creighton university fall 1997fall 1997 · creighton university creighton university fall 1997fall...

CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY ■ FALL 1997CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY ■ FALL 1997

EMERGING DISEASES

FINDING GOD IN

YOUR EVERYDAY WORK

THE CLASS OF 2001BEGINS AT CREIGHTON

THE REALITIES AND

IMPLICATIONS OF CLONING

EMERGING DISEASES

FINDING GOD IN

YOUR EVERYDAY WORK

THE CLASS OF 2001BEGINS AT CREIGHTON

THE REALITIES AND

IMPLICATIONS OF CLONING

WINDOW magazine may edit Letters to the Editor, primarily to conform tospace limitations. Personally signedletters are given preference for publi-

cation. Our FAX telephone number is:(402) 280-2549. E-mail to:[email protected]

Publisher: Creighton University; Rev. Michael G. Morrison, S.J., President; Michael E. Leighton, Vice President forUniversity Relations. WINDOW staff: Stephen T. Kline, Executive Editor; Rick Davis, Editor; Pamela A. Vaughn, AssociateEditor. Editorial Advisors: Rev. Donald A. Doll, S.J.; Charles J. Dougherty, Ph.D.; Richard L. O’Brien, M.D., Allen B.Schlesinger, Ph.D, and David G. Schultenover, S.J.

Creighton University WINDOW (USPS728-070) is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by CreightonUniversity, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178-0001. Periodicals postage paid at Omaha, Nebraska, and additionalentry points. Address all mail to Public Relations and Information, Omaha, NE 68178. Postmaster: Send change of address toCreighton University WINDOW, P.O. Box 3266, Omaha, NE 68103-0078.

COPYRIGHT © 1997 BY CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY

Pursuant to our educational obligation to search for truth and to expand knowledge, WINDOW Magazine promotes the dis-cussion of a variety of issues. Although published by a Catholic, Jesuit university, the opinions expressed in WINDOW arenot intended to be construed as the official teaching or position of Creighton University or of the Catholic Church.

2 Creighton University WINDOW

LETTERS

From Cholera to AIDS: Diseases Continue to Plague UsWith the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s, manythought infectious diseases would disappear. Instead,new diseases have emerged and some familiar diseases

have bounced back with a new virulence. Professor andChair of Biology Theodore E. Burk addresses

the phenomenon starting on Page 3.

They’re Diverse, They’re Bright,They’re the Class of 2001Associate Professor Eileen Wirth takes an in-depth look at the Classof 2001. While a high number say they plan careers in the health sciences, the class represents a wide range of backgrounds and inter-ests. Find out more about Creighton’s newest class on Page 13.

Work as a Calling: Finding God on the Job Law Professor and A.A. and Ethel Yossem Endowed Chairin Legal Ethics Joseph G. Allegretti discusses ways to integrate faith into everyday work, whether you’re ahomemaker, teacher, doctor or plumber. Page 18.

The Prospect and Implications of Human CloningWith recent advancements in cloning sheep and cattle, the possibility of cloning human beings moves closer to reality.Kevin T. FitzGerald, S.J., a member of Creighton’s Board ofDirectors and a research associate at Loyola University Medical Center, examines the issue. 2.

Alumnews..........................................................................Page 26University News...............................................................Page 27

Volume 13/Number 4 ■ Creighton University ■ Fall 1997

WINDOW

Soul StirringThe article in the summer 1997 issue ofWINDOW by Fr. Richard Hauser captured myimmediate attention. In reading it, it awak-ened the Spirit within me. It was inspira-tional, enlightening and soul stirring.Hopefully, WINDOW will be featuring futurearticles of this nature. A very special thanksto Fr. Hauser. The article will be saved toshare with friends and for my own futurereview.

Dorothy Pritchett, BSN’67Wills Point, Texas

Grill Uncivil To WomenIn a periodical noted for its taste, it was dis-appointing to read an article featuring a for-mer neighborhood grill notorious for itsincivility to Creighton women. For othermodes of discrimination, the grill wouldhave been boycotted or should have been.

N.J. Lemke, S.J.Jesuit Community

Creighton University

Quiet Jesuit Touched LivesI’ve never seen an article about the quietJesuit who presided over the physics lab inpre-World War II days. He must havetouched the lives of every pre-dental andpre-med student of that era. Does anyoneout there remember him?

His name escapes me, but I’ll never forgethis hand-written signs that decorated bothlab and lecture rooms. One in particularstands out: “Voluntary contributors to theAnnual Varnish Fund may signify theirintentions by putting their feet on the desk infront.”

Margaret Rossie Taylor, BS’39Littleton, Colo.

Wrong GuyYou misidentified the man pictured on page25 of the summer 1997 issue. He is MichaelFarrall. WINDOW looks great! It keeps me intouch with “home.”

Judy Sing, BA’91Macomb, Okla.

“Plagues Are AsCertain As Death

And Taxes”:Emerging And Re-emerging Diseases

Theodore E. Burk, Phil.D.Professor & Chair of Biology

Aunique event in the long saga of thehuman struggle against diseaseoccurred on Oct. 26, 1977. In Merka,

Somalia, Ali Maow Maalin was diagnosed ashaving smallpox. There was nothing uniqueabout a person contracting smallpox; exceptfor tuberculosis, no other infectious diseasehad taken so many human lives over thecenturies. What was unique was that AliMaow Maalin was the last person ever tocontract smallpox under natural conditions.When he survived his infection, smallpoxwas extinct in the wild — the only diseasepathogen ever completely eradicated innature by human effort. Smallpox eradica-tion, the culmination of an 11-year, $300 million campaign, seemed to many to marka milestone in human history, the dawningof an age in which infectious diseases woulddisappear one after another and would nolonger constitute an important cause ofhuman suffering and death.

Dr. Burk. Background is an enlarged photo of the AIDS virus.Photo by Kent Sievers

Aunique event in the long saga of thehuman struggle against diseaseoccurred on Oct. 26, 1977. In Merka,

Somalia, Ali Maow Maalin was diagnosed ashaving smallpox. There was nothing uniqueabout a person contracting smallpox; exceptfor tuberculosis, no other infectious diseasehad taken so many human lives over thecenturies. What was unique was that AliMaow Maalin was the last person ever tocontract smallpox under natural conditions.When he survived his infection, smallpoxwas extinct in the wild — the only diseasepathogen ever completely eradicated innature by human effort. Smallpox eradica-tion, the culmination of an 11-year, $300 million campaign, seemed to many to marka milestone in human history, the dawningof an age in which infectious diseases woulddisappear one after another and would nolonger constitute an important cause ofhuman suffering and death.

Dr. Burk. Background is an enlarged photo of the AIDS virus.Photo by Kent Sievers

Ten years earlier, U. S. SurgeonGeneral William H. Stewart had told aWhite House meeting of state healthofficials that it was time to movebeyond infectious diseases and con-centrate the nation’s health resourceson chronic diseases such as hyperten-sion and diabetes. Bright young grad-uate students were discouraged bytheir mentors from going into thedead-end field of infectious diseaseepidemiology.

Then, in 1975, came Lyme disease.In 1976, Ebola hemorrhagic fever andLegionnaires’ disease. In 1978, toxicshock syndrome. In 1979 (althoughthe virus wouldn’t be discovered forseveral more years), acquired immunedeficiency syndrome. In 1982, E. coli0157:H7 food poisoning. In 1993, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.Mixed in with all of the above was ageographic menagerie of other newdiseases — Marburg, Machupo, Junin,Lassa. And, as if this swarm of“emerging diseases” wasn’t enough to belie the optimism of the 1960s and early 1970s, familiar diseasesreturned in new and deadly forms —yellow fever, dengue, malaria,Staphylococcus, tuberculosis, cholera.Instead of disease eradication,humankind seems to be headed into a

new era of “disease turnover,” inwhich old diseases fade away underthe advances of medicine, only to bereplaced by new diseases or newforms of the old ones.

In this article I discuss where such“emerging and re-emerging diseases”come from, by what pathways theycan become widespread and estab-lished as human epidemic diseases,and how in almost all cases humanalteration of the natural environmenthas been a significant contributor totheir emergence and spread. Finally,some ways to anticipate the arrival ofnew emerging diseases and to miti-gate their effects are mentioned.

It is useful to begin by reviewingthe history of humankind’s strugglewith disease, as summarized by JaredDiamond of UCLA School of Medicinein his books “The Third Chimpanzee”and “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Fourdistinct stages can be recognized. Thefirst, beginning with the origins ofhumankind and continuing until theadvent of agriculture in the past10,000 years, involved people living inthe hunter-gatherer lifestyle for which

our species evolved. While it mayseem impossible to reconstruct thehealth problems of prehistoric people,practitioners of the science of “pale-opathology” attempt to do this byexamining skeletal remains (and occa-sionally well-preserved mummies orair-dried feces). Surprisingly, theyhave found that most preagriculturalpeople were, on average, taller andhealthier than the people who fol-lowed them. In general, they hadstrong bones and teeth free of cavities,and show little evidence of nutritionaldeficiencies. They did suffer accidents(many bones exhibit healed fractures),they certainly had their share of para-sites such as intestinal worms (manyof these “heirloom diseases” broughtalong by people from their primateancestors), they suffered wounds thatbecame infected, and they occasional-ly picked up an animal disease fromthe wildlife with which they came intocontact (such diseases are called“zoonoses,” and they play a majorpart in our story, as will be seen).

