5,000 N,C. Women To Be Screened
Duke Receives NCI Breast Cancer Grant
Duke has received a $130,3M contract
from the National Cancer Institute (NCI)
to finance the first year of an extensive
breast cancer detection demonstration
project in central North Carolina.
The project, aimed at screening 5,000
North Carolina women during the coming
year, was announced earlier, and NIC
formally announced the contract in
Let's pretend you're lucky enough to
have a full tank of gasoline, and you're
beginning a vacation tour of North
Carolina. Summer is on the wane and the
boss has given you a couple of weeks to
regain your mental health and renew
acquaintances with your wife and kids.
What kind of drivers might you expect
to meet along the route?
Good ones, mostly, according to
Department of Motor Vehicles figures
released by the Durham-based National
Driving Center last week. The fact is that
most North Carolinians have never had an
accident.
But how about the other ones? You
know, the kind who make insurance rates
seem like house payments, and the kind
who make your hair stand on end when
they pass you like a blur on a blind curve.
Well, 3,570 of them have been arrested
in the last three years for racing on public
highways.
There are 960 who have in excess of
five convictions for driving while
intoxicated and 58,650 who have been
caught drunk at the wheel more than
once.
Twenty-four hundred drivers have had
eight or more property damage accidents
apiece since 1968; 640,790 have had at
least one mishap.
Twenty drivers have had at least seven
accidents each resulting in personal
injuries, and almost a quarter of a million
have one on their record.
Almost 9,000 have a conviction for
leaving the scene of an accident, and 160
have more than five convictions for
driving after their licenses were revoked.
One result was that hundreds of lives
were lost last year alone, and millions of
dollars of property damage were
recorded.
Still want to take the trip?
Dr. Verne L. Roberts, director of the
National Driving Center and adjunct
professor of mechanical engineering at
Duke University, says that these figures,
which are as surprising as they are
frightening, should prove useful in
providing safer highways in the future.
The statistics come from a project
which the center initiated in the fall of
1973 to gain insight into the role played
by drivers in the highway safety problem.
Before studying the effects of medical,
behavioral, educational and social factors
on driver performance, Roberts
explained, it was necessary to have an
adequate profile of Tar Heel motorists.
mid-February.
The program is one of 27 across the
nation being funded by the American
Cancer Society and NCI in an effort to
■ cut the death rate from breast cancer, the
No. 1 cancer killer of American women.
The current contract will run to Feb.
14, 1975, and the project has been
approved for funding a second year.
both the good ones and the kind you
wish would stay at home.
Scientists at the center, which was
funded by the N.C. General Assembly last
year, fed the driving records of North
Carolinians into a computer at the
Research Triangle Institute and produced
a document which is the first of its kind
in the United States.
It tells 255 different stories about the
3.3 million licensees in the
state—everything from the number of
drivers in each county and the incidence
of transporting bootleg liquor to the
number of drivers who are subject to
blackouts and those who have been
convicted of driving the wrong way down
a one-way street more than five times.
"This is a wonderful research tool,"
Roberts said while explaining that the
computer data file has been structured to
furnish further statistical information
without the need for special
programming.
"It can provide researchers and
government personnel with prompt,
responsive replies to their questions, and
it is a first step toward the study, analysis
and treatment of problem drivers," he
added.
"One of the areas we'll be looking at
will be drivers with physical disabilities
such as visual defects,- coronary heart
disease, epilepsy and diabetes.
"Until now we haven't had good
During that year an additional 5,000
women will be screened and repeat
examinations will be conducted of the
first-year group.
Volunteer workers from the North
Carolina Division of the American Cancer
Society will help in the project by
encouraging women who have no cancer
symptoms to make an appointment and
standards for judging which handicaps
might make a person prone to accidents,"
the safety expert said.
Another object of the current research
will be to aid those who are involved in
rehabilitating the alcoholic, he indicated.
