Key acts on folic acid debate
July 15th, 2009 at 8:49 am by David FarrarColin Espiner reports:
Prime Minister John Key has asked Crown lawyers to help the Government get out of the new folic acid food standard.
Yesterday, Key asked Crown Law to find ways to free the Government from its legal obligations to implement a requirement that folic acid be added to bread from September.
Pleased to see the PM get involved. It is highly desirable to get an out before September.
And Martin Kay has good news:
New Zealand has effectively been given the green light to axe rules forcing bakers to add folic acid to bread from September.
The office of Australian parliamentary secretary for health Mark Butler told The Dominion Post it was New Zealand’s call whether to proceed with the trans-Tasman standard, agreed in 2007.
“Whilst the Australian Government will maintain a keen interest in what New Zealand decides, decisions on New Zealand standards are the responsibility of the New Zealand Government. As permitted under the [food] treaty, New Zealand has opted out of the joint standard and so their standard is nothing to do with the Australian Government.”
That sounds encouraging. If the Ausies are not going to get upset, what is the issue?
Related posts:
- SST declares victory on folic acid debate
- No mandatory folic acid in bread
- Armstrong on Folic Acid
- The Folic Acid controversy
July 15th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Clark was famous for doing the same thing. Every time something went wayward with one of her ministers she would personally take charge of the problem.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 8:59 am
That man keeps impressing me more than he does not. Now. Time to wade into s92 and squash that dead as well.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Good! Now Key must get us out of all the useless UN stuff Clark and her government signed us up for. It is costing the country too much, it interferes with our ability to choose for ourselves and most of it is of doubtful value.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Nice to see, but I’d prefer a stronger team of ministers that doesn’t need the leader to step in all the time.
The entire Western world seems to be trending towards the ‘leader as sole decider and sole problem solver’ e.g. the increasing tendency in the UK for the leader and advisors thereof to make decisions for cabinet approval instead of cabinet making decisions as a team.
It’s all a little too Putinesque for me. In the West, we’re supposed to believe in the system rather than the power and charisma of individuals.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Well done Neville, now how about dropping the totally arrogant stance on the anti smacking referendum.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I’m not about to get pregnant – in fact as I am male I guess that would be difficult!
I do not want folic acid in my bread.
If something worthwhile can come out of this debacle it will be the awareness
of the need for women intending/trying to get pregnant to consider the benefits of
taking folic acid.
Surely its about Freedom of Choice AND Education
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:25 am
This really should be a non-issue.
What is the sense in mass medicine to solve a tiny problem. (Important as it is for some!) Supplements for pregnant ladies is the way to go.
Bread was never the right foodstuff to use as a medicine conveyor.
The Aussies never would have been bothered. It was a Sir Humphrey obsession, and the Minister was shown to be weak in the face of the grey suits.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:37 am
DPF,
“If the Ausies are not going to get upset, what is the issue?”
I’m not quite sure that is what the Aussies are saying here: ““Whilst the Australian Government will maintain a keen interest in what New Zealand decides, decisions on New Zealand standards are the responsibility of the New Zealand Government.” Instead, they are simply stating legal fact (in the end, it is a matter for NZ domestic law whether the folic acid standard gets implemented … we are still a sovereign nation). But they are also giving something of a warning shot (imho) by saying they have a “keen interest” in how NZ uses that sovereign power to decide. After all, one NZ government (not a political party, but the NZ government) agreed to adopt this measure. Then the government changes. Now a new NZ government wants to back out of that agreement, simply because it disagrees with the basic premise of the policy move (i.e. there aren’t REALLY any new safety issues here that alter the cost-benefit analysis). Which may well make Australia think “why do we waste our time trying to reach common ground on matters of regulation with these Kiwis, if every time there’s an election the ground rules change and the agreements go out the window?” And given how important this government (as with previous governments) think reaching common ground on matters of regulation with Australia is, that is a real danger above and beyond the immediate issue.
Bottom line – this is a diplomatic matter that has broader implications for the ongoing harmonisation of trans-Tasman markets. It isn’t really a legal issue at all!
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Who gives a fuck what the Aussies think about what we do with our bread?
Vote:Most of them are descendants of bread stealers in the first place!
