Fear sells

I got an e-mail from my wife's aunt who wanted to know what I thought of a video she saw on YouTube. This is why I love her. At least she contacted me before buying into the whole thing. I will not do justice to the original video by sending you to it. It's seriously ridiculous. But basically, the gist of it is that a person posing as the former Chief Medical Officer of Finland claims that swine flu has been invented and released into the human population by the North American and Western elite to reduce the population of the world. The idea is that they release the swine flu, then they create mass fear, then they convince everyone to take the vaccine which they have previously poisoned and thus exterminate all the low life scums out there ruining our world. Aside from the base premise being completely ridiculous, this is how I responded to her question on my thoughts.

I did research the supposed "former chief medical officer of Finland". She was, in fact, only the provincial medical officer of Lapland, a province in Finland. Since retiring she has published such useful insights as "I've had my life saved three times by aliens", "schizophrenics are actually just vestiges of an earlier conspiracy to plant mind control microchips inside all the babies born in the mid-40s and the American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders for the sole purpose of labelling these microchipped individuals as pathological so they can be sequestered from society and shunned so that if they ever do reveal they have a mindchip people will think they're crazy", and the only reason she didn't remember her first experience with a UFO until being hypnotized at a much later date was because the aliens had placed a mental block on her to prevent her from exposing their whereabouts. Other such doozies follow below:

She claims to have met three kinds of aliens:

• One that is "three feet tall, has a huge head and big black eyes, but no nose or teeth"
• A second that "is like the first but has a large nose"
• A third that "is about 12 feet tall, with a very small head and large dark glassy eyes" and "wear lab coats, gloves and hoods over their heads".

According to her the Nazis visited the moon in the 1940s and the Americans have already been on Mars.

Now aside from the intellectually ridiculous conceptual base of the entire video, I do agree that there is something wrong with swine flu. The media has done a very good job of making it a lot scarier than science would warrant. But it's not a conspiracy. It's standard stuff...it's all about money. Fear sells papers and boosts ratings. Not to mention sales of alcohol based hand sanitizer, N95 masks and latex gloves. A lot of the fear is the fault of the public though. They take the word of unreputable sources at face value instead of using their own insight and fact finding. The term "pandemic" is really what has set people off. But if you look at the definition of a pandemic it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with severity of infection. It is a term that defines the ease of spread of an infection. Pandemics are further categorized by their severity, from 1 (least severe) to 5 (most severe). There are 3 characteristics an infection must have to be considered a pandemic.

1. It must be new to the population it is infecting
2. It must infect humans and cause illness
3. It must spread easily and sustainably among humans

That's it. Nothing in there denotes severity of infection. In fact, the most severe infectious diseases are unlikely to ever become pandemics because they kill their vectors too quickly. Ebola virus is a good example of that. It has a mortality rate of 50-90% and can kill in as quickly as 2 days. Plus, very close contact needs to occur for transmission, unlike with influenza with requires only respiratory droplet transmission, the most potent form of transmission.

The problem is that all this fear might cause an unforeseen consequence of swine flu. A study recently published and widely spread by the media came to the conclusion that getting the seasonal influenza vaccine would increase your risk of contracting severe swine flu. The study has more or less now been discredited by the respected medical community but because of this, many people, especially the elderly, are not going to get the flu shot. But the kicker is that even though seasonal flu is a category 1 pandemic with a fatality rate of less than 0.1%, it kills 250-500 thousand people a year. There have not even been 500 thousand CASES of swine flu yet, but we consider THIS to be the bigger public health threat. Hmmm. And the other kick in the ass is that because everyone is shitting their pants about it, a bunch of yahoos went out and got an antiviral medication at the height of the paranoia just to take for shits and giggles. Lo and behold, we now have an antiviral resistant strain of H1N1 floating around. Fantastic. We've just successfully morphed a virus against which we had at least two lines of defence into one with one less line of defence. Now all we have is the vaccine if we actually think this is something we need to protect ourselves again. But because of UFO girl and Jenny McCarthy, who goes around telling everyone that vaccines cause autism, no one is going to want to get the damn thing so we'll just let it run roughshod over the population causing more damage than it would otherwise. Vaccines are one of the safest and most remarkable public health achievements of our time. Why they've engendered such visceral fear in the public is beyond me. Worldwide, vaccines currently prevent roughly 2.5 million deaths worldwide. However, just as many deaths from vaccine-preventable illness occur each year because the vaccine is either not accessible or not given. Significant health risks of vaccines have basically been completely disproven in respectable medical literature yet persist in the informal literary universe of Google. Consider the chart from the WHO below:

