Letters: Readers discuss the Fourth National Climate Assessment and nursing home deaths

That’s authority

Thirteen federal agencies — assembling the work of 1,000 people, 300 of them scientists from inside and outside the government — prepared the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

John Meyer

Blue Springs

Protect everyone

Pain on pain: Those words barely scratch the surface when it comes to conveying the heartache at the unexpected death of a loved one. And some of these deaths occur in nursing homes.

Because death is seen as a near certainty for people in these facilities, autopsies are rarely performed and law enforcement is not likely to investigate. In some states, a doctor can sign a death certificate without seeing the body. The reality, though, is that motive, means and opportunity for neglect and crimes of all sorts — including homicide — exist in nursing homes as much as anywhere else.

Nursing home residents become even more vulnerable in the absence of security cameras and electronic badges that track the activities of staffers and visitors. Effects of a drug overdose, either intentional or accidental, can take hours after the perpetrator has left the premises.

Mandated responsibility to report abuse and law enforcement’s commitment to “protect and serve” should not stop for those in nursing homes. There needs to be as much an investigation for a death inside a nursing home as there is outside its walls. Those with nothing to hide, hide nothing.

Valerie Harper

Topeka