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Top 10 Good News To Come

By on January 8, 2017 in Entertainment, Health, History, Lifestyle, Music, Politics, Technology, Travel
Photo Credit: Ottawa Citizen

Photo Credit: Ottawa Citizen

2016 was full of bad news, so let’s hope the new year is going to bring more good tidings, particularly for us boomers! Based on some of the developments last year, here are my anticipated top 10 good news for the new year:

  1. Canada Continues to Be The Shining Light Of the World: Canada graced the October 29 cover and feature story of The Economist magazine last year. The publication said that our nation is uniquely fortunate in many ways – but its liberalism and tolerance hold lessons for other Western countries and went on to explain why Canada is still at ease with openness. Under Justin Trudeau’s leadership, we might not be perfect, but Canada will continue to be a champion of immigration, open trade and the fight against climate change. For 2017, I have to quote retired Global TV journalist, Tom Clark, as he said farewell to his career on December 31, “For all of our troubles, all of our scandals and disagreements, we should try to keep things in perspective. In global terms, our problems are small. Our country works better than most, perhaps better than any other. We should always aim higher. But let’s remember how blessed we really are.”
  2. Canada officially kicked off our 150th Anniversary of the Confederation on December 31: In addition to a special commemorative 150th Anniversary coin series produced by the Royal Canadian Mint, there will be numerous special celebratory events and festivities in local communities and urban centres across the country throughout the year. Under the umbrella theme of “Diversity, Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, the Environment and Youth,” the Department of Canadian Heritage has budgeted $180 million for a variety of initiatives across the country and $20 million for special events such as the New Year’s Eve party on Parliament Hill.. According to a recent government-commissioned poll, nearly nine in 10 respondents expressed a lot of pride in being Canadian, and they felt strongly attached to their country. Nearly the same number said they would visit a national park in 2017 or attend a Canada 150 event. But, as of last summer, few had heard much about what the government was doing to celebrate. Looks like the government has a lot of marketing and promotion work to do on upcoming celebrations.
  3. From brain drain to brain gain for Canada in a Trump presidency: Canada’s tech firms are hoping Donald Trump will help keep Canadian graduates from skipping town for Silicon Valley and perhaps lure some of the talented expats who have gone south for work. According to CTV News, Canadian companies large and small have quietly bemoaned the exodus of talent for decades, and agencies like Communitech and the City of Toronto have been trying to woo them back. That’s why billboards have been placed on well-travelled Route 101 in Silicon Valley promoting “GoNorthCanada.ca,” a website extolling the values of tech jobs in Ontario. Communitech said that the site has seen spikes since Trump’s victory. “People are reaching out and letting us know they are ready to come home,” said Communitech’s vice-president Heather Galt. With the growth of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry and the important research role that Canada has been playing, the nation can further benefit from a brain gain. Last year, Google has announced that it is investing $4.5 million in the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, the latest sign of Google’s growing interest in AI. As part of the deal, Google will open an AI research group in Montreal. The company believes the city has the potential to become a “super-cluster” of machine learning knowledge. Some large companies have also recently moved their AI divisions to Toronto, including Thomson Reuters and General Motors, with the intention of hiring hundreds of data scientists. According to The Globe and Mail, many of Canada’s largest companies have also stated a desire to hire thousands more data scientists in the coming years. Demand for talent already outstrips supply, and the gap will only grow. Now is the opportune time for Canadian AI companies to spread their recruitment net wider to include the U.S. so that we can benefit from a larger pool of AI research talents.
  4. The Paris climate change agreement was signed by 194 countries and ratified by 121 members, including the U.S. and China, by the end of last year: In spite of what Donald Trump said, it would not be easy for him to repeal this accord. With the enforcement of this agreement, nearly 200 governments will become obliged to meet emissions-cutting pledges made before the deal. The agreement would also commit the countries to aspire to keep temperatures below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The agreement went into effect on November 4, 2016, which means that 2017 will see a lot of countries starting to move in the direction of reducing greenhouse gases. In Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau and most of the premiers (except for Saskatchewan and Manitoba) signed a historic pan-Canadian framework last month to fight climate change and meet the country’s 2030 emissions reduction targets.
