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The Current Transcript for February 5, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Even if we got lucky and found a biologically vulnerable part of this virus to get a vaccine, the procedures would take, I think at the minimum, we're talking about is years, not months.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: He's a scientist with the World Health Organization. The WHO is concerned about the Zika virus, this week, labeling it a public health emergency of international concern. So the race is on to develop an anti-Zika vaccine, though the need for clinical trials involving pregnant women will force extra precautions. We'll talk about the ethical quandary that all raises later on today. Also today, in the years since Western powers helped topple its leader Moammar Gadhafi, Libya has descended into crisis and chaos.

[sc]

That country has resources. The last thing in the world you want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue.

PC: That's US Secretary of State John Kerry painting a worst case scenario for the future of Libya. Right now, there is a power vacuum that's proving irresistible to actors including the so-called Islamic state and as that group gains a foothold countries, including Canada, are talking seriously about the potential for another military intervention in Libya. And we'll talk about that too in a half hour. And what's it like to flee a country marred by chaos, crisis, and then find safe haven?

SOUNDCLIP

[translated] We heard the Canadians were kind, but now we're feeling it by living in it and being close to this kindness. It's different than just hearing about it. It's actually indescribable.

PC: Well, if that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about being Canadian, you're about to hear more. Canada, meet Abdallah Al Abdallah and, in a moment, the rest of his family, a family who fled Syria and has taken refuge in our country trying to start life anew. Hello. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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'Soon, all of Canada will be our family:' Syrian family adjusts to a new home

Guests: Abdallah Al Abdallah, Nahla Al Sammon, Mohamad Al Abdallah, Sawsan Awad, Anas Al Abdallah, Oais Al Abdallah, Andrew Fitzgerald

SOUNDCLIP

[door squeaks open]

VOICE 1: Hi, can I come in?

[women speaking Arabic]

VOICE 2: My name is Piya. Nice to meet you.

PC: Well, in many ways I felt like I already knew them, but here we were my first time meeting face to face with the Al Abdallah family. They are among the first Syrian refugee families to arrive in Canada with the help of a community group of sponsors. We brought you the story of those sponsors, known as the Ripple Refugee Project, here on The Current last fall. And then in December, I talked to Anas Al Abdallah after he first touchdown here in Canada ahead of the rest of his family. But there are eight family members of the Al Abdallah family here now and they’re living in two apartments in north east Toronto. I dropped by earlier this week to see how life in Canada is going. So here is my conversation with Anas, his parents Abdallah Al Abdallah and Nahla Al Sammon, brothers Oais and Mohamad , Mohamad’s wife Sawsan, and their two children Aya and ReeMohamad Al Abdallah: , who are eight and five. The Current’s Pacinthe Mattar joined me to help with interpretation.

VOICE 1: [muffled speaking]

PC: I like it. You are a true Canadian. You're wearing your Roots sweatpants. [laughter]

VOICE 1: Yes.

PC: Well, hello and welcome to you Mohamad Al Abdallah and Nahla. You've been in Canada now for about two months. You arrived at the beginning in December and I just want to know, how are you all doing? How's it going?

NAHLA AL SAMMON: [translated] Thank God everything is good. God has chosen the best for us. We have to say a big thank you to our sponsor group and to the Canadian government that has taken us in and reunited us.

PC: Can you tell me what the last two months have been like for you? If you go back two months ago when your family was in Lebanon what, at the time, you were thinking about the expectations for Canada and sort of what's come to pass in the last two months? What surprised you? What's been difficult? What's been easy?

NAHLA AL SAMMON: [translated] We were very eager to come to a new country and to live a stable and calm my life. Life in Lebanon before we came was very tense, very stressful. We lived like that for three years. Everything there is Syrian, Syrian, Syrian. Our livelihood got cut off, our work. Everything was, we’re Syrians, Syrian.

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] Here, in Canada, they don't differentiate between people. But in other countries, even in Arab countries, they discriminate between one kind of Arab and another. Canada sets itself apart, because people from all over the world live together here with a sense of fellowship and understanding and familiarity and everything is okay here.

PC: I think that's a nice thing for many people to hear that you've felt very welcome. Is there a story that sticks out for you in the last two months that really captures what it's like for you being in Canada?

