Year by which G8 countries pledged “universal access” for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and care: 2010 Estimated number of people, globally, currently receiving that care: 4,000,000 Estimated number of people, globally, still waiting on that pledge: 5,000,000 * Percentage of Canada’s population that is Aboriginal: 4% Percentage of new Canadian HIV/AIDS patients who are Aboriginal: 10% […] More »

My doctor and I sat there, blankly staring at one another, wondering where we both went wrong. I was perched beside his desk, asking for a prescription refill for my birth control. “You don’t need to ask me,” he kept saying. “Just call ahead, ask for what you’d like and come pick it up at […] More »

Today in our ongoing saga of legalization initiatives, Rosemary Counter talks to Canada’s pre-eminent outlaw milk farmer (not that there are too many of them jostling for the top position), Michael Schmidt. Schmidt believes that Canadians should be able to drink unpasteurized milk if they want to, and that it’s actually better for you; Health […] More »

[Editor’s note: today we introduce “Body Politic,” a new blog column about medicine and public health, written by Lyndsie Bourgon. Visit her website or follow her on Twitter. Body Politic will appear every other Thursday.] As the Calgary Flames hit the ice this weekend they appeared to show no great superpower, which is what I […] More »

Our (totally made up, unofficial) Legalization Week continues today with Katie Addleman’s exploration of the drug trade, and the catastrophic effect prohibition has had on law enforcement, gang violence, addicts’ health, and community safety: Ounce for ounce, marijuana is worth more than gold, and heroin more than uranium. Yet it’s only as a direct result […] More »

The November-December issue of This is showing up in subscribers’ mailboxes and on better newsstands coast to coast this week, and today we’re kicking off “Legalization Week” to showcase the five stories and writers who contributed to this special issue. Today it’s Tim Falconer’s call to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Canada: Given that the boomers, […] More »

In a case before the Ontario Superior Court this month, an Ottawa man is challenging the ban on blood donation by gay men. Currently, any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 is “indefinitely deferred” from giving blood. Not only is this ban unnecessarily broad, it does a disservice to the very […] More »

Intrawest, the resort company that runs the ski runs at Whistler Blackcomb and 10 other ski hills, announced yesterday that it is strongly encouraging skiers and snowboarders to wear helmets on its courses, and instituting mandatory helmet rules for all children and young-adult participants in its skiing and boarding classes. The move comes six months […] More »

When the news came out yesterday that the largest-ever HIV-AIDS vaccine drug study had concluded with modestly positive results, there was certainly reason to be glad. There was not, of course, any reason to call the damn thing a “miracle vaccine,” as the Dallas Fort-Worth NBC affiliate did. The actual announcement from the U.S. National […] More »

Above I’ve embedded Lacey’s Story, one of the films in the National Film Board’s Playing It Safe series. If you can’t see it, click here to watch it on the NFB website. Documentaries about drug use and life on the street can easily become depressing cautionary tales. The NFB’s website Playing It Safe avoids this […] More »

The treatment of Caster Semenya is a disgrace. The 18 year-old South African runner, who is currently the object of “gender verification testing” after winning the world championship 800-meter race in August, has had her most private medical details paraded before the international press in what can only be described as an exceptionally ugly episode […] More »