The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 8

WtUNESUAY, JULY 19, 1995 A9 mm THE INDIANAPOLIS S1AR The childhood swinging on a hours spent front porch Accelerating to new drugs the access for patients ifewr km flSSl 111 FwiTTj r2 I "4HV PERSONALLY SPEAKING That was long ago, before air conditioning. After supper a family retired to the front porch, where aunts and uncles gathered, cousins flocked and neighbors stopped to talk and pass the time. If you were really lucky, you had an Uncle Dan who played the guitar and sang Big Rock Candy Mountain while he rocked on the porch. Often the women would sit and swing and discuss "lady things," and the men would go sit on the running boards of cars, have a smoke and discuss "men things." Although the kids were told to "go play," we'd often hang around in hearing range, especially of the "men things" because they were much more interesting. The men laughed a lot.

The front porch was where you had a cold iced tea, or a red pop from the store down the way; where you sat and watched the moths flutter about the light and where you watched the June bugs pop Into the screen door. The porch light was the beacon for all small kids who ran off into the dark playing hide and seek and Annie, Annie Over and rough- By ROBERT W. McCOIGE ine years ago, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. If I hadn't been lucky enough to receive an experimental drug, I would be six feet under today. Instead, I'm working as an engineer for the city of Goshen, playing tennis and competing in 10K races.

So when people talk about reforming the Food and Drug Administration in order to give patients access to new drugs sooner, this is not just an abstraction to me. It's a matter of life and death mine. In 1990, the latest year for which figures are available, the National Cancer Institute estimated that about 149,000 Americans were living with kidney cancer. About 30,000 new cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society, and the disease kills more than 10,000 people annually. When I was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1986, the prospects weren't bright.

But after surgery I got included in a clinical trial of a new biotechnology medicine being conducted at the University of Chicago. The medicine was Inter-leukin II, which activates the body's own defenses against certain cancers. This drug doesn't work for everybody. In fact, it is estimated to help about one out of four kidney cancer patients. And it can produce some pretty severe side effects.

It's not a perfect drug, but it saved my life. I am now, knock on wood, cancer-free. Since I believed this drug should be more widely available, I testified in 1988 before a Food and Drug Administration panel considering its approval. The panel turned down the request even though the drug was already marketed in nine European countries. Some three and a half years later, in May 1992, after another hearing at which I testified again, the FDA approved the drug.

In the interim, while committees met and papers were shuffled, many kidney cancer patients died who might have been saved. I was extremely lucky to be included in the clinical trial of the medicine. But not everyone is so lucky. You have to live in the right place, and have a physician who happens to know about the trial. There's a lot of just plain luck involved.

Instead of relying on chance, we need to take positive actions to make sure patients have speedier LETTERS Star Staff illustration On rainy days the front porch was best those soft summer days when you'd sit and swing and listen to the patter on the roof and enjoy the fact that it was too wet to go out and weed the garden. That was a time to hunker down with a Hardy Boys book, or maybe Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. Then something terrible happened. They quit building front porches. They started building houses that Just dropped off, sliced like a loaf of bread with nothing out front but a slab of cement.

Big picture windows Architects, I guess, decided big picture windows would do the trick, so we got a run on little brick ranch houses that didn't have any porches, just like we got little sleek cars that didn't have any running boards. I think that's when life as we now know it started getting ugly. Granted, a front porch wasn't worth much in the winter, it didn't come with a television and it wasn't mosquito proof, but there was something about it that made a house a home. After porches went, they tried to cover up with backyard decks overlooking swimming pools and such, but they were pale substitutes. They're all fenced in and private.

The old front porch was right out there where everything was happening. It kept people civil and sane and connected. I've heard it said that front porches are coming back, that architects are rethinking their engineering, and porches are somewhere on the horizon. I hope they come back with swings. 777 Star welcomes short, concise letters signed with name, address and telephone number.

All are subject to editing. Send to Letters to the Editor, The Indianapolis Star, P.O. Box 145, Indianapolis, IN 46206-0145. Send letters by computer modem via the Internet to Indystarindy.net. Or fax letters by dialing (317) 633-9423.