Risk from disease versus risk from vaccines

DISEASE	VACCINES
Measles	MMR
Pneumonia: 1 in 20	Encephalitis or severe allergic reaction: 1 in 1 million
Encephalitis: 1 in 2 000
Death: 1 in 3 000 in industrialized countries. As much as 1 in 5 in outbreaks in developing countries
Mumps
Encephalitis: 1 in 300
Rubella
Congenital Rubella Syndrome: 1 in 4 (if woman becomes infected in early pregnancy)
Diphtheria	DTP
Death: 1 in 20	Continuous crying, then full recovery: 1 in 100
Tetanus	Convulsions or shock, then full recovery: 1 in 1 750
Death: 25-70 in 100 overall. 10-20 in 100 with good intensive care management	Acute encephalopathy: 0-10.5 in 1 000 000
Pertussis	Death: None proven
Pneumonia: 1 in 8
Encephalitis: 1 in 20
Death: 1 in 200

So please, please, before making health decisions based on what you see on the news or what you read on Google or what you watch on YouTube, do some research. If you're not sure whether you're researching respectable sources, talk to a healthcare professional or scientist you trust. Have them look into it. Your health is worth the time and effort.

A future virologist?

My 3-year old, Sacha, setup his line of Mega Block trucks and asked that I read them the "poop book", otherwise known as an animated book of anatomy that he has an abnormal affinity for given that he is a young toddler.

The day before we had been looking at illustrated representations of various viruses like the cold virus and the human papilloma virus that causes warts. We had a short discussion about why HPV has spikes (I'm not so sure it does, but the drawing did!)

So while reading the "poop book" to his coterie of trucks we came across the article for warts, where the HPV picture was duplicated. He shouted out, "Hey, it's a viwus!" If that wasn't surprising enough, I thought I'd test him and asked him if he knew WHICH virus it was.

"Yeah, dat is da papiwoma viwus."

The kid never ceases to amaze me.

Our gardening project

If you haven't already seen it, I encourage you to check out the pictures of your new yard. We had a professional do it but because we didn't know what we wanted in the back yet in terms of plantings, and because we didn't have the budget for him to do anymore, we just left the back as soil. The last couple of weeks have seen us undertake our very ambitious gardening project, but I'm so excited about it I thought I'd share.

Most of the ideas I gained for this project came from a few books, listed below in order of importance.

Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew
Second Nature:A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan
Edible Estates:The Attack on the Front Lawn by Fritz Haeg
Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons
Organic Gardening For Dummies

There was also a lot of internet browsing and utilizing various resources I found throughout my searches. One particularly useful resource for any of you who live in Edmonton is Ron Berezan, owner and operator of the Urban Farmer, a landscaper and designer who focuses on edible plants. He is a wealth of information.

So after the extensive information gathering phase came the planning phase and finally the implementation phase, which started last weekend.

In our back yard, we have two levels now. The lower level, recessed below the level of the retaining wall now running diagonally through our backyard, is where we are planting the vegetable garden. The upper level is where a spot of grass will be planted and 2 large perennial/edible beds. The retaining wall holding up our neighbors uphill from us has a wonderful 40 foot long bed that is about 3-4 feet wide where we will plant perennials and edibles as well as a few annuals (not a huge fan of annuals; with a 90-100 growing season, it's just not worth the effort).

Now here's where all the great permaculture stuff comes in. In the vegetable garden, I noticed that the downspout was draining downhill immediately upon hitting the ground and not reaching the garden at all. So I built what is called a swale.

Basically, you start at the drainage spout of your downspout and start digging a trench about a foot deep and a spades-width wide. To mark out the course of the trench you use an A-frame to find how the land contours. You do not want the swale to run downhill or uphill, but be level. Once you've marked out the contour, you dig the trench the entire length of the contour, attempting to keep the bottom of the trench as level as possible. You then fill the trench, minus the top 2 inches, with straw. You then put the soil you dug out of the trench back on top of the straw. The excess soil should be piled up against the downhill side of the trench to form a berm. This downhill berm prevents heavy rains from overflowing out of the swale but also provides a planting space for some plants.

