Canadian Bill C51 purportedly proposes sweeping changes to the herbal supplement and naturopathic/homeopathic remedies market.  The following excerpted from an anti Bill C51 website, although not independently confirmed, suggests that the bill would (amongst other things):

1) Fasttrack pharmaceutical drug approval and
2) Make over 70% percent of current herbal drugs illegal.

Now, this was taken from an opposing website so all claims must then be taken with a grain of all natural sea salt.  The Government claims that your access to Vitamin C and Echinacea is safe. 

“Under Bill C-51, Canadians will continue to have access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality. The Bill will not limit access to natural health products nor does it call for a change in their regulatory status (from over-the-counter to prescription)” says Health Canada spokesperson Paul Duchesne.

Source :: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080509/C51_protests_080509/20080510?hub=TopStories

From that simple quote we are forced to ask the question, who and how will products be determined to be ’safe, effective and of high quality’?  The contention seems to be over semantics and the definition of exactly which products will and will not be regulated.  Putting semantic issues aside, it looks as though the combatants are missing the more global issue and that is in addressing the manner in which the allopathic (mainstream) and alternative medicine operate.  The issue is probably more complex than first fathomed.  Both paradigms operate under different modi operandorum. 

Big pharma operates under the model of providing drugs and therapies with validated claims.  The drug’s claims and safety are established by clinical drug trials.  The benefits here should be obvious but the weaknesses of this system may not be.  The first failure of the big pharma model is that drug trials can be flawed either intentionally or just by simple lack of scope or experimental design.  Take for example the drug VIOXX which did pass clinical trials and FDA approval which was later associated with heart disease and voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer Merck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib#Withdrawal  The second failing of the big pharma model is even more subtle in that  only patentable therapies need apply.  Take for example the research Dr. Evangelos Michelak out of the university of Alberta who has come up with a cancer treatment using the chemical DCA. http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/  This treatment has been conclusively shown to remove or eradicate all manner of cancers in test animals.  It is a hugely promising therapy with suprisingly few side effects.  One would expect this drug to be in human trial by now.  However, since DCA is not patentable, (almost as common as table salt) the drug companies have no interest.  DCA will go to human trial nonetheless, but only after Dr. Evangelos Michelak is able to scrape together enough money from other philanthropic investors.

Now let’s examine the world of home or natural remedies.  You can pick up a bottle of an herbal remedy which can make all manner of claims.  These claims need not be validated and, indeed, the only validation you’ll receive is either from the smiling face of the salesperson at your natural foods store or the recommendation of a friend or naturopatic practitioner.  However, you probably won’t be able to rely on any study and you’ll have to adopt a ‘take it and try it’ approach.  The failings of this system are two fold.  First, hearkening back to the days of the snake oil salesmen, there is the potential for you to waste your time and money on ineffective remedies.  Second, in wasting your time on these remedies, you may delay seeking appropriate medical treatment for a potentially serious condition.  The first failure – the lack of study based findings — is compelling.  The natural health product industry needs to provide better support for their claims and adhere to some standard as for quality of composition. The second failure is not as compelling as people typically resort to natural health products only after the failure or reticence of allopathic medicine.

Looking at both paradigms, there is a measure which could marry their strengths and divorce ourselves of their weaknesses.  The summary of bill C51 reads as follows:

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, to strengthen the oversight of the benefits and risks of therapeutic products throughout their life cycle, to support effective compliance and enforcement actions and to enable a greater transparency and openness of the regulatory system.

Source :: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3398126&File=19

If this is indeed the goal of the Federal Government, then wouldn’t their time and efforts be better spent in implementing a system of subsidized and facilitated human trials?  A subsidized and facilitated human trials system would raise the bar for natural health food products to better support their claims.  Since the studies would be subsidized and facilitated we wouldn’t deny ourselves access to any reasonable therapy but as consumers, claims of product effectiveness and quality of composition could be properly backed by more than a friendly smile.  All therapies, herbal and pharmaceutical would be subject to the same level of testing.  This testing would be reasonably affordable for any given company.  This would satisfy the allopathic community’s demands for rigorous proof and testing while at the same time allow the allopathic community to consider previously unprofitable yet promising treatments such as DCA.

