To the Editor
Re “The War in Ukraine Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready” (editorial, Sunday Review, May 22):
Your editorial is filled with contradictions. It sensibly favors continued military support to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression, and it acknowledges that it’s the Ukrainians who must decide what an end to the war might look like. To avoid a wider war with Russia, it recommends that the U.S. assist be limited.
Dealing with a revanchist Russia, which seeks to erase Ukraine from the world map, is not a winning strategy.
Ukraine’s military successes have exceeded everyone’s expectations. There is no time to be ambivalent or hesitant in giving Kyiv the resources it needs to ensure Moscow suffers a strategic loss. This is the best approach to achieving a fair settlement that restores Ukrainian sovereignty rather than a fragile one that Russia will violate repeatedly.
Alexander Vershbow
Philadelphia
The writer is a distinguished fellow of the Atlantic Council, former NATO deputy Secretary General and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia.
To the Editor
Thank you for starting the conversation on how to get the U.S. out of Armageddon in Ukraine.
It is time that Congress and the Administration reassess their commitment to this conflict’s open-ended funding and weapons. With one million deaths from Covid-19, raging inflation, and spiraling political and social crises at home, U.S. taxpayers will quickly tire of this war, if they haven’t already.
Steve Roddy
San Francisco
To the Editor
As an American voter, I find your suggestion that “inflation is a much bigger issue for American voters than Ukraine” deeply insulting both to me and to my fellow Americans. In effect, you are saying that we care less about prices than we do about the plight of women and children in Ukraine being raped, killed, and tortured, and not to mention the cause for freedom in the face of tyranny, oppression, and tyranny.
Yes, it is possible for Ukraine to suffer from continued military support, but it can also change the course of human history.
Lacking a crystal ball, we can be guided either by our moral values or by our fears, and I don’t believe that our fears will do us any good.
Eugene Levine
Fremont, Calif.
Preventing Heart Disease in Women
To the Editor
Re “Are Women Missing Signs of Heart Disease?” (Science Times, May 17):
Even amid critical questions of reproductive freedoms, women’s health across the course of life remains essential.
Since the 1920s heart disease has been the leading killer of men and women. Yet for nearly three-quarters of a century, heart disease was examined, evaluated and warned about in men — primarily middle-aged, middle-class white men — and rendered largely invisible in women.
Recent decades have seen a lot of attention paid to heart disease in women. However, gender differences in clinical research and diagnosis and treatment remain.
This failure to see — to research, report, diagnose and treat — heart disease in a broad range of women is not only grounded in contemporary biases, but also follows a long history of research and recognition in a subset of men, while relegating women’s health almost solely to reproductive concerns.
As in the past century, heart disease will kill more women this year than any other condition. It is crucial to recognize the death toll of their biggest killer and to make changes.
Cara Kiernan Fallon
New Haven, Conn.
The writer is a Yale University medical ethicist as well as a historian of medicine.
To the Editor
Thank you for highlighting the need for medicine to reframe its approach regarding heart disease prevention and treatment of women, and those who were given to them at birth.
For early detection of heart disease, it is important to have a history of pregnancy. We now know that pregnancy is a massive “stress test” on the body and that high blood pressure in pregnancy is a marker for future heart disease. These early warnings can help us reduce our risk.
Pre-eclampsia and gestational hypertension were once thought to resolve after childbirth. New data shows otherwise. These diagnoses provide an opportunity to educate patients on heart disease prevention.
Patients with hypertension during pregnancy should be seen for at most one year. It is important to be educated about risk mitigation and routine primary healthcare.
Imagine being able decades in advance to identify patients at highest risk for developing heart disease. With this knowledge, we can provide the tools for women and birthing mothers to optimize their heart health.
Lauren B. Golfer
Mary L. Rosser
New York
The writers are a nurse practitioner and an obstetrician-gynecologist, respectively, at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. They are codirectors of Columbia Postpartum Health Program.
Reagan’s Stand on Abortion
To the Editor
Re “How My Father, Ronald Reagan, Grappled With Abortion,” by Patti Davis (Opinion guest essay, May 23):
I have no reason to doubt Ms. Davis’s description of her father’s grappling with abortion based on his own moral views. To ignore the possibility (likelihood?) It is disingenuous to assume that he was calculating political goals. He was a politician, and was well aware of the growing influence of the Christian Right on politics.
Bill Gilbert
Franklin, Mass.
Source: NY Times
