Vote for the new 7 Wondersof the World DESTINATIONS, T1

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An honor guard carries President Ford’s casket into the Capitolfor a state funeral Saturday after a nighttime motorcade fromAndrews Air Force Base. The motorcade stopped at the WorldWar II Memorial, then snaked past the White House to the stepsof the Capitol, where cannon thundered and dignitaries crowdedthe Rotunda to celebrate Ford’s life. He will lie in state untilTuesday. Story on Page A17.

PORTLAND, OREGON $1.50DECEMBER 31, 2006 VOICE OF THE NORTHWEST SINCE 1850 ★★★ SUNRISE EDITION

The year in stocks BUSINESS, E1

Business . . . . . . . . . .E1Classified index . . .G1Crossword . . . . . . .H9Crossword NYT . .O14Destinations . . . . . .T1Metro . . . . . . . . . . . .B1Movies . . . . . . . . . .O10Nation . . . . . . . . . .A15

Northwest . . . . . . .B4O! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .O1Obituaries . . . . . . . .D1Opinion . . . . . . . . . . .F1Parade . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sports . . . . . . . . . . .C1Weather . . . . . . . . .D4World . . . . . . . . . . .A7

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Copyright © 2006 • Oregonian Publishing Co.Vol. 156, No. 52,550 • 154 pages

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Saddamnow likelyto becomea martyr Analysis | The execution’s timing, at the startof the holiest Muslim holiday, angers the Sunniminority that is driving the Iraq insurgency

By MOHAMAD BAZZI LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST SERVICE

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The timing and drama surroundingSaddam Hussein’s execution make it likely that he will becomea martyr for Sunni nationalists fighting U.S. forces and the newIraqi government.

By executing Saddam at the start of Eid al-Adha, the holiestof Muslim holidays, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi governmentmade a strategic blunder: It further an-gered the Sunni minority that formedthe core of his regime and now is drivingthe insurgency.

As news of Saddam’s hanging spreadSaturday across the Sunni-dominatedMiddle East, many Arabs criticized thetiming — even those who despised the dictator. Relations be-tween Sunnis and Shiites are already strained by the regionalascendance of Shiite-led Iran, its growing influence on theIraqi leadership, and its involvement in other countries withlarge Shiite communities, especially Lebanon.

“Holding this execution at the start of Eid is only going tomake relations worse” between Sunnis and Shiites, saidNazem al-Jassour, an Iraqi political analyst. “There was nogood reason why the execution could not be delayed until af-ter Eid. ... It’s going to be perceived by Iraqi Sunnis as one

Please see ANALYSIS, Page A3

Bigger school budgetwon’t end crowding Education | Most of the governor’s extramoney would be eaten up by rising costs

By STEVEN CARTER and SCOTT LEARN THE OREGONIAN

Most of the hundreds of millions in new money that Gov.Ted Kulongoski has proposed for Oregon schools in the nexttwo years will be swallowed by rising payroll and other costsand won’t reduce class sizes or restore programs, an analysisby The Oregonian shows.

Of the $750 million-plus increase in state support for schoolsthat Kulongoski seeks, at least $500 million would go towardsalary increases, rising employee health costs, pension contri-butions, rising enrollment and higher prices for supplies andservices, the state projects.

Education leaders say the governor’s two-year $6.06 billionbudget — a 14 percent increase from current school spending— would make only modest improvements in Oregon’s classsizes, which are among the nation’s largest.

“We don’t want to be spoiled brats and not be appreciative— the good news is, it’s not forcing us to cut,” says Heidi

Please see SCHOOLS, Page A8

» Online:

OREGON DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

A surge of mud and debris roared down the southeastern flank of Mount Hood, inundating aonce-elevated Oregon 35 by the White River, in early November. Such an event will beincreasingly common as glaciers shrink, loosening rocks and material once held in place by ice.Planners must ask: Is merely rebuilding the road adequate?

To read previous stories in this series, go to www.oregonlive.com/special/

Northwest forecast:dramatic change

By MICHAEL MILSTEIN THE OREGONIAN

Fine wine, abundant electricity, wild salmon— there are things Oregonians take for grant-ed. But keeping them will be harder than everbecause we plan and build our lives in the be-lief that Northwest weather will always beNorthwest weather.

It’s not so, researchers are finding. Weshould expect hotter, drier heat waves, heavierrains and quicker snowmelt. The Northwest, anatural target of major storms, will feel it inways other regions will not.

