habamus rodentum

Ready, willing and blogging

2007-11-07T03:14:00.000-05:00

Whoa!

Having looked at the last time I blogged on this blog software - it was almost a year ago and tonnes has happened since then. I've also been contemplating the benefits of anonymous blogging and have realized there is a little more freedom in what I can and will publish . Besides that, I missed the Blogger interface and ease of editing - I've tried two other interfaces and the editing is very poor.

I guess I missed all the hubbub of the last provincial election but I wasn't totally out of the loop. In that year I managed to rid myself of a whole filing cabinet of paperwork and shredded it myself with my little Zellers paper shredder - it took two weeks. I've been lugging around stuff for too many years like 1992 income tax returns, all my LAN notes from school and other totally irrelevant material.

Looking back, habamus rodentum appeared to have an impact in politics and social change even though I considered it guerrilla blogging. At the time I wasn't sure about blogging but I had too many other fights going on, which blogging on it may have helped. Or not.

I was just reading a recent article in the Hamilton Spectator about the where-abouts of Former Deputy Prime Minister Tony Valeri. The Stoney Creek News had been months ahead of them indicating he was going to concentrate on his position on the Board of Trustees at St. Joseph's Hospital, which the Hamilton Spectator failed to include in their recent article. (St. Joe's webpage on 'Ethical Fundraising' wasn't available at this writing)

One of the on-going issues I've been trying to deal with over the last year is getting missing notes considered medical records (McInerney v. MacDonald, S.C.C., 1992) from St. Joseph's hospital. Having made numerous requests in writing to Marie Lynch, the Chief Governance and Corporate Services officer (at the time the Chief Privacy Officer) in 2004 & 2005, she did not respond in writing as to their where-abouts in the 30 day time frame according to section 55 of the Personal Health Information and Protection Act. To this date neither has Marg Doma the hospital's Risk Manager and it's almost officially 3 years. According to section 72 of the same Act, it's considered an offense for doing so.

But don't ask Chief Brian Mullan to lay an information under that offense clause under that Act. Despite himself and his officers being police officers able to take an information under the Provincial Offenses Act, he never followed up on his promise to me last October 5 2006 when I sat in his office with former Deputy Chief Tom Marlor. The Hamilton Police Service aren't strangers to scandal. Even though the Attorney General has written indicating that it's the responsibility of police officers to take an information, I think Chief Mullan's sitting on St. Joseph's Foundation board has something to do with it. Hamilton appears to be the City of Conflicts.

Now, I was reading over another Stoney Creek News story which quoted Conservative Deputy House Leader Jason Kenney (remember the last election?) on why Tony Valeri should be investigated by the former Ethics Commissioner as reported in the Stoney Creek News at the time, particularly with respect to the his stating the property was recreational. Habamus rodentum posted a story in the National Post listing all the politicians that had 'questionable' properties or financial assets. It noted Valeri's property being listed as recreational when it was actually being built right on his existing property.

Nothing in any article said anything about where the building permit was to allow this, but Hamilton has been having some difficulties in the building permit area - like not issuing them. As for the ethics follow-up, the Ethics Commissioner was removed from his position after the election for his inability to follow a Code of Ethics of his own but mostly he was perceived not to be enforcing Parliament's mandate.

And that's only one instance. A letter that was posted here to the former Attorney General of Ontario, The Law Foundation of Ontario and the Law Society of Upper Canada had an impact on how the public can access law libraries in Ontario. Although not publicized - any further complaints from the public to the Law Foundation of Ontario about the refusal of the public to use a law library will advance another inquiry.

Other well known bloggers have cited HR and government officials were happy to have participated in some stories. (Yes, they knew they were going to be interviewed by the intrepid HR)

Despite my reservations, blogging really does seem to have had a social effect, which is really the whole point of the matter isn't it? So over the last year I've had time to do more research (legal), take care of some outstanding issues that are still outstanding, get my kid off to college and attempt to change the world...

So stay tuned and welcome back because the next posts will offer insights that the main stream media has chosen to leave out of print. I also predicted that there would be another federal election in two years and it's getting close to The Hour of our Discontent.

The Mob: History Connects to OPP

2007-04-18T06:41:00.000-04:00

In honour of OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino and his lack of understanding of Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act and his threats to pull his officers out of Caledonia in case they get hurt because a protester wants to peacefully protest - I thought I'd come back to HR after such a long hiatus to repost this article. (Sorry folks - I got distracted from other blogs and other local political and legal stuff that I lost interest in posting for awhile).

This is what the Act says:

The right to stop dangerous work does not apply to police, firefighters or those employed in correctional institutions [section 14(2)(a)].

Even the Minister of Labour confirmed it in a letter he sent to me but to show a lack of Liberal leadership he left it to me to make a complaint instead of looking into it himself.

If we can go back a few years when Julian Fantino was the Chief of Police with the City of London's police service, he was throwing his weight around then by arresting peaceful protesters making their displeasure known about the drastic cuts to medical services at London Health Sciences Centres. When I'm able to get a copy of that back issue I'll be back here posting it.

Let's not forget that Fantino got his position with the OPP by a good friend of his former Crown Attorney and convicted money launderer Peter Shoniker - who was arrested after an RCMP sting to get him to launder money taken from the pensions of the United Steelworkers in Hamilton. Apparently there was an elected city counselor that was involved and they weren't from Toronto...

Updated September 21, 2006: here is a report to compliment the KPMG Report linked below.

It's called 'Medicine in Ontario Needs Glasnost' a review to the Government of Ontario by the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council. Here is an excerpt, which I would consider very serious - but I know it happens because I have two personal experiences with obstruction of justice with the CPSO - the most recent was earlier this year in 2006.

In at least one case "there was prima facie evidence that CPSO officials may have committed the criminal offence of obstructing justice by repeatedly misleading the Executive Committee as to the true state of the evidence in this case". In the remaining cases Mr. Code found "evidence of abuse and misuse of power", "systemic unfairness and repeated abuse and misuse of power", and "a consistent pattern of unfairness

Updated September 2, 2005 - link to KPMG Report below

Since the subject of organized crime is circulating the blogosphere, I might as well add this little tidbit.

While taking a break from preparation of my C.E.D.A.W submission in 2002, I engaged in a hallway talk of wisdom my neighbour Mr. G seeing there wasn't a water cooler in the near vicinity. Mr. G knew I was busy researching in the library archives so he suggested during a deep discussion of the economics of war, to see if I could find an article in the Toronto Telegram about a student who published his thesis on the intention of the John Birch Society's plan to break up Canada.

Now this article apparently appeared in the Toronto Telegram in the early 70's, so that meant I had to look up months of microfiche over a period of two years. I didn't find that one but I did find an article in the June 5, 1970 publication on O.P.P Commissioner Eric Silk (born in Hamilton) and O.P.P Superintendent Wilson from London, Ontario.

It turned out that Commissioner Silk and Superintendent Wilson had links to George Duke, an associate of John Papalia crime family of the Hamilton Mafia. The article described how all four met at Duke's estate in Oakville for an 'open house' on lawn maintenance equipment.

Duke also attended the wedding of Wilson's daughter and flew up from Fort Lauderdale in order not to miss it.

Now the Paplia crime family of Hamilton had another associate named Paola Violi who married the daughter of Giacomo Luppino who was the most influential "N'drangheta members in Ontario" (see The Mafia of Montreal). Giancomo Luppino was a close friend to Cosa Nostra boss Stefano Magaddino, cousin to Joseph Bonanno.

In 1997, John 'Pops' Papalia, a made member of the Joseph Todaro Cosa Nostra family of Buffalo, was gunned down in front of his office in Hamilton, Ontario.

Paola Violi also had a Hell's Angels connection and of course, our own former Minister of Public Works Alphonso Gagliano is alleged to be a "made man" in the Bonanno crime family of New York although it is not proven.

Back to O.P.P Commissioner Silk. He retired from the O.P.P in or around 1973 and became the President of the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto. He died in 2004.

I have no other details regarding any further investigation in Commissioner Silk's ties to Mafia associates since then, although I attempted to see if I could get more information from the Hamilton detachment of the R.C.M.P., but they were not able to elaborate, only that the officer I spoke to remembered the events covered in the newspaper at the time.

C.S.I.S wasn't able to comment on any information and if they had any, it would be classified.

I don't know what exactly the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto does but apparently it has something to do with helping doctors write insurance claims for accidents as one example. In any case they deal with the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

The reason I find this society intriguing because of the two largest and powerful organizations in Ontario are the self-governed and self-policing Law Society of Upper Canada and the College of Physicians and Surgeon's of Ontario.

This article on R.C.M.P Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's press conference into organized crime infiltrating Parliament (see Hansard) seems to tie a few things together when it's compared to what is now happening in our government, especially when he was so open to suggest that "criminal groups are focusing on Parliament, the courts and other institutions with the aim of destabilizing the political system."

Now compare this article and the current events with my post of May10 and April 29.

The KPMG Final Report of the Review of the CPSO Complaints and Discipline Process commissioned by Elizabeth Witmer, the Minister of Health in July 2000 is posted here.

This report documents, amongst other concerns, that 71% of Ontarian's complaints about physicians are dismissed and 81% are dismissed without logical rationale.

What is most concerning is on page 33 the CPSO is using a standard of evidence higher than the civil standard. The Regulated Health Professions Act states the the College is to use the civil standard. KPMG reports that the CPSO justifies this higher standard in the case of Bernstein (Ontario Divisional Court 1977) but the judgement clearly defines the standard as civil.

There is a more concerning adjacent story that goes along with this report, which will be posted at a later date. I am also in the process of confirming the Commissioner Zaccardelli's 2000 news conference with RCMP and any subsequent reports that are publicly available.

This conference was confirmed by Commissioner Zaccardelli's office but there is no indication of it on the RCMP's website. I was referred to a criminal intelligence website but it did not clarify that organized crime was infiltrating parliaments, only in developing countries. I was told by the public relation's office that anything else would have to be requested through freedom of information.

Government Scientist Charged Criminally

2006-12-14T07:03:00.000-05:00

The following from the Seattle Post Intelligencer is another example of something that doesn't happen in Canada - our medical practioners are too professional and pure of heart to do anything criminal so much so the Canadian and Ontario governments don't believe it's necessary to enforce health legislation or investigate fraud.

Now if you believe that your not understanding sarcasm and irreverence. You can see how well our provincial politicos care about the health of Ontarians here in this recent Auditor's report.

Here's an excerpt from that:

The Ministry established a Fraud Program Branch in 1998 to promote health-fraud awareness. Althouh the Branch is staffed with Ontario Provinical Police detective inspectors and fraud examiners, it has never had a mandate to conduct fraud audits, nor has it had access to health records that would allow it to conduct fraud monitoring activities, and no suspected fraud cases have ever been referred to this Branch.

As for the Seattle Post Intelligencer - Government scientist faces charges for ethics violations

Excerpt:

With a rare criminal case against a senior federal researcher, prosecutors are sending a message to scientists on the government payroll: Making money from companies on the side can land you in big trouble.

California DoJ Investigates Big Pharma for Bribes

2006-11-07T08:37:00.000-05:00

Will we see an investigation for questionable marketing practices in Ontario? Probably not. Will the Ontario Securities and Exchange Commission start investigating their arm of these big Pharma companies for giving monetary remuneration to health care providers who prescribe anti-psychotics when they shouldn't be prescribed just to increase their sales and their value on the stock market? Probably not.

The Ontario Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ontario Provincial Police or the RCMP didn't follow up on the YBM scandal (see post below) from the Russian mafia putting up a bogus company on the Toronto Stock Exchange to launder it's money that implicated a number of politicians. Ontario's municipal police forces don't even want to co-operate and take an information when it comes to obstruction of justice by the investigtors of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario so expecting the CPSO to monitor bribes given to doctors from big pharma's marketers or investigating conflicts of interest is a useless and futile act.

I'm not sure if you can believe that OHIP is actually investigating the psychiatry out patient research programs for diagnosis fraud at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton. It's probably just lip service by the Ministry of Health.

The California Securities and Exchange Commission has requested documents from the makers of Zyprexa (Eli Lily) and Seroquil (AstraZeneca) to look at their marketing practices and selling drugs to people who shouldn't be on them, which should be investigated here in Ontario - particularly Hamilton.

Canada's big Pharma should be investigated in Ontario as well as the policitians and Colleges that turn a blind eye to members and non-members of Colleges who use psychological tests from California that diagnose mental illness without benefit of having Canadian norms or provinical standards of testing.

California's drug marketing doesn't vary from state to state so that should mean that it doesn't vary from the United States into Canada or Ontario either just as these the selling of these psychological tests don't vary.

*************************************************************************************

AP
California Investigates Anti-Psychotics
Friday November 3, 4:30 pm
By Peter Loftus, Dow Jones Newswires

California Investigates Marketing of Anti-Psychotic Drugs

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- California's top law-enforcement official is investigating drug makers' marketing practices for blockbuster anti-psychotic medications.

At least three pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca PLC, Eli Lilly & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., have disclosed they received subpoenas from the California attorney general's office seeking information about their respective anti-psychotics. The drugs are approved to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Eli Lilly, which makes Zyprexa, and AstraZeneca, maker of Seroquel, indicated that the subpoenas received in September sought information about their marketing practices for the anti-psychotics, as well as the drugs' status on California's "formulary," or list of preferred drugs for a state insurance program.

Lilly of Indianapolis said in a regulatory filing Friday its subpoena was related to "our efforts to obtain and maintain Zyprexa's status on California's formulary." Also, Lilly said the subpoena concerned "remuneration of health care providers." AstraZeneca of Britain disclosed its subpoena in a document posted on its Web site last week.

New York-based Bristol-Myers "has received a subpoena from the California state Department of Justice seeking documents in connection with Abilify," spokesman Craig Stoltz told Dow Jones Newswires Friday. "Bristol-Myers is cooperating with the investigation." California's attorney general heads the state justice department. Additional details including the timing or exact nature of Bristol's subpoena weren't immediately available.

Tom Dressler, a spokesman for the California attorney general, confirmed subpoenas were issued to AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly but declined to comment about Bristol-Myers. He said the office is "trying to get more information about the marketing of these specific products and their status on the Medi-Cal formulary," referring to the state insurance program.

Marketers of other anti-psychotics, including Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J. and Pfizer Inc. of New York, couldn't immediately be reached.

Newer anti-psychotics have become big moneymakers for drug companies, with Zyprexa posting $4.2 billion in sales and Seroquel generating $2.76 billion last year. Abilify, a newer drug, posted sales of $912 million in 2005.

But the drugs also have faced scrutiny over their effectiveness and safety. One government-funded study released earlier this year found that an older drug, clozapine, was more effective in treating certain patients with schizophrenia than three newer drugs: Zyprexa, Seroquel, and J&J's Risperdal. Clozapine is sold under the brand Clozaril by Novartis AG of Switzerland.

In another government-funded study, an older anti-psychotic called perphenazine was found to have similar effectiveness to three newer ones: Risperdal, Seroquel and Pfizer's Geodon. This study showed Zyprexa to be more effective than the other drugs, but also linked it to more weight gain and higher blood sugar.

Last year, Lilly established a $690 million fund to settle lawsuits that generally alleged Zyprexa led to diabetes or related problems in people taking the drug. The company said the claims were without merit.

J&J has previously inquiries from federal investigators over its marketing of Risperdal, according to regulatory filings. J&J said it was cooperating and responding to the subpoenas.

More recently, a study concluded there was little benefit of using anti-psychotics to treat symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, despite the relatively common practice of doctors prescribing the drugs for that use.

AstraZeneca said last week it's in the initial stages of responding to the California request for information, but a spokeswoman declined further comment.

Lilly indicated in its regulatory filing it couldn't predict the outcome of the matter, and that it could hurt the company's financials. A Lilly spokesman couldn't immediately be reached.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
November 03, 2006
Antipsychotic Marketing Investigation Broadens

Pfizer and Lilly have received subpoenas from the California attorney general related to antipsychotic promotional practices, the firms told "The Pink Sheet" DAILY.

Lilly, which markets Zyprexa (olanzapine), disclosed in a Nov. 3 Securities & Exchange Commission filing that the California AG subpoena, received in September, is "seeking production of documents related to our efforts to obtain and maintain Zyprexa's status on California's formulary, marketing and promotional practices with respect to Zyprexa, and remuneration of health care providers."

Geodon (ziprasidone) marketer Pfizer confirmed it had also received a subpoena in September from the California AG.

Lilly and Pfizer are the latest drug makers to come under scrutiny regarding antipsychotic promotional practices. The attorneys general for California and Alaska launched separate inquiries into AstraZeneca's marketing of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder treatment Seroquel (quetiapine) in September (1"The Pink Sheet" DAILY, Oct. 30, 2006).

Lilly's marketing practices for Zyprexa do not vary from state to state, the company told "The Pink Sheet" DAILY.

According to the SEC filing, Lilly has "implemented and [will] continue to review and enhance a broadly based compliance program that includes comprehensive compliance-related activities designed to ensure that our marketing and promotional practices, physician communications, remuneration of health care professionals, managed care arrangements, and Medicaid best-price reporting comply with applicable laws and regulations."

- Brooke McManus (b.mcmanus@elsevier.com)

Contents copyrighted C F-D-C Reports, Inc. 2006; protected by U.S. Copyright Law.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Monte Kwinter and Russian Mob

2006-10-29T19:21:00.000-05:00

Here a listing of stories from various Canadian newspapers that links a number of Canadian politicians to the Russian mafia. The politicians aren't just Liberals, but Mulroney PC's.

These articles are from 1999 - 7 years ago. I don't know whether David Peterson was charged or not for securities fraud for being involved with YBM a company run by the Russian mafia.

He's still involved in politics so I take it Ontario hasn't done much to make sure white collar criminals do the time when they do the crime...

And it appears here that Monte Kwinter doesn't quite get the fact that it's his responsibility to make sure law enforcement enforces the laws of the land...but is playing word games instead of showing that he is serious about fighting crime.

FDA Chief Charged with Conflict

2006-10-18T22:19:00.000-04:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 17, 2006
Former F.D.A. Chief Is Charged With Conflict
By STEPHANIE SAUL

Lester M. Crawford, former chief of the Food and Drug Administration,
was charged yesterday with conflict of interest and lying about stock he
and his wife owned in companies the agency regulates.

Dr. Crawford, who resigned abruptly in September 2005, just two months
after his nomination had been approved by the Senate, is expected to
plead guilty in federal court in Washington today, said his lawyer,
Barbara Van Gelder.

Each of the two charges filed against Dr. Crawford, 68, is a misdemeanor
punishable by up to a year in jail, but Ms. Van Gelder said she expected
him to be fined and placed on probation.
It's his responsibility," she said, "and he accepts it."

Senior employees of the food and drug agency are prohibited from owning
shares in companies the agency regulates, and when Dr. Crawford became a
deputy commissioner in 2002, the government's charging document says,
ethics officials at the Department of Health and Human Services told him
that he and his wife would have to sell stock in a dozen regulated
companies. Those companies included several large pharmaceutical and
medical device concerns, among them Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer,
Medtronic and Boston Scientific.

Dr. Crawford and his wife, Catherine, sold their holdings in nine
companies, the government says, but retained shares in three others: the
food companies Sysco and Pepsico, and Kimberly-Clark, a maker of
consumer health care and other products.

In addition, it says, Mrs. Crawford held shares in another regulated
company, Wal-Mart, but her husband did not list those holdings in his
2002 financial disclosure.

Prosecutors also say that Dr. Crawford, a veterinarian and
pharmacologist, owned options to buy 41,500 shares in Embrex, an
F.D.A.-regulated poultry biotechnology company where he formerly served
as director. He exercised some of those options in 2003 and 2004,
earning $8,150 in one transaction and $20,627 in another. He correctly
reported those transaction on his federal tax returns but did not list
them in disclosure filings at the time or disclose the remaining,
unexecuted options he held in the company, the charges say.

The government noted that during a period when the Crawfords held shares
in Pepsico, a soft drink and snack food company, he was chairman of an
F.D.A. Obesity Working Group that among other tasks was reviewing
calorie content labeling for soft drinks. At the time, prosecutors said,
the couple held 1,400 shares of Pepsico worth at least $62,000, as well
as 2,500 shares of Sysco, which specializes in supplying food to
restaurants and institutions, worth at least $78,000.

When Dr. Crawford became acting commissioner of the agency in 2004,
reviewers at the Department of Health and Human Services, the F.D.A.'s
parent, again raised questions about his ownership of Sysco and
Kimberly-Clark shares. Responding to that query, he wrote in an e-mail
message to an ethics official at the department that "Sysco and
Kimberly-Clark have in fact been sold."

"In truth and in fact, as Crawford then knew, Crawford and/or his wife
held shares" in both Sysco and Kimberly-Clark "throughout 2003 and
2004," according to the charging document.

Dr. Crawford, now a senior staff member at the Washington lobbying and
communications firm Policy Directions, could not be reached for comment.
But his lawyer, Ms. Van Gelder, said the fact that the charges were
misdemeanors reflected Dr. Crawford's having amended his financial forms
after his departure, making a full disclosure.

"One of the things I hope comes out is that he sold the Mercks and the
pharmaceuticals," Ms. Van Gelder said. "The Syscos and Kimberly-Clark,
one wouldn't ordinarily think, 'I've got to divest myself.' You wouldn't
think Wal-Mart is in the same boat as Merck."

Dr. Crawford's rocky 18-month tenure as acting commissioner and then
commissioner was marked by a series of controversies, including the
withdrawal of the painkiller Vioxx from the market and an internal
battle over whether the agency would approve the emergency contraceptive
Plan B for over-the-counter sale.

Though his sudden resignation last fall so soon after his confirmation
appeared unusual, he offered no detailed explanation. The office of
Daniel Levinson, inspector general of Health and Human Services, told
Congress, however, that it was investigating the circumstances of the
commissioner's departure.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act several weeks
later revealed that the department's ethics office had questioned Dr.
Crawford's broker in August 2005, the month before he quit.

A spokesman for Sysco said yesterday that the company had not been aware
that Dr. Crawford was a shareholder.

"We were totally unaware of it, and we really didn't have any real
regulatory matters before the agency beyond routine matters," said the
spokesman, John M. Palizza.

