6 - Friday, August 2, 1985 - North Shure News Editorial Page Time to act ith AIDS recently taking the life of a 40-year-old Fort St. John woman, - it’s time to reconsider our smug attitude towards the disease. Long considered a problem facing primarily the homosexual community, the public’s attitude towards the disease and its victims has run the gamut from self- righteousness to self-inflicied ignorance. According to experts, there is no evidence that the disease is spreading to the general population other than with individuals in- volved with receiving blood and blood pro- ducts, and partaking in sexual intercourse with someone carrying the AIDS virus. Nevertheless, the disease is being contracted by heterosexuals. In the case of the Fort St. John woman, she contracted the disease from a blood transfusion conducted two years ago. The Red Cross which provided the plasma is now coming under fire. isn’t it time to stop blaming the Red Cross and homosexual community for supposedly transmitting and spreading the disease? Although the disease’s existence has been _ known for six years, only last month did the , B.C. health ministry give the Red Cross ‘funds to start a screening program for AIDS antibodies in blood donors. If governments and the public had reacted soener -- and more objectively -- to the threat, a B.C. housewife and mother, as well as many other victims of: AIDS might be alive today. Fun verboten! ancouver’s chief engineer wants those jigging sandwichbeard artists banned — says they distract drivers’ attention, slow traffic and ‘‘create hazards’’. The sand- wichboard advertisers have retorted by asking, What about mini-skirts? To which we could add a whole list of other driver distractions, including the chief engineer’s own convoluted traffic sigus. Really, is ALL fun to be verboten? ima vies naar imo wt vanceiven ‘north shore news SUNDAY + WEDMEEDAY + FIDAY Display Advertising Classified Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom 985-2131 Ctreulation 986-1337 Subscriptions 985-2131 1139 Lonsdate Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 Publisher Peter Speck Genera! Manager Roger McAtee Operations Manager Berni Hilliard Advertising Director - Sales Linda Stewart Advertising Director - Admin. Mike Goodsell Edltor-in-Chiet _ Noel Wright Classified Manager Vai Siephenson Marketing Director Bob Graham Circulation Director Bill McGown Production Olrector Chris Johnson Photography Manager Terry Peters North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule Itl, Part (lt, Paragraph Itl of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885. Entire contents ® 1985 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. ! Subscriptions, North and West Vancouver, $25. per year, Matling tates available on request. i Wo responsibility accepted for unsolicited maternal inctuding manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped. addressed envelope. | Member of the B.C. Press Council 9 56,245 (average, Wednesday SDA DIVISION Friday & Sunday) SN" THIS PAPER !S RECYCLABLE 980-0511 Abortion Dear Editor: I find J. Christopher- Thomas’ letter in the July 21! edition of the North Shore News to be very offensive and misleading. I wish to make it clear to the public. that the Pro-Life movement is NOT a small group of religious fanatics conspiring to impose their views on all Child road victim did not run out Dear Editor: In the July 21, 1984 issue of .your newspaper you reported that there was a young !2 year old involved. in an accident with a District of North Vancouver truck at the corner of Mountain Highway and Crown Street in North Vancouver, You also reported - that there were no charges against the driver as the in- fant had come from behind a parked vehicle. 1 would like to know the source of your in/ormation as it is ab- solutely incorrect with respect to the child entering the street from behind a parked vehicle. It was my child who was involved in the accident and a number of people are aware that your report per- tains to him. He continues to suffer from the injuries he sustained in the accident and 1 think it would be ap- propriate if that report were to be corrected in fairness to him. Ronald Perrick North Vancouver other people. Pro-Lifers are defending the rights of the human child when it is maturing in the mother’s womb. It has been scien- tifically proven that the fetus is a human being; therefore, willfully killing that human being, intentionally aborting its life, is murder. Our. society universally condemns all other forms of murder in defence of the right-to-life of the victim, regardless of whether the killer believes that murder is wrong or right. Since abor- tion has been PROVEN to be the killing of a human child, society must face its responsibility to universally prohibit abortion in defence of the right-to-life of the Dear Editor: Instead of keeping to . facts, Don Burbidge, in his letter replying to critics of his unproved theories on class size, branches off into semantics, ‘might be’, ‘suspect that' and ‘seem to’. Mr. Burbidge also refers to imy use of non-existent research, so I would suggest that he approach Dr. Leo Marshall, the North Van- Lower P/T ratio has not helped education child. The right-to-life is the most fundamental and basic of all human rights and outweighs all other privi- leges. The Pro-Life movement is currently assisting in such programs as Birthright, helping pregnant women during and after their pregnancy. Pro-Lifers are also providing pregnant women, along with the rest of the public, with accurate information regarding abor- tion, paying particular atten- tion to those facts which pertain to the significant health risks that women who have an abortion must face, All that the pro-abortion (anti-life) forces .have done for women is put at their couver School Superintend- ent, who, I am sure, would provide him with a great amount of research both for and against small class size. Some of the researchers are described as ‘statistically incompetent’’ by their peers and their work described as a ‘dogs breakfast’’ in other learned documents but the term ‘‘non-existent’’ cannot be used by any stretch of the imagination. Dear Editor: Letter writer Don Bur- bidge condemns alt mega projects as a waste of money. As long as he and his fellow teachers are fully employed it appears he does not care for anyone else. Let us stop ALRT, EXPO and every other construction job, throw all the construction workers onto unemployment is isky murder disposal a: means. of killing their own children and severely increasing the risk of suffering a host of ail- ments; an abortion creates a 500 per cent increase in the chances of suffering a life- - threatening ectopic pregnan-_ cy and a 200 per cent in- crease in the chances of suf- fering sterility. Abortion also heightens the risk of in- fection, and can be a direct cause of potentially lethal hemorrhaging. More people must recognize .the facts as they are and: become involved in the ‘struggle to defend a child’s basic human right to be permitted to live. Sean Fleming North Vancouver Lots of class research Mr. Burbidge also says that only Socreds do not know of the value of small classes. After recent visits to China and Japan, where classes of from forty to fifty pupils appear to be quite common, it is obvious that Social Credit influence is far more widespread than | had anticipated. Ernie Sarsfieid North Vancouver and employ more teachers in the forlorn hope that his unproved theories turn out right. Reduction in the pupil teacher ratio has NOT helped improve education in the past. Why should it be expected to do so in the future? R. Kelly North Vancouver