Shattering Rose-Colored Glasses

A new title

2007-11-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

I changed my mind about the title.

My Lava Life: A year of drinking scotch with strangers.

Ahh?

NaNoWriMo - Day One

2007-11-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

Off to a strong start (but apparently no longer able to type since those five words took me several shots to get right… fingers numb!) with 5,034 words under my belt.

29 days to bash out the remaining 44,966 words!

I feel very good about what flowed. It’s not close to perfect but it’s not total crap either. It’s got a shadow of truth in it and a much stronger element of fiction than I expected to be able to pull off. For this I am very happy. God knows, I’m an eager exhibitionist in a clothing-optional hot-tub, but exposing my body is much easier than exposing how outrageously lame I can be in situations of the heart.

What will I share? How about this – a few words I’ve used in the first three chapters:

Glenmorangie
Canadian Club
Aberlour
Auchentoshan
Sex (7 times)

How about this. An excerpt from chapter 2… risky since this is just copy puked from my brain. Not edited. At least it’s English…

Gabrielle pulled up to the house and parked. Se opened the trunk and pulled out James’ bags while he woke himself from his half-nap. As she looked in the trunk she realized that her bottle of scotch wasn’t with her.

“Ah, fuck!”

“What?”

“I bought a bottle of Auchentoshan while I was waiting for you. I must have left it on the seat. Fuck! I hate that. It was forty-five bucks. Aaaaa-ghhhh!”

“It’s not ‘o-shent-o-shan.’ It’s pronounced ‘ocken-toshin.’ Remember?”

Gabrielle took a deep breath. She remembered.

“Why’d you buy a bottle of Auchentoshan? You don’t like that one. You think it’s too peaty.”

Gabrielle considered telling him why she bought that bottle over all the others, and decided to simply tell him she forgot that she didn’t much care for that scotch.

“Well, I guess my sub-conscious remembered since I left the bottle behind for someone else to enjoy.” She tried to laugh but it came out more as a snarl.

There. Day one under my belt. Now all I have to do is make sure I don’t get too much work this month and I’ll have 50,000 words done, no problem! To heck with the mortgage! This is way more fun...

First goes the mind. Common sense and decency soon follow.

2007-10-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently, although I can't find time or motivation to blog these days (weeks, months), I'm going to write a "novel" in November.

I signed up with NaNoWriMo. That would be National Novel Writing Month.

I tried this once before. In 2002. I failed, in that I did not complete the task.

This year? All I can do is give completion the ole college try again. And since November is looking extremely thin in the work area, I won't have much better to do with my time.

My working title is "My LavaLife: dating tales of an anti-vaccine advocate."

It'll be a work of fiction based loosely on the experiences I had during my 12 months of online dating. I had 24 first dates, a handful of second and third dates, and even one... "relationship."

I met some very interesting characters who deserve to be glorified in a work of humourous fiction. The stories make me laugh - and some of them make me cringe - not in the least, due to my role in the whole dating scene.

Wait 'til you read about my main character's three dates with Adam, a 6'5" lawyer with an affinity for dressing up in gorgeous gowns and 4" heels. (Let me tell you, did that man go to extremes finding stilettos in size 14!).

And then there was Jake, a very shy insurance adjuster who was so concerned that his car would make or break any woman’s interest in him that he made me - of course, I mean, my main character - walk home from their date, in the pouring rain, so that she wouldn’t see his ride… even though he was going to drive right by her house!

Then Steven, the cop. All those stereotypes about cops being overbearing, control-freaks? Yeah, well, believe them!

As I said, fiction loosely based on fact. Hopefully, the fact and fiction parts won’t be easy to distinguish from each other… just in case my mom follows along!

It's not too late for me to change my story idea... opinions?

So shoot me, these days my mind turns to thoughts of euthanasia

2007-06-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

It was inevitable.

I believe that I can now officially be called “The Crazy Cat Lady.”

The transformation was not gradual and gentle, as I expected it to be… Incremental ticks and twitches, slow build-up of the smell of stale urine that go unnoticed until one day an old friend who hasn’t seen me in months drops by and comments, “Donna? Medication?"

Rather, it seems that on Wednesday, at about 11:10 AM, a switch in my brain was flicked. At that moment I was no longer “Donna, mom of Liam, girlfriend of Dave, owner of T-2, Eddie and Gryphon.” No. It is clear to me that I am now, “Donna-run-screaming-and spraying.”

As I patrolled the perimeter of my property, water machine gun in hand, I realized that I had become insane! Just like that.

In fairness the transformation started on Tuesday morning, when I returned home from a long weekend at Dave’s place. My neighbour Kathryn fed my three cats while I was gone. And a fourth. A relatively new cat in the ‘hood who's decided that my house is the cool place to hang out. The house to catch a free meal. The house to find a quiet spot to sleep.

This new cat has some strange power over my three. They let him eat from their food bowl. They let him sleep on the blankets they use. But those bastard cats of mine are passive aggressive to the extreme. Somehow, it appears, they’ve decided that I am personally responsible for the intrusion and that although they won’t complain about the presence of Xena, the intruder cat to his face, they’ll tell me after he leaves. By spraying.

When I got home on Tuesday I found my couch had been sprayed. The door of my bedroom. The spare bed in the attic. Liam’s bookcase. A pile of wool blankets.

I called my vet to ask what I could do. Would he put them down? Could I? He suggested I use a water gun to prevent the intruder cat from hanging out in my yard and entering my house. He said that that should curb the inappropriate indoor peeing.

Back to Wednesday morning at 11:10. After I went back inside from my perimeter patrol, I laid my gun down beside my lap top. I got back to work. My mind started to settle. Then I saw Xena in the house. I picked up the gun and started running from the front to the back of the house. Xena ran under the dining room table. I sprayed. He ran onto the deck. I sprayed. He jumped the fence to the neighbour’s deck. I sprayed. And heard a scream of “STOP!!! What are you doing?!!”

I looked up from my rage. What I was doing was soaking Kathryn and her lunch.

I need a vacation away from all these cats. A permanent vacation.

And perhaps some sedatives. Just call me The C-r-a-z-y Cat Lady….

We are a smoothie now: well-blended

2007-05-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

The adventure was epic. Three days of driving south… five days in Disney Land… four days of driving north. The trip was an unqualified success. Testament to top notch parenting skills! (Yeah, yeah… scoff all you want… it’s what I believe, so it’s true).

Highlights of the trip:

Driving. We did a few hours of this. I didn’t get behind the wheel until mid-day of the second day. Southern Oregon though Northern California. I got to drive the exciting, hilly, curvy, 18-wheeler ridden roads around Mount Shasta at the going speed which was about 10 miles an hour above the speed limit of 65 mph.

The van handles much differently than my Subaru which has been set-up for rallying and I found it a bit of a challenge to steer. I attributed this to my lack of experience with having wheels directly under me - until we slowed to take a pee break and the van started to shake and shimmy and rattle and jerk. Dave suspected that a pothole had knocked the alignment out. We carried on with me keeping the speed up since it was much easier to handle at 75 mph than at 50 mph!

By the time we reached Redding, CA, the van was no fun to drive anymore. We found a Les Schwabb Tire outlet. It was closed for the day but the manager was kind enough to take a look. It took him two seconds to see what we hadn’t seen 100 miles earlier: a bulge in one of the front tires that was the size of a banana. The steel belts had started to separate. He told us to get back to his shop at 8:00 the next morning and NOT to drive at highway speeds.

Mmmm.... thank goodness for the guardian pirate bobble head we put on the dash board just before leaving Vancouver!

So, we were stuck in Redding, CA for the night, three hours north of our planned destination of Sacramento. No big deal. Except for the fact that that particular weekend was the Kool April Nites Classic Car Show. We had arrived in a town that was inundated by choppered old cars, some of which were worth as much as my house. Hotels are fully booked a year in advance for this event which draws enthusiasts from all across the country to roar their custom engines up and down the town streets, showing off their custom paint and custom choppedness. Fortunately, there was a no-show at the Holiday Inn and we got a room – with a parking lot full of life-size Hot Wheels! What a perfect introduction to the California experience!

Arriving in Anaheim just after dark, and without a map, we intuited where our hotel should be from my memory of where it was located in relationship to Disney Land. A miracle given my typically pathetic navigational skills. Trouble checking in. We were booked for five days, not the six I had asked and paid for…. Manager gets involved… we’re shown to a suite that has not just a separate room for Liam, but a third bedroom for Marcus. Woo-hoo!

Disney Land was a blast but I have to say that despite being told by several friends that it really is the happiest place on Earth, I’ve had happier moments in the Squamish area… hiking to the top of the Chief and looking down on a real paradise beats It’s a Small World any day in my book!

One highlight of our five days and six nights in Anaheim was the evening that an evangelical gathering kicked off at the Conference Centre right beside our hotel. As the children fell into dream land, the master of ceremonies to their outdoor concert preached about hellfire and brimstone. On one hand it seemed an odd contrast to the image of Disney Land as the happiest place on Earth; on the other hand, it seemed a perfect Disney Land family-values fit...

And then there was the drive home. We took the fast route down – the I-5 – which was about 22 hours of driving plus another 8 of stopping to pee and eat – so decided to take the scenic route home.

After a good breakfast and swim, we packed into the van and headed South to Long Beach for Dave to check out Jesse James’ chopper shop. On the map it looked like a one hour diversion, but by the end of the day we had only made it 138 miles north of LA! Traffic. Holy cow! Seems it’s either 16 lanes moving at Mach 5, or 4 lanes crawling at 5 miles per hour.

And then there was the short diversion we took, following signs that told us the exit we wanted had been rerouted. We followed these signs along small side roads until we reached a dead end. At the dead end: a parking lot for the Legionnaire's Club, filled with old men drinking beer and watching car after car turn around to find their way back to somewhere else! I am certain these old duffers messed with the signs to attract new members to their club.

Looking for a hotel room in Buellton proved a futile effort. Spring weekends in California, it seems, are meant for big events. In this case, it was a mountain bike race. So we drove a little further north to Los Alamos, a one-horse town where the restaurant was closed but the chirping turtles in the pond outside our room were up! We ate our scariest meal that night. No, not turtle soup, microwaved meat-things from a gas station convenience store… Ewwww….

On the road the next day at a reasonable hour (the rooster crowing in the parking lot of the motel made sure of that!) with a mid-day destination of Berkeley to visit the Bastard of Art and Commerce and his family. Our plan was to be there by 3 PM. Well, an unplanned side diversion to the Hearst Castle and some less than stellar navigating (my fault) landed us lost in East Oakland at 9 PM… at a gas station where young men in colours (sorry, that would be colors) were hanging out around the bullet-proof glass cashier box. Call it balls or stupidity, but I walked in, told one of two women in the place that we were lost and asked how to get back en route to Berkeley. She gave us stellar directions and we were on our way to what proved to be an even scarier scene: the Mills’ home!

If Greg and Paula’s kids were cartoon characters, Ruby would be the just-awakened Sleeping Beauty, and Owen would be the Tasmanian Devil – with ADHD. I’m certain that when the homies in the Bay area came up with the hip-hop expression hyphy, they were watching Owen spin out of control!

We had a fantastic time that night and the next morning. Two-for-two on great experience blog cross-over meet-ups. If you’re in Berkeley, I highly recommend a stay chez le Manoir Mills. Five stars for both hospitality and entertainment.

Two more days of driving and we were home: a happy, healthy, harmonious holiday.

And this weekend… A camping trip sans enfants! Happiest place on Earth? Right here, just off the Sea-to-Sky highway, thank you very much!

Are we there yet?

2007-04-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I remember my mom telling me at some point when I was young(er) that if a relationship can survive a road trip, then there’s a pretty good chance that the couple has the skills to tackle pretty well any relationship challenge.

My parents, who are still married, tested and retested that theory for most of childhood by throwing two - and then three - kids into the back of our Mercury Marquis and making the 3-day, 24-hours-of-driving trek from southern Quebec to southern Florida. I remember those road trips with a great deal of happiness...

We lined up to buy gas (and Billy beer) from Billy Carter’s gas station during one of the year’s that his brother was president. We dove deep into the Shenandoah caverns in Virginia. We stopped at 50's style diners and ate pancakes for breakfast every day. My sister and I used hand signals to communicate with a truck driver who driving was on our tail, encouraging him to blast his horn at Dad. (We only did that once!).

So, back in 1991, when my best friend Lizzy and I decided to go on a two week camping, road trip to Nova Scotia and PEI, I expected the trip would be amazing. The theme was “Thelma and Louise” (to this day Lizzy still calls me Louise more often than she calls me Donna) and Lizzy and I even rented the requisite convertible for those rainy two weeks!

In the month prior to going on this adventure, I met Bill, who of course was immediately nicknamed “Cowboy.” (And yes I know it was Thelma who got the cowboy in the original story). Cowboy joined Thelma and I on our adventure, and it was, as I had anticipated it would be, one of my most memorable summer vacations ever.

And when we got home to Montréal, Cowboy moved in with me so we could save money to go on our next adventure: three months of backpacking in South East Asia. Just four months after he moved in with me, which was barely more than a month after we met, Cowboy and I were on a plane to Thailand.

Of course you know how that story ends. We managed 14 years of adventures together but his two week road trip to Turkey introduced him to a new travel buddy. Which, of course, left me open to do the same!

In three days I’ll be going on my most adventurous road trip since Liam was born: Dave (aka “Mr. Wonderful” in some of the comments on previous posts), his 5-year-old son Marcus, Liam and I will be packing into Dave’s MPV for the 22-hour drive from Lotus Land to Disney Land. Most of me is incredibly excited about the ten days we’ll have together, squashed in a moving vehicle... locked in a 337-square-foot hotel room… and of course, riding the coasters at the “happiest place on Earth.” And part of me is only as terrified of getting into that van on Thursday as I am of spiders…

I have no doubt that on our own, Dave and I could tackle the unforeseen circumstances of any road trip. I’m almost as confident that if we were taking just one of the boys, the trip would be a no-brainer. It’s the just-add-water, instant-family element of having two kids who only know life as being an only child, suddenly having to negotiate life with a brother, that has me taking the chewable Gravol with my meals today.

Mom doesn’t have any experience or advice for me on this one. I do recall a story that my grandmother used to tell about leaving a very young version of my dad at the side the road when he was once misbehaving in the car, but I'm thinking her advice should have been buried with her...

"Road tripping with a blended family." There ought to be a book. And maybe after this trip there will be.

And now… watch my head explode!

2007-03-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

Look back at my posts from 2005 and you’ll see a very different blog from the blah-blah-blahg posts I write now.

I used to have a great passion for outing the evils of childhood vaccinations and the over-drugging of small children with psychotropics and antidepressants. My intention had been to make a documentary about vaccinations. After far too many years beating my head against the wall with broadcasters who were in and then out, I gave up. I stopped reading about the issues about 18 months ago when income generation became more of an imperative than making change in the world.

But I still have subscriptions to a variety of news sources with the key word vaccine. 95% of the time I ignore the stories. Not today. And I’m more angry at this moment than I was when He-who-shall-not-be-named told me he was leaving the country.

The gist of the story:

Merck's chickenpox vaccine Varivax not only loses its effectiveness after a while, but it has also changed the profile of the disease in the population, U.S. researchers reported Wednesday.

The study confirmed what doctors widely knew -- that the vaccine's protection does not last long.

And with fewer natural cases of the disease going around, unvaccinated children or children in whom the first dose of the vaccine fails to work have been catching the highly contagious disease later in life, when the risk of severe complications is greater, they said.

"If you're unvaccinated and you get it later in life, there's a 20-times greater risk of dying compared to a child, and a 10 to 15 times greater chance of getting hospitalized," said Jane Seward of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, who worked on the study.

So this is where my head explodes. An idiot like me knew this six years ago. I’ve watched my friends coerced into having their 5-years olds get the chicken pox vaccine and wondered what I could have said to have been more convincing than the doctor who was pushing the shot. Nothing, apparently.

The thing that kills me is that measles used to be one disease – about as dangerous as chicken pox is, killing about 100 kids a year in the States – and typically kids who are already immuno-comprised. But today the measles virus has mutated into several strains, all of which have to be included in the shot, of course…

Vaccines are not benign. In many cases, they can cause terrible side effects. In most cases the disease for which the vaccine purports to protect the child is not a serious health risk, rather it’s a serious inconvenience for a parent to take time off work to stay home with a grumpy kid who has measles or chicken pox.

I can’t get enough oxygen to get into why and how the vaccine promoters manage to get away with convincing government and public health officials to recommend their shots – and in some American States, forcibly make every kid get the shots or be prevented from attending public school….

If you’re interested, I’ve ranted on these topics before…

Meningitis (Marketing) Can Strike Out of the Blue

Volunteers Needed for Anthrax Vaccine

Ahhh… May, June, July, August 2005… there’s stuff there abut vaccines.

And here’s the full story, Chicken Pox Vaccine Fades Over Time.

If a painted black cat crosses your path...

2007-03-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Super quick post.

Last week, while roofers were replacing the shingles on my house, door-dudes were here replacing the French doors to my back deck, mon dieu! Condensation between the window panes… door frame starting to rot – who’s crazy idea was it to build a city in the middle of a rain forest??

Anyway… new, unpainted doors. Rain for the past week. Today the first sunny break. So I donned my painting duds and set out to put some protection on the primer before my new doors started to suffer water damage.

All’s going well. I’m 3 minutes from done with just one paint drop on the deck, easily wiped up and onto my jeans.

And then all chaos breaks loose. Gryphon, who until today was the only good cat in the brood, decided it was a good idea to sit on the paint lid – which of course was sitting paint side to the sky! Bum onto black oil-based paint can lid, quick change of mind, lid upturned on deck (peanut butter side down, of course!), cat disappeared back into the house.

Easy to follow Bad Cat III’s path – and the number of times he sat down. Four. Four black, oil-based paint, cat bum prints on my floor.

And now, instead of doing the work I desperately need to get done, I have to find Gryphon and cut his painted tail feathers from him… I figure the embarrassment he’ll suffer having a bare ass is better than the stomach upset he’ll feel if he licks the paint off…

I will be the crazy cat lady one day… heading quickly down that path…

Oh - and if anyone mentions karma... I'll be shipping all three bad cats to you. Consider it fair warning.

At least I’m not pregnant with twins

2007-03-09T18:06:00.000-08:00

That’s my new motto.

It was a line used on me last week at the conference I was animating in Toronto. The woman who was organizing the logistics had been handed the event at the last minute by her colleague who had to leave town. It was a little chaotic for all of us.

I threw my hands up at one point, shaking my head at some mess-up and she quickly put it all in context for me… “at least you’re not pregnant with twins.”

She had just found out that that was her situation. I had to agree. And over the last week I’ve called on that blessing several times.

Mr. Wonderful’s car was totaled while it sat in his yard and we goofed around in Whistler (in my car) last Sunday. He’s only getting $750 from ICBC since it has such high mileage… but at least he’s not pregnant with twins!

My eleven-year old house had a new roof put on this week since the original one was flying off in the wind. The initial quote was for $10,000 (tax in). The damage was worse than we thought. Final bill is over $13,000… but at least I’m not pregnant with twins!

The exterior wall behind my chimney has been slowly rotting for over a year. I’ve diligently ignored it but now the damage has gone into the structure. So now I have to pay for more work than would have been required last spring when I first noticed the damage. No doubt that I’m an idiot, but at least I’m not pregnant with twins!

My fabulous roommate announced today that he’s moving out to live with one of his friends. I’ll be very, very sad to lose his company… but… at least I’m not pregnant with twins!

Yes, crap flies freely around my house these days… but I have little to complain about when compared to what I could be dealing with. And … I’m not pregnant – with twins or otherwise. Thank god for small blessings!

Seasonal Schmaltz

2006-12-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Let’s see… not believing in God (despite believing that the man called Jesus was a damn fine role model)… hating to shop even for practical things like food and new underwear… and being a vegetarian who doesn’t love to cook…. Christmas, and all its traditional trappings, doesn’t get me the least bit excited. That said, it doesn’t bum me out either. I’m entirely neutral toward this whole Christmas thing.

Not that December 25th doesn’t cause me some amount of emotion. I enjoy watching Liam’s excitement, of course. And this year is particularly amusing since I know he doesn’t believe in Santa, but is trying to fake it since he hasn’t figured out if the presents end as soon as he admits disbelief!

For me it’s the “Happy New Year” part of the Christmas season that typically has the most impact: the call to reflect on what was in the past year and what new and exciting things I have to look forward to in the new year. And having my birthday on February 1st, the Happy New Year greeting also reminds me that I will imminently be "one year older." And that, more than anything, makes me stop and think.

The year of my 29th Christmas I recall quite clearly. I had a huge amount of excitement about the fact that I was just a month away from turning 30 - and, I believed, finally entering the age at which I would be taken seriously. I honestly believed that by virtue of leaving my 20s - the decade of my mohawk, of having rats living on my person 24 hours a day, of wearing ball gowns with combat boots, and of drinking far too many Black Labels on far too many school nights – I would somehow be given the respect I thought I was due as … umm… an adult.

Throw on top of that the fact that three months after I turned 30 I was going to give birth to my first, (and only), child. Come on! Thirty, bob haircut, pet cat, Dayton boots and a mother. Everything it seemed to me, was working in my favour for achieving what I so desired: respect from a society of strangers.

I think I was 37 before I finally accepted that no matter how old my birth certificate says I am, I will never garner the nods of approval from the suits in the ivory towers. (And now, I can’t for the life of me, think of why that ever even mattered).

Fast forward ten years. The Christmas before I turned 39 launched me into a “this will be my best year ever!” enthusiasm for my new age. My marriage was feeling uncommonly stable. I was entering my third year of self-employment, having beaten the odds and survived longer than the majority of new business owners do before giving up the crazy idea of self-employment to go back to a real job again. And, I’d finally, and firmly, established my position as “the meanest mom in the world” to an eight-year-old who hated the idea that anyone was the boss of him. I was on top of it all!

Ah, 39! The promise. And the delusion!

By the time the next “Happy New Year” season rolled around, and I was contemplating turning 40, my husband had left me for a 26-year-old. And despite the encouragement from friends that “40 is the new 30” I was having a hard time seeing how a woman with grey hair, wrinkles and adult onset acne (pimples at 39/40??? Proof that if God exists, he is a bastard) would ever have sex again.

Forty. I was facing having to get a real job so I could get bank approval for a mortgage on my own. I actually wrote my first job application in 13 years. Cover letter, resume. Damn near killed me. And I wasn’t even offered an interview!

And, to top it all off, in the ten years since the Christmas that I was convinced I would earn respect of other adults by turning 30, I was now facing the reality that my own 9-year-old, having honed negotiation and logic skills superior to my own, had overthrown me in my role as a benevolent dictator and established himself as a fairly equal partner in what had become a democratically-run household.

What the?! None of this was what I had planned as I bit into that first (vegetarian) mince pie the Christmas eve before, making my wish for the new year …

So, here I am now. It’s Christmas eve again. In five weeks I’ll be 41. Reflecting on the year that’s just passed, I feel great about 40. It turned out to be an exciting and interesting year.

Through the miracle of the equity mortgage and having a great lawyer, I was able to buy the house I’d previously co-owned with Liam’s dad – without having to get a real job! (Of course, this is the kind of blessing that challenges my atheism…).

Despite the hormonally-induced zits, I did have sex last year – and it was the freaking best sex I’ve ever had, thank you very much. (And another challenge to my atheism, apparently, given my tendency for calling on God in moments of heightened awareness.)

And Liam has turned out to be a reasonable and thoughtful minority-government ally. Dictatorships seems overrated now and I’m quite enjoying sharing the blame when decisions he participated in making disappoint him.

Looking forward to 41, now. I’ll be thrilled to stay-the-course. And, if the course changes, my guess is that I’ll be good with that, too. Life is good. No. Life is fucking amazing as I head into the new year.

So, to all of you, my wish that your new year will bring you opportunities to learn and to grow, to regularly pee your pants laughing, to face new challenges and accept the outcome as positive (even if it’s not what you had hoped for), to have spiritual experiences when you’re both naked and clothed, and to love deeply and to be loved for exactly the person you are.

Everyone of us deserves nothing less. Happy New Year.

XOX

Reflections on my own arrogance

2006-12-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

Until 2 PM today, Sunday, my weekend was going as well as a good weekend does. In fact, even better than most. And so was Liam’s.

But two events moved us from head-banging to the Red Hot Chili Peppers as we drove from the ‘burbs back to the city, to unsettled and introspective.

The first event that prompted reflection, we fortunately missed by an hour: a car accident that left a single vehicle wrapped around a power standard. The driver was probably fine enough, but if there had been a passenger… the sight of the car made us both feel sad to the point of nauseous, hoping the driver had been alone.

Fewer than two kilometers and five minutes later, we actually witnessed a car accident. A small sedan pulled off of a side street into the lane of quick moving traffic that we were in. At the same instant, a huge black Toyota truck switched lanes right in front of us. I stopped in time. But the other two vehicles connected. The truck rammed the driver square-on. Every other car managed to avoid hitting, or being hit by, either the truck which did a 90 turn and flew into the median, or the sedan which spun to a stop in the middle of the two lane street.

Smoke started to pour out from under the hood of the sedan. Several people jumped from their vehicles to assist the driver of that car. Cell phones were flipped open. The horn was engaged (I didn’t look to see if it was the driver resting on the steering wheel or not… too much information for me).

Since I wasn’t looking at the sedan carnage, I watched as the truck took off down a back alley at “get me the hell out of here” speed. I was perfectly positioned to follow it, hoping to grab the license plate number. The neighbourhood we were in, just seven blocks from my house, has a big park that was filled with kids playing soccer – meaning kids and parents on or near the road as well. I had no way to see the license plate since I was watching the road, but Liam managed to get the first four digits before I pulled over to call the police and let them know the direction the truck was heading.

Given how many hundreds of hours I spend in my car every year, I’m surprised that this is the first accident I’ve actually witnessed. According to ICBC, 459 people were killed and 78,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes on BC roads in 2005. On a typical day last year, there were 695 motor vehicles crashes; 215 people were injured in these crashes (including four cyclists and six pedestrians every day); and at least one person died. This means that there was one car crash approximately every two minutes of every day, and someone was injured almost every seven minutes.

And a good handful of accidents that have contributed to the stats have been very close to home: four kids at Liam’s old daycare were hospitalized three weeks ago after a car went off the road and drove into the playground. Six months ago, my scotch-drinking buddy, Alan was hit while riding his motorcycle (not his fault and he's selling his bike now). A year ago Alan’s wife was driving home from work and was hit by a truck running a red light. Two years ago our neighbour and his then 2-year-old son were thrown from the crosswalk by a car on Christmas Eve (the child bounced and recovered quickly, the dad was off work and in a leg cast for several months). And the car that I drive was actually responsible for an accident a few years ago (I was at work when it happened).

I know that the roads are dangerous. I know that the situation on the road can change in the matter of a split second of looking down to change the radio station. But I drive with the arrogance of someone who has never been in a car accident, still believing at some level that it will never happen to me.

Seeing the collision today makes me reflect: I was one second from being part of that accident. Was it luck that my car is intact outside my house and that Liam and are drinking hot chocolate on the couch and not in an emergency room? Or can I assert that I avoided being part of the accident because I was aware of my surroundings and slowed down, anticipating potential danger when I saw the sedan pulling forward? I recognize the arrogance, but I'm not sure how to overcome it... and I guess it's a potentially dangerous arrogance.

Hire this photographer!

2006-12-05T00:21:00.000-08:00

He's brilliant.
And smart.
And funny.
And he cooks a mean tuna steak.
And did I mention, he's one of the best photographers I've met in forever.
His name is Gilles Champagne and this is his website.
Mention my name... you'll get a good seat... I mean, deal.
And tell your friends.

A round for all my friends!!

2006-11-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

I was going to respond to comments from my previous post in the comment section, but decided my idea warranted a whole entry.

