"Rapid Response" Science -- Developing a Vaccine for Novel Coronavirus

Alyson Kelvin, (Liam Richards/The Canadian Press)

"I work from waking up until going to sleep. My whole life has shifted. My husband and children are back in Halifax."
"It's especially important [developing a meticulous method in avoidance of safety risks] because the original SARS vaccines weren't effective and sometimes led to more severe disease in the end. So, this is an important stage of the evaluation [of potential vaccines against novel coronavaris]."
"We may see waves of it [coronavirus] in the same way we do with influenza. ... Having a vaccine and being ready for this particular virus could help us if that becomes a reality."
Alyson Kelvin, 39, virologist, International Vaccine Centre, Saskatoon

David Kelvin, (Submitted by David Kelvin)

"Rather than going through a lengthy process of days, we can do it [biomarkers test to identify severity of the virus] rapidly and provide assistance to doctors who are looking at a surge of patients and can decide who should receive hospitalization at the earlier stages of the disease."
"This call for the initial research was $1 million. It's a fantastic initial start."
"We realize and know that to continue this through the full duration of the infection cycle, we're going to have to have a lot more investment."
David Kelvin, 65, professor, department of microbiology and immunology, Dalhousie University, Halifax

Father and daughter, both are scientists who have taken on a professional dedication to fighting global infectious diseases. And now the novel coronavirus has led them to an exhausting trial in the creation of tests and vaccines in short order in reflection of a global pandemic, in pursuit of saving lives. Dr.Alyson Kelvin normally works at Dalhousie University but now is seconded to the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization laboratory in Saskatoon, and has been there since mid-February.

Her work has her focusing on testing vaccines in laboratory animals. Her father, stationed in Halifax is immersed in the creation of a portable test kit meant to identify the severity of the disease in people who have tested positive for the virus. What they are working on is a field identified as "rapid response" science; fast-tracking a collaborative search, supported by federal funding, with other scientists working on the pandemic, from around the globe.

Dr. Alyson had watched her father work on HIV-AIDS, when she was young and this was her life-work inspiration in a career that has seen her work on the first SARS outbreak, the Zika virus and a number of influenza outbreaks, while her father has similarly been at work on many of the same outbreaks. Among Dr.David Kelvin's projects is a thrust on identifying "biomarkers" -- molecules activating white blood cells -- to indicate whether someone who tests positive for coronavirus is at risk of developing a severe case of COVID-19.

The creation of a kit to allow health-care providers to swiftly determine who requires hospitalization would potentially keep beds and respirators vitally needed, open for those patients identified as being most in need of them. Dr.Alyson, along with a doctoral student and technician from Dalhousie works with Darryl Falzarano, coronavirus investigator at the International Vaccine Centre, carrying out animal model tests for potential vaccines.

Her team is currently working with three vaccines that molecular virologist Chris Richardson -- a scientist at  Dalhousie University -- developed. Dr.Richardson has had experience in his field of professional expertise for the past forty years, and cautions that such vaccine research normally takes several years. "Typically it could be two years and clinical trials can go even further."

Dr.David Kelvin is hopeful that the biomarkers for the test kits will result from collaboration with scientists he is connected with in China and Italy, in four to ten weeks, with further work required to connect with commercial collaborators who might be interested in producing the kits. "We can experimentally induce viral infections and disease, and we can evaluate the kits using samples from our experiments before they're used in people", explained Dr.Alyson.

Her father is concerned with persuading government to reflect on whether funding for vaccine research should have been available sooner, much less on a steady basis. "We need to impress on everyone this is our third pandemic in 20 years. We don't want to respond in an emergency fashion every time. We want to be really well prepared."

Alyson Kelvin is working with three vaccines developed by a Halifax molecular virologist and a vaccine developed by a scientist at the centre. (Liam Richards/The Canadian Press)

An Overdue Life-and-Waste Discussion

"There's a middle group that, if there was anybody interested in organizing them, could probably mediate some of the stuff at the far ends of both spectrums."
"It wouldn't make everybody happy. But nobody is happy now, anyway."
"People on both sides of the issue are nervous about speaking about things that are ethically complex, because how will those things be used by people on the other side. Those of us who are pro-choice present pro-lifers as adamant -- 'no abortion for any reason, just let the woman die'. [Whereas pro-lifers think of pro-choice people believing abortion not the delivery room is entirely acceptable.] Neither of these things is true."
"There are reasons women have abortions, and if those reasons didn't exist, many of them would continue their pregnancies."
Frances Kissling, president, Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy, Washington