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] We were welcomed when we arrived from the airport. Seeing the prime minister of Canada here himself, being part of that welcome, we were really touched by that and the kind, wonderful Canadian people showing us the best of themselves, their sense of pureness and safety. It makes you feel respected and appreciative of everything.

PC: You’re all smiling as we're talking. And I'm just wondering how much that has changed in the last two months?

NAHLA AL SAMMON: [translated] In Syria we lived a very normal life. We were very happy and lived in safety. But things changed and we had to go. But in Lebanon, life there was quite miserable. But here, we’re happy.

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] We were humiliated in Lebanon, we've never seen anything like it.

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] Of course, we get very sad thinking about those left behind, and how they're living. But we try to forget about it, to distract ourselves, so that we can keep going on with our lives. So we're focused on the kids, and Oais's treatment, on the future. We want to feel happiness again, and not let the sadness take us over.

PC: And how difficult is that to do?

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] We have to try to move on, because we've had relatives that have died, relatives that are still in prisons. But life has to go on. We can't stop the turning wheel of life. Bit by bit, we're trying to keep focused on the future, and what goodness it may bring, and trying to leave the worst of it all behind us.

PC: And what does that future look like to you all? When you imagine it?

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] We want to live a good life here, peaceful, and safe. To learn, and live like these people, and understand them. Learn the language, so that we can understand, and blend more with society here, and integrate and be part of it all. And to forget what happened to us, and live a life better than the one we left behind.

PC: You still have family back in Syria and I'm just wondering if you can give us a sense of how often you talk to them, what do you talk about, what are your hopes for them?

NAHLA AL SAMMON: [translated] I have siblings I haven't spoken to in a very, very long time. One of them, they took him to prison. His wife is still in Damascus. It's been so long since we've spoken.

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] And his son, a young man, they've taken him away too. It's been four years that we don't know anything about him, whether he's dead or alive.

PC: I mean, obviously you missed your family and wonder what is happening to them. And I'm not sure how much you're following Syria on the news here, I'm sure it's a lot. What do you miss most?

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] My house, and my parents. They’re still in Damascus in Syria, in the countryside. There was a massacre there. I haven't seen them in five years. My brother, after they threw him in jail for two months, when he got out, he took his kids and escaped. He has three kids. Now he's on the Turkish border. And my younger brother, he has a degree in English Literature. The Syrian Army wants him to join their forces, but if you get into the Syrian Army, there's no getting out, so I'm looking for someone to help me bring him over here.

PC: I’m sorry to—You’re all crying and I’m sorry to ask you these difficult questions and I promise I will move on in just a moment. But I think one thing that is quite difficult for anyone who is not in your shoes to just really understand how you cope with all of this, and yet this new life that you're building with your family, trying to build a future and I'm not sure how you sort of reconcile that.

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] This is God's fate. What's written is inescapable. If it were up to me, I'd bring everyone here. We all have someone that we'd love to bring with us here to Canada. My husband wants to bring his sister. She's in Egypt; we haven't seen her in four or five years. But there’s nothing we can do right now. We’ve gotten used to it.

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] In the future, God willing. Canada hasn't let us down yet. We hope in the future, we'll all reunite, and life will only get better. God willing, things will get better. The help Canada's given us so far hasn't disappointed us yet.

PC: What can Canadians do to help you?

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] Canadians have been so helpful already, whether the government or our sponsors. We hope they'll keep helping others still in Jordan, in Turkey, in Egypt, our relatives to bring them here. And those in Syria, maybe the Red Crescent, the UN can help get them out. We don't know how exactly, we do know it's something greater than what's possible.

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] There's still a world of people that need help. People are living tragedies, even in Lebanon. There are sieges, there's destruction, and inflation, unprecedented inflation. No heat, no oil. Nothing.

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] No drink, no food, even in Lebanon.

MOHAMAD AL ABDALLAH: [translated] Even those in Lebanon, not just those in Syria. The Syrian in Lebanon is destroyed. He's in a prison worse than being behind the bars of the Syrian regime. They have to deal with militias, thieves, crooked religious figures. They fled one war to go into another war, a psychological war that's even worse.

