There's been some terrific (and terrible) commentary and writing about Canada's prostitution laws since the Ontario Superior Court struck down three key laws around the sex trade last week. Here are a couple pieces from the former category, one from SFU professor John Lowman in the Vancouver Sun, and the other from the Ottawa Citizen by Steve Sullivan, Canada's federal ombudsman for victims of crime. Nice to see some smart, thoughtful writing on this subject.

Court ruling finally brings sex workers out of the shadow

You’ll be reading this today, or maybe even weeks from now. By then it will be old news that the Ontario Superior Court tossed out the bulk of Canada’s prostitution laws.

But it’s Tuesday, Sept. 28 right now, 11:01 a.m. I’m sitting down to write this mere minutes after the first amazing email landed in my inbox with the news. I’ve been crying happy tears ever since. I’m still in the buzz of the moment, so please don’t mind me if I get all emotional.

Years of battle lie ahead, of course. Brothels, living off the avails and communicating for the purposes of prostitution were all rendered legal in Ontario with the decision, which ultimately has implications coast to coast. The first thing the Crown’s going to do after everybody gets past the shock is file an appeal. Then it’s off to the ultimate arbiter, the Supreme Court of Canada.

Still, there’s no going back from what has already changed. The moment Ontario Superior Court Judge Susan Himel handed down her decision Tuesday, sex workers finally became people. They became flesh-and-blood women and men, out there working for a living like the rest of us.

"By increasing the risk of harm to street prostitutes, the communicating law is simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance," Himel wrote in her 131-page ruling. The danger sex workers face “greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public.”

Court decisions seem like pretty sterile documents by the time the public gets a look at them. But there’s real pain, and incredible bravery, in the process that brought about this most recent judgment.

The sex workers who appeared before the court were subjected to intense and prying questions by prosecutors. I still remember the day a friend of mine came back from giving her testimony, the broken way she looked. It had been a hard and humiliating experience.

These women put their lives on public display as few would be willing to do. Without them, there would have been no case. I hope they are celebrating like crazy this week.

University of Toronto law professor Alan Young and the legal team who took on this challenge worked for free. They went to extraordinary effort to build a story that spoke to the law while also bringing the voices of Canada’s sex workers and advocates to the fore. There would have been no case without them, either.

When all of this got underway, I couldn’t have guessed how the court might finally rule. At that level, the law is not often something that the common person can understand.

But then I learned a few months back that the legal test was essentially whether Canada’s prostitution laws caused more harm than good. And that’s when I knew there was a good chance that the sex workers were going to win.

Our laws are well-documented for hurting and killing sex workers while doing nothing to curb the industry. If harm versus public good was the test, there was no question in my mind.

Even when the laws aren’t enforced - which is mostly the case in Canada for the laws around keeping a bawdyhouse or living off the avails - they cause harm by shutting sex workers out of the mainstream and deepening stigma.

It took me a long time to form my views on sex work, through many twists and turns in career and personal experience. I now feel unequivocally that adult, consensual sex work must be legalized.

But it took me years to get here, and I respect that not everybody will greet Judge Himel’s ruling as a gift from the heavens. Some may even see it as the end of the world.

But what is the argument for anyone being subjected to injury, death, immense shame and stigma just because another segment of the population believes the way they make their living is immoral?

Perhaps you can’t imagine doing the work and wouldn’t want it for your own daughter. But is that really reason enough for laws that ramp up the danger and difficulty for other people’s daughters and sons?

People struggle with the idea that sex work could ever be part of their community. But the truth is that it already is. Thank you, Judge Himel, for seeing the people in the shadows.

Wow, we are living in kooky times when a U.S. newspaper does a straight-up story about how homeless students have a tougher time than other students when schools in their neighbourhood close down. Pretty unsettling story not so much because of what it's actually about, but because it treats the concept of homeless students like it's a normal thing.

Check out the fascinating buzz going on at the CCSVI Facebook page, where the piece I wrote today about multiple sclerosis got posted. This is clearly one hot topic among people with MS.

What's the real reason for resisting help for people with MS?

Paulo Zamboni must have been hanging out with the marketers too long when he coined that cursed phrase “liberation therapy” for a garden-variety angioplasty.

Maybe if the Italian doctor hadn’t made it all sound quite so fancy and amazing, we’d just be doing what we always do for people with blocked veins, giving them angioplasties to open things up.  Instead, we’re acting like it’s some unheard-of procedure and putting up a real fight to stop people with MS from trying it.

You probably know the story by now. Zamboni tried angioplasty on people with MS to test his theory that the devastating illness might be caused by blocked veins that affected blood flow in the brain. Patients responded in near-miraculous ways, and the “liberation therapy” was quickly news all over the world.

But even as people with MS grew hopeful at the news, a massive resistance was building among governments, doctors, MS support groups and virtually anyone else with a professional tie to the issue.

On the one hand, it’s understandable.

Zamboni didn’t do the double-blind, control-group kinds of studies that are required in countries like Canada.  His theory goes against everything we think we know about MS, challenging the common wisdom that it’s an incurable auto-immune disorder best managed through lifelong drug therapy.

On the other, what’s this wave of resistance really about? More than 35,000 angioplasties are performed in Canada every year, 99 per cent of them without incident. Other than touting it as a potential cure for MS, Zamboni isn’t advocating an unusual or dangerous procedure.

 So why are the MS professionals so resistant to even considering that people with MS might have blocked veins? Why are we forcing ill Canadians to travel to other countries on their own dime just to get a scan to confirm whether their veins might indeed be blocked? Why are we making it so hard for desperate people to hold onto hope of reclaiming at least a little mobility?

“Right now, it’s my only hope,” says Sharon Kristiansen, a Victoria woman who has lived with MS for 31 years. “Maybe it would mean that one day I could walk again. But if not that, then at least maybe I could get more feeling back in my fingertips. The slightest things make a difference.”

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the power of the pharmaceutical companies can’t be underestimated when trying to understand the resistance.

On average, people with MS use $20,000 to $40,000 worth of prescription drugs every year to control their symptoms. (Kristiansen’s annual drug costs are $25,000.) Onset is typically between ages 20 and 40. MS isn’t noted for shortening your lifespan, so many people live 40 to 60 years with the disease.

Close to three million people around the world have MS, including 55,000 Canadians. Based on my rudimentary math calculations, that means that just the current crop of Canadians with MS will use between $44 billion and $134 billion worth of prescription drugs over their combined lifetimes.

Assuming people in other countries are also paying at least $20,000 a year for drug therapy and living with MS for the same length of time, we’re talking a mind-blowing $2.4 trillion worldwide  just to treat the people who have the disease right now.

That’s a lot of sales at risk. I know that’s an ugly thing to say, but can we honestly feel confident that we’re exploring potential cures for MS when that much money is at stake?

Drug companies are very good at public relations, to the point that everyone from researchers to doctors to advocacy groups and “grassroots” health organizations ends up compromised. Case in point: The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

Kudos to the society for issuing its first-ever proposal call last fall for further research into Zamboni’s theory. That can’t have been an easy decision given that drug companies donate half a million dollars or more every year to the society.

Six drugs are approved for use in Canada for the treatment of MS. The manufacturers of five of them were listed as major donors in the MS Society’s 2008 and 2009 annual reports.

Just four donors in the country gave at the top level last year, with gifts of $100,000 or more. Two were drug companies.

Is any of that proof of something afoot? No. Zamboni’s theory challenges the status quo in all kinds of ways, and for all I know the resistance is simply about sound medical practise.

But for the first time ever, there’s a glimmer of real hope on the horizon for people with MS. I just find it odd that we’re putting so much effort into raining on their parade.