The invention of agriculture, whichoccurred several different times in dif-ferent areas of the world, ushered inthe second phase. Agriculture, fromthe perspective of paleopathologists,was a very mixed blessing.Domestication of crops led toincreased food supplies and greatlyincreased human populations, but thenew crop foods tended to be high incarbohydrates and low in proteins andother nutrients. The larger popula-tions supported by agriculture werecomposed of people who thus grew tobe smaller than their hunter-gathererancestors, lived shorter lifespans, andshowed much greater evidence oftooth decay and nutrient-deficiencydiseases. Also, with large populationsdependent on just a few staple cropssuch as rice, wheat or corn, massivestarvation resulted if bad weather orplant disease caused crops to fail. Anddomestication of animals, leading toclose and prolonged contact between

Creighton University WINDOW4

Viruses such as influenza, picturedabove, are common in the UnitedStates and elsewhere. Some strains,however, can be deadly.

Instead of diseaseeradication,

humankind seems tobe headed into a new

era of “diseaseturnover,” in which

old diseases fadeaway under the

advances of medicine,only to be replaced bynew diseases or new

forms of the old ones.

the domesticated animals and theseagricultural people, meant that animaldiseases crossed over to people muchmore frequently and began to evolvenew, specifically human-infectingforms (“souvenir diseases”). The list ofhuman diseases that are likely to havebeen derived from related diseases ofour domesticated animals is long andshocking; a very incomplete listincludes measles from dogs, tubercu-losis and smallpox from cattle,influenza and whooping cough frompigs, the common cold from horses,and malaria from birds. In other cases,our diseases came not from intention-ally domesticated animals, but fromanimals that had voluntarily taken upcohabitation with us — one examplebeing bubonic plague, a disease ofwild ground squirrels that occasional-ly spread to rats and, because ofhumanity’s close contact with rats incrowded urban settings, people.

Phase three involved a natural progression from phase two. The food surpluses and hierarchical soci-eties that resulted from widespreadadoption of agriculture rapidly led tothe growth of large cities, in whichmost of the human population waspacked together at densities far high-er than ever experienced before.Under such circumstances, the stagewas set for the emergence of the greatinfectious disease plagues that werethe major source of human mortalityfor the past few thousand years, rightup to the 20th century. The diseaseslisted above, plus others such ascholera, polio, typhus and typhoid,were able to establish themselves per-manently in the large, densely crowd-ed populations of people living incities, especially given poor sanitaryprocedures that facilitated spread ofthe pathogens during interpersonalinteractions (actual physical contactas well as the inhalation of thepathogen-bearing exhalations of near-by people) and contaminated foodand water supplies.

By the turn of the 20th century, as a result of such discoveries as vacci-nation by Jenner, the germ theory ofdisease by Pasteur and Koch, antisep-tic procedures by Lister, the impor-tance of pure water supplies by Snow,and the disease-spreading role ofinsect vectors by Ross and others,rates of most epidemic infectious dis-eases were already falling rapidly,especially in Europe and NorthAmerica. By the middle of this centu-ry, the worldwide spread of higherstandards of sanitation, accompaniedby the discovery and use of antibioticsagainst bacteria and pesticides againstdisease vectors, led to the optimistic

situation described in the openingparagraph. The dramatic decline ofthe “classic” epidemic diseases, dra-matically illustrated by the elimina-tion of smallpox, was supposed tousher in a fourth era, in which — atleast in developed countries — mosthealth problems would be due tochronic “lifestyle diseases” such asheart attacks, strokes, cancer and dia-betes. In this era, as we saw above,epidemic infectious diseases were notsupposed to be important health con-cerns. But, as we also saw, this purefourth era hasn’t yet arrived, and itnever will. Instead, our real new era isone in which lifestyle diseases assumegreater prominence, but are accompa-nied by an ever-changing challengefrom new infectious diseases and different and dangerous forms of previous ones, a period not of infec-tious disease disappearance but of disease turnover.

Where do all these “new diseases”come from?

The answer, in almost every case,is, “from the same place old diseasescame from — existing diseases of oth-er species.” In that sense, emerging

Fall Issue 1997 5

Diseases such as the bubonic plague have spread worldwide, as shown by the redareas above. The plague, originally a disease of wild ground squirrels that spread to rats and then to humans, decimated Europe for 400 years.

The list of human diseases that are

likely to have beenderived from related

diseases of our domesticated animalsis long and shocking.

Distribution of Plague Today

diseases are not new at all, just new tohumans (or, having been present inhuman populations but not recog-nized, merely newly identified). Forexample, Lyme disease, a bacterialdisease with initial flu-like symptomsthat can progress to a more seriousarthritic condition, is contracted bypeople bitten by ticks, especially thedeer tick Ixodes scapularis. While asmany as 10,000 Americans per yearcontract Lyme disease, it is primarily adisease of deermice, vectored by tickscycling between deermice and white-tailed deer. Hantavirus pulmonarydisease, first recognized after an out-break in 1993 in the Four Cornersregion of the American southwest thataffected both Navajo Indians and oth-er people in the region, is a disease ofdeermice, contracted by humans whoinhale the virus in airborne particles ofmouse urine and feces. Many of themore exotic emerging tropical diseases

also fit this pattern: Lassafever, endemic in muchof West Africa, is primari-ly a disease of the rodentMastomys natalensis.While the animal originof the deadly Ebola virus(50-90 percent mortality in hundredsof cases each in four African outbreaksin the past two decades) has not yetbeen identified, many scientists sus-pect bats, rodents or monkeys. (Ebolahas devastated one population ofchimpanzees in the Ivory Coast thathas long been intensively studied byprimatologists, suggesting thatchimps, like humans, are not the natu-ral hosts but victims of occasionalcross-species infection.) HIV (humanimmunodeficiency virus), the AIDSvirus, is closely related to viruses thatinfect (but do not cause serious dis-ease in) African monkeys and chim-panzees, and the most widely

accepted theory for its origin is fromone of these primate viruses.

For a pathogen from one species tosurvive and reproduce in another,such as humans, is not a likely event.Since different species have differentbiochemistries and physiologies,pathogens that are well adapted toinvade one kind of organism areunlikely to be able to overcome thedefenses of a very different kind oforganism; only where the new host isphysiologically similar to the old hostis the infection likely to take hold. Asa result, most of the zoonoses thathumans acquire come from other ani-mals that are relatively closely related


The proximity of deer to human populations has increased the spread ofLyme disease in North America. As many as 10,000 Americans per yearcontract Lyme disease, which is spread through the bites of deer ticks.

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to us; in a survey of 62 human dis-eases that are primarily found in otheranimals, Will Kastens of Harvardfound that 35 came from wild non-pri-mate mammals, about a dozen fromdomesticated mammals, and sevenfrom non-human primates. A fewcame from birds (who are, like mam-mals, warm-blooded vertebrates),with only a scattering from otherspecies (such as cholera-causing Vibriobacteria, which are associated withmarine plankton and shellfish).

Animal diseases get into humanbodies in a variety of ways. In the caseof Lassa and hantavirus, close contactwith rodents leads to humans inhalingairborne particles from rodent feces orurine that contain the viruses. Otherdiseases, such as Lyme disease and themany mosquito-vectored diseases(malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever,Rift Valley fever, encephalitis), areintroduced by a biting arthropod (inthe case of viruses, such disorders areknown as “arboviruses”, short forarthropod-borne viruses). In other cas-es, the pathogens get into humanhosts when humans kill and eat theanimal host. The harsh environmentof the human gut probably kills mostingested pathogens, but in preparing arat or monkey for consumption, ahunter gets blood and other contami-nants from the animal on himself,which may enter the human blood-stream via cuts or across variousmembranes. This is almost certainlyhow the Ebola and AIDS viruses firstentered the human system. (The IvoryCoast chimpanzees devastated byEbola were famous for being enthusi-astic and successful predators on thelocal monkeys, which they killed andtore apart before eating.) Or a wildmammal may bite a human, directlyinjecting pathogens (as in rabies).

Modern cultural practices haveopened up new ports of access. Abouta dozen Britons have now died fromthe new variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that they almost certain-

ly acquired by eating beef contaminat-ed with the mysterious prions (“pro-teinaceous infectious particles”) thathave caused thousands of cases of“mad cow disease” in British cattlesince the mid-1980s. The cattle, inturn, almost certainly became infectedby being fed animal protein contain-ing sheep by-products (sheep havinglong been affected by a similar disor-der called scrapie). (In the 1950s, a

tribe in the Papua New Guinea high-lands suffered 2,600 cases of a similardisorder, called kuru, which wasalmost entirely restricted to womenand children who had participated inritual burial handling of dead rela-tives; these rituals may or may nothave included cannibalism of thebrains of the dead; whence the kuruagent came when it first infected thetribe is not known, but seems likely tohave been some local animal that was killed and eaten.)

A worrisome possible new routefor new pathogens is via “xenotrans-plants.” There have already beenseveral cases of primate hearts orlivers being transplanted intohuman patients as stop-gap mea-sures until a human organ wasavailable. Due to the perpetualshortage of human organs forpatients who need them, severalcompanies are developing newstrains of pigs, specially bred to be asource of organs to be harvested and

transplanted into human patients.However, pigs (and all other proposeddonor species) harbor various her-pesviruses and retroviruses that, whilenot causing serious disease in pigs,might do so in humans. In Britain,pig-human transplants have beenbanned for now, until further researchis carried out to assess the risk ofintroducing new diseases into humanpopulations, and until a U. K.Xenotransplantation InterimRegulatory Authority develops guidelines.

