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IN INDIA, prostitution is big business and thrives on exploitation and slavery, robbing the poor of dignity and innocence. Freeset opened its doors in 2001 with twenty women brave enough to trust a couple of foreigners and seize the opportunity to leave the sex trade behind. The business now produces around 1000 jute bags a day for export. Consistent quality is important for Freeset to be a competitive, self sustaining business that is able to break the cycle of poverty and exploitation for these women once and for all.
“Six thousand women, they say, service twenty thousand men here [Sonagacchi] every day; often for as little as fifty cents a trick. All this is no more than two minutes walk from the Hilton's front door.”
“For the first time in my life, I know my granddaughter's not going to have to do this.”
ONE OF MY FAVOURITE medical blogs is written by Kevin Pho (KevinMD), a Boston internist and avid blogger. KevinMD was voted the best medical blog of 2008 and has over 21,000 subscribers and 16,000 followers on Twitter.
Understandably, ambulance workers say that patients weighing over 350 pounds present additional challenges to transport, and require specialized equipment and additional workers. Not unexpectedly the ambulance industry wants to pass on the expenses to insurance companies and even individual patients.
It turns out (according to Kevin) that some US states already charge more for transporting extremely overweight patients.
So what is my response to this poll?
My regular readers will probably already guess that I voted "No" and with that differently than the 78% of responders who opted for ‘Yes’.
While I fully appreciate that extremely large patients pose important challenges for amublance workers, I still maintain that (as with airline seats) the only fair rule can be one patient — one ride — one fare!
The whole notion that obese people should pay more, is nothing other than another expression of the widely held weight bias against overweight people that is entirely based on the assumption of choice and fault. As I have argued previously, neither choice nor fault (even if they were relevant to obesity) can be a criterium for deciding about costs.
If fault is a criterium, then how about charging people more who get into DUI accidents, injure themselves during risky outdoor activities or even just have heart attacks from smoking too much?
If this is about "fair" distribution of cost — I wonder if ambulances will next offer discounts on rides for people who walk to the ambulance and lay themselves down on the gurney (less work — less pay).
Or will they also be charging higher rates for tranporting other folks who create more work, like people who don't speak English, are psychotic, aggressive, or just making a mess of themselves by spilling blood and guts all over?
As a significant proportion of the population gets bigger, it is up to ambulances to up-size and adapt their services by providing the right equipment and the right personnel. If this costs more (as it probably will), the costs should be spread amongst all who require ambulance services and not simply passed on to a vulnerable minority that is already hit hard by the utter lack of access to obesity prevention and treatment options that work.
We all bear responsibility for creating an obesogenic environment in which some people will gain weight — no matter what.
Weight-based discrimination (like all forms of discrimination) are inhumane, cruel and not a solution to the problem.
To take Kevin's poll and perhaps correct the voting balance in favour of fairness and compassion click here.
WHEN I THINK OF CHRISTMAS, I think of many things but one of them is the custom of giving gifts.
We give gifts to those we love, well ... because we love them. We want to let them know that they are important to us and one way (and certainly not the only way) is to give them a gift that brings joy to their lives.
What about giving gifts to people you don't know? Many of us do that when we give to the local food bank or give money to The Salvation Army Christmas kettle, or the local Christmas Fund. We don't know where, how or by whom our donation is used — it is simply a gift to those in our community.
What about giving, not just a few dollars or tins of food once a year at Christmas, but the gift of life all year long and year after year?
Let me introduce you to my friend, Bill Braun. In 1966, at the age of 17, Bill went with his father to a ‘blood donor clinic’ (his dad was a regular donor) and gave his first pint of blood. Back then you could give blood every 72 days (now it is every 56 days). Bill has donated blood ever since. As of November, 2009, Bill has donated 161 units of blood. What a gift! For many years he has been a Hospitality Volunteer at local and mobile clinics, welcoming and caring for other donors and serving refreshments. Bill has also organized blood donor clinics for young donors from a number of local high schools.
Why is donating blood such a special gift?
Approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. In fact, according to a recent poll, 52 per cent of Canadians say they, or a family member, have needed blood or blood products for surgery or for medical treatment.
The good news is that one blood donation — in just one hour — can save up to three lives.
When you think about giving this Christmas, why not include a trip down to your local blood donor clinic and follow Bill's wonderful example of giving the gift that truly counts. I know I will be!
