Painkillers are causing twice the number of overdose deaths in Ontario than they were two decades ago, a precedent-setting study has found. Most of the people these opioid-related drugs are killing got them through a prescription and had seen a doctor in the month before they died.

The increase mirrors a dramatic rise in prescriptions for oxycodone, a potent opiate found in OxyContin and Percocet that has proliferated in an epidemic of chronic pain that has turned Canadians into a nation of pill-poppers – using more prescription opioids per capita than any country but the United States and Belgium. Read the full story

Patient trapped in a 23-year ‘coma’ was conscious all along

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night.

Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed.

He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said. Read the full story

U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to China has a dirty little secret: cyberwarfare. It is an issue Beijing refuses to acknowledge exists, but it has the potential to torpedo military relations between the two nations. Almost every other conceivable area of disagreement between China and the U.S. will have been raised during Obama’s visit by one side or the other — even such highly sensitive issues as human rights and the unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang province. But even if U.S. officials try to raise the issue of what they believe is a constant and growing campaign by China to infiltrate U.S. networks, steal secrets and hone Beijing’s ability to wreak havoc in case of military conflict, the likelihood is that Chinese officials will simply deny that the problem exists, as they have done with great success in the past. From the American point of view, there’s unfortunately currently little Washington can do to change that state of affairs.

“At a fundamental level, the Chinese view cyberwar as an overt tool of national power in a very different way from the United States,” says James Mulvenon, a Washington-based specialist on the Chinese military. “The U.S. is still uncomfortable exercising that power, but the Chinese — and the Russians — are very comfortable with the deniability and using proxies, even though the actions of those proxies could have enormous strategic consequences.” Read the full story

The Flu Case – I am a Swedish general practioner working in Belgium, and quite involved in this issue, as together with three citizens and another GP we advised the Belgian Government last Friday in court that this is a disguised pharmaceutical trial on human subjects, with real risks involved.

I put in two comments on the story (see below), that are quite relevant in the context that the Swedish Newspapers have seemingly stopped reporting the intermediary results of this disguised pharmaceutical trial. Read the full story

The Palestinian Authority would not oppose the prosecution of Hamas militants on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, Israel Radio on Saturday quoted the PA’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as saying. Read the full story

Rockets trade guard White to Denver

With little wiggle room left on the roster less than a week before training camp, the Rockets traded guard James White to Denver, largely to give him a better chance to stick with an NBA team, a person with knowledge of the move said Tuesday. Read the full story

Sept. 14, 2009 — Attention, countries of the world: Do you know where your moon rocks are?

The discovery of a fake moon rock in the Netherlands’ national museum should be a wake-up call for more than 130 countries that received gifts of lunar rubble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later. Read the full story