  5. Self-Driving cars from science fiction to science fact: after the first series of successful pilot-tests of self-driving vehicles in both the U.S. and Canada last year, these autonomous cars will hit the street in larger numbers in 2017. Last month, Alphabet, the owners of Google, spun off the research and development of self-driving technology into a separate company with the name of Waymo. The company has partnered with Chrysler to develop self-driving Pacific Hybrid minivans. Test units will hit the road over the next several months. According to technology news website Dice.com, expect Uber and Tesla to speed up with making their autonomous-driving offerings as advanced as possible in 2017. This development will drastically improve the quality of lives for aging populations across North America.
  6. On the health front, 2017 will be a breakthrough year for the fight against Ebola. An Ebola vaccine developed by Canadian researchers and considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be the first effective treatment against the virus has already started a new phase of clinical trials. The vaccine’s safety and effectiveness were tested on volunteers infected with HIV, starting in Ottawa and Montreal last November, and followed by trials in the new year in Senegal and Burkina Faso. According to the principal investigator Cecile Tremblay, “It is particularly important to study the effectiveness of this Ebola vaccine in vulnerable populations, such as those living with HIV. These populations can often be most at-risk during outbreaks, because of their compromised immune systems.” The Ebola vaccine, originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, provided blanket protection in a field trial in Guinea in 2015. Health Minister Jane Philpott said that the next phase of clinical trials in 2017 is an important milestone in the development of the world’s first proven, effective vaccine against the Ebola virus.
  7. A revolutionary blood test that can detect cancer can become part of an annual physical in five years. Liquid biopsies, as the blood tests are known, can give physicians a telltale sign of the presence of the disease in almost all types of cancer mutations. For cancer patients undergoing treatment, liquid biopsies could spare them some of the painful, expensive and risky tissue tumor biopsies and reduce reliance on CT scans, which must be limited because of the danger posed by overexposure to radiation. Medical experts say that the liquid biopsy has come a long way in the past year and a half. According to CNBC, doctors and medical researchers are excited by the prospect that liquid biopsies would be a way to help people already fighting the disease. The new year will bring even more research and development in cancer centres across the U.S. on how a non-invasive blood test could be appropriate in many cases to identify the DNA mutation driving cancer forward.
  8. New eye drops can dissolve cataracts with no need for surgery. We’ve all read about a new study that used eye drops to shrink cataracts in dogs may have made an important step in overcoming them. According to Professor Kang Zhang, from the University of California San Diego, whose research team developed the eye drops, this new drug could play an important role in the prevention of cataracts in those showing early signs. Although at this stage eye drops have the potential to overcome a number of limitations of surgery, they won’t be able to replace it yet. According to Dr. Manuel Datiles, a senior investigator and attending ophthalmologist at the U.S. National Eye Institute in the National Institutes of Health, eye drops will become key in treating cataracts, as surgery will not be able to cope with the growing needs of the world’s aging population. The new year will also bring more research and development to investigate whether there can be more medical breakthroughs in this area.
  9. On the arts and culture front, we could not have asked for a better year than 2017 when Canadian musicians took the Grammy nominations by storm and two Canuck male lead actors were nominated for the Golden Globe Awards. After a year of Canadian dominance on the international music scene, Drake, Justin Bieber and The Weeknd were nominated for many categories in the 2017 Grammy Awards. Drake leads with a whopping eight nominations while Bieber fares well with four. Other Canucks on the list include R&B singer Tory Lanez, Vancouver-formed and now Brooklyn-based duo Bob Moses, jazz musician and composer Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Toronto-based record producer Nineteen85, and the renowned classical music conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin in the Best Opera Recording category. We all look forward to awards night on February 12 when we will see how much hardware these artists will bring home! On the big screen, two Canucks will go head-to-head in the best actor category for a musical or comedy. Ryan Gosling, from London, Ontario, was nominated for his lead role in La La Land while Vancouver-native Ryan Reynolds is also up for his comedic performance in Deadpool. (Gosling eventually took home the Golden Globe and will, almost for sure, be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar!)
  10. Canada tops The New York Times‘s 52 Places To Go in 2017. On January 4, The New York Times put Canada number one on its annual list of places to go in the new year. According to the publication, Canada has it all – from cosmopolitan cities to barely explored natural wonders and everything in between. It also mentioned that all of the country’s more than 200 national parks and historic sites are offering free admission through our 150th Anniversary year, “from the turquoise lakes and mountain peaks of Banff in Alberta to the rolling dunes and red sandstone cliffs of Prince Edward Island along the Atlantic Coast to the newest reserve, the glacial-rounded Mealy Mountains in Labrador.” Looks like Tourism Canada did a better job in marketing our country as a travel destination to our neighbours down south than to fellow Canadians!

