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INEQUITIES IN CANCER TREATMENT

“When I saw [the cover], I started screaming and hitting myself and crying uncontrollably,” wrote Nancy Walker of Glendale, Calif., whose sister–who died last year at 63 from glioblastoma–did not have the option of the trial approach Alice Park described in “The Cancer Gap.” Park’s story profiled two women with glioblastoma, only one of whom had access to experimental drugs that are helping her beat the disease. “Yes, doctors are way ahead of where the FDA and insurance companies are,” wrote Tom Simpson, a doctor of pharmacy from Stockton, Calif. “Government needs to step in and require insurers to pay for medication use outside of FDA-approved indications when there is clinical evidence of their value.”

JOE KLEIN ON ISRAEL

Readers were struck by Klein’s column criticizing bigotry in the re-election campaign of Benjamin Netanyahu. Holocaust survivor Alfred Lakos felt Klein’s critique of the newly re-elected Prime Minister–in part for saying he would not support a two-state solution–was misplaced in light of continued hostility toward Israel; Lakos said he would support such a solution only “when the Palestinians will acknowledge the existence of Israel and want to live in peace alongside [it].” But others, like Mary Alice Larson of Springdale, Ark., thanked Klein for a “poignant, perfect delineation of our world’s most painful unhealed wound.”

THE GRANDPARENT CLOCK

Susanna Schrobsdorff’s essay on having children later in life–and thereby limiting the time they get to spend with their grandparents in their prime–struck a chord with Connie Wood of Auburn, Ala., who called the gap a “sad” circumstance for “the children who won’t be able to have lunch with Grandmom for their 21st birthday!” But great-grandmother Eleanore Poster of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., wrote: “It is not how old you are when you have children, it is how you stay young as you age,” adding that her 82-year-old husband “skied with the 7- and 9-year-old this winter.”

A YEAR IN SPACE

For the next 12 months, TIME will be covering a historic NASA mission to explore the effect of spaceflight on the human body. The mission will center on astronaut Scott Kelly (above), who will spend a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and his twin Mark, who will be monitored back on Earth. Our reporting will include dispatches from the launch, set for March 27, interviews with the Kellys and their families, video updates from the ISS and more. Check out a preview at time.com/space.

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