A spokesman for Pepsico said compliance with government regulations
concerning conflict of interest was clearly an individual
responsibility. He referred additional questions to Dr. Crawford.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such
material is made available for educational purposes, to advance
understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and
social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair
use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C.
section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without
profit.
~~~~~~~~~~~

For Immediate Release:
Contact: Jeff Lieberson
October 16, 2006
202-225-6335 (office)

202-225-0817 (cell)

Hinchey Statement On Court Filing Against Former FDA Chief Crawford

Washington, DC -- Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) today released the
following statement in response to the court filing against former FDA
Commissioner Lester Crawford on charges of making a false writing and
serving with conflicts of interest. Hinchey led the call last year for U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General Daniel
Levinson to conduct an investigation into Crawford's sudden resignation with
a particular focus on any potential financial conflicts of interest.
Levinson initiated the investigation, which is still ongoing according to a
letter he recently sent to Hinchey.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-10-02T22:12:00.000-04:00

I just got an email from Bell Canada and it seems they have lost their spokes-beaver, Gordon.

Apparently he's been sited. The last I saw him he was acting as Mr. Beaver in the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Perhaps Bell should contact Hollywood or Bollywood - I'm sure they're paying him better.

Speaking of Bollywood...

Well, not exactly.

I found out that my human rights buddy from Manipur is to be freed today. This is good news. But we don't know how badly he was assaulted, tortured or if it happened at all. If your not familiar Manipur it's a state in India that borders the country Myanmar and is surrounded by other Indian territories Assam and Nagaland. Tibet is to the north and China north east.

Manipur has a majority of 'ethnic' Meeteis, as is my buddy, who are under assault by the Indian government by the misuse of the Special Armed Forces Act. From what I understand, the Meeteis want to be recognized equally under the Indian Constitution. Some say that Manipuris want to separate but what cultural minority in a larger cultural majority doesn't want to these days?

Well now...

I just read in the Ham Spec that Hamilton is going to fill in for Windsor in a Hollywood series about an insurance investigator that lives in Windsor and travels back and forth to Detroit .

Hahaha - how fair is that? Poor Windsor gets to be portrayed by Hamilton and not itself. What a kick in the pants. I guess Hollywood can't make the 3 1/2 hour trip to Windsor to get a great shot of the Detroit skyline at night (not the smoke stacks of Stelco or Dofasco) or the Ambassador Bridge. Nothing around here merits filling in for them.

Speaking of Windsor, I'm heading home the Thanksgiving weekend and won't be blogging for awhile but I left some pics to keep you from boredom.

The pic at the top is from Manipur and this one to the left is over looking the Dundas Valley in Ontario from a portion of the Bruce Trail.

Six mafioso fugitives from Italy living in T.O.

2006-09-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

Update: check out this retarded statement given to the Hamilton Spectator by former Immigration Minister Deni Coderre:

Liberal MP Denis Coderre, a former citizenship and immigration minister, said the Conservative government lacks the "political will" to take steps to remove the Mafia fugitives.

Duh...huh? These guys have been in the country all through the Librano's reign and this guy says that the Conservatives don't have the political will? This, a Minister that used to shut down his phone line when he faced political back lash on stuff he didn't do? Bloody Canada

This Toronto Star article wonders how Mafia fugitives have lived in Canada so long without being extradicted back to Italy...

Excerpt:

"Officials could not explain how alleged Mafia fugitives could have obtained citizenship if they had prior criminal records or had been charged with crimes, since all applicants must first undergo security checks."

I think I know and it' s from this post back in May of last year but it doesn't explain how they got in back in the 70's but I might have an answer for that here and here.

Here's what I wrote last year about security checks: (*PWGS = Public Works and Government Services). Correction below. I noticed that the information regarding Manpower and security checks was not accurate. They only perform very minimal security checks - not clearances as the original text stated.

NOTE OFF TOPIC: PWGS* Canada is also responsible for security checks and has handed out contracts for minimum security checks to private companies such as Manpower Services Canada, a temporary employment agency that is now being investigated for violations under the Ontario Human Rights Code. Manpower also supplies temporary workers to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, particularly in Windsor Ontario, whose employees also need security clearances or reliability checks performed by Manpower via Public Works who has given staff at Manpower secure status to inquire about people.

Correction: C.S.I.S gives reccomendations to Public Works for security clearances but their decisions are non-binding. Security clearances are also given by law enforcment agenices (including local) via their C.I.P.I.C database. Once given, the government does not have to follow C.I.S.I.S's recommendations.

So, if Gagliano has ties to organized crime and his Ministry had responsibility for handing out security checks that does not have to following the recommendations of our security officials, what does that say about our national security?

Supersize me!

2006-09-21T07:54:00.000-04:00

Ewe! It seems Monty - this apparently hungry python - has eaten a pregnant sheep and couldn't get off the roadway because no one had a bucket or a tiny waffer thin mint. After she was captured she eventually puked it up.

Should Zaccardelli resign?

2006-09-21T06:59:00.000-04:00

The question is battering around in the news organs, the internet, on blogs and on law lists:

Should Zaccardelli resign his post from the RCMP?

My answer is "yes"

I have to put things into perspective and put myself into that position - although I have no idea what it's like to head a police force - I did work as a manager for a woman's clothing store which could be worse when it comes to the feminine mystique - and the fact that I wasn't a great manager because I was half gullible and half red-headed temperament.

I have to ask myself, how is it that policies that I could protect the force from violating the Charter and us getting sued as well as putting the administration of justice into ill-repute that could loose another terrorist case in court and make our law enforcement agency the laughing stock of the world?

And if all this happened under my management, how is it that I could have let that happen? If I knew these things were going on, should I have taken measures to protect my staff from their own problems in understanding and adhering to legal standards or should I purge the agency of these problems, or just do nothing?

Having been a manager I know that staff won't tell you bad things and will cover them up if they are good enough cons, especially if they want your job. But women are a little more conniving than men - I can't imagine lower subordinates keeping this information from the Commissioner just to get his job - and if they did, why should they get it?

If my agency was called 'incompetent' while the news organs of the world echoed it until my ears were ringing like the bells of St. Mary's, I think I would take stock of all the other incompetancies that have occurred more or less, while I was Commissioner:

Air India
Air Bus
AdScam
Arar

Ok, so that's the 'A' section of the alphabet.

After considering that these things are very serious screw-ups and I wonder what other law enforcement agencies in the world must think of us here in Canada.

So, it's my opinion that stepping down is the honorable thing to do - after I have terminated the jobs of those I delegated to act on my behalf that allowed it to occur.

My other suggestion is - given Joe Comartin's stance against asking Commissioner Zaccardelli to step down - that American media investigate Joe Comartin's election finances to find out whether or not the money he's been getting for his election campaigns, besides being mostly from the C.A.W., is coming indirectly from Hezbollah in Lebanon or Iran via local Hezbollah supporters.

I think it's safe to say that he gets election donations from persons sympathetic to the Hezbollah, but who isn't in Windsor?

As for Irwin Cotler, isnt' giving legal advice to a Canadian citizen while being the Minister of Justice - illegal?

Just asking

California Sues Automakers

2006-09-21T06:46:00.000-04:00

California's Office of the Attorney General is launching a lawsuit against six automakers for contributing to smog and greenhouse gases. Here's what the AG says:

"Global warming is causing significant harm to California's environment, economy, agriculture and public health. The impacts are already costing millions of dollars and the price tag is increasing," said Lockyer. Vehicle emissions are the single most rapidly growing source of the carbon emissions contributing to global warming, yet the federal government and automakers have refused to act. It is time to hold these companies responsible for their contribution to this crisis."

Why doesn't the Ontario provincial government do the same since the government pays billions of dollars in health care, which a good chunk goes to respiratory diseases and other offshoots?

Ontario doesn't because it doesn't care about protecting the public as much as it cares about protecting the auto industry.

As I always said if they could put a man on the moon, they can make cars without emissions.

But the problem isn't with the ability to make the cars; it's with the mentality of the auto industry itself as well the unions that try to protect the jobs within. I've heard the rumblings of CAW members that they don't want to make emission free cars because it will mean lost jobs.

Well, I don't put much weight into auto union rhetoric since they base their bullying tactics on propaganda, which usually means BS. If hybrid cars are popular and they can make them cheaper the better the technology gets then people will love to buy them.

We are actually fortunate here because we do have stronger emission controls than other countries. When I visited Morocco there were no emission controls on the cars. Sitting at a red light there gets you a good gust of exhaust in your face.

The only thing that doesn't really make their emissions an issue is that the rest of the country doesn't have big smoke stacks spewing crud into the rest of the Moroccan air. It was incredibly clean and I didn't have the usual sneezing, itchy ears and swollen glands, like I got two days after I arrived back to Canada.

Holy Pope Batman!

2006-09-19T00:34:00.000-04:00

Ok...once again we are faced with individuals who call themselves Muslim getting irrationally upset and violent because of words they don't understand. The Pope has also clarified in the speech that the comments of the emperor he quoted were 'brusque' and found them astounding.

Here is the Pope's speech.

It's seven pages long and only mentions Islam once to illustrate a point - the rest was about Greek philosophy and the term 'logos', which I'm not going to pretend to understand but here's the Wikipedia version of it if you want to bore yourself.

As usual, the 'Islamic' world has taken the Pope's words out of context. The reason I put 'Islamic' in quotations is to remain true to what the Pope was trying to illustrate and how I understand it because these people who are making all the fuss are not learned theologians and are acting 'voluntarily', which is one of the philosophies that was brought up in the speech and the only part I found quite interesting. Here's an excerpt:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

[...]

In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness.

Those learned Islamic theologians, if they read the full text, would understand that the Pope was waxing philosophical about reason and religion and how the philosophy of religion was not out of line of being taught in a university. The Pope also went on to explain that other cultures have influenced Christianity, in particular Greek thought.

The Pope stressed how important it was to open dialogue with those in the Islamic world so each other could further the other's understanding of God. He was stating how important religion is in the context of humanity that doesn't reject scientific reason nor current philosopies of other religions for if it did, then it would limit the scope of ethics and morality.

You know my first and only language is English and I had trouble understanding what the Holy See was saying too, but rest assured it wasn't to insult Islam.

He was attempting to illustrate an emperor's writing on the meaning of 'controversy' and what he believed was contrary to God's nature. You have to consider that when belligerents are banging at a city's gates, it seems only natural for an emperor to make those statements at a time when Constantinople was under siege by the Turks, for fear of being compelled to convert to a religion they really didn't want to convert to. That was his understanding of Islam then and he probably wasn't correct because there was a lack of dialogue.

As the Pope also pointed out, compulsion to practice Islam is an anti-thesis of it. He did not mention that Christians were also not compelled to practice Islam as they were accepted as people of the Book which is clearly stated in the Quran, which also states that it's legal for Muslims to marry people of the Book (which includes the Torah and New Testament). For those who don't want to convert, they are asked to pay a tax and in turn, the Muslims would protect them.

What's insulting to all Muslims are the idiots who act out in the name of their religion it because they have become exactly what it is that they have assumed the Pope has said - violent. They are acting out as if they were still living in the Middle Ages and have a voluntary compulsion to behave as if they were in a Holy War (jihad).

It's time to give the Pope a break.

A matter of belief

2006-09-18T17:19:00.000-04:00

Ugh...besides feeling sick from a cold I got a number of emails from an old friend of mine...

About 5 of them were sent with the same information - an itinerary that reads like a bad suspense thriller or a something that should be a part of a psychiatric assessment. In any case it made me sick to my stomach. After reading that I wonder if I what I write reads the same way and I hope to God my command of the English language is much better.

I hadn't contacted this person in years because of incessant requests to marry him that was tiring back then for me to put up with but I felt he was harmless enough to contact again. Besides, I missed his sense of humor and his stories about the Congo.

Although after reading his itinerary I am thrown back into an occasion in my apartment in London. After insisting once too many that I marry him I told him that he had no right to keep insisting and if I asked him to leave my apartment because he was bothering me with this and he didn't, I could call the police. That's when he went on a rampage accusing me of working for the London police. I had to explain to him that he misunderstood me, that I was merely explaining to him what the laws were - that in this culture, 'No' means 'No' and he had to stop harassing me with this question because I wasn't interested in him that way. Our friendship stopped for a number of months and resumed when he promised to stop asking the question.

Only now, after reading that email, am I wondering if it was a good idea to contact him. I am very concerned about what he has sent me because it involves a murder, detention in a jail, beatings, the Pope, rape, heads of State, Amnesty International, illegitimate children and a number of Universities in Ontario, France and the Congo. He forgot to mention the time he did at the University in Berlin studying linguistics where a friend of mine whom I've known for a number of years teaches with a professor that taught my Congolese friend.

But you have to wonder how does a person get to know the people they do and why is there a common thread in their lives?

From that Berlin friend I was introduced a number of years ago to a human rights activist for indigenous peoples in the State of Manipur, India. I met my Manipuri friend in 2004 in New York when he was scheduled to speak at an Indigenous conference at the United Nations. I thought it was a good opportunity to see New York and him at the same time. That visit had an interesting encounter with two hostile males in a New York subway on the way to Ground Zero. We were both terrified - but that's another story.

I learned about 3 weeks ago that my Manipuri friend was detained by Indian authorities and is allegedly being tortured. He was already detained previously in 2004 after he had 'pissed off' his government at a talk he gave to the U.N. in Geneva. It was the same situation this year but the government accused him of being in cahoots with a 'terrorist' organization.

Although he wasn't married when we met in New York, I think I sufficiently broke his heart and got married to a woman that shares his culture and fight. I wrote to his wife to inquire about the accusations of the government so I could write to the Canadian Foreign Affairs like I did in 2004.
I know that the government might have one small thing right - something I was told in a moment of intimacy that his wife wouldn't know. What India is doing with the Manipuri's is equivalent to having the War Measures Act imposed for about 20 years - without benefit of due process and the rule of law applied equally for Indigenous peoples of Manipur. But the Manipuri's want their independence so therefore, there are other concerns about how to achieve that outcome. I'm a sepratist myself but don't condone going about it violently.

But in any case, I wasn't going to put myself in a position to cover up for him and that depended on the group he was accused of working with. Since he was a lawyer he should be able to explain the charges with clarity and who the group is. I haven't had any correspondence further on this issue from him or his wife.

So it is today, that I read of the thread of similarities that have human beings tormented by each other's society's class system and sensibilities.

I read in the Hamilton Spectator about my own tormenter who has been elevated to a hero's status in a narrative by The Spec journalist Jon Wells glorifying the emergency medicine doctors at Hamilton General Hospital.

This is one hospital I am terrified of going to for fear that my life would be in danger.
As I have said before, I am not scared of terrorists but I am scared of Hamilton's doctors - they have far too much power than they are allotted by law.

In one instance we can make accusations of some types of people and they are assumed to be guilty but we can't make accusations towards others because it is assumed they are pristine elements of everything good and righteous in our society. Or if we do, then we don't believe the person with lesser status.

So is the case with Dr. Ali Hersi - who has committed fraud by fabricating a diagnosis and doctoring medical records just to cover his ass for his negligence. I am told by the FBI that they do investigate diagnosis fraud in the United States. Our authorities don't do it here.

But from the evidence on what appears on the medical records based he should be charged with fraud because the information that he left out and the information that was crossed out - shows that he anticipated his negligence would have cost me my life so he had to do something that would cover up any investigation by a Coroner. The Coroner would never question him once he read the medical records.

The attitude of Dr. Hersi and his accomplice, Dr. Krismanytch towards some individuals within the health care system seems to be underscored by a recent Ontario Human Rights Commission decision. The OHRC says the Crown discriminates against individuals with mental illness because the Coroner's Act didn't make it mandatory that a coroner's inquiry be launched to investigate the deaths of persons who have died in a mental health institution yet a coroner's inquiry has to be launched by deaths of prison inmates.

Why the decision? Because the doctor (or nurse) crossed out medical information in a deceased patient's medical records who was a resident in a mental institution. The family applied for their loved one's medical records, found the discrepancy and made their complaint. The family fought back and they one some very important rights for individuals with mental illness but not enough to have doctors or nurses charged with criminal negligence.

Not that I was in this situation, but I was suffering from withdrawals from an anti-depressant, in which Dr. Hersi thought the reaction was laughable and refused to treat me. I had to go to another hospital. Their attitude wasn't much better, but at least I was treated.

What makes it especially nefarious for me is that I have been complaining for years to the Hamilton Spectator that Hamilton has a problem with it's doctors - especially the likes of Dr. Hersi and the emergency management at Hamilton General towards certain individuals in the health care system.

Instead of reporting based on the principles of the Canadian Journalistic Association - they, The Spec, has allowed themselves to be compromised by private interests instead of reporting in the public interest. I'm not the only one who has serious concerns about how medicine in practiced in this City but The Spec isn't reporting on them.

So now, I look back on the stories of different individuals and wonder how different is mine? For me, it would help to clarify circumstances by having documentation to back up accusations. My Congolese friend has some wild ideas but I know his English isn't that good and his misunderstands things. My Manipuri friend told me that he wanted to start up an allegiance with Muslims to support his cause. I told him not to because it would only give him problems - that was back in 2004. Now he is accused of aligning with a group that is accused of terrorism.

I think the point is, the difference between being believed is the evidence to confirm the corruption that dispels concerns of just a wild story, a factual story that sounds wild but isn't written well, or a well written articulation of presumed knowledge based on deceit and lies.

And in lite of today's Arar Inquiry conclusions, which do you believe?

Tout sweet

2006-09-15T21:34:00.000-04:00

I'm not commenting on the Montreal Dawson CEGEP shooting.

Only...

WTF is wrong with Montreal? How many school shootings does that make in one City in as many years?

Secondly...

This 25 year old - (hell, I was a mother at that age) - was old enough to know better but he was stunted in his emotional growth somewhere - admitted he took drugs. He was drinking wiskey before the incident.

But did he take drugs with that wiskey? If so, what drugs? Anti-depressants? Anti-psychotics? Robotussin? Ritalin? Ever read the manufacturers documentation on the side effects of Remeron an anti-depressant? Psychotic episodes is one of them. Are the securite de Quebec looking for this?

Don't kid yourself...teenagers take this stuff to experiment. In the documentary Prescription: Suicide? one of the teenagers was a normal kid but after taking anti-depressants to experiment with drugs - went outside and shot himself after taking them.

In Hamilton the degenerate friend of a house-mate was selling Ritalin on the streets. When my car was stolen there was a Zyprexa (anti-psychotic) on the floor of the car - probably to give the kid an extra boost and intent.

So where the hell do these people get this stuff and why the fuck would they sell it to kids? Rumour has it in Hamilton that pharamcists are selling this stuff to street dealers...

Thirdly...

If I was reading that shit on the internet and saw the guy had pics of guns and knives...I'd be calling the R.C.M.P tout sweet.

Dog - the Bounty Hunted

2006-09-15T21:06:00.000-04:00

Dog, the Bounty Hunter (a.k.a. Duane Chapman)

his son Leland

and his brother Tim

have all been arrested for the illegal detention and conspiracy of Max Factor heir Andrew Luster in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Luster skipped the country after being indicted on charges of rape. I don't imagine that he'll stay very long in lockup - even though the slammer is de rigeur now-a-days after Martha Stewart did her stint while crocheting ponchos for her new buds.

Don't ask me why, but I like his program...this guy looks like a big brut but he's awfully caring to some of the people he catches. Not only is he caring but he's very careful as well - not to violate out-of-Hawaii state laws when he's hunting bail jumpers and the fleeing indicted.

Maybe I like the program because of his wife Beth. Actually, it's not her per se - I actually became infatuated with her large bosoms and found I wanted to see the show more often. Yeah, I know I'm a girl but she knows her bosoms are her assets and if I had 'em I'd be wearing low cut tops on purpose for the camera to get right in there and...

Aloha

A place in history

2006-09-13T03:54:00.000-04:00

When a historic event occurs it seems we all want to remember what we were doing on that day. It's like attending a wake. We reminisce about the past, the good memories and our place in its history.

I wasn’t born when JFK was shot nor do I remember any of the other assassinations in America during the 60's revolution. I do remember, though, the riots in Detroit.

It was a topic at our dinner table because Mum – a Canadian American – worked in the States like she had done for years before marrying my father. During the Detriot riots, my sisters tell me that Dad used to bring them to Windsor’s waterfront to see the fire and smoke and hear the gun shots during the heat of the riots.

The only time I remember being brought to the waterfront to witness something historic was the passing of the Edmund Fitzgerald. My father always had an innate quality to know what was historically important before it was historically important.

As for 9-11-01? Need I ask?

My normal day usually started out with a cup of coffee and I would check my inbox for my morning email link to the New York Times and CBC news alerts. By 7:30 a.m., I would watch the morning news on television until it was time to leave for school although at this time, I wasn’t in school but waiting for my course to start the following week so I kept my routine of waking up at 6 a.m.

This day was different. Instead of turning on the television to watch the news I decided to clean out my in-box of unwanted emails. I remember lingering over one email. It was from a Saudi named ‘Ahmed’. Ahmed and I met in a chat room over the Internet and added each other to our chat programs.

I lingered on this email because of our conversations that brought concern only months before.

‘Ahmed’ and I used to speak about mundane things, mostly about his import company – construction vehicles, or Islam or on one occasion, Osama bin Laden. We spoke about him because he was a topic within the Salafist community in London Ontario where I lived at the time. He told me how he knew ObL’s brothers who lived in Saudi Arabia.

Even though ObL was a topic of discussion, I couldn’t tell if the local Salafists were supporters of ObL or not. I knew they didn’t support American troops in Saudi Arabia because it was ‘sacred ground’ and there was apparently a hadith suggesting that no foreigner should be on this sacred land.

I knew the local Salafists didn’t support the Saudi royal family because they were squandering the country’s oil wealth while the gap between the rich and the poor in Saudi Arabia was deepening. ‘Ahmed’ confirmed this fact in our discussions.

I knew that the local Salafists didn’t support the bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. It was a common belief that Clinton ordered the bombings to distract the Americans away from his affair with Monica Lewinski – it was quite the joke.

But did all that mean the local Salafists supported ObL’s jihad? I knew there were people who supported jihad in the Sudan if one where to be declared in a fatwah – but that was because most of every one I knew had a husband who was Sudanese or were close to marrying one.

As for Ahmed, he seemed to know ObL because he told me he was a ‘simple’ man. Till this day I don’t know what he meant by ‘simple’. Did it mean that ObL wasn’t complicated in his thinking? Did it mean he wasn’t materialistic? Did it mean the Americans gave him too much credit as a protagonist?

It didn’t concern me at the time speaking about this subject. ObL was a common subject and I agreed with all of my other Salafist friends that the Americans were ‘demonizing’ him (although I really was only parroting what I was learning because I didn’t know tit from tat about American foreign policy).

What was important about this conversation between Ahmed and I was about a hadith that I was having trouble with. I wanted some context to a hadith I found on a website and that hadith was about ‘killing Jews’. I didn't know my teacher had some radical ideas about it.

Months before, I had gone to a lecture by a doctor at the University of Western Ontario given on certain evenings to learn about Islam. On a ride home I took with the doctor and his wife, he counseled me to go to a particular website. I was looking up something totally unrelated when my search came up with a hadith I found very troubling.

It was troubling because when I had converted to Islam I qualified my conversion only if I was not going to be taught to hate any particular group - I would then deny my own Canadian identity of pluralism and multiculturalism. If Muslims preached they were the religion of Peace – then there should be absolutely no preaching of hatred against any group if Allah wanted my soul.

But when I read this hadith that told Muslims to “kill Jews wherever you find them, behind trees or under rocks”, it seemed pretty crazy and out of line so it was my duty, I felt, to find out what this was and to learn the context of it. So, in keeping with my personality, I started asking questions.

Many of them.

Little did I know that this hadith was the catalyst to my leaving the religious community months later.

After having my questions answered – not by the Imams because they just ignored them, I found out that that hadith was referring to a war. Some highly educated and well-positioned Muslims in Ontario explained the hadith to be interpreted as “enemies” not “Jews”in this war. But this translation is not accepted by the majority of Muslims I spoke to. The commonly accepted translation is “Jews” in this widely believed hadith, which I found out is a Sahih Bukhari hadith – which means ‘highly credible’.

Next, the hadith was put into context for me. It was explained that it was in the context of a war at the time when Muslims would follow a dajjal or false prophet. ‘Ahmed’ explained to me that this hadith was about this war and that the war would involve Israel. In this war, Israel would be taken over by Muslims who followed this dajjal. Other countries in Europe would be over thrown - right up to Italy. He explained to me that hadith was to support that war that would be just like the holocaust for the Jews.

Ok, so I got rhetoric and propaganda. This is when I started to put on the breaks and start to wonder if this guy is for real or not. How can anyone talk like this? Who is this guy and why am I speaking to a person who says he’s from Saudi Arabia?

When he asked me if I believed this explanation, I wrote back ‘NO’. His response was hostile. He told me that “I should watch what I say”. I took this as a threat and I became nervous since he, by now, had my email address. I wrote to an Imam to explain what had happened. He told me this guy was wrong. The only thing that kept me from being frightened was that the guy was very far away - in Saudi Arabia.

But by the end of that summer - the summer of 2001 - I was arguing with another Muslim man – an Egyptian that had taken over a position at the University from a friend of mine. He was refusing to post services for Muslim women in the Mosque’s newsletter because of his bigoted attitude towards non-Muslim women. I told him that I was taking my hijab off in protest. He wrote to me from his Western email account telling me “I should watch what I say”.

I would give anything to have a copy of my responding email - but that was a long time and many computer operating systems ago.

By this time the threat was closer to home. The same words were reiterated as those of ‘Ahmed’ and underscored that an extreme ideology was at play and put to rest any concerns that the Saudi was a fictitious character.

So, on September 11, 2001 probably about an hour and a half after I started housekeeping my email account, I rested on Ahmed’s email. I told myself not to delete it – that I might need it in case something happens.

I didn’t think that happening would be so huge.

It was about 9:30 a.m., and I finally turned on the ABC morning news about 2 hours late of my routine. I settled in my lazy boy with my coffee and saw the first pictures of the twin towers smoking. The newscasters were confused. I’m sure my face was contorted. There was speculation that it was a terrorist attack. The next shots were the Pentagon and then a smoking field.

What the hell is going on I thought?

I got on the phone to call my friend to see if she had the answers. When she answered the phone she was crying. Her husband was expected to arrive in New York at 8:30 that morning from a flight from Egypt. We held the phone to our ears, crying as we stared at the TV. We watched and cried as the first tower went down. She wanted to get off the phone to leave it open in case her husband called. I wanted to call C.S.I.S.

There were too many red flags thrown in front of me on two-year Islamic journey.

My first reaction to seeing the targets was that the acts were committed by American terrorists. Who could have executed something so spectacular with such precision other than Americans?

My next thought was that it very well could have been Muslims because I knew from the targets that they were, for one, a good example of “higher buildings” from a hadith explaining portents of ‘The Hour’. As explained by Mohammed to a follower: “When the shepherds of black camels start competing with others in the construction of higher buildings. And the Hour is one of the five things which nobody knows except Allah.”

There are many hadith about ‘The Hour’, those Nostrodamus like prophecies - Islamic style. Those towers were indicative of America’s competitive national attitude, that which instigates competition throughout the world asking questions of architectural or engineering firms, who is able to build the highest building in the world?

Tall buildings were symbols for what we Muslims learned to be a portent of the Hour. The Hour for those who believe would also be called the end of the world, as we know it. As for the portent hadith, they are Sahih Bukhari, can be found in the Book of Belief and are widely believed by Muslims.

I also knew how high the possibility was for Islamists to have flown the planes into the WTCs just because they were the World Trade Centre towers. World Trade was also indicative of tourism, which to the Salafists was not an acceptable Islamic practice because that meant that more Westerners would be flooding the Islamic world and influence Muslims with Western thought and philosophies. This meant that tourism would cause Muslims to loose their religion because they couldn’t isolate themselves from outsiders or their influence.

This is why it made sense for Islamists to use planes as weapons because any fears that it created by doing so would also cause a reduction in the tourism industry – less people would want to fly to any parts of the world let alone Islamic ones. The fear of being caught in a terrorist act while flying was necessary to put in the minds of the Western psyche because as these Islamists see it, Westerners are afraid to die as they haven’t the religion to give them succor and prepare them for the afterlife.

What confirmed it for me that Islamists were involved was the November 2000 federal election.

For just as soon as those planes torpedoed into the towers, doctors and engineers within the Muslim community were busy disinforming those in the Muslim community who wanted to believe that it was a Zionist and Israeli conspiracy to fly planes into the towers. If this information came from Muslim doctors or engineers – 'professionals' – the chances were greater that this lie would be believed.

I was working on the campaign trail for the local NDP candidate. I had wanted to attend the London Mosque’s meeting that was being held to determine their position for the election, what questions they were going to ask the candidates and whom they were going to support. There was anger in the community against the Reform Party and John Renolds for his comments towards the Muslim community’s right to ask Stockwell Day to step down.

By this time I was very irritated because I wasn’t allowed to attend the meeting – apparently only men were allowed to attend. A double slap in the face was that a City of London counselor – an elected official - was the person doing the disallowing. I had pamphlets I wanted to hand out for the NDP but because the Mosque board didn’t like the NDP’s position on abortion and gay rights, they weren’t going to allow their voice to be heard in the Mosque.

Instead, I left pamphlets on the NDP’s position against the World Trade Organization. The stance at that time was anti-WTO because globalization was seen to undermine the traditional social-democratic position of labor and unions thus threatening the NDP’s main supporters – the patriarchy of big labor unions. I put those pamphlets on a common table for information at the Mosque. By evening prayer all the pamphlets were gone.

In 11 months after the Canadian federal election, planes used as missiles would fly into the World Trade Towers - the microcosmic symbol of world trade - and the underlying fear of those who are afraid of losing their religion.

On being hoodwinked

2006-09-11T03:05:00.000-04:00

There's quite a few things about Hamilton that you wouldn't see probably in many places in Ontario.

It's arrogant doctors who abuse patients at a rate per capita that is probably the highest in the province
A City licensing office that approved a business license to a business owner to sell pot without any questioning by the Hamilton Police Service on why they did it
Crack addicts that steal cheese from one convenience store and sell it to another to make money to buy a rock
Drive by shootings in a populated area downtown street - like the shooting in downtown Toronto that killed a teenager - and is totally ignored by national media
A newspaper that harasses an elector who is trying to make the Mayor - an elected official- accountable under to the Provincial Elections Act legislation and the newspaper editorializes that he's ethical
And counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

Not only are the people of Hamilton gullible and don't pay attention to whom they vote for, they also have to contend with public safety threats that were imposed on them by counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

The local coroner didn't even know about the fake heart drugs that were being sold to patient's until the RCMP put it in the news according to the Hamilton Spectator:

Eden examined 11 deaths and his boss, the province's chief coroner, recommended after the King West case that the Ontario College of Pharmacists be given the power to shut down drugstores when there's an imminent public health risk.

Eden said last week patients given fake Norvasc faced two risks: the acute, short-term problem of suddenly coming off the drug and the longer-term concern of an untreated heart problem.

