Noise vs. jobs
Re: “Sound Check” (11/7/2019): As a community, are we always willing to trade quality of life for the vague promise of “more jobs” and a “better economy”? It puzzles me that, among our elected officials, few minds have been changed by the damning evidence provided by the Air Force itself in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. How can it be okay that officials who are representing citizens turn a blind eye to the enormous harm that will be done to the bodies, homes, and schools of the most vulnerable of those citizens? How can it be okay to demolish homes in a city where there is an affordable housing crisis? How can it be okay to allow unnecessary classroom disruptions in schools where there is the largest achievement gap in the country? How can it be okay to allow the poisoning of the water in our wells and lakes with no promise of clean-up?
In recent months, our community has been fraught with three big fights centered on the tension of noise vs. economic gain. Maybe these fights — the stadium at Edgewood, expansion of the Middleton airport, and the F-35s at Truax — are telling us that people are fed up and no longer willing to sacrifice the quality of daily life in their homes, schools, and parks for the twin chimeras of “jobs” and the “economy.” Maybe, at this moment in time, with the F-35s circling and the climate crisis looming, we are no longer willing to do that.
— Sally Young, via email
All in this together
Re: “The right balance” (11/7/2019): Edna Chiang provided a much-needed service by focusing attention on the complex, fast-moving field of microbiology. As she inferred, scientists do not make discoveries working alone in their garages these days; they require access to labs and computing power, government grants, and international collaboration. Rarely can a CRISPR-Cas9 single gene edit prevent a disease. Since numerous genes make small contributions to a disease, such as cancer, scientists require access to international pools of hundreds of thousands of cases in order to find sufficient samples for their experiments.
As Ms. Chiang’s article acknowledges, the commercial and military payoffs from scientific breakthroughs can tempt and have caused individual scientists, governments, and companies to steal, derive private profit, and circumvent legal and moral barriers. The term, “moral dumping,” even has been coined to describe the practice of scientists in a country that has banned certain medical practices from providing the know-how for those in a more permissive country to perform the procedure. Science has too many aspects for one country to protect and balance them alone.
— LuAnne Feik, via email