There is a petition circulating to stop bill C51.  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/StopC51  I would be willing to sign it if it could be proved it would make 70% of current natural health care products illegal.  Would I sign a petition to have the Federal Government fund and facilitate human trials of all health care products?  In a heartbeat.

Alberta · ale · alternative medicine · bill c51 · c51 · Canada · cancer · cancer treatment · cancers · cent · China · dca · Dr. Evangelos Michelak · drugs · Evangelos Michelak · fda · fed · federal government · Federal Government fund · food · Health · Health Canada · health care products · health products · heart disease · herbal medicine · homeopathic · http · king · life · Merck · MIT · natural health care products · natural health food products · natural remedies · naturopatic · oil · Paul Duchesne · pharmaceutical · pharmaceutical drug approval · quote · servlet · snake oil salesmen · spokesperson · the fed · therapeutic products · University of Alberta · vioxx · web

There has been a spate of activity in the nanotech realm lately. Over the past few months I’ve tracked several new developments. Here they are in no particular order: spine, ram, solar cell, ca

1) Solar Power: The problem with solar technology is the high cost of the solar cells. The current level of technology in solar is in silicon wafer solar cells. They have low relative effeciency and a high relative cost. This makes them unfeasible as a replacement. Many companies, amont them Nanosolar of California, have developed a technology using nanoparticles which can absorb light more efficiently, but more importantly, more economically. Nanosolar is targetting a rate of $1/watt which would make solar power a viable alternative over nuclear or fossil fuels.

More amazing is the fact that the solar films can be mass produced and printed on to any building or surface. More details can be found here: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10989479
http://www.nanosolar.com/

2) Cancer Treatments:This story warms my heart on so many levels. John Kanzius was himself diagnosed with Leukemia. He underwent several bouts of painful chemotherapy. Not a physician but instead a retired radio and television engineer, he had a brainwave one night while sleeping. He came up with the idea of using radio waves to selectively target cancer cells while leaving the remaining healthy cells unscathed. Chemotherapy is based on the differential survivability of cancerous cells versus healthy cells. That is to say the chemicals used are toxic to both healthy and cancer cells, and the hope is that the cancer cells die out faster than the healthy ones: not a promising prospect.

Kanzius’ idea is remarkably different. He plans to send nanoparticles of gold into the tumor. He plans to use a targeting molecule attached to the gold nanoparticle to saturate the tumor with particles. Then he directs a highly concentrated radio beam towards the tumor. The gold heats up under influence of this beam and essentially the tumor is cooked.

3) RAM-Memory: Hard discs have had a good run. They’ve given us a terabyte of storage at nominal cost and with reasonable access time. The technology of the future however will but much smaller, with no operating parts to wear out. The technology is called ‘Racetrack’ and is being developed in the Almaden Research Center in San Jose California. At the heart of the technology electron spin is used to code information. This information races along a nanowire at blazing speeds with very low power consumption. Future incarnations of this technology promise replace hard discs an allow for near instantaneous start up and uncompromising reliability.

4) Spinal Repair: We all recall fondly the heroic efforts of Christopher Reeve to bring about an awareness of spinal injury and the tragic effects it can have on the sufferers and their families. The problem with spinal injury, indeed most nerve injury, is that the injured site (referred to as a transection) forms a scar at either end of the cut bundle. Nerves do have the ability to regrow however, they lack the ability to bridge this scar. John Kessler, M.D., Davee Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine has come up with a gel of self assembling nanostructures which is injected at the injury site. Once inside, they go to work assembling a scaffolding which allows neural stem cells to bridge the gap. Mice with spinal injuries were injected with the compound and showed significant improvement including the ability to walk again.

almaden research center · california · cancer · cancer treatment · cent · chemicals · Chemotherapy · christopher reeve · economist · flu · gold · head · Health · html · http · ibm · ILS · injury · injury site · Internet · John Kanzius · john kessler · Kanzius Machine · Leukemia · levis · nanoparticles · nanosolar · nanotechnology · nanotubule · nerve injury · Northwestern University · Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine · physician · professor · Professor of Stem Cell Biology · racetrack memory · radio · radio and television engineer · RAM · Red · scar · solar · solar power · solar technology · spinal chord · spinal injuries · spinal injury · stem cell · stem cells · technology electron spin · technology promise · technology using nanoparticles · transection · tumor · USD

