Admittedly, there are many people on the streets who are unable to make good decisions for themselves and to take advantage of the services available to them. In these instances, the health services system needs to step up and do their mandated jobs to help these people adequately, and we need to raise our voices to assure that this happens.

In the case of many homeless people, their lifestyle choices and backgrounds leading up to these choices are mainly responsible for their plight. Whether fleeing homes of abuse, fighting the demons of drug abuse and alcoholism, the streets are not the only choice offered to humans. Please do not assume that I sit in an ivory tower as I write this letter; I, too, lived a childhood of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and am intimately familiar with the havoc these issues wreak on the rest of one's lifetime. I know exactly how difficult it is to get 'out the other end' of abuse.

My point here is rather simple: adult human beings have choices; children and animals do not. Of course there are many obstacles placed before adults in making wise decisions about their lifestyle, but the fact remains that there are alternatives available if one fights long enough and hard enough to put them to use, and again, we who are healthy must stand and fight with them.

Every animal that is involved in a human being's world has never had an opinion on how they will live out their lives. Whether captured in the wild as a reslt of another greedy scheme, bred to be a working aid, forced into zoos or show business, or simply taken home as a cute diversion in someone's life, the animal has no rights, no voice, no alternatives and no way out.

Society has a long way to go in learning how to exercise our powers (or not) over those who are weak and vulnerable and whose lives we govern. We must be careful not to put one living being's claims to humane treatment above another's...it is our responsibility to meed the needs of all creatures.

The Government would have us believe that we must choose one sector over another. Should we therefore ignore the children being raped or women being beaten or the homeless without shoes or developmentally handicapped stored in lock-ups or elephants being slaughtereed for their ivory or...??

We must not allow politics and laments of no funds to put us in a position to choose which helpless group we defend and support and which we leave out in the cold. Surely no one who reads a newpaper today can truly believe that the funds are not available to provide for both humans and animals in need...add up the amounts spent on politicians' junkets, posh office, boondoggles, the Olympics, etc., etc., etc. Then tell me we do not have the funds needed to shelter all of society's distressed.'