"Outside of a fraction of the country, the abortion issue, on the whole, as a medical transaction, seems done."
"[The issue behind abortion acceptability presents] a quandary that now puts abortion in the realm of the assisted dying debate."
"We are past the stage of whether or not we should have the moral, ethical, legal and legislative right [to a doctor-assisted departure from this world]. On that issue, we're now into the weeds of deciding the final what and when. And that's comparatively where the abortion issue is now."
John Write, pollster, DART & Maru/Blue polling

"[There exists a lack of nuance in public debates on abortion] because of the kinds of questions too often asked in public polls on abortion. Questions that aren't meaningful to the lives of people most directly affected."
"[A minor with an unwanted pregnancy and unsupportive parents in parental consent can be asked an opinion and] one would likely get a very different answer than from a random poll."
"A meaningful question about abortion later in pregnancy would ask about the reasons why people seek and need abortion through pregnancy, and about the hardships endured, the resources required and the stigma suffered by many in accessing this care."
Joanna Erdman, associate professor, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

New technologies are pushing the boundaries of “fetal viability,” and challenging our ideas about confronting us with discomforting questions about abortion.   Getty Images

Hospitals and clinics in Canada performed slightly over 85,000 abortions in 2018, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information; a lower number than was done in 2017, at 94,000 when the abortion drug Mifegymiso was available in Canada, when women could abort in the privacy of their homes. The two-pill regimen can be prescribed within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, where a normal full-term is roughly 40 weeks.

A fetus cannot breathe outside its mother's body at 21 weeks; the tiny sacs called alveoli that fill with oxygen are not yet fully developed; premature lungs lack surfactant to keep the tiny air sacs from collapsing and sticking together when deflated. Yet the near future holds out the possibility that a fetus could be placed within an artificial womb, a translucent, plastic vessel filled with fluid mimicking the uterine environment. An oxygenator powered by fetal heartbeat,

In such a scenario an "extracorporeal" uterine device would nurture a viable human fetus enabling it to grow, bathed in artificial amniotic fluid until such time as the lungs, brain and other organs mature, technicians keeping watch while the sounds of a maternal heartbeat soothe the fetus. The greater majority of Canadians believe abortion should not be legal past the initiation of the third trimester of pregnancy -- 28 weeks onward.

There is a middle group identified by an extensive national survey of Canadians with more nuanced views on abortion than the committed pro-lifers and -choicers. A recently published DART & Maru/Blue poll found seven in ten Canadians think of the current situation on abortion, with no legal restrictions at any stage of pregnancy acceptable. Decades ago an earlier poll indicated that 44 percent of people surveyed believed abortion should be legal in some circumstances, with 32 percent saying when the woman wanted it, and 22 percent that it be prohibited unless the mother's life was in danger.

The current DART poll found one in ten considers abortion unacceptable; the majority -- 71 percent -- feel a woman should have access to an abortion once she decides she wants to have it, irrespective of reason. Yet a deeper issued revealed itself when the survey highlighted areas of ethical and moral debate where, though two-thirds (62 percent) of Canadians led by Quebec and British Columbia, identify primarily as pro-choice, and only one in ten as pro-life (led by Alberta, at 19 percent), one quarter of Canadians felt uncomfortable in either category.

Of those, three-quarters believe an abortion should be legal when evidence exists that the fetus may be mentally or physically impaired, while six in ten believe abortion should be legal if the woman or family is unable to raise the child affordably. Canadians believe almost unanimously (93 percent) that doctors should be lawfully required to inform women of potential risks of surgical abortion prior to the procedure. Over three-quarters favour a law that would require doctors to inform women about abortion alternatives, like adoption.

A law requiring women seeking abortion to wait 24 hours between counselling and committing to the procedure is favoured by two-thirds of respondents, while half believe a law should require women under 18 to have parental consent for an abortion, and seven in ten feel abortion should be illegal in the final three months of pregnancy. And while a dominant majority reject abortion outright for sex selection -- usually favouring males -- only 57 percent believe abortion should be legal in the second trimester.

As to the question whether government should debate the issue of abortion, three-quarters of respondents feel matters would best be left as they are, yet the status quo reflects that Canada is alone in the world with no legal boundaries on abortion even while half of Canadians feel politicians should at the very least be willing to discuss providing some regulatory framework. The extremes on both sides of the issue, points out Ms. Kissling, a pro-choice Catholic herself, control the politics in their entrenched warfare, paying no mind to moral complexities, reducing the debate to absolutist positions.

