Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 29/8/24

What’s gone on in climate-change talks with China? Watts is coy while Brown buries his news about raising road revenue

Point of Order is disappointed that Climate Change Minister Simon Watts didn’t tell us much more about his chat with China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, Huang Runqiu.

Watts said the Chinese minister is departing New Zealand today ”after the Fifth Ministerial Climate Change Dialogue between New Zealand and China…”

Bob Edlin: Health Researchers Stumble Over Treaty

Health researchers measure the benefits of taking precautions – but they stumble when they bring the Treaty into considerations.

The headline on a recent press statement from Massey University showed what great things emerge from state-funded research, although it seemed to state the obvious:  New research highlights the benefit of injury prevention measures in Māori households.

Was research really required to find it’s a good thing to take steps to prevent injuries in Maori households – or any household, come to think of it?

Matt Ridley: New diagnostic devices will save lives and money

As happens in the media, the excitement generated last week by the headline that cancer could be detected in the blood was overdone. The results announced in Science magazine are a long way short of meaning that the earliest signs of cancer can be detected in people with no symptoms: the 70% success rate in finding DNA from 16 cancerous genes was in people already diagnosed with serious cancers. False hopes may have been raised. 

But behind the headline, there is little doubt that a revolution in diagnostics is happening.  Till now, the slow process of culturing infectious agents to identify them has not changed much since the days of Louis Pasteur. It is becoming increasingly possible to identify the precise virus, bacterium, drug-resistant strain, antibody or telltale molecule that defines exactly what is wrong with somebody, quickly and without invasive procedures or lengthy cultures in distant labs. Yet Britain is lagging behind comparable countries in joining that revolution.

Matt Ridley: Mental illness is the greatest research challenge

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, and his wife Priscilla Chan, a paediatrician, have announced their intention to spend $3 billion over ten years on medical research. Having met them last year, I thought I would take the liberty of making a suggestion as to how they spend their money.

Dear Priscilla and Mark,