It particularly challenges public agenciesand private businesses, which now must ex-pect climate curveballs, such as the record-set-ting November deluge — Portland’s wettest

month since 1938, Seattle’s wettest in 115years.

Warmer summers already have altered thetaste of Oregon’s signature pinot noir wines,and vintners are shifting their vines uphill tokeep them cool. But that will not be enough. Bythe end of the century, the iconic grape of thestate’s $1 billion wine industry will grow betteralong Washington’s Puget Sound than it doesin the Willamette Valley.

Volcanic debris once locked in place byMount Hood’s ice, now exposed by meltingglaciers, ripped away miles of Oregon 35 dur-ing the November storm. Crews hurriedlypieced it back together at a cost of $10 million,just in time for ski season, but only a far more

Please see CLIMATE, Page A16

Our warmer world | The debate over what to do about global warmingremains divisive. But few scientists dispute we live on a planet where

temperatures are higher than they were a century ago and will continue toclimb. In the Pacific Northwest — a place defined by glacier-clad mountains,

rivers and the sea — the effects are now seen and measurable. In this sixth report in an occasional series, The Oregonian

examines how higher temperatures exert fundamental change on the Northwest’s natural world and built environment.

Doctor andinventionoutlast jeersand threats Vertigo | John Epley’s chairconquers dizziness, winsacceptance and has a businessplan, thanks to his daughter

By JOE ROJAS-BURKE THE OREGONIAN

He is a doctor and an innovator. Yearsago, he took aim at a medical curse thathas disabled millions of people and de-fied treatment. He came up with a curethat was astonishingly simple. Nosurgery. No pills.

Now, think: Would his colleaguescheer his stroke of ingenuity by spread-ing the news — and practice — of the

treatment to relievesuffering?

No. Inexplicably,they rejected him,ridiculed him, heavedaccusations thatthreatened his licenseto practice medicine.

Portland ear sur-geon John Epley per-severed quietly. His

daughter grew up largely unaware of hisstruggle. When by chance she found out,the discovery changed her life — and his.

Stirring disbeliefJohn Epley’s stooped shoulders and

gentle eyes gave him a turtlish look. Hewore a thickly knotted necktie and wrin-kled sport coat. No amount of combingcould tame the stubborn cowlick in hisshort hair.

His audience of ear surgeons mut-tered skeptically and shook their heads.Few at the October 1980 meeting in Ana-heim, Calif., believed Epley’s claim tohave developed a cure for the most com-mon cause of chronic vertigo.

In any given year, tens of thousands ofpeople seek treatment for the disorder’sstrange, crippling attacks. Provoked by acasual tilt or turn of the head, the vic-tim’s surroundings whirl. The eyeballstwitch involuntarily. Nausea over-whelms the senses. On-and-off boutsmay torment a sufferer for years.

Physicians were baffled. The best theycould offer as treatment was a drasticlast resort: surgically destroying nervesto the inner ear, impairing patients’ bal-ance and possibly their hearing.

Please see VERTIGO, Page A10

JAMIE FRANCIS/THE OREGONIAN

Dr. John Epley, a Portland ear surgeon,devised a simple cure for positionalvertigo that has practically eliminatedthe need for surgery in most cases.

To see ademonstrationof Dr. JohnEpley’s Omniaxmachine, go tooregonlive.com/multimedia

» Online:

HOW YOUR COMMUTE COULD CHANGE METRO, B1

Gerald R. Ford | Remembering a president

Inside Saddam Husseincurses “spies’’ andAmericans in hisfinal moments | A4

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Vertigo: Epley sticks hisneck out andhelps patients

Continued From Page One

Epley proposed an elegant alternative. His talk concluded with a demonstra-

tion, a young woman acting as his pa-tient. Epley and his research collabora-tor, audiologist Dominic Hughes, beganby tilting the woman flat on her back, herhead hanging over the end of an exambench. Hughes cradled her head in hishands and rotated it about 45 degrees tohis right, then he and Epley rolled thewoman’s head and shoulders back to theleft in a counterclockwise move thatended with her face down. In a finalmove, Hughes and Epley lifted thewoman to a sitting position.

And that was it. By then, audience members were

walking out. One doctor stomped up toEpley and slapped down a commentcard before exiting. He’d scrawled, “I re-sent having to waste my time listening tosome guy’s pet theory.”

Solving the riddleEpley diagnosed many patients at his

Glisan Street medical office with a con-dition known by a cumbersome name:benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, orBPPV.

A Viennese physician first describedthe disorder in 1921. Decades later, no-body had nailed down the cause or de-vised a satisfactory treatment.

