Taking a pill
It is true that vitamin C, a water soluble vitamin, will normally be excreted in the urine when supplements are taken, because most diets have adequate amounts (“Hard to swallow”, September 29). However, many will find that, after an injury, a graze or a scrape, taking a 200mg supplement of vitamin C will aid the healing process, since vitamin C is needed for the synthesis of collagen, a protein necessary for the repair of a wound.
Janet Carrington (Dunedin)
Power use
The mischievous omission of Peter Jackson from the Power List (September 22) is surely a ploy to promote the article rather than a reflection of your panel’s views.
I’ve just finished reading Kristen Thompson’s The Frodo Franchise, a compelling and detailed examination of the Rings trilogy. It shows how Jackson’s dream has led to unexpected consequences, such as new business models for how movies, games and merchandising are created and sold.
The trilogy has also led to an explosion of independent film-making around the world; largely funded from the huge profits to the distributors in different territories who took a punt on a nobody and invested before the first movie started shooting.
Jackson may be our greatest cultural icon; he has revolutionised Hollywood and changed the image of how New Zealand is seen internationally. We will benefit from his vision for many years to come.
Arthur Baysting (Auckland)
I remain proud of my ongoing relationship with the Jackson clan. However, even when married to Willie, my name was never Moana Jackson. There has only ever been one Moana Jackson and that is he, “the well-known lawyer”. Anyone requiring astute legal analysis, please contact our clever uncle. Anyone wanting a concert, please contact me. Uncle Moana isn’t keen on singing in public.
Moana Maniapoto (Grey Lynn, Auckland)
NOTHING DRAMATIC
I was intrigued to read, in her review of Nicholas Shakespeare’s Secrets of the Sea (Books, September 22), that Charlotte Grimshaw believes New Zealand writers have a “problem” because “in human terms”, they “live in a place where nothing dramatic happens”. This will come as news to a significant number of very good New Zealand writers, including those who are well aware of the dramatic amount of desecration and destruction that has gone on here, and still goes on. It would be interesting to know Grimshaw’s definition of what’s “dramatic”. Perhaps the problem is that her view is insufficiently broad.
Brian Turner (Oturehua)
ZAOUI IN NZ
On September 13, the Director of the SIS stated that Ahmed Zaoui (Editorial, September 29) had ongoing associations with terrorist networks during his early months in New Zealand.
This is a little difficult to comprehend when Zaoui’s first eight days were spent in police cells and from there he was placed in solitary confinement for 10 months with a sign above his cell door reading “terrorist”.
John Wheeler (Turangi)
Just who, how many and where are these people who lionise and marvel at this “Kiwi folk hero”? Zaoui should have been on the very next plane leaving this country after his arrival, thereby saving taxpayers the three and a half million dollars wasted on him so far. Now we will have his family to contend with and, to add to the cost, probably a state house provided. Who is the “us” that he has supposedly charmed? Perhaps that should have read “conned”.
G N Paul (Blenheim)
OUTSOURCE ‘EM
I understand that the new CEO of Telecom is to be paid somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred times the average wage. The justification seems to be that this rate is set by the international market. My question is this: if New Zealand companies can outsource the workers’ jobs to countries (such as China or India) where wage rates are more “competitive”, why can’t the same be done with the jobs of the bosses?
Vera Robinson (Hamilton)
SHE’LL BE SWEET
Is aspartame, the artificial sweetener 951, safe, or is it causing an ignored epidemic (“Sweet surrender”, September 1)? The views of the Food Safety Authority on the controversial sweetener, coinciding with those of the manufacturers, seem to be more a case of defending current policy rather than critically examining research.
Gary Bowering of the Food Safety Authority (Letters, September 22) supports his argument that aspartame is safe by quoting a recent review. What he omits to mention is that this review of the artificial sweetener is funded by Ajinomoto, a manufacturer of aspartame. Although the reviewing panel is allegedly unbiased, the evidence and conclusions presented speak for themselves.
How curious, for example, that no mention is made of ethanol, the natural counterbalance to methanol. Ethanol is found in fruit, but not in aspartame, where the isolated methanol poisons the brain. Industry-funded studies finding no fault with aspartame are mentioned plentifully, but the few independent studies mentioned, showing various adverse effects such as cancer, seizures and nervous system damage, are criticised extensively.
In our view, the epidemic of aspartame disease rivals that of tobacco. This is why we have launched a petition asking for restrictions and education, if not a ban on aspartame.
If you currently have diet drinks, sugar-free products including medications, chewing gum and sports drinks (aspartame is found in more than 6000 products worldwide), and have unexplained symptoms, try the 60-day no-aspartame test and see what happens.
