It appears as though most Canadians who were convinced they need the H1N1 flu vaccine have already gotten it and now the government and health agencies are struggling to convince the rest of us. Although there are still reports of line-ups and shortages occurring sporadically throughout the country, vaccine clinics as a whole have been much less busy administering shots than when the first doses became available to priority groups in November.
Chantelle Sylvester is a 21-year-old Niagara College student. In many ways, she is not very different from other students her age. She has a part-time job, she enjoys the company of her friends and boyfriend and she spends a lot of time studying. But in one way, Sylvester is different from most students; Sylvester has Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis.
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that affects an individual's Central Nervous System - the cause of which is not yet known. Most people begin to show symptoms between 20 and 40 years old, however they are not normally diagnosed until later in life both because of the increasing severity of the disease and the lack of a diagnostic test.
In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25, Section 1 proclaims "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care".
For most of us, cleaning our ears is a daily occurrence. Whether you do it when you get out of the shower, before you go to bed or sporadically throughout the day, ridding our ears of that dreaded brown wax is always the ultimate goal. But have you ever stopped to think why our bodies produce it in the first place? We are biological miracles, fine-tuned over thousands of years for ultimate performance, so then why is it that our bodies produce something so unwanted? The answer is to point out the problem with the question.
