Diana Wichtel: Where even good news turns bad

Newsflash. It has been conclusively proved that health is bad for you. Independent studies have revealed that daily exposure to health pages and grim-faced television health reporters planted outside hospitals scares the hell out of me.

It's meant to. Like sexuality, Health (with a capital "H" for "hysteria") has become a media construct that sells. There's nothing like an over-hyped new cancer cure - Lyprinol anyone? - or a fresh food scare to get everyone's attention.

Take hormone replacement therapy. In the years since I first heard of it, it has gone from being possibly bad for you to being not too bad and maybe quite good. Medical thinking has shifted to a considered "HRT? Are you barking mad?" Or, as long-time HRT sceptics such as Sandra Coney tend to put it: "I told you so."

I'd just stopped feeling guilty about wine and chocolate, briefly deemed to be good in moderation, when further research revealed that nine out of 10 killjoys now believe they might not be after all.

Arrghh. It's got so bad there are now health scares about the health scares. Something called the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford has identified some worrying new syndromes. There's "warning-fatigue" by which people get desensitised and end up ignoring all warnings, even the useful ones.

Then there's "riskfactorphobia". Sufferers become obsessed with purging all risks from lives until they have no lifestyle left to purge.

In tribute to the contradictory nature of health advice, I suffer from a bit of each. I certainly experienced some serious warning-fatigue at the news that bread (even the jaw-wrenching variety we eat at our place since I read too many reports) might give you cancer.

It's something called acrylamide that occurs in carbohydrates when they're fried or - and this really was the last straw - baked.

Some people are saying enough is too much, already. As a result of the bread scare, an American health group is taking an absurd legal action against an organic food retailer's bread in a bid to draw attention to what it calls equally absurd food health scares.

Forget the information superhighway. We are all trapped, like over-worked lab rats, on an out-of-control health information roller-coaster.

In this anxious environment, nothing could be more welcome than some good news. The new "smart drug", Glivec, is looking good news indeed. It's getting spectacular results against chronic myeloid leukaemia, with far fewer side-effects than the less-effective, standard treatment. Encouraging words such as "normal" and "remission" are being used.

So what exactly is the downside? Cost. Pharmac has baulked at the $60,000 to $100,000 a patient a year price tag that the maker, Novartis, originally put on the drug. (Novartis is funding 30 patients, mainly through clinical trials.)

Pharmac was considering funding the drug for people in the advanced stages of the disease, although the evidence is for most benefit during the earlier, chronic phase. Right now it's not funding Glivec at all, though negotiations with Novartis continue.

In the meantime, only the rich can afford it and 90 New Zealanders who could benefit are denied what could be life-saving medication.

The Leukaemia and Blood Foundation expressed its anger at the situation with a savvy pre-election "Save the 90" campaign. It caught media attention but didn't gain much traction. Voters were too busy worrying about that election time political construct called "The Family", and some corn that hasn't been proved to hurt a fly.

It makes me mad. Medical professionals I respect have explained to me all about too little money, too many patients and cost-effectiveness calculations. If everyone in this country got the health care they deserved, heart patients wouldn't be dying on waiting lists.

It still makes me mad. Some of the 90 patients - productive, talented people in the prime of their lives - have told their stories to the media. You have to wonder whether Pharmac has factored into the calculations the cost benefits of keeping them well, working and out of grossly overstretched hospitals.

There could be other, less tangible benefits to getting the funding sorted out quickly and fairly. It would generate some much-needed optimism in a mostly depressing field of medicine.

Cancer is a war where we desperately need to win a battle. Words such as "epidemic" are being used. Morale is subterranean. How many of us drag our feet when it comes to those scary, recommended screenings because we have little faith in a good outcome if the news is bad? And, since the Glivec situation, even less faith that we will get the best available treatment should we need it.

More people could be encouraged to participate in preventive and screening programmes if the cancer landscape became a little less bleak.

Money could well be more forthcoming for research. And the lives of those living with cancer, and their families, might improve if the "C" word generated less fear and denial, because more genuine progress was being made in beating it.

The situation is cruel, unacceptable and makes no sense. Novartis has apparently offered a lower price, but not low enough. If Glivec is the potential miracle the drug company claims, it should have no trouble setting a reasonable price and still making a profit. After all, there would instantly be a bigger market.

As for Pharmac, I hate to use that worn-out greenism "holisitic", but it is time our healthcare providers cured themselves of their bottom-line mania and took a look at a bigger, more humane and possibly even, in the long run, more cost-effective picture. What price can you put on hope?