While it may be too much to ask that senior administration officials honestly answer questions, it would be nice if they did not actively disseminate information they knew was false.
John R. Lott Jr.
Center for the Study of the Economy and the State
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Vaccination Cure
Robert Pollock's "Shot in the Dark" (Nov.) was right on target. The Vaccines for Children Program's premises--that profiteering drug companies price families out of the vaccine market, and that government must purchase the vaccines at a forced discount--are both false.
The Center for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of October 7, 1994, reported on a 1991-92 series of studies on why inner- city minority children don't get vaccinated. The study found these children often don't get vaccinated because their vaccinations are not checked and updated at every visit to the doctor. This happens often enough that the program's goals can be met if health care providers give all needed shots each time they see a child.
If providers and parents change their shot-giving practices by maintaining accurate records, checking them at every doctor visit, and giving all needed vaccines simultaneously, the children will get immunized. Nothing in the current faulty practices has to do with the price of vaccines. None of the necessary changes require government intervention, theft of income from drug company shareholders, or government takeover of the health care system. All that is required is some good common sense attention by parents and doctors.
Charles K. Young
Majuro, Marshall Islands
Importing Crime?
In Virginia Postrel's editorial "Memory Lapse" (Nov.), she dismisses the problems with the prisoners and mentally ill who came over on the Mariel boats as a "myth" because there were only 5,000 prisoners or mentally ill amongst the 125,000 who came.
This may be a mere 4 percent of the total, but to me it is a very frightening figure. Five thousand criminals in a country suffering from horrific crime in the streets, and with prisons that are overflowing, are significant.
I would think that Mr. Castro would hardly liberate political prisoners, but rather the worst dregs in his prisons. Even if we get some good people (which I am sure is the case), I can't buy the logic that it's OK to accept 4 percent criminals to get the rest, since we haven't solved the problem of our own home- grown criminals.
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