the person in question who was being bribed by the Conservative ( Harper) party I believe died in under 6 months after.
Remember the Conservative party in Canada is very muck like the Repulican party in the US.

re: Canadian Cancer Society

info from Wikiperdia:

In a 2005 audit by KPMG, the Society reported a revenue of $150,718,000 CAD. A breakdown of disbursements shows 28% of the Society's revenues going to fund research, 17% to provide support for people living with cancer, 7% to pay for information campaigns, 6% to fund prevention, and 2% to provide advocacy. Fundraising consumes 27% of the Society's revenue, and 6% is given over to management costs.

svilla, regarding your statement, "... a possible factor in the "obesity epidemic" in children...", I believe the real culprit is aspartame, something that never should have been allowed in the food supply in the first place. Give a lot of thanks to Rumsfield for that, and yes, I mean the same disgraced Donald now out of favor for Iraq.

Aspartame (a neurotoxic poison with roots in a chemical warfare program)has also been linked to juvenile diabetes as well as over 90 other illnesses like chronic migraines. It causes a craving for carbohydrates, so the fat person drinks a diet soda then scarfs down six donuts behind that, "But I'm drinking diet sodas to lose weight...yeah, right." Read the damned labels people! It's in 1,500 products in the average grocery store. Virtually everything sweet that says low-fat, no-fat, or diet contains this poison, but since it makes billions for those who put profits before people's lives & health it's still lobbied to remain in our food chain. Shun it, and don't buy it. Better yet, do a little research, and inform the people in your lives you care about. That's what's called active responsible citizenship, even responsible friendship, something we direly need in our country right now.

RE: This is the same Gov who offered an independent member of parlimant 1 million bucks if he voted to support a vote against the Liberal Gov before the last election. This member had TERMINAL CANCER, they then called this member's wife a lyer when she broke the story and sued the leader if the liberal paprty for slander that is a first in Canadian history.

So are you referring to Chuck Cadman? How long after the vote did Chuck Cadman die? What exactly did Harper mean when, on tape, he used the phrase "finanical" incentives.

I usually bring this point up concerning NAFTAgate.

I am not a big fan of Liberals but under the Liberals the amount of time it took to get one's immigration papers processed was 6-8 months, and now, under the Tories it is 6-8 years. So now that the Tories have created the problem (backlog in processing immigration papers), they have come up with the perfect Shock Doctrine solution - giving the Minister of Immigration absolute power to ignore the process and decide who does and doesn't get in.

First you starve the system and create a backlog and then, once you've created the problem, you use the existence of the problem to dismantle the system. They've done it with Health Care for years.

And the point stands - the reason Canadians complain about the Health Care system is that it used to be better.

The reason Americans don't as much because it has never been any better than it is today.

Are you sure BPA is not an acronym for; Bush, Phony, Assassin?...

Canada is to be lauded for this bold initiative; not easy when big corporations pressure and brainwash the masses.

I hope Canada retains its sense of ethics and uniqueness in leading by example and showing the US that leadership, real leadership means not being beholden to the mighty US dollar...oh wait a minute...not that mighty anymore!...Viva Canada!

Another concern about BpA is that it causes neurodevelopmental problems such as ADHD. We are seeing an increase in children with complex neurodevelopmental disorders- some can be classified as autism, or ADHD, while others are not quite autism, but more involved than ADHD.The official numbers for increases in numbers of children with autism (over 1 in 100 for boys now in the US) don't quite reveal the magnitude of the problem.
I believe that in mice, BpA is also associated with increased body weight through life when exposure happens early in life. Hmmm... has anybody identified this as a possible factor in the "obesity epidemic" in children? Just think, a double exposure with every bottle of formula- once from the can of formula, once from the bottle. In the media, the emphasis has been on polycarbonate bottles, but the bigger problem may be canned foods, as more BpA is released through the heating in the canning process. Maybe people who cannot afford, or do not have access to fresh foods, such as the urban poor, end up with higher doses through canned food, as well. Puts a ned light on Popeye's morphing after eating canned spinach now, eh?

