Letters - Saturday

TIME TO ACT

Congress, Bush must agree on funding for Alzheimer’s

Now is the time for the government to meet its responsibility to help the 5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. It’s time to find ways to protect the lives of 78 million baby boomers whose lives will soon be at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The only way to stop this killer is by investing in more research — now.

Alzheimer’s disease causes enormous suffering for patients and places tremendous financial and emotional burdens on families. But stopping Alzheimer’s disease isn’t just good social policy, it’s sound economic policy as well.

This year, Alzheimer’s disease is costing Medicare $91 billion and Medicaid $21 billion. By 2015, the two programs will be spending $210 billion just on people with Alzheimer’s disease. The nation cannot afford to wait.

President Bush and Congress must take action now to stop this disease that today has no cure or effective treatment.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a bipartisan Labor-HHS-Education appropriation bill (HR 3043) that allocated $30 billion for the National Institutes of Health, reversing years of erosion in the nation’s research investment. Included in that total was a modest $16 million increase for research on Alzheimer’s disease — the first increase in three years.

Unfortunately, this legislation was vetoed.

Congress is now working with the president on a compromise to fund health, education and other programs. There should be no compromise on our nation’s commitment to medical research. If funding falls below the $30 billion originally allocated by Congress, medical breakthroughs to end Alzheimer’s will be threatened and more lives with be lost.

The president and Congress must finish the job they were elected to do: Appropriate $30 billion for NIH to step up the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.

Sue Parenteau

Regional Director

Alzheimer’s Association of Colorado

Colorado Springs

STEAMING MAD

Gazette sidesteps research to attack climate models

The Gazette’s silly editorials opposing the climate change thesis really are too much. Once again, we are treated to more ideologically driven mumbo-jumbo in two recent installments of codswallop (“Findings deflate climate change rhetoric,” Dec.3; “Time for change,” Dec. 4).

The Dec. 3 effort is easily countered by reference to Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, and the excellent article ‘Warm oceans raise land temperatures’ in Eos Transactions, Vol. 87., No. 19, 19 May 2006.

“It is recognized that land temperatures in recent years have consistently been above normal with indications that 2005 was the warmest year for globally averaged temperatures within the instrumental record,” it said.

Hence, it is totally misleading for Joseph D’Aleo to assert “there has been no warming for at least a decade”.

The Gazette’s Dec. 4 Bali tirade includes a reference to the IPCC downshifting sealevel rise forecasts from 35 inches to 17 inches. However, nowhere is it pointed out that the IPCC assessment specifically excludes the contribution that could occur from rapid ice flow changes.

The IPCC excluded this on account of continuing uncertainties, not because the models are wrong. If it is factored in, one easily attains a sea level increase of 1.5 meters or more.

It is clear that The Gazette’s message falls far short of where it needs to be on man-made global warming.

Phil Stahl

Colorado Springs

CROWDED JAIL

Writer ignores Constitution in plans for accused

Apparently there are several things Jim Balcerovich “failed to realize” in his letter regarding jail overcrowding (“Criminals must toe the line to stay out of jail,” Dec. 5). He must have forgotten that all U.S. citizens have certain rights under our Constitution: namely the right to presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case.

Balcerovich must have “failed to realize” that our Constitution guarantees those accused of a crime the right to a reasonable amount of bail. He stated that he “didn’t realize the capacity of a jail had anything to do with the danger a criminal posed to society.” He must not know that many of the people housed in the Criminal Justice Center have not been convicted of any crime — and they’re entitled to roam the streets.

There are cases in which people are actually innocent and have been falsely accused of a crime. But I must assume from his response that he’s “elated” that these people are unable to post the high bail that would allow them to remain free while awaiting trial.

There is a difference between a jail and a prison and keeping people warehoused in jail for months because they’re too poor to post high bonds does no one any good: not even Balcerovich, unless, of course, I failed to realize that some people like paying higher taxes than they should.

Walli Haley

Deputy state public defender

Colorado Springs

IN RESPONSE

Redwind Sanctuary an oasis, not a burden

As the current president of the Aiken Audubon Society, I feel it is necessary to respond to the misinformed diatribe published as an editorial on Dec. 1 (“All wet / City should skip deal on dry marshland,” Our View). The editorial was incorrect in many of its statements regarding Aiken’s Redwing Sanctuary.

The sanctuary has not gone dry due to the recent drought. It is no longer a marsh because of drainage issues caused by the developments around the property. In fact, whenever I visit the sanctuary, water is flowing in both branches of the creek which trisect the property.

The editorial referred to the Redwing Sanctuary as “marginal property.” I don’t believe the residents living nearby would agree with this assessment. Yes, 18.6 acres may be a small plot when compared to other open space parcels, but it is located in an area of Colorado Springs that has very little open space. And I challenge The Gazette to find any comparable city park which does not have a homeless person or two living in it.

Sidestreets columnist Bill Vogrin’s opinion that AAS “no longer has the energy to continue as its guardian” is incorrect (“Audubon Society wants to give city sanctuary,” Nov. 26). For years, AAS has been trying to gain appropriate access to the sanctuary, i.e. a curb cut, from the city. But since AAS is a 501(3)c nonprofit organization, it does not have the funds nor volunteer personnel to hire a lawyer and fight for it. To further clarify, the Redwing Sanctuary property was not given to AAS by an anonymous donor, as Vogrin states. As I told him in our phone interview, the Potts family donated the land to AAS in March 1982.

Contrary to the editorial, the property is not “a castoff, with diminishing value as a nature area.” It is because of its location that it needs to remain a nature area. Just because the marsh is gone does not lessen the importance of Redwing Sanctuary to the local and migrating birds of Colorado, and the local homeowners who use the property. With this in mind, AAS saw that the city would be the best and most logical steward of this inner-city oasis.

If nature had been left alone, it possibly would have maintained a marsh at Redwing Sanctuary. It was man’s intervention and development that altered the area’s natural drainage. The “state of flux” was man-made, uncontrolled by nature. But now, Colorado Springs has the opportunity to obtain another piece of open space so more citizens can use and enjoy this urban oasis, something AAS members have known about and enjoyed for the past 25 years.

Rise Foster-Bruder

President, Aiken Audubon Society

Colorado Springs