Monday, Aug. 20, 1973

The Tapes

Sir / The President of the United States should not release the tapes of confidential conversations and other discussions in his office with members of his staff [July 30].

The Ervin and the Cox investigating committees should be ashamed if they are unable to arrive at the truth of the matter with all the time they have given themselves and with their ability to subpoena any and all employees.

MRS. FRANK E. MULLEN

Soperton, Ga.

Sir / Richard Nixon can only help this country now by turning over all tapes and documents and resigning thereafter.

GLENN MALONEY

Glenshaw, Pa.

Sir / Surely everybody should know by this time that one of these days verbatim transcripts of those tapes will appear in the Washington Post, the New York Times or Jack Anderson's column.

So--why worry?

HUGO W. SCHROEDER SR.

Randallstown, Md.

Sir / Even hoodlums obey subpoenas.

MICHAEL D. PETIT

Washington, D.C.

Watergate Thoughts

Sir / President Nixon claims that he knew absolutely nothing of what his staff was doing in reference to the Watergate breakin. The question used to be, "Would you buy a used car from this man?" I now answer the question this way: "No, but I'd sure like to sell one to him."

PAUL BRIDENBAUGH

Jackson, Mich.

Sir / I feel we need to return to sanity, wind down the committee circus in Washington, get the Watergate affair into its proper perspective and off the TV tubes and front pages, and get on to working on the real problems that face our nation.

JAMES GRAHAM

Columbus, Ga.

Sir / Hindsight: the improvement in vision that comes with having been caught redhanded.

JOHN NEALE

Lilburn, Ga.

Sir / I am afraid you do not know that "Ehrlichman(n)" means "honest fella." Well, then.

WOLFGANG KAUP

Aschaffenburg, West Germany

Sir / After watching and reading about the Watergate hearings for quite some time, people may wonder what educational value this has for the American teenager. Here is what I have learned: in retrospect, I have no knowledge whatsoever at this point in time, to the best of my recollection.

DIANE SIEGEL

Stamford, Conn.

Heart Surgery Statistics

Sir / In your article "Revitalized Hearts" [July 30] the mortality statistics for patients with and without surgical treatment by coronary-bypass techniques were quoted incorrectly, giving a falsely grim outlook for both groups of patients. In the Cleveland Clinic study, 6.2% of 1,000 operated patients were dead after one year, compared with 11.9% of non-operated patients with severe coronary disease. The cumulative mortality of surgical patients after three years was 13.4% (of 269 patients who were followed over three years), compared with 24.9% of nonsurgical patients.

The experience to date suggests that surgical treatment reduces mortality from coronary artery disease by about one-half.

DONALD B. EFFLER, M.D.

WILLIAM C. SHELDON, M.D.

Cleveland Clinic Cleveland

The Palestinians' Turn

Sir / As an Israeli student of history, I feel it is my moral duty to focus the readers' attention on an important point in Mr. Dayan's interview with your diplomatic editor [July 30].

In saying "there are Palestinian people, but there is not any Palestinian state," Mr. Dayan put the Palestinian people in the same tragic situation that his own people were in just a few decades ago. Perhaps history will repeat itself, only faster this time. The time will come when Dayan's people will be in the same situation as the Palestinian people are in now, if Dayan's policy is accepted by the Israeli government.

ADAM NASSAR

Greenville, Ill.

Scrap of Tissue

Sir / The outcry over experimentation on aborted human fetuses [July 30], which by the fact of having been aborted are not considered to be human beings, strikes me as ridiculous. If our society has decided that a human fetus is no more than a scrap of tissue attached to a woman's body, and therefore sanctions its removal at her whim, then surely it is foolish to become outraged by experiments performed on it, any more than it makes sense to become outraged about an experiment performed on an excised tumor.

If the amount of "humanity" possessed by a fetus is sufficient to ban experiments on it, why isn't it sufficient to prevent its being killed at all?

DEBORAH DAHL

Springfield, Ill.