Eden didn't know about the concerns at the pharmacy until after the RCMP issued a press release June 16, 2005

It's not that I think Eden cares so much about protecting the public - after all this is a guy that thinks suicide is caused only by mental illness - not oppression. It's the fact that this Province has a dismal record of protecting the public. This is a Province of buck passers. Of giving Provincial responsibility to enforce Provincial legislation onto electors. Of not enforcing health care practitioners to loose their licenses when they commit a crime.

The culture is not here in Ontario for the RCMP to provide the information to Provincial officials who are to use it wisely to protect the public. And the public is too naive to know when they are being hoodwinked.

Hurricane Florence public advisory

2006-09-10T05:05:00.000-04:00

I wouldn't normally be posting this but I just noticed it on my news updates.

The National Hurricane Centre in Florida has just posted this advisory that Florence has been upgraded to a hurricane status. Hurricane winds have a probability to hit the eastern part of Canada

Word of the day

2006-09-10T03:50:00.000-04:00

The following is taken from Miriam Webster's dictionary. It reminds me of something I would hear on Bugs Bunny. But since I'm currently reading The Professor and the Madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary by Simon Winchester, I thought I'd stay in the spirit of things.

poltroon \pahl-TROON\ noun

: a spiritless coward : craven

Example sentence: In the end, their leader proved to be a traitorous poltroon whose main concern was saving his own skin.

Did you know? When you get down to synonyms, a "poltroon" is just a "chicken." Barnyard chickens are fowl that have long been noted for timidity, and the name "chicken" has been applied to human cowards since the 17th century. "Poltroon" has been used for wimps and cravens for even longer, since the early 16th century at least. And if you remember that chickens are dubbed "poultry," you may guess that the birds and the cowards are linked by etymology as well as synonymy. English picked up "poltroon" from Middle French, which in turn got it from Old Italian "poltrone," meaning "coward." The Italian term has been traced to the Latin "pullus," a root that is also an ancestor of "pullet" (a young hen) and "poultry."

Pullus? One could have fun with that one...maybe in another post

Katrina victims battle mental illness

2006-08-29T04:17:00.000-04:00

Now the victims of Katrina are vulnerable to become victimized one more time - by the mental health system and big pharma looking to cash in on sales of anti-depressants.

Yahoo - Reuters reports that mental illness has been diagnosed in Katrina's victims.

The report states:

200,000 people from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi face serious
mental illness because of Katrina, with about a third suffering from
post-traumatic stress syndrome and the remainder depression
[...]

About 25 percent reported having nightmares about their experiences -- a
figure that rises to nearly 50 percent for people who lived in New
Orleans.

For those who subscribe to the theory of social constructionism, this is probably a good opportunity to apply the Katrina tragedy to human interactions and responsibility with each other seeing that this was a rather large example of the relationship between public and government, between cause and effect, between living and dying.

Cybertronics charged under SEC laws

2006-08-28T23:55:00.000-04:00

The recent news about Dr. Nemeroff stepping down from his position as editor of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology journal called Neuropsychopharmacology for not disclosing a conflict of interest with Cybertronics. Dr. Nemeroff is chairman of Cyberonics' Mechanism of Action Advisory Board.

This comes on the heals a complaint filed with the United States Securities Exchange ommission against Cybertronics on August 18, 2006, for violation of the United States securities laws under sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by:

making false and misleading statements regarding Cyberonics' Vagus
Nerve Stimulation Therapy System (the "VNS Device") as a therapy for
treatment-resistant depression ("TRD").

From the First Amended application with the United States District court in Texas Lead plaintiffs allege that the defendants failed to disclose that certain individuals associated with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") had safety and efficacy concerns about the use of the VNS Device for the treatment of depression and questioned the adequacy of evidence of safety and effectiveness presented to the FDA by the Company, that the defendants misrepresented the prospect for payer reimbursement for the VNS Device, that the defendants concealed executive compensation and governance issues, and that the defendants falsely stated that an analyst's statements about options granted in June 2004 were inaccurate and without merit.

Lead plaintiffs seek to represent a class of all persons and entities, except those named as defendants, who purchased or otherwise acquired Company securities during the period February 5, 2004 through August 1, 2006.
The amended complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages and equitable or injunctive relief, if available.

Cybertronics's annual report is pending a review of stock option grants and accounting issues so it's stocks have taken a hit. See Yahoo Biz and Yahoo Finance

The MediaScan of StockHouse USA, an internet exchange pitt stop to empower investors provided links to the above financial reports.

I wouldn't expect the Ontario Securities Commission to get on the band wagon with the SEC. Beside Cybertronics being hyped by the IEEE - the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in their Spectrum magazine with an article called 'Psychiatry's shocking new tools', the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health "Canada's leading addiction and mental health teaching hospital" and "is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto", has been funded by Cybertronics as it appears in this list from their website along with quite a few large pharmaceutical companies such as:

AstraZeneca Canada Inc.
Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Eli Lilly Canada Inc.
GlaxoSmithKline Inc.
Merck Frosst Canada Inc.
Pfizer Canada Inc.
Purdue Pharma

And Government Ministries:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Joe Volpe being a former Minister of and recipient of donations from Apotex - a generic pharmaceutical company in Toronto),

Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services
Ontario Ministry of Correctional Services
Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care

And of course, the University of Toronto, who has been cited in this article on questionable research ethics.

Another med journal editor resigns

2006-08-26T21:10:00.000-04:00

The Alliance for Human Research Protection has provided more insight into the world of psychiatry and medical research below. But before you read on, I'm adding my own twenty-five cents as usual.

Mental illness is not something you can easily predict or take stats on. The expectations of persons diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder to speak for themselves is so prevalent in this field of medicine it's very easy to manipulate "disease" symptoms as a sculptor manipulates clay because the perceptive discrimination patient's face with the "mental illness" label are the bigoted attitudes of doctors and others within this system of medicine that inherently undermines the rights of patient's - including being believed when a patient presents their symptoms or medical history. It's probably the one area of medicine whose ethics and scientific data are not put under the microscope.

What motivates most of us is money, and doctors or researchers are no different.

There are many reports of dubious individuals or organizations involved in mental health care that would do anything to influence the sale of drugs even if it means fabricating medical symptoms or fabricating medical records.

Perhaps manipulating medical records is the ulterior motive of researchers/doctors to provide clients for their clinical drug studies.

Perhaps it's necessary for a pharmaeceutical company to forecast sales in psychotropic drugs and means they would have to have reasonable knowledge that the need for these drugs are necessary. It's only necessary if there was a set number of persons who have a particular "disease" and this is where manipulating clinical data or research data can be lucrative as the inherant and perpeturated attitudes towards the newly diagnosed or past diagnosed would be an undermining of a patient's claim regarding their feelings on how the drug is making them feel.

If mental illness can be "created" by using particular unstandardized tests provided by a pharmaceutical company, those predictable numbers become less arbitrary and easier to define.

One way of predicting mental illness is to create it or "look for" symptoms as those described in a semantic listing test (questions and answers based on the DSM-IV) as opposed to verified scientific data for proven illnesses. The meaning of a word could mean something different from one person to the next when describing feelings or emotions or physical symptoms. I've noticed doctors in Hamilton take normal human reactions to unjust social conditions and turn it into a pathology that they believe justifies a symptom of a mental illness.

Dr. Christine Adam - an unsupervised 6th year psychiatric med student from McMaster and emergency physician at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, took a human right under clause 8 of the Ontario Human Rights Code to prove her ignorance of the law and subjected the patient to her own judgemental "political" opinion thus turning the diagnostical symptomatic criteria into a subjective medical term called "entitlement".

Not very scientific.

Such fabrication was duly compounded, either to maintain the fraud or due to incompetance by St. Joseph's Outpatient Psychiatry's clinician Debbie Fournier a registered nurse. This clinician chose to fabricate bogus illnesses attributed to the patient's sister and father on the patient's clinical records without there even being the slightest diagnosis of any illness in the past nor appropriate symptoms of it at the time of the medical examination. This clinician, instead of listening to the patient, interjected what she wanted to hear the patient say, that the disease runs in the family when it was clearly not what the patient had described.

This wasn't a mere misunderstanding, no medical practitioner should attribute any diagnosis to any person unless it was a medical fact not if a person indicates they can "relate to a symptom". Qualifying one symptom doesn't justify a diagnosis of a particular disease that may have symptoms that are indicative of other mental disorders or physiological disorders.

Since St. Joseph's hospital has a systemic tendancy to not to document accurate medical facts for persons that come in with a percieved mental illness, its not in the hospitals interest to document accurate medical facts when it presents an opportunity to manipulate them, thus underscoring the equivalency of a patient has a percieved mental illness therefore can't be believed to give accurate facts regarding their own health.

Mental health medicine does not provide physical blood test to prove a chemical imbalance actually exists or as a result of a PET scan that proves, for example, this area of the brain is affected and therefore it's indicative of schitzophrenia.

Most less serious "mental illnesses" aren't verified by physical tests. It's mostly subjective and depending on what "expertise" the doctor practices, that doctor can filter and diagnose any one mental illness with some semantic qualification if they are given the chance.

Guarantee of a mental illness "diagnosis" can also guarantee a demand for the supply of drugs and therefore giving a better forecast of sales thus increasing stock dividends and returns. Thus turning the science of medicine into a making money venture by taking advantage of vulnerable individuals. Such ventures can also guarantee research funding for a hospital from government sources and increase the profits that some politicians gain either in increasing stock value or political donations from individuals close to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan will not deny that St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton is being investigated for research fraud.

*************************************************************************************

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

FYI

A notice from The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the inner sanctum of biological--predominantly drug-centered psychiatry--informs the membership of the resignation of Dr. Charles Nemeroff, the Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Neuropsychopharmacology.

The resignation comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that the authors of research review article in the ACNP journal had concealed conflicts of interest. [1]

Furthermore, the article appears to have been ghostwritten by a writer paid by Cyberonics' communication management company. The lead author was the journal's editor in chief. The New York Times described the relationship in an editorial as, "incestuous."

Dr. Nemeroff, chairman of Psychiatry at Emory, a past president of the ACNP, is not an outlier in the profession. Indeed, Dr. Nemeroff and the ACNP are the key opinion leaders in psychiatry whose influence on research and treatment paradigms in psychiatry are the bedrock of this primarily commercial enterprise.

The case represents a microcosm of Biological psychiatry and its failure to rise to the level of a science-based medical discipline. Neither its diagnostic guide (DSM-IV), nor treatment guidelines (TMAP) are based on any validated scientific standards of professional judgment--they are based on the financial interests of those who write the standards. [3]

Most importantly, when this case is considered alongside the tainted antidepressant drug literature, only then does the magnitude of the disconnect between psychiatry's academic literature and the data that that literature is supposed to reflect.

For example, The Executive Summary of ACNP's Task Force on SSRIs and Suicidal Behavior in Youth, was issued by GYMR, a public relations firm in Washington (in January 2004) 10 days prior to an FDA advisory committee hearing about this issue. Just as the VNS article bye Nemeroff et al, acknowledged "editorial support in developing early drafts of this manuscript," the ACNP Report acknowledged "medical writing input."

Indeed, Dr. David Healy has noted: "There is probably no other area of medicine in which the academic literature is so at odds with the raw data. A possible explanation is that this literature has had a significant ghostwriting input, a possibility that the ACNP Task Force Report, published 10 days before the FDA hearing and widely seen as a pre-emptive strike at FDA, does nothing to dispel."

For a long time foollowing its dissemination to the press, the ACNP SSRI Task Force Executive Summary report was unavailable from ACNP offices. Those who wished to obtain a copy were referred to GYMR, whose medical writers, its website promised, "know how to take the language of science and medicine and transform it into the more understandable language of health". See GYMR website

Further underscoring its public relations value: "GYMR knows how to grab the attention of DC and national reporters--reporters who set the agenda for media in communities nationwide."

The message that GYMR disseminated with the ACNP logo was meant to deflect from the evidence by reassuring the public: "taking Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) or other new generation antidepressant drugs does not increase the risk of suicidal thinking or suicide attempts."

But, as Dr. Healy points out, the authors's diclaimer that "they might be mistaken in that they had not seen the raw data," is incomprehensible: "The authors of the Task Force Report include [Graham] Emslie, [Karen] Wagner and [Neil] Ryan who are authors on almost all of the randomized trials on SSRIs, in addition to study 329."

"On what basis," he asks, "can they claim not to have seen the raw data?" [5]

NY State Attorney General, Elliott Spitzer, characterized such partial concealment of data as FRAUD.

But what about the integrity of medicine and science?

Even after those reports of partial data have been discredited, they continue to be cited as authoritative. Indeed, the Final report of the ACNP Task Force continues to cite those studies as authoritative. [6]

Concealment of financial conflicts of interest is only one symptom of the disease.

Financial conflicts of interest permeate the entire fabric of medicine--but as the case example demonstrates, psychiatry is fartherst afield from acceptable conduct.

Fraudulent practices--such as, concealment of negative data, and clinical trials designed NOT to detect severe, though rare, adverse effects, have resulted in the approval of tainted drugs that injur and kill. The proliferation of expensive but worthless treatments is also bankrupting the public healthcare budget.

See also, comments by ACNP member, Dr. Bernard Carroll, retired chairman of psychiatry at Duke University, on his blog, Health Care Renewal (Tuesday, August 08, 2006) "Money and Medical Journals"

References:

1. Charles B Nemeroff, Helen S Mayberg, Scott E Krahl, James McNamara, Alan Frazer, Thomas R Henry, Mark S George, Dennis S Charney and Stephen K Brannan. VNS Therapy in Treatment-Resistant Depression: Clinical Evidence and Putative Neurobiological Mechanisms Neuropsychopharmacology (July, 2006) 31, 1345-1355.
see AHRP comments

3. ACNP Task Force on SSRIs and Suicidal Behavior in Youth. Executive Summary was issued by GYMR Communications without any accompanying data analysis. Whether the document was ghostwritten is anyone's guess. That study 377 will not be published at all because it failed. See this link

5. Among the published reports about Paxil study 329: Keller MB, Ryan ND, Strober M, Klein RG, Kutcher SP, Birmaher B et al (2001). Efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: a randomized, controlled trial. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 40: 762-772.; Montgomery SA, Dunner DL, Dunbar GC (1995). Reduction of suicidal thoughts with paroxetine in comparison with reference antidepressants and placebo. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 5: 5-13.

6. J John Mann, Graham Emslie, Ross J Baldessarini, William Beardslee, Jan A Fawcett, Frederick K Goodwin, Andrew C Leon, Herbert Y Meltzer, Neal D Ryan, David Shaffer and Karen D Wagner. ACNP Task Force Report on SSRIs and Suicidal Behavior in Youth, Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication 23 November 2005;

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org

From: Sarah Timm [mailto:stimm@ACNP.ORG]
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 1:01 PM
Subject: Memo from ACNP Council

Date: August 25, 2006
To: Membership
From: ACNP Council
Subject: Neuropsychopharmacology Editor

Charles B. Nemeroff, MD, PhD has notified the ACNP Council that he will not accept their May, 2006 offer of reappointment to a second term as Editor-in-Chief of Neuropsychopharmacology. Council has asked the Publications Committee to begin an immediate search for a new editor.

Dr. Nemeroff indicated that his decision was, in part, based on the recent adverse publicity to the journal and the ACNP.

Council appreciates the work that Dr. Nemeroff has done. During his tenure, a number of major innovations were instituted including the recruitment of 9 Field Editors in different subspecialty areas to handle the growing number of submissions, the introduction of the Point-Counterpoint Series, and the Complicated Case Series. The number of manuscript submissions per year increased from 489 to approximately 800, the number of published pages increased from 1836 to 2400, and the impact factor has risen from 4.497 to 5.369. Neuropsychopharmacology is currently ranked 5th of 90 psychiatry journals, 17th of 187 neuroscience journals and 22 of 198 pharmacology
journals.

Dr. Nemeroff has served as second longest Editor-in-Chief. Dr. Nemeroff has served the ACNP as a Council member, past president and Editor-in-Chief. Council is grateful to him for his efforts on behalf of the ACNP and wish him much success in his future endeavors.

Sarah S. Timm, CMP
American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
545 Mainstream Drive, Suite 110
Nashville, TN 37228
Phone: 615.324.2374
Fax: 615.324.2361
stimm@acnp.org

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Medical Journal Editor to Quit
In Wake of Disclosure Oversight
By DAVID ARMSTRONG
August 25, 2006 6:14 p.m.

The editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology is stepping down following a flap over the medical journal's failure to disclose that the authors of a paper reviewing a new treatment for depression had financial ties to the treatment's developer.

One of the authors of the article was the editor himself, Charles B. Nemeroff, who is the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta. In an email Friday, the owner of the medical journal said Dr. Nemeroff had decided to step down as editor. They said his decision was "in part, based on the recent adverse publicity to the journal."

Attempts to contact Dr. Nemeroff for comment were unsuccessful.

The medical journal is published by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a medical society comprised of scientists and physicians who study the brain and behavior. In an email to its members, the college said Dr. Nemeroff had been reappointed as editor in May.

Last month, the journal published a review of a new treatment for depression in which a small device is implanted in the chest to deliver mild electrical pulses to the vagus nerve in the neck. The Food and Drug Administration approved the device, made by Cyberonics Inc. of Houston, for use in treating depression last year. The authors conclude that vagus nerve stimulation is "a promising and well-tolerated intervention that is effective in a subset of patients with treatment-resistant depression."

Of the nine authors of the review, eight are academic researchers who serve as consultants to the company. None of those relationships were disclosed. The ninth author is an employee of Cyberonics, which was reported in the review article. On July 31, the journal published an online correction disclosing the consulting relationships.

Approval of the device was controversial and a U.S. Senate investigation found that FDA reviewers opposed use of the device for depression because Cyberonics didn't demonstrate reasonable assurances of safety and effectiveness.

Dr. Nemeroff, in a previous interview, said there was "no intent whatsoever on my part or any of my co-authors to hide the fact we were working in collaboration with Cyberonics."

He also says the identification of one author as a Cyberonics employee as well as a notation that the report was supported by a Cyberonics grant made clear the review was connected to the company. Dr. Nemeroff says he serves on two Cyberonics advisory boards but declined to say how much he was paid.

Write to David Armstrong at david.armstrong@wsj.com

RELATED ARTICLE

. Medical Reviews Face Criticism 07/19/06

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Blog of note

2006-08-23T23:53:00.000-04:00

Here's a new blog that all concerned about misconduct in the pharmaceutical industry should endeavor to read - it's called Scientific Misconduct Blog - worth the internet reading time.

Rat in'a Hat - Hamilton's new film

2006-08-23T06:25:00.000-04:00

Like the hype around Snakes on a Plane, Hamilton has been hyping its rat infestation - except Samuel L. Jackson hasn't called me yet to intimidate me into seeing the flick.

But I did get a call from my mum - all the way from the bush. And she asked me how our rat problem was fairing! How did she know that Hamilton had a rat infestation? Did the name of the blog give it away?

Let's be clear - the rats are on the 'Mountain' (tongue in cheek at mountain) - not us in the lower city - we just have bed bugs and neither one can the City's health department seem to resolve.

I guess the concept of letting some cats run loose on the mountain to eat up the rather large rats has been bantered about. Well, thaaat's great, not. Once the rat's fleas start biting the cats and then households take them in "because the cats are so cute" (or the rats are soooo cute), we can all expect to have an outbreak of bubonic plague.

But that's ok, you know, it's only the Mountain. There's a few individuals on the Mountain that I admit I'd have schadefreude if they got a ring around the rosie or two, or three or four...

Hey, wait a minute....damn!

Something just bit me....

what the?....

HEY!... Noooooo!

U.S. psychiatrist gets away with bad behaviour

2006-08-16T01:23:00.000-04:00

The Los Angeles Times
Probes Targeted UCI Researcher
Alleged ethical and financial breaches by Dr. Steven G. Potkin drew scrutiny
but no sanctions. The professor defends his activities.
By Christian Berthelsen
August 13, 2006

TV news personality Jane Pauley had a message to deliver in April when she
spoke at a fundraiser for UC Irvine's Brain Imaging Center. She told the 140
guests at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach about her battle with mental
illness and spoke in support of the research being done by the center's
director - and Pauley's brother-in-law - UCI psychiatry professor Steven G.
Potkin.

Potkin is one of UCI's biggest stars. The 60-year-old psychiatrist is among
the university's most prolific researchers. He brings in lucrative contracts
from some of the world's biggest drug companies and has presided over as
many as a dozen clinical trials at a time.

Recently, his investigation into nicotine's effects on the brain received
national attention. And in March, the university proudly trumpeted his role
in heading a $24-million National Institutes of Health project that will be
headquartered at UCI.

But at the same time Potkin has attracted funding and recognition for UCI,
he has also been investigated three times by the university for alleged
ethical or financial breaches, according to more than 300 pages of documents
obtained by The Times. And although Potkin says he was not disciplined as a
result the investigations, each raised serious questions about his practices
and how UCI dealt with the issues.

Most recently, administrators found in 2004 that the professor had skirted
the school's patient safety review board to test a drug for a pharmaceutical
company without the required university approval. When UCI learned of the
research, it ordered Potkin to immediately halt the study.

Seven years earlier, administrators looked into why Potkin had directed drug
companies to pay more than $2 million in research funds to a firm his family
owned. The payments were related to studies he was performing at UCI. The
university concluded that the company may have been set up to avoid UCI
overhead fees, and it prohibited Potkin from using the company in future
research projects.

UCI launched its first investigation of Potkin's work in 1989, four years
after the psychiatrist arrived at the university from the National
Institutes of Mental Health, where he specialized in schizophrenia research.
Fellow UCI doctors accused Potkin of wrongfully billing Medi-Cal for his
research. Although Medi-Cal rejected some billings for the clinical trial,
the state and UCI concluded that Medi-Cal was not defrauded.

Despite the repeated investigations, Potkin's star has continued to rise,
and this summer he was given a raise and a promotion.

The grants that researchers such as Potkin bring are an important source of
funds for universities. The publicity brings prestige that attracts
students, professors and donors, which is especially important for a school
such as UCI, which is still trying to build its reputation.

UCI's medical programs have been racked by problems in the last decade,
including the theft of eggs and embryos from patients, cancer research
violations, illicit sales of body parts and shortcomings in its liver,
kidney and bone marrow transplant programs. In each case, critics say,
warnings were ignored and serious problems downplayed.

Dr. Mike Samoszuk, a former pathology professor who left UCI late last year
to work as the chief medical officer for a medical device division of a drug
company, said that although he had no knowledge of the Potkin case, the
university's thirst for research funding may have caused it to look the
other way when ethical lapses were discovered.

"Even though clinical research is a noble and worthy activity, it's very
easy to lose your moral compass if your primary goal is the dollar amount of
grant funding that you generate,"Samoszuk said.

UCI said it couldn't discuss specifics of personnel matters. Potkin, in an
hourlong interview, defended his activities, saying that UCI administrators
approved his business dealings and that his work helped patients and the
university.

But documents provided by the university suggest that some of Potkin's
activities had not been approved by UCI.

In 2004, Potkin and psychiatry department co-chairman William E. "Biff"
Bunney applied to the university board that monitors human research for
permission to test an Alzheimer's drug for Praecis Pharmaceuticals, a small
company in Waltham, Mass. The request was not immediately approved.

The professors went ahead anyway, using a private company they had
previously formed to conduct the research at an assisted-living facility for
Alzheimer's patients in San Juan Capistrano.

The professors had previously signed an agreement with the university
allowing them to consult on clinical trials through their company but not to
work as principal investigators on a study through the firm. The agreement
was later modified to allow the professors to supervise principal
investigators through their company.

On learning that the men had gone ahead without university approval of a
study that listed them as principal researchers, Thomas Cesario, the dean of
UC Irvine's medical school, took swift action. In a Dec. 8, 2004, memo,
Cesario told the psychiatrists that he had learned of their outside trial
and that they were violating UCI policies. "We require this study be halted
immediately until further notice," he wrote.

In a letter to Cesario the next day, the doctors acknowledged that they were
listed as the principal researchers but said they were only providing
"management and consulting" services for another company. The company the
doctors said was running the trial, Pharmacologic Development Physicians
Inc., had been established two months earlier by Steven Mee, a former
medical school student under Potkin and Bunney who had completed his
residency the year before. Mee did not return a telephone call seeking
comment.

Potkin said he was not trying to avoid university scrutiny but, rather, had
moved the study out from under UCI's auspices because of a shortage of
psychiatry beds available for research. "What this issue has all been about
is the loss of research facility beds in a place that was supposed to do
research," Potkin said. "That was really the point. When we don't have beds
and don't have resources to do that, we have to come up with other solutions
to do that."

He also maintained that the amended permission form gave him approval to
conduct the trial and that UCI's policy for monitoring research did not
apply to "outside activities."
"I would agree that things could have been written more precisely," he said.
"There's no question in my mind that when we did this we had full approval
to do this."

Cesario thought differently.
"When you first conceived of the company with Biff, my clear understanding
was that this was a consulting business," Cesario wrote Potkin and Bunney on
Dec. 18, 2004. "It was not a business to run clinical trials outside of the
university."

In April 2005 someone complained anonymously about the Praecis trial to the
National Institutes of Health. The agency asked UCI whether a Potkin-owned
company had used NIH-funded school staff and resources for the research and
whether the doctors had performed a clinical trial without review board
approval. As a condition of receiving federal funding, research institutions
such as UCI must guarantee that its review boards will safeguard human
experiments.

"I'm surprised they didn't suffer a direct, immediate and tough penalty,"
said Dr. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the medical ethics department at the
University of Pennsylvania.

Cesario acknowledged in a letter to the NIH that the doctors had conducted
their research through a private company and that they had used UCI's
brain-imaging facilities. The letter also said the company paid for the
service, which was allowable under the NIH grant.

The letter, obtained as part of a public records request, was never sent.
UCI spokesman Tom Vasich said that before it was to be mailed, NIH said it
only wanted a financial audit. The three-page audit contained none of the
admissions in Cesario's unsent letter. The report said the auditors "found
no evidence" that NIH funds were used for Potkin's and Bunney's private
company. NIH accepted the university's findings and did not conduct its own
investigation. A spokesman for the agency would not comment on the case.

Potkin's research had earlier come under scrutiny in 1997, when
administrators asked questions about another outside company involved in his
work.

Research funds typically are paid to the university. But in 20 of Potkin's
studies, he arranged for drug companies to channel some funding directly to
the firm Pacific Clinical Studies, according to university documents.
Pacific Clinical Studies was owned jointly, by Potkin's brother Ralph, a
pulmonary care doctor, and a trust in their parents' names. Potkin told
university auditors that the money was used to pay staff used in recruiting
patients for studies and for patient costs such as pet boarding.

One Potkin client, Janssen, a drug firm in Titusville, N.J., became
"increasingly uncomfortable" with the payments it was making to PCS and
stopped making them, according to a June 1998 internal UCI memo. Janssen,
according to the memo, was worried because of the arrangement's similarity
to a case in which the chairman of the psychiatry department at the Medical
College of Georgia pleaded guilty to diverting research funding from the
school to a company he controlled. A spokesman for Janssen parent Johnson &
Johnson declined to comment.

The UCI audit, completed in September 1998, concluded that Potkin's actions
did not technically violate the university's nepotism policy, since PCS got
its money from the drug companies rather than from UCI. However, the audit
suggested that PCS "may have been established" to avoid paying university
overhead that is attached to research projects. The report said all of the
company's money came from Potkin's clinical trials, with the exception of
one his brother ran. The drug companies paid PCS $2.4 million.

Seven months after the audit was completed, Cesario and Frederic Wan, then
the vice chancellor for research, told Potkin that PCS could no longer work
on clinical trials at the university.

Potkin said in the interview that UCI knew about PCS' involvement, since it
was mentioned in the school's contracts with the drug companies. He said the
money PCS received was in addition to any research grant to UCI.

"Patients benefited," he said, "and more research was completed at the
university."

Vasich, the university spokesman, said that although UCI knew of the
company's involvement, Potkin did not reveal its ties to his family.

UCI investigated Potkin for the first time in 1989. Doctors there told
administrators that Potkin was inappropriately billing Medi-Cal for patients
in his research trials. Bills submitted for patients in Potkin's studies had
been turned down three times by Medi-Cal, documents show.

In response, Potkin called a meeting to present what UCI psychiatrist Dan
Bates described in an affidavit as a plan to "fool Medi-Cal into reimbursing
the department for unauthorized expenditures."

The sworn statement was one of four that UCI doctors and a psychologist
submitted in support of another physician who filed a complaint with UCI
alleging that he was retaliated against for making the Medi-Cal allegations.

In the affidavits, Bates and psychiatrist Chris Heh said Potkin directed
staff to keep two sets of records, disguising the names of the drugs that
patients were receiving on the version made available to Medi-Cal.

According to the affidavits, although patients were receiving the
experimental drugs Raclopride and Zacopride, one set of charts indicated
that patients had been given drugs labeled Haldol-R and Haldol-Z. Haldol is
an FDA-approved drug that is eligible for Medi-Cal reimbursement, while the
other drugs are not.

Several doctors and nurses complained to administrators, and documents show
the whistle-blowers thought that their warnings were ignored.

Larry Drake, a business manager for the psychiatry department, wrote to
department chairman Bunney, "If you recall several months ago, after hearing
of these issues, I suggested that you form a committee to review the ethics
of the research unit. This was not done!"

UCI eventually launched an audit. The results, issued in September 1990,
said there were no improprieties. It said Medi-Cal had approved payments for
the hospital stays of some patients in the research trials and that the
state had not been billed for experimental drugs.

The state attorney general's office did not file charges after conducting
its own inquiry.

In his interview with The Times, Potkin denied that billings were
inappropriate. He said Medi-Cal was billed only for the hospital stays of
patients before they were enrolled in the study.

He also said it was standard practice to keep two sets of charts in research
trials and that the notations were "absolutely not" done to justify Medi-Cal
billings. The drug labelings, he said, were a shorthand way of showing the
drugs were being tested againstHaldol.

In their affidavits, Drs. Heh and Nora Johnson said the drugs were being
tested against a placebo.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such
material is made available for educational purposes, to advance
understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and
social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair
use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C.
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profit.

Squealer alert #2

2006-08-14T00:25:00.000-04:00

It's amazing how when anything is mentioned about lawyers that those speaking about them or writing about access to them just pussy foot around this issue.

Take this article Chief justice warns of "epidemic'' of self representation in courts in the National Post that quotes Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin as trying to find an explanation of why Canadians are representing themselves in court.

What she has failed to say because she doesn't want to let the cat out of the bag is that Canada - more likely Ontario - is failing to administer justice or live up to its Charter obligations because if there is 40% of Canadians that represent themselves legally in a court of law, then it's about 45% percent who have no representation at all - including themselves - thus rendering the guaranteed right of equal protection and equal benefit under the law a cruel joke.

Here's an excerpt of what Chief Justice McLachlin had to say:

"Does the typical law firm's fee structure have anything to do with this?" she asked. "Can more creative ways be found to bill clients proportionate to the complexity and the value of the proceedings?"

Are lawyers fees a deterrent to getting access to legal services? YES

She elaborated at a news conference, cautioning that she is not calling on lawyers to change their billing methods, but simply pointing out that it is a prospect they may want to review.

Can you get any more wishy-washy than this?

"I think it's for the bar to answer than question," she said. "It would be presumptuous of me to say law firms should do this or that or the other thing but I raised it as a question for the bar to ask themselves."

