Atrazine, a controversial herbicide ubiquitous in Canadian cornfields has been found to chemically castrate male frogs, turning them into egg laying females. The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that when scientists at the University of California Berkley exposed male African clawed frogs to minute amounts of the toxin, just 2.5 parts per billion,the mutation occurred. Of […] More »

With today’s edition of Verbatim, we’ve got This Magazine associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey in conversation with Liberal Party critic for International Cooperation Glen Pearson. You can hear the original podcast of this conversation, as always, on the podcast blog. Nick and Glen discuss Canada’s humanitarian commitments past, present, and future, ranging from Darfur to Afghanistan […] More »

A group of American pediatricians think the hot dog needs a makeover. In a study released Monday, the team singled out the long tubular shape as the single highest choking hazard for small children and called out to the industry to redesign the Franken-meat. Now I get we need to me mindful of the food […] More »

When was the last time you called Bayer or GlaxoSmithKline up for a chat about your prescription regime? Never, right? Doctors are our go-between, the ones who prescribe and manage our health, who pay attention to developments in pharmaceuticals, and we generally have to trust them to know what we need. While many provinces are […] More »

First, mothers were warned to be watchful of their curious children around the potentially poisonous product; and now, store owners and homeless shelters are being urged to keep an eye out for clientele who may be abusing it. The culprit: common hand sanitizers, which have been saturating not only our hands, but also store shelves […] More »

When we talk about health care, do we end up invoking nationalism above all else? In an editorial posted recently on The Mark, Herbert Emery, a professor of health economics at the University of Calgary, argued that our health care system isn’t going to evolve until we leave the idea of what is, and isn’t, […] More »

Susan Chamberlain says she’s reluctant to complain about money. We’re talking about the difficulties in providing mental health care for foster children, and the problem is essentially one we hear from so many reaches of health care policy. The ‘R’ word: resources. There’s not enough money. “There’s no question that the kids need it,” says […] More »

When we’re put on wait lists, or stand in line at clinics, or fall asleep in waiting rooms it’s easy to think that there’s something wrong with Canada’s health care system. We need more doctors, we need more nurses, we need more surgeons — we need a better way to get better. But what if […] More »

A few years ago I was assigned a story about circumcision for a national women’s magazine. My research into the topic took me far beyond medical technicalities—circumcision in Canada is a controversial topic, surrounded by heated debate across provinces, religious lines and parental preference. I conducted interviews across the board—from a doctor in Nova Scotia, […] More »

One of the perks of attempting to forge a career from your home office as a writer is the amount of time you’re able to just sit back and read. I’ve convinced myself that this is “research”, but lately I’ve been reading almost everything, including, I’ll admit, trash. Which is how I came to crack […] More »

We’ll all get older, and start to slow down. It’s just a fact of life. But in the Atlantic Provinces, the population as a whole is getting older, and that’s going to lead to tough times ahead unless the provincial and federal governments step-in and make some changes. A report released Monday by the C.D. […] More »