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When I learned I had precancerous lesions on my cervix and that my doctor was recommending I remove them surgically, my reaction went as follows: One, muted panic. Two, I’m definitely going to die. Three, Wait, what does that even mean?

So I did what anyone in possession of an Internet connection in 2021 would do: I went online to do my own research. The Internet confirmed what my physician had told me: the procedure, called a loop electrosurgical excision procedure, or LEEP, is a common one, in which a heated wire is inserted into the vagina to remove the offending cells.

I also found a host of women complaining of unexpected side effects. One article, in Cosmopolitan, was particularly concerning, full of stories of post-LEEP sexual dysfunction from women who had fully healed, yet who were unable to orgasm, feel pleasure during penetration, or have pain-free sex.

I mentally rehearsed the discussion I’d had with my gynecologist. He hadn’t warned me about any of this, which worried but did not surprise me. He had seemed more concerned with protecting my ability to get pregnant, even though I had repeatedly told him I was uninterested in bearing children. With scant scientific literature available—studies on post-LEEP outcomes were mostly focused on the procedure’s efficacy in preventing cancer, as well as pregnancy outcomes—it felt impossible to assess whether these risks were real. Was I about to subject myself to a procedure that might save my life, but at the cost of one of the things that brought real joy to it?

*

The disconnect between our experiences with medical professionals and what women and people assigned female at birth (AFAB) hear from our peers has been a central concern for feminist health activists for decades. When it comes to understanding what’s going on with our bodies, who can we trust?

For much of the twentieth century, the health-care system overtly treated AFAB people as unable to make decisions about their own bodies. Contraception was not decriminalized in Canada until 1969, and limitations on abortion were struck down even later, in 1988. Birthing people often had to endure labour alone, without partners present, and without the freedom to decide on pain relief options. Many women were ignorant of even the basic anatomical realities of their bodies.

In the 1960s and ’70s, activists dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by a misogynist health-care system, regressive laws regulating their bodies, and chauvinist doctors began to organize. They formed self-help groups, opened community clinics, and ran underground abortion networks. They performed vaginal self-examinations using a speculum, a flashlight, and a mirror.

What became known as the women’s health movement was grounded in a belief in empowering women with access to information about their own bodies and their sexual and reproductive health that was being denied to them by licensed health-care providers. In the U.S., the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective published revolutionary health-education text Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1970. Inspired in part by that text, a Canadian group called Women Healthsharing launched a quarterly magazine, which ran from 1979 to 1993 with a mandate to “take health out of the hands of the experts and return it to our own collective and individual hands.”

“The media landscape for women’s health information and feminist health perspectives in particular was dismal” at the time, says Connie Clement, founding managing editor of Healthsharing and longtime public health activist.

Healthsharing featured a mix of experts and lay writers reporting from across the country. “We always tried to write for lay women and women who had training in health. And I think it was a huge success for us that we had nurses and doctors contributing and reading, and we had women who had no special knowledge,” Clement says.

The subjects of Healthsharing ’s coverage were wide-ranging. In the inaugural issue, collective members Madeline Boscoe and Kathleen McDonnell penned a piece exploring birthing options in and out of the hospital, in response to feelings of “powerlessness, ignorance, and alienation from our bodies and our surroundings” in childbirth. Multiple issues reported on the use of Depo-Provera, a controversial contraceptive with potentially serious side effects. One column crowdsourced health information from readers (“We are trying to find out more about cervical caps in Canada,” read one callout). Other stories, like a piece on the labour conditions of garment workers, looked at the wider social and economic status of women in Canada.

This kind of education was key to both the women’s health movement and to second-wave feminism more broadly, grounded in the belief that knowledge was a precondition for enacting social change. “The whole feminist health movement was trying to change the social context of women’s health, [and] the structural conditions that influence health,” says Clement.

While it may seem like we are lightyears away from people not knowing what their own vulvas look like, as I peruse archival copies of the magazine over 30 years later, I am struck by how many articles overlap with current hot-button topics. The desire to balance “expert” medical opinion with the layperson’s experiences, the critical questioning of controversial pharmaceutical solutions, the attention to broader social, economic, and political conditions: it’s all in those pages, and it can be bittersweet to see how many issues are still relevant today, a testament to how slow progress can be in these contexts, and how easy it can be to roll it back, especially when we forget what has come before us.

*

I came of age in the 2000s, long after the era of the Women Healthsharings and vagina colouring books of women’s lib. I instinctively shied away from the diet-centric, fatphobic content in teen girl magazines. Thankfully for me, there was an entire ecosystem of feminist writing I could turn to online which shared both individual women’s experiences and fact-based reporting on our health. From blogging platforms Tumblr and LiveJournal to linchpin publications Bitch and Jezebel to private and semi-private groups of people with the same issues, for a while it seemed like the Internet could deliver on the promise of creating networks of knowledge in ways that mattered, filling the gaps where traditional media failed.

But by the time I was doing a deep dive on LEEPs, the online landscape had transformed entirely—in no small part because of social media, especially TikTok. The short-video sharing platform has become a major source for health information, especially for young women. In 2024, a survey study in the journal JMIR Infodemiology found a majority of U.S. women between 18 and 29 used TikTok for health information. Users post about vaginismus, birth control, orgasms, squirting, perimenopause, endometriosis, fibroids: I could go on. Some of these videos are created by health professionals, but many AFAB people post in the spirit of helping others through sharing their own experiences.

When I type in “birth control” on TikTok, the results are as follows: a “wellness”-focused woman encouraging natural planning, i.e. tracking your menstrual cycle to understand when you might be ovulating; a self-described nutrition coach listing ways the pill supposedly “robs us of our health;” and a sex educator responding to a question about birth control that doesn’t involve hormones.

In some ways, this knowledge ecosystem seems like an outcrop of the activist efforts of yore, grounded in information-sharing between peers and often using the language of increased bodily autonomy. Topics like hormonal birth control’s effects on the body are sometimes grounded in
legitimate concerns. Although these contraceptives are both considered safe overall and highly effective at preventing pregnancy, rare life-threatening complications can occur. There is research investigating the link between birth control and chronic inflammation that can lead to cardiovascular problems, blood clots, and mood disorders. Meanwhile, for methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs), for example, some report extreme pain during insertion, feeding into concerns that women and AFAB people’s pain is being dismissed by health-care providers.

More problematically, however, discussion online about birth control can quickly veer into right-wing misinformation territory, inflaming fears in an effort to get people to abandon contraceptive use altogether.

And in countries like a post-Roe U.S., where some states are increasingly implementing restrictive abortion laws, the stakes of an unwanted pregnancy can be high, says Dr. Jenny Wu. Wu is a medical resident in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke’s School of Medicine; she studies women’s reproductive health information shared on TikTok.