The State of The Union – As Seen on TV
Martin C. Winer

But first a word about how this article was written:  This article was the result of a ‘cluster’ or a free-word association.  This is an exercise which is meant to use the ‘right brain’ to spur creativity and generate writing topics.  You can create your own clusters or bubbles here: http://www.bubbl.us/ but it’s best to do them with pen and paper since one tends to self edit when typing.  Each word you see italicized below is from the cluster.  Usually, the idea is to take one theme from the cluster and write about it.  I thought it would be a challenge to include ALL the words and still have the article tell a cohesive story.   Read the article, taking note of the italicized words.  Then see the cluster below.

I have been worried about the state of the world as of late.  Being recently unemployed with no meaningful job on the horizon, I was wondering when I’d be returning to the 9-5 lifestyle.  It’s not that I ravish 9-5, as Dolly Parton’s famous song correctly puts it, 9-5 is all “takin and no giving” but it beats aimlessly strolling on sidewalks waiting for a direction to unfold.  Up until recently I was a member of the over 30 and unmarried class.  Fortune changes quickly and I now find myself suddenly being married with children.  The responsibilities are understandably far different.  Curious as to what direction my life would take over the next months and years, I turned on the familiar glowing oracle fitted in every living room, the television.

While I waited for my big screen TV, a vestige of my former employed self, to come to life, I recalled that a comic had mentioned that Dolly Parton had insured her breasts.  I wondered if the comic was putting us on, as he was apt to do.  Would an insurance company take premiums for such a ridiculous item?  What was the counterparty risk?  Were her breasts in good hands with Allstate (TM)?  The TV came to life with the evening news reporting of another hemorrhage on Wall Street of 213 ethereal points, with AIG requesting more bailout money.  Evidently, indeed, insurance companies would take premiums on just about anything and the only boobs in the interaction were the policy holders who actually thought the policy was worth something.  Bored with the evening news I changed the channel.

Dick Cheney was on “State of the Union” with John King on CNN.  Cheney, a bastion of the old guard was set to be ‘grilled’ by King as to the sins of his administration.  I flipped right past the interview because I knew it could not yield the satisfaction I was seeking.  Waterboarding and assassination squads would be second nature to a man like Cheney who shot his hunting partner in the face.  Waterboarding I imagined was just his technique for cleaning his felled game, human or otherwise.  I wasn’t interested in the past, I was curious to know what my future held.

There was an infomercial on with 90 year old Jack Lalanne sporting his leisure suit and his juicer.  I am a late night TV watcher and infomercials plague the airwaves from dusk ‘til dawn.  Jack Lalanne was born in 1914 and looked to be in better health than myself all thanks to his 1/2 horsepower juicer.  In went an orange, apple, and every other healthy fruit your mother tried to get you to eat as a child.  Out poured a fountain of youth which had purportedly kept Lalanne in such great shape over these many years, yet somehow, it hadn’t managed to save his fashion sense.  The leisure suit was last popular when the juice on everyone’s lips was Juice Newton, “Grease” was the new movie and disco was still in style.  I was intrigued with the notion of extended life and wondered if indeed Lalanne’s juicer could provide it.  Even if it could, what would my life be like, aged 90+ years drinking fruit and vegetables all day?  Would my life be fulfilling?  I changed the channel seeking an answer from the glowing oracle of TV.

The next infomercial was for Extenz tablets; an all natural ‘Male Enhancement’.  Well this held some promise now didn’t it?  At least my latter years could be herbally augmented with extra length and girth.  But just what were these pills I thought to myself?  “An all natural male enhancement?” I wondered to myself.  Didn’t we already have such a thing in Dolly Parton?  What were these herbs and how were they discovered?  Did someone eat a salad with wild herbs one night with shocking results in the bedroom?  How did they then suspect the salad and not anything else?  My mind was awash with questions and I wasn’t much in the thinking mood.  I wanted answers, not questions.  Come on oracle of television, what would my life be like?  The only effort I was willing to exert was in flipping channels.

