LETTERS 05/05/08

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You cannot drive on a major street without stopping at every single intersection. Anyone can understand that every time you stop at a light, just a few hundred feet from your last stop, you sit and idle, start and stop, just wasting gasoline.

Many cities time their stoplight patterns to keep cars moving, and have more than one pattern per day to accommodate the direction of rush-hour flow.

Have you ever driven on 135th or 119th streets and made it from Mission to Metcalf without stopping at every intersection along the way?

Joseph A. Leto

Leawood

I agree with Bill Harkins (5/1, Letters. “Gun-free zone signs”) that everyone should carry a sign to protect themselves from gun-wielding psychopaths. But I lean toward a hipper, more permanent solution: gun-free zone tattoos.

And if I can paraphrase Andrew Meyer, the student removed forcibly from a John Kerry speech, the tattoos could read “Don’t Shoot Me Bro!”

Jeff Buckley

Raymore

Your editorial “Authorship questions raise doubts” (4/18, Opinion) raised valid points about the need for transparency in pharmaceutical research. However, your editorial refers to articles published in The Journal of the American Medical Association that were false, misleading, and lacked context.

First, those who wrote the JAMA article apparently failed to check their accusations with the non-Merck authors of the papers themselves. Several of those authors publicly protested the allegations, calling any allegation of “ghostwriting” of their papers absolutely false.

Second, you ask “so what” that the JAMA articles were written by consultants hired by trial lawyers. The significance is that it is a one-sided account. Indeed, the company was given no opportunity to provide any input. In the litigation — where Merck was able to present its side — Merck won nine of the last 11 product liability cases.

Theodore V. H. Mayer

Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP,

Outside counsel for Merck & Co., Inc.

New York

Why do people on oxygen smoke? Aren’t the tanks clearly marked that they are explosive?

Have you ever been to a casino? I can’t believe how many people I see hooked to an oxygen tank lighting up one after another. Why are we letting this happen?

I used to be on oxygen myself, so I feel I can talk about this freely. It used to puzzle me when I would go out to eat and the hostess would ask “smoking or nonsmoking?” Would you want me to blow up your restaurant?

Come on people, get a grip. Be safe. If you want to blow yourself up, do it in your own home, not in public.

Kathy Barnes

Raymore

Frank Grimaldi (4/25, Letters) seems to think the Bible gives us license to destroy the Earth. He states that Genesis gives man “dominion over this creation,” and therefore we can do with it what we will.

It’s true that we seem to have dominion over the plants and animals. But we don’t have control over the laws of nature — one law being the law of gravitation, which means we are more or less stuck here on this planet.

If we don’t find a way to limit population growth, Earth will become a barren sewer and our descendants will end up killing each other over food and water.

Maybe that is the fate of humanity, but you can’t blame some optimists for thinking that we are intelligent enough to live in harmony with nature.

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