Letters
Prostate prognosis
Congratulations on promoting articles increasing men’s awareness of health issues (“Screening meemies”, February 13). Prostate cancer is so poorly understood by the average New Zealand male (and usually his partner) that any enlightenment can only be beneficial. However, the boxed story “Prostate fears and facts” missed critical information: prostate cancer usually begins near the surface (capsule) and thus often has spread before it causes symptoms. That is why the cancer is often not detected until it has spread. Conversely, benign enlargement (BPH), common in men over 60, occurs from the centre first, compressing the urethra and causing reduced flow.
Jim Tucker is right in that population screening (at present) is not a total answer to sensible diagnosis, but serial testing by a man’s GP over time – combined with biopsy and a consideration of the man’s age – allows appropriate diagnosis and treatment. Microscopy of a positive biopsy can indicate (using the Gleason score) how aggressive the cancer cells are, and with the rate of increase in the blood test (PSA velocity), a good estimate of the likelihood of death by prostate cancer can be made.
One fact is certain: a removed prostate, (by surgery, external radiation or brachytherapy) will not kill if the removal occurs before the cancer spreads.
Dr Lannes Johnson
Clinical director, Harbour Health
Modified thinking
Wait a minute: the US State Department sends out its science adviser and suddenly this person is supposed to be objective enough that there is no longer the need to properly seek out the other side from the New Zealanders who have led the local critique of genetically modified food? Nina Fedoroff came specifically to counter the case these Kiwis have made for New Zealand to continue to produce only GM-free food. Yet they were absent from “Morsel combat” (February 6).
Despite Fedoroff’s claims that GM is needed to “feed the poor” and cope with climate change:
No commercially available GM plants are significantly more drought-tolerant or better able to cope with climate change – there are only research programmes. The same claims about what such research could do were made a decade ago, and each year the realisation grows that the science required is much more difficult than expected.
No commercially available GM plants produce meaningfully bigger corn cobs or such – there is only research. Sophisticated plant breeding is what has continued to deliver the big gains. Contrary to what Fedoroff implied, plant breeding is very different from GM.
More than a dozen years after GM crops were commercialised, over 98% of all GM acreage is confined to soy, corn, canola and cotton. GM remains a very narrow set of techniques but GM developers want governments and societies to pre-commit to the GM approach: to have weak rules and to fundamentally alter Brand New Zealand.
Simon Terry
Executive director, Sustainability Council
(Wellington)
Accounting for rugby
If, as Lloyd Morrison thinks, rugby is an efficient and accountable industry (“I’m very happy”, February 13), can he explain why poor old Auckland ratepayers and the general taxpayers are expected to stump up huge amounts of money for the Rugby World Cup? No other industry would get away with that.
Also, if the industry is so accountable, why is Graham Henry still there after the last world cup?
Paul Hicks
(RD1, Warkworth)
Meeting standards
Nobody is arguing we do not need to improve many aspects of learning in our schools, especially for the 20% of students who struggle to gain basic skills.
One school of thought is that National Standards will do something to address these issues (Editorial, February 13). They are seen as a panacea that will raise standards, provide clear information to parents and expose teachers and schools that are failing our students.
These believers, however, do not seem to be able to provide any evidence to show how this will happen. Plenty of evidence shows that where National Standards have been introduced they at best have made no improvement and at times have been detrimental. The only country that clearly comes out ahead of New Zealand in its levels of literacy is Finland, which has neither national standards nor national testing.
We can already identify students who are having real difficulties in learning literacy and numeracy skills, and they exist in every school. We need to diagnose why these difficulties exist and give these children the training and resources they need to meet their individual needs.
Parents do deserve to have accurate and understandable information on how well their children are progressing, but they deserve much better than the simple pass or fail that National Standards suggest. Anything more than this, however, is challenging for schools, as parents have different levels of understanding and expectation.
Our children deserve something much better than the simplistic concept of unproven National Standards. They are most likely to become a meaningless layer of distraction in schools, gobbling up scarce resources with no discernible benefit for our students.
John Garner
Principal, Collingwood Area School
I am bemused by the fracas about National Standards. I taught for a number of years in the primary school system, mostly year one and two children, moved on to secondary teaching, went back to university as an adult student and then spent 25 years working in the adult literacy field.
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