I believe I’ve unlocked the reason why Montrealers are perceived to be friendlier/ chattier/ warmer than Vancouverites.

Add up the “facts” from comments to that last post, including information that was sent to me privately, and I think the reason will be obvious to anyone:

Randy extended “more friendly” to everywhere else in Canada, not just Montréal. **

SMM commented on the car culture in Vancouver, which is very, very different from Montréal’s transit culture.

Severen, who is one of those old friends I made in my first year in Montréal, and who still lives in the city, said (in an email, rather than as a comment): “I wonder if Montréal feels more like home to you because of how intense the years were. There was so much going on all the time. I just say that because, while Montréal feels like home to me, it doesn't feel "friendly".”

Massawippi, another one of that 18-25 year old gang, and who made the move to the Lower Mainland commented that “Montreal feels like home… because they sell beer and wine at the corner store.” (Which MVL challenged, but I have to agree with Massawippi, which should become clear in a minute).

Doug, who has lived in pretty well every major city in Canada, said in an email, “I love Vancouver. I have great friends, a great life, and it is certainly beautiful. But compared to Halifax or Winnipeg... well, it doesn't.”

MVL said, among other things, “as a native Vancouverite, I don't find this city unfriendly at all. My neighbours all chat, I have conversations with strangers, I find meeting people easy.”

Here’s how I add this all up.

When Severen says that my years in Montréal were “intense” and that there was “so much going on all the time” what he means, if my memory of those years is the same as his, is that we spent an enormous (probably unhealthy) amount of time drinking at pubs and going to see live music (which involved great amounts of alcohol).

Massawippi’s comment reflects the fact that the alcohol culture in Quebec is very… progressive. Kids can buy beer from the corner dep for their dad… or for themselves as long as they say it’s for Dad. And all my friends started drinking with their families as children… my brother got his own beer stein at age 5 or 6.

I don’t know Doug very well (never met him), but I know that he was born in Halifax and grew up in Winnipeg – thus his younger years were spent in the two cities he says don’t compare to Vancouver, where he now resides as an over-40 adult.

SMM’s comment can be linked to drinking and driving issues. If you’re driving everywhere, you can’t be drinking to the same degree as you can when you have a friendly bus driver to take you home at the end of the night.

And MVL, despite being 40 or older like the rest of these commenters, manages a pub as his job, and reviews live music and theatre as a hobby… and he experiences Vancouver as friendly.

Can you see where this is going?

D’uh! Cities are friendlier when you’re consuming copious quantities of alcohol and surrounded by others who are also three sheets to the wind!!

Which is why I’m going to be going out to the Whisk(e)y pub behind the Irish Heather in Gastown next Tuesday night, gettin' friendly with the locals!

** Randy I tried to find some statistics that would support (or refute) Vancouver having lower per capita alcohol consumption than other cities, but came up dry!

Vive le Quebec Libre!

2006-11-29T14:41:00.000-08:00

Not sure this warrants epiphany classification, but I had one of those a-ha moments I so enjoy mulling. Your opinions, informed or otherwise, are encouraged – especially if I’m dissin’ your hometown.

I’ve lived in Vancouver since March 1992. That’s close to 15 years. I try to get home to Québec every year. After all this time, Québec, and Montréal specifically, still feel more like home than Vancouver.

I’ve thought long and hard about this for the last decade. Why it’s been that every trip to Québec since I left Québec, I’d arrive at Dorval/René Levesque airport and have that overwhelming sense of being in my place… of being home. And why Vancouver has never made me feel that way.

The language? Je suis Québecoise. Je suis fiere. But, I don’t think so, being an Anlgo who was raised in a family that had no love of the French language or culture. I was different from my folks (surprise!) and did become bilingual and do love the French culture, but the whole language politics drove me insane. (French must be the dominant language on all exterior signs… whatever! Depanneur… casse-croute… are there even English translations for these signed places?)

The architecture? Sure I love the brick and stone in la vielle ville, but that doesn’t explain why I feel like Montréal is home from the moment I step off the plane in that butt-ugly airport.

The air? Yes, I do feel my lungs fill more easily and more deeply in Montréal than in Vancouver. But I’ve always thought that was an emotional, rather than physical, response.

The landscape? Absolutely not. Even in autumn, when the leaves are at their most glorious in southern Québec, I still think Vancouver is geographically superior to la belle province.

Could it be that the people of Québec are the reason I’ve held on to this feeling that Montréal is my home, despite the fact that I’ve now lived in Vancouver for twice as many years as I lived on the island of Montréal?

The majority of my closest friends are still those I made when I was a Montréaler. I’ve often thought this may have to do with the age at which I made those friends – 18 through 25. Maybe making friends is harder after 25? But I don’t buy that.

My opinion: Montréalers are simply friendlier than Vancouverites.

I’m a friendly person. Friendly people, who smile at and talk to strangers, are looked upon with caution in this city. Friendly people, who smile and talk to strangers in Montréal are typically met with a return “Allo” or “Bonjour!” But why?

Today I think I figured it out part of the equation: extreme weather.

Montréal summers are unbearably hot and humid. People die as a result of the extreme heat. Montréal winters are unbearably frigid. People die as a result of the extreme cold. And those weather extremes, which Vancouver so rarely experiences, bring people together. Strangers share something in common that allows them to talk to each other on the street, on busses, in cafés… how the weather is impacting them.

And why this epiphany now? Because for the past several days my natural smiles and hellos to strangers I pass on the street are being met by more than just a head shrug. A lovely four-block conversation with an old Italian man, who has lived here for 55 years, and, despite the treacherous sidewalks, is still doing his daily walk… A three-minute grocery store conversation with a new Canadian who loves this unexpected weather and is glad to have a break from the rain… and countless openings to potential conversations with people I’ve passed on slippery sidewalks who have returned my hello with, “crazy weather, eh?” and “so this is global warming? Better do something about it!” and “cold enough for you?”

Cold? Maybe the air is. But I’ve never felt such warmth from the people of Vancouver in all the years I’ve lived here. Maybe if the snow stays long enough we’ll reach a tipping point and Vancouver will begin to feel as homey as Montréal…

*&#%@ you! And your mother, too!

2006-11-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Child of mine came home from school today and asked if I knew how to speak Spanish.

A few words. Why?

“Meag (the after-school babysitter) slipped on the ice and when she did she yelled, “Chingada!” She won’t tell us what it means, so it must be bad.”

Liam and I sat down together and googled it.

The first mention that caught our eye, “Chinga a tu madre.” And then the translation in brackets beside it. Great! (And thank you Wikipedia!)

Although I’m not pleased that he just learned this new expression, I was quite impressed with his accent. The kid's got linguistic talent.

****

In a similar vein, while googling “Commercial Drive” on the weekend to find the phone number of a store, I came across this wonderful link that sums up the neighbourhood I live in. Like me, the friends I shared it with who live in the ‘hood, recognized a few of the characters described. We all shed tears of laughter… but, maybe it’s an inside joke… special place, Commercial Drive.

Only in Vancouver does six inches make headline news

2006-11-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

It’s insanity.

I may be making this entirely up. It may be a whole load of crap. But here’s what I think.

People – make that drivers – in Greater Vancouver Regional District, are for the most part, idiots.

Excluded are all the drivers who have driven in the winter in any other part of BC, in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and maybe Prince Edward Island (but I’m not sure about winters on PEI).

How many people would that be? I have no idea. And I’m not going to try to figure it out. But watching the cars slipping and sliding around my own small neighbourhood, you’d think it was significantly fewer than half the residents of the area.

Anyone who has driven on a snowy winter road knows that “all season” tires do not mean that they are effective in “all seasons” (unless the seasons you’re tracking are spring, summer, autumn and flu season…).

What a dangerous misnomer.

“All season” tires are fine in a winter season that does not have snow. But they’re useless on snowy roads. And in our fine city, the majority of the roads are not just snowy, they have not been plowed or salted. The days get warm, the snow turns to slush. The nights get cold, the slush turns to ice. And all those spinning “all season” tire drivers slip and slide all over hell’s half acres.

Which is why, despite the fact that I have ten Quebec winters’ driving experience; despite the fact that I have proper winter tires on my car (thanks to Liam's dad!); and despite the fact that I love driving in winter conditions, my car will stay put, safe and sound at the very top of a hill that no car without winter tires can climb.

The most fun to be had on a snowy weekday morning on my street? Walk two blocks down to the bottom of the hill and watch car after car after car turn up the street… spin their tires for five minutes.. and finally give up, backing down from whence they came – and, as I’ve seen one year, sideswiping every parked car as they slide backward… idiots!

*****
Side note. This cracks me up. Head to the Vancouver Weather Page to check on road conditions and this is the note you get for Monday at 10:00 AM:

Current Road Conditions
Road reports will be offline until further notice.

Damn, I love this city!! If I were in charge, I would have done exactly the same thing! Tee hee!

Punk Rudolph, by Liam, age 6 (2002)

2006-11-26T18:01:00.000-08:00

New neighbours asked me what our tradition is for decorating the house at Christmas.

Christmas? Not yet! No way!

I went to the hole under the house to pull out the lights… in 8 years living in this house I’ve never gone down to the hole before.

In 8 years I’ve never put up the exterior Christmas lights… but I have the 30 foot extension ladder… and the 40-year old hammer my dad gave me… I guess I’ll put up lights tomorrow…

If I don’t post for a few days, I’ll likely be at Vancouver General. Send flowers. I like daisies.

Snow! Hey, oh!

2006-11-26T14:41:00.000-08:00

As much as I’ve grown to love Vancouver over the last 14 years, the summers will never be hot and humid enough, and the winters never white enough. I guess you can take the girl out of Montreal, but you can never take the Montreal out of the girl… or something like that!

So, days like today make me feel like I live in paradise! Vancouver is under a whack of snow!* Woo-hoo!!

Liam came back from his dad’s at noon and the first words out of his mouth were, “I want to make some money. Where’s the shovel?”

He shoveled our back deck and stairs and then the front walk. He asked me how much he’d earned.

“Well… you’ve just done a chore that contributes to your allowance.” (He gets $20/month).

I was fully expecting him to complain or try to negotiate, using “special circumstance” as an argument. And I would have offered him $5. But he didn’t. He asked how much I thought it would be worth if he shoveled our next door neighbour’s walk and sidewalk.

Five bucks.

He started working. I suggested that if he hoped to be paid, he should find out if she was willing to pay him before he did the job. He looked up at her house and said, “I can’t ask Angela for money. She can’t do the work herself. I think I should just do it to be nice, like you rake her leaves to be nice.”

God, I love my kid.

While he was doing Angela’s walks, I did the sidewalk in front of our house, and the walkway of the duplex attached to us. (I could claim to have been being nice, since they’re young, first-time, home-owners who own nothing to maintain a yard. But that would be a lie. I did it because I love being in the snow in this city.)

Liam "caught" me.

“Excuse me, Mommy, I hate to be rude, but before you do any more shoveling, could you please ask if I was planning to do it, first?”

Oops. There I was thinking about me, and my needs, forgetting that Liam had a goal to earn money so he could buy some books at the school Book Fair this coming week.

“Hey, how about I pay you for doing Angela’s walks since I would have had to do them if you hadn’t. Good enough deal?”

“Great. I’m going to see if Ross wants me to do his walkway and stairs.”

Ross negotiated Liam down to $3 since the city sidewalk had already been done by his duplex co-owner.

An hour later. We’re now sitting drinking hot chocolate. Liam is making a gingerbread house (a kit… I’m not that good a mother), and the snow is still coming down! If school is cancelled tomorrow, there will be lots of opportunity to re-shovel everything that was cleared this afternoon. What fun!

* MVL, also a Vancouver resident, called to challenge me on my assertion that we had a "foot" of snow. Fine. Maybe it was a little bit of an exaggeration. Although there is much more snow at the top of the hill where I live than at his place near the water, I stand corrected.

Smooth and creamy, spicey sweet with the dewy freshness of autum fruits

2006-11-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

Alan, my “date” for the HopScotch Festival tasting event, arrived at my house right on time… in his spanking new Dodge pick-up… black… shiny… a V-8... a BIG truck for a BIG man.

(Alan: 6’4”; singlemalt-lover; funny as hell (partly because of his British accent, giving everything he says a Monty Python-like ring to it); and astrologically… September something… I have to look this up… a Virgo or a Libra. Despite being very happily married to my best friend, Alan is a perfect date, as per the guidelines MVL has suggested I follow in his comments to this post).

I, however, was 20 minutes late and arrived home with four, wet 10-year olds in tow. I could have sworn that I’d started the day with just one Gremlin. This insane Vancouver rain caused the multiplier effect thing to occur…

Thankfully, oh-so-thankfully, I found homes for all four of the singing, dancing, “Happy Feet” Gremlin-penguins, and Alan and I set off to have one bourbon, one scotch and one beer… or two… or seven.

One bourbon: Maker’s Mark. It was actually the last thing I drank before going home, so my judgment may be … mmm… a bit off? But it was forgettable compared to the scotch and whisky I tried.

Dewar’s 12… Aberlour 10… Bushmills Black Bush… the Macallan Fine Oak 10… Auchentoshan 10... Danfield’s Private Reserve Canadian (I had to try a local whisky. Next year I won’t!).

And that’s it. I loved all but the Danfield’s. I wanted to try so many more… An Cnoc 12… Glenmorangie Port Wood Finish… Ardbeg Uigeadail… Bowmore 12… but the combination of my light-weight drinking abilities and the fact that many of the distilleries ran out of elixir by 10:30 (what terrible planning for an event that ran until 1 AM), left me wanting more.

I did save room for a couple of beers at the end of the night.

The Dead Frog nut brown was great. And I love their branding. Their tag-line is “there’s more hops in a dead frog.” Brilliant! And their beer coasters cracked me up. One of the women who was pouring - well, pulling - said her 12-year old son helped develop some of the sayings. My favourite was done by her kid, “This is one dead frog that ain’t donating its body to science.” (I did wonder, but did not ask, if they’ll be marketing Dead Frog in my home province… la belle province… je me souviens… I find the idea tres amusant).

The Red Truck ale wasn’t to my taste at all, although the branding was clever and the young women serving were smokin’! They were wearing red mechanic coveralls, but with the tops folded down around their hips… one of these beer babes had dimples on her lower back that could hold an ounce of scotch each… damn! Her t-shirt said, “Truck me!” Poor girl… 600+ drunk men and women… an invitation like that on her chest… I can imagine the pick-up lines she had to endure all night…

Four hours of standing, sipping, talking, laughing and people watching - meaning Alan helpfully pointing out all the men who “look single.” Jesus, I hope nobody ever surreptitiously nods in my direction, saying to a friend, “Joe. The tall one. She looks single.”

The night ended without event. Not even a drop of spillage to offer an opportunity for conflict and a story. But a good, fun, boozy night none-the-less. And I already have my date for next year. It will be our third annual. And I'm saving my tasting booklet, so I can be sure to start with the scotch I missed trying this year.

Hallelujah! There is hope for sanity in the world!

2006-11-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

Now, until a couple of weeks ago when my two lovely and talented blogosphere pals, Greg of Bastard of art and commerce, and Geoff of Geoff’s Periodic Inanities, blogged about videos they’d seen at YouTube, I’d never heard of the site. (Yes, yes, I live under a rock, but it’s a conscious choice that I’m good with).

Today, the best news ever from CNN:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, can now add "Invention of the Year" to its growing list of honors this year, Time magazine announced Monday.

The publication chose YouTube over inventions such as Merck's Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents a cancer-causing sexually transmitted disease, and CrustaStun, a device that electrocutes a lobster in five seconds, and is touted as a humane alternative to boiling.

Long-time readers know of my visceral hatred of the vaccine industry. If you’re new to my blog and want to see spitting and cussing, check out anything I posted in 2005. My blood pressure is going up just thinking about it.

Now I have a mission: make some short, clever anti-vaccine videos and post them at YouTube... with more than 70 million video views every day at the site, my informed and informative ranting will likely find a couple of people willing to watch, listen and learn about the evil vaccine empire (and yes, Bill Gates is behind a lot of that evil, too!).

Oh - and did you know it was now officially "Flu Season?" Yessiree. Spring, summer, autumn, flu, winter.

What does Flu Season mean? Vaccine promotions to encourage every freaking, breathing biped to get a flu shot kick into high gear.

Don't buy the hype. And if you're inclined to buy the hype, read these flu posts from last year first. (My goodness I can get excited...can you spell breathless hyperbole? I need a pill.)

And for fun, check out this very funny flu vaccine news story from YouTube! The circle is complete... Oh, except for the lobsters... YouTube... vaccines... lobsters... I'm sure someone could do something with that! Not me. Not now. My rock is calling me. Rock... Rock Lobster... B-52s... isn't there a game like this? Someone play with me??

Who invited the punk?

2006-10-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended a fancy-pants fundraising wine tasting shin-dig with a couple of friends. The organization hosting the event was the Adoptive Families Association of BC. One of my friends is the business partner of two men who have adopted a little girl, so their company bought six tickets. Since one of the two partners was out of town, there was an extra ticket, and I was invited to fill-in his shoes. So far so good…

The event took place on the top of Grouse Mountain. A beautiful location. And one I’ve only ever been to one other time for an "event"... on March 29, 2006... hmm... recognize that date? One of the four I will never forget. How seamlessly the circles in my life close...

So, there I was, top ‘o’ the world, dressed “West Coast Formal,” (asking what this meant I was told by one person, “it means wear clean fleece,” by a second, “it means don’t wear anything from Mountain Equipment Co-op” (i.e. even clean fleece won’t do), and by a third, “Donna, you have nothing to wear that is good enough to be called West Coast Formal.”

But I did. Long black skirt. Hot pink blouse. A dangly diamond earring in one of the five holes in my left ear. And my new Dayton boots (pictured in this post) topped off by my black leather motorcycle jacket. (Okay… maybe that’s more Montreal Casual than West Coast Formal, but it worked).

I’ve been to scotch tasting events before, but this was my first wine tasting experience. I was taken by a few things as I compared the two events:

Men who drink scotch tend to be taller than men who drink wine. (This is something a 5’10” woman notices);
Women who drink wine tend to be significantly more numerous than women who drink scotch (This is something a single woman notices);
A big group of people drinking scotch are a lot more fun than a big group of people drinking wine. (This is something anyone with any perceptive abilities would notice).

I ate fine chocolate, nice cheeses and crackers, fancy hors d’oeuvres, unknown fruit, and even some seafood, all coupled with the most appropriate (non-cabernet) red wines. I made small-talk with strangers (all women...phhh!). I caught-up with the friends who had invited me. A nice, uneventful evening.

Until... 10:00 PM. The emcee said, “Volunteers, will you please remove the silent auction bid sheets from the tables. The silent auction is now closed.”

All evening my friend Lin had been bidding on a charter boat cruise for 30 people. There was one other woman who was also interested in having this cruise. The bidding started at $500. Toward the end of the evening, Lin asked me to write her name on the bid sheet since the other bidder jumped at the table each time Lin walked away. Lin hoped that having me enter a bid might go unnoticed by the other bidder, since I was not on her radar as competition…

And it sort of worked… at least for a minute or 90 seconds. I wrote down the final bid for Lin ($670) and walked away. The other bidder did not immediately outbid my entry.

But she did ultimately approach the table. As fate would have it, I was on my way past the bid sheet at that exact moment, to get a top-up of a lovely Fabiano Recioto Rugola 2001, and just as the emcee called the auction over. This meant that Lin had succeeded.

But. Wait. The evening was to become “eventful.” That sneaky other bidder picked up a pen and tried to put her bid down after the auction closed! No freaking way, you cheater!

I grabbed the pen right out of her hand and said politely (I think), “The bidding is over. You lost.”

She grabbed the pen back from me and said, “I was writing when he said that. I get to finish putting my bid down.”

“No you weren’t! You picked up that pen after he said it was over,” and I took the pen from her for a second time.

Oh dear. This woman stood at my height and was just the same build as me… in the few seconds that this altercation took, her four friends had approached as back-up, telling me to give back the pen. Her friends were all women. Five on one? You got it!

The lights went out. The floral-patterned rug turned to knee-deep mud. Not liking the feeling of squish between their pedicured toes, three of the well-heeled women retreated, leaving me with my now-nemesis and only one of her side-kicks.

Two spot lights. One focused on me and one on the cheaty-cheater, so remaining Side-kick skulked sulkily out of the pit, leaving the two of us to a fair fight.

Now, if I had to put my money on one of us, I would have put it on me, for one simple reason: I was wearing my Daytons and she was wearing silly little heels. I felt grounded both physically and morally. She was wobbly on both counts.

End of the story… Lin apologized for my behaviour. I apologized for my behaviour (but my inside voice was not apologizing, oh no!). And the woman who didn’t get her boat cruise was gracious enough to shake my hand, while shaking her head at my apology.

Scotch tasting festival coming up in a few weeks… stay tuned! I predict a story... I'm feeling spunky.

Who's in charge? I'd like a word please...

2006-10-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

I’m experiencing a feeling right now that I really don’t enjoy. It’s hard to describe… a combination of nausea, grief and a little bit of fear.

It’s the second time in a week I’ve had this feeling. It takes all I have not to break down and sob… distracting myself by writing is a good way to deal with it … suppressing? Maybe.

The first time was last Thursday. A friend called to tell me that the 13-year old son of one her close friends had died the day before, the result of a food allergy. It was a total surprise. He ate something that he’d eaten before without affect and was dead within 10 minutes.

********
Yesterday I received an email from my friend Rasika, who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He and I became friends over the five weeks I spent working with him this year. Hearing from him made me curious about the state of the war in Sri Lanka these days. I haven’t been following for the past month. I find it too depressing. And too confusing.

The work I did in Sri Lanka, with Rasika, involved working with over 100, mostly non-profit, organizations that are working to achieve peace in the country. The groups were so diverse that one could only believe that peace is possible. In addition to peace organizations, the individuals I worked with came from work backgrounds as diverse as government officials, teachers, women’s organizations, tea plantation workers, university students, religious leaders, newspaper editors and reporters…

And the workshops they participated in, developing what they call the “One Voice Campaign,” brought Tamil, Singhala, English, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, obscenely rich and obscenely poor men and women together to work on a shared vision. Simply: A Sri Lanka where each of them is respected equally.

The people I met and developed relationships with came from all over the country: from the most war-affected regions in the north, to the tsunami-devastated towns in the east, to the affluent towns on the west coast and tourist destinations of the south.

**********
My first trip to Sri Lanka in February, I spent three weeks, most of which was in the capital city of Colombo. During that time the cease fire was still in effect. My recent trip, in August, was very different, since the cease fire had been broken. I spent just 14 days in the country, of which only one week was in Colombo. In that week I was in three-wheelers (to get to and from the office) a total of 16 times. The trip from my hotel to the office was no more than 20 blocks. And in that week, the vehicles I traveled in were pulled over by armed soldiers four times. All four times the drivers were asked to show identification and their details were taken down by the soldiers. Twice I had my passport taken and was asked questions about why I was in the country. I was quite surprised at how the experiences left me feeling… unmoved. Armed soldiers are so much a part of the landscape that to have one stop and address me directly seemed like a natural event. Not scary; barely interesting.

What I did find interesting and another thing that had changed between my first and second trip, was the way my colleagues would walk on the streets. Their office is one block from the Prime Minister’s residence. It is a very heavily guarded neighbourhood. The restaurant we would get our lunch from was three blocks from the office, past the PM’s home – and on the same side of the street. On my second trip my colleagues would not walk in front of the PM’s place. They would cross the busy street to walk the block of his residence on the other side.

Why? To avoid being blown up, of course. And just weeks after I left, several people who had not crossed the street when passing the PM’s residence (including some school children) were killed by a suicide bomber in that block.

That news did not have much affect on me. It was predicted. People understood how to control and reduce their chance of being harmed in what was an expected attack.

The news I read today was different. Galle, a seaside, tourist town in the south, was attacked by Tamil Tigers. The people of Galle feel very far from the war in their country, despite the fact that the island is really quite tiny - just 350 kilometres north to south and 200 kilometres wide. The war, for the most part, has taken place in the north with strategic bombing in the capital of Colombo - west-central. To have the war show up in Galle is a huge surprise - one that people were not prepared for.

Reading the news of the bombings, I thought of three beautiful young women from Galle who I spent four days working very closely with. I was mentoring them to deliver the One Voice Campaign workshop to peers in their own community. The workshop they participated in was in Kandy, central Sri Lanka. The three of us, escorted by a senior member of the Sri Lankan government, made a pilgrimage to two of the most historically important Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka. I spent several hours that evening learning about these young women from Galle and their devotion to Buddhism. It was a huge honour to have been invited to share the experience of their first trip to these temples with them.

**********
This feeling of nausea and grief and fear… I guess it really all comes down to realizing that although I like to believe I have control of, and over, events that take place in my life, really, it’s illusory. I’m starting to learn that all I really can claim to control is my reaction to events… and, as tonight has shown me, I don’t even have much control over that… Pah!

Heading to sleep with one question to the universal power that does have control over who lives and who dies and when… what are you thinking??! Faith being challenged here… big time.

I was served with a Statement of Defense and Counterclaim today

2006-10-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

Statistically speaking, about 50% of readers will know what that means. For the lucky 50% who don't, I was served with the first papers the lawyers need to file to start divorce proceedings. One year, less a day, from October 19, 2005 - a day I will always remember.

Like April 3, 1993. And May 23, 1996.

In this order: the day Bill moved out, the day Bill and I were officially married, the day our son was born.

One year ago today, I posted my last blog entry for several months. It said simply,

Signing off for awhile

Had a blast. Learned a lot. Met so many great people.

Life changes compel me to put the blogging aside for now. Had my own rose-colored glasses shattered. Time to regroup.

Hope to be back at this sometime soon...

Adieu.

So, what’s life like “one year later”?

Damn fine, thank you very much.

Hurt has been replaced by hope. Fear by confidence. Disinterest by curiosity. And anger by gratitude.

One year ago I lived in a house that I love, in a community that I love. Thanks to the miracle of the “equity mortgage,” I still live in the same house. And now all the renos I’ve dreamt of doing for the past several years are underway (nothing complete, but lots of in-progress projects ... anyone want to volunteer to help me paint?! Or change three bathroom faucets?).

One year ago I was working to fill-in my partner’s income with money that was great to have, but not essential. Today my income is critical and, since I need to earn twice as much as I ever have, and since I can’t imagine myself working in a “real” full-time office job, I raised my self-employed billable rate by 33% in an effort to make ends meet. And now I have more and more fun work than ever. Crazy how that works!

One year ago I hated red wine. Today I love it. All but cabernet sauvignon, which, I realize, must have been the wine that Bill typically bought. I assumed all red wine made my mouth tingle and my throat constrict... until I met a man who drinks shiraz. Imagine my delight to find that I have a third option when neither scotch nor beer appeals to my pallet or to the social situation.

One year ago I had two bad cats. Today, I have three... three bad cats (wah-hah-hah-hah!). The third bad cat being the former bad cat of the shiraz-drinking man I must call “Beefcake” (I’m told by a very smart friend who works in communications for international health agencies that a 47-year old man cannot be called a “boyfriend,” rather, he should be called, “Beefcake”… and, well, if the shoe fits…) who was going to move from Toronto to Vancouver this autumn and then changed his mind… I shipped his snowboard gear and winter work boots back to him, but he said I could keep his cat and the cordless drill... I am blessed!

One year ago, if “Beefcake” were arriving in four days for a five-day visit, I would have been in big trouble – morally and matrimonially. Thankfully, I did not know him a year ago so I did not have the dilemma, and today I can anticipate the visit with nothing more than … anticipation!

This year I added a fourth day to my list of unforgettable dates: March 29, 2006… the day of the walk to “the rock” during tide-out… a day that waves of hope, confidence, curiosity and gratitude washed over and through me – waves that have continued to (ebb and) flow freely ever since.

October 18… amazing the difference a year can make.

FILYR

hardly worth a post...

