Mail Call: A Changed China?

Frankly, I do not believe that Fareed Zakaria has anything to recommend to Barack Obama concerning his Iraq policies. Obama has proved to have very good judgment on the Iraq matter right from the beginning. What one can recommend to Obama is to increase the U.S. education budget so that future U.S. presidents and journalists alike will know their moral duties and responsibilities and advocate and support peace all over the world.
Dirk Provoost
Munich, Germany

Reducing the Risk for Cancer
Again, the experts are missing the obvious and looking for complicated reasons and explanations, and overlooking simple logic in "Your Lifestyle, Your Genes, and Cancer" (June 30). This and other such articles state that overweight people who exercise, within reasonable bounds, are just as healthy as slimmer people who exercise. Why? It is exercise, of course. Ask anyone who knows anything about the human body and he will tell you that exercising stimulates the lymph system: the lymph system fights infection and dumps the waste into our bloodstream, where it is filtered by the kidneys. The more our heart beats, the more our blood circulates around the body and the more it is filtered and passed into our urine. It is pure common sense.
V. L. Williams
Neath, Britain

Your article on lifestyle and cancer was very interesting. I was especially glad to read that most common cancers appear at very different rates in different areas of the world. All too often it seems that such information is not looked at in medical studies, even though such data provide the largest subject populations. However, in the same paragraph, the authors go on to state that "as Japanese have embraced Western habits, their rates of colon, breast and prostate cancer have skyrocketed." While this is true, the rates of stomach cancer, the most common type of cancer in Japan, have dropped. This drop in stomach cancer and the increase in most other types of cancer are said to have a strong relationship to diet. The Japanese diet has changed dramatically since the 1950s. This sort of international epidemiological data is, I believe, a gold mine of useful information on the effects of diet and lifestyle. It would be nice to see it used more often, as it is in this article.
Bob Potter
Asaka-Shi, Japan

Thanks for the article about lifestyle, genes and cancer. Chronic inflammation as a promoter of cancer growth has been known, if disregarded, for a long time, and is well documented. A regular dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids (fish oils, etc.) is the best way to regulate the chronic inflammatory response, and is the least studied in clinical (randomized and others) studies. Of course, there is not a penny to be made from fish oils for the shareholders of the pharmacological industry.
Jacques Aguilera, M.D.
Former Fellow, Dept. of Neoplastic Diseases
Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine, New York
Lyon, France

Good Life or Endangering Species?
Your May 5 issue addressed many important topics on the environment. I applaud NEWSWEEK for these features. However, tucked in the back is the Good Life section, where snakeskin sandals are pictured and glorified. Though not always intentionally, producers and particularly makers of high fashion fuel the black-market trade in furs and skins. Such behavior, along with magazine advertising, cause uninformed consumers to contribute to black markets that put both the Earth's biodiversity and our planet at large in jeopardy. I ask that NEWSWEEK editors remain cautious and reconsider publishing such writing that can reverse the positive change other articles may bring about in the world, especially on sensitive issues such as the fight to save endangered species.
Rachel Zuercher
Peace Corps
Suva, Fiji Islands

The Truth About Islam
Your article "The New Face of Islam" (June 23) prompts me to thank you for writing something positive about Islam. This is the first time I have found a Western magazine highlighting the truth about Islam. Although this great religion remains unchanged since its beginning, some followers misuse and misinterpret it. Like Osama bin Laden, there are thousands of religious/political leaders using it to kill people. We Muslims hate such people, as Islam does not approve of killing under any circumstances. Finally, I request you not to use the word "Islamist" instead of "terrorist" or "fanatic," as Islam does not support terrorists.
Shaikh Kamruzzaman
Dhaka, Bangladesh

FIJI Water ' s Carbon Accounting
Your July 7/July 14 article "Save the Planet, Lose the Guilt" does a disservice to all well-intentioned people who are trying to make thoughtful decisions about the environment. The article makes misleading statements about FIJI Water and our carbon-negative commitments. First, I am not the president of FIJI Water. Second, we are not buying carbon offsets to reduce our emissions. We have a commitment to reduce actual carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2010; and our partnership with Conservation International to develop our own carbon offset program in Fiji that would involve a reforestation project. Nearly 60 percent of Fiji's rainforests have been destroyed, and this is a serious commitment to restore the original rainforest habitat. Leading climate scientists around the world agree that rainforests sequester carbon. By restoring native tree species, this project will provide offsets to meet FIJI Water's carbon-negative commitment over the next 30 years. Finally, it is not correct to imply that there is no way to measure a carbon footprint and that we have based our carbon-offset program on "dubious math." We used the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to calculate our products' entire life-cycle emissions. This protocol is the most widely adopted greenhouse-gas accounting tool in the world, used by the Kyoto Protocol signatories, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the International Standards Organization and hundreds of corporations. We also took the added step of having ICF International, a leading climate-strategy firm, provide third-party verification for FIJI Water's carbon accounting.
Rob Six,Vice President
Corporate Communications, FIJI Water
Los Angeles, California

Editor's Note: In the article, Rob Six's title was misstated; it is vice president. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.

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