A team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is developing a “Biobag,” or artificial womb-like device, to help keep babies born severely premature alive. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Alternative Medical Treatments With GoFundMe

"Campaign recipients were a very ill group as evidenced by the fact that at least 62 [representing 28 percent of the total studied] had died following the start of their [online GoFundMe campaigns]."
"Campaigners sought a range of other unproven cancer treatments [beside homeopathic treatments]."
"Campaigns driven by any of these rationals [such as claims that homeopathic/naturopathic medicine has been proven with outstanding healing results] have the potential to exacerbate problems associated with the use of alternate cancer treatments, including wasting resources and raising false hopes for better results."
Study, Drs.Snyder and Caulfield, published in The Lancet

"Each of these GoFundMe campaigns is a little human interest story. So they can be very persuasive, particularly if you are a cancer patient looking for answers."
"It really is a worst-case scenario. These are often desperate people leveraging the good will of others to raise money for something that doesn't work, which, in turn, helps to support a harmful industry based on pseudo-science."
Timothy Caulfield, professor of health law and policy, University of Alberta

"These were the sickest people in a lot of cases -- they were going to keep trying various alternative treatments in the hope that might prove a miracle."  
"These are completely unproven treatments. There's no physical explanation for how [homeopathy] could possibly work. It's a placeholder for clearly garbage treatments."
"The typical rationale was, 'I want to make sure I've attempted everything I can possibly do to try to cure it [cancer]."
You get language like  'chemotherapy is poison. I had an uncle who was fine and then he went to the hospital and suffered and died soon after'. Crowdfunding was enabling them to buy all these bunk treatments instead."
"But these are people who might have been better served by palliative care, or coming to grips with their diagnosis. These are very desperate people. What really needs to happen is GoFundMe needs to get involved. They know this is happening. They can't continue to take the position that it is up to people to decide how they spend their money, because they are the ones who are enabling this to happen."
Jeremy Snyder, bioethicist, Simon Fraser University

REUTERS/Eric Gaillard     A patient receives chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer at the Antoine-Lacassagne Cancer Center in Nice on July 26, 2012    

In a new study of the crowdfunding for alternative cancer treatments recently published in The Lancet, these two scientists conducted a search of the GoFundMe platform to assess medical crowdfunding campaigns specifically mentioning 'cancer', along with a number of versions of 'homeopathy'. They were focused on gaining a perspective of the number of people who have made use of crowdfunding to enable them as cancer patients to finance and promote baseless therapies.

It is not, of course, only those making the appeals for others to fund their alternative cancer therapies, but what they write often appear as testimonials to the veracity and effectiveness of thoroughly useless alternates to scientific medical regimens proven to help combat cancer. In the process of persuading people to help fund their campaigns, they are also giving false hope to others like themselves, struggling to cope with the fallout of cancer and its medical treatments.

The growing proliferation of such cancer-related searches for funding of alternate therapies in the belief they will work and miracles will arise where there was previously no hope in defeating end-stage cancer, persuaded Drs. Snyder and Caulfield to search the GoFundMe site where they identified 220 campaigns, most in the U.S., 23 in Canada.

Information was recorded for each campaign registering the amounts requested and subsequently pledged; the number of donors, the number of Facebook shares, the individuals' rationale for alternative treatment, and whether, if at all possible, the person to whom the GoFundMe appeal was linked had died of their cancer.

The numbers are impressive; 13,621donors made pledges totalling $1,413,482, working out to 24 percent of the $5.8-million originally targeted to achieve, and the campaigns were shared 112,353 times on Facebook. Along with homeopathic treatment other therapies included vitamin C infusions, oxygen, ozone and hyperbaric treatments, cleanses and detoxification, energy healing, alkaline water treatments, mistletoe, massage, magnets and chelation therapy.

The numbers the two researchers came up with, while impressive, are also without doubt underestimations since the search conducted on GoFundMe was limited to homeopathic treatments of cancer campaigns representing "the low-hanging fruit", according to Dr. Snyder's considered expert opinion.

Of the 220 individuals seeking alternative treatment, 38 percent were identified as viewing alternative treatments to complement traditional therapeutic treatments for cancer, while another 29 percent entirely reject traditional treatments, committing instead to homeopathic or other unproven and useless treatments. Patients opting solely for alternative medicines were more likely to die, according to a 2017 study of cancer patients.

"People have turned down mainstream treatments in the past, but what is different about this is that crowdfunding is giving them the money to actually do that. I think that's really concerning, because clearly people are dying as a result of that", pointed out Dr. Snyder. "Crowdfunding is being used to pour a lot of money into clearly ineffective treatments, which is a waste of money. It might be pulling people away from effective treatments, and it is actually spreading a lot of misinformation." 

A paper published by a different group of researchers in October 2018 found that at least a thousand medical crowdfunding campaigns have raised millions of dollars for  unproven treatments, many of which have the potential to be dangerous. The October paper was not entirely devoted to cancer, but went further, to analyze treatments for brain injury, spinal cord injury, and chronic Lyme disease.