To Epley, it was a challenge ripe forpicking.

By nature, the Klamath Falls nativewas a hands-on problem-solver. In col-lege, he tinkered in the physics laborato-ries at the University of Oregon. His zealfor experimentation continued after heearned a medical degree from the schoolnow called Oregon Health & ScienceUniversity. During his surgical residencyat Stanford University Medical Center,he helped develop an early cochlear im-plant to restore hearing. He opened asolo practice across the street from Prov-idence Portland Medical Center in 1965.

Though no longer connected to a uni-versity, he devised surgical methods andinstruments — innovations that medicaljournals published. As he dreamed upideas, he sometimes forgot the patientscramming into his waiting room, Hugh-es observed.

The audiologist shared Epley’s fasci-nation with dizziness. With no graduatedegree, Hughes was an unlikely collabo-rator. Epley had hired him to do work-place hearing tests. But Hughes hadbeen a research assistant at the Univer-sity of Chicago Medical School and hadspent three years studying hearing andbalance problems at a Japanese univer-sity. Over a long lunch two or three timesa week, the two debated the latest stud-ies and hashed out their own ideas.

To maintain balance, the brain coor-dinates messages from the eyes, frommuscles pulling against gravity and frommotion sensors inside the inner ear’smaze of fluid-filled canals.

Another researcher had reported find-ing chalklike particles in the inner ears ofvertigo patients and proposed that theseparticles clumped onto ears’ motionsensors to trigger false sensations of mo-tion. But the hypothesis failed to explainthe on-again-off-again nature of posi-tional vertigo: If particles stuck on sen-sors, why did dizziness ever go away?

Epley and Hughes reasoned that theparticles must float freely. Head move-ments might shift them, causing a siegeof dizziness until the particles settled orshifted. It might be possible, they fig-ured, to move the particles where theywouldn’t cause mischief. Since the parti-cles are denser than inner-ear fluid andsink, gravity could do the work.

Hughes used plastic tubing to build amodel of the inner ear. To simulate looseparticles, he put BBs in the coiled tubes.He and Epley flipped and turned thehand-size model as they might a kid’spuzzle, to work out a sequence of movesto reposition the tiny metal balls.

They began testing the moves on peo-ple straightaway, tilting and rolling themon an exam bench. Odd as the treatmentsounded, frustrated patients were keento try it.

The first two or three subjects seemedto gain immediate relief. At first, Epleywasn’t too impressed. The condition of-ten clears up by itself, he recalls remind-ing himself. He didn’t know whether hehad made any difference.

But when the treatment cured severalmore patients, including one who hadendured dizziness for a decade, he andHughes realized they’d hit upon a greatdiscovery.

Hard sellIn Portland, some of Epley’s col-

leagues were so skeptical that they beganto question his medical skills. Some doc-tors stopped referring patients.

On one occasion, Epley scheduledtime in an operating room at ProvidencePortland Medical Center so that a pa-tient could be put under anesthesiawhile he and Hughes performed therepositioning maneuvers. The patientwas an elderly woman disabled by verti-go; she had to be pushed around in awheelchair with her head cradled in abrace. Epley applied a handheld vibratorbehind the affected ear to help mobilizethe particles while rolling the patient.

The anesthesiologist glared at Epley,dumbfounded. He later pulled Epleyaside. “I don’t think you know what you

are doing,” Epley recalls him saying. But when the woman awoke, her ver-

tigo was gone. The results amazed evenHughes. The anesthesiologist, im-pressed in a different way, filed a com-plaint at the hospital. The hospital’s au-dit committee soon dropped the matter,but tensions resurfaced.

By 1983, when Epley had cured sever-al more cases, he and Hughes submittedtheir first article. The Journal of Otologyrejected it, explaining that the treatmentdefied established theory. The two re-vised the paper and submitted it to oth-er journals but got nowhere. Hughesstruck out on his own after completinghis doctoral degree.

Epley labored on. Rejection drove himto work harder to convince colleagues.He no longer had time for hobbies or so-cializing, his wife, Norma, and daughterCathy noted.

In front of hostile crowds, he kept pre-senting his findings. Ken Aebi, a medicalsupply salesman in Portland who’d be-come Epley’s friend, felt helplessly em-barrassed for him. Epley struggled at thelectern, reading too much from notesand occasionally wandering off on tan-gents. Some doctors rolled their eyes.Others laughed openly.

The surgeon launched into a project todesign and build a motorized chair thatwould enable him to better treat balancedisorders, even in patients with fragilenecks or who were obese.

