SATURDAY MAILBOX

The Baltimore Sun

Faith is inspiration for charity, peace

It has become fashionable to try to blame belief in God for most human conflict ("Faith: Something worth fighting for," Dec 31). But in fact just the opposite is the case.

If belief in God was truly the prime motivator in human conflict, one might expect its opposite, atheism, to produce a harvest of peace and concord.

Yet the only officially atheistic system of government ever implemented, Communism, resulted in a toll of human death and misery unparalleled in the history of mankind.

This suggests that removal of belief in God might not result in greater peace on Earth but instead in something more cataclysmic and sinister than the world has ever known.

On the other hand, the writer of this review failed to mention the many benefits to mankind that belief in God has brought about - even to nonbelievers.

These include countless hospitals, charities such as Mother Teresa's organization and the Salvation Army, famine relief and medical help for the poor, and schools and literacy outreach to the developing world, to name but a few charitable projects inspired by faith.

Religious faith has also been a driving force in the worldwide abolition of such deplorable practices as infanticide, cannibalism and slavery.

Without the belief in God that drives these efforts, the world would be a far colder, harsher, less humane place to live.

Hugh Thompson

Ellicott City

Arrests won't end epidemic of murder

Whatever the answer to the epidemic murder rate among black males, it is apparent that there is no panacea available ("Patterns persist in city killings," Jan. 1).

It is also apparent that simply increasing arrests and incarcerating more black men with more "meaningful punishment" is not the answer.

It must be asked if such crime and homicide in any way benefit the power structure - especially if that structure is based on a racist paradigm that historically has been founded on the dehumanization and destruction of black men.

Obviously, the problem is systemic and deep-rooted.

Young black men are killing each other, and hence themselves, with a vengeance that would make even the most abashed Klansman effuse with glee, and this should be disturbing and alarming to everyone.

This is a problem that affects not just young black men but also their families, friends and the entire population of Baltimore.

There couldn't be a more crucial time to consider a more radical, holistic approach to the constellation of ills that plague the city's African-American males. And the answer may, in fact, lie outside of our crime-and-punishment-oriented paradigm.

Baltimore is one of the nation's deadliest cities, particularly for young black men, and it's going to take more than a high arrest rate to arrest this tumultuous tide.

Tracy Stott

Baltimore

Longer sentences could curb killers

Since most of the city's killing suspects and victims are people who have long criminal histories, it stands to reason that there is something wrong with the criminal justice system in the city ("Patterns persist in city killings," Jan. 1).

Perhaps we should examine the sentences given to violent offenders, and ask ourselves why the city's judges aren't putting these predators in jail for much longer periods of time.

Maybe if the judges did their duty and incarcerated the criminals for long sentences, instead of giving them probation so often, the murder rate would go down.

I know, for instance, that the Dawsons would be alive if the young man who killed them had been in jail instead of on probation.

So let's try something novel: Put the criminals in jail.

Jay Davis

Churchville

Escalating the war will add to carnage

The Bush administration's greatest achievement has been its success in the clever selection of the language used to present its view of reality ("Making progress on Iraq, Bush says," Dec. 28).

The war in Iraq was sold with all the savvy of a light beer commercial. Terms such as "weapons of mass destruction," "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "Mission Accomplished," "as they stand up we'll stand down" and "Islamo-fascists," to name just a few, have been used to distort what really is happening.

We all know the powerful effect of setting the terms used in an argument. If you can get people thinking in terms of a "death tax" rather than an inheritance tax or of "enhancing" Social Security rather than privatizing it, your attempt to change public perceptions has already half-succeeded.

The media have gone along with this manipulation of public sentiment since President Bush came into office, and are continuing to do so even now.

Everywhere I read the word "surge" used for the soon-to-be-announced increase in American troops stationed in Iraq.

"Surge" implies the gentle lapping of the tide on a sunlit beach or a muscular, forward movement toward a worthwhile goal.

What is really going to happen, however, despite the clearly stated wishes of the American people to wind down America's involvement in Iraq, should be called what it is - "escalation."

