Questions of Gender, Race and Power

As a Republican—now registered as a Democrat—I have listened to Hillary Clinton's argument about being "ready to lead from day one." It would certainly seem that she is. However, while she may have great ideas and programs, she might not be able to get much done. Her negatives are so high with Republicans and many independents that she may be stymied on day one. It would take only 41 Republicans in the Senate to shut off any change that she may want to achieve. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made a life's work of dealing with Republicans in order to get things done. He's often willing to take half a loaf if that moves his ideas forward. Hillary is not. And we can't go another four or eight years of not being able to get past the Washington gridlock.
Mike Vice
Novato, Calif.

Legacy of a Mount Everest Explorer
Edmund Hillary went to Nepal to climb Mount Everest ("From Up High, a Noble View," Periscope, Jan. 21). He left behind schools, hospitals and health clinics. Today, climbers arrive with helicopters and TV cameras and in their wake leave a mountain littered with trash and corpses. Hillary was humble and selfless, insisting that he and Sherpa colleague Tenzing Norgay conquered the mountain as one, refusing the distinction of being the first. Climbers today pound their chests and stuff their bottomless egos with self-aggrandizement. With Sir Edmund Hillary's passing, much of the world's remaining grace, humility and reverence have vanished.
Michael E. White
Burbank, Calif.

Staying Healthy
As a healthy 72-year-old woman, I think your guidelines show great common sense ("A Guide to Predicting Your Medical Future," Health For Life, Jan. 21). The trick, though, is to get health-care providers to agree. The mind-set today seems to be a "one size fits all" style of medical testing that results in expensive diagnostic procedures being automatically ordered regardless of the patient's age, family history or wishes. We cannot and perhaps should not all be tested or medicated to fit into the same box, and to do so is a waste of valuable health-care resources.
Dorothy Barton
Lawrenceville, Ga.

As a neurologist, neuroscientist and ethicist who has spent a quarter century working on the challenge of so-called Alzheimer's disease and being an avid reader of NEWSWEEK, I lament the two articles on this topic. In "65 Years and Older," we learn that simple phone tests can be used to detect Alzheimer's before symptoms emerge. In reality, while such tests can detect memory difficulties, they cannot produce a diagnosis. Somewhat contradictorily, in "How to Solve Three Puzzles," we learn that an expensive combination of as-yet-uncertain neuroimaging and spinal-fluid tests will need to be used in the future to identify those who will progress from so-called mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's. Both sections emphasize the importance of drugs and convey the usual enthusiastic hype about developing therapies. Unfortunately, what I used to call Alzheimer's is not a single condition waiting to be fixed. It includes various processes that affect us all to one degree or another as we age. Some of these processes start early in life, as you suggest. In fact, exposure of very young children to the increasing number of environmental toxins, such as lead, should be part of our program of prevention.
Peter J. Whitehouse, M.D., PH.D.
Professor of Neurology Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio

Correction
The Dec. 31/Jan. 7 caption for a photo by Balazs Gardi accompanying the Periscope article "Alone, Afraid, in the Company of Men Dreaming of Death" incorrectly implied that the boy in the picture had been wounded by a Taliban suicide bomber. In fact, the child was injured by an airstrike from U.S. forces. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.

© 2008