To the editor:

In 1994 the voters of Spokane County elected Dexter Amend, an M.D., as coroner. By the time his term was over he’d cost them more than $400,000 to settle lawsuits over mishandled death investigations.

The coroner is a death investigator, not a forensic pathologist. Given that we live in a rural area, I would rather have a veterinarian as the coroner because he is more likely to be able to identify a death from an illness transmitted from an animal (swine flu) than would an eye doctor.

I urge my fellow voters to retain Dr. Robert Bishop as Island County coroner.

Jeannette Carpenter

Clinton