A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Pretty sure I’ve seen a few sci-fi movies whose plots aren’t so different from the real-life Grifols blood plasma shocker that has been making the news recently. The story in a nutshell: A Spanish pharmaceutical multinational sets up shop in Canada to buy people’s blood plasma to sell into the global market. Even though death from plasma donation is reportedly very rare, two people then die. Health Canada reacts, Grifols shuts down its many Canadian collection centres, and the unsettling details about giant corporations paying people to sell their body fluids are suddenly the talk of the town. Grifols arrived in Canada in 2022, signing a 15-year agreement with Canadian Blood Services for commercial plasma extraction in Ontario even though CBS itself has a strict policy against paying people for their blood or plasma. (Things that make you go hmm….) A year later, Grifols bought up a chain of private plasma-collection facilities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick an...

I was in Philadelphia visiting family last month when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on a Manhattan street in a carefully planned execution. The instant roar of approval that united an otherwise starkly divided America in the days and weeks that followed has been a notable reminder that people are feeling a little done these days. Like everyone who has written about Thompson’s murder, I want to stress that in no way do I condone street executions. I’m sorry that he got killed, and that a young man whose own path seemed quite promising felt compelled to take such drastic action. At the same time, I’m awed by the powerful rage that the shooting brought out in people, and the major conversations it is sparking. (I, too, burn with fury at what the CEO class has gotten away with, though I’d like to think I’d never settle it with a gun.) The killing lit a fire under the issue of health-care claim denials in a way that a thousand of the most heart-breaking tales of life s...