On June 10, I sent in a somewhat lengthy letter-to-the-editor in response. The editor replied, asking if I'd be willing to change my references to "Health Nazis" to "socialists." Although "Health Nazis" is in common usage where I hang out — referring to those who go beyond "education and persuasion," seeking coercive government mandates to convince people their ever-increasing raft of "recommended" inoculations (etc.) are in fact "mandatory" (especially for kids wishing to attend the government schools) — I OKd the moderate watering-down.

As eleven days have passed without the letter appearing, I now post it below:

To the editor:

The June 3 Pahrump Valley Times — on the front page, no less — declared "Nevada senior citizens' health near bottom."

I had not realized our emaciated oldsters are so near death they can barely crawl to the phone to call for help -– apparently suffering from a lack of proper nutrition and medical care at a level only slightly better than such notoriously impoverished corners of the Hookworm Belt as Holmes County, Mississippi. (Are we at least still doing better than the chronic alcoholics of that "Workers' Paradise," the former Soviet Union?)