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I Nation ^Computer owners are UPI Pulse Report epcor POLL j LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (UPI) y- There are signs the home comput­ er market is reaching a saturation aoint, according to a Walt Disney SVorld survey. " Taken in July, the poll asked ',218 visitors to Disney's Epcot inter the question, "where do you £tand on the purchase of a home computer?" Only 3 percent said they planned to buy one before the ffod of 1965. » k That represents a significant drop t)m July of 1984, when 20 percent of ,100 Epcot Poll respondents said ey intended to purchase a home computer that year. 7 " The 1985 survey indicates, howev­ er, that the number of home comput­ er owners is up - to 27 percent, cpmpared with 11 percent in 1984. ; Also, 26 percent of 1985 respon­ dents said they planned on buying a >mputer "in the future," rather lan within a year. Only 22 percent el 1984 respondents gave that answer. •1965 Wall Disney Productions More people own home computers than ever before -- but it looks like the market is reaching the saturation point. Comparisons show that as the ownership percentage has increased, the number planning to buy a computer has decreased* Where do you stand on the purchase of a home computer? 1984 1985 % % Already own one 11 27 Plan to buy 42 29 This year 20 3 In the future 22 26 Can't afford to buy one 11 10 See no need for one 28 30 Not sure 8 4 Handicapped tenants say they are objects of discrimination . By Gregory Gordon United Press International "' WASHINGTON - Barbara Gilley, ' who raised three children while con­ fined to a wheelchair, says she thought it was obvious she was a capable person -- until she began booking for a federally financed apartment unit built for the ^handicapped. -( Gilley said when she approached managers of buildings financed and regulated by,the Department of Housing and Urban Development, she was surprised, angered, and fi­ nally, disillusioned by "obnoxious" treatment: She suspects it was aimed at convincing her to look -elsewhere. t "After raising three children, .marriage and divorce, I bad to get a rehabilitation counselor who would .certify that I could live on my own, jat I could take care of myself," ley said. --r- -- > She said apartments specially eauipped for the handicapped were vacant when she made telephone inquiries but would become unavail­ able when she arrived to • fill out an application. Gilley believes she was a victim of .what one housing coordinator for the handicapped described as "the Catch-22" of taxpayer-financed hpusing. ' "You must^ be handicapped to qualify for some of these programs, tout the handicap may be the exact reason you are denied (admit­ tance)," said the coordinator, who requested anonymity. According to HUD and Farmers Home Administration budget direc­ tors, the agencies will spend over $1.5 billion in 1985 on mortgage pro­ grams that require developers to build wheelchair-accessible units. An additional $623 million in HUD funds are already committed for the next 20 years. ;• But.handicapped and civil rights groups charge that HUD, which flies a banner outside its national head­ quarters in Washington proclaim­ ing, "Fair Housing: 85 is Our Year," not only has failed to enforce fair housing laws for minorities, but also tor the handicapped. , They say that despite a General Accounting Office audit warning of the problems four years ago, only a fraction of the handicapped units are occupied by handicapped persons. When Gilley, paralyzed below the waist from polio, applied to an Alex­ andria, Va., HUD complex she was immediately told, "the waiting list i$ very long -- at least a three-year wait." ' At the time, she said, non-disabled people were living in the handi­ capped units - designed with ramps, wider bathroom doors, grab bars by the toilets and adjustable aountertops. So she asked about a separate waiting list for units for disabled people to help shorten the wait. She said she was told the list vyas"very long." "They had accessible units occu­ pied by people who didn't need them at the same time that they had long lists of disabled people," Gilley said. "It just didn't make sense. Zayre We're Sorry . • In our "Zayre Sale circular, on page 4 *e advertised a $24 99 Desk lop at 60 lonf actually, this desk is 48' long. Due to a " manufacturer late shipment, the Recency Scanner lor 199.99 on page 9 will not be amiable Every store will have a substitute ol , equal value or you may request a rain check Also, due to greater than anticipated demands the Emerson VCR on page 8 (in sale for $299.00) and the) Emerson Stereo System on page 10 (on safe for $179 00) may not be available in sufficient quantity Should any - store sell out. rain checks will be available We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers "1 never did find any (subsidized) housing. I gave up and moved to Waynesboro, (Va.), where the cost of living was cheaper." HUD has yet to implement a regu­ lation to require fair housing for the handicapped, and its officials ac­ knowledge they have lost track of how many wheelchair-accessible units exist or where they are located. Handicapped and civil rights groups allege that the Farmers Home Administration has discrimi­ nated in similar fashion. Rachael Warren, national director of the United Cerebral Palsy Associ­ ation, said UCPA's "usually very long waiting