November

An average Canadian family of two adults and two children will pay about $11 400 in taxes for health care in­surance in 2012, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.

The report, entitled “The Price of Public Health Care Insurance: 2012 Edition,” calculates the amount of taxes an average family pays to all levels of government in a year and the percentage of the total tax bill that goes toward public health care insurance.

The Centre for Clinical Diagnostic Genomics at the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) has begun using new DNA sequencing techno­logy to test for inherited mutations in two major breast cancer genes. Mutations on two specific genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, greatly increase a wo­man’s risk of developing both breast and ovarian cancer.

BCMA Silver Medal of Service
BCMA members are encouraged to nominate physicians or laypersons for the BCMA Silver Medal of Service award. The medal will be presented at the BCMA’s Annual General Meeting in June 2013. 

Physician nominees must have 25 years of membership in good standing in the BCMA, the CMA, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Nonmedical candidates may be laypersons of Canadian or foreign citizenship. To be eligible for the award, nominees must meet at least one of the following criteria:

Dr Richardson is right that Harley Davidson motorcycles are too loud [“Summer rant,” BCMJ 2012;54:321]. Movie theatres present another noise issue. I wear earplugs when I go to a movie because the intensity of the sound during the trailers is painful. A while ago I sent an e-mail inquiry to the Canadian Pediatric Society asking if they had guidelines about the decibel level to which children are expos­ed in public spaces. At that time they did not have a guideline about the subject.
—Robert Shepherd, MD

The essence of the research budget proposed by the Harper government can be summarized succinctly: Why waste money on basic science research when funds could be better directed toward industry-driven projects fo­cus­ed on immediate economic gain? While the overall Canadian Foundation for Innovation budget increases to $750 million, most of the monies will be channeled away from groundbreaking science (upon which tomorrow’s medicines are based) to support shortsighted, industry-driven research.