Viagra won't save wildlife

The piece by Dominique Ritter ["Viagra saves the rhino," Oct. 22]--on how Viagra will save the endangered rhino from hordes of impotent East Asians--is a typical example of most Westerners' misinformed views of traditional medicine. Rhino horn is used in Chinese medicine not as an aphrodisiac, but as a treatment for life-threatening fevers. Viagra can't help the rhino and neither can dismissing the medical tradition of an entire culture as a quest for sexual potency.

To save threatened wildlife, we must enlist the cooperation of consumer societies, not humiliate them. When traditional medicine users finally take responsibility for the ecological impact of their practices, we will be in a much better position to develop creative conservation solutions that actually work, rather than calling for ineffective trade bans that simply drive the wildlife trade underground. Dialogue and cooperation with traditional medicine communities are the only ways to develop this understanding and to move forward.

Biased and poorly researched media reports only hurt the conservation cause, by alienating the very people whose support we, and the world's wildlife, so desperately need.

-Marie-Annick Moreau

Department of Biology, McGill University

Surgically correct?

In the last publication of the Mirror dated Nov. 5 ["Bigger breasts, big busts"], you have written that "Dr. Courchesne is a general surgeon." Your readers should be properly informed that he is a general practitioner--the public is too often mislead that they are being operated on by a specialist while the doctor, in actual fact, has very little training in surgery.

One does not judge a book by its cover, nor should one judge the competence of a doctor by the aspect of the waiting room.

-Louise Duranceau, MD
President, Association des spécialistes en chirurgie plastique et esthéthique du Québec

As a stripper who does it for my tuition money, the only problem I have with "Drastic Plastic" is that I need books and rent money but want tit money! Ahhhh! Please don't print my name... envy is a sin and I'm a good little girl at heart.

-Name withheld

Saving private citizens

Saddened to see your review of Saving Private Ryan [Film blurb], not because it was negative but because the reviewer was obviously too caught up in Hollywood and anti-American stereotypes to recognize that the movie does anything but glorify war.

"Wrap me in an American flag and set me on fire, if this film doesn't glorify war more than anything else." What a disturbing and ridiculous comment to be found in the pages of a respectable paper.

I took my Greek roommate to see this movie, knowing that he was required to join the army for 18 months in Greece. He was as shocked and scared by the realities of war portrayed in this movie as any war veteran (maybe you should talk to some). The nightmares he had about this movie bring to light what a stupid thing war is; its portrayal of the most terrible side of humanity brings all our ideals into perspective.

Fortunately, most of us will never have to experience anything like it, but movies like Saving Private Ryan ensure that we don't neglect what a horrible experience it is.

I'm sure the reviewer was biased by the American content in the film. Remember, the film is American, made for Americans by Americans. If it were a French movie, it would be a French flag waving over the closing credits, and no one would mind. So why the double standard?

-Prosanta Chakrabarty
(a proud Canadian)

Skanking mad

I think you should fire the asshole who wrote the review on the new Reel Big Fish album. He has no concept of what music is. Especially when he considers a bunch of sell-outs (i.e. Mighty Mighty Bosstones) to be real ska. RBF is the bomb and shouldn't be considered "lame skater ska."

-Roberto Ugarte

Free for all

Some people trash the Mirror because it is a free paper. However, I would like to remind newspaper snobs of the old saying: the best things in life are free.

The Mirror is really free, unlike many right-wing newspapers that sacrifice freedom of press and diversity of opinion simply to please their owners. It is only ''free'' newspapers that prevent many from being brainwashed by the right-wing. Thank you for making democracy function more intelligently.

-Paul Lumba