Kudos to kidney chains, coverage
Thank you for bringing attention to the topic of live kidney donations (“Live donors give new life to recipients at the UCLA Kidney Transplantation Program” March 16). I was part of the first kidney chain on the West Coast.
I donated my kidney so my wife could get a live kidney and get off dialysis and the transplant list much sooner. It is truly life-giving and paying forward. Dr. Jeffrey Veale did a miraculous job on my wife’s transplant. The kidney chain is a great way to donate and help give people life.
I urge everyone who might know someone on the transplant list to consider a kidney chain.
Steven Shaevel, School of Dentistry
Column’s calumny misrepresents Lent
In response to “Stop feeling guilty, indulge in the pleasures of life,” (March 16), Jordan Manalastas certainly has a gift for eloquence ““ if only he didn’t miss the point completely.
Lent is a time of penitence, not of guilt. Christians choose to be a little harder on themselves during Lent to identify more closely with Christ’s suffering.
A much more simplistic comparison would be the way elementary school children sometimes choose to have their heads shaven to identify with a beloved friend or classmate plagued by cancer. It is simply a gesture of love. Is training yourself to become the master, and not a slave of your desires, really depriving yourself of your humanity?
Cheers to you for giving something up for Lent. Next year, I hope you decide to give up bashing harmless, age-old religious traditions.
Katrina Murata, Class of 2008