lists" for accessible housing units are "getting worse." "Lots of (handicapped) people are competing for these spots," Warren said, but they often are coming up losers. Gilley, who now works at the Inde­ pendent Living Center in Alexandria helping other handicapped people obtain housing, said managers rou­ tinely ask "very personal, very em­ barrassing" questions of their handicapped applicants. For example, she said, a disabled man recently applied to HUD-fi- nanced apartments and was asked questions that were "such a blow to his self-esteem that he gave up." "The questions were incredible," she saicK "He was asked 'How do you get in and out of the bath tub? How do you get in and out of your wheelchair? How do you get on and off the toilet?' "The rental agent was obviously trying to discourage him from living there," she said. Allegations of discrimination and haphazard occupancy procedures in HUD and FmHA programs are not new. In 1981, GAO audited the agencies' projects for the elderly and the handicapped and reported that only 27 percent of the wheelchair-accessi­ ble units of the projects visited were occupied by people in wheelchairs. The report said some disabled people were being rejected for rea­ sons such as not being old enough, or because they had someone come into their homes during the day to provide special services such as cooking meals. 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W. of Rte. 31) (•15) 455 2570 Changing people's views This cornea surgery Is more than Just a little risky and "Ti semipa The congressional investigative arm recommended that the agencies take action to advertise the avail­ ability and location of handicapped units, to require waiting lists for the handicapped units and to stop dis­ criminatory practices. To date, FmHA has only added a regulation to the project managers' handbook giving priority to people in wheelchairs for the accessible units. A FmHA official in the Property Management Division acknowl­ edged that no letter was sent to the managers explaining or even point­ ing out the new rule. Margaret Milner, a HUD program analyst, said HUD developed a "needs assessment" program for the handicapped, but it has not yet been tried. HUD officials, whose agency fi­ nanced all but one of the housing programs audited by GAO, said they have no data on the number of wheelchair-accessible units or their location. Lex Frieden, director of the Na­ tional Council for the Handicapped, said if the GAO "did the same study today, they would get the same results." Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 barred federal agencies from discriminating against the handicapped, but HUD will be the last federal agency to implement the rule. HUD attorneys said its regulation is still in the planning stages and far from complete. But Bonnie Milstein, a civil rights attorney, says HUD's proposed rule will create more prob­ lems for the handicapped if adopted in its draft form. Milstein, from the Center for Law and Social Policy, said HUD's pro­ posed rule would give project man­ agers too much control, allowing them to bar a person in a wheelchair for reasons such as "the wheelchair will leave skid marks in the hallway." For example, she said, one man­ ager of a HUD-financed project evicted a blind tenant because other tenants complained about his cane clicking in the halls. Managers also could bar certain handicapped people if admitting them would create an "administra­ tive or financial burden," Milstein said. "Of course, they'll (managers) always be able to find some admin­ istrative burden." By Jayne Garrison San Francisco Examiner /arm night in late July, Bob iki Wirthlin crowded into a lar at the MGM Grand Hotel in Reno, Nev., to learn how to change their view of the world. They were not trying to get rich or suave or follow other self-improve­ ment schemes taught at so many hotel lectures. Here, Dr. William Ellis of El Cerrito, Calif., told 300 nearsighted people how they might see without spectacles. Within two weeks, the Wlrthlins were being wheeled into Ellis' East Bay Hospital operating room for eye surgery called radial keratotomy, in which microscopic cuts are made around the cornea, like spokes on a wheel "What am I expecting?" Bob Wirthlin said to a reporter. M20/20 vision. And when I go fishing, the only glasses I expect to take are my sunglasses." For $1,500 to $2,000 per eye, some doctors promise bloodless, 15-min- ute operations that can free people from even Coke-bottle-thick lenses. The price has been right for 150,000 to 200,000 Americans who have opened their eyes to the diamond knife since 1978. Some ophthalmologists earn up to $1 million a year doing 15 or more such operations a week. But other ophthalmologists warn that the procedure is still,new; doc­ tors are refining it as they go. And not everyone can throw away glass­ es after surgery. About a fifth must return to corrective lenses, and of­ ten their eyes no longer can tolerate contacts, so they must wear glasses. "We're entering a time when we say 'buyer beware,' just like with insurance or buying a car," cautions Dr. George Waring of Emory Medi­ cal School in Atlanta, where he heads a federal study of the procedure. An estimated 43 million Ameri­ cans are myopic, or nearsighted, which means that light focuses in front of, instead of on, the inner lens of the eye -- the retina. Radial kera­ totomy flattens the cornea, the