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP     A patient stands in a hospital hallway.

"[Our goal is to] provide the most effective, supportive and safest place for people to fundraise for causes and needs that are important to them."
"That said, GoFundMe is an open platform and ultimately it is up to the GoFundMe community to decide which campaigns to donate to. We always encourage people to fully research whatever it is they are raising money for and to be absolutely transparent on their GoFundMe page, so donors can make an informed decision on what they're donating to."
GoFundMe

Neurodegenerative Disease: Youth/Elderly

"Notice the obvious paradox. Teenagers. In an epidemic. In norther Uganda. Dying of a neurodegenerative disease."
"It's totally remarkable. Nodding syndrome is a tauopathy. Our hypothesis is that nodding syndrome is a neurodegenerative disease, like Alzheimer's."
Michael Pollanen, chief forensic pathologist, Ontario

A 2012 image from Uganda shows an 11-year-old boy suffering from nodding syndrome.

JAMES AKENA/REUTERS

Nodding Syndrome is recognized as rare and as a disease whose origins are still unknown, mysterious. Understanding it, however, may give medical science a clue to origins and patterns recognized in Alzheimer's Disease. And Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, Michael Pollanen has produced some pioneering research that has been published recently in the journal Acta Neuropathologica. His insight may lead to a new understanding of the nature of age-related dementia and Alzheimer's; one of the oddities here is that Nodding Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that victimizes children, quite the opposite age spectrum that Alzheimer's strikes.

What Dr. Pollanen found remarkable, is that children were dying of an affliction that everywhere else in the world has symptoms that exclusively strike the elderly, with rare exceptions. What is also noted is that while children are being struck down by this degenerative attack on their neural system, their parents remain unaffected by Nodding Syndrome. "Why are the parents not affected?", asks Dr. Pollanen and the answer to that may very well answer a great deal more, with respect to the much broader worldwide issue of Alzheimer's Disease.

He has a scientist's educated hypothesis based on what he already is aware of that a convergence of genetic and environmental factors may be found to be at play. One such epidemic of Nodding Syndrome broke out in the 1960s in Tanzania, and in South Sudan in 1998. Now it has become an epidemic in Northern Uganda; all African nations, all countries that have been roiled by brutal conflicts, by issues of malnutrition and desperate existential fear.

Where it strikes is in impoverished and insecure environments, where subsistence-farming villages have become susceptible to its mysterious onset, along with those languishing in camps for internally displaced people. Only children between around five and fifteen years of age are affected; the disease peaks around the age of eleven. Societal turmoil appears to unleash its onset; in central Africa when the Lord's Resistance Army abducted children to be trained as soldiers or act as sex slaves.

The epidemic first surfaced in a camp for internally displaced persons in 2004 when children would initially display classical nodding, mistaken for atonic seizures; a generalized brief loss of muscle tone that degenerated to severe intellectual impairment, grand mal seizures and death. Victims become mute, some paralyzed in its later stages -- while others yet exhibit Parkinsonism-like symptoms.

These physical and mentally vulnerable children then become victim in a perilous environment of camps to being accidentlally burned in charcoal cooking fires, drowning in open water, injured when falling from heights, or they become the helpless victims of sexual violence. Strong epidemiological association with a common parasitic infection of a water-borne worm that can cause skin problems, blindness and affects the brain has been theorized.

As another theory would have it, Nodding Syndrome represents a lingering effect of the measles virus infection, leading to a neurodegenerative disease.

According to Dr. Pollanen, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control investigated Nodding Syndrome but it appears found no significant answers. It appeared that the agency found nothing in the dissected brains of the victims, leaving room for more intensive investigation. The brains of five fatal cases were studied by Dr. Pollanen; a typical 14-year-old girl had been malnourished, wasted, dehydrated, had multiple healing injuries and died of dehydration and malnutrition.

In their newly published paper, Dr. Pollanen and his colleagues describe a neurofibrillary tangle; distinctive brain lesions that are seen as playing a central role in Alzheimer's. In addressing an audience of doctors and epidemiologists how it would appear if these tangles were in the frontal cortex, the response was: "memory and cognitive impairments". And if the tangles were in the brain stem? Parkinsonism.

The general consensus reached is that Nodding Syndrome "recapitulates" in a manner not yet understood let alone proven -- in children, not adults, the type of neurodegenerative disease typically found in adults worldwide. Tangles in the neurons, age-related plaques in the brain's grey matter, all somehow appear to figure into the equation. What is also unclear is why it is that children born later in birth order are less likely to be affected.