July 15th, 2009 at 9:40 am
More importantly, whats happened to our ginger nuts?
Vote:http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2595174/Ginger-nuts-disappear-from-shelves
July 15th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Pregnant women who don’t know about folic acid probably won’t make good mothers either.
Maybe politically incorrect, but the truth.
They are trying to mass medicate to compensate for the countries poor social and educational record.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Good on you John Key, taking action in an area where you cannot lose.
How about tackling the big issues, like closing the wages gap, improving living standards and building my fucking cycleway?
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:58 am
AG: At a Ministerial level, I think Ministers will understand the role of politics. Key just needs to explain to Rudd that opinion at home is massively against the standard, it could hurt them in the polls badly, and they need a solution before September. Rudd will understand, and basically Key will owe him one. Ministers at the end of the day are politicians.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:59 am
wreck1080
“Pregnant women who don’t know about folic acid probably won’t make good mothers either. ”
Thus it is OK that their children should suffer by getting spina bifida? That’s not just “politically incorrect”, but downright evil.
Furthermore, folic acid needs to be taken 4 weeks before conception, and then in the first trimester of the pregnancy, to be effective in combating neural tube defects. So what about women not intending to become pregnant … should they take supplements “just in case”? And if they don’t, do they deserve kids with spina bifida too?
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Key’s move shows how weak and gullible Minister Mrs. Wilkinson is.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:11 am
DPF,
Quite right. But the point is, there is a trade off if Key does this … for example, it will make it tougher for NZ to demand Australia adhere to their (domestically unpopular) agreements with us on things like access of our apples to Aussie markets. Either governments stand behind their agreements with each other, or they don’t. And remember, this present problem is taking place in the shadow of NZ’s failure to implement the legislation needed to set up a Trans Tasman agency to regulate therapeutic products (as we agreed to do) … so we (as in the NZ government) have a history of failure to follow through in this area.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Wilkinson is a waste of space.Too weak to win an electorate seat. Too weak to be a minister.
I have had conversations with Wilkinson that make Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:20 am
AG, what you are descibing are risks. Almost everything we do carries an element of risk. Climbing ladders, walking out the front door, driving the car, crossing the street, having sex, having a flu’ jab, taking a panadol …. all carry risks of varying magnitudes. And what is our response generally? It is to be reactive commensurate with the level of risk involved, and also consistent with each persons perception of the risk. Thus some women will drink while pregnant and risk their baby having FAS, Some will eat cheese and take the risk of Lysteriosis, some will have sex without a contraceptive and risk pregnancy.
Vote:I have my assessment of the risk of eating bread that does not contain added folic acid (not to be confused with naturally occurring folate) and I’m sure you have yours. Nothing gives you the right to impose your risk evaluation on me or the rest of the population.
God knows we went through this argument enough over fluoride in the drinking water in spite of overwhelming evidence of widespread dental health benefits and major economic benefits to the nation. Lets attack areas of high risk (unwanted pregnancy, prostate cancer, deteriorating dental health, obesity, heart disease) before we get into marginal areas like this.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:27 am
when is the funeral for wilkinsons’ political career/ambitions..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am
“I have my assessment of the risk of eating bread that does not contain added folic acid (not to be confused with naturally occurring folate) and I’m sure you have yours. Nothing gives you the right to impose your risk evaluation on me or the rest of the population.”
Well – it’s not ME who is doing it. It is the Food Safety Authority, which consists of a wide range of persons with expertise and ability to represent various viewpoints. I simply think their assessment of the relative cost/benefit is worthy of some respect.
As for the general point of “imposing risk evaluation” on the general population, this happens ALL THE TIME. Why is the speed limit 100km/h on some roads; 80 on others; 50 on yet others? Why do the police close roads in icy conditions? Why do airplanes take off in some weather, but not in other weather? Why are seatbelts and motorcycle helmets compulsory? Why is iodinised salt going to be added to bread from September (something that no-one has mentioned here)?
I think what you mean is that you believe the expected benefit of the move (number of neural tube defects prevented) does not justify the “risk” (‘tho exactly what this “risk” consists of is unclear) of adding folic acid to all bread. Which is fine – that’s your assessment of the balance to be struck. But you need to recognise it for what it is – a subjective assessment (just like mine is).