An important constant in all of thecases mentioned thus far, and in manyothers, is human action. When weponder the effects of the humanassault on the natural world, we usu-ally focus on such factors as climatechange, air and water pollution, soilerosion and reduction in biodiversity.But rarely are the disease conse-quences of our actions considered. Asrain forest is invaded by colonizinghuman populations, there is increas-ing contact between these populationsand wild animals carrying potentialnew human pathogens — more peo-ple get bitten by mammals or insects,more monkeys and rodents are killed

Fall Issue 1997 7

The E. coli bacteria in the petri dishshow a green sheen. (Slide courtesy ofStephen J. Cavalieri, Ph.D., associateprofessor of pathology and director ofmicrobiology at Creighton.)

...close contact withrodents leads tohumans inhaling airborne particlesfrom rodent feces

or urine that contain viruses.

and sold in local markets, morehuman huts and shacks are invadedby opportunistic local rodents. Thelikelihood of new zoonoses emergingis greatly accelerated.

To this general phenomenon, spe-cific human actions can be added.Lyme disease, probably present forhundreds of years in northeasternNorth America at very low rates,exploded after humans cleared theforests and eliminated large predators,farmed these areas for a couple ofhundred years, then abandoned themfor the fertile prairies farther west. Inthe second-growth forests that sprangup, white-tailed deer populationsexploded (ideal habitat, no predators),allowing the deer tick with its deer-mouse/deer life cycle (and its cargo ofLyme disease bacteria) to explode innumbers as well. As suburbanitespushed into these wooded and wildareas, they encountered the abundantdeer ticks and, from their bites, Lymedisease bacteria. In Argentina, nativepampas grasslands were replaced byintensive cultivation of corn; in corn-fields, a new dominant mousereplaced a different species that hadpredominated in the grasslands. Thenew species (Calomys musculinus)turns out to be the host of the Juninvirus, cause of Argentine hemorrhagicfever, which has caused many deaths

in agricultural workers. In Africa,building of the Aswan Dam in Egyptwas followed by 200,000 cases of RiftValley fever and 600 deaths in the1970s (the disease continues today):The building of the dam created abun-dant new habitat for the mosquito

vector of the virus, and brought intothe area new large populations ofhumans and livestock who could beinfected (cattle and sheep are majoranimal hosts).

Other cases abound. Legionella, thebacterium that causes Legionnaires’disease, has lived for millennia in

lakes and ponds without affectinghumans — if people swallowedLegionella, their guts made short workof the bacteria. But invention of giantinstitutional air conditioners withreservoirs of water to remove heatopened up a new niche for Legionella,with powerful vents to distribute itaerially via water droplets, gettinginto people’s lungs and bypassingtheir guts. Invention of a new extend-ed-use tampon in the 1970s createdthe perfect environment for the sur-vival and growth of toxic-shock-syn-drome-causing Staphylococcus.

Human activities not only providenew opportunities for people to comeinto contact with potential pathogens,they also greatly facilitate the spreadof these pathogens out of their loca-tion of origin to the worldwide humanpopulation. It is quite likely that HIVhad occasionally been getting intohuman populations in central Africafor many centuries, causing a smallnumber of mysterious, lingeringdeaths in isolated villages. However,in the 1970s, political upheaval,increasing urbanization and large-scale movements of migrant laborers(often single males who visited urbanprostitutes frequently) coincided with the building of a highway that,for the first time, ran all the wayacross central Africa from Kinshasa,


An Ebola infection (left) and the Ebola virus are pictured above. While the animal origin of the deadly Ebola virus has not yetbeen identified, many scientists suspect bats, rodents or monkeys.

Human activities provide new opportu-

nities for people tocome into contact

with potentialpathogens and greatlyfacilitate the spreadof these pathogens...

to the worldwidehuman population.

Congo, on the west to Mombasa,Kenya, on the east. These mass move-ments of people, facilitated by thepresence of what has come to be called“the AIDS highway,” ensured that thismysterious intermittently present ail-ment escaped its former boundariesand entered major African urbanareas. Easy intercontinental movementof people, made possible by modernairplane travel, then provided theopportunity for HIV to get out ofAfrica and spread to the rest of the world.

While AIDS has a very long latency,allowing it to get established outsideAfrica before it began to reveal its fatalpresence, it also is important to realizethe extent to which modern air travelhas the potential to facilitate thespread of other, much faster-actingemerging diseases. As a saying goes,with modern air travel nobody in theworld is more than 24 hours from therain forest. Hundreds of cases of tropi-cal diseases enter Britain each year viaHeathrow Airport; over a hundredcases a year of dengue fever arereported in the U.S. among travelersreturning from the Caribbean (whichmakes the spread into the U. S. of sev-eral good mosquito vectors of this dis-ease very disturbing); a few years agoa man died in Chicago of Lassa fever,contracted when he was in Nigeria for a funeral.

A reader of recent popular books orsensationalized movies may doubt thedoomsday scenarios they propose, inwhich a hypothetical new tropical dis-ease quickly spreads throughout theworld and, with Ebola-type mortalityrates, threatens the very existence ofthe human species. But history pro-vides many examples of just such dev-astation when an immunologicallynaive population is suddenly exposedto human disease-causing pathogensfrom another part of the world. In themost famous case, American peoplefrom the Arctic to Tierra del Fuegowere decimated by Old World dis-

eases brought by European con-querors and their African slaves.Smallpox, measles, yellow fever,malaria, and many others sweptthrough Native American populationsfor several centuries, often causing 50-90 percent mortality in particularlocations. Some estimates suggest that Old World diseases reduced anoriginal pre-Columbian population in the Americas from 100 million toonly about 10 million a century after contact.

And if emerging diseases weren’tbad enough, old familiar enemies alsoseem to be making a comeback, innew and deadlier forms. The popularnews media have recently begun tospread alarmist stories about tubercu-losis strains that are resistant to allknown antibiotics and about “flesh-eating Staphylococcus.” While many ofthese stories are over-sensationalized,they do reflect a real problem.Antibiotic-resistant forms of such oldenemies as Mycobacterium tuberculosisand Staphylococcus aureus are present-ing very serious new challenges; everymajor disease-causing bacterium is

resistant to at least one antibiotic, andmany are resistant to all but one ortwo. And new, deadly forms of previ-ously innocuous microbes are alsopopping up, such as the 0157:H7strain of Escherichia coli, the ubiquitoushuman colon bacterium. This newstrain, first discovered in 1982, hassince been involved in deadly out-breaks of food poisoning involvingcontaminated fast-food hamburgers inthe United States and contaminatedschool-lunch salads in Japan.

The appearance of such new“superbugs” involves two phenome-na, one that should have been imme-diately predicted by anyoneunderstanding the process of evolu-tion, the other a more surprising phe-nomenon only fully revealed bymodern molecular biology. The firstinvolves simple natural selection.When antibiotics are first used againsta bacterial species, most individualbacteria are susceptible and quicklykilled. However, a tiny minority of thebacteria usually have, by coincidence,partial or full resistance to the antibi-otic. Under the severe selection

Fall Issue 1997 9

As humans continue to encroach on the rain forest, there is greater likelihood of people coming into contact with wild animals carrying potential new humanpathogens. With air travel, nobody is more than 24 hours from the rain forest.

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imposed by antibiotic use, this tinyminority are the only survivors. Withtheir competition eliminated, they cangrow explosively and become the pre-dominant form in an environment(such as a hospital) where antibioticsare pervasive. Even where already-resistant forms don’t exist, mutationsleading to resistant forms are likely tooccur, since bacteria exist in enor-mously large populations and havevery short generation times. Underideal circumstances, some bacteria canduplicate themselves every 20 minutes— at that rate, a bacterial species goesthrough as many generations in a dayas humans do in a millennium. It isnot just possible, but essentiallyinevitable, that microbes will evolveresistance to any new antibiotic; thebest modern medicine can hope to dois to follow careful procedures thatdelay this inevitable outcome.

Similar arguments apply in the caseof pathogens other than bacteria. Thetrypanosomes that cause sleepingsickness and the Plasmodium species(protozoans, both) that cause malariarapidly change their outer proteins sothat the human immune system andhuman vaccine developers are unableto keep pace. Retroviruses such asHIV are also notoriously fast evolvers.One theory (not accepted by the entireAIDS medical community) for whymost AIDS sufferers usually succumbis that HIV and the patient’s immunesystem engage in a prolonged armsrace, with HIV constantly generatingnew versions and the patient’simmune system having to match thatwith new defenses — under this sce-nario, almost inevitably at some pointan HIV variant arises that the immunesystem never is able to cope with, andthe disease progresses to the patient’sdeath. In 10 years in a patient’s body,HIV can undergo as much geneticchange as has happened in humanssince the early hominid “Lucy”walked the savannas 3 million years ago.

The second trick that leads to thespread of antibiotic resistance and tothe generation of new “superbugs” isa phenomenon called “horizontal genetransfer.” Bacteria have many ways ofpicking up new genes. One involvesthe acquisition of small, circular piecesof DNA called plasmids, which maybe transferred during bacterial “mat-ing” or picked up from other bacteriathat release them into the environ-ment. Such plasmids often containgenes for antibiotic resistance or fortoxin production, and bacteria of onespecies can incorporate these plasmids

not only from other bacteria of theirown species but from other species aswell. Thus, a non-resistant species ofbacteria can quickly acquire antibioticresistance from a resistant species thatshares its environment (such as thegut or bloodstream of a human or adomesticated animal), or an innocu-ous bacterium can acquire genes formaking deadly toxins from anotherspecies in the same way. The 0157:H7E. coli strain picked up its deadly toxingene in this way from another food-poisoning pathogen, Shigella dysente-ria, which lives alongside it in suchenvironments as the guts of cattle.