outer lens of the eye, with four to 16 inci­ sions around its edges, pushing.the point of focus closer to the retina? Experiments with the surgery started in Italy and Holland 100 years ago. In the 1940s a Japanese doctor, T. Sato, started the series of radial cuts only to find that his.pa­ tients went blind 20 years later. In the 1970s, the Soviets discov­ ered Sato's mistake: He had cut all the way through the cornea, damag­ ing vital cells on its undersurface. They began cutting 80 percent to 90 percent through the cornea, leaving the bottom surface untouched. The usual result is much better vision. Some severely nearsighted people with eyesight so bad, 20/800, that they can barely read the big E on the eye chart can later see 20/40, well enough to drive without glasses or contact lenses. Last year, results of a federal study on 435 patients showed that, overall, 78 percent of people's vision was corrected to 20/40 within a year after their operation. The better a person's vision was to start with, the better the results of surgery, Uni- . versity doctors still must track those patients four more years to deter­ mine longer-term effects. Some bitterness remains among doctors over risks of the surgery and the way it is being pitched to the public. Cutting the cornea weakens the eye; getting slugged becomes more dangerous. Some people experience glare at night. Others see "daz­ zling," a starburst effect when light seeps through the incisions. And no one knows the long-term effects. But flattening of the cornea sometimes continues after surgery, and an estimated 10 percent of pa­ tients in the federal study became * farslghted, Waring reports. Which patients will fall into the slim margin of failures? No one can predict. Says Dr. H. Dunbar Hoskins of San Francisco: "I'd wait a few more years myself before I went in to have my eyes carved on." Not Dr. Ronald Schachar of Deni- son, Texas, a pioneer of radial kera­ totomy in the United States. He is suing the American Academy of Ophthalmology and skeptics for call­ ing the operation "an investigational procedure," a statement he says de­ ters insurance companies from pay­ ing for it. "I would do my own children," Schachar says. Ellis, a clinical as­ sistant professor at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, agrees. They note the federal study exam­ ines early patients operated on when doctors used broken fragments of razor blades. Tiny diamond knives made for the operation are available now. For people whose world is blurry, even dangerous, without glasses or contacts, the operation seems to promise a miracle. Sometimes, so do the ads. Ellis' ad is headlined: "A new life style ... without glasses or con­ tacts!" And, like many ophthalmolo­ gists, he holds seminars at hotels and appears on local television and radio to discuss the benefits of radi­ al keratotomy. A news release on the ophthalmol­ ogist begins. "Meet the man who, in the eyes of his patients, is a miracle worker." An early ad for Dr. John Beale of the San Francisco Eye Institute trumpets, "New 10-minute proce­ dure can free you of glasses forev­ er." That ad has since been changed to: "Be free of glasses. Radial kera totomy ... can allow you to be active without glasses." Ellis and Beale defend promotion of the surgery. "People want to know. And the highest courts in the land have held that competition, advertising, is proper in medicine," Ellis says. He has patients watch a videotape on the operation, take a quiz to make sure they understand it, then sign a three-page consent form ad­ vising them of risks and the fact that they are undergoing an operation in the research stages. But patients may remember the promising ad more than the warn ings. Beale acknowledges that three of his 2,000 or more patients are talking to lawyers about suing. Some are unhappy with the results, farsightedness, even though he told them it was possible, he says, v Waring would not be surprised if more and more dissatisfied patients surface around the United States, mostly because he suspects people undergo radial keratotomy so they can have perfect vision. Anything less is a disappointment. "First of all, it's what they want to hear. Second, they hear it over and over again," says Waring. "Isn't that what you do with advertising? Convince people they need something?" But dissatisfied patients may be more disappointed in court. Most sign detailed consent forms warning them of risks. They have no grounds on which to sue. Eventually, every doctor inter­ viewed agrees, techniques will ad­ vance, concern will fade and radial keratotomy will become a standard tool like contacts did 25 years ago. - Until then, says Dr. George Wein* stein, head of ophthalmology at West Virginia University: "Some are going to have problems, difficul­ ties they never would have thought would happen to them. But most are going to be relatively happy. And some are going to be greatly Inv proved. They're going to be real happy." HOURS MOP Wed t S. Thur» l f r < Sat » 5. Sun 114 Macintosh Means Business Whatever Business you are in the powerful and easy to use Macintosh 512 personal computer by Apple can now be combined with the powerful Jazz Software from Lotus. Jazz may be the only software you ever need. Analyze trends, develope forecasts, keep track of files and even communicate with other computers. 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