork that will turn over his body to von Hagens after death, allowing him to do with it what he will.

Ever been touched by an angel? Theresa de Vera, 21, might have been. That is as good an explanation as any other for why a woman written off by her doctors as doomed was admitted last week to the Casa Colina rehabilitation center in Pomona, Calif. The former Loyola Marymount University student wound up at death's door because she suffered a terrible asthma attack April 20. Her lungs stopped working, leaving her brain without oxygen. De Vera became unconscious. After the attack, she was rushed to Glendale Adventist Hospital.

Earlier this season, Tim Wakefield went more than two months without losing. Now, it's been more than two weeks since the Boston Red Sox knuckleballer has won. But even in the face of a defeat to the Seattle Mariners last night, the Red Sox saw evidence that Wakefield (14-3) is on his way back. "I think Tim threw better than he did the last couple of times out," manager Kevin Kennedy said, after Wakefield had given up five runs in just over six innings in Boston's 6-4 loss to visiting Seattle.

They're too expensive and valuable an item to be torn, so the Baltimore Orioles will simply put a commemorative seal on tickets to the games in which Cal Ripken is slated to tie and break Lou Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games. Tickets for the games are going for up to $1,000 at ticket-selling agencies. The Texas Rangers are joining forces with the Mickey Mantle Foundation this weekend to promote organ donation. About 30,000 Mickey Mantle donor cards will be issued at home games at The Ballpark in Arlington beginning Friday.

It took less than 100 days. Ten percent of Philadelphia's population died in the yellow fever epidemic that devastated this city in 1793. Memories of that disaster spurred Congress to create the Public Health Service 200 years ago: July 16, 1798. The small corps of physicians - the first group of federal employees who had to meet testing requirements to be hired - was charged with caring for merchant marines. We've relegated yellow fever to the history books, but the Public Health Service continues to be a not-so-silent partner in our challenge to the hazards that put our lives at risk every day. Across the street from Independence Hall, not far from the final resting place of many victims of that long-ago epidemic, the PHS wages its battle from the regional office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.