PC: When I spoke with Anas, who arrived several days before the rest of you all back in December, he told me at the time that his biggest concern and your family's biggest concerns were for Oais and his ability to get around in Canada in a way. So, I’m wondering, how is that all going for you, the accessibility in Canada and Toronto.

OAIS AL ABDALLAH: [translated] I was shocked when I first got here but Canada's focus on and attention to special needs is better than other countries'. Since I got here, the group, and Mr. Andrew, one of our sponsors, has provided everything I needed. Medical equipment, help, any of my medical needs, I'm getting them met.

PC: You were studying law back in Syria, as I understand it. What are your-- Are you hoping to restart your studies in law?

OAIS AL ABDALLAH: [translated] I do want to finish my studies, but my first problem is a language problem. I need to learn the language first and Mr. Andrew and the group have said, don't worry, we'll help you until you finish your studies and earn your degree.

PC: And what about the rest of you? Again, when I spoke with Anas a couple of months ago he said that he really wanted to get working. And I'm wondering how is that all going for you all? Are you looking for work? When do you think you might be able to work?

ANAS AL ABDALLAH: I want to work as a mechanic. Mr. Andrew and someone else from the group, Lisa, they got me a job. But I worried that because of my language difficulties, it might be hard. But I do want to work. We have to.

PC: When you will sit together and talk about your new life and you think about where you all might be a year from now, what do you imagine?

MOHAMAD AL ABDALLAH: [translated] Our focus for this first year is to Mohamad Al Abdallah: ter English. After that, we want to work. I want a job, Anas wants a job. Oais, we're trying to help him as much as we can. As you know, we're from the Middle East and we all take care of each other. We want to secure housing for us. We want to earn a living, to make a living for us as a family. Our main focus is on Oais, and to earn a living ourselves, so that we aren't a burden on anyone. We're grateful to Mr. Andrew and the group, they've helped so much, but after a year, we have to depend on ourselves, we don't want to burden anyone.

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] I want to live a happy life, forget what I went through. Forget the war we left behind, and the life we lived in Lebanon. That wasn't a life. I want my girls to grow up and learn, and become whatever they want. We want to learn the language, and make a living for ourselves. We want to live a good life.

PC: Thank you to all of you. I want to wish you luck and in the future and also just thank you for sharing your story with us. We've been following your arrival here in Canada and now to talk to you, it's a real pleasure for me. Thank you.

SAWSAN AWAD: [translated] We thank you and the Canadian government. And we want to thank Mr. Andrew very, very much. We feel like he's part of the family, him and Claudia. And the rest of the group. But Mr. Andrew is something else. [laughter]

ABDALLAH AL ABDALLAH: [translated] When we meet people in Canada our family is getting bigger. Every day it grows when we meet someone new. And as the circle of people we know gets wider, soon all of Canada will be our family. Thank you.

PC: That was my conversation with the Al Abdallah family at their new home here in Toronto. And as you heard, their sponsor, Mr. Andrew is quite something else. Well, Mr. Andrew Fitzgerald who chairs the Ripple Refugee Project, the group that sponsored the family is here with me in studio. Hi.

ANDREW FITZGERALD: Hi, Piya, how are you?

PC: I’m okay. Wow, it certainly sounds like you have extended family, a new family that is really grateful for all your help. And you've been working on this for so long now, for many months, before the family’s arrival and then arrived. And we talked after they arrived about, sort of, the immediately logistics. But have the last two months been like for you and the group of sponsors? What have you been up to?

ANDREW FITZGERALD: So, a lot of it-- We have a group of 17 people and everybody has been very active in different areas. We have different members have been helping the family to sort out, I guess you could call it, their administrative details, so finding dentists, registering for government documents, bank accounts, getting set up with the English as a second language for the adults, schooling for the kids. And then some of the more mundane things, like shopping for household supplies. And so each of the members of our group have areas of their taking care of and they're working directly with the family to do that.

PC: And as we heard from the family, and they said many times in our conversation with them, their priority for each one of them, no matter how old they are and they're from the younger generation or to the oldest, their priority right now is learning English. Their English is very limited at this point, as you would expect it to be. This is all their, you know, desire to integrate into Canadian society. Are they mixing with other Canadians? Maybe other people from who also are from Syria or from the Middle East?

