PM Harper announces funds for health center in Ontario

This
is From the Prime Minister's site, as is this. And this allows a search of local newspaper reports.

Vitamin C and Heroin, Cocaine, Crack, Meth Withdrawal

When the Cure is Worse than the Disease

"Mary wonders why the new young doctor she visited recently says to nearly every patient, after examining their throat, that it looks like their esophagus is being eroded by stomach acid and they need to start taking acid-blocking pills. He hands patients free samples provided by pharmaceutical companies. The patients are oblivious to the fact that if they begin using the drug, they may never be able to stop taking it without experiencing an excruciatingly painful bout of rebound heartburn."

One way to build an income in private medical practice is to hook patients on drugs that continually require re-examination, testing and prescription renewal. Article here.

When Thyroid Imbalance Masquerades as a Mood Disorder

Dr. Escamilla suggests that as scientific understanding of the interactions between genetics, biophysiology, and mood dysfunction advances, "it may be only a matter of time before many of the patients who we currently diagnose as having bipolar disorder will actually have more specific designations that describe in detail their underlying pathology."

NOTE: Comprehensive Thyroid Assessment is important for assessing underlying clinical and subclinical thyroid imbalances linked to a variety of mood disruptions, including chronic anxiety, depression, insomnia, and restlessness. This evaluation of central and peripheral thyroid metabolism can pinpoint hidden causes of treatment dilemmas.
Source: Nath J, Safar R. Late-onset bipolar disorder due to hyperthyroidism. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2001;104:72-75.


Article is here.

Tranquilizer Addiction Rampant in the UK: Daily Mail

"It's thought that between three and seven million Britons are affected, with antidepressants, tranquillisers, sleeping pills and pain-killers the main culprits.

A recent report by the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board predicted that the scale of the problem of addiction to legal drugs will soon overtake addiction to banned substances.

Yet despite this, few patients receive any effective help - meanwhile, millions of pounds are spent helping those addicted to illegal drugs. In fact, the problem of prescription addiction has, for years, been ignored or denied by drug companies and successive governments."

Story here.

Declaration of Pharmaceutical Independence

Did you know that among those who signed the Declaration of Independence there were five physicians? Read about them here. What might they say about our dependence on Big Pharma?

Some foster kids' doctors have ties to drug companies

Texas, Minnesota, Vermont and more. Story here.
Listen to former Pharma rep Gwen Olsen talk about how drug company representatives put a positive spin on dangerous meds at her site, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher.

Update: Texas suspends drug program for kids

A state mental health plan naming the preferred psychiatric drugs for children has been quietly put on hold over fears drugmakers may have given researchers consulting contracts, speakers fees or other perks to help get their products on the list, The Dallas Morning News reports.
The Children’s Medication Algorithm Project, or CMAP, was supposed to determine which psychiatric drugs were most effective for children and in what order they should be tried at state-funded mental health centers, the paper writes. In April, state health officials gave researchers the go-ahead to roll out the guidelines, but a month later, they delayed the protocol after objections from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office.
At most, the suspension indicates that state investigators fear fraud has occurred, according to the paper. At the least, the change reflects nationwide unease with potential conflicts of interest between leading medical researchers and drugmakers that fund much of their work. Publicly, officials say it’s because the state is suing Johnson & Johnson’s Jannsen unit for allegedly using false advertising and improper influence to get its drugs on Texas’ now-mandatory adult protocol, the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.

BBC: Beware of black-market drugs

Benzodiazepine addiction is bad enough; now people must beware of warfarin sold as diazepam

The lonely madness of Alice G

The lonely madness of Alice G
ERIN ANDERSSEN
Globe and Mail Update
June 19, 2008 at 10:04 PM EDT

Alice G was driven mad by a broken heart, so said her doctors.

At 39, the unmarried housekeeper from Belleville, Ont., walked through the doors of the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, as it was called in 1893, and never saw the outside world again.

Her mother, the commitment papers suggest, had appealed to doctors for help. Alice spoke to people who didn't exist. She claimed to be a “prophetess” under orders from Heaven, and predicted she would give birth to two babies, one silver, one gold. She was reportedly infatuated with a local doctor.

Explaining the “supposed existing cause of insanity,” the physician who committed her scrawled on her form: “disappointment in love affairs.”

Beside occupation, he wrote: “Spinster.”

By society's standards, Alice G was to be pitied: childless, poor, lovelorn and, worst of all, insane.

In the asylum, what came to be called 999 Queen Street – and is now the site for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – Alice was crowded into a dormitory, without a private toilet, where the residents regularly complained of chills and rats.

Read the rest of the article here

From Pills to Power

You paid dearly for the meds you no longer take.
This plan is definitely better than throwing old drugs into the sewer system.