It's about time! Please check the site below. It has additional information.

http://www1.environmentalhealthnews.org/

Unfortunately, most of us already have the chemical in our bodies. See:

http://www.isitinus.org/

Earlier studies looked at the "body burden" of chemicals that we are carrying around with us. Yet, nothing was done about it. Chemicals are considered innocent until proven guilty. Once that happens, the corporations start arguing about it. Only about 1/4 of chemicals in use have been tested. Futhermore, testing on combinations of chemicals have never been done. We are laboratory animals.

muggles5 April 16th, 2008 3:50 pm wrote:

"Canadians complaining about healthcare are like people in a small town complaining about traffic. You have no freaking idea."

Canadians aren't shy, nor should we be, about challenging our health care system(s) to respond to our needs. WE pay for them, after all, and it's up to US to demand that OUR elected representatives spend OUR tax dollars in ways that best reflect OUR contributions and OUR needs. We can't imagine paying taxes to train doctors, fund public health infrastructure, etc. etc. and then having to pay thousands more (if they'll let us) to "insurance" companies whose whole raison d'etre is to reap vast profits by taking our money and denying us access to a return on our already considerable investment. That, to us here Up Over, is just plain nuts.

Yes, culicomorpha April 17th, 2008 12:35 am, and very few people in the US are aware 1 of each 100 people in this country are born with ambiguous gentalia, meaning BOTH a penis AND a clitoris. Is it any wonder many people's sexual identities are a bit confused?

As a Canadian ONE POINT YOU HAVE MISSED
Harper the current PM of Canada never stops campaigning and all this is is smoke and mirrors for the Conservatives to get a majority Gov next election.
This is the same Gov who offered an independent member of parlimant 1 million bucks if he voted to support a vote against the Liberal Gov before the last election. This member had TERMINAL CANCER, they then called this member's wife a lyer when she broke the story and sued the leader if the liberal paprty for slander that is a first in Canadian history. The story is 100% true but in keeping it the courts the Liberals can't use is against Harper in the next election.

As for the stories about health care. I am sorry when my son needed a life saving operation, he was on the table in under 48 hours after his first visit to the family doctor that took 24 hours to set up. The cost to me as he was 16 at the time was zero. This also got him free TV and a semi private room. Sorry the cost was not zero I had to pay 5$ a day for parking for 4 days. Every system isn't perfect but I feel for Americans with next to zero health coverage. I know personally 5 people if they lived in the US would be dead. One was the X wife, mother of my kids who had 3 boughts with cancer and would never get coverage in the US. Today she is cancer free.

luckylefty... yea... exactly.

I just would like to point out here that BPA acts like an estrogen. So let's say you took your one year old, and started feeding them birth control pills. What, exactly, would you expect to happen?

The environmental health literature is replete with terms like "feminization" and "demasculinization" regarding BPA and other xenoestrogens. Let that concept sink-in for a little bit. Again, what, exactly would be the outcome you would expect from feminization?

I know this is a hard thing to deal with for most people. We are taught to think that men are men and women are women, but things are not that simple. With our technology, we have altered the natural scheme of things, and there is a price to pay for that. I would only hope that there might be a little compassion towards those beings who have been "feminized" so that instead of calling these people mentally defective or pathological, this might be replaced with some understanding instead.

OK. They're Canada. We're the US. We're different. Profits are first, last and forever. Somebody fucks with your profits you ritually defame them, bribe your political whores into secretly giving you exemptions, or just kill the dissidents and NEVER cover any of it in the press. The American Way, we don't need no science, just give us The Bible. America will die happy, soonest.

But first you want to live to see your child change gender because of the shit they put in your food and containers. Little Johnny just got tits and little Janie's clitoris is turning into a penis. Better living through chemistry and Profits for the richfilth animals of course. That is why wewere born right? To serve as a genetic test subject for Master. If we don't care, why should He? Nobody's going to cut his head off, are we?

Peace.

