Midnight Witticisms

Coolest.Fucking.Thing.Ever.  Just keeps reminding us that for everything we know, there are a million things we don’t know.

via Kevin, M.D.

Is it sad that I would totally get an iPod Touch just for this?  There wouldn’t be anything else on there but anatomy.  I know I’m a geek, but this might be pushing it…

As all three of you who actually read this thing know, I love reading anything related to medicine. A quick glance at my sidebar, and one will see that most of the blogs I read are medically related. Since the only thing going on in my life right now is pretending to work and faux studying for the Psychometric Exam, I don’t really have too much time to come up with my own information. Or something.

Last week, I was reading my blogs (what seems to be one of two pastimes - the other planning the decor for my hot, new, Tel Aviv apartment), when I read something that just needed to be shared. With all three of you <3

One of the blogs I read, Canadian Medicine, is, clearly, a Canadian based blog. I’d been following half-heartedly for a while, thinking, Who cares about those darn Canucks, anyway? But then they had what I’ll call a miniseries that was their saving grace: for the past few years there has been a Safe Injection Site, known as Insite, located in Vancouver. It’s exactly what it sounds like; it’s a facility where drug users can go and safely inject. The facility offers clean needles, the staff provides information about increasing safety when injecting out in the “wild”, and also offers counseling services. There have been may positive results, including decreased needle sharing and public injecting, a reduction in injection-related litter, and a decrease in OD-related deaths.

It’s been a war in Canada between the Liberals and the Conservatives (I know you’re shocked; I see the mandibular rug burn). The Liberals claim that removing this program would be in violation of the rights of drug addicts; the Conservatives say that a facility such as this is bad, and that the country should focus on prevention. A scripted argument, to say the least.

Personally, I believe there is some legitimacy in the Insite project. Aside from the peer-reviewed research (with positive outcomes), it’s just a little bit of common sense. I’m not denying that children should be educated, that it is much better to avoid a drug problem than to try to get rid of it. And in an ideal world, it would be enough to tell kids, “Drugs are bad. Don’t do them.” In an ideal world, they would listen. (Also why abstinence-only education is an epic fail. But I digress.) There will always be people who will make the choice to try drugs; people who will fall in and drown in that unfortunate cesspool.

Drug addiction is a serious problem, and if something seems to work, I believe we should keep at it until a) it stops working, or b) we find another alternative that works better. I would love to see more facilities of this kind in places where they are really needed. I don’t think we can solve anything overnight, but even a little less litter or less public drug use is beneficial for the entire community. A cleaner city gives its residents hope and happiness. If drug use is less “out there” it has less of a chance to lure our children. Users who are in a facility will be more prone to making use of counselors, develop a support network that could aid them through detox.

It would be a slow recovery, both for the addicts, and for the affected communities, but recovering is a healing process. And it would be most unfortunate if a project such as this one shuts down because of some social agenda.