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Thursday, June 20, 2024

Jordan Williams: We can't afford cancer drugs - but can afford this?


While cancer patients wait for the Government to "find the money" to fund desperately needed modern drugs, the very money meant for health research and saving lives is being flushed down the toilet.

At our weekly staff meeting this morning, the research team took me through the latest batch of grant funding decisions by the Health Research Council.

My heart sank.

But first, let's remind ourselves what the Health Research Council is.

According to their website, their purpose is to "support high-quality, high-impact research by investing in People, Ideas and Priorities." They describe themselves as "the home of health research in New Zealand" and "here to improve the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders through our process of identifying and supporting high-quality, high-value research that delivers far-reaching impact within the health and science landscape."

Here are a few examples of just the first round of 2024 funding:

Hapai te hauora: Breathing your ancestors into life

"Hāpai te hauora’ as ‘breathing your ancestors into life’, captures the breadth & connections of a generation – rangatahi Māori–a generation moving forward together. This proposal builds on an HRC funded project (18/651) exploring the ways rangatahi Māori make sense of & live hāpai te hauora through navigating journeys of hauora & wellbeing."

Approved funding: $649,992

Sounds like high quality science!

Timely access to rongoa Māori in cancer care services for Māori

"Prior to Europeans arriving in Aotearoa, traditional Māori way of healing was the only hauora practice Māori knew. Today, traditonal Māori healing is known as Rongoā Māori. Rongoā Māori is diverse and can include karakia [prayer], wai [water], waiata [music], himene [hymns], access to the ngahere [forest] and whenua [land].

For Māori health consumers, patients and whānau accessing cancer care service; seldom they are made aware of or referred early to rongoā Māori practitioners at the beginning of their cancer care journey.

Using tikanga Māori methodology and codesign with Māori health and iwi providers, our method will include interviews, and hui with rongoā Māori practitioners, Māori and Iwi providers, Māori health consumers, patients, their whānau, and health professionals in primary and secondary care in the MidCentral region to explore ways for timely access to rongoā Māori in cancer care services for Māori."

Approved funding: $398,771

Rather than fund the actual cancer medicines, the Government is funding "timely access" to cancer treatments witch-doctor cancer treatments. Ka pai!

If that doesn't work, there is always music therapy:

He Whiringa Māramatanga: Kaupapa Māori Music and healing

"‘He Whiringa Māramatanga’ examines Kaupapa Māori music theories and practices as a pathway to accelerating Māori well-being. Music theory is primarily located within Western music notation, harmony, and tonality. However, Māori Music, particularly through oral forms such as waiata, karakia, ruruku, haka, pūrākau and whakapapa, illustrate that Māori have unique key elements of musical theories to create oral legacies and that traditional Western definitions of ‘music’ may be confining for true Māori creative expression."

Approved funding: $377,550

Or maybe barbershop is more your [cancer's] thing?

Health Promotion Interventions for Pacific men in a Barbershop

"A rapid review and qualitative interviews with Pacific men, Pacific heath promoters and Pacific barbers will inform the development of a Pacific health promoting behaviour change framework and intervention programme in a barbershop setting owned by a Pacific health provider. This first of its kind research in New Zealand brings together an underserved population, a non-traditional setting for health promotion and culturally unique health promotion interventions delivered by an unconventional health and wellbeing workforce (barbers)."

Approved funding: $150,000

Or how about, rather than fixing hospitals, or building nicer family waiting rooms, we splurge $150k on a study to understand the space?! Thanks to the Health Research Council, a very well paid 'space cadet' is coming to the rescue:

Building room for equity: Culture centred design of hospital waiting rooms

"Hospitals in Aotearoa New Zealand have a legacy founded in colonialism and are designed to Eurocentric principles of health and well-being – as such they are inequitable by design and represent culturally unsafe spaces for many people who need to access them. Hospital waiting rooms represent one such space. Our project is premised on understanding how physical spaces in hospitals shape people’s experiences of care."