2006-10-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

...but my new fridge arrives first thing Wednesday morning. This is what it would look like if I had an art director buying and organizing my food for me...

Greg... can you encourage your wife to come up for a wee visit to help me make the old contents of my new fridge something beautiful to behold... food worthy of a $1500 (plus GST) storage vessel??

Are the contents of your fridge this gorgeous?

A well-stalked fridge?

2006-10-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

I consider myself to be a pretty average gal, with a pretty average life. A good, blessed, average life.

When I look at my daily grind, I consider it to be within +/- 2.2 % similar to other Canadian middle-class lives, 9 times out of 10.

I regularly shit, shower and shave, like the majority of other Canadians.
I live within a 500km of the US border, like the majority of other Canadians.
I live in a home that is equipped with a stove and a refrigerator, like the majority of other Canadians.

There are a couple of things that I know set me apart from the majority.

I don’t own a microwave oven (which causes no end of grief to my son who needs a microwave to cure his fake barf and keep it from moulding).
When I make dinner, it’s never one meal that I cook since my son is a committed carnivore and I am a bleeding-heart, don’t-hurt-the-animals vegetarian.

Pretty normal overall, though.

So why do I feel like I’ve just become one-in-a-million… the woman with an experience that is so unique it is incomprehensible to the average, large appliance salesman?

It started last Sunday. I was on my way to bed, wrangling the bad cats inside from out, turning off lights and the thermostat down… It’s true that that particular night I looked in all the closets before setting the house alarm, to be sure I wasn’t locking my phone stalker into the house with me (thank you VERY much, G, for that image… you bugger)… But all-in-all, a normal night for a normal gal living a normal life.

As I walked past my fridge it started to growl. A deep, rumbling, angry growl. I jumped back with a small shriek. “Shit! I didn’t check the fridge for my stalker and the alarm is on… what now??!!”

Only a second of insanity, really. Fear quickly turned to confusion. What the hell is that sound? A mouse in the motor?

My roommate out of town, I couldn’t pull the fridge from the wall to check this assumption, so I turned the cooling dial down in an effort to shut off the motor/fan. It worked. Noise gone. Me to bed. Not too worried about the mouse: either it will escape the fate of the fan to be eaten by one of the three bad cats, or it will die at the back of the fridge and Jon will be home to help me retreive it before the rotting rascal starts to smell.

Monday morning, up for tea. Open the fridge door and have my feet soaked by water that appears to have appeared from nowhere. Open the freezer door… worse than finding a horse’s head, I find that all of my organic gourmet pizzas, my flat of spanakopita, a variety of mushroom/tofu/lentil/dirt and bark veggie burgers and one grain-fed, free-range chicken (ugh!) have all thawed.

The fridge awakens and starts to growl at me again. I slam the freezer door closed and pretend not to have seen what I have just seen. I need tea before I can consider the implications of this new condition.

My cuppa in hand, I sit down and ponder my situation. The fridge is as old as my house: 15 years. I know that appliances are not built to last, like they used to be. (When I rented an apartment in Montreal, in the mid- and late 80s, I had the most amazing fridge… it was turquoise, with the freezer just a plastic icebox inside the main fridge door. It was from the 50s. I loved that fridge.)

I look at the stack of newspaper flyers scattered around my feet. I pick up the one from Sears. All my friends who buy appliances (large and small) buy them from Sears. I figure that I can trust their research. I already know that I’m going to buy an Energy Star model since I don’t want to be any more responsible for Canada missing our Kyoto targets than I need to be. I find some models that look interesting. Of course, they’re all over $1200… so I put the flyers down and forget about my fridge.

Wednesday rolls around. Paper towels are sort-of protecting my now warping hard wood floor from the non-stop dripping from the ever-thawing freezer and warming fridge. Jon returns from his travels. We stand together, looking at the fridge and decide that yes, indeed, I need to buy a new one. We agree that it would be silly to call in a repair man to even look at this one since it will cost $80 for him to walk through the door and likely several hundred to replace what we decide is a dying compressor.

Days pass… we adopt a meal-time philosophy of eat-it-quick-before-it-rots, starting with the food most likely to make us sick if we wait too long to ingest it.

Saturday now (that would be yesterday, and one week since my stalker/the mouse broke in to break my fridge). My friend/colleague/gym partner Catherine comes over to work on writing an RFP with me. I tell her my tale of woe about my thawing food-stuffs. She looks at me like I’m insane to not have taken a more proactive approach to fixing the fridge problem. At her insistence, Jon and I hope into her car and we head to Sears. (A girl can never have too many advisors).

And this is where I wonder if my life is not as common as the majority of other Canadians’ lives. Seems to me that the purchase of a refrigerator is not something one does in the same way one decides to purchase, say, a new car, for instance. I can’t imagine that most people wake up one day and think, “you know, I’m growing tired of this old fridge. I know it still keeps my Strongbow cold and my gelato frozen, but I think I’d like to get a new one.”

No, I assume that most people who are in the market for a fridge have been pushed into the large appliance department by need. An urgent, or imminently urgent, need to buy a fridge and buy it fast.

After an hour of opening and closing doors and drawers, hearing from the salesman about the difference between US-made and Mexican-made models (racism is alive and well in Burnaby, folks), comparing energy ratings, and imagining how my own selection of salad dressings and soy milk will fit the new configurations of each model’s door shelves, I decide on the fridge I want. I tell the salesman. He wanders off to start the paper-work.

He returns, “We can have that model to you on November 17!”

“Pardon? You’re joking, right? It’s Saturday today. I was hoping you could have it delivered on Monday... (I pause and look him directly in the eye)... I’ll be home... all day…”

“Ma’am, all of our stock is kept in Calgary… if it’s in stock it takes a week to get here. The model you want is not in stock currently. You’ll have to wait three weeks.”

“Sell me the floor model?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Management doesn’t like to have holes in the floor display.”

“Oh, for god’s sake… you don’t even have this fridge in stock to sell… look over there… a mess of fridges all higgledy-piggledy… can’t you move one of those over here?”, is what I think. I ask,

“Well, what do you propose I do, sir? I need a fridge ASAP.”

“Go to Home Depot. Good luck.” (and “good riddance” I could hear him say as he turned to find a real customer… he thought he was using his inner voice but it snuck out as his outer voice. Happens to me all the time…)

We boot over to Home Depot. Find the same fridge. I pony up my $1500 (plus GST). Delivery is promised on Wednesday… until then, I’ve got a bottle of Pepto Bismal at the ready.

And a new insecurity about what I'm doing to create situations that are apparently beyond the scope of your average, run-of-the-mill, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary life experiences. This has the potential to cause me some serious existential angst... over-analysing again? Crap! And none of my regular comfort food in the fridge to help me calm down.

Can YOU pat your head and rub your belly at the same time?

2006-10-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

If you have 10 minutes to kill (which you must have if you’re wasting time here), and you want to pee yourself laughing, check out the comments that have been posted in response to the Sneeze’s question to the post "A Wink of an Eye," Is there any other seemingly simple action you're physically unable to do?

Are these “skills” genetic progression or regression? I just found out that red hair is a recessive gene that goes back to the Neanderthals… my red-headed room-mate told me. He wouldn’t make something like that up…

In case anyone cares…

I can wink
I cannot raise one eyebrow
I can wiggle my ears
I can do the Vulcan hand greeting
I can cross my toes (without using my hands)
I can wiggle my nose
I can whistle – but not using my fingers
I can burp on command
I can bend my thumb toward my arm and lay it flat against my wrist (pretty gross)
I can curl my tongue, but I cannot roll it, clover-shape it or touch it to my nose
I can snap my fingers on both hands.. but I cannot snap my index fingers on either hand
I can pee myself laughing
I can make a short film about this… wouldn’t that be fun!?

Bus driver blinds female passenger

2006-09-30T21:12:00.000-07:00

Do you love public transit? I do.

I don’t love the convenience of living near a Skytrain station… I don’t love the fact that it’s way cheaper than parking downtown… I don’t even love that I can feel good about not adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.

Those are all good things, but not what I love about taking transit.

What I love about riding the bus and Skytrain are all the kooky people I get to see. People who would never find themselves in my car.

Take last night. I was on a bus on Broadway, heading home from a meditation class. Feeling… calm. Breathing… deeply. Accepting… nonjudgmentally.

I sat down beside a young woman. I’d guess she was in her mid-twenties. She was very cute. Long brown hair. Beautiful skin. And a bag of make-up as big as loaf of Wonderbread.

When I sat down, she was Nature Girl. Over the course of the 20-minute ride, I watched her, (from the corner of my eye…no, I did not stare!), transform into Glam Girl. An amazing feat to me, the girl in high school who never learned how to put on more than eye liner and tinted lip balm (strawberry flavour, of course... it was the early '80s!).

What was most… shocking, I guess… was the process she used to get her mascara right. She put it on with a wand and then used a safety pin to separate the lashes… while the bus was moving… a safety pin next to her eyes… bus starting and stopping… safety pin just a hair away from tearing her cornea from her eyeball. Don’t you think that’s a bit too much faith in the bus driver?

Now, I’m not an overly cautious kind of person. I picked up two hitchhikers today on the way to Squamish… I spent five weeks this year, working in a country that’s engaged in civil war (bombs, kidnappings, the works)… Ihave gone out with men I met on the Internet.

Clearly, I am comfortable with risk. But a safety pin near an eyeball on a moving bus?? Crossed my line of comfort, in a BIG way.

I sat, post-meditation-acceptance-of-the-world quickly evaporating, wondering things like,

If she’s meeting a guy tonight, and they spend the night together, won’t her eyes be covered in black smudge by morning? Or does she have special little envelopes to wrap around her lashes, to keep them tidy while she sleeps?

If she’s hoping to meet a guy tonight, and she doesn’t, how disappointed will she be at all the effort she’s just made to separate every freaking eye lash from the one next to it? Will she rethink her approach and go out with the “clumpy lash look” tomorrow night?

And then I wondered why men don’t wear make-up. When I was in my twenties, many of my male friends wore eyeliner and lip-liner… Goths in the mid-80s, they were. I thought they looked silly. But then they thought I looked silly with my semi-Mohawk and my pet rats, Tara and Pogo, who lived inside my t-shirt.

Yeah… twenties was a silly age. Forties is good. Although it would be better with someone to ride the bus with, making up silly (but nice) stories about the lives of other riders...

The fine print communicates loudly

2006-02-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was facilitating a communications workshop on message development and audience profiling to a small group of civil society organizations here in Sri Lanka. I was very happy to have the image of the vaccine billboard to use in my presentation as an example of how to use a positive message for an issue that could easily be communicated using negative language (an image of a child with a disease as opposed to the love of the mother who protects her child from a disease).

ANYWAY! Seeing the image projected on a wall I noticed the GSK logo...which I hadn't noticed when I saw the billboard on the street! I made an assumption that the billboard had been purchased by an organization like the Pediatric Association or some other non-profit interested in child heath... why would I think that?! Because in Canada that's who would deliver this message - not th ecompany making the vaccine.

The last thing I taught to the group in my workshop yesterday was about the importance of having the right messenger deliver the message. You can develop the best message possible for your target audience, but if the messenger is not credible, then the message will be lost.

Do you think GSK really cares about the health of children in Sri Lanka? Of course they'll say the do because being a "caring company" is good for business. But the bottom line is, their bottom line, not protecting a child from chicken pox or hepatitis.

If you haven't yet seen it, I highly recommend you rent or purchase The Corporation. Life - or at least my view of it - will make so much more sense once you see this film.

Vaccine Billboard in Sri Lanka

2006-02-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

I walked passed this sign in a non-tourist part of Colombo, Sri Lanka yesterday. Not sure how I feel about it. If it were in downtown Vancouver, my feelings would be clear, but in this country, I have no idea what the impact of hep B and chicken pox is on kids...funny though, that this ad is promoting the two newest vaccines in the arsenal.

FDA's caution, Part 2

2006-02-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, check it out before you read this post, which picks up where I left off yesterday (if you want to, of course. There’s no coercion here at Shattering Rose-Coloured Glasses).

For those readers, who, like me will not follow the instruction to read yesterday’s post, because they were asked to, here’s a link to the article I’m discussing:

The four most dangerous words in medicine: First do no harm

So let’s start at the CBC. Being a proud Canadian, and just a little left-of-centre in my political views, I turn to our national broadcaster for most of my daily news needs. And, when I want to know about good journalistic principles, the CBC is the first place to look. Here's what they say:

2. JOURNALISTIC PRINCIPLES

Information programs must reflect established journalistic principles:

Accuracy
The information conforms with reality and is not in any way misleading or false. This demands not only careful and thorough research but a disciplined use of language and production techniques, including visuals.

Integrity
The information is truthful, not distorted to justify a conclusion. Broadcasters do not take advantage of their power to present a personal bias.

Fairness
The information reports or reflects equitably the relevant facts and significant points of view; it deals fairly and ethically with persons, institutions, issues and events.

Application of these principles will achieve the optimum objectivity and balance that must characterize the CBC's information programs.

I assume that if you’re reading my blog you’re at least as smart and thoughtful as I am – likely smarter and more thoughtful. So I’m inclined to just let you apply those journalistic principles to the following first four paragraphs of the article in question and let you draw your own conclusions about the journalistic quality of the story…

But, because I get such joy in tearing apart other people’s writing, you can follow along with my analysis and contribute your own ideas to the comments.

Now, in case you’re one of those “scan-readers,” I’m going to highlight a few key words and phrases that jump out at me and lead me to conclude that this piece of journalism is not as balanced or unbaised as it would have been had the CBC run it. (Not that the CBC is perfect…)

(NEW YORK) FORTUNE - When Friday's announcement came it was hard to see it as anything but wonderful news -- the FDA had approved a vaccine called RotaTeq, made by Merck & Co., which had the potential to stop a deadly viral epidemic in its tracks.

Here was "an important new tool," said the FDA's Jesse L. Goodman, MD, that could "effectively prevent an illness that affects almost all children within the first few years of life." The plague, called rotavirus, causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and fever in infants and toddlers that, if unchecked, quickly leads to dehydration. And in much of the developing world, that can mean imminent death.

Estimates -- which may even be low -- are that some 600,000 children succumb each year to rotavirus gastroenteritis. On the scale of human misery, then, this bug is a biggie. So what could be wrong with a medical marvel that could conceivably end its reign?

Well, nothing -- except that this very happy ending caps a tale that is otherwise quite terrifying. You see Merck's (Research) RotaTeq (and a competing product from GlaxoSmithKline (Research) called Rotarix that is approved in a number of countries, though not yet the United States) aren't the first miracle weapons designed to fight this disease.

And now, to draw on my annoying language deconstruction tendency that caused my parents so much grief:

“wonderful news” – how could the writer (who is the editor-at-large, not some green J-school grad) draw such a conclusion unless he was imposing his bias? I think he stretches the rule of accuracy and breaks the rule of integrity here. He’s reporting that a new vaccine has been approved by the FDA. Wonderful news? Sure, if you have shares in Merck & Co and the vaccine takes off.

“deadly viral epidemic” – want to define this for us? Deadly to whom? The writer will tell us later, but most readers will never finish this article. The headline, lead and first few paragraphs are all most readers have patience or interest in reading. So, a majority of readers will leave this article with the impression that rotavirus is a much larger problem than it actually is. And, probably, with a misguided idea of whom the disease is most deadly for.

And how big is the epidemic? Actually, can rotavirus even legitimately be called an epidemic? Do a google define: epidemic search and read the definitions from academic institutions. My read is that rotavirus does NOT meet the definition of an epidemic.

“plague” – see “epidemic.” Same thing applies. This is a clear-cut case of fear-mongering language.

“if unchecked, quickly leads to dehydration” – "if unchecked" is an easy little phrase to overlook when sandwiched as it is. If unchecked, any vomiting child, regardless of the cause of the vomiting, will become dehydrated. Dehydration is not caused by, or the result of rotavirus. It’s the result of inattentive parenting. More fear-mongering.

“imminent death” – fear-mongering. And this imminent death is for children in developing countries, not the babies that the readers of this article will most care about: their own American flag-waving progeny. How many American babies die from rotavirus? Well, this article goes on to say, “In the United States, where rotavirus is rarely deadly…” We can’t quantify the risk, so how can a mom make an informed decision about her child’s need for the vaccine?

“Estimates – which may even be low” – or, may even be high. If the number is an estimate, that means we don’t know how many children “succumb” to rotavirus. By saying the estimate “may be low” the reporter leads readers to conclude that, if the number is not accurate, then it is low. That's innaccurate reporting.

“600,000 children succumb” – lots of kids are dieing from rotavirus. Sounds very scary. And it is – if you’re a malnourished child in a developing country who has no access to clean water. But here in North America…scary? Not so much. Say it with me, “fear mongering.”

“human misery” – my heart is bleeding. Now, if this article moved to the story about how the vaccine was being made available, for free, to the countries where the human misery and deaths from rotavirus are actually occurring, then that phrase would be acceptable. But that’s not close to where the writer takes us. (At US$187 for three doses, I’m guessing it will be years before the kids who really need this vaccine will ever get it).

“medical marvel” – please. Nice alliteration. Not so good for objective reporting.

“a very happy ending” – again with the reporter’s (or the industry’s press release’s) biased opinion.

“miracle weapons” – notice the structure of these first four paragraphs. First we’re bombarded with fear-mongering language like deadly, epidemic, plague, misery, and succumb, and then – the news we are desperate to hear – we don’t have to suffer and die! A medical marvel, the miracle weapon called RotaTeq is our salvation.

Vaccines are a frigging sacred cow in society. And using language like “miracle weapon” to describe a vaccine further entrenches the belief. Bow down before the doctor with the hypodermic needle, for He is your salvation. (Now that is my side-step into loss of integrity, accuracy, fairness and objectivity. Where’s an editor when I need one?)

There’s tons more to this article to look at…it’s a brilliant case study. I’m having so much fun I want to change my day job so I can just spend my time deconstructing stories like this one.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll pick it up again. Part three. Maybe something else will catch my interest…

FDA’s caution may be killing people

2006-02-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

The work I do with the MediaDoctor.ca project has taught me a lot about how medical news is created and the shortcomings in the reporting of health-related stories.

Top of the list, which I really should have put-together given my day-job, is how reliant health reporters are on industry-generated press releases for their stories. Not just what the story will be about, but the focus of the story and the tone of it.

What does this mean? Well, let’s say, for instance, there’s a new vaccine (It’s Monday…vaccine news day) that will save us from ourselves. And, let’s say this is a vaccine to protect small kids from severe diarrhea. And the severe diarrhea has a medical label: rotavirus.

Ring any bells? Several years ago a vaccine to protect infants and toddlers from rotavirus was put on the market in the U.S. It was called RotaShield. Starting in 1998, over 1 million babies received the new RotaShield vaccine. And then, quick as the runs start, it was voluntarily pulled off the market. Big pharma pulling a new drug off the market less than a year after it's launched doesn’t happen too often.

Why was it pulled? Because it was killing babies. Nobody could argue the facts that this vaccine was causing a rare and deadly type of bowel obstruction called intussusception. Unfortunately, I can’t recall or find the stat of how many babies actually died as a result of RotaShield-induced intussusception. (And the article that I suggest you read uses statistical trickery to tell us that babies died, without telling us how many. If you read closely and you’ll see how.)

That’s the background story.

So take a minute or two now and navigate yourself away from my blog and read the following article from Fortune. But please come back after you read it! I’ll teach you a few of the things I’ve learned over the past nine months about how to read and analyse a health story…

Oh, and be sure to look at the title of this page in the lower bar on your computer screen. The title of the page is not the same as the headline on the webpage…it’s just a tad non-objective…just a wee, little, tad…

The four most dangerous words in medicine: First do no harm

Quite an intriguing headline. Ten points to that headline writer!

The lead, or the first text just below the headline reads:
The approval of a rotavirus vaccine is the happy end to an otherwise terrifying saga.

I could spend this whole post just on that one sentence and how non-journalistic it is. And how inappropriate for a health story it is. There are three elements to that lead:

The approval of the rotavirus vaccine
The happy end
An otherwise terrifying saga

Back in Grade 4 – when I was nine-years old – I was taught how to deconstruct arguments into their elements to either prove them logical or prove them illogical. (I think that was when I was introduced to Socratic argument…and the same year my parents signed me up for boarding school in England.)

Back to that sentence. We can’t take issue with it’s logic. And that gives this sentence strength and leads us to assume that since it’s a logical sentence it must also be true, a statement of fact. Since we don’t know otherwise, given the sentence makes sense, most people will naturally deduce that it is true, too.

But thanks to Mr. McAdam and the logic and rhetoric training he provided me and a handful of other precocious nine-year olds, I don’t accept what I read as “truth” so easily.

I can’t argue with the first clause, that a new rotavirus vaccine has been approved. It’s a fact, that I can prove because every news media outlet has told me so. (I hope you read the sarcasm in that last sentence…).

The two elements of the second clause, “the happy end to an otherwise terrifying saga,” I must take issue with.

How on God’s green earth can the assertion be made that the approval of a new vaccine is the happy end to anything? We saw with the previous rotavirus cure that in under a year the vaccine caused children to die and had to be withdrawn.

This new vaccine has been tested on close to 70,000 children. None of the 70,000 of the test group died or suffered any serious complications, but they are almost certainly not representative of the population of children who will start to receive this vaccine once it hits the market.

Why? Because kids (and adults) who are used as guinea pigs for new drugs, are typically chosen based on very specific health criteria. In the case of a vaccine, those kids would almost certainly have been identified as healthy, overall; of not having any pre-existing medical conditions. Certainly, they would not have any previous indication of bowel problems.

And sticking with the “happy end,” below is data about the side effects of the RotaTeq vaccine. You can find this if you link from the press release that the FDA issued to announce their approval of the vaccine.

Read closely. It may not appear logical at first. Or on second reading. Or third. I certainly wouldn't want to be on the "happy end" of the bum in the diaper that got this vaccine!

6. Are there are any possible side effects associated with the use of RotaTeq™?

During the studies, rates of serious adverse events were similar in infants receiving RotaTeq™ compared to those infants who did not receive the vaccine.

The following were reported more often in infants who received RotaTeq™, when compared to those who received placebo;

diarrhea (24.1% in vaccine recipients vs 21.3% in those receiving placebo),
vomiting (15.2% in vaccine recipients vs 13.6% in those receiving placebo),
ear infection (14.5% in vaccine recipients vs 13.0% in those receiving placebo),
runny nose and sore throat (6.9% in vaccine recipients vs 5.8% in those receiving placebo),
wheezing and coughing (1.1% in vaccine recipients vs 0.7% in those receiving placebo).

The most important problem here is that we have no idea what ingredients were in the placebo that was used as the control. We may assume that it was a benign saline solution. But that would be foolish and, very likely, not the case. Most vaccines, believe it or not, are tested for their safety not against a benign solution, but against an existing vaccine!

Since most vaccines cause some kind of reaction in children (diarrhea, fever, and uncontrollable crying are three pretty common ones), this new rotavirus vaccine could, in fact, be causing not just a 3% increase in diarrhea for kids who get it, compared to kids who don't - it could, depending on the control placebo, be causing 24.1% more diarrhea cases. Does that makes sense? I need someone smarter than me to post a comment to explain that better than I just did.

Okay, so this post broke the cardinal “short is better” rule-of-blogging 750 words ago. I’ll end it here and address the actual content of the story tomorrow. Come back. It'll be good!

Two million bad kids, 19 dead ones

2006-02-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

I opened this email news alert today and felt a wave of nausea. Light-headed. And then a little weepy.

Strongest warning suggested for ADHD drugs

2 million children are prescribed the drugs every month

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ritalin and other stimulant drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should carry the strongest warning that they may be linked to an increased risk of death and injury, federal health advisers said Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted in favor of the "black box" warning after hearing about the deaths of 25 people, including 19 children, who had taken the drugs. The vote was 8-7, with one abstention.

Yeah, it’s the CNN.com version of reality, but that makes this even more shocking. CNN is usually pretty pro-corporate agenda in its spin.

It wasn’t the 19 deaths that made me feel ill and sad. It’s the fact that two million kids take ADHD drugs each month in the States. Two million children are being told, day-after-day with every pill they take, that their personalities are not “right” and need to be changed. What else can a child interpret from being given a drug that has the express objective of changing his behaviour, natural personality and how he interacts with the world?

Two million kids growing up to believe that their natural childhood enthusiasm for life needs to be tempered. That their excited and hyperactive energy needs to be dampened. That their boisterous behaviour is irritating to others and that those others’ needs are more important than their own need to express themselves in the most honest way they know.

I felt ill because my own son was given a label by his after-school care-givers and placed with eleven other kids who they identified as high needs kids. Kids who either were taking behaviour-modification drugs, or, as I was told in my son’s case, should be taking the drugs. (Turns out he has a wheat allergy and every day they fed him bread, muffins and crackers…eliminate the wheat, eliminate the behaviour issues).

It is certainly very sad that 19 children have died as a result of taking ADHD drugs. But in my mind, what’s even more sad is that two million children are living -- growing up to believe that they need drugs to fit into society.

Anyone want to bet that those same kids will be the highest illegal drug users as teens and young adults, the demographic most likely to get hooked on hard drugs? These kids, who from a young age understood that taking drugs made them feel different and that when they felt different, they were actually more likable… that's the saddest part of this story.

Of donuts and data

2006-02-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

You know those annoying phone calls everyone gets from time to time…the phone rings, you pick it up, and there’s a second or two of silence. You know that the person on the other end is not a friend. He or she is a telemarketer, wants to sell you something or is working for a market research company.

I get a couple of these calls a week. Unlike many of my friends I neither hang up on the caller nor do I verbally abuse them.

I used to work the phones in a market research company. It was the only job I could find when I first arrived in Vancouver 14 years ago. It was miserable. I empathize with the people making minimum wage, hating what they’re doing and not caring a whit about what they’re trying to sell or the research data they’re gathering.

“Hello M’am. How are you tonight?”

First thought in my head was, “I feel like shit. I was dealing with lawyers today, trying to settle assets with an ex who doesn’t want to settle assets.” I said, “fine, thank you.”

“Do you have 9 minutes to participate in a research study?”

“Depends. What’s it about?” I refuse to participate in market research about food or cars or financial institutions.

“Important issues, M’am.”

Well, that’s clear enough. “Sure,” I said.

“What’s the most important issue facing Canadians today?’

First thought in my head was healthcare. But I didn’t want to say healthcare. Everyone says healthcare. It’s the issue we’re told is the most important by new media, day after day. I don’t believe healthcare is the most important issue, even though it was top of mind. I thought for a couple of seconds, “the privatization of public resources.”

First five minutes of the survey focused on the federal government: would I vote for the Bloc? The Conservatives? The Greens? The NDP? The Liberals?

In that order. Isn’t that odd?

And then two questions about the leadership potential and credibility of 10-12 politicians, starting with Belinda Stronach and including Ken Dryden, Bob Rae, what’s-her-name-Liberal-who-quit–when-she-lost-the-leadership-race, and a handful of folks I didn’t know enough about to judge.

From there: questions about health care. A-ha! Further proof that health care is the most important issue facing Canadians today.

“M’am, do you think that doctors make prescribing decisions based on a) ensuring the best care for their patients, b) controlling health care costs or c) their salaries?”

I hate multiple choice questions that limit my answering ability. What about option d) which pharma rep was last visiting their office with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts and tickets to the Canucks? Or option e) the drug they saw advertised on TV while watching the Seahawks get their butts kicked?

Then the same question about federal government bureaucrats and provincial governments. Then a new set:

“How important are bureaucrats in determining which prescription drugs Canadians take?”

I said, “I don’t understand the question. Is that how important are they or should they be?”

“It’s your opinion M’am.”

I still didn’t understand but answered a whole series of this same question: how important are doctors, nurses, provincial governments, pharmacists, the patient in determining which prescription drugs Canadians take?”

