In the comment section of my last column a person who goes by the alias Couchman wrote:

“Mrs Mandaville, it’s clear Mr. Traxler wants to argue and continue to insist science is a Chinese menu where one can pick and choose what parts of science should and should not be trusted. Climate scientists use the same chemistry, physics and biology that people who build jets, skyscrapers, bridges, medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

“A while back Mr. Traxler wrote about his treatment for prostate cancer and praised the doctors who were treating him and the advanced science used in his treatments. Given Mr. Traxler’s propensity to challenge some science, I am left wondering why he didn’t seek out someone who would treat him with mercury, arsenic or give him a few good bleedings if modern science is so suspect.”

Please note I used complete paragraphs and did not take the Couchman’s words out of context.

The first paragraph missed the point of the column, but that that is not unusual for Couchman. The column’s point was that, if true, if we take the climate change folks at their word, then it is all over for humans on Earth. The point was that taking them at their word, believing in them 100%, totally accepting the science, the explosive growth in the third world will end human life.

Couchman has a habit of never reading the column before he/she comments. He/she has placed quotes around things I never said, taking them out of context. A very cowardly and unethical thing to do.

It is the second paragraph that is contemptible, actually below contempt. I wrote of my treatment for advanced, aggressive, prostate cancer to help others, to urge men to get tested and to not fear treatment. Stories of the side effects of treatment being worse than the cancer are all over the chat rooms. I had a friend tell me he would never undergo radiation as it was more painful than the cancer and did not help, it just made money for the medical corporations. I found the treatment to be difficult but hardly painful or even very unpleasant, no worse than a cold. I wrote of the side effects and treatment with full candor. Again, with the goal of helping others.

Walking the readers through the process and telling all I hoped would calm irrational fears and men would be more active in testing and aggressive in treatment. Well that was before the Townbroadcast became a publication that condones, even encourages mocking and ridiculing those who dare attempt to help others. Management will deny this of course.

The mockery must be directed at a conservative columnist, however. Bleeding, arsenic, mercury, really? No good deed goes unpunished. The editor could have added a note after the truly contemptible comment made by Couchman as he has done dozens of times for the four liberal columnists, to include the column in question; he jumped in twice on the side of the leftist, but condoned wholeheartedly Couchman’s vile attack.

Couchman mocked me for not believing in “science” and believing my doctors. If they had given me the wrong diagnosis four times in the past, as the climate change folks have, I would have questioned them. The east and west coasts are not underwater as Vice President Al Gore promised in his 1992 bestselling book Earth in the Balance, nor is all life destroyed by acid rain, fried by the sun because of the hole in the ozone layer, or frozen from global cooling.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. So just when did questioning scientific theories become a bad thing?

I will never again attempt to help educate folks in the pages this publication nor recommend others do. The entire series of columns on treating prostate cancer was totally nonpolitical, again with the goal of helping and educating. Being attacked while trying to help others is sad, and even worse is the editor embracing contemplible actions.