Approved funding: $150,000

For our religious taxpayers, there's one for you too!

Research into Hine te Iwaiwa (who was the wife of Tinirau and is known as the spiritual guardian of childbirth who assists at the entrance into, and the exits from this world) is, as we understand it, worth a lot of money as cutting-edge science.

Guided by Hine te Iwaiwa: Exploring Maramataka [traditional Māori lunar calendar] influence on pregnancy Outcomes

"This research aims to explore the effects of incorporating the maramataka, a traditional Māori lunar calendar system guided by the goddess Hine te Iwaiwa, into the context of pregnancy care for wāhine Māori and Maori Midwives."

Approved funding: $400,000

And then there's the help for our Pacific friends.

Remember, these grants are not for front-line services to help Pacific communities, but rather to "support high-quality, high-impact research"...

Development of a Fijian Model of Health

"The research seeks to develop a Fijian Health Model to address Fijian peoples health in Aotearoa New Zealand."

Approved funding: $649,561

Here's a thought: why not get New Zealand's own health model right (to serve everyone living here) before we start ethnic segmentation of our health system?

Then there's this grant, for nothing other than to support an academic's professional development!

He Kaakaakura Whakamaatau [Translation: An Experimental Green]

"This programme of senior leadership research and training for Dr Belinda Borell will build on her expertise in kaupapa Māori research and enable her to pursue a development and capacity building plan to grow both her expertise and that of emerging researchers. Focusing on historical trauma, mixed methods will explore poverty and abuse in care."

Approved funding: $649,997

We had a quick look into Dr Borell. If you thought her work was, well, scientific, I've got some bad news.

This is her Massey University profile:

Belinda (Ngati Ranginui, Ngai Te Rangi, Whakatōhea) has recently completed her PhD, The Nature of the Gaze: a conceptual discussion of societal privilege from an indigenous perspective. The thesis explores how Kaupapa Māori paradigms can make important contributions to research topics that may not be of direct or immediate relevance to Māori communities. Insights gained from a Kaupapa Māori investigation of white privilege in Aotearoa New Zealand are discussed. The thesis argues that cultural hegemony is maintained through structured forgetting, silence, and suppression of dissent which has dire consequences for dominant cultural groups as well as marginal. Structural racism and privilege are amenable to analyses utilising similar frameworks albeit from opposite sides that can provide valuable insights to understanding inequity more broadly. I also examine ways in which Kaupapa Māori analyses of white privilege can illuminate pathways of redress that will benefit all New Zealanders and provide more embracing perspectives of nationhood.

Dr Borell was also recently awarded the Hohua Tutengaehe Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Health Research Council of New Zealand to further her research into societal privilege.

Congratulations to Belinda for the $649,997 for her 'professional development'. Who knew naval gazing paid so well!?

These are just a selection of the nutty grants that the Taxpayers' Union will be highlighting over the coming weeks.

But make no mistake, while we can laugh about the decisions being made in Wellington, for the parents of those kids sitting on oncology wards, there is no humour in this.

More than $30 million of the Health Research Council's annual budget of $125 million seems to have very little to do with health. That money alone is nearly half what is needed to fund the 13 cancer drugs that weren't in last month's budget.

The cancer drugs are not unaffordable, it's a matter of priority.

While Nicola Willis can shift some of the blame for the underfunding of Pharmac onto the last Labour Government, it simply isn't good enough to suggest there isn't enough to plug the gap, when we are still spraying money up the wall on nonsense like this.

She needs political pressure to make the tough decisions and push back against the woke bureaucracy and academic establishment making these decisions.

The money isn't going to where they say it is.

Jordan Williams is a constitutional and commercial lawyer who is Executive Director & Co-founder of the Taxpayers' Union. This article was sourced HERE

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

We need an auditor general investigation into the persons responsible for allocating this funding and for the funding to be stripped from the HRC because they clearly lack sufficient discernment to manage such large sums of money.

