CAW tells members to blackball the NDP

This is huge news. Very huge news.

The CAW drops its support for the New Democratic Party - see the Windsor Star

The union has told its members to stop any and all activism on behalf of the NDP including at the riding association levels.

I suppose once the heat cools on this; members of the CAW will no longer feel obliged to act the way the CAW tells them to. Perhaps now they will get to choose which political party they want to support and act on behalf of.

Any union that still uses baseball bats to get its point across shouldn't be lecturing about democracy.

The Master Control Freak himself, the one who believes he can dictate to Windsorites which cars they should drive or whether or not public transit is effective in Windsor says this:

Ken Lewenza, president of CAW Local 444, which represents DaimlerChrysler and Casino Windsor workers, said the party's rebuke of Hargrove had the effect of "expelling" the entire union from the NDP. He said he too was a "main advocate" in favour of strategic voting.

"It infuriates me to think they can do this to the CAW and think it's business as usual," Lewenza said. "There is no rubber-stamp support for the NDP.... I know our union, when we're backed into a corner, we'll defend each other."

Lewenza said he spoke to local MPs Joe Comartin (NDP--Windsor Tecumseh) and Brian Masse (NDP--Windsor West) Friday "out of courtesy" to tell them about the union vote. Lewenza added the decision to pull support from the NDP would not lead to an official endorsement for any other party in the future but that union leadership will determine which candidates best represent the union's views.

"It infuriates me to think they can do this to the CAW and think it's business as usual". Of course it infuriates a control freak and Herr Lewenza is the best at dictating to his members what they should think or how they should act.

Not personal huh? I wonder what Comartin is going to do since he's a CAW man? It's not like him to concern himself with other Canadians that aren't CAW.

Proud Windsorite

Sometimes I miss my hometown, Windsor, and here is one reason - The Windsor Star

3 excellent articles are on the front page of today's Star that show that the administration of law and justice appear to be strong in Windsor as opposed to my adotped city, Hamilton:

1)
A Casino Windsor security staff person is indicted in the United States for accepted a $100,000 bribe from a U.S. security firm to install survellaince cameras at the Casino. The guy also managed to get the same company business from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission where the man's brother works.

Our local legal system in Hamilton seems to have ignored s. 122 of Part IV of the Criminal Code with respect to Hamilton's mayor providing his campaign manager $12,000 plus $30,000 in city contracts and another Di Ianni campaigner recieved $5000 and a high ranking position with the mayor - as one Hamiltonian pointed out. Feigning ignorance about what was actually known about collecting donations above electoral regulations was not lost on another Hamiltonian.

Yet, the Hamilton Spectator continues to endorse Di Ianni in an attempt to have the people of Hamilton tolerate and accept his willful ignorance as proper community standard and blame the language of the legislation.

2)
First of all, Hotel Dieu Hospital is a very good hospital, with excellent staff. Save from the long wait times it's nurses, doctors and social workers are extremely professional. That's why it was strange to learn that the Hospital was directed by its lawyer not to co-operate in a criminal negligence investigation by the Windsor Police Services.

Now, Hotel Dieu Hospital will co-operate in a coroner's inquest into the murder of nurse Laurie Dupont who was killed by her ex-lover Dr. Marc Daniel.

The lawyer representing the hospital instructed the hospital not to co-operate. HR had concerns about obstruction of justice regarding the instructions of the laywer to its client not to co-operate based on evidence from a Supreme Court decision on the inclusion of investigations as the course of justice.

As the Law Society of Upper Canada complaints service representative stated in an email to HR - instructions of a lawyer to their client is expected. Although a caveat was added:

However, should a presiding judge make negative comments about a lawyer’s professional conduct, please provide us with a copy of the relevant transcript pages or the judge’s endorsement.

The issue of whether justice has been obstructed is a legal issue that cannot be determined by the Law Society.

3)
Lastly, a local Windsor law firm has launched a class action lawsuit on behalf on their client for the sale and use of tainted bone and tissue parts by Canadian and American companies.

Similar concerns were reported in the Hamilton Spectator on the tainted bones but the local legal commununity doesn't figure into the equation by having a lawyer represent the patient's possible desire to launch a class action lawsuit against Hamilton Health Sciences for continuing to use the distributor that sold the body parts.

