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7HURSDAY,  SEPTEMBER 2,   1976

FIFTEEN CENTS


Dr. Koop Explains How Alta Choked

  By HENRY R. DARLING
    Of The Bulletin Staff
Dr. C. Everett Koop pointed to the
second button down from the top on
his shirt and said:
"It was stuck just about here."
He was pointing to the relative loca-
tion in his own body of the bean that
caught in the throat of Altagracia
Rodriguez and killed her.
"It was stuck so tightly,and so far
down that no slap on the back, no
Heimlich maneuver, nothing could
have saved her. Even if it had hap
pened in the operatig room we
couldn't have saved her. Her mother
estimates she was dead in 90 sec-
onds."

Alta Rodriguez, the 3yearc!d for-
mer Siamese twin sister of Clara,
choked to death last Friday in the
yard of her h?me in Las Auyamas, a
country village high in t+e mountains
of the Dominican Repcb IC
Clara and Alta were separated rn an
historic operation at Philadelphia's
Children's Hospital on Sept. IX. lY74,
by a team of surgeons working with
Dr. Koop

Dr. C. Everett Koop

Now they have been separated
agam, by a common green bean, an
"habituala" bean, not much bigger
than a kidney bean, Dr. Koop said,
trat Aita apparently put in her mouth
and swallowed while sneezing or
laughing.

In a press conference at the hospital
yesterday, Dr. Koop said he left for
the Dominican Republic last Sunday
as soon as he learned of the tragedy.

He said he was shocked, not only by
Alta's death, but also by the attitude
of the newspapers in Santo Domingo,
capital of the Dominican Republic.

"They are blaming the twins'
mother, Mrs. Farida Rodriguez, for
Alta's death," he said.

"They say she was at fault for tak-
ing the children to Las Auyamas
where there is no medical care, that
she wasn't watching them carefully
enough and that because they have ar-
tificial organs, they needed special
care.
"Well, it was rry feelirg that they
would be better off in the rountry at-
mosphere of Las Alfyamas instead of
the city.
There has been sxrc thought that
Alta had ctloked on 3 coffee Sea.1 The
yard where she w's pld `mg next `0
the Rodriguez home and store IS
paved with cmcrex !ZI form ?, d~i.:=,
area for coffee beans.
But Dr. Koop said the drymg sea%n

wbs over and the object that stuck in
AIra's t.hroat was definitely a green
bedn of the type the twins' father, Sal-
t ,dor. sells in the grocery. He de-
xrlbed the tragedy as "the most
f ?dki;h accident I have ever seen."

r r 1(3op. who was the twins' godfa-
ther said the funeral was held over
.r:`~l his arrival Sunday. The funeral
r-ocpssion began from the Rodriguez'
new home in San Jose de Ocoa, a
I;i-gpr town about 14 miles from Las
A  *a.T?ds. The home was built for the
fimlly by the Dominican Republic
gLverrnent after the birth of tbe
twm:;

4s the procession passed thr~~~gh
tt e town, people kept joining it in ac-
(1 rdance with Dominican traditiaa,"'
the physician said. "By the time we
grt fo the church, we had picked up-.
1. UO peoplf?."                  ,
The Rev. Louis Quinn, rector of the"
Jbn Jqce &arch. met the pmcession
61 hP loor and helped carry the cas-'
=I I0 Ire front of the church. Dr.
1'
' ii  w?n has a degree fmm the
E~~sIP'T) Baptist College, delivered the
wrm< 7.