Yet as I flipped there were a plethora of Viagra and its new copy Cialis ads.  Was the television intimating that my future would need these?  A Viagra ad promised that at age 50 I could trade in my sedan for a Harley Davidson and with one pill have the vigor of a 20 year old.  A Cialis ad promised 36 hour or daily dosing options to make sure I would be able to respond when the mood was right.  If I was as old as Jack Lalanne, would my wife still be ready for me?  I’d be worried about breaking bones at that age.  Another flip would quell that fear.

Once a month Boniva would rebuild my wife’s bones without the need to remember a weekly pill.  There would be no need to take those chalky calcium pills once a day.  Of course memory at that age will be compromised so the once a month dosing is ideal.  Side effects could include liver and kidney disease but at least you would only have to endure them once a month.  God bless Big Pharma.  I could have a once a day boner and my wife could have healthy bones all month.  I was comforted that the future would be bright.  My comfort was not long lasting, at least not as long lasting as 36 hour Cialis promised to be, when it occurred to me that Big Pharma was suffering from a horrible case of misplaced priorities.  With all of their attention focused on bones and boners, they had dropped the two big balls of cancer and heart disease.  I curiously imagined a big Pharma strategizing kick off meeting with people brainstorming on new drug targets and somehow bones and boners getting to the top of the list over cancer and heart disease.  I only hoped that Jack Lalanne’s fountain of youth Juice could get my wife and I past those two roadblocks.

I calmed myself thinking that my 90th year was well off, I being only 35 now.  Big Pharma had time to readjust their priorities.  I continued my flipping to discover yet another Big Pharma commercial for Requip, a medication for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS).  My legs were perfectly atrophied into their TV watching position.  I didn’t believe that such a condition could occur.  “My doctor said ‘Requip’” said the announcer as a television doctor mouthed “Requip”.  I imagined that the doctor mouthed “bullsh*t” in response to the patients complaint.  [0u92R90U R ‘ jixz-]0039;ffaS980059-09ATRE MT3.  Oops, I’m ever so sorry about that previous mess, you see my arms tend to spontaneously move uncontrollably every so often…  Oh my, could it be I have Restless Arms Syndrome (RAS)?  Well at least I know that Big Pharma is on the case.  Perhaps if I ingest Requip while standing on my head, the medication will settle in the appropriate appendages?  Parenthetically I wonder if all Requip contains is a bottle of gel caps filled with Brandy?  All it seemed Big Pharma could do for me in my latter years was give calm legs and arms and a rock hard erection.  The Viagra commercial warned that any erection lasting over 4 hours constituted a medical risk and thus I knew my fulfillment from Big Pharma would leave me with 20 remaining hours in the day to fill with what?  What would I do?  I looked to the financial stations to see if I had any prospect of finding a job.

CNBC was heralding the success of the latest Apple Computer quarterly results.  The IPhone and the IPod were unrelenting successes.  The host discussed the failing health of Steve Jobs as a concern for the future of the company and since we now know all that Big Pharma is good for, the concern is justified.  I myself am not a gadget freak.  I often mockingly eye people walking down the street sweaty palmed typing at lunatic speeds on their Palm, Blackberry or blueberry or whatever the latest berry is.  I have no need to be so totally connected, but evidently there is a huge market for these devices.  Just the same I was delighted to see the success of Apple whose Macintosh computer was, in my mind, the superior computer in 1985.  Bill Gates was the smarter CEO, not the better innovator.  Steve Jobs didn’t allow clones of Macintosh’s while Gates allowed clones of the PC.  As a result Apple’s market share fell like Newton’s apple under newly discovered gravity.  With all the discussion of executive compensation these days, I think Steve Jobs deserves the lion’s share of the reward when it comes to innovation.  The IPod is simple to use media device which takes advantage of the recent wave of music piracy and MP3’s that puts the tale of the Maersk Alabama to shame.  Now don’t get me wrong, copyright infringement was not created by Jobs, he only capitalized on it.  The IPhone is the next logical extension of a handheld computing device incorporating maps, navigation and a whole host of other useful features we come to expect from Apple.  The Macintosh, the IMac as it’s now called, is gaining market share in leaps and bounds.  I guessed that I had attained some inspiration from the glowing oracle;  perseverance, like that of Steve Jobs in the face of constant opposition and I too could one day go on to innovate a pile of handheld devices – or something like that.  Of course this special was being aired on CNBC the so called financial news network that managed to complete miss any predictions of the financial collapse which had claimed my job.  I wasn’t about to take any advice from them.  No, the Corruption National Broadcasting System as I had renamed them would have to find another mark. I dismissed them with a flip of the channel.

