treatment

Transit Hub Addiction Clinics Benefit Everyone

- Adam Clare

When social services are difficult to get to then their services are used less, it sounds obvious but in too many places social services are very difficult to get to. Car centric urban designs further exacerbate inequality by limiting mobility options, or to put it another way: cars limit freedom of access and opportunities.

In order to best help everyone in our communities we should ensure that social services are accessible and what better way than at transit hubs? Many people suffering from addiction also suffer from economic problems so ensuring that they can easily get to treatment centres can help them recover. Early research is proving that accessible treatment centres help everyone.

“What we’re finding is that there’s this significant relationship between being close to these new transit start ups … and costs, operating costs are significantly less,” said Cohen.

“The other thing that we’re finding is that there’s a relationship between equity and access to treatment.”

The research looked at addiction and mental-health clinics that were within half-a-mile, or approximately 800 metres, of a new transit route. Cohen considered that basically walking distance, and compared results with those from clinics further afield.

Read more.

How We Can Fend Off Drought

- Adam Clare

In this TED talk David Sedlak explores options that can be used to fend off drought in cities. The last century saw massive developments that treated water in a very unsustainable way (from dams to pathetic water policies). This century we will have to correct the mistakes of the past and focus on changing how we approach water as an ecological system.

As the world’s climate patterns continue to shift unpredictably, places where drinking water was once abundant may soon find reservoirs dry and groundwater aquifers depleted. In this talk, civil and environmental engineer David Sedlak shares four practical solutions to the ongoing urban water crisis. His goal: to shift our water supply towards new, local sources of water and create a system that is capable of withstanding any of the challenges climate change may throw at us in the coming years.

Virus Shown To Treat Prostate Cancer

- Dan Harrison

A team of researchers in Alberta have successfully tested a new way to treat prostate cancer with a virus. Viruses, which target specific cells, are injected into the body and seek out the mutations in cancer cells. The virus then replicates and causes the cancer cell to burst, sending thousands of viral particles into the surrounding tumour.

The six men in the study had the virus injected directly into their tumours three weeks before they had surgery to remove the prostate gland as part of standard treatment. The tumour cells are targeted by viruses in the experimental treatment, says Dr. Don Morris of the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary.

Signs of cancer-cell death were found in the removed prostate tumour, while the normal parts of the prostate showed minimal toxicity and no viral replication, Morris said.

Although this doesn’t represent a cure for cancer (tumours were very rarely completely eliminated), it may lead to cancer becoming a much more treatable illness.

Read more at Cbc.ca.

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