Then some questions about some new federal prescription drug initiative that is supposed to address the disparities between the drugs available to people who have private health care insurance and those who are on provincial plans and those who pay out of pocket.

One question asked if I believed people with private health insurance should get access to more drugs than people who are on provincial plans. What the? Of course not!

I got through the survey and was asked the demographic info: my age, household income, and then my postal code.

I wanted to lie. I thought about it. But I couldn’t remember the postal code for the fancy part of Vancouver. I live in the postal area that had the highest “no” vote in the Olympics referendum. The same postal area that voted NPD provincially when all but two seats went to the Gordon Campbell Liberals. The postal area that is arguably the most progressive in BC.

I’m certain I heard the interviewer’s computer go “ping.” My third eye visualized the screen she saw, “Delete this interview? Please select Yes or No.” She sighed. Thirteen minutes wasted. She won’t make her quota for the night. Tomorrow she’ll be given a list of numbers in a neighbourhood where only 20 percent of residents speak English fluently.

I reconsidered what I think to be the most pressing issue facing Canadians today: too many people living their lives pay-cheque to pay-cheque, hating the work they have to do, to feed themselves and their families.

Sure, I had a bad day, dealing with lawyers. But I am blessed to be in a position to even have a lawyer.

The old telemarketing firm I worked for is just around the corner from my office. Tomorrow I think I’ll pop in with a big box of Tim Horton’s donuts for the young men and women who are responsible for doing the research that provides the media with headlines like, “Canadians support privatization of healthcare.”

If you have the science, show me. If you don't, shut up!

2006-02-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

What a weekend! Another I’ll long remember.

A surprise fortieth birthday party, organized in Vancouver from Seattle…my sister is amazing! My friends – many of whom I’ve had in my life for twenty years, some of whom have “only” been walking along my life path for a couple of years – are the most supportive and loving gang of people ever brought into one life.

I am truly blessed.

In addition to a party with so many old friends, I also met with someone for the first time this weekend. The professor who founded the Neural Dynamics Research Lab at the Vancouver General Hospital: Dr. Chris Shaw. And our meeting, I predict, was one of those transformative events that happens so rarely in life: Prof. Shaw walked into my house this weekend (with potted flowers in honour of my birthday...is that nice or what?) and offered the missing third leg of the stool that I have been trying to make stand for nine years.

Background: Nine years ago I looked into the whole childhood vaccine issue. Being a naturally skeptical person, I was not able to provide consent to vaccinate my newborn son until I knew more about the danger of the diseases and the safety of the vaccines than what my doctor could tell me. As I’ve mentioned (perhaps too many times!), that research lead me to the position that, as parents, we do not receive enough information to make an informed decision about childhood vaccinations.

The first leg of my stool is the knowledge and experience that I have about how social marketing and communications is used to influence public beliefs and behaviour – such as accepting that every healthy infant/child needs 40 shots of 12 different diseases in his first five years of life, if he is to remain healthy.

The second leg of my stool is Alan Cassels, whom I met and started to work with six years ago. Alan is a well-known and respected health policy researcher at the University of Victoria, a journalist and author. His knowledge and expertise about how health policy is made adds critical context to the social marketing aspect of the vaccination issue.

Missing for the past six years, however, has been the science leg of the stool. Until now (or very soon from now, once his research has been peer reviewed and published), there has been no way to assert that vaccines could be causing harm to our children (and our soldiers, and our elderly populations and well, anyone who accepts the shots, really). Without the science to prove that vaccines are not as safe as government health agencies, doctors, and the public have been lead to believe they are, the marketing and policy legs simply did not stand.

The science that Dr. Chris Shaw oversaw in his research lab, undertaken by grad student Mike Petrik, proves that the adjuvant aluminum that is used in some vaccines causes neurological damage in mice. Significant damage. Statistically significant neurological damage – in mice.

Interestingly, Shaw and Petrick did not set out to study vaccines at all – they were looking for clues about the possible causes of Gulf War Syndrome. Their research lead them to look at the anthrax vaccine, which lead them to the aluminum adjuvant – an adjuvant that is used in several different vaccines, including many given to infants and children.

Petrik’s research is the first ever to be done (since one very inadequate study done in the 1940s) to even look at the impact of aluminum adjuvants in/on a brain. Despite the fact that aluminum has long been known to be a neuro-toxin. Aluminum has been added to vaccines for 80 years and this is the very first time a researcher has made the effort to see if aluminum could have any impact on neurological functions. Does this make sense?

Despite research never having been done to prove it, for a century we’ve been assured that vaccines are safe. This begs the question of how such an assertion could have been made in the first place, and then why that unproven assertion was accepted by the establishment, and finally, how an unproven assertion has not only survived for 100 years but has become so entrenched in popular belief that to challenge it is akin to blasphemy?

The answer: social marketing and public policy. Three legs of a stool that, if the stars continue to align as they have been, will make 2006 the year that Vaccine Nation is produced and published. 2006, the year I turned 40; the year that starts the slow process of replacing a belief we "know" to be true (that vaccines are safe) with the oppositional knowledge that will bring that belief to its knees.

The sacred cow may fall in my lifetime. And with it, perhaps, a medical paradigm that never should have been accepted in the first place.

Did 007 Ever Use Ricin?

2006-01-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, sweet-mother-of-darkness. I need a pill.

Back in October I blogged about the pending avian flu pandemic, the Spanish flu catastrophe of 1918 and projected, tongue-in-cheek, the following:

“If you pick up any newspaper, turn on any TV news in the next weeks and months, you’ll hear lots of breathless hyperbole about the imminent, unstoppable and deadly flu pandemic that is on the verge of ravaging the Earth. You’ll be told to get your regular flu vaccine, and your avian flu shot, and your anti-terrorist immunizations, and then you’ll willingly ask for antidepressants, and anti-panic pills, and high blood pressure medication because the world is such a scary place to live these days.”

And today, what lands in my inbox, but news from the New York Times that the first clinical trial for the ricin vaccine has proven to be safe and effective.

Ricin. Heard of it? I never had before this morning, but now that I know about it I’m afraid. Very afraid.

Ricin is the castor bean by-product left by the production of castor oil. (not so scary yet)

Ricin is easy to make. (still not worried)

Ricin is highly toxic. (okay, so I won’t start producing castor oil in my basement)

Ricin can be made into a powder and aerosolized. (I thought aerosol cans were banned…)

Ricin is the spy-master’s favourite poison. Let me say that again, “Ricin is the spy-master’s favourite poison.” (better stop picking up spies at my local pub)

The scary thoughts are tumbling about in my head.

First, how many spies are there in my neighbourhood? There must be lots if some corporation has determined it’s in their financial interest to develop a vaccine against the spy-master’s favourite poison. I mean, if there weren’t a good number of spy masters roaming about then there wouldn’t be much of a market for the anti-ricin vaccine, and without a substantial market, there would be no profit for the company that’s invested in the R&D. Conclusion: there must be a lot folks skulking about with castor bean stains on their finger-tips. That makes me uncomfortable.

Did you know that in a famous incident, Bulgarian exile Georgi Markov was fatally attacked in London in 1978 with an umbrella-like weapon that injected him with ricin? (It’s true. I read it on a website). And I live in Vancouver, where we had 29 days of rain this January. I see hundreds of umbrellas every day…strangers’ umbrellas actually touch me on the bus…I’m simply not riding at rush-hour anymore.

Second scary thought: GWB has managed another assault on the American public’s right to choice. Using his executive powers he has the right to force every single solitary American citizen to submit to anti-terrorist vaccines if he feels the need. (Actually, that may only be American citizens living on American soil…and soldiers, of course. I may be exempt from that law based on my Canadian residency. Then again, with our new Prime Minister being a GWB-Mini-Me-Wanna-Be, if Bushie says it’s a good idea, my guess is that Stephie will jump in the little red wagon and get shots for us, too.)

Third scary thought: Tomorrow I turn forty and I have a crush on a man. My 9-year old and I are having peer-to-peer conversations about the anxiety caused by this state of mind/heart/being. That is way too scary, but not a topic for this blog…not today, anyway.

As for the info I promised yesterday...still waiting for the document.

Aluminun adjuvants under the microscope

2006-01-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those days that I will long remember. A day that I expect I’ll look back on in one year, five years, ten years and smile, “that was the day my life work got the traction it needed.”

My life work, the work I feel compelled to do or die trying to get done, is to produce a documentary film about the lies we're told about childhood vaccinations. A film written for parents who have, for a hundred years, been coerced and tricked and lied to about the “proven safety” of the shots that, we’re told, our children need to be healthy. A film that will challenge the sacred cow of childhood vaccinations. (“If you love your child, vaccinate, on-time, every time!”)

Today, I finally received the proof that every broadcaster has demanded of me before they will agree to provide Vaccine Nation with a license (in Canada, that’s the trigger to access support from all the different film funding pots): proof that vaccines are not as safe as the manufacturers and government assert they are.

The very first statistically significant testing has been completed on the safety of aluminum adjuvants* used in vaccines. Yes, the very first safety research ever in the history of vaccines. (Well, the very first ever that researchers could find. Studies with unhappy results may have been undertaken by vaccine-makers but if they ever were they have been destroyed or well-hidden, since there is no record of any research anywhere.)

The study is yet to be published (in the journal Lancet Neurology), but by tomorrow I will have the pre-press copy. I spoke to the lead researcher for an hour today and he regaled me with his story and findings.

I didn’t take notes. So I’ll wait until tomorrow to post what he found. But, if you happen to have an appointment tomorrow to get your child vaccinated with the DTaP or DTP, hepatitis A or B, pneumococcal 7 vaccines, or to get an anthrax shot yourself…call and postpone – just for a day or two.

I know if I were a parent, which I am, I’d be glad I did.

* Aluminum compounds have been widely used as human vaccine adjuvants for more than 70 years. The adjuvant helps the disease ingredients in the vaccine do their job more effectively, increasing the efficacy of the vaccine.

Rx for bad medical reporting

2006-01-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

My fabulous colleague Alan Cassels (co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us all into Patients and the “star” of my documentary Little Boy Blue) and I recently launched a website: MediaDoctor.ca (with the support of the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society and funding from Industry Canada).

Media Doctor is a website dedicated to improving the accuracy of media reports about new medical treatments, based on the Australian Media Doctor project that launched a year earlier than ours.

Our Media Doctor team reviews current news items about medical treatments, assesses their quality using a standardised rating scale and presents reviews of good and bad examples of reports on this website. We anticipate that these independent and objective critiques will improve journalistic practices in reporting new medications and treatments in Canada.

Feedback from some of the health editors and journalists we’ve spoken to is affirming that this kind star-rating will have an impact on how reporters approach their stories, how much effort they put into reading beyond industry-issued press releases, and how much they hype new drugs. One reporter was comical in his response to my “heads-up, we’re rating your work” phone call, moaning, “No, no, no, no, no you can’t give my stories a star rating. That’s not fair.”

Well, given that the vast majority of health consumers, otherwise known as patients, otherwise known as the public, get our knowledge about health and medical matters from the media, not from health-care providers, I believe applying a star rating to those stories is perfectly fair.

For instance, imagine you’re a woman who comes from a family that has a history of breast cancer. You read the article at CTV.ca that suggests that drinking 6 cups of coffee a day may lower some breast cancer risks. Sounds good. Easy enough to make the extra trips to Starbucks every day…so you double your latte intake based on the hope presented in this article. Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe not. Find out what the Media Doctor reviewers had to say about this 2 star article.

Be sure to check out some of the other articles our team has reviewed. Post a comment. And sign up to receive a notice each time we post a new review.

(And to my American readers, watch for your very own stars and stripes Media Doctor website, coming in February, 2006).

Back in the game and feeling fine!

2006-01-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

Over three months since my last post. Where did the time go?! Sure hope all my old, regular supporters and detractors are still around to keep me in line…

News from the Shattering Rose-Coloured Glasses home front:

I am adjusting very nicely, thank you, to being single after what was a fine marriage. I wish the father of my child all the best with his new relationship. Everyone deserves to be happy.

I was offered yet another broadcast license for my documentary about childhood vaccinations…and yet again, weeks after the offer was made it was retracted. “Too risky.” So – the new idea is to write the book and then make the film. I have a co-author who is already a published, best-selling medical/health writer. We have a major publisher pushing for a first draft. Vaccine Nation will happen. 2006 will be the year. It’s only been ten years since I started this project…

I’ve been working back in the office of my old employer. A place I swore I’d never go back to. Alas, I’m happy with this change. I’m working on wonderful campaigns with lovely clients and will soon be traveling to Sri Lanka for three weeks to work with peace and reconciliation non-government organizations.

Life is good. Piss and vinegar is back in my blood. Let the ass-kicking of big pharma start again…

Signing off for awhile

2005-10-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

2005-10-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

Another cogent argument from Dr. Ralph Faggotter of Healthy Skepticism in Australia.

This was in response to a message I sent to our listserv letting everyone know that Oct 3 – 9 is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week (this is not a spoof but an earnest effort by a group of very concerned citizens to help us prepare for the potential crisis.)

Dr. Faggotter wrote:

Every now and then the Media goes into a collective feeding frenzy over an issue which is entirely imaginary. (Think Saddam's WMDs). (On the other hand, the Media often fails to report on monumentally significant real events such as the collapse of the Larsen B ice-shelf in 2002 which was one of the most important events of the last 14,000 years and scarcely rated a mention in the mainstream media).

One such imaginary event is the 'Bird Flu Pandemic'. Type 'Bird Flu Pandemic' into Google and you will come up with 1/2 a million hits. Now the skeptically inclined might be wondering what this is all about.

The Avian Flu Virus lives in its Avian hosts as it has done for centuries. Every now and then a human is accidentally cross-infected. At the same time every creature on earth from the size of bacteria upwards is in the same position.

Think of the millions of viruses which live in the bacteria which live in our tummies. There are millions of different viruses out there which have non-humans as their natural hosts but which can potentially jump across to humans or other species on occasion. But the very factors which make a virus well adapted to one host are likely to make it poorly adapted to another host. This is why viral infections in humans, where humans are not the natural host, tend to fizzle out rather than spread (with some notable exceptions).

In order for the Avian Flu Virus to cause a serious pandemic in the human population it would have to undergo some serious evolution. It would have to learn how to be spread by aerosol droplets rather than excreta, and how to transmit from human to human without losing its infectivity or virulence.

This is a big ask. Sure it could happen soon, but more likely it will happen long after we are all dead from other more probable causes which we failed to notice because we were too busy jumping at shadows.

The skeptic always likes to ask- "Who stands to benefit from all this publicity?" The beneficiaries can be loosely divided into 4 groups-

The Media- which thrives on hype and fear.
Governments- which can divert attention away from their failings and expand their powers by appearing to be 'seizing the initiative'.
Pharmaceutical companies- which manufacture anti-viral agents and vaccines.
Academics, researchers and 'public health experts'- who are looking for funds for their work.

How would YOU spend $3.9 Billion

2005-10-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

While so many of us in developed countries focus our attention on the not-yet-real avian flu pandemic, wringing our hands and federal budgets to figure out how to protect our own lives, the World Bank has some data to help put all of our concerns into a new perspective:

From Water, Sanitation & Hygiene

Inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene account for a large part of the burden of illness and death in developing countries:

Approximately 4 billion cases of diarrhea per year cause 2.2 million deaths, most – 1.7 million – are children under the age of five, about 15% of all under 5 deaths in developing countries.

Diarrheal diseases account for 4.3% of the total global disease burden (62.5 million DALYs). An estimated 88% of this burden is attributable to unsafe drinking water supply, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. These risk factors are second, after malnutrition, in contributing to the global burden of disease.

Does this not cause you to pause and wonder if, just maybe, last week’s Senate vote to provide $3.9 billion in emergency funds to plan for and react to a bird-flu outbreak in the USA could have been allocated to a more pressing human health need?

Worse than how easily we can be whipped into a frenzy about dangers that may (or may not) lurk in our own dark corners, is how easily we can ignore the appalling living conditions in which the majority of the world’s people live. Be they in Asia, Africa or the poorest neighborhoods in America, my guess is that most people in the world don’t have the time or energy to worry about some future virus they may never live to see.

Enough kvetching - here's a challenge for you – and I’ll offer a prize to the person who responds with the most creative and compassionate idea.

If you were in the Senate, how would you vote to spend $3.9 billion?

Back up your idea with an argument or two.

I’ll mail one person a copy of a fantastic book called, “The Power of Giving: Creating abundance in your home, at work, and in your community.” I think the message in this book is so important that I bought four copies to give away – I have one left.

I’d love to see some creative thinking. And I’ll let you all decide who I should mail the book to. Please post your ideas. Debate and/or support each other’s ideas.

Herbinator, Lil Bobo, Alisa, Gina, Free Thinker, Omni, Dawn, The Fly, Caron, Pam, Salem Watchen, Polanco, Bryan & Cherene, Toad734 …and the rest of you… Think of the power we would have if all of us engaged in some collective problem-solving together!

And if you think your blog readers may have some good ideas for how to spend US tax-payer money, send them on over to Shattering Rose-Colored Glasses where new ideas are always welcome.

You say "pandemic," I say "fear mongering"

2005-10-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

It’s flu season again! Every year, right after back-to-school season, the government, media and pharma marketers kick the flu season into high gear.

Since the small and unfortunate SARS “outbreak” that killed a few hundred people in North America two years ago, fear of a global flu pandemic has grown to well, pandemic proportions. But since SARS did not make a comeback last year, seems the dread Avian flu is the preferred poster child about which to panic – compared in most cases to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

The stats to be found about deaths caused by the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic vary widely. Most researchers and writers claim that between 20 and 50 million people died…some say 20 percent of the world population succumbed to that flu, which, given the population of 1.8 billion at the time, would mean that as many as 360 million people contracted the Spanish flu.

So, today, we have almost four times the population that we had in 1918: there are close to 6.5 billion people on Earth…and, since 2003 we’ve had under 100 deaths from Avian Flu, all of which have occurred among people who live in close proximity to their fowl…so, I’m at a loss to understand how the American government can compare the Avian Flu to the Spanish Flu without cracking a sly smile and high-fiving their pharma friends (stock prices will soar if this flu pandemic ever really flies).

So, what about that Spanish flu of 1918? What do we know about it and why it spread around the world with such apparent ease? War was certainly a factor and American soldiers have been fingered as one of the main targets for both spreading and dieing from the flu. (Hmm…maybe there is reason to make the comparison after all, given how many American soldiers are taking roots all over the world today…)

If you pick up any newspaper, turn on any TV news in the next weeks and months, you’ll hear lots of breathless hyperbole about the imminent, unstoppable and deadly flu pandemic that is on the verge of ravaging the Earth. You’ll be told to get your regular flu vaccine, and your avian flu shot, and your anti-terrorist immunizations, and then you’ll willingly ask for antidepressants, and anti-panic pills, and high blood pressure medication because the world is such a scary place to live these days. I want my Mommy!

Here are a few thoughts from people whose ideas you won’t see covered by the mainstream media:

Vaccine, Not Virus Responsible for Spanish Flu
Who knows if this story from the Irish Examiner, May 2003, has any teeth. I don’t. But what strikes me are two lines of text:

This disaster occurred when viruses were unknown to medical science. It took a British science team to identify the first virus in man in 1933.

Throws just a little light on why it’s so hard to get a good sense of how many people died of the Spanish flu, no? Maybe throws into question not only how many people died, but exactly what they died from …odds are we’ll never know, given the medical data of the time was not able to tell us, and that revisionist history is rampant in cases of disease-caused deaths. But there are a few theories out in the world. Among them…

Murder by Injection by Eustace Mullins (page 138)

"Medical historians have finally come to the reluctant conclusion that the great flu "epidemic" of 1918 was solely attributable to the widespread use of vaccines. It was the first war in which vaccination was compulsory for all servicemen. The Boston Herald reported that forty-seven soldiers had been killed by vaccination in one month. As a result, the military hospitals were filled, not with wounded combat casualties, but with casualties of the vaccine. The epidemic was called "the Spanish Influenza," a deliberately misleading appellation, which was intended to conceal its origin. This flu epidemic claimed twenty million victims; those who survived it were the ones who had refused the vaccine."

Vaccination Mythology
Reprint of part of a letter sent by John P Heptonstall (Director of Morley Acupuncture Clinic and Complementary Therapy Centre) to the British Medical Journal, January 24, 2000.

"The 1918 'Spanish Flu' started in American military Camp Funston, Fort Riley, USA amongst troops making ready for W.W.I - taking on board vaccinations, recruit training and all. It eventually killed about 40,000,000 people worldwide. That flu strain only appeared briefly once again, according to the US Atlanta CDC. This was in 1976 and again it struck at the US army camp Fort Dix, USA, amongst recently vaccinated troops (and no one else EVER); Fort Dix is known to have been a vaccine trial centre. Was the world's greatest 'influenza' scourge another well-hidden vaccine disaster?"

And finally, a paragraph from The Survival Factor in Neoplastic and Viral Diseases by Dr. William Koch. This book is out of print. Published in 1958. I suspect the data he cites here could be verified, but sadly, that is not on my list of things to do today.

"In 1918, the US Army forced the vaccination of 3,285,376 natives in the Philippines when no epidemic was brewing, only the sporadic cases of the usual mild nature. Of the vaccinated persons, 47,369 came down with small-pox, and of these 16,477 died. In 1919 the experiment was doubled. 7,670,252 natives were vaccinated. Of these 65,180 victims came down with small-pox, and 44,408 died. In the first experiment, one-third died, and in the second, two-thirds of the infected ones died."

One more finally - check out the wiki encyclopedia's entry on the Spanish Flu. There are many sources of info cited - none of which/whom could be labelled as anti-medico freaks, so they should be considered reasonably credible. Read between the lines, not just what's said explicitly.
If you decide to skip the annual flu vaccine this year, and want to keep healthy, the best advice I’ve seen so far is to stay away from the target population that seems to be the virus’ mechanism for reaching out and touching someone: toddlers and elementary school-age kids.

And if you have kids that you can’t give away just yet – I recommend isolation of the whole family. You can’t be careful enough…in case you haven’t heard, there’s a killer flu on the horizon…

The raw (and ugly) truth about the war on drugs

2005-10-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

Great article at NewsTarget.com about America's love affair with prescription drugs and fear of illegal drugs.

Here's a snippet:

But wait a minute, you say. Those legal drugs are different from marijuana. They're FDA-approved drugs, prescribed by a doctor. They have a medical purpose.

Oh really? Ritalin has a medical purpose? What medical symptoms does Ritalin treat, then? What measurable physiological state is addressed with Ritalin? There are none, of course. Ritalin is an authority drug. It keeps children in line. It makes teachers feel less stress and parents feel less guilt. Ritalin is a mind-altering narcotic, and yet millions of children are on it today. Its purpose is not to help children, but to make life more convenient for those who manage children.

We truly are a vaccine nation

2005-10-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

Where to start? I think first, with a deep breath. Or two…or three…

I just spent a week participating in a workshop with Lynne Twist, probably the most effective individual donor fundraising in the world today and, a woman who is the embodiment of integrity. I learned more about myself in her workshop than I even knew I needed to learn!

One of the principles Lynne helped me recognize was the difference between taking a position on an issue, and taking a stand for an issue. I have long struggled with my film Vaccine Nation because although, for my own family, I hold a strong position (I will not allow myself or my son to be vaccinated), that position is not what I want to communicate in my film. I believe that all parents should make every decision about their children’s health for themselves – and, most importantly, that every decision must be a well-informed decision.

With the guidance of Lynne Twist, I was finally able to articulate what I stand for, as distinct from and able to exist alongside, my own position on vaccinations.

In a phrase, I stand for living in the Socratic tradition of asking questions of systems that individuals and societies take for granted. A high-falootin’ way to say, I believe that people have the right to question authority.

So this article from my favourite source of medical mayhem actually had the effect of causing me to hold my breath for so long I now feel dizzy and faint.

Here’s the headline:
Pediatricians Would Give Vaccine-Averse Parents the Boot

And one of the opening paragraphs:

In a survey of 302 pediatricians who provide routine vaccinations in a primary care setting, 39% said they would dismiss from their care families who refused all vaccinations, and 28% said they would terminate their relationship with a family who refused select vaccinations.

The author of this “Teaching Brief” goes on to advise,

Physician concerns about liability should be addressed by good documentation of the discussion of the benefits of immunization and the risks associated with remaining unimmunized.

That one sentence captures exactly why I quit my full-time job four years and have invested thousands of hours researching, writing and seeking funding to make the film Vaccine Nation.

What about telling the parents of that perfect 2-month old they're holding in their arms that there are risks associated with the vaccine? What arrogance to think that because doctors are in a position that society has given power to, that they have the right to selectively share information with patients and with parents of infants, who would not be patients were the vaccine culture not so embedded in North American society? They get those first shots at their "Healthy Baby Check-up!"

I actually feel nauseous. In fact, I can’t stop weeping. This is so troubling.

The problem is, we parents believe in our doctors without questioning them. By the millions we march our healthy infants, and toddlers, and 5-year olds, and teenagers into the doctors’ offices for shots that have never actually been proven to prevent disease. For shots that have caused so many children to suffer disabilities, and even die, that the vaccine-makers do not stand behind the safety of their own vaccines.

In 1986, the Institute of Medicine acknowledged that childhood vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction. In response, and because the vaccine manufacturers refused to acknowledge the potential harm (they refused to engage in lawsuits), Congress established the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. They also established a fund to pay off vaccine-victims and their families. To date, despite the burden of proving a causal link between a vaccine and an adverse vaccine event, almost $656 million has been paid out to American families who have suffered a vaccine-induced injury.

Check the stats here, at the US Department of Health and Human Services website. (And if you ever wondered what the monetary value of your infant is in the United States, here’s your answer: "Awards for death cases are capped at $250,000 plus attorneys' fees/costs.")

So, once you’ve taken a look at the facts, please write to tell me where you stand. If you stand with me, if you believe that parents need to be given the respect to be trusted to make informed health decisions on their children’s behalf, then join me in the work that I have committed to do.

To change the current system we need stories. Share yours. Connect me to people who have stories. Doctors who don't force vaccinate. Parents who have taken a stand against the system. Children who have refused the hep b vaccine. Stories of courage and questioning.

We need money - $250,000 to make a film that will expose the truths that have been hidden about vaccines and the so-called, vaccine-preventable-diseases. (It’s not that much…just the cost of one vaccine-preventable death.) If the annual flu shot is provided by your workplace, whether you have the shot or not, I encourage you to take up a donation for this film, when the nurses and needles are in your office. If just a couple of hundred people took this initiative, we would have funding to get started by Christmas.

And I need moral support. Since my son was born nine year ago I have fought for my right to refuse vaccinations so many times I sometimes find myself tired of the fight. But I love my son so deeply, and the children he plays with, and the kids he’ll one day meet in college and all the people who will never even directly touch his life, that I continue to stand for what I believe in: truly informed consent. Even when it means I take punches for my stand. Knowing that others are with me, hoping for the same thing I am, is sometimes just what I need to hear to keep my faith that change can be made and will come.

I am grateful for all the blessings I have received and that I have the tools to write this blog today.

Killing us for profit

2005-10-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

I’ve been away. Off-the-grid for a whole week. No newspapers. No radio. No TV. No Internet. (And no drugs, legal or otherwise).

Just downloaded a week’s worth of email messages. Among them all my various and sundry health story alerts.

Here are the headlines that caught my eye:

MedPageToday: Lilly to Include Warning about Suicidal Thoughts on Strattera Label

New York Times: F.D.A. Orders New Warning on an Attention-Deficit Drug

The gist of this new research is that kids who take Strattera to help treat their ADHD are more inclined to have thoughts of suicide than kids put on placebos.

The best quote in the New York Times article has to be this one:

"We believe Strattera is a safe and effective treatment option, and attention deficit disorder has its own risks for people who stop taking the medication based on something they hear," said Dr. John Hayes, vice president for Lilly Research Laboratories. "We are advising people who have concerns to consult their physician."

