Letters to the Editor
human power
Published Letters: 91 Editor's Choice: 26
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Genes or Environment?
[Read the article: My beautiful, drug-addicted boy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know if the books delve into this (neither of the interviews that I have seen does), but do the parents explore the possibility that their own narcissistic behavior was the key trigger for Nic's drug life? Affairs have a way of breaking up families and are generally based on lies. (Who tells their spouse about their intention to sleep around?)Also, trying to raise a child by shuttling him back and forth seems rather selfish. And how could Nic feel like anything but an inconvenience as his parents/stepparents go on to breed their next families? In this child's reality was a father he couldn't trust who probably appeared more interested in his new offspring; no wonder a chemically altered reality was so alluring. I know this sounds harsher than I mean it to, but I hate to see parents jump to saying their children's problems are genetic when the environment created by the parents may be the larger factor.
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I remember the nuthouse
[Read the article: Welcome to the nuthouse]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Four years before my child was born, my partner and I both thought my sister was quite selfish for making her husband deal with their two young daughters from the moment he came home from work until bedtime. Foolish us. When our child was born, we split the day into two twelve hour shifts; each of us had half the day for grad. school and work and half for parenting (and sleeping if we were lucky). We quickly realized the "work" portion of the day was the break.
One day my normally calm partner called me at work and told me she had just punched a hole in the wall. She explained that she felt a repairable hole in the drywall was preferable to getting upset with the baby. Somehow we all came out intact, but I don't remember most of it; sleep deprivation will do that.
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Why should they bother?
[Read the article: Who is, or was, Big Oil's candidate?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Big oil's contributtions are paltry because they have already won the war (on the environment). Americans are as committed as ever to wasting every last drop of oil driving around and purchasing imported consumables. There are no threats to fossil-fool companies on the political horizon like, say, individual carbon quotas.
In fact, we can't even get our traffic laws enforced in a manner that would make our roads safe enough to walk and cycle on. Based on hundreds of interviews that I have conducted, a lack of safety is the number one reason most people give for refusing to walk/cycle locally. Twenty-five percent of all trips are less than one mile but seventy-five percent of these trips are done by fossil-fool powered wheelchairs.
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Profit before safety
[Read the article: Should biotech piggy go to market?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All biotech methods that I am familiar with (I'm a retired biochemist) involve the use of antibiotic resistance genes. Most of the time, these genes end up in the final product, be it swine or soy. As anyone who has taken an introductory biology course could tell you, many bacteria will incorporate DNA from their environment and useful genes will even be transmitted between species. Thus, by releasing these biotech "products" into the environment, we are hastening the end of the golden age of antibiotics. Great job geniuses.
As if that isn't bad enough, consider the virology issues involved with interspecies tissue transplants. A virus well-adapted to swine would be nonlethal to swine; In fact, it may cause no clinical manifestation whatsoever. That same virus, when introduced into a human, may prove to be quite lethal. Consider that the current model used to explain the emergence of HIV postulates that it was initially transmitted to humans from bushmeat (primates), probably by direct blood to blood contact. So, these transplant-ready swine can be HIV- and hepatitis-free, but what surprises do they hold? I seriously doubt the clinical trials will be large enough to assure our safety.
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Real stories, fake character
[Read the article: Attention, all you memoir fabulists!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The day the story broke about the fraudulent background of the author of “love and consequences” the L.A. Times website had a story about the author’s confession. Next to that story was an article about a 17-year-old male being gunned down three doors from his house by two gangsters. As Peg Seltzer said, the stories she told were based on stories she had been told by those who actually lived what she wrote about. Her book isn’t her autobiography, but it is biographical (if you remove the main character). The dishonestly of this young woman has understandably angered many people, but the bigger issue is still our society’s refusal to do anything about inner city violence and the hopeless choices faced by those who are born into poverty here.
By the way, for those who think this was all about a privileged white woman getting rich at the expense of society’s victims, nothing could be further from the truth. I know this author (neighbor). She is very invested in trying to end inner city violence. She has been playing this character for years and seems to have gotten kind of carried away and violated the first rule of holes. When young black men from South Central find their athletic eligibility and scholarships over before they have their degrees, they move into Peg’s house. She is a fraud, but she is not evil, unlike some past and present leaders of this nation.
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All in Monsanto's plans
[Read the article: The super-bollworm cometh]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You have missed the point by skipping the history. In the '90s Monsanto strong-armed cotton farmers in Texas to plant their bt-cotton. They sold it under the premise that these farmers would save money on pesticides. The levels of Bt were too low to be effective but just right to help select for resistant strains. Why would Monsanto want bt-resistant strains of pests? Because demand for organic cotton was growing unabated and the only tool the organic farmers had to fight with was live Bt. If Monsanto could help create bt-resistant pests, then everyone would have to buy their pesticides. It was a brilliant strategy; it just took longer than they expected.