With all these good news, let’s move forward into the future with more positive thinking and cast away all the bad news of 2016. A new year is always a new beginning with new hope!

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Slowing Aging May Not Be That Bad

By on September 1, 2016 in Health, Lifestyle, Retirement, Science

Last month, The Economist‘s article, Cheating Death, conjured up the distant possibility of slowing, and even abolishing, aging all together with successful scientific research and breakthroughs. With the increase of average lifespans over the past century, the new extension of human life can be brought about by specific anti-senescence drugs, some of which may already exist.

The publication reported that life for many people could be extended to today’s ceiling of 120 or so. Centenarians might be less of a rarity as worn-out body parts will be repaired or replaced, DNA will be optimized for long life and more anti-aging drugs will be at work.

It seems like everybody wants longevity, but few have thought about how long life can exacerbate existing social and economic problems. Social inequity will become more of a problem if wealthy people are given preferential access to anti-senescence treatment which could be very expensive.

Already, a lot of millennials resent their boomer colleagues now because the latter are reluctant to retire and are, therefore, perceived to limit the careers of their younger subordinates. If older workers can live even longer, bosses might increasingly cling on to their senior positions and be reluctant to let go.

If you think boomers have been delaying retirement now for the lack of savings, retirement would even become a more distant option for most. People might want to expand their careers by going back to school in their 50s to learn how to do something completely different. The enviable professions such as accountants and lawyers might be less craved for just because people with longer lives could shift to a totally different profession in order to try out something new within their extra-long lifespan.

Longevity will also be detrimental to family life too. The feasibility of people tying the knot in their 20s and be expected with the same person 80 years later seems dismal. As The Economist said, “the one-partner life, already on the decline, could become rare, replaced by a series of relationships, each as long as what many today would consider a decent marital stretch.”

This is, of course, a pessimist’s point of view. An optimist would consider a longer life a happier life, provided that you’re still physically and mentally healthy! According to a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, older people tend to be happier than younger people, and their happiness increases with age.

The New York Times reported that researchers in the study contacted 1,546 people aged 21 to 99 via random telephone calls and found that older age was associated with higher levels of overall satisfaction, happiness and well-being, and lower levels of anxiety, depression and stress. The older the person, the study found, the better his or her mental health tended to be.

According to the senior author of the study, Dr. Dilip V. Jeste, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, “Brain studies show that the amygdala in older people responds less to stressful or negative images than in a younger person. We become wise. Peer pressure loses its sting. Better decision-making, more control of emotions, doing things that are not just for yourself, knowing oneself better, being more studious and yet more decisive.”

So, there you go – if we can combine an age-defying body with a contented mental state, longevity might be something to look forward to after all so long as you have the financial resources to sustain your long life as well!

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Importance Of End-Of-Life Care

By on May 31, 2016 in Health, Lifestyle, News, Politics
Photo Credit: ehospice.com

Photo Credit: ehospice.com

While everybody has been debating about the pros and cons of the proposed Bill C-14 on the right to die in Canada, another important topic is being sidelined – the access to and the quality of palliative care.

