Doctors “afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry”

Andy Rowell, January 21, 2014

Later today hearings are scheduled to begin on emissions and vapours emanating for the tar sands, specifically around the Peace River area.

The hearings, which have been scheduled by the Albertan Energy Regulator, have come after years of complaints by local residents into the odours, which are so bad some families have been forced to move from their homes.

Local residents have been complaining of symptoms such as severe headaches, dizziness, sinus problems, vomiting, muscle spasms and fatigue, amongst others.

But we do not know how badly the tar sands are really impacting people’s health. This is because according to a report commissioned specifically for the hearings by a public health specialist, some local doctors are reluctant to treat patients who draw connections between the tar sands industry and their personal health problems.

The report, prepared by Dr Margaret Sears, concludes that: “There were reports from various sources that physicians would not diagnose a relationship between bitumen exposures and chronic symptoms.”

“Physicians are quite frankly afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry,” she adds.

And it gets worse. For those individuals who suggested there was a “connection” between their health problems and the tar sands, Sears records how “Physician care was refused … and that analytical services were refused by an Alberta laboratory when told that the proposed analysis was to investigate exposure to emissions related to bitumen extraction.”

Locals are arguing that the regulator must force the industry to capture the emissions: “The best result possible is that they make some regulations to get companies to capture their vapours,” believes Alain Labrecque, who has had to vacate his farm after suffering numerous symptoms including headaches, dizziness, fatigue and memory loss.

His family only started experiencing symptoms in 2011, after Baytex Energy purchased nearly 50 wells and in the area and started heating bitumen in above-ground tanks to extract the oil.

“There is definitely a regulatory gap,” Labrecque argues “We just want more accountability. We want the regulator to take on a greater role, and have regulations in place so they can enforce them, and just provide more accountability to industry.”

Baytex, for its part, predictably argues that “there are no human health impacts associated with the emissions from our projects.”

The Labrecques have also now filed an injunction against Baytex to force the company to stop operating. The hearing though won’t be heard until March.

Local residents will also have to wait until March for the report into the hearings to be published by the regulator.

http://priceofoil.org/2014/01/21/doctors-afraid-diagnose-health-conditions-linked-oil-gas-industry/

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2012 The Awakening

Doctors “afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry”

Bacteria or virus: New diagnose tests to prevent pandemics and bad prescriptions

Published time: September 19, 2013 14:22

Reuters/Ints Kalnins

When unsure whether you suffer from a virus or bacteria, just take a snapshot of your immune system. So say American researchers, who are developing a blood test that could save millions, prevent pandemics and cut back on wrongly prescribed medication.

The crux of the problem is that symptoms are not enough for a diagnosis. The doctor’s only weapon is to prescribe a test which detects a certain pathogen. Presently, the test is usually chosen based on common sense, e.g. “is there currently a flu epidemic?” And if the usual suspects do not show up, additional testing – which may take days – is necessary. 

Correct identification of ‘signatures’ in every affliction is in this case necessary. Here is the solution the Duke researchers came up with: photographing gene activity at the onset of infection. Before a person even feels the first symptoms of an illness, sets of genes are dispatched by the organism to battle it. But a viral infection is fought with a different set of genes than a bacterial one, for instance. This also leads to differing RNA and protein formations, otherwise known as a genetic fingerprint. 

With this information doctors will be able to identify and diagnose diseases correctly and in time, prevent pandemics, possibly recognize infections at the incubation stage, as well as dramatically cut back on erroneous prescriptions.

For instance, knowing that an infection is not a virus automatically rules out antibiotics as treatment. And it is becoming common knowledge that germs mutate and become resistant to antibiotics. Drug-resistant germs are the cause of over 23,000 deaths annually. And when dangerous viruses, such as the new MERS, begin to spread rapidly, a revolutionary technique like genetic fingerprinting could be a solution in the future. 

Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, who is the head of genomic medicine at Duke University, told the Associated Press that the “viral signature could be quite powerful, and may be a game-changer.” On Wednesday, his team got results back from a 102-person study that proves the new test works.

Dr. Aimee Zaas, who is lead researcher at Duke, explains how the new test works. The Duke team recognized 30 genes that switch on during a viral attack. This led the scientists to the idea of taking a still of their activity at the time of infection or “what those genes are doing at the moment in time that it’s captured.”

Concrete evidence of a viral signature was first spotted in people who volunteered to be infected with differing strains of flu for the experiment. For a more real comparison, researchers then took blood samples from previously sick walk-in patients who were diagnosed much later.

The results of the genome test proved remarkably accurate: in 89 percent of the cases a viral signature showed itself to be distinct from a bacterial one, according to Zaas’ Wednesday report in the Science Translational Medicine journal. Her results took about 12 hours. Now, everyone’s hope is to speed that up to being almost instant, the way in-office tests work. 

As Dr. Octavio Ramilo of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus (Ohio) pointed out, children are usually the first victims of slow diagnosis, because “in the beginning [virus and bacteria] look completely alike.” Therefore, he agrees that this is groundbreaking and predicts that the Duke team will come up with a working, widely used procedure within five years. 

Ramilo, whose research runs parallel to the Duke discoveries, has decided to take their finds a step further. One very pressing problem is diagnosing and saving infants with serious bacterial infections in time. To do this, Ramilo has taken a sample of 22 pediatric emergency rooms to attempt to extrapolate a fraction of high-risk babies that need an extensive set of tests. Because this is currently the default procedure for any infant with fever, the success of genetic fingerprinting could drastically cut waiting time.

RT – News

Bacteria or virus: New diagnose tests to prevent pandemics and bad prescriptions