He tracked cases he treated, usinghandwritten index cards for a database.In 1992, he submitted a report to thejournal of the American Academy ofOtolaryngology. In it, he described the100 percent cure rate of his “canalithrepositioning” maneuver in 30 patients.

The journal published the report.More than 10 years after Epley took onBPPV, he’d finally gained the recognitionthat was vital to acceptance among hispeers. But the stamp of approval did notsway the skeptics. Many doctors rejectedor ignored Epley’s breakthrough, even inhis hometown.

Desperate patientAt an emergency room in 1995, a doc-

tor couldn’t figure out the cause of a sud-den attack of vertigo that struck JosephDelahunt.

He had crawled from the living roomof his North Portland house out to his carso that his wife could drive him to thehospital. Delahunt hung his head out thewindow and vomited most of the way.An Air Force veteran in his mid-50s, hewas healthy and active — selling real es-tate and practicing yoga — until the at-tacks started.

Delahunt consulted his family doctor,then tried a neurologist and an ear, noseand throat doctor. They prescribed mo-tion-sickness drugs and other medicinesthat didn’t help much. One told him he’dhave to learn to live with the “benign”condition. None mentioned Epley’streatment. His wife discovered it on theInternet.

Delahunt’s condition worsened. Toavoid unbearable, spinning nausea, hesat as still as he could in a reclining chair.For nearly three months, he left the re-cliner only to go the bathroom.

At Epley’s office, an assistant helpedDelahunt down a long hallway to a gray-walled room with closed blinds. An un-gainly apparatus filled much of theroom. Inside a giant steel ring hung apadded chair that reminded Delahunt ofan ejection seat. Motors, gears and drive-chains were rigged to flip and twirlthe chair like a carnival ride.

Delahunt stepped up to a platformand into the chair. An assistant clippedstraps across his chest and ankles. Shecovered his eyes with a bulky mask. Itcontained a video camera to track hiseyes. She clipped a vibrator behind hisear. It buzzed gently, more lightly than acell phone on vibrate.

“Are you comfortable?” the assistantasked. Delahunt nodded, grateful for theValium he’d taken.

Epley fingered a joystick controller totilt the chair back until Delahunt was faceup. A flick of the joystick rotated Delahuntlike a barbecue skewer. On a black-and-

white computer display, Epley monitoredhis patient’s eyes for a characteristictwitching movement triggered by posi-tional vertigo. He repeated the series ofcalibrated tilts and whirls. Then he swungthe chair upright and face-forward.

No waves of vertigo struck when De-lahunt moved his head. The nausea hadcleared. He stopped taking the medica-tions other doctors prescribed and re-sumed his life.

Threat to livelihoodIn Portland, many doctors still dis-

missed Epley as a crank. The conflict flared into a crisis in 1996.

The Oregon Board of Medical Examinersnotified Epley that he was under investi-gation for alleged unprofessional con-duct.

His medical license and livelihoodwere on the line.

At issue was Epley’s development anduse of another cutting-edge technique:the infusion of a drug to deaden nervessuspected of causing inner-ear distur-bances. The case dragged on for fiveyears before hearing officer MarilynLitzenberger ruled.

Epley kept his feelings to himself, evenat home. But his wife and daughter knewthat the investigation weighed heavily.Epley’s stoop worsened, they could see.His health faltered. He had to break intohis retirement savings to pay for his legaldefense.

Epley’s accusers, two Portland physi-cians, testified that Epley was administer-ing the nerve-deadening drugs recklessly,based on inadequate diagnostic testing.

Epley’s main defender, a Harvard-af-filiated specialist from Boston, describedEpley as “a forward thinker who hasbeen right virtually every time he stuckhis neck out.”

Litzenberger left no doubt whom shefound most credible, portraying theboard’s medical experts as hostile, one-sided and ill-informed. In the summer of2001, Litzenberger dismissed all claims.

By then, a review article in the presti-gious New England Journal of Medicine

had credited John Epley as the inventorof the “treatment currently recommend-ed” for positional vertigo. In clinical tri-als, about 90 percent of patients werecured by a single treatment. Doctors ap-plying treatment around the world re-ferred to it as the “Epley maneuver.”

Daughter’s missionEpley’s daughter, Cathy, may have

never heard the full story of her father’stravails if not for a terrible coincidence.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Cathy was attendinga medical convention in Denver, hopingto find job leads. At 43, she had workedas an editor for a business magazine dur-ing the Internet boom, then switched topolitics, managing anti-tax activist BillSizemore’s unsuccessful campaign forgovernor in 1998. She moved on to a jobin marketing with a medical device start-up. But the firm couldn’t afford to keepher on full time. So she tagged along withher father to Denver.

