Fabrus will occupy Pfizer Incubator first
Thank you for your coverage of the launch of the Pfizer Incubator (“Pfizer’s ‘Incubator’ warms up new ideas,” Village News, Aug. 30, page B-1). La Jolla can be proud to be home to this new facility, where independent scientists and researchers can rely on Pfizer’s support as they work to identify new medicines to address unmet medical needs.
One clarification: the first occupant of this research space will be Fabrus LLC, which will be headed by Dr. Vaughn Smider of The Scripps Research Institute. Fabrus, a newly formed company, will be working to develop a unique technology to identify antibodies that might lead to new therapies. Your article misstated that Scripps would be a “user” of Fabrus.
Thank you for setting the record straight.
Alex Polinsky
Head, The Pfizer Incubator, Pfizer La Jolla

Democracy at stake
Some local election officials throughout the state oppose Debra Bowen’s courageous effort to return transparency to our elections. They claim too little time before the ’08 elections.
That is preposterous. In fact, a group in New Hampshire has published a handbook detailing every step of the process.
Throughout history, the most tried-and-true electoral system has proven to be hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots. True, there has always been fraud with paper ballots, but nothing like the scale that is possible with computerized electronic equipment, which permits one person to change an entire election outcome without leaving a trace. Besides observable, honest counts, increasing citizen involvement keeps the (much reduced) cost of elections within the local community, and ends secrecy and “outsourced” corporate-run elections.
This is extremely urgent. Please contact your county election officials and speak up for fair, open, observable elections. Nothing less than our democracy is at stake.

Sally Castleman
National chairperson, Election Defense Alliance, (www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org)