What this swale accomplishes is remarkable. Before, when a rain would come, all the water from 1/2 of my roof would drain into my neighbors yard using the shortest point of exit: downhill. By starting the swale at my downspout, all that rain enters the swale and travels along the whole 40 foot length of the trench until the swale is full, which would take quite a rain. So already you've diverted all that rainwater into your swale. But now, because the swale is located at the uppermost point of the garden, the rainwater will now leech into the soil surrounding the swale and make it's way downhill, evenly distributing all that wonderful water into the vegetable garden. Fantastic!

Mission #2 in the vegetable garden was to add organic matter to it. Sure the landscaper brought in lots of nice topsoil, but topsoil devoid of organic matter just isn't going to cut it. So I did a lot of research, mostly from the books above, and found out that the quickest way to add organic matter to a large area is to use what is called a green manure. Basically you sow a fast growing grass or legume that can live through the winter. Then in spring, before the plant sets seed, you till it into the soil. The nitrogen is released as it decomposes and...voila!!!! Organic matter!

I bought 500g of fall rye and 125g of crimson clover from West Coast Seeds in BC. It only cost me $20 and it arrived in 3 days. Sacha and I used our broadcast spreader to spread the seed on the recently tilled soil and then we raked over it lightly. Now we wait!

The upper level is where the real work is happening. First we had to plan what we want to plant. I found two great nurseries in Canada, Corn Hill Nursery, and Golden Bough Tree Farm, who grow mainly bare root trees and shrubs which they can then ship for dirt cheap to all corners of Canada. And in looking at their sights we discovered that fall is a great time to plant bare roots. So below is the list we are bringing in next week:

2 American plums, 1 in each corner of the backyard
2 Harbin pears; a huge pear tree; grows to 30 ft tall; one will go smack dab in the middle of the front yard and the other smack dab in the middle of the back
3 Highbush cranberries; not sure where they're going yet!
1 Black currant bush going in back corner under the plum tree
1 Red currant bush in the same spot
(we are buying 10 more currant bushes next year to plant as a living fence in the retaining wall bed between us and our neighbors)
2 elderberry bushes in same spot
1 Native river grape and 1 Valiant grape; will construct a trellis under our deck and run them up this
2 Arctic Kiwis; 1 male, 1 female

That is for now. Next year we are also going to buy some dwarf apple trees (probably Jaune Transparente and Norland), 3 cherry shrubs (U of Sask Romance Series), and a few Saskatoon bushes, as well as raspberries and strawberries.

Now for the real fun. How to add organic matter to individual flower beds? The book above, Gaia's Garden, mentioned a concept that intrigued me: a sheet mulch. It sounded like a lot of work but I thought I'd try it.

What we did first was outline the beds. Then we tilled them to loosen the cement soil that has come from a month of absolutely no rain and constant pounding feet of two busy little boys. We then hoed back about 2 inches of soil from the beds to replace later in the process.

As the bottom layer of the sheet mulch we spread a light layer of cow manure, composted over about 10 years in the farmyard of my father-in-laws brother. We loaded it all by shovel into a pickup truck and then unloaded it by shovel and wheelbarrow. No joke. But it is beautiful stuff! The layer of cow manure was no more than 1/2 inch thick.

Then I took a bunch of cardboard boxes from work, removed all the tape and broke them open so they were single layered. I laid them down all over the manure, overlapping to leave as few holes as possible.

On top of the cardboard I spread another half-inch of manure. That is where we stand right now.

This weekend we are getting a large round bale of old hay from my father-in-laws brother and 4 square bales of straw. Once we have that, we will spread roughly 6-8 inches of hay on top of the manure. On top of this will go the soil we had backhoed from the start. Finally, we spread about 2 inches of straw to make a nice looking mulch and retain moisture. At the construction of each layer you are supposed to do a thorough wetting.

Basically, what is supposed to happen is that over winter, the space under the cardboard composts well and brings in lots of earthworms which till it up nice and fluffy. The pile starts at about 12 inches but compresses down to about 6 inches. In the spring there should be rich healthy soil underneath the cardboard and the other layers give you a foundation to start planting. To plant you simply pull back the mulch layers, cut a space in the cardboard, and plant in the soil underneath. Plus, the cardboard in the other areas where there are no plantings minimizes weed growth.

After this is done we will be tilling the remaining soil and planting it under to grass. The kids need somewhere to run!

We can't wait for our trees and shrubs to arrive so we can plant them and see how they do. Now we're gonna be itchin' all winter for spring to arrive! We'll keep everyone informed of the progress of our adventures. Maybe I'll turn out to be a fool, but it sure was fun to try. And the total cost?

