MICHAEL Moore’s column “Cuba wins the cigar for public health commitment” (CN April 30) raises a number of issues.

The Cuban experience indicates the benefits of a health system that is not driven by “supplier push”, as the Australian and American health systems are said to be, with undue pressure on regulators to approve new products.

Moore’s comment that Australia is doing much better than Cuba seems exaggerated when life expectancy is 81 in Australia and 79 in Cuba, and that is largely a reflection of slightly lower infant mortality in Australia (one or two more per 1000 live births). Australia is not doing much better, and is paying a lot more.

What I would have liked to hear from the article is HOW the Cubans are achieving comparable health outcomes on a budget that is 1/20th of that in the US and also a fraction of the Australian health budget.

It appears that there are quantum improvements that could be made to our Australian system without costing any more. It is about health reform on a massive scale.

The Cuban integration of different systems of medicine can be translated to other countries, Australia included. Moore’s mission, as president-elect of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, is to promote and protect global public health. I trust that the federation is not “supplier driven”, and can act outside conventional straitjackets to reform world health, taking lessons from the Cuban relative freedom from the pressures of international businesses.

Jenny Heywood, via email

Glued to a screen

SURELY, columnist John Griffiths, an idiot is not so much someone who understands and chooses to correct grammar as someone who misses his bus stop because he is so glued to his almighty phone waiting for it to tell him when to get off the bus!

I suspect John Griffiths missed out on grammar because he has spent his life glued to a screen.

Neil Dunn, via email

Colour of language

A SCIENTIST once said that research is the scalpel of truth. Having read “Be Alert and Alarmed”, by the well-known author and researcher Elaine Walters, I must agree.

She quotes from “A manual for the drug policy activist” (1994, page 24) by Michael Moore, former ACT Minister for Health: “I blatantly colour the language to assist in building the picture of the failure of prohibition”. Ms Walters explains that this colouring of language about street drugs is consistently used as a deceptive and pacifying technique.

For example, “soft drug”, “recreational use” and “safe injecting room”. If anyone believes that ice, heroin, cocaine and cannabis etcetera, which are linked to 70 per cent of crime and either cause or are associated with at least six shocking mental illnesses, can be used safely, it may well be that Shakespeare was right and we have arrived at: “Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind” (King Lear).

Colliss Parrett, Barton