As in the previous case of newlyemerging zoonotic diseases, humanactions have made the processes of

antibiotic-resistance and virulenceacquisition much worse than they oth-erwise might have been. Particularlydamaging has been the widespreaduse of antibiotics in less-than-criticalsituations. The more widespreadantibiotics are in the environment, themore quickly resistance to them willevolve and prevail in a bacterialspecies. Having evolved in a domesticanimal, given antibiotics as a routinepractice to promote faster weight gain,or in a human patient with a viralinfection (against which antibiotics donot help), a resistant strain can thenenter and cause serious illness inhumans. As a parent myself, I knowjust how tempting it is to insist that achild with a fever and a sore throat begiven an antibiotic, even if what thechild has is probably a viral infection.And, living most of my life in Kansasand Nebraska, I can understand whycattle producers wish to eliminatenagging health problems that slowweight gain and limit profits. But eachof these situations greatly exacerbatesthe problem of antibiotic resistance.(In the U.S., 30 times as many antibi-otics are used on farm animals as onhumans; in Denmark in 1993, 22 kg ofvancomycin were used in human ther-apy, 19,000 kg in animals.)

Are we helpless against emergingand re-emerging diseases? Not at all,although to better protect ourselveswe have to be constantly aware of therisks they pose and the ways in whichhuman actions affect those risks. Thepublic health consequences of humanintrusion into the natural world, espe-cially in the tropics, need to be explic-itly considered. Perhaps each newdevelopment project should be accom-panied by not only an ecologicalimpact statement but also an epidemi-ological impact statement. Well-fund-ed research should be undertaken tosurvey the microbial biota of wild ani-mals, to identify potentially emergingpathogens. Research should also focuson pathways of “microbe traffic,” so


In 10 years in apatient’s body, HIV

can undergo as muchgenetic change as hashappened in humans

since the earlyhominid “Lucy”

walked the savannas3 million years ago.

that a better understanding exists ofhow new pathogens get into localhuman populations and spread fromtheir original foci to new areas.International organizations should beestablished to make public healthmonitoring and record keeping asgood in all parts of the world as it is inthe U. S. With our network of local,state, and federal public health agen-cies, anchored by the Centers forDisease Control in Atlanta, only 19days elapsed in 1993 between the firstcase of hantavirus pulmonary syn-drome showing up in a doctor’s officeand the identification of the new han-tavirus that was the cause of the dis-ease. In this age of political

conservatism, government budget cut-backs and lack of enthusiasm for thefunding of international agencies, itwill be difficult to establish such pro-grams, but we should never forget

that all of us are within 24 hours of the rain forest.

In addition, an explicitly evolution-ary approach, sometimes called by itssupporters “Darwinian medicine,”should guide our use of antibiotics,making sure we follow proceduresthat allow us to husband the valuableresource of antibiotic effectiveness andmake it last as long as possible. And,where diseases are already estab-lished, it may be possible to use proce-dures developed by proponents ofDarwinian medicine to give less viru-lent strains of pathogens an evolution-ary advantage over more deadlystrains (See Randolph Neese andGeorge Williams’ recent book, “WhyWe Get Sick: the New Science ofDarwinian Medicine,” for details.)

Above all, we must be prepared tocarry on the fight against infectiousdiseases over the long term; there willnever be a quick fix or a permanentsolution. In 1982, following the stringof new diseases that had firstappeared or been recognized in the1970s, Dr. Richard Krause of theNational Institutes of Health wasasked to testify before HouseAppropriations Committee hearingsabout the budget for NIH’s NationalInstitute of Allergy and InfectiousDisease. Congressman Joseph Earlyasked Krause, “Has something newoccurred? Why do we have so manynew infectious diseases?” Krause’sreply can be our warning: “No, noth-ing new has happened. Plagues are ascertain as death and taxes.”

Final Note: Since this article wasbegun, Nebraska and Iowa have both seen their first cases of hantavirus pul-monary syndrome (the Iowa case wasfatal), and there has been a nationwidescare concerning frozen hamburger patties originating from a Columbus,Neb., food-packing plant that were con-taminated with the 0157:H7 strain of theE. coli bacterium. W

Fall Issue 1997 11

The more widespreadantibiotics are in the

environment, the morequickly resistance

to them will evolve and prevail in a

bacterial species.

Workers process ground beef at the former Hudson Foods plant in Columbus, Neb., last August. Concern of a possible E. coli bacteria contamination prompted a 25 million pound recall of beef processed at the plant.

Ethan Deas

Kelly Kennedy Jenaid Ahmed

Amber VanKirkEthan Deas Amber VanKirk

Jenaid AhmedKelly Kennedy

Proudly wearing a new CreightonT-shirt, Jenaid Ahmed of theChicago area joined the con-

trolled confusion at lower St. John’sand patiently waited his turn to speakto his freshman seminar adviser. Itwas the culmination of summer pre-view for Creighton’s Class of 2001.

Ahmed, a pre-med major whosemother is an immigrant physicianfrom India, symbolizes some of themajor changes that the class is bring-ing to Creighton.

According to C.U. admissions andstudent services officials, this class:

• Includes sharply increasing num-bers of Asian Americans, especially ofIndian or Pakistani descent.

• Has very high numbers of pre-med majors attracted by theGuaranteed Admissions program.

• Includes more students whoseparents have more than a bachelor’sdegree.

• Has fewer Roman Catholics andmore members of other faiths includ-ing non-Christian faith traditions.

Like many members of the Class of2001, Ahmed said that the Guaranteed

Admissions program (which began in1996 and guarantees admission tothree of the five professional schoolsto C.U. graduates meeting certainstandards) was a major factor in hischoice of Creighton. However, itwasn’t the only reason.

“Creighton is full of opportunities,”he said. “It’s like a buffet. It’s compact.I know where everything is. The atmo-sphere is very welcoming and friend-ly.” On a campus visit, he “saw theinteraction in the halls. The teachersseemed so friendly.”

Ahmed said he has attendedLoyola Prep in Chicago so he is famil-iar with Jesuit education. His collegeplans include more than just studyingto get into medical school.

“I’m interested in community ser-vice and maybe some of the leader-ship activities,” he said. “I plan to playintramural basketball.”

According to Director of Admis-sions Laurie Galeski, 21 percent of thisyear’s approximately 875 freshmenare members of minority groups, thebulk of them Asian Americans.

While exact ethnic percentages ofthe Class of 2001 were not available atmidsummer, Galeski said she expect-ed the figures to be fairly similar tothose of the Class of 2000 when 14 per-cent of the freshmen were AsianAmericans.

This represents a sharp increase

Fall Issue 1997 13

THE CLASS OF 2001:

A NewOdysseyfor Creighton

By Eileen Wirth, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Journalism and Mass Communication

Making a residence hall room home isCreighton freshman Juan Baltodano.P

hoto

s by

Ken

t Si

ever

s

from the 5 percent Asian Americanfreshman enrollment in 1991 and the 9percent Asian American enrollment in1995, the year prior to Creighton’sGuaranteed Admissions program,said Dr. Stephanie Wernig, associatevice president for student services.

Wernig said increasing numbers ofstudents of Indian and Pakistanidescent are selecting C.U. especiallyfor this reason. Many new studentsare the children of immigrant doctorsand other professionals.

This factor has sharply increasedthe parental educational backgroundsof Creighton students since 1987, shesaid. For example, in 1996, 68 percentof the freshmen said their fathers hada B.A. or higher as well as 60 percentof their mothers. This contrasts with56 percent of the fathers and 48 per-

cent of the mothers in 1987.The great jump came in 1996. In

1995, the year before the GuaranteedAdmissions program for studentsmeeting certain grade criteria, 62 per-cent of the fathers and 53 percent ofthe mothers had more than a B.A.

The Guaranteed Admissions pro-gram has increased Creighton’s tradi-tionally high percentage of studentsplanning health sciences careers,Wernig said. In 1996, 40 percent of the freshmen said they planned medi-cal or dental careers, up from 30 per-cent in 1995 and 21 percent in 1987. Incontrast, the percentage of studentswho planned to attend law schooldropped from 14 to 7 percent between1987 and 1996.

The increase in prospective pre-medical students was reflected in the

students filling the benches at lowerSt. John’s at summer preview.

Amanda Nierstheimer, 18, of Pekin, Ill., and Ethan Deas, 18, a graduate of Omaha Burke High, were among those getting acquaintedas they waited to see their advisers.Both are pre-med, and guaranteedadmissions helped draw both toCreighton. However, like Ahmed,Nierstheimer and Deas also consid-ered other factors.

“For me, Creighton’s location wasnumber one and also its academic rep-utation,” said Deas.

Like many Omaha students, hesaid he’s been weighing the relativeadvantages of saving money by livingat home versus the chance to meetmore people by living on campus.

“I would like to join a fraternity


Settling in to Swanson Hall are, left, Abraham Daniels, and, right, Mital Patel.

and participate in some intramuralsports and clubs,” he said. “I’m excit-ed. I’m ready to get going...”

Nierstheimer said Creighton’s sizeand the recommendation of a friendwho went here affected her choice.Creighton is big enough that there willbe plenty to do but not so big thatshe’ll get lost in the crowds. A campusvisit in February solidified her choice.

“Everyone I met seemed really hap-py,” she said. Her interests includeintramural swimming and leadershipactivities. She’s also impressed byCreighton’s level of computerizationand unlimited Internet access.