ANDREW FITZGERALD: So the family is very focused on the future. I think you can hear that in the interview. They are focused on learning English because they recognize that that's going to be essential for them to move on and to get good jobs and to really integrate with the country. In many respects, they're not looking backward to their life in Syria. That's kind of the past and it's been interesting. We located them their housing in an Arabic kind of area- Lawrence of Arabia is sort of the nickname- with the idea that they would make lots of friends with other Arabic speakers. What's been interesting, a bit surprising is they've kind of shied away from that a little bit. They, in conversations with them, they have talked about how sometimes the Arabic community or especially the Syrian community in Canada it could be a bit politicized. You’re maybe from one side of the conflict or from the other side of the conflict and they don't want to have confrontational arguments. They don't want to really spend any time in the politics of it and so as a result they have shied away from making friendships with, let's say, with the Syrian community, instead are really looking to our group and to other Canadians they meet as their new friends.

PC: Surprising for you to hear that from them?

ANDREW FITZGERALD: It is and one of the things I think settlement groups have to decide, in terms of housing, is are you going to situate your family in a kind of more Arabic-speaking, like Thorncliffe Park, or in a less Arabic. And we consciously put them there because we thought they'll feel very comfortable. And I know over time they will be developing those friendships, but I think to begin with they're a little bit fragile. They still feel a bit vulnerable. And they don't want to get into any kind of a confrontation or even political conversations. Back in Syria, I know they weren't political. When they talk about the war in almost sounds as if they're talking about how a tornado came into their town and wiped it out. They're not angry. They don't have regrets or blaming. They're really just sort of moving forward and that's also the attitude they want to have here.

PC: So, that's one of the- I don't know. I’ll put it quotes- the “lessons” you’ve learned so far, to consider all the pros and cons of where you help a family settle down. What are some of the other lessons that you've come to learn that may have surprised you, things you haven’t thought about?

ANDREW FITZGERALD: Yeah. I think settlement groups, such as ourselves, you know, have the tendency perhaps- or we have anyway faced that- tendency to maybe infantilize the people a little bit. They don't speak English. They’re new to the country. They're not familiar with the cultural practices. So you kind of feel like you've adopted the family and you want to make sure everything goes well and you want to, for example, drive them everywhere and take care of all of their decisions. But this is something that we've tried to resist is not to infantilize them, to instead involve them in the decision making process, respect their preferences. And this is comes up again and again in what we're doing.

PC: I want you to just quickly share, because we were talking to the little girls. We didn’t hear from Aya at the end of our program today, but she was telling me, you know, how she loves watching Mr. Bean and Barbie videos. What have you guys been doing for fun together?

ANDREW FITZGERALD: We were down at the aquarium which was amazing. We were out at a luncheon, a Middle Eastern place for kind of Christmas. We've had walks. We went skating at Harbourfront which was a blast. Only some of the members of the family skated. Anas, who’s been on the show, took a bad-a bit of a fall and sort of banged his head and learn a new respect about-- So he and I skated around arm in arm around the Harbourfront. It's been fantastic.

PC: Well, keep up the good work and welcome to your new family as well.

ANDREW FITZGERALD: Thank you, thank you, Piya.

PC: Andrew Fitzgerald is the chair of the sponsorship group that helped bring over the Al Abdallah family to Canada. He was here with us in the studio. We have photos of the family and lots of our earlier coverage of this story. You can find it all at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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ISIS gains in Libya raise risk of failed state, deepen civil war

Guests: Dr. Salem Langhi, Mary Fitzgerald, Jonathan Schanzer

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, we'll hear about the latest efforts to swat away the Zika virus. Scientists have a significant hurdle in their search for a vaccine against the mosquito borne virus, because any testing on pregnant women raises big ethical concerns. We’ll weigh those concerns in a half an hour. But first, the next battle for Libya.