$20 for green manure seed
$0 for borrowed tiller, rake, and wheelbarrow from mother-in-law
$0 for borrowed truck, free manure, free straw and free hay from father-in-law and his brother
$20 for case of beer for aforementioned individuals
$200 for bare-root edibles, including shipping and taxes
$0 for free grass seed from aunt-in-law
$0 for free cardboard from waste source
$50 for precision drop spreader
$30 for soil testing kit to test soil before and after amendments being made
$0 to do soil composition test using Mason jars and water (Results: almost half silt, half sand; lots of clay lays beneath the topsoil to slow the drainage in our otherwise rapidly draining land)
$infinite in time spent on projects
-no price to be put on the exercise we got out of it or the things our kids have learned from helping us along the way!

Wish us luck!

Finally

After many years of trying, rugby has finally scored a spot in the Olympics! Anyone who knows me knows I am a huge rugby fan. For years I have been unable to understand why rugby was not an Olympic sport. Now the International Olympic Committee board has recommended rugby, as well as golf, for inclusion in the summer Olympics, starting with the 2016 summer games. Even though it is 7 years off, I couldn't be more excited. The rugby I watch is called rugby union and includes 15 players a side. The version approved for Olympics is a pared down version known as rugby 7s, meaning there are only 7 players a side. Although not as elegant, for a global audience that may not be familiar with the sport, 15 a side rugby can be a little confusing and sometimes slows down. 7s is relentless in its pace, involves a lot of fast running and hard hitting, and has shorter games. I'm just happy it's in.

And my bro will be tickled pink that golf is in too. Word has it Tiger is already chompin' at the bit.

Losing faith

I lost a little faith in human nature today. I'm in Edmonton attending a course and am staying at my grandma's condo downtown (thanks grandma!) with my wife and two boys. It's a good hike from Walmart South Common, where the course is, to grandma's condo, so I have ample opportunity to witness the egregious display of human stupidity that is rush hour in Edmonton.

I consider myself a safe and smart driver and my untarnished driving record speaks for it. I give most of the credit for this to my dad who I consider to be one of the safest and smartest drivers I know. His language is not always PG-rated, but he gets you there safely and, by using his brain, he always arrives in a timely manner, WITHOUT resorting to speeding I might add. Coupled with this and his insistence that you always think 5 steps ahead when driving and always plan your route MILES before you need to, I have picked up some of his great habits. It also helps that he has ingrained in me the assumption that every other driver on the road is a complete moron.

This may sound unfair, but it makes sense. It's called defensive driving. If you assume other people are world class drivers, you could assume that you could cross this driveway entry because that car bearing down on you would certainly be using his signal light if he intended to turn into the driveway. But if you assume he is a moron, you will wait until he has either turned into the driveway without signalling or has in fact passed right by it before you set foot in that crossing. It's just safe.

So it is that I set out on my journey home this evening. Assuming they are all morons. And there was ample evidence to prove my point. Donkey boy in his fancy truck swerving around the road because he was totally oblivious to those around him while he talked about the new sequined Italian shoes he bought at Gucci for $500 on his cellphone he bought to replace the one he bought last week. Or the genius who thinks that driving 20 km/h in a 50km/h zone is safer than driving the speed limit. Or Einstein who spends 20 blocks slowing down at each intersection to check the sign because he didn't plan his route before leaving home. Or Mr. Mensa who cuts abruptly into your lane because the guy in front of him is not driving 100 in a 50 zone and then so courteously flashes his right signal light once after he's already in front of you. Thanks for the heads up. But the prize today goes to a motorcyclist.

Driving down 104 Avenue during rush hour is at the best of times nerve wracking. But no matter how much you hate it, just stay in the lane you need to be in to arrive at your destination, because you can do all the lane changing you want, but you're not going anywhere any faster. Not according to Mr. Motorbike today. I saw him swerving in and out of traffic like a lonely bee in a field of newly bloomed clover. He figured if he just changed lanes fast enough and often enough he JUST might make it there 2 minutes earlier. A block or more before reaching the intersection of 104 Avenue and 105 Street, the walking signal started flashing and doing the countdown, warning oncoming drivers that the yellow light was about to turn. In this case, it makes it real simple for even the dimmest bulbs in the crowd and counts it down. 16, 15, 14,.... So any intelligent driver gauges his speed and how quickly he is bearing down on the intersection. If you know you will reach the intersection right when the light hits 1, you cover your brakes and prepare to stop at a yellow.

