Let’s ban the cruel behavior of animal experimenters. There are many groups — including the Physicians’ Committee that sued UCSF — and individuals who are opposed to the animal experiments, which are brutal to the animals and ineffective in helping humans.

The primate experiments at UCSF have engendered much opposition, including doctors who say the eye experiments are useless. The dog experiments at UCSF have also come into question.

Many medical schools in the United States such as Duke University no longer do live animal experiments because there are much more effective methods. All the animal experiments done in the United States have not led us to high quality health care. The United States is 46th in longevity (behind Bosnia) and highest in infant mortality in the industrialized world. We are actually slipping behind in providing dental care.

Why are our tax dollars and our payments funding these cruel, useless experiments? Let’s ban animal cruelty, speak out for the animals and speak out for actually providing good health care for Americans.

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Arlene Sen

San Francisco

Take Obama to task

If Sen. John McCain had voluntarily attended a white church for 20 years that preached hatred of blacks and of America, would that have been worthy of inclusion in your paper (Today’s Newsmakers, U.S.A., March 14)? Sen. Barack Obama was married by his hate-filled spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and also takes his children to listen to vile racist rhetoric every Sunday. If he didn’t condone and agree with Wright, then he wouldn’t have sat listening to him for 20 years. Obama has gotten a pass from the fawning media and it’s time they did their job and informed the public about who he really is.

Minnie Hanover

San Francisco

Celebrate life, not death

Earlier this month in Gaza, Palestinians cheered wildly the latest jihadist murder of eight Jewish Bible students. This is not the first time such celebrations have occurred. Gazans filled the streets with festive glee when Hezbollah rockets fell on Israel in summer 2006, when Israeli leader Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006, when Saddam Hussein launched 39 Scud missiles on Israel in 1991 and of course, when America was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. When will there be peace between Arabs and Jews? Let’s hope for the day that the Arab people joyously fill the streets celebrating life, not death.

Scott Abramson

San Mateo

Media gave pass to Buckley

Contrary to the media’s gushing commentaries on William Buckley as the architect of modern conservatism, he was an unapologetic racist bigot. He likened Dr. Martin Luther King with Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell. In numerous articles in his National Review he vigorously supported white supremacy, especially in a 1957 editorial, “Why the South Must Prevail.” Unmoved by the lynch-mob mentality of the South, Buckley argued that there exists, “a median cultural superiority of white over Negro ... that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”

He was a vehement supporter of apartheid in South Africa, opposing Nelson Mandela’s release from years of incarceration, famously commenting in 1985. “Where Mandela belongs, in his current frame of mind, is precisely where he is: in jail.”

He railed on gays during his public exchanges with author Gore Vidal. In 1986 he advocated tattooing HIV positive men, starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich with its pink triangles. He repeated this monstrous proposal in 2005. He displayed monumental disdain for women’s liberation, describing the literature as “so stupefying awful.”

Buckley was an ardent supporter of the dirty war against Vietnam that killed millions. He described Spanish fascist dictator Franco “a national hero.” Like his nemesis, Henry Kissinger, Buckley supported the merchants of death Pinochet in Chile and the Argentine generals who tortured and “disappeared” thousands.

Tej Uberoi

Los Altos

Day workers not welcome

The shopping center businesses in the block of Old County Road between Howard and Brittain avenues must be livid. I have observed day workers standing around, strolling in the parking lot, gathering on the driveway separations, sitting in front of business facades and sometimes leaning on the building structures. They are numerous in the area of Home Depot and appear to spread out to cover the entire shopping center and parking lot.

“No Loitering” signs are posted, but apparently not policed or enforced. I find it menacing and intimidating to do business there. It is worrisome to have to dodge the loiters and I do not feel safe. Surely this situation has been costly for businesses in this location, and it does not add to the charm of San Carlos.

Patricia Wade

Menlo Park

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