“I was scared before I came for this(summer preview) that I wouldn’tfind my way around or know any-one,” she said. “Now I’m just excited.”

According to Jack Walsh, assistantdean of the College of Arts andSciences, many students are attractedby the variety of health career pro-grams at Creighton.

“Students have a lot of differentways to go,” he said. “They like thefact we’ve got three undergraduatecolleges they can go to. If they don’tmake it in one place, they can gosomeplace else.”

And, indeed, not all the prospectivehealth care professionals at previewwere pre-med. Lora Hill, 17, fromTimnatu, Colo., for example, plans tobecome a physical therapist.

“I liked the campus and its size,”she said. “Creighton has a good repu-tation for physical therapy. I don’tknow anyone here, but it’s fun to be ina new place.”

Across campus, away from thehubbub at St. John’s, sat AmberVanKirk of Lincoln, waiting to meetwith her adviser in the School ofNursing.

VanKirk, a graduate of Lincoln’sPius X High School, said she choseCreighton because of the reputation ofthe nursing program and because hersister Shana, an Arts and Sciencessophomore, has been happy at C.U.

“I like the fact that it’s small,” shesaid. “I know the teachers will behelping me out. I knew the nursing

program here was very, very good.”VanKirk said she hopes to work

with people who are less fortunate —“really sick people or poor people. Ithink that going on service trips is onething I’m definitely interested in atCreighton.”

According to Galeski, admissionsto the School of Nursing havedropped, reflecting a national trend.However, prospective business stu-dents have increased by about 34 per-

cent, an extremely welcome changefor the College of BusinessAdministration which has workedhard to halt an enrollment decline.

COBA freshmen such asChristopher Wilmes, 18, of Allen,Neb., met with their advisers at theCollege of Business Administration.

Wilmes said he plans to major inmanagement information systems andchose Creighton partially because ofits reputation and because he received

Fall Issue 1997 15

• Approximately 875 students• Natives of 39 states and numerous foreign countries

• Average ACT score of 25.5

Here are some comparisons between the things the classes of1987 and 1996 considered either very important or essential:

1987 199625% Influence politics 19%43% Influence social values 40%65% Help others in difficulty 74%80% Become an authority in my field 68%10% Make theoretical contribution to science 28%14% Write original works 10%13% Create artistic works 9%50% Become successful in own business 35%32% Promote racial understanding 37%

Source: Creighton Student Services

57%FEMALE

43%MALE

57%ROMAN

CATHOLIC

21%PROTESTANT

22%OTHERFAITHS

A PROFILE OF THEUNDERGRADUATE CLASSOF 2001: A THUMBNAIL

the Walter and Suzanne ScottScholarship. In addition, his parentswere eager for him to attend aChristian university.

“Hopefully, I will become a com-puter systems analyst,” he said.“That’s my idea right now — or (Imay do) something in business in gen-eral. I believe that I will have a job incomputers that is high paying and willgive me the chance to travel. That’sthe dream I have...”

One of Creighton’s major goals,said Galeski, is to recruit additionalstudents in fields outside the healthsciences. “We’re doing direct mailingsand specialized programs to increaseenrollment in some of our other areasbut in many guidance counselors’minds, the health sciences are whatCreighton is best known for.”

Incoming Fine Arts major MelindaMcGuffee of Papillion, Neb., said shechose Creighton for a combination ofreasons including proximity to home,its academic reputation and financial

assistance. She might also take publicrelations courses to enhance her careeropportunities.

Meeting Dr. Roger Aiken, chair ofFine Arts, got her really excited aboutCreighton. “He was the coolest guy inthe world,” said McGuffee, who isespecially interested in Aiken’s spe-cialty, art history.

Another example of an Arts andSciences student enrolling atCreighton for its other programs isKelly Kennedy, 18, of Bellevue, whoplans to major in journalism. Kennedy,who edited the Bellevue East HighSchool newspaper and received anumber of journalism awards, saidthat receiving a Mildred Brown Schol-arship in journalism drew her to C.U.

Her plans include living on cam-pus, working on the Creightonian student newspaper, getting active inthe Creighton University African-American Student Association andpossibly studying abroad. “The semester in the Dominican Republic

appeals to me.”Kennedy said that she had been a

little scared that in college she wouldnot experience the closeness that shefound on her high school newspaperstaff. However, she found a similaratmosphere when she received herscholarship at Creighton’s journalismawards banquet last spring.

Galeski said that Creighton stilldraws many children of alums and isincreasing its efforts to attract suchstudents. It sends out special mailingsto alum families. Last year, it added amailing to 500 alumni with a waiver ofthe application fee as a reward fortheir help with student recruitment.

“Alumni assist us now in a lot ofareas,” she said. “We want to workwith them more closely. They can cer-tainly be strong, influential factors in astudent’s decision-making process.”

Galeski said that Creighton also has increased its efforts to attract stu-dents from Jesuit high schools by visit-ing 39 of the nation’s 46 Jesuitsecondary schools. Creighton Jesuitspersonally call accepted students fromsuch schools, urging them to enroll.This year, there’s been a 34 percentincrease in deposits from such stu-dents. In addition, Creighton movedto first place as the choice of 1997graduates of Creighton Prep. It hadfallen to second or third (behind theUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln andthe University of Nebraska at Omaha)in recent years.

Overall, admissions and Universityofficials say they are delighted withthe quality of the Class of 2001. It issmarter than ever with 36.3 percent ofdomestic ranked students comingfrom the top 10 percent of their highschool class, compared to 34.7 percentlast year. Incoming freshmen alsoseem to be enthusiastic, said AssistantDean Walsh, who worked with allthree preview groups.

Wernig said that Creighton’s grow-ing diversity poses a number of chal-lenges. The percentage of studentswho describe themselves as RomanCatholic on the freshman survey hasdropped from 75 percent in 1987 to 59


Assistant Professor George McNary consults with College of Business FreshmanJennifer Lee during Creighton’s summer preview.

percent last year and is expected to beabout 57 percent this year. Growingnumbers of students are born-againChristians, Buddhists or Moslems.

In addition, she said, Creightonstudents seem to be more conservativepolitically. While about half the students still consider themselvesmiddle of the road politically, 29 per-cent of the 1996 freshmen listed them-selves as conservative versus 24percent in 1987. Those calling them-selves liberal dropped from 27 percentto 18 percent.

“As we get more diverse, maintain-

ing and teaching our traditionalCreighton value system gets morechallenging,” said Wernig. “This pre-sents a special challenge to Jesuit col-leges and universities where socialjustice and leadership developmentare considered a vital part of eachinstitution’s mission.”

Galeski emphasized thatCreighton’s increasing academic credentials should not discourage students from applying. Creightonstill welcomes students who were nei-ther valedictorians nor scored in the30s on their ACT tests, especially if

they have other qualities of leadershipand service.

Galeski said Admissions wants totalk to all students who thinkCreighton may be a good match forthem. It is open to good students of allbackgrounds who may bring a varietyof gifts to the Creighton community.

Creighton normally admits stu-dents with at least a C plus averagefrom a good college prep school andan ACT of 22 or higher, she said. Theadmissions process is highly personal-ized and considers all components of a student’s background.

Fall Issue 1997 17

In the late 1940s when Harry Dolphin enrolled atCreighton, he expected to get a good education in journal-ism, then make up for the three years he had lost to Army

service in World War II.Dolphin, a retired Omaha public relations executive, said

he and other veterans took advantage of the GI Bill and oth-er programs to get far better educations than they otherwisewould have had.

“We were making up for lost time,” said Dolphin. “Wewanted to get a good education as fast as possible.” Taking17 hours was considered a light load. Going to school yearround was not unusual.

Like Dolphin, three other alumni from different decadessaid the eras in which they attended Creighton shaped boththeir expectations and their experiences.

John Reefe, an Omaha attorney who received his B.A. in1958, recalled the 1950s as a time of traditional values andlittle worry about competition.

“People were pretty relaxed about going to school,” hesaid. Jobs were plentiful and “no one I knew was real fright-ened about the future.”

Reefe said that when he entered Creighton, his goal wasto be “in the middle of the pack or a little ahead of it butwithout doing much work.”

There was no law school entrance exam, he said. Studentsmerely had to promise to pay their tuition eventually. Reefegraduated from C.U. Law School in 1963.

The 1960s, by contrast, were a time when many enteringCreighton students were interested in the civil rights andpeace movements, said Elizabeth Rea, an Omaha teacherwho transferred to Creighton from a junior college in Iowa in 1967.

Rea, vice president of the Omaha Education Association,

said she had been inspired by John F. Kennedy and went tocollege expecting that “part of life was to make some differ-ence” in society. Dr. Richard Shugrue, who then taught polit-ical science, was faculty adviser to the Young Democratswhich she joined. He encouraged members to “get activeand get involved.

“I loved it,” she said. “It was one of the best times of my life.”

By the early 1970s, fear of the draft was a motivator formany incoming Creighton students, at least male students,said John Rosenthal, treasurer of a commercial finance com-pany in the Chicago area.

Rosenthal, who received a B.A. in math in 1973, said thathis draft lottery number was seven. Throughout college, heworried that failing to finish one-eighth of his graduationrequirements every semester might result in loss of his student deferment.

“You couldn’t change majors or colleges or you riskedbecoming cannon fodder,” he said.

Rosenthal said that students who entered C.U. in the early ’70s had different expectations depending on which faction they exemplified. There were racial divisions. Somestudents were intensely political while “the rest wereintensely not political.”

