Category: Health

Insite Can Continue to Operate: Supreme Court

Insite is a safe injection site for drug users which has had proven health benefits for individuals and the community. Through their work Insite has been able to help many addicts stay safe and secure while consuming drugs, this is in stark contrast to doing drugs on the streets which is way more dangerous.

In the past, Insite had to defend itself against the British Columbia Supreme Court and won, and today Insite won in the Supreme Court of Canada. This is a blow to the anti-safety, anti-drug, pro-prison campaign of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and will hopefully mark a turning point in how Canadians support drug addicts.

This is a huge victory for results-based and preventative health care and for people who are unfortunately addicted to drugs.

If Insite wasn’t allowed to operate it would prevent injection drug users from accessing the health services offered at the facility, threatening their health and their lives, the ruling said. Withdrawing the exemption would even undermine the purpose of the federal drug law, which includes public health and safety, the court said.
…

Health groups, including the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Public Health Association, also applauded the decision.

The Supreme Court said that if the health minister, currently Leona Aglukkaq, receives applications for more exemptions, she must continue to exercise her discretion and aim to strike a balance between Charter rights and protecting public health and safety.

Read more coverage and see the full court report at the CBC.

Remember don’t consume dangerous drugs!

Denmark ‘Fat Tax’ Starts Saturday

Denmark is moving ahead with a tax on products that make people fat. Denmark already has the lost percentage of obese people in Europe and even they are concerned with the increasing girth of their people. This new ‘fat tax’ will hopefully keep the country’s slim people slim and inspire other countries to institute a similar tax.

Starting from this Saturday, Danes will pay an extra 30p on each pack of butter, 8p on a pack of crisps, and an extra 13p on a pound of mince, as a result of the tax.
The tax is expected to raise about 2.2bn Danish Krone (£140m), and cut consumption of saturated fat by close to 10pc, and butter consumption by 15pc.
“It’s the first ever fat-tax,” said Mike Rayner, Director of Oxford University’s Health Promotion Research Group, who has long campaigned for taxes on unhealthy foods.
“It’s very interesting. We haven’t had any practical examples before. Now we will be able to see the effects for real.” The tax will be levied at 2.5 per Kg of saturated fat and will be levied at the point of sale from wholesalers to retailers.

Read the rest of the article.

Gamers Solve AIDS Enzyme Puzzle

If you thought playing games was just for fun, well Foldit is a game that has people solve problems for science. That itself is pretty neat, but what pushes this one over the edge is that Foldit has brought some great results and fast!

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids — the building blocks of proteins — using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Cracking the enzyme “provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs,” says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” Firas Khatib of the university’s biochemistry lab said in a press release.

Read the rest of the article.

Thanks Kathryn!

Good Reasons to Have a Vegan Diet

Unfortunately I’m no vegan, but this article is inspiring me to try harder at being one!

The article is an interview with Gene Baur, who is the founder of US-based animal rescue organization Farm Sanctuary about why a vegan diet is good for the planet, animals, and you.

What’s responsible for the rise of veganism?
I think there’s a convergence of issues. There’s more awareness of the cruelty in factory farming with the internet, YouTube and photos being widely distributed. There are growing healthcare problems. In the US, heart disease and cancer are the number-one killers and both can be seriously lessened by switching more to a plant-based diet containing whole foods instead of processed junk food. There are also the environmental consequences of basing a diet on animals. The UN put out a report called Livestock’s Long Shadow that talked about how livestock industry is one of the top contributors to serious environmental problems including climate change. As we face more economic challenges, I believe there will be a natural tendency towards more plant-based farming.
Would you like to see everyone become a vegan?
I’d love to see that, but I recognize everyone has to make their own choice. It’s my belief that this is the best way to live and the most humane way to live and the healthiest. There are a lot of things in this world we cannot control but one thing we can control is what we eat. Choose food that makes us healthy and makes us feel good and not make us say, “Oh, I don’t want to know where that came from.” Our food choices have big consequences on our health, the well-being of animals and the planet and I just want people to be mindful of that.

Read more here.

Better Primary Health Care

Health care is expensive no matter where you are and places like Uganda and the USA health care is even more expensive because they don’t have universal health care for their citizens. A company in California, MedLion, is looking to bring effective primary health care to the masses because some governments can’t afford (or refuse) to provide basic health care for their citizens.

This model of delivery that MedLion is using can be applied to countries large and small, rich or poor.

Fortunately, pioneers such as Dr. Qamar have shown there’s a better way. Dr. Qamar originally setup a concierge medicine practice catering to the well-healed. He remains the House Doctor for the world famous Pebble Beach Resorts. As much as he has enjoyed his Pebble Beach practice, Dr. Qamar wanted to serve a broader population so he opened a practice with a dramatically lower price point. For only $49 per month and $10 per visit, MedLion is able to provide high quality medicine at a price point nearly any family can afford.

In fact, MedLion has plans to open another clinic in 2011 in a farming community in California catering to migrant workers who can have difficulty finding a family physician. Dr. Qamar states, “For the same amount they may pay in co-pays with an insurance policy, we can offer complete primary care without the added cost burden of insurance. We believe that a farm worker deserves access to primary care just as much as an executive at Pebble Beach.”
…
Dr. Qamar sees a resurgence of the primary care physician where the primary care physician can make a healthy living while not being shackled by insurance bureaucracy. “The gratifying part of being in a practice like ours is we can practice medicine the way we were trained while saving our patients a considerable amount. Many of my brethren in insurance-centric primary care share with me they believe they are only using 40% of their medical training when they are forced to have what I call ‘drive by’ interactions with patients. When they learn about how we practice, they are eager to transition their practices to our model.”

Read the full article here.

Thanks Liz!