Herpes Epidemic

To the Editors:

Your article on this incurable virus [Aug. 2] described a feared and often misunderstood health problem in a brief, comprehensive and understandable manner. An educated public is essential in learning to live with the disease and the threat of contracting it, and ultimately in avoiding its propagation.

Eileen J. Bell

Fullerton, Calif.

Perhaps today's sexual liberation is more restrictive than old-fashioned morality ever was!

Frank W. Schnitzler

Manasquan, N.J.

Although your intentions are laudable, you seem to taunt those individuals who are not stern believers in sexual austerity. The message appears to be that anyone who gets herpes certainly deserves it and that it is a damn good thing this epidemic came along to bring back the good old days.

Joel Ratner

Beachwood, Ohio

The litany changes. It used to be "Your place or mine?" Now it is "Do you have herpes?"

Willis O. Preston Jr.

Newark, Del.

I never had a chance to become a sexual hedonist because I was too old for the sexual revolution. Now, thanks to herpes, I can stop regretting having missed it.

Robert Young

Deerfield, III.

Thanks to herpes, people have begun to question the doubtful freedom of the sexual revolution in Western society. It is time to realize that there is more to human life than just easy sex and superficial enjoyment.

Elisabeth Reichenbach

West Berlin

The story on the herpes epidemic not only reports public hysteria but participates in promoting it. One simple, helpful fact, vital to prevention, is that herpes is almost exclusively transmitted during its active phase. Herpes victims do not have to withdraw emotionally or sexually during the dormant phase, which is most of the time.

The majority of herpes sufferers are not destroyed or unalterably changed by their condition. Panic only leads to stress, and stress is a major contributor to recurrences. We favor rational education and an expanded research effort as the best ways to fight herpes.

Robert Weinreb, Executive Director

National Herpes Research Foundation

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

I wonder how many readers started itching, burning, looking for lesions, reviewing past activities and muttering promises about the future. Good grief, you could be changing America's sexual behavior more than Hugh Hefner and Bob Guccione combined.

Diane Morrisett

Austin

Pipeline Problems

When will President Reagan begin to realize that the European allies are not his marionettes to manipulate but sovereign states with their own requirements and foreign policies? We do not want to be lectured on the potential risks of the pipeline deal with the U.S.S.R. [Aug. 2] by someone who is selling grain to the Soviet Union. This impudent attitude, along with America's high interest rates, which are seriously endangering European economies, is bound eventually to wreck the Western alliance.

Robert Gruber

Munich

I.R.A. Bombings

How a cold-blooded attack on a military band and a troop of men riding beautiful horses on parade in London [Aug. 2] will help to liberate Ulster is a puzzle. Bombs and bullets are not the solution to this intractable problem. The Protestants of Northern Ireland are not likely to surrender their lives to the tender mercies of the I.R. A.

Robert A. Pinkerton

Toronto

I am shocked by the explosions in England and, as a Briton and naturalized U.S. citizen, object strongly to American involvement in these I.R.A. terrorist attacks on the innocent. It is common knowledge that arms and financial aid to the I.R.A. are sent by Americans, and with an ease that smacks of turning a blind eye.

Alan McGlinn Webb

Lakewood, Colo.

Nicaraguans Celebrated in Masaya

With your story "Challenge from the Contras" [Aug. 2], there is a photograph of members of the Directorate of the Sandinist National Liberation Front, making it appear that they were celebrating the third anniversary of the Sandinist Popular Revolution in Moscow. The photograph actually was taken in the city of Masaya, Nicaragua, on the 19th of July of this year. I do not believe that there was any ill will on the part of your magazine, but rather an involuntary error in the picture caption. Nonetheless, this does not help international understanding of the difficult situation that Nicaragua and the rest of Central America face today.

Francisco Fiallos Navarro

Ambassador of Nicaragua

Washington, D.C.

TIME regrets the error, which occurred in typesetting.

Thirst for Great Lakes Water

In response to your story about water-poor states tapping the Great Lakes [Aug. 2], I say the Sunbelt can take the people out of the Great Lakes region, but it will never take our water without a fight.

Michael H. Cameron

Schaumburg, Ill.

Our regional pride has been wounded and our heating bills have soared higher than a Texas oil gusher. Now that other states' aquifers have been sucked almost dry, they look to our Great Lakes for water.Never, I say! Let them eat their desert sand and drink their petroleum reserves.

Malcolm M. Lawrence

Pittsford, N. Y.

Building New York's Subway Cars

Your story on the award of a contract for New York City subway cars [July 26] is somewhat misleading. You refer to the loss of the contract by the Budd Co. of Troy, Mich., to Canada's Bombardier Inc., but neglect to mention that the cars will be assembled in Bombardier's U.S. plant in Barre, Vt. You imply that several hundred jobs will be lost to Budd, but ignore the new jobs that will be created with Bombardier in Vermont, and also those that will be saved at Westinghouse Electric in New York, where motors and other assemblies will be manufactured. It is somewhat disheartening to those of us who worked so hard to bring Bombardier to the U.S. to have our local plant labeled in effect a "foreign bidder."

Alan H. Noyes, President,

Central Vermont Economic Development Corp.

Barre, Vt.

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