Some parents sent their children to Creighton from theEast Coast on the assumption that they couldn’t get intotrouble in Omaha. The FBI occasionally sent agents to cam-pus looking for drug users and dealers.

“It wasn’t politically correct to worry about a job,” said Rosenthal. “That would have meant you were sellingout. Everyone wanted to get a job because you had to haveone, but a career meant that you had bought into the system.” W

ALUMNI REFLECT ONTHEIR OWN CREIGHTON ‘ODYSSEYS’

It’s a Monday evening at a Catholicchurch in Omaha. A dozen peopleare sitting around a table. They

range in age from the 20s to the 70s.They are men and women, black andwhite. They have gathered to talkabout their work, their faith and theconnections between the two.

• A stay-at-home mother of threesays, “I want to find time for prayerbut I can’t. My days are just too busytaking care of my kids.”

• “I love my work,” says a highschool teacher. “I know I’m doingsomething important with my life.”

• A doctor tells the group, “I worry

that my medical practice is takingover my life. All I do is work.”

• A computer programmer com-plains about the lack of meaning in hisjob. “I spend eight hours a day punch-ing information into a computer. Idon’t feel like I’m doing anything foranyone.”


BUSY PEOPLE

A

WORK

P R A Y E R O N T H E R U N

By Joseph Allegretti, J.D., M.Div.Yossem Professor of Legal Ethics

Creighton University School of Law

SpiritualityOF FOR

SSppiirriittuuaalliittyy aanndd WWoorrkkTeachers, bankers, plumbers,

lawyers, accountants, homemakersand real estate brokers — the work isdiverse, but the concerns are similar.People are struggling to find a way tolink their work with their deepest val-ues. They do not want to feel like oneperson at church or synagogue on theweekend and a different person atwork during the weekday. They arehungry to connect their faith and their work.

Each of these people, in his or herown way, is trying to fashion a spiritu-ality of work. Some people dismissspirituality as the very antithesis ofthe everyday world of work, com-merce and family. Literally, however,spirituality means to be “under theinfluence of the spirit.” As Richard P.McBrien puts it in “Catholicism,”“spirituality has to do with our way of being religious.” Our spiritualityrelates to how we experience God inour life and respond to that experi-ence. It is not abstract, otherworldly or impractical. It is how we are whowe are.

A spirituality of work, then, seeksto relate our work to the rest of ourspiritual life. It invites us to open our-selves to the presence of God in ourwork. It looks for opportunities tomake our work an instrument of ser-vice to God and to neighbor.

As we cultivate a spirituality ofwork, we guard against the twintemptations toward devaluing ourwork (treating it as spiritually mean-ingless) or overvaluing our work (giv-ing it too much meaning). In the firstcase, we damn our work as a curse; inthe latter, we transform it into an idol.

‘‘CCuurrsseedd iiss tthhee GGrroouunndd’’We treat our work as a curse

any time we approach it as nothingmore than a grim necessity, withoutany inherent meaning, valuable only for the paycheck it may (or may not) bring.

Many people I talk to fall into thistrap. Some of them earn large salariesand live in the nicest of neighbor-hoods. Yet their work is nothing but a

painful chore — it provides no suste-nance for their souls, no bread fortheir spiritual journeys. Often thefaces of such people brighten up —lighten up! — the moment the discus-sion changes to what is really impor-tant in their lives, whether it be family,church or sports.

What is most pernicious about thisattitude is its effect upon the worker.When I approach my work as a curse,it diminishes my own value. Here Iam, spending hour after hour, dayafter day, month after month, yearafter year, engaged in aimless and hol-low activity which is irrelevant to thedeeper yearnings of my heart andsoul. But if my work is a curse, whatdoes this say about me? Over time Imay come to hate myself for wastingmy talents and my life. Often this self-hatred is driven underground only tore-emerge in the guise of substanceabuse or other destructive behavior.

Ironically, religion itself has con-tributed to a negative assessment ofordinary work. In Genesis 3, God tellsAdam and Eve, “Cursed is the groundbecause of you. In toil you shall eat ofit all the days of your life; thorns andthistles it shall bring forth to you andyou shall eat the plants of the field. Inthe sweat of your face, you shall eatbread.” Work, back-breaking, mind-numbing work, is God’s punishmentfor the primeval, original sin ofhumanity. (There is another, more pos-itive, picture of work in Genesis, butit’s God’s curse that sticks in mostpeople’s minds.)

More subtly, religion in the Westhas sometimes encouraged the mistak-en notion that God and the spirituallife are reserved for Sundays and spe-cial days, with the unfortunate effectof trivializing the value of our every-day lives. Too often spirituality in theWest has been viewed as somethingthat you can do only if you flee fromordinary life.

In the Middle Ages, for example, itwas often assumed that no one whoremained in the secular world couldlive out the richness of the Christianfaith. As we shall see, both Protestantsand Catholics now reject such a deval-

uation of ordinary work, but the rem-nants of the medieval view haunt usstill. To go on a retreat, sit quietly inchurch, attend liturgy, read the Bible,meditate privately — that is spiritual.But time spent at work, or with thekids, fixing dinner, rushing to the vet-erinarian — many of us see that assecular, worldly, not spiritual at all.

From this viewpoint, the longhours we spend at work are at best awaste of time and, at worst, a sourceof guilt and anxiety. We can neverquite escape the fear that everymoment spent at work distracts usfrom the real purpose of our lives —to deepen our relationship with God.

Most of us, of course, do not spendour entire lives hating our work orhating ourselves for working. Butmost of us experience times when wefeel pressured and overwhelmed byour work. When this happens, ourwork seems to be devoid of meaningand estranged from the rest of our life,like a curse or punishment.

If you are like me, and sometimesfind this happening, then you mightask yourself a few questions:

• To what extent have I inter-nalized a negative view of work that finds it a distraction to my spiritual life?

• Do I sometimes hate my work orfind it spiritually meaningless? Isthere a certain situation or event thattriggers this feeling?

• When I treat my work as a curse,what is the impact on the rest of mylife? Do I become angry or depressed?Hard to get along with? Do I over-eat,over-drink, or spend long hours infront of the TV?

• What brings me out of this mind-set? How do I recapture a sense of

Fall Issue 1997 19

“I want to find timefor prayer but Ican’t. My days arejust too busy takingcare of my kids.”

meaning in my work?If at times our work seems like a

curse, the solution is to find ways tocultivate a sense of meaning in ourwork. We must take care, however,lest we avoid one trap only to fall into

another — we need to find meaning inour work, to be sure, but not too muchmeaning, lest our work become not acurse but an idol.

TThhee GGoodd WWhhoo CCaann’’tt SSaavveeIf one view of work devalues its

significance, and treats it as spirituallydeadening, there is another attitudetoward work that overvalues it, andthreatens to transform it into some-thing more than it is, something god-like, an idol made not of stone or claybut out of our dreams of worldly suc-cess and accomplishment. As the greatChristian theologian Paul Tillichreminds us, in a practical sense ourgod is whomever or whatever weinvest with ultimate worth, whoever

or whatever is most important in ourlife. Idolatry is confusing the finitewith the infinite. Sometimes this hap-pens with our work.

We confront here a paradox at thevery heart of a healthy spirituality ofwork: Work is an important and inte-gral part of our spiritual life, andshould be taken seriously, but it is notof ultimate significance in our lives.Work should open us to God, not takethe place of God.

How easy it is, however, to investtoo much of ourselves in our work. Ithink of all the times when I have beenburdened with assignments, frantical-ly trying to finish them all, yet at thesame time saying “yes” but never“no” to each new request. And it isnever enough to complete my assign-ments — not only must I do them all, Imust do them all perfectly. My workbecomes a way of proclaiming to theworld, “Look at me: I’m good! I countfor something!”

I’m not alone in this. At a cocktailparty, we break the ice with strangersby asking, “What do you do? Wheredo you work?” The size of our paycheck or our office frequentlyserves as a not-too-subtle sign ofdivine favor, proof that we’re some-body special.

When we approach our work thisway, success or failure at work

becomes the chief test of our worth asa person. Who I am depends uponwhat I do. It’s easy to end up like theman I met who said, with a sigh, “Allmy life I’ve been an engineer. Nowthat I’m retired, I’m nothing.” Andwoe to the unemployed and theunderemployed in a society like oursthat enshrines work, accomplishmentand productivity as the chief tests of aperson’s worth!

Work idolatry is an occupationalhazard for many workers, but espe-cially so for those who believe thatthey are doing “important” work.Many doctors, lawyers and businessexecutives, for example, are over-achievers, workaholics, who placeinflated value on their work in thehope that it will save them from theirshadowy fears of emptiness andworthlessness.

For such people, work becomestheir entire life. Everything else suffers— families and friends fall by thewayside, cherished hobbies are forgot-ten, their health is jeopardized — intheir frantic efforts to work more, earnmore, accomplish more. The brokenmarriages, the drug and alcohol prob-lems, the push-push-push mentalitythat can never slow down — all aretangible signs of the vain quest tograsp the Holy Grail of the workplace.

The root of the problem is that weare trying to make our work intosomething that it cannot be. We are using it as a magic potion to convince us of our self-importance, adrug to take away the painful suspi-cion that without our accomplish-ments and our corner offices we are, at bottom, nothing.

There is no quick cure for this problem, but the first step is to admitour tendency toward work idolatry.This is a fact of life for most of us, to agreater or lesser extent, because ourwork does matter. It does make a dif-ference to us if we do it well or poorly.If our work had no meaning, it wouldbe a curse.

