or
Please print out the following petition and circulate among your friends!
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Keep our MSP & Pharmacare programs under public control!
To the Honourable Legislative Assembly of the Province of British Columbia in Legislature assembled. The petition of the undersigned states that
Whereas the Campbell government’s plan to privatize both the Medical Services Plan (MSP) and Pharmacare systems puts in jeopardy:
Our right to the absolute security and confidentiality of our personal medical information through the public control of MSP and Pharmacare;
Our right to a public not-for-profit health care system as granted to us under the Canada Health Act; and
Our sovereign right to a public not-for-profit health care system protected from the negative trade implications of NAFTA and other international trade agreements;
And, whereas the Medical Services Plan and Pharmacare programs serviced by experienced public government workers form the secure gateway for British Columbians to our public health care system;
Whereas the provincial government should be safeguarding the future of new generations of British Columbians by strengthening and investing in our public health care system;
Therefore your petitioners respectfully request that the Honourable House reverse the privatization of the Medical Services Plan and Pharmacare and maintain public control of this vital gateway to our public health care system; and
Further your petitioners respectfully request that the Honourable House provide the necessary resources and infrastructure to ensure that it meets the principles of the Canada Health Act of a universal, accessible, portable, comprehensive and publicly-administered health care system.
Dated: ____day of __________________, 2003
Name (Please print) Full Address Signature
Please print out the above petition and circulate among your friends!
Note: Keep MSP and Pharmacare...
online petition

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Dave Ruston
StatsCan to collect blood from Canadians
By DEAN BEEBY
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004 ... 38-cp.html
The federal agency plans to collect blood and urine samples from volunteers beginning next year in a radical departure from its usual question-and-answer checklist approach. The $20-million project would involve a battery of lab tests on the blood and urine of up to 10,000 Canadians in search of dozens of key health indicators. Researchers would look for diabetes, cholesterol levels, lead, pesticides, SARS, HIV, herpes, West Nile virus and many other measures of the health of the general population.
The survey would also include direct measurements of weight, which people tend to underestimate when answering pollsters\' questions, blood pressure, fitness, back strength and many others.
The urine and blood samples - and possibly saliva samples - may also be stored for years so other tests that have still not been developed can be performed later.
\"There\'s enormous potential for this to inform policy at all kinds of levels,\" says Mark Tremblay, one of the directors of the four-year project known as the Canadian Health Measures Survey. \"It\'s very, very important.\"
The last such national survey in Canada was carried out in 1978-79, but many other countries have routinely collected bodily fluids for testing, including Britain, New Zealand, Australia and some European countries.
The United States runs the most sophisticated program, which determined among other things that the American population had high blood levels of lead. The finding was instrumental in getting lead additives banned from gasoline in that country.
And in the late 1980s, Australia\'s national survey discovered that the number of diabetics in the general population was double previous estimates that had been based solely on questionnaires.
\"For every known case of diabetes there, they had an unknown case,\" says Tremblay. \"So their estimates based on self-reporting health questionnaires . . . were off by 100 per cent.\"
\"And so you can imagine the importance of that in terms of projecting future health-care costs, demands for services, etc.\"
Such fluid-sample surveys also record statistics for healthy individuals, who frequently don\'t appear in existing medical records of hospitals and doctors, allowing statisticians to analyse the effect and importance of healthy habits.
Participants for the Canadian survey would be volunteers who are representative of the general population in terms of age, sex and other demographic factors. Residents of native reserves, members of the military and people residing in institutions such as prisons will be excluded.
The samples are to be gathered in clinical settings, such as a mobile clinic, and participants would not receive payment, though they will be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses such as travel.
The amount of blood extracted would be between 50 ml and 80 ml, or about one-tenth of the amount taken during a blood donation. Results of the tests would be shared with each individual.
A pilot project is to be carried out next year, with full sampling expected in 2006, perhaps following the scheduled Canada-wide census that year.
Tremblay cautions that planning is still tentative.
\"There are a lot of complicated features to this, and details to iron out,\" he said. \"We\'re in the early design phase.\"
For one, the project still needs the approval of Canada\'s privacy commissioner, as well as privacy officials in the provinces, he said.
jelly fish cabinet.