  A recently published letter reports a measurement of alpha decay from states
in 19Ne at excitation energies below 4.5 MeV. The measured alpha decay
branching ratios B_alpha are used to calculate the astrophysical rate of the
15O(alpha,gamma)19Ne reaction and to draw conclusions regarding the transition
between steady state and unstable nuclear burning on accreting neutron stars.
Here I show that the calculated astrophysical reaction rate is based on an
unreliable value of B_alpha for the 4.03 MeV state and point out a serious
internal inconsistency in the letter's treatment of low statistics alpha decay
measurements.
