LETTERS

THE MOOD MOLECULE

"We don't need 'cleaner' drugs to help us manipulate the brain better. We need to understand how it is disturbed in the first place." GORDON WILLIAMS, M.D. Florencecourt, Northern Ireland

Much of the art of medicine lies in balancing the risks and benefits of every drug administered [MEDICINE, Sept. 29]. When this balance is disturbed by long-term use of drugs that are intended for short-term therapy or needless administration of drugs for self-limiting conditions, we will continue to have unnecessary tragedies. As drugs become more potent, the potential for these disasters increases. We are a drug-oriented, quick-fix society, so this scenario will be constantly repeated. PETER JENKINS Eagle River, Alaska

I am alarmed at the monster that Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Solomon Snyder and I created when we discovered the simple binding assay for drug receptors 25 years ago. Prozac and other antidepressant serotonin-receptor-active compounds may also cause cardiovascular problems in some susceptible people after long-term use, which has become common practice despite the lack of safety studies.

The public is being misinformed about the precision of these selective serotonin-uptake inhibitors when the medical profession oversimplifies their action in the brain and ignores the body as if it exists merely to carry the head around! In short, these molecules of emotion regulate every aspect of our physiology. A new paradigm has evolved, with implications that life-style changes such as diet and exercise can offer profound, safe and natural mood elevation. CANDACE B. PERT, Research Professor Georgetown University Medical Center Washington

Our moods were elevated by your uncompromising look at current pharmaceutical treatments for mental-health problems. But we found it ironically depressing that the articles made no mention of effective treatment alternatives. Collective research on the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders, including severe forms, strongly suggests that cognitive therapies are just as effective as their chemical alternatives, as well as less costly and safer. Unfortunately, psychotherapies are often overlooked in the mistaken belief that medications are shortcuts to mental health. WILLIAM DANTON DAVID ANTONUCCIO Reno, Nev.

Your excellently researched article on serotonin drugs touched on a much larger picture. One of the curses of living in an advanced industrialized society is a growing propensity to deny responsibility for one's own health and happiness and expect material goods, science and technology to take up the slack. As long as overweight people pop pills instead of taking the stairs and psychiatrists prescribe chemicals, not introspection, mistakes like those made with Redux and fenfluramine are inevitable. Our evolutionary cousins continue to be tortured in the name of science. AMANDA WILSON New York City

The fundamental implication seems to be that people are not responsible for what they do but are victims of their uncontrollable chemistry. What happened to willpower? To freedom of choice? Is all variation from "normal behavior" a deficiency disease to be corrected by a pill or a combination of pills? DAVID T. CARR, M.D. Richmond, Va.

Almost any side effect of medication is preferable to active mental illness. Your mood-drug article appropriately points out some serious side effects of taking medication. As a person who is mentally ill, however, I would put up with many additional side effects, because lithium freed me from the slavery of my illness. MARK HASKINS Lambertville, Mich.

RESEARCHERS' JUSTIFICATIONS

David Ho's attempt to justify the outrageous AIDS-related research being performed on HIV-infected Africans in Africa is inexcusable [VIEWPOINT, Sept. 29]. Similar research practices performed on death-row inmates in the U.S. would elicit an immediate federal criminal investigation. Ho's justification is in part an echo of arguments used by eugenics researchers and the team that contrived the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. The fact that there was patient consent does not do much to help Ho's argument. KOFI ALLAN Pomona, Calif.

I have no doubt that Dr. Ho richly deserved to be named TIME's Man of the Year for 1996. And he certainly merits the respect he has earned around the world as an AIDS researcher. But when he attempts to discern a difference between what is morally acceptable in the U.S. and what can be tolerated abroad, Ho may be beyond the area of his true expertise. JOHN BLACK New York City

What Africa is doing is inhumane. How can anyone with a sound mind and common sense administer a placebo--for research purposes--to a pregnant woman with AIDS? CHAD J. PROPER Plattsburgh, N.Y.

THE BIG GIVEAWAY

Congratulations to Ted Turner for understanding that making a profit is only one side of the coin [NATION, Sept. 29]. Without its other side--generosity--the entire enterprise is unbalanced. The precarious and destructive results of getting and not giving can be felt all over the earth, making corporate businessmen, arguably, the most dangerous men alive. We can only hope that this is the beginning of a trend to balance the scales. JEANNE C. WILKINSON New York City

First we had Hanoi Jane, and now we have United Nations Ted. What a great American family. What about Americans helping Americans? Aren't there enough problems that require attention? WILLIAM P. O'BRIEN Poway, Calif.