Related news
Blood, organ crises loom
The Victoria Times Colonist
THESE ARE DIFFICULT TIMES for blood and organ donor programs. Over the past two years, reserves of blood have fallen to near-crisis levels. The reason is simple. At some point in our lives, 90 per cent of Canadians will require a blood transfusion. But nationwide, only four per cent of us are donors. The figures are even lower in B.C., where only about half that number give blood. Hospitals in our province are importing emergency supplies from the U.S.
Bad as things are, they're about to get worse. In most developed countries, donated blood flows from the younger end of the population to the older. People aged 17 to 25 tend to be the most generous contributors, while those over 65 are the biggest recipients.
But as our population ages, that pattern is likely to be disrupted. Canada's youth cohort is declining, while the number of retirees is rapidly growing. Over the next five years, these demographic changes will reduce blood stocks dramatically.
The precise amount is uncertain. But studies in Europe suggest a decline in the 30-per-cent range is conceivable. That would be close to a disaster scenario.
In tissue donations, the situation is no better. Across B.C. last year, organs were collected from only 54 donors — and that was a 15-year high.
The challenge is magnified by medical limitations. With the exception of kidney transplants from live donors, most tissues are harvested at the moment of death.
But the circumstances where this is possible are rare. Across Canada in 2007, there were only 420 occasions when organs could be recovered. That works out to a national donor rate of about one Canadian in every 78,000.
Meanwhile, more than 4,000 patients need transplants. Each year 200 of them die waiting. As with the blood crisis, this predicament will worsen as our population ages.
So what are the options? We could cross our fingers and hope medical science comes to the rescue.
Synthetic blood products under development might reduce the demand for natural blood. And better tissue-preserving techniques might allow more organs to be rescued.
But in the short term, the only practical solution is to sign up additional donors. How to accomplish this has become a critical issue.
Yet federal and provincial agencies have few ideas.
On the one hand, there is strong resistance to offering financial incentives. Donors are not paid now. There are pins and certificates of recognition for people who give blood. And living kidney donors can be reimbursed for lost wages.
But the official view is that public duty, and not money, should be the motivating force.
On the other hand, what if that force proves insufficient? Isn't that where we're headed? Indeed, considering the shortfall of transplantable organs, haven't we reached that point already?
No one wants to see bags of cash change hands. That certainly sends the wrong message.
But aren't there more thoughtful options? In the case of organ donations, what about a scholarship offered to a surviving child or grandchild? Couldn't B.C.'s lieutenant-governor host a gala dinner once a year for blood donors?
Certainly there are risks in providing incentives. Yet 200 deaths every year due to a shortage of organs is unacceptable.
By some means or other, supplies of blood and tissues must be increased. If the status quo isn't working, other solutions should be tried.
And yes, there is a moral duty to donate. Readers who can help should contact:
JUST IN TIME for the holiday season Food Inc. has been released to DVD.
For those of you not familiar, Food Inc. is a documentary film that details the industrialization of the American food supply with lenses trained primarily on corn and beef.
I have mixed feelings about the film. On the one hand it's a tremendous tour of what's wrong with how we get and subsidize our food. On the other hand, it doesn't really offer up any solutions and the folks they chose to champion change in many cases are indeed great on camera but shy on authority. While it's wonderful to have the wise, sustainable agriculture farmer waxing philosophic on the food supply I do wonder whether or not his means of farming are in fact scalable to supply the masses.
One thing's for certain however, the movie is both powerful and frightening. While I'll often blog about the health risks associated with red meat consumption and the development of various chronic diseases, Food Inc. takes the viewer on a tour of the acute diseases associated with contaminated ground beef and I found the story so chilling that I've decided to give up mass market ground beef.
To that end some kind folks at Cookware.com sent me a meat grinder to try out to see what grinding your own meat's all about. I tried it out this past weekend and clearly I've yet to get the hang of it. I did succeed in grinding out 4lbs of beef, but I think I used meat that wasn't quite frozen enough (semi-frozen is apparently the way to go) and the grinding took multiple attempts, many cleans and a great deal of frustration.
Despite the movie's shortcomings, I highly recommend this film though be forewarned, I'd bet this film has birthed its fair share of vegetarians in the past 6 months — it's that jarring.
(If anyone reading this has any meat grinding tips, I'm all ears!)
by Dr. Arya Sharma
by Yoni Freedhoff, Weighty Matters