What Milken Case Says About ‘Success’

“Milken’s Mission” (Feb. 18) is a peculiar and never-ending dilemma.

Was he only a target for charges by Wall Street and government out of control? He pleaded guilty to six out of 98 counts of lawlessness stemming from his Wall Street experience of ruthlessness and greed.

Can his subsequent efforts nullify his past behavior? How typical is our materialistic, short-sighted ways.

What lessons have we yet to learn from academia, who honor this type of “success”?

I am reminded of a poem so befitting this situation:

Hear the new professor speak.

No more Latin, no more Greek.

Classics must be done away with,

Give them something they can play with.

Books like this before them thrust

How to build and run a trust

How a Senate might be bought

How to steal and not be caught

Mold and train him so he can learn

How to skin his fellow men.

Thus, he’ll be a power with men

And a model citizen.

And, some day when he is greater,

He’ll enrich his alma mater.

HERMAN H. MATT

San Clemente

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As Michael Milken’s urologist and medical director of CaP Cure (the Assn. for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate), I wish to underscore one point that got lost in your story.

Milken could have responded to his diagnosis the way most patients do--with denial or anger or reluctant acceptance. But Milken responded by taking action and founding an organization that in just three years has become the world’s second-largest source of funding for prostate cancer research and is already having a dramatic impact in our efforts to find a cure.

What your readers may not know is that prostate cancer is now the most diagnosed cancer in America, and that the number of new cases is expected to grow this year by more than 30%--to 317,000. Meanwhile, another 41,400 American men will lose their lives to the disease--one every 12 minutes. Yet new figures released by the National Cancer Institute show that federal research funding for prostate cancer, which had traditionally been underfunded, when adjusted for inflation will remain relatively flat. The result is a perilously wide funding gap--one that can only be bridged by the commitment and leadership of people such as Michael Milken.

He brings to this effort unique intelligence, enthusiasm and vision that heretofore has been lacking. For that he should be congratulated.

Dr. STUART HOLDEN

Santa Monica

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I’m impressed. It isn’t every convicted felon who can receive a 10-year prison sentence, write more than a billion dollars worth of compensatory checks and get virtually a whole front page of the Los Angeles Times’ business section devoted to his life. A life currently devoted to the very business he has been prohibited from engaging in.

And so modest! It isn’t every convicted swindler who would equate his choices in life with the beliefs of Jesus Christ! The T-shirt had “Mike’s Math Club” printed on it. In fact, the shirt should have read “Mike’s PR Club.” The Times is now an honorary club member.

TONY LYNN

Pacific Palisades

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In addition to teaching a class in math, Milken ought be taking a class in personal responsibility. How dare he compare himself and his criminal activities to the work of revolutionaries and Jesus Christ?

I suggest he be sentenced to a lifetime of reading James B. Stewart’s “Den of Thieves,” which is also recommended reading for anyone even slightly persuaded by this latest twist in Milken’s “holy revolutionary”--wholly irresponsible--public relations effort.

DIANA SHULMAN

Los Angeles

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If Michael Milken is a “misunderstood visionary,” then I am a soulless, billionaire arbitrager who couldn’t care less about the thousands and thousands of jobs I helped to extinguish in my power-drunk years at the top of the greed pole.

TODD WARING

Santa Monica