The Cheney Interview was over on CNN and now Anderson Cooper on A.C. 360 was sporting a pie chart showing the distributions of the American reinvestment Plan.  There were huge allotments for infrastructure building projects.  A clip revealed workers building bridges all over the country.  Wasn’t it another Democratic president who wanted to build a bridge to the 21st century?  Now are we building bridges out of Chapter 11?  There was discussion of incentives to homeowners to renovate and rejuvenate their properties.  I thought of stopping in at Home Depot but immediately balked because the 27 minute hand waving discussion with 17 year old ‘Skippy’ who works there never seems to get me the results I want.  For all the talk of hope and economic plans CNN was pushing out, I knew that the recession was receding faster than Dick Cheney’s hairline.

Rembrant - Raising of Lazarus

Then they aired a clip of the master of hope: President Obama.  “America has been great and shall rise to be great again” he prophesized.  I thought this had a familiar tone.  I quickly switched to the Catholic Television Service and the pastor proudly boomed “and the phoenix shall rise out of the ashes just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.”  The pastor went on to solicit donations for a new building project.  This also had familiar overtones and I flipped back quickly to CNN.  “It will take considerable investment from us all but we shall rebuild and come back stronger” proudly acclaimed Obama.  It then occurred to me that Obama was more than just a President, he was our primary minister.  He then intimated at his plan to remove toxic assets from the books of the banks without providing the necessary details I was looking for; undoubtedly he would turn water into wine.  The rhetoric of hope was overflowing my ears and I needed a counter position to ground myself again.  Luckily there was the FOX network who was lambasting Obama as the bane of humanity whose short stint in office had already thrown the economy into apocalypse from which only a miracle could now save us.

Putin and other former Soviet interviewees were quoted as saying that the end of capitalism has finally come.  A commentator remarked: “the American dream of picket fences has been replaced by picket lines” as the video showed protesting auto workers.  Am auto worker protested: “The companies are trying to divide and conquer us, taking advantage of this downturn to cut our benefits and pay.  I say enough taxing the middle class!”  Cheers and hurrahs followed.  My brain was like a pair of Levi’s jeans iconically being pulled by these two polarized stations in opposite directions, at the risk of ripping.  There had to be some truth on the glowing oracle of television.  PBS I thought to myself quickly.  That will save me.

Jim Lehrer

(Ed. Note: Actually it’s IOWA that is ok with Gay Rights, not Oklahoma.  In my cluster, I confused the two, but I went with it because the challenge was to write an article using all the clustered words.  I was only off by a 10 hour drive anyways.    )

Public Broadcasting, publicly funded and publicly ignored in favour of watching MTV to hear if Britney Spears of Lindsay Lohan were wearing underwear today.  Today Jim Lehrer was discussing the state of Gay Rights.  Evidently in Ahnold’s (sic) California the rights of gays have been ‘terminated’.   Ironically, Oklahoma seems “Ok” with gay marriage.  Is that what the song “Oklahoma, OK” is about from the musical Oklahoma?  The world seemed upside down.  Had I inverted myself such that Requip went to my arms and forgot about it?  Oklahoma was a place where I expected politicians to spout the bible about ‘being Fruitful and multiplying’ and how homosexuality was unnatural.  In liberal California, I expect them to say anything goes, from Gay Rights to cloning dolly the sheep.  After all doesn’t Hotel California by the Eagles promise “Plenty of room at the Hotel California / Any time of year, you can find it here”?  I couldn’t make sense of my world.  I was about as comfortable as a man swimming in itchy wool trunks.  I needed to flip the channel quickly.

