Re: energy, we can't return to business as usual

Three articles in the Nov. 23 Forum ("Re-energize America," "Let Them Go Bust" and "Save the Big Three") rely on a return to growth to cure our economic and financial crisis. But what if this is as fanciful as trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again?

Most Americans acknowledge the debt, delusion and deception of the housing and dotcom bubbles; what we are overlooking is the role of oil.

First, oil went from $98 to $147 in the first six months of 2008 and has been falling since only because of the severity of the economic downturn it helped to intensify.

Second, the Energy Watch Group reported in "Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society": "By 2020 ... global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame." Indeed, this meltdown is now beginning.

Our federal government is throwing borrowed money at failing industries. Wall Street is first; the Big Three are in line; and soon the airlines, health care and other institutions will encounter dire straits. When we see the futility in returning to business as usual and recognize our true energy predicament, we'll get busy building a sustainable society that will be much different from the one that is passing into history.

DAN BEDNARZ
Edgewood

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Pure greed

I want someone to explain how our government can give billions of dollars to bail out the corporations that mismanaged their money out of greed. Twenty billion in bonuses to their employees?

Why not give every American in this country $1 million? That would certainly jump-start our economy.

I receive $1,311 a month in disability and I take care of my 86-year-old mother, keeping her out of a nursing home.

Our lawmakers should hang their heads in shame for allowing these bailouts to happen. But greed prevails.

LESLEY S. OWENS
Highland Park

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Yes, fear not

The Nov. 20 Perspectives piece by Dr. James N. Jacobson deserves supporting comments. His commentary, "Unfounded Fears," highlights the continuing misconceptions that individuals with mental illness may be dangerous and violent and pose a potential threat to others. This misconception is largely the result of media hype when a violent act is completed by a person with mental illness.

A large number of research studies have consistently found that 80 percent of Americans believe that people with mental illness are very likely to commit violent crimes. Many other studies reveal that male gender and a younger age are more strongly predictive of an individual's likelihood of becoming violent than the presence of mental illness. People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. These media distortions lead to further stigmatization, ostracism and alienation of the mentally ill.

The majority of the uninformed are also not aware that mental illness, including schizophrenia, the most disabling of all mental illness, is a brain disorder and treatable with medications and other therapies, which allow those persons to function productively in jobs, marry and have children, socialize and lead relatively normal lives.

With the passage of the mental health-parity bill, requiring insurers to provide comparable coverage for mental health care as for other medical conditions, a large gap in our health-care system may soon be closed.

Advocacy and education need to be ongoing to close the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome. I wonder if Vincent van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln or Ernest Hemingway, all of whom suffered from a mental illness, would be welcome in your neighborhood?

LILLIAN L. MEYERS, Ph.D
Bethel Park

The writer is a licensed psychologist.

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Smokeless benefits

I was disappointed to read in the Nov. 20 article "New Snuff Marketing Makes W.Va. Spittin' Mad" comments by West Virginia University researchers and state health officials that misled West Virginia smokers with irresponsible allegations about smokeless tobacco.

Bruce Adkins, director of the state Bureau for Tobacco Prevention, is purposefully misleading when he says, "Here in West Virginia, 4,000 people die every year from tobacco-related illness." He knows that the deaths are due to smoking.

Britain's Royal College of Physicians, one of the world's most prestigious medical societies, documented that smokeless tobacco is vastly safer than smoking. Unlike cigarettes, smokeless does not cause lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema. Research clearly shows that the risk for mouth cancer with smokeless is far lower than it is with cigarettes. Statistically, smokeless users have about the same risk of dying from mouth cancer as automobile users have of dying in a car wreck.

American anti-tobacco extremists don't want smokers to know that smokeless tobacco works as a cigarette substitute because it delivers nicotine almost as efficiently as cigarettes. Nicotine is highly addictive but does not cause any smoking-related diseases. That makes it similar to caffeine, which is addictive but safely consumed by millions of Americans in coffee, tea and cola drinks. Modern smokeless tobacco products provide a socially acceptable way for smokers to achieve virtually all the health benefits of being smoke-free without abstaining altogether from nicotine and tobacco.

BRAD RODU
Professor of Medicine
Endowed Chair, Tobacco Harm Reduction Research
University of Louisville
Louisville, Ky.

Editor's note: The writer's research is supported by unrestricted grants from smokeless tobacco manufacturers to the University of Louisville. The writer says he has no personal relationship or conflict of interest regarding any manufacturer.

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Have a heart, UPMC

I cannot imagine how hard it has been for UPMC to post a slim $5 million profit in fiscal 2008 down from a record $612 million profit the year before. The economy is hitting all of us hard. I can, however, imagine how hard it must be for the chemically dependent, homeless pregnant women or new mothers who have been able to rely on House of Hope to know that come next year it will not be there anymore ("Lamenting the Loss of House of Hope," Nov. 14).

No doubt the measure by UPMC Braddock makes perfect business sense: The multimillion-dollar hospital UPMC is planning in Monroeville demands such measures. Money does not grow on trees. But what I cannot imagine is where is the social responsibility of UPMC as a nonprofit organization? Do these organizations have a heart? Yes, this has been a bad year for UPMC, but imagine what next year would be like for those who depend on House of Hope.

We cannot demand that UPMC reconsider this action; it is a business not a charity organization. But if it were to reconsider, it would make all of us who have supported UPMC feel so much better. In this holiday season, give the neediest among us a ray of hope -- they have nothing else.

L.F. CHAPARRO
Monroeville

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Joe Lieberman, a model of civility, stands up for his beliefs

In your Nov. 21 editorial "Act of Mercy," you called Sen. Joe Lieberman a "turncoat" for his act of "betrayal" in advocating the election of Sen. John McCain and suggested that Mr. Lieberman is "a renegade senator who has a lot to prove that he is not a bum."

Well, I have news for you. I have known Joe Lieberman for some 40 years since we were classmates in college and in law school and he has never had to prove to anyone that he is not a bum.

Joe has always charted a moderate course in politics; he has always stood out as one of the senators who have reached across the aisle to the other side and who have fought to retain civility in the Senate. His support of the Iraq war reflected his deep convictions that our actions in Iraq were justified. He supported the war at great political risk to himself, losing the Democratic nomination for Senate in the 2006 election but winning election as an independent. If taking stands based on conscience and against one's political best interests makes one a "traitor," we need more such "traitors" in American politics and fewer party hacks who -- to borrow a line from Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore" -- "never thought of thinking for [themselves] at all."

While your editorial says nothing about Joe Lieberman, it speaks volumes about the extent to which a once great newspaper is becoming a liberal rag which, like conservative radio talk show hosts, must resort to name calling and vitriol as a substitute for analysis and thought.

JAMES T. CARNEY
Mt. Lebanon

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