Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Dear Juliebird
[Read the article: Cleric: Your sexy outfit is killing me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is you who does not pay attention to what others write.
Some posters here have indicated that men who get aroused by sexily dressed women need to get a grip, and it is implied that men in the United States are sufficiently sophisticated to handle, I mean avoid handling, women who wear clothes that display the sexual attributes of their bodies.
I pointed out that our society (USA) has many sex offenders. For example, I live in a peaceful small town where there is hardly any crime worth mentioning, but I just looked on my state sex offenders Web site and found that there are no less than an incredible 85 sex offenders and sexual predators living within 2 miles of my home. Yes, 85.
These are people who have been legally convicted in a court of some kind of sexual offence. Not people who have done bad things that are not illegal.
Nearly all of the examples of sexual offenses that you have given are things that are not illegal or only borderline illegal in the countries concerned. This is a bit like saying that Spain is full of pedophiles, because the legal age of consent there is only 12.
My point was simply that we in the US are nowhere as good at controlling our sexual impulses as we might like to think,and that most of the examples you mention are where societal values differ, rather than true examples of failure to control sexual urges, which is what this thread is about.
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Interrogate her
[Read the article: What Hillary won't say about torture]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hillary says that she supports Geneva. The Third Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners forbids "outrages against personal dignity". The question is really whether Hillary regards waterboarding as an outrage against human dignity. I think the answer may be that Hillary should be interrogated on a waterboard so that she can make an accurate determination based on first hand experience. It's no good just guessing.
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Healthcare in England, Scotland, and the US
[Read the article: Rudy's bogus healthcare stats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would like to point out to David W. that he is partly right, but that there are also some differences in the way health care is provided in Scotland, an example being that certain expensive cancer drugs are available in Scotland, but not in England. It is possible that the obsolete statistic quoted by Giuliani did apply only to England.
What exactly is meant by socialized medicine? Is he referring to the fact that it is financed out of tax revenues rather than insurance contributions, or is he referring to the fact that the hospitals are privately owned versus governent owned?
In the United States, Medicare and Medicaid are one form of socialized medicine that is paid for by tax revenues but provided by private contractors. Is Giuliani saying that if he had been on Medicare, his chances of survival would have been less? Surely the US statistics on survival include many Medicare recipients.
The Veterans Administration is the closest thing the US has to a socialized medicine system. Care is paid for out of central taxation, and the hospitals are owned and run by a government entity, doctors employed by the federal government etc. What are their prostate cancer survival rates?
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More socialized medicine in the US
[Read the article: Rudy's bogus healthcare stats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Someone made a point about prostate cancer results in the US being a lot better than in England or the UK because of much more screening. This is almost certainly true. Here is an interesting anecdote:
In a top security prison, a very good-looking and healthy imate asked me when he was going to get his PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) test. I said I didn't know, but asked what his concern was. He said that his 40th birthday was next week and that he would therefore be due for a PSA test, which the state would provide him as part of the health care package available to inmates.
He said he had been arrested at the age of 17 and falsely convicted for his part in a home invasion and robbery. (All prisoners are innocent--it is standard procedure.) The judge was biased against him (again standard procedure) and had given him a lenthy sentence that meant that the earliest possible date for parole was on his 70th birthday, so he wanted to be sure that he stayed in good shape for his impending release. He also wanted to be sure that he outlived the biased judge, as the death or retirement of that particular judge could improve his chances of parole.
I don't know how he is doing now, and I have forgotten his name, so I can't look him up on the prison Web site, but I imagine he is still looking on the bright side.
The state and federal prison medical system is one of the largest socialized medicine networks in the US, serving millions of patients, mostly poor. It makes a major contribution to prostate cancer screening, identification and survival rates, and in these days of extremely long sentences for innocent men from biased judges, it is doing a great job of keeping them alive long enough to enjoy a happy retirement once their life of crime is over.