News of multiple jet crashes halted theconvention. With airliners grounded,convention goers scrambled to bookrental cars from a hopelessly inadequatesupply. Cathy Epley accepted an offer toshare a ride back to Portland with her fa-ther’s old friend Ken Aebi and his wife.They headed west trying to make senseof the terrorist strikes, compulsivelygleaning news from the radio. As the dri-ve wore on, the conversation turned toJohn Epley and his struggles.

Cathy Epley felt enraged. But as she absorbed the details, her

anger solidified into something more likeresolve: She had to help her father get hisdue. The rest of the drive, Epley spenttalking with Aebi about ways to help herfather earn money from his inventions.

Back in Portland, she tried to interestventure capitalists in commercializingher father’s work. Several listened to herpitch, but all had the same message: Shewas unlikely to land venture funding.Endless meetings with fund managers,however, weren’t fruitless. One suggest-ed she seek startup money from the Na-tional Institutes of Health’s small-busi-ness innovation program.

Cathy Epley went out on a limb. Withscant knowledge of running a company,she worked 10 months without pay, writ-ing grant proposals and a business plan.She named the business Vesticon, andshe and her father held monthly “boardmeetings” at American Dream Pizza,across Glisan Street from the elder Ep-ley’s office.

Soon federal grants started rolling in:more than $348,000 in 2003, $1.4 millionin 2004 and $1.6 million in 2005. CathyEpley hired an engineer and techniciansto build a sleeker version of the “Omni-ax” chair. The company leased an officeand set up a crowded laboratory inSoutheast Portland.

In January, specialists in Louisiana,San Diego and Portland are set to beginclinical trials of the chair. The studyshould take four to six months. If it stayson track and yields satisfactory results,the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationcould allow Vesticon to begin sales nextsummer. Cathy Epley has already begunnegotiating with distributors.

EpilogueOn a recent day in the building where

Epley has practiced since 1965, the doctorstood by the controls of his rotating chair.

“We’re going to roll you back,” he saidto a patient from Idaho. She’d sufferedintermittent vertigo since a rollover caraccident and was back for a follow-up ona successful earlier treatment. Epley pi-loted the chair through rolls and twists.The device showed signs of modifica-tions: a radio transmitter lashed to itsframe with nylon straps, a video cameraclamped to an adjacent shelf, cables toadded components snaking beneathceiling tiles pushed ajar.

At 76, Epley sees patients three days aweek. He spends the two other days ofthe workweek at Vesticon. His daugh-ter’s startup has already launched devel-opment of two of Epley’s other inven-tions.

In a pause between patients, Epley re-flected on the reasons other doctors re-fused to accept his findings for so manyyears.

“If I look back at medical school, muchof it was misinformation,” he said.“Physicians learn to just do the routine,to do the accepted things — don’t go toofar out.

“They’ve got so much to lose if theystick their neck out.”

•Joe Rojas-Burke: 503-412-7073,joerojas@news.oregonian.com

LEFT | Cathy Epley founded Vesticon tocommercialize the inventions of herfather, Dr. John Epley. The firm hasraised more than $3.3 million and inJanuary will begin clinical trials of itsfirst product: a system for diagnosingand treating balance disorders.

BELOW | Vesticon engineer Jon Birck(left) and company founders CathyEpley and John Epley demonstrate agoggle system to Dr. James Phillips(right), an associate medical professorat the University of Washington. Thecomputerized goggles measure andrecord eye movements that can helpdoctors diagnose balance disorders.

Photos by JAMIE FRANCISTHE OREGONIAN

Editor’s note Joe Rojas-Burke of The Oregonian

reconstructed Portland ear doctorJohn Epley’s struggle to gainacceptance for his cure for the mostcommon type of vertigo byinterviewing a dozen primary sourcesand consulting a variety of othersover the past three months.

Primary sources included Epley;daughter Cathy; Epley’s formerresearch partner Dominic Hughes;longtime friend Ken Aebi; colleagueOwen Black; and University ofWisconsin neurologist Douglas Lanska.

Secondary sources includedtechnical articles on vertigo and thehistory of its treatment in The NewEngland Journal of Medicine, Archivesof Neurology and other peer-reviewedjournals; three patients of Epley’s; anddocuments from an investigation bythe Oregon Board of MedicalExaminers.

— Ben Santarris,business editor