Well, let me be presumptuous then. There is no access to justice or guaranteed rights for certain individuals in Canada. The legal community has thumbed their noses at the Constitution Act, 1982 and the Charter.

Check out how the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario champions access rights on their website.

Legal Aid Ontario (LAO), an independent agency funded largely by the Province of Ontario, is responsible for the delivery of high quality legal aid services to low-income individuals throughout Ontario.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. The first was on the Federal Minister of Justice's website stating that the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (C.E.D.A.W.) was not legally binding only morally. It's also an indication of how out of touch the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario is out of touch because it doesn't fit with the reality of what is happening in Ontario.

"Legal aid certificates are issued to eligible individuals, who can then retain a private lawyer of their choice. "

Of our choice? This is the most ridiculous thing that may have ever been written. What choice is there if the choice to choose from is 0?

If there is an epidemic for persons representing themselves - then it's beyond outrageous epidemic proportions for individuals not able to represent themselves nor have someone represent them.

A Scenario to Consider

What if we lived in a culture where, if a person has cancer, nothing is done about it? Or any other disease? What if we lived in a country that only offers limited services for those not able to afford a doctor? What would you do if you have cancer and called a clinic looking for medical services that provides for clients that can't give $3000 up front to private surgeons prior to surgery because the government told you that clinic covers cancer services?

When you call you find out that the clinic only serves indigent persons with hemorrhoids, reflux disease or athletes foot because only those diseases affect the poor.

You've been sent a document in mail that came from the government. That document told you as a Canadian your guaranteed medical services for cancer even if your poor, but you find out the hard way - by calling all the clinics and private doctors but they tell you they don't serve persons with cancer unless you have $3000 up front.

The private doctors to tell you to go to Wal-Mart to get the latest do-it-yourself surgery kit so you can operate on yourself but you find out it will take you 6 months to read the manual and you only have one month to live.

If the private doctors don't tell you to go to Wal-Mart, they tell you they are too busy to take you on as a patient so why don't you try the bigger medical firms in Toronto? Sometimes they tell you to go to the government subsidized medical clinics but when you tell them they only serves persons with athletes foot, they tell you contact another that you know only serve persons with ingrown toenails.

You then find out that there are other people with cancer, which isn't strange in itself because people get cancer. It's how they got it that is alarming. It's because the cancer is contagious and it spread from phone calls made to the Society of Clinics - a self-governing body that tries to lobby the government to prevent the sale of do-it-yourself-cancer-surgery kits from Wal-Mart and any other books or services that may make it easier for people to perform self-surgery.

When faced with the daunting task of self-surgery you call the local M.P.P's office and they tell you to go to Wal-Mart or call the Society of Clinics after all, it's not brain surgery.

U.S. Congress probes researchers & big pharma

2006-08-13T15:44:00.000-04:00

Congress to Probe Policies at NIH
A bipartisan group asks the health agency for details of a researcher's ties to drug companies to assess its conflict-of-interest guidelines.

By David Willman, Times Staff Writer
August 10, 2006

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of congressional leaders has asked the director of the National Institutes of Health to provide details of a senior researcher's ties to several pharmaceutical companies.

The congressional leaders, including the Republican chairman and the ranking Democrat of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in their letter that they wanted the details in order to evaluate conflict-of-interest policies at the NIH. They requested a response by week's end.

"We have received the letter, and NIH will be responding to the committee," NIH spokesman Donald Ralbovsky said Wednesday.

The senior researcher, Dr. Thomas J. Walsh of the National Cancer Institute, helped lead clinical trials that used the companies' drugs to treat suspected fungal infections in patients with compromised immune systems. Walsh also appeared alongside company representatives at various U.S. Food and Drug Administration meetings regarding antifungal products made by the companies.

Two of the companies, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co., have acknowledged paying Walsh fees in recent years.

According to the congressional letter, the Energy and Commerce Committee "is seeking to determine if there is a sufficient factual basis to formally investigate questions about National Institutes of Health policy, the adequacy of NIH oversight or other issues that may be raised by the conduct of this NIH scientist."

The July 28 letter was signed by Rep. Joe L. Barton, R-Texas, the committee's chairman; Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat; Rep. Edward Whitfield, R-Ky., the chairman of the panel's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee; and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.

The letter was prompted by articles published July 16 by the Los Angeles Times, which reported Walsh's appearances with the companies at the FDA meetings, his acceptance of fees from Merck and Pfizer, and his leadership role with the clinical trials.

Walsh's fees were not among the industry payments reported by the NIH to the congressional committee two years ago, when the panel first examined potential conflicts of interest among agency scientists.

The Times also reported that, when results of two of the clinical trials were published in 1999 and in 2004, controversy flared as other scientists questioned whether dosages of "control" drugs used in the studies were adequate. The dosages were set by the scientists who designed and carried out the research in collaboration with the sponsoring companies.

U.S. conflict-of-interest law generally prohibits a federal employee from representing an outside party before a government agency. Walsh, in earlier comments to the newspaper, said that he appeared before the FDA not as a company representative but "as a government scientist providing information and/or evaluation" regarding clinical trials.

As for the dosages, Walsh and researchers with whom he collaborated had said that the studies were properly conducted and followed accepted standards of care. Both studies' designs were reviewed and approved by the FDA and by boards at the medical sites where patients were treated.

In their letter to the NIH director, the four congressional leaders requested a wide range of documents, including all internal financial-disclosure reports filed by Walsh from 1995 to 2005.

The letter also requested copies of any related policy that "permits [NIH] scientists as part of their official duties to assist drug companies with presentations to FDA advisory committees or FDA staff."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (© ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Squealer alert

2006-08-11T07:39:00.000-04:00

Jeepers, I'm going to write something about this when I've got more time.

I've just come across the Board of Directors list for St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton. I appears that Tony Valeri is on the board as well as Dr. John Kelton the Dean of Medicine at McMaster. Kevin Smith the CEO of St. Joseph's hospital is also a professor at McMaster.

Talk about conflicts. This is the City of Conflicts. I think the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act was written with Hamilton in mind.

McMaster and St. Joe's, I've been told by a very respected doctor of medical research ethics that worked for St. Joe's, that what the doctor did by disclosing my name without my consent was illegal. He also told me that McMaster was worse at disclosing patient's names for clinical studies without consent than St. Joe's was. The problem is that both of these "professional" institutions would do it at all.

It is illegal but Marg Doma the Risk Manager at St. Joseph's in Hamilton says "they don't do anything illegal".

Riiiggght. Were's Squealer? Did he fall off his ladder?

As for Valeri, I don't see anything conflicting, yet. The only issue for me is that a guy who lied to the Federal Ethics Commissioner about his property and then to the Spectator could certainly influence the thinking of the other board members and their policies about "illegal" disclosure practices.

But still I wonder how much his influence had on St. Joe's or McMaster getting federal funding, if any?

You know, if it wasn't for bloggers then these stories wouldn't hit the front pages. HR was the first to contact a City Planner about Valeri's building permit explanation and posted it here before the Hamilton Spectator came up with the idea.

But I've heard Hyde nor Hare from The Spec - most likely because they read this blog!

Big Pharma charged with fraud

2006-08-09T15:13:00.000-04:00

This is an alert from the Taxpayer's Against Fraud based out of the United States with a link from the PharmLive website:

The Attorney General of South Carolina, Henry McMaster announced today that the State of South Carolina has filed a lawsuit to recover over $40 million in taxpayer funds. McMaster believes several pharmaceutical companies fraudulently manipulated the prices of Medicaid and State Health Plan prescription drug claims.

[...]

The Attorney General’s office began reviewing this matter approximately one year ago. The defendants named in the State’s lawsuit are:

Abbott Laboratories, Inc.;
Baxter International, Inc. and its subsidiary Baxter Healthcare Corporation;
Dey, L.P., formerly known as Dey Laboratories;
Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane, Inc. and its subsidiaries Roxane Laboratories, Inc. and Ben Venue Laboratories, Inc.;
Schering-Plough Corporation and its subsidiaries Warrick Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Schering Corporation.

Since 1995, South Carolina Medicaid has spent over $300 million on prescription drugs from these companies and the State Health Plan of South Carolina has spent over $100 million.

The State will allege that the pharmaceutical companies intentionally misreported the average wholesale price (AWP) of selected drugs which increased the reimbursements paid by Medicaid and the State Health Plans, thereby overcharging South Carolina taxpayers over $40 million dollars.

Boy, wouldn't it be nice if Ontario's Attorney General made such announcements?

Waiting for Gadot...

2006-08-07T15:46:00.000-04:00

I probably should (or shouldn't) comment on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. I spoke to my sis about it and she was worried that it would evolve into something very serious - like an all out third world war. I told her I wasn't worried. She asked me why?

While it does bother me that Israel invaded Lebanon, Hezbollah is an antagonist and I think the whole of the Middle East has to just get over the fact that Israel is not going anywhere. They are staying exactly where they are so the whole Islamo-fascist movement has to be dissolved.

But lets face it. Most of us are pretty sick and tired of listening about this issue that we have decided to ignore the Palestinians and the Israelis altogether.

Unless America wants to just swing over to the area and add a few of their soldiers to make everything hunky dory. Hopefully that would mean until those in the Middle East mature enough to stop pointing the finger at each other and work out their problems no one is going to listen to accusations of who has moral authority. Having the Americans there will make sure they play nice.

I'm all for Israeli aggression until Hezbollah is unarmed because the rest of us can't stand the idea of having anyone's religion dictate to us what we can and can't do, what we should or shouldn't do nor do we want to feel bullied or threatened by theocracies that have as part of its ideology hatred of Israel that's bred into its young children.

But the rhetoric is nothing different from what I've been listening to in Southern Ontario for the past 12 years from my friends from this area.

Windsor has probably one of the largest Shiite populations and Hezbollah supporters in Canada. Local politicians are benefiting from this male dominated community that they are no doubt influenced by political attitudes as are the rest of us.

I was influenced by the propaganda until it started getting ridiculous.

My buddy who's a Kurd, loves George Bush and grew up in the Middle East told me about a Canadian guy that came into his shoppe. He was spewing propaganda about Bush, was supportive of al Qaeda and the deaths of the innocent people from the World Trade Centres collapse and the death of our troops in Afghanistan. This guy was supportive of the Hezbollah but liked to patronize his Oakville neighbours by smoking Pot in his front yard. (He's probably just pissed off that the Canadian troops are interfering with the opium production in Afganistan).

The guy, you would assume, was from the Middle East or somewhere sympathetic. He wasn't, he was very Canadian, meaning - he had no background or family ties to the Middle East. He was bent on dogma and ideology alone - the same stuff I heard from unions - like CUPE.

When the 17 Canadian guys from Mississauga were arrested and arraigned on terrorism charges months ago, a guy I was "dating" told me he agreed with the accusation by the ring leader of these 17 that Canadian soldiers were raping Afghani women. As usual this was just indicative of the propaganda he was gleaning from his Sudanese community in Mississauga.

All this from a guy that hates that women get housing because they come from women's shelters. Yes, I agree that women getting housing from the shelter system has grown into a scam here in Hamilton but this guy should talk while he is working for cash and collecting his unemployment insurance benefits and has found some guy from Pakistan to forge a fake emissions certificate and has tried to hide from his grown children that he had a girlfriend, drank alcohol and has friends who traffik in Kat - a narcotic from Yemen or in Pot.

The hypocrysy and propaganda I'm seeing on a macro level with this conflict, I've seen from a micro level for the last 12 years. The stuff above is just a drop in the hypocrysy bucket but eventually it does become tiring. I've corrected my errors in judgement about the men I date, but it has left me quite indifferent to the propaganda wars and the conflicts of the Middle East. It's also given me reason to believe that Middle Eastern men are full of a lot of hot air when they belch their propaganda.

But if I have to lean, I'm leaning with Israel because I want to see if the Hezbollah will get a warhead with nuclear material from Iran, or from another entity. Not that I wish this fate on Israel - they are taking a chance when they invade a country that puts them in danger. But it will prove that Iran was lying all along, wouldn't it?

Even then, I'm not worried that it's the end of days and the coming of the Messiah, the Mahdi or Gadot.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish my Oracles of Notradamus...

LGF busts Hezbollah propagandist

2006-08-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

Wowzer...been so distracted by other writing that I forgot I had a blog.

But what spurred me to write was seeing Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs on CNN about 20 minutes ago.

I've kinda been oblivious to the war between Israel and the Hezbollah - not because I don't care but because it's just more of the same stuff that's been going on since I had converted and left Islam.

Why did LGF catch my attention? Well it seems that bloggers have a clever eye and exposed a Lebanese photographers doctored photos for Reuters to make it look like the bombing from Israel was worse that it was. With some help from photo-shop there was added smoke and buildings from a copy tool. LGF has a whole series on his blog which will probably be a dedicated section in time but for now it's on the main page. You can access it here but it is a little slow - for obvious reasons

I guess all that bombing dust got in the way of the photo-shop mouse and the pic had to be enhanced...

It happened this day...

2006-07-25T20:35:00.000-04:00

July 25, 1956

The Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast, killing 51 people.

In Canadian History...

July 25, 1759 - British capture Fort Niagara from French in the 7 Years' War

In European History...

July 25, 1938 - Jewish artisans not allowed in Germany. See this link Entartete Kunst the Third Reich's signling out of German artists they considered 'degenerate'

Marc Chagall

Paul Klee

Max Ernst

In American History...

July 25, 1972 - US health officials concede blacks were used as guinea pigs in 40 year syphilis experiment

Moon Landing Anniversary

2006-07-21T12:29:00.000-04:00

I forgot to wish everyone a happy Apollo 11 walking-on-the-moon anniversary yesterday - July 20, 1969.

That was 37 years ago.

On July 20, 1969 I was 4 years old and camping with my family at Point Pelee National Park. Now that was a long time ago because public camping was stopped at Point Pelee not too long afterwards.

We had our monstrous blue army issue tent that reeked of smoldering canvas or mildew or both. We couldn't tell the difference anyway - canvas to us was the baked smell of mildew when heated in the sun. That tent was the kind with two rooms separated by large metal zippers. The front had a dining area as it had the large screened in windows. The back area had smaller windows that had flaps and canvas ties on the outside which we kids used to untie when our older brothers and cousins were changing into their swim suits.

Dad brought our little black and white T.V and my sister our pet raccoon - Racky, which she most likely named after the Beatles song. Dad and my uncle brought their cases of stubbies - Molson Canadian or Export and sat on their little foldable lawn chairs watching the moon landing.

Dad was always aware of the importance of history and duly documented historical events, either by keeping copies of the Windsor Star at the time of the Kennedy assassination, taking my older siblings to the edge of the Detroit River so they could watch the riots from the quiet Canadian side or take consecutive photos of the Edmund Fitzgerald as it passed between Windsor and Detroit.

On that black and white day Dad used his 8 millimeter to film our little black and white television as it televised the radio signals from the moon. We kids stared at the black and white for as long as our attention span allowed us, occasionally jumping up after sitting quietly cross-legged while remnants of pine needles, twigs, patches of grass and a member of an ant colony stuck to us.

I'm a fan of technology and of the space missions. I learned to read with Mr. Mugs, those grade school readers whose characters went to the moon and lived in space stations. Our grade one class painted a large moon mural and my best friend got to wear a space outfit and climb a ladder so our beautiful teacher - whom we all adored- took a short film of Ricky waving his arms and sending his greeting from our only satellite.

So I thought it was only fitting to celebrate this anniversary watching an Australian film about a radio telescope and it's nerdy heroes in a film called The Dish. It's subtle humour and innocent beauty gives a snap shot of day to day life during this time period in the '60's gives it it's endearing quality. A great 60's sound track completes the nostalgia.

Summertime hues

2006-07-15T05:15:00.000-04:00

Update: here's a link to a very good article from yesterday's National Post on why the sky is blue in case one of your kids or grandkids ask...

Here's some pics from 50 Point Conservation Area heading towards St. Catherines and Niagara on the Lake.

This wasn't enhanced - the sky looked pretty well that colour and the grass was scorched from the heat of the last few weeks.

While my buddy streched out under a tree reading an Arabic version of Colin Wilson, I was preoccupied with my camera.

As this trip wasn't planned and my bathing suit at home, I was tempted to go down to the beach and swim in my underwear.

This is looking back towards Burlington and Hamilton. Notice the light house on the spit.
To the left is a large marina and boat launch.

The sky in southern Ontario is usually pretty hazy and grey - mostly from the smog combined with the level of humidity

2006-07-10T03:53:00.000-04:00

Congratulations Italy...

Blog lite

2006-07-10T01:55:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Italy for winning the world cup. Here's a few pics to highlight the celebration in Hamilton's little Italy.

Those of use who have been hooked on football for the last month can get back to enjoying other things other than world cup - like the rest of the summer.

I'm going to blogging lite for awhile as I'm writing a very broad human systemic rights submission against a number of organizations, institutions and Ministries in Ontario.

Yeah well...Somebody's gotta do it...

Things to do

I'd keep an eye out for more documentaries about big pharma and big stocks in the MSN and if I can get distracted enough to right about it - it appears that RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli's 2000 news conference about organized crime infiltrating Parliament and the courts has it's first curious evidence of truth - the dropping of murder charges against a known biker leader and the possible reasons: see this and see this article from the Hamilton Spectator.

Don't get too cozy knowing that Hamilton is free from the political influences of organized crime. While trying to convince the rest of us that there is no connection to mob racketeering or Soprano type violence - Judy MacDonald Musitano is the only candidate running for Ward 2 counselor in the next Hamilton municipal election.

Yeah. Right.

Have a look at this link from the Niagara Falls Reporter and from laborers.com a website dedicated to fighting racketeering within the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA).

If your not sure who these guys are, here's a little backgrounder or here

Those links should keep you busy for awhile while I blog lite for the next little while. I'll post some pics from time to time on my adventures around Hamilton or other places in Ontario.

If not here are a few other suggestions:

On Friday July 14 there is another artcrawl in Jamesville from 7 to 10pm. This event there is a new gallery that focuses on film. There will be 10 minute short films run throughout the evening.

The Hamilton Waterfront Trust has come up with a great way to see some of Hamilton's prettiest nature areas. If your down by the bay area (north end of Hamilton) everyday in the summer you can catch a wheelchair accessible trolley that takes you from various points along the waterfront - all for $2 all day.

Yes that right. Two dollars. I'm not kidding!

So park your car any of the 12 trolley stop locations and hitch a ride. A round trip is an hour and a half but is worth the scenery and the relaxation. You can start off at Williams Coffee Pub at Pier 8 and take the trolley right to Princess Point where you can get off, hike the trails, have a picnic and then take the trolley back to your car. This is a great outing for families that is extremely affordable.

While your here check out the Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. It's a very small show - 5 pieces - but a very-oh-so-worth-it lesson on canvas into Van Gogh's artistic journey into Impressionism.

On August 11 & 12 Hamilton hosts its Carnival its version of Caribana. Like most events passing through Jamesville the parade makes it's way up James Street North and into Bayfront Park.

Some cities have to build their own lakes and waterfalls but Hamilton have these natural beauties given to them from mother nature. Be adventurous and check out the 32 accessible waterfalls this summer - or be adventurous and discover new ones this summer.

Ciao for now,

HR

2006-07-01T05:41:00.000-04:00

Happy Canada Day...

Happy Tax Cut Day

2006-07-01T05:03:00.000-04:00

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has unveiled a new GST sign in Ottawa yesterday signaling the reduction of the GST from 7% down to 6%

That's his little gift to us Canadians for Canada Day.

Press Release from the PMO's office:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper marks GST reduction

June 30, 2006
Ottawa, Ontario

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper marked the lowering of the Goods and Services Tax today at a department store in Ottawa, Ontario, reminding all Canadians that they will pay less for everything they buy as of Canada Day.

"Canada's New Government is committed to lower taxes, and we are pleased that lowering the GST to six per cent is just one of the many tax cuts contained in Budget 2006," the Prime Minister said. "This single tax reduction will mean nine billion more dollars will be kept in the pockets and bank accounts of Canadians over the next two years."

Joined by the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister unveiled a new sign that will appear in retails stores across Canada telling consumers the GST rate has been reduced to six per cent.

Today's announcement is but the initial step. The Government is committed to further cutting the GST to five per cent, which will result in more savings for all Canadians.

Under Canada's New Government, Canadians are saving more money. In Budget 2006, 29 separate tax cuts were introduced, representing more tax relief than in the four previous federal budgets."

*********************************************************************************

You know I just realized that the feds have their signs all ready in order to introduce the tax cuts for today.

Now compare that to the Ontario government when they introduce new legislation - such as the Smoke Free Ontario Act - and they have nothing ready. No signs, no education of by-law officers and therefore, no enforcement.

The Ontario government does things so quickly they don't consider how to implement changes in law effectively nor do they consider how badly it's engineered when the laws are monitored by individuals who have no legal background and then arbitrarily change the law as they see fit.

They've done the same with the Personal Health Information Protection Act and I have a feeling they are going to do the same with the Persons with Disabilities Act that is supposed to have Ontario employers comply with these employment standards for persons with disabilities ten years from its enactment. (I wish I knew how to add a sound wave with a chorus of laughter)

Ontario employers are going to keep doing what they've been doing and not comply with any of the legislation and the government will continue to appoint incompetent friends and neighbours to enforce it and then sit on their arses and do nothing about it when it isn't enforced.

When pigs fly it's a beautiful sight but watch out for the dumps

2006-06-29T08:09:00.000-04:00

Holy Geez...the government of Ontario is going to increase Legal Aid funding by $13 million and citing the new Access to Justice Act, 2005 which hasn't been passed yet will help "address the issue of unrepresented litigants". See this press release from yesterday

This is good news. But it's just a shine job for now - until it's actually working and helping people I won't give the Liberals credit for it.

If the Liberals increased legal aid funding by 10% or $ 25 million - it isn't showing in increased access to legal services - because legal aid offices are still wringing their hands at being able to deny applicant's certificates especially - those who are unfortunate enough to be caged within Ontario mental health abuse system.

If the system was working I wouldn't have had to commence a human rights complaint against the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Law Society of Upper Canada, Legal Aid Ontario, Law Foundation of Ontario and LibraryCo - all under s.s 1;10 (3) and 11 (1) & (2) of the Ontario Human Rights Code (Code linked to the left)

Good grief not good government

2006-06-28T07:32:00.000-04:00

Oh my God…I want to cry.

After speaking with yet another Hamilton police officer and being denied services – yet again, I end up perusing the net and find that the American Department of Justice has a special department that investigates and prosecutes hospitals in order to uphold disability rights!

See the DOJ website.

What the hell is going on in Canada then? Committing crimes against humanity that allows individuals with disabilities – in particular those branded mental illness – to be abused to the point of near death or death that’s what.

Here is an example what recent protections the DOJ has been involved in – in this case it investigated four hospitals in California that were violating the civil rights of their institutionalized patients within their mental health facilities.

Excerpts:

“Individuals in the care of the State are entitled to be safe and provided with adequate services to promote their mental health and rehabilitation,” said Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division”

[…]

“A mental health patient in many ways is more vulnerable than other citizens, and therefore particularly needs to be protected from undue harm,” said United States Attorney Debra Wong Yang. “The settlement will lead these well-known and often-used hospitals to enact sweeping changes that will improve the lives of hundreds of patients.”

[…]

“The Department found a pattern and practice of preventable suicides and serious, life threatening assaults on residents by staff and other residents”

I hope our Ministers of Justice are reading this and will start to proactively uphold the rights of individuals with disabilities like they are in the United States instead of burying their heads in the sand and being complicit in the abuse.

One method to stop this systemic discrimination is to have 'a minister of the Crown' to designate police officers to take an information on all offenses that have been violated under various provincial legislation that have an offense clause in it.

I'm getting tired of hearing police officers - provincial offenses officer - as clarified in the definitions of the Provincial Offenses Act* - instead of them telling victims they aren’t interested in protecting their legislated rights.

(* there is a new currency of this Act that refers to and will be amended to (?) the Good Government Act, 2006)

Consumer Alert

2006-06-27T20:44:00.000-04:00

Recall -- Firm Press Release

FDA posts press releases and other notices of recalls and market withdrawals from the firms involved as a service to consumers, the media, and other interested parties. FDA does not endorse either the product or the company.

Sage Products Inc. Issues a Voluntary Recall of Comfort Shield® Perineal Care Washcloths in the U.S. and Canada

Contact:
Sage Products Inc.
1-800-323-2220

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Cary, IL -- June 23, 2006 -- Sage Products Inc., of Cary, Illinois, is initiating a voluntary recall of specific lots of Comfort Shield Perineal Care Washcloth product codes due to contamination with Burkholderia cepacia. See identified lots, below.

Code # Lot # Dates shipped

7403 1301 02/10/06 - 02/13/06

7403 1312 02/13/06 - 03/02/06

7403 1312 02/13/06 - 03/02/06

7403 1457 02/24/06 - 03/01/06

7403 1677 05/02/06 - 05/03/06

7408 1848 04/18/06

7503 1999 05/03/06 - 05/16/06

7524 2070 05/01/06 - 05/15/06

7524 2086 05/11/06 - 05/15/06

7905 1766 03/22/06 - 06/12/06

7503-M 1702 04/13/06

7503-M 1995 04/13/06 - 05/19/06

Burkholderia cepacia can cause serious infections including pneumonia and bacterial sepsis in immunocompromised persons, persons with cystic fibrosis (CF), in hospitalized patients in general as well as certain other patient groups. No other lots of Comfort Shield Perineal Care Washcloths from Sage Products are known to be affected by this recall.

The product was distributed to hospitals, medical centers and long-term care facilities in the U.S. and Canada. There was no known distribution through retail sales. Sage Products initiated this recall after receiving and investigating a Canadian complaint on lot 1457 of off odor. At the present time, Sage Products Inc has received no reports of patient injury. This voluntary recall is being conducted with the knowledge of the Food and Drug Administration.

Customers who have the affected lots of these products should stop usage, sale and distribution, and should contact Sage Products to coordinate product return and replacement. Product is available for immediate replacement and no stock outage is anticipated. To arrange for product replacement, contact Customer Service at 1-800-323-2220. Return affected product only, to Sage Products Inc, 3909 Three Oaks Road, Cary, IL 60013, attention: Customer Service.

Summertime and the livin' is...

2006-06-26T06:08:00.000-04:00

Well...Summer is here and so are the vast array of events in almost every city and town in Canada as well as summer rituals.

On of those rituals for me is reading books. Last summer I posted a number of book reviews as this time of year I find conducive to settle into some good reading - either under the shade of a maple tree, in a cafe sipping a glass of wine or relaxing in a hot bath - which I'll probably be doing more of lately since the arthritis is effecting me so badly over the last couple of days I'm having difficulty walking.

This means also, it is too painful to sit and write and post on the blog until I'm able bear it - and for now, I'm not even though there is so much political news to comment on or interesting stories to write about.

I just finished the Tennessee Williams play 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. The most enjoyable part of Tennessee Williams is reading Tennessee Williams writing about Tennessee Williams, which is what I did before commencing this little Signet book containing the script that also included an essay by T.W originally published in the New York Times drama section on November 30, 1947.

I picked the script up because of my fascination with Marlon Brando. After seeing the movie version directed by Elia Kazan an number of times I didn't quite get why Blanche was picked up by a psychiatric nurse and doctor at the end of the movie. I knew there was a rape involved but I didn't quite get where it occurred because in the movie version of the play it was removed.

It turns out that Stanley Kowalski raped his wife's sister but the wife didn't believe Blanche when she told her so she had the state institution come and pick her up because her sister thought she was delusional. Everyone played along with the game wanting to believe that Blanche was crazy enough to be institutionalized because of her alleged immorality but Stanley gets away with his abuse as it is used against her. There are also issues of inter-cultural marriages and friendships in New Orleans, which at that time in the United States was pretty well still taboo.

I could continue here but I won't for various reasons and one of them is that this short story has inspired me to write my own essay or script based on the fact I think Blanche and Stanley are missing some nuances of psychology and the familial relationship between the two sisters is interesting to explore.

Another book I'm on the verge of finishing is 'What looks like Crazy on an ordinary day' by Pearl Cleage - an Oprah's Book Club find in a second hand clothing/furniture shoppe.

I'm back home in Windsor and Detroit in my imagination with this book since the characters tell their story in a rural setting in Michigan. The main character Ava, who has sold her hair salon in Atlanta, Georgia due to complications from her recent HIV positive diagnosis, returns there to stay with her sister - what is supposed to be temporarily. It's the language that reminds me of home, even Windsor is written about in the book as is the inevitabilities of Detroit.

So, with more good books in mind I'm off from posting for awhile. I wish everyone to thoroughly enjoy the beginnings of summer festivals, picnics, swims and of course and the rest of vacations. Until, I remain, your

HR

Consequences of Rae

2006-06-22T02:16:00.000-04:00

Breath a sigh of relief. The Supreme Court of Canada has given its decision on the consequences of misconduct of a spouse in divorce proceedings. If they didn't rule on the consequences of actions or bad behaviour in a divorce case then it would obliterate the psychological effects of emotional abuse in domestic relationships.

To prove the wife ended up with the symptoms of a mental illness due to her trauma was the defense's arguement why she shouldn't get alimony in the first place. That she ended up bitter and obsessive sounds like the symptoms of trauma from lack of a sense of justice. If there were no closure she would have ended up - God forbid - in the Canadian mental health system - where she surely would end up with a serious mental illness if she didn't have a bona fide one in the first place trying to deal with the luck of the draw.

I know the S.C.C has made a decision to open up a divorce decision - when an individual was taken advantage of, but specifically I'm waiting for the S.C.C to decide on misconduct by the State in divorce proceedings.

Yes, removal or denial of the access to proper legal services can and has caused trauma for individuals causing the symptoms of mental illness mostly due to the sense of a lack of justice - such as denial of legal aid certificates by mismanagement of legal aid funds by the Law Society, corruption of opposing lawyers, corruption of advocating lawyer, corruption of Legal Aid Ontario, having no lawyer present a client when attending court - all against the person's will, undermining Charter rights, and in general being taken advantage of by a 'questionable legal system'.

I'm waiting to exhale on that one - but not until the government comes up with some statistics on how many people in Ontario were adversely affected - with emotional trauma - by the legal aid cuts in 1997 that were precipitated by the mismanagement of legal aid funds by the Ontario Legal Aid Plan (OLAP) while it was under the umbrella of of the Law Society who "lost" $100 million dollars in 1994, which is still "not accounted for " today.

Back in 1994 when Bob Rae was Ontario's Premiere, he didn't have the mind to order a forensic audit to find out where the money went to back then while Allan Rock was the treasurer of the Law Society of Ontario. It took another four years to remove legal aid from the jaws of the Law Society - but not before the provincial Conservative government n Ontario commissioned a report to do so, which was enough evidence to support that mismanagement was the rationale to pull it from the LSUC.

But Rae, not inquiring why so much money was lost was just a foreshadowing of the Liberal mismanagement to come. This is why it makes complete sense to me that Rae is now vying to be leader of the federal Liberal Party. He's with the old dogs with their old ways of leadership that continue to lift their legs and piss over the people of Canada - like he did to Ontarians - for many, the reasons mentioned above.

Hey Zeus!

2006-06-21T14:18:00.000-04:00

Ever want to capture a lightining bolt?
I managed to get this one by waiting for a lightning strike by video-taping the storm.

Afterwards, I broke up the video with sequential stills broken into 30 frames/second and looked for the ones that caught the bolt.

What was interesting about this frame is that the camera captured spots of fuschia at various intervals up the bolt. I'm not sure if you can see them in this pic or not, particularly near the top, middle and bottom of the bolt, but compared to the other frames these fuschia spots on this one showed up more obviously.

Those into spectrum analysis may find it of some interest. Perhaps the heat is reacting with the surrounding atmosphere to cause a chemical reaction thus creating a particular gas at these places which can be determined by the colour (not my forte) or maybe my camera is just reacting to the intensity of the heat.