Kim Kardashian

Chicks Who Love Guns

Up next was a documentary “American Justice” revisiting the O.J. Simpson trial.  It brought back names like Mezza Luna, Nicole Brown, Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian… whoops my mind wandered.  Robert Kardashian had helped set a murderer free but brought us Kim Kardashian.  Now they say justice should be blind, but have you seen Kim Kardashian?  He was off the hook in my books but the rest of the characters who let O.J. go were open to attack in my imagination.  I recast the events of that fateful night as a Quentin Tarantino movie.  I’d have my justice, if only in my imagination.  Nicole Brown would now be Jackie Brown.  She would seductively seduce O.J. by dancing for him like Salma Hayek in Tarantino’s “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn”.  She’d then immediately turn into a vampire and eat him alive.  Next, Travolta and Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction would show up and after quoting Ezekiel 25:17 would lace into the O.J. lawyers.  Finally the women from “Chicks who love Guns” as seen in Jackie Brown, armed with the AK-47 and they would deal with every “mother [t]ucker” in the jury room.  Returning from my daydream I realized that 10 years had passed and there was no justice to be spoken of.  The only thing I had learned from the episode was that justice is a function of wealth and that O.J. stood for Orenthall James, not Orange Juice.  I’m not admitting I was that stupid however, I’m about to write another article: “If I was that stupid, here’s how I’d admit it.”

I knew how the O.J. saga ended so I flipped again to see what else was on the glowing oracle.  John Sebastian crooned “Welcome Back, to the same old place where you started from…”  It was a rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.  Truly, I was basically back where I had started from, only an hour of flipping elapsed.  I knew nothing more of the future than when I started.  Sure I knew that my bones and boners would be safe, boobs could be insured, and that if I worked very hard, I might find a job.  But I was looking for important answers to important questions like, what would justice be like in the future?  What would the economy be like?  I was sure that Kotter’s Vinni Barbarino wasn’t going to be able to answer my questions.  With that, I turned off the glowing oracle for the night.

‘Apple’ cluster which generated the article.

This is the free word association (or cluster, or bubble) which generated the article.  Again, each italicized above came from the cluster below.

9 to 5 · 9/11 · AID · aig · AK-47 · ale · allstate · America · american justic · Announcer · apple · arnold schwarzenegger · auto workers · bailout · bank · bankruptcy · bible · bill gates · blog · boniva · bubble · california · cancer · capitalism · Case · cent · chapter 11 · chicks who love guns · cialis · cluster · dca · dick cheney · dolly parton · eagles · Economy · Executive · extenze · Ezekiel 25:17 · free word association · gay rights · God · grease · head · Health · heart disease · home depot · homosexuality · hotel california · http · ibm · ILS · insurance · Internet · iphone · ipod · jack lalanne · Jackie Brown · jim lehrer · John Sebastian · John Travolta · juice newton · kim kardashian · king · lawyer · lazarus · levis · life · logic · maersk · maersk alabama · marriage · Martin C. Winer · MIT · mp3 · Music · nature · O. J. Simpson · obama · OJ · oklahoma · palm blackberry · piracy · pirates · President · Pulp Fiction · quentin tarantino · quote · Red · requip · rls · Robert Kardashian · Rome · Salma Hayek · sex · steve jobs · Tarantino · viagra · video · Vinni Barbarino · waterboarding · wealth · Welcome Back Kotter · writing

Some may say that the debate between Capitalism and Socialism has long been concluded with the fall of the Former Soviet Union. While it is true that large scale Communism will likely never be tried again, the debate continues in smaller forums. Michael Moore’s recent film ‘Sicko’ reignites this debate as it pertains to healthcare.

In so doing, the global pros and cons of either system need to be considered when applied to healthcare. The nutshell ‘con’ of Socialism is that it fails to motivate people and deliver supplies and resources efficiently. In turn, the nutshell ‘con’ of Capitalism is that it can be very cold and tunnel visioned, in that it is only profit seeking, which may go against the true desires of its citizens.

