To the Daily:
I've been reading the Daily since my undergraduate days. It has always been a source of amusement and information. Unfortunately, the current Daily staff seems to be too preoccupied with the politically correct spelling of Hawai'i to check any of the other facts in the paper. Reading through the article by Jaimie Winkler entitled "Foreign students to join in holiday," (11/25/98) I couldn't help but notice that Guy Fawkes Day (see American Heritage Dictionary 2nd Collegiate Edition, Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary, etc.) is misspelled as "Guy Faux Day" throughout the article.
If the Daily can't find a qualified fact checker to put on the staff, perhaps it should invest in a good dictionary or encyclopedia. Some things you just can't leave to the spell-checker. Go Blue!
Peter Anderson
University alumnus
To the Daily:
Last year, the Daily was generous enough to do an article on the rejection of a proposal on offering American Sign Language here at the University. Due to that article, tremendous student support for this class came crawling out of the woodwork.
At the beginning of the semester, I heard that the Daily wanted to do an update on the progress. The agreement made by the Dean of Academic Affairs (Dean Lincoln Faller, who has since resigned from the position) and the American Culture department was that the course was going to be offered by Fall 1999, by the American Culture department for Fall 1999, and would fulfill the four-semester foreign language requirement.
I've been working with the new dean of Academic Affairs (Robert Owen and his assistant, Douglas Shapiro) and the American Culture department to make sure that this happens. Recently, I got an update. Owen let me know that they were not able to find a professor to teach and are not offering the class in the fall, as originally promised two years ago. They've had two years to complete their end and this class won't be offered as initially promised.
But a class will be offered this summer, which is great news. The only problem with this is that if there is low enrollment, the University will use that as an excuse not to offer the course at all, which is not an adequate measurement of the several people on campus who have expressed a desire to take the course but may not be on campus during the summer to take advantage of this opportunity.
If anyone is interested in learning more about this, I will be more than happy to refer them to members of the Hearing Impaired Student Organization, who have been fighting for the privilege and right to learn the third most spoken language in the country. Thank you for your time, and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Rachel Arfa
LSA junior
To the Daily:
Reading the letters section of the Daily on Nov. 24, I was in disbelief at the blatantly inaccurate statements made about animal research ("Animal research is problematic"). The person who wrote the letter, Tiiu Ruben, has obviously never set foot in a real research lab. And from his statements, he clearly knows nothing about the physiology, immunology and biochemical aspects of any organisms.
His first statement was that because animals are incompatible with humans, research based on them is counterproductive. This is wrong. Without getting into too many medical explanations, realize that all those therapeutic and preventative drugs out there on the market that have been tested and derived solely on animals, work on humans.
How can this be? Well, even mice have enough of the basic cellular and physiologic systems in common with us that drugs that work on them work on us. This applies to drugs ranging from Tylenol to AIDS medications.
Ruben also mentions that because animals are studied in artificial environments, the result of experiments are inaccurate because of confounding variables. This statement proves to me that Ruben has never set foot in a real lab. Research animals are kept in germ-free environments, drinking purified water, eating bacteria-free food and breathing highly filtered air. If this were not done, how could a researcher be sure that the results, especially when doing immunological experiments, were not impacted by some roving virus. The whole reason that the environments are artificial is to prevent confounds - it most certainly does not create them.
Ruben goes on to suggest that cell, tissue and organ culture systems can adequately replace animal research. For anyone who is curious about the accuracy of this statement, just run it by any professor who does medical research, and don't be alarmed if he laughs for a very long time. Not only are we still unable to culture many of the cells of interest in humans, but those that are culturable do not behave like they do in vivo.
Lastly, Ruben says that the money so foolishly wasted on animal research prevents those suffering from disease from being treated. Here is a question for you, Ruben: How do you suppose we treat people when we don't know how a disease is affecting them? If you have any ideas, let the medical community of the world know and they will be oh-so-grateful.
Kevin Fajardo
School of Public Health
To the Daily:
This is in reply to Joel Haas's letter ("U.S. should not be afraid to attack Iraq," 11/19/98) regarding America's current foreign policy problem child - a man by the name of Saddam Hussein who just happens to sit in power in Iraq.
Now as someone who, like the French, would much rather try and find a diplomatic avenue in this situation however frustrating it may seem to get, I am actually a little frightened by the tone of Haas's letter. It reflects an attitude that is much more dangerous to both sides than trying to seek a workable diplomatic pathway. That attitude might be described as "trigger happiness." We should always seek an excuse not to use that massive miliary machine that we possess rather than continue a rather unintelligent but distinctly American foreign policy version of the temper tantrum - in relative terms, we are a young nation, and sometimes we act like it.
Admittedly, Saddam's behavior is frustrating, even for the diplomatic corps. Further, I don't think that anyone didn't expect him to "play," if you will, with the situation in which he finds himself. He demands, as we know, that the sanctions against Iraq be rescinded. The United States' demands are that we get to monitor and inspect possible weapons manufacturing areas in Iraq. Well, Saddam won't let us see everything, and we have not been satisfied enough to lift those sanctions. It's a painfully slow diplomatic effort, yes, with both sides wanting the last word and both sides trying to exercise control of international policy in their own favor. I may be an optimist, but I think that even this hill can be climbed somehow, and we now have to work on the "somehow."
I personally will not tolerate the "line in the sand" behavior that Haas purports. I will not give up in the face of seeming utter frustration, and I refuse to fire a weapon until there is sufficient justification, which does not include a Middle Eastern leader who is simply being what most Americans might call a jerk. I do not make the decisions to fire, but I do know that firing without just cause would be a disgraceful action. Haas might very well be correct in thinking that the United States is not afraid of an attack on Iraq, but I ask you this: What are the grounds? Well, as I said, trying to play diplomacy like a finely tuned instrument in order to frustrate those folks who beat you in a short-lived conflict about seven years ago is hardly sufficient reason to do anything.
Lorne Cook
LSA junior
11-30-98
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