It took about 8 frames to capture the bolt altogether. This is the last frame where you can see just a hint of where the bolt was.

Now, on a lighter side - with pun intended - how 'bout this bongonews article on God sending a lightning bolt to zap Ted Kennedy...

Have cheek, insert tongue

2006-06-20T23:24:00.000-04:00

HR's quote of the month club:

"The complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working" - Shanti Goldstein

Bill C-2

2006-06-20T10:53:00.000-04:00

Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Simcoe North, was singled out in the House of Commons for voting for a tourism Bill instead of excusing himself from the vote that would directly benefit himself and his business financially (see bio).

He was accused by a Bloc Quebecois MP of an apparent conflict of interest as Bill C-2 - the Federal Accountability Act - was being debated in the House of Commons regarding motions 6 and 7 that were re-introduced to the Bill after they amended in Committee, in particular the clause that would re-add a conflict of interest clause to prohibit MP's from voting in matters that would benefit themselves financially, in which that the member of Simcoe North voted against.

Pat Martin had at 'em though - blasting the other opposition parties for sabotaging the Accountability Act in Committee, in particular the Liberals. He gave a stern warning to the Liberals that if they continued to get in the way of passing the Accountability Act that they would be exposed in Parliament and publicly. I'd love to know what in particular Mr. Martin was speaking about but way to go Pat!

James Moore, Parliamentary Secretary gave an excellent submission to Parliament today on the legal and criminal aspects of the new Act. There was particular concern about a clause in the Bill that may infringe on a criminal proceeding and independence of the Canadian judiciary so it was taken out - to which the Liberals wanted it kept in (perhaps to create a wrench in possible future proceedings?)

The Liberals are pushing for more time to go through the clauses as they saw they are trying to make "good laws". The Liberals voiced concerns that Bill C-2 shouldn't be ammended to Bill C-11 because it was never officially recognized by giving it Royal Ascent - but if they checked the information noted on the link - they would see that it had Royal Assent on the 25th of November 2005.

This is one problem I see with Bill C-11

Another major amendment is the inclusion of segments of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) within the scope of the bill. In the original bill, the RCMP, along with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment, was excluded from the definition of “public sector.”

In the current bill members of the RCMP, including special constables and those employed in a capacity similar to that of a member, are considered public servants.

Hmmm...

So who is monitoring the RCMP - the Department of Justice?

Wind Power

2006-06-19T06:51:00.000-04:00

Here's an article from the Seattle Times on the benefits of wind power - one couple - whose farm land was compromised by strong winds blowing away rain clouds - will receive more than $160,000 in annual royalties for having 45 wind turbines on their land put up by the Big Horn project.

Not bad money for having someone else do the work for you.

I've often wondered why native reserves didn't get into wind power energy production.

Massacre suspects arrested in Winnipeg

2006-06-16T10:19:00.000-04:00

The National Post reports there will be a news conference announced in Winnipeg this morning for a number of arrests in the murders of 8 bikers on a rural farm near London Ontario a number of months ago. One of those arrests includes a former Winnipeg police officer turned Bandito biker.

Of course I posted this because one was a former police officer...

I guess you'd have to read my original post on this subject to understand why this may be interesting to some.

Royal Crest Lifecare

2006-06-16T02:59:00.000-04:00

And here is another topsy turvy turn in the life of Hamilton's old age home sagas - John Martino of Royal Crest Lifecare died in a car accident Thursday morning - The Hamilton Spectator reports.

An excerpt:

"The bankruptcy cases drew attention in March 2004 when a judge admonished the brothers for not giving plausible explanations for what had happened to a combined $4 million of income earned in the few years leading up to bankruptcy.

[...]

Last October, the RCMP launched an investigation of the Martinos' bankruptcies to determine if there was any intent to defraud creditors or conceal funds. A spokesperson said yesterday the investigation will continue. "

Stay tuned to this saga - apparently a few well known Canadian bloggers are onto this one.

Another must read

2006-06-16T02:00:00.000-04:00

Holy Quran Batman! - besides the excellent broadcast from Thursday's The National on the CBC on the explanation of how Quranic verses can be interpreted to support violent Islam - read this one on how a Canadian convert went for Islam version Extreme! back to his Canadian sensibilities and started taking on the extremists.

And I thought I was the only person who thought the same way this guy does. I am no longer alone hiding behind my fan in an HR blog.

Port Security?

2006-06-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

In the previous post there is a pic where a gate is shown closed because a ship is moored at Pier 8 which is just adjacent to the Canada Marine Discovery Centre. That gate opens to allow public access past a large warehouse for Dofasco and Stelco overflow.

If you continue down this trail you'll end up at a street intersection which will take you into this area as shown in the pic to the right. The sign to the left in the pic is another "No Entry" sign but I was able to get past the gate in the background which was wide open and make my way right next to the ship pictured below.

I took this pic outside the gates after I left the restricted area because I didn't think to take pics at the time as I was actually looking for an exit to the road that led me right to this mooring - in which I was able to get right up next to the ship on the other side of that fence.

I had to turn around and go back the way I got in, which included riding past the Hamilton Port Authority building. There were a few people but no one stopped me from accessing the area or asked to see an authorized card permitting access.

A couple of weeks ago the Burlington Lift Bridge had to be closed for 9 hours because some guy had gotten in the area and stole a vehicle from one business and left on the bridge. There were witnesses who watched the guy saying he was "erratic" but they did nothing to question why he was there.

I guess making ports secure like airports with restricted areas and back ground checks on workers as measures to be taken and reported by the previous Liberal government to the CBC hasn't made it's way into Hamilton yet.

Money for nothin'

2006-06-15T07:20:00.000-04:00

Am I missing something here? Did I read in this article that a medical office manager named - of all things - Rocky DiBenedetto (Rocky?) – committed forgery and fraud against a Hamilton doctor and isn’t being charged with a criminal offense by the Hamilton Police Services?

Is that like two other victims who were raped in Hamilton, one by a police officer no less and whose perpetrators were never charged with sexual assault?

Or is that like the bogus investigation launched by Hamilton Police Services Professional Standards Branch that was supposed to investigate their officers at their Marine Unit? Officers at the marine unit were busted by Hamiltonians enjoying its bayfront as they watched the officers give joy rides on their boats to family members and some very attractive women. The "investigator" didn’t even speak to witnesses who watched as they floated by – even after pretending she was actually going to investigate by taking down the exact locations where they were “spotted”. I guess that's what happens when the acting staff sergeant is allowed to lie to the "investigators".

Yep, all this bogus prevention of crime while the Port continues to be have problems with its security and all that money given to the city of Hamilton to put up a couple of signs.

By the way, that gate extenstion over the edge of the pier and the sign is new since the Ministry of Transportation investigated the Port for not complying with the International Shipping and Ports Security Code. All that money for Hamilton's Port security and all we get is a sign.

That gate opens when there is no longer a ship moored at this spot to allow pedestrians and bike traffic through - past the open warehouses with the steel coil that this ship just dropped off.

Once this gate is open it leads to a road that has more open gates and signs just like that one.

Anyone is able to get right up to a ship like the one pictured here but moored near Stelco - without anyone stopping them.

A must read

2006-06-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

This has to be one of the best written articles from the Toronto Star I have read in the mainstream media on Islamic indoctrination.

It goes to show how irresponsible Ontario governments have been in not regulating Islamic Imams, schools, mosques or anything else to prevent Islamic radicalism. Ontario governments have bent to the will of their Islamist constituents to allow any form of Islamic belief at the cost of a negligent policy that does not protect the Ontario public - all because of their gullability and their ignorance of the community.

It shows how the Islamic community is negligent and irresponsible in allowing any type of Islam to be practiced in Canada without having a nation-wide conference to decide how Islam should be interpreted under the umbrella of Canadian law - not the other way around.

World Cup & Art

2006-06-09T02:52:00.000-04:00

This is an exciting time for Jamesville in Hamilton. World Cup Soccer begins today as well as Jamesville's unique ArtCrawl with gallery openings starting at 7 pm. The place will be abuzz and I'm going to take some time to enjoy Hamilton's cultural events. I hope Lakeport breweries taps (pun intended) into this marketing gold mine.

I'm in the process of working on another 'investigative' post. Since blogger is finicky with posting pictures lately that post is going to have to wait and I'm going to relax over the next few days watch some world cup to see how C'ote d'Ivoire, Togo and Tunisia do while I wear my Switzerland flag then I'll take in a little art crawling.

In the mean time check out this Ham Spec article or this one. Why not even check out Google?

Post with you later!

HR

Tony Blair

2006-06-09T01:22:00.000-04:00

Now I think I’ve really lost it.

For years I’ve been hiding the fact that I find Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister incredibly attractive, actually…sexy…

The way his ears stick out are kinda cute but I’m a girl that goes for what comes from the mouth.

NO not bad breath!

What a guy says can have an aphrodiastical effect. If the movie The 6th Day were real I’d love to clone Mr. Blair’s speaking ability and implant it in my brain – somewhere.

I wish Canada and the U.S. had leaders that speak one quarter as well as Tony Blair. That's why I’d like him to come and visit us in Canada thank you very much.

From the Toronto Star:

What will be interesting to see is whether Harper adopts one of the distinctive aspects of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's approach to the issue, which includes talking very bluntly about Islamic extremism in the broadest terms. In a speech in March, he observed that ministers have been advised never to use the term "Islamist extremist" because it will offend people.

"It is true. It will," Blair said, adding the bombers were no more proper Muslims than a Protestant who murders Catholics in Northern Ireland is a proper Christian.

"But unfortunately, he is still a `Protestant' bigot," he said. "To say his religion is irrelevant is both completely to misunderstand his motive and to refuse to face up to the strain of extremism that has given rise to it."

Blair added it is essential to see the phenomenon as a global ideology, and argued it would not be defeated until it was tackled head on.

"I mean telling them their attitude to America is absurd; their concept of governance pre-feudal; their oppositions on women and other faiths reactionary and regressive," he said. "And since only by Muslims can this be done, standing up for and supporting those within Islam who will tell them all of this but more, namely that the extremist view of Islam is not just theologically backward but completely contrary to the spirit and teaching of the Qur'an."

The Price of Democracy

2006-06-08T00:13:00.000-04:00

I've been getting a lot of traffic obviously because of the subject matter over the last couple of days.

While I know that I've had some police officers, including the Chiefs of Police of Ontario, the Law Society even the House of Representatives in the United States peruse this blog from time to time, this message is for those who are not familiar with freedom of speech laws in Canada nor our human rights laws nor the Charter protections.

The clause above on Habamus Rodentum is taken from the Constitution Act, 1982 (see link to left) which happens to be Canada's supreme law (s. 51) yet I am surprised at how many politicians who don't know it's significance - or that it exists.

There are limits to Charter guarantees. I can't imagine a limitless guarantee of freedom of religion where religion doesn't take responsibility for itself for promoting hate against co-religionists or co-citizens who don't believe the same dogma. The same goes for freedom of expression.

But the chance to prove the right to criticize a government agency, police force or religious group without fear of reprisal (death threats, murder) to save freedom of expression is worth every written word.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission does not consider exercising freedom of speech a violation against the Human Rights Code. If there are qualified safety concerns then a human rights violation may not be present against enumerated grounds.

For example: if a group of people preach or propagate to do something against a another group of people then that first group of people could be in violation of human rights law. I consider the Islamic hadith on killing Jews such a violation. Some apologize for this hadith and translate it to be 'enemies'. This is explained and taught in Islamic circles (halaqas) as a Sahih Bukhari - a sound hadith. If it's sound, then it is believed.

And it is believed.

Because of this hadith and subsequently hearing a complaint from a small child that an Islamic school teacher told her kindergarten class it was ok to kill your enemies - that was the red flag for me to reconsider why it was that I converted to the religion.

Because of the volatile situation in Ontario there are numerous press reports about a backlash against the Muslim community but exercising freedom of speech isn't one of them. Vandalizing or taking someone's property i.e.: smashing a window at a mosque or harming Muslims or anyone else by death threats or actual violence because they are a specific religion, race or because of disability, is.

Even if your attitude against particular individuals is such that it influences yourself or it influences other's decisions to do or not do something and that decision harms another person because of it - your guaranteed right to security of the person in the Charter should be fought for.

A human rights claim can be filed by anyone who has been denied services or employment because of an enumerated ground under the Code. Police services are one such service under Section 1 of the Code.

Section 15 of the Charter also gives guaranteed protection and benefit of the law - that applies to all Canadian police services.

That means those who have not received equal benefit and protection under the law, in particular the Criminal Code or other legislation due to discrimination that violates an enumerated ground under the Charter for example religion, race or disability (any disability) it means they could file a Charter Challenge.

If a person has their property taken against their will and a police officer helps the offender do it and it's done because of a perceived notion about a person because of their differences under enumerated grounds under either the Code or the Charter - that's a serious offense.

Not only is a peace officer helping someone else steal another persons property because they are of a certain religion, race or disability, and contributing to undermine their security of the person, they are also violating the basic tenets of our democracy.

But since our Charter protection laws and access to provincial court challenges are non-existent in Ontario it is very difficult for individuals to launch such a challenge, obtain legal help for civil matters or even have equal benefit and protection under the law by some of the provincial institutions that are legislated to enforce the laws to protect the public.

That public also includes persons under enumerated grounds under the Charter for example those of a certain religion, race or disability.

In some cases, measures to get into a court of law are difficult if not existent. Since these are denied for many people in the province of Ontario - mostly those who are impoverished due to constant discrimination under enumerated grounds.

To provide evidence to a court of competent jurisdiction and to file a Charter challenge in Ontario it may be to the point of necessity that includes posting names on a blog in order to stimulate a court action. Much evidence is posted or link on HR but much isn't due to the nature of the evidence.

Is it worth the price of democracy?

I guess we will see.

Hyperbolic hyperbole

2006-06-07T06:26:00.000-04:00

From the Seattle Times:

Batasar portrayed the sensational allegations as an attempt by the government to frighten the public.

"It appears to me that whether you are in Toronto or Ottawa or Crawford, Texas, or Washington, D.C., what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear," he said.

Yes of course there is a certain amount of hyperbole on both sides. The police with their overstated militia type security measures and beheading the Prime Minister as a desire from one of the suspects - is most likely wishful thinking if he were able to get close. And it wasn't the Crown that read out the charges - it was the guys lawyer. By doing so he drew attention to it.

Let's put hyperbole in perspective.

In 1996 I was told by two Windsor RCMP officers that "I would be killed" if I told my boyfriend I was speaking to them because, unbeknownst to me, he was being investigated for accident fraud. I didn't exactly believe them - but I was more nervous when I left the detachment than when I went in because a cab was waiting in front. I was instantly overcome with anxiety because over the last number of months I had been followed by cabs and was recieving numerous hang up phone calls.

When I relayed this to my acquaintance at CSIS, after he finished explaining that many Arabs and Muslims speak in hyperbolic language ie: they say they will kill you when they don't actually mean it. But he wasn't happy two RCMP officers would try to frighten me by telling me I would be killed especially when you had call the police earlier in the year to tell them what would happen to you and who might do something to you if something were to happen to you.

He tried to reassure me that they were using hyperbolic language because their training back then wasn't very good. My response was that I didn't believe that RCMP were susceptible to hyperbole. As I knew Arabic and Islamic culture much better - I know that most are very gentle people and if they speak with what appears as rough language it usually is hyperbole. It's just when their actions don't correspond with the words that becomes a problem.

Canadians, in particular, Torontonians may be scared but I'm not. I'm more scared of Hamilton's doctors than I am of terrorists lurking about. As I understand the community they don't lurk - they keep themselves contained - away from Canadian culture - until obviously have had enough meetings to make their plans and act on them.

What does happen is the lying.

And it could be from not saying anything to loved ones and keeping the ideas to one's self or outright denying accusations on suspicion. They will also use the race card or religious intolerance card because they know it works so well here in Ontario. It's actually being so over-used that it is becoming the cry wolf game. When abuses do then occur - most of us will ignore them. (And yes, the accused have Charter rights. If they don't get them - then their case will be thrown out and Canada's justice system will become a laughing stock again)

Think about it. Realistically, if 17 guys tried to storm the CBC do you think Ontarians would let them? No way in hell - I sure as hell wouldn't. As much as I don't like CBC's programming, I'd get on the Go and with thousands of other Ontarians, I'd storm it back.

Now, getting past the Islamic community's expected propaganda - Ontario has to start paying attention to what it's been neglecting to a point of liability - that Islamic 'Imams' are not regulated. There is no accountability within Ontario legislation or regulations that makes it mandatory that in order to preach Islam, that Islamic training must be undertaken by future Imams in an accredited Islamic institution taught by accredited, respected and peace loving theologians that will be under scrutiny by the Ontario Human Rights Commission - not a body of self-policing theocrats. It doesn't work in Ontario as those self-policing institutions are corrupt.

Many Universities in Ontario started off as seminary schools - like the University of Windsor for example. But new Islamic theological schools can and should be regulated to avoid the likes of Mr. Jamal and to practice willy nilly.

Mosque's of any sort should also be regulated and shut down if they violate legislation like performing multiple marriages or allowing extremist preachers to give sermons in any language. Complaints should be made to the OHRC , for example when extremism is preached in another language. That may cut down on mainstream mosques being used to rally support for extremism. Of course - all the extreme stuff will go underground if this is done and will be harder for Muslims to self police themselves. But the community needs to be responsible - and start self-policing - and accepting it.

This may be a conundrum because one of the teaching by fellow Muslims is that being a good Muslim is "not tattling on" fellow Muslims ( I think this is more of a criminal code of ethics judging from the number of "pious" Muslims that were into criminal activity before they 'reverted').

It is also difficult to express an alternate opinion otherwise you risk being accused of adhab - having no manners - and therefore, not a pious and good Muslim. This, I believe, is not any where to be found in the Quran but is something that is amplified by some hadith somewhere by a community that doesn't like freedom of expression.

Isolation and refusal to integrate into the Canadian/Western culture is also at play and something I have posted on this blog and commented on in others as well as what is taught to Muslim children by their mothers from home schooling or by others in Islamic schools.

The Ontario government - thinking they are progressive by allowing free Islamic thought - are just as irresponsible for ignoring the security threats to Ontarians and other Canadians by those within the Muslim community who do use the Islamic religion to interpret a violent Islam.

And to paraphrase on National Post commentor: I'm gobsmacked to hear that the RCMP doesn't attribute one common denominator to the cell - the fact they are ALL MUSLIM - should be a clear enough indicator .

And if the Islamic community can't get over this common demoninator - then perhaps it will take a class action lawsuit by the people of Ontario and Canada to get it through their denying craniums.

We can start with the Al Rahman Islamic Centre - and continue from there.

Psychiatric Researcher I Have Tenure So I Need Big Pharma Money Disorder

2006-06-07T05:24:00.000-04:00

The Psychiatric Researcher I Have Tenure So I Need Big Pharma Money Disorder, otherwise known as PRiHTSiNBPMD - without the hyperactivity - is a relatively new disorder discovered by the less educated and scientifically based on the mysteries of the Universe. It used to be known as Psychiatric Researcher I Have an Empty Wallet So I Need Big Pharma Money Disorder - PRiHaEWSiNBPMD - but psychiatric researchers have become well fed in the last few years so the clinical reporting definition has changed.

Ok, ok, so I want to start making up names to new 'disorders' send a 'press release' out to various media outlets and see if they'll report on it. The following alert you'll read below is from the Alliance for Human Research Protection in the United States but not before I make a comment from an editorial piece in the National Post about Quebecers having a preponderance of personality disorders because they have the highest rate of suicide in Canada.

Huh? That was almost as funny as when I heard on CTV about yet a new disorder called 'Intermittent Explosive Disorder'. I laugh to myself when I read it and wonder how people who call themselves journalists can report this stuff. Now psychiatry is starting to make a laughing stock of themselves.

Quebecers now have a cultural prepoderance to personality disorder? Even if they don't live in Quebec? That means they must have a French gene that predispositions them to personality disorders - the most preposterous and culturally discriminatory language I've ever heard. But psychiatry couldn't exist if it didn't use as it's initial premise of bigoted perceptions and discrimintory rationale to start off with.

Of course we are to believe that the demise of so many Quebecers has nothing to do with bad medicine or the pharamceuticals they are being put on that could cause so many suicide? Remember Dr. Ali Hersi of Hamilton General Hospital fame from my posts? Well the guy was trained at McGill. I can now start to understand how so many Quebecors can commit suicide if they have physicians like this refusing to treat them and then fudging their clinical records in case they die.

When the following was announced on CTV's Canada AM yesterday, I was waiting for them to say it was a London Ontario researcher who was going to blame road rage on ADHD - not because of idiot drivers, traffic congestion and bad time management.

Laugh if you wish because it's actually true - and ADHD is mentioned by the 'good' doctor below. The sad part is, whether the good doctor from London knows it or not, he he part of an ADHD scam- also known as diagnosis fraud- in London Ontario just to make money from the federal government - Human Resources Development Canada to be exact. (more on this a little later but it was documented in the public docket at the FDA in a submission I sent to them)

I guess everyone knows the cause of heart disease as being one thing - cholesterol - but because psychiatry is not a science these guys can get away with just about anything as long as there is big money behind it.

*****************************************************************************************

From Vera Hassner Sharav of the Human Alliance for Research Protection
Contact Vera at 212-595-8974 or email veracare@ahrp.org

FYI

It is difficult to believe this latest announcement laying claim to a new "under treated" psychiatric disorder--Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is not a parody !!

"The outbursts are sudden and can include damage to property or physical harm. The disorder could affect as many as 7.3 percent of adults. That works out to 16 million Americans. Harvard professor of health care, Ronald Kessler, PhD says that each year IED affects nearly 4 percent of Americans, or 8.6 million adults."

Academic researchers grab at every unproven--even discredited theoretical hypothesis--chemical, neurological, psychological, genetic--to launch yet another drug marketing campaign in their effort to pathologize assaultive behavior.

The one pesky detail not mentioned is that such violent assaultive outbursts may be precipitated by use of psychotropic drugs whose labels acknowledge, they can induce aggression, agitation, manic, violent and suicidal behavior--whether the drugs are prescribed by a psychiatrist or illicitly obtained.

''There's a biology and a psychology and a genetics and a neuroscience behind this, and you can come up with strategies for intervention just like for anything else, like diabetes or hypertension or depression." said Emil Coccaro of the University of Chicago, a leading anger researcher.

"The numbers translate into many millions of circles of trembling misery and anxiety. Wives live in fear of their otherwise sweet husbands' next tirade,and wonder if they dare bring children into such a violent world of wrath."

Dr. Coccaro reports that he receives research grants and serves on the speaker's bureau or as a consultant to Eli Lilly and Co., Abbott Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, and Forrest Laboratories.

Co-author, Dr. Ronlad Kessler, a professor of health-care policy at Harvard Medical School, has received grants from Eli Lilly, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the Pfizer Foundation.

The Boston Globe reports, "they readily acknowledge that biologically, impulsive anger -- like so much in the brain -- remains largely a mystery."

But then the absence of scienctific justifican has never restrained psychiatrists from prescribing a "wide array of drugs" with (admittedly) no more than "educated guesses" to support them.

Their institutional affiliations give them the seal of authority--Harvard and U of Chicago--and pharmaceutical companies provide the financial incentives.

That means we can expect IED to be widely promoted--much like ADHD in adults--it won't die a quick death.

The Boston Globe
Out of control anger
As many as 5 percent of people suffer from a disorder that can ruin their lives
By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff August 8, 2005

They used to just call it a bad temper and tell you to count to 10. Then came bunches of guys sitting around in circles and learning ''anger management."

Now, increasingly, the catchphrase is ''Intermittent Explosive Disorder." Researchers delving into pathological anger report that it is more widespread than anyone had suspected. And that their understanding of its biological roots is deepening, raising prospects of better treatment.

''It's not simply bad behavior," said Emil Coccaro of the University of Chicago, a leading anger researcher. ''There's a biology and a psychology and a genetics and a neuroscience behind this, and you can come up with strategies for intervention just like for anything else, like diabetes or
hypertension or depression."

For all the buzz about phenomena like hockey dads and the recent road rage incidents, it was only this summer that researchers got definitive data on how common such volatility is.

A national study found that at some point in their lives, about 5 percent of people have such frequent, serious blow-ups that they qualify as suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a full-fledged psychiatric diagnosis.

It is twice as common in men as in women and tends to begin before age 20.

The numbers translate into many millions of circles of trembling misery and anxiety. Wives live in fear of their otherwise sweet husbands' next tirade, and wonder if they dare bring children into such a violent world of wrath.

Husbands find that sometimes, the smallest provocation of their wives brings on a firestorm. Parents struggle to understand why a son puts his fist through things, kicks pets, or screams at siblings. Is this a character issue? Or a medical problem?

Specialists say that their growing knowledge does not excuse such explosions, but it can help explain them. A picture has begun to emerge of what happens in the rage-prone brain, and a central culprit appears to be the chemical messenger that newer anti-depressants have made a household word: serotonin.

In broad terms, serotonin -- active in the frontal, ''thinking" part of the brain -- is needed when a person stops a bad impulse. When someone is low on serotonin, that brake can get weak.

Brain structure may also play a role. ''In people with impulsive aggression, there's more chaos in the front part of the brain," said Dr. Jon Grant, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

So some of the problem may lie in the very formations of the nerves, suggesting that genes or development may be at fault. Childhood abuse is also common in people with the disorder, suggesting that environment, too, plays an important role.

It gets even more complicated. Other brain chemicals are involved -- perhaps some that influence the ''gas" rather than the ''brake." And studies have found psychological differences in the anger-prone, compared with others. Tests show that they are likelier to believe other people have hostile intentions, for example.

Despite such insights, specialists readily acknowledge that biologically, impulsive anger -- like so much in the brain -- remains largely a mystery. But in recent years they have begun to use educated guesses to try a wide array of drugs to fight it.

None of the drugs has federal approval specifically for Intermittent Explosive Disorder, but doctors and researchers have been prescribing them ''off-label," and report that they can often help, though not always and not everyone.

Anti-depressants of the Prozac generation sometimes bring results, they say; so do mood stabilizers, and drugs that were used initially to stop seizures.

A major, federally funded study published last month in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that among autistic children, risperidone, a newer anti-psychotic drug, could reduce violent outbursts for up to six months with few side effects. Risperidone has prominent effects on serotonin, so the study's positive results underscore the importance of serotonin in
impulsive aggression, said its lead author, Dr. James McCracken.

Therapy helps as well, specialists say. When well-run, anger management groups can prove effective, they say, and so does individual therapy that helps patients recognize their problematic reactions and find ways to defuse themselves.Treatment can involve training in relaxation, habits of thought (like thinking, ''Maybe he wasn't trying to make you mad"), and coping skills like walking away when things start to get hot.

''Between both medication and therapy, I'd say probably the majority of people can find some relief," Grant said. Once, anger problems tended to lead many straight to jail; now, ''We can offer people some real hope about what might allow them to get better control over this."

No miracle drug appears to be on its way, though. For now, researchers predict that they will be largely limited to clinical trials using existing drugs, because drug companies are unlikely to push hard for specific anti-rage agents.

For one thing, Coccaro pointed out, company lawyers are scared that if violent patients go onto a drug and then commit violence again, the company could be held liable.

There is a broader problem, too, he wrote in a recent journal editorial: People who explode are not very lovable. No celebrity is likely to volunteer to be a poster child for Intermittent Explosive Disorder. And philanthropists are less likely to contribute to research aimed at helping people viewed as perpetrators rather than patients or victims.

The patients themselves can be problematic as well, resisting treatment even when surrounded by wrecked lives.

''People say, 'I don't have an illness, I have an anger -- It's not I who have a problem, it's you," said Ronald Kessler of Harvard University, who led the national study on how common mental illnesses are. Often, he said, patients have already lost jobs and spouses before they seek help.

Some specialists say they also hope that now that it is clear how common impulse disorders are, they will get more attention, despite the obstacles, from researchers and grantmakers. Kessler's study found that when all the impulse disorders are lumped together, from compulsive gambling to Attention Deficit Disorder, they are even more common than mood problems like depression.

''The social implications are huge," said McCracken, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles. Think, he said, of the impact of violence and compulsions like gambling, both on the perpetrators and people around them.

''I think a deeper understanding of these impulse disorders and better-identified treatment choices could have profound benefits for society," he said.

Carey Goldberg can be reached at goldberg@globe.com.

Frequency of anger disorder

A June study estimated that roughly 1 in 20 people has had ''intermittent explosive disorder" -- a form of destructive, uncontrolled anger -- during their lifetime. The disorder, considered an impulse-control problem, is most common among 18-29 year-olds and its prevalence declines with age.

Lifetime frequency of:

Any mental disorder 46.4 percent
Any impulse-control disorder 24.8 percent
Conduct disorder 9.5 percent
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder 8.1 percent
Intermittent explosive disorder 5.2 percent

SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, June, 2005

C Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Let the games begin!

2006-06-05T10:35:00.000-04:00

Check out this article in the New York Times on the terrorist plot coverage - it berates the Globe & Mail for not writing anything on Saturday about the arrests.

Yep.

That's Canadian media for you.

Sometimes you gotta wonder if Canadian editors in their Toronto condos are too busy looking at themselves in the mirror and preening their feathers to report the news.

But, at least the Globe did better than the Hamilton Spectator whose University has spawned a suspect. They didn't even update their website let alone print anything until today which turned out to be a feel sorry for the criminals cover-up piece - consistent with their usual fair on reporting bad news.

Here a some articles from American media that covered the story, including one from the L.A. Times that did write about the med student from Hamilton's McMaster University.

From The Los Angeles Times :

"Both Mississauga, with a population of nearly 611,000, and Scarborough have several mosques and hundreds of businesses that cater to Muslims. The 2001 census counted 41,840 Muslims living in Mississauga and 165,130 in Toronto, or about 7% of each city's population."

The Financial Times

"The Liberal party, which formed the government from 1993 until earlier this year, has built a strong constituency in these communities. "

The New York Times: On one of the arrested

"Anser Farooq, the lawyer representing Mr. Jamal and three other people from the Islamic center, said Mr. Jamal was not a leader of that mosque. "He's one of about a half-dozen people who lead prayers at the mosque," he said. Mr. Jamal was not part of any conspiracy, Mr. Farooq said. "

The Seattle Times:

"The 17 suspects have a bail hearing scheduled for this week. Lawyers and family members have described them as innocents caught up in a politically motivated police dragnet aimed at proving that Canada is tough on terrorism."

McMaster spawns med student in terror cell

2006-06-03T23:46:00.000-04:00

Update: Holy shiites Batman! I didn't realize there were so many grammatical errors in this post. It's been rewritten to clarify some points and events. Some links were added. This is a tranistion post that asks readers to put theirselves in a particular situation while attempting to explain a logical rationale for a concept - of why a person may consider converting to Islam and how Islamic dogma may interfere with our every day lives and is based on true events.

Let the propaganda begin...Rocco Galati a lawyer from some of the alleged terrorists has gone on record with CTV stating that his clients are the sons of some up standing persons in the community - and a medical student no doubt! Wow! That certainly qualifies his clients as automatically exempt from Canadian law - as if this strata of society does nothing wrong.

