Martin C. Winer

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VIOXX which did pass clinical trials and FDA approval which was later associated with heart disease and voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer Merck.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.

My hope is that I’ll be able to post several eulogies, videos and pictures here.  Please send me anything you’d like posted.

Pictures:

Video:
VIDEO: Grandma Glass, Passover 2001
VIDEO (alternate format): Grandma Glass, Passover 2001

Obituary:

Original link here:

http://classifieds.hamiltonspectator.com/HOLCSApp/do/attribute_view_ad?adID=5360066&categoryName=ANNOUNCEMENTS&classId=3080

GLASS, Ida A beautiful woman passed away on April 23, 2009, just shy of her 97th birthday. Her name was Ida A. Glass and she will be reunited with her husband Walter P. Glass. Wishing you guys a good time up there. Ida Glass (nee Marcus) was an incredible daughter, wife, mother of Bernard and Reesa, grandmother and great-grandmother, sister and friend. Everyone who was lucky enough to have known her will remember her as a treasure. Funeral: Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 2 p.m. United Hebrew Memorial Chapel, 28 Ewen Rd. Donations to Shalom Village, Hamilton.

Eulogies:

Eulogy: Martin C. Winer (Grandson)  Ida A. Glass (1912 – 2009)

Grandma Glass brimmed with a bright and glowing personality which rose to fill a room much like her cakes and pastries.  Grandma was known to others as:  Ida Adele Glass.  Grandma herself added Adele to her moniker as though two names could not contain her character.  She was right.  Grandma was always on the go with one project or hobby or what have you.  Grandma attended bridge games, outing clubs, wrote book reviews for the local library, did knitting and needle point, collected antiques and of course there was the constant cooking and baking.

When Grandma arrived in Toronto for a holiday celebration, a ten minute procession of circular cookie tins lined with wax paper ensued.  One by one bearers would ferry in stacks of tins laden with banana muffins topped with walnuts, hand made strawberry jam strudel, coconut macaroons, mandel broit, and my favourite, blueberry cake.  Only after some time had passed and the procession had ended did Grandma and Grandpa make it to the door where they provided my brother and I with an eagerly anticipated Hot Wheel car or Lego set.  Visits from Grandma were a cornucopia of sweet delicacies and toys.  “Could anyone be cooler than this?” thought the 8 year old boy I was at the time.

Trips in the opposite direction, Toronto to Hamilton, were equally ‘cool’.  Grandma’s apartment was one of the first apartments we knew of to have a pool.  When we arrived we were greeted by the usual cakes and pastries and Tuna casserole.  Now Grandma new I was a fussy eater, not given to eating fish, and always had a supply of applesauce and Jello on hand.  Cakes, cookies, jello, a pool and toys.  My parents had told me that Hamilton was a city famous for making steel.  Well I didn’t see any steel here, I saw heaven.

Grandma’s apartment was adorned with antiques and the walls plastered with her needle point work.  The knick knacks were ever changing.  As a child I imagined that Grandma had a warehouse of knick knacks which she constantly exchanged to keep the place looking fresh.  It didn’t take me too many more visits to realize that Grandma actually gave away all her knick knacks only to create more to replace them.  The cost of owning anything in Grandma’s house was mentioning you liked it.  Visitors to Grandma’s place always left laden with baked goods, Grandma’s craft items and antiques.

Grandma lit up when her grandchildren were in the room.  She relished stories of what we had done and what we were interested in doing.  Her faith in us inspired greatness – not wanting to disappoint such an avid fan.  Grandma bought me my first doctor’s play kit from the IGA we were visiting to foster my interest in medicine.  Later on she, along with my Grandfather and Uncle, got me my first Merck Manual – a doctor’s handbook.  My interest in Science eventually led me to Computer Science rather than Medical Science, but I’m sure she’d be equally supportive of my choice.

Towards the latter years, with her health starting to fail, we saw a distillation of Grandma’s character with the key components still shining through.  In one of her early stays in the hospital I remember noting that Grandma had gone to the trouble of putting on a broach and was still well put together.  Grandma was always prim and proper.  In the convalescent home, her love for reading persisted to the very end, even beyond her ability to speak.  One small event sticks with me in that it perfectly captures Grandma’s love for all of us.

In one of the last Passovers she attended in Toronto, at the end of the usual procession of cookie tins, Grandma needed to sit down; she wasn’t feeling well.  She asked me repeatedly to fetch some icing sugar to ice the cake with.  I remember wondering: “what difference did it make, it was only family anyways?”  But there was no such distinction for Grandma.  Her family was royalty.  So when I realized the importance to her, I sprinkled the cake with icing sugar and she looked relieved.  I remember thinking that love can be uniquely expressed by a bunt cake.  It was her display of caring and affection to all that shared in it.  It was a culinary work of art made lovingly just for us from the kitchen of Ida Adele Glass.