Ageless Cerebral Researcher

"We reached an agreement, right then and there. He [driving instructor] let me pass the [driving] test, and I promised never to drive."
"You see, my spatial skills aren't so good. That's primarily a right-brain function."
"People think because I'm 98 years old I must be emerita [retired with grace]. Well, not at all. I'm still nosy, you know, curious."
"I come into the office [at McGill University, as a senior/senior researcher] about three days a week or so, that is plenty."
"And I have some rules. I will take on post-doctoral students, but not graduate students. Graduate students need to know you'll be around for five years or so, and well -- well, it's very difficult if they have to switch to someone else, you know."
"I live very close [to the university and her office]. It's a ten-minute walk up the hill. So it gives me a good reason to come in regularly."
Dr. Brenda Milner, psychology professor, McGill University

Dr. Brenda Milner in her office at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital last month. Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times

In 1962, Dr. Milner demonstrated that the brain has at least two systems for processing memory. One whose function is explicit in the handling of names, faces and experiences. And the other implicit in incorporating skills such as riding a bicycle, playing a guitar, practising dance steps. Earlier, in 1957 her research was instrumental in changing the course of brain science understanding when a paper she wrote with a brain surgeon concluded that the hippocampus in the medial temporal area of the brain was critical to memory formation.

Even before that, with doctorate in hand, she identified the specific brain organ critical to memory formation, by observing a 29-year-old man from Connecticut who had undergone an operation to relieve severe epileptic seizures. She worked with that patient to demonstrate that his motor memory remained intact, recalling how to perform physical drawing tests, even though lacking the memory of having learned them to begin with.

Dr. Milner, now 98 years of age and determined to continue working and conducting research, may have been unable to satisfy the basic moves in parallel parking, but her brain could always be relied upon to work in overdrive. As a professor of psychology in the McGill department of neurology and neurosurgery in Montreal, she is known for having discovered the seat of memory in the brain.  Its relevance to cognitive neuroscience cannot be overstated.

Her career has spanned close to 70 years of professional life and she has no intention of surrendering it simply because of advanced age.

Her brilliance as a researcher and her single-minded devotion to her craft ensured that if gender barriers to advancement existed, she took little notice of them and simply forged ahead to achieve her goals, and in so doing earned her international reputation as a neuro-cognitive researcher par excellence. No one, either McGill University or the Montreal Neurological Institute affiliated with the university has suggested she step aside.

Funding is available to her through three prominent achievement awards granted her in 2014, providing research money. Her current project focuses on an ongoing study to investigate how the healthy brain's intellectual left hemisphere's co-ordination with the aesthetic right hemisphere in thinking and memory comes about as a vital feature of the human brain. The biology of memory is her bailiwick.

Neuroscience Pioneer, Dr. Brenda Milner       Yannick Grandmont, New York Times

The Complexity of Human Identity

"Intersex, also known as disorders or differences of sex development [DSDS] represents a dozen different conditions] where what you see on the outside is not necessarily matching what you see on the inside."
"[A number of different] configurations [can present. With ambiguous genitalia] it's not clear if you're looking at a large clitoris and vagina, or if you're looking at a small penis with hypospadias [where the opening of the urethra is on the underside, and not the tip of the penis]."
"There used to be time where doctors used to say, 'this is what  your child has, this is what should happen'. Now it's 'here's the evidence about what happens with early treatment, here's the evidence about what happens with later treatment'."
"The most important and the biggest change is that we counsel the parents about explaining from a very early age to the child exactly what's going on, so there's nothing that's hidden and secret. It might be private, you might not tell the whole community. But it's not secret, so there's nothing shameful about having one of these conditions."
Barbara Neilson, social worker, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

"Hi, I'm Hanne and I was born intersex. This means that my body isn't really male or female."
"It's very important to me in my life right now to break the taboo. At this point, in this day and age, it should be perfectly all right to talk about this. . . . Unconsented, unnecessary and irreversible surgeries that cause 'way more harm than do good."
"I am proud to be intersex, but very angry these surgeries are still happening."
Hanne Gaby Odiele, 29, Belgian, Chanel model

Hanne Gaby Odiele poses for photographs at the amfAR's 23rd Cinema Against AIDS Gala at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on May 19, 2016 in Cap d'Antibes, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/WireImage)

"[Surgery to make the genitals appear] more normal [should never be performed until such time as the child is sufficiently mature to decide for himself or herself.]"
"There is no evidence that children who grow up with intersex genitals are worse off psychologically than those who are altered."
interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth

Born with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), the body fails to respond to testosterone properly resulting in the penis and other male parts failing to develop normally, despite being genetically male with male chromosomes; and this describes the condition of Vogue supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele who has decided to speak publicly of her birth condition in support of interACT Advocates in the hopes that no other young people will be manipulated by well-meaning doctors to undergo unnecessary surgery.

