Wednesday, February 19,2003
Cloudy High 54, Low 36 www.chronicle.duke.edu Vol. 98, No. 102
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Strong drive The eighth-ranked men’s golf team finished ninth in the Mercedes-Benz Collegiate Championship See page 9
THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Hospital’s ‘tragic error’ led to wrong transplant Girl not expected to live more than few days By MIKE MILLER The Chronicle
Duke University Hospital admitted a “tragic error” Monday in transplanting the heart and lungs of the wrong blood type into a 17-year-old girl now in critical condition.
BEN YAFFEAHE CHRONICLE
Looking to hang on Dahntay Jones and the rest of the men’s basketball team must beat Maryland tonight to stay alive in the ACC regular season championship hunt. See Gameday for complete coverage.
Jesica Santillan, who underwent the surgery Feb. 7, is not expected to live more than a few days, said Mack Mahoney, a family friend who has medical power of attorney for the girl because her parents do not speak English. As of early Tuesday afternoon, family friends were reporting the girl was still in declining health and getting more swollen, while doctors have told them her kidneys have stopped operating. “In our efforts to identify organs for this desperately ill patient, regrettably, a mistake occurred,” Chief Executive Officer of Duke Hospital Dr. William Fulkerson said in a statement. “This was a tragic error, and we accept responsibility for our part.” Hospital officials refused to elaborate on exactly how the type-A organs were mistakenly transplanted into the girl, who has type-O-positive blood, but Mahoney, a philanthropist who helped raise the money for the operation, claimed the family was told it was a “clerical error”
that Jesica was listed as a potential recipient for the organs. Dr. James Jaggers, associate professor of surgery, admitted to the family following the surgery that, in a rush, he did not check the organs’ blood type when they reached the Hospital, Mahoney told The of Herald-Sun Durham. Jesica’s original heart was too large for her chest and impressed on her lungs, cutting off oxygen flow to the blood. Her parents moved to Jesica Santillan the United States from Mexico to find the needed organs, for which Jesica has waited three* years. The Santillan family held a press conference Tuesday afternoon in the Brookwood Inn near the Medical Center for media hailing from across the United States and Mexico, describing their initial elation at finally finding what they were told were matching organs and their ultimate disappointment. See TRANSPLANT on page 6
Duke backs Mich, Univ. sets records with applicants in admissions case By ALEX GARINGER The Chronicle
Someone get an eraser.
� Dozens of universities and other organizations have weighed in on battle over affirmative action at the University of Michigan.
16, 656 APPUCMTS Class 012006-15.892
By KEVIN LEES The Chronicle
In a display of support for another top university, Duke and several other top-20 universities signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief Tuesday in favor of considering race in admissions “We felt that it was important for Duke, along with other colleges and universities, to go on record explaining why we feel diversity is important in our admissions decisions—and why that diversity should include race, among many other factors,” President Nan Keohane wrote in an e-mail. The brief supports the right of universities to use race as one factor in an admissions system administrators say is complex and individualized, and was filed in response to two cases taken up by the Supreme Court on the University of Michigan’s racebased admissions system. It was filed by Harvard University, together with Yale University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Brown University, the
13,933 Trinity 2,723 Pratt
199Pertect SAT score 2,405>m0 4,300>m0
1364FOREIGN APPLICANTS Class 0f2006 1200
2/3
APPIYFORFIMAHCIAI AID 1+2% Class Ol
See APPLICANTS on page 8
See MICHIGAN on page 8 ■
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A Panhellenic Council task force will consider the future 0f p an hel sororities’ bid day, which this year included a more elaborate process than in years past. See page 3
Undergraduate applications for the Class of 2007 broke almost every record on the books this year as 16,656 high school seniors applied for admittance—eclipsing last year’s record by more than 750. Overall, the applicants set benchmarks in almost every category, including international applications, SAT scores, financial aid requests, individual minority applications and a host of others. The high total comes in a year during which early decision numbers declined about 10 percent. “The University has been very supportive of us,” Director of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag said of the numbers. “They have given us the resources to do more recruitment both on campus and off campus, and I think we are seeing some of the dividends of that.” Guttentag added that the uptick in applicants can be partially attributed to continued progress in the recruitment of international students, who as of last
College students are more likely to black out from alcohol consumption than previously thought, according to a new Medical Center study. See page 4
Seeking to relieve a transportation crunch during peak travel times, officials are adding four buses to the current fleet. See page 5