Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor Excellent Interview I would like to thank Managing Editor Amitabh Pal for the interview with recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai of Kenya (May issue). Her...
...Letters may be e-mailed to: editorial@progressive.org Please include your city and state...
...Scholastica and to live with the sisters who taught her, and to be an English professor at Benedictine College, formerly Mount St...
...Thanks for granting him the space to voice his human contribution...
...As progressives, we should not debate in code, but with the whole truth...
...We should not dismiss these claims outright, but we should examine the claims and see if they hold up, see if they support a more progressive position, not swallow them whole and fund them with public funds...
...Jaydee Hanson Director for Human Genetics Policy International Center for Technology Assessment Washington, D.C...
...She assumes that Kass's ideas must be opposed because some rightwing groups like them or because he talks to conservatives...
...Well, some of us progressives support some of what he does, too...
...His company needs investors and holds patents that would control this research...
...Zinn is a man to be admired for his work, his wisdom, and, more importantly, his love of justice...
...The major difference between McNamara and Wolfowitz is it took McNamara twenty years to see the errors of his ways and to apologize for his mistakes...
...Talib Ray Via e-mail The Future of Life Leon Kass's anti-cloning slogan, "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder" ("Bioethics, Bush Style," by Nina Siegal, May issue), invites this reply: Narrow are the souls that cannot comprehend that different souls shudder at different things...
...Sister Thomasita Homan, OSB Atchison, Kansas Capital Offense Thank you for Nancy Shepherdson's report on the National Federation of Republican Assemblies ("The Republican Wing of the Republican Party," May issue...
...And, lest we forget, his war that began forty years ago makes Iraq look like a walkover: 58,000 Americans killed...
...Today's biotech barons are attempting to enclose the global commons of life...
...In effect, her article is a sideways defense of embryonic cloning, not stem cell research per se...
...With the notable exception of the British Broadcasting Corporation, few mass media outlets in the United States have given her the exposure she truly deserves...
...As a former Missourian, however, I doubt that the bus she rode between Frontenac and the St...
...McNamara's record at the bank is not that good...
...He has a strong economic interest in his claims...
...Her straightforward statement, "Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees," demonstrates there is still hope for apposite environmental and sociopolitical change in Africa...
...They even argue that their theft is progress...
...Siegal also quotes bioethicist Arthur Caplan's excitement, but not his warning that in this research we should avoid past mistakes related to genetic research...
...Felicia Nimue Ackerman Providence, Rhode Island Rather than debate whether the ideas of Leon Kass on embryo cloning support the progressive agenda or not, Nina Siegal resorts to a McCarthyist form of guilt by association...
...Like railroad barons, they lobby their friends in government to get them to turn over our common resources...
...I simply love the man for who he is...
...Joe Turner Concord, North Carolina Zinn a Gem Just a small comment about the article "The Scourge of Nationalism" by Howard Zinn (June issue...
...They want exclusive control of plants, animals, and now even human genes and human embryos and their stem cells...
...However, let's not forget the man whose chair at the World Bank he is going to occupy, Robert McNamara...
...When biotechnologists with an economic stake in these technologies make exaggerated health claims, progressives must question their claims as much as we question those of plant and animal genetic engineers...
...Scholastica College, where Maathai received her science degree in 1964...
...And Siegal declares that Massachusetts Governor Romney is opposed to embryonic stem cell research when he actually opposed not embryonic stem cell research, but the cloning of embryos...
...thousands more addicted to drugs or poisoned by Agent Orange...
...To The Progressive: good show...
...Siegal accepts Lanza's assertion that embryo cloning will cure a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer's-when no animal data suggests that a cure for Alzheimer's will be found through embryo cloning...
...I shudder at the thought of being denied life-saving technology because it violates Kass's particular conception of dignity...
...The Scourge of Nationalism" is just another one of his many gems...
...Progressives should not move into the "technological change=growth= progress" camp, and The Progressive should not endorse technologies without examining their effects on justice for all groups and the future of life itself...
...Through her encouragement, wisdom, steadfastness, and peace-filled heart, she continues to urge others to act...
...Maathai continues to challenge herself, her country, and the world to be environmentalists and peacemakers...
...Ronald Clark Hamtramck, Michigan Thank you for Amitabh Pal's excellent Wangari Maathai interview...
...Maathai makes me proud to be a member of Mount St...
...Human embryonic stem cells only were isolated in 1998...
...They seek patents and government funding to help them in this new enclosure of the commons...
...Bob Blumenthal Auburndale, Massachusetts From War to World Bank I am no fan of Paul Wolfowitz-far from it ("Musical Chairs," Comment, May issue...
...Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., should be viewed with the same suspicion as the CEO of Monsanto or Wal-Mart...
...Wolfowitz ain't never going to admit he was wrong in anything he does...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness, and may appear either in the magazine or on its web page...
...more than a million Vietnamese and untold numbers of Cambodians and Laotians killed...
...The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...The Progressive serves as a powerful megaphone for her message and that of the Nobel Peace Committee...
...Louis Arch went past the Missouri State Capitol building, given that the capital of Missouri is Jefferson City...
Vol. 69 • July 2005 • No. 7