So let us admit that our work isimportant and is inextricably entan-gled with our self-identity. Problemsarise not when our work is meaning-


Deep down we know that our work can’t save us. It can’t makeeverything better.

Allegretti...”We need a spirituality of the ordinary.”

ful but when it assumes ultimatemeaning in our lives, when we wor-ship it as a god.

If you are prone to work idolatry, asI am, you might periodically pauseand ask yourself a few questions:

• When I close my eyes and picturemyself, what do I see? How am Idressed? What am I doing? Am I athome or at work?

• Do the inevitable failures at workdiminish my sense of self-worth? Do Ifeel like a failure as a person?

• Do I catch myself thinking aboutwork at all times of the day and night?Do I bring work home most eveningsand weekends?

• Do I throw myself into my workto escape from problems in my per-sonal and family life? Would I ratherbe at work than at home?

• What are one or two things Icould do to achieve a healthy balancebetween my work and the rest of my life?

Deep down we know that our workcan’t save us. It can’t make everythingbetter. It can’t compensate for failedrelationships, lifelong insecurities, apainful childhood. Work can’t save us— only God can.

SSppiirriittuuaalliittyy ooff tthhee OOrrddiinnaarryyIf work is a paradox, if we give it

both too little and too much meaning,then the solution must be paradoxicalas well. We need a view of work thatsees it not as a curse or an idol, but assomething in between, something thatis part of our spiritual life but not thewhole of our spiritual life.

The medieval church was right toaffirm the sanctity of work; its prob-lem was in assuming that only certainwork had spiritual significance. As farback as the Reformation, Luther andCalvin broke free of this idea andtaught that any work could be a voca-tion if it was an avenue of service toGod and to neighbor. Our calling is tolove God and our neighbor throughour work.

Similarly, in the encyclical LaboremExercens, Pope John Paul II speaks ofwork as a way for humans to share inthe creative work of God and Christ’s

ongoing work of redemption.This means that we serve our God

in our everyday work. We are doingGod’s work not just when sitting inchurch, but when counseling a client,preparing a marketing report, repair-ing a balky computer or driving atruck. We collaborate with God as werespond competently and diligently toour tasks. As theologian ElizabethDreyer in “Toward a Spirituality ofWork” puts it, “Gradually we arelearning that to be a good plumber,truck driver, nurse, or janitor is theway to be a good Christian.”

Our challenge is to cultivate anawareness of the opportunities for ser-vice and creativity in our everydaywork. If God is in the details, as thetheologians say, then we need tobecome sensitive to the ways weencounter God in the details of ourdaily lives. What we need is a spiritu-ality of the ordinary.

Let me give an example. Manytimes a student will walk into myoffice and begin talking about a class assignment, only to open upgradually and reveal a deeper prob-lem at the root of the visit — a familybreakup, a vocational crisis, naggingdoubts about self-identity. Yet I’membarrassed to admit how often Icatch myself surreptitiously peekingat my watch and wondering how I amgoing to get my “real” work done —preparation for a class, writing an arti-cle — if I spend so much time withthis student.

How often I’ve overlooked theopportunities for ministry in my

work! Right now, at this moment, withthis student, I have the opportunity to bring my faith and my work togeth-er. My work is not an impediment tomy spiritual life; it is a vehicle for living out, for making flesh, my spiri-tual values.

How often I’ve forgotten what iscalled for: a ministry of the kind word,the attentive ear, a smile or a laugh,just being present for a student or col-league. The people I encounter atwork are not distractions to my spiri-tual life, but companions on a spiritualjourney, from whom I receive suste-nance and to whom I, in turn, amcalled to minister.

The opportunities for service differ from work to work, of course,but no work is devoid of possibilities.Let me suggest a few questions tothink about:

• What is your greatest satisfactionat work? Are there times when youfeel especially close to God?

• What is your greatest disap-pointment at work? Are there timeswhen you feel distant or estrangedfrom God?

• What is one thing you could doright now to cultivate a sense of Godin your work? What is one thing youcould do to make your work moreprayerful?

• Where are the opportunities inyour work to serve others? Are youtaking advantage of these opportuni-ties? What more could you do?

• Where are the opportunities inyour work to pursue justice? Are youtaking advantage of these opportuni-ties? What more could you do?

TToo CChheerriisshh aanndd ttoo SSttrruugggglleeWork is not a curse or an idol, but

something more, something less. It isholy but it is not divine. It can bringgreat joy and deep disappointment.The great Catholic writer FlanneryO’Connor wrote, “You have to cherishthe world at the same time you strug-gle to endure it.” What O’Connor saidabout life applies to work as well. We must learn to cherish our work at the same time that we struggle toendure it. W

Fall Issue 1997 21

The people Iencounter atwork are not dis-tractions to myspiritual life, butcompanions on aspiritual journey.


Should We Have Tailor-Made Children?

by Kevin T. FitzGerald, S.J.Research Associate, Cancer Research Center

Loyola University Medical Center

“I want a child with grandma’s

eyes.”

“I want a child with grandma’s

eyes.”

“I want a child free

from the diseases thathave afflicted

my family.”

“I want a child free

from the diseases thathave afflicted

my family.”

“I want a child whois a donor

match for my son. He needs

an organ transplant.”

“I want a child whois a donor

match for my son. He needs

an organ transplant.” “I want a

child who can, in a

way, replace my dying

daughter.”

“I want a child who can, in a

way, replace my dying

daughter.”

“I want a child who

looks like me, even though I can’t have

children myself.”

“I want a child who

looks like me, even though I can’t have

children myself.”

CLONINGCLONING--

Editor’s note: Fr. FitzGeraldholds a Ph.D. inmolecular geneticsfrom GeorgetownUniversity inWashington, D.C.He is also a Ph.D.candidate inbioethics atGeorgetown.

He was recently appointed to CreightonUniversity’s Board of Directors. Fr.FitzGerald’s opinion has been sought fre-quently by the national news media sincethe cloning of Dolly the sheep in Scotland.

In April 1997, the journal NatureGenetics reported that Dr. Brigitte

Boisselier, scientific director ofClonaid in the Bahamas, plans to offerhuman cloning for $200,000. Dr.Boisselier defended this offer on thegrounds that parents have the right toclone themselves. Such an offer imme-diately brings to mind two questions:Can people be cloned? Does a parent,or anyone else, have the right to clonethemselves?

Considering the advancements incloning sheep and cattle, which havebeen announced by a few biotechnolo-gy companies during the summer, theanswer to the first question is thatcloning people could be possible soon.Does this mean that people couldmake carbon copies of themselves?No. What it does mean is that cellscould be removed from a humanembryo, fetus or an adult, and thatthese cells could be used to create anew human embryo genetically iden-tical to the individual who donatedthe cells. Upon being implanted suc-cessfully into a woman’s uterus, thisclone would grow up to be similar to adelayed identical twin of the personfrom whom the cells were taken.

Could watching a clone grow up belike watching a rerun of the celldonor’s own childhood? No. Sincenatural identical twins (who can bequite distinct from one another) sharethe same womb during gestation, the

effects of the uterine environment ontheir development would be quitesimilar. Conversely, a clone woulddevelop in a different womb, or thesame womb at a different time. Thisdifference alone could result in a clonebeing significantly less similar to thecell donor than if it had been a naturalidentical twin. In addition, the envi-ronment experienced by a clone dur-ing its childhood could be vastlydifferent than the childhood of the celldonor. This, too, would result in moredissimilarities between a person andhis or her clone.

With all these potential differences,why all this talk about cloning people?One reason for all the media coverageabout cloning is the widely held mis-conception that cloning somehowinvolves producing exact copies ofpeople almostinstantaneously.Although this ideais, in fact, ground-less, it has beenused in moviescripts and sciencefiction novels.Hence, when theannouncementwas made aboutthe existence ofDolly, the firstclone from anadult mammal,people naturallyconjured upimages of scien-tists secretlycloning the presi-dent and replacing him with a clonewhich they could control. Now thatthe impossibility of such a scenario ispublicly acknowledged, attention canbe directed to an assessment of themore serious proposals for the use ofhuman cloning which have not beenas widely discussed.

These proposals for the use ofhuman cloning spread out along aspectrum from responding to psycho-logical grief at the loss of a loved oneto the possibility of medical interven-tions intended to prevent the passage

of disease from one generation to thenext. A brief review of some of thesesuggestions provides an opportunityto evaluate their scientific and medicalmerit. This evaluation is the founda-tion for the answer to the second ques-tion posed at the beginning of thisarticle concerning a parent’s or any-one’s right to try to clone themselves.

One proposal for using cloning toprevent the transmission of diseasefrom parent to child involves geneticdiseases which do not arise frommutations or abnormalities affectingthe genes located in the nucleus of acell. Human cells contain many smallstructures outside the nucleus, calledmitochondria, which are crucial to cellfunction, and which contain their owngenes. Egg cells have many mitochon-dria. Sperm also have them, but sperm

mitochondria generally do not get intothe egg when fertilization occurs.Therefore, only the mother has to beconcerned about passing on a mito-chondrial disease to her children.

Cloning technology then could beused to remove the nucleus from anembryo which has inherited diseasedmitochondria. This nucleus would beplaced into an enucleated egg cellwhich has healthy mitochondria.Hence, the genetic characteristicsinherited from both parents’ chromo-somes would remain and the diseased

Fall Issue 1997 23

Dolly, the genetically cloned sheep, looks toward the cameraat the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland. Dolly was

the first animal to be genetically cloned from adult cells.

