*REDUNCULOUS* You open with a subheading, ???Guarantee: you will be surprised???. Why would YOU say such a thing? Nothing, I repeat, nothing, surprised me throughout this article. I must admit that I appreciate your bringing the study to print in a popular magazine, but that???s where my complements stop. Am I really to expect that bleach-white carbohydrates, excessively stored fats/energy, a diet focused on animal proteins, or weight control and exercise are Something NEW in the research detailing healthy living? Seriously? What WOULD surprise me is if you exposed the reasons behind these foods. If nothing else I thank you for saving me from wasting my time reading a 240+ page confirmation that the American lifestyle is not one for optimal conception. While I admire our Harvard researchers for affirming this, I also rebuke your staff for simplifying these common sense practices into a lengthy five page article.
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Health-care reform is being addressed on a piecemeal basis, and I doubt any of your article contributors are there at 3 a.m. when the rubber meets the road. As a physician who does get up in the wee hours, I'd like to offer some suggestions. First, add personal responsibility to the equation. I've seen countless patients on Medicaid who smoke and also need metered dose inhalers (paid for by the taxpayers) to treat their "asthma." If your disease is self-inflicted, the primary victim should be you, not the taxpayers. Second, make it easy for health-care providers to volunteer. Medicaid right now is really just obligate charity with legal liability. Drop Medicaid reimbursement to physicians, let them write off the opportunity cost of charity work, provide some legal protection and people will volunteer. Third, make training for a medical degree attractive and affordable. Med-school grads have an average debt of about $150,000. If you want to manage physicians' fees, help alleviate the less-than-subsistence lifestyle of trainees. Finally, don't insult our intelligence by telling us we need to take a pay cut while instituting a boondoggle like Medicare Part D—a transfer of wealth from the young to the retired.
David Stinson, M.D.
Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Let me state what any medical researcher would say when reading the diet "advice" given in the article "Fat, Carbs and the Science of Conception": please! Have any of these doctors treated infertile couples? Have any of these "new" findings ever been proved to help infertile couples? They explain associations found retrospectively between diet and fertility. It's pure data mining, and it is the softest kind of science we have—it is riddled with problems that no statistical models can account for. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that following the doctors' "guide" will help women conceive. NEWSWEEK should heed the advice of its columnist Jerry Adler, who in "A Big Dose of Skepticism" (Periscope, Dec. 10) pledges to focus on prospective "randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials." Public-health researchers, funded by our taxes, should strive to translate epidemiologic data into clinical trials, not into screaming headlines. If what these researchers believe is true, the government should fund a relatively easy NIH trial before giving false hope to struggling couples.
Benjamin J. Davies, M.D.
Clinical Instructor of Urology
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, Calif.
As a mother of four children, ranging in age from 15 to 23 years, I wanted to let you know that I think the naked woman on your cover is inappropriate and unnecessary. It may sell magazines, but it shows no class. Don't get me wrong. I think the pregnant female body is beautiful, but not on the cover of a national newsmagazine.
Cindy Young
Via Internet
While it was encouraging to read "Diagnosis: Same as It Never Was" on the impending changes in the diagnostic manual for mental health, there was a glaring void in the preceding article, "Cures for an Ailing System," about the major issues facing health care. National statistics indicate that one in five Americans is affected by mental-health issues, either directly or indirectly. But mental-health care was not mentioned among the "cures" according to the seven Harvard experts. Mental-health treatments constitute some of the biggest costs facing the health-care industry and employers who provide medical insurance, yet mental-health insurance parity remains a problem. While parity is addressed in several recent bills in Congress, it gets little attention in the current White House race. Until parity is reached, millions will be without affordable access to the continued care they need.
Doug Harpole
Amissville, Va.
Keeping the 'Gates Keeper'
Reading your splendid piece about defense Secretary Robert Gates ("The Gates Keeper," Dec. 10) caused a moderate Republican like me to be thankful for the pressure of the wafer-thin (and admittedly divided) congressional majority that probably made possible his appointment, and to lament that we in America don't follow the British parliamentary model that allows voters to know before elections who will likely serve in senior positions in candidates' cabinets and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Your mentions of "containment" and Gen. George C. Marshall remind me how lucky the internationally inexperienced Harry Truman was to be advised by men of the high caliber of Dean Acheson, Chip Bohlen, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Kennan and Marshall. (Kennan thought the Marshall Plan did more than anything else to keep Russia out of Western Europe after World War II.) It's sad that President George W. Bush waited six years to begin to appoint people as excellent as Gates and Gen. David Petraeus.
Henry P. Briggs
Cincinnati, Ohio
Secretary Robert Gates, the "anti-Rumsfeld," is a desperately needed waft of fresh air in the polluted atmosphere of the Bush administration. As a Democrat who can't wait for the "anti-Bush" on Jan. 20, 2009, I would be delighted if Gates could stay on as Defense secretary in the next (Democratic) administration.
Dorian De Wind
Austin, Texas
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