Cat research, cont.
Regarding your story "How UW Lab Cats Became the Symbols for PETA's Campaign Against Animal Research" (1/10/2014), cochlear implant is very delicate surgery. The surgeon has to thread up to 22 hair-thin electrodes into the spiral-shaped cochlea, properly placing each one for its audio frequency. My niece's surgeon had 10 years' experience with implants. Knowing how taxing her surgery would be, he did nothing else that day.
Watching it done once, do these UW researchers really think they could do it themselves successfully? They sound like the people I've been waiting for to buy my ocean beach in Kansas.
Michael Moffatt
I would like to issue an invitation to all of you who claim how humanely those cats are treated. If you believe so strongly that what you're doing to those animals is "humane," then let's put you in the equipment. Are any of you so confident of the high quality of treatment of these animals that you'd be willing to undergo the same? Matthew Banks says "thankfully, effective antibiotic treatments are available" (Letters, 1/17/2014), so of course, you have no systemic infections to worry about, right? How about it, hotshot Ph.D.? Step right up and undergo the same as you do to those cats.
You two-faced hypocrites make me sick. It's all about nothing but money to UW.
Christine Huth
Thank you to Jenny Peek for her excellent article on just what is happening to cats in a "dimly lit campus laboratory." This is exactly why my donations to PETA will continue.
Gail Glaze, Cross Plains
If you want to do research, don't use animals. My opinion is that you should use convicted child molesters. The animals would never do what child molesters would do. They have more compassion.
Tina Babilius, Sun Prairie
Profit not a sin
The last paragraph of the letter on the Lothlorien co-op (Letters, 1/17/2014) mentions hating to see someone come in and build a condo, only to make a huge profit.
Is this the new way of thinking? What's wrong with making a profit while providing large numbers of jobs to build the condo? Once the condo is built, it provides living arrangements for a number of persons. Then the owner pays property taxes to the city on his property. The owner still needs to keep a number of people employed to keep his property running. The owners of the condos pay their share of taxes to the city. I think you get the picture.
Since when has it become a sin to make a profit?
John A. Fiorello Sr.
Ewww-cigarettes
E-cigarettes? What's not to love besides people sitting next to you spewing their vaporized tuberculin-infested saliva into the air ("Bill Would Allow Electronic Cigarettes in Public," 1/17/2014)? If faux smokers want to swap saliva with another sentient being, have them get a significant other or a puppy. Enough already!
Bill Sumner
Assault on local control
I enjoyed reading Bruce Murphy's article regarding Gov. Scott Walker's potential vulnerabilities in the 2014 elections ("Ten Points Where Gov. Walker Is Vulnerable," 1/24/2014), but he missed one big area: the Republican assault on local government. In a move that blatantly contradicts their supposed belief in local control, the Republican Legislature and Scott Walker have transferred significant power to Madison by stripping Wisconsin municipalities of their right to govern themselves. There are so many examples of this since Gov. Walker took office that Mary Burke could run a different campaign ad with a new example each day and not run out of new things to say for a month.
We have seen Republican state government tie the hands of local government on everything from property tax caps to siting of cell phone towers, shoreland zoning restrictions, local control of charter schools, regulating landlords who own rental property, mining, and on and on. Gov. Walker and the Republican Legislature have created an all-powerful Madison, which is exactly what Wisconsin hates. Mary Burke could run on the promise to return Wisconsin to local control, and that message would resonate throughout the state.
Richard Godfrey
Buzz kill
I find it an odd choice to report about proposed legislation to ban Everclear, which included a reference to the many other states that have done so in response to people dying after consuming it, only to include a sidebar drink recipe ("What Good Is Everclear?," 1/24/2014). Everclear is dangerous because it doesn't taste like alcohol and yet is extremely intoxicating in small quantities. It poses a significant threat to young people, who often make poor choices due to their brains not reaching maturity until the mid-20s, their gross overestimation of their limits when it comes to alcohol, and their ubiquitous desire for the fastest way to a buzz.
I support banning Everclear not so much because of adults, who I'd better expect to know their limits, but because of the high school and college-aged youth who -- like myself at that age -- do not.
Stephanie Turner