“It’s a complex conversation to navigate with my patients, when they tell me they don’t want hormonal birth control and they want to do natural family planning in a state where we have limited abortion access,” shares Wu from her home in North Carolina, which in 2023 banned abortions after 12 weeks with limited exceptions. (Both surgical and medication abortion is legal in Canada and free to those with access to territorial or provincial health care.)

Wu says the level of misinformation propagated online about reproductive health is contributing to increased levels of distrust from her patients overall. This climate makes it more difficult for Wu and other doctors to have these conversations about proper gynecological care, but it also can mean people don’t go see her at all, don’t receive proper care, don’t get the contraceptives they need or access to screening tests to detect potentially life-threatening diseases. But mistrust of the health-care system, especially for at-risk populations, is nothing new.

*

Underlying the relatively recent phenomenon of online misinformation is the much longer, checkered history of gynecological medicine. In Canada, abusive medical practices like the forced sterilization of Indigenous women are ongoing. Meanwhile, many AFAB people and racialized people feel their symptoms are routinely downplayed or dismissed by health-care providers. It’s not hard to understand why some people would want to avoid the medical system altogether.

Tracey Lindeman is a longtime Canadian journalist and author of BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care. Endometriosis, in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body, is notoriously under-researched, misunderstood, and underdiagnosed, which can lead to years of pain and suffering for those living with the condition.

“Endo is a super lonely disease, because you just feel like no one can really understand you and how much pain you’re in,” Lindeman, who lives with endometriosis, shares. For endo patients, frustrating repeated encounters with the medical system can feel more like gaslighting than care. In BLEED, Lindeman writes about asking her boyfriend to write a letter confirming that they didn’t want children in order for her request for a hysterectomy to be taken seriously. Another woman she speaks to experiences a pelvic exam so rough she files a sexual assault complaint; others still are denied referrals to a specialist or have their requests for pain relief dismissed.

Online groups can be a boon to these patients. There are thriving communities, like Nancy’s Nook Endometriosis Education on Facebook, with roughly 213,000 members, that offer a network of information and crucial support—and, just as importantly, the knowledge that those going through this are not alone.

But health influencers hawking cures of dubious provenance and efficaciousness feed off the need of those who turn to the Internet to self-manage their health. Much of the content paints itself as “natural,” implying it is better than “chemical” remedies. Looking up videos about LEEPs, I immediately stumble upon an account that is selling a course on how to “naturally” clear human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer. Another “plant-based health” account shares a video about how “chemicals” cause endometriosis and that you can heal it without hormonal or surgical intervention. These accounts are selling supplements, creams, and cycle trackers, all ways to supposedly take control of your own health or body.

Many of these solutions are obviously farfetched; others have a “science-y” veneer of plausibility about them. But for those people who have been ignored, traumatized, or abandoned altogether by formalized health care, these options may feel like the only solution.

“[The wellness industrial complex] is capitalizing on desperation,” says Lindeman. “People are desperate for help, they’re desperate for answers, and they’re not getting that help, and they’re not getting those answers the conventional way, and so they become really vulnerable to online influencers and online [gynecologists] who are proposing information that lets them maybe try to manage it themselves.”

Enduring racism and sexism in the health-care sector; traumatic personal experiences when seeking treatment; the explosion of influencers promising to help reclaim power over your own body: these all feed into one another so that AFAB people delay the treatment they need, suffer needlessly, and even die younger. We need ways to circulate accessible, evidence-based information, both from other women and AFAB people and medical professionals, which build momentum to tackle these much larger problems together, instead of isolating us even further.

*

A year after my diagnosis, I sat in a Montreal-area hospital, clad in a medical gown and socks, clutching a small piece of yellow paper. I didn’t feel like I had all the information I needed to make a decision about whether to have the LEEP, so I had scribbled down a list of questions for my doctor.

But I was called into the OR with no chance to speak to the doctor beforehand. Instead, I was ushered onto the operating table. As he applied local anesthetic to my cervix and inserted the wire into my vaginal canal, I asked him: “So… should I be worried about any sexual side effects?”

“No, no, I have never heard of this,” he replied.

With the loop still inside me, he rattled off what to expect post-surgery. In a daze, I heard the words “heavy bleeding.” “So a lot of bleeding afterwards is normal?” I asked. “No! Go to the ER if you start bleeding,” he repeated.

The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes. I stumbled off, the yellow paper crumpled and unused.

For a long time after the procedure, I felt confused and irritated at myself for not being a better self-advocate. I could have refused to undergo the procedure if I wasn’t satisfied with the level of information I had been provided. Why hadn’t I been able to say what was on my mind?

Sharing my story helped, because I started to realize just how common LEEPs were. It helped assuage my fears that I was necessarily on the road to cervical cancer. Reading accounts like those from Lindeman, who experiences doctor anxiety after a lifetime of poor medical encounters, helped reassure me that I wasn’t alone.

Is sharing stories online enough to take control of our health? In some ways, yes. The Internet has become a lifeline for many Americans seeking medication abortions. Lindeman says journalists pay attention to what is being said online and amplify concerns to a wider audience.

Meanwhile, after finding that the majority of videos about IUDs on TikTok mentioned pain, Wu shifted the way she practices: “I [now] offer patients something for pain before any IUD placement and really before any gynecological procedure.” In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States’ public health agency, even updated its recommendations for IUD insertions to include discussions of pain management.

And in 2023, a year after my own LEEP, a study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine was published exploring healthcare providers’ limited knowledge of post-LEEP sexual dysfunction and the resources patients used to cope—potentially the first ever study to look at the difference in patient and health-care provider perspectives when it comes to LEEP treatment. It found that there was “misalignment” between the two and recommended not only further research into sexual dysfunction symptoms, but also better education and training for providers, and better support for patients who do have negative outcomes.

These are heartening indications that when you share your health experiences, people are listening. The question remains: how do we translate these types of discussions into improving health outcomes for all AFAB people—especially when research into health problems that affect us is still underfunded?

It starts with finding ways to pair networked knowledge with collective action, because the power of social media is ultimately limited. “It’s the personalization of systemic problems,” points out Lindeman. “[You’re] continuing to focus on what you can do as an individual, instead of attacking the systems that are responsible for such a deficit in care.”

Social media may give us the reassuring impression of solidarity. In reality, it is atomizing, incentivizing a competitive attention economy; a billion voices speaking over, but not always to, one another. The collectives of the women’s health movement knew that to build power, you must do it together, through communities of care.

Perhaps we have to start by relearning that lesson–even if it means tearing ourselves away from our phones.

Charlotte Munro and her mom smiled for a selfie high above the frothy water of Niagara Falls. Amidst a difficult year where Munro endured both opioid withdrawal and a near-deadly infection, the weekend trip should have been a respite. But the getaway quickly turned sour because she was forced to forgo packing one essential item—her medication.

In 2014, after years of opioid use that began with a prescription for a fentanyl patch from her doctor for leg pain caused by necrosis, Munro decided to try methadone, one of the most effective medications in treating opioid addiction. It works by activating the same opioid receptors in the brain as drugs like heroin and fentanyl, except it’s slow-acting. This means that it can prevent withdrawal and reduce drug cravings. However, methadone itself is an opioid and subject to strict regulations in Canada and abroad.