The Spec could investigate further into the claim of St. Joseph's hospital CEO Kevin Smith that they didn't use any tissue at all.

I don't think Mr. Smith can be trusted since his hospital blatantly ignores other provincial legislation that their patient's have a right to be protected under.

The Registrar at the Ontario Privacy Commission has confirmed that a local woman's shelter in Hamilton is not within the "circle of care" that St. Joseph's Hospital staff collected personal health information from. This can result in charges being laid under s. 70 of the Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2005

Mr. Smith, St. Joe's CEO, has also in the past was lazy to contact their patient's because of questionable blood products that could affect their hospital's patients.

Local Hamilton blood donor clinics tampered with the records from blood donors which prompted Canadian Blood Services to withdraw the products. Yet St. Joe's and Hamilton Health Sciences continued to use the products on their patients without telling them.

According to confidential information obtained by this column, last month Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) and St. Joseph's Healthcare held back information about the altered records because they were satisfied the increased risk to patients is minimal.

Of course, George Smitherman fully expected "hospitals will eventually notify all referring doctors about the withdrawal"

Second FDA Panel wants tough warnings on drugs

Update March 22 '06 from this post :

CTV - FDA Paediatric Advisory Panel recommends tough warnings but not strongest warnings on ADHD drugs.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch -

Licensed clinical psychologist David Stein, who has a practice in Richmond, promotes drug-free solutions to managing attention-deficit and hyperactivity problems. Stein, a Longwood University professor, is signed up to testify during the public comment period at the FDA meeting today.

"One of the things I am saying to the FDA is what a terrible thing it is to tell a child or parent that the child has a psychiatric disease and will have it for the rest of his or her life when there is not a shred of evidence of its existence."

Stein said he is not totally opposed to using psychotropic drugs but thinks they are vastly overused.

Muslim leaders in UK cite child abuse in madrassas

From BBC News - "A group of Muslim leaders says the community is in denial about child abuse in religious schools, known as madrasas. "

[...]

The schools play a central role in many Muslim communities - but Dr Siddiqui said very few had policies in place that meet the requirements of the Children Act 1989, a key law.

The report praised two councils which had taken steps on child protection in madrasas - Kirklees and Blackburn - but accused most of being reluctant to engage with the Muslim community.

Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, said she commended the authors for speaking out and attacked local authorities for not acting.

"I have had reports of physical abuse in madrasas in my own constituency," said Mrs Cryer.

"Failing to protect the children in madrasas because of 'cultural sensitivities' is nonsense.

"Are we saying that British Asian children are not entitled to the protection of the law? It is racist to differentiate between children and to fail to offer that protection."


I haven't witnessed child abuse in madrassas in Ontario but the attitude toward child punishment within the Islamic community that I was a part in wasn't exactly friendly to what we consider abuse here in Canada.

I have listened to stories of attempted murder for honour attacks against young women and have been told that some teachers at madrassa's tell their very young students that "it's ok to kill your enemies" - which usually means those of the Jewish faith or Israeli's - as is commonly discussed in the community.

Attempting to address these concerns on an electronic message group was too much "fitnah" (trouble-making) that those involved in the discussion as an act of democratic debate just shut it down.

What was noticeable was the level of repression against bringing to the fore sexual harassment and women abuse into the community to discuss openly. And it wasn't necessarily Arab Muslim men that frustrated the discussion, in one case a Canadian man converted to Islam diliberately withdrew and influenced the male support in the community who has used the religion to cover up his own violent actions.

Post-Partum Depression

Once again, the Toronto Star and the Hamilton Spectator are using American research and stats to back up their supporters in the pharmaceutical and health industries.

In an article that appears in the T-Star, the Spec notes the following:

"... These findings suggest that it is important to provide vigorous treatment to mothers if they are depressed ," the study authors write.

But depressed mothers often don't seek treatment, the report says. Many are low-income and don't use the community care available, even if it is free.

"Without outreach, child care, transportation and flexible schedules, these women are not likely to receive appropriate treatment for their depression," it says.


It says that mothers suffering from post partum depression don't seek treatment. Well that's because it's the United States and they probably don't have the money to pay to get help for their PPD. It also now blames, in classic American style, poor women for creating the problem of more depressed children by not going to "free clinics".