Escalating the conflict by sending additional tens of thousands of American soldiers into the killing zone will mean more American deaths, more Iraqi deaths, more Arab resentment of us as an occupying army and even more recruits for the cause of Jihad against the West.

So stop playing the administration's game.

Stop using "surge" when the right word is "escalation."

Victor Wilkotz

Marriottsville

Peat will never be Earth-friendly fuel

The article "Scientists see potential for peat as fuel" (Dec. 26) errs in saying that the peat Michigan researchers are trying to convert into a clean "pethanol" fuel is a renewable resource.

Although mined-out peatlands can be restored, at considerable expense, to something resembling the original peat bogs, it may be several thousand years before the very slowly accumulating peat deposits become economical to mine again.

Not only is peat in practice not renewable, but the carbon dioxide created by burning peat, in any form, is a greenhouse gas according to the recently revised greenhouse gas reporting guidelines published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although scientists may make peat, a notoriously smoky and inefficient source of energy, into an atmospherically clean pethanol fuel, they cannot make it into a climate-change-friendly "green" fuel.

Clark Row

Edgewood

The writer is a climate change consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wind farms menace wildlife and forests

The writer of the letter "Embrace the wind for cleaner power" (Dec. 30) states, "Aside from solar power, wind is the only fuel-free, pollution-free and carbon-free source of electricity that exists."

But he is incorrect. Hydroelectric power is also free of fuel, pollution and carbon.

We embraced this power source for many years until its unintended consequences, including blocking the migration of many types of fish, resulted in the near-collapse of many marine species.

Today, we are dismantling many dams in the hope of restoring fish populations.

Given his interest in wildlife, the letter writer should be very concerned about similar unintended consequences of placing wind turbines atop Appalachian ridges.

Large bat kills have been documented along those ridges at every industrial wind plant studied so far.

Wind turbines, which are typically 400 feet tall with blades moving at up to 200 miles per hour at their tips, would serve as gauntlets for migrating birds and bats.

In addition, building wind turbines on forested ridge-tops requires large road networks.

The clearing of forest averages about 4 acres per turbine. But this rate of loss is only a small part of the impact; considerably greater harm results from the fragmentation of increasingly scarce "forest interior" areas needed by many species of disappearing songbirds.

In many cases these higher-elevation ridge-tops also are important habitats for rare and endangered species.

Supporters of wind power seem to think that it will reduce the coal burned to generate electrical energy.

Sadly, it won't come close to doing that.

Wind energy is very fickle and cannot be substituted for the power grid's baseload generators - which in our region are powered mostly by coal and nuclear energy.

However, even if many thousands of goliath turbines were built in our region, their total annual power generation would match the expected increase in demand for electricity for only a relatively few years - while the same number of tons of coal would continue to be mined and burned.

Our accelerating demand for electricity will absorb all the wind energy potential of this region, and we will need to rapidly find other sources of renewable power if we don't want to increase our use of fossil fuels or nuclear energy.

Ajax Eastman

Baltimore

Eliminate the limits on treating addicts

I commend The Sun's editorial on Congress' decision to change the patient limit for physicians treating patients suffering from addiction with buprenorphine ("A promising treatment," Dec. 21).

The change from 30 to 100 patients is a significant step forward for addiction treatment. But more must be done to make addiction treatment available to all who need it.

The disease of addiction, involving illicit drugs and alcohol abuse, strikes every community of our country and its effects permeate every aspect of our society.

Providing more and better treatment for this disease could have the greatest public health benefit we have ever seen.

But with the continued patient restrictions, there will never be enough doctors to provide lifesaving treatment to all the patients in need.

We do not limit the number of patients an endocrinologist or a cardiologist may treat, nor do we limit the number of prescriptions for insulin a physician may write.

And we don't limit the number of addictive, narcotic pain pills a physician may prescribe.

The only way to provide adequate treatment opportunities for addicted individuals is to remove any restriction on the number of patients who can be treated and to allow appropriately qualified physicians to provide the care they have been trained to provide.

Dr. Lee Tannenbaum

Bel Air

The writer is the founder and owner of the Bel Air Center for Addictions.

