Activist’s legacy in work on ‘Lynda's Law' to boost compo
Women’s health activist Lynda Williams would have been chuffed to have seen the passing of what her colleagues are calling “Lynda’s Law”.
It isn’t law yet, but it was Williams’ tireless attendance at health agency meetings that first brought public and research attention to problems with compensation for patients injured on company-sponsored drug trials.
Williams died at her West Auckland home on Thursday, surrounded by her five children. She was 67.
She was diagnosed in October 2015 with terminal pancreatic cancer.
In discussing her many achievements in women’s health, she told the Herald last year that she wanted to complete unfinished business. Part of that was to improve compensation for injured trial participants.
“I said to her that if they pass a law, then it would be Lynda’s Law, referring to the fact that she was the inception of it,” Professor Jo Manning, of the University of Auckland, told the Herald yesterday.
Williams was at Manning’s inaugural professorial lecture last month. The lecture focused on the compen- sation issue, an important area of research for Manning, a legal academic.
“She had picked up there were these two cases of subjects injured in two separate trials,” Manning said, “and they had encountered difficulties in getting compensation from the pharmaceutical companies involved.”
“She talked to me about it and encouraged me to do some research.”
Government documents indicated departments had put up competing views on whether there should be a law change to return cover of subjects in privately sponsored trials to the Accident Compensation Corporation.
Business ministry staff had opposed the change but health officials would now run a review of ethical guidance on trials and might look at the wider issue.
“Lynda got on to this. She did the ground work, she went to all the district health board meetings, the HDEC [health and disability ethics committee] meetings, and so she picked up things that were happening,” said Manning.
Williams also had a strong sense of fairness and an empathy for the people harmed in healthcare.
She spent more than 35 years as a women’s health activist and, in her own words, “being a pain in the butt to the health system”.
Former health and disability commissioner Professor Ron Paterson yesterday described Williams as a vigorous activist who never hesitated in keeping the medical profession and health agencies on their toes.
Manning said: “Lynda was a grafter . . . she leaves a big gap.”