Specialists believe that there is too much fear surrounding discussions about end-of-life care. They said it is not about what happens when all treatments have failed, but a team of people – such as doctors, nurses, social workers and others – helping make sure Canadians have what they need to continue fighting while relieving the severity of symptoms and improving quality of life. According to palliative care experts, part of the challenge is that there will be legislation around the right to assisted death but there is neither legislation nor enough clinicians to adequately provide end-of-life care across Canada.

Dr. Jeff Myers, the head of Palliative Care at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, believes end-of-life care should be provided by family doctors, specialists and many other health care professionals who are already treating people for disease. This includes basic symptom management, emotional and mental health support, and the ability to discuss advance care planning and goals of care. He said then we can be certain that people are making assisted dying requests having had access to the full spectrum of care, regardless of how long they have left to live and regardless of what challenging conditions they are living with.

Another end-of-life care expert, Harvey Max Chochinov, who is Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care and Director of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit, wrote in The Toronto Star last year that despite the impressive strides that palliative care has taken, physicians have been taught less about pain management than those graduating from veterinary medicine. Once in practice, most physicians have knowledge deficiencies that can significantly impair their ability to manage cancer pain. Doctors are also not generally well-trained to engage in end-of-life conversations, meaning that goals of care often remain unclear; and patients may not receive the care they want or the opportunity to live out their final days in the place they would want to die.

According to Professor Chochinov, it is unfortunate that for 70 to 80 percent of Canadians, palliative care is not available and, therefore, not a real choice. It is concerning that we might become a country that extends patients the right to a hastened death, but offers no legislative guarantees or assurances that they will be well looked after until they die.

Palliative care doctors are urging the Canadian government to improve and standardize end-of-life care across the country. According to Dr. David Henderson, President of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians, there is a lack of palliative care service and it is unevenly distributed. In Canada, the federal government provides guidelines on health services and funding, but the provinces and territories manage them. Palliative care doctors would like to see one body set up to decide what are best practices in end-of-life care, how to mobilize them and set standards, and to collect data. Dr. Henderson said there needs to be palliative care training for new doctors and other health care workers as well as upgrading of skills for those already practicing. Fewer Canadians might opt for doctor-assisted death if palliative care services were improved.

Dr. Henderson also recently co-wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed article with Dr. Susan MacDonald, Past President of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians, that while Bill C-14 is in the process of becoming law, palliative care units in Ontario are closing due to funding cuts, and there is no law on the table about the right to end-of-life care. Tragically, many people die at home, with no access to palliative care supports such as home care nursing or visits from a family doctor or, when needed, a palliative care team.

The two doctors strongly advocated that now is the time for a national palliative-care program. “Dying is a part of life,” they said. “We should not let our incomes, our postal codes or our family support networks determine how well or how poorly we die. We need to think about this, discuss it – and fix it. The time is right to insist that our health ministers address this issue in Canada’s new health accord.”

Too much focus has been placed on the June 6 deadline for passing Bill C-14, but not enough discussions have been made on understanding the urgency of universal access to quality palliative care in Canada. As the nation debates its response to the court’s decision, it is, perhaps, equally important for federal and provincial governments to make sizable investments in hospice and palliative care in order to offer patients and families choices that are fair, compassionate and real.

 

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Canada Needs Healthcare Innovation

By on July 28, 2015 in Health

Photo Courtesy: ctvnews.ca

Since the release of a new report on July 17 by the Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation, a lot of media and members of the medical community have been weighing in. The panel, led by David Naylor, a physician and former president of the University of Toronto, stressed that “Canada has no shortage of innovative healthcare thinkers, world-class researchers, capable executives, or dynamic entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the health sphere.”

Yet, according to the report, innovation is stifled by the structure and administration of the health system, and a lack of leadership. According to The Globe and Mail, Medicare is, in fact, not a system at all; it’s a collection of 14 federal, provincial and territorial programs that are neither integrated nor coordinated. Worse yet, within those programs, there is a near total absence of vision and goals.