I pretty much gave up on drinking water out of plastic bottles five years ago. At a certain cancer conference the researchers were all drinking water out of glass jars and glass bottles. I can fill an old glass juice bottle with filtered tap water. I break one such bottle a year, no big problem, and I rinse the bottles out occasionally.

Say hi to all the smokers for me.

RE: sask April 16th, 2008 4:39 pm

Sask, I'm not familiar with what the Canadian Cancer Society is all about, but in America the ACS (American Cancer Society) looks like just another scam for the wealthy corporate America types, intent on selling more pharmaceuticals & expensive treatments, but not with prevention. It's a cash cow for the 3000 heads of regional offices who make six figure incomes, and over half (52%) of the money raised goes toward administrative overhead. A good portion of the 'real' work is done by unpaid volunteers, and a major portion of funds raised is accumulated, invested in real estate holdings, or vehicles for high level executives ($1 billion), yet they are always tearfully claiming they have no money & need more. Why do they want to 'cure' cancer when it slays their golden egg laying goose?

Don't take my word for it, see for yourself:

American Cancer Society: The World's Wealthiest "Nonprofit" Institution
Samuel S. Epstein M. D.

http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/wealthiest_links.htm

Canadians just complain about their health care system because it used to be a lot better. Two tier is sneaking in the back door for some kinds of care and wait times are longer. Still nowhere as draconian as in the states though.

One of the best deals around is India. I get all my dental work done there now. (That is user pay in Canada.)A root canal and crown in Canada runs between $1500 to $1800,$200 to $250 in India. For very little more than the price of the process in Canada I can also have a wonderful winter vacation, and save the cost of the dentist in lower food and transportation costs. Other people are going there for hip replacement surgery and other elective surgery that they do not want to wait for up to six months for. They have some very new, very good hospitals for the use of India's brand new middle class.

We just moved to Canada from the US. We did have to wait to find a primary care physician, but have never had to wait for a doctor appointment. We have urgent care here (open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week)and anyone can just walk in, and be seen quickly. We can get an appointment with our family physician or an associate the same day or next. The clinics are not as fancy, the doctors more down to earth, and I am still getting used to how available and casual medical care here is. But I would take the Canadian medical system over the US system any day.

Here's the thought process I was taught in college. Make regulatory decisions by asking the question ...."would I want my wife or children exposed to this?" Leads to a wonderful clarity on such matters.

I'm so sick of hearing how we can't fix our health care system. These two problems are not unconnected, and fixing one would lead towards fixing the other.

Fix the way we pay for health care. Follow the money. Show me the money. Fix that part first. Go to a single payer system. Don't feed me the Democrat BS line about 'universal coverage'. They just want to funnel more money to the insurance companies and the HMOs. Go to single payer.

When you've got singe payer, you can start to get a handle on the quality problems. Two ways of doing it. First off, the way we fund health care today is one of the big causes of the quality problems you describe. You say someone might mis-diagnose 10 people before breakfast. Well, why the heck are they even trying to diagnose 10 people before breakfast in the first place. That's because of the distortions the insurance companies and the HMOs are putting in the system in the first place to try to cut their costs and increase their profits. If you go to a single payer system, then that system can set some more sensible payment rates for doctors so the economics of their practice or the policies of their HMO aren't forcing them to see 10 people before breakfast.

Second, if you've got single payer, by controlling the money you can control the quality. If the state medical boards won't decertify a doctor, then the single payer system can step in and say to a doctor that you are causing to many problems and deny that doctors ability to seek reimbursement. So, if there's a quality issue with the doctors in your area, the agency running single payer can address it.

I guess I'm just really, really sick of people telling me that the current system just can't be fixed. Of course it can. And taking control of the money is the mandatory first step.

Sask, I'm not much for flaming people but I would urge you to consider the failure of our respective regulatory systems to embrace the precautionary principle. The burden of proof should fall upon the manufacturer to conclude unequivocally their products do not harm people. Instead, the burden of proof falls upon the victim to demonstrate where the harm originated.

While this allows for some superb profiteering opportunities in the health care and legal industries, it demonstrates why we are facing cultural, environmental, and planetary meta-systems collapse.

