Letters

Sunday, May 11, 2003
    • The No. 1 Killer of Women

    Your report on women and heart disease struck home [HEALTH, April 28]. In 1998 I was a 49-year-old married workingwoman who found herself not feeling well. The diagnosis was high blood pressure. I was given medication, but it didn't help. I had no energy and poor skin color, and I passed out twice at home. One day I told my family I felt as if I were dying, and I was taken to the hospital. My father died of heart failure at 59, and my mother had heart surgery in her 60s. It should not have taken so long for someone to figure out that I had a problem with my heart. Thank God, I finally found a great cardiac specialist. But all too often women with heart problems receive an incorrect diagnosis.
    LAURA CUPO
    West Haven, Conn.


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    As a nurse with experience in many health-care areas, I went through my worst ordeal when a friend, a 50-year-old woman, had a massive coronary. We couldn't save her, even with all our emergency medical technology. She had smoked and taken hormones but had shown no outward signs of heart disease. Since then I have tried to inform every patient of the need for tests and vigilance about the symptoms of heart disease. Women's heart-disease symptoms are different from men's. Regular cardiovascular checkups would save more women's lives.
    JANNIE MARTIN
    Baytown, Texas

    I realize that heart disease and cancer are competing for the same research dollars, but don't blame breast-cancer-awareness programs for taking women's minds off our cardiac health. If we fear breast cancer more than heart disease, perhaps it is because breast cancer is more likely to strike us in our 30s and 40s, when our careers are in full bloom and we may still have young children. Perhaps it is because breast cancer can be disfiguring, damaging our self-esteem and interfering with our most intimate relationships. Certainly, women are concerned about heart disease, but they can't be faulted for also taking breast cancer very, very seriously.
    JANE VAN CONEY
    Cincinnati, Ohio

    It is gratifying that research is finally homing in on women's heart disease. But as a 50-year-old woman with no risk factors who has already had two heart attacks, I know there is still much work to be done. In the meantime, I go about my very active life trying to ignore the insidious feeling that at any moment it might happen again. The initial symptoms of my first heart attack were so mild that I unwisely finished the tennis match I was playing. Women should recognize the symptoms of a possible heart attack and seek medical help immediately.
    MARY E. FARLEY
    Mount Kisco, N.Y.

    Lingering Questions

    In the article "Unfinished Business" [THE OCCUPATION, April 28], you noted that there are still unresolved issues in Iraq, including incontrovertible evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For months we were told that the reason the U.S. was going into Iraq was to prevent an out-of-control dictator from using WMD that he was concealing. The situation was repeatedly compared to that of Germany before World War II, and the hawks asserted that, boy, we were not going to play the role of an appeasing Neville Chamberlain. So where are the WMD? Now we are faced with rebuilding a shattered country, and the current rationalization for the war is that Americans were saviors, bringing democracy to Iraqis. Or have we simply fostered a political incursion that is paying off for those in the right places?
    HELEN RANDALL
    Breckenridge, Colo.

    If people don't feel the goal of freedom was reason enough to oust a murderous tyrant, then their reasons for opposing the conflict are far more appalling than the motives they claim that President Bush had for invading Iraq.
    MIGUEL A. GUANIPA
    Whitinsville, Mass.

    If Saddam Hussein does not turn up anywhere in the Middle East, it might be wise to search for him where nobody would think to look — say, in a posh hotel in Las Vegas. Perhaps he might even be meeting with Osama bin Laden there.
    TURAN FETTAHOGLU
    Munich

    Unprevented Plunder

    In the report on the looting of Iraq's museums and libraries, TIME stated that "while coalition forces took pains to safeguard Iraq's oil ministry in Baghdad, they left the nation's cultural heritage wide open" [BAGHDAD'S TREASURES, April 28]. This is an example of the cultural bankruptcy that characterizes the Bush Administration. The price of one jet bomber would go a long way toward endowing any major U.S. museum, helping ensure fiscal stability for generations. Actions by the coalition forces to protect the Iraq Museum might have done much to convince people throughout the Middle East that we were serious about their welfare. Instead, we're doling out billions to American companies to rebuild damaged infrastructure and failing to take into account another kind of damage — to Iraq's cultural heritage — that could have been prevented but cannot be repaired.
    JOHN JANOVY JR.
    Lincoln, Neb.

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