Hard News: No Red Wedding
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Hebe,
And I really think the greenie-fringe-weirdo stereotype could be laid to rest.
Thanks Lilith. That is what I was really meaning. Mea culpa for a hastily tossed-off sentence that has led, when I returned just now, to a fracas about alt medicine vs conventional. Lots of interesting views on all sides.
I want to choose my medical treatments; but I entirely recognise that calls must be made about what is state-funded.
My million-dollar premature babies sure wouldn't have survived without high-tech intervention that did not exist ten years before they were born. Equally, every conventional medicine solution failed for long-term severe OOS in my case; but getting into "psychedelic dancing" as my skeptic partner calls tai chi chuan, alleviated and pretty much resolved years of pain and restricted activity.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
Mallard on the other hand, I personally think, would be a great Speaker.
Poacher turned gamekeeper..?
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This morning’s Herald reports a very strong poll result for Cunliffe’s Labour.
Greens up too.
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Great poll and a great response from Kevin Hague too about Greens' health policy.
I'm thoroughly reassured. Do y'all want me to post his email here?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Great poll and a great response from Kevin Hague too about Greens’ health policy.
I’m thoroughly reassured. Do y’all want me to post his email here?
Absolutely!
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This is the response from Kevin Hague about the Greens’ onsite health policy re complementary therapies. I wrote to him under the assumption that he’d have a part to play in a new govt.
“Thanks for your email. I’m quite keen not to count my chickens etc, but on the other hand am also thinking about priorities for implementation.
The first thing to say is that our Health policy is pretty old and is currently in the middle of a complete rewrite, so by about early next year it will look quite different.
The second thing to say is that in practice such a unit already exists in the Ministry and has done for years, although it has little effect in practice. Where I have been called on to say what this particular policy means I have spoken about the need to enable ‘complementary therapies’ with satisfactory evidence of effectiveness (eg Cochrane review) to be used in our health services. This is sometimes a little tricky because such therapies may not fit easily with other categories (eg pharmaceuticals). You may be aware that in fact many of our established therapies have not had this standard of evidence to support them, but I figure we shouldn’t be funding or advocating anything new – mainstream or complementary – without good evidence.
Some of my medical friends also see a place for integration of therapies that may not have evidence of effectiveness (beyond placebo, which is pretty effective in itself) but which do no harm, in some situations and there are some good reasons to at least ensure health practitioners are aware of and educated about the kinds of complementary therapies their patients may be using, and that an environment is created where patients will disclose what these are.
My own view, although it’s going a bit far to say this is a Green party view, is that there is also a case for ‘catastrophic rights’, where a patient who is terminally ill has the right to access therapies with no proven benefit. Sir Paul Callaghan’s use of high doses of intravenous Vitamin C might be an example, and I have known many people with AIDS in parallel situations.
So that’s the thinking anyway. Of course I have other friends who say if a complementary therapy is shown to be effective then it is no longer complementary. By such a semantic argument anything called complementary would, therefore, be unproven, but that seems to me to be pretty unhelpful. I reckon most people would still think of manuka honey used in wound care, for example, to be complementary.”
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Stephen R, in reply to
re: anti-nuclear policy.
Three years later it had become something that the majority were proud to endorse.
My memory of that was that the reaction by the US Government trying to bully NZ into backing down was what sold it to the majority.
I'm not sure what could produce a similar indignant reaction to support green policies by people who are currently not supporters.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
Thanks Cecilia for relaying that response from Kevin Hague.
I'll have to say that I'm not all that reassured by it. The example of Sir Paul Callaghan and the high dosage Vit C is not really applicable as Sir Paul would certainly not have been expecting public funding to cover it. It is worrying that the Greens health spokesperson is making a case for allocation of public funds for 'therapies with no proven benefits' - hardly an evidence based approach. For prevention of bowel cancer, oh how much better it would be to allocate more funding to stepping up routine colonoscopic screening, there is very good evidence that it is an effective intervention. Having had a parent and a parent in law both die of bowel cancer I take a strong personal interest. -
BenWilson, in reply to
This morning’s Herald reports a very strong poll result for Cunliffe’s Labour.
Greens up too.
It's going to be an exciting year. I think we may finally have reached the tipping point, where Key drum beating that a Labour/Green coalition is Left, rather than Center, might actually be advantageous to Labour. If he manages to strongly project that there is a genuine difference at the political center that isn't just down to the "safe pair of hands" that National has somehow managed to persuade a minority that they have, he could actually energize the apathetic voter.
I think it's also important to note that most calculations of a coalition put the Maori Party on National's side. But they're like Peter Dunne, playing both ways. There really is no guaranteed alliances apart from ACT left for National. The last election really was a structural defeat for the political Right.
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Herald digipoll have tended to report better numbers for national than Roy Morgan. This reading for National more or less matches Roy Morgan's value of 41% for National from a couple of weeks back during the Labour leadership contest.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Well done Cecelia. That's a pretty reasonable starting point for a Health policy. I particularly like the comment that the existing document is being reviewed.
