Posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2007 12:00 am
I read Mark Snodgrass' July 31 letter ("Why pay so farmers can burn grass straw?") against the farmers burning their fields, and I'm surprised that he and the others who have complained about the resulting (lack of) air quality feel that the farmers are to blame.
What about all the old vehicles spewing smoke as they drive down the roads, every single day? After the few fields that are permitted to be burned are burned, it's over. The vehicles, on the other hand, will keep spewing smoke and pollution until there are emissions laws passed.
There seem to be good reasons for burning fields. What good reasons are there for allowing unnecessary pollution from cars and trucks?
Rebecca Stillwell, Albany
Positive pot study was misrepresented
The study to which Cynthia Cutting referred in her July 27 letter, whose outcome she maintains concluded that smoking marijuana does not cause lung cancer, was carried out only on animals by Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine.
In an interview, Dr. Tashkin emphasized that the outcome of the study is a hypothesis, not a "conclusion." Although he stated that THC - the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana - does have some immune suppressant and anti-inflammatory properties that may prevent emphysema and lung cancer, he was quick to add that it is a two-edged sword: Those same properties also prevent the lung's alveolar epithelial cells from suppressing microorganisms that cause such lung diseases as pneumonia and bronchitis. Smoking marijuana may thus actually hasten the deaths of patients who use it to increase appetite or to decrease pain and nausea.
While studies indicate that THC can inhibit the growth of certain kinds of tumors, it accelerates the growth of others. In these studies, THC was administered by direct injection of the THC into the tumor. Such administration did not produce any overt psychoactive effects (the "high"), and Dr. Tashkin conceded with tongue in cheek that, to proponents of medical marijuana, the administration of THC by injection or capsule form "is not as agreeable" a method as is smoking.
Dr. Tashkin stresses that "smoking is not a reasonable route of administration for therapeutic purposes" because "marijuana smoke contains an awful lot of noxious materials that cause airway injury, visibly as well as microscopically."
Lisa J. Aldrich, Psy. D., Shedd
Pot article was alarmist, one-sided
The July 27 article on marijuana use and the risk of psychosis may have been unduly alarmist. In saying (inaccurately, I think) that "psychosis (is) a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known," this article suggests that marijuana may cause schizophrenia.
Psychosis, as I understand it, is a state of mental confusion that occurs or may occur with a number of psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia being one and, less frequently, bipolar disorder. Even depression sometimes goes all the way to psychosis. Psychosis can be produced by extreme sleep deprivation or street drugs. But that doesn't mean a person has schizophrenia or any other chronic mental illness.
It may be that, with the very strong forms of marijuana now available, some people are getting a marijuana-induced psychosis. But the most likely reason for finding this coincidence of marijuana use and psychosis is that, when a person is on the brink of psychosis, their mental distress is such that they will reach for anything that might give temporary relief, and those things are, most commonly, marijuana and alcohol. A person may have gone for days without sleep; marijuana or alcohol will make sleep possible. Addiction of some kind in conjunction with serious mental illness - "dual diagnosis" - is almost the norm.
Towards the end, this article does say "Scientists cannot rule out that pre-existing conditions could have led to both marijuana use and later psychoses." To me this seems likely to be the case. But articles like this one tend to get the alarmist reading.
Dianne Farrell, Corvallis
Liberal prof fired for telling the truth
The attack on Ward Churchill, now appealing his firing from a tenured professorship at the University of Colorado, is part of the Kremlin culture of the American Empire. Churchill has documented the bad faith relationship between the American military and American Indians, but became a true 'heretic' for telling inconvenient truths about 9-11.
Like it or not, Americans need to admit that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were symbols of the Empire occupying bin Laden's Holy Land.
Churchill, and most of the world, view the occupation of the Middle East and exploitation of its oil as immoral. They do not believe that Americans are so good we can do empire nicely and to good purpose. They are right.
Churchill pointed out that those "innocents" serving the Empire were like the functionaries serving Nazi Germany, "little Eichmann's." Somehow, this inflamed "patriots" intent upon believing that America was the moral victim of "evil ones." Academic freedom's justification is the voice like Ward Churchill's speaking truth to power and reality to propaganda.
The trumped-up charges of plagiarism cannot be allowed to cloud this Stalinist attack on dissent in the American academy. Protest against this outrage in Colorado.
Don Caughey, Corvallis
Ducks' baseball revival suspect
So the Ducks weren't swayed by Oregon State University's back-to-back world series championships?
Yeah, right. And it's snowing in Death Valley.
Go, Beavs!
Terry Renshaw, Corvallis