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Ida Adele Glass
Chayyalah bat Ya’acov v’Rivkah
April 26, 2009
Rabbi Jordan Cohen

There is some controversy around the Ayshet Hayyil nowadays, the passage from Proverb 31 which describes a woman of valour. In a post-feminist age, measuring the worth of a woman by how she satisfies the needs of her husband and children seems to be little anachronistic and ignores the essential essence of who a woman is as an individual. But for woman of a certain generation, these qualities of trustworthiness and integrity, of service to family and community, of dignity, kindness and strength, represent not only the most essential values of life, but ideals to be striven towards each and every day without exception. Ida Glass was, indeed, a woman of that generation, and, indeed, she represented all that our tradition revered in the Ayshet Hayyil .

Ida Marcus was born here in Hamilton in June 1912 to Jacob and Rebecca Marcus. She was the youngest of four daughters, all of whom pre-deceased her: Eva, Esther, and Millie, who passed away only recently. Throughout her life Ida maintained the qualities that would describe her right to the end of her days: she was a vibrant woman, endlessly optimistic and positive. She was elegant, with fine taste. She was an exceptional hostess, knowing all about protocol, and eager to mentor younger women to be hostesses as well. She was fiercely loyal to her family, beginning with her parents and sisters and continuing all the way to her great-grandchildren. Family was family, and that was all that mattered. She was regarded as a highly gifted woman. Although her education extended only to the end of high school, she always seemed to have solutions to problems that evaded even professionals. Many came to her for her wise counsel. This probably extended from her incredible passion for reading. She was always reading books, bringing home new books from the library and even start to write book reports, which she would share with her family, which were then published in the local library newsletter.

Ida worked for many years, in clothing and linens, and those she worked for quickly came to rely on her for natural talents at business and organization. But work and family were never enough, and Ida maintained a whirlwind of volunteer activity, taking leadership roles with the Temple Anshe Sholom and the Temple’s Devora Sisterhood, the National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah. And, as if this was not enough, there were the social activities: bridge games, outing clubs, the Saturday nighters, knitting and needle point, collecting antiques and the seemingly never-ending time in the kitchen cooking and baking.

Ida was in her early 20s when she met her beloved Walter and the married when she was 23, in 1935. Soon Bernard and Reesa came along, and Ida had her own family, which she longed for. Bernard remembers their childhood as being ideal, which their mother always there for them, constantly caring and providing guidance and wisdom. Reesa recalls their home having what seemed like a revolving door. The house was always full of people, the coffee pot always on and the delicious homemade goodies that were always available to go with the coffee. No matter how busy, Ida always had time for family and friends. Always available, always the consummate hostess, always willing to help. She was always doing something, hardly ever resting, and when she did lie down, she would do so for exactly 15 minutes and then resume her activities, totally refreshed.

The last couple of years were difficult for Ida and her family, and, beginning around the time of Walter’s passing in 2000, her health began to decline. She eventually moved into Shalom Village, becoming known there as the “Queen of Shalom” for her hospitable, caring and loving nature. She was a real lady, a true Ayshet Huyyal right to the very end.

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Eulogy: Ida Glass by Reesa Winer (Daughter)

My mother’s house had a revolving front door.  Her home and kitchen were always full of people, the coffee pot was always on and delicious homemade goodies went with the coffee.  She was a extremely sociable woman who always had time for her friends.

She was actively involved in the community taking leadership roles.  Temple Anshe Shalom, The National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah.

She assisted several family members in their businesses, acting as a sales person.  She was always doing something, hardly ever resting and when she did she would lie down for exactly 15 mins. and then resume her duties, totally refreshed.

She loved nature, always commenting on the beauty of trees, flowers and the world around her. ————————————————————————————————-

Eulogy:  Ida Glass by Jeremy Glass (Grandson)

There are so many gifts of heritage and identity that a grandmother imparts  to her family along the way.  If there are core family values passed down through many generations, Grandma and Grandpa you instilled in us and others  integrity, honesty, pride, industriousness, grit and determination.  I will always remember you as so very well put together, so strong on your own two feet, smart as a tack, so giving to us on our visits; one must mention how stylish and polished you and grandpa were as a couple, and of course you were the best baker on this side of the continent.  The pride and loyalty you showed towards our father and Auntie Reesa have modeled to us what we should expect from our elders and what the young people around us should expect from us.

The Glass family has lost its beauteous matriarch.  Grandma Glass, I send you our love, and I send my sympathy to the rest of our family as we celebrate the heritage and pride you have modeled and instilled in us.