Letters to the Editor | Feb. 17, 2025

In 2019, I was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer. I went for a second opinion at Penn where the breast surgeon told me that one of the drugs I would receive in my treatment was Herceptin. He told me that before this drug was invented, women died. He said I was lucky it was available. Before Herceptin, women with this type of breast cancer lived maybe two to five years after diagnosis. The scientists who discovered Herceptin received large grants from the National Institutes of Health, which the Trump administration is now cutting drastically (a federal judge temporarily stopped this, but that’s not good enough). Without Herceptin, I would likely be dead now. And now with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as our health and human services secretary — who thinks the NIH should be downsized — how many will die because of research that will no longer be funded?

Claire Gawinowicz, Oreland

I realize now that it is going to take more than the Eagles’ thrilling Super Bowl victory to snap me out of the funk so many of my friends and I are mired in due to our concerns about this country and its short- and long-term standing. Beyond the nonsensical talk of takeovers, name changes, and fear-mongering, there is what is happening to the people who are being summarily dismissed from their government jobs in this country and around the world.

So many of these men and women are the best and brightest apolitical employees who have taken care of the nation’s business in a variety of agencies across several administrations. For those who took the buyouts, it is still unclear if they will be able to collect the so-called generous severance packages. Funding from the buyouts does not yet exist on any budget line, and in his real estate career, President Donald Trump was no stranger to routinely stiffing people he owed money to. Elon Musk and all the others (elected and unelected) in the administration advocating low tolerance for the human condition will need to answer for those dismissals and the damage done to agencies engaged in the public good. The fact is their collective disregard for their fellow Americans and refusal to take them into account in their allocations and focus means they can never hope to meet the bar that would categorize them as patriots.

Mary Kay Owen, Downingtown

When Donald Trump was campaigning in the fall, inflation was one of the key issues he used to hammer President Joe Biden. Now, weeks into his presidency, Trump’s ill-advised economic policy decisions on trade tariffs will surely bring about markedly higher, not lower, inflation. If Biden had been reelected and inflation continued at prior levels, the criticism from the right-wing disinformation machine would have been deafening. Today, it is silent. If Trump is serious about deporting the workers who pick crops and engaging in senseless trade wars, then inflation will rise to levels never seen under the Biden administration. He owns this.

Larry Skvir, Delran

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