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Woa let us take a step back here and just remember who decided to play god
and force you into this bullshit.
MNIJ this is at your party’s door
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Sorry Bok, but unlike you, I don’t have a “party”. I reserve the right to vote how and for whom I feel, and to hold my government to account.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Congratulations John KEY…..It is important that the Government listen to overwhelming Public Opinion and reacts when justifiable concerns are raised.
Vote:If folic acid is important for females then it can easily be included in the sexual practice education they now receive.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:03 am
MNIJ
Vote:Man you have a sense of humor. I just love this beauty:
“… and to hold my government to account.”
July 15th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Nappy change for jackboot.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Australia acts against charlatans, New Zealand protects them.
Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority (ANZTPA)
On 16 July 2007 the New Zealand Government announced that it would not be proceeding with the legislation designed to enable the establishment of a joint agency with Australia for the regulation of therapeutic products. This is in recognition that the New Zealand Government does not have sufficient support in the New Zealand Parliament to ensure passage of its Bill at this time.
Negotiations between the two countries to establish ANZTPA have been postponed. The Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand for the Establishment of a Joint Scheme for the Regulation of Therapeutic Products remains in place.
Australia remains committed to a world-class regulatory scheme for therapeutic products to ensure that the safety and efficacy of medicines and therapeutic devices in Australia is paramount.
Come on John Key, grow some balls and put in palce measures to protect citizens from the harm caused by fraudsters, or this will soon be the public face of NZ Medecine.
Vote:
July 15th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Key is starting to remind me of Kirk or the later (mad) Muldoon.
He’s probably left of Kirk though.
I hope I’m wrong but he won’t last (physically) if he continues to carry the country alone.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 11:58 am
“Now Key must get us out of all the useless UN stuff Clark and her government signed us up for. It is costing the country too much, it interferes with our ability to choose for ourselves and most of it is of doubtful value.”
Please provide a list of what we got signed up to in the last 9 years.
Vote:I think you’ll find it’s a much shorter list than you think, and usually of very little immediate impact on our lives. Most of our obligations to the UN seem to go back to the 60s and 70s
And many of them are things like we won’t use land mines …
July 15th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
AG, thanks for the response. I guess that you really proved the point that the risk assessment dictates (or it should) that speed limits and road closures, crash helmets and seat belts etc need to be regulated because the greater good is sufficiently large to warrant the intrusion into what had previously been people personal decision-making.
I’m not decrying the devastating effects of having a child born with a neural tube defect but the numbers don’t seem to stack up. Perhaps it a screening method should be developed like Downs Syndrome and termination offered in identified cases. I don’t pretend to know the answer but I also don’t think we have adequately defined the problem.
On salt I have the same problem as with folic acid. Non-iodised salt has been available for a while allowing choice, the wider spread use of salt grinders demands mined salt low in iodine and health fears over salt use hardening arteries have reduced our iopdine intake, but it has to be admitted that the incidence of goitre (once quite common) is a fraction of what it was. It may well be indicated as a widespread problem-in-the-making so I would like to see an argument for its compulsory use. I suspect that the salt thing was an Australian invention as I don’t think they have had the widespread iodisation that NZ has (and also NZ salt has been largely sea salt which has a high natural iodine level).
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
AG: “But you need to recognise it for what it is – a subjective assessment (just like mine is).”
And that is what freedom is, the ability to make your own subjective judgments and decisions rather than have some politicians and bureaucrats make them for you.
And we have to fight continually to preserve freedom because the bureaucracy inexorably removes it – almost always by claiming to avoid potential harm of every conceivable kind.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
What a fucking circus, the country has been in an uproar for the last week or so over this stupid issue, it should have been dealt to and put to bed before the peasants got worked up. For fucks sake it’s not as though it took a rocket scientist to sort it out. If the government struggles over something this simple to solve then God help us when we get into serious shit like the ETS cons and scams.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Dead right Bob.
I think Wilkenson has been hung out to dry a bit.
Forced to defend a siutaion she obviously didn’t like.
Key has done the right thing, just a couple of weeks too late.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Alan,
“And that is what freedom is, the ability to make your own subjective judgments and decisions rather than have some politicians and bureaucrats make them for you.