If the T-Star and the Spec did some homework I'm sure they would find that this isn't the case in Canada or Ontario.

And another thing, who is that study funded by? A pharmaceutical company? What are the chances of that "free clinic" in the United States isn't going to send that woman for clinical drug trials in order to get her "free medical care"? This is the U.S we're talkin' here.

Also notice in this article that the author does not mention that using SSRI's could increase the risk of suicidal ideation or other behaviour and that all patients should check for Health Canada warnings on any drugs they prescribe because their physicians are least likely to bring this to their patient's attention.

With this very important information missing, it tells me that the research was funded by a pharmaceutical company that is or will be, marketing drugs for post-partum depression.

Always discuss adverse drug reactions with your physician and if there is any reaction your body that isn't normal, even decreased sleep, don't let the physician tell you "it's part of your depression" if you know that you have never had interupted sleep in the past or it was a blip.

Never let a physician tell you what you experience. Responsible doctors practicing good medicine will listen to their patients now matter what illness they have. It is often the case of depression that physicians will ignore the concerns of patients when they would otherwise listen to them if that patient had reactions to any other drug that was not an drug treating a "mental illness".

Physicians often attribute adverse drug reactions to their patient's symptoms when in many cases, those symptoms were never a part of their experience. Health Canada is very clear about listening to a patient's complaints about adverse reactions to drugs.

Now, if anyone has a hard copy of the Spec, around that article you should see an add for clinical drug trials for depression being launched by St. Joseph's hospital or McMaster. When the Spec puts in an article like this without citing warnings about adverse affects from Health Canada, there is usually one of these ads.

It's not surprising that the research boards in the City would have bitched at them if they did anything otherwise, after all, they are still trying to make up for that investigative report published last year on McMaster's cosy relationship with big pharma and the money they get from them.

Bush's job rating dropping

A recent Harris poll on how American's feel about how well Bush is doing his job is dropping. Other poll that are taken on various other politicians and Supreme Court justices are also taken - see Harris Interactive

Perhaps that's what Canada's polsters should start doing. Asking Canadians to start telling Minister's how they feel they are doing in their jobs.

They can start with George Smitherman, the Minister of Health and Long Term Care - I'll vote 3 on a scale of 1 to 10

Watch in the next few weeks if Minister Smitherman is named in a human rights complaint on the Cornwall denial of medical services because of a patient's ancestry/ethnicity.

Feds at Justice delay process on fraud cases

From the Canadian Press:

Integrated Market Enforcement Teams (IMETs) may have been undermined by the federal Justice Department.

[...]

Justice, which was handed $17 million for its participation, initially failed to deliver these key team members.

[...]

More than three years after it was announced, the IMET program has yet to lay charges in any of its high-profile investigations.

And earlier this month there were further indications of Justice Department staffing issues, in connection with an IMET probe of Royal Group Technologies, which involves Greg Sorbara, Ontario's former finance minister.

Sorbara's lawyer filed a court affidavit suggesting that two Justice Department officials had been pulled from the file and that the department "was no longer advising IMET" in Sorbara's case.

Well, well. Isn't that convenient that the feds, yet again, are frustrating another investigation into another corrupt politician.

I wonder what the feds are afraid of? Justice? In Canada? Whoever heard of such a concept in a democracy?

Intelligent reading

It's great to read intelligent articles. Here are two from the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).

Speaking of medicine, I hope my readers have caught the CBC production on Tommy Douglas called Prairie Giant.

I learned more about him and Saskatchewan tonight than I ever did in history class. The last episode was quite information - I didn't realize that doctors went on strike in Sask and others were being shipped in - from Ontario and the U.S. of all places. I think those Ontario docs stayed in Sask and the opposing ones came to Ontario...

Anyway, that should be a good enough segway to the excerpts from CMAJ

March 2006 Is Medicine Still a Profession?

First, there is a leakage of physicians' authority resulting from the better education and empowerment of patients. Some patients suffering from a single disease may be better informed about their condition than their physicians, who must keep track of hundreds. Second, an erosion of guardianship is resulting from commercialization of the medical knowledge base.

