But unless they have a seat at the table, Weinstein writes, "so-called aid becomes another weapon to exploit these good people who liberated themselves from slavery and are still paying the price."
Monday, March 1, 2010
Interesting: Exploiting Disaster in Haiti
As legions of aid workers, security personnel and diplomats descended on Haiti in the wake of its earthquake disaster, how much of the millions in help actually made its way to Haitians? Montreal nurse Scott Weinstein, who quickly headed down to help survivors, reports in this interesting first-person account in Montreal Serai magazine that the foreign interests have mostly worked to further their own interests. Meanwhile, ordinary Haitians have little say in the rebuilding.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Awards: Calling Canadian Writers
New writing awards have been launched this year at the Professional Writers Association of Canada. The two awards, which come with prizes worth $500 apiece, are for non-fiction features and shorter pieces published in Canadian print and web media. (I'm co-chair of the PWAC committee that spearheaded the awards.) See more details here. The judges are journalism profs Stephen Kimber and Maxine Ruvinsky, Montreal authors Elaine Kalman Naves and Eric Siblin, Best Health editor Jennifer Walker and Bilbo Poynter, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting. Deadline for entries: Friday, March 19.
TAGS: awards
Monday, February 8, 2010
Investigations: H1N1 Might not Have Been a Pandemic
Concerns about how Canadian and other public-health authorities handled the H1N1 pandemic are finally starting to make their way into Canadian media. As I noted in this post in November, Canadian journalists have been astonishingly uncritical in their "reporting" on the flu outbreak. Protéger-Vous, the Quebec consumer magazine, has just published this interesting in-depth look at the pandemic, which some prominent health experts now say was not a true pandemic at all.
For a critical look at H1N1 and the flu vaccine, see this story I did in The Georgia Straight last November. And to see an investigation I did last summer on how flu cases correlated strongly with intensive hog farming operations, see here and here.
On a related note, the British Medical Journal has just published this interesting critical review of the research trials done on Tamiflu, one of the main antiviral drugs stockpiled worldwide to combat H1N1 and other seasonal flus at a cost of several billion dollars. The review found that most of the studies of the drug's effectiveness and side-effects had not been published in peer-reviewed journals, were sponsored by the drug-maker itself or were poorly designed.
Limited evidence suggests that benefits from Tamiflu are modest - a half-day to one-day reduction in flu symptoms, if taken within 48 hours of their onset - while the rate of side-effects (including some reports of sudden behaviour changes, suicidal tendencies, hallucination and sudden death during sleep) has not been thoroughly studied. The review's surprising conclusion: Tamiflu and related drugs "should not be used in routine control of seasonal influenza."
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