EDITORIAL

Attacking AIDS

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has not struck hard at
the Jewish community . . . so far. But it is creeping closer, and Tem-
ple Beth El's Rabbi Marc Blumenthal has been warning for five years
that the deadly disease will strike closer to home as the epidemic
spreads.
AIDS is no longer the private disease of the homosexual com-
munity. As more victims are struck, Rabbi BluMenthal warns, in-
travenous drug abusers and their sexual partners will widen the
scope of the AIDS problem.
It is a problem that the Jewish community has not attempted
to face, either through ignorance, fear, an anti-homosexual bias, or
the attitude that it does not effect us yet so why worry. Blumenthal
and others in this week's Close-Up articles (Page 24-28) advocate
education programs throughout the community to stop AIDS before
it becomes an epidemic.
The statistics are dreadful. According to the local AIDS experts,
nearly sixty percent of the five hundred confirmed Michigan AIDS
victims have already died from the disease. But a recent national
report suggests a slight reprieve: new cases of AIDS have not been
diagnosed at the rate that had been predicted.
This does not suggest an end to the problem, but a little more
time to marshall our forces, to prepare ourselves and our commu-
nity to combat a deadly killer that will not disappear without our
help. This is one battle that we cannot afford to watch from the
sidelines.
We should be supporting education and prevention programs. Our
clergy and medical professionals must become familiar with this
terrible disease before they have a patient or family to treat or
counsel. And individual Jews must live up to our religious codes to
help the needy, the sick, the dying.
AIDS is not our problem yet. But it will become our deadly pro-
blem if we don't take steps now to defuse it.

Her sister-in-law, Carol Pollard, reports after a recent visit that
Henderson-Pollard is in constant pain and "looks like an inmate"
of a concentration camp and that her weight is down to about 90
pounds. She weighed 150 pounds when she was arrested two years
ago. Pollard says her sister-in-law is "unfocused, not able to concen-
trate, her eyes are glazed, she is at times unresponsive, and she walk-
ed bent over like an 80-year-old woman."
The U.S. government has opposed efforts by Henderson-Pollard's
attorneys to receive a sentence reduction that would enable her to
receive specialized medical treatment. The government says she is
attempting to use her medical condition as a means to escape punish-
ment. But one of her internists at the prison, Dr. Jay Krasner, in
a lengthy memo filed this summer, noted that "there is some validity
to an assertion that incarceration in and of itself constitutes har-
sher punishment of her than for an individual without such a
disorder."
We urge the authorities to reconsider Anne Henderson-Pollard's
plight and condition. She reportedly has not received a single letter
since July from her husband, who is serving a life sentence, though
he says he writes to her each day. Her recreation time has been reduc-
ed and, according to her sister-in-law, no food will be brought upstairs
to her unit though she is too weak and in pain to walk to the cafeteria.
At the very least, the drugs she is dependent on to alleviate her
pain should be administered to her on a regular basis.

Languishing In Prison

It is time for the Jewish community to speak out, on
humanitarian grounds, on behalf of Anne Henderson-Pollard, the
27-year-old wife of convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is in
deteriorating health in the U.S. federal prison in Lexington, Ken-
tucky. She is serving a five-year term for having illegally possessed
classified documents.
Henderson-Pollard suffers from a rare disease known as biliary
dyskinesia, an incapacitating illness where food cannot be digested
without the use of drugs to stimulate the stomach to empty.

LETTERS

Lender's Israel
Initiative

I was pleased to read your
recent article on Murray
Lender's efforts to increase
trade between Israel and the
United States ("Marketing
Man" Nov. 13). As a member
of the American-Israel
Chamber of Commerce of
Michigan, I enjoyed listening
to him at our annual
membership meeting.
His program, in my opinion,
will succeed because it will
bring high quality products
marketed in an appealing
way, to consumers.

6

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1987

The economic independence
of the State of Israel depends
on these kinds of initiatives.
Please feature more business
information about Israel.

Jonathan D. Brateman

Southfield

No Need
For Shrimp

This is in reference to the
editorial "The Brandeis U.
Image" (Nov. 27). Having two
sons who are Brandeis alum-
ni, we always took pride in it's
special Jewish character .. .
Brandeis, although non-

sectarian officially, is Jewish
to the core and should remain
so. And, frankly, in our long
and ongoing association with
the university we never heard
anyone, whether Jew or gen-
tile, complain of any features
of the institution which
makes it uniquely Jewish.
Nor did we hear of anybody
choosing a university on the
basis of its menu.

Brandeis U. still has a great
deal to offer the non-Jewish
student even if this doesn't in-
clude ham and shrimp.

Downtown
Synagogue

I have been a resident of
downtown Detroit for the past
ten years. I have attended
morning and evening minyan
at the Downtown Synagogue
. . . Many days it is difficult to
get ten men to hold this im-
portant service.
I hope you publish this and
ask that some of our fellow
Jewish brethren perhaps
would take the time to stop in
and support (one of) the last
synagogues within the city.

Rachel Kapen

Gerald Ginsberg

West Bloomfield

Detroit

What Do
You Think?

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