LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Disease’s reach wider

Buddy Gough’s feature on ticks was informative, but I believe misleading on one point: that Lyme disease is “rare in Arkansas.” According to the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, Lyme is the fastest-growing infectious disease in the U.S. today, affecting up to 300,000 Americans each year. It’s often misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, dementia, Alzheimer’s, ADHD or a host of other “chronic illnesses.”

I tested positive and was diagnosed with late-stage neurological Lyme disease at three independent clinics in Texas, Arizona and Missouri after eight years of misdiagnoses in Arkansas. Yet, according to the Arkansas medical community’s protocols, I do not have Lyme.

Arkansas will have its first physician to be certified as a Lyme Literate Doctor (LLMD) this year, and his motivation is personal as well as professional. His wife, who has been chronically ill, tested positive for Lyme last year, as did he and his six children. Once he started doing research on Lyme, he re-evaluated more than 180 patients at his clinic with various “chronic illnesses.” About 150 tested positive for Lyme. So much for “rare.”

For objective and truthful information, I would recommend Coping with Lyme Disease by Denise Lang and Kenneth Liegner, as well as the websites underourskin.com and arklatexlyme.com.

“Rare” is definitely not an accurate portrayal of Lyme in Arkansas, in my opinion. In fact, the opposite is more accurate and frightening.

LINDA SHARP

Little Rock

Scenarios aren’t same

I’m so tired of people comparing being required to buy health insurance to being required to buy other types of insurance. Insurance for home and vehicles is to protect other people. It protects the bank’s financial interest in the home or car. After a car is paid for, you are only required to carry liability insurance to protect other people’s investment in their cars, or to pay for their medical bills. After a house is paid for, you are not required to carry insurance.

I have the option of buying a home or car; I can do without them. I don’t have an option of living. I didn’t have a say in being born, committing suicide is illegal, and you don’t have a financial stake in me. So why should I have to buy insurance?

TAWANNA RHODES

Sherwood

A slim chance of that

All I want for my birthday is the cancellation of that ugly-person ad promoting a fat-loss center.

JEAN BLOMQUIST

Little Rock

All kicks and giggles

On a recent day there were two letters on this page countering Bradley Gitz’s columns. Folks, we need to adopt a new perspective on Gitz. His writings are humor.

Every Monday, Gitz answers two questions:

1.Can President Barack Obama and Democrats possibly have become stupider and more evil than they were a week ago?

Answer: Yes.

2.Can Republicans and I possibly have become more intelligent and virtuous than we were a week ago?

Answer: Yes.

Gitz’s errors and misuse of data are mind-boggling to me. People who are as partisan and extreme as he is always twist everything to suit their perspective. There is no end to this. So, relax everyone! We can’t take Gitz seriously about anything.

The fact that he is so deadly serious about what he is doing only heightens the humor.

SANDY WYLIE

Bella Vista

Living on tiny crumbs

Republicans say you can’t tax the rich because they are the ones who supply the jobs. I believe this is a fallacy because the rich don’t use their personal wealth to supply jobs, except maybe their domestic help. The companies they own or manage are the ones that furnish the jobs, and these accounts are separate, one personal and the other for business.

A few years ago, the son of an old Jewish gentleman hired three or four of us workers to do some remodeling of his father’s house, and the old gentleman would come out and talk to us sometimes. One thing he told us that has stayed with me these many years is that if you watch your pennies, your dollars will take care of themselves. What he meant was the pennies added to the dollars would help increase wealth. So if Republicans say that taxing the wealthy wouldn’t help the economy and debt, they are wrong, because every bit, whether big or small, would help reduce the debt.

I ask the true workers of this nation: What have the Republicans ever done to improve your living conditions? Don’t say they reduced your taxes. A Republican tax reduction, in the simplest way I can explain it, is like feeding bread to fish in a pond. The biggest fish (the rich) get the bread, the midsized fish (the financially well-off) get the biggest crumbs, and the small fish (that’s you, the true worker) get what’s left, if anything.

Don’t think that the Republicans are going to resolve the mess they got us into in the first place. They are probably just going to make it worse for the workers.

DON HUNTER

Benton

It wasn’t government

President Barack Obama recently opined that if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build it. Somebody else made it happen. He went on to imply that government provided roads and bridges that allowed that businessman to survive and thrive.

Really? Stop me when I’m wrong! Government may have supplied the impetus for roads and bridges, but it was the private entrepreneur who built those roads and bridges. And no, government didn’t pay the bill. It was paid by the same entrepreneurs and businessmen being denigrated today. It’s called taxes.

So, no, it really wasn’t roads and bridges provided by the government that allowed private enterprise to succeed. It was sweat, perseverance, risk-taking and long hours that built that enterprise.

BOB FOSTER

Hot Springs National Park

Parents’ responsibility

We keep hearing about how smart some people are. No man or woman on this Earth is or ever will be smarter than Jesus. He never killed anyone. I do not care how smart a person is. When someone takes a gun and kills innocent people, there is something wrong mentally.

It is sad in America when young people think a gun will solve their problems. Remember, all the guns are not in the ghetto. Are parents at fault for young people and their guns? Will parents be responsible for their kids killing innocent people? Remember, God holds parents responsible when their kids do wrong. Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

George Zimmerman went out with his hard iron and killed Trayvon Martin-a child. Now James Holmes is accused of killing 12 young people. I hoped George sees he is not alone in his gunslinging. It is beginning to sound like the wild, wild West.

I hope these two thugs know they made God very angry. If they think it is hot now, think again, because where they are going, they don’t know heat. Hell is too good for them.

JULIA RANDLE

Jacksonville