Lawsuits no cure for medical errors

The president of the Coalition for Patients' Rights is correct that the epidemic of medical errors is a major issue in health care and patient safety ("Epidemic of errors is real health issue," letters, Dec. 30).

However, his conclusion that the legislature should "pass legislation that addresses the epidemic of malpractice and negligence" to solve the problem of medical errors is incorrect.

Medical errors result mainly from a fragmented health care delivery system.

If health providers all belonged to a single care delivery system that utilized electronic medical records accessible to all providers, diagnostic and medication errors could be dramatically reduced.

Such a system could prevent the prescription of medications to which the patient has a known allergy or of medications that have serious or fatal interactions and allow providers to access data on previous successful and unsuccessful treatment modalities.

Computerized prescribing also would reduce greatly errors that are caused by illegible prescriptions or by pharmacists misreading legible prescriptions.

Intense efforts must be made to improve a health care system whose expenses are spiraling out of control but that yields a quality of care lower than the level in many countries that spend less on health care than we do.

In instances of true negligence and dereliction of duty, patients and families should be compensated.

But these instances account for very few of the medical errors, which are mostly the result of systemic deficiencies.

More malpractice lawsuits will not solve the systemic problems.

They may, in fact, only deflect attention from the need for systemic health care changes and for consumers to take greater personal responsibility for their health.

Dr. Lawrence Adler

Columbia

The writer teaches psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Criminal cases pose threat at Rosewood

I was not surprised to read The Sun's report "Hospital resident charged in state facility stabbing" (Dec. 29).

In recent years, the Rosewood Center has received an influx of court-committed individuals with mental retardation, who have allegedly committed crimes, for psychiatric and competency evaluations.

These individuals, most of whom are not competent to stand trial, now constitute more than 25 percent of the total population at the center.

They are a major problem because their aggression poses a danger to themselves and to other residents and employees at the center.

A few years ago, a plan was devised to transfer the hard core of this group to a wing at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane. Unfortunately, the transfer was put on hold by the court system.

One solution to the problem proposed some time ago would be the establishment of a new, small facility on the grounds of the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center for patients who are developmentally disabled.

The cost of building a new facility would be millions of dollars. But in the long run, this option would be much better than continuing the current situation.

Dr. Wulfred Berman

Owings Mills

The writer is a former medical director of the Rosewood Center.

Stop the sniping at other Democrats

All Thomas F. Schaller is asking is that Democrats stop junking their core values in order to get votes and that conservative Democratic politicians start going after Republicans more than they attack the Democrats who most strongly uphold the party's core values ("Advice for Democrats: Look away," Dec. 27).

Think about it: When was the last time you saw a conservative Republican trying to score points by attacking more moderate Republicans such as Sen. Olympia J. Snowe?

But the Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats, especially in the South, seem constantly to be attacking Northern and moderate to liberal Democrats, and have been doing so for years.

They seem to attack Democrats more than they do Republicans. And this inflicts long-term damage on the Democratic Party as a whole, for dubious, short-term individual gain.

I think that the Southern-Blue Dog reaction to Mr. Schaller's thesis is based on the fear that they will have done to them what they've been doing to other Democrats for decades. They're projecting their own modus operandi onto Mr. Schaller, and they obviously don't like what they see.

Tamara Baker

St. Paul, Minn.

Ford's two pardons helped nation heal

Much has been written about President Gerald R. Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon and the role it played in restoring normality to American life ("A nation bids Ford farewell," Jan. 3).

But Mr. Ford should also be noted for the controversial program he created that allowed young men who fled the country to avoid the Vietnam-era draft to return home.

Throughout the Vietnam War, young Americans fled to Canada to avoid participating in what they considered an illegal and immoral war.

They were patriots to some, traitors to many.

Mr. Ford's decision to grant conditional amnesty to "draft dodgers" officially acknowledged the great ambivalence Americans felt toward the Vietnam War and helped bring closure to that terrible episode in our history.

At the time, the amnesty was only slightly less controversial than the pardon of Mr. Nixon. And it undoubtedly hurt Mr. Ford's re-election prospects.

But together, the two amnesties sent a message that compassion and forgiveness are necessary and important elements of a functioning democracy.