Kay O'Lacey said...

Thanks to Jordan and the TPU for ongoing excellent work. I used to write satire about things like this but have given up as satire just writes itself now in the news..

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

So the effective treatment for cancer is to remove the patient to land that s/he has a connection with near a forest, and play music, some of it religious, interspersed with prayers.
Who needs expensive drugs?

Willow said...

I respect what Jordan has written but as a critic of modern pharmaceutical medicine also believe that people may have turned to weird stuff because of some unscrupulous actions in main stream allopathic medicine.

The recent Covid scam is just one example. Big pharma definitely prevented alternative cures like ivermectin being used. More and more evidence is coming out from reputable medical sources that the vaccine can cause heart inflammation and cancer. People like Angus Dalgleish, world expert in melanomas has expressed concern about the vaccine.

I believe also the placeobo effect and counselling can produce an observable effect . This is probably what is happening with the weird therapies mentioned.
All cultures have used herbs which can in some cases, proven by research, be better than pharmaceuticals.

Distinguishing between genuine natural cures and nonsense is the issue as is the bigotry of the medical establishment.

Doug said...

This government is just as reckless as the last one when it comes to financial credibility.What happened to the CEO and his management skills ,mergers etc.I guess like most of them ,he majors in hot air production.

Anonymous said...

The real problem here is not just these racist bluggers scamming the NZ taxpayers, but also the gullible people in charge of these funding decisions.

There can obviously be no tangible outcomes from this witch doctor B.S. - so why is it being funded ?

Under Ardern we paid out as I recall half a million dollars to some Maori for research on the singing of the waves on the Hokianga harbour or something like that - just one of many examples where we were duped by Maori for nonsense that wouldn't pass the pub test, or scrutiny by any reputable off shore organization.

So let's identify the people of the committees that make these idiotic calls, when clearly applications like these should be immediately binned.

Come on, if you are so proud of your work, stand up, be identified, and justify your decisions.

Anonymous said...

Reading this made me incredibly upset. I have lost both of my parents to cancer and my sister is also terminal. I do not understand how we have all got to a place where this sort of thing happens at all. It just disgusts me. Two small children just lost both of their parents to cancer and still we get this!!!!

J.lee said...

Be sure to let HRC your views on this

Peter said...

This would be a joke if it weren't such an utter disgrace. I agree with anon@11.47 - the persons responsible for allocating this money are patently inept and their 'guide' is clearly woke and DEI orientated. Shame on them and they should never, ever again have a hand on the allocation of taxpayer's money.

Anonymous said...

Err, hmmm, but, double but - I "thought that the NEW Minister of Health was going to sort this all out". What happened?

Did HIS -
- Govt Limo break down collecting HIM one morning?
- office computers fail, due to a malware issue, created by the previous Govt
- appointments diary fail to list an important meeting with the Health Research Council - or due to "urgent business in the House" did he skipped the meeting
- HIS plea to the PM to go to the Switzerland (instead of Mark Mitchell), for the Ukraine Peace conference fall on deaf ears??

My Optician tells me "my eyesight it okay"- but the money going to - read the article, why?

Allen said...

Another WOFTAM that needs to be shut down, saving the money they give out and the salary, office space and running costs of those who work there.
I once had a boss who's favorite trick was to stop/close something down and see who missed it. It often had surprising results.

Anonymous said...

I thought the Coalition Government was cutting out wasteful spending? Looking for a Māori remedy for cancer is probably why lifespans were so short. There wasn’t one. When Māori who rely on, for Māori cures, start dying early again, I suppose colonisation will be blamed.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely preposterous !

A scandal like this should be headline news in every newspaper in the country.
It should be the lead item on TVNZ news.

Seen anything ?

Why not ?

Simply because the people running them are complicit in the deliberate destruction of NZ as a democracy.

$2M just peeded away and our media doesn't care.