Reply All | Letters: The 3.10.13 Issue

I was a real allergy skeptic until my own daughter experienced a life-threatening reaction to a cashew bar. More than a year later, a combination of care and luck has kept her anaphylaxis free. Of course, I was excited to read about a possible treatment for her in your magazine. But I am frustrated that researchers aren't doing more to try to determine what is causing this epidemic rise in severe allergic reactions. I worry that the focus on a cure dooms us to have more allergic kids rather than stopping the problem where it starts. AMANDA COOPER, Alameda, Calif.

Melanie Thernstrom wrote, "While food allergies cost an estimated $500 million a year, Congress recently appropriated only $28 million a year for research (compared with, say, $1 billion for diabetes and $5 billion for cancer)." Congress appropriated a research budget for allergies, however, that is 5.6 percent of the total economic cost. The budgets for diabetes and cancer only amount to 0.4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. BRIAN HUNT, Wheaton, Ill., posted on nytimes.com

THE PROFESSOR, THE MODEL AND THE SUITCASE FULL OF TROUBLE

You meet bikini model online and she asks you to fly an empty suitcase from Bolivia to Europe. What can go wrong? @ThankUAndGnite, via Twitter

Did the professor go through with the scheme because he believed his online lover was real and that this was a task to prove his worth? Maybe he thought he could use his appearance as an aloof nerd to make the case that he "accidentally" smuggled drugs. He's retelling this story even after it has failed in court, which seems to indicate that he actually was bamboozled. And yet what about those text messages? What about those days in the airport, waiting for the e-ticket to Brussels? He was never suspicious about the bag? Even the idiots in "Dumb and Dumber" knew the bag was cursed. DAN NGUYEN, on news.ycombinator.com

I've known Paul Frampton for more than 30 years. He's decent and hard-working. I never thought he had an exaggerated opinion of himself. I have a great deal of respect for him, far more respect than I have for the D.E.A. KEVIN CAHILL, PH.D., Professor of physics and astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Contrary to the implication in the article written about me, the behavior exhibited by both the lawyers and judges in my case was thoroughly professional and exemplary in all respects. The lawyers were able to prove my health was deteriorating in prison and probably saved my life by their work. While I admit that I showed bad judgment by checking in a bag belonging to someone else, I had no suspicion or knowledge that it contained illegal substances. PAUL FRAMPTON, Buenos Aires

NORA EPHRON'S FINAL ACT

Our 39-year-old son has acute myeloid leukemia, just as Nora Ephron did. Jacob Bernstein's moving reflection on his mother's illness brought not hope, but a companionship of shared experience — in this case the arbitrariness of this disease. Good writing can't outsmart leukemia, but it can keep us connected to life as we have it and remember it. JANET ZANDY, Rochester

This article provides an unparalleled, as of yet, glimpse into Ephron's mentality regarding her illness. It serves as a rebuttal to Frank Rich's New York magazine piece decrying the way in which those in Ephron's closest circles, including Rich, were finally told of the writer's illness: in a phone call from Jacob Bernstein, a day or two before she died. Bernstein calls those conversations "strangely beautiful," noting only that the longtime friends on the other end of the line "were startled and confused, but gracious." . . . Bernstein's essay reveals a devoted and admiring son coming to terms with the death of his larger-than-life, seemingly indomitable mother. STEPHANIE BUTNICK, on the Scroll blog, on tabletmag.com

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