Mr. Ford put the good of the country first, and a finer thing you cannot say of a president.

Mac Nachlas

Baltimore

Community schools offer better support

We are pleased to see the efforts of the 27 site coordinators in Baltimore's community schools recognized and applauded ("A resource for the family," Dec. 26).

We appreciate the reporter's efforts to research good news and share it with the public.

This partnership represents the commitment of 14 community-based organizations, 33 schools and numerous service providers, parents and community leaders to offer students and families a range of critically needed supports.

But we would like to highlight the visionary leadership in the city and the Baltimore public system for this partnership.

The Sun's article implies that community schools focus largely on family support.

While strengthening families and communities is an important goal, the primary aim is always student learning - removing barriers, strengthening families' role in the learning process, making neighborhoods and school buildings safe and supportive.

While community schools are centers of community development, such programs are designed first and foremost to support the academic mission.

We agree wholeheartedly with The Sun's editorial board that the community school strategy should be used in more schools ("School extensions," editorial, Jan. 3).

As we testified before the city school board in December, the schools could use Title I funds, restructuring money and safe schools dollars to fund site coordinators in an additional 20 schools.

Community schools offer a powerful strategy for supporting students and families in challenging environments.

We are confident the city's leadership will continue to see their value and power as the initiative grows.

Jessica Strauss Sheila Drummond Baltimore

The writers are co-directors of Baltimore Community School Connections.

Single-payer is best health option

I was pleased to read that there may be a serious effort to reform health coverage in Maryland this year ("Health coverage options in works," Jan. 1).

As reporter M. William Salganik notes, Maryland ranks 40th among U.S. states in its level of Medicaid coverage for poor parents. This may help explain why 80 percent of the 9,000 different people seen by Health Care for the Homeless last year had no health insurance.

The cost of reform seems to be the most daunting challenge. The changes contemplated in this article might cost $200 million to $250 million annually.

But I remain puzzled that the least-expensive solution to the health care problem wasn't mentioned.

A recent study of health coverage reform in California by the Lewin Group concluded that a single-payer system in that state could cover everyone and save the state $8 billion in the first year and more than $340 billion in health care costs over the next 10 years.

Businesses, individuals and the state budget would benefit from such savings.

The experience of other countries is also instructive.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Australia, for instance, spends $3,120 per person for health care, compared with the U.S. expenditure of $6,102 per person. Life expectancy in Australia is 80.6 years, compared with 77.5 years in the United States. Infant mortality there is 4.7 deaths per 1,000, compared with 6.9 deaths per 1,000 in the United States.

The major reason for the difference in costs and outcomes is that everyone in Australia has the same affordable and comprehensive health insurance. This drastically reduces the administrative costs of health care.

In the United States, the administration of health insurance consumes, by various estimates, from 20 percent to 31 percent of health care expenditures. The administrative costs for care in countries with a single source of insurance are less than half that amount.

I urge the governor and General Assembly to consider the cheapest and most efficient health coverage reform - a single-payer system.

In Australia, where health care is cheaper and overall outcomes are better than ours are, everyone has the right to the doctor of his or her choice.

I look forward to the day when the 780,000 insured Marylanders, including the homeless ones, can choose their doctor as well.

Jeff Singer

Baltimore

The writer is president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless.

While The Sun's recent article on plans to cover the uninsured detailed a number of proposals, it left out one - a single-payer system.

Single-payer legislation will be introduced this year in the Maryland House and Senate.

Unlike any of the other proposed health bills, a single-payer system would provide quality health care for all Marylanders.

Under a single-payer system, everyone would be covered under a single plan while retaining choice of provider. There would be no need for co-payments, deductibles or exclusions based on pre-existing conditions.

Any health care reform that addresses only the uninsured is bound to fail.

Employers are dropping coverage of their employees because of rising costs. Increasing co-payments and deductibles are causing consumers to forgo health insurance.

Only a single-payer system would address the entire problem in a systematic manner. It deserves to be part of the public debate.

Richard Bruning

Baltimore

The writer is a former president of the Maryland Universal Health Care Action Network.

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