The risk of suicidal ideation is high enough to have the typically toothless FDA step in and demand a black box warning, yet the company that produces Strattera is messaging that it could be riskier to go off the drug…maybe, but the obvious spin made me dizzy.

MedPageToday: Manufacturer Warns of Potential Birth Defects with Paxil

Forbes: New Warning Issued on Paxil

The nut of this research is that pregnant American women who take the antidepressant Paxil in their first trimester are more likely to give birth to babies with major congenital malformations. A little side story is that a Spanish study found that babies born of moms on Paxil had the highest rates of neonatal withdrawal syndrome.

And no surprise, the makers of Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline, stand by their drug and caution that while there appear to be risks to taking Paxil while pregnant, there are also risks of withdrawing from using the drug while pregnant.

The solution seems pretty easy for both of these drugs and the risks of withdrawal effects: don’t take them in the first place.

If your kid is hyper, start by changing his diet. Replace some of his screen time with judo or soccer.

If your wife-of-child-bearing-age is depressed, talk to her…go for nice walks after a healthy dinner…work with her to determine why she’s unhappy and change the situation.

Is living a life without behaviour and mind-altering pharmaceuticals really that hard? Move to British Columbia if you’re having trouble kicking the legal drug habit. We’ll set you up with some nice, calming ganja... deep breath in ... ahhh ... deep breath out ... feels good.

Healthy Skepticism on Cancer

2005-09-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

Here are some stats from a new book called “What Canadians Think about Almost Everything”

7 out of 10 Canadians are confident that within their life-time scientists will find a cure for cancer.
68% think that , within the next ten years, cancer will become something you live with, rather than something you die from.
9 in 10 Canadians would like to know more about latest advances in cancer research.

And here is a comment about this data from Dr. Ralph Faggotter, an Australian General Practioner who is on the management team of the organization Healthy Skepticism. These are comments he made on a private listerv I am a member of. He’s given me permission to share his opinion.

“The results of this poll are not surprising since we are constantly being bombarded by the media with stories of scientific breakthroughs which have just occurred or are just about to occur. These stories usually predict that massive benefits for humankind will flow from these impending discoveries. This constantly replayed mantra serves to reinforce the essential underlying theme of modernity, which is the notion of constant progress through science and technology.

It is not surprising, therefore, that most people believe that technology will 'cure cancer' soon.

It is also not surprising that people can’t cope with the following facts.

1/. Over-all technology creates much more cancer than it stops. Modern humans are living in a thick soup of chemical carcinogenic toxins created by the same system which claims to be working on 'curing cancer.' The dramatic rise in the incidence of cancers in the developed world over the last 60 years FOLLOWS the dramatic rise in technology.

2/. Digital technology and DNA technology have been very successful in recent years and this tends to obscure the fact that there has actually been very little change in the rest of technology over the last 25 years. (Even with digital and DNA technology, the basic science was worked out well before the last 25 years.) The real wonder is that that millions of scientists/researchers working with huge budgets all over the world have, after 25 years, been able to come up with so little.

The main drugs used to treat cancer have not changed much since I worked in oncology as an intern in 1980. Yes, there appear to be new drugs based on understanding the human genome in the pipeline, but these will be incredibly expensive and targeted to very specific situations as is the nature of DNA based technology. Furthermore, the same technology which enables these medications to be produced, also enables genetic engineering of a range of organisms in which the inherent dangers of increasing the rates of cancer creation even further are obvious. It is therefore probable that in the long-run, DNA based technologies will increase the incidence of cancer mortality not reduce it.

3/. Surely it makes more sense to reduce the risk of developing cancer, which can be done very cheaply ( in fact your society can save money in the process) rather than spending massive amounts of money and effort on pointlessly trying to find that forever elusive cure? What we need is less technology, not more. Over 20,000 different chemicals are commonly used by industry and we are exposed to these. Most of them have not been properly studied long-term. (You force feed the chemical to some rats and if they don’t all die within 24 hours you declare the chemical safe .) We need less carcinogenic chemicals in our food, clothing, agriculture, houses, gardens, workplaces, schools and transport systems.

5/. Technology makes us lazy and fat so that even if the carcinogens don’t get us, coronary artery disease and diabetes will. It makes me sad to see China industrializing according to the Western pattern and making the same errors. Out go the bicycles and in come the cars. Out goes fitness and in comes unfitness, respiratory disease from pollution, cancer heart disease and diabetes! Disaster! That's progress. ”

Indeed. Thank you, Doctor.

The Precautionary Principle

2005-09-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

When I worked at one of Canada’s leading environmental organizations, the application of something called the “precautionary principle” was part of daily life.

The concept is simple: if you have enough scientific evidence to suggest that an action may cause harm to the environment or human health, but not enough evidence to assert the connection, you act in a way that protects the environment or human health, even if it has a negative impact on economic health.

(For definitions from a variety of places, type the following into Google – define: precautionary principle).

The problem with the concept of the precautionary principle is that it’s darned hard to convince industry and government to apply it.

Today in the New York Times, an old story with a new twist. California Wants to Serve a Warning With Fries

French fries and potato chips that are fried at high heat create acrylamide. Acrylamide has been linked to cancer in lab mice and rats. Do chips and fries cause cancer in humans? We’re not sure, but we do know that many substances that turn cells cancerous in mice and rats do the same to human cells. This is a situation where the precautionary principle should apply.

According to the article, the number one, most consumed food in American restaurants is French fries. Americans spend an estimated $4 billion a year on fries and $3 billion a year on potato chips.

The FDA and, of course, industry, are opposed to any labeling which would tell consumers that fries may be linked to cancer. But the state of California is going to court to force the issue under Proposition 65, which forces the state to regulate chemicals that are known to cause cancer or reproductive harm and to force manufacturers to label their products or otherwise warn consumers. Acrylamide is a chemical that has a variety of industrial uses, such as paint solvents and fertilizer, which all carry warning labels.

But, industry argues, the acrylamide that is found in chips and fries is not added, but happens as part of the natural cooking process (now, many would argue that deep frying at high heat is not actually a very natural cooking process, being quite a new way to prepare food, and, as most agree, not usually a healthy cooking style, regardless of acrylamide), and so should not be regulated - that is, warning labels should not apply.

The New York Times article is worth reading. And once you’ve read it, I defy you to put forth an argument that convincingly asserts that cancer is NOT a political disease.

A Canadian Hero Working for the Wrong Cause

2005-09-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about cancer a great deal this past few weeks. You know, Terry Fox Day and all the requisite activities and school homework related to raising money for cancer research that hits us every September. “Back to school” is synonymous with “cancer cure fundraising” when you have an elementary school-age kid in British Columbia (Terry’s home province).

So, at our school last year, the teachers set the goal of raising $500 for cancer research in the name of Terry Fox. A mighty feat, one would think, at an inner-city school with just 100 kids. Well, the rascals did it – and then some, raising almost $1,500 for the Terry Fox Foundation and cancer research. So this year the fundraising target has been set at $2,000, with the promise that if the kids succeed, the principal will allow one of the Grade 5 kids to shave his head (the principal’s head). My son, who is in the Grade 4/5 split class says that they all agree the principal will be sporting a mohawk if they succeed. Of course, the kids want to make the target.

So, how much effort have I made to help my son get his pledge sheet filled in and money raised to support cancer research and the shaving of the principal’s head? Zero. Nada.

Now, before you get all, “It’s Terry Fox…a Canadian icon…one our true heroes…how can you be such a heartless person…one in two people will develop cancer in their lifetime” on me, here’s why I cannot support fundraising for cancer research – especially fundraising done by kids who are fed only the line about how heroic Terry was, and that’s why they should raise the money.

Canadians (and I can assume Americans and Europeans as well) have been assured that a cure for cancer will be found in the foreseeable future. I’m sure I heard that when my own grandmother lost a breast to cancer back in the 80s. Twenty years later, the cure is still around the corner. How much money have well-meaning individuals, governments, charitable foundations and businesses contributed to finding this elusive yet at-our-fingertips cure? Billions of dollars.

A cure…spoken of as though cancer were one disease with one cause. While all the researchers are looking for a cure for cancer, who is out there addressing the causes of cancer? Why aren’t billions of dollars being invested in preventing cancer?

Cancer is caused by many things we know and lots of things we haven’t pinpointed. Of those things we know cause cancer, why haven’t government, industry and well-meaning individuals stepped up to stop the manufacture and use of cancer-causing chemicals?

Number one most obvious: the chemicals added to cigarettes. Why is this allowed? Why does the government continue to allow the tobacco industry to add proven cancer-causing chemicals to cigarettes?

This past summer I bought sunscreen for my son. Got it home and compared the ingredients to a list of chemicals known to cause cancer. Two of the six ingredients were identified as cancer-causing. Yet this product is allowed on the market.

Look at the ingredients in highly-processed foods. Many have been linked to cancer.

Think of the toxins spewed into the air by certain industries. Known cancer-causing fumes that we still allow to be released into the air we breathe.

Water polluted by chemical run-off from farms. Pesticides and herbicides sprayed directly on the food we eat – known to increase risk of cancer.

There’s no day to commemorate all the activists who work with miniscule resources to reduce the causes of cancer in our environment. Why don’t we have an Erin Brockovich Day where kids raise money and awareness about the industry in their hometown that employs and ruins the health of their moms, dads, aunts, uncles?

My own family used to own a paint and wall-board manufacturing company in the small town I grew up in, Cowansville, Quebec. A few years ago I checked a Pollution Probe website (which I can’t find now) to find the environmental ranking of my hometown. Cowansville, was listed as the major contributor to water and air pollution in the region. I told my mom.

“Yeah,” she said, “The big problem is the JJ Barker Company. You know, almost every one of the men who worked in that factory has had cancer? It was a terrible place to work.”

Pah! (Can’t point the finger at my dad though, because he got out of that business in the sixties, before anyone really understood how poisonous the manufacturing process actually was.)

So, aside from all the typical conspiracy theory tiatribe that you’ve no doubt heard and discounted, why would all the cancer agencies be so focused on curing cancer, rather than preventing it to begin with? Check out this eye-opening article about how tied to industry the American Cancer Agency is at NewsTarget.com.

And the links in a post I made in May called, Cancer is a Political Disease…

And when that cute little kid comes knocking at your door, asking for five bucks to support cancer research and Terry Fox and shaving the principal’s head: smile nicely and tell the little sucker that he’s been duped. Pat him on the shoulder and be the first to tell him the truth:

“Son, there is no cure for cancer. Eat your organic vegetables and pray that the winds are blowing in the opposite direction when the PVC-sided house next door goes up in flames. The only cure for cancer is prevention, my child.”

Calling all Canadian Bloggers

2005-09-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

Help out a fellow Canuck who is doing his Master's thesis on Canadian blogs.

Do his short survey.

Ditziness - it's not just blondes

2005-09-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

It’s a pandemic. Adults, getting half-way to work before they remember that they forgot to stop by Starbucks on their way in. They were distracted. They have adult Attention Deficit Disorder. All the papers reported it today with headlines like “Adult Use of ADHD Medicines Surges.”

Golly – use among women aged 20-44 rose 113% between 2000 and 2004. How on earth were all those ditzy broads coping before they were diagnosed and treated for their ditziness? And how did it happen that all of a sudden, women in that age group started dropping brain cells to the degree that they needed pills to help them remember to keep at least one hand on the steering wheel while applying lip stick?

A quick trip to the Shire Pharmaceuticals website sheds some light on this shocking new phenomenon.

In March 2005, Shire’s CEO made a presentation to Merrill Lynch folks in New York. Slide 5 notes the 2004 FDA approval for adult use of Adderall XR, their ADD/ADHD drug. The slide also indicates that the FDA has granted them 6 months of additional market exclusivity.

And Slide 6 is a list of bullets related to the New River Agreement. I’m not sure what that is, but it is clearly a financial winner for Shire and is directly related to selling Adderall XR to the new adult market.

Shire’s March 2004 presentation to the Bear Stearns London Healthcare Conference indicates that sales of Adderall XR are still one of the company’s strengths and that something to look forward to, emerging data, is that “SPD503 is a novel non-stimulant for the treatment of ADHD.”

What is SPD503? you ask. I’ll tell you what Shire states as the profile:
-- Guanfacine originally used off-label in refractory ADHD patients or in those with contraindications to stimulants
-- Non-scheduled, non-stimulant compound
-- Established safety profile for active ingredient in adults
-- On approval, will be the first guanfacine product licensed for ADHD
-- Novel, patent protected, once-daily formulation of guanfacine
-- Shire holds license to use-patent in ADHD
-- Paediatric phase III started February 2003

Oh – and that the target filing date to get approval of this drug is in 2005 and that patent protection will last until 2015 (slide 25).

Then there’s the presentation Mr. Shire CEO made to Lehman Brothers Global Healthcare in March 2005 where he shares information that Adderall XR Adult which received FDA approval in August 2004, remains Shire’s “largest opportunity” (slide 4). While Slide 9 shows that Shire has four more ADHD drugs in Phase 3 development. Slide 12 indicates that Adderall XR is Shire’s most profitable drug with $606.7 million in sales in 2004, a 28% increase over 2003 sales of just $474.5 million.

I could go on. I won’t. But is it any surprise given what you now know about Shire’s passion for developing ADHD medicines, and their promise to shareholders to create a new adult market for ADHD, that adult ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions for treatment have increased by over 100% between 2000 and 2004? The kids prescribing rate has “only” increased by 54% in that same period.

Since most kids outgrow being kids, the rascals, Shire strategically set about to patent the first adult ADHD medication. The beauty of adult ADHD is that once you’ve been diagnosed, you never outgrow it! You’re an Adderall customer for life! Goodness knows you don’t want to return to your previous, pre-drug state of ditziness…

Get a life. Take our pills.

The kids are bummed...grab the zoloft

2005-09-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

What the hell is this teaching moment all about?

In January 2004, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, an epidemiologist in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, analysed 22 clinical trials of nine antidepressants and uncovered some damning evidence that indicated that SSRI antidepressants used by children caused a doubling in suicide attempts over kids who were given a placebo (sugar pill).

These studies had been done over the course of many years and then buried by the drug-makers. Dr. Mosholder blew the lid off the data which lead to the FDA holding meetings with industry, parents whose kids had been on SSRIs and killed themselves, doctors and others.

The result: the FDA ordered drug-makers to place black box warnings on all antidepressants that include the following information:

Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents with MDD and other psychiatric disorders.
Anyone considering the use of an antidepressant in a child or adolescent for any clinical use must balance the risk of increased suicidality with the clinical need.
Patients who are started on therapy should be observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior.
Families and caregivers should be advised to closely observe the patient and to communicate with the prescriber.
A statement regarding whether the particular drug is approved for any pediatric indication(s) and, if so, which one(s).

So a Teaching Brief recently posted at MedPageToday.com has me a little baffled. Recall that MedPageToday.com positions itself as the leading source for doctor education.

The Tecahing Brief is called, Childhood Depression Is Understudied and Under-treated. It's a review of an article that just appeared in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The review talks about all the deficits in understanding and treating childhood depression and how many depressed kids are left untreated. And then, there’s this quote from the author, a doctor:

Although tricyclic antidepressants such as Elavil (amitriptyline), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac and Zoloft (sertraline) and specific norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) such as Strattera (atomoxetine) all appear to work equally well in adults, there is little evidence to support the use of any but the selective serotinin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in kids, Dr. Ryan asserted. (My emphases)

Dr. Ryan! Did you miss the memo? SSRIs lead to kids killing themselves! Oops. You must be pretty embarrassed, Dr. Ryan. Wait 'til the editor of The Lancet finds out that he, too, missed the memo. What an oversight…

...oh, unless you’re an industry shiller. An expert paid to help swing opinion about SSRI prescribing back into a favourable light…but that couldn't be... a doctor putting his self-interest before the patient's? The editor of a major meidcal journal blinded by junk science? No... that doesn't happen...

And as a very nice irony – or clever marketing strategy – the ad that accompanies this article is for Zoloft, an SSRI antidepressant, of course. (Check it out here). This animated antidepressant looks like it's straight from one of the crazy Neopets / Pokemon / Digimon series of animated characters my son loves. Just who are they trying to grab with this ad campaign? Moms or their kids?

Ah, Sugar! A Math Quiz?

2005-09-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

According to a story at News Target, the average American consumes 150 pounds of sugar each year. I read that and thought, "okay, so the average American east my body weight in sugar every year. Big deal."

Here's the quiz: how much sugar would you have to eat each week to make it to 150 pounds of the white stuff in a year?

Hmmm...150 pounds in 365 days is just under half-a-pound a day...or, one teaspoon of sugar every hour of every day for the whole year. Eeech!

Of course, one can of soda will give you several of your hours' teaspoons. A chocolate bar a few more. So you can sleep sugar-free.

And that's the average - some Americans eat much less sugar which means...others eat much more.

Pass the sugar-free potato chips, please.

Medical Studies and the Average American Kid

2005-08-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Full article from the Washington Post today. No commentary. Just 100% copyright infraction.

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 22, 2005; Page A05

Pop quiz for parents:
Researchers want your 9-year-old child to give up a day of summer vacation to participate in a medical experiment. They need to find out whether a new drug, tested only in adults, is safe for children.

The drug will not benefit your already healthy child, but the researchers assure you that, in accordance with federal regulations, the risks will be no greater than the ones kids encounter in daily life. What do you say?

By that measure alone, parents may be wise to say "No," according to one of the first studies to quantify the risks kids routinely face.

As it turns out, the day-to-day risks of being a kid are considerably higher than many people appreciate, these experts assert. And therein, they conclude, lies a problem with federal rules on research involving children. By assuring that risks will be no more than "routine," they convey a false ring of security.

"Everyone's got an intuition about the risk of everyday life," said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. "We thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could quantify it?' And once you begin to do that, you realize that everyday life is not benign."

The new analysis, led by Emanuel and NIH co-worker David Wendler, is the latest contribution to a bubbling controversy on whether federal research protections for children are adequate. That debate has grown in recent years as it has become clear that the vast majority of medications prescribed for kids have never been tested for safety or efficacy in youngsters -- a risky situation in itself, since children can respond to drugs very differently than adults.
The federal government is making a major push to have more medications tested in children, offering pharmaceutical companies valuable patent extensions, for example, on drugs that the companies test in kids. But that push has led a number of experts to scrutinize the current standards for such tests.

Of special concern are studies involving healthy children, since they offer no potential benefits to offset the risks. Federal rules allow such experiments with parental permission only if a review board deems the risks "minimal" or, in some cases, a "minor increase over minimal."

"Minimal risk," according to regulations, means that the anticipated harm or discomfort will be no greater than that "ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological . . . tests."

That standard has proved squishy. Kids living in crime-ridden neighborhoods face terrible risks every day. If the regulations are interpreted by that standard, those children would be wonderful prospects for researchers wanting to conduct dangerous studies. After all, those kids regularly risk getting shot or stabbed.

To avoid that kind of exploitation, the regulations have been interpreted by the Institute of Medicine and others to mean "risks ordinarily encountered by average, healthy, normal children." But here a second problem arises: Just how big are those risks?

To answer that question, Emanuel and co-workers searched high and low for statistics on the risks of daily living. They got some from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Others came from sports organizations. Many others came from individual researchers who had quietly spent their lives compiling statistics about obscure activities that they thought nobody would ever care about.

To get a sense of the risk inherent in a standard medical test, for example -- a standard that the regulations say should be used for comparison purposes -- the team tried to track the fates of people who had taken a glucose tolerance test, commonly given to suspected diabetics. After many dead ends, they found a doctor who had tracked injuries from 14,000 such tests but had never published his work.

Similarly, while looking for data on psychological stress in kids, they came across a study comparing the stress of being young and fat to that of being young and diagnosed with cancer.

"We said, 'Wow, he must have some data,' " Emanuel said. Sure enough, the researcher had stress-related information on 6,000 kids.

The product of all this work, published in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association, provides a comprehensive look at the risks in a typical kid's day that might include a ride in a car (the major risk of death for children), time on a playground or in a sporting event (the major cause of injury), and other routine activities such as bathing or swimming.

Their conclusion: In the course of an average day, kids routinely face risks as high as 1 in 250 of an injury requiring hospitalization or a visit to the emergency room. For young people 15 to 19, the cumulative risk of dying in an accident is as high as one in 100,000 each day.

Those risks may not sound huge, but studies have shown that research review boards routinely reject experiments whose risks are substantially lower than those. That disparity reveals a disconnect between experts' intuitive sense of acceptable risk and the actual risks that regulations allow.

Experts agree that the continued participation of children in clinical trials is very important. Without them, such lifesavers as the polio and measles vaccines might never have been approved, and doctors in the 1950s might never have learned that their use of supplemental oxygen was causing blindness in babies born prematurely.

In their article, Emanuel and colleagues propose a few alternatives -- none of which, they emphasized, reflect the views of the NIH.

One of them, the "de minimus" standard, would require that research risks not exceed the negligible risks people tolerate every day (such as when walking to work), rather than using a standard that includes such dangerous extracurricular activities as playing football.

An alternative is to use the model of charitable giving, to achieve a standard of allowable risk that falls between de minimus and the current standard. Just as people accept certain unnecessary risks because of the benefits they bring (such as the convenience of a car or the fun of sports), people also take risks to help others (such as helping build homes for the homeless). If people more consciously appreciated the societal benefits of medical volunteerism, some argue, a higher level of risk might be justified.

The terrain is an ethical minefield, experts warn. And most agree that changes in the current system must await the results of further research.

"No one's presented an alternative that a good philosophy professor couldn't tear to shreds in about 30 minutes," said Terrence F. Ackerman, chairman of ethics at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis.

But after decades of inattention, Wendler said, at least the topic is beginning to be addressed.
"We want safe and effective medicine for kids, but we don't want them exposed to risk, so we've closed our eyes," Wendler said. "This begins a discussion of what the appropriate levels of risk are."

Business Rule #1: Don’t Kill the Client

2005-08-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s my Canadian upbringing. Perhaps its because I was born in the sixties. But I tend to hold the view that not all illegal drugs are created equal. (I know, it's very un-American of me).

For instance, if I found out my son, at 16 years old, was smoking pot, my response would likely be to ask him to consider eating it, since eating marijuana is much less detrimental to his health than inhaling it. (Now, if I caught him doing any drugs of any kind in any way before 16, my reaction would be quite different…“boot to the head!”)

I’ve smoked and eaten pot. Years ago I tried mushrooms (great story there!). And once, some moron put a hit of acid in my drink at a bar. That’s the only time I’ve ever tried what I’d consider a hard drug. I recall feeling almost exactly the same when I dropped acid as I did following surgery when some idiot nurse gave me Tylenol 3’s, even though the red armband I was wearing said quite clearly that I’m allergic to codeine.

Despite not being able to claim empathy for hard drug addicts, I am very sympathetic to those people who find themselves with drug addictions to heroin, cocaine, pain killers, and so on.

I don’t like to hear that a bad batch of some drug (legal or illegal) has caused a bunch of people to die, or even to become sick. So that’s my position on drugs.

I also have some thoughts about business. There’s this concept I recall learning while I was taking some business training that had something to do with spending 80% of your marketing and sales resources on keeping your current clients happy and 20% on finding new clients. An application of Pareto’s Law.

Right now I make a reasonable living as a self-employed writer, strategic planner and documentary filmmaker. If I wanted to make more money, I could switch professions. I could, for instance, become a drug dealer, or maybe the manager of a basement lab that makes heroin and other hard drugs. If I did make the switch, I think I’d still want to apply Pareto’s Law. It just seems to make sense that no matter what business you’re in, your current clients are your most valuable asset.

So why would any heroin-maker or dealer, with two brain cells to rub together, mix their heroin with a drug that boosts muscle growth in cattle?

Do you think it was the chemist who decided this may be a good idea? Maybe he was trying to help the typically too thin heroin addicts bulk up a little.

Or maybe, the heroin dealer is moonlighting as a cattle rancher. Maybe he accidentally mixed the two white powders, making both his heroin addict clients and his cattle sick. Gives whole new meaning to Mad Cow Disease. (Business Rule # 17: Whether it’s on file folders or on little plastic baggies, a smart business person uses labels.)

If you live in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, South Carolina or North Carolina and you use heroin: be careful. Some boneheaded, failed business-school dealer or chemist seems to have forgotten that his business won’t thrive and survive if he injures or kills his clients.

A pox on you, CDC!

2005-08-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Okay. So here’s the post I was going to write yesterday, about the blessing that is the chicken pox vaccine.

From MedPage Today, here’s the summary blurb that landed in the inboxes of all list subscribers on August 17:

Chickenpox Vaccine Cuts Cost of Varicella Care
ATLANTA-The vaccine against chickenpox, a disease that was once a staple of childhood, has dramatically cut varicella-related hospital admissions, outpatient care, and the associated costs of the disease.

(Note: to see MedPage Today articles you have to register. It’s free.)

I believe I’ve mentioned this before in another post, but some outrageous percentage of people will never read beyond that summary paragraph. As a result, it’s the most important text in the whole article. As such, it provides the hint to the conclusion we are meant to draw were we to read the whole piece. In this case, we’re meant to think: Hallelujah! Another vaccine success!

In most mainstream news articles, you’ll find that about two-thirds of the way through the story, a contradictory or questioning point-of-view is introduced. This is done to create the illusion that the reporter is fair and objective. In the case of this Teaching Brief (so-called by MedPage Today), no such effort was made.

Blah, blah, blah…stats and laudatory language for the chicken pox vaccine…blah, blah, blah…how many fewer people went to hospital due to the pox... And the final paragraph of the story reads:

Understanding the costs and benefits of vaccine programs is important when decisions are made to recommend or not to recommend new vaccines, Dr Davis said, adding, "costs are just as much a part of vaccines as their benefits."

Sadly, in the context of this article which is focused exclusively on the financial benefits of the chicken pox vaccine, we can only assume that Dr Davis was referring to the economic costs, and not the health costs of the vaccine.

This article made no mention of the number of kids who ended up in hospital due to an adverse vaccine reaction. Or the number of kids who suffered non-hospitalizing reactions that may have a long-term impact on the kids’ health.

This article made no mention of the fact that just this year the CDC was forced to acknowledge that one shot of the varicella vaccine was not providing adequate immunity, and recommended that all kids get two shots. The economic impact of government, insurance companies and parents now having to double their cost-per-kid-vaccinated was not addressed in this article (which only covered data between 1994 and 2002).

This article did not mention the fact that the chicken pox vaccine does NOT provide lifetime immunity and people who get the vaccine must get a booster shot every ten years for the rest of their lives.

This article did not mention the fact that when an adult contracts chicken pox, they fare much, much worse than children do, both in the ratio who end up in hospital and the ratio who die from the infection.

Think about those last two point together…the 37 year old who got the varicella vaccine as a kid, and has forgotten to get a booster shot for the last decade, takes his grade one daughter to school. Dad picks up the virus from some irresponsible family that has chosen to let their kid develop natural immunity to chicken pox. Dad gets really sick. Dad ends up in hospital, misses lots of days of work and maybe doesn’t recover. To hell with the economic impact: what about the emotional and long-term health impacts to that family who has just lost a young father and husband?

Let’s see the spin the CDC researchers put on the impact of the varicella vaccine in 10 or 20 more years, once the cohort of young guinea pigs who are part of this experiment have reached adulthood.

No matter how many ways you slice this one, the chicken pox vaccine is a bad idea for the majority of the population. To any kid who is otherwise healthy, the chance of having a bad case of chickenpox is very slim. (So long as you don’t overdose the kid on aspirin or Tylenol). Let the kid suffer through a few days of the pox when he’s young. Let him develop lifetime immunity.

When chickenpox made its way through my son’s daycare in 2000, every single parent was thrilled to get a couple days off, to stay home and cuddle with our spotty scratchers. Oddly, the CDC doctors would have you think that this was child abuse and an economic detriment to the country.