Not genius. He figures he can beat the system. In rush hour traffic. In a 50 zone. With 10 cars between him and the next intersection. So I'm in the right hand lane and the road widens to include a right turning lane. Again, demonstrating human stupidity and ignorance of traffic laws, TWO cars are in the left turning lane on 104 Ave eastbound. When the light turns yellow, my group, those of us heading west on 104 Ave, diligently stop to allow these individuals to turn left and clear the intersection. In case you were wondering, the moron here is the second driver because there should only be ONE car in the intersection at once to execute a left turn, despite the fact that most intersections in Edmonton will witness 3 or more clearing the intersection, some of which ENTER the intersection after the red light comes on, as though there is some magical grace period for left-turning drivers only.

So eastbound 1 and eastbound 2 start turning left. Well, Mr. Motorbike is not about to WAIT for the laggards in front of him to run the red, so he takes advantage of this newly found land on the right hand side of the road called a right TURNING lane and passes myself and the gentleman in front of me. And now what?

That's right. Broadside of a barn. Thankfully he didn't appear to be fatally wounded or I could not poke fun at his stupidity without feeling a little bit guilty. He smashed full speed into the passenger side of eastbound 1, a Nissan Pathfinder, and was then treated to a lesson in inertia and careened through the back passenger window. His bike lay in a crumpled heap on the road spewing oil everywhere. Eastbound 2, who should not have been involved in the accident had she been actually accessing the thought centres in her cerebrum, proceeded to rear end Eastbound 1 when he came to an abrupt stop after being T-boned by a human torpedo. As a bit of salt in the wound, her car proceeded to inflict further damage on Speed Racer's motorbike.

Thus ends loss in faith of human nature event #1.

I immediately put my car in park. Guy in front of me as well. At least 10 vehicles witnessed the accident. Total number of vehicles stopping to help and see if everything is okay=3. One gentleman got out, called 911 on his cellphone, and then promptly fled the scene as he likely had some very important meeting to attend at 5:00 on a Wednesday afternoon that excluded him from the commonsense necessity of providing a witness statement to the rapidly arriving police. Car #2 basically made sure no one was dead and then also proceeded to leave. Car #3, me, calmly pulled to the curb, parked my car, and stepped out. Fire and ambulance arrived almost immediately and ambulance took Speed Racer to hospital in a neck brace, what looked to me to only be precautionary.

I stuck around and filed a witness statement with the police. The police officer was very grateful because remarkably, at a VERY BUSY intersection at which NUMEROUS cars witnessed the accident, I was the ONLY driver who stopped to provide a witness statement.

Thus ends loss in faith of human nature event #2.

What has come of us? Our need to succeed and cram every possible last thing into our days, our disregard for others, the rarity of commonsense and our slavery to deadlines and timelines were all contributors to this accident.

The unfortunate thing about the word "accident" is that it implies a completely unavoidable event with no causality attributable to human behavior. Rarely are motor vehicle collisions (a much better word) accidents in the truest sense of the word. Most of the time, except when freak weather is involved, they involve some aspect of human behavior, be it stupidity, negligence, aggression, oblivion, ignorance, or intoxication. So please, for the sake of other drivers and pedestrians, passengers, and families of all the aforementioned, be the smartest driver on the road and assume the rest of us are all morons.

The Grammar Nazi

I've known since day 1 that Sacha is smart as a whip. But he's demonstrated it more frequently since he started speaking. Now, it's official. You can't pass anything by this kid.

I noticed it first the other day when I was reading him his newest "favorite" story. It's about a St. Patrick's Day parade held by ants where they chase a green ant that is a leprechaun to hopefully snag some good luck. I was reading along and said, "'Green ant!' asked Grant." Sacha immediately interceded. "No, no. SAID. Not ASKED. SAID." Oh, yes, how silly of me. "Asked" is used in the next line. He's done this before where he knows a book so well that he'll correct you if you say it wrong. What came later though totally blew me away.

I was reading him a French book about a group of animals that each bring a different part to the party to help build a snowman. It became apparent to Sarah and me that whoever did the translation of this book into French didn't edit it very well because there are a few grammatical errors, one of which went unnoticed until our 3-year old grammar Nazi came along.

