Letters: Hard work beating heart disease

AS the country celebrates National Volunteer Awareness Week, June 17-23, I would like to thank all Whanganui Heart Foundation volunteers who work so hard to support our mission to stop New Zealanders dying prematurely of New Zealand's single biggest killer, heart disease.

Their efforts also help many of the 186,000 New Zealanders with heart disease live a full and productive life.

As a charity, the Heart Foundation relies on our people, who give their time so generously across many areas, helping at community events, special projects, collecting and co-ordinating during our Big Heart Appeal, sharing stories and administration support.

I would like to acknowledge that everything our volunteers do, every hour they volunteer, any campaign they support, or each time they share their story, makes a difference to people with heart disease and their families.

We would be grateful if you were able to join these people in the fight against heart disease in your community. Please register your interest at heartfoundation.org.nz/volunteer or contact your local branch on 06 358 7745 or sallyd@heartfoundation.org.nz.

SALLY DARRAGH
Heart health advocate, Manawatu/MidCentral Branch

Fair trade war

Gwynne Dyer in his article in our Chronicle, June 13 berates Donald Trump for going against free trade. Donald Trump has repeatedly said he is not against free trade but wants fair trade.

He is fighting to get the unfair tariffs that make the US a generator of wealth for everyone else: the EU $150 billion from unfair tariffs; China $300 billion with tariffs and money manipulation; Canada huge tariffs, 270 per cent on farm products; Mexico a huge winner out of Nafta.

His critics, being weak people, are fearful of a trade war. They say just lay back and think of the motherland.

The EU, Japan especially, and the US also do the same to NZ. We are weak because we are small and can't retaliate.

These countries should man up to little economies like ours and play us on a level playing field.

G R SCOWN
Whanganui

No consensus

Russ Hay's assertion (Chronicle May 29) that "modern genetics are clear on 'gayness' being driven by genes" is disingenuous at best.

There is no "clear" consensus; studies are inconsistent, conflicting and/or contradictory. There is perhaps some genetic (nature), perhaps some social (nurture), and probably more personal environmental (experience) impact, which might as easily be "interpreted" to indicate that "you become what you do" (or in biblical terms "as a man thinks, so is he").

Conflicted gender cases, being based on feelings at odds with genetic reality, would seem to bear this out.

Studies in the emerging field of epigenetics could also be "interpreted" to imply that "the iniquity of the fathers" is indeed "visited upon the sons" in a limited genetic sense, so that they are affected in body as well as soul.

The iniquity of the fathers, in God's mercy, is visited on the third and fourth generations of those that hate him, yet he has, does, and will show loving kindness to thousands of those who love him and keep his commandments.

"This is the work of God, to believe him whom he has sent" (that's Jesus the Christ).

JOHN HAAKMA
Whanganui