CORRESPONDENCE

...EDWARD L. SWEDA BOSTON, MA I agree with Dennis Prager that we need to do better at teaching moral and personal responsibility to our children and that smoking is one of the least of today’s societal dysfunctions (“The Anti-Smoking Crusade,” July 20...

...JOSEPH ST...

...SANDY, UT WESLEY J. SMITH RESPONDS: I appreciate Dr...

...Unlike Calfee, these jurors were willing to uphold the principle that wrongdoers, including corporate wrongdoers, should be held accountable for their actions...

...Along these same lines, society properly and necessarily prohibits assisted suicide and euthanasia...

...But suicide also needs to be decriminalized...

...People seek him out because they choose to die, not because they are seeking psychiatric assistance or medical prognoses...

...Those people who choose suicide should be able to die surrounded by family and friends, utilizing the most humane techniques...

...Clearly suicide and organ donation need to be informed and voluntary...

...Not only was Stone a staunch supporter of such Stalinists as Ho Chi-Minh, he fully allied himself with those determined to put an end to Israel’s existence...

...Academic bureaucrats are committed to employing faculty along the same lines...

...His surviving family members won a verdict of over $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages after a jury found that Lorillard and the filter maker had defrauded him...

...The problem is people like Smith, who would eliminate all choice, deny people the basic right to dispose of their lives as they choose, and prevent legitimate physicians from ending the suffering of their patients— thus driving desperate, suffering people into Kevorkian’s arms...

...It was easy, and I was more like Dad...

...Stone: Red and Dead,” June 22...

...He urged an arms boycott against Israel because it was “a racist state” that persecuted Arabs...

...JOHN MICHELL SAN ANTONIO, TX EVEN MORE DIVERSITY Michael Greve dissects the shibboleths and clich?s of “diversity” by which universities admit students according to the double standards of a color-coded, gender-conscious agenda (“The Vanity of Diversity,” July 20...

...It became a regional lightning rod for opposition to faculty hiring preferences based on race, gender, or ethnicity and helped ignite the statewide campaign against preferences and quotas that resulted in the passage of Proposition 209...

...These days, Esteban and his CSU counterparts refuse to state openly whether they rigorously enforce Proposition 209, now Article 1, Section 31 of the state constitution...

...While mutilation of a corpse makes for a sensational opening sentence, the truth is that mutilation of corpses is rather routine...

...It seems to me that the question comes down essentially to this: Are we going to be a compassionate and loving community that cares enough about the lives of vulnerable, despairing, and medically defenseless people to protect their lives even from self-destruction—or are we going to devolve into a society based on noxious notions of radical individualism in which people are indifferent to one another’s needs and owe a duty only to themselves...

...In a garbled memo to his faculty, Esteban recently promised only to “comply with the spirit” of the new state regulation...

...And I did it by purloining his, and Mother’s, cigarettes...

...And my own religion considers state-mandated embalming a mutilation...

...So while I’d agree that Kevorkian’s methods are unsavory and often repulsive, the only real issue is whether Joseph Tushkowski gave his consent to the removal of his kidneys, an issue Smith apparently considers too irrelevant to mention...

...Another aspect of Stone’s undermining of democracy was his opposition to the Jewish state and his gross apologies for Arab dictatorships and terrorists...

...Stone’s support of ruthless Marxist dictatorships was welcome (“I.F...

...As a pre-teen I wanted so much to be like my personal idol, my father, that I began “doing as he did rather than as he said...

...Describing the filters as “completely harmless,” Lorillard never informed Horowitz—or any of its other customers—that they contained crocidilite asbestos...

...I was a cigarette smoker for many years, and advertising in print and on billboards was not my reason for starting...

...And considering the desperate need for transplantable organs, suicidal persons who make their organs available should be applauded for doing so...

...CHARLES GESHEKTER CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY-CHICO CHICO, CA THE RIGHT TO DEATH Wesley J. Smith is a hypocrite...

...When the Lorillard Tobacco Company came out with a new, highly touted Micronite filter for its Kent cigarettes in the 1950s, Horowitz was one of its customers...

...Thus, we do not permit people to sell themselves into slavery—even if that is their “choice” —because slavery dehumanizes and demeans enslaved individuals while debasing and degrading the entire society...

...In other words, I have the right to terminate my life at any time and for any reason...

...Especially if you are their hero...

...His incoherent “Faculty Diversity Program” was abandoned in the face of widespread faculty criticism and public outrage...

...REDDER THAN RED Robert D. Novak’s reminder of I.F...

...I myself have done it, although it was described as “dissecting a cadaver...

...Yet Smith, who claims no medical training whatsoever, presumes to know not only that Kevorkian is wrong, but that he (Smith) knows what is best for everyone...