A little preamble is in order. In English, no matter whether you have one cat or numerous cats, you would still write "The cat places the carrot as the nose." OR "The cats place the carrot as the nose." The "place" changes to match the subject, but other than that, there is little change. In the case of French, the masculine definitive is "le" as in "the" but only when in reference to a masculine noun (English does not have this gender differentiation of nouns). If it is before a single subject like "chaton" (a single cat) it is "le chaton". If it is before a plural subject like "chatons" (two or more cats) it is "les chatons". You can see how the definitive changes its state to match the quantity of the subject.

So I had read the line "Les chatons place le carrotte pour le nez" numerous times without protests and without noticing anything. Then after correcting me on a few errors earlier on in the book (which I had made due to extreme fatigue) Sacha started to protest vehemently. Previously he had asked me to stop saying "chaton" because he preferred "chat" as he did not feel that this particular feline was worthy of being called a kitten (chaton). I thought that's what this particular protest was about so I said, "Oh, right "Les chats place le carrotte pour le nez"". "No, no, no, only one chat." Then I looked, and sure enough, there it was. The illustration only featured a single cat. Therefore, the phrase "les chats" is grammatically incorrect. And my 3-year old called me AND the editing staff of the book on it. Look out future teachers. You'd better be on your game!

Seniors drug costs

In preparing for a presentation I'm doing at a local seniors home tomorrow, I had to research the upcoming changes to provincial drug coverage for seniors in Alberta. Basically, drug costs are rising, and the new changes will save THE GOVERNMENT $20-30 million per year, so you can imagine where the difference is going. Low income and mid-low-income seniors will benefit as the lowest income will pay nothing for prescriptions and the next step up will pay less. However, the mid-high income seniors will take on significantly more costs of drug therapy. At first, I thought this seemed rational, given that those more able to pay should bear more of the cost. But then I wondered whether this rule should apply to those who have served their country and communities for so long. Shouldn't WE be taking care of THEM and not vice versa by unloading our costs onto them? Then it got me thinking: which country has some of the highest health expenditures in the world? The United States. Who off loads most of their health spending onto citizens instead of covering it publicly? The United States.

I started to wonder whether we might be going about this the wrong way.

I dug up the comparative drug spending for all 20 OECD nations for the most recent years available, that being 2005. The United States has the highest per capita total expenditure on drugs of all 20 OECD nations. However, they have the second lowest % of that expenditure covered by public programs, second only to Mexico. The US only publicly funds 24% of all drug expenditures. The lowest developed Western nations in terms of total drug expenditure are Denmark, New Zealand, and Norway. Their public coverage of that cost ranges from 55.8-66.2%. Where is Canada? We have the second highest total expenditure and fourth LOWEST public expenditure. So much for universal healthcare.

Now, the thought entered my mind: is there any correlation between the following:

1. % of drug expenditures covered publicly and total drug expenditure
2. % of drug expenditures covered publicly and health system performance
3. % of total drug expenditures and health system performance

A presentation I came across concluded that public funding of healthcare does seem to improve health system performance but a good deal of this performance is tied to lifestyle choices and socioeconomic status as well. Furthermore, the WHO rankings of health care systems are contested by many respectable authorities, but they're all we've got for now. So let's test our theory.

1. The correlation is so close to 0, it might as well not exist. So based on the data I have, it looks like the amount of drugs that are covered publicly does not impact total drug spending. Thus, other factors must be at play like lack of price protection on marketed pharmaceuticals, lifestyle, etc. etc.

2. There seems to be a weak correlation that the less a country spends publicly on drugs, the more poorly their health system is ranked. But this certainly does not prove cause and effect and the relationship is weak.

3. Here a weak correlation would suggest a relationship between increased drug spending and increased health system performance. Again, no causation proved, but food for thought.

Taking all these together, it seems we may be headed in the wrong direction. It seems clear that there is no relationship between offloading drug costs to individuals and the eventual total drug costs of a society. And regardless of whether the government pays for them, those costs will be borne by someone. If it is individuals, they will then have less disposable income, meaning less money to "stimulate" the economy.

Maybe we have to rethink our whole approach to controlling costs. Also in the process of researching this presentation, I came across a study that showed that if used properly, pharmacists could save the Canadian healthcare system $103 million a year. That's just one member in the healthcare team. Think of what we could accomplish if we restructured our system to fully utilize the skills of each of our allied health professionals, with the patient in the centre of the team? Think what we could accomplish if instead of only pushing pharmacotherapy we also focussed on healthy living and preventative medicine? Think what we could accomplish if instead of always thinking about dollars and cents, the government put some consideration into the greater factors at play in rising drug costs? Think what we could accomplish if for a moment our legislators and administrators would do just that....think.