I know this attitude within the Muslims community. They've used it quite often. "We are doctors and engineers etc., so there is nothing wrong with us, we're perfect". Get over it people - this is part of the propaganda that will be used to try to win over Liberals and the NDP supporters.

Well, well, well McMaster University here in Hamilton has spawned an alleged terrorist from its arrogant medical program. I wonder if he was studying psychiatry? Am I feeling contempt? You betcha - if you keep reading you find where my edge comes from.

If the terror suspect had the ability to influence his fellow med students by giving them mis-information - ie Islam is the religion of Peace like I've heard parroted so many times, it would explain the discriminatory behavior of at least one of Hamilton's physicians.

So here's the deal.

The example is from Dr. Christine Adam's, a St. Joseph Hospital resident of psychiatry and student from McMaster. Her discriminatory attitude towards individuals who have come out of the propaganda ridden Islamic community reared its nefarious head in the way she practices medicine.

Ok, so you’re probably wondering what does this doctor have to do with terrorism?

I’m going to tell you. It's a different kind of terrorism as this physician was either influenced by her fellow classmates or simply did not pay attention to current events and how they may effect her patients. I'm trying to be brief as possible even though all of this would better be described better in a book with chapters and all that stuff.

There are readers that have been following my blog for some time and may have taken the time to attempt to read my story on my conversion to Islam – it started off called ‘My Journey into Conversion’ – in various parts and posted at HR.

If you read the link to the declassified documents from CSIS in the terror cell post earlier - you'll notice that Islamists like to attract converts (or reverts as some say). Some media reports highlight male converts but over-look the women converts. It’s the women that provide much of the Islamic 'schooling' or teaching to their children. (Ershad Manji - please pay attention).

Now imagine that you've been indoctrinated with Islamic dogma about everything you do - how you wash, eat, sleep, speak, have sex etc., etc. and after a number of years you will have found that you have been slowly accepting some pretty intense religious teaching - to the point that you are explaining away human rights abuses of Hamas and the Taliban for example.

Once you get over this, imagine now that you are slowly removing your Canadian Constitutional rights - little by little - by rejecting Canadian law and assuming Islamic law as well as the cultural prejudices that are brought from various countries concentrated into your small community.

The message is the same.

Islam is perfect as are praying Muslims (the more covered you are as a woman - the better it is for you and Allah) and some will say that Islamic law is supreme - not the Canadian Constitution. The only thing the Canadian Constitution is useful for is to use it to Islam’s advantage. (And if the Constitution were complied with in Ontario and you benefitted from equal protection of the law - you wouldn't have accepted the militancy of Islam).

Eventually your freedom of opinion and free speech is replaced with accusations of fitna (mischief) and lack of adhab (Islamic manners). If you do this, you’re not a 'good' Muslim and therefore, not pious. Therefore, you must be a hypocrite or a Jew or paid by Jews (as viewed by your new Islamic family).

Now, you have to ignore that your good friends are allowing their husbands to beat them or to ignore that some men in the community beat and rape their wives to the point it’s ignored and the mosque refuses to deal with it. And women are denied services that they would otherwise receive outside of the community. You fight with these men because of their blatant contempt and oppression of the women. The same scenario is repeated in your life as you fight the ghosts of familial abuse.

The women - those converts who've given up Canadian law for Islamic law - are now agreeing with them. Men who can’t even look women in the eye and don’t question the men who are belligerent and discriminate against their own women – are studying psychiatry at your local university. You become mistrustful of them as you are concerned that they will not accept the Canadian feminine point of view in their medicine practice.

Imagine that, within two years that you made your 'political decision' to convert that you realize the community was more Islamo-fascist, discriminatory and oppressive than the country you live in is - but it's getting worse week by week because the local University has just allowed another Islamic extremist to leave their country of origin and work for them in engineering or some other 'professional' field. You fight with these Islamic mysogynists and your told to 'watch what you say'. Within the time you converted you’ve met the wife of a known al Qaeda operative and other extreme wrong-headed individuals.

You decide that the religious indoctrination is going beyond the tolerant and plural society you once prided yourself in. As a result of the indoctrination of others, intolerant and unreasonable Islamic discourse ends up as a religious complaint against you in your place of work! The Ontario Human Rights Commission finds the company that allowed the co-worker to use Islam as an issue in the work environment liable of a human rights violation under the Ontario Code and updates their Human Rights at Work publication. (See link to the left - letter from OHRC to follow)

At down time you chat to a fellow Muslim over seas who knows of Osama bin Laden and has met his brothers. You ask him to explain a hadith you have just read on killing Jews you found on a website that was referred to you by a doctor at a talk at your local university. The guy from Saudia tells you that hadith is about a war that will involve many Muslims believing in a false prophet and that there will be a war much like WWII. You ask if that ‘false prophet’ is Osama bin Laden. He asks you if you believe in the hadith. When you say 'NO' your Islam is questioned and you’re told you 'should watch what you say'.

You try leaving the years of indoctrination and friendship and removed yourself from the community but not before your subjected to non-stop 9/11 conspiracy theories by a local pathologist at a well known hospital - an upstanding doctor - a professional - that's into spreading the conspiracy theory that Israelis orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. You find out later from a sleuth friend that the same conspiracy theories are found on white supremacist websites.
When you leave the community it's not easy - it's actually very difficult - but there are no supports in the community. It takes you months to slowly remove the hijab from your head, in various stages, because the psychology of having worn a veil for so long will not permit you to remove it quickly because it has become a part of your body.

Ok, by this time your a little screwed up and decide to move back to your hometown Windsor in 2003 to be around your dysfunctional family. You left there in 1996 because the boyfriend you had was involved in accident fraud and the RCMP tells you that if they find out you were talking to them they would kill you. Back then you were being followed and stalked on the phone with incessant phone calls and hang-ups.

After moving back you unwisely go back to the same doctor that sexually assaulted you in 1996 after taking advantage of your vulnerability due to the above circumstances. Attending an appointment with that doctor you see that old boyfriend the RCMP told you to be aware of is sitting in this doctor's office with his new wife and kids. He listens to you update your file with the nurse with your new address. He shows up in front of your new apartment or around the area three times. You vow if he shows up again you will call the Windsor Police services and let them know you are intimidated.

You later take a temporary job at the University of Windsor's Engineering department and meet up with another old beau - the one that got in an auto accident with six RCMP officers, whose license was suspended but ended up going to jail anyway for driving under suspension and then, got into another accident and caught. He tried to get you to lie for him to say he wasn't driving his car like his Iraqi friends did but you didn't "love" him that much. He forgot to consider that the woman whose car he hit - had watched him do it.

In 1997, he told you he was fund raising for an outlawed organization in the United States but was perfectly legal for him to do with his Iraqi friends in Canada - for years. He tells you that he attended a secret meeting in New York because his fundraising activities were illegal in the U.S. - and meeting clandestinely. The fundraising was for the 'orphans' of suicide bombers in Palestine and Lebanon. You remember that the pamphlets had gruesome pictures of dead bodies and that his friends would go door to door within the Iraqi Muslim community asking for donations. Many of them outright refused because they knew what they were up to.

In any case, in the summer of 2004, he shows up next to you while your putting cream into your coffee at the University's cafeteria. He walks you across campus but doesn't let you go past him unless you give him your phone number because, he says, he's not happy in his arranged marraige. You tell him if he doesn't let you pass by him because he is now blocking your passage, that you'll call campus police. He lets you go but calls your work and visiting the office.

Your supervisor tells you to call campus police but after you do so, removes you from the assignment the next day. Because of her decision you now have no job. You just lost another job because you stood up for your rights under the Ontario Human Rights Code against discrimination because of a disability, harassment and sexual harassment and it turns out, the principal of the office is also a professor at the University. The Ontario Human Rights Commission in 2006 after a complaint was launched sent you a letter to let you know that they will be investigating three Windsor companies - including the University of Windsor under section 11 of the Ontario Human Rights Code.

You’re told by security officials to call your local police if there are any problems with these guys. You call the local police and tell them the situation and the ignorant detective in their 'sex crimes' unit tells you that these guys "still have the hots for you" and he’s not going to take a report. You think to yourself what an ignorant sod.

After an event in the paper, you eventually end up speaking to a police officer that is one of three in the department handling local terrorist threats. You tell him you would testify in a particular case and he tells you he appreciates that. He wants you to speak to his partner but he is too busy to call you back. Years later you hear on the news that he was shot in the line of duty by two 18-year-old thugs selling crack.

To make a long story shorter, you decide to take a shelter worker's advice to put your stuff in storage, to "be homeless" and move to Hamilton into one of their woman's shelters – a move you’ll later recognize as the worst advice you’ve ever taken. The emergency room psychiatrist you’ve seen months before for post traumatic stress, anxiety and depression, gives you a script for Remeron - an anti-depressant - but doesn't listen to your concerns that it has caused adverse reactions with you the year before.

After a couple of days in Interval House in Hamilton, the staff has allowed the shelter to become out of control as parents and children were screetching in unison. Kids three years old are throwing glass cups at other residents hitting them in the face. The rooms were designed so shoddy you can her your neighbour constantly screaming at her kids, fart and talk on their cell phone - every day.

Some of the older kids are reacting to their confinement and lack of services provided by the shelter. Their mum is crying because they can't handle their kids and others are screaming at them - repeatedly. You call children’s aid because the shelter staff is not providing psychological and parenting supports for the kids or the mums.

One day, you have a reaction to the Remeron - intense sleep for prolonged hours and irritability but shelter staff - too incompetent to know what to do in these cases - ignore your concerns about an adverse drug reaction. When a young resident from Kitchener arrived days earlier other residents had their rooms broken into. You wonder if this young resident slipped you something during supper hour because she sat by you while you were passed out on the couch for five hours while the staff of the shelter did nothing.

You end up getting kicked out of the shelter without warning and could glean from the shelter staff it was because you called C.A.S on the shelter. The shelter kept your property - everything you owned - against your will and protests and with the complicity of an officer from the Hamilton Police services.

Months later after your own investigation you find that the local CAS was violating their own laws, regulations and mandate along with a court decision on violating the Charter as well as acting on an assumed idea from a non-qualified opinion of what post traumatic stress is - discrimination based on perception - that was passed to them from shelter staff. What other defense would a badly run woman's shelter need as long as they can blame their incompetencies and illegal acts but on someone they are slandering as mad?

Blah blah blah etc etc., etc., you end up in the St. Joseph's emergency psychiatry because you want to die and spew the last ten-year's history. You find out after the fact that Dr. Christine Adam of St. Joe’s EPT is so totally ignorant of current events and is in total disbelief that an ex-Islamic convert could meet the wife of an al Qaeda operative in such a small community and ignores a serious drug reaction.

She instead diagnoses a more serious illness that has no scientific or legal basis – all based on personal health information that was collected from another woman’s shelter in Hamilton called Mary’s Place – run by former prostitutes, wanna be non-qualified clinicians, staff identifying themselves illegally as social workers and wanna be corrections workers. This isn’t a health care facility but they are fraudulently acting as if they were and the City of Hamilton is sanctioning it.

Months later after your own extensive investigation, the manager tells you they are above the law and don’t have to follow any of Ontario’s laws. This is confirmed by the Christian Brother that runs the shelter for the Good Shepherd centers in the City who receives tons of money from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social and Community Services - all for their ‘illegal’ services.

From your own investigation that was plagued by interference and obstruction, you find out that these medical 'professionals' violated every legal rule they were supposed to comply with including consent and disclosure laws because they didn't believe a word you said. A nurse from St. Joe’s calls your brother asking if you actually went to the University Windsor and if you really have a son because, I guess this is how they are trained at McMaster – don’t believe a word their patient’s tell them.

Treatment for emotional trauma is certainly a big difference in Hamilton compared to other centres like Windsor or London if you went in with a physical medical condition. You read by evidence of clinical records that Dr. Adam's was so determined to make a diagnosis she ignored your complaint about the adverse drug reaction to Remeron because she didn’t document it on purpose in the clinical records but she did document that your story about your Islamic adventure as ‘bizarre’.

You also find out during your investigation that the hospital passed on inaccurate and fraudulent information to the woman's shelter your staying at and the shelter gives up your bed and leaves you homeless - again! Not only that, they steal your property – in particular your car and you’re forced to go to the police to get your car back!

The following year after more investigation and a foray into the police complaints process you have a withdrawal reaction to Celexa. Months later after being refused treatment by Dr. Ali Hersi of Hamilton General Hospital because you refused to go to St. Joseph's which is within your legal right to do so, you discover by clinical records the worst criminal act you have seen so far from Hamilton's doctors is that Dr. Ali Hersi crossed out the clinical information that documented you were having withdrawal reactions from the Celexa and wrote that you were NOT having suicidal ideation that were clearly documented by triage nurses and he was clearly told by you as well from your clinical records you found out he totally fabricated it with a diagnosis without you there because you left at his refusal to treat you. Dr. Hersi's refusal to simply prescribe you more Celexa because you had no family doctor as Dr. Namburi your family doctor cancelled your medical services without telling you.

In your panic that Dr. Hersi caused by his refusal to treat you, you took the remaining Clonazapam you had with you because your pharmacist told you to bring it so the hospital would believe that you had been prescribed the meds. As you swallowed the pills, Dr. Hersi watched and later laughed - telling you the pills wouldn't kill you. You had to call an ambulance yourself to take you to another hospital. You wonder how this could happen when hospitals in Windsor and London are run so well?

You try to get the Hamilton police service to take a report against Dr. Hersi for fraud and assault but they just laugh at you because they assume "your mentally ill" for taking all those pills and don't have protections under the Constitution nor the Ontario Human Rights Code. The police standards branch – in particular Staff Sergeant Jack Corruzzi - frustrates and interferes with a complaint and then writes letters containing pure BS – due to a lack of understanding this post.

After filing complaint with Dr. Krysmanytch the Hamilton General Emergency room director you find out that he doesn't understand his legal obligations and refuses to explain them to Dr. Hersi. This is before you got a copy of the clinical records to see that facts were crossed out and clinical documentation was fabricated.

On more investigation - remember the hospitals are not co-operating in giving you your clinical records. In one situation the records clerk tries to hide the evidence by putting the clinical records that document Dr. Adam asked Marcia Dinsmore an RN to get "collateral information" from your brother and Mary's Place staff. You trusted that she would give you all the records but after you asked to see the whole file you find that she did not photocopy them all.

You speak to your brother about what Ms. Dinsmore asked him and you find out she told your brother "they want to help you" but they didn’t as they ended up denying you medical services and put you in greater harm. At the time, you had to travel back to Windsor to get medical help – not one but three times. The last time was after you rationalized yourself out of taking the remainder of those morphine pills you had in the trunk of your car you were forced to sleep in.

The nurse and physicians at Hotel Dieu in Windsor were so professional and treated you with dignity, something that Hamilton's hospitals don't have (so stay away from them if you are a visitor and go to Burlington) - that you breathed a sigh of relief. You explained to the nurse what had happened in Hamilton and her comment to you was "what you went through would make anyone suicidal". The nurse is now a witness to psychiatric assault by Hamilton physicians - in particular those physicians who are they to help not destroy.

Before you went to Windsor you had to sleep in your car because of an appointment the next day. You wouldn’t have had to sleep in your car (after you had to go to police to get it back) if those women’s shelters weren't so appallingly disgusting in their actions all because of their discriminatory attitudes. They, along with Dr. Adams and medical staff at St. Joseph’s hospital made you homeless because of how they view individuals who are in distress.

And you wonder how many people have died because of the nefarious attitudes of the medical staff at St. Joe’s hospital towards individuals experiencing suicidal ideation from adverse drug reactions?

You’ve never seen medicine practiced anywhere like this in Ontario and you wonder what kind of City you moved to. Months later a woman who runs a support group for survivors of ritual abuse in Thunder Bay tells you to “get the hell out of Hamilton” because of her rationale. You think you really lost it if you attempt to even contemplate her theory because it had something to do with Masons...

By this time you're very aware of a developed paranoia that was created by Hamilton's support services. You decide that St. Joe’s outpatient isn't the best medicine and remove yourself after they passed your name on for research without your consent – they did so even after they knew you had serious concerns about their prior consent abuses. To show their ethics and professionalism, they chose to ignore them over and over and over again. The director of ethics research tells you that what they did was illegal and managed to get the doctor to apologize - in writing. He was retired shortly after their risk manager indignantly told you St. Joe's does "nothing illegal" or "anything wrong".

Recently, to prove the disrespect for the rule of law in Ontario, an ‘official’ with the Ontario Privacy Commission tells you that the Commission won’t investigate the shelters and the hospital because section 18 (7) of the Personal Health Information Protection Act doesn’t exist.

Huh?!!

More abuse towards individuals with non-visible disabilities by agents of the Crown? She refuses to return your evidence and refuses to put her refusal in writing.

You write to the Commissioner and copy the Minister of the Attorney General hoping that perhaps he will replace the Commissioner and charge under the Criminal Code of Canada, the staff that you named, including the Registrar for not enforcing the Act and for blatantly refusing to follow Supreme Court decisions on medical records because of their total ignorance of the law. It would be wishful thinking if they were charged for obstructing justice and breach of trust under the Criminal Code of Canada - this is Ontario after all.

Sound like the movie Crash? You were asked to imagine a day, week, month or years being a person whose weaknesses were exploited to the point of actually causing if not permanently creating, serious mental illness because of bad medicine practiced in Hamilton. It's the way not to do it if you actually want to help someone and have no other agenda.

That was the reality of HR not too long ago.

Now, I am taking Hanna Gartner's advice and removing myself slowly from the anti-depressants so I can avoid a reaction like I had with the Celexa. And no Hanna, I haven't gotten that job at a law firm yet but I did stop smoking which I have found caused bad reactions with the meds. Once I left the care of those Hamilton doctor's and clinicians that were in part mentioned above and removed myself for their scripts I slowly started to rehabilitate and get back to normal.

Before started blogging I passed along my desire to tell my story online with a friend that helped me work out the Islamic indoctrination part and who also happens to work for CSIS. I got more support from him than I ever got from the idiots in Hamilton's health abuse system. I told him about my Hamilton adventure. He thinks I have the Chinese curse (you know – the one about being cursed with an interesting life?) and reiterated to me what they did was illegal.

It’s then you realize the lack of respect for the rule of law and lack of law's enforcement that enables individuals to enjoy equal protection under health laws, privacy laws, human rights laws etc., and is actually the political rationale why you converted to Islam in the first place. Then, in a momentary lap of judgement, a brain drift pops into your heald and you wonder if living in a cave in Afghanistan would be half as stressful as living in Ontario that consistently hands over legal responsibilities to organizations that have no respect or understanding for the rule of law as their denial of legal rights still continue to oppress the oppressed? Then you give your head a shake and realize that there is something to fight for. Your democracy.

Chromium-Cancer Study a Fraud

2006-06-03T23:29:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 2, 2006
11:03 AM

CONTACT: Environmental Working Group Bill Walker or Renee Sharp,
(510) 444-0973

Real-Life Epilogue To "Erin Brockovich": Medical Journal Retracts Fraudulent
Chromium/Cancer Study
EWG Investigation Exposes Fakery of
Firm Headed by Bush Appointee

(WASHINGTON, June 2) - In a real-life epilogue to "Erin Brockovich," a
peer-reviewed medical journal will retract a fraudulent article written and
placed by a science-for-hire consulting firm whose CEO sits on a key federal
toxics panel. The retraction follows a six-month internal review by the
journal, prompted by an Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigation.

The July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
(JOEM), the official publication of the American College of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine, will carry a retraction of a 1997 article published
under the byline of two Chinese scientists, JianDong Zhang and ShuKun Li.

The article appeared to be a reversal of an earlier study by Zhang that
found a significant association between chromium pollution of drinking water
and higher rates of stomach cancer in villages in rural northeast China.
Since its publication, the fraudulent article has influenced a number of
state and federal regulatory decisions on chromium.

"It has been brought to our attention that an article published in JOEM in
the April 1997 issue by Zhang and Li failed to meet the journal's published
editorial policy in effect at that time," says the retraction, written by
JOEM Editor Dr. Paul Brandt-Rauf and obtained by EWG. "Specifically,
financial and intellectual input to the paper by outside parties was not
disclosed."

In an email to the JOEM editorial board, Brandt-Rauf acknowledged that for
legal reasons the retraction is "carefully worded and kept to the barest
minimum of facts." But EWG's investigation, confirmed by a Wall Street
Journal report in December 2005, found that Zhang and Li were not the actual
authors of the article.

Under the state Public Records Act, EWG obtained and posted online documents
from California regulators and court records that showed the article was
actually the work of ChemRisk, a San Francisco-based consulting firm whose
clients include corporations responsible for chromium pollution. The
documents and the story they outline are at www.ewg.org.

"In order to ensure continued faith in the scientific process such serious
breaches of ethics cannot be tolerated," EWG Senior Vice President Richard
Wiles wrote to Brandt-Rauf in December. "The scientific community must be
notified that a paper circulating in the published literature is fraudulent,
the paper must be retracted, and those responsible for the incident must be
appropriately disciplined."

ChemRisk's founder and CEO, Dennis Paustenbach, is a Bush Administration
appointee to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control advisory panel on toxic
chemicals and environmental health. His firm holds a lucrative contract with
the CDC and the Energy Department to investigate radioactive and toxic
releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In this case, ChemRisk was working for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), a San
Francisco-based utility whose dumping of the industrial chemical chromium-6
had contaminated the drinking water of the small town of Hinkley, Calif.
Hinkley residents' lawsuit against the company, which PG&E eventually paid
$333 million to settle, was the basis for the film "Erin Brockovich,"
starring Julia Roberts as the legal investigator who uncovered the dumping.

PG&E hired ChemRisk to conduct a study to counter Hinkley residents' claims
of cancer and other illnesses from chromium-6 in their water. ChemRisk
tracked down Zhang, a retired Chinese government health officer, and paid
him about $2,000 for his original data. ChemRisk distorted the data to hide
the chromium-cancer link, then wrote, prepared and submitted their
"clarification'" to JOEM under Zhang and Li's byline, and over Zhang's
written objection.

Zhang has since died. But JOEM located his co-author, ShuKun Li, who agreed
that the article should be retracted.

Zhang's original work remains the only study of people ingesting chromium-6
in their drinking water. The JOEM article reversing its findings was cited
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in allowing continued use of
chromium in a wood preservative, and by the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry in a report that discounted chromium-6 as an oral
carcinogen.

Most significantly, the fraudulent article was cited by a scientific panel
whose 2001 report forced California health officials to revise a
recommendation for how much chromium-6 should be allowed in drinking water.
A member of that panel was ChemRisk's Paustenbach, who has made a career out
of consulting and testifying on behalf of major industrial polluters
including PG&E, ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical.

Independent scientists blasted Paustenbach's 2002 appointment to the Board
of Scientific Counselors for CDC's National Center for Environmental Health
as part of a Bush Administration pattern of packing environmental panels
with industry-friendly experts. EWG has provided CDC with documentation of
ChemRisk's fraud in the Zhang case and demanded that Paustenbach be removed
from his post when his term expires in June, but CDC has refused to take
action.

"It is abundantly clear that CDC's contractor, ChemRisk, does not have the
necessary scientific or ethical integrity to engender public trust," EWG's
Wiles wrote to CDC Director Julie Gerberding in March. "It is also clear
that ChemRisk founder and president Dennis Paustenbach has been directly
involved in the firm's unethical behavior."

EWG has earned a reputation as a watchdog of suspect science. When the group
reported to the EPA a failure by DuPont to disclose internal company tests
of drinking water and workers for a toxic chemical used to make Teflon, the
government sued the company and in 2005 extracted the largest administrative
settlement in history for such offenses.

In 2000, EWG caught ABC News' John Stossel reporting nonexistent test
results in an "investigation" critical of organic food that was broadcast on
the network's 20/20 magazine program. The disclosure forced a rare on-air
retraction and apology from Stossel.

FYI: Paustenbach will be up for reappointment shortly to the CDC panel
mentioned below. Hexavalent chromium is the chemical now favored by the wood
industry to pressure-treat lumber since arsenic was phased out).

RELATED LINK JOEM Notice of Retraction can be viewed here

EWG is a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., that
uses the power of information to protect human health and the environment

Toronto terror cell broken

2006-06-03T09:10:00.000-04:00

Update: CTV reports on the sparce news conference at 10 am this morning - 12 adults and 5 youths have been taken into custody along with 300 tonnes (not kilos) of 'farmer's explosives' - otherwise known as amonium nitrate. I'm sure the youths were recruited because they are taking advantage of the youth justice system in Ontario and the restrictions in the Criminal Code on charging youths the same as adults. But it is most likely these kids were 'brainwashed' starting with their parents, their local Islamic community and other propagandists - which would make them ripe for the picking. The majority lived in Mississauga...don't even start me on that part of Ontario...

From this morning...

The RCMP, Durhan, Peel, York and Toronto police have rounded up over what is reported as more than a dozen terror adherants and interfered with their plot to attack Ontario targets.

According to The National Post story - 4 of them are Algerian and involved with the Salafist Group for Call and Combat - a radical Sunni Muslim group seeking to establish an Islamist government in Algeria. The National Post also has this report from the CSIS on 'homegrown terrorism' - which includes converts for their ability to pass detection.

RCMP has commented to the press that those arrested have been raised in Ontario or have been living here for some time. One of the Algerians came to Canada on a fake Saudi passport in August 1998.

More two cents:

It's not really surprising that there are Algerians part of this capture - I've met a number of them that had left Algeria because the government was "going to kill them" for practicing Islam. But the Islam they practiced was far to extreme to be accepted psychologically by the broader Islamic community in Ontario.

Having been around a few of these guys I had pressure put on me for listening to Algerian or any other kind of music that wasn't 'Islamic' (I should only listen to the duff - an ancient form of Islamic drumming listened to by the Prophet in circa 600 A.D.); going to visit and celebrate Christmas with my 'Christian'* family (that day my car was broken into, the window smashed and my car stereo stolen, traumatizing my 'Christian'* son. *The Salafist's emphasis); I couldn't write poetry, draw or paint ( I drew a stylized bird for an Islamic poster and I was told by a Canadian convert that I couldn't do that - it was haram - which basically means 'illegal' in Islamic law); or not following Islam to the letter of Islamic law (sharia) - which usually was interpreted by these guys on the extreme side - to the point where it became a joke.

One of these Algerians had a peace bond put on him because he was threatening another Muslim in a mosque with a knife because the man was using prayer beads. This same guy would also point out all the Sufi's walking down the street since to Salafist Muslims - as to Salafists, Sufi's are evil.

As I have mentioned in numerous posts on this blog - the propaganda was overwhelming against the Jewish community - mostly against Israel - so Palestinian propaganda was strong amongst some in the community - but I didn't noticed it as much within the Algerian Muslim community. The Algerians that usually had a strong North African, Somali and Sudanese following, dictated a really oppressive form of Islam - even more than the Sudanese Salafist interpretation.

As has been pointed out on this blog and supported by other less extreme Muslims, there are those in the community that teach their kids to support fundamentalist Islam - usually through home schooling or Islamic schools (such as the one the Algerians in London Ontario ran) - which leaves those children, especially boys, an outlet as they get older. Instead of playing video games - they can experience the real thing - a Jihad.

That is the ritual of manhood in extreme Salafist Islam. This leaves them wide open to the recruiters that come and go into the mosques or propagandize at meetings encouraging the perfectness of Islam at many meetings and gatherings held at various institutions - usually universities.

Why universities? Because those who are familiar with the CIA infiltrating campuses in the 1960's to spy on those in the anti-war movement - know that the CSIS's mandate is not to infiltrate Canadian campuses. This leaves Islamic groups and their propaganda to game momentum in this venue.

These things are a reality - it's not that there is the commonly believed conspiracy to destroy Islam by even the less devout Muslims - this conspiracy theory is a reality of Islamist propaganda.

But what Christian would support the mass murder of innocent victims because of the perception that, for sake of making a point - if we can't force people to practice Christianity or Islam in this case, the way we want (the way it was practiced in 600 A.D.) - and which isn't supported by our country's leadership (as in the case of Algeria) - then the whole world is against us so we have to fight them in a global jihad?

Ontario at it again...

2006-06-01T05:33:00.000-04:00

The Ontario Ombudsman's office has been hard at work with the appointment of Andre Marin as Ombudsman.

Their office has found that the Ministry of Community and Social Services Disability Support Program has been understaffed since the inception of the program in 1997 to handle the load of disability support applications. The full Ombudsman's report is here.

Initially the program was expected to recieve 400 applications a week but the current number is up to 700 per week. That meant that applications were in backlog, in which decisions took about 8 months to decide even in the most serious cases. Upon backlog the regulations to the Act only intended to pay recipients 4 months of backlogged benefits - not the full time frame it took to process and decide the application.

What is more irritating is that Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Community and Social Services at the time, lied to the media when her Ministry was put on notice of an Ombudsman's investigation.

She stated publicly that she only knew about the backlogs from March 15, 2006 for "at least six months"

It was pointed out in this Ombudsman's report that former Minister Pupatello knew about it since September 2004 as she was given a presentation by her staff to put forward a position to the Ontario Auditor for the same problems that was supposed to fix those issues.

Perhaps the Liberals could smell a another rat coming from the Ombudsman's office and moved Minister Pupatello to a new Ministry - Education

The Ombudsman wants the Province of Ontario to reimburse those disabled Ontarians who've had to wait too long to get benefits for the months they were not covered under the regulations.

The new Minister, Madeleine Meilleur, said the Province won't reimburse the applicants for their mistakes. See The Spec's report here.

It's probably going to take a class action lawsuit that may see a judge agree with retroactive payment plus increase the amount to include pain and suffering. The same could be done in a human rights application to the Tribunal to make a judgement against the Ministry especially if the Minister knew about the problems and did nothing to fix it showing contempt for disabled people in Ontario.

If they had fixed the problem by hiring more staff and having better projections in the first place they probably wouldn't have to face a liability rather it would have cost the Ministry approximately $900,00 for the cost of extra staffing - as opposed to as high as $12 million.

Whistleblower protection

2006-05-31T18:46:00.000-04:00

From the AHRP & the Government Accountability Project (U.S.)

Supreme Court Rules against Government Whistleblowers
Garcetti v. Ceballos Ruling Undermines Public Employees' First Amendment Rights

WASHINGTON - May 30 - Today, the Supreme Court severely limited the rights of government employee whistleblowers to protect the public interest. Through its ruling in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Court holds that government employees' job-related speech is not protected by the first amendment, a significant departure from prior law.

"The Supreme Court's ruling strikes a shameful blow against free speech rights and a vigorous democracy - public employees' ability to serve as guardians of good government are severely restricted by this opinion," stated Joanne Royce, GAP General Counsel. "A deeply divided, but majority court, today upheld the values of "employer control" over the traditional
American values of freedom and protection of public discourse and professional dissent. This ruling will have a serious chilling effect on the willingness of public employees to risk their livelihood to expose government fraud and waste. Our democratic traditions and the American
taxpayer are sacrificed to the alter of "employer control."

GAP's amicus curie brief to the Court regarding the case, written by Royce and GAP Legal Director Tom Devine, can be found here