Hanne Gaby Odiele is that one in four thousand  people born with both male and female physical traits. When she was ten years of age doctors surgically removed the internal testes she was born with, in a common but  now-controversial effort to "fix" babies born with ambiguous genitalia. She tells how the doctors looking after her informed her parents that "I might develop cancer and I would not develop as a normal, female girl" without surgery.

She is now married. When she was 18 she underwent vagina reconstructive surgery. Females born with AIS have no womb, Fallopian tubes or ovaries. A child looks like a girl at birth with normal appearing genitals reflecting a female appearance, but with undescended or partially descended testes, along with an unusually short vagina, and no cervix.

In 1998 an article was published in The New York Times stating that girls with AIS "often grow into unusually beautiful women, with long legs, clear skin ample breasts and thick hair."

The ancients knew the condition and named an intersex being in their pantheon of gods and goddesses, as Hermaphroditus:

Up to 1.7 percent of babies worldwide are born with sex characteristics which do not match typical definitions of "male or "female", according to the United Nations. Which also cautions that sex-assignment surgery has the potential to cause infertility, lifelong pain, loss of sexual sensation and mental anguish. As a result, that interference is considered to represent a human rights violation when surgery is undertaken lacking proper legal consent.

As far as the Intersex Society of North America is concerned, babies who exhibit intersex should ideally be "assigned" boy or girl, "depending on which of those genders the child is more likely to feel as she or he grows". In the 1950s, doctors at Johns Hopkins University felt that the "optimum gender of rearing" position would best work in treatment of intersex children, performed by surgery before 18 months of age.

Ethicists at the present time argue that consent should be awaited on whether or not to proceed with surgical sex assignments until such time as the child him/herself can appreciate the consequences, arguing that there is no harm in delaying surgery, even though the practise of performing surgery on children with ambiguous genitalia remains commonplace to the present time.

Mlahanas -- Hermaphroditus, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes

Out Of This World

"There's absolutely no concern for me that they can get us there safely and they're not going to send us unless the colony is ready to go."
Alex Marion, 26, Surrey, British Columbia

"I've always said that if such a trip would happen in my lifetime, I would do everything it takes to be part of it. It breaks my heart to actually leave them, but I've had a talk with them and they understand it is my dream since I was young."
Audrey Roy, 19, technical engineering student, Saint-Ephrem-de-Beauce, Quebec

"We were both incredibly surprised about my making it -- not so much of him not making it. We both had hopes, but there was no expectation there, so it was quite incredible to get the email."
Christy Foley, 32, Alberta government employee

Christy Foley, but not her 33-year-old husband who also applied for the selection process to be chosen to take part in a one-way journey to Mars scheduled to begin in 2024, was among seventy-five Canadians chosen to travel to Mars through the non-profit organization, Mars One, based in Amersfoort, Netherlands. When the Mars One project was announced inviting applicants, it amassed a global applicant pool of over 200,000 people.

There were 8,243 applications from Canadians with an average age of around 35. On December 30, Mars One brought the pool of prospective travellers to a 99.5% reduction. That done, a mere 1,058 candidates were left to enter the second round of the selection process. Now, 43 Canadian women and 32 Canadian men are set to take part in the next part of the process. University of Moncton math and physics professor, 60-year-old Claude Gautier isn't certain why he might have been selected.

Presumably he knows why he made application for the one-way trip, but at age 60 at the present time, he would be in his 70s by the time the first departure of four leaving every two years is initiated. And it is anticipated that, taking off in 2024, arrival on Mars will be within the following year. "Half of the family agrees that I should go on the trip, the other half is under negotiations. My wife reserves the right of veto and she'll have the last word", he said. Better be nice to her.

Prior to sending these adventurous volunteers into the void of deep, dark and very cold space, the enterprise plans to put together an infrastructure on the planet including living quarters, communications sytems and a water supply. Mars looks rather desolate as a destination, given the Mars rover photographs relayed back down to Earth. But then, people make strange decisions with their live prospects, and this may represent just another quirk in human nature.

Canada, with 75 prospective travel candidates represented the second-largest tranche selected after the United States, where 297 candidates were chosen. India came in third behind Canada with 62 candidates taking their place within the second round. Applications were received from hopefuls representing one hundred countries. Confoundingly all such chosen candidates must now present health certificates signed by a physician.

Amazing that this was not a requirement from the word go, to accomany the completed application requests. Mars One's medical director, Dr. Norbert Kraft wishes to receive confirmation that candidates have no serious physical illnesses or addictions to drugs or alcohol. "We want to make sure they are healthy enough to join the program", he explained from San Jose, California. A trifle tardily, it would seem.