Rampant Inflation

Sir / I'm pretty weary of having the finger of accusation pointed at our President for being the cause of the rampant inflation we are experiencing today [July 30]. I believe it is high time that the blame for our domestic problems be placed where it belongs --not on any one man but on the people of this country. Blame the politicians who are willing to sit and do nothing constructive, just point a finger and say shame. Blame the industrial men who worship profit only --responsibility to the consumer and a quality product be hanged--and contrive shortages to further their own ends. Blame the farmers who cry poverty, and the union leaders who use the public to feed their super egos but haven't the true sense of leadership that would allow them to point out to their members the plain fact that when wages go up, prices go up, and they are no better off than before. And blame the housewife who continues to purchase the same way as she did when there was no inflation.

Until the American public turns the finger away from the office of the President and points it where it belongs, at each one of us for not acting responsibly, until then there is very little hope that the situation will get better very soon.

(MRS.) ANNE E. MIKESELL

Bloomsburg, Pa.

Sir / The hell with Watergate and your constitutional crisis. I have a pocketbook crisis, and it is real.

STEVE PATRICK

Fairport Harbor, Ohio

The Strange Ethic of Sterilization

Sir / Re your article on the sterilization of the mentally retarded [July 23]: liberals in this country, among whom I normally count myself, have evolved a strange and typically guilt-ridden ethic. The middle class must absolutely limit itself to two children. Anything else courts ecological disaster, and somebody ought to do something about it. However, the poor may have as many children as they can bear; any notion to the contrary is insidiously genocidal. And even to raise the issue with respect to the mentally retarded is prima-facie fascism. In what segment of America may we look for a little prudence and some common sense in social ethics?

(THE REV.) DONALD HEINZ

Richmond, Calif.

Sir / TIME stated: "Last month, shortly after the drug [Depo-Provera] was banned because of undesirable side effects . . ."

That statement is false. The facts are as follows: Depo-Provera is prescribed in the U.S. as a useful drug in the palliative treatment of endometrial cancer and certain gynecological conditions, and has also been approved for use as a contraceptive in some 70 other countries. It is under active review by the FDA as an injectable contraceptive for selected patients in the U.S.

CHARLES T. MANGEE

The Upjohn Co. Kalamazoo, Mich.

Disney's Land

Sir / Because a Disney production fails to exercise the symbolism of Fellini or the graphic horror of Peckinpah, one doesn't summarily relegate that work to the level of cinematic Sugar Pops [July 30]. And that "superclean Main Street" is a damn welcome environmental alternative to Sunset Strip or 42nd Street. Variety is fundamental to healthy "psychic chords," and a strict diet of absolute realism constitutes a ticket to "Psycho-World."

ANDREW CHAPMAN

Mobile, Ala.

Sir / To a country weary of the fantasy of the Watergate Blunderland, it is comforting to realize there exists the reality of Disney World and Disneyland.

JAMES A. MCGRATH

Orlando, Fla.

A Lutheran Pope

Sir / Despite the results of the recent Missouri Synod convention [July 23]. I feel confident that there are hundreds of laymen like myself who oppose those proceedings and believe that no one man has the right to force his interpretation of Scripture on an entire church. After all, the right of the individual to study and interpret God's word was one of the points that led Luther to his original break with Rome, and I feel our church has suffered a sad blow by voting a self-styled pope into the presidency.

(MRS.) KATHY PIEHL

Durham, N.C.

Sir / Pastor Precup had better listen more carefully to what Luther said at Worms: "My conscience is captive to the word of God" and to the clear teaching of Scripture. This is precisely the substance of the Missouri Synod decisions at New Orleans.

PROF. JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

University of Strasbourg, France

Sir / There's nothing wrong with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod that a good old-fashioned inquisition won't cure. Only those who believe in the Gospel according to St. Jack will be saved. Tough luck, the rest of you sinners.

RICHARD A. HARTMANN

Pleasant Hill, Calif.

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