Would you want your doctor to put “breaking news” into practice?

2005-08-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Almost every day I read at least one article at MedPage Today. Their tag-line is: putting breaking news into practice.

I was going to post about the recent MedPage Today “Teaching Brief” that lauds the great accomplishments of the chicken pox vaccine, but as I typed that tag-line, “putting breaking news into practice,” I realized that the real story is there. Not in the Teaching Briefs or News Briefs, but in the very philosophy and raison d’etre of this website. Here's what they say:

MedPage Today is the only medical news service for physicians that links consumer medical news and the professional medical analysis needed by clinicians. Through our daily coverage of breaking medical stories and topics widely reported in the consumer media, we provide clinicians with the real-time information they need to address their patients' questions and to find out how new developments might impact their clinical practice.

The problem is obvious when one simply looks at MedPage Today's top News Brief:

Jury Awards $253 Million to Plaintiff in First Vioxx Case

ANGLETON, Tex.-The jury in the first Vioxx (rofecoxib) personal-injury case ruled today that the once popular arthritis agent caused the death of a 59-year-old man. It ordered Merck, the maker of the drug, to pay his widow $253.4 million in compensation.

Breaking news (consumer medical news) about drugs is almost exclusively generated by pharmaceutical companies.

Breaking news (consumer medical news) is typically not analysis of peer-reviewed studies.

Breaking news is always full of hype and hyperbole, dramatic statistics and first-ever findings.

The role of breaking news is not to educate, but to attract readers/viewers which in turn sells advertising.

And why in god’s name would any responsible doctor be interested in “consumer medical news” as a tool to inform them about anything to do with the care and treatment of their patients?

Consumer medical news is by definition dumbed-down so the average idiot can understand it. What value to a doctor in that kind of story?

Having doctors put into practice what they learn from pharma-created consumer medical news is what leads to situations like the Vioxx lawsuit, where millions of Americans, doctors included, bought the PR-line that the drug was a safe and effective way to beat arthritis pain. Maybe it was a great way to deal with arthritis, but it wasn’t so good for the users' hearts. It only took 18 months and some 4,000 deaths to figure that out.

I want to see a list of all the doctors who subscribe to MedPage Today. If mine is on that list, I’m finding a new GP.

The Tyranny of Troubled Teens

2005-08-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

The New York Times ran an article today called “A Business Built on the Troubles of Teenagers”. Mildly interesting. It’s about families that have kids who are deemed to have some sort of behavior problem that requires professional help, at a cost of anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 a month. So, in essence, it’s about rich families with troubled kids.

The one paragraph that really caught my attention was this one:

“The teenagers who attend these programs have often been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or other behavioral problems and are taking medications. Some have used drugs or have been sexually abused. Many have been in trouble at school or in minor trouble with the law. Others have run away from home or stolen from their parents.”

Aside from the kids who are sexually abused, which I think would be a damn good reason for a kid to have a behavior problem, the rest of this list of problems that land the kids in Troubled Teen Camp seem pretty lame to me. Have you never used drugs? Did you never get into trouble at school? Have you never had minor trouble with the law? Did you ever run away? Or steal anything from your folks?

I have a theory. It is mine. It’s based on my own experience as a teenager, some 20 years ago; my experience as the mom of a kid who some people have labeled behavioral; and my experience as the step-aunt of a 16 year-old boy who’s back in juvie lock-down this summer, for a third time in three years.

Here’s the theory:

You take a pre-teen, say 9 or 10 years old. He’s misbehaving in school, goofing around too much. Teacher tells the parents to take the kid to see a doctor. Doctor says he has ADHD and prescribes a stimulant drug. The kid takes the drug, settles down to the teacher’s liking. All is good in the world.

Or not. What does that kid believe about himself, his emotions, his personality now? He’s going to believe that there is something wrong with him. Something about him that is not right and needs to be changed through psychotropic drugs. Drugs not unlike cocaine, by the way.

At 9 or 10, the kid has become a legal drug addict who understands that drugs change the way he feels and acts. He believes that drugs that alter his mood and personality are a good thing. The drugs make him more likable to his teachers and probably, to his parents as well.

This unspoken message to a young kid, that his personality needs to be adjusted with drugs, is probably not doing a whole hell of a lot to help him build healthy self-esteem.

A few years go by. The kid’s now 14. He’s rebellious despite the doctor-approved drugs he’s taking (or selling for $10 a pill to his classmates who know that grinding up Ritalin and snorting it provides a really good high).

His parents are on his case about some stupid thing so he runs away. In fact, he probably just stays a friend’s house without telling his folks.

And/Or he really wants some new Nikes but his mom won’t cough up, so he steals $60 from her wallet and buys the shoes.

And/Or he’s out with a gang of buddies and they stupidly think it would be a good idea to break into the corner store to steal some chips and beer.

Odds are, at 14, he hates school and is getting mediocre grades. Or worse, he hates school because he’s bored to tears and so he gets lippy with his most boring teacher. (In my neighbourhood there’s a program for teens who either quit or were kicked out of regular high school. Almost half of these kids test gifted.)

Is this a bad kid who needs to go to reform school, Troubled Teen Camp? Maybe some are. But the article indicates that this is a growing industry. Like the growing industry of putting our moody teens on antidepressants and our hyper kids on stimulants drugs. Quick fix band-aids that do nothing to address the root of the behavior. And in some cases, I’d argue, behavior that simply needs to be tolerated while the kid finds his natural place and voice in the world.

Kids aren’t easy to raise. Parents who expect their kids to behave perfectly all the time, to always follow (often stupid or arbitrary) rules, and never break (often stupid or outdated) laws, should not be allowed to parent. And parents who ditch their teens when they start to exhibit rebellious streaks, or their grades start to fall, or they get caught with pot, should be the ones sent to correctional camp. Especially those parents who model the behaviors they don’t want to see in their kids…but that’s a whole other rant.

I think our expectations for kids to act more mature than their natural ability, older than their age, has gone to an extreme. We can place the blame on many shoulders, but ultimately, it’s the parents who have to decide how to handle their challenging kids. And, in my opinion, making the decision to first drug then boot camp away the undesirable behavior, is much less humane than taking the time to listen to your kid’s reasons for acting up. In my experience (as a teen, a mom and an aunt) kids can have some pretty compelling reasons for acting the way they sometimes do.

Get this guy an agent!

2005-08-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Just found a very entertaining blog post about many candies that mimic adult addictions: cigarettes, chewing tobacco, pot…check out You'll Only Get Sugar High From Pot.

And Rocky Road Scholar’s “Behind the Cereal Box” series, which tells us where all the old cereal mascots are now, is a riot!

I'm not dead yet

2005-08-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

The first week of not posting was pure hell.

The second and third weeks I didn't even consider blogging, given I was experiencing a world like I've never experienced before: in an American protectorate of all places. A tiny island in Micronesia, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. A little place called Saipan. North of Guam. Just a quick boat ride from Rota. You probably heard of Rota last week. It's where the A-bomb headed for Hiroshima was launched, 60 years ago this month.

It was an honour to work, for a short time, on Saipan, with folks working to protect the coral reefs in that region. Felt disingenuous to be ranting about bad journalism and unethical pharma practices in a place where history is so rich and I am so obviously just a (mostly) insignificant player in the circle of life. (Okay, significant to my son, but aside from him...not so much significant).

Coral reefs, baby. That's where life on this planet starts and stops. Gotta keep the coral healthy or every other ecosystem, first in the ocean and then on land, will suffer.

Despite the fact that the USA uses one of the islands in the CNMI as a target for aerial bombing practices, I think the US government is doing more good than bad for this set of islands. It was a hard pill to swallow, coming to that realization. Given that self-loathing of my half-American-blood is a key definer of who I am, I didn't know how to come to terms with liking that part of me I've always loved to loathe.

Makes me rethink all of my firmly held beliefs. Relax my stridency. Look at the world from outside my fishbowl - a fishbowl that has been focused on looking inside the American fishbowl.

Where will it all lead? Who knows. But I pray to god that it doesn't lead me to finding God...that would be just too much. Finding some good in US foreign policy AND finding God. How could a Canadian socialist atheist resolve that kind of Christian Republican identification? The only way I can think of is with some of those pharmaceutical drugs I'm usually too happy to condemn... or maybe if I licked one of the fluorescent blue fish I swam with around the reefs...

Oh dear. Encouragement, anyone?

Cyberchondriacs Unite!

2005-07-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Bristol-Meyers-Squib (BMS) announced a couple weeks ago that it is moving away from direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing, such as television and magazine ads, and will be investing its marketing money in direct-to-patient marketing. They hope that by focusing their money on grabbing the attention of people who are already being treated by doctors, as opposed to DTC's scatter-shot appeal to the entire population, they’ll make more sales.

It’s a smart strategy. Any Marketing 101 course will teach you to focus your resources on the people most likely to buy your product, and to avoid campaigns targeted to the “general public.”

Do you wonder how they plan to pull off direct-to-patient marketing? Through doctors? Nope. Through pharmacists? Uh-uh. Through posties and the mail? Wrong again. The patients will be reached via the Internet.

According to David Stern, VP-Marketing at Serono, Rockland, Mass. (As reported at EyeForPharma.com)

"It's a tumultuous time. The return on investment for traditional advertising is really waning . . . the Web is where we can get a return on our investment."

Stern said DTC spending had skyrocketed, but patient demand at the doctor's office was relatively flat. He suggested one alternative was to custom-build Web sites for individual doctors who could then recommend their patients seek more health information from the site. The pharma marketer would then end up knowing more about the patients' interests than the doctor would, Stern said -- invaluable for sales reps on their next visit with that doctor.

Sweet mother of darkness.

And of course, those sales reps will have nothing but my best interest at heart when they're telling my doctor about their latest miracle cures.

No doubt BMS’s decision to switch advertising media was based on some solid research that lead them to believe they would get a better ROI from websurfers than from channel surfers. Studies, perhaps, such as the one recently done by polling house Harris Interactive.

Now, the target audience for the poll that Harris Interactive did is pharmaceutical company decision-makers, not the public. It's not you or me. I raise this point to draw attention to the language that BMS is using regarding their new strategy as compared to the language the polling company is using for what would be the same target audience.

While BMS is talking about marketing their products “direct-to-patients via websites,” Harris Interactive calls the people who look for health information online “cyberchondriacs.”

I think that much can be gleaned from this choice of a moniker for pharma’s target audience. Of course, a hypochondriac is a person who has imaginary symptoms or ailments. A cyberchondriac, more than just being a person who looks for health info online, implies that this person is someone who goes online to find the disease that matches his or her symptoms. I’m very happy to be challenged on my leap of logic, but that’s how I read the word.

And, if a cyberchondriac really is someone looking to match their symptoms with an identifiable cause (disease, condition, you name it), then are they really “patients” or, are they “want-to-be-patients,” or perhaps, “primed-to-be-patients?”

Given that the word was used in a report directed to pharma industry folks, I suspect in the full report (which I cannot access) the word is well-defined and defined in such a way as to indicate that cyberchondriacs are ready and willing to be moved to action, which is what BMS clearly said it wants its advertising to result in: "patient demand at the doctor's office."

So, what did Harris Interactive find out in their research?

In 2004, 117 million American cyberchondriacs went online to look for health or medical information.
That cyberchondriacs look for health info online an average of 7 times per month.
That 90% of the adults surveyed say the information they find online is either “very reliable” (37%) or “somewhat reliable” (53%).
And that 57% of people who have sought health information online say they have discussed the information with their doctors at least once.

And that, dear readers, would have been exactly the kind of info BMS needed to know before deciding to pull their money from TV and mag ads: that if 117 cyberchondriacs are looking for health info online, and that 90% of those folks believe the info they read is reliable and then 57% (or somewhere in the area of 60 million people) turn their web surfing into a conversation with a doctor, who is inclined to write a prescription…well, that’s money well-invested.

Just think about this. Pharma builds the patient-oriented websites that have your trusted doctor’s face and name on it. The website surveys you and collects all kinds of data that you feel comfortable telling your trusted doctor. The website gives you information about the symptoms that match diseases you have indicated you are either predisposed to or concerned about in your survey. The solution that is presented is the name of a drug and the ubiquitous, “See your doctor if you have further questions.” The doctor, of course, is complicit, having his website paid for by the pharma company, so he is primed to write the prescription to you, his patient, the cyberchondriac.

Maybe I’m a conspiracy theorist…but industries don’t manage to earn billions of dollars a year unless they are very strategic. And this approach to grabbing market share is pure brilliance.

Case Study in Poor Journalism

2005-07-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Oh happy day! A vaccine article in the New York Times I can challenge!

All you readers who say you want to scream when people like me challenge the vaccine status quo – I await your comments with great anticipation. Don’t hold back. I’m itchin’ fer a fight.

So the headline of the article in question is:

A Dose of Potent Advice: Don't Mess With Tetanus

Very cute play on the extremely effective Don’t Mess With Texas public education campaign.

And the opening paragraph reads:

If you scare easily, maybe you'd better not read this column. Then again, maybe a good scare is really what you need to get your immunization against tetanus up to date.

Read all 1200 fear-mongering words if you feel inclined.

I want to draw your attention to the paragraph that is third from the end of this article (on the second page), which, as every journalist knows, will be read by precious few people since folks tend to read the headline, the opening one or two paragraphs and then scan the rest of an article, losing interest long before they reach the end. And having to click to a second page with online articles is deadly.

So here’s the paragraph you probably didn’t read even if you linked to the article:

Before routine childhood immunization began after World War II, the United States had 500 to 600 cases a year (about 40 per 10 million people). The numbers have dropped steadily, to about 50 to 100 a year. But in recent years, there's been a disturbing increase among people under 40, partly linked to drug users in California. Self-piercing and tattooing may also be a factor.

Such a rich paragraph! Every sentence a gem, particularly when taken in relation to the rest of the article which sets up our reason to be afraid...be very afraid.

The way the first two sentences are written, mentioning childhood immunization, creates a false conclusion that immunization was the reason the tetanus numbers have dropped steadily since WWII. One could just as accurately written, “At a time when people relied on horses for transportation, the United States had 500 to 600 cases a year.” Or, “At a time when the majority of citizens lived in rural areas…” Or, "At a time when tens of thousands of Americans were fighting and being injured in wars."

Unfortunately, the website that has the historic chart for all so-called vaccine-preventable diseases is down tonight. My memory is that incidence of tetanus began to decline long before the introduction of the vaccine, except, perhaps, among soldiers who were having the bullet wounds treated in make-shift hospitals.

As for those final two sentences of the paragraph in question... "But in recent years, there's been a disturbing increase among people under 40, partly linked to drug users in California. Self-piercing and tattooing may also be a factor."

I looked at my favourite CDC webpages to find out how many of the 50 to 100 tetanus cases are dieing and how old those people are. The CDC has data for the years 1999 to 2002 and here’s what it says:

Total deaths due to tetanus in 2002: 5
55-59 years old: 1 death
65-69 years old: 1 death
75-79 years old: 2 deaths
80-84 years old: 1 death

Total deaths due to tetanus in 2001: 5
55-59 years old: 1 death
65-69 years old: 1 death
80-84 years old: 1 death
85-89 years old: 2 deaths

Total deaths due to tetanus in 2000: 5
65-69 years old: 1 death
70-74 years old: 2 deaths
80-84 years old: 1 death
90-94 years old: 1 death

Total deaths due to tetanus in 1999: 7
30-34 years old: 1 death
55-59 years old: 1 death
60-64 years old: 1 death
75-79 years old: 3 deaths
85-89 years old: 1 death

What does this prove other than the fact that deaths due to tetanus are outrageously low in the US (1 in 60,000,000) and that not one single under 40 drug user or self-piercer has died from tetanus? Nothing more than the journalist was using partial facts and misleading phrase clusters to prove her thesis that we must all rush out and get our tetanus shot – or, more likely, the thesis of an industry-funded organization since most health stories are generated from the issuance of a press release.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t get your tetanus vaccine updated. That's a decision each person must make for herself once she has all the facts. It’s called informed consent…and the NYT article does nothing to help inform you about the actual and relative benefits and harms of contracting tetanus or getting the tetanus vaccine.

Shame on the New York Times for such sloppy and biased journalism.

Skeptic's Guide to Selling Sickness

2005-07-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Canadians are more skeptical as a culture than Americans. I wonder what that’s about, what the difference can be traced back to.

Could it be that although we are a capitalist society, our socialist values lead us to question authority more than our southern neighbours?

Maybe it’s the influence that the French culture from Quebec has on all Canadians who live in a country that allows one province to have its own Constitution and legal system. Maybe that makes us all more inclined to see and accept many angles of any story.

Could the way we accept new Canadians into our country, as bringing new ideas as opposed to creating a melting pot, be influencing our collective skeptical nature?

Perhaps it’s due to our founding principles of Peace, Order and Good Government, which is quite different from the American’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

For whatever reason, Canadians tend to be more skeptical citizens than our American cousins (and, in my case, siblings). And, our skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry’s motives have lead one Canadian, Alan Cassels of British Columbia, to co-author quite an eye-opening book. It’s called, Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All Into Patients.

(Disclosure: I am a friend and work colleague of Alan’s and am currently house-sitting for him. In fact, my laptop is sitting on Alan’s desk as I type this entry).

I’m on holiday. Relaxing. Reading. And while my husband is unraveling the mysteries of the Half-blood Prince, I am unraveling the mysteries of how every American and Canadian has become a patient in need of some pharmaceutical magic pill.

Selling Sickness is a must-read if you are skeptical about the ulterior motives of Big Pharma and need some good arguments to help make your point at parties and to your pill-popping parents.

If you are not skeptical about Big Pharma’s motives, having been hoodwinked by industry greed, it’s even more important for you to read Selling Sickness. I will offer you a money-back guarantee* that, after reading this book, you will live a happier life knowing what’s really going on behind the prescriptions your doctor is writing to treat your high cholesterol, depression, menopause, adult ADD, high blood pressure, social anxiety disorder, pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder, osteoporosis, irritable bowel and/or syndrome female sexual dysfunction.

The best quote from the book so far:

“Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world’s largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s. It had long been his dream, he said, to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could “sell to everyone.” Gadsden’s dream now drives the marketing machinery for the most profitable industry on earth.”

You can read an excerpt from the chapter on shaping public perceptions with a case study on the creation of the newly created social anxiety disorder. (Oh my god…I have that!).

*Okay. Not really. But I still stand behind my belief that this book is one of the most important you can read to wrangle control of your health care away from profit interest and back to your own self-interest, which is really where your health care provider's attention should be directed, don’t you think?

Those Darn Toxic Unborn Babies

2005-07-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

If the conservative faction of Americans who get all excited about babies rights want to do something really worthwhile with their energy and money, I propose they change their focus from preventing abortion to getting stricter pollution laws passed.

According to a new report by the Environmental Working Group, Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns :

Researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. Tests revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of these 10 children, collected by Red Cross after the cord was cut, harbored pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage.
…
Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.

What makes me just a tad upset is all the effort that cancer organizations put into the blessed Walk/Run/Cycle/Swim for the Cure events to raise money to find some elusive vaccine to prevent cancer, while the real cause of the ever-growing cancer rates is left unchallenged and for the most part, under-researched. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the leap that industry-created toxins in our air, food and water aren’t good for us.

Rather than expose us to that crap and then try to cure the illness with injections of more toxic cocktails, why can’t we focus on reducing the toxins in the first place? I’m sure corporations could figure out how to turn a profit from helping people stay healthy…

There are no bad foods, only bad children

2005-07-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

New York Times today. Headline: Food Industry Defends Marketing to Children.

ABOUT 350 food company executives, government officials, consumer advocates and academics packed a meeting room at the Federal Trade Commission's offices yesterday to discuss a wide range of issues on marketing food to children.

Amazingly, neither the government nor industry reps were in favour of government regulations. The industry, with the blessing of the Federal Trade Commissioner, has its own 5 person self-regulation organization called the Children's Advertising Review Board, or CARU. According to the CARU website:

CARU is the children's arm of the advertising industry's self-regulation program and evaluates child-directed advertising and promotional material in all media to advance truthfulness, accuracy and consistency with its Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising and relevant laws.

Well that’s good news, isn’t it? Turn on the tube, Mabel and let Johnny watch the Cap’n Crunch Cardio-Kids Hour.

But there were some dissenting voices in the crowd. According to Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa:

"CARU has become the poster child for how not to do self-regulation," said Senator Harkin, who was one of the few speakers to use the phrase "junk food." The board, he said, "has shown itself to be a captive to the industry."

Well, given that Senator Martin is a Democratic and we don’t know what his alterior motives are it’s hard to accept such an assertion without supporting evidence.

At the table were also representatives from the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association. They’ve published their own report on advertising food to kids, and claim that “data collected by Nielsen Media Research shows that children are viewing less food, beverage and restaurant advertising today than they were a decade ago.”

I guess that’s good news.

Unfortunately, for the GMA and all of the makers of kid-directed junk food advertising, their spokesman, Richard Martin seems to have missed the meeting where their key messages to media were outlined. (I also doubt this guy has kids). This has to be one of the dumbest quotes I’ve seen in several months:

The association says is it is opposed to nutritional guidelines because it does not believe there are any bad foods. “Any food can be responsibly consumed by everyone, including kids,” Mr. Martin said.

Hey, Mr. Martin, your industry funding is showing. Two points for Senator Harkin’s side and for common sense.

Got Milk? Eat my shorts!

2005-07-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Don’t expect this will be making mainstream news. From a marketing e-newsletter I subscribe to:

NEW YORK -- GOT MILK? the catchy trademark of the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB), will soon appear on men's boxers and baby clothes sold in Wal-Mart and other major retailers.

GOT MILK? will be cross-licensed with character properties such as Cookie Monster, Garfield and the Pillsbury Doughboy. GOT MILK? designs will be sold through Wal-Mart. Plans call for expansion into women's apparel via Target Corp. within the next six months.

Cutie Pie Baby, New York, will feature GOT MILK? on baby and toddler apparel, including bodysuits, burp cloths, bibs and blankets and on select hardgoods such as baby bottles and sippy cups. The line will retail at Babies "R" Us, Buy Buy Baby, Baby Depot and Macys.com beginning in September.

The CMPB, a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase milk sales and consumption in California, is funded by California milk processors and administered by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It began its licensing program in 1995 with GOT MILK? Barbie and now has more than 100 product licensees.

San Francisco advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners created the GOT MILK? ad campaign in 1993.

Now, you don’t have to have experience working with non-profits or in marketing to see the problem in the CMPB being labeled (and given government approval to be) a non-profit organization given its mission to “increase milk sales and consumption in California.” This is an industry-funded, arm’s length marketing department for milk producers. D’uh!

So, many may say, what’s the problem with trying to get more people to drink milk? After all, milk is one of the most healthy drinks available. For goodness sake, without milk our babies would never grow up big and strong.

And that’s the problem with industry creating fake non-profits to support their business goals. Where do you think this myth, that drinking cow’s milk helps build strong bones, came from? Well-funded, so-called third party organizations like the CMPB, of course.

Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you. Milk equals bone-builder is one of those entrenched myths that have been repeated so often it’s attained indisputable fact status. Read the milk fact sheet at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

The PCRM is a non-profit organization that promotes preventive medicine, especially good nutrition. PCRM also conducts clinical research studies, opposes unethical human experimentation, and promotes alternatives to animal research.

These folks ran a clever counter Got Milk? ad that challenges Dr. Phil to Get Real about his assertion that milk helps people lose weight.

And a very well-researched article on milk, the not-so-perfect food, can be found in the July edition of Shared Vision.

Master Hooper

2005-07-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

I'm so busy with work that I don't even have time to read the blogs I love, let alone read the news or comment on anything.

Just wanted to share one of the many talents of my boy! He's got 5 hula hoops spinning and a 6th is about to be tossed on top. Sadly, the weight of 6 hoops (1 inch PVC piping!) knocked him backward - you can see his feet leaving the ground with "just" the 5!

Want to make your own cool hula hoops? The recipe used to make these hoops can be found at the Hollyhock Leadership Institute. Didn't you know - all great leaders can hoop!?

Little Boy Blue

2005-07-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been naturally inclined to question authority – especially when that authority (be it my own parents, a doctor, politician, or teacher) tells me I need to do something that doesn’t feel right to me.

So, when Adisen's kindergarten teacher, at our very first parent-teacher meeting informed us that Adisen was a challenging child to have in her class, that daily he interrupted her lectures with commentary that made other kids laugh, and that unless we “changed his personality” he would have trouble through his school years, I started to look into what the characteristics of a “good” personality for a 5-year old are. I mean, there would be no point in changing his personality to another “wrong” or “bad” personality, right?

I spent hours doing web searches to find the set of personality characteristics that would please an elementary school teacher. By the end of the day I hadn’t found a single definition for “the perfect child/student.” What I found was list after list of the kinds of behaviour that are not acceptable or desirable in a child. I also determined that my sweet son exhibited every single behaviour trait of a kid with ADHD and most of the personality traits of a child with bi-polar disorder. Oh – and that his behaviour was classic of gifted children.

I concluded that the only way I could give the teacher the student she wanted was to put Adisen on a psychoactive drug that would effectively change his five-year old personality. Problem was, I love all of Adisen's personality traits. When he argues with me, I envision him as a future lawyer. When he obsesses over building the perfect Lego character, I imagine him as a scientist. When he explodes into a rage that I’m not being fair, I see the human rights activist in him. All of his personality traits, as challenging as they sometimes are coming from a child, have the potential to serve him well as an adult. I simply could not imagine him as broken or sick, needing to be fixed or cured of the personality he was born with.

Sadly, millions of parents in the United States and around the world are convinced that that their young children would somehow be “better” if put on a prescription drug to alter their moods and behaviour. Over the past decade, the increase in the number of very young children placed on Ritalin or similar psychoactive medications has been staggering. Recent studies cite a 300 percent rise in the number of two- to four-year olds taking these medications and estimate that nearly 20 percent of school-aged children in the USA are taking personality changing drugs. In addition to the psychoactive drugs, in 2002 in the United States, over 11 million children were prescribed an anti-depressant.

So I made a film, called Little Boy Blue, with the hope that it would encourage parents, teachers and care-givers, doctors and soccer coaches, to discard the notion that there is a firm definition of how a model child behaves, to reject society’s template of what a “good” and “emotionally healthy” child looks like, and to embrace and accept that many different behaviours are good and healthy – even if those behaviours make it hard for teachers to manage a class, or for both parents to work full-time, or even if they expose deep flaws in the environments we as a society are forcing our kids to adapt to.

People are buying copies...it played in another festival this weekend...slowly but surely the message is getting out. I go to bed feeling grateful tonight.

Flu-related blogs worth taking a look at

2005-07-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

There are some really smart and well-educated folks out there blogging about the avian flu! If this is a subject that intrigues you, you can see several arguments to my post from yesterday and the day before both in the comments at my blog and at the following links (all of the comments are different, although there are some folks who are responding at more than one site). I promise you, you’ll learn at least one new thing.

HN51 – News and Resources about Avian Flu
fluwiki
Effect Measure

As I mention in a couple of replies, my background is NOT in medicine, rather my experience is in social marketing. I know how to use the media and other strategies to help a public change behaviour (and sometimes beliefs).

The folks posting replies to my call for level-headed reporting on avian flu seem to have more background in medical areas. I've learned a great deal from them. (However, I’m still not buying the need for avian flu pandemic fear-mongering via the mainstream media.)

Take a look - and join in the conversation! Through discussion we can find areas we all agree on and, the bonus, ways to move forward that serve all of our needs and goals. It's true! The conservative right-wing, anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion crowd have been successfully using this strategy for two decades. Important change takes time. And lots of talking. C'mon. Join in!

I think my head is going to explode

2005-07-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Gina at RenegadeMom, I found another “oh sweet jesus the pandemic flu is upon us” article. This one from CNN last Friday.

I’m seriously irritated right now. Shallow breathing. Nauseous. Light-headed. Shoulders tense.