...Five years ago at California State University in Chico, President Manuel Esteban launched an illegal set-aside scheme to hire faculty by race and gender...

...Correspondence RESPONSIBILITY AND THE TOBACCO WAR John E. Calfee concludes his article (“Why the War on Tobacco Will Fail,” July 20) by calling for “an enduring sense of personal responsibility— among smokers, their families, and physicians...

...Western Civilization is as much about us-us, we-we, as it is I-I, me-me...

...Similarly, we don’t allow duels because it would cost individual lives while undermining the rule of law as the proper construct for the resolution of individual disputes...

...When a society decides to provide a minimum level of income for its elderly, it has decided to take money from people who are working and give it to people who are not...

...Rejecting the principle that corporations should be held accountable for their actions and apparently having learned nothing from thousands of recently released internal documents from this rogue industry, Calfee instead endorses an extraordinary public policy: Trust Big Tobacco...

...The money can be collected in taxes on the incomes of the working people, or it can be collected as profits in individual investment portfolios, but in either case the amount that has to be collected is roughly the same...

...The problem is not Kevorkian...

...This is what his privatization scheme amounts to...

...The ultimate horror of Jack Kevorkian is that misguided people like Smith have turned him into a “folk hero” by refusing to allow more responsible physicians to assist in suicide...

...resolution condemning Zionism as racism and said he “understood” the motives of terrorist assaults against Israeli civilians, who after all were doing what Jewish terrorists did to the British in 1948...

...Add in, as advocated by Dr...

...Horowitz died from mesothelioma, a fatal form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos...

...SARAH THOMPSON, M.D...

...Thompson, the prospect of organ harvesting as an inducement, and the term “culture of death” takes on a new and terrifying meaning...

...JOHN J. REILLY JERSEY CITY, NJ...

...He supported the 1975 U.N...

...Individuals may choose to cede ownership of their lives to church or state, but neither church nor state may simply arrogate those lives...

...While Frum notes, accurately, that writing a check to yourself does not give you more money, it is also true that writing a check from one of your accounts and depositing it in another doesn’t do it either...

...Kevorkian is not misleading anyone about his agenda...

...Not only would legalization permit people to be killed because they are sick, disabled, and/or depressed—people who might, after all, change their minds about dying with appropriate suicide prevention, medical treatment, and emotional support—but it would unalterably rend the fabric of society by sending the pernicious message to such people that society views their lives as of so little value and of such a pronounced burden, that their killing is an acceptable, even desirable, act...

...The most basic property right enjoyed by each person is the ownership of his body and his life...

...We properly maximize individual freedom, to be sure...

...Thompson’s letter, if only because it places in such stark contrast the conflicting moral values and philosophical constructs that underlie the assisted-suicide debate...

...Campus quota promoters at middlelevel universities like Chico State use endless ruses, dodges, and euphemisms to disguise their race-attentive, genderconscious agenda of “diversity” at any price...

...Society has the right to prevent harm to the corporate whole just as it does to individual citizens...

...Jack Kevorkian a “quack” because he has “no training or expertise in diagnosing or treating depression” (“The Serial Killer as Folk Hero,” July 6/July 13...

...The problem is a paternalistic state that controls which persons may “legitimately” practice medicine, which procedures and drugs they may use, and even how much they may charge for their services...

...If the economy is not producing enough surplus to support the old through Social Security taxes, it will not be producing enough surplus to support them through interest and dividends...

...That ownership gives the individual the absolute right to dispose of his body or his life any way he chooses, so long as he doesn’t infringe on the rights of others...

...I have the right to donate or sell my organs either before or after my death...

...Does Smith really believe Kevorkian’s clients are too stupid to understand this...

...Well, that’s what Milton Horowitz did...

...Few, if any, people would choose someone with Kevorkian’s questionable ethics and bizarre ideas to preside over their deaths if they had any choice...

...MARVIN MAURER WEST LONG BRANCH, NJ THIRD-RAIL GRAB David Frum, in “Grabbing the Third Rail” (June 22), remarks that the problem with the Social Security trust fund is that it consists of checks the government has written to itself...

...The message is that if you don’t want your kids to smoke, you had better be an example to them...

...He labels Dr...

...Many pathologists mutilate corpses regularly, although then it’s called “an autopsy...

...They didn’t seem to know who was the last to remove a package from the ever-present cigarette carton in our house...

...Persecution of already suicidal people, or of responsible physicians who choose to assist suicide, increases suffering but does little to stop actual suicides...

...Smith is wrong...

...But not among tobacco executives...

...He compared the Arab refugee camps to Hitler’s concentration camps...

...However, “choice” does not occur in a vacuum, but rather in the context of relationship and community...