These regulations limit access to take-home doses, forcing many patients to visit a pharmacy or clinic weekly or even daily to be observed while they take their medication. Patients are evaluated for signs of intoxication before they take their dose, watched while they take it, then their mouths are checked to confirm it’s been consumed. The purpose of these restrictions is to ensure methadone is used as prescribed, but the ensuing limitations on movement have caused some to refer to the drug as “liquid handcuffs.”

Daily observed doses shouldn’t render a patient completely tethered to their home pharmacy. Ralf Gerlach co-founded a harm-reduction organization in Münster, Germany just over 30 years ago and found his clients unsure if they could travel after starting methadone treatment. In response he wrote Methadone: Worldwide Travel Guide. He maintains that people should have access to this care wherever they go. “Denying freedom to travel is counterproductive to the goals of treatment,” Gerlach insists. “If doctors feel their patients are not stable enough for take-home dosing, courtesy dosing should be arranged at the place they travel to.” In practice though, courtesy dosing can wreck a two-day vacation to a nearby city.

Munro wasn’t prescribed any take-home doses for her trip, so she and her mom took a detour to a pharmacy near the Falls. Even though her doctor had called ahead and she had her ID and previous dose receipts, Munro’s methadone, which usually came in the form of a small, fruit-flavoured drink, hadn’t been prepared. She had to wait for the pharmacy to empty before being seen to. “I wasn’t given a fair turn in line like most people would get if you’re just going to the pharmacy to pick up a script,” she says. “I felt like a second-class citizen.” In her eight months of taking methadone, that was the only trip Munro attempted to make.

“A change of scenery and feeling like you’re part of society is healthy, it’s needed,” she says. Research shows exposure to new environments—in other words, travel—can boost our happiness. But for those who take methadone, this kind of happiness may not be available.

Tens of thousands of people across the country take methadone to treat opioid addiction. Treatment duration can range from less than a year to decades. While Canada struggles to address an opioid crisis that has killed more than 30, 000 people since 2016, aggravated by a drug supply poisoned with fentanyl and, more recently, benzodiazepines that render naloxone ineffective, methadone treatment for opioid addiction has proven critical—cutting a person’s chance of dying in half.

Although strict restrictions on take-home doses are slowly easing, they continue to impose barriers which may lead to people experiencing interruptions in treatment or discontinuing it altogether. They also limit freedom of movement for those who do take it. The drug is treated differently than many other life-saving medications; retrieving a dose from the pharmacy or methadone clinic is burdensome and can be deeply stigmatizing. What’s more is that research proves that lessening these restrictions is better for patients.

*

The first methadone treatment program in the world was founded in Vancouver in 1959. Residents of the Kitsilano neighbourhood originally set to house the clinic protested its opening and succeeded on the grounds that it would devalue their homes. At the time, two distinct conceptions of addiction treatment were clashing in B.C. Where the criminal model saw addiction as a moral shortcoming and pushed for indefinite compulsory treatment with a goal of abstinence, the medical model vied for voluntary treatment over punishment. The latter’s proponents suggested giving people addicted to heroin controlled levels of the same drug to help stabilize their lives, but this approach was ultimately rejected.

Amidst the discord Dr. Robert Halliday began treating patients for short-term opioid withdrawal with methadone. The drug had been synthesized by German scientists only 20 years prior and its efficacy for treating opioid addiction was mostly unknown at the time. Initially patients were given 12 days of methadone treatment to taper off the illicit opioid they were addicted to, but a few years later the clinic implemented what Halliday called “prolonged withdrawal”—allowing patients to take methadone for as long as they needed.

Both approaches had positive effects, however prolonged withdrawal saw more results, particularly for older patients who had been using drugs longer. Halliday cautioned against using abstinence to measure methadone’s efficacy. In a 1967 study that featured interviews with more than 150 of the clinic’s patients, he wrote that it’s “illogical to equate abstinence with a cure,” and compared methadone treatment for opioid addiction to insulin therapy for diabetes.

Instead, Halliday used factors such as relationships with family, work, a patient’s psychological wellbeing, and whether they developed healthy coping mechanisms to determine the success of methadone treatment.

At the turn of the millennium, professor Benedikt Fischer, a drug policy researcher, published a 40 year history of turbulent methadone policies in Canada. The success of Vancouver’s small-scale methadone treatment program prompted the practice to be widely accepted and 23 methadone programs opened across the country. In the early 1970s the government’s LeDain Commission published a series of reports on the non-medical use of drugs, including opioids, in Canada. It concluded that methadone was an effective treatment for opioid addiction and recommended a heroin substitution program when methadone was not adequate.

At the same time as the LeDain Commission, a special committee was struck to investigate methadone programs after a significant increase in the import of methadone into the country prompted concerns. It found that methadone was responsible for several overdose deaths and the widespread availability of the drug was brought about by private doctors without the knowledge to properly prescribe it. The committee thus recommended methadone guidelines that said it should only be prescribed to those with at least one year of opioid dependence, frequent urine screening for illicit drugs should occur with treatment, written prescriptions for methadone should be prohibited, patients must take the drug under supervision, doctors need authorization from the federal health authority to prescribe it, and any violation of the guidelines would be a criminal offence.

As a result, the number of patients taking methadone in Canada decreased from about 1,700 to about 1,100 in just three years. Over the years restrictions on people addicted to opioids continued—B.C.’s Heroin Treatment Act proposed compulsory treatment of up to three years for opioid addiction. While this was struck down in the province’s Supreme Court, policies restricting access to methadone persisted over the following decades.

In 1995, the federal government abruptly transferred oversight of methadone programs to the provinces. Since then, rules and regulations for methadone treatment, now one of several medications used to treat opioid addiction known under the umbrella term opioid agonist therapy, have developed differently in every province, with services in B.C. and Ontario expanding the most.

However, consistent throughout the country is the concept of contingency management, where people can earn take-home doses through meeting program requirements such as daily attendance at the pharmacy or clinic to receive an observed dose and frequent urine testing to check for prescribed and non-prescribed drugs.

“I was on methadone and suboxone for 18 years. And in that 18 years, I never once earned a take home dose,” says Toronto- based Andrew McLeod.

The restrictions on methadone and suboxone, a similar medication used in opioid agonist therapy, isolated McLeod. Being forced to make daily pharmacy visits means “you’re not engaging in society; instead, you’re kind of observing it,” McLeod says.

His rigid daily appointment made finding work difficult, with one employer never calling back after hearing he would be gone for half the day to visit the methadone clinic. It also affected his ability to spend time with loved ones. For nearly two decades, if McLeod wanted to be with his family at the cottage in Kingston, Ontario, away from his pharmacy, he had to secure heroin or fentanyl or else risk withdrawal, which he describes as excruciating. “It’s probably one of the worst feelings in the world. The withdrawal is what often takes people back.”

“Take the worst flu you’ve ever had,” he says, “then multiply that by 25 or 50. I’ve seen people violently sick.” At that point, McLeod explains, if he could not make it to the clinic in time or there was an error faxing his prescription, he had to find an alternative opioid. “I cannot live in that sickness.”

“One of the most dangerous situations is when someone decides for whatever reason, they want to abruptly stop their opioid agonist therapy,” says Dr. Vincent Lam, an emergency and addictions physician in Toronto. “Sometimes this can happen just because they’re frustrated with the limitations of the program.”

In the agony of withdrawal, patients are more likely to access another source of opioids, and with a lower opioid tolerance, this can be deadly.

*

Alongside take-home doses for people who want them, activists in B.C. and across Canada are fighting for safer supply, meaning access to prescribed medication in lieu of potentially toxic illegal drugs.

In B.C., small pilot programs providing hydromorphone to those who use illegal drugs and are at risk of overdosing were established in 2020. However, the province continues to suffer the consequences of toxic supply with 2,300 people dead due to poisoned drugs in 2022. This year, B.C.’s government decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs, though activists and researchers warn that without an accessible safer supply, this is not enough.

After starting his career as an emergency room physician, Lam yearned for more continuity of care. He began working in addictions medicine and was surprised at the positive impact even a couple of weeks of opioid agonist therapy had on a patient’s wellbeing. Lam explains that addictions medicine has historically been the subject of additional oversight and scrutiny compared to other specialties, and says it’s a field which, in many ways, is stigmatized within the medical community.

Lam recently spearheaded the drafting of new methadone take-home dosing guidelines to make the program more accessible, replacing the former contingency method. These new guidelines are meant to help advise physicians in taking a more patient-centred approach. Instead of sweeping, generalized criteria for take-home doses, doctors are encouraged to look at factors such as whether someone can safely store their medication, a person’s overall stability, and their amount of time on methadone. Abstinence from non- prescribed drugs is no longer required to access take-home doses, although it may affect how many are permitted.

Changes to the guidelines were in part brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. To reduce the risk of an outbreak, take-home dose allowances were increased for those who already had them and provided to people who were formerly only permitted observed doses. Researchers found that as a result, in Ontario the risks of treatment discontinuation and opioid-related overdoses were lowered.

A lingering point of concern for those critical of loosening methadone treatment rules is the potential for diversion. That is, methadone being acquired or used by someone it’s not prescribed to. While diversion does occur and improperly stored doses pose a public health risk, studies have shown that the main motivation for diversion is to provide safer drugs for others during an overdose crisis.“People have done it for me. I’ve done it for people who are dope sick. I’ve given them some of my methadone before to help them along so that they don’t have to do something else,” says Garth Mullins. Mullins is a board member of the B.C. Association of People on Opioid Maintenance and host of “Crackdown,” a podcast about drugs run by drug users.

Mullins first encountered harm reduction when he was 19, sleeping in a San Francisco park and using black tar heroin. At the time, syringes were difficult to find in the U.S., needle exchanges were illegal, and HIV was spreading among people who injected drugs. Mullins remembers using bleach in an attempt to sterilize needles and a match striker to sharpen them when they dulled. Then a group came by with buckets and new syringes. “It was a guerilla needle exchange. It was an act of civil disobedience in public health. It touched me and left a mark,” Mullins says.

While he has been taking methadone for more than 20 years and travelled abroad to Portugal with take-home doses during that time, Mullins understands why someone wouldn’t continue treatment. “A lot of people have just had enough. They don’t want any more people monitoring their lives, and want to get back a little bit of that dignity and self-determination…A methadone clinic seems like this weird hybrid between a place of healthcare and a place of punishment,” he says.

Alongside restricted travel, limited or no carries means someone fleeing disaster can’t access a supply of emergency medication. With wildfires burning more of the country every year and floods increasing in frequency and severity, this issue is growing more pressing.

The same restrictions that prevent people taking methadone from traveling are exacerbated for people in need of treatment living in remote regions. While opioid addiction is still prominent in rural areas, geographical barriers mean daily pharmacy access for some is impossible, like for Charlotte Munro, who was often forced to forgo treatment when her town’s pharmacy was closed on Sundays. If she wanted her medicine, she’d have to take a 45-minute cab ride to Stratford. Harsh regulations meant Munro’s access to methadone was precarious, putting her at risk of entering withdrawal. Her doctor was aware she was missing doses on Sundays, but that didn’t change her predicament.

*

Almost a decade since Munro waited for a pharmacy to empty in Niagara Falls, the evidence of medical stigma sits in a box in her hallway. A few months after the weekend trip she became severely ill with endocarditis, an infection of the inner lining of the heart. Munro was turned away from three hospitals in one week. “They weren’t doing the tests, they were just thinking I was trying to get drugs,” she explains. She feels that her methadone prescription sparked bias.

The Friday of that week Munro fell into a coma and was rushed to Stratford General Hospital. She remained unconscious for two weeks and spent months recovering.

Now an activist and full-time student in Indigenous Social Work at Laurentian University, Munro requested her medical records from that period. She intends to go through the large box to understand why she was treated so poorly and present her findings, but hasn’t felt emotionally ready to relive the experience.

Even last year, however, Munro was traumatized by her treatment at the hospital while giving birth to her son. Munro wasn’t given adequate support with breastfeeding, her concerns were dismissed, and her chart noted that she had consumed alcohol during the pregnancy, which she says is untrue. “I’ve been so successful in my recovery… and then I go in there and none of that matters. It’s just what they see on paper. It was probably a flagged file,” she says. “I feel like it robbed me of certain things that I should have been enjoying with my son,” Munro recounts. “I was basically being looked at like an unfit parent.”

Both Munro and Andrew McLeod are co-authors on the new set of methadone take-home dosing guidelines, offering their perspectives for a more human- centred approach. McLeod is now a social service worker and addictions counsellor.

“Addiction, it’s got a lot of pieces to it. It’s not just as simple as changing carries and everything will get better,” McLeod says. Three-and-a-half years ago, he tapered off of methadone by slowly decreasing his dosage. The process was physically arduous as he endured some withdrawal, but he’s experienced new freedom. “Instead of having to make my way to this pharmacy, I could get up in the morning and I could go to work, or I could go to school. I was able to go visit my mom and my kids. I was able to go to college,” says Mcleod. Last summer, he went to B.C. for his first vacation in over 20 years, which he says is sad.

Alongside changes to how methadone is prescribed, McLeod believes that housing, access to education, jobs, especially for those with criminal convictions, and support to help families affected by addiction are all equally as important. Without housing, family, and employment opportunities, McLeod believes many will look at methadone treatment and think “what’s the point?”

However, the truth about the treatment of opioid addiction in Canada has been clear for more than 60 years. Abstinence- based, compulsory, and punitive programs are often ineffective. Yet echoes of these regressive policies remain and fester in strict contingency management, lack of patient-centred care, and a continued resistance to implementing harm-reduction from officials at all levels of government.

*

Accessible opioid agonist therapy is a matter of life and death. While new person-centred and evidence-based methadone take-home guidelines and the decriminalization of small amounts of drug possession in B.C. are steps forward, the restrictions to travel Charlotte Munro faced nine years ago are still a reality to many across the country. The stakes could not be higher. An average of 20 people per day died of opioid-related overdoses in 2022. Safer supply programs that would provide people with unpoisoned drugs are difficult to access and although smoking is now involved in most overdose deaths in B.C., inhaled drugs are only permitted in a handful of safe consumption sites across the country. Ensuring freedom of movement for those who take methadone as well as improving access to this life-saving drug is critical.

An ocean away from Munro and McLeod, Gerlach still monitors drug policy in North America. Set to retire from his organization this year, Gerlach plans to continue updating the guide, now called Substitution: World Travel Guide, to include other opioid agonist therapy medications like suboxone. Poring over almost 200 sets of national import regulations and securing contact details of doctors and clinics is tedious work, but 26 years after the guide’s first publication, and in spite of limited funding, it’s helped thousands of people travel internationally. For Gerlach, it isn’t a question of whether someone taking methadone or other opioid agonist therapy medications should travel, but of how. “Travelling,” he says, “is a human right.”

All photos courtesy Provincial Archives of Alberta

The first image: a small child in striped pyjamas, three years old, peering through the bars of a crib, directly into the lens of the camera. There’s intelligence in her eyes, but no indication of pleasure or recognition. Just a quiet, cautious curiosity. She’s holding a naked, hairless, rubber doll. Behind her, off-kilter on the wall, are two framed drawings, one of a kitten, the other of a girl hugging a rabbit. The scene is a ward in Edmonton’s Charles Camsell Indian Hospital. The year is 1960. The child is Linda McDonald, from the Liard First Nation in the Yukon, recently diagnosed with tuberculosis. The solitude and vulnerability emanating from the photograph are not surprising, given her age and the abruptness of her departure. “My earliest memory is of mom walking with me to the little lake we lived beside,” she tells me, more than five decades later. “She carried me in her arms and she was crying. That is all I remember of mom saying good-bye. I then recall being on a plane with someone.”

Arrival at Camsell was no less traumatic: “The bathroom seemed very large. A nurse all in white was taking my clothes off and making me stand in a shower. I think this was my first shower experience. I was crying and she said, ‘shut-up’ and banged my head against the wall of the shower. I remember the smell of the bathroom, the large bars of Ivory soap.” Another of McDonald’s memories of Camsell involves being awakened in the middle of the night by a siren, by shouting and people running, and not knowing what was happening. A head-count on the lawn revealed someone was missing. McDonald recalls a nurse using the scissors to cut the cloth bonds that tied her to the crib and carrying her out where the rest were gathered.

I first heard from her in response to a brochure I distributed at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Vancouver in September 2013. On the cover was an image of four small girls in dressing-gowns overlaid with the caption: “What Was Going on in Canada’s Indian Hospitals?” Inside, along with a photograph of Camsell, was a description of the link between the racially segregated hospitals for aboriginals and residential schools: the latter serving as farm-teams or recruiting grounds for the former, providing a constant clientele of guinea pigs for forced sterilization, gratuitous drug and surgical experiments, and electric shock treatment—a sure way to destroy the short-term memory of sexual abuse. “I went into the hospital
an Indian girl,” McDonald confides, “and came out a white girl.”

I met her a few months later in Whitehorse. At the time, she was just finishing a six month medical leave from teaching. The person I met was out-going, middle-aged, and very bright. We had a wonderful lunch together and she arranged for me to meet several of her friends who had also been patients at the Camsell. Without those emails and beautifully written memoirs, I would not have guessed there was anything troubling this charming and vivacious person, whose life had been so profoundly affected by her two solitary years peering through crib bars, wearing pyjamas that resembled striped prison garb, and who had returned home “spoiled and thinking our little cabin was dirty and smelled funny.”

Yet, her experience was not unique. Camsell was one of 22 segregated hospitals in Canada, created not so much to help the Indigenous population, as to keep them separate from the white community. Established on racist assumptions, it’s not surprising that these hospitals were poorly staffed and underfunded. While residential schools— with their death-rate of 40-60 percent—are now widely acknowledged as a horrible stage in a slow-motion genocide, the story of the socalled “Indian hospitals” has been largely ignored. And yet, their legacy continues in today’s health care system. Were it not for this ongoing racism and colonial legacy, for instance, Brian Sinclair, a 45-yearold Indigenous man and double-amputee, would not have died in his wheelchair in a Winnipeg emergency room in September 2008 after being left unattended for 34 hours with a kidney infection that could have been treated.

Speaking of the Camsell era, medical researcher and author of Healing Histories, Laurie Meijer Drees offers the understatement of the year when she informs us it’s clear that, in Canada, aboriginals “mattered less.”

Provincial Archives of Alberta

Systemic racism is no stranger to Canada. British Columbia, my home, not only spearheaded the evacuation of thousands of Japanese-Canadians during World War II, but also gave enthusiastic support to the Chinese Head-Tax and the refusal to allow the Komogatu Maru to dock in 1913 in Vancouver harbour, sending it back to Hong Kong with its cargo of Sikhs and their shattered dreams of immigration. B.C. was also quick to follow suit when its neighbour across the Rockies passed the Alberta Sterilization Act in 1929, both provinces paying doctors to perform involuntary surgical procedures, a disproportionate number of them done on Indigenous men, women and girls. The provinces were in tune with the federal government, which turned away the St. Louis and its shipload of Jews fleeing the Holocaust, because someone in the Ottawa bureaucracy thought one Jew too many.

Treaty 7, signed between the Crown and First Nations in Southern Alberta in 1877, came with no promise of medical assistance—not even the standard clause of a medicine chest, which had been included in earlier treaties. Neither did Treaty 8, which covered Northern Alberta, B.C. and part of the NWT. A secondary report by Indian Commissioner David Laird promised that “supplies of medicine would be put in the charge of persons selected by the Government at different points, and would be distributed free to those of the Indians who might require them.” Laird and his contemporaries assured aboriginal signatories that “the government would always be ready to avail itself of any opportunity of affording medical service,” although these promises were not written into the treaty itself. The federal government would pay little attention to the health of aboriginals for decades, eventually downloading the responsibility to the provinces.

Another former Camsell patient, Marilyn Murray-Allison, a Gwich’in woman from the NWT, contacted me to say that both she and her mother had been patients in the early 1950s. Age five-and-a-half, and in constant pain, she could neither sit nor stand. Together with her parents and her sister, she was flown to the hospital, where staff found tuberculosis in her lymph glands; her mother had it in her lung. “It was a very tragic time,” she says. “In a matter of a few hours, our family was separated.”

The separation anxiety, rather than the tuberculosis, almost killed her. Although in the same hospital, mutual contact between family members was disallowed on the assumption that it would be upsetting to both parent and child who were supposed to be immobile and resting. But separation in a strange place, where no one spoke her language, made it worse. “All I remember of those days,” says Murray-Allison, “was the hurt and sadness and crying for my mother and my family. I was dying of heartbreak, not being able to eat and biting my fingernails until they were bleeding.”
Eventually, staff realized she wasn’t improving and put her in a room next to her mother’s. Able to see her mother through a window in the wall that still separated them, she began to heal slowly. More than once, a kind nurse would wrap her frail body in a blanket and sneak her in to cuddle with her mother. Bedridden for so long, she forgot how to walk and had to learn all over again.

Such procedures do not speak well of either the medical knowledge or the psychological insight of doctors and nurses, whom we might expect to know something about the role of emotions in the healing process. In The Camsell Mosaic, a book put together by the hospital’s history committee, Dr. William Barclay acknowledges the severe limitations under which staff worked and the primitive measures taken to treat patients. He describes how, initially, no drugs were available for the treatment of tuberculosis, so total bed rest was prescribed, sometimes including surgical collapse of the lung and plaster casts to fixate the joints, most of these procedures applied in “blind faith.”

Among the many Camsell photos in Meijer Drees’ Healing Histories and in the federal government’s archives, there is one that touches me deeply. It shows 11 children, aged two or three, in white gowns arranged on benches by a nurse wearing a facemask. The two in the front row wear moccasins, another child is missing a shoe and a third is sucking her fingers. Collectively the photograph does not depict a single mood, such as fear or anguish or pleasure—though the children are anything but animated. Yet, knowing how children need the love and affection of parents—and how their health and immune systems can plummet without this special care—the photo sends a shiver down my spine. Many of those toddlers—if they even made it through their hospital ordeal— were not sent home, but shipped off immediately to residential schools, where their chances of survival were sometimes as low as 60 percent.

Relevant to the story of these segregated hospitals is Canada’s long-standing policy not only of ignoring aboriginal wellbeing, but also of deliberately starving Indigenous peoples to force them into white subservience. Many of the great chiefs, including Poundmaker and Big Bear, were brought to their knees as beggars, asking for handouts to save their people. The violence that prompted killings at Frog Lake in 1885 and helped spark the Riel rebellion in the prairies was precipitated by Canada’s high-handedness and failure to fulfil treaty promises, particularly the failure to provide food and medicine after the extermination of the buffalo. As Maureen Lux explains in Medicine That Walks: Disease, Medicine and Canadian Plains Native People, 1880-1940, the starvation of the tribes at Fort Walsh, “was a cynical and deliberate plan to press the government’s advantage and force the Cree from the area and allow the government a free hand in developing the prairie.”

It has taken more than 100 years to dismantle some of the myths about Canada’s Indigenous peoples, including the notion that they are more susceptible to disease than other races. Appalling conditions, rather, were to blame for the high rate of morbidity: hunger, malnutrition, being crammed into tiny reserves, and held captive in residential schools that were often a haven for diseases, sadists, and pedophiles. Continual neglect and abuse resulted in fatalities that, in earlier times, might have been avoided, or at least less widespread, when food, confidence, and solidarity were not in short supply. These exacting measures were approved at the highest level of government. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald made this clear in 1882 when he assured the House, “we cannot allow them to die for want of food,” then added that Commissioner Edgar Dewdney and the Indian agents, as they wer called at the time, “are doing all they can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense.”

When Dr. Peter Bryce, chief medical officer of the Department of Immigration, was sent out to study the conditions in prairie residential schools in 1907, he wrote a scathing report about what he witnessed, including overcrowding, malnutrition, and an appallingly high death rate. His report was shelved and his position eliminated. Fifteen years later he would publish the report himself under the title A National Crime. Duncan Campbell Scott, deputy superintendent of what was then called Indian Affairs, dismissed Bryce’s claims, saying in April 1910: “It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.” On another occasion he added: “It is only necessary to carry out some common sense reforms to remove the imputation that the department is careless of the interests of the children.”

Those promised reforms, of course, did not come. Lux tells us that Chief Long Lodge, whose people had been forcibly removed from Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills of southern Saskatchewan and were sick from starvation, put the matter bluntly: “I want no government medicine. What I want is medicine that walks. Send three oxen to be killed and give fresh meat to my people and they will get better.” When the aboriginal population—albeit one that was devastated and drastically reduced in numbers—refused to disappear, residential schools and segregated hospitals were the next phase of the “final solution” that Indian Affairs (now Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada) set in motion.

Forced sterilizations and drug and surgical experiments happened in many segregated hospitals during the two decades following World War II. Teeth were often removed without freezing and experimental drugs were administered that caused serious harm, or proved fatal. The causes of death were often falsely reported to authorities and loved-ones were not contacted. Sexual abuse was not uncommon, as many testimonies at the hearings of the TRC confirm. One friend told me an orderly raped her at the Nanaimo Indian Hospital while her upper body was encased in an iron lung. Much of the fear that Indigenous people have of doctors and hospitals today derives from the horrendous experiences and racist attitudes encountered in these institutions.

Provincial Archives of Alberta

As I was putting these thoughts together in January 2014, Melinda Bullshields phoned me from her small flat on East 2nd Avenue in Vancouver’s East End to say she’d seen one of my brochures at the TRC. One of 11 siblings from the Blood Reserve in Alberta, about 30 kilometres from the U.S.-Canada border, she’d been a patient at the Camsell from age four to eight. Simply put, it ruined her life. Her voice was strong, urgent, articulate, informing me that being bedridden for so long made her knees small for her size, but she’d still managed to become an athlete. She saw many things at Camsell—every kind of abuse, “I remember the casts, little kids with hips and both legs in a body cast, just a small hole where they could pee,” she says. “At night, the orderlies would be doing things in those holes.”

Four years of hospitalization, followed by residential school, alienated her from family, some of whom she no longer recognized when she returned to the reserve. “They groomed me for solitude,” she says. “I coped with the abuse by dissociation, closing off the emotions, being elsewhere when nasty things happened to me.” This dismal situation continued even back home, where her sisters tormented her for being too English and where the worst abuses learned in residential school and the segregated hospital had become an epidemic.

When we met at a coffee shop on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, Bullshields brought her copy of The Camsell Mosiac to show me her photo on page 211, front row, third from the left—one of 10 tiny, costumed girls, part of the Counterpane Players, wearing a frilly, conical cap, her only photo of herself from that period, a light moment in an otherwise dark period. “I hate both sides,” she says, “so where does that leave me?”

Indeed, where does this leave all of us? As individuals and as a nation, we have a responsibility to rewrite the national narrative, acknowledging our failure to honour the promises and partnership
implied in the treaties and to build a better, stronger, healthier future. We can start by making the records of all 22 segregated hospitals available. Canadians need to know what really happened in these hospitals—the sterilizations and the nutritional, drug, and surgical experiments. We also need to find out what was going on in that special day school on the Goodfish Lake reserve in Alberta where, from 1959–1963, 38 Cree children were isolated, taught nothing, allowed to watch TV all day, and subjected to excessive doses of polio vaccines, known even then to be contaminated with a carcinogen called SV40—a virus originating in the kidneys of the rhesus monkey used as a culture for growing the vaccines.

Camsell would be a good, symbolic place to jump-start the reconciliation and healing process. After serving as a general hospital for the entire population from 1967–1996, it was abandoned because of asbestos contamination. It remained empty for decades, grew increasingly decrepit, and only made the news periodically, when vandals started fires or the building figured in the internet’s latest ghost watch.There was enlightened talk of renovating and turning it into housing for Edmonton’s homeless and low-income population, a large number of whom are First Nations individuals, but the locals objected. Instead, the city sold the building to a developer, who promised to turn it into condos for seniors and yuppies. Now that the asbestos has been removed, the city council could intervene to realize that earlier dream.

Harold Cardinal wrote many years ago in The Unjust Society that equality of health or education services is not enough: “We aren’t starting on equal grounds. Equality of services doesn’t mean a thing to people who are so far behind they can’t even see the starting line. It just means we would remain that far behind. That’s not good enough. We want to catch up. Then we can talk equality.” Cardinal, who was born in High Prairie, Alta. and grew up on the Sucker Creek Cree Reserve, wrote those words in 1969. Some 46 years later, we have still not taken them to heart.

Between 1946-1966, nearly 97 Indigenous patients who did not survive Camsell, including 13 infants, were buried in the cemetery on the grounds of the former Edmonton Indian Residential School, located in nearby St. Albert. Their names are inscribed on marble slabs on four sides of a monument made of round stones set in concrete. On the top of the six-foot-high structure, between the stones, mourners have deposited tiny plastic toys and a small skipping rope. When I visit the site in late April 2015, a cold wind has blown a tiny, black, plastic car onto the paved surface. I pick it up and place it back on top of the monument, wondering about those who left it here.

Before departing, I drive a few hundred metres to the new Poundmaker drug and alcohol addiction centre that now occupies the grounds of the former residential school. A stand of poplars in the distance is festooned with long, brightly coloured cloths. I ask a woman outside having a smoke what they signify.

“They’re prayer flags,” she tells me. “When the wind blows, they flutter and the pain is carried off by the breeze.

Companies, like Procter and Gamble (P&G), use this time of year to push cause marketing: a for-profit business using a not-for-profit’s cause to market their product. So even though cyclopentasiloxane—an ingredient shown to cause cancerous tumours in test animals—is the first ingredient in P&G’s Secret Scent Expressions deodorant, people can feel good buying their products because they have plans to donate US$100,000 to the American Cancer Society. This is pinkwashing, where companies mask the bad (sometimes cancerous) parts of their products by exploiting women’s vulnerability to breast cancer.

“Raising money has become the priority,” says Dr. Samantha King in Pink Ribbons, Inc. “Regardless of the consequences.” Distributed by the National Film Board, and directed by Lea Pool, the 2011 Canadian documentary is based off of King’s book of the same title. In it people such as Barbara Ehrenreich, a writer and breast cancer survivor, talk about how the capitalism of breast cancer awareness is serving as a distraction from how the movement originally started, with a sisterhood critically looking at the health care system.

“To expect you to add social purpose to your business just because it’s a good thing to do, is foolish,” writes Olivia Khalili of Cause Capitalism.  “You have a bottom-line and other obligations to meet.  You don’t have extra resources to allocate to ‘doing good.’”

Obviously businesses have a bottom line that doesn’t include helping others for the goodness of it. But where is this money really going? Walks and parties are fun—I’ve done fundraising for cancer research efforts myself—but after the high of solidarity wears off, and the hype dies down, we must ask: what progress health care wise has been made?

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

He shared this opinion with the staff of an Etobicoke home for teens with autism, owned by the Griffin Centre, a non-profit mental health agency. The Etobicoke Guardian reports that Ford held a public meeting with the centre’s staff last Thursday. He informed them the home’s neighbours were upset about police calls, noise disruption, and not receiving advanced warning about the residents. Deanna Dannell, the director of Griffin Centre, sent an email to the Canadian Press, stating that the centre had spoken to Ford before the home opened and explained their housing situation.

Apparently, Ford sympathizes with the teens but believes they should not be allowed to leave the house. He is willing to buy the house and sell it, if need be, the Guardian says.

There has been some warranted backlash against his beliefs.

“It was disappointing to hear that kind of reaction from [Ford],” Dannell told the Star. “Certainly we had hoped for something different.”

John Tory, a Toronto mayoral candidate, released a statement calling Ford’s comments “from another age”.

Ford blames the Liberal government for closing Thistletown Regional Centre in the west end. “It was a beautiful centre, had 43 acres that allowed families to have their children with challenges there,” he told the National Post.

Children with challenges…

Although Tory benefits by pointing out a Ford’s flaws, he raises a good point. Canada has a serious problem when the people in our government do not want to respect those with mental disabilities. There is no easy way out. No one knows that better than the staff who work with autistic children.

So despite the noise and other various disruptions, these people deserve as much fresh air as the rest of us. Canadians will have taken one step forward and five steps back if we try to whisk away all human “inconveniences.”

The Star recently conducted an investigation into the usage of these pharmaceuticals in Ontario nursing homes. It discovered that in over 40 homes across Ontario, nearly half of the inhabitants are given these anti-psychotics. In about 300 homes, more than a third are on the pills. One home uses them on about 75 percent of patients.

The pills include olanzapine, quetiapine, and about 10 others, but none of them are approved by Health Canada for use on people suffering with dementia. Some of these medications even have a “black-box” warning on the label—the strongest possible warning on a pharmaceutical. Commonly the label cautions that patients with dementia have a 60 percent increased risk of death after using the drug.

Then why are nursing homes offering these drugs to its residents?

Olanzapine and quetiapine were approved in 2004 and 2005 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and episodes of mania.

Yet, doctors continue to prescribe these drugs off-label, even though the government was warned about overuse of this anti-psychotics in 2007 by the auditor general. Yesterday, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews told the Star, “Let’s remember, it’s the doctors who prescribe these drugs, not the government.”

This sounds suspiciously like the blame game. Doris Grinspun would agree. She’s head of the registered nurses association and told the Star she is “quite frankly, outraged at anyone, let alone the minister, who tries to divert responsibility. It’s all of our responsibility.”

But it is a doctor’s choice to medicate a patient without fully divulging potential danger to relatives.

One family explained to the Star their aunt, lovingly known as Aunt Gerry, died four months after Wellesley St. nursing home used olanzapine to “quiet her down”. Her husband had no idea what the drug would do and would not have consented to it if he had.

This isn’t the first time Canada has been in trouble for its misuse of anti-psychotics. Prisons use these methods as well. A large amount of female inmates are given quetiapine to help them sleep. Last year, CBC and the Canadian Press discovered that about 400 of the 600 prisoners in five different correctional institutions are given “psychotropic medication—drugs that impact mood and behaviour,” the Star reported.

Quetiapine’s side effects include: diabetes, hyperglycemia, high fever, intestinal obstruction, and rigid muscles, to name a few.

Clearly, prescribing off-label is a common issue.

Matthews acknowledges it is a serious issue but did not explain any specific, rectifying action the government is suggesting doctors take. She did mention “doctors cannot prescribe this kind of medication without the consent of the individual or their substitute decision maker.” Which doesn’t say enough.

Grinspun has some suggestions of her own. She believes the province should increase staff numbers and provide in-depth training focused on those with dementia. Some homes mention trying to get their prescription rate down by learning to recognize triggers for agitation in seniors.

Dr. Andrea Moser told the Star good work has been done to limit the use of these drugs in nursing homes. “We’re making progress. We still have a long way to go.”

A long way sounds ominous. Especially for current patients like Aunt Gerry. The government and doctors owe these families better work to ensure a long way does not translate into a long time.

In Canada, there are nearly 40,000 medical marijuana patients; when the program was initiated in 2001, there were 100. Many patients grow their own marijuana, depending on their needs and ailment, such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, or chemo therapy. Most say they need the drug to function, and some require 40 grams or more a day to manage their condition. In such cases, patients would have to pay $200/day for the drug—a prohibitive cost, and one that is much higher than what it takes to grown the plant themselves.

The government contends the new change will help regulate medicinal marijuana, and protect patients from hazards such as fire, mould, and potential break-ins and burglary. It also claims the new law will also stop abuse of licences and black market trade.

Opponents to the law, however, say it really just makes it harder to get medicine patients desperately need.  John Conroy, a lawyer from Burnaby, B.C., has launched a constitutional challenge against the law. Conroy argues that the law would deny his clients’ reasonable access to medicine they desperately need. Not only will patients be unable to afford buying from state approved growers, he argues, certain strains of the plant that have been found effective for some conditions would no longer be available.

Conroy has asked for a temporary injunction to the law until the court makes a decision on his constitutional challenge. In the meantime, one couple is also suing the government for  $6.5 million, the amount they say they will be forced to pay for the medicine they could happily grow for a fraction of the price: $500. Many medicinal marijuana users are simply vowing to ignore the new law, and continue growing their own pot.

Let’s hope it is all one big, elaborate April Fool’s prank.

Earlier this week, Canadian doctor Danielle Martin battled the rather patriotic U.S. Republican Senator Richard Burr at a subcommittee meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss different health care systems around the world.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic here but it sure seemed like a battle—and Martin, the vice-president of the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, effectively defeated the North Carolina senator every time he tried to point out flaws in Canadian health care, and by extension Obama-care.

The video, posted above, is filled with quips and ripostes between the two, but my personal favourite has to be the golden response Martin gave when Burr asked her how many Canadians died while on waiting lists: “I don’t, sir, but I know that there are 45,000 in America who die waiting because they don’t have insurance at all.”

Here’s hoping this becomes a new Canadian saying.

The change took effect July 22, and marks a drastic departure from the organization’s previous policies concerning blood donation from the MSM category of donor, a blanket term used to describe gay men and other males who have, at any point in their lives, had sex with men.

Before the policy change, if a potential male donor had had sex with a man since 1977, he couldn’t give blood. Now, the deferral time is five years—a donor who falls into the  MSM category can give blood if he has had absolutely no sexual contact with another man for at least five years.

This can be interpreted as a step in the right direction. Certainly, Canadian Blood Services would like us to think so. In a press release announcing the change Dr. Dana Devine, VP of Medical, Scientific and Research Affairs at the organization said: “It’s the right thing to do and we are committed to regular review of this policy as additional data emerge and new technologies are implemented.”

In fact, we are still smack dab in the middle of the spectrum—the National Blood Service in the U.K. has a deferral time of one year. In the U.S., if a man has ever had sex with a man he can’t give blood, though the American Red Cross and other U.S. blood donation services have called for a change to 12 months, saying there is no reason why those who fall under the MSM category should be banned from donation while those with similar sexual practices are not.

Canadian Blood Services tests all donated blood for HIV and other transmissible illnesses before it becomes available for transfusion, and HIV testing can detect the virus as early as three weeks after infection—so why the five year deferral?

Canadian Blood Services will point to statistics to justify the restriction: Those in the MSM category still make up a large portion of both those living with HIV and the newly diagnosed. As of 2011, 46.7 percent of those living with HIV/AIDS in Canada were MSM, as were 46.6 percent of new infections.

While these statistics can give pause, they’re still not enough to justify the five-year wait period. The U.K. blood donation service changed its policy to one year in 2011, after a review of blood donor selection criteria determined a lifetime exclusion for men who’ve had sex with men wasn’t medically justifiable.

What’s more, in Canada the deferral time is only one year for those who engage in heterosexual sex with someone who is HIV positive.

Let’s put it this way: if a woman had sex with an HIV positive man, she could potentially give blood 12 months later. In Canada, if a man has had sex with any man, HIV-positive or not, he can’t give blood for five years. That, to put it bluntly, is discrimination, not protection.

The case centred on controversial Myriad Genetics, the (now former) patent-holder of the gene mutation responsible for hereditary breast cancer. Perhaps, like many others, you first heard about the gene mutation after Angelina Jolie spoke openly about her preventative double mastectomy last month—launching the subject into hot topic territory. Jolie had the surgery after tests revealed she carried the gene mutation which gave her an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer.

In that New York Times op-ed, Jolie encouraged other women to be tested for the gene. However, the property rights to the patented gene mutation push the cost of the test over $3,000—even for those likely to test positive, such as women with mothers and grandmothers who’ve had breast cancer. Jolie’s double mastectomy, though seemingly extreme, was a preventative cancer treatment. But with the cost of the test so high, even the option to consider this preventative care was available only to those with the money to spare.

The case was, of course, more complicated than the coverage of celebrity health, though Jolie did bring hereditary breast cancer and this particular gene mutation into the limelight. The biotech industry is up in arms about the Supreme Court’s ruling, afraid the decision will reduce funding for research—gene patents lead to bigger payoffs when treatments hit the market, an attractive prospect for investors.

But many, including civil rights activists, say it’s a win, as the decision opens the field to independent research and study, particularly at universities.

The judges voted unanimously on the issue, and reportedly in line with President Obama’s opinions on the topic. But the decision did not outlaw synthetic gene patenting; companies are still allowed to patent cDNA, the synthetic DNA produced by cloning.

So, here’s hoping healthcare becomes more affordable in the U.S., preventative cancer treatments become more accessible, and clones don’t take over the world.