I feel like I’m the butt of some depraved reality life experiment, like the Truman Show, or The Matrix, or the episode of Spongebob Squarepants where Sandy Squirrel longs for her Texas homeland.

You know that old saying that if you repeat a lie often enough it will become truth? Well, the god-forsaken media have repeated the lie about how many Americans die from influenza so many times that it is nearly impossible to argue otherwise. It has become an accepted fact.

In this CNN article they state, “In an average year, influenza kills an estimated 36,000 Americans and puts 200,000 into the hospital.”

This is a commonly cited stat. But it’s an utter fabrication! May I say, it’s bullshit!

Arrgghhh! How can people make informed decisions about when to rely on medical interventions (such as vaccines) and when to rely on their otherwise good health to keep them feeling groovy?

Here are the facts, from the most reputable health monitoring agency in America – the Center for Disease Control. Their stats about deaths due to influenza come nowhere near this mythical 36,000.

Follow along with me if you’re skeptical. I will help shatter those rose-colored glasses…actually, in this case the glasses are black, like death, covering our ability to see clearly:

Go to this CDC webpage

Now go to the second PDF file in the list on this page, G00.1-L00 (1,110 pages) (or link from here)

You can now either search for the keyword “Influenza” and find 12 mentions of it, or, you can simply read the following list. Either way, you’ll get the identical information. These are all American influenza death statistics:

Influenza due to identified influenza virus: 99
Influenza with pneumonia, influenza virus identified: 38
Influenza with other respiratory manifestations, influenza identified: 59
Influenza with other manifestations, influenza identified: 2 (that’s not a typo, it’s two)

So far, that’s a total of 198 Americans who died in 2002 from identifiable influenza virus. Under 200 people. And more than half of those folks were over 80 years old! Just 16 kids under 10 died from influenza in 2002. Sixteen! Why in God’s name are we giving flu vaccines to hundreds of thousands of infants and children?!

But wait, there’s more. The CDC also lists the number of people who die from something that is called influenza but was not actually identified as such. Doctors who don’t test to see if the patient died from influenza but think that influenza was the cause. Here are those numbers:

Influenza, virus not identified: 628
Influenza with pneumonia, virus not identified: 291
Influenza with other respiratory manifestations, influenza not identified: 323
Influenza with other manifestations, influenza not identified: 14

And that’s it. Those are the actual deaths attributed to influenza from the actual Center for Disease Control in 2002. Again with these numbers, more than half were people who had already seen their fair share of days.

198 confirmed influenza deaths. 1,256 unconfirmed influenza deaths. From the CDC itself.

So where does the magic 36,000 deaths a year come from? You see, the CDC doesn’t require doctors to report deaths due to influenza, so they make up a number that feels right based on computer models and statistical projections. Please! The question begging to be answered is, “why?”

Why doesn’t the CDC require doctors to report cause of death when it’s influenza, but requires cause of death reporting for cancer, car accidents, gun shots, and so on and so on and so on? Why?

Of course, I don’t know why, but most people who don’t ask for information don’t want it. Is it possible that the CDC doesn’t want to know how many people in the USA die from influenza since, if the numbers really are as low as they appear based on the reporting that is done, the public may stop fearing the flu, stop getting their annual shot, and maybe even resist all of the anti-terrorist vaccines that will one day be forced on us all?

Back to all the noise about the imminent flu pandemic…experts predict up to 7.4 million people globally will die. They cite the avian flu as a real possibility to set the pandemic in motion. But so far, nobody has died from the avian flu – just a lot of birds living in pretty crappy conditions. When I did math a couple decades ago in school, I thought I learned that any number multiplied by zero was zero. I wonder how the computer model that came up with 7.4 million got that number.

Must drink scotch now.

A nice cup of tea with a dash of milk and a spoonful of fear

2005-07-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

I have a typical morning routine. I wake up when my early-rising and wonderful husband places a cup of tea at my bedside. I turn on CBC radio. Sometimes it’s just before the 7:00 news, sometimes, just after. And I lay in bed until I’ve heard both the national and regional newscasts. It’s usually a nice way to start the day.

Today, however, was not one of the nice days. I missed the 7:00 AM national news but caught the newscast at 8:00 while brushing my teeth. I wasn’t fully focused, but tuned right in when I heard some spokesperson breathily predicting Armageddon. Asserting that a killer flu pandemic will inevitably hit Canada once the avian flu starts to mutate and spread among humans.

This maestro of mental mayhem also warned that we must be prepared for universal flu vaccination programs and then worried about the fact that some people may be reluctant to get the avian flu vaccine.

I’ve had to deal with school bureaucracies, telling me my son can’t attend unless his vaccines are all up-to-date (which is utter bullshit since no child in Canada can be denied an education simply for not having been vaccinated). I’ve had to deal with very snarky emergency room hospital staff and doctors when taking my son in to get a cast or stitches (of course, a parent who refuses to follow the government mandated vaccination schedule is suspected of other types of child abuse and neglect).

The deal is that childhood vaccines are not mandatory anywhere in Canada, so I get some flack but am ultimately left to make the health care decision for my child. This newscast, and some other stories from Ontario in the last months, are preparing the public to accept forced immunization.

So I’m left with the feeling that the time is now to start organizing. Organizing what, I have no idea. Get myself a lawyer perhaps…find funding to launch an education campaign…build a small shelter to protect my family from the forced needles.

There are already American states where parents have had their non-vaccinated children taken from them and been charged with neglect. The kids are immunized and returned to their family.

Even if you are a firm vaccine supporter, this kind of talk about forced immunization for an event that may never happen – or may happen with a strain of disease that is not contained within the vaccine vial – should make all citizens angry.

The thing I’m most upset about right now is that the fear mongering is actually affecting me. I am scared. But not of the flu pandemic. I’m terrified because it’s clear that our government (and the American government, too) is clearly setting the stage to change immunization policy so they can legally force vaccines on us.

Individual rights? Sorry folks, we’re at war. And the chickens are winning.

Better to be a rat than a grandma…

2005-07-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

…if you live in Canada and find yourself participating in research to test new drugs and medical treatments, that is.

A few posts ago I mentioned how appalled I was at my mother-in-law’s treatment by drug researchers when she was waiting for a surprise triple by-pass. Now a new study, Towards the Ethical Governance of Canadian Research Involving Humans: Principles, Policies, Practices and Outcomes, shows her experience is not unique.

The researchers conclusion: “The governance of research involving animals in Canada is not only more stringent, but better.”

Those crazy academics with their fancy ten dollar words...what he's saying is, lab rats are better cared for in drug testing than humans are.

How many Canadians are recruited into studies to test new drugs? About one million. And who are they? They are the disposables, of course, grey hairs and folks who are chronically ill. Like my son’s granny T.

And, to make the story even more disturbing, the overview of the report concludes that,
"It is far easier to find out about research mishaps in Canada from U.S. authorities than from Canadian authorities."

Apparently, while the Canadian research community refuses to disclose when investigators or institutions are involved in misconduct, such as misspending funds, falsifying results or mistreating patients, several Canadian researchers and universities have in recent years been publicly questioned and sanctioned by U.S. regulators.

With all due respect to my American cousins, I can’t say I feel happy about having the country with one of the highest mortality-due-to-doctor-invention rates being Canada’s drug research watchdog…

Gimme, gimme never gets

2005-06-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Just home from a week in paradise, at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre. My life is truly blessed. I worked and hung out with 30 environmental activists who are working in a variety of ways to protect and restore wildlife and nature in the west – from San Francisco to Alaska, from Vancouver Island to Winnipeg (with one pleasure activist from New York City thrown in there to help mix things up a little).

With all the giving of themselves that these activists are doing on behalf of all of us who don’t have the time or inclination to fight the battles that need to be fought on behalf of all the species and ecosystems that are under threat, I am compelled to both give today and to ask those of you reading today to help me out in a small way.

A friend of mine recently co-wrote a book with a best-selling author. This book is called The Power of Giving: Creating abundance in your home, at work and in your community.

The book's goal is to start a movement to dramatically increase giving in our communities. And that's why the authors are donating 100% of the profits from sales of The Power of Giving to the registered charity, Tides Canada Foundation.

The Power of Giving explores all the ways we can give: time, money, kindness, forgiveness, and much more. Best of all, you'll create more abundance in your personal life, your home and your work when you follow the simple yet powerful messages in this book.

That’s the sales pitch. And here’s a lesson in marketing and why the appeal is to buy a copy of The Power of Giving today:

If 200 people purchase a copy of this book today, on June 30th, The Power of Giving will become an Amazon.ca bestseller. If it becomes an Amazon.ca bestseller, then bookstores will order more copies. If bookstores order more copies, then more people will buy the book and more money will be donated to charities. If charities have more money…they can do more work on our behalf.

Easy! You benefit from the great wisdom in the book, and charities will benefit too. So hook yourself up with The Power of Giving by purchasing a copy today. It’s just $12 Canadian...and it makes a great gift…I bought four copies myself…mom, dad, mom-in-law, you'll each be getting one.

Mother's Little Helper

2005-06-24T16:26:00.000-07:00

I am happier than heroin addict with a hit. More relaxed than cat sleeping in the sunshine. This week I am working in paradise, a place Cortes Island, at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre. Who needs antidepressants when life is this good?

And that is the point of this very short entry.

If you’re an adult who is taking or thinks you may need antidepressants, I highly recommend this wonderful first person story by Joli Jensen, Emotional Choices: What story you choose to believe about antidepressants reveals a deeper truth about who you are.

And, if you’re the parent of a child who is either taking SSRI antidepressants, or you think your child would benefit from such drugs, take a look at the short documentary I made last year about this subject, The Magic Little Pill. (I currently only pay for enough monthly bandwidth to allow 5 viewings of this film, so if you try to watch and get an error message, drop me a line and I’ll increase my bandwidth for you!)

Thanks to to The Bastard of Art and Commerce for the heads-up on the Joli Jensen article.

Revised Oath for Doctors

2005-06-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

This is from a doctor in India, Dr. Leo Rebello. He wrote it in 2003, believing the Hippocratic Oath to be partly outdated. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with his oath, but it’s interesting to see what he believes to be important to commit to. I wonder how many American and Canadian doctors would ever commit to the same...

Many doctors have forgotten their Hippocratic oath or humanism. Therefore, I would like to administer the following oath to the doctors to serve as a reminder as to how important is their profession. Doctors to please repeat after me.
I, -------------, do hereby swear on this solemn day that :-
I shall NOT prescribe unnecessary medicines and tests to my patients;
I shall NOT give false counseling;
I shall NOT overcharge and accept cuts and gifts;
I shall NOT rape tiny tots with inoculations or vaccinations, for they pollute the blood stream of small children leading to serious diseases like AIDS, Cancers, Autism, etc;
I shall NOT prescribe lethal drugs, like anti-retrovirals, chemotherapy, or give ECT to my patients;
I shall NOT be afraid of any authority and fabricate medical records or give false evidence;
I shall NOT exploit students studying under me;
I shall NOT manipulate findings or results to win grants.

The oath has more points that you can read at Health Wisdom by clicking though to the Doctor’s Oath (left column)

Hey! July 1st is Doctor’s Day…make an appointment…get a prescription…everyone will feel better!

Am I good or am I poison?

2005-06-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I taste a bit like Almonds.

Mmm, the taste of almonds - anathema to many with nut allergies, and a bad sign for many more, as my taste is not unlike that of cyanide. Am I good or am I poison? A risky thing to guess about. What Flavour Are You?

Thanks to Bucket-o-Cool for the link.

Volunteers Needed for Anthrax Vaccine

2005-06-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

NIH: Clinical Research Studies

Title: Anthrax Vaccine Clinical Trials
Adults who are in good health and children who are in good health may be eligible for this study. The involvement of 350 adult volunteers and 100 children in first and second grade is planned.

And I ask, what parent in their right mind would sign-up their 6- or 7-year old as a volunteer to receive an experimental vaccine??!! And anthrax?!

Same day, different email, I get a story from the Las Vegas Sun (whatever...) about the suspected effects the anthrax vaccine has had on a few other disposable American citizens. The opening para reads:

More than 1,200 military personnel who received the anthrax vaccine before going to Iraq have developed serious illnesses, according to an Army report released last month, though local military officials contend the shots still are safe and necessary.

If you want to sign your kid up for the FREE anthrax vaccines, visit the National Institutes of Health site to get all the exciting details.

That would be Institute of Health in the same way as George Orwell's, 1984 Ministry of Peace, wouldn't it?

And if you haven't read 1984...please stop reading my blog. If you want to keep reading, you can download 1984 for FREE at the very cool site, Online Literature.

What the #$%^%?

2005-06-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

So, my son, Adisen is nine years old. He’s been sick with a virus that makes his lungs and gut hurt when he breathes deeply. After forcing him to suffer at home for the requisite three days, I took him to see our doctor. (Note that I only made him wait one day before taking him to the hospital when he broke his arm, so this three-day waiting period is somewhat flexible).

Anyway, Dr. Grant is a great doctor. Not big on drugs. Tends to offer the harder cures to health-care woes (Bloated? Eat less wheat. Tired all the time? Join a gym. Wake up with the shakes? Stop smoking crack. Having panic attacks at the office? Quit your job).

Anyway, after making Adisen hop on one foot, jump up and down, bend over, breathe deeply and cough (not all at the same time, mind you) Dr. Grant said:

“If your lungs still hurt in a week, come back and I’ll use the pointy part of this (at which point he pulled the reflex hammer from his drawer) to drill a hole in your side, right below your rib cage. Then you’ll be able to breathe through the hole so breathing won’t hurt your lungs anymore.”

With all the sincerity of the most gullible child placed on god’s green earth, Adisen asked, “but won’t that hurt?”

Dr. Grant assured him it would only hurt if he missed the soft part and drilled right into Adisen’s rib cage, which he promised him he’d try not to do.

After we left the doctor’s office, I asked Adisen if he thought Dr. Grant was serious about drilling a hole in him with a plastic hammer.

He said, and I quote, "Yes, because doctors always speak the truth."

What the #$%^%?

These were not my son's words coming from his mouth. No nine-year old of mine uses expressions like "speak the truth." And no child of mine would ever speak these words of anyone in a power position…doctor, politician, priest, or parents, for that matter.

It reminds me of the day he came home and started reciting prayers...

“What the #$%&^?” I asked.

“We say prayers everyday at lunch.”

I tell you, the things kids bring home from school – head lice, old sandwiches, and the craziest ideas!

I thought it was the Environmental PROTECTION Agency…

2005-06-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

This morning, like most mornings, I launched my email program and waited for nuggets of news to find their way to my enquiring mind.

Some days are dry. Today is wet like the BC rainforest.

Both the Washington Post and New York Times delivered news I’d expect to read on CNN, the shock value of these two pieces are so high.

Here are excerpts from the Washington Post article: EPA Using Data From Chemical Tests on Humans

The Environmental Protection Agency is using data from two dozen tests that deliberately exposed humans to toxic chemicals to help determine whether to approve new pesticides, according to a study released yesterday by congressional Democrats.

Democratic staffers surveyed 24 tests conducted between 1967 and 2004, most in the past decade, that the EPA is reviewing as it evaluates applications to market new pesticides. They concluded that nearly one-third of the tests "were specifically designed to cause harm to human test subjects or put them at risk of harm," and in many cases "the informed consent forms used in the experiments do not appear to meet ethical standards."

The scientists conducting the tests frequently ignored the fact that they were putting their subjects -- who were often students or minorities -- at risk, the report said. In one case, three dozen subjects took an insecticide pill with orange juice at breakfast; in another, eight people received a dose of a toxic insecticide for 28 days, during which time all eight "experienced adverse events, including headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, coughing and a rash. The researchers declared that every single adverse event was unrelated to dosing."

And excerpts from the New York Times article: Drug Trials on Children Broke Rules, Officials Say

Federal officials have found that a Columbia University Medical Center committee that oversees the use of patients as subjects in medical research violated federal regulations in the 1990's in the case of four research projects. In the projects, experimental drugs were tested in children, including foster children, with AIDS or who were H.I.V.-positive.

The Office for Human Research Protections informed Columbia in a letter last month that the medical center's institutional review board had "failed to obtain sufficient information" concerning the selection of foster children as subjects, the process for getting their parents' or guardians' permission and certain additional safeguards.

The findings come at a time when questions have been raised nationally about the participation of foster children in drug trials during the 1980's and 1990's, when hundreds of babies in New York City alone were born H.I.V.-positive and when there were at first no treatments approved for children.

Disclosure: I snipped several paragraphs from each article, including the “we did nothing wrong” quotes. And maybe these researchers did not do anything unethical. Fact is, minorities, students, foster children, the elderly, even soldiers are often the targets for drug experiments. This we know. (And this is today, in the USA. Human experiments did not die with Hitler and the Nazis.)

I’ll never forget the researcher who came into my mother-in-law’s hospital room, two hours before her triple by-pass. The researcher had left a two-page document for mom to read, requesting her participation in an experimental dosage of one of the drugs that is used during a heart by-pass.

Her heart attack had been a total surprise. She was in the process of having her newly-written will witnessed by hospital employees, and she was being asked to participate in a drug test that was being presented in what I would call, an unethical way.

Given her not-very-clear-state-of-mind, she had decided that it was in humanity's best interest for her to participate. I flipped when I read the document.

I can’t recall all the details, but it made a statement about how an increase in the dosage of the drug in question of say, 20% did not harm lab rats. But later in the document it indicated that the experiment was to increase the dosage of the drug by over 100% in my mom-in-law…I was appalled at the lack of integrity being shown in this situation.

Expendable lives… those old people would have died soon anyway… those poor people would have had a lousy quality of life had they lived… those soldiers signed an “I won’t sue for injuries” statement… those babies have a low economic value, so we can afford to lose the lawsuit… those foster kids aren't wanted anyway… PAH!

Hormones Working, No Viagra Needed

2005-06-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

Sex. It’s a subject I’m just having to start thinking about: how to ensure my 9-year old son knows enough about sex to know what is and is not appropriate for kids his age.

Truth is, he has absolutely no interest in girls (or boys) from a crush perspective. Yet.

But there’s one girl who has been pursuing him, writing love notes, giving him photos of herself (and one with the two of them). He considers her a friend. She has told him that one day he’ll smarten up and have a crush on her too.

I have to admit, I really like this girl, her confidence and her spunk. (She has bright red streaks in her hair. She’s cooler than I ever was and she’s only eight!). She comes over to play and I leave the two of them in Adisen’s room, unmonitored.

So news today that the Heritage Foundation is challenging study results by a Columbia-Yale research team around the value of virginity pledges sparked my interest.

The Columbia-Yale guys found that virginity pledges contributed to kids being exposed to more STDs (because virgins can't have intercourse, but virgins can engage in oral sex).

The Heritage Foundation evaluated the same study and drew different conclusions. Here are a few:

Eighty-one percent of virginity pledgers had engaged in any sexually activity compared with 92% of non-pledgers.
Only 75% of virginity pledgers reported ever having engaged in vaginal intercourse compared with 90% of non-pledgers.
Sixty-two percent of pledgers reported ever having engaged in oral sex compared with 73% of non-pledgers.
Pledgers are one-third less likely to engage in anal sex. Fifteen percent of pledgers compared with 22% of non-pledgers had engaged in anal sex.
Five percent of non-pledgers engaged in sex with prostitutes compared with 2.9% of pledgers.

So, parents, educators, religious leaders, all you people who are trying to look out for the health and well-being of kids, what does this say?

It says, kids need more information about sex.

They don’t need to be strong-armed into making empty, ill-defined virginity promises. Fer gawd’s sake, if you have a pre-teen, talk to them about sex in a respectful and complete way. Buy a book to help if you have to. Kids will experiment. Get over it and deal in the best way for the kids!

(And if you know of a really good book, can you let me know?!)

And another thing! If your son or daughter decides that a same sex experiment is what is right for him or her – accept it. Don’t make me come over and beat you senseless with your own intolerance.

Strategies of Astroturf Organizations 101

2005-06-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Take a quick look at the following website. It’s called iDECIDE: Supporting your weight loss

Here’s part of the About Us page text:

The iDECIDE website is designed to help people like yourself who are concerned about their weight and ready to make the necessary changes for weight loss. Here you will find information about how to work with your doctor to develop a healthy weight loss approach that is right for you.

I wonder who funds this project, the website. The About Us page doesn’t say who these people are. Doesn’t tell us if iDECIDE is a non-profit organization or a for-profit company. The look and feel of the site are 100% non-profit though.

A little further down the About Us page is the following text:

In addition, iDECIDE includes a listing of Canadian doctors who have indicated that they are interested in helping people who are trying to lose weight. Click on Doctors Who Can Help to find a doctor in your area. Our goal is to assist you with getting professional guidance in order to develop a healthy approach that may help you start winning at losing weight.

So here’s my question:

Why would someone who wants to lose weight need to find a special doctor online at a weight-loss website? The doctors listed have indicated that they’re interested in helping people lose weight…that would be most GPs, I suspect. Why is this group of doctors special?

A little research by a colleague found that an Australian version of this site also exists. The landing page has the same graphics, photos, feeling evoked as the Canadian site.

The Aussies claim this to be the raison d’etre of their iDECIDE website:

This has been developed for people who are ready to lose weight with their doctor, and want to keep it off for good!

Another list of Australian doctors who have a special interest in helping people lose weight. Something smells fishy, no?

Yeah, it does.

Here’s the US version of the same campaign website.

While the Canadian site has absolutely no mention of the pharma interests that have funded it (I suspect since our direct-to-consumer drug advertising laws differ from the US),

and the Australian site has Abbott noted only in the footer ("'i Decide' is an initiative of Abbott Australasia in the interest of patient education and better health"),

the US site is actually housed at the Abbott URL.

iDECIDE.ca is a classic pharma-funded, fake grassroots organization (AKA, astroturf organization) posing as a non-profit working in the public’s best interest.

And to answer that question I asked 100 words ago: Why is the website directing people to specific doctors? I’m taking a wild guess here, but do you think maybe the doctors who are listed have been visited by cute pharma reps, handed a big pile of Meridia, Abbott's weight loss pills, and agreed to give them to their patients as a trial?

That’s all for today. Have a nice salad for dinner then go for a walk with your family.

Why Does Bill Gates Care About Cervical Cancer in Developing Countries?

2005-06-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

Hands up, anyone who thinks Bill Gates’ modus operandi is to make the world a better place…hands? Hands? Anyone?

The richest man in the world has a charitable foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which makes headlines every few months with some new investment of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to provide vaccines to the world’s poorest people. So far, this Foundation has invested over $1.5 billion to help increase access to basic childhood vaccinations in world's poorest nations.

Today’s news applauds the BMG Foundation’s donation of $12.9 million to two organizations to support a campaign to get cervical cancer vaccines to women in poor countries.

The deal with cervical cancer is that it kills 250,000 women a year, most of whom live in developing countries. One of the main triggers for cervical cancer is human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease.

Merck and GSK are both developing cervical cancer vaccines. It takes a lot of money (if we are to believe the pharma folks) to develop and take a new vaccine to market. Here’s what I don’t understand:

Why are Merck and GSK investing in a vaccine that will find its largest market in developing countries? That’s not good for business. Developing countries don’t pay market prices for vaccines. And, why develop a vaccine that will only benefit women? Women’s health issues are rarely a cause for concern to the suits who run big pharma.

Oh wait. I remember. A few weeks ago Merck and GSK made news with this vaccine, saying that once they've completed safety testing and received approval from the FDA, they want the US government to add it to the list of recommended vaccines for all American 12-year olds. Boys and girls alike.

So they still need to test the safety of this vaccine... I don’t imagine industry wants to get caught with another PR mess where it’s found out that low-income “black and brown” kids in American ghettos are being used as guinea pigs for new vaccines. Media is too close. Better to carry on experiments with black and brown women in far-away countries where media is ignored and lawyers are few and far between.

I understand why the WHO and big pharma and the US government all sleep in the same bed…but why has Bill Gates jumped under the sheets?

Just what is Bill Gates up to? I mean, I know he’s evil, but really, is he that evil?!

What the Hell is in the Ketchup?

2005-06-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

So much of what I have learned over the past nine years has come from being a mother. Had I not had a baby, I never would have looked into vaccinations and become interested in the social marketing of diseases. Had I not had a baby who had febrile seizures, I never would have thought to consider how fever suppressants can harm you. Had my son, Adisen, not been labeled ADHD by his daycare, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to question the role of non-medical professionals in diagnosing our children’s state of mental health.

Today, I embark on a new fact finding journey to determine whether pesticides used on tomatoes could be causing Adisen to have spontaneous, irrational outbursts of anger.

Last night as I lay in bed, unable to sleep worrying about the frame of mind Adisen was in when he went to bed, every angry outburst he’s had over the last few months flooded my mind. And they all had one thing in common: prior to each event, Adisen had eaten ketchup. At home we only eat organic ketchup. But when he eats at his friends’ houses it’s always plain old Heinz or Kraft. When he eats in restaurants, it’s never organic ketchup he’s putting on his chicken.

We already know that Adisen has several food and chemical intolerances. His reactions vary from a red face to a sore mouth to ADHD-type behaviour when he eats wheat, chocolate, malt, red food dye, caffeine or MSG.

Several years ago he developed a painful skin rash while shucking fresh strawberries. I assumed at the time that the reaction was due to chemicals on the fresh-picked berries and from that day forward I started buying as much organic food as I could find.

All of these thoughts came to me. And now I wonder if there isn’t one or more specific chemicals used on non-organic tomatoes that are contributing to behaviours that, if we were to take Adisen to see a doctor, would undoubtedly be labeled as a mental health problem.

…later…

No luck with my Google searches to find any connection between tomatoes, pesticides and irrational behaviour. But I did stumble on this (I have paraphrased the original text since in its original form it is very convoluted):

“The label on the POST Selects Date & Raisin Pecan Crunch claims it contains salt. But when the agent at the Canadian Kraft consumer satisfaction public relations office was asked if the salt was regular or iodized, they responded that it was neither, but MSG.”

So I Called Kraft Canada to ask if it were possible that their ketchup contains MSG even if it’s not listed on the label. Pierre, my friendly Kraft consumer relations man said, and I quote, “I can’t talk for other products, but for Kraft and Nabisco if it’s not on the ingredients list it’s not there.”

Now if that isn’t an invitation to start digging!

This tomato/ketchup thing may be a red herring, but there’s no doubt that something my son is eating is making him sick. And I have to figure out what it is…ideas?

The Vaccination Man

2005-06-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Slowly he would cruise the neighborhood, waiting for that occassional careless child who confused him with another vendor.

Click on the cartoon to see it bigger.

Who doesn't love Gary Larson?

Those Damn Lyee, Liars

2005-06-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

I don’t even need to add my thoughts on this story, but I probably will. From the Washington Post yesterday, an excerpt:

Few scientists fabricate results from scratch or flatly plagiarize the work of others, but a surprising number engage in troubling degrees of fact-bending or deceit, according to the first large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior.
More than 5 percent of scientists answering a confidential questionnaire admitted to having tossed out data because the information contradicted their previous research or said they had circumvented some human research protections.
Ten percent admitted they had inappropriately included their names or those of others as authors on published research reports.
And more than 15 percent admitted they had changed a study's design or results to satisfy a sponsor, or ignored observations because they had a "gut feeling" they were inaccurate.

So, the funny thing with this story is that it could be a total lie! The story itself is based on a study that could have had unethical researchers faking conclusions! Or, it could be an entirely fictitious account, since reporters have proven that they are not above making it up as they go along, either! Wouldn’t it be hilarious if this was a fake study, and the real study is monitoring how the media eat up the story without first fact-checking?

(But I’ll bet my American SSN that this is true. Sad, potentially deadly when the research is on meds, but true.)

Indulge me while I hop back on my high horse, but to everyone who blindly accepts the mantra, “vaccines are entirely safe and science has proven this to be so,” uhhh….can you maybe consider this type of bending research results behaviour has been used to fudge the results of vaccine safety and effectiveness studies? Maybe?