Why complicate the adventure of a year's journey to outer space by having to plan for a sick bay for those who may never live long enough to colonize Mars?

A Humpty-Dumpty World

It's kind of a social conundrum. A tricky one. One that leaves more questions than answers. What's normal and not normal in our post-modern society of liberal-social-progressive thought and sensibilities in a truly pluralist society?

Take, for example, illegal recreational drug use. When it's done by celebrities, high-paid performers, singers, actors, it's cool; they're relaxing, that's what recreation is all about, isn't it? When it's done by politicians we hardly know about it, because they're discreet about their mode of recreational ease. And they will scarcely go about informing their constituents that they're hooked on feeling good, now will they?

And then there are high-powered business types, CEOs, that kind of public-private persona, getting away from the stress of the job.

Alcohol, drugs, take your pick, they're both addictive, they're both very capable of destroying a life. Moderation, of course, is the key to controlling one's habit, but moderation is difficult to achieve when free choice has been made to use a mind-altering drug that will control you, not you control its use. Famously, but quietly, medical professionals, under pressure and with drugs so readily accessible, find themselves addicted to drugs.

Their profession morally and professionally mandates they be in control.

If a surgeon is in the operating room and he's under the influence of drugs, how reliant can a patient be -- oblivious to the state their seemingly capable doctor may be struggling with -- that they will emerge from a serious operation that will most certainly forever alter their lives, positively or negatively. And nurses, when doling out specific medications in very specific amounts to patients; how capable are they when they're not in their right mind thanks to the ingestion of drugs?

But these are the responsible, respected, highly-motivated, socially accepted members of society. They're not the down-and-out, the poorly-waged living in seedy neighbourhoods where they and their offspring indulge in illegal drugs use to defray the misery of their lives. A dirty habit that society condemns them for and the police look out for, prepared to arrest and charge and appear in court to give witness in  criminal court proceedings.

And where does someone like Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto, fall in this catalogue of equal ethical and moral failures, but condemned outright and susceptible to criminal charges in the underworld of the poor and the marginalized and the criminal element of society, but skirted around in the discreet use by respected members of society?

Come to that, there are members of society who are outright condemned for their choice of lifestyle and working habits. Working girls commonly referred to as prostitutes, whores or sluts live a dangerous lifestyle, exposing themselves to dire sexually transmitted medical conditions and equally worrisome, violence at the hands of some of their johns. Those johns are all right, though, since many of them are representative of the same level of societal respect as the bankers and physicians who use drugs.

And then, there's the equality in human rights entitlements given to the peculiarity of the cross-gendered, those who are sexually attracted to same-gendered lovers and who, though once horribly persecuted and exposed to a violent backlash from 'normal' gendered heterosexuals, are now given a stamp of societal and legal approval through the absurdity of 'same-sex' marriage, preferred over the legality of civil union protections.

Where two women exchange sacred vows of the marriage rites, and where two men will do the same. The women may prefer to consider one another 'husbands', while the men may consider one of the pair to represent the 'wife', while the other is the 'husband'. The real question here is why would homosexuals insist that they be entitled to the sacraments of a social institution specifically geared to heterosexual bonds?

A former Ontario provincial Member of Parliament who performed abysmally at the profession of politician by making errors and decisions that cost the taxpayer grief, felt sufficiently confident in his lifestyle and orientation to openly present as the 'wife' in a longstanding union with a man considered the 'husband', (counter-intuitively, the husband a much smaller man than the wife), and who was content to be a 'stay-at-home' father to two adopted infants until he finally succeeded after a number of attempts in committing suicide.

Society seeing little amiss in what certainly appears to be a dysfunctional setting for two small and vulnerable children, patterning themselves on the lifestyles of their 'parents'; their 'father' and their 'mother'.

Diplomat: Israeli Resolution at UN Cosponsored by Record 114 Countries Shows Weakening of Arab Bloc

December 5, 2013 5:46 pm 

Author:

Dovid Efune

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Arab kingdom Arab led alliance arab world Dovid Efune Dovid Efune Algemeiner Israel Agriculture Israel Technology Israel UN Israeli backed Israeli Diplomat Muslim Studies Palestinian issue ron prosor Simonne Levavi UN United Nations Prosor United Nations resolution

The Saudi representative at the UN. Photo: Screenshot. 

A United Nations resolution brought forward by Israel that received a record number of co-sponsors earlier this week, was seen as a weakening of the Arab-led alliance against Israel at the UN, an Israeli diplomat told The Algemeiner.

