Senior gets wrong meds, ends up on life support

Alphonsine Winzoski was 87 years old in June 2011 when she was taken to Winnipeg’s Concordia Hospital after an asthma attack. Her granddaughter said the treatment should have been routine. She was shocked when Winzoski ended up on life support….Two weeks after the incident, a doctor from Concordia Hospital contacted the family and admitted the hospital made a mistake and gave Winzoski another patient’s medication. One of the pills was Metoprolol….York University Professor Joel Lexchin, who is an expert in pharmaceuticals, said the drug constricts the lungs and can cause breathing difficulty in people with respiratory problems. “This is a drug that has a number of actions,” he said in CBC News May 23. “One is that it slows the heart down[…]the lungs constrict and they get narrower. If people have either COPD or asthma, and part of the pathology of these diseases is that the airways are already tight[…]use it with extreme caution.” Read full story.

Muslims and the war on terror
“A tipoff from a prominent Toronto imam more than a year ago appears to be at the heart of arrests at the end of April in the alleged VIA Rail terror plot in Canada. In fact, counter-terrorism police began their press briefing by thanking Muslim leaders,” wrote Osgoode Hall Law School adjunct Professor Faisal Kutty in Counterpunch May 23. “Even in the Boston Marathon tragedy, national and local Muslim organizations have condemned the bombings. The largest Muslim civil rights group in the country, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even asked Muslims to offer authorities any leads that they may have. Moreover, in an interesting twist, mosques refused to arrange Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s janaza (Islamic funeral prayers).[…]The intent behind this is to send a clear message to potential terrorists.” Read full story.