Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima prefecture, Japan.
Nuclear fears
A tsunami of fear-mongering on nuclear power plants is gathering force. John Allemang's front-page report on Japan's nuclear industry ('For The Good Of The Country': Why Japan Overlooked Its Nuclear Past - March 17) is a case in point. Its central (and heartless) thesis is that a nation once devastated by American nuclear bombs should know better than to foist potential nuclear horrors on its populace.
The implied conclusion from this is that all countries with nuclear generators are imposing similar unacceptable risks on their people. But where are the stats? Nuclear power plants are not atom bombs. When they have gone wrong, their toxins have affected a tiny fraction of those killed and sickened worldwide from burst hydroelectric dams and unsustainable, pollution-spewing coal-fired power plants, many in the developing world.
When we stop mentioning Hiroshima and nuclear plants in the same breath, we'll begin to understand what really constitutes nuclear risk, nuclear benefit.
Joseph Dzananovic, Toronto
.......
Medical decisions
Why is it that people suffering from pain are never asked when deciding what painkillers should be prescribed (Some GPs Prescribing Practices On Painkillers Putting Patients At Risk, Study Finds - March 15)? For many, many people, the risk of possible dependence on a drug or even death is a far lesser evil than endlessly suffering chronic pain. Patients should be given all the information about possible risks, and then allowed to make the decision themselves. The role of doctors is to describe the risks, not deny relief to their patients.
Nichola Hall, Vancouver
.......
Herceptin funding
André Picard (Denying Herceptin Was A Necessary Evil - March 17) acknowledges that women with early stage breast cancer who use Herceptin have a 14 per cent chance of recurrence, compared to 22 per cent for women who do not, but considers this a "marginal benefit," unworthy of funding. Methinks the definition of marginal benefit in this case is that it is someone else's tumour.
Irwin Silverman, Toronto
.......
Mr. Picard's article speaks to the terrible truth that faces publicly funded drug programs: You can't pay for everything. I was the first full-time executive officer of Ontario Public Drug Programs, and it was my job to decide when we would say yes, and when we had to say no. The plight of people such as Jill Anzarut is terribly familiar. I remember meeting the parents of a young boy to explain to them why we were not providing funding for a very expensive drug for their very ill son. We had weighed the evidence, assessed harm versus benefit, and concluded that funding the drug was not justified. After meeting those parents, I cried for quite a while. But my responsibility to the government, to taxpayers, and to patients, was to make drug funding decisions based on evidence. Indeed, denying drugs is sometimes a necessary evil. Tough, but not heartless.
Helen Stevenson, former assistant deputy minister, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
.......
Managing mergers
Harris Fricker (The TMX Merger: Why Mess With Success? - March 17) is right when he says in this merger of exchanges that the London exchange is the diner and the Toronto exchange the dinner. TMX may be small on the world stage, but it is a rapidly rising star in the commodities-driven boom. LSE should have been a far larger exchange than it is, because it has lost momentum of late.
The only way the investing public in Canada would benefit from the merger is if the new company is owned 50-50 with equal board seats and the CEO of the merged exchange is based in Toronto. If this arrangement is not acceptable to London Stock Exchange Group, then the Canadian government should tell them to look for dinner elsewhere.
Ajaz Haque, Toronto
.......
I read with interest Mr. Fricker's comments that the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange has struggled in recent years. AIM is currently home to more than 1,170 companies, directly supports 250,000 UK jobs and last year raised £7-billion for growth businesses at a time when bank debt financing for small- and medium-sized enterprise had all but dried up.
For its part, TSX Venture Exchange is a world leader for public venture capital financing for small-cap and early stage companies. As AIM has a greater weighting toward larger SMEs across the full spectrum of market sectors and is recognized as the best market of its kind in Europe, the two markets are highly complementary.
Through our proposed merger of TMX Group and London Stock Exchange Group, we will be in a position to maintain the respective strengths of these individual markets, while pooling our expertise. Truly something to be proud of.
Marcus Stuttard, head of AIM, London Stock Exchange Group
.......
Mayors' requests
Re Our Big-City Mayors Are Wondering: After The Stimulus, What's Next? (March 17): Before asking what mayors are going to do without the stimulus money, perhaps you should be asking what they did with it. In Winnipeg's case, we had (among other things) the construction of "calming circles."
What are these? They are elevated concrete circles, about 10 feet in diameter, located in the middle of neighbourhood intersections, and accompanied by between eight and 12 bright yellow signs. The theory seems to be that obstructing traffic and distracting motorists increases safety. Go figure.
Jay Hamilton, Winnipeg
.......
Seeking applicants
I read with interest the report of your interview with Roger Martin (We Will Suffer If Business Schools Neglected: Dean - March 16). As president and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, I was particularly interested by the reference made to the CFI.
While the success rate of applications from business schools compares favourably to the overall CFI success rate, the number of applications from business schools is surprisingly low. Of the more than 900 applications in the humanities and social sciences that have been submitted to the CFI to date, only 50 came from business schools (with a 70 per cent success rate). Researchers in our business schools have received CFI research infrastructure funding and, given the high quality of their research, will no doubt receive more in the future. The CFI's doors are open to business school researchers, and will remain so, but they must apply!
Gilles G. Patry, president and CEO, Canada Foundation for Innovation
.......
Word choice
As a possibly endangered "mid-list author" (Are Mid-List Authors an Endangered Species? - March 15) I was pleased to learn the format I'd adopted for my writing is a "new hybrid" named "video-book." I'd been calling it the "extended Internet essay with video clips embedded." The new name is short, sweet, neat. But 48 hours later (such is speed-up) we learn (Getting a Read on the Future of Publishing - March 17) that someone has collapsed video-book into "vook." Shorter but not sweeter. "Vook" subliminally brings to mind "kook" - maybe crook or even spook. So I'm going with "V-book," proudly capped as in V for Victory and V for Vendetta. Subliminally historical, subversive and, one hopes, victorious.
Barrie Zwicker, Toronto