Letter of the week: Frank Davis, Mt Albert
It puzzles me why the Government doesn't apply the same thinking behind our Fair Trading Act to the sales process for housing (Weekend Herald, June 26).
Under the Fair Trading Act, a vendor has to clearly advertise the selling price for goods and
services, however the target selling price for a house is often kept secret, especially when an auction is involved.
The intended effect of this is to push up the price as high as possible.
If we want to reduce house prices a simple solution would be to ban auctions and require the selling price to be clearly advertised.
To quote from the government website: "Under the Fair Trading Act (FTA), you have the right to clear and accurate prices for products and services, and factual advertising."
Why should this not also apply to house sales?
Election result
John Roughan (Weekend Herald, June 26) repeats the fiction: Winston Peters "put the Labour Party into office after the 2017 election… he distorted the election's reflection of public opinion."
Incorrect. Bill English could easily have won the 2017 election, outright. National could have governed alone. All they had to do was offer the voters enough of the policies that the voters wanted. They chose not to.
But wait, there's more. After the election, English and his strategy team could easily have won New Zealand First over to their side. Just compromise a little (Winston would prefer them to the Greens). National could have formed a stable coalition government. They chose not to. And they totally underestimated the new woman, the better craftsman.
Arch Thomson, Mt Wellington.
Prostate tests
Regarding Conor English's article (Weekend Herald, June 26) on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests: The extraordinary unreliability of the test and the multiple risks associated with the transrectal biopsies that commonly follow results showing elevated levels of PSA, mean that the PSA test is a very blunt instrument.
Many authorities regard it as worse than useless as a diagnostic tool unless it is done repeatedly over a period of time and shows a sudden elevation. A specific experience is not a useful tool for the formation of policy or even individual decisions any more than "my grandfather smoked all his life and never got sick" is evidence that smoking is not bad for health.
Multiple trials, easy to find online, show no significant difference in 10-year survival between those returning high and low PSA levels.
With the greatest respect, the individual experience and thoughts of a communications specialist are not as worthwhile as the conclusions of researchers who have studied large populations for long periods.
Peter Calder, Westmere.
Balancing risks
In response to Mr English's article (Weekend Herald, June 26) regarding screening and in particular men's health: Firstly, there is no such thing as a WOF for a human. It is a common misconception that the human body can be compared to the "workings of a machine" when biological systems are infinitely more complex.
Secondly, the history of screening is littered with controversy and emotive decision-making. All tests have false positives and false negatives and they need to be put into context for the individual. This raises obvious issues as what to do with an abnormal test result, the PSA being a case in point.
Morbidity caused by unnecessary treatment of a healthy individual can be every bit as bad as that caused by a missed diagnosis. It is often better not to perform a test unless there are clinical indications to do so.
Navigating unbiased and correct clinical information, balancing the risks and benefits, and applying it to the individual in a clinically relevant manner is still best performed by your doctor. I agree that paternalism is dying a much-needed death but we still have your best interests at heart.
Dr Leon Cloherty, Consultant in Intensive Care and Anaesthesia, Whangārei Hospital.
