© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

The aged are politically expendable

February 6, 2022 Opinion by Greg Ray Imagine you were prime minister of Australia or premier of NSW. You had decided, for one reason or another, that you wanted to "let Covid rip" in your communities, presumably believing that the death toll and health consequences of that policy would not be as damaging as the economic cost of lockdowns and safety measures. I suggest that, equipped with the knowledge you had gained in your own country and overseas, you would have thought carefully about those of your citizens most vulnerable to the worst effects of the…

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Some thoughts on aged care packages

I wish people in government would stop pretending to be surprised that Australia's aged care system is a mess. It's not surprising at all. Encourage private investors to take over any "caring" sector, let them shift profits offshore to avoid taxes, let them cut staff to the bone and employ the least qualified workers they can find, let them hide the truth about what they spend on food and care and avoid regulating or scrutinising them and what do you think you will get? The bottom line seems to be that governments don't care about powerless…

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Read more about the article Our troubles with midazolam: a story of death, dying and a powerful drug
Photo by James Heilman, MD. Wikimedia Commons

Our troubles with midazolam: a story of death, dying and a powerful drug

Are powerful sedatives being over-used in palliative care and aged care? Our observations of the apparent effects of the sedative midazolam on our fathers, who both died from cancer a week apart in October 2018, have left us with some questions. Midazolam is a powerful benzodiazepine drug, very widely used in a variety of medical applications. Although midazolam has no analgesic properties, it was repeatedly described to us as a “breakthrough drug”, implying that it was being used to suppress spikes in pain above the level the prescribed doses of painkillers could handle. We believe this…

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