As an investor I am torn: While I would like to see Ben and Jerry's become more profitable, I am also a fan of their quirky business practices. Before majority shareholders make a move, however, they may want to look at what happened when the Famous Amos label sold out.

-- A. Evonti Anderson

It's sad that so many people are leaping aboard the "save Ben and Jerry's" bandwagon. It's true that Ben and Jerry's does a number of incredibly cool things. But despite their counterculture "Cherry Garcia" credibility, Ben and Jerry's is awash in the blood of many, many animals.

Cows, even cows from bucolic Vermont, are almost always slaughtered after four or five annual milking cycles. So to produce its ice cream, Ben and Jerry's requires the slaughter of about 12 cows every day. And over 23,000 cows are impregnated each year in order to produce the milk required to supply Ben and Jerry's. A substantial number of the resultant calves are put in veal crates and slaughtered before maturity.

Ben and Jerry's noble ethics stop short where animals are concerned. Fortunately, thanks to the burgeoning soyfoods industry, milk and ice cream are obsolete in terms of ethics, health, and taste.

-- Erik Marcus
Publisher, Vegan.com

William F. Buckley: Retiring line
BY AMY REITER
(12/16/99)

I feel just awful that Amy Reiter felt "cheap and dirty" the day after. The great big secret about ideological conservatism is that it's all about laughing and having a good time with life. Bill Buckley isn't my favorite conservative in the world, but I do like the delightful old gent, and he is as quick with the bon mot as he is with the mot juste.

She ought to quit feeling guilty about having a good life. Most liberals are too concerned about matters that do not touch them to feel good about anything. A liberal will eat a steak and feel bad because the wheat that the cow ate could sustain 30 people at a subsistence level for one year; a conservative will eat the steak and enjoy it, and perhaps ask for another glass of bordeaux.

I feel her pain, though; I felt something similar when cultural arbiter/cranky old establishment liberal Walter Cronkite retired. I miss him, and my conservative friends don't understand that. Good enemies are harder to find than good friends, so they are missed more when they are gone. I only hope that Reiter can find some witty conservative crank to keep her entertained after Buckley's retirement.

-- Jim McNeely

Orphans of managed care
BY ARTHUR ALLEN
(12/15/99)

Sickle-cell disease is only the tip of the coming crisis. We see see the sickle-cell problem because of its racial implications and because we have known how to treat this fairly simple disease for 40 years; once the technology arose the crisis was inevitable.

Soon we will be able to treat a vastly greater number of diseases -- but at a price. Expensive treatments available soon or now include the cloning of body parts, gene therapy for single-gene diseases (like sickle cell), protein-based drugs for chronic diseases (arthritis) and transplant-based therapies for diabetes and cancer. But who will pay if cardiac transplant becomes routine?

For all the talk about "preventive medicine," technology will now inevitably give us the tools to treat diseases but not the economic means to use these treatments.

-- S.M. Schwartz

The emergency rooms of this country serve as the safety net for a very large number of sickle-cell patients that have nowhere else to go because of over-"managed" HMOs or lack of funds. Virtually all of those E.R.s provide excellent care for these patients, and the overwhelming majority of the time they are not reimbursed for the care. Arthur Allen's statement -- "When their regular care suffers, they end up being treated in the emergency room, and suffering unnecessary complications" -- is untrue and a slap in the face to the many nurses and physicians that take care of these patients, many times for free.

-- Joseph M. Soler, M.D., FACEP

Next page | Gay San Francisco voters would have won with either candidate