Globe and Mail

How chronic drug shortages became Canada’s new normal

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Karen Reeves, who was diagnosed with epilepsy 11 years ago, is photographed at her home in Waterloo, Ont. Thursday, March 29, 2012. Reeves has struggled to get epilepsy drugs and is now forced to travel to Florida every 3 months to fill her prescription.
Photo by Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail

Wednesday, April 11, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY and KIM MACKRAEL

When the only drug that effectively stopped Karen Reeves’s seizures became unavailable in Canada, she didn’t find out until her pharmacist couldn’t fill her prescription – the medication wasn’t there. Replacement shipments never showed up.

Welcome to the new normal of prescription drug supplies.

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In Jason Kenney’s immigration system, the labour market calls the shots

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Photo by Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail

Thursday, April 5, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Jason Kenney has had it with incremental measures.

“It frustrates the hell out of me,” the Immigration Minister told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board on Wednesday. “We’re bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the country to end up, many of them, unemployed or underemployed in an economy where there are acute labour shortages.”

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Canadian Cynthia Vanier’s arrest a success in international security co-operation, Mexico’s Calderon says

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Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Mexican President Felipe Calderon cites the arrest of Canadian consultant Cynthia Vanier on accusations of trying to smuggle one of Moammar Gadhafi’s sons out of Libya as a prime example of successful security co-operation between Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Thing is, Canada has yet to elucidate exactly what its role was in Ms. Vanier’s arrest and the investigation leading up to it – and her lawyer, among others, would really like to know.

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Canada’s pandemic response needs work, federal health agency says

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Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters

April 3, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

There are still serious shortcomings in the way public-health bodies communicate with physicians, nurses and pharmacists on the front lines of a pandemic, says the Public Health Agency of Canada.

And almost three years after a flu pandemic put the country on high alert, the federal agency has put out a call for a new strategy to improve communication with clinicians during pandemic response.

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A penny spurned: Anatomy of Canada’s soon-to-be defunct one-cent coin

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Susanna Blunt, who designed the latest queen on Canada's coins, seen here at Capilano University, in North Vancouver.
Photo by John Lehmann/Globe and Mail

Saturday, March 31, 2012 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Pity the penny: In the past 15 years it’s lost its copper, its usage and its cost-effectiveness – the butt of jokes and bane of neat freaks well before its end became official in Thursday’s federal budget.

Despite its lowly monetary status, the penny is a high-maintenance bit of metal. It is by far the most expensive Canadian coin to produce, relative to its value. At a cost of a little over 1.6 cents per penny, it’s the only piece of currency in the country that now costs more than its value to make.

While the news of the penny’s phase-out came as a surprise even to the Royal Canadian Mint, the analysts and coin-crafters in charge of Canada’s money say they’ve known for years its days were numbered.

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The Tyrolean Iceman cometh, and shows us heart disease has ancient origins

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Photo courtesy of South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology

Wednesday, March 7 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

A few ground-up grams of spongy bone, drilled from a 5,300-year-old mummy’s right hip and painstakingly bathed, sequenced and analyzed, have yielded a near-complete genome of Italy’s Iceman. The discovery not only offers a glimpse into an early human ancestor, but also gives a fresh perspective on one of the leading causes of death in the 21st century: The Iceman had a genetic predisposition to heart disease

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Germ warfare: The creation of a lethal virus sparks a debate pitting science against security

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Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green) are shown in this 1997 image.
Cynthia Goldsmith/THE CANADIAN PRESS

With a recommendation that scientists be allowed to publish details of how they engineered a highly contagious strain of bird flu, the World Health Organization has come down on the side of those who argue that humanity is best served by the free exchange of knowledge. In doing so, it may have risked letting that knowledge fall into the hands of those who would do humanity harm

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
Thursday, February 23, 2012 – Globe and Mail

When two groups of scientists on either side of the Atlantic engineered a highly contagious strain of avian flu, their findings were variously hailed as brilliant, groundbreaking – and reckless.

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As more drugs crack down on oxycodone abuse, addiction experts fear public insurance limits don’t go far enough

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Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Nova Scotia has become the latest province to clamp down on OxyContin prescriptions, with Health Minister Maureen MacDonald announcing the province will only pay for the potent painkiller’s replacement in extenuating circumstances – for cancer-related pain or palliative care.

Nova Scotia’s move comes days after Ontario, with the highest rates of prescription-opioid addiction in the country, announced it is tightening rules for the painkiller.

Physicians called the move a step forward, but warned that changing publicly funded drug plans won’t be nearly enough to stem abuse from the prescription drug.

“There is a lot more that needs to be done,” said David Juurlink, a drug-safety specialist at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. “These drugs should be harder to obtain, harder to prescribe – and certainly at high doses.”

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Provinces clamp down on OxyContin abuse

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Photo by Michelle Siu for the Globe and Mail

Saturday, February 18, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

The epicentres of Canada’s prescription pill problem have said they’ll only pay for the leading brand of potent painkillers under special circumstances – one of the most dramatic steps taken in years to tackle the country’s fastest-growing addiction.

Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures OxyContin, is replacing it with a drug that’s supposed to be less prone to abuse. But some provinces have decided that’s not good enough.

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