I would encourage the Legislature to pass the bill mandating HPV vaccination for young teenagers.

In men HPV is known to cause throat cancer. The treatment for this disease is radiation usually accompanied by chemotherapy. Having your head blasted by radiation for six weeks while ingesting poison is, to say the least, a terrible experience. You may or may not survive but you will never be the same. Trust me, I know.

If there is something as simple as a vaccine that will save our kids from this fate then we owe it to them to pass this bill.

Even if the Legislature doesn’t pass this bill, I would encourage parents to get their kids vaccinated.

Thomas Welch

Hawaii Kai

Trip to D.C. sounds like a big waste of money

Why is a trip to Washington, D.C., being planned to “learn more about the status of the former Superferry vessels” when it will take years to get one back in service (“Ship ahoy?” Star-Advertiser, Feb. 4)?

I realize the state has a serious information technology problem, but did not know it was so bad that senators cannot find needed information on the Internet, or send an email or snail-mail or make a phone call to the Navy instead of an expensive trip to Washington.

This is manini but symptomatic of the waste of our taxpayers’ money.

Shirley Hasenyager

Kailua

Silversword decline foretold HC&S decline?

The silversword decline that started sometime around 1991 parallels another notable decline, the yield decline of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, an irrigated sugar plantation on Maui, where a crop decline starting in 1990 resulted in a decision to close the plantation (“Study cites dry weather for silversword decline,” Star-Advertiser, Feb. 4).

Could the remarkably close timing of these two long-term events be something other than coincidence?

Robert T. Martin

Paia, Maui

Sugar plantation was there before newbies

Maui residents who purchased their homes in Kihei recently, let’s say within the last 10 years, and complained of the smoke from the burning cane, should read Lee Cataluna’s column (“Maui sugar workers intent on going strong till the end,” Star-Advertiser, Jan. 31).

They not only accelerated the closure of a 145-year-old company, but also the end of what appears to be a classroom that taught ingenuity, independence and critical thinking — on-the-job training at its best, not like the “snowflakes” some of the institutions are turning out: kids who melt when confronted with obstacles or opinions different than their own; kids who need “trigger words” and space to survive their college lives.

I also wonder why in the world they bought there in the first place.

Dale K. Yamauchi

Makakilo

Transportation planning for Pro Bowl was awful

I am a local NFL Giants fan who had fun at the Pro Bowl.

I took the Pro Bowl express bus from Kapiolani Park for $12.50 round trip — no problem.

Why was there zero promotion for this bus? I rode it to other games but was not sure if it was running this year; I went to the same spot as last year, hoping it would be there.

Tailgaters did not have to show tickets to park and took all the parking spaces. There was no free NFL Saturday practice at Aloha Stadium this year, and Turtle Bay was closed to public where the NFL players stayed.

No planning and no public transportation promotion equals a Pro Bowl parking fiasco.

Goodbye, Hawaii Pro Bowl.

Tom Sebas

Waikiki