Letters to the editor

Mammogram rules

I just read the story on the government task force that is now deciding the fate of millions of American women.

I wish to emphasize the word "government" here. I lost a sister-in-law at age 40 to breast cancer.

I have also known many women who have noticed a lump during self-examination in between mammograms. Some of them were already to stage II cancer.

Thousands of women every year develop breast cancer long before their 50th birthdays. These women are mothers, sisters and daughters.

Now the government has decided we don't need to do self-examinations; we only need a mammogram every two years, and we do not need an exam until age 50.

I now am a true believer that ObamaCare really does have death panels.

KERRI BOWMAN OUSLEY

Trinity

Let system work

If this was 1945, and he had survived, would the Obama administration try Hitler in a federal court, too? Not for invading Poland, Russia or France (after all, that was against military targets) but for the Holocaust. After all, these were civilians.

There is a good reason for having a military justice system. An act of war is just that, an act of war.

Who do we let handle our business during a war? The military.

Let the system work, Mr. President.

MARK SULLIVAN

Tampa

Attacking cancer

We might be attacking breast cancer from the wrong direction:

I have biologically identical twin sisters, one of whom received hormone replacement therapy and one who refused to put anything in her body that God did not see fit to put there in the first place.

They are now 66 years old.

The one who had the therapy got breast cancer, with all of its attendant trauma; the other did not, although she was cranky and hot on occasion.

Both are school teachers. Both are upper-middle class. Both married electrical engineers.

We (the medical profession) must be giving women something that triggers cancer.

HUGH SMITH

Lakeland