PRESS REVIEWS

The colorizing of the New York Times may please many of its readers, but the strength of the paper is its sober coverage of real news [PRESS, Sept. 29]. It has not succumbed to the many pressures of the marketplace and become a rag. "Snooty" and "austere" are not good characterizations of the Times. Being "out of the mainstream" is a compliment to today's crazy journalistic milieu. RUTH KAUFMANN Rochester, N.Y.

Earlier this year, The Dallas Morning News published a story saying Timothy McVeigh had told his defense team that he bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, and that he intended to leave a "body count" in order to "make our point" to the Federal Government. In your story naming the Morning News one of America's best papers, you assert that publishing that story constituted some kind of journalistic faux pas. I find that assessment as puzzling as it is unsupported by fact. The Morning News story was accurate, the documents it quoted were legitimate, and the reporter engaged in neither illegal nor unethical conduct in obtaining the documents. Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lead defense lawyer at the time, put forth several tales, including one that our story was based on a fabricated document. That was untrue. TIME apparently bought Jones' attempt at damage control. If a faux pas has been committed, it certainly wasn't made by the Dallas Morning News. STUART WILK, Managing Editor Dallas Morning News Dallas TIME's trashing of the Miami Herald as a "shell of its former self" is a chomp on the ear. Sure, it's a different newspaper than it was in 1984. Yet since then the Herald has nine times picked off a Pulitzer, a prize supposedly indicative of quality. Probably no region in America sees more demographic upheaval than Miami does, and the Herald addresses it up-front and openly. That means taking risks. Some work: El Nuevo Herald, our Spanish-language counterpart, now has a daily print run of 110,000. Some don't work: we now staff Managua rather than New York City. Dealing with change is what journalism is all about. Forget the "shell" game. GENE MILLER, Associate Editor/Reporting Miami Herald Miami

CAMPAIGN REFORM NEEDED

With each passing week, we are given more evidence of the need for campaign-finance reform [NATION, Sept. 29]. Unfortunately, the two issues--enforcement of existing laws and reform--are being mixed. Existing laws should be enforced, and we should look at the problems within the current system of how we finance campaigns. Quick-fix ideas to reduce the amount of money that can be spent are advanced. Yet little attention is focused on how campaign money corrupts the political process. WILLIAM E. WHITLEY High Springs, Fla.

After reading your article "Reno's New Focus," I came away with a disheartened outlook on our government. It is a sad fact that our two most powerful political parties make money the pivotal point around which they revolve. Today the only way to gain attention from any government official is through large sums of money. AMY RITZERT Corona Del Mar, Calif.

It doesn't matter whether the money is hard or soft, or where the phone call was made, or who placed the call. Only the amount matters, because that determines the extent to which our democracy is nullified and the degree to which our votes are negated. GERARD C. LAMMERS Oswego, Ill.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN I.Q.

It is very important that children learn good manners at an early age [EDUCATION, Sept. 29]. Some people think it is a waste of schooltime to teach children to be polite, but politeness is more important than your IQ. It is better to be a B-average student with great manners than an A+ student who is a big wise guy. If all second-graders learned politeness and kindness just as they learn math and science, America would be a much more civilized society in 25 years. CHRISTINE DEVLIN, age 11 Brookline, Mass.

STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE

Your excellent article "The Search for the Unicorn" [AMERICAN SCENE, Sept. 29] told the public what the infamous hippie Ira Einhorn did to my sister Holly and how he has been on the run since 1981, hiding and laughing at the rest of us. Our father parachuted into Normandy on June 6, 1944, and was one of the first Americans to help liberate France from Nazi tyranny. Our mother was stationed in France with the Red Cross. Do the French now repay these real debts by releasing my sister's murderer? The spirits of Holly and my parents cry out for justice. If a convicted murderer like Einhorn is allowed once more to slip through some chink in the system, will we or anyone else ever have justice or be safe? If Einhorn is to be released, why don't we just turn loose all the lifers? JOHN MADDUX Alvarado, Texas

ALL IN THE FAMILY

I felt a bit implicated by your assertion that Deepak Chopra, my dad, has "little familiarity with family life as most Americans live it" [FAMILY, Sept. 22]. I was not aware that drinking from the toilet, balloon animals spawned from condoms, and tongue studs constitute the American family experience. More to the point, despite having passed through my own phases of growing pains, tattoos and flunking two college courses, I have, at 22, managed to graduate from Columbia University, publish a novel, embark on my own adult journey and find some time to feel grateful to both my parents for teaching me the tools to find happiness through it all. In other words, I feel remarkably well adjusted for having been the product of Chopra's idealized "warm bubble bath of self." GAUTAMA CHOPRA New York City