Put people -- not money -- first. Confusion of the two leads to outright harm and death resulting from greed and what's cheaper instead of what's better, safer, more efficient...

De-regulation (aka a money free-for-all) is a social and environmental disaster.

Put people first!

I know I am going to get flamed for asking people to take an honest and sober approach to this topic, but here I go anyway.

Here's what the Canadian Cancer Society has to say about the matter:

"We do not know if exposure to bisphenol A increases your risk of cancer or can have other effects on your health" and "At this time, the Canadian Cancer Society does not have any specific recommendations because it is not clear whether bisphenol A increases the risk of developing cancer." They go on to say "This research has not been done in people, and scientists do not know whether the results of the studies in laboratory animals apply to humans."

http://www.cancer.ca/ccs/internet/standard/0,3182,3172_573785695_209363767_langId-en,00.html

I've wondered for a long time if plastic was what keeps the packaged ice cream for such a long time, and prevents it from melting the way it used to. It just dries up into a hard mess.

I've been switching back to glass in every area I can. I drink from glass, eat from glass, and buy food in glass, fresh, or do without. There's still a lot of things plastic in my home, but I'm hoping every little bit I can learn to live without will help me in the end.

Corporate criminal America has proven it will do anything to prevent anyone from killing their (plastic)golden goose, even at the expense of the health of millions (billions?) of world citizens. These invented corporate 'entities/personhoods' consider themselves much more important that ANY flesh & blood people. The quandary is, what do we have to replace our addiction to food/drink bottled in plastic, or the same in plastic lined cans? With the outrageous rise in food costs lately, and the oil required to make these plastics mentioned, it could become a moot issue. Pretty soon we all could be eating fresh food grown in our front/back yard suburban gardens, and just drinking water from the garden hose (if the pharmaceutical traces in our water supplies don't mutate our genetic code to the point we can all just survive on polluted air, poisoned dirt, and what the Pilgrims were rationed a gallon per capita daily on the Mayflower---beer). Gee, the future suddenly got a bit brighter, didn't it? ;-)

Canadians complaining about healthcare are like people in a small town complaining about traffic. You have no freaking idea.

Either that or they are paid GOP or healthcare lobby shills. Think it ain't happening? It's viral marketing, it's everywhere.

Really, though, who in the US who is actually working for a living believes that our healthcare system could possibly be any worse? The geniuses here in Central VA can't even read an X-ray properly, and they lie constantly, and misdiagnose ten people before breakfast, and yet they charge a small fortune for their work. It's broken from top to bottom, and the for-profit insurance system encourages all its worst attributes.

I'm sick of hearing people say how great health care is in the US, and how it's rationed in evil socialist countries. It's not only unevenly available here (de facto rationing by class status and location) but it's poorly regulated, and indifferently delivered.

The big problem we have in any kind of transition is that in places like the UK and Germany, it's a national health system, a network of providers, not just a national insurance system. In other words, we can't have universal coverage partly because we would be paying for overpriced incompetence and drug profiteering. it's going to be very difficult to fix both sets of problems at once.

"This important story, which is front-page news in the Canadian press, cannot be found in a single mainstream newspaper or TV source in the US. Not one!"

USAn-Our local news station (in Pennsylvania) actually had this story last week. The next day my son brought home the same information from school. I was happy to know that this was being discussed in our schools As a result, we have gone through all of our plastic bottles and have thrown out the ones with number 3, 6 or 7. I suggest you all do the same.

My Canadian (US resident) parents often criticize Canada's healthcare system from afar. The complaint is always the same: it takes two months to get an appointment. I listened to them, and was not necessarily disinclined to agree for lack of experience. Then I had to make an appointment with my PCP (in the USA). Three months. I also broke a disc in my back somewhat recently. I had a visit to my PCP, two MRIs, two visits to orthopoedics and a preliminary visit to a physical therapist. In this 21 week period, I still have yet to see an actual MD. NPs and PAs are quite qualified, but I, like others fortunate to be able to afford it, pay quite a bit for healthcare.

well, Kelmer, 50 million americans would be waiting forever for that sholder trouble.