When we apply Capitalism or Socialism to healthcare we see the inherent strengths and weaknesses of either system manifest themselves. Specifically, we find Capitalism style healthcare too cold and non-inclusive. However, Socialized healthcare again has problems of motivation of healthcare providers and delivery of cutting edge technologies and services in a timely manner. We’ll work a few examples to flesh this out.

Suppose you are in your doctor’s office and, heaven forbid, you are given the most feared diagnosis in medicine: Cancer. You may or may not want to live in a country with Socialized medicine. This author lives in Canada which is far from the masterpiece of healthcare that Moore seems to paint in his film. I may remind Moore that another man’s grass is always greener and another man’s bill of health is always cleaner.

Canada has a long history of socialized institutions from gas, phone service, electric utilities, etc. to healthcare. But long gone are the halcyon days of government institutions. In recent years there has been a spate of privatization with private health clinics and tiered systems for healthcare already on the table. Having said all that, Canada still maintains a socialized healthcare system, at least for the moment.

Returning to our dreaded Cancer diagnosis, the word on the street in Canada is that our doctors are often not aggressive enough in treating Cancer. Many hugely expensive, yet promising, courses of treatments are avoided due to long wait times or simple unavailability. It is a common practice of Canadians to drive into Buffalo for example for a faster MRI. Having said all that, suppose you are low on funds and are recommended a course of chemotherapy. In this case, ignoring the wait times, you’d want to live in Canada where this is covered. Make no mistake about it, socialized medicine is something that I’m quite proud of as a Canadian, however, it is necessary to make sure we don’t exalt it as a panacea when in fact, it is not. In the final estimation it suffers from the same inherent problems of Socialism, lack of motivation and problems with resource delivery.

Turning our attention to Capitalism as it pertains to healthcare, we again will use Cancer as an example and this time we’ll examine the Pharmaceutical industry. Imagine for a second that I told you there was a new substance which, in mice, was able to shrink lung, breast and brain cancers. This substance was able to target Cancer cells specifically eliminating most, if not all, of the side effects of conventional cancer treatments. You’d think the pharmaceutical companies would be beating a path to the researcher’s door but they’re not. The reason? The compound the researcher works with is about as common as table salt. DCA (Dichloroacetic acid) is a common laboratory compound already available from any chemical supplier. Most importantly, it’s not patentable. As a result, drug companies have no way of recouping any money they pour into its research in human trials. As a result the researcher (Dr. Evangelos Michelakis out of the University of Alberta) is left to ‘pass the hat’ to try to collect the necessary funds to conduct the human trials. Here we see the tunnel vision of Capitalist style healthcare, overly focused on profit, while failing to accomplish the task it was assigned: providing health care.

Thus we see that neither Capitalism nor Socialism make the perfect pill for solving the problem of healthcare. What then do we turn to? We need only parse out ‘healthcare’ into its two parts, health and care. The key to the problem is in the caring. We can try for as long as we want, and as hard as we want to apply different methodologies, but in the end they will all fail if we try to remove ‘care’ from healthcare. In a socialized healthcare system, we still need doctors who care and are motivated and we need politicians to care enough to manage to keep up with the frenetic pace of healthcare developments. In a Capitalist style healthcare system, we need the system to care enough to occasionally ignore profits and look at the more global picture to avoid having the system tunnel visioned and not inclusive. In any case, the key metric for any healthcare system should be measured in units of caring.

AID · Alberta · ale · author · brain cancers · breast cancers · Buffalo · Canada · cancer · cancer treatment · cancers · capitalism · Case · cent · chemical supplier · Chemotherapy · cialis · cold · Communism · conventional cancer · dca · Dr. Evangelos Michelak · dreaded Cancer · electric utilities · Evangelos Michelak · Evangelos Michelakis · Former Soviet Union · Health · healthcare · healthcare developments · healthcare providers · healthcare system · hmo · http · ILS · king · lung cancers · Michael Moore · MRI · pharmaceutical · Red · researcher · resources · Sicko · socialized healthcare system · socialized medicine · style healthcare · style healthcare system · University of Alberta