[Music: Theme]

PC: More than four years after the Libyan civil war that deposed Muammar Gaddafi, in large part due to foreign military intervention, world leaders were gathered in Rome this week to ponder the fate of the deeply divided country and whether military intervention may be in store once again. In the years since Gaddafi’s overthrow, life in Libya has been marked by a crisis of unending violence as various factions attempt to fail a political vacuum. Most troubling to the wider world, perhaps, is that ISIS is one of the groups that has stepped into that vacuum. This is Canada's foreign minister Stéphane Dion at the meeting in Rome, describing the conditions for any Canadian intervention.

SOUNDCLIP

We certainly have an obligation to help the people of Libya, and the first step is to have a government. There is a national government that we are recognizing, but they are two other governments claiming to be governments. So that's the first thing we need to know in Libya: is it possible to have a government for Libya, one government? It’s key for the stability of the region.

PC: That's Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Stéphane Dion. Today, we are discussing how Libya got to where it is today, how the international community can now best help. But first, we are going to go to Benghazi, Libya, for a sense of what life there is like on the ground today. Dr. Salem Langhi is an orthopedic surgeon at the Benghazi Medical Centre, and he’s in Benghazi, hello.

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Hi, how are you?

PC: I am okay. Tell me what day to day life in Benghazi looks like today, in February of 2016.

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Well, it's better in the sense there’s less fighting inside the city, and in many areas, the army are in control. Of course, we have the airports shut down, and the ports, and we get everything else from outside the city. So things, getting the goods in and out, takes longer than before. Takes more money, and things like that. Kids going out to school that they used not to go because of when they started fighting in 2014 in October 2014, but now they’re starting. We are kind of adapting to that, you know. Everything is obscure, we don't have strong government as such, so far. There’s a debate about who's coming, who's better. We didn't have good luck with the governments before, because it didn't achieve what we were hoping for them to achieve for us. The inflation is going up and the Libyan dinar is losing against the American dollar, which is really bad. And some people, they have problems coping with the expense, the price that's going up day after day.

PC: You're a doctor, you work the Benghazi Medical Center. Can you tell me what it's like as a doctor living in Benghazi? Do you have the supplies you need to treat patients, what kind of patients you're seeing?

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Well, we have war injuries. People get killed, you know. Used to be in big numbers, but now it’s not anymore. As I say, the war has eased off a lot compared to last year. But mostly, there are gunshot wounds. Sometimes due to conflicts or battles, or sometimes it’s accidental. Things like that. And this is the casualties. Minding we have about ten hospitals, ten major, big hospitals in the city were shut down, because their place are in conflict, within conflict zones. So the main maternity hospital was shut down. My medical, Benghazi Medical Center, is actually a regional hospital, a transfer hospital; it wasn’t equipped to be like an emergency hospital. But since 2011, it has changed into an emergency hospital. Now, all the hospitals were open until about 2014, when the war started inside the city. So, one by one, was closing down, and their patients comes to our hospital, which has a capacity of having about 900 beds. But we don't have actual number 900 beds, because 900 beds need nursing, and most of our nursing staff are from Philippines and India. Most of these guys left the city during last year, because of the security issue, because of the money issue, transfer issue, which is actually overcoming now. Like, you know, because of closure of banks and things like that, there were not able to transfer the money to their families Philippines and India, and caused a lot of big obstacles for them and difficulty, because they came here for money.

PC: And so now, in your hospital, you don't have enough people. Do you have enough funds, do you have enough medical supplies?

DR. SALEM LANGHI: No, we don't. Because the main stores for the medical supply were burned, so we didn't have it, that happened last year. So that's caused crisis, medical crisis for us. Besides the oil price going up, no more oil is being exported; we have a huge deficient in the budget. So the health sector suffered a lot, you know, from this.

PC: And what kind of toll has that taken on the people of Benghazi? How are people coping psychologically, mentally, and as you, I think, suggested, that people are just kind of accepting it?

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Is accepting it, because it’s not our choice, you know? Psychologically, everyone, every family in Benghazi, I’d say in Libya, but Benghazi in particular, you know, been affected seriously with what's going around them. I mean, there’s a stress, you know, post-traumatic stress syndrome, a lot of people are actually complaining of that. Nobody has diagnosed them, but you can see the symptoms, signs, and things like that. Other things, like depression. Kids get affected, a lot of them, they recognize now the noise of the firearms; this is AK-47, this is machine gun, this is a 14.5, whatever, caliber. Which is not really nice, you know.

