Editor, RE: “Bleaching: Why you should avoid it at all costs” (The New Times, January 16). You won’t stop suicidal people from harming themselves. But perhaps if you can make them understand that eventually their skin will look like that of a zebra, with skin interspersed with blotches of dark and light patches that makes them much uglier (or at any rate far less attractive) than they believe they now are, they might think twice before they apply those carcinogenic lotions. My view is that it is almost always impossible to improve on the wonders Mother Nature has endowed us with. The proof is in the sickening blotched skins of those who have tried to “improve” on natures magnum opus that is the human body, including its beautiful—and yet so highly functional—external packaging, our skin! You got the coloring nature gave you for a purpose, and not just for aesthetics. Mwene Kalinda