[…]

Further, to keep up to date with modern medical science, physicians have to rely (and indeed are encouraged to rely) on various summaries of that science in the form of narrative and systematic reviews in peer-reviewed journals, clinical practice guidelines and continuing medical education. But these, too, are being increasingly distorted by commercial self-interest. Thus, not only is the privileged knowledge the profession once possessed no longer exclusive (a good thing), but the integrity of that knowledge is being corroded by commercial interests (not a good thing).


November 2005 Conflict of Interest in Medical Schools in Canada

Before beginning a lecture or talk, speakers at all teaching events in clinical settings must provide statements about their potential conflicts of interest, including stock holdings, honoraria, consultancies and advisory board membership. The disclosure is intended to allow students to decide for themselves whether the information they receive in lectures is truly unbiased and evidence-based, says Dr. Catharine Whiteside, the university's interim dean of medicine.

Under U of T's conflict-of-interest principles, health professionals and medical students are also prohibited from receiving direct industry sponsorship to attend conferences and from accepting payment for proposing patients as research subjects or enrolling them in trials. The conflict policy also requires physicians and medical students to disclose to patients any relationship that creates, or may be perceived to create, a conflict of interest.

Welcome to the Animal Farm

Well if newcomers to this blog haven’t noticed there is enough documentation here that proves Ontario is the Animal Farm – when it comes to justice that is.

Bloggers have been using their blogs to participate in their right to freedom of speech to protest against our justice system that proves, time after time, that there are those that are more equal and more human than others. Even Reader's Digest has weighed into the protest with their recent article on two tier justice.

Here is yet another example from The Windsor Star where a doctor commits a crime and does not get a criminal record like the rest of us would expect. There is an unwritten rule in Ontario that doctors, lawyers and police officers, or any one that works for the government, have special privileges that allow them to get away with less punishment than say other members of our society for committing the same crime - or worse.

Like Kimberly Rogers, a woman with a mental illness that committed a similar fraud to the good doctor for example that’s explained in this post.

Or the attempt by the Hamilton Spectator editors expecting their readers to accommodate their apologist viewpoint after patting this poor Mayor - Larry Di Ianni – on the head with the proverbial ‘there there now’ for not complying with the Municipal Act and the Municipal Elections Act.

We are expected by these editors, the pillars of everything good and right in our community to dumb down our values, our concept of integrity and honesty which as far as I'm concerned respect for the law.

We are expected to believe that the Mayor is more human than the rest of us, more equal than the rest of us and just because he is going to court for failing to comply with an Act that he had a legal duty as an elected official to comply with, he is still the epitome of integrity in this City even though he felt he had no duty to educate himself as to what those duties are.

I didn't realize news paper editors were the judge and jury in our legal system. The Spec has opened my eyes. What was I thinking?

But the rest of us are expected to know more than our leaders. We have high expectations put on us. We get charged a harsher punishment for the same crimes that some in our society would ever bear to consider. It makes it the perfect crime knowing you won’t get charged the same way as others because you know you have special privileges above others in society.

Even there is a 1970 Supreme Court decision documented as Drybones v. R. confirming that natives can’t be punished more severely than other non-natives, there seems to be an ignorance of the language and spirit of this decision by our Crown attorneys and legal system.

Even though section 15 of the Charter states that everyone in Canada has equal treatment and equal protection under the law; it doesn’t seem to wash with Ontario’s justice system.

Yes, justice is not perfect and the reasons we have Constitutional law to remedy any problems. But when special privileges in our society become broad and rooted in more than just random errors of judicial discretion, then one has to start questioning or in this blogger’s case, continue to question, why there are those that are more equal than others?

More bed-bug news

Chicago woman sues New York hotel for $20 million due to serious infestation of bed-bugs - from CTV

Here is my previous post on bed-bugs and how the City of Hamilton is dealing or not dealing with them.

The latest update is that the Hamilton health unit ordered a City of Hamilton owned building to hand out information pamphlets to the tenants. The documentation that was from the City of Toronto's health unit, indicated that holes surrounding plumbing pipes had to be covered and to fill in cracks in baseboards.

The superindentant of the building was given direction by the health unit to disseminate the information but didn't and since then, there has been two more out-breaks.

The building manager - a City of Hamilton employee, who willingly ignored requests to maintain property standards still has not made an effort to enclose the holes so now the City's building department has been contacted to slap a work order on them.