PC: And even though the fighting has gone down over the past year, there are still random order attacks or gunfire. What is it like to live with that, that unpredictability?

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Nobody likes to live like that. We don't like fighting, we don't like bullets, we're ordinary people. We want to live in peace. We don't like to live with thousands of tons of arms and weapons and bullets around us, you know, nobody likes that.

PC: As you know, international leaders meeting in Rome this week, trying to decide what to do about the rise of ISIS in Libya, the political turmoil, the bloodshed. If you'd been there, what would you say to that meeting?

DR. SALEM LANGHI: I would say that there’s people living, innocent people living in Benghazi, but this is in exceptional circumstances. They should know, leaders of the world, they should know that the country is suffering from the oil prices that is dropping, so economic crisis, medical supply, which is my field, that have some international help. Like health aid, international organizations, which we’ve never seen for the past year. Red Cross wasn’t here, Doctors Without Borders only came lately, very late. We didn't have any international aids, [unintelligible] kind of medical supplies that come from abroad, mostly from the Libyan who lived abroad, they bring things like that but the part from this, really unmentionable. So it's been neglected. They shouldn’t neglect Libyan people, they shouldn't treat them like they have no life, or they want these things to happen. We don't want this, it’s not our choice. People want better life.

PC: Do you think a new air campaign, which is what some people are advocating, would help you gain that better life, long term?

PL: I’m against, well, to be honest with you, military intervention, had they done any good in Syria and Iraq, I’ll be more optimistic. We all hope for better life. We are working on it. We’re not just waiting for the world to give us a hand, we’re actually moving on this, good people, enough numbers, good people with no means or very little means, try to make things better. So that's people, actually, who help people who have no homes and provide them with food and some refugee camps. Believe it or not, we have refugee camps, people from [unintelligible.] We have, we help each other in that thing, you know.

PC: Dr. Salem Langhi, thank you for talking with me today, I appreciate it. Do take care.

DR. SALEM LANGHI: Thank you very much for having me.

PC: Dr. Salem Langhi is an orthopedic surgeon at the Benghazi Medical Center; he was in Benghazi, Libya. Well, let us broaden out now, and ask what role the international community has in trying to fix the situation in Libya. And to do that, we're joined by two guests. Mary Fitzgerald is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in Libya, and has contributed to the book The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath. She's in Marseilles, France. And Jonathan Schanzer is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. He is in Washington, D.C.. Hello to both of you at points abroad.

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Hi, how are you?

PC: I'm okay. Mary, let me begin with you. You spent a year living in Libya. You were last there in September, and we just heard from Dr. Salem Langhi. How common is what we heard from him by other people, do they hold the same views?

MARY FITZGERALD: Yes, I would say pretty similar views. And there's a real sense of, you know, I think Dr. Salem was trying to remain upbeat despite the very trying circumstances in Benghazi, but there is a growing sense of despondency across Libya right now. Because not only do you have fighting continuing in Benghazi and other places, but the population across the country is basically suffering as a result of this ongoing political power struggle that started in summer 2014 that basically resulted in Libya essentially being divided between two rival governments: one recognized, internationally recognized, based in Eastern Libya; the other one, self-declared in Tripoli. Two rival parliaments, and both of those camps backed by an array of armed factions. In between are the ordinary Libyans, who are suffering as a result of rising food prices, crumbling infrastructure. And then, of course, in the midst of all this chaos, we see the rising spectre of Islamic State which has gained a foothold in Libya.

PC: Yeah, we'll talk about the Islamic State and about the regional players in just a minute, but Jonathan Schanzer, Mary says this is a country divided, and regular Libyans are just caught up in it all. And I guess from for me, four years ago, you know, Muammar Gaddafi is ousted, and there is great hope for this country. How did it get to this point, where after so much hope, we now have two rival governments and a population caught in between?

