Posts by Cecelia
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Carol Stewart,
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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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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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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I've emailed Kevin Hague and asked him what "selected" means in their policy on complementary health practices.
I hope he answers and I hope their policy is just a leftover from an earlier period.
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the idea that it should be shutting down all rivals to big pharma
Hardly - health stores are still out there in large numbers. People have lots of choice. My beef is that ACC for example will pay for acupuncture for someone like me who carelessly carries around huge pots on her deck and injures her back. Then they quibble about other people's far worse injuries and won't fund the surgeries they need. I mean, don't spend scarce govt money on treatments that are less likely to work ...
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I kind of started this because of a strong distaste for alternative therapies being paid for by the government, as they are now by ACC. I wouldn't vote Green if it was in their manifesto because in my mind it would undermine all the brilliant work they're doing in other scientific/technology based areas: mining, climate change and so on. This might sound barking mad ... just my opinion but, but, I want the Greens to be totally credible to people of a scientific ilk.
Tracy and Islander, I know what you're saying: "proven" wasn't a good choice of word on my part. I've had terrible experiences with conventional medicine too but in the end I've found that the best treatments have scientific credibility, even if you have to be a very strong advocate for your own health within the medical system. I could give examples but anecdotal evidence is not enough to base a case on.
This isn't a matter of limiting people's choice but just having certain criteria for public funding. I guess I'm daring to say this on PA and risk being a bit troll-like because I desperately want a Labour/Green government. I've become so emotionally bound in this desire for regime change that anything standing in the way alarms me. -
Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to TracyMac,
Some of these treatments work for some but they never work for the bulk of people sent to them in the way that proven treatments do. I can sort of believe that a gifted practitioner can kind of use a treatment with a dodgy theory behind it in a way that meshes with the needs of some individual patients. (See, I'm not all Richard Dawkins ...)
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<q>But it might still work. I don’t know. It’s not clear. There appears to be the possibility it does work<q>
Is that good enough? Is that a reason for ACC and a future Green Party health minister to fund it? (I know they haven't said that, but ...)
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Deborah,
Great stuff:)
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Sacha,
evidence-based healthcare being broader than drugs and surgery
Which "complementary" treatments are evidence-based?
Sorry to be picky but this is my bete noir.