Decreasing the gender gap

The World Economic Forum has a new report out called Measuring the Global Gender Gap in which it rates the countries in the world that have done the best to improve economic, political and health conditions of women. OneWorld US has report. Update: The Spec has an article on a Stats Canada report in time for International Women's Day.


Here's an excerpt:

Advancement within professions such as law, medicine and engineering, in which women are increasingly well represented in developed countries, is of great concern. One survey of graduates carried out by Yale Law Women points to the growing numbers of women attorneys (25-35%), only a small number of whom are partners in firms (5-15%), and to the importance of what they call ‘family-friendly’ and ‘female-friendly’ practices in the profession.

[...]

A study in the United States has found 49% of high-achieving women to be childless, as compared with only 19% of their male colleagues.

Globally women hold only 15.6% of elected parliamentary seats.

Here's Canada's rankings:

Economic Participation - 7th

Political Empowerment - 11th

Educational Attainment - 12th

Health & well- being - 14th

Economic opportunity - 27th *

*Concentration of poorly paid job 'ghettos'. "This is most commonly the result of negative or obstructive attitudes, and of legal and social systems which use maternity laws and benefits to penalize women economically for childbirth and child care responsibilities, and discourage – or actively prevent – men from sharing family responsibilities" (page 3)

Excerpt from the StatsCan report:

Women make up a disproportionate share of the population in Canada with low incomes as measured by Statistics Canada's low income cut-off (LICO) on an after-tax basis. Unattached women are particularly likely to have low incomes.

[...]

Families headed by female lone parents also have relatively high rates of low income. In 2003, 38% of all families headed by lone-parent mothers had incomes which fell below the after-tax LICO. In comparison, this was the case for 13% of male lone-parent families and just 7% of non-elderly two-parent families with children.

Harper vows to get to bottom of Air India

Harper supports full public inquiry into the Air India bombing fiasco - from the C.P

Buh Byeee

From the Toronto Star the New Democratic Party of Ontario has voted in large favour to put the boot to Buzz Hargrove for backing the Liberals in the federal election.

Who says Canada is boring? We've certainly some of the sleaziest politicians and union leaders in the world.

Jack Layton is naive when addressing the media about Hargrove and the CAW - he just hasn't been around them as long as some of us.

When a union pretty well runs a City, Windsor for example, and has union members buying themselves seats on it's city's boards and uses baseball bats to deal with non-supporters of a strike, then you have a problem with democracy and the rule of law.

Buzz being kicked out is a good lesson for CAW leadership in Windsor and its two MP's Comartin and Masse - and one I hope it listens to.

Or are baseball bats necessary?

Former NIMH editor calls for dismissal of CMAJ publisher

Former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and member of the Canadian Medical Association Journal calls for CMA president to dismiss publisher Graham Morris - from the CP

And then there is this from the Toronto Star:

Doctors at a large chain of methadone clinics are billing OHIP for expensive, excessive tests that are rarely used for patient care, a Star investigation shows.

[…]

Daiter, 42, and Varenbut, 37, have prominent positions in numerous professional medical groups, including the Ontario Medical Association and the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine. Several years ago, Ontario's health ministry appointed them investigators for the now-defunct Medical Review Committee, which reviewed claims submitted by physicians. They also ran a website offering advice to Ontario doctors being audited by investigators. (my emphasis)

Methadone treatment has become big business in Ontario.

FDA says post market tests on drugs not done

FDA says 65% of testing that is mandated for drug companies to perform on safety are not completed - from the Canadian Press

"This new information is an embarrassing continuation of similar reports issued by FDA each year on the appalling state of the medication safety studies it has 'mandated' drug manufacturers to perform. It is scandalous that of the supposedly active studies, about two-thirds haven't even been started yet," Avorn said.

The FDA said it relies on the so-called Phase 4 studies to gather additional information about a drug's safety, efficacy or use. The FDA also can require the studies after it has approved a drug, including to better determine its safe use in children."

Calling the kettle black

Psychiatrist who called Reagan stupid gets conned - from the Canadian Press

Somehow, this has an air of satisfaction to it.

Crushing News

This is so Hamilton - a 20 tonne roll of steel fell off a flat-bed truck rolled, down Main St, jumped the curb and crashed through the window of the Bank of Montreal, where it now sits waiting for a tellar. See The Spec for video stream

Baby Altruism

Altruism in babies occur as young as 18 months of age (or younger) says study reported by the Associated Press

Here is my chance to brag. I'm going to share a memory about my baby that touched me then and touches me still.