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Well, I think the first thing that's probably important to note is that there wasn't a lot of civil infrastructure, there were institutions that were withering under Muammar Gaddafi, and so there wasn't much to work with from the start. But beyond that, I think the U.S. led or Western led military intervention was poorly planned. There was really little in the way of a plan for what happened after the bombing was done, after Gaddafi was ousted. And you could get a sense almost immediately that the international community begin to lose interest; partly because of the Arab Spring and all the other chaos that was taking place around the around the region, but also, I think, Libya has always placed fairly low down in the list of priorities in the Middle East for the United States, and perhaps even for Europe. But one other quick note, and that is just that it has become increasingly more complicated, because it has become a regional power match between the Qataris and the Turks on the one side supporting the Islamist government, against the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Egyptians, and the other sort of traditional Middle East powers. And so, it's become a proxy battle and one that has been very difficult for the West to untie.

PC: Okay, these are all very complicated situations, and we're going to break them down. We'll talk about Qatar and Turkey and how they play into this, because to really understand what's happening in Libya, you do have to understand the wider context. But I want to talk about ISIS as Mary raised just a bit earlier. And so Mary, these international leaders in Rome, they’re trying to figure out what to do in Libya. And ISIS, of course, they are concerned about. So give me a sense, you know, ISIS is a presence in many countries in the Middle East right now. When it comes to Libya, where does it have its stronghold, how strong is that foothold, and how significant of a force is ISIS?

MARY FITZGERALD: Well, the estimates vary. Late last year, the UN estimated that the number of Islamic state fighters in Libya was around three thousand. Pentagon officials, just a couple of days ago, said that they believed it was between five and six thousand fighters now. No one really knows, I mean, those estimates are basically based on media reporting from inside Libya and local sources, which I think need to be kind of treated warily in many respects. But we do know that Islamic State, since it declared its first affiliate in Eastern Libya in late 2014, it has gained a presence in different parts of the country. Particularly in the coastal town of Sirte, which was Gaddafi’s birthplace. That is essentially Islamic State stronghold now. They took over a number of institutions in the town last year. They have consolidated control using tactics that we've seen them use in Syria and Iraq, basically carrying out public executions and trying to frighten the population into acquiescing with them. From Sirte, they have in recent weeks and months try to fan eastwards, carrying out attacks particularly on oil infrastructure in Libya's oil crescent, further east along the coast from Sirte. This, of course, has caused alarm not just in Libya, but also amongst the Western powers who fear that Islamic State in Libya could be trying to seize control of Libya's oil sector. In my view, I think it would be very difficult for Islamic State to replicate what it has done in Syria in Iraq in terms of tapping into oil revenues because of the nature of Libya's hydrocarbon sector. And the fact is, you have that constellation of militias across the country. Indeed, during the most recent attacks by Islamic State in the oil crescent. They were actually repelled by local militias. So Jonathan Schanzer, if I’m hearing Mary correctly, I think she's saying that Islamic State is a threat, perhaps not the hugest threat to Libya right now. Where are you on this? How big of a threat is ISIS in Libya?

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Well, it's obviously a threat and it's growing. I've seen estimates of five or six thousand fighters, and it's only been them going north of that over the last couple of couple of months. And so, we fully expect them to expand further in Libya and to exploit that chaos. Al-Qaeda affiliate groups, or now ISIS, have always tried to exploit areas of weak central authority, and Libya certainly qualifies as a territory with those characteristics. But the thing that I'm watching now is ISIS’s ability to move into, for example, the Sinai, where they have been quite devastating against Egyptian forces, and have even taken a few shots at the Israelis. And then, of course, there's also the fear that ISIS could be spreading to other parts of North Africa. So it's that metastasizing effect that we should be watching, along with the impact that ISIS may have in Libya.

PC: Okay, and then, Turkey and Qatar are key allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. So Jonathan Schanzer now, put this into that regional context, the regional politics at play. Who's backing whom, what are sort of these larger fights about?