CLONINGCLONING--

mitochondria would be eliminated.Since this procedure would be done inorder to treat a disease which could beseverely detrimental to the health ofthe offspring, it is proposed as con-

forming with the accepted medicalpractice of taking some risks with thehealth of the patient, in this case theembryo, so that a significant healthbenefit can be achieved.

It is also an important part of medi-cal practice to consider whether or notalternative methods might provide thesame benefits with much less risk. Analternative to the above proposal isbeing researched now. This optioninvolves transferring the nucleus ofthe mother’s egg to the enucleated eggcell with the healthy mitochondria. Ifthe transfer works, the new egg can bereturned to the Fallopian tubes oruterus of the mother and, it is hoped,be fertilized. The significant differencehere is that the cloning procedurerequires research on and manipulationof embryos, while the nuclear transfer,when only eggs are used, does not.Looking ahead to an ethical evalua-tion of these two procedures, it wouldappear that the procedure of usingeggs alone has the advantage since theloss of eggs in a failed procedure isless significant than the loss ofembryos which can develop and growand be born.

Another suggested use for humancloning is to supply needed tissuesand organs for transplantation. In itsmost heartrending form, this proposalseeks to address the situation where a

child or infant requires a transplanta-tion in order to live. The parents, it isproposed, could clone their child toproduce a sibling who would providea perfect transplant match. Presumingthat the older child’s disease does nothave a genetic basis, the clone coulddonate an organ or tissue to save thelife of the sick sibling.

Again, present research may pro-vide better alternatives. Studies areongoing into the possibility of trans-planting special cells, called stem cells,which generate and regenerate thevarious tissues of the human body.These cells might be acquired from tis-sue and organ donors, both living anddead, or perhaps from the patient,whose own cells could be treated andreinfused. Cloning technology itselfprovides the possibility that animalsgenetically engineered to have tissuesand organs com-patible withhumans couldbe cloned to pro-vide their tissuesand organs fortransplantationinto people. Bothof theseapproacheswould make thecloning of a newperson medical-ly unnecessary.

This potentialmedical advanceis not the onlyreason, though,to refrain fromusing humancloning fortransplantationpurposes.Contemporarysociety holdsthat no adultshould be forcedto donate anorgan or tissue against his or her will,not even to save the life of an innocentchild. In an extension of this position,parents can speak for their own childin volunteering to donate tissue only if

it will not seriously threaten or impairthe life of the child. Therefore, thereare significant ethical and legal barri-ers already in place to prevent anyonefrom choosing in the name of someonewho does not, as yet, exist and there-fore cannot consent to the productionof a body part for another.

But what if someone desires tohave a person cloned just so that theclone could be loved? Such proposalsare often raised in the context of a cou-ple wanting to replace a dying childwith a clone of that child, or a spousehaving a clone of the dying spouse. Inthese cases it is crucial to bear in mindthat there will be significant differ-ences between clones and the peoplefrom whom they are cloned.

No human being is replaceable —not even physiologically. We are allunique. The desire to clone a loved

child or spouseto replace thelost loved onemay well indi-cate a retreat toa biologicalsolution fromthe age-oldproblem of deal-ing with thegrief and trau-ma of death.Even if the psy-chological strug-gle with the lossof a loved oneeventually isdealt with suc-cessfully, thecloned childwould alwayshave to livewith the realityof having beencloned toreplace another.

There couldbe other difficult

social and psychological realities withwhich a clone might have to live.Perhaps the experiences of childrenconceived by means of artificial repro-ductive technologies can be used to


No human being is replaceable -- not even physiologically.

We are all unique.

No human being is replaceable -- not even physiologically.

We are all unique.

Two rhesus monkeys were cloned fromembryos last year at the Oregon Regional

Primate Research Center in Beaverton, Ore.

CLONINGCLONING--

Fall Issue 1997 25

extrapolate what clones might experi-ence growing up — but perhaps not.Whichever is the case, these issuesrequire attention because some physi-cians in the field of reproductive tech-nology will want to offer cloning as anoption to their patients, as Clonaidalready intends to do.

This last proposal for the use ofhuman cloning — to help solve repro-ductive problems — raises again thequestion of who has the right to try tobe cloned. Discussions about people’srights can be complex, even convolut-ed. One important distinction to makeis between negative (liberty) rightsand positive (welfare) rights.Regarding cloning, liberty rightswould encompass the moral and legalfreedom to reproduce by cloning, orassist others in doing so, without vio-lating any countervailing laws ormoral obligations. Welfare rightswould entitle those who wish to becloned to assistance from other par-ties, such as health insuranceproviders or the government. Sinceliberty rights are required in order tohave welfare rights, the question ofpeople’s rights should begin with theformer.

Legal liberty rights to reproduceare virtually unlimited in the UnitedStates. Though some state and federallegislation has been proposed whichwould prevent all reproductive tech-nology clinics from offering humancloning as a treatment option, the pre-sent situation is that many privateclinics are not prevented legally fromoffering cloning as a treatment forinfertility. That leaves the moral partof the question: Should such servicesbe allowed to offer cloning, and, con-versely, should patients be allowed to request it?

Considering the fact that reproduc-tive technology clinics already employa panel of techniques to combat fertili-ty problems, the medical need to usecloning to solve a particular reproduc-tive problem may be quite limited, ifthe need exists at all. This circum-stance was apparent in the proposeduses for cloning already reviewed.

Hence, in the ethical evaluation ofwhether or not cloning should beoffered, the burden of proof is onthose who want to use cloning to treatpatients. They must demonstrateclearly what benefits it would provideand how the potential risks would beminimized.

Some potential risks have alreadybeen elucidated. Cloning technologywould require the treatment andmanipulation of embryos. Manyembryos would be lost in the processof perfecting the cloning techniqueson humans, and even in the regularemployment of the procedure onpatients. If these embryos were fatallydiseased, one could argue that thecloning procedure is their only hope.But if the cloning procedure createsthem in the first place, what ethicalargument can justify creating embryoswhich are most likely going to die orbe destroyed?

The reasons advanced in favor ofcloning, reviewed above, focus on thedesire of parents or individuals to cre-ate a child of this or that type. Thetype of child desired would have cer-tain genetic characteristics, includingthe characteristic that the child has aparticular person’s genes. This desireto have a child of a particular genetictype conflicts with the value of theuniqueness of each individual.Consequently, such desires couldresult in harm to the person clonedbecause that person would be expect-ed to resemble physically and behav-iorally the particular genetic type toan even greater degree than what isexpected of other children. What free-dom to be him or herself would aclone receive from parents that choseto create a clone in order to get a par-ticular type of individual?

On a societal level, the desire toproduce children of predicted typesalso could cause great harm. If chil-dren do not behave as expected, or fitin as expected, it could be surmisedthat they were not produced properly.The struggles of growing, developingand living could be reduced to meretechnical problems to be solved

through technology. If this sounds toofuturistic and farfetched, consider thepresent clamor in medicine for drugsand treatments to take care of all prob-lems people encounter in life — espe-cially suffering, dying, and even deathitself.

Scientific advancements and medi-cal technology have contributed great-ly to the quality of life people canhave. Our God-given abilities allow usto achieve and accomplish so muchfor which we should be thankful. Thetemptation humankind faces continu-ally is to look to our own achieve-ments for salvation from whatever ailsus. Advancements in mammaliancloning could be one of those accom-plishments which provides great ben-efit to many who are in need. It alsocould be used to provide a way for usto run from who we are by attemptingto make ourselves into that which weare not ... mere products of our genesand biochemical reactions.

It is our moral obligation asChristians to seek to use our abilitiesand accomplishments to care for one another and creation as best wecan, and not to run from our limita-tions. At present, the cloning ofhuman beings offers calamity, not care — individual restriction, not freedom.

Our moral obligation, then, is to exercise our right not to employ this new technology to produce tailor-made children for whatever reason, but to continue to be open to the benefits cloning may providethrough medical research. W

The cloning of human beings offerscalamity, not care --individual restriction,

not freedom.

The cloning of human beings offerscalamity, not care --individual restriction,

not freedom.

CLONINGCLONING--

“The Degree of Difference”®

RECYCLEDAND RECYCLABLE

Since 1972, the Institute for Latin American Concern has beenmaking a difference in people’s lives.

Not just the hundreds of lives ILAC touches in the DominicanRepublic, as Creighton students and professionals work with resi-dents in remote villages and impoverished neighborhoods, offeringhealth education and health care.

But the lives of hundreds of Creighton students who also aremade better by the experience ... as they learn they are part of thehuman family — and discover the connection between affluenceand poverty in our world.

Today, ILAC not only brings health care to Santiago and 186rural communities but has grown to include a permanent healthcare facility and year-round health care services to augment the

original summer program. Occupational and PhysicalTherapy programs now round out ILAC’s original healthcare services of medicine, dentistry, nursing and pharmacy.The University also has established the Montesinos Centerfor the Study of the Dominican Republic to foster research.Also today, the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and BusinessAdministration offer “Semestre Dominicano,” a semesterof study at Creighton’s Dominican Republic campus.

ILAC is making a difference in our world, one life at a time.

For more information about ILAC, contact the follow-ing: Fr. Ernesto Travieso, S.J., executive director, orVirginia McGill, director, at 1-800-343-3645.

ILAC ... Making a world of difference for 25 years.

Katie McMahon, BS‘97, foreground, and Tanya Reindl, BS‘97, background, take a child’s medical history at the clinic in Henequen.

Amy Smith, BSN‘96, talks with a young Dominican girl.

Photos by Don Doll, S.J.

creighton university fall 1997fall 1997 · creighton university creighton university fall 1997fall...

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