I think we'd all like to eat foods and grow plants without pesticides, but that's not likely to happen, so we need to be conservative in their use and test for negative effects. We used DDT intensively on the central Illinois dairy farm where I grew up, and I probably have more of the chemical in my bones than one in a million persons.
I have cervical dystonia, a nerve-muscle disease that may or may not have been triggered by DDT (mammalian toxicity has been demonstrated). I've used herbicides and fumigants that have had long-term deleterious side effects not mentioned on the label. I was working for Iowa State when stilbesterol was introduced to increase beef production by 20 percent. It was later found to be hazardous to the consumer's health.
I think Dr. Borlaug does a disservice in labeling all environmentalists as extremists. Certainly there are extremists on environmental issues as there are extremists who think technology can solve all problems. Some of Dr. Borlaug's solutions require more fossil fuel. The cost of energy will only go up. What about the increased gases produced by technology, such as CO2, that are destroying the ozone layer? Climate is changing and will have profound effects on all life, and potable water is in increasingly short supply.
It is amazing to me that Dr. Borlaug doesn't emphasize the need for population control along with technical advances in agriculture. Living in Haiti, as I have, would soon convince him of that necessity to maintain any decent quality of life. Yes, we need technology, but let's be more conservative--with longer testing periods for innovations and an awareness that agricultural technology must be combined with population control to maintain a decent quality of life.
Charles L. Coultas
Havana, FL
clcvlc1@aol.com
Vietnam West?
Kudos for publishing "The Drug War's Southern Front" (April) by Timothy Pratt. This article should be on the required reading list for both Congress and the State Department.
Even so, I'm afraid that it wouldn't help. I recall that Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall was on the recommended reading list for Army officers in 1962. In that book, Fall showed how the Viet Cong won the war and why the French never had a chance. It didn't help because the U.S. thought it could do better. The Viet Cong beat us using the same tactics and strategy. Now Colombia is on the way to becoming a disaster of Vietnam proportions.
Gerald M. Sutliff
Emeryville, CA
gsutliff@dnai.com
Watching the Watchmen
I enjoyed Cathy Young's article ("Miranda Morass," April). As a conservative, I've been concerned for some time about excessive and inappropriate use of police force. Likewise, I've been concerned about the effects of Miranda on suppressing evidence in criminal cases. Balancing the need to know the truth with the rights of suspects is sometimes difficult.
One concern that I've always had is that police officers who distort testimony, coerce confessions, contaminate evidence, etc., are almost never punished for the acts. Couldn't one replace Miranda with legislation which criminalizes certain police transgressions? A crime such as "warrantless entry" could be penalized as a misdemeanor or perhaps a felony under certain circumstances. Slap a $2,000 fine on a police officer for "warrantless entry" but allow the evidence seized to be admissible in court. This might better protect the rights of both the public and the accused than the present system.
Andrew Sicree
Director and Curator
Earth & Mineral Sciences Museum
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA
sicree@geosc.psu.edu
About the only time I have seen the Miranda warning in use is on TV and in movies. I'm a software engineer by trade, but I look more like a drug dealer with my long hair and Levis. And because of it, I have been falsely arrested at least eight times in the past 15 years because of how I look.
I was never read my Miranda rights during any of those false arrests and, in each case, when I told the police that I wanted a lawyer before talking, they did not comply with my request and continued to question me. In fact, the police made threats that bad things would happen to me if I didn't answer their questions. In all of the cases the police detained me for about an hour and then released me after telling me I was a bad citizen for demanding my Fifth Amendment rights. In a few of the cases the police didn't show any respect for my Fourth Amendment rights and searched me, my car, or my home without my consent or a search warrant.
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