And we have to fight continually to preserve freedom because the bureaucracy inexorably removes it – almost always by claiming to avoid potential harm of every conceivable kind.”
I hear what you are saying, and have sympathy for your general position. But here’s the problem. The person who must “assess the risk” of not getting enough folic acid in early pregnancy is the mother of the child, yet the consequences of getting that assessment wrong fall on the child born with the neural tube defect (who can do nothing to avoid that risk). Added to this is the fact that folic acid is required UP TO FOUR WEEKS BEFORE CONCEPTION OCCURS … so there will be a significant number of women who simply cannot “assess the risk” as they are not planning pregnancy (unless you really want to argue every woman who engages in sex ought to ensure her diet is rich enough in folate to safeguard an accidental pregnancy?) So we have a situation of imbalance – the person who can choose whether or not to take the risk of lack of folate both lacks the information needed to do so (i.e. the fact they are going to get pregnant) and is risking the future happiness of another person (i.e. there is something of an externality issue involved).
What this means is it isn’t as simple as bureaucrats saying “we know what’s better for you than you do yourself”. It’s more a case of trying to take a step to redress a situation where risk and its outcomes are not well aligned.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
AG, firstly the risk is very small – about 0.02% per pregnancy I guess off the top of my head. Secondly, we don’t really know who is at risk or why that very small number of women get problems. Obviously 99.98% of women have no need to take any more folic acid than they already get in their diet. I would have thought the first thing to spend $4M on would be figuring out who is really at risk.
Yep, I do argue that any women who engages in sex and who is prepared to carry any resulting pregnancy has a duty to take reasonable precautions for the health of her child. Presumably in the existing state of our ignorance a routine check on folic acid levels is advisable followed by a review of whether the solution is dietary or medication.
Obviously the parents of an affected child suffer greatly as well as the child no matter what the cause or how avoidable it was. The best solution for such a rare occurrence is specific advice at the right time followed by specific targeted treatment.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Alan,
Not sure it is as straightforwards as you make out … it’s not a simple case of “don’t have enough folic acid, will have neural tube defect/have enough folic acid, won’t have neural tube defect”. Rather, its about increased/decreased risks of that occurring. So even if your 0.02% figure is right (how do you calculate it? Does it include terminations of unborn children with the disorder?), it’s not a case that only 0.02% of the population are a problem here. Rather, the problem manifests in 0.02% of pregnancies out of a far wider wider population of “at risk” mothers-to-be … and you can’t know until after the fact which of those “at risk” mothers will actually manifest the problem.
Anway, there’s all the material that the Food Safety Authority considered before making its decision at: http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/standardsdevelopment/proposals/proposalp295considerationofmandatoryfortificationwithfolicacid/p295finalassessmentr3568.cfm
I think you’ll find there’s been a fair bit go into it …
As for “The best solution for such a rare occurrence is specific advice at the right time followed by specific targeted treatment”, well OK. But shouldn’t we have evidence about how regularly those “at risk” mothers get medical checkups? I mean, advocating testing and treatment isn’t much good if those who need it don’t present at the doctor. And before you say “it’s then their fault if their kid gets spina bifida” … isn’t it a bit tough to condemn a person to a life in a wheelchair or on crutches, most likely with severe learning difficulties, ’cause their Mum was careless?
Finally, in citing the $4 million cost of this move, aren’t you doing the same thing BERL did with its cost-of-alcohol study? What is the offsetting value of the benefit (reduced medical costs/education costs/increased productivity over a lifetime of both the child and its parents) of the fewer cases of neural tube disorder?
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
AG, top of the head mental calculation was replacement birthrate for 4M pop 70 year lifespan must be about 60k per yr. 14 babies saved per year is about 0.02%. Can’t be too far out. Doesn’t include terminations – obviously another solution.
“it’s not a case that only 0.02% of the population are a problem here” How can we know that? It’s simply that we do not know how to identify the problem accurately enough. That’s why we should put the money into research instead of mass medication. Especially when the report you link to shows that at best the folic acid additive will save 20% of the neural tube defect babies and at worst only 6% of them. Good research might lead to solutions that can save most of them.
Personal responsibility in parenthood is necessary or Darwin’s law kicks in to rectify the problem anyway. Give people the knowledge and the tools to fix their own problems and stop treating them like idiots.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
AG, I further note from that report that the incidence of neural defects in NZ is already only half that of Australia, and that the evidence from Canada is that impacts of the additive were least in areas where the incidence was already low.