Alison White, Safe Food Campaign (Karori, Wellington)
ACC LEGISLATION
I was perturbed to read Jane Clifton’s attack (Politics, September 29) on ACC regarding the case of an AFFCO employee being shot in his employer’s carpark. As one whose professional life is largely taken up with challenging decisions by ACC and Accredited Employers, I suggest that commentators read the legislation carefully before waving the banner of indignation.
ACC legislation clearly defines a workplace and it includes the employer’s carpark. Several District Court appeal decisions have confirmed this.
A further clause in the relevant section of the Act provides that an employee is covered for personal injury in the workplace even though at the time s/he “may have been indulging in, or may have been the victim of , misconduct, skylarking or negligence”. (Emphasis mine.) Media comments on this case have so far overlooked this important fact.
Being shot is, without a doubt, a personal injury and the act of shooting is clearly misconduct. In a no-fault scheme it does not matter who or what caused the personal injury.
AFFCO is an accredited employer that has contracted with ACC to manage its employees’ claims for work-site personal injuries, in exchange for discounts on levies payable. Like ACC, AFFCO is bound to implement the law as it stands and cannot opt out of its legal obligations because one particular claim appears to be financially unpalatable.
Keith Reid (Kohimarama, Auckland)
SAFE AS MILK
Professor Keith Woodford hypothesises in his book Devil in the Milk that the A1 beta-casein variant in cow’s milk is causative of a range of diseases including type 1 diabetes (“The big milk shake-up”, September 29).
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking and destroying the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Part of the cause is inherited genetic factors. Equally, however, environment is a factor, as the incidence of the disease has increased dramatically over the previous two generations. It is intuitively obvious that drinking of (A1) cow’s milk by children cannot be a major factor in this increase. Consumption of cow’s milk has not changed appreciably during this time.
There are other possible explanation(s) for the increase in type 1 diabetes. One possibility is the clean and sterile modern environment in which children are raised. The “hygiene hypothesis” proposes that the increase in type 1 diabetes is partly attributable to reduced exposure to organisms that are part of the evolutionary history of mammalian immune systems. Crucial organisms (eg, helminthes and some mycobacteria) are recognised by the immune system as harmless or to be tolerated. This is important for the generation of specific immune cells capable of regulating the immune response and preventing autoimmune attack, a component of the immune system that is deficient in type 1 diabetes.
Living at a high latitude is associated with an increased incidence of type 1 diabetes. People in high-latitude countries receive less vitamin D from the sun. Is there a link here? Woodford states in his book that vitamin D “is not an obvious factor for type 1 diabetes”. On the contrary, however, there is considerable biological evidence supporting a role for vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is a co-factor for the immune system and increases the ability of the immune system to regulate itself.
My wife has type 1 diabetes, so our children have inherited an increased risk of type 1 diabetes. We are motivated to decrease their risk from the environment. On the basis of our understanding, gained as scientists studying the genetic causes of type 1 diabetes, we enjoy seeing them covered in dirt and protect them from the sun in a balanced fashion. They all drink cow’s milk containing the A1 beta-casein variant. Perhaps that explains the devil in them.
Tony Merriman (Dunedin)
PORT OF DEPARTURE
James Cook did not sail to New Zealand from Whitby (Letters, September 29). He learnt his seamanship out of there on colliers of which his ship Endeavour was an example. Cook sailed to New Zealand from Plymouth.
(Dr) Philip Temple (Dunedin)
DAIRYING AND WATERWAYS
Joanne Black (“Will dairying eat New Zealand?”, September 15) put the spotlight on the damage that farming is doing to our waterways. Massive increases in dairy herd numbers can only occur at the expense of water quality. Intensive dairying and clean streams cannot co-exist.
In 2002, Environment Canterbury found more that 80 percent of central South Island farms were breaching their effluent discharge resource consents. In December 2006, fines totalling $60,000 were imposed on a Southland diary company for contaminating waterways. That implies that little has changed.
If all dairy farmers had a genuine concern for the environment (and some do), the courts wouldn’t be imposing such penalties. Instead, Federated Farmers spokesmen choose to ape politicians and blame the media for reporting the truth.
The government, too, is guilty of failing to address the issue. With an election due next year, and dairy incomes at record levels, politicians are frightened to impose rigorous water conservation policies and risk political damage from a slowdown in the rural economy.
G Henderson (Northcote, Auckland)
BOVINE COLOSTRUM
Last week’s cover story “Hard to swallow” featured Trevor Lock of Functional Nutraceuticals discussing bovine colostrum. We refer readers who have asked for more information about this product to: www.purenzcolostrum.co.nz.