The case before the court was that of Richard Ceballos, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County, California who learned that a deputy sheriff lied to obtain a search warrant, Ceballos advised his superiors of the wrongdoing, and recommended that the county drop its case.

His recommendation was ignored, and his superiors demanded that he continue with
the prosecution. Ceballos then informed the defense of his findings, as required by law. Despite the fact that he had acted in a lawful fashion, Ceballos was removed from the case, demoted, and transferred to a different office.

Ceballos' ordeal is a shining example of how ethical government workers are supposed to act - he exposed misconduct that was in gross violation of the underpinnings of the American justice system. It is a tragedy that the Supreme Court allowed the government to penalize such
principled behavior.

The ramifications of the Supreme Court's decision are devastating to public employees who choose to speak out in the interest of the American people. By restricting the speech of whistleblowers, the Supreme Court has made government more susceptible to fraud and corruption. Public employee truth-tellers are essential to the safety and welfare of our country - they expose corruption, fraud, and national security shortcomings.

The muzzling of such vital contributors to the nation's well-being will certainly have grave consequences. Without whistleblowers, government will no longer be compelled to act in an accountable and ethical fashion.

Tom Devine, GAP Legal Director, commented "This decision is outrageous. Canceling the doctrine of "duty speech" means that government employees only have an on-the-job right to be "yes people," parroting false information and enabling illegality.

The Court alludes to the Whistleblower Protection Act, but it has been weakened by a series of limiting court decisions. House and Senate Leaders must schedule a vote on legislation to strengthen the Whistleblower Protection Act, so that government employees are not punished for speaking in the public interest. This bill has been unanimously approved by Congressional committees for the last two Congresses, but the leadership has refused to schedule an up-or-down vote. It is time for Congress to act."

GAP has been an outspoken advocate of Ceballos' cause, because we see it as a vital stop-gap in the protection of employees who speak out, to protect the public interest, about wrong-doing. In this case, Ceballos' speech protects the integrity of the criminal investigation process, and that is
vital.

See the Government Accountability Project's October 2005 New York Times Op-Ed by GAP Communications Director Dylan Blaylock and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, available here

Government Accountability Project
Contact: Dylan Blaylock, Communications Director
Phone: 202.408.0034 ext. 137,
Email: dylanb@whistleblower.org

World Cup Soccer

2006-05-31T08:45:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you guys...but I can't wait for World Cup Soccer to start with the first game between Germany and Costa Rica on June 9 at 6 pm (I'm assuming that's Eastern Standard Time).

I really don't know why the major networks in Canada, including all those brewing companies haven't caught on to soccer...especially world cup. Missing out on tapping into some great markets - especially in Canada where soccer is the number the one sport (probably at about 98%) within our immigrant communities.

See this Financial Times report on the Economics of World Cup Soccer.

C'est domage...(it's sad the CBC is only loyal to hockey...)

Check out the World Cup Soccer schedule here on the FIFA website, which includes an online game predictor and links to their interactive viewer participation like this one at Rogers.

The standings board is here waiting to tally the scores and CTV is already on the band wagon - here's their latest article on the games.

Ontario Coroner commits human rights abuses

2006-05-29T05:01:00.000-04:00

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has ruled in favour of mandatory coroner's inquests into deaths that occur in psychiatric facilities. The Crown or the Ontario Coroner's office refused to hold an inquest into the death of a patient when clinical records were altered by the facility. The OHRC deemed the Coroner's actions to violate the patient's right of equal treatment under the law (s. 15 of the Charter, s. 1 of the Ontario Human Rights Act) thus discriminating against individuals within that have mental illness, an enumerated ground under both the Charter and the Code.

See the CBC website for details. Here is the news release from the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

I don't know about you, but I'm personally disgusted that the Crown via the Coroner's office wouldn't totally disregard Charter provisions for individuals with mental illness. But then again, this is Ontario.

Perhaps now the Randy Modgridge case could be looked into by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Speculative drug treatment on healthy children

2006-05-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION

Information Alert from AHRP and an article from the New York Times below

Our criticism of a high risk, speculative drug experiment conducted on healthy children and adolescents at Yale University's Psychiatric Institute was validated by a federal investigation: and our criticism is now validated by the principle investigator, Dr. Thomas McGlashan. Dr. McGlashan, who now concedes that his screening test proved unreliable. Furthermore. he said:
"I'm more pessimistic about all this now. I don't think the drugs can prevent full-blown psychosis, only delay it." He added, "I think more than ever we need to follow a group of prodromal adolescents who get no drug treatment to see more clearly what happens and refine our understanding of what the prodrome is."

A profile of Dr. McGlashan, Director of Yale Psychiatric Institute and professor of psychiatry, was published in The New York Times Science section, "A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry's Twisting Path." The profile follows a Times news report (May 1) revealing that this
controversial (we maintain, unethical) experiment failed. The authors reported that "the drugs were more likely to induce weight gain than to produce a significant, measurable benefit. [And] more than two-thirds of the participants dropped out, rendering the trial inconclusive."

This unethical experiment was funded by Eli Lilly and the National Institute of Mental Health. The children (12 years old +) did not qualify for a diagnosis of any mental illness. Yet, they were exposed for one year to the severe risks and health hazards linked to Lilly's antipsychotic drug,
Zyprexa (olanzapine) merely because the Yale investigators presumed the adolescents were "at risk" of schizophrenia-without scientific evidence to back up that presumption. See this link

The profile of Dr. McGlashan (below) is a portrait of psychiatry: its pseudo-scientific theories that are anchored in faith and speculation, not science. Its scientifically unsubstantiated treatement arsenal have given rise to a cowboy culture that readily endorses high risk, mostly
non-therapeutic experimentation on patients. Dr. McGlashan at first enthusiastically embraced psychoanalysis. When it failed to improve patients' lives, he threw his energies into biological, drug-centered treatment. Benedict Carey notes that Dr. McGlashan "has with grim delight
extinguished some of psychiatry's grandest notions, none more ruthlessly than his own."

But what about the patients who have suffered harm by being subjected to test "psychiatry's grandest notions" that ended in failure? Where is the concern about the human consequences of pseudo-scientific tinkering?

Indeed, if psychiatry's prescribed treatments were assessed from the perspective of patients' satisfaction-as is done in all other medical evaluations-the inescapable conclusion would be that each of its failed treatments has aggravated rather than ameliorated suffering-often causing
chronic disability and premature death. Psychiatry's ministrations violate the foremost Hippocratic medical dictum: "Primum, Non Nocere" ("Above all, do no harm").

Even as a body of irrefutable empirical evidence has shown that psychiatry's drug treatments induced irrevocable harm, medical journal editors and most of the major media have deftly avoided questioning psychiatry's ethics and have continued to broadcast unfounded, claimed benefits for its harmful treatments. FDA officials have shown reckless disregard for the safety of
children who are exposed to toxic drugs in unehtical experiments.

The drug prescribed for the adolescents in Dr. McGlashan's experiment (Zyprexa, olanzapine) is so toxic that Eli Lilly paid $700 million to settle lawsuits filed by 8,000 surviving patients and families of deceased patients who became diabetic while taking the drug. Zyprexa's adverse effect profile is so well-known among psychiatrists, University of Cincinnati psychiatrist,
Dr. Henry Nasrallah, refers to the "Zyprexa metabolic syndrome" in his presentations. [1] And Dr. Carol Tamminga, a leading schizophrenia researcher and promoter of the antipsychotics acknowledged in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry: "the side effect outcomes are staggering in their magnitude and extent and demonstrate the significant
medication burden for persons with schizophrenia.."

The Times quotes Dr. Steven E. Hyman, Provost, Harvard University and the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health: "Given the likelihood that psychosis is delayed and not prevented by the drugs, and given the severe side effects of the drugs, this is an idea that needs to be taken with great caution." However, a cowboy culture fosters risk taking-"shoot first, worry about the consequences, later"-and ambitious psychiatrists at powerful academic institutions do not respect the cautionary principle of medicine.

Furthermore, psychiatry's penchant for applying its "grandest notions" before they have been scientifically validated is an abuse of power that tramples on individual rights. Schools are being turned into experimental laboratories posing a threat to children and adolescents who may be
mistakenly labeled as "mentally ill." The Boston Globe reported (2002) that a "Yale research center called Prevention through Risk Identification, Management and Education , or PRIME, is developing a possible student screen now, although Dr. Thomas McGlashan, PRIME's chief investigator, said general screening was still some time in the future. ''We're talking about a year from now'' at the soonest, he said.

Dr. McGlashan now concedes that his screening test proved unreliable, and he no longer recommends exposing adolescents to antipsychotics inasmuch as they may never need them. Not so, Dr. Barbara Cornblatt, the director of the Recognition and Prevention Program at Zucker Hillside Hospital of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center (Albert Einstein School of Medicine). Dr. Cornblatt continues exposing children to unjustifiable risks of harm in a similar dubious experiment on the basis of the following rationale: "I may be more optimistic about early treatment than he is at this point."

Dr. Cornblatt's shrug of the shoulder attitude about very serious risks of harm for the human subjects in her speculative experiment is a reflection of the lack of accountability within the context of medical research. The adverse events suffered by the children and adolescents in these experiments must be accessible to public scrutiny. What did the original consent forms
disclose about the risks to parents ?

The media's soft-peddling when one after another of psychiatry's ambitious experimental forays ("grand notions") has ended in disaster, has helped perpetuate disinformation about speculative benefits of harmful treatment modalities such as those embraced and then discarded by Dr. McGlashan. He told the Times that he has turned down an invitation to sign up for a debate
over whether high-risk adolescents should be treated with drugs: "He wanted me to sign up for the pro side, and I said absolutely not."

Whereas Dr. McGlashan has seemingly retreated from prescribing antipsychotic drugs for adolescents, the same toxic drugs are currently being tested on very young children--even toddlers--at Harvard University affiliate, Massachusetts General Children's Hospital. See this link.

The outpouring of public comments about this experiment on the ABC News (Brian Ross) website is an indication of public dismay and indignation. To our knowledge, the last comment was posted by Dr. Marcel E. Wingate, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, a clinical psychologist and expert on speech pathology. His most recent book, Foundation of Stuttering
(2001) set forth a rational and scientifically defensible foundation for the study and management of stuttering, based on the fact that stuttering is manifestly a disorder of speech: "Stuttering is not a symptom of emotional or mental problems, although it may become a source of stress and cause emotional difficulties."

Commenting about the Mass General antipsychotic drug experiment, Dr. Wingate wrote: "These experiments are truly exploratory. The territory is strange and very little is known about it. Those who invade it are truly adventurers, reminiscent of the Conquistadores, essentially criminal types, looking for GOLD!"

Posted by: Marcel E Wingate, Ph.D. May 25,
2006. See ABC News Blog

Reference
1. See video slide presentation (Internet Explorer)

2. See: Dr. Carol Tamminga, "Practical Treatment Information for
Schizophrenia" Editorial, AJP, April, 2006, vol. 163:563-565.

3. Ellen Barry, High school testing eyed for schizophrenia signs, Boston
Globe May 25, 2002 page A1

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org

THE NEW YORK TIMESMay 23, 2006
Scientist at Work Thomas McGlashan
A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry's Twisting Path
By BENEDICT CAREY

The patient, Keith, was a deeply religious young man, disabled by paranoia, who had secluded himself for weeks in one of the hospital's isolation rooms.

In daily therapy sessions he said little but was always civil, seemingly pleased to have company and grateful for a cigarette and a light.

Until one spring morning, when he wrestled the lighter from his therapist's hand and held it to his own head - igniting his hair.

"I grabbed him and was slapping at the flames, and he immediately became passive," said Dr. Thomas H. McGlashan, the man's therapist. "He went limp and pulled a blanket over his head."

He added, "That patient, that experience, changed everything for me."

In a career that has spanned four decades, Dr. McGlashan, now 64 and a professor of psychiatry at Yale, has with grim delight extinguished some of psychiatry's grandest notions, none more ruthlessly than his own. He strived for years to master psychoanalysis, only to reject it outright after demonstrating, in a landmark 1984 study, that the treatment did not help much at all in people, like Keith, with schizophrenia . Once placed on antipsychotic medication, Keith became less paranoid and more expressive.

Without it, he quickly deteriorated.

Dr. McGlashan turned to medication and biology for answers and in the 1990's embarked on a highly controversial study of antipsychotic medication to prevent psychosis in high-risk adolescents. But doctors' hopes for that experiment, too, withered under the cold eye of its lead author.

Early this month, Dr. McGlashan reported that the drugs were more likely to induce weight gain than to produce a significant, measurable benefit.

Through it all, he has remained optimistic, restless, hopeful that he is close to understanding some of schizophrenia's secrets. In a way, his work mirrors the history of psychiatry itself, its conflicts and limits, its shift away from talk therapy to drugs and biological explanations for
illness.

And for those who want a sense of what direction the field will take next - and how - Dr. McGlashan may serve as a kind of bellwether.

"Basically, you're talking about a person who can walk into an extremely hostile environment and deliver bad news; I don't know how to describe him better than that," said Dr. Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health. He is a former colleague of Dr. McGlashan's at Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, Md., closed in 2001.

"At the lodge, he stood up and, in essence, told all these giants of psychotherapy that there was not a shred of evidence that what they were doing with schizophrenia patients was helping, much less curing the disorder," Dr. Fenton said. "And the therapies were being advertised as
cures."

Dr. McGlashan is recognizable from a distance, a lean figure striding across the grounds of the medical school as if against a strong wind, chin forward beneath a mop of white-gray hair. On a typical day, he visits with adult patients at a state mental hospital in the morning and with adolescents in a private institute in the afternoon. He is a deliberate presence, solemn for
long periods; but then he will remark on something absurd and tip backward with laughter.

This unsettling combination - gravity punctuated by sudden levity - may help explain his comfort with the world of psychosis.

"I thought he was the Antichrist when I first met him; I thought all the therapists were," said Keith, the patient at Chestnut Lodge who changed Dr. McGlashan's thinking in 1982. "But in the end I liked his sense of humor, and he liked mine, and I keep in touch with him."

Keith, who is now 47 and spoke by telephone only on the condition that his last name not be used, said he set his hair on fire that day because he was terrified that a great tribulation was at hand, during which he would be dragged by his hair before the devil.

"I really believed it was coming, any moment, and there was no way to escape," he said. "I still believe it's coming, but not right now; I'm not afraid of it." Dr. McGlashan joined the staff of Chestnut Lodge at a time when psychoanalysis was in ascendance in psychiatry, nowhere more so than at the lodge, which became known for its commitment to treat severe mental
illness without antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs or electroshock therapy. It was thrilling just to be there, Dr. McGlashan recalled, hearing so many accomplished therapists offer seemingly powerful ideas about what troubled patients and why.

At the time he was treating Keith, Dr. McGlashan was pursuing a study for the hospital's owner, Dr. Dexter Bullard, to track patients years after treatment. Their records were revealing artifacts, detailing thousands of interactions in which therapists, steeped in psychoanalytic theory, tried to interpret patients' every word and gesture.

In one account, a psychiatrist described an outing when he bought a patient an ice cream cone. The patient refused it vehemently. "This was very exasperating to me," the therapist wrote. "She never did accept the cone, and I had to throw it away. I thought of it at the time as having
represented a kind of rape situation to her."

Yet in his analysis of 446 cases, Dr. McGlashan found that about two-thirds of the former patients with schizophrenia who had been treated with psychoanalysis were functioning poorly and struggling in their relationships and in their jobs, if they had them. Their lives were no better than those of similar patient groups who had received little psychotherapy or none at
all.

"I felt like people at the lodge had become lost in the process," he said.

"We would have all these erudite conversations, talking about interpretations, and meanwhile the patient is crumpled in the corner of his or her room."

Chestnut Lodge changed some of its policies as a result of the study, allowing more drug treatment, job training and other programs.

Dr. McGlashan's intensity, and willingness to reverse course, was evident even in childhood. An ardently religious boy, he grew up with two sisters near Rochester, where his father worked at Kodak. In middle school, the youngster pored through the Bible, to the dismay of his father and the bemusement of his mother.

The devotion was isolating, Dr. McGlashan remembers, creating a mostly private world of mystery and awe. Then in his first year of high school, he met other Christian students, who belonged to a group devoted to proselytizing.

He was reluctant to join, and his father sensed it. "He saved me," Dr. McGlashan said. "He picked me up after a meeting and said it was O.K. to pull back" from the group.

"He was giving me permission."

He graduated second in his high school class and studied chemistry at Yale. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, where, during a psychiatry rotation, he met his future. He interviewed a middle-aged Philadelphia businesswoman, who described to him a tortuous plot being hatched against her, involving family members and the F.B.I. "I thought, 'She can't possible believe this,' " Dr. McGlashan said.

He was hooked. Psychosis was isolating, too, and deeply mysterious even to scientists who spent their lives thinking about it. By the 1990's, most psychiatrists believed schizophrenia to be a genetically based brain disorder involving developmental changes that occurred well before the first full-blown psychosis. No one knew precisely what those changes were, but studies strongly suggested that they were real.

Moreover, psychiatric clinics periodically saw adolescents who seemed to be experiencing mild, prepsychosis symptoms. They were "prodromal," in the medical jargon, perhaps destined to develop a full-blown psychotic episode, perhaps not.

Dr. McGlashan and several others saw in these converging threads a possibility: maybe treating young people with drugs before they became psychotic would prevent the illness, and perhaps even help illuminate its cause.

Dr. McGlashan recalled patients at Chestnut Lodge who had spent decades receiving daily psychotherapy, to no avail, before receiving antipsychotic drugs and reclaiming some portion of normal life. One woman spent 18 years at the lodge, barefoot, unkempt, closeted in her room. One day, he said, he looked out a window and saw her going for a morning walk, smartly dressed, wearing shoes; she had recently been given medication and began taking daily
walks.

"What right did we have denying her that?" he asked. "Small changes in a person's life, which I think is what we can expect, can make a big difference."

The risks of using drugs to try to prevent psychosis seemed to him moderate.

New antipsychotics were becoming available, and, though they could have serious side effects, they appeared to be more tolerable than the older generation of drugs, and to reduce the risk of debilitating, Parkinson's disease-like side effects. So Dr. McGlashan began a study, financed in part by Eli Lilly, giving medication to adolescents considered at high risk for developing psychosis. But almost immediately, there were difficulties.

The test that Dr. McGlashan developed to identify those at high risk proved less reliable than he had hoped, meaning many adolescents would be exposed to drugs needlessly. Participants for the trial were hard to recruit. Mild psychosislike symptoms are rare in adolescents; and some who came in chose to continue seeing Dr. McGlashan or another psychiatrist but did not enter
the study.

An ethical debate over the wisdom of early treatment ensued, and not everyone thought the potential benefit was worth the risk.

"Given the likelihood that psychosis is delayed and not prevented by the drugs, and given the severe side effects of the drugs, this is an idea that needs to be taken with great caution," said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard and a former director of the
National Institute of Mental Health.

And in 2000, Vera Sharav, a prominent patient-protection advocate, wrote to government officials calling the experiment unethical, because "healthy children - who are not capable of voluntary, informed consent - are being put at high risk of harm for experimental purposes."

Officials from the federal Office for Human Research Protection began an investigation. About a year later, the agency concluded that the researchers needed to strengthen their informed consent documents to emphasize the side effects of the medication.

The researchers made the required changes, and the trial continued. But in a paper published this month, the authors reported that more than two-thirds of the participants had dropped out, rendering the trial inconclusive.

Moreover, those on medication gained an average of about 20 pounds. The entire process, almost 10 years in the making, has altered Dr. McGlashan's thinking again. "I'm more pessimistic about all this now," he said. "I don't think the drugs can prevent full-blown psychosis, only delay it." He added, "I think more than ever we need to follow a group of
prodromal adolescents who get no drug treatment to see more clearly what happens and refine our understanding of what the prodrome is."

Sitting in his office on a recent Tuesday morning, after having seen three patients taking a total of 10 drugs, Dr. McGlashan sighed. "I've never written so many prescriptions in my life," he said. He said he had recently gotten a call from someone in England organizing a debate over whether high-risk adolescents should be treated with drugs. "He wanted to sign me up for the pro side, and I said absolutely not," he said.

Now colleagues are watching the progression of his thinking, wondering where his drive for answers will ultimately take him. "It's funny, he seems to be coming full circle," said Dr. Barbara Cornblatt, the director of the Recognition and Prevention Program at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., and an early critic of preventive drug treatment. "I may be more optimistic about early treatment than he is at this point."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Sandbox politics

2006-05-25T10:36:00.000-04:00

"We can't accept that the prime minister's office would decide who gets to ask questions," said Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery. "Does that mean that when there's a crisis they'll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?" - from CTV

I'm wondering if Harper's respect for freedom of the press is for real or if it's coming from his Hamilton bred communications director Sandra Buckler. If there is a remote bit of Hamilton in this woman - the above the law Hamilton attitude just may be influencing these bizarre decisions in the PMO's office and would make a little sense that the clause you see above on the Habamus Rodentum clause from the Charter is brushed off.

Are journalists not FREE to asks questions? Even the press gallery themselves decides who is a qualified "journalist" in order to let them into news conferences to ask questions - so it's not like just anyone can ask a question.

I noticed when the Liberals were in office that the press gallery didn't ask the tough questions - I was so irritated by this I called the press gallery myself. That was after a guy who posed as a journalist was "let into the question gallery" without proper credentials - but he asked a really tough question that Martin couldn't answer. The guy was dragged out.

So I'm not exactly sure who is controlling what or whom.

I've started blogging because journalists and news media didn't cover the stories that affected me and other Ontarians a.k.a. Canadians. So someone is controlling what type of information is getting out - just not the right info.

Perhaps Harper knows how non-elite Canadians feel and wishes to take his message to the people as they distrust the media as much as this subject suggests he does.

So I'm going to say to the media what I used to say to my son when he wanted to play with something another child was playing with: Harper isn't ready to share yet, when he is ready he will.

As for Harper he'll realize he's being selfish and controlling and will be more compromising within a very short period of time - it always worked with the kids and there was no fighting.

Foster care children are guniea pigs

2006-05-24T01:37:00.000-04:00

At least in Texas there appears to be justice for children within the foster care system that are being prescribed psychotropic medications to keep them compliant with the system. If those of you didn't watch the CBC documentary 'Finding Normal' you can do so here - the video link is available for you to watch it.

An overview: A child 'J' was diagnosed with various mental illnesses - some of the rationale for diagnosing them were based on adverse symptoms of the drugs he was given for ADHD - not because he actual had the condition. Here is a list with the amounts of drugs he was given:

50 mg of Ritalin
500 mg of Divalproex
500 mg of Seroquel.

500 miligrams of Seroquel! Seroquel is an anti-psychotic drug meant for schizophrenic patients. This child does not have schizophrenia - or at least the idiotic physician didn't diagnose that yet. 25 mg can make an adult feel out of sorts. Imagine what a child on that amount of drugs must be going through but don't have the capability at such a young age to describe that they are having adverse reactions.

What is more nefarious and criminal is the conclusion by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario from a complaint against the physician:

Last spring, the college cleared the psychiatrist; concluding "the medications and dosages prescribed by Dr. Massabki are standard, and are medications commonly prescribed for young patients in similar situations with good effect."

The CPSO is condoning and telling us that it was ok to drug this child in the manner the physician did and that more children within the mental health system in Ontario are being targeted in a cruel and unusual game of irresponsible, incompetant, harmful and discriminatory medicine. If this isn't a reason to remove the CPSO from investigating and disciplining physicians and putting it in the hands of courts so it can determine Charter rights - I don't know what is.

The government has done nothing to investigate health care fraud and the government's relationship to big pharma.

I tried contacting Katherine Clarke spokesperson of the CPSO but she did not return my phone call - although that may be because I told her I was going to file a human rights complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission using this documentary as evidence (as well as many other reports) and ask them to investigate under the definition of crimes against humanity when it comes to Ontario's treatment of mental health patients by physicians and 'health care practitioners'.

For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Contact: Will Holford or Dick Ellis
512-463-4070
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's Statement * Press Conference (639K MP3)

(Austin)-- "I started the ongoing investigation of possible Medicaidfraud and abuse in the foster care prescription drug program inNovember 2004."

As mama and a grandmamma, I am concerned with the health and well-being of our foster kids."As Comptroller, I am also concerned with the potential Medicaid prescription drug fraud and abuse in our foster care system because of the high cost of many of these prescriptions."

Under my statutory responsibility for the Texas Health Care Claims Study conducted by my office each biennium, I requested the prescription drug and claims data for foster care children for fiscalyears 2004 and 2005 to determine whether these medications are being prescribed to make children more submissive or to simply line the pockets of the unscrupulous and the uncaring - or both.

"It is not uncommon for one child to have prescriptions totaling more than $1,000 per month and for some children to have up to 19 different prescriptions within one month."

Based on the data I have received:

* $39 million was the total cost of all prescriptions for fosterchildren in fiscal year 2004;

* Of that, more than $29 million were for powerful, mind-alteringpsychotropic drugs;

* Of the 12,000 foster children who received psychotropic drugs infiscal year 2004, each child averaged 21 psychotropic drug prescriptions during the year.

"According to the Food and Drug Administration, many of these drugs are not labeled for use in children and have serious side effects, such as suicidal tendencies, diabetes, and cardiac arrhythmia. I am particularly concerned about the use and side effects of the atypical antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Zyprexa."

A clear pattern of overmedication and potential misdiagnosis of fosterchildren is evident. This potential for Medicaid fraud and the possibility of long-term health problems in these children is alarming.

"Today I am sending a letter to Gov. Rick Perry calling on him to immediately instruct his Texas Health and Human Services Commission to release the fiscal year 2005 data I requested and need to complete my investigation." Gov. Perry's Health and Human Services Commission has been stonewalling my investigation since I launched it in November 2004.

"The Commission has given the same Medicaid information I have requestedto the Cyber Security and Emergency Preparedness Institute in theEngineering and Computer Science School at the University of Texas at Dallas for its Texas Health Analytics Information Technology project."

On April 25, my general counsel formally requested the same data from the Health and Human Services Commission to provide this data.

"On May 2, the Health and Human Services Commission's general counselsent a letter to my office refusing to provide the requested data."It is unfathomable that Gov. Perry's appointed commissioner would provide this information to the University of Texas at Dallas and not provide it to satisfy a legislative mandate.

"The stonewalling at every turn by Gov. Perry's Health and HumanServices Commission to provide this data may be endangering thephysical and mental health of thousands of children in the state'sfoster care system."I urge Gov. Perry to act immediately. The lives of our most preciousand most vulnerable resource -- our forgotten children -- are atstake." -end-

Stairs

2006-05-24T00:22:00.000-04:00

Like many Canadians I spent the long weekend with family sightseeing. This is a view of lower Hamilton from the escarpment.

Of course when family comes to visit that means I have to drive by all those landmarks where there was familial involvment to bring back some sense of nostalgia just because my siblings were born here... but remember nothing...(?)

Maple keys carpeting stairs that descend down the escarpment in one of many of Hamilton's escarpment parks

I think I'm going to take on a project and document all the various stairs in this city. Here is one set of probably hundreds in Hamilton. This one isn't the most daunting that climbs the escarpment to the upper city - at least I could walk back up them. There are some that I can't even get past 2 stories before I'm ready to pass out.

Scientific and moral integrity in medicine - an oxymoron

2006-05-17T01:46:00.000-04:00

HR's note: I finally got back on to AHRP's info e-list after months of it not working on my new email addy. Whew! I was getting worried. Vera Hassner Sharav recently did an interview with ABC on American toddlers getting scribed for Seroquil. Seroquil! Toddlers!

Here is the link for the video, which you can watch or the text, which you can read.

I made two phone calls after I watched and recorded this documentary. One to the Ministry responsible and one to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The latter is the biggest bunch of SoB that as far as I'm concerned, should be arrested and thrown in jail just so they can experience their own brand of justice - getting screwed up the back end like they've been doing to Ontarians.

The following from AHRP is a large write-up on the credibility gap that physicians, researchers and those that are supposed to protect the public - the FDA - are facing.

From the ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

A documented report by David Armstrong of The Wall Street Journal (below) shatters the last glimmer of illusion about The New England Journal ofMedicine as a bastion of scientific and moral integrity. The revelations inthis investigative report deliver an irredeemable blow to the reputation ofthis preeminent academic journal that physicians around the world havetrusted as a repository of impeccably vetted scientific information.

The evidence brought to light by the WSJ reveals that a culture change atthe NEJM mirrors the prevailing culture within the pharmaceutical industry.Neither the scientific integrity of its published reports nor theprofessional conduct of those who review the reports can be trusted.

Among the documents for which the WSJ provides links, is a link to a Seattlepublic radio broadcast ( Aug. 14, 2001) in which pharmacist JenniferHrachovec called in and challenged NEJM editor, Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, aboutthe inaccuracy of the published Vioxx-VIGOR study.

Excerpt:

Hrachovec: "With this study in particular, it bothers me thatthere is more data from the trial than has ever been published and the New England Journal still hasn't published an editorial or any kind of update tolet readers and clinicians using this drug and giving it to patients who they think will benefit from a better side-effect profile. My concern isthat doctors are still using this and exposing their patients to higherrisks of heart problems and they just don't even know that that's the case."

Drazen: "We can't be in the business of policing every bit of data that weput out. We think that that's the role of people who know the field. Andwhen they think that the field has advanced to the point where somethingwhich was true at the time it came out may no longer be true .

Having brought that evidence to our attention in the form of a manuscript or aletter, we can judge whether there's enough new information and put it outif we believe that the re-analysis is correct." Jennifer Hrachovec also submitted a letter to the editor to alert physiciansabout the vital misinformation, but the NEJM refused to publish.Evidence that NEJM editors knew and remained silent for 5 years about thedisparity between the Vioxx trial data submitted by Merck to the FDA (20heart attacks, 0.5%) and the data reported to physicians taround the worldin the published NEJM version (17 heart attacks 0.4%), first came to lightin a court deposition (December 8, 2005).

Under oath, Dr. Gregory Curfman, Executive Editor of the NEJM, made somedamaging admissions about how the NEJM handled the Vioxx report (2000). The WSJ reports: "The journal's editors grew alarmed about the potentialfor bad publicity over the videotaped deposition, fearing it could be leakedor played in a federal courtroom session on Dec. 8, according to internalemails and an interview with Drs. Curfman and Drazen.

"Forbes reported the malodorous revelations that came to light in thedeposition showing the editors' failure to intervene when they foundevidence of data manipulation in the published VIGOR study (December 8,2005). See this link from AHRP

Just as the pharmaceutical industry relies on public relations firms toclean up its sullied image with ethical pronouncements, so too, editors ofthe NEJM were guided by a public relations firm when they crafted aneditorial statement, an "expression of concern" about Merck's misconduct(December 2005).

That "expression of concern," the WSJ shows, was cynically calculated to divert public attention from the damaging deposition. The strategy worked, the major press and media were hoodwinked by the phony "expression of concern"-except FORBES.

What could account for the most trusted source medical of information to fall so ignobly from its high pedestal? The answer is most likely found by following the money:

"Internal emails show the New England Journal's expression of concern was timed to divert attention from a deposition in which Executive Editor Gregory Curfman made potentially damaging admissions about the journal's handling of the Vioxx study.

In the deposition, part of the Vioxx litigation, Dr. Curfman acknowledged that lax editing might have helped the authors make misleading claims in the article. He said the journal sold more than 900,000 reprints of the article, bringing in at least $697,000 in revenue. Merck says it bought most of the reprints."

Of further note, the WSJ reports: "The journal won't disclose its revenue, but its owner, the nonprofit Massachusetts Medical Society, listed $88 million in total publishing revenue for the year ending May 31, 2005."

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org