And I hope you can agree that there are few flaws in the Canadian system that more funding wouldn't cure. Canadian provinces could double the funding of their health care system and still spend much less than the US.

But instead we are seeing the usual neoliberal privatization tactic -starve the program for funds, service then gets poor, then say "see? public services don't work! Let free enterprise be your savior!

I see some disturbing trends that some kind late arriving Reaganism is arising among Canadians, just as the US may be poised to finally take some steps away from this awful 28 year project.

My brother moved to Canada and he's just happy to have access to health care at all for the first time.

Kelmer

In the U.S. to kill off the wild herds of buffalo, the U.S. government paid a high price for the tongues, they didn't care about the rest of the animal. European traders nearly drove the animal extinct. Control of the food supply is not new but there is an effort for corporate control and cheap low quality food. Native Americans that are dependent on government subsidies of food have the lowerest life expectency in the developed world (44 years) and highest rates of diseases like diabetes...which is lifestyle related. To corporations you are a consumer and now when you deal with a government agency you are also called a consumer instead of a citizen. People pay to add chemicals to everything, flouride is a by-product of chemical fertilizer. It is a poison that kills bacteria but that is no reason to drink it...but people do.

The story HAS been in mainstream press for about a week.

The Chemical companies have been bombarding 'letters to the editor' sections of all the papers (at least in my area) decrying the publication of the story and pointing to the less than useless government testing claiming - 'It's not so bad.'

The studies cited in these stories are pretty emphatic about the impact. Let's see if the US can be as smart as our northern brothers.

You've got to hand it to Canada. The nation looks out for the health and well-being of its people, unlike the U.S. which is only interested in making big profits.

**tell that to my mother as she tries to get medical care for her shoulder. As a Canadian in a good part of town--dont believe all the hype about the health care system. It isnt quite that great.
Phillipino migrants are keeping the costs down.

Canada also supports GMOS--so much for people concern.
Plus its protection of animal researchers has long been notorious.
Its like a Soviet block country in some respects.
It is paying hog farmers more than double the price of a hog so they kill off their herds to bring the price of pork down.
All on taxpayers money.

Ottawa to pay farmers $50-million to slaughter hogs

PAUL WALDIE AND JOE FRIESEN

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

April 15, 2008 at 12:27 AM EDT

TORONTO AND WINNIPEG — In an unprecedented move, the federal government plans to pay hog farmers up to $50-million in total to slaughter as many as 150,000 breeding swine.
Farmers will receive $225 for every hog they kill, so long as they agree to wipe out their entire breeding herd and stay out of the hog business for three years. The government hopes the program will reduce a glut on the market that has helped drive down prices.

**oh Canada.

Now if we can only get Propaline out of bottles. This story has been on the news of and on for months! We all knew this was coming.

U.S. panel reviewing effects of plastic additive

Bisphenol A found in food, beverage containers

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/08/06/bisphenola-review.html

put bisphenol in either a cbc.ca or ctv.ca search and see how many hits you get.

A lot of customers have been complaining about the products because of news coverage like this (with the mother, the baby and the baby bottle):

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/green_rush/better_baby_bottles.html

Note that commercials trying to show their products are safe, also make use of babies and pets.

You've got to hand it to Canada. The nation looks out for the health and well-being of its people, unlike the U.S. which is only interested in making big profits.

Well what the corporate media will do is carry the story and minimize it as much as possible. They won't be able to ignore it completely...but it will be buried...

They'll use a technique called inoculation..
" A preemptive advertising tactic in which one party attempts to foresee and neutralize potentially damaging criticism from another party by being the first to confront troublesome issues."

Canada is a good nation... all in all...imo

This important story, which is front-page news in the Canadian press, cannot be found in a single mainstream newspaper or TV source in the US. Not one!

US journalists don't dare piss off their corporate advertizing customers and owners, or the "business community" in general don't they?

And we have no choice to avoid the stuff as it is in all canned food, which is hard to avoid altogether. So much for consumer choice in our wonderful "free markets" crap.