Let's Not Get Too Gushy About Rob Ford

I get it, he's got cancer.  With the sludge that guy has pushed down his gullet and snorted up his nose, quelle surprise!

As our friend, The Salamander, pointed out, where's our concern for other cancer victims like the natives in the cancer villages near Fort Mac on the Athabasca river?  Those are people who have contracted terrible cancers and deformities that others, mainly very well to do just like Rob Ford, could get ever richer.

Unlike Rob Ford, those cancer victims of Athabasca are blameless for their plight.  The shit that got into their bodies wasn't of their doing.  Yet we write them off as collateral damage to what Ignatieff called "the beating heart of the Canadian economy."

As a society we are desperately in need of a recalibration of our moral compass.

Skin Cancers Linked to Driving

A new study by the St. Louis School of Medicine has found an apparent link between skin cancer and long hours spent at the wheel. Americans, of course, drive on the right meaning the driver sits on the left side. That leaves the driver's left side, arm and face in particular, exposed to UV radiation.

What the researchers found was an increased incidence of left-side skin cancers. For men it was 56% while women were still 52% left-side over right-side. However when it came to the most lethal of skin cancers, melanoma, they occured on the left side in 74% of cases.

There's nothing really new to this. Airline pilots have known this for years because, with the large side cockpit windows and the high altitude exposure to not just UV but also elevated gamma radiation, they've been particularly vulnerable to these sorts of cancers.