LETfj PRAf By REX REPIFER orches. Now there's something to think about in these trying times. That, and swings to put in them. I don't know of anything this country needs more than a return of the front porch. It might bring back all the sanity that has been lost in the last 50 years.

Anyone who ever spent childhood hours on a front porch knows that life without one is a life "unfulfilled. Porches rank right up. there with train whistles, running boards on cars and kids chasing fireflies on a summer's night. When I was a kid the front porch was where it was all at. It was where you listened to the grownups gossip and tell their tales about the family how Uncle Jim was a "black sheep" for going to bars and chasing "fast wimmin" all told in low voice so the kids couldn't hear, which attracted them like flies.

Before air conditioning That was where jokes were told, family history was passed on and all the wondrous world of adulthood unfolded on quiet summer nights. School prayer Tom Oberly's July 1 response to Richard Roberts' June 26 column, "Getting the point across about God," ridiculed the influence of school prayer in public schools. In Oberly's letter he referred to Islamic teachings in Iran. Over there, it is mandatory for any non-Muslim student to be present at the morning school devotion, which opens with a recitation from the Koran. Islam is a major religion in the Muslim countries and Hinduism is a major religion in India.

The followers of a minority religion are supposed to accept the religious practices of Islam or Hinduism in those countries. It is ironic when immigrants from Muslim or Hindu countries change their positions and act so righteously in America. They, along with the liberals, don't want their children to hear a word from the Bible or Christian prayer in public schools. They expect America and its public to respect their religious views and not expose their children to Judeo-Christian views. Roberts stated correctly that the U.S.

Supreme Court's ruling on prayer in public schools did not represent the views of a majority of the American public. A sizable majority believe in God and would want to restore the right to say prayers in the public schools. The majority are getting tired of the godless and immoral practices in public institutions. A minority should not be allowed to dictate its left agenda to the majority. There used to be some moral values, discipline and respect for law and order in our public schools when school prayer was allowed.

Now that it is forbidden, public schools have become hotbeds of immoral activities. Let's send leaders to Washington who have integrity and believe in the moral principles that this nation was founded on. This way, we might be able to restore prayer in our schools and moral values in our land. K.D. NASIR Indianapolis Point on prayer Responding to Richard R.

Roberts' June 29 column, "Getting the point across about God," may 1 say that school prayer to this day is not outlawed. Any student in any school is free to pray in the halls, in classrooms, in study halls, at lunch, in the buses. What is not allowed is organized prayer, which forces a non-religious or non-Christian student to pray in a group led by a teacher or a public address system. In the matter of Madalyn M. O'Hair, she and her family were Injured, their Maryland home was frequently damaged, their car was ruined several times, her father went to an early grave as the school prayer case proceeded to the U.S.

Supreme Court. No one ever was arrested despite the occasional recognition of young Christians responsible. Further, Roberts' suggestion that Capt. Scott O'Grady's survival in Bosnia is linked to religion is to ignore the thousands of airmen in World War II, Korea and Vietnam who were not so lucky and possibly just as pious. It is a common theme today among religious people that a lack of forced prayer in school results in dig addiction, lowpades.

Eleanor Mill Illustration access to promising drugs. Because of agitation by AIDS patients, drugs for this disease are put on a fast track at the FDA. This proves the FDA can review drugs faster if enough pressure is applied. But patients shouldn't have to go that route. We need to make legal, institutional changes.

For a start, Congress can Instruct the FDA that its Job is. to help save lives by getting safe and effective new medicines to patients quickly, not just to guard the public against unsafe drugs. When the medicines in question are for potentially fatal diseases such as kidney cancer, the FDA shouldn't hold up a drug because of side effects. People with life-threatening diseases should be allowed to make the decision that the risk of side effects is worth taking. A new medicine gave me my life back.

But bureaucratic foot-dragging may have denied that chance to many other people with kidney cancer. We need to change the system to give all patients the chance I had. McCoige resides in Goshen. Time Savers Watch Repair. Since 1919, Windsor ha been repairing and maintaining fine watche.

Saving people time and money. All Models Serviced Including Quartz Batteries Replaced While ton Wall. SOUTH OF THE CIRCLE AT 16 N. MERIDIAN 634-6736 MON. FRI.

