Letters to the Editor:
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 10:34 AM PDT
Keep community
cancer care alive
In 2006, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My cancer was caught very early, and I only needed six weeks of external beam radiation therapy treatments. I was fortunate to have a radiation therapy center nearby in Fruitland, 15 minutes away from my home near Ontario. The proximity of my treatment center was important because, as the weeks wore on, I found myself increasingly tired from the daily radiation treatments. The treatments themselves were painless and quick, very much like receiving an X-ray. However, it did take time to get to the clinic, park, check in, change clothes and receive the treatment. I feel very fortunate because fatigue was the only real side effect from my 11⁄2 months of cancer treatments. I am very concerned about a recent proposal from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that oversees the Medicare health insurance I have, that would cut payments to radiation oncology centers like where I was treated by up to 30 percent. My doctors tell me that if these cuts go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010, that they and many other centers that serve patients like me would be forced to close. If my cancer center were forced to close, I would have had to drive two hours each day to a hospital. Many clinics that stay in business would have to stop seeing Medicare patients, and the vast majority would have to lay off staff and cuts benefits and salaries. New technology and improved techniques have allowed radiation oncologists, like the one who treated me, to dramatically improve radiation treatments. This has helped them more effectively kill cancer cells while not hurting healthy parts of the body. Better treatments result in better cure rates and significantly fewer side effects. I feel strongly that the continued improvements to cancer treatments should not be stopped by cuts to Medicare. Every year over 1 million patients like me receive radiation therapy as they battle cancer. We all deserve access to quality cancer treatment as close as possible to our homes. Cutting needed cancer services will result in less access to care, lower cure rates and more suffering for patients. Limiting access to care is the exact opposite of what I thought Washington, D.C., is trying to do. Reps. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) have drafted a bipartisan letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius urging her to stop these cuts and protect access to care for cancer patients. Please join me, as well as doctors, nurses, patients and cancer survivors from across the country, by urging your member of Congress to sign onto this bipartisan letter. Go to
www.rtanswers.org to tell Medicare to preserve access to cancer care.
Joyce Whittet
Ontario
Fair parade route
dangerous as set up
The Malheur County Fair has been a great success for our family this year. The fairgrounds looked wonderful and all of the exhibits well planned, making for a whole week of fun-filled adventure. The parade on Saturday afternoon from the train depot down Southwest Fourth Avenue to the hospital and then north to the fairgrounds was a very bright and festive procession but for one problem. Someone decided not to close both sides of Southwest Fourth Avenue for the parade route, which resulted in normal traffic flow on the eastbound side.
We took our small children out, who had been waiting all week to see the special fair parade, in 100 degree heat at 4 in the afternoon to view it after deciding the only way to be able to cope with such high temperatures was to be in the shade. The only shade we could find was on the side of the street that had the traffic still being allowed to go by. We stood there in the only bearable, shady place we could find, holding our kids by their hands so they would not run out in the street in front of cars to get the candy being thrown to them by the people in the parade procession. Quite a number of pieces of candy were just run over in front of us. During a lag in traffic, some of the parents would run out in the street and throw the good candy over to the kids waiting on our side. It was a very dangerous situation for the very small children present and stressful for the parents involved.
The wonderful parade was not a real long event ... why couldn’t they have set up a detour for the safety of the people who came out in very high temperatures to watch it? Isn’t that the goal of those who spent so much effort to get the parade together... to please and show the spectators how great Malheur County is?
Eleanor Pernula
Ontario
FDA leaves U.S.
consumers vulnerable
Editor,
While many accusations have been leveled at the domestic catfish industry and its pursuit of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspections, the intent of the U.S. catfish industry has always been very clear — consumer safety.
U.S. consumers currently believe that their seafood is subject to the same rigorous inspection standards as those imposed on meat and poultry products. However, that is not the case under the existing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards, and the domestic catfish industry is dedicated to fighting for increased consumer food safety. Seafood consumption in the United States now exceeds 4.9 billion pounds annually. Of this amount, more than 83 percent is imported, less than 1 percent of our seafood imports ever sees an inspector. Furthermore, only a fraction of that amount is ever tested for contamination from illegal drugs and chemicals.
It is of great concern that inspections by the Canadian government along the U.S. border and testing by the agriculture departments of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi have found dangerous and illegal drugs and chemicals in Asian fish imports that had already been cleared by the FDA. To say that the FDA leaves U.S. consumers vulnerable is an understatement.
The first and foremost responsibility of the elected officials of this country is to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens. The assurance that the food we eat is safe should be an integral part of that responsibility. Taking action to eliminate any threat to the safety of the American public, including food safety, should be non-negotiable and off the table in any political arena.
Let’s hope our elected officials do the right thing.
Joey Lowery
President, Catfish Farmers of America
Indianola, Miss.
Obama ‘shoots from the hip’
President Obama has confirmed my fear of having a president with terrible judgment.
His recent accusation that the Cambridge, Mass., police “acted stupidly” in the arrest of a black college professor shows Obama makes decisions without gathering all the facts and analyzing the situation. He automatically took the side of a fellow black person and berated the police, without any knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the event. He should not be commenting on local police matters. This only weakens the office of president of the United States.
President Obama has trouble thinking correctly and makes poor decisions when he is away from his aides, is not reading from a prepared speech and does not have a teleprompter in front of him. Also, he has exhibited a tendency to “shoot from the hip.” Do you trust him to take the 3 a.m. call? I don’t.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH
