Don't you believe it; Head lice are not so super.

Head lice are not easily spread by hats, pillowcases, sofa backs or rugs.

Newspapers love a good story. The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's most respected newspapers, warned readers about the growing problem of super lice⁠—lice which have developed resistance to the insecticides in the traditional treatments. Hardy, resilient, tough to wipe out: No, I am not talking about head lice but about the stories, mostly myths, surrounding the pesky, little bugs.

When the Toronto District School Board announced it was reviewing its "no nits" policy, a media fire storm erupted. The "no nits" rule, once common in schools around the world, prevents those students with visible head lice eggs, nits, from attending school. The affected children cannot return until their heads are declared nit free. The rule sounds reasonable but isn't.

Teachers, parents and even health care workers often misdiagnose head lice infestations. When the Harvard School of Public Health examined samples of head lice and nits, more than 40 percent of the samples had nothing to do with head lice. This is why a "no nits" policy results in students being barred from school for such things as hat lint or dandruff. Of the remaining samples, approximately half or 30 percent indicated non-active infestations. Do the math. 70 percent of the samples were innocuous.

The Toronto Star fanned the fires of fear by conducting a highly suspect, online poll. The loaded questions determined most readers believed "nits are damaging to the kids." This came as no surprise since the story was replete with myths. Readers were warned, "Lice are a common problem among young children because they can be easily spread by sharing items like hats, brushes or combs." No they can't. Completely untrue. A myth.

Research has shown, and this is a quote, "the odds of head lice transmission via hats of lice-infested children is sufficiently low to be considered improbable and inconsequential."

With the school board in Toronto reconsidering its approach to the head lice problem, my local paper, The London Free Press, decided to do a take on the story but with a local twist. The fact that neither the public nor the separate school board was contemplating changes to the head lice policy should have made this a non-story but it didn't stop the paper. A grabber headline, a big picture of a concerned mother intent on protecting her young daughter from head lice, a separate fact-box with the usual stern warnings and voilà: a head lice story.

The Thames Valley District School Board cannot be faulted for being cautious. Without community support a move to discard the "no nits" policy may fail. Progressive boards which moved too fast have been forced to reinstate the discredited "no nits" policy after facing a flood of complaints from angry parents and, in some cases, teachers.

I contacted a school board in the States that had to backpedal on its decision to drop its "no nits" policy. The person I talked to felt the local newspaper was of no help in getting out the true head lice story. The newspaper preferred yesterday's myths to today's news.

Head lice are not a health hazard, they do not spread disease, on this everyone is in agreement. What they do is carry is a nasty stigma. They spread fear, stress and anxiety. Possibly, The Free Press should have run a picture of a young mother who no longer wants her children exposed to the possibility of being barred from school for having hat lint. Don't laugh. Remember the study done by the Harvard School of Public Health.

The little critters, only as big as sesame seeds, are unable to hop, let alone leap tall buildings, yet in the press they are called "super lice." There is nothing super about them. After years of being controlled with insecticides, the little bugs have done what insects do best—adapt. Head lice have developed resistance to the insecticides in the hair treatments used to fight them. This adaptation took no one by surprise.

But this very adaptability may well be their undoing. After living thousands of years as our uninvited guests, head lice are perfectly adapted to life on a human head. Off the human head, they don't fare so well. They die. (Reportedly, 55 hours off the human head and they're dead. That said, 72 hours without a blood feeding and they are done is a more often quoted time frame.)

With newspaper stories goading them on, fearful parents toss out pillowcases complete with pillows. Hats, scarves, coats are washed or even dry cleaned at some expense. Toys are bagged and left bundled for weeks. Almost everything a child with head lice has touched is considered contaminated by these frightened folk.

Rather than focusing on the environment, parents should focus on the affected child's head. The fear-driven cleaning response is totally out of proportion to the risk and this is thanks in part to the myths spread by our newspapers.

When I contacted the local reporter who wrote the head lice story, she referred me to her source, something she found on the Web. I thought, "You can't believe everything you read on the Web." The reporter's nose was so far out of joint because I dared to question her story, she has not talked to me since. Clearly readers should not question journalists.

It's claimed that Edward R. Murrow said of his own profession, "Journalists don't have thin skins. They have no skins." Sadly, I have discovered this observation on the sensitivity of many reporters to criticism is all too accurate. In this age of the Internet, with the ability to check any and all questionable claims, journalists would be wise to listen to a little criticism.

Google enough sources and you will soon realize there is a battle being raged over head lice. I like to think one side studies lice in the lab while the other studies lice in their environment, in the community, in schools and on children's heads.

To get the whole story, the accurate story, I contacted the people behind the claims. My search led me to Richard Speare, professor emeritus, James Cook University, Australia. Speare is one of the major players in the unraveling of the myth-riddled head lice story. Speare graciously responded to my email and attached a number of documents detailing some of his work.

Speare and his cohorts accepted that hats were considered high-risk items but could find little hard data supporting the all-too-common claim. The research team examined over 1000 hats in four schools. They also examined the students. The team found no head lice in the hats but over 5500 head lice on the students' heads. One myth busted.

The Australians also investigated the possibility of contacting head lice from contaminated floors. 2,230 children were examined from 118 classrooms. A total of 14,033 lice were collected from the children but not one louse was recovered from a floor. Researcher Deon Canyon doesn't mince words. He calls the risk of contacting head lice from a floor "zero." It is, he says, another groundless myth.

The out-of-proportion fear and stigma attached to head lice can make the lives of our most sociable little children quite miserable. Why the most sociable? Because they are the kids most likely to be making the head to head contacts that are almost always the source of the problem.

The reward for their social nature can be exclusion from school, isolation from friends, over-treatment and under support. Toddlers can find themselves ostracized by their best friends. It can be emotionally traumatizing. It doesn't have to be this way. The next time I see a story in the newspaper on head lice, I want to see a picture of a mother protecting her child from unwarranted emotional trauma. This would be a great story and this would be news.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has listed solid reasons for discontinuing "no nits" policies:

• Nits more than ¼ inch from the scalp are usually not viable and thus are unlikely to hatch.
• If nits are easily visible, they are most likely empty shells or nit casings.
• Nits are cemented to hair shafts and are unlikely to be transferred to other people.
• Misdiagnosis of nits is very common, resulting in children being banned from school in error.
• Misdiagnosis can result in a child undergoing unnecessary chemical treatment.

Female head lice glue their eggs to the base of human hair shafts close to the scalp. And it must be a hair on a human head. A human body hair won't do. Nor will the hair of a favourite pet.

Also, the distance the egg is from the scalp is important. The eggs, called nits, are incubated by the warmth of the scalp. A growing hair can carry a nit too far from the warmth. It will fail to hatch. No oh-so-close warm scalp, no hatching. It's that simple. Adaptation is a weakness as well as a strength.

Now you can understand why the presence of nits does not indicate an active infestation. If the nits are easily seen, they are most likely not viable. Or the nits may be nothing but empty egg casing or bits of dandruff and the like, all misidentified by the untrained eye. The CDC knows all this but not all school boards and not many parents and certainly not many reporters.

It is claimed head lice have become difficult to eradicate. But it is not just head lice that have developed resistance to the insecticides used. Many parents have also developed strong resistance to the neurotoxins used in the treatments. More and more parents are hesitating to douse their child's head with powerful, poisonous chemicals to kill a benign pest.

Image courtesy: Community Hygiene Concern, Joanna Ibarra

The approach du jour is bug busting. A lubricant, often conditioner, is used with water to wet the hair. The lubricant makes it difficult for the lice to move quickly and thus avoid the fine-toothed nit comb sliding through the hair from the roots to the tips.

Bug busting is nit picky. The goal is to physically remove all nits and lice from the infested head. Many people have neither the time nor the patience to see the process through. The failure rate is quite high.

Others believe an oil, such as coconut oil, will coat the bugs and suffocate them. It will certainly slow them down but lice are resilient. This approach has yet to find clear support from scientific testing but those wanting to asphyxiate the little critters may be on to something.

One product available in Canada, Nyda, combats head lice by using the asphyxiation method but kicks it up a notch. During an interview on Radio New Zealand, Professor Rick Spears was asked, "How essential is a nit comb for getting rid of head lice and nits?" The professor answered:

With some of the new dimethicone based products, some of the silicone based oils penetrate the egg too, so the embryos die as well. In that case you don't have to comb them all.

That's Nyda! Nyda is a dimethicone based product. And it claims not only to kill lice but also nits. In many cases one treatment is often sufficient, the maker says. If necessary a second treatment ten days later guarantees a lice-free head. No neurotoxins are involved. Nyda is safe but keep it out of the eyes. You don't want a child fighting head lice to also be fighting the caregiver, you, and the treatment.

I chatted with a family that used Nyda as directed. The parents told me that Nyda appeared to eradicate the head lice after just one treatment. But the affected child was treated again after ten days just to be sure. The family asked me not to go into too many details as they had discovered the London school their child attends does not follow the "no nits" policy but mum's the word. It is a school policy and not a board directive. The principal and teaching staff are clearly enlightened.

The parents read The Free Press article and realized the paper wasn't enlightened. The paper and the reporter were still living in the head lice dark ages. Mythology still rules.

If it makes you feel better, wash that toque, put those sheets in the dryer and set it to hot, bag those toys, vacuum the floor and carefully dispose of the dust bag. But do try to relax, shake off your fears. Take comfort in the facts and forget the myths.

Remember: head lice are adaptable and they've adapted to heads. Off the human head they are dead within as little as six hours. You see, the damn little things aren't so super after all.
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Other links:

Back at school? Here is how to keep kids free of head lice

Do head lice spread in swimming pools? (Simple answer: No!")

Follow link and do a search of the pages for chapter titled Lousy Science.

A link to an article from Nautilus by Noson S. Yanofsky

I found the following worth a read -- or two.

Kolmogorov Complexity and Our Search for Meaning

From the last two paragraphs of the linked article:

While we travel through the seemingly random events in our life, we are searching for patterns, and structure. Life is full of “ups and downs.” There are the joys of falling in love, giggling with your child, and feeling a sense of great accomplishment when a hard job is completed. There is also the pain of a crumbling relationship, or the agony of failing at a task after great effort, or the tragedy of the death of a loved one. We try to make sense of all this. We abhor the feeling of total randomness and the idea that we are just following chaotic, habitual laws of physics. We want to know that there is some meaning, purpose, and significance in the world around us. We want a magical story of a life, so we tell ourselves stories. 

Sometimes the stories are simply false. Sometimes we lie to ourselves and those around us. And sometimes the patterns we identify are correct. But even if the story is correct, it is not necessarily the best one. We can never know if there is a deeper story that is more exact. As we age and suffer from ennui, we gain certain insights about the universe that we did not see before. We find better patterns. Maybe we get to see things more clearly. Or maybe not. We will never know. But we do know that the search is guaranteed to never end.

Total Operating Expenses: 2017 VW Jetta Wolfsburg Edition

Important Numbers: 2017 VW Jetta TSI Wolfsburg Edition as of Sept. 25, 2022

• Fuel cost per km: $0.10 (Canada, southwestern Ontario)

• Total cost to run car per km: $0.43*

• Fuel consumption: 8.06 litres/100 km (This climbs during the winter months as I do more in-city driving at that time. Annually, I've averaged about 9,200 km.) 

•  Present distance travelled: 57441 km
  

• Total Fuel used: 4,629.11 litres

• Total Fuel cost: $5,531.99

• Total "directly" out-of-pocket expenses: $24,821.04**

(** The above includes down payment, monthly car payments, fuel costs, all maintenance charges, insurance, car washes, parking, etc.)
* Will change over time.
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I had a 2011 diesel-powered VW Jetta TDI. Because of the diesel scandal, VW bought the car back at fair market value. VW Canada also paid a bonus to make full amends for their questionable TDI claims. All in all, I got $16,700 which I put towards the purchase of my present 2017 VW Jetta Wolfsburg Edition TSI.

The only complaint I have with the car is the finish. Before I took possession of my black Jetta, it was parked where the paint surface was damaged. Before delivery, the dealer buffed the car but the paint, especially all the top surfaces (roof, hood, trunk), remains badly scarred.

In bright sunlight from the right angle, the swirl marks caused by the dealer's buffer are visible. This sounds worse than it is but I am sure when I go to trade in this car the paint finish will be a problem. For this reason, I will be keeping this car for a long time. Luckily, I love the car and keeping it is not a problem.

On the plus side, I have come to trust Greg Wagner, a service advisor at Dalmar Motors in London. He's been a very decent fellow and I do not hesitate to recommend Dalmar to others based to a great extent on my good experiences with Greg Wagner.

I have a spreadsheet tracking all costs. The numbers in this post are from that spreadsheet. If you have been following this post for sometime, you will have noticed that the costs have been going up recently. For instance, the price of gasoline has soared recently and my gas cost per km has gone up a penny. I had thought the longer I kept the car, the cheaper the running costs. Inflation has stood that belief on its head.

Is it honor or honour? No clearly established Canadian standard according to one Canadian government source.

". . . he’s here (at Western) to consider new ideas and points of view. He might learn something in the process."

— Arzie Chant

Arzie Chant took a solid, unassailable position in a letter to the editor of the Gazette, Western University's student newspaper. Perhaps Chant should re-read what he wrote.

Recently Chant, a member of the school's senate, questioned the use of the word honors rather than honours, with a 'u', on diplomas and certificates awarded by the university. The staff senator told the local paper: "It struck me as embarrassingly un-Canadian to spell honours without a 'u'."   

This isn't the first time someone has raised this issue. The last time it was debated was 22 years ago. At that time, the university made it clear that it had been consistent in its use of the spelling "honor" rather than "honour" on diploma parchments since its founding in 1878. 

If you are surprised, don't be. My grandparents, born in the 1870s, were taught from Canadian textbooks that used both spelling, sometime in the same book. Honor was not un-Canadian at that time. Then, around 1890, all began to change. No less a source than the Government of Canada itself states Canadians have Sir John A. Macdonald, born in Glasgow, Scotland, to thank for the confusion.

Our first prime minister felt strongly that all parts of the British Empire should hold to the system used in England. And he ordered that “the English practice be uniformly followed” in all government documents. Thus, British spelling was upheld as the standard in Canada.

Ideology proved a poor motivator and although governments in Canada fell into step, a lot of folk didn't. It took Canadian newspapers about a full century before the papers embraced the claimed Canadian spelling.

In June, 1986, The London Free Press style guide still accepted only one spelling, honor, no 'u', as correct. And color was the same. the LFP is not un-Canadian.

As the university senate pointed out 22 years ago, Brits prefer honour, Yanks write honor and Canadians, for the most part, are free to use whichever spelling they prefer. But soon, not at Western.

Arzie Chant claimed it was the "somewhat paternalistic approach of senior administrations" that allowed the continued use of honor without the 'u'. Really? When it comes to paternalistic, Arzie Chant appears to be the culprit and not the university. If he is not careful, his un-Canadian charge may stick to him as well.

To see what Western's former position was on this matter, please read the info posted below. It was taken from a university web page that may soon be taken down. 

After posting this blog, I got a response from one reader questioning the statement: ". . . actual usage in Canada varies." They went on to say, " I disagree. I've never seen the 'or' version used in Canada, unless by mistake. I wonder where that author got that strange idea."

I know the answer: Fowler. But, I know another source as well: the Canadian government. I found this days after my original post on a page, dedicated to The Canadian Style. It claims: " . . . as a result of our historical links with Britain and our proximity to the United States, Canadian spelling has tended to waver between the forms used in these two countries, so that, to this day, there is no clearly established Canadian standard."

If you feel like reading anymore on this topic, here is suggestion: Testing Canada's 'honour'.

Be wary of saturated fats in your diet: red meats, dairy and eggs

I have a friend who likes to promote dairy products, red meats and eggs. This friend has no fear of cholesterol nor saturated fat. It's not my approach and it's not the one promoted by my heart doctors.

Recently, I read this article from the Harvard Medical School: The truth about fats: the good, the bad and the in-between. The piece argued:

A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body. For that reason, most nutrition experts recommend limiting saturated fat to under 10% of calories a day.

And where do we encounter saturated fats? Harvard tells us:

Common sources of saturated fat include red meat, whole milk and other whole-milk dairy foods, cheese, coconut oil, and many commercially prepared baked goods and other foods.

When working to reduce the amount of saturated fat in one's diet, one must not replace the lost calories with increased consumption of refined carbohydrates: for instance, white sugar. Instead, keep two alternative fats in mind: mono-saturated and poly-saturated.

For mono-saturated fats, look to: olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, and most nuts, as well as high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils.

For poly-saturated, think: fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, and sardines, flaxseeds, walnuts, canola oil, and unhydrogenated soybean oil.

Note the word unhydrogenated. Hydrogenation creates trans-fats and these are the worst offenders. One must take every measure to get trans-fats out of one's diet.

If you read this post, you are clearly seeking information on diet. Keep googling, keep an open mind but be wary of any diet that makes extreme claims or promotes the consumption of saturated fats.

(Note: both photos show actual dinners I have served recently. Before dining, I take a moment to grab a photo illuminated by the large window beside our dinner table.

Journalism, Journalists and Twitter

The video of the teen wearing the red Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat in a face to face confrontation with a drum-pounding Native American went viral on social media.

Having spent more than four decade in the media, I am not surprised that newspaper journalists and television news reporters quickly cobbled together a narrative for publication and for broadcast.

Sadly, but not expectedly, the story as first reported may have been wrong. One reason for the errors may be found in the way journalist complete for stories and for attention. For years I have contended that journalists should cooperate rather than compete. To a certain extent this position has been validated by the recent ICIJ stories, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. If the hundreds of journalists working on this story had worked together, a far more accurate story could have been written and quickly as well.

For instance: it would have been clear that the Native American gentleman approached the teens and not the other way around as originally reported by many media outlets. Also, someone would have done the simple math and questioned the claim that the drummer was a Vietnam vet. It took days before this fact made it into the Washington Post.

I've also believed that stories should not be rushed into print. Stories should be done with accuracy in mind, not speed. All too often journalists make assumptions. Assumptions are quick. But, assumptions are also often wrong. A quivering BS detector can become a stand-in for facts.

Personally, I think there is a good story here. But, sorting it out will take a bit of time. In my humble opinion, journalists must not add to the confusion. I want to look to journalists for truth and not for conjecture.

The chap featured below, was the inspiration for this post. I do hope everyone understands I am treating him as the voice of journalism. After all, he was the chair of one of the most respected  journalism departments in the province. His position, his actions, are the one's often followed by the industry today.

Journalists can rely too heavily on their BS detectors.

The other day I saw the above tweet in my Twitter feed. It was posted by Paul Knox, a retired journalism professor from Ryerson in Toronto. Knox had tweeted that his BS detector was left quivering by the response of the teenage boy featured in the viral video of a standoff between the boy and a Native American gentleman.

I tweeted a reply. I didn't mean to upset Knox. I simply wanted to tell him that, after looking at the time stamp on his post, I was surprised a journalism professor was still pumping out the all-too-quickly reported original take on the incident. Many news outlets were retracting their original stories. The story as it was unfolding was becoming more and more complex.

Knox got his knickers in a knot. He took great offence at being accused of "pumping out" a premature take on the incident. He responded by pumping out a number of rapid-fire, defensive tweets.

Knox put me in my place, telling me I was wrong to think he had any preconceived opinions. He didn't. But, "as for more questions, yes, I have them," he tweeted. He continued, "If I were a reporter chasing the story I’d ask them. I’m not. I’m retired and on Twitter." And putting his much BS-Detector to good use, I might add.

I told Knox, "I feel very strongly about journalism. It's an incredibly important job. But, since retiring, I've learned Edward R. Murrow was right: journalists have thin skins. Journalists are quick with fast quibs but slow with meaningful responses. I added, Twitter is not the best venue." I wasn't just thinking of Knox here but all the journalists reporting this story. I wondered if the chap with drum was really a Vietnam vet but I didn't contact any reporters with my question. I've tried that in the past and it lead nowhere good.

Knox didn't appreciate my reference to Edward R. Murrow and a famous remark of his. He took my remark very personally. In retrospect, I'm not surprised. At one point, Knox told me, "Please don’t lecture me about journalism. I spent years and years dealing with these issues. The best journalists are skeptics [sic] as hell. But counter-narratives emerge all the time, on many different kinds of stories. People finally speak up. Another video surfaces ..."

Knox sure knows how to bring out the snorting, charging bull in me. Counter-narratives are one of my personal red flags. Get the story right the first time. And be damn careful with the counter-narratives.

A journalist must do the job properly the first time, make the background calls and check all the facts. And tread lightly when it comes to counter-narratives. These put my own BS-detector a quivering.

Think of the famous 60 Minutes Benghazi Report. The show, based on a counter-narrative, had one flaw: the counter-narrative was wrong.

According to the Poynter Institute:

. . . “60 Minutes” aired a report that called into question the official version of what happened when the U.S. diplomatic compound was attacked in Benghazi, Libya. At the core of the story was a source, Dylan Davies, who worked as a security contractor for the State Department. Davies had a book coming out that purported to share new facts about what happened that night, and what he did.

Problem one: he lied to the show about what he did and saw, thereby making a core piece of evidence in the “60 Minutes” counter-narrative false and undercutting the entire segment.

Problem two: it only took days for other news outlets, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, to reveal significant flaws with the story, and with Davies. . . . "

I bow to the professor. He is, of course, right when he talks about journalism. He's been a guiding force in the industry for years. I'm sure his positions, when it comes to journalism, are completely defensible. It is how things are done. But, my contention is that folk, like the good professor, should be confronted. The old rules have let us down time and time again. It is time for a new playbook.

The old BS-detector has let us down too many times. Need proof? Read:

Who's a photojournalist?

The New York Times couldn't recognize a staged photo!

Or think of the infamous UFFI story. Thousands of people's lives were severely impacted by that bit of shoddy journalism. Retirees who had put their faith in their home as their retirement nest-egg saw it shrivel because a lot of journalists wanted to be first with the story. The counter-narrative, although true, never got traction.

The counter-narrative never got traction. I still see the UFFI myth treated as truth by the media.

Or how about another famous BS-Detector failure: Liberation Therapy?

People, people full of hope, died having this procedure preformed out-of-country. My heart doctors were not fooled but journalists were. Today, even the doctor behind the theory admits it does not work.

I believe journalists need more than a BS-Detector. Journalists need time and facts and money.

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It is looking as if we can add the Covington students to our list of infamous BS-detector generated stories.

• Nathan Phillips approached the students not the other way around.
• Nathan Phillips did not serve in Vietnam. He is not a Vietnam War vet.
• Most students bought their MAGA hat for the March of Life.
• In years past, students bought Obama-era "Hope" hats while visiting Washington, D.C. 
• Nathan Phillips attempted to disrupt Mass at DC’s National Shrine

A bridge with a future

As the former owner of a heritage automobile, I was disappointed when Í first inspected the re-opened Blackfriars Bridge. When I expressed my disappointment and explained why the poor paint and lingering corrosion bothered me, my friends patiently explained it's an old bridge not an old car. It's been rehabilitated, not restored.

I thought for a moment. I recalled how my old Morgan was built in the days before seat belts. When I sold the roadster, the first thing the new owner did was install seat belts. This was an act of rehabilitation and something I should have done years ago. I had allowed myself to be seduced by the restoration mythology: if it wasn't there originally, it shouldn't be there. Period. And bunkum. Old or new, equipment must meet today's safety requirements. Anything else is stupid. I had been stupid.

I wonder about all the unpainted stuff that I found all over the Blackfriars Bridge. The corrosion would not have been acceptable on an old car, rehabilitated, restored, re-anythinged. Still, it is an old bridge and not an old car.

Those running the City of London should be proud. The continuing presence of the Blackfriars Bridge over the North Branch of the Thames River is remarkable. The fact it is also still carrying traffic is a rare achievement.

 If you had assumed a 143-year-old structure would not have been designed to meet today's demands, you'd have been right. (Heck, my Morgan was only 45 year old and it fell short.)

It is for some very good reasons that the Blackfriars Bridge of today is not, for the most part, the original structure. Instead, it is a ghost, an elegant reminder that the past is past, that times change and that stuff must change too or be left behind. The Blackfriars Bridge has changed. It has not been left behind.

This is not a restored structure but a rehabilitated one, and a somewhat repurposed one. It no longer carries horses pulling farm wagons but cars, albeit in only one direction, plus numerous pedestrians and cyclists.

Top detail of derelict Wrought Iron Bridge Co. bridge arch.

It was almost 70 years ago that the bridge load was restricted to five tons. A few years later it was necessary to do "significant work" to strengthen truss members and reduce vibration. By 1986, the load limit had to be reduced again. This time to only three tonnes.

Since that first "significant work", the bridge has undergone a lot of significant remedial work. I'd argue the bridge standing over the river today is a new bridge which incorporates the visual elements of the original bowstring-arch truss bridge.

I'm old enough to recall when hundreds, if not thousands, of wrought-iron bridges were still in use throughout both Canada and the United States. Almost all are now gone. Worn out, demolished, replaced.

Restoration: really?

I was disappointed by the new bridge because too many folk, often journalists, refer to the work as "the restoration of an historic gem." It isn't. It's better.

The myth of restoration is a killer. Structures have been demolished when found impossible to restore. Restoration can be an impossibly high bar to clear. Why? Because of what true restoration entails.

Restoration modifies an heritage structure to accurately reflect its appearance at a specific point in its past. This may involve the addition or the removal of structural material.

The engineers who rebuilt the London bridge to meet today's demands proclaimed quite openly that they were rehabilitating the structure. Rehabilitating is not restoring.

There is very little of the original bridge in this latest incarnation. This is as it should be if the goal is to keep the bridge in use. Once we get our heads around the truth that restoration is not the only way to honour the past, opportunities appear all around us. Think of Old Quebec. As I wrote in a previous post:

I am old enough to recall when many of the present "heritage" structures (in old Quebec) were not there. Many of these buildings were not restored but recreated. Much of the area's 18th century ambiance so loved by tourists is faux.

Once we accept that our new bridge is a glorious salute to the past, a glowing, functioning memory, we find it possible to openly ask, what is the best approach to preserving the illusion of heritage? To answer this, we must bring artists and historians into the rebuilding effort and not just engineers. Artists like Ted Goodden, who featured the bridge in his art, can bring a lot to the rehabilitation table.

Those who take the time to look will discover that the new Blackfriars Bridge is magic--a practical answer wrapped in romance and sentimentality. Gérard Morisset, the art historian behind the reclaiming of Old Quebec's heritage texture, argued it is completely acceptable to restore a structure "to a state of completeness that may never have existed."

A construction update picture posted by The City of London.

Make no mistake about it, the reopened Blackfriars is new bridge, a stronger bridge, a bridge with a future not just a past. This is not just a facade like the old roomless hotel pasted into the northeast corner the Budweiser Gardens. This is a working bowstring-arch truss bridge. Appreciate it.

On my death, to my Indian friend, I leave my pacemaker.

So how dependable are pacemakers? Well, the University of Michigan has a program for recycling devices no longer needed by their original owners. Why are they no longer needed? Uh, the heart patient has died.

Pacemakers cannot make a heart beat that no longer has the strength to continue. There's no point in flogging a dead horse, as they say.

Tossing out perfectly good pacemakers with the cadavers is seen as a waste by the U of M folk. Working with funeral directors and crematorium staff, along with interested individuals, the U of M is recycling pacemakers that still have life in them, so to speak.

And who takes the old units. Why the third world. Many pacemakers are good for up to ten years today. Many folk die long before a decade has passed. Put these used units in the right patients and it it is a match made in heaven.

For more information, click the My Heart Your Heart link.

Medical 'breakthroughs' hyped by media

This topic is tough to discuss. The danger is that one may come across as simply a defender of the medical device industry. I'm not.

Another danger is that one may come across as a media-hater. Again, I'm not. I worked at two newspapers and one television station and have great respect for many of the folk with whom I once worked.

Medical devices are often foreign objects surgically implanted into the human body -- a damn hostile environment for many materials. Corrosion is but one of the immediate threats.

Think about the discredited Liberation Therapy treatment proposed as a treatment for MS (multiple sclerosis). Doctors were slow to embrace the untested surgical treatment as it often involved the off-label use of a coronary artery stent being inserted in a vein in a patient's neck.

The media was quick to attack the doctors, government regulators and insurers for their reticence. The Post Media paper in London, Ontario, ran a story about a local woman unable to obtain government health care funding for the treatment.

When I looked into the wisdom of placing a stent in a patient's neck, I was told by the medical professionals questioned that they would not do it. Why? Too dangerous.

Liberation Therapy is no longer bandied about as a miraculous cure for MS. The doctors and clinics that were so quick to provide the treatment should be ashamed. Patients died having this surgery. It was a high-risk-no-reward treatment. And the press should be ashamed of the role it played in advancing this quackery.

So, is there a problem with medical devices? Yes. But it is a complex problem and the breathless reporting of patient-recipient horror stories, as I've encountered on CBC, is not the adult discussion needed.

Thank you, Medtronic.

My heart doesn't beat well. At least, it doesn't beat well on its own. I have a one hundred percent heart block. This a problem with my heart's electrical system and not a problem with my arteries. I'm not concerned about having a heart attack. What threatens me is heart failure. You see, on its own my heart would beat only about 30 times a minute, maybe even less. Without my pacemaker, my ankles would swell, fluid would gather in my gut and surround my heart. My lungs would fill with fluid and I'd have a difficult time breathing. Within days I'd be dead.

My pacemaker is an implanted medical device attempting to partially correct my heart's electrical system failure. It is not a perfect solution and there are problems associated with having one implanted. How anyone could think that having a chunky metal box inserted into one's chest and attached to one's heart by 26-inches of wire could possibly be risk-free puzzles me.

CBC is reporting that tens of thousands of medical devices distributed worldwide — like pacemakers — were approved for sale with little scientific evidence . . . 

CBC claims devices such as pacemakers are suspected of having played a role in more than 14,000 reported injuries and 1,416 deaths. This number is so large because it includes problems associated with a number of devices, of which pacemakers are but one.

Digging deeper I discovered CBC posted an interactive medical device database of associated incidents. I typed pacemaker into the device category field.

I discovered 157 deaths and 1,291 patient injuries are associated with pacemakers. This is not all that surprising when the complexities of the system and the all-too-clear dangers are considered.

Simply making a pocket in a patient's chest and inserting a metal box is fraught with danger: infection, blood clots,  stroke and the list just grows. And, if a problem does arise, the solution may well demand another operation. Surgery is never risk free.

What did surprise me were some of the incidents that made the list. I admit to cherry picking but this is my point. Don't just take the numbers and other bits of information at face value.

The CBC encourages us to question the motives of the device makers. The manufacturers may be driven by a need for profit. I suggest the CBC, and all news folk, should face questions as well. Journalists may have their own demons driving them forward. Think viewers, readers, awards and even think profits. I like to think it's the demand to tell a good story that blinds them.

So what were the surprising incidents that made the pacemaker incident list? Here are a few:

• patient piloting air ambulance involved in plane crash died. no evidence to support a device-related cause for the event.
• generator and associated leads were removed due to infection. source of infection unknown. patient died from liver cirrhosis.
• patient died due to acute coronary artery disease. device tested and functioned properly and within specification. patient was 85.
• pacemaker implanted for heart block. developed non-ischemic cardiomyopathy with ejection fraction diminishing. root cause was physiological.

Now maybe a good time to read the CBC fine print:

• CBC has not verified the accuracy of the data. 
• Reports might have been filed to Health Canada with inaccurate or incomplete information. 
• There is no certainty that the medical device caused the reported reaction. 
• A given reaction may be the result of an underlying disease, process or another coincidental factor. One report may be tied to multiple parts of the same device and multiple reactions may be connected to a single patient. 

The data does not reflect any CBC assessment of association between the health product and the reaction(s).

I'm on my second pacemaker. I got seven years out of my first unit before the battery failed. I apparently suffered no infection from the replacement surgery. My luck seems to be holding. But, I cannot be completely certain I escaped the threat of infection until a full year has passed.

My original lead, the 26-inch wire connecting my pacemaker to my heart, was retained and reused. It has now been operating in a very hostile environment, the human body, for eight years. How long that lead will last is anyone's guess. The electricity-conducting wire could corrode or succumb to metal fatigue. Leads do fail and the frequency increases with time. And, of course, there is always the threat of manufacturing defects and recalls.

Just living carries risks. I simply live with a few extra risks. But risks in life are often nicely balanced by rewards. I believe the risk/reward ratio associated with my pacemakers are weighted heavily in favour of my pacemakers.

Thank you Medtronic.

Despite the scary tone of some of the CBC reporting concerning pacemakers, the ICIJ stories, the source for the ongoing CBC reports, is often not as frightening. The ICIJ is actually fairly reasonable. The following is from the ICIJ report titled: Frequently asked questions and resources for readers.

Do all medical devices have problems?

No. For example, pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) have revitalized and saved millions of lives.

I'm not keen on having man-made stuff implanted into my body. I've had car problems, microwave breakdowns and expensive camera battery failures. Stuff fails. It is a fact of life. Sadly, sometimes stuff fails because of poor design or shoddy workmanship. This is not acceptable in any situation but it is a worst case scenario when it involves the failure of a medical device. The ICIJ is doing us all a service.

The ICIJ asks who is watching the medical device makers? I wonder who is watching the journalists?

Who's really endangered? Answer: Newspaper editors.

This opinion piece contains many questionable numbers. In the old days it would've been spiked.

"Who's really endangered?" My answer may surprise you: Newspaper copy editors.

A quick reading of the opinion piece written by Elizabeth Nickson left me asking, "Where is a copy editors when you need one?" Copy editors are an important and respected part of every newsroom — or, at least, were in the not-so-distant past. These talented, well educated, team players fixed grammar, corrected spelling and checked both usage and style for agreement with the newspaper's in-house style guide. (This post would look quite different if I had a copy editor.)

Copy editors acted as proofreaders, fact checkers and polishers of dull prose. Exceedingly knowledgeable, copy editors had solid backgrounds in journalism. Some of the best were first-rate reporters before moving to the desk.

Sadly, copy editors are a dying breed. Many have been given early retirement, their jobs declared redundant by the giant media conglomerate owners.

The opinion piece written by Elizabeth Nickson, a fellow at the right-wing Frontier Centre for Public Policy, often called a right-wing think tank, is a good example of writing in need of a skilled copy editor.

 Nickson immediately stakes out the territory she is attempting to control: The sixth great extinction. "Unlike climate change, the notion of the sixth great extinction is not contested vigorously . . .," she claims, moving quickly to a full frontal attack on Paul Ehrlich, whom she derisively calls "the godfather of extinction science."

Unfortunately, it seems Nickson got her godfathers mixed and predictions as well. She tells us that Ehrlich predicted 27,000 extinction a day by 2000. He didn't. It was Edward Wilson, the father of sociobiology and a champion of biodiversity, who made that prediction, sort of. He predicted 27,000 extinction a year.

That's more than 70 a day, an amazingly high number until you understand the professor is talking about the destruction of the world's rainforests, the most biologically diverse places on Earth. He is not talking about black-tailed prairie dogs in the west or caribou in Canada's distant north. He does not restrict his prediction to large mammals and birds and this should come as no surprise; Wilson is the world’s leading authority on ants.

Ehrlich's and Wilson's ideas have attracted a lot of opposition over the years. It's a rich, complex world and, just as one would expect, not every biologist studying endangered species agrees with either man. Nickson would be in good company if her facts were correct but they aren't.

Nickson does no better reporting on the black-footed prairie dog situation in Colorado. Numbers are again the Frontier Centre writer's downfall. I won't go so far as to say Nickson is wrong but there is no doubt that her writing lacks clarity. People familiar with the situation in Colorado were puzzled by the Nickson numbers.

Nickson claims 12 million acres was demanded to protect to the black-tailed prairie dog. "In court, the state's scientific rigour won, hands down," she says.

Tina Jackson, Species Conservation Coordinator with the Colorado Department of Natural Resources , wrote me, "I am not sure where they got that information about black-tailed prairie dogs in Colorado." Neither Jackson nor James Baker, also with the DNR, was aware of this ever being taken to court.

Elizabeth Nickson was good enough to share some of her research links with me for this article. Reading through the links, and links to links, she sent me I found the following:

The earliest published estimate of prairie dog occupied acreage in the state (Colorado) is from C.P. Gillette in 1919 . . . (Gillette believed) prairie dogs inhabit about 12 million acres in the State . . . [Is this the source of the 12 million number?]

A good editor will tell a newspaper writer to deliver the goods before the turn. Break a newspaper story into two parts and a large number of readers won't make the turn. Editors keep stories short, interesting and accurate.

Today, a great number of people are failing to even pick up the paper, let alone make it past the turn. If newspapers want to bring back the readers, bring back the copy editors.

Good blue-pencil editing becomes a lost art

Black day for the blue pencil

CBC earns an incomplete for seat belt story

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The CBC is making a big deal of its investigation into the need for seat belts in school buses. I can see the argument. I often accompany my oldest granddaughter on school outings. I sit in the school bus with the children and I feel weird not wearing a seat belt. It has never felt right and so I did some research.

Finding the definitive answer is not a quick search. It turns out this is a complex problem and a lot of folk have given it a lot of thought. Heck, even the researcher quoted this morning in the CBC report was once featured in a New York Times piece carrying the headline "Study Rejects Requiring School Bus Seat Belts."

Kathleen Weber, the researcher quoted by the CBC, told the Times that all the members of the committee examining the question of seat belts use in school buses were in agreement: the benefits of requiring seat belts were sufficiently small, and the problem itself sufficiently small, that the committee could not justify the cost.

I don't like that answer. If seat belts work, put them in the school buses. Period. End of discussion. Surely, cost does not enter into the equation. We are talking seat belts. How much can seat belts cost? The present system of making school buses safe, compartmentalization, cannot be cheap.

No, the question is: do seal belts work? Or more accurately, do standard seat belts work with little children? Think carefully before answering. If you do, you'll realize little children do not ride in the backseat of the family car restrained only by the three-point seat belts provided. By law a booster seat is required. Why? For safety.

In Canada, over a two-year period, 28 children were reported to have sustained injuries consistent with seat belt syndrome; seven of these children remained paraplegic. Among the 16 injured children eight years of age and older, four were properly restrained with three-point seat belts.

Booster seats are an attempt at preventing maladjusted seat belts from causing serious injuries and even death to improperly restrained children. Ill-fitting seat belts are a big safety concern. Studies show children are especially vulnerable to suffering a seat belt caused injury. Transport Canada has some well founded concerns.

As I mentioned, I have grandchildren. I own two types of booster seats: one a booster cushion and the other a high-backed booster seat that installs using the Universal Anchorage System (UAS/Latch). Both are legal in Canada but not everyone in the world agrees. The use of booster cushions is restricted to older children in Great Britain and Europe. In those places, my grandchildren would be breaking the law by using booster cushions.

Whenever possible, I use the high-back booster seats which attach firmly to the car's UAS system. I leave the booster cushions at home in the garage. My gut feeling is that the high-backed, anchored boosters deliver improved protection. I think the Europeans are making the right decision. I'd like to see this style of booster seat, paired with properly designed seat belts, used in school buses.

The Fifth Estate did one thing right. They found IMMI in Indiana. This is a company developing innovative seat belts for school buses. One product features a five-point system that appears to deal with the biggest dangers posed by traditional three-point seat belts. Kudos to the Fifth Estate for finding the IMMI company and bringing it to our attention.

An independent study of the IMMI product or products may be necessary but surely it could be done quickly. Let's make school buses, already remarkably safe, safer still.

Lastly, one-sided attacks, like the one launched by the CBC, make for attention-holding television but such attacks don't encourage folk to come to the table for an adult discussion. I'm not surprised the minister refused to meet with the CBC Fifth Estate reporter. It appears on the face of it that the CBC folk had an agenda and it wasn't getting at the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It was attacking a government bureaucracy. It was in telling a good story.
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When writing a post for my blog, an immense amount of information must be found and read. I admit it may overwhelm me. A better system would be for journalists to work together and to work longer, ignoring self-imposed, artificial deadlines, to deliver accurate information. Below, is just a very small sample of the info found and examined.

Sixteen passengers died and 13 were injured in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. The charter bus company involved in the crash had already installed seat belts without a federal rule, but none of the players were wearing one.

Research link: http://www.who.int/roadsafety/projects/manuals/seatbelt/seat_belt_manual_module_1.pdf

The three-point lap and diagonal seat-belt used by adults is not designed for children’s varying sizes, weights, and the different relative proportions of children’s bodies. For example, a smaller portion of a child’s abdomen is covered by the pelvis and rib cage, while a child’s ribs are more likely than an adult’s to bend rather than break, resulting in energy from a collision being transferred to the heart and lungs.

Consequently three-point lap and diagonal seat-belts may lead to abdominal injuries among children, and will not be optimally effective at preventing ejection and injury among them. Appropriate child restraint systems are specifically designed to protect infants and young children from injury during a collision or a sudden stop by restraining their movement away from the vehicle structure and distributing the forces of a crash over the strongest parts of the body, with minimum damage to the soft tissues.

Child restraints are also effective in reducing injuries that can occur during non-crash events, such as a sudden stop, a swerving evasive manoeuvre or a door opening during vehicle movement.

Seatbelt Syndrome in Children: This is an interesting paper. Seat belts are good but, when it comes to their use with children, proper booster seats are an excellent addition to increase safety. It should be noted that there are a number of opinions on what exactly constitutes a proper booster seat. For instance, look up what is demanded in Great Britain.

http://www.roadsafetyobservatory.com/HowEffective/vehicles/seat-belts
http://www.roadsafetyobservatory.com/HowEffective/vehicles/child-restraints (The researchers found that abdominal injuries mainly occurred in children using only a seat belt, emphasising the need for belt-positioning boosters. (Jakobssen, 2005))

(The main system for safely restraining occupants in vehicles is, of course, seat belts. However, seat belts do not fit children properly, and do not fit babies at all. This means they are less effective in protecting children, and in some circumstances, could even cause injury.

Children are not simply smaller adults; they are proportioned differently, their bones are not fully formed and their skeletal structure does not cover and protect their internal organs in the way it does in adults. All of these things change as children grow older, meaning that the type of restraint system they use also needs to change, until they reach the point where the seat belts can provide the same protection as for adults. (Burdi and Huelke, 1969, WHO, 2009))

Child Car Restraints Compared with Seatbelts
A USA study of 2 to 3 year old rear seat child passengers in crashes that resulted in at least one vehicle being towed away between 1998 and 2004 concluded that the odds of injury were 81.8% lower for toddlers in child seats than for toddlers wearing seat belts. (Zaloshnja, 2007)
Another American study comparing the use of child restraints with seat belts by 2 to 6 year old children involved in vehicle crashes between 1998 and 2003 found that compared with seat belts, child restraints (when not seriously misused) were associated with a 28% greater reduction in the risk for death in children of that age group. When including cases of serious misuse, the effectiveness was slightly lower, at 21%. (Elliot, 2006)

A study of crashes in 15 states in America between December 1998 and May 2002 involving 1,207 children aged 12 and 47 months, seated in the rear of vehicles, found that the risk of serious injury was 78% lower, and the risk of hospitalisation was 79% lower, for children in forward facing child restraints than for those in seat belts. (Arbogast, 2004)

A study of 17,980 children under 16 years old involved in crashes in 15 states between December 1998 and November 2002 found that the risk for inappropriately restrained (defined as using a seat belt rather than a child safety seat or booster seat) children was almost double that of appropriately restrained children. (Durbin, 2005)

An analysis of fatal car accidents in the USA between 1982 and 1987 estimated that children in child safety seats were 50% less likely than unrestrained children to be killed, but those using the car’s adult seat belts were only 36% less likely to be killed. (NHTSA, 1998)

When these estimates were updated in 1996, the estimates for the effectiveness of seat belts on their own had increased to 47% in cars and 48% in light trucks or vans. The effectiveness of child restraints had also increased from 69% to 71% for under one year olds and from 50% to 54% for one to four year olds. (NHTSA, 1996)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11366925_Are_seat_belt_restraint_use_effective_in_school_age_children_A_prospective_crash_study

The Crisis of Living

I was directed to the Globe and Mail opinion piece by a tweet by a journalism professor. The piece? The Crisis of Living Too Long.

He was right. It was a good piece of writing but a bit too maudlin for my liking. The author tells us that she and her husband aim to "stockpile sleeping pills" as they get deeper into their senior years. I suppose today suicide is an option for those finding life too tough. But it wasn't always so.

When my dad died, suicide was not a good way to leave this world of blood, sweat, toil and tears. For one thing, killing oneself left one's life insurance in question. It left one's spouse and children possibly in a tougher-than-need-be financial crisis.

My dad had a poor heart but excellent doctors. He endured coronary after coronary and after a stay in the hospital he was back home, gulping nitroglycerin pills and waiting for the next major heart attack, the next trip to the hospital and the trip home.

After his last attack, life threw him a changup. He suffered a stroke instead of a heart attack. He lost the sight in one eye, all was a blur. He found himself forced to have one lens of his glasses completely frosted. If he wasn't wearing his glasses, he wore an eye patch. He took no pleasure in his new I'm-a-pirate look. I believe he felt humiliated.

He sold his car. His first new car in decades. It was a small, four-door, Vauxhall with leather seats. It broke his heart to part with that car. But the stroke that damaged his vision also left him slightly paralyzed on one side. The car had to go. In one sense, it was not a big loss as he no longer had a job. The car had become just an expense, a drain on the family finances.

One morning my dad appeared at the breakfast table in his best blue suit. He wore a bright, almost jaunty, tie held firmly in place by a fancy, gold clip. His white shirt was pressed with just the right amount of sleeve extending below the cuffs of his suit jacket. His patent leather Oxfords were perfectly polished. Not a scuff to be seen.

His bald head glistened from the Wildroot used to slick back the dozen or so long hairs he carefully tended. Those hairs were all that protected him from facing the fact he was bald. The world saw him as bald; he saw himself as thinning.

Dad had his usual bacon and eggs breakfast with two pieces of well-buttered toast. He mopped up the dark orange-yellow yolk with a scrap of toast, downed the last dregs of his peculator-brewed coffee, kissed both me and my mother good-bye and walked out of our home and out of our lives.

My dad died in the Prince Edward Hotel.

That was the last either of us saw my dad. Apparently, he took the bus downtown, checked into the Prince Edward Hotel and died. His heart pills, mostly nitroglycerin, were found sitting on the dresser on the other side of the room from the bed in which he was found.

It appeared my dad had died shortly after leaving home but we'll never know for sure. His body was found by the hotel cleaning staff. The hotel called the police, the police, using the information on his pill bottles, called his heart doctor and he, in turn, called us. His doctor identified the body, filled out all necessary forms, and contacted the funeral home.

My dad had a closed coffin, as he wished. Neither my mom nor I ever saw my dad's dead body. His death was from natural causes, a major coronary event unmitigated by medication. His doctor claimed that his death had come so suddenly, so quickly, with such power he had been unable to reach his pills left on the side of the room from where he had stretched himself out seeking relief from the pain.

My dad's death is a story that could be told as I've told it and then left, but to do so would be to tell an incomplete story. My dad died the way he had lived. He was born ill. His mother blamed a sick cow used to provide all the milk given the newborn. In his twenties he had three fourths of his stomach removed: ulcers. In his thirties had had hernias: numerous hernias. He had gall bladder, appendix, bowel operations and more. His health issues in old age, if dying in one's early 60s is old age, were a continuation of health problems that plagued him his whole life.

I'm ending this with a wonderful bit of advice from Monty Python's Life of Brian. And yes, I have considered the jarring note added by this song written by Eric Idle. But, please trust me, as a fellow alive only thanks to my second pacemaker I take great pains to smile. I see no hotel room in my future.

It's NOT Baby Aspirin; it's low-dose.

As children stopped taking Aspirin, Reye's syndrome almost disappeared.

Reye's syndrome posed a danger to children when I was young. It was rare but lethal. Today? We rarely hear of Reye's. Why? The relationship between Aspirin (ASA), its use in children and Reye's syndrome was recognized.

The orange-flavoured chewable labeled Baby Aspirin disappeared from drugstore shelves. The powerful drug is now known as low-dose Aspirin.

And yet, today, we still encounter folk using the former name. Even doctors are known to fall into the trap, referring to low-dose Aspirin by it now out-dated-for-a-reason moniker. What puzzles and appalls me is that journalists, those purveyors of truth and accuracy constantly get the name wrong. Where are the editors? In forced retirement, I'd guess.

Aspirin is a drug, a powerful drug and, as with all powerful drugs, taking it comes with risks as well as rewards. If one is healthy, taking even a low-dose Aspirin once a day has always been a questionable practice. As they say: "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."

That said, if you get your medical knowledge from the main-stream media, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The media has a history of presently the taking of low-dose Aspirin as relatively innocuous, almost risk free. To underscore this point, the media often refer to low-dose Aspirin as Baby Aspirin. What could be safer?

This is NOT news. The recent report simply confirms common concerns.

The media should not link babies and Aspirin for the same reason that Bayer changed the name: it was found that parents, especially new parents, thought the low-dose product was made for use by children and infants. It's not. Not today.

I take low-dose Aspirin and it  frightens me. As the Harvard Medical School pointed out:

If taking Aspirin was risk free, it might make sense for everyone worried about heart disease to take it. But Aspirin does have risks.

It can potentially lead to hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding inside the brain). In the stomach, Aspirin can aggravate bleeding ulcers. Severe gastrointestinal bleeding can be lethal.

Aspirin is NOT for babies nor children no matter how low the dose. Nor is taking Aspirin completely risk free even for healthy, adult folk. It's a powerful drug and deserves to be treated as one.

I knew that. How? Because my doctors made the risks associated with taking a daily low-dose Aspirin very clear to me. Why doesn't my daily newspaper, and the rest of the MSM, get the story right? It's not difficult and it would lessen the danger of children mistakenly being given low-dose Aspirin.

I don't understand. This story left me confused.

A young Londoner came down with a illness that left his doctors stumped. And according to The London Free Press, this "experience is all too typical in a country in which Lyme disease has grown to epic proportions, a crisis that neither doctors nor public health officials have adequately addressed..."

One problem: The young boy did not have Lyme disease. A Maryland specialist discovered the boy had Bartonella, commonly called Cat Scratch Disease. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the States) people get CSD from the scratches of domestic cats, particularly kittens. The disease occurring most frequently in children under 15. The boy in the story was 12 when he came down with his illness.

Which bring us to my second problem: The CDC and many other official sources claim ticks may carry some species of Bartonella bacteria, but "there is currently no convincing evidence that ticks can transmit Bartonella infection to humans."

The young man had an illness that went undiagnosed. Why? The story does not give us enough information to understand why this terrible thing happened.

I sense a bias against the Canadian healthcare system in this story. If it was simply the shoddy Canadian system at fault, why did the boy have to travel to Maryland, a nine hundred kilometre trip. If the American system is so great, why didn't the boy simply cross the border and immediately get help? There are a lot of American doctors closer to London, Ontario, than the specialist in Maryland.

I can feel for this young man. I had a somewhat similar experience. I had a V-tach event while vacationing in California. After running up a bill approaching $30,000, the American heart specialists found nothing to explain what had happened. I was released from the hospital to drive to Vancouver and on home to London, Ontario.

Although one should wait six months before getting behind the wheel after such a cardiac event, I drove some fifty six hundred kilometres immediately after having my heart reset by two paddles pressed tightly to my chest to deliver a jolt of 200 joules. Unlike my Canadian doctors, the American ones failed to discuss driving after being released from the hospital.

When it came to finding a cause for my V-tack event, my London doctors didn't fare much better than their American counterparts but the Canadians persevered, discovered I had a relatively rare form of heart disease and installed a pacemaker/ICD in my chest. I'm now on my second pacemaker/ICD. Thanks to the Canadian system, I have a life. (And thanks to my granddaughters, I have a good life.)

Should the American doctors with all their sophisticated testing equipment have been so easily stumped by my heart disease. I don't know. But what I do know is that I owe my life to my Canadian doctors.
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To keep the above post short I did not examine the newspaper's criticism of the Canada's supposedly out-of-date approach to testing for Lyme disease, but, if interested, read the following.

The story informs readers that in Ontario "doctors won't use a test well-established in the United States and Europe, a Western Blot test, unless patients first test positive using a method known to miss many cases, an Elisa (sic) test."

This would be very damning if it were true. But, it isn't. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the States recommends performing an ELISA, or similar EIA test, first and a Western Blot test second. If the first test is negative, no further testing of the specimen is recommended. The American CDC approach and the Canadian one are in agreement. (The respected Mayo Clinic also agrees with the Canadians and the CDC.)

Furthermore, the two steps should be done as designed. The CDC does not recommend skipping the first test and just doing the Western blot. The CDC warns, "Doing so will increase the frequency of false positive results and may lead to misdiagnosis and improper treatment."

Since writing this, I've encountered some criticism. I've decided to post some info from the Mayo Clinic in the States.

Lab tests to identify antibodies to the bacteria can help confirm the diagnosis. These tests are most reliable a few weeks after an infection, after your body has had time to develop antibodies. They include:

• Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test. The test used most often to detect Lyme disease, ELISA detects antibodies to B. burgdorferi. But because it can sometimes provide false-positive results, it's not used as the sole basis for diagnosis. This test might not be positive during the early stage of Lyme disease, but the rash is distinctive enough to make the diagnosis without further testing in people who live in areas infested with ticks that transmit Lyme disease.
• Western blot test. If the ELISA test is positive, this test is usually done to confirm the diagnosis. In this two-step approach, the Western blot detects antibodies to several proteins of B. burgdorferi.

The above has a reference date of May 16, 2018. The above is not stale-dated information.