Simonne Levavi, Israel’s Adviser on Social and Economic Affairs at the UN mission, who worked to build consensus for the Agricultural Technology for Development resolution, also said that Israel is becoming known at the UN for other issues besides the Palestinian one.

“Israel and the mission here at the UN are increasingly becoming more active in issues outside of the Palestinian issue, and people are recognizing that, and people are recognizing that Israel has something to say especially in terms of development and technology,” Levavi said.

Levavi answered in the affirmative when asked if she thought that UN members were tiring of the Palestinian issue. “You can just see in the room that people are like ‘oh this again,’” she said, referring to the moment when harsh criticism was leveled against Israel by Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority as the resolution was adopted.

Levavi also said that the vote in effect isolated the Arab bloc.
“The G-77, which is a big bloc of 130 countries, negotiate together on development resolutions, and on our resolution they didn’t negotiate in one bloc,” she said, “because the Arab group which is part of this larger group didn’t join.”

“We have a resolution which breaks up this group because they can’t agree, the Arab group can’t convince the whole group to not engage on the resolution at all, because there are African countries there that really care about agricultural technologies.”
“On a development issue, it is very rare that they split up,” she said.

The biannual resolution is one of two that Israel pushes routinely. The first time that this particular resolution was presented was in 2007, and the amount of co-sponsors has risen every time since. Two years ago, 103 co-sponsors signed on, eleven less than this year. Israel’s other biannual resolution is entitled “Entrepreneurship for Development,” and it most recently attracted 97 co-sponsors.

Although among the co-sponsors, which included India, Brazil and Argentina, were members of the powerful Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Arab states forced the resolution to a vote, even though most resolutions at the United Nations’ Second Committee, which covers economic and financial matters, are adopted by consensus.

Asked why she thought that the typically powerful Arab bloc was unable to halt support for the resolution, Levavi said “It is very difficult for countries not to support agricultural technology.”
“It is a huge priority internationally to end hunger, and agricultural technology is one of the pillars to be able to do this, to be able to produce more, more sustainably,” she said, “especially considering the resolution focuses on developing countries and focuses on building developing countries’ capacity to adopt technologies they can use.”

The resolution calls for the empowering of youth, especially those living in rural areas, and building and strengthening agricultural cooperatives through investments in technology, sustainable production and marketing techniques. It also advocates increasing the participation of women and youth to dramatically reduce poverty, provide food and job security, and increasing access to information and communication technology and agriculture.

Ironically, Arab countries are among those that could benefit the most from Israeli agricultural technology, a point that Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations was sure to drive home in his remarks following the passing of the resolution. 

“There is one group of nations standing in the way of us achieving consensus on this resolution, not surprisingly the Arab group,” Prosor said. “Ironically, few countries could benefit more from agricultural technologies than the Arab world. Across this region people are hungry for change and thirsty for progress, yet the Arab governments are stubbornly determined to put politics before people.”

“They really take every opportunity to hijack any meeting or anything (at the United Nations) to blame Israel for something,” Levavi added.

“They only care about this (the Palestinian) issue and that is what they are focused on, and we focus on a whole lot of other issues and I think that other delegations at the UN appreciate that, they see that and they appreciate that,” she added.

Levavi sees things getting better for Israel at the United Nations.
“I see it as a natural progression of our work,” she said. “I really hope that one day we can adopt it (the resolution) by consensus.”

“I see us continuing and probably having more, different resolutions and probably we will get more than 114 co-sponsors.”

Regarding the possibility that Arab states might ever get on board with mutually beneficial Israeli backed efforts at the UN, Levavi was less optimistic. “Unfortunately, I am skeptical that they will ever let go of their need to blame us all the time, I don’t see that happening,” she said.

In remarks on behalf of the Arab bloc preceding the vote, Saudi Arabia reinforced her concerns.
“…Israel continues to violate those resolutions which undermines its credibility within the United Nations, and also member states must be opposed to this attitude and should not allow Israel to manipulate the organization by presenting this draft resolution which deals with important technical issues for developing countries in order to achieve certain political designs and that is to hide their policies…” the Saudi representative said.

Seizing the opportunity to needle the Arab kingdom on its human rights abuses, Ambassador Prosor had a sharp response.

“…and I would like to suggest with this to the Saudi representative to allow women to drive behind the wheel before they steer the conversation here further off course,” he said.

“With this resolution, we are fortunate to help developing countries become masters of the field and masters of their own destiny,” Prosor said in his remarks.

But the Saudi representative insisted that the Arab world needs nothing from Israel.
“…it needs not use agricultural technology provided by Israel to develop agriculture, rather we have our Muslim studies and scientists who can provide what is needed to develop agriculture in all fields,” he said.