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The show was for Canadian consumption, so fewer non-Canadians appeared, and the like of Doc Jock and MS Freedman were there. I thought, as is the correct approach, they were damned with faint praise. Note that even the Saskatchewan government is now guilty of medical tourism, and doctors there have been caught providing after-care. I sent the following to "Nature of Things", and I am posting it here as an open letter:
Dear David Suzuki:
I enjoyed watching your February 9, 2012 broadcast of The Nature of Things. You have occasionally covered some topics I was less interested in, but I have been a fan since I wrote to you in the nineteen seventies, when you were on radio, the CBC "Quirks and Quarks" program. I was asking you back then, about the ozone layer. Now we have another connection, as I have found out my niece, Debbie, has done some work on your TV show.
My interest in this particular show was personal; I have had the procedure you were talking about, and actively pursued the issue since 2009, mainly in the Internet forum “ThisIsMS”. I am one of those advocates.
The honourable Dr. Murray is quite correct in saying it is a political issue now. It is partly so because of unusual pressure by Internet activists. He, with Dr. Freedman, and the other doctors and scientists expressing their skepticism, do not get the attention they deserve.
At the same time, the bits and bytes flashing momentarily on the Internet are living on beyond all merit, and get echoed everywhere.
It was fine journalism. Especially when you captured on camera Dr. Murray repeating what he told a Federal Parliamentary subcommittee, that if we allow people to be treated, the research will suffer because the MS patients will no longer sign up for the studies. Why they would behave in this selfish manner is beyond me.
William Shakespeare gave Romans powerful oratory in the play Julius Caesar. Some modern critics, however, along with some modern actors, do not realize that, when his political speech says ‘The evil that men do lives after them’, etc., wily Marc Anthony is using an oratorical device: Irony. He is sarcastic. He says the exact opposite of what he means. He comes not to bury this Italian king, but to praise him. Thank goodness none of our politicians has his guile.
Kirsty Duncan, who represents Etobicoke for the Liberal Party, has spent countless hours trying to light a fire under the anti-inflammatory Stephen Harper, the Canadian Institute for Health Research, and anybody else who would listen. She went to medical and scientific meetings, read many scientific papers, had a scientific subcommittee that heard from the MS society, neurologists, and surgeons such as Dr. Zamboni, Dr. Simka, and Dr. MacDonald. She authored hundreds of very pertinent questions to Parliament, none of which have been answered by two Harper governments. She held a long multi-party emergency debate on CCSVI in MS. She has hosted breakfast meetings with scientists, senators, and house members of all stripes. She has a private member's bill in the house, and another in the senate. She had as much to do with Canadians making progress against CCSVI as did the Internet. All that can be read in Hansard.
Long live the CBC. Long live The Nature of Things.
1eye
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"Try - Just A Little Bit Harder" - Janis Joplin
CCSVI procedure Albany Aug 2010
'MS' is over - if you want it
Patients sans/without patience
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