What yours?

Do you know about Eve van Grafhorst? She was born in NSW in 1982 and needed a blood transfusion. From that, she was affected by HIV, which eventually became AIDs. She didn’t ask for that. Eve’s parents fought for her, against other parents in the area who knew nothing about HIV, and believed it was airborne. Eventually the van Grafhorsts moved to Hastings on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, and were welcomed there.

In 1992 Eve received the Variety Gold Heart Award. She was 10. A year later, in 1993, she died, at the age of 11. Princess Diana sent a letter to Eve’s mother, acknowledging Eve for her “courage and strength”.

These days many people know about HIVand AIDs, and understand that any person can get this. Have a look at AIDS Link International and read what can cause HIV and AIDS. Get yourself informed.

My research went on further. I know many smokers, and I know many who have given up. I also know many non-smokers. The packets for cigarettes say that “Smoking causes heart disease”, or “Smoking causes lung cancer”, among the other required statements. They are not correct. They should be re-printed to say that “Smoking can cause heart disease”, or “Smoking can cause lung cancer”. Why? Because smoking is only a small part of heart diseases, lung cancer and many other diseases.

I looked up some websites which listed what is known globally as dangerous diseases. Smoking doesn’t even show on many of those lists.

• 2010: Nursing Schools (USA) statistics for the ‘developing countries’ included malaria, influenza and asthma in the top 20.
• 2012: Forbes listed global death tolls: they included respiratory infections: death toll 3,060,166; HIV/AIDS: death toll 1,533,760; diarrhoeal diseases: death toll 1,497,674. They counted up to 10 diseases.
• 2016: The Meningitis Centre in Australia listed 9 diseases which could kill within 24 hours: meningococcal disease, streptococcus and stroke, among others.
• 2016: WHO listed 10 death statistics globally, which includes ischaemic heart disease (9.5 million), stroke (5.9 million) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3.2 million).  Lung cancer was further down the list, with bronchus and trachea. 
• 2017: News.com.au gave us a travellers list which included African diseases such as plague (which hit Europe in the Medieval history during the 13^th and 14^th centuries, killing one third of the population), tuberculosis (which kills one million people annually) and typhoid fever (killing around 220,000 every year). 
• 2017: SBS gave a list of what they felt was killing Australians. The top one was ischaemic heart disease (12.04% of all registered deaths). 
• 2017: The Conversation listed diseases which are still working to kill people, including tuberculosis, HIV/AIDs and influenza. Smallpox, they told us, was ‘eradicated’ in 1980, with the last recorded death in 1977, yet they say “Smallpox may be gone as a disease, but the variola virus controversially remains, kept secure in laboratories in Russia and the US. Concern has emerged about the prospect of smallpox as a weapon of bioterrorism. The impact of such an event could be devastating, given people are no longer routinely immunised against smallpox.” 
• 2018: Cheatsheet listed deaths from something within 24 hours. If you don’t know about these, then read this! It was written in June 2018, so it’s the latest list. Theirs included necrotizing fasciitis, meningococcal disease and epilepsy. 

So these different lists include different diseases over the last decade, yet none of them included smoking. In Australia, lung cancer is said to have killed 6,000 people, according to WEHI. Lung cancer “occurs because of genetic changes in lung cells. These occur more frequently in people exposed to DNA-damaging agents such as tobacco smoke.” Yet it is not the only cause of lung cancer. 

The “naturally occurring radioactive gas radon and its progeny”, according to ARPANSA, can change the DNA of a person who breathes this. It happens predominantly across the Great Dividing Range, and in Perth. And yet chemotherapy can change the DNA too – medicals are potentially diseasing those who have had chemotherapy. “The full extent of their cellular mechanisms, which is essential to balance efficacy and toxicity, is often unclear.” Do they know that? Do you? Look at the WEHI comment above.

My dad smoked a pipe for years. He finally gave it up when he got a bad winter cough sometime in the 1990s. He died from his fourth stroke in 2000, not from smoking. I found a website which said that smoking a pipe was “the art of manliness”. What is the difference between pipes, cigars and cigarettes, and why has the current government continued to increase the excise tax they take on smokes? According to the Department of Health, “Australia is the only country in the world to index tobacco excise to wage inflation (AWOTE) to ensure that tobacco products do not become relatively more affordable over time.” The only country in the world? Really??

My mum was diabetic. She had never smoked – she had only breathed dad’s pipe smoke until the 1990s. She had the gradual progression of peripheral artery disease which medicals told her could take her feet away – that is, she would have them cut off. She died in hospital in 2007 and never had her legs or her feet taken off.

How many people know anything that I have written about – which diseases are global, where does ‘smoking’ come into lung cancer, and why are the cigarettes and tobacco packets printed with incorrect comments? Do you care? What sort of disease might take you on? Who would care about that? Do you drink? Do you ever get drunk? Do you speed? Have you paid fines? Are you a Baby Boomer or a Millenial? Please tell me, because I am so fed up with how we live nowadays, how we treat other people.