Oh, the irony!

2005-06-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

WebMd is running articles about the recent American Psychiatric Association’s AGM. One that piqued my interest is titled: Consumer Drug Ads May Confuse the Public.

The opening text reads:

A new study shows that patients are often influenced by advertisements for medications that they see on TV and in magazines -- often to the point that they question their doctor's wisdom.

And adjacent to the text of this article, dominating the top of the page, what is there? THIS DRUG AD! (Guess the AMA didn't find the same influence from website advertising...)

Oh my gosh. I pee at least 12 times a day. Really. Last night I woke up twice to pee. (I am also sick so yesterday I drank at least 12 big cups of tea and hot honey and lemon - but do pee more than 8 times a day...)

And I leak sometimes, too. Like yesterday, when my husband put off a telemarketer by saying he was 16 and his wife works at a bank. Peed my pants laughing, I did.

Unfortunately, the simplicity of this ad could lead me to conclude that I have an overactive bladder. More likely though, I just have an overactive imagination.

Excuse me. I have a sudden urge to pee.

Trumpeting vaccination may only entrench opposition

2005-06-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

I have a request. Please read the following, short press release that appeared on EurekAlert! two weeks ago and tell me what you conclude.

Extolling the safety and benefits of childhood vaccinations may only serve to strengthen and entrench the positions of those philosophically opposed to them, says new research led by University of Toronto scientists.

Sorry. Can't help but throw in my comment: qualifying the parents who oppose vaccines as “philosophically” opposed is insulting to all parents who are opposed to vaccines based on knowledge, research they’ve done, or the fact that one of their kids may have suffered an adverse vaccine reaction. That qualification is clearly meant to discredit non-vaccinators.

"Changing attitudes about pediatric vaccination can be challenging," says Dr. Kumanan Wilson, professor of medicine and health policy, management and evaluation at U of T, internal medicine physician at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, and lead author of the research.
"Some parents have strongly held beliefs about the safety and benefits of vaccines and any attempts to try to change their minds may only strengthen their anti-vaccine sentiments."
Wilson and his colleagues from U of T and McMaster University sought to test the attitudes of people known to have views not supportive of vaccination. They randomly divided 97 participants into two study groups. One group received an evidence-based lecture on the benefits of polio vaccine while the other received a talk by a polio survivor. Participants completed surveys about their attitudes to vaccines before and after the presentations. "Before" surveys confirmed the researchers' initial hypothesis – these participants were generally non-supportive of vaccines with only nine per cent saying they would recommend the polio vaccine and six per cent saying they would recommend the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.
However, analysis of the "after" surveys revealed surprising results – some respondents reported being even more opposed to vaccination. After seeing the presentations, 25 per cent reported being less likely to recommend the polio vaccine and 38 per cent were less likely to think polio was a serious problem.
"For some parents, concerns about vaccines are deeply held and physicians need to be aware of these findings when confronting parents who are strongly opposed to vaccination," warns Wilson. "Prolonged discussions may be counterproductive and could in fact damage the physician-patient relationship." The study appeared the April issue of Vaccine.

I don’t want to sound condescending, but doesn’t it strike you that the statement, "Prolonged discussions may be counterproductive and could in fact damage the physician-patient relationship," is a veiled way to say, "to hell with informed consent, just give them the damn needle."

The press release is clearly meant to advise doctors to provide less information to parents. But the results of the study, that parents who are informed (predisposed not to vaccinate) become even more firm in their opposition once given more information, prove that the more parents know about the dangers of diseases and vaccines, the less likely they are to vaccinate.

Hello? Can you say, “special interest spin” and “research result manipulation?”

I'm dying for comments on this...

And now for something completely different

2005-06-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

How valuable is the time you spend blogging? I spend about an hour a day researching and writing my blog entries. Since I’m self employed, the time I ‘waste’ blogging is potentially billable time. The majority of the work I’m hired to do is technical writing and curriculum development.

So, since this is my business, I thought I knew the value of my blogging hour. Hah! I’m one of those classic women who earn less than men, not because I’m not as good as the guys who do the same job as I do, but because I never learned to value my work properly. Idiote! (I always insult myself in French...it sounds kinder somehow.)

So, to all you bloggers, filling up publishing space on the Internet, here’s what your writing time is worth. (Data is from 1999. If anyone has more current data I’d love to see it). Did you know your bons mots were that valuable?

Some categories that I found interesting:

Online Publishing: Range: $35-$100/hour; Avg: $70/hour

Marketing Communications: Range: $35-$100; Avg: $76/hour

Medical/Pharmaceutical Writing: Range: $35-$150; Avg: $75/hour

Researcher: Range $25-$150; Avg: $65/hour

I’d rather be a monkey with Ebola, than an Angolan without

2005-06-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

All of the major news agencies are reporting the wonderful news that two vaccines-in-development, one for Marburg and one for Ebola, were 100 percent effective in a study of 12 macaque monkeys. Monkeys given just one shot of vaccine and later injected with a high dose of virus did not even get sick. Normally, all the animals would be expected to die.

The story is newsworthy because of the recent outbreak of the Marburg virus in Angola where virtually 100% of those who have contracted the virus have died. (About 400 people).

Will the vaccine save the lives of Angolans exposed to the virus in future? If the monkey survival rates are any indication, there’s a good chance the vaccines will work. But I bet the vaccine will not work as well in the human population of Angola. Here’s why:

Population of Angola: 10.8 million
Urban Population: 35%
Life Expectancy: 40 years
Infant Mortality: 194 per 1,000 live births
Under Five Mortality: 260 per 1,000 live births
Maternal Mortality Rate: 1,500 per 100,000 live births
GNP Per Capita: $500 (by comparison, the GDP per capita of Canada is $31,500 and of the USA is $40,100)
Percentage Population With Access To Safe Drinking Water: 38%

So, why won’t the vaccines work as well on the people of Angola?

Because the monkeys that were tested with these vaccines had a much, much better standard of living than the people of Angola, that’s why.

Your average lab chimp gets clean water and enough good food every day to keep him a healthy chimp (otherwise, the drugs he’s being injected with would cause more serious negative side effects, which researchers don’t like to see).

But in Angola, large segments of the population do not have access to basic goods and services, including food, clean water and health care. Fully 70% of the people live below the poverty line. And only 1 in 3 have access to safe water to drink.

You want to curb death by disease in developing countries? It's easy:

Improve the living conditions of your average citizen of a war-torn country to match that of your average laboratory monkey.

Give these people access to clean water, enough food and good sanitation, for God’s sake. Is it really that hard to figure out?

Think about it. Four HUNDRED people have died over the last two months from the Marburg virus. Over the same two months, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people have died from malnutrition, water-borne diseases and stepping on one of the 12 MILLION landmines that scatter the countryside in Angola.

Why focus on the Ebola and Marburg vaccines, and not on improving the standard of living in Angola? The answer is dead simple. CNN said it best,

The research has been financed by the Canadian government and U.S. military, which want vaccines in case of a domestic outbreak or a biological attack by terrorists.

And all of those mal-nourished, immune-suppressed people of Angola will become human guinea pigs for the experimental vaccines to benefit paranoid Canadians and Americans. The international community will hold it’s head high proclaiming it has done this for humanitarian purposes. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. I’m disgusted with the Canadian government. No comment on the U.S military since children may be reading.

Did you say, “Vioxx Lawsuit?”

2005-06-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

Psst…a little secret from the pharma industry has just escaped, thanks to an article in the Financial Post on Friday, June 3rd. It starts,

Several of the world's leading pharmaceutical groups and at least one regulator are in talks to hire a computer consultancy company that has devised software to "spy" on Internet conversations about medicines...

The service scans Web logs -- or blogs -- news groups and forums for exchanges of information between patients.

After a brief description of how the 7,000 web-trawlers will work, the head of Netrank, the company that will undertake the spying, had this to say,

"You could say we are spying, but actually this information is in the public domain. We are doing it for the good of the patient, allowing companies to react more quickly to concerns."

Call me wacky. Call me weird. But corporations working together “for the good of the patient?” I believe that contravenes any corporation’s legal responsibility to work for the good of the share-holder…

How will the spy system work? Well,

It monitors the number of references to selected drugs every day and cross references them with the content of messages, analyzed by phrases including "side effects" and "legal action." Potentially, the system could help drug companies get in touch directly with those who send messages.

When I first read this article I was a little stunned that pharma would do this –spy on bloggers the way the CIA listens in on phone calls? Is no conversation sacred? But that, of course, was a naïve response. I actually think this whole story could be a smokescreen. It will raise some concerns about pharma communicating directly with consumers in these forums (in all countries but the USA and Australia, direct-to-consumer advertising by phrama is illegal or at least severely limited).

The fact is, corporations of all kinds are already watching and commenting on listservs and blogs. But they don’t go by names like “Jane Smith, Merck employee” rather as “Jane Smith, a mom just like you.”

Lots of political and corporate folks have been outed over the last few years by watchful list owners who have tracked suspicious comments back to their originating IP addresses. Big surprise, the comments that look, taste and smell of PR come from corporate IPs with a stake in promoting a certain idea or product.

Be ever watchful. And skeptical. If a comment to your blog reads like PR, odds are good it is PR.

A writer defined by what she reads

2005-06-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

What an honour to be tagged so early in my blogging career. Thanks so much to Herbinator for making me feel a real part of this community.

Number of Books that I own:

Me personally, about 1500 I’d guess, of which 80% are non-fiction. We’re a book family. (My 9-year old has over 300 age-appropriate books right now.)

Last Book I Bought:

Just yesterday I bought a book I’ve been wanting to read for months: The Truth About Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it by Marcia Angell, MD (and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine). I suspect I’ll be throwing stats and quotes from this book into my posts over the next weeks.

Last book(s) I read:

Last week I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon). Since the new year I’ve read lots of books, but these stand out: The Life of Pi (Yann Martel) … The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) … Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)… Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)... and lots of chapters, here and there, in several books in A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket) .

Five Books that mean a lot to me:

Aristotle’s Poetics. I had to read this book and write an essay on an idea in it as part of the admission process to get into the Communications Department at Concordia University back in 1986. Best damned outcome from reading a book ever.

Toxic Sludge is Good For You, (John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton). I read this book while working for the David Suzuki Foundation in 1998/9. It introduced me to the power of the astroturf movement which really brought my inner activist to life.

Mamatoto: A Celebration of Birth, (Carroll Dunham). A lovely, educational and very un-British-stick-up-the-bum view of how cultures around the world celebrate birth. This book gave me enough info to have the courage to tell the hospital nurses to “piss off” and leave the blood and vernix on my newborn son and the blankets off him. It was also the impetus for my looking into the whole vaccination tradition.

Getting the Message Out: A Step-by-Step Communications Guide for Environmentalists by me. Several years ago I wrote a list of 100 things I want to do before I die. “Become a published author” was one goal. I wrote this book as a training manual several years ago and out-of-the-blue, an organization decided to publish it and provide copies to all Ontario-based environmental organizations. Not exactly what I had in mind when I conceived the “get published” goal, but it will do. And when I feel my writing sucks, I can call up this success as encouragement.

Spider and Dragonfly’s Mystery by my son. A 15-chapter novella he wrote and illustrated in Grade 3. It’s a page-turner, with lots of crazy secondary characters like Undead Rapper Dude and Slime Robot. The story ends with the two protagonists and all surviving antagonists deciding to be friends and have a big picnic together. Brings tears to my eyes.

People to tag:
Bastard of Art and Commerce
A Healthy Life
The Toad Report
Mad Dog Medic

The Fiery Tingles of Shingles

2005-06-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I’ve made my point about how easy it is to manipulate vaccine data to support the growth of this industry. There are over 100 new vaccines in development right now. Kind of scary. But, some of these vaccines could be very useful.

Really, I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m pro-informed consent.

And as proof, here’s a vaccine that just may be a good idea. Zostavax is a new shingles vaccine that Merck is hoping the FDA will approve.

According to a story in the June 2nd issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Merck has tested the vaccine on more than 38,500 men and women aged 60 and older and they’re reporting that 61 percent of shingles patients reported reduced pain and discomfort following vaccination, compared to placebo. Zostavax apparently also reduced the incidence of persistent nerve pain by 67%. The study claims the vaccine reduced the incidence of singles by 51% but I’m not sure how they figured that out since the article implies that the vaccine was tested on people who already had shingles and I’m not going to read the whole study.

This vaccine will sound promising to anyone who has had shingles or watched a loved one suffer. I had shingles when I was 35. And it was by far the most painful thing I have lived through. Way, way, way worse than meningitis. I’d give birth every day for a year rather than suffer with shingles again.

…thinking…remembering…shuddering…

Okay, I just remembered how I got through my bout with shingles and now I’m starting to wonder how great this vaccine actually is (you are witnessing train-of-thought-writing and conclusion-drawing).

So, I suffered for days, thinking there was nothing to do but wait the disease out. My mom suggested a natural approach to deal with the pain and sores, a remedy she found in the book Prescription for Nutritional Healing.

At the core of the treatment was mega-dosing Vitamin C. I took 8,000 mg a day. I expected stomach aches and diarrhea (is this over-sharing?) but I had no ill-effects from that much vitamin C. I also took high doses of Vitamins A, B, D and E, Zinc, Calcium and Garlic. Within two days of starting the vitamins I was able to consider living again. I no longer wanted to slit my wrists, to create pain somewhere other than where the shingles sores were.

So…now that I think about it…maybe I’m not so much in favour of this new shingles vaccine. What I’d love to see is a study that compares the outcomes of using the shingles vaccine to the outcomes of megadosing the vitamins I took. And, how about some mention of the side effects of the vaccine, while we're at it.

Of course the vaccine outperformed the placebo…big deal. But will it outperform the non-pharmaceutical remedies that already exist?

Vaccines-schmaccines. Even when I really try to look generously on them, I stumble. Sorry. I tried. I really did. But knowledge and experience got in the way.

Polio is a kind of candy with caramel in the middle

2005-06-02T17:57:00.000-07:00

Oh, I hate it! The kids are so cute.

“Measles is a game you play and then you sing a song.”

“Mumps is something camels have. Some have two mumps and some have one.”

“Chickenpox is a park where chickens have fun.”

As the Merck spin doctors tell it, “most kids today don’t have a clue about diseases adults remember, thanks to Merck scientists. We’ve invested billions to research heart disease and asthma. Now we’re trying to make Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer history, too.”

Put on your skeptic’s cap (or take it off) and check out the new Merck ad campaign.

"So what happened to polio if vaccines didn’t work?"

2005-06-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Toad734 posed the above question in response to my previous post. Great question.

There are many easy explanations about what happened to polio:

Redefinition of the disease
Once the polio vaccine was introduced, the old, classical, definition of polio was changed from

“a disease with residual paralysis which resolves within 60 days”

“a disease with residual paralysis which persists for more than 60 days.”

Given the reality of the polio disease this excludes more than 90% of polio cases, as they used to be defined, pre-vaccines.

Different diagnosis of the disease
Since the 1950s, when a person who has been given the polio vaccine gets polio, it’s not diagnosed as polio, but as viral or aseptic meningitis. But when a non-vaccinated person gets polio, it’s diagnosed as polio, of course. In this way, every media story you read about a polio case will be of a non-vaccinated person.

Walene James, in her book, Immunization, Reality Behind the Myth, provides figures from the Los Angeles County Health Index Morbidity and Mortality, Reportable Diseases which reveals this fact.

----------------Viral or Asceptic

-------------------Meningitis --------------Polio
July 1955 ------------50 ----------------------273
July 1961 ------------161 ----------------------65
July 1963 ------------151 ----------------------31
Sept 1966 ------------256 ----------------------5

(Sorry - I haven't figured out how to insert tables into this blog program.)

Those numbers from one county, it could be debated, may not be representative of the larger population. Well, according to August 15, 2003 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, there are some 26,000 to 42,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the United States. And that’s where you’ll find tens of thousands of cases of polio disappeared to after the introduction of mass polio vaccination. I can’t place my hands on it right now, unfortunately, but I have a graph that shows the same pattern of polio cases decreasing while aspectic meningitis cases increased that Walene James identified but on a much larger scale in the USA.

Redefinition of “epidemic”
Finally, understanding the manipulation that occurs due to redefinition of an “epidemic” is also important. Prior to the polio vaccine, an epidemic was when there were 20 cases/1,000,000 population (or 2 cases/100,000 population). After the introduction of the vaccine an epidemic required 35 cases/100,000 population. Voila! No more polio epidemics! (You’ll see “epidemics” for different diseases, such as SARS a couple years ago, when there were fewer than 1 case per million population. The definition of an epidemic, it seems, changes depending on the goals of the public health body creating the public health crisis (or miracle!).

These are just a few of the ways the public has been sold on the myth that vaccines are the most important health achievement of the century and that polio has been all but eradicated due to the vaccine…in fact, polio is alive and well, it’s just wearing new labels.

The Earth is Flat – Like Your Head!

2005-06-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

Imagine how hard it must have been to be Copernicus in the 1500s, claiming that the Earth is just a planet in a solar system with the Sun at the centre, challenging the Biblically-based belief that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Copernicus made his discoveries many years before he published them (just before his death), fearing his ideas might get him into trouble with the church. The politically powerful churchmen of the time feared that Copernicus’ theories might lead men to think that mankind is simply part of nature and not superior to it. Of course, that kind of crazy talk would lead to a lessening in the churchmen’s power.

Fast forward 600 years. New millennium. What are myths that are upheld by church and state and industry today? The sacred cows that help uphold the belief that mankind is superior to nature and natural processes? There are many of these myths and they are so entrenched in popular belief that anyone who dares hold them up for scrutiny is labeled a “conspiracy theorist.”

I am one of these so-called conspiracy theorists given my disbelief in the sanctity of vaccinations as the world’s most important medical accomplishment. For eight years (on and off) I have been trying to get financial support, a broadcaster, to stand behind a film about the way in which vaccinations are marketed to parents and doctors. The way in which diseases are marketed to create unreasonable fears and thus, demand for new vaccines.

Today marks a watershed moment in my efforts. The last possible mainstream funder in Canada has rejected the project, saying the science to support my position is not proven – even though the story I want to tell has nothing to do with the science of vaccines. The story I have been trying to tell has everything to do with the way in which parents make one important health-care decision for their children.

It’s arguable that every parent must decide to vaccinate or not vaccinate or partially vaccinate each of their children. But given the nature of “informed consent” around vaccinations, most parents don’t actually “decide.” We give in. We accept. If we challenge, we’re often labeled abusive or neglectful. In some US states children are actually taken into state custody when parents refuse to vaccinate.

Efforts to show parents that their basic right to make informed decisions on their children’s behalf are denounced. Vaccinations are such a sacred cow that challenging the blind acceptance of this medical intervention, which itself is based on tradition not on science, is seen as heresy.

Yeah, yeah, many people will argue that there is strong science behind vaccinations but the fact is, there is not. Even the vaccine-manufacturers can’t prove the value of vaccines since there has never been a study of any significant population to compare the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated people. There is no control group against which to compare the vaccinated population…so there is no scientific evidence that we’re better off with vaccines. There are graphs and charts and statistics and anecdotes and assertions but no scientific proof. (A died-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist might also say there are lies and cover-ups and hidden agendas and Naziesque experiments on expendable populations – but I’m not that kind of heretic).

Not many people have the stomach or the time to invest in challenging the church, state and industry. Copernicus waited until death was knocking to publish proof that the Earth is just another planet, and, by extension, that Man is just another species, no better than other species in the universe. (A Monty Python song is trying to break out from the depths of my memory…what is it?)

Who will have to die before the truth about vaccines is exposed? Who has a hidden notebook containing the facts and evidence to prove or disprove the beliefs that have become so entrenched that universal vaccination is heralded as God’s work. Maybe vaccines really are the second-coming but until someone steps up with the scientific evidence to prove it, I think parents must become more forceful in questioning this sacred cow.

If I can't make the film, I guess I'll just have to keep blogging.

If the sun doesn’t kill you, the sunscreen will

2005-05-31T00:11:00.000-07:00

It’s been unseasonably sunny and hot here in the BC rainforest this spring, which prompted me to buy sunscreen last weekend. I bought two tubes: a water-proof/sweat-proof version and a sensitive skin version of the same brand.

When I got home I checked the active ingredients of each tube and found that in the water-proof/sweat-proof tube, two of the four active ingredients are ranked in the top twenty most toxic ingredients added to sunscreen. So I took that tube back to the store.

The clerk asked me why I was returning the product.

“Because two of the ingredients are highly toxic,” I said.

She filled in the “Reason for Return” space with “Don’t want.”

I left the store and was immediately disappointed in myself. Why hadn’t I pushed to have the clerk write down my actual reason for returning the product?

And then I had an idea. What if consumers:

targeted one personal care product manufacturer (I’d start with Dove since they’re on an advertising blitz and just asking for some earned media attention);
purchased that company’s most toxic products (the Face Care Essential Nutrients group of lotions, cleansers, creams and toners are particularly poisonous); and then
returned the products stating “toxic ingredients” as the reason.

If enough people did this, it could make a difference… and it would be fun!

To find out how toxic the ingredients in your personal care products are, visit the Environmental Working Group sub-site Skin Deep and do a safety assessment of the crap in your medicine cabinet. Don’t be afraid to throw the poisonous products out!

Wash with water and milk. Clean your pores with honey. Tone with vinegar. (Actually, I’m making this part up. Better ask Grandma what she used to use to stay clean and smelling good during the war. I bet her secrets were safer, cheaper and just as effective as the processed stuff we buy today.)

If I had any programming ability, I’d figure out how to take the EWG’s fantastic database and add it to PDAs, so consumers could check ingredients while standing in the aisles of the pharmacy or supermarket.

And then the guerilla-media-types could put super-sticky, danger-red warning stickers on the products that contain cancer-causing ingredients…and green “this product is safe” stickers on the products that don’t add to our body’s toxic loads. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Meningitis (Marketing) can Strike out of the Blue

2005-05-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

So, I’m thinking it may be fun and worthwhile to focus this blog simply on deconstructing CNN health stories…it may be too narrow a focus, but given the crap I regularly read from that news source, I’d never be without something to write about.

The CNN propaganda that informs today’s blog focuses on a new meningitis vaccine.
(Poor Leslie, the anecdotal focus of the news story, contracted meningitis at 8-years old and has been left with scars on her shoulders and knees. She urges everyone to get the new meningitis vaccine.)

Where to start? Back in 1983. That was the year that I contracted meningococcal meningitis. I spent about a week in hospital. Spinal tap. Whole deal. My case falls into the classic high risk formula in that I was living in a dorm at the time. None of the other girls I bunked with (four to a room) or I shared a floor with (about forty 16- and 17-year olds) got sick.

Maybe the health or hospital care in England in 1983 was better than it is in the USA today…maybe my infection was not as bad as the cases I read about in the paper…maybe I started out healthier than the kids who have permanent damage or die from meningitis…or maybe I was just lucky. I don’t expect we’ll ever know.

But it is my own anecdotal experience with meningococcal meningitis that informs my skepticism about this new vaccine. It’s so easy to parade out the worst-case scenario to make a point about the horrors of a disease and the miracle that is the new cure.

So, back to my fave health news source and the article in question. How dangerous is this disease? CNN reports:

Although meningococcal meningitis affects only about 3,000 people nationwide each year, it kills a fifth of adolescents who get it.

“Nationwide” refers to the USA, of course. Population of the USA these days is just shy of 300 million. So in the whole population of the USA, about 1 in every 100,000 people will contract meningococcal meningitis each year. Not very high risks, really.

But wait, it kills a fifth of adolescents who get it. That’s 20 percent. But not 20 percent of 3,000 (which would be 600 adolescents a year) since the 3,000 is the total number of cases of ALL Americans, no matter how old they are.

Why aren’t we told the death stats for that full 3,000 people who contract meningitis? Do adults or babies who have the infection fare better, worse or the same as adolescents? Why is CNN using this wonky, potentially misleading math?

Probably because the goal of the story is to generate support for vaccinating 8 million US kids with this new vaccine – “11- to 12-year-olds, students entering high school and college freshmen headed for dorm life.”

Perhaps the best question is, "how many kids from the target population for this new vaccine contract this form of meningitis each year?"

The meningococcal meningitis vaccine just received FDA approval in January this year, which means that the marketing of the vaccine (including selling fear about the disease) is just getting started.

Watch for more scare-mongering in the months to come – when news in August is slow and “back-to-school” stories start to fill the pages, I'll bet we see lots of articles calling for the target populations of students to get their meningitis shots.

My call to parents is simply this: Ask your doctor the following question:

What are the potential side effects of the meningococcal meningitis vaccine?

Like all vaccines, it will not be benign. The drug-maker will have recorded adverse reactions while the vaccine was being tested. Find out what those reactions were and how prevalent they were. Find out if any groups of kids fared worse than others (medical background, cultural background, income level).

If your doctor can’t answer you, ask to see the product monograph before allowing your child to roll up his or her sleeve. It’s called, “Informed Consent” and in neither Canada nor the US is it very well-understood or practiced when it comes to the sacred culture of vaccines.

Shattering Rose-Colored Glasses

A new title

NaNoWriMo - Day One

First goes the mind. Common sense and decency soon follow.

So shoot me, these days my mind turns to thoughts of euthanasia

We are a smoothie now: well-blended

Are we there yet?

And now… watch my head explode!

If a painted black cat crosses your path...

At least I’m not pregnant with twins

Seasonal Schmaltz

Reflections on my own arrogance

Hire this photographer!

A round for all my friends!!

Vive le Quebec Libre!

*&#%@ you! And your mother, too!

Only in Vancouver does six inches make headline news

Punk Rudolph, by Liam, age 6 (2002)

Snow! Hey, oh!

Smooth and creamy, spicey sweet with the dewy freshness of autum fruits

Hallelujah! There is hope for sanity in the world!

Who invited the punk?

Who's in charge? I'd like a word please...

I was served with a Statement of Defense and Counterclaim today

hardly worth a post...

A well-stalked fridge?

Can YOU pat your head and rub your belly at the same time?

More past life stories

Bus driver blinds female passenger

The fine print communicates loudly

Vaccine Billboard in Sri Lanka

FDA's caution, Part 2

FDA’s caution may be killing people

Two million bad kids, 19 dead ones

Of donuts and data

If you have the science, show me. If you don't, shut up!

Did 007 Ever Use Ricin?

Aluminun adjuvants under the microscope

Rx for bad medical reporting

Back in the game and feeling fine!

Signing off for awhile

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

How would YOU spend $3.9 Billion

You say "pandemic," I say "fear mongering"

The raw (and ugly) truth about the war on drugs

We truly are a vaccine nation

Killing us for profit

Healthy Skepticism on Cancer

The Precautionary Principle

A Canadian Hero Working for the Wrong Cause

Calling all Canadian Bloggers

Ditziness - it's not just blondes

The kids are bummed...grab the zoloft

Ah, Sugar! A Math Quiz?

Medical Studies and the Average American Kid

Business Rule #1: Don’t Kill the Client

A pox on you, CDC!

Would you want your doctor to put “breaking news” into practice?

The Tyranny of Troubled Teens

Get this guy an agent!

I'm not dead yet

Cyberchondriacs Unite!

Case Study in Poor Journalism

Skeptic's Guide to Selling Sickness

Those Darn Toxic Unborn Babies

There are no bad foods, only bad children

Got Milk? Eat my shorts!

Master Hooper

Little Boy Blue

Flu-related blogs worth taking a look at

I think my head is going to explode

A nice cup of tea with a dash of milk and a spoonful of fear

Better to be a rat than a grandma…

Gimme, gimme never gets

Mother's Little Helper

Revised Oath for Doctors

Am I good or am I poison?

Volunteers Needed for Anthrax Vaccine

What the #$%^%?

I thought it was the Environmental PROTECTION Agency…