Nov. 24: Letters to the editor

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Occupy fizzles

Re Occupy Protests Barely Hanging On (Nov. 23): I note that when Canadians occupy a square in Toronto that is anarchy, and when Egyptians occupy a square in Cairo that is democracy.

Go figure!

A. Trevor Hodge, Ottawa

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Congratulations to civic authorities for their clearance of protesters in Ottawa and Toronto. Sincere congratulations for their care not to repeat the police violence of the G20 protests. Insincere congratulations for thinking that the social and economic outrages that have inspired the occupy movement are merely a nuisance. Letting the populace go back to sleep will delay a reckoning; it will not solve the problems, which are very real, and decidedly not a matter of hippie impudence.

Michael Morse, Peterborough, Ont.

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Weak enforcers

Re Days Of Blindly Topping Up Medicare Over (Nov. 22): The problem is not so much in imposing conditions on the provinces, but in actually enforcing them. How do the feds do it when Ottawa is only contributing 20 per cent or so to health care spending in Canada? That 20 per cent is hardly a hammer to hit the provinces over the head with for misbehaving.

Add to that the fact that Canadian prime ministers are loath to take the provinces on – witness Stephen Harper's caving in on the non-existent fiscal imbalance, seat redistribution in the House of Commons and a federal securities regulator. I hate to admit it, but the provinces are now driving the public-policy bus in Canada today. Sir John A. must be turning over in his grave.

Peter McKenna, professor of political science, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown

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Sacred health cow

The report of Don Drummond, A Prescription for Canada's Health System, must be viewed with a large dose of skepticism (Top Economist Warns Canada Against Two-Tiered Health Care – Nov. 17). It counsels against a larger role for private health care in improving efficiency and accessibility, in the face of ample evidence to the contrary.

Virtually all G8 and Western European countries that also pioneered universal health care evolved parallel systems, with significant private-sector care augmenting a government-sponsored program. Perusing annual OECD and WHO reports on health care worldwide reveals that these countries consistently provide superior care and patient satisfaction, have far shorter wait lists for surgery, better access to physicians and diagnostic technology, and for the most part at a lower cost, than Canada.

Kurt Samer, MD, Vancouver

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Got to go!

The hockey coverage in Tuesday's Globe outlines both the beauty and the insanity of our national game.

Sidney Crosby is back, thank heavens, after nearly a year recuperating after a vicious hit to the head, and is pictured scoring a classic goal. The next page, however, underlines two of the current hockey sicknesses.

Milan Lucic "just misses his mark" your caption writer notes (Bergeron's been there – Nov. 22). Mr. Lucic is clearly two feet off the ice hurling himself at an opponent. Charging? Boarding? Interference? No, No, No.

He is just "finishing the check" in hockey parlance, despite the obvious lack of a puck in the action.

Below is a second photo of two Islanders crashing the net. Both players are in the goalie's protected zone, the blue ice, one running over the Penguins' goalie. Penalty call? No.

You reported Monday that there were 80 concussions last year in the NHL. "Finishing the check" and "crashing the net" have got to go.

Jim Herder, Aurora, Ont.

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Library cuts

Patrick White's article about the Toronto Public Library Board running out of options to cut an additional 4.3 per cent from its budget (Citizens Rally Against Shortened Library Hours – Nov. 22) drew me back to the original intent of the Ontario Public Libraries Act, which I developed in 1984.

It gives municipalities full financial control over their public library's budget. If the elected council disagrees with a library board's financial decisions, it has the right to make different ones.

If the Toronto Public Library Board feels it has reached the limits of responsible cuts, it should let council members decide from where any further cuts will come. In short, force the elected members to stand in the public gaze and defend their position.

Wil Vanderelst, former director of the Ontario public libraries branch, Toronto

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Fear-driven diplomacy?

Paul Heinbecker's reluctance to see Iran challenged militarily over nuclear weaponization (Think Twice, Canada – Nov. 22) is depressingly reminiscent of the fear-driven diplomacy that bred a calamitous do-nothing policy when the Nazi state remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936.

And we all know how that turned out.

Stu Woolley, Kingston

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Breast imaging

I am unfortunately one of the Stage 4 breast cancer patients with bone and liver metastasis, which translates to being terminally ill (In Breast Cancer Debate, A New Chapter Begins – Nov. 22). We can live with the disease for some time, being treated until those very expensive and harsh treatments stop working. At the end, they all stop working. Only 20 per cent of Stage 4 patients survive five years or more.

My family physician was following a two-year guideline for mammography. I stretched it to 2.5 years. There was no family history of breast or ovarian cancers. Somehow, it got missed that there were other cancers in the family, and I was still not menopausal at the age of 58. That last alone should put me in the high-risk category. Nobody told me that.

When diagnosed with Stage 2 cancer five years ago, I had multifocal, very aggressive tumours. I wonder if I would be a "survivor" if I'd had my mammogram yearly? Most of us dying would rather deal with the stress of a false positive than metastatic disease.

Krystyna Hahn, Calgary

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Women and their doctors are even more confused? I don't know why. Over the past two decades, the benefit of screening women between 40 and 49 has repeatedly been examined by objective expert panels.

Since 1992, screening benefits have been deemed trivial twice by U.S. National Cancer Institute panels, twice by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, twice by the Canadian task force and soon to be three times by the Nordic Cochrane Collaboration. Each time, the imaging industry has trashed the conclusions and instilled doubt in the population.

More recently, in addition to the very small screening benefit, substantial harms are being demonstrated. Of 2,100 women screened, 10 will be unnecessarily treated. Furthermore, breast-cancer death rates were declining before screening was implemented. Thank therapy, not screening.

Cornelia Baines, MD, professor emerita, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Toronto

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What's extra virgin?

Re The Great Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Scam (Nov. 23): All along I was labouring under the delusion that extra-virgin oil was simply made from the most unattractive olives available.

Wayne Newman, Vancouver