9-5, 6AT. FEATURING AMERICA'S FINEST NAME IN FURNITURE Bernhardt Universal Hickory Stiffel Hooker Lane Drexel Heritage Clayton Marcus 844 9544 housing around the yard. That was in the evenings when the day came down and you got to stay up until way after dark because company was there. But the best thing about a front porch was when you walked out on an early summer morning and saw the dew-dipped morning glories first crack off the bat, or inhaled the waft of lilacs and knew the world was good and all was well. It was where you sat in the shade on dog-hot days and snapped beans, shucked a few ears of corn or ate a bacon sandwich with tomatoes fresh from the garden.

form plan of Republican presidential hopeful Richard Lugar. I was taught in school that a sales tax is the most regressive tax there is. The middle class and minimum wage group would be taxed on everything they earn because they must spend it to survive. A simplified income tax return that could be prepared by an individual with simple math skills, eliminating loopholes for the rich, would solve the problem and cut government spending. All that would be necessary would be for the Internal Revenue Service to print current tax year tables.

This could eliminate many audits and save the costs of printing forms each year. BRENDA TURNER Bloomlngton Well spent? Being a curious person by nature, I would like to know about all the money that is collected for abused children and where and how it is administered. A rather large drive here in Lafayette was held recently, and now the state is in the act with the "Kids First" license plate. Let's put the programs on the table and let the public know what is being done for the children. We donate to all these causes, but lately we've read in the papers about people getting their hands caught in the cookie jar.

It is time to look at all these so-called not-for-profit organizations and see if they are doing what they are supposed to. CHUCK BASH AM Lafayette In short grass I can understand Gov. Evan Bayh's fixation with spending taxpayers' money to redesign the very challenging Fort Harrison Golf Course. I'm a longtime member who has personally observed Bayh, club in hand, exploring much of the "natural habitat" that surrounds the course's fairways and greens. The governor could spend the money on flora and fauna in the planned new state park there, but even renowned golf course architect Pete Dye will tell him there's nothing wrong where the short grass grows.

CRAIG DOOMS Indianapolis No rewards I am a young person writing to you about the Indianapolis Public Schools being put on probation. I have read the new requirements for the schools and I agree with all of them but one, I do not think teachers should be rewarded for teaching a class that they are already being paid to teach. Other than that, I fully agree with all of them, especially the new discipline programs. CHUCK BURKHART Indianapolis And I hope soon before the whole country falls apart. Redifer is a reporter for The Star.

PRIOR U.S. IN OUR HISTORY MM. Ml 1 TOM ill Mi flu LJU CV3Ji4)J nTTyl4a, rt 'ffj; Margaret Scott Illustration pregnancies, divorces, inflation, famines, floods, earthquakes and more. Almost as pathetic is the truth about the Middle Ages, when people by the thousands were tortured and threatened with death for not believing the often-revised European Roman Catholic Christian Bible. Holy scripture supports slavery and the killing of "witches." When that latter myth reached our country, non-believers suddenly became "witches." We know many were burned to death, and "conversions" to Christianity Jumped.

Today the Christian threat of an "eternal hell" for non-believers is trying to accomplish what burning at the stakes did, with obvious similar results. ROBERT CORYA Indtanapolts A symbol Millions have given their lives for our freedom and our way of government, which are symbolized by the U.S. flag. It should be saluted and glorified to honor those who have given all and for those who have served to insure our freedom. However, it is not a subject of constitutional gravity.

We should dishonor and find ways to make public flag desecra-tors pay for their actions without having to amend the Constitution. The Constitution is about our method of government and freedom. The flag is a symbol of all that has been given and will be given for American freedom. To define flag desecration itself will be impossible and in so doing will become divisive among strong supporters of our freedoms. Desecrators would not do it as often if they got no press, so the press could help by simply not covering these flag debasements.

DAN LYNCH Indianapolis Tax concerns I have some serious doubts about the proposed income tax re I THMJ JULY 23rd 1n0 I Hi- LsxJvll I ALREADY REDUCED PRICE SALES NOT INCLUDED. IN STOCK ITEMS ONLY Unique Home Furnishings 31 136th Street.