Eve van Grafhorst got HIV from a blood transfusion in Australia when she was a baby but was mistreated. She was taken by her parents to New Zealand for a much better life. Is that very different to how people treat smokers? Are smokers now being treated the way Eve van Grafhorst was treated back in the 1980s?

Please tell me!

Whether you think you can…

There is an election coming up. Either a by-election or, later, some time, a federal election. Who will win? It must not be LNP. Their behaviour in the past 5 years has been abdominal, especially their relation to any politician of any other party which has not supported their ‘new’ acts or bills. ALP – Bill Shorten – seems to be the top of those that LNP picks on. Why do they? Is their abuse relative to their positions in government?

I read a book after Julia Gillard was out-voted in 2013, titled “Bewitched and bedevilled”, by many authors who objected to what LNP and the media had done, both to Gillard and to women. Gillard was the first female prime minister and ran a very good government with a shortfall team of Labor, supported by Greens and independents, but LNP, behind Tony Abbott back then, abused her unthinkably. The most visual in my own mind is the picture of Abbott, Bishop and other LNP people standing in front of two extremely unacceptable posters: one said “Juliar…. Bob Browns (sic) bitch” over some drawn in flame, the other was “Ditch the witch” with a witch drawn in the middle, flying on a broom. Gillard? A witch? A bitch??

Who the hell did the LNP think they were? Abusers? Bullies? Anti-women? Why did Abbott and his chaos team stand in front of those posters?? 

Since they were voted into government in 2013, LNP has ruined Australia. The present PM, Malcolm Turnbull, is a rich man. He doesn’t care about poor people (“escalates his war on the poor and unemployed”, New Matilda). He doesn’t care about disabled people (“government's bid to link disability funding to welfare cuts has backfired spectacularly”, SMH). He doesn’t care what tax is used for (“sticks defiantly to business tax cuts”, The Guardian). He doesn’t care about ABC (“ramps up attack on public broadcaster”, The Guardian). He doesn’t care at all about ALP (“party-pooper trick of calling five by-elections on the day of the Labor Party's biggest celebration”, Fraser Coast Chronicle). He doesn’t care about women politicians (“politics is still not an equal place for women”, The Conversation). He does care what goes into his own bank account (“the highest paid politician in the OECD”, SBS). 

The following essay writers from “Bewitched and bedevilled” wrote about what upset them – what upset so many women. This abuse they wrote about was from the media, the LNP party – and yes, LNP women. If you have never read “Bewitched and bedevilled”, read these: they can make you angry, make you cry, make your hair stand up on your neck.

Emily Maguire, p14:     Political reporting has all but ceased to exist.

Jane Caro, p24:             See, the critics imply smugly, we told you women just aren’t up to it.

Kathy Lette, p35:         Perhaps it’s time all Australian women took up knitting, to enable is to impale misogynists on the end of our needles.

Helen Razer, p44:         Yes. Yes. Politicians have ALWAYS made empty promises with big smiles. The thing is, now, no one seems to care.

Helen Pringle, p75:       What is new is that the use of the pornography to incite laughter against women has migrated into the heart of political discourse, as a way of humiliating those who don’t know their proper place.

Eva Cox, p83:               On the wider questions, gender remains an uncomfortable fit with power politics.

Catherine Lumby, p90: Female politicians are seen as female before they are seen as politicians.

Claire Hawey, p100:     She has been a victim of frequent and often shocking nastiness – sometimes by people who were also grotty sexists.

Clementine Ford, p108:          These are the depths of sexism to which political discourse in this country sunk while wrestling with the challenge of a woman in charge.

Shakira Hussein, p120: …similarities in strategies that [women] adopted to negotiate the minefield of gender and power in which they found themselves.

Ruth Hessey, p125:      Another quick check of the image-makers’ guide to success reveals that a woman ‘diminshes her image as an expert or an authority figure’ if she ‘turns a man on’.

Tracey Spicer, p133:     [LNP] had described her as ‘deliberately barren’ and, as a consequence, ‘unqualified’ to lead the country. It wasn’t long before this slur was dragged back from the muckheap and slung again. And again.

Carol Johnson, p140:    Male politicians who replace existing leaders seem to be constructed as understandably ambitious, while women who do so risk being constructed as ruthless and devious.

Chloe Hooper, p156:    The relationship between journalists and a politician is a co-dependent but not a transparent one.

Tanya Plibersek, p187:  It is absolutely clear that the News Ltd media were extremely hostile towards the Labor Party under both Julia’s and Kevin’s leadership. It’s also true that the right-wing talk-back hosts have a very clear political agenda of their own.

There is an election coming up. Either a by-election or, later, some time, a federal election. Yes, I said this at the start of this blog, but it is winding me up. I am a very, very small part of everything that Turnbull and his party does not care about, does not like, but I did not choose to be here, I did not choose to be poor, I did not choose to be disabled and I wish I could work.

Who will win the by-elections and the federal election? 

It must not be LNP.

Trenoweth, S 2013, editor Bewitched and Bedevilled, Hardie Grant Books, VIC