~~~~~~~~~~~

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bitter Pill: How the New England Journal Missed Warning Signs on Vioxx
Medical Weekly Waited Years To Report Flaws in Article That Praised Pain
Drug Merck Seen as 'Punching Bag'By DAVID ARMSTRONG
May 15, 2006; Page A1

BOSTON -- In August 2001, a Seattle pharmacist called a radio show on which
Jeffrey Drazen, the top editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, was appearing. On the air, the pharmacist, Jennifer Hrachovec, begged Dr. Drazen to update an article in the journal that touted the benefits of the painkiller Vioxx while playing down its heart risks.

Dr. Hrachovec had been reviewing data on a Food and Drug Administration Web site indicating that patients in a Vioxx clinical trial had suffered more heart attacks than the journal article about the trial reported.

"It bothers me there is more data from the trial than has ever been published and the
New England Journal still hasn't published an editorial or any kind of update," she said. "My concern is that doctors are still using this and exposing their patients to higher risks of heart problems and they just don't even know that that's the case."

ON RECORD

Pharmacist Jennifer Hrachovec challenged Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, about the Vigor study in a call to a Seattle radio show Aug. 14, 2001. Below, excerpts.

Hrachovec: "With this study in particular, it bothers me that there is more data from the trial than has ever been published and the New England Journal still hasn't published an editorial or any kind of update to let readers and clinicians using this drug and giving it to patients who they think will benefit from a better side-effect profile. My concern is that doctors are still using this and exposing their patients to higher risks of heart problems and they just don't even know that that's the case."

Drazen: ". We can't be in the business of policing every bit of data that we put out. We think that that's the role of people who know the field. And when they think that the field has advanced to the point where something which was true at the time it came out may no longer be true . Having brought that evidence to our attention in the form of a manuscript or a letter, we can judge whether there's enough new information and pu it out if we believe that the re-analysis is correct."

* * *

Listen to the full exchange on the Web site of KUOW,Puget Sound Public Radio. (Hrachovec's call begins at about minute 44:30.)

Dr. Drazen was dismissive. "We can't be in the business of policing every bit of data we put out," he told Dr. Hrachovec.

Three years later, Merck & Co. pulled Vioxx from the market, citing higher risk of heart attacks and strokes in some patients. An estimated 20 million Americans took Vioxx, and more than 11,500 lawsuits have been filed against Merck alleging death and other damage from the drug.

While Merck has taken the brunt of criticism in the affair, the New England Journal's role in the Vioxx debacle has received little attention. The journal is the most-cited medical publication in the world, and its November 2000 article on Vioxx was a major marketing tool for Merck.

Last December, the journal repudiated the Vioxx article in an "expression of concern," but only after the drug had been recalled and more than five years after the article appeared. Had the journal acted before the recall, its authoritative voice almost certainly would have damped the Vioxx boom.

Dr. Hrachovec's radio-show call was one of several early warnings about the article's flaws including its failure to mention the extra heart attacks. She and a colleague also submitted a letter to the New England Journal, which was rejected for publication. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported on Vioxx's cardiac risk in an August 2001 article.

In April 2002 the FDA added a caution on Vioxx's label that warned of cardiovascular risks.

Internal emails show the New England Journal's expression of concern was timed to divert attention from a deposition in which Executive Editor Gregory Curfman made potentially damaging admissions about the journal's handling of the Vioxx study. In the deposition, part of the Vioxx litigation, Dr. Curfman acknowledged that lax editing might have helped the authors make misleading claims in the article. He said the journal sold more than 900,000 reprints of the article, bringing in at least $697,000 in revenue. Merck says it bought most of the reprints.

Stanford University medical professor Gurkirpal Singh, a rheumatologist who was among the first researchers to raise questions about Vioxx's cardiac risks, says the affair shows that journals need to be more vigilant about problems in what they publish. While praising the New England Journal for eventually taking action, he says "They absolutely should have corrected in 2001." Had it acted earlier, he says, sales of Vioxx "would have been killed."

Dr. Drazen, the editor, says in an interview that the authors of the article, who included Merck employees and consultants, are the ones at fault. "This was an episode where it was clear people had taken data and not reported it fully," he says in an interview. He adds: "I have now learned we need to be much more careful."

The questions about the New England Journal come as the flaws of leading medical journals are receiving greater attention. Many articles lend an academic imprimatur to messages hatched by drug companies as part of publicity campaigns. Sometimes they fail to disclose authors' financial ties to companies or the involvement of company-hired ghostwriters.

Started in 1812, the New England Journal has 200,000 subscribers and is considered must reading for doctors who want to stay current. Its selectivity and editing practices are feared and respected. The weekly rejected 93% of the 3,586 manuscripts it received last year. Accepted papers typically undergo months of editing, including "peer review" by a secret panel of experts and scrutiny by staff editors, many of whom are doctors.

The journal won't disclose its revenue, but its owner, the nonprofit Massachusetts Medical Society, listed $88 million in total publishing revenue for the year ending May 31, 2005.

In May 2000, a team including Merck employees submitted to the journal an article about Vioxx, a painkiller approved the previous year by the FDA. The article presented the results of a human trial called Vigor that showed Vioxx posed a lower risk of stomach ulcers and bleeding than naproxen, one of a class of older pain relievers long associated with such complications.

The article said 0.4% of the Vioxx patients had suffered heart attacks, compared to 0.1% for the naproxen group. It offered several reasons why that wasn't as worrisome as it seemed, including a theory that the difference stemmed from naproxen's supposed protective effect on the heart. The New England Journal published the article on Nov. 23, 2000, and the occasion was celebrated by Merck in a press release.

Merck submitted data from the Vigor study to the FDA because it wanted to add the favorable information about stomach side effects to Vioxx's label.

But the data it gave to the agency, posted on the FDA's Web site in February 2001, did not square with the data in the New England Journal article. Merck said Vioxx takers had 20 heart attacks, which translated into 0.5% of the total, not 0.4% as the article said. The higher figure undermined an assertion in the article that only those who were already at high risk of a heart attack showed an increased risk after taking Vioxx. That's because the extra heart attacks were all in the low-risk group.

The FDA Web site said Merck submitted the revised heart-attack data in October 2000, before the publication of the article. Dr. Curfman, the journal's executive editor and a cardiologist, acknowledges that he reviewed the FDA Web site posting around September 2001. The journal says the editors believed the FDA had posted late data from the trial that had not been analyzed in time to be included in the article's manuscript.

In June 2001, Dr. Hrachovec in Seattle and a doctor reviewing the drug for a Seattle health insurer wrote to the New England Journal, noting the FDA posting. They warned the journal that the Vioxx results it printed were incomplete and made the drug appear safer than it was. The journal refused to publish the letter, saying space was limited. It acknowledges that during this period it never asked Merck, the FDA or the article's authors about the discrepancy, believing that it was the responsibility of the authors to report new data.

Merck says the extra heart attacks, three in total, happened after a predetermined cutoff date for recording events in the trial. Merck says the article was properly done and doesn't require a correction. That puts the company at odds both with critics of the New England Journal and the journal's editors, who now are calling for a correction while defending their failure to ask for one earlier.

Dr. Drazen says journal editors are "just the middleman in picking what goes out there" and "when there are problems the onus lies with" authors to sound the alert. "If you ask me, it is none of our concern about whether [Vioxx] is a cardiovascular risk in the patients that are on trial," he says. The concern was making sure what was published was correct, he says, and "people could have set the record straight."

Early Criticism

Besides the article's possible understating of the heart-attack numbers, its theory that naproxen had a protective effect on the heart also came in for early criticism. "This hypothesis is not supported by any prospective placebo-controlled trials with naproxen," an FDA official wrote in a memo also published on the agency's Web site in February 2001. In September of that year, the FDA sent a public warning letter to Merck, criticizing the drug maker for promoting the naproxen idea without explaining the lack of evidence for it.

Curt Furberg, a Wake Forest University public health professor, says the New England Journal should have challenged the authors on the naproxen theory during the article's editing. "Here we have an editorial board attacking the company when they conducted an inferior review of the article," says Dr. Furberg, who is also an adviser to the FDA on drug safety. "The sad thing is patients have suffered as a result."

In September 2004, Merck withdrew Vioxx, citing the results of a new study that showed the drug raised the risk of heart attack and stroke for those using it at least 18 months.

Both sides in federal litigation over Vioxx conducted a deposition in November 2005 of Dr. Curfman, the executive editor. Plaintiffs hoped to bolster their allegation that Merck's marketing of Vioxx was deceptive.

Although the New England Journal wasn't on trial for anything, the deposition produced a number of damaging admissions by Dr. Curfman. He acknowledged that neither the peer reviewers nor journal editors challenged the authors' heart-attack theory about naproxen as it was presented in the article. "Yeah, we signed off on this," he said, according to a transcript of his testimony. "And I have many times had second thoughts about having done that."

Dr. Curfman also disclosed that the journal sold 929,400 reprints of the article -- more than one for every doctor in the country. Merck says it bought most of them. The reprints brought in between $697,000 and $836,000, using per-copy price estimates provided by the journal.

If the New England Journal had questioned the article's findings earlier, the impact of the reprints likely would have been blunted because any corrections or official
statements on a study must be included with the reprint. Merck says that after February 2001 it included a letter with the reprints telling doctors about the additional information submitted to the FDA.

FURTHER READING

Read the "Expression of Concern" published by the New England Journal of Medicine Dec. 29, 2005, about the Vigor trial.

The journal's editors grew alarmed about the potential for bad publicity over the videotaped deposition, fearing it could be leaked or played in a federal courtroom session on Dec. 8, according to internal emails and an interview with Drs. Curfman and Drazen. After five years of silence on the article, the editors started racing to prepare an "expression of concern" about it.

The New England Journal says there was a good reason for the sudden decision to rebuke the article's authors. It says Dr. Curfman was surprised to discover from a July 5, 2000, memo he was shown during the deposition that two of the authors who worked for Merck knew of the extra three Vioxx heart attacks well in advance of the November article.

However, that shouldn't have been news to Dr. Curfman since he says he read the FDA documents in 2001 showing Merck submitted information about the three events to the FDA more than a month before the article's publication.

Dr. Curfman says there was nothing in the FDA data to indicate the authors knew of the additional heart attacks. Also, he says, "The data were in the hands of a regulatory agency and we felt it was now up to them to take appropriate action."

Dr. Drazen also received a clear description of the timing in a July 2005 email from Eric Topol, then a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist, who had criticized Merck and Vioxx. Dr. Topol, who had been contacted by a National Public Radio reporter asking about the November 2000 New England Journal article, told Dr. Drazen that the article's authors "clearly had ample time to correct the data when one compares the FDA Submission dates and the galley proofs (as relayed to me by Greg Curfman)."

On the night of Dec. 7, Edward W. Campion, a senior New England Journal editor, sent a note to his staff explaining why the statement had to be released the next day. The explanation didn't involve any late-breaking information obtained by Dr. Curfman. "The reason is that tomorrow's testimony in the Vioxx trial may involve part of a deposition that Greg gave," Dr. Campion wrote. "It will be essential to notify press" about the statement "and make it prominent" on the journal's Web site, he added.

A public-relations specialist who has advised the journal since 2002 predicted the rebuke would divert attention to Merck and induce the media to ignore the New England Journal of Medicine's own role in aiding Vioxx sales.

"I believe that given what a public punching bag Merck has become, there is more than enough information and more than enough context in the statement to drive the media away from NEJM and toward the authors, Merck and plaintiff attorneys," wrote Edward Cafasso, a Boston-based public relations consultant, in a late-night email to journal staffers hours before the expression was released. Mr. Cafasso later added, "In my view, this disclosure may very well be seen as the final straw for Merck on the Vioxx matter."

Mr. Cafasso's prediction initially proved correct. The Texas court ended up delaying the release of Dr. Curfman's deposition, and the expression of concern released Dec. 8 received wide media attention. A Dec. 12 list of talking points circulated among journal editors advised them to deny that the journal's statement was connected to the federal trial. If asked about the release date, editors were advised to say, "We made this information public as soon as we could, without regard to the trial." It isn't clear who wrote the memo.

The editors now concede the timing was connected to the planned release of Dr. Curfman's deposition at the trial. "We wanted a coherent statement to go out before that," says Dr. Curfman. However, they maintain that the statement was motivated by Dr. Curfman's discovery of new information about the Merck authors' advance knowledge of the three heart attacks.

'We Were Hoodwinked'

Dr. Drazen says one discovery he made after the journal's statement was published shows how the authors deceived the journal. He found that the Vigor study of Vioxx continued to tally stomach-related events for several weeks after it stopped tallying heart-related events. "We were hoodwinked," he says. Merck says these cutoff dates were determined ahead of time and weren't designed to reduce the number of heart events included in the totals.

Perhaps the most sensational allegation in the journal's expression of concern was that the authors of the November 2000 article deleted heart-related safety data from a draft just two days before submitting it to the journal for publication. The journal said it was able to detect this by examining a computer disk submitted with the manuscript.

The statement was ambiguous about what data the authors deleted, hinting that serious scientific misconduct was involved. "Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data," the editors wrote.

In reality, the last-minute changes to the manuscript were less significant. One of the "deleted" items was a blank table that never had any data in it in article manuscripts. Also deleted was the number of heart attacks suffered by Vioxx users in the trial -- 17. However, in place of the number the authors inserted the percentage of patients who suffered heart attacks. Using that percentage (0.4%) and the total number of Vioxx users given in the article (4,047), any reader could roughly calculate the heart-attack number.

Dr. Curfman says it would have been easier on readers to give the exact number and admits "both the authors and the editors slipped up" in not including it.

Many news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, misunderstood the ambiguous language and incorrectly reported that the deleted data were the extra three heart attacks -- which, if true, would have reflected badly on Merck. The New England Journal says it didn't attempt to have these mistakes corrected. Dr. Curfman says the language about the deletions is "very precise and it is correct."

The day after the expression of concern, Mr. Cafasso emailed colleagues:

"The story is playing out exceptionally well."

Write to David Armstrong at david.armstrong@wsj.com4

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Charter protection for dogs - not humans - in Ontario

2006-05-15T13:13:00.000-04:00

For all those who defend the rights of human beings in this country and who don't realisitcally believe that dogs are included in the enumerated grounds for a Charter Challenge in the Canadian Constitution.

Dear Minister Bryant:

I never thought I'd see the day when a high profile lawyer, Clayton Ruby, starts defending dogs under our Constitution in a Charter Challenge. (CTV news)

But then again, this is Ontario - a province that snubs it's nose at the legal rights of human beings - especially those already enumerated in section 15 of the Charter - namely those who are branded as "mentally ill" and who have their rights violated daily but cannot get legal services or access to the courts or Charter challenges because of the discriminatory attitudes of lawyers and the Crown.

So, it's not really surprising that dogs have more rights in Ontario than human beings. If a dog was subjected to the inhumane and undignified treatment that individuals who are branded by the health community with a "mental illness" do in this province, Ontarians would certainly be up in arms about it wouldn't they and as fast as possible launch a Charter challenge?

What an incredibly pathetic province this is.

MW B.A.
Human Rights/Mental Health Rights Advocate
Hamilton ON

Go figure...

2006-05-12T00:52:00.000-04:00

Thought I should post to let readers know what's up with HR. I was pretty damn sick and still have a cold or whatever it is. But one good thing has happened - actually two.

I've stopped smoking and with that have cut down how much coffee I drink. Go figure...

In any case this is good news. I've been reading the blogs of journalists who have decided to web log how they are handling quitting. Some sound like they are suffering quite a bit and I do have to say, that there has been no suffering from lack of nictotine on this girl's part.

Yes, I'm having some not-so-serious cravings but I still have a sufficient amount of phlegm in my lungs that I'm really not interested in taking in anything that only a few weeks ago burned my lungs with such intensitiy that I was sure I seared a hole through the bottom of my wind bags.

I did have one or two ciggies but they tasted like I scraped the tar off of a well travelled highway and stuck it in a tube of bleached paper. So after a few days of not smoking, the coffee tasted like crap too, well not exactly, but it certainly wasn't worth drinking let alone enjoying so this means I'm down to one professional coffee a day.

Speaking of cigarettes...

I wanted to write about Constable John Atkinson the Windsor police officer that was shot and killed last week but I didn't know what to say. I used to get my cigarettes from the Mac's where he was killed as I lived up the road from that intersection. Here's a link to a really beautiful use of html. It's a guest book to sign condolences offered by the Windsor Star.

Instead, I cried off and on throughout the weekend because I knew him, if only briefly. I still have his card he gave to me after we met. I can still hear his voice and the words he said when we first spoke.

Death is surreal. One day the life of a person is exuded by the voice we hear and presence we feel but in a matter of seconds it vanishes like the sun burning off a fog. It fades into the air, never to have presence again. It's hard to wrap the mind around this vanishing.

So for a little while, with all this seriousness in mind, I will stop posting to concentrate on a few non-serious things - like some sculpture - so I can express myself a little more creatively, with satisfaction and hopefully, with some impact.

yours,
HR

Promotions

2006-04-30T16:59:00.000-04:00

UPDATE May 1 2006: If you get a chance please read this press release on this report. Here's an example heading: The Hospital as A Coercive Intimating, Abusive, and Traumatizing Environment. The report was organized by the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault and put out by the Canadian Alliance for Rights on Health Care. Psychiatric assault is right - some that include death - which should put these charlatans behind bars - if only Ontario's police services actually took s. 15 of the Charter seriously.

I've been under the weather lately - just a chest cold & fever. I could use some more rest for a few more days so I won't be posting for the remainder of the week.

I wan't to promote this documentary until Friday anyway.

For those of you who are out of town and want to catch the film it starts at 7:30 pm - the poster is noted a half hour earlier but that's ok it's a trick we French Canadians have learned to get us places at the right time.

If you do decide to come to the screening it should end by about 8:30 pm. There may or may not be a discussion at the end of the film - this will depend on the audience. It's only intended as a screening and not a thesis motivator. That means I won't be giving a talk just a basic introduction and perhaps some anecdotal information the end of the film.

Jamesville Art Crawl

Sky Dragon is less than a block from Jackson Square which is on James Street you can check out Jamesville's infamous art crawls that is happening the same night. If you take a right North on James (that means turning right off of King William - and yes there is parking right across the street from Sky Dragon for a cost-??).

You can park anywhere on James Street between Cannon and Barton. There will be a number of galleries with co-ordinated openings in this stretch - just watch for the throngs of curious art gawkers and buyers. Many Hamilton artists are a very clever bunch - they have tapped into creating small pieces for small cost to fit tight art collecting budgets to larger pieces for the serious investor.

Here's a few in Jamesville with links to wet the whistle: Mixed Media, Blue Angel Gallery, Loose Canon Gallery, You Me Gallery, Hamilton Artists Inc.

There are galleries popping up in this area almost every month and each crawl brings more and more art investors to the area - so keep in touch with these links - you won't find Jamesville's art crawls mentioned in The Spec.

Talks & documentaries on mental health issues

2006-04-27T09:11:00.000-04:00

The Healthy Mind, Body, Planet tour - details below from the Ottawa X Press - is in Hamilton at 7 p.m., at Sky Dragon Community Development Centre (pick link for details). I will be there tomorrow to meet Angela as well as promoting the documentary Prescription: Suicide? that will be screened at Sky Dragon next week on Friday May 5th at 7:00 - cost is $5.00

April 13th, 2006
Bio: Angela Bischoff
Corporate checkup
Riva Soucie
Ottawa X Press

Angela Bischoff's detox plan for a pill-popping generationTypically, mental, physical and planetary health are treated separately by activists, media and policymakers. But Angela Bischoff - whose partner's death, environmental activist and politician Tooker Gomberg, was linked to side effects from depression medication - wants people to make the connection between the three. She's teamed up with other activists to create Healthy Mind, Body, Planet - a multimedia presentation now touring Canada. XPress reached her in Big Cove, New Brunswick.

XPress This campaign looks really rad. Nutshell it for people who don't know anything about it yet.

Bischoff I've joined forces with independent media activists Kelly Reinhardt and Bridget Haworth of www.boilingfrog.ca. I'm focusing on the dramatic rise in antidepressant use while they're making the connections between big pharma and the corporate influences of big oil, big media and the like. In the next three months we'll travel by train to 23 Canadian cities and towns to talk about and document the dangers of antidepressant drugs and the pervasive influence of the pharmaceutical industry in our lives.

XPress What's the big deal about big pharma?

Bischoff They're a half-a-trillion-dollar industry that sells products that often cause injury or death when used as directed, like big oil and tobacco. All three industries know that some of their most profitable products are injuring and killing people, but have hidden evidence, lied about it, hired their own experts to produce phoney, misleading "research," and rely on public funds to pay for the consequences. Meanwhile, people are dying, and families are being torn apart. It's obscene.

XPress What was your motivation for taking this on?

Bischoff Two years ago I was living life fully with my soul mate of 17 years - Tooker Gomberg - travelling through life together, making waves, organizing around environmental and justice issues. We had just moved to Halifax. Tooker was unemployed and sank into a depression, the second of his life. He saw a psychiatrist and agreed to take an antidepressant drug. His agitation increased on the drug until, with the dosage upped to the maximum in just five weeks, the agitation literally sent him over the edge.

Not three weeks later, while at his memorial in Toronto, a friend gave me a copy of a newspaper report: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had issued a public health advisory stating that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation in some users. I broke down, incredulous. I immediately immersed myself in this issue, reading everything I could get my hands on.

XPress What did you learn?

Bischoff I learned that one in four users of antidepressants gets agitated on them. This is a very serious side effect. Agitation is a potent predictor of suicide. With 50 million users worldwide, that's a lot of angry, agitated people. Dr. David Healy of the U.K., author of hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and a dozen books, claims that one in 500 users of antidepressants will kill themselves as a direct result of their drug - that's 500,000 suicides!

This has been confirmed by Dr. Dean Fergusson of the Ottawa Health Research Institute. His meta-analysis reviewed data on 90,000 patients from some 700 clinical trials and found that patients were twice as likely to attempt suicide on antidepressants as on sugar pills. And there's a whole host of other side effects that we're never told about, like mania, sexual dysfunction, emotional dullness, weight change, addiction, aggression and on and on.

XPress What are you hearing from people on the road?

Bischoff Our first stop on the tour was a First Nations community, Elsipogtog, in northern New Brunswick. We spent two days meeting people, hearing their stories, and it's a nightmare. Every family is touched by addiction and everything that accompanies it: theft, lies, family breakdown, suicide, all from drug abuse (pharmaceutical and street). This community is begging for solutions, for help. Meanwhile, the pushers carry on, the doctors keep writing "scripts," and the drug industry reaps millions in profits in this community alone. It's a tragedy of unbelievable proportion.

XPress What can we expect at the presentation tonight?

Bischoff We're telling people's stories through theatre, video and spoken word. We've edited together the best video clips we've come across to inform and inspire critical analysis. We're sharing and distributing information. We're listening to others' stories. We're creating a public dialogue. We're brainstorming solutions.

XPress How else can people get involved?

Bischoff They can visit our website: www.greenspiration.org. We've got blogs and video podcasts of interviews we're doing along the way, as well as information, articles and web links about antidepressants and big pharma. They'll also find our own publication, Depression Expression, outlining these issues in depth with references and resources, as well as discussion about alternatives to drugs to treat depression. The back page is about taking action.
More importantly, people can pay closer attention to their friends and loved ones, supporting them during their down times. Proper diet devoid of sugar and processed food, daily exercise and social contact are things you can do to keep yourself healthy and connected.

XPress Okay, activists aren't superhuman. Any guilty pleasures?

Bischoff I like to play pool and have a pint of the local microbrew. And black licorice - my favourite.

XPress What are you doing to stay healthy on the road?

Bischoff Bridget quit coffee on day one of the tour, narrowly averting a caffeine withdrawal headache with a shot of propolis tincture. Kelly purchased his last pack of smokes before boarding the train. A native medicine healer told me today that peppermint and mint are good herbs to counter cravings. We all committed to a half-hour of yoga daily, to eating healthily, and to staying positive and supporting each other. We're committed to our own physical, mental and spiritual health - what we call sustainable activism.

Senate Committee to examine tax returns of oil co's

2006-04-26T21:52:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Senate Financial committee is requesting the tax records of 15 of the largest oil and gas companies in the United States - from the AP on Yahoo news.

Both Republicans and Democrats sitting on the committee are concerned about high profits and executive compensation when gasoline prices are soaring and gouging drivers. The committee wants a thorough review to determine if the companies are complying with tax laws, close loopholes and examine if executive retirement plans are subsidized by taxpayers.