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NEW Hilary Johnson blog

V99

Senior Member
Messages
1,471
Location
UK
http://oslersweb.com/blog.htm?post=690317

O Canada
April 7, 2010
Tags: WHO SAYS CANADIANS ARE BORING?
Kudos to Canadian health officials. Canada is a great and enlightened country, but Canadians already knew that.

On April 6th, 2010 the Canadian Blood Services announced it would prefer to "err on the side caution" and ban "cfs" patients from donating blood. Halleluiah! Canada's decision is a milestone in international public health. Although "cfs" or ME, has turned into one of the most common chronic diseases on several continents; although there have been ample instances of cluster outbreaks dating back well into the early 1980s and likely before, signifying the disease is infectious; and although a gammaretrovirus with 99 percent homology to murine leukemia virus was found in two thirds of CFS patients--as reported in Science magazine last October 8, 2009--only Canada has made the decision to prevent CFS patients from donating blood.

This decision comes from the country that felt the sting of SARS in 2003. SARS turned out to be caused by a newly-identified member of the coronavirus family. Interestingly, that virus was identified using the same DNA microarray technology that in 2005 would be used to identify XMRV in prostate cancer patients.

Why are Canadian health officials so much smarter than public health officials everywhere else? Well, for one thing, Canadian health officials have faced the tragic, and ultra-costly, results of failing to err on the side of caution. In 2005, the Canadian Red Cross Society pled guilty to distributing conatminated blood and blood products to Canadians in the 1980s, an act that resulted in approximately 1,000 AIDS cases and an estimated 20,000 cases of hepatitis C in the Canadian population. The Canadian Red Cross, by 2005, had already paid $55 million to victims who contracted these diseases.

This is just the beginning, I didn't feel right posting all of it out of respect for her, but you can find it at the link posted.
 

MEKoan

Senior Member
Messages
2,630
Many thanks V99! It's always good to see Hillary about in the land!

Never expected her to link to Oh Canada, though, must say :victory: