Dear Marion,

Thank you very much for your letter, especially for the
account of the film Footnote. Your description makes me 
want to compose Eliezer's acceptance speech for him. The
coincidence of outward and inward drama seems to me to
set the stage for pathos, irony and satire on a monumental
scale. I was reminded of the wedding chapter in Die Andere,
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/k41.html

Thank you also for your comments on faith:
_
_    "I think of faith as a proffered antidote to the worry,
_    uncertainty, fear, dread, paralyzing feelings of inadequacy,
_    helplessness and despair that may afflict people
_    when they confront life's difficulties. 
_    If faith in a system, a force, a Being becomes a habit of mind,
_    it can be deployed as a psychological tool
_    to comfort and strengthen a person."
_     
obviously valid and persuasive, a blueprint, it seems to me, for
a species of Deism without the name. But then: What's in a name?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

The comparison of "faith" with "Glaube" seems to me to corroborate
my thesis that thought is the consequence of language. As compared
with "Glaube", Faith, to my hearing, has a much stronger component
of trust, which in German would be expressed by "Vertrauen". To be
faithful means "treu sein". "Jemandem glauben" is to believe that
someone is speaking the truth, "Etwas glauben" means to believe
that something is true. I'm fascinated by the differences between
the languages, and begin to understand better why I write in German.

I've forgotten the considerations that led me to explore the
economics and procedures of self-publishing. I'm as reluctant
as ever to try to "promote" my writing (and myself); but I can't
deny that for years I cultivated relationships to optometrists
who referred patients to me by taking them to lunch.... It worked.
I succeeded in building and mainatining an ophthalmology practice.
Today, successful publication of some of what I have written
strikes me as an interesting political challenge, worth trying
if only for the excitement. As a result of contemporary technology
which makes it possible to duplicate "e-books" and the like at
minimal cost, and makes it feasible to manufacture printed books
"on demand", only when they have been ordered, the costs of
publishing are almost entirely those of my energy. I ask myself,
how should I apportion my time between additional writing, and
soliciting attention for what I've already written. A dilemma 
that I find stimulating. I've begun by making some of the chapters
of Die Andere more presentable, by converting them into html format,
and replacing the double vowels ae, oe, and ue with their dotted
equivalents, ä, ö, ü, and the hard s, written as sz, with the
symbol "ß". In addition I should, prior to attempting distribution,
carefully proofread the 1700 existing pages. Is it worth the time?

Just now, I received in a medical newsletter, some comments about
asthma which might be of interest to you, and which I append below.
I hope you are, and will continue to be well.  I'll write to you
about the hearing Thursday night. 
Jochen

=========================================================
Asthma Defies "One Size Fits All" Diagnosis
Many patients with mild-to-moderate asthma have persistently 
noneosinophilic disease.

Asthma is considered an eosinophilic disorder, and anti-inflammatory 
treatment (i.e., inhaled corticosteroids [ICS]), is aimed at eosinophilic 
airway inflammation. However, because many asthma patients do not respond 
to traditional therapy, recent attention has focused on the heterogeneity 
of this disorder.

Investigators reviewed sputum studies from nine clinical trials involving 
patients with mild-to-moderate asthma (age range, 12-70 years). In patients
not receiving ICS who provided multiple sputum samples, 53% had persistent 
or intermittent sputum eosinophilia and 47% never had eosinophilia. Most 
patients were allergic, all had reversible airflow obstruction or 
methacholine hyperreactivity, and both eosinophilic and noneosinophilic 
patients had similar responses to inhaled albuterol. However, eosinophilic 
patients had significantly better responses to aggressive 2-week courses of
oral and inhaled steroids than did noneosinophilic patients.

Comment: This study gives more support to the idea that asthma is not a 
"one size fits all" diagnosis. These patients all had similar symptoms, 
reversible airflow obstruction, and airway hyperreactivity, but only those 
with airway eosinophilia responded to steroid treatment. This explains why 
many of our patients do not do well with current asthma treatments, 
although we don't yet know what to offer these patients. Unfortunately, 
sputum cytology is best performed in research settings -- and neither blood
eosinophilia nor exhaled nitric oxide is an adequate surrogate marker.