My husband and I rented a house up in Northern Ontario so it got pretty cold in the winter. The house was pretty large but in order to conserve energy we turned the heat down at night making the house cool in the mornings.

As a baby my son would wake up pretty regularly at 6 am so I would go get him, bring him into bed with daddy and off I would go to make his bottle. He had started walking late in his eleventh month but his 'altruistic' moment came late into his twelfth or early in his thirteenth month.

While heating up his bottle I was standing by the stove in my morning coat sans slippers. As I looked down I saw my little one holding up my slippers to give them to me so I could put them on my feet to keep them warm.

I was overcome with joy and did the motherly thing, scooped him in my arms, praising him and of course, I started to cry. I thought for sure his daddy had encouraged him to bring me the slippers. Since my son couldn't talk too much at the time I had to confirm with his dad that he didn't encourage him to do it.

Even my husband was intrigued as he watched The Dufus (my ex's pet name for him) watch me leave the room without my slippers, get out of the bed, pick up the slippers and walk out to the kitchen to give them to me. I was astonished that he had shown such sophistication at such a young age but I didn't realize this was considered a human evolutionary trait, according to the study above.

That moment will always stay with me mostly because it underscores who he is as a young adult. I can't wait to see how he'll be as a full grown man!

Are women in the boardroom?

Women still under-represented in Canada’s boardrooms from the National Post

- Certain industries continue to have the highest representation of women on their corporate boards, including insurance, real estate, financial services, retailers and entertainment. Gold, mining, construction, engineering and information technologies are among the industries with the lowest percentages of women directors.

- A higher percentage of board directors in the United States are women -- 13.6%, compared with their Canadian counterpoints at 12%

I’m in the process of clarifying the percentages because 1.6% is not very big a difference. It also leaves out Canada’s comparisons to Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.

The attitude towards women in the work force in Ontario is pretty bad. Almost every single job I’ve had in Ontario there was always some form of sexual harassment – either by men or women pushing female chauvinism because they want to please their boss or some company policy that doesn’t take into consideration harassment.

It has gotten better over the years but employers still have a long way to go to discourage harassment in all forms in the work place in Ontario. For example, based on a true scenario, how is it that a guy can threaten a co-worker to a fight and not get fired but a woman stands up for her rights under the Human Rights Code and does?

Right now I have three human rights complaints on the burner for investigation against:

1) Stantec Consulting Engineers of Windsor for sexual harassment, vicarious sexual harassment and discrimination for grounds under the Code
2) Manpower Temporary Services of Windsor for refusal to employ because of discrimination for grounds under the Code
3) The Engineering faculty at the University of Windsor for sexual harassment, vicarious sexual harassment and discrimination for grounds under the Code

All three, hopefully, will be investigated as systemic discrimination as opposed to separate complaints, which can be requested in a human rights complaint with the OHRC

And these are the less blatant cases I have experienced over the years.

It certainly doesn’t make an individual want to be a female employee in Ontario but if there were more women on the boards of companies that make these policies, I'm sure it would help to adopt more female friendly company policies. Ya never know, it just might find its influence on Canadian politics as well.

*Sigh* Health Care in Ontario II

Sometimes, I really don’t know what I am reading when it comes to Dalton McGuinty or George Smitherman.

Here they are in this Windsor Star article complaining about Alberta’s ‘Third Way’ health care reform but they have done nothing so far to offer up to Ontarians what they are going to do to fix our provinces health care problems and wait lines.

It appears that both of these two politicians are oblivious to the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that making patient’s wait in the public system threatens their security of the person.

So why are these two continuing down this path and forcing Ontarians to endure cruel and unusual treatment making them suffer more while they wait in line to get medical services?

What the hell is wrong with their picture?

Another Consumer Alert

A New Zealand by its Medical Research Institute says patients taking the pain "reliever Celebrex were at nearly twice the risk for heart attacks as those using rival treatments" - from the Canadian Press

When I was diagnosed with reactive arthritis, before I had an MRI to confirm I have degenerative arthritis, I was given Celebrex and Vioxx to handle the pain.