Furthermore most of the affected babies die in pregnancy or very soon after birth so in fact do not face a lifetime of suffering. And there is some evidence that more spina bifada babies survive to endure life when folic acid is added. Is that a good thing?
Regarding risk of unintended consequences the report largely covers “not proven” studies where the uncertainty in the results is too great to determine whether adverse impacts occur.
Obviously the risk is that small adverse consequences for the total population may turn out to far outweigh modest benefits for a tiny fraction of the population.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I loved JKs piece to camera last night on One. A not so subtle coded message to the Sir Humphries “Stop F…. about and find a solution”
Beat the grey cardy wearers Socialists Sir Humphries didnt like that.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Alan and AG – well done. An interesting argument you both put forward,
and on balance I believe won by Alan IMHO by a nose.
It is indeed a pleasure to follow a debate where the participants don’t
Vote:resort to slagging one another.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Oi, fredinthegrass … I’m not finished yet!
Alan … In the year to march 2009 there were 64,160 live births. I’ve seen the figure of neural tube defects prevented by the folic acid addition to bread as between 4 and 14. So you were pretty close!
As for your points … “Doesn’t include terminations – obviously another solution.” Or another problem, insofar as the termination imposes psychological costs on the mother (and her partner) – life is not as easy as “no baby, no problem” (to paraphrase Stalin). And we can know the rates of women with insufficient folate levels … the Food Safety Authority data I pointed you to refers to a number of studies that assess just this. It’s just we can’t know exactly which of those women will have children with children with neural tube defects. But the point is that it is not simply a matter of getting a very few women to take more folic acid … it is necessary to get a much larger population to take more in order to prevent the negative outcomes.
As for your claim “Personal responsibility in parenthood is necessary or Darwin’s law kicks in to rectify the problem anyway. Give people the knowledge and the tools to fix their own problems and stop treating them like idiots.” I think this is a gross misuse of “Darwin’s law” (by which I assume you mean “evolution”) … unless you think personal responsibility is a genetically predetermined condition that can be naturally selected for? Which would come as news to most geneticists!
Finally, I guess I’m happy to trust the question “is adding folic acid to bread likely to result in fewer children born with neural tube defects than not doing so” to an expert body like the Food Safety Authority … yes, experts can get it wrong. But they also can get it right,
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
AG: “unless you think personal responsibility is a genetically predetermined condition that can be naturally selected for? Which would come as news to most geneticists!”
Hardly, all kinds of conduct around mating and care of young are clearly genetically predetermined.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
As usual, a simple issue has been stuffed beyond redemption by political considerations. The great unwashed have won again. Key made the “correct” decision.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
“Hardly, all kinds of conduct around mating and care of young are clearly genetically predetermined.”
Of course they are. But it’s a stretch to go from that sort of high level, residual carryover from our development on the African Savannah to saying that the specific behaviours that constitute “personal responsibility” in a modern society are the result of our genes … or do you seriously think the particular trait of “taking folic acid suppliments” will be naturally selected for over generations?
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Ag, no, but I think that most people are genetically programmed to care about their children and given information and tools will try to do the right things.
As can be seen from the significant uptake of voluntary folic acid use by pregnant women which has apparently had improvements as significant as those hoped for by the advocates of mass medication according to the paper you quoted.
Those that don’t act may terminate their genetic lineage – though the mathematics of this particular affliction may not be decisive.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Lots of words in the newspapers and TV.
Folic acid, bread, flour, Australia treaty, mass medicate like fluoride, good for pregnant – bad for prostate.
The stupid people take all of this in and argue about it, the “what if” brigade.
Now even the stupid can use a computer (well some can)
Vote:They should Google “Codex Alimentarius” and see where they end up.
Or do they care as long as they are happy?
July 15th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Sometimes Government needs to act to improve the health of the population. This can be justified entirely on economic grounds. This should appeal to all capitalists that contribute to this blog. The recent rantings about “mass-medication”
with folate are based on….. silliness I may respectfully suggest. Equally, as I have previously written here the prostate connection is tenuous, unproven and contradicted by important evidence in the same paper. For those of you actually interested in the medical side of the debate, which is very well proven now, I offer you this extract from “eMedicine”. I hope the (economic) benefit of abortion as detailed below is recognised by the real right wingers (rather than religious nuts) amongst you.
