UBC Reports | Vol. 48 | No. 10 | Aug. 1 , 2002

In The News

Highlights of UBC Media Coverage in July 2002.

Compiled By Brian Lin

Boomers Betting on Botox

All across North America, aging baby boomers are lining up for the privilege to have their face injected with Botox, the miracle molecule that eliminates wrinkles.

"Overall people are more concerned about how they look," UBC Clinical Asst. Prof. of dermatology David Zloty told the Vancouver Sun. "They want their physical self to reflect how they feel."

"Botox is a medical procedure we believe should be done in a medical situation by physicians trained in pharmacology and the clinical use of Botox, and who have a good understanding of skin and facial muscles," cautioned another clinical assistant professor of dermatology Larry Warshawski, who has been using Botox on his own furrow lines twice a year for three or four years.

Chardonnay of the Century Contest Cancelled

Organizers of the Chardonnay of the Century wine competition have been forced to cancel the event due to a lack of sponsors arising from the economic uncertainty following Sept. 11.

"It was impossible after Sept. 11 to even talk about a wine competition," Hennie van Vuuren, director of the Wine Research Centre at UBC, told the National Post.

"Who wanted to talk about a wine competition after the tragic event in New York?"

Even though wineries from France, Germany, Austria, Australia and Canada were prepared to enter their top chardonnays, the lack of sponsors crippled organizers' ability to attract enough entries to make for a credible competition, he added.

"The objective of this challenge was to obtain a collection of outstanding chardonnay wines, to collect a database. I could go back and study what these 100 wines have in common," said van Vuuren. "We would have made these wines available to researchers all over the world."

HRT Controversy Continues

In response to the recently published research study on hormone replacement therapy, UBC endocrinologist Dr. Jerilynn Prior told Maclean's magazine that women should not stop therapy if they're on it for a good reason.

"If they're on it for an unjustifiable reason, then - and this is a very important point - they should come off their estrogen therapy extremely slowly," she added. "The brain gets used to high estrogen levels and it reacts just like an addict's brain reacts when their drug of choice is withdrawn. You need to sort of de-condition the brain."

"Prevention of heart disease or Alzheimer's - or to keep women young and sexy - are not good reasons," she said.

War with Iraq Likely

Andrew Mack, director of the Centre for Human Security at UBC's Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues told the International Herald Tribune that the U.S. is contemplating war because diplomacy and sanctions have failed to persuade Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions.

"Bush administration hawks see 'regime change' as the only way to ensure that Iraq gives up its weapons of mass destruction," Mack said. "They are very probably right."

Mack added that authoritarian regimes ultimately fail because, as societies become more developed, complex and interdependent, they also become increasingly difficult to govern by coercion.

"Abandoning the draconian sanctions that have enriched Saddam's henchmen, wiped out the middle class and caused appalling suffering would enable the Iraqi economy, now a quarter of its size in 1990, to recover. This would facilitate re-emergence of the middle class, the most effective potential source of resistance to the regime in the long term."

Demand for Assisted Suicide Increasing

Dr. Romayne Gallagher of UBC Palliative Care told BCTV News Hour that she has seen a marked increase in the number of her patients asking her to assist in their suicides.

"When people say they want to die, what they're saying is they can't live like they're living right now. It doesn't mean that if someone were to meet their needs that they would still want to die," she said.

"We need the health care system and the community to join together in meeting the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of people with a life-threatening illness."