The Celebrex made me itch, which is a side-effect so my rheumatologist switched me to Vioxx.

The Vioxx made my arthitis so bad that I couldn't even walk up a small set of stairs. I have arthritis - but not to the point that I couldn't even lift my legs to walk up 3 steps - all since I had been taking Vioxx.

This isn't the first time I've noticed similar reactions to a drug that actually causes the symptoms of a disease to increase or it actually makes symptoms of a disease that weren't there in the first place.

Once I got off the Vioxx, thanks to my rheumatologist's belief in my adverse reactions, the severe mobility problems were removed and I was put on a more traditional medication and was referred to an excellent physiotherapy program at St. Joseph's hospital in London.

But not all physicians are a concerned about their patient's health and that includes adverse reactions to drugs.

LIST of HAMILTON PHYSICIANS THAT IGNORE ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS

Since Health Canada does not impose rules against physicians for deliberately ignoring an adverse reaction to a drug and the College of Physicians and Surgeons investigators would rather cover-up for physicians by fabricating evidence or withholding evidence from a disciplinary investigation than protect the public (in contempt of a Supreme Court decision), I am going to list all those physicians that have ignored or deliberately thrown a Health Canada warning across their desk in contempt of it on this blog.

Here's my list to start and they are physicians from Hamilton

Dr. S. Namburi - threw adverse drug reaction from Health Canada across desk
Dr. Christine Adam - McMaster medical student, 6th year resident at St. Joseph's
Hospital in Hamilton - ignored adverse reaction in clinical records
Dr. Qian Lee - McMaster medical student - 1st year resident St. Joseph's hospital - ignored adverse reaction in clinical records
Dr. Jennifer Brasch - St. Joseph's Hospital, Hamilton. Allowed residents to practice medicine without monitoring them
Dr. Marilyn Korsecwa - St. Joseph's Hospital. Ignoring adverse drug reaction before making diagnosis.
Debbie Fournier - Registered nurse - St. Joseph's Hospital. Fabricating and falsifying clinical records.
Marcia Dinsmore- Registered nurse, St. Joseph's Hospital. Making diagnosis based on illegally collected health information and not on adverse drug reaction.
Dr. Ali Hersi - Hamilton General Hospital. Fabricating and falsifying clinical records. Making diagnosis without benefit of a patient to diagnos. Ignoring adverse drug reacion withdrawal
Dr. Krysmanitch - Director, Hamilton General Hospital. Either encouraging or deliberately covering-up for Dr. Hersi.

Yes, that's right you've read correctly. Some of Hamilton's doctors are fabricating their clinical records to avoid their fiduciary responsibility. If anyone else did that it would be considered fraud and a criminal offense.

But we all know that in Ontario, doctors are above the law so forget about getting a police officer to take a statement.

An insider's look at the Gomery Inquiry

Doh! Is there Gomery III on the burner? Francois Perrault unleashes his almost tell all book Inside Gomery

He makes accusations against the Privy Council office without naming names...

Ho hum...I'm so tired of reading how much politicians and bureaucrats protect each other without much happening I'm not going to bother reading the book, it'll just sap the energy out of me and leave me with more contempt for our behemic administrative legal system than I already do now.

Now, if Perrault wants to start naming names - then maybe I'll start to pay attention...

Consumer Alert

Patients taking the anti-biotic drug Tequin (Gatafloxacin) from Briston-Myers can experience life threatening side affects including serious diabetes from using it. A Canadian report published in the New England Journal of Medicine went as far as warning doctors not to prescribe it.

See Reuters for story see NEJM for full report

Canada ignored int'l laws on human trafficking

Canada sucks at helping victims of human trafficking - from Reuters

At least Monte Solberg is going to look at a report on human trafficking to address the necessary changes the previous government ignored.

Stelco reduces production of dioxins & furnans

Back in the summer I posted these pics from a malfunctioning auto-shutdown from Stelco's blast furnace in 2001 and again in 2005

Stelco has just announced today - after years of fighting emissions charges laid against them by the Ministry of the Environment - they will be "cleaning up" the emissions of highly toxic dioxins and furnans - the Hamilton Spectator reports.

Well...that's good news...but they were allowed to spew onto Hamilton's north end neighbourhoods for that long?

Where was Dalton McGuilty or Dwight Dunk-in when you needed them?