“A worldwide decline in neural tube defect births has been recognized over the past 3 decades. For example, in the United States, New England has seen the incidence of spina bifida drop from 2.31 per 1000 births during the 1930s to 0.77 per 1000 births during the 1960s.
Reasons for the dramatic drop are not completely clear; however, certain factors probably play a part. The decline in neonates with neural tube defects paralleled the development of commonly used prenatal screening tests such as alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and ultrasonography. Termination of pregnancy increased 50-fold in the British Isles after the introduction of prenatal screening. Termination of pregnancy probably accounted for a significant amount of the decline of neural tube defects in the United States, as well. In Atlanta in the early 1990s, more than 30% of affected pregnancies were terminated based on prenatal test results. When epidemiologic analysis is complete, use of periconception folate in the United States is most likely to impact the incidence of neural tube defects in the late part of the 20th century.
In September of 1992, the US Public Health Service made the following strong recommendation:
All women of childbearing age in the United States who are capable of becoming pregnant should consume 0.4 mg folic acid per day for the purpose of reducing the risk of having a pregnancy affected with spina bifida and other neural tube defects. Because the effects of high intakes are not well known, but include complicating the diagnosis of vitamin B-12 deficiency, care should be taken to keep total consumption less than 1 mg per day, except under the supervision of a physician.
That statement and the abundance of scientific data available to the public have reinforced the observation that risk of delivering a child with a neural tube defect significantly decreases with the ingestion of periconception folate.
The evidence of reduction in neural tube defects after folic acid fortification has continued to mount. In 1998, folic acid fortification in specific foods such as cereal became mandatory in Canada, a country in which the prevalence of neural tube defects was higher in the eastern provinces compared with the western provinces. In 2007, scientists in Canada published a population-based study in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which they analyzed the effect of this fortification.2 The observed reduction in incidence rates of neural tube defects due to food fortification with folate included a 53% decrease of spina bifida cases, a 38% reduction in anencephaly cases, and a 31% reduction in encephalocele cases.”
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Oh by the way – another great example of Key showing complete LACK of leadership and another flip flop.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Thehawkreturns (9.30) ignores warnings from research reports this year on possible effects of folic acid on incidence of prostate and colorectal cancer. The references have been posted repeatedly on Kiwiblog threads on the folic acid-bread debate. Instead Hawk relies on earlier material. Hawk seems to think science stands still. He also weakens his argument by ad hominem dismissal of posts he disagrees with as rantings.
The Lefties are fighting a rear-guard action on this issue, but at least it’s bringing them out of the woodwork. Even Kathryn Ryan on Labour Radio’s nine to noon today uncharacteristically seemed a little biased on the issue.
Voters put Key into power to halt Labour’s nanny-state crap, and it looks as though he’s going to do his job on Labour’s undebated (in the House) move to doctor all bread with folic acid. Good on him.
I’m sure if there’s sufficient demand bakers will offer a line of bread with folic acid added. Put in your order, Hawk. Or do socialists eat cake instead? Perhaps that’s why King/Labour decided on placing the additive during bread baking rather than in flour during milling as in Australia.
We are in debt to DPF for keeping Kiwiblog threads open for rigorous debate on the issue. Thank you DPF. We also are in debt to Katherine Rich for her great effort on behalf of the bakers for the benefit of all of us. What a contrast she is in so many ways to the H1 harridans.
Vote:July 15th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
“The entire Western world seems to be trending towards the ‘leader as sole decider”
You mean “deciderer,” Simon.
Aren’t we lucky?
Vote:July 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Thehawkreturns should consider the following simple arithmetic.
At any given time the proposed mass medication of New Zealanders will be of no benefit to at least 99.9999% of those affected and at worst (Ministry’s most pessimistic forecast) 99.99997% of those affected. If even a small proportion of those medicated suffer adverse affects that will likely far, far outweigh the benefits. The studies quoted of risk assessment do not have anywhere near the accuracy necessary to dismiss such an outcome – by many orders of magnitude.
Vote: