World's most expensive medication

Garrett Shakespeare, a 23-year-old North Vancouverite, suffers from paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), a rare blood disease that attacks red blood cells.  The treatment consists of intravenous doses of Soliris; a single 45-minute treatment costs $17,000.  According to Forbes magazine, Soliris, at US $409,500 a year, is the world's single most expensive drug.

British Columbia initially refused to fund Shakespeare's treatment, but a Canada-wide lobbying effort by PNH patients has resulted in an agreement to fund treatment, which was announced at the meeting of Canadian premiers in Vancouver.  There are approximately 90 PNH patients in Canada who need the drug.  Symptoms include red urine, tiredness, shortness of breath, and palpitations, abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing and pain during swallowing, erectile dysfunction, blood clots, and stroke.  PNH can be life-threatening.

Black men survive longer in prison

According to a new study of inmates in North Carolina published in Annals of Epidemiology, black men who are incarcerated are half as likely to die at any given time than those who are not, especially from alcohol- and drug-related causes, accidents and certain diseases. In contrast, white men are slightly more likely to die in prison.

"Ironically, prisons are often the only provider of medical care accessible by these underserved and vulnerable Americans," said Hung-En Sung of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, at 743 100,000 population as of 2009, with non-Hispanic blacks accounting for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population. Black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate of 4,749 per 100,000 U.S. residents of the same race and gender. White males are incarcerated at the rate of 708 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents. The study involved 100,000 men between the ages of 20 and 79 who incarcerated in North Carolina at some point between 1995 and 2005. Sixty percent of those men were black.