2001

Jeff Purkis’ letter in the March issue ("Please fix walk-in problem" [BCMJ 2001;43(2):71]) describes very clearly the urban family practice reality. During my last 7 years of practice I coordinated the UBC Department of Family Practice Residency City Site. All of the residents received training in the urban practices of community family doctors.

In the last issue of BCMJ, Pat Goble, president of the Surrey Access for All Committee, wrote a plea to physicians to "limit certifying the number of patients who request disabled parking placards to those who genuinely need them."[1] I take exception to two points made in this commentary.

References

The Canadian Medical Protective Association has had an opportunity to review the article by Dr Sedergreen that appeared in the September 2000 issue of the BC Medical Journal ("Massage Therapy—A Review" [BCMJ 2000;42(7):342-344]), as well as letters that were published in the December 2000 issue of the Journal written by the president of the College of Massage Therapists of British Columbia [BCMJ 2000;42(10):452] and Dr Sedergreen [BCMJ 2000;42(10)454].

In the April 2001 issue of the BC Medical Journal, five papers were published on Parkinson’s disease from the viewpoint of research studies directed to understanding the cause and mechanism of cell death. The topics included etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, pathology, and imaging. In this issue, the theme of Parkinson’s disease is continued, but the papers are more clinical.

We all experience occasional interludes in our daily unplottable travels into chaos when we retreat briefly into the land of alpha waves. Some of my recent self-hypnotic states have been even more obscure than the usual bizarre, unconnected stuff my subconscious regularly dredges up. I'm not sure if this is a sign of my impending central nervous system Armageddon or that the universe is suddenly bombarding us with some new quirky, famtosecond energy pulses.