The National Driving Center, currently
housed in Duke's Engineering Building,
will break ground for its permanent home
in the Research Triangle Park this
autumn.
Involved in the planning for the new
facility and the investigations to be
carried out are faculty members from
Duke, North Carolina State, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, and Bowman Gray School of
Medicine in Winston-Salem.
-DA VID WILLIAMSON
The 10th annual symposium honoring
the man who established the division of
gynecologic endocrinology at Duke will
be in session throughout today and until
noon tomorrow in the Hospital
Am phitheater.
It is the E. C. Hamblen Symposium in
Reproductive Biology and Family
undergo the quick and painless tests.
The examinations will be offered at no
charge to women 35 years and older.
Dr. Richard G. Lester, chairman of the
Department of Radiology and director of
the project, said the cancer detection
tests that will be used have been available
at Duke and other hospitals for several
years for patients who knew about them
and could afford them.
"The purpose of this project is to get
this technology to the people who
haven't been able to afford it," he said.
"We want to examine women who have
no symptoms or complaints in an effort
to find the cancers early while they are
most treatable."
Dr. William W. Shingleton, director of
the Comprehensive Cancer Center, said,
"This screening program for early
detection of breast cancer is the first
phase of the center's community
outreach program. This outreach will be a
major part of our cancer control effort.
"Preliminary results from an ongoing
study in New York have suggested a
reduction in the mortality from breast
cancer among women when the
mammogram is used in early detection,"
he said. '
The screening of each woman will take
about 30 minutes and will use a
combination of several techniques;
clinical examination by a surgeon;
thermography, a heat pattern image of
the breast; and mammography, x-rays of
the breast. The tests are painless and
involve no injections.
The screening clinic will be housed in a
building at the Lennox Baker Cerebral
Palsy Hospital in Durham not far from
Duke Hospital. It will be staffed by
surgeons, radiologists and a highly trained
technical staff.
The radiologists will include members
of the staff from Duke and Watts
Hospital in Durham. The surgeons will
come from Duke and from the Durham
community.
Planning. Dr. Hamblen was a member of
the Ob-Gyn faculty here from 1937 until
his death in 1963.
Thirteen members of the Duke faculty
are on the program, and guest speakers
include: Dr. S. J. Behrman, professor of
Ob-Gyn at the University of Michigan's
Center for Research in Reproductive
Biology; Dr. E. J. Quilligan, chairman of
Ob-Gyn at the University of Southern
California; and Dr. J. B. (Ben) Younger, a
former house staff officer at Duke who is
now associate professor of Ob-Gyn at the
University of Alabama.
The program began at 8:30 this
morning with remarks by Dr. Roy T.
Parker, department chairman.
Presiding at the opening session on
"Management of the High-Risk Obstetric
Patient" are Dr. F. Bayard Carter, former
department chairman, and Dr. Robert G.
Brame and Dr. Arthur C. Cristakos. Dr.
Charles H. Peete Jr. will preside at the
late afternoon session on "Newer
Techniques in the Treatment of
Fertility."
Today's second topic will continue
tomorrow with Dr. Charles B. Hammond
and Dr. Stanley A. Gall presiding.
Other Duke participants include Dr.
Lillian R. Blackmon, Dr. Lynn G.
Borchert, Dr. M. Carlyle Crenshaw, Dr.
Marcos J. Pupkin, Dr. John C. Weed Jr.
and Dr. R. Herbert Wiebe.
WRITES OF SPRING-Last week temperatures reached record highs for early March,
and the balmy weather brought out undergraduates by the score. These three Duke
students took a break after classes, and tried their hands at frisbee throwing. (Photo by
David Williamson)
ntcBcom
duke univeusity mcdicM ccnteR
VOLUME 21, NUMBER n MARCH 15, 1974 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
National Driving Center Seeks Profile
Of Drivers in Safety Research Effort
(Continued on page 2/
Annual E. C. Hamblen Symposium
Slated Here Today and Tomorrow