‘Bad Behavior’

It is indeed unfair, as Margaret A. Hagen argues (“Giving People License to Behave Badly on the Job,” Commentary, Aug. 22), to require employers to accommodate unreasonably “bad” behavior on the part of workers with “so-called mental disorders.”

Likewise, it would be “bad” of us to abandon unhirable fellow citizens to panhandling and crime. Obviously we must devise ways of helping emotionally disabled people to be functional employees while not infesting the workplace with sociopaths. Hagen’s uncharitable diatribe is not a “good” approach to a difficult human problem that requires understanding, compromise and a willingness to be helpful.

PETER LARSEN

Lake View Terrace

Evidently, Hagen has not done her research on Tourette syndrome before writing her article. I refer her to the catalog of publications from the National Tourette Syndrome Assn. Hagen would find a wealth of resources to verify the “genuinely biologically determined” aspect of Tourette syndrome, as well as the true statistics on coprolalia.

Or better still, Hagen could also go to to her local library and read “Tourette Syndrome and Human Behavior” by David E. Comings MD, world-renowned geneticist from City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte.

LORETTA A. STAEBLER

Encino