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Too few friendly ‘blood-suckers’

Did you know that more than 10 billion laboratory tests are performed in the United States each year? Laboratory test results constitute an estimated 70 percent of a patient’s medical records and are vital to the diagnosis and treatment of illness and disease. Did you ever wonder where your blood goes after the friendly “vampire” or blood-sucker” takes a few vials?

Behind those friendly people with the needles and vials of tubes often known as phlebotomists are other individuals called technicians or technologists. These people have gone through either a two- or four-year education program and then are certified to run laboratory tests. They take the time and effort to make sure each specimen is properly processed and analyzed through the various machines.

Like nursing, laboratory is facing a severe shortage of personnel. Within a few years, it is projected that the laboratory work force will be half of what it is now.

As National Medical Laboratory Week is right around the corner, April 20-26, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize all of the women and men who have made a commitment to the laboratory field. It is a behind-the-scenes profession that many of us take for granted; yet, it is one of the most fulfilling and rewarding professions a person can enter because every vial of blood that is touched makes a difference in someone’s life.

Beth Marsing
Sedro-Woolley


Christian attitude and racism

Amy Sullivan’s book “The Party Faithful” brought back boyhood memories of my hometown evangelical Baptist church. Like her, religious beliefs led me to become a liberal. Being taught that all were equal in God’s sight, I reasoned that to view anyone else as inferior was unchristian, but many fellow church members openly displayed racist attitudes.

I arranged for a locally popular black athlete to share his views and experiences at an evening service. “Wink” worshipped at the “separate and unequal” Second Baptist Church and umpired our local church softball league. He told of the discrimination and indignities he’d experienced despite his popularity, such as driving 100 miles to get a haircut. (Local barbers said they hadn’t the training or equipment to cut “Negro hair,” but in truth, they feared their white customers’ reactions).

He spoke earnestly and eloquently about the civil rights struggle in the South. The first question after he finished was, “Is King a Communist?” Other questions and comments revealed similar misperceptions and ignorance about our black neighbors.

Foundational religious values led me to join the war on poverty and work with disadvantaged inner-city youth and prison convicts. I joined a multiracial church, marched with King for open housing and against the Vietnam War, bought a house in a racially changing community, and organized a block club to reduce neighborhood tensions.

Sadly, my hometown church, now “independent and fundamental,” eschews such “liberal” issues as war and peace, economic injustice and poverty, global warming and hunger, genocide — and racism.

Larry Edwards
Burlington


Public deserves true reporting

I find it interesting that only one news outlet, namely “The Drudge Report,” is consistently reporting on the huge oil finds off of Brazil. Would it be that news of that sort does not fit your agenda or the agenda of the majority of the press in the U.S.?

True reporting rather than manufactured and cherry-picked news would be the least so-called “news” papers and TV news programs could do. As a member of the “public,” I am sick and tired of everyone being treated as though they are morons who cannot be told what is really happening.

Alan Davis
Stanwood


Of religion, the universe, truths

I was reading the Religion section of the Herald when a series about the universe came on the History channel. It caused me to pause to consider the relationship between the two.

The amount of knowledge we have learned about the universe in the past 25 years has been absolutely mind-boggling. And we continue to learn more on almost a daily basis. And this isn’t conjecture. We’ve sent space vehicles to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. We have a picture record of parts of our universe we didn’t even know existed, and have hard samples from the moon and Mars.

Early mankind had no frame of reference for all the new and different things he kept running into. His lack of knowledge made him fearful of the unknown and he very often made them deities and built religions to them.

Today, we have the knowledge and skills to solve the unknowns. We no longer have to fear what we don’t yet understand. Unfortunately, there are those who don’t want us to be well-informed and without fear. More unfortunately, many of these individuals are in some religious group. They teach the innocent and vulnerable that the Earth is only 10,000 years old, that man can walk on water and live inside whales, etc. And worse, they practice and teach discrimination, hate, greed and self-rightousness.

Humanity is on a slippery slope to oblivion — with global warming, population growth, hunger, poverty, ignorance and war. Religions can and should make a positive contribution toward resolving these issues, but they won’t as long as their members continue to live in the past while refusing to accept the realities staring them in the face.

Jim Grenfell
Sedro-Woolley