Newer drugs might work better

Go-to restructuring Signs of sadism

I write in support of the women who presented a petition to Parliament on Tuesday calling for funding ibrance and kadcyla, new generation targeted chemotherapy drugs.

I couldn’t be at the march because I was receiving an infusion of kadcyla at the time. As far as I know I am the only patient in Wellington receiving kadcyla, which is because I have cashed in my Kiwisaver to pay for it.

Each time I receive it I think about the women who need it and can’t have it, many of whom were on the march.

Before I started kadcyla in May I was told that without it I would not be able to function by the end of the year. The cancer had taken over half my liver, a number of bones, two places on my peritoneum and I was at risk of renal failure. I am now on my seventh round and the tumours have shrunk significantly, blood tests are almost normal and I am leading an ordinary life.

Kadcyla is only appropriate for a small percentage of patients with her2 positive cancer whose disease has progressed. But for those patients it makes an exponential difference to life expectancy and health.

The advent of these new drugs seems to mean the drug regimes that are currently funded should be reviewed. Is it sensible to keep funding the very damaging older chemotherapies if there are newer drugs that do a better job? Lydia Joyce Wevers, Wellington Safety issues blamed on staffing cuts (Oct 16) notes that ‘‘restructuring has gutted the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) of experienced staff and industry is paying the price’’.

This lifts the lid on a much wider issue always ignored in the endless agonising over ‘‘productivity’’ – how much loss of productivity and real usefulness has been caused by the constant use of the go-to solution ‘‘restructuring’’ in organisations, especially in public sector ones over the past three decades and more.

As well as the actual loss of experience, survivors of these forays naturally tend to take their eye off the main game as they worry about how they might fare in the inevitable next restructure.

Corporate memory and experience do have a value but because the ideology says they cannot be measured these are ignored. Certainly the productivity of consultants and their ilk who are hired to recommend restructures has grown splendidly, but like the reported case of the trucking industry, the clients’ productivity has not.

The alternative is not ‘‘jobs for life’’ but the pragmatic use of continuous incremental improvement in all types of organisation. The state should be daring and try it some time. Alan Smith, Woburn As if the appalling treatment of the women revealed in the Women’s Refuge/Family Planning study (‘I wasn’t allowed to kiss my baby’, Oct 15) isn’t bad enough, what is just as bad is the inaction and ignorance of these sadists’ own siblings and possibly parents and wha¯ nau.

The kind of violence these men perpetrated didn’t happen in isolation – they didn’t wake up one day and decide to inflict these awful, unbelievable acts of hatred. There must have been some signs to have alerted other family members. How is it that no-one in their families did anything to help their wives, partners and probably children as well?

This man surely must have been violent before they entered the relationship with this woman so why have they kept silent about it all? Or have they not been believed or taken seriously?

How many mothers/sisters/ aunties would not have noticed that a new mother wasn’t breastfeeding her baby and asked about it? I’m fairly sure anyone I know would have queried the situation.

I felt physically sick when I read this article and I’m sure many other people would have too.

I think the next step should be a mandatory survey in which these so-called men are asked about their reasons for dishing out torture and degradation to people already smaller and less able to defend themselves. That would make for very riveting reading. Christine Conroy, Carterton [abridged]