The report warned that “absent federal action and investment, and absent political resolve on the part of provinces and territories, Canada’s healthcare systems are headed for continued slow decline in performance relative to peers.”

So, the panel recommended creating a Health Innovation Fund with a $1-billion yearly budget to invest in changes to the healthcare system in conjunction with willing provinces and healthcare institutions. But, of course, just before a federal election in October, the Harper government would want to balance the budget rather than consider adding $1 billion a year to spending.

This was further exacerbated by the recent fiscal sustainability report released by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Confirming what we boomers and, of course, seniors most fear was the report’s warning that health spending won’t meet needs of aging Canadians. While the federal government has been saying that provinces should be increasingly responsible for healthcare delivery and sustainability, provincial Premiers, who met earlier this month, called on the federal government to provide more money for health.

But it’s not just a matter of more money. Our healthcare system needs a major overhaul! According to the Naylor report, it has to begin with leadership, and it should come from Ottawa. Andre Picard of The Globe and Mail nipped it in the bud today by pointing out what the real problem is: it’s not more money the healthcare system needs, it’s culture change – a shift from perpetual pilot projects to embracing best practices. He said, “For decades, we have produced reports about the need to transform healthcare delivery and funding while, simultaneously, clinging to the same old ways of doing things. It’s a fundamental disconnect between evidence and action. If you don’t take risks, you will never innovate.”

Healthcare is probably the number-one priority for all boomers. Any political party candidates who can and will show some guts to take risks and innovate; to drastically overhaul our healthcare system to meet its current and future needs; and to show that they have listened to the people’s concerns will get the boomers’ vote in the upcoming elections! And it is not likely to be the Conservative Party!

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Time to Introduce Universal Drugs Plan Is Now

By on June 10, 2015 in Health

Photo Credit: globeandmail.com

I read with interest that several provincial and territorial health ministers said earlier this week that Canada should have a national pharmacare program to help people pay for prescription drugs, and that they would make this a key issue in this fall’s federal election.  These ministers include Ontario’s Minister of Health Eric Hoskins, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Minister of Health Steve Kent, New Brunswick’s Health Minister Victor Bordeau and British Columbia’s Health Minister Terry Lake.

Unfortunately, the federal government did not accept an invitation to attend a roundtable meeting on June 8 with these provincial and territorial ministers, academics and other experts in pharmacare. According to The Globe and Mail, the federal government issued a statement saying it wants to work with the provinces and territories on bulk purchases of drugs before “spending more money” on a pharmacare plan. The spokesman for federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, Michael Bolkenius, said that there are hundreds of millions of dollars that could be saved and hopefully improve access. The provincial and territorial ministers said they were examining studies that show it could save taxpayers $11 billion a year through bulk purchasing to reduce the price of medications.

As posted before on this blog, Canada is the only industrialized country with universal health insurance that does not offer universal prescription drug coverage, and statistics show that one in 10 Canadians cannot afford to pay for their medications. When people do not take the drugs they need, there is a cost to health and to medicare when our hospitals are already overwhelmed.

Ontario’s Health Minister Eric Hoskins has always been taking an initiative in leading a crusade to make universal pharmacare happen in Canada sooner rather than later. In an OpEd article published in The Globe and Mail on October 14 last year, he said, “Over the past several years, Ontario and the other provinces and territories have embarked on a successful joint initiative to improve access to drugs. Together, we’ve created a pan-Canadian cancer drug review process to ensure equitable access to new medications.” Hoskins pointed out that they have also made significant progress in getting better prices for new, life-saving drugs by negotiating as a bulk buyer with drug companies through the Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance – an initiative that will now have a permanent office hosted in Ontario through his ministry.

Hoskins seems to be targeting Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017 as the most ideal date to launch a national pharmacare program. It’s heartening to see that Ontario has been taking a leading role in making this a reality and that the federal government seems to be interested in supporting this initiative. Canada’s universal healthcare system needs a major reform and incorporating a universal prescription drugs plan would be a clear priority in light of an aging population.

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