I like very much that when pushed to a decision they fall back on evidence and not ideology.
An interesting poll result this morning too, it would be really interesting to know what factors have changed peoples opinions, I suspect that the change in Labour leadership is less a factor than the way the chose the new leader. That is a defined process rather than a night of long knives.
Given the bump for The Greens as well I suspect some of the change is about the national party losing support as well.
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As someone participating in the Greens rewrite of health policy (although not leading it, we have very experienced and skilled policy convenors facilitating the process), I can say that Kevin Hague's response is an accurate characterisation of the process right now. There is a tension between existing recognised medical practice and non-recognised practices, and the way to resolve these is through evidentiary processes. Kevin's right to highlight that much of medicine has not passed through the level of scrutiny that new practices and drugs are receiving; the concept of 'evidence based medicine' (EBM) is actually a rather new one. The upside is that as a whole the discipline has strongly embraced EBM in the last 15 years, and that its impossible to go forward without making it the core of practice.
While many Greens still have reflexive shock against things which fall outside the naturalistic fallacy (if it occurs in nature with minimal human intervention it is better for humans), the strong outside criticism of the party on science has strengthened the resolve of science and evidence advocates within the party. Closing that gap is important to us.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
That's really good to hear, George. Considerably reassured.
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As for Cunliffe, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s been a poll bump. People are generally low-information participants in the political process, and he conveys a number of attributes that place him well to assert leadership. He’s tall, confident, sharp, well-dressed, and has a face that conveys neither too much hardness and threatening masculinity nor too much softness (not coincidentally, these are all attributes Key possesses). People are superficial, because we are animals and respond psychologically to a range of cues – which can be overcome with work, but that work is difficult even in normal circumstances. Helen Clark lacked in some, but used incredible political skills over 6 years as leader to overcome these and even turn them into strengths (before they became weaknesses against Key).
Already we’ve seen that National have sought to overcome these by attaching a strong set of negative attributes to Cunliffe, in the form of dishonesty and arrogance. So far they’ve bounced off, but I expect the personality-flaw attack to continue and intensify in the next year. It’s difficult win it on policy, as Labour is able to announce a large set of voter-friendly policies which will put National on the defensive trying to rebuff. The television political-entertainment group are torn between two competing objectives; wanting to turn intra-party politics into emotionally-laden high drama, and the desire to see a competitive and exciting horse-race between the two major parties. There’s one television in presenter in particular whose MO is highly tilted towards the former, but the rest can switch easily. It’s a good thing he’s out of the country right now.
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Promising sounding work on the health policy George. Exactly how Kevin Hague's "access to therapies with no proven benefit" plays out will be very interesting though...
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George Darroch, in reply to
Exactly how Kevin Hague’s “access to therapies with no proven benefit” plays out will be very interesting though…
That’s fair. At the same time though, evidence is starting to show that a supportive palliative environment, often with less aggressive treatments, is important to both quality and quantity of life. It’s a complex issue.
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Paul Williams, in reply to
I think we may finally have reached the tipping point, where Key drum beating that a Labour/Green coalition is Left, rather than Center, might actually be advantageous to Labour.
Wait for the obligatory response from Trotter though... actually, why bother. It's predictable and not terribly informative.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
This morning’s Herald reports a very strong poll result for Cunliffe’s Labour.
If you can't get a poll bump after six weeks of pretty soft media coverage, your incompetence is truly inspiring. The trick is sustaining it.
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Does that really stack up, though? I thought Labour’s main problem last time was a whole bunch of their voters not bothering to turn out.
If they don't go vote for you, you can't count them as your voters any more, by definition.
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Cecelia, in reply to
Hi, Carol. I think Hague is expressing a personal view about "catastrophic rights". Just the fact that he refers to Vitamin C etc as "no proven benefit" shows that he's a clear thinker but wants to extend some sort of hope and comfort to those who are terminally ill. I know what you mean about the value of screening but also think that the concept of "catastrophic rights" is interesting. I like what George said about a "supportive palliative environment".
With Cunliffe's mention of "predistribution" and the promise of thoughtful policy from the Greens, we could be in for a much better win next year than any boat race can deliver us.
I wonder where medical marijuana comes into a Green health picture?
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Paul Williams, in reply to
The trick is sustaining it.
Agreed. Shearer failed early. Cunliffe shouldn't, not least of all because he's a much more effective communicator but also because of where we are in the electoral cycle.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
That’s really good to hear, George. Considerably reassured.
Ditto. I really like how a wild threadjack has turned out to be so useful.*
*This was, of course, my cunning plan all along.
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Hebe, in reply to
Ditto. I really like how a wild threadjack has turned out to be so useful.*
*This was, of course, my cunning plan all along.Of course.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
wild threadjack
I'll feel less guilty now. Actually it's one of the things I have always loved about PAS - that discussions can wander the way real life discussions do, with discussion possible even when people have directly opposing opinions. And sometimes the wandering leads to interesting places.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
The trick is sustaining it
Especially since National have not spent much political effort yet trying to minimise the bump Labour were always going to get.
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