Tonight: Marketplace, The Fifth Estate

Marketplace, CBC – “License to Deceive”
Licence to Deceive is a months-long investigation into drugstore remedies and how they are licensed by Health Canada. MARKETPLACE gets their own product licensed without any scientific proof, raising questions about the government agency that’s supposed to keep you and your family safe and healthy. MARKETPLACE uncovers a troubling lack of oversight for some over-the-counter remedies and a lack of scientific proof behind some claims, and they reveal how consumers can be misled with potentially dangerous consequences.

The Fifth Estate, CBC – “The Pain Game: Drugs, Doctors and Pro Sports”
It’s the untold tale of prescription drug abuse in professional sport. An investigation by the fifth estate discovers a shocking story of the rampant over-prescription of drugs by some team doctors in major sports leagues. Former Canadian NHL player Derek Boogaard was found dead in his apartment in 2011, after what was ruled to be an unintentional overdose of alcohol and the painkiller oxycodone. But in the months after his son’s death, former RCMP officer Len Boogaard worked to piece together his son’s medical history and made a startling discovery – Derek had received hundreds of prescriptions from dozens of team doctors for a total of thousands of tablets of powerful painkillers and other dangerous drugs. In football, too, over-medication is a problem many in the league are unwilling to face. Jeremy Newberry, who spent years as the all-pro center for the San Francisco 49ers, describes a dressing room assembly line for painkilling injections. When these doctors’ first loyalty is to the team owners who pay their salary, and whose ultimate goal is to win, can they really have athletes’ best interests – and safety – at heart?

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