May

In his recent editorial, Dr Wilson states that Canada and North Korea are the last two countries trying to deny sick people a choice. Surely Cuba can’t have moved ahead of us?

I would appreciate knowing if I have been wrong in telling people that Canada and two brutal communist dictatorships alone share similar prohibitions of freedom of choice.
—G.F.O. Tyers, MD
Vancouver

Yes, Cuba now has a parallel private system. —ED

I read with interest the two articles on community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) infections in the April 2006 issue of BCMJ [48(3):114-120].

Thank you for publishing our article, “Multiple sclerosis: Myths and realities” (BCMJ 2006;48[2]:72-75). We have had a tremendous response from physicians and health care professionals who appreciated clarification on the most common myths patients bring into their practices.

The January/February 2006 issue of the BCMJ [48(1):14-15] contains a report by the BC Provincial Renal Agency (BCPRA), included in Pulsimeter, stating that as a result of the home hemodialysis program launched in 2004, considerable cash savings have been made by training patients with end-stage kidney failure to carry out the procedure themselves at home, rather than having it done by nurses in expensive hospital dialysis units.

Sometimes I wonder how much any of us look beyond our own immediate concerns and needs. I can’t remember if it was the seventies, eighties, or nineties that was supposed to be the “me decade,” but it has certainly dragged on. The word for the new millennium often seems to be solipsism—and the fact that I use a word like solipsism without bothering to define it shows how little we seem to care for the needs of others.