The State of the Internet
David Clark's approach to the problems of the Internet ("The Internet Is Broken," December 2005/January 2006), to redesign its infrastructure, bears a similarity to the medical profession's approach in the 1960s and '70s to the "bubble boy" syndrome (severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID). Both are attempts to sterilize the environment so that the immune-deficient subject can survive. It did not work then for those patients, and it won't work now for the Internet's security.

The medical profession today takes care of SCID patients by giving them new immune systems through bone marrow transplants. We should be looking to do the same for our data, so it can travel throughout the existing Internet infrastructure.
Frank J. Sauer
Arlington, VA