Kennedy, who is a nephew of late US President John F Kennedy, openly opposes the use of vaccines and has also backed several conspiracy theories, including on so-called chemtrails allegedly left by airplanes. He has repeatedly been accused of spreading vaccine misinformation and dubious theories on health. He also often promotes the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.

Recording TV programs, and then skipping through commercials during playback, I don’t often watch live television. Today, a 30-second version of this video caught my attention:

Defunding mRNA Vaccine Research Is a Catastrophic Mistake
AND
New mRNA Cancer Vaccine Delivers Stunning Results, Sparks Universal Treatment Hopes.

One of the less frequently noticed luxuries of the postwar liberal order was the licence to be a fool. For the better part of a century, prosperous, scientifically minded countries have tolerantly sustained an underbelly of madmen and extremists — medical sceptics, conspiracy types and anti-democratic fantasists who would quickly have come to grief in less congenial surroundings.

In the summer of 1950, parents kept their children indoors for fear of a devastating and contagious virus: polio. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim to the disease—half of them under the age of ten. But tireless advocates, teams of scientists, and everyday Americans donating their dimes led to the development and rollout of a life-saving vaccine, one of the most important medical breakthroughs in U.S. history.

Free-market individuals believe industries should be allowed to do whatever an unregulated market allows. Most would object to Therapeutics Initiative (TI). But many of us recognize its value. TI is part of the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. It aims to provide health professionals and the public with evidence-based information on healthcare interventions. TI is independent and separate from the government, the pharmaceutical industry, and other vested interest groups. 

A few days ago, fifty-year-old Brian Thompson was gunned down on a street in midtown Manhattan. Thompson was not an unimportant man. He was a senior executive of United Health Group, a company valued by the stock market at about three-quarters of a trillion Canadian dollars. The company expects profits of almost C$40 billion in 2024.

After more than seven years of responsibility for the sector, Adrian Dix is blamed for healthcare inadequacies. Indeed, real challenges abound. Yet solutions to apparent problems can take much time and the four Liberal Health Ministers that served during Christy Clark’s six years are not blameless…

Last week, the British Columbia Coroners Service reported unregulated drug toxicity deaths of at least 192 people in July 2024. The leader of the BC Conservatives believes this is largely a matter of criminality. He wants to imprison chronic drug users. People who actually know something about substance use disorders know there are better ways…

We dined recently at an “upscale casual” restaurant in Port Coquitlam. The service and the food were fine, but I was troubled by the noise level. My iPhone decibel meter calculated an average of 86 decibels with a peak level of 95 dB reached often. While the noise level I experienced may do little harm to a diner exposed for only 90 minutes, the risk is quite different for servers working hours-long shifts…

The Economist, a 180-year-old newspaper published in Britain, has been tracking deaths from COVID-19. They examine fatalities reported by official sources, but also look for how many people have actually died because of the covid-19 pandemic. A lot depends on how “because” is defined…

BC Government’s COVID panic began in March 2020, but was turning to neglect in the following year. It can be argued that neglect shifted to overtly harmful management of the pandemic…