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Sure, well, the Qataris and the Turks were really the champions of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of the Arab Spring. Those were bets that largely failed to pay off in places like Egypt and Tunisia, but the Qataris and the Turks still have a horse to back in Libya. They've got Libyan Dawn, so they’re supporting the Tripoli government in defiance of the international community, which has recognized the Tobruk government. And also in defiance of some of the other regional players that I mentioned. So the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, they're all backing that internationally recognized government. And so, this has devolved into a kind of a proxy battle among the Arab world and Muslim world players. And it's fascinating, as you mentioned, because the Turks and the Qataris are, of course, fighting ISIS, they're part of the U.S. led coalition, and they're working with the Saudis in Iraq and Syria. They're working with the Saudis to fight, for example, the Houthis in Yemen, but they are at odds here in Libya, and I believe that it's this regional battle, this proxy battle, that is making the conflict in Libya so intractable. That the two sides have not yet given up on the horses that they're backing, and this is really, I think, explains quite a bit about the conflict that we're seeing playing out in Libya today.

PC: And then, Mary Fitzgerald, there's the West. Trying to help or figure this quagmire in these proxy wars out. So if we look at Italy, for example, Italy is pushing for an aggressive air campaign against ISIS in Libya, along with some other countries. Is that a good proposal, a good idea, Mary Fitzgerald?

MARY FITZGERALD: Well, I'd just like to quickly address something that Jonathan, a couple of things Jonathan said. First of all, it's misleading to portray what's happening in Libya as Islamist versus non-Islamist. You have on the western side, that is the alliance in control of Tripoli, as many non-Islamists as Islamists. And actually, on the other side, you have hardline Salafists fighting for the government in Eastern Libya, so it's rather more complicated than that. The second thing I would say is that right now, the international community is backing the so-called unity government, which emerged out of a political agreement signed by various individuals in December.

PC: That is the position Canada is backing.

MARY FITZGERALD: Right, exactly. So, you know, we've moved on from that element of the government in Eastern Libya recognized, and then the self-declared government in Tripoli. What we have now is essentially a third government, which is currently taking shape outside Libya because it cannot sit in Tripoli, because various militias there oppose it. But the international community is backing that government, which emerged from a UN brokered deal. In terms of what moves we may see from the internationals in the next weeks, particularly regarding Islamic State, what the Western powers hoped was that out of unity government, if it actually got up and running, they could basically get authorization to carry out some kind of intervention against Islamic State in Libya. Right now, the unity government is basically experiencing a lot of problems. There’s no great certainty that this will actually take shape as the UN had hoped. So there are increasing indications and signals from various Western powers that they may actually move without that permission. What we're likely talking about here is an expanded aerial campaign against known Islamic State targets inside Libya. The US carried out some air strikes in Eastern Libya last year, killing Abu Nabil, a senior Islamic State figure in the country. So we might see expanded air strikes, and then some form of ground presence. Now, it's the latter that is very, very controversial, because many Libyans, including the deputy prime minister of that unity government are basically saying that no ground force will be welcomed in Libya, no matter how limited. The fact is, though, it's rather an open secret in Libya right now that Western special forces have been on the ground in Libya for the last weeks, and some cases, months, liaising with some armed factions on the ground, trying assess capabilities and trying to get a sense of how those various factions may meet together in an anti-Islamic State push. But this is, I have to say, fraught with risk. Already, there have been a number of incidents where Western Special Forces have basically had confrontations of sorts with some local factions because the environment in Libya on the ground is so complicated. We're talking about this array of militias in various regions and communities, some of them are at each other's throats, there’s been longstanding animosity between several of them. So inserting Western Special Forces into those kinds of complicated environments risks inflaming the situation even further before you even start talking about tackling Islamic State head on.

PC: All right, we only have about a minute left, and Jonathan Schanzer, let me end with you by asking this. You said, you know, in the priorities of the world, Libya is sort of lower down on the list. What does it stake for the West if Libya continues its descent toward a failed state?

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Well, we continue to see this across the Middle East, that the map is changing, making it that much more difficult to craft policies that make sense for the security of the world. I think there is a direct danger posed to the Europeans. This is, of course, in the backyard of Europe. And more broadly, I think the United States seems to be adrift in terms of figuring out a way to bring a soft landing to all of these Arab Spring countries, And so we risk extended chaos in the Middle East, and I think we've already gotten a sense of what happens with just a few years of that with the rise of ISIS in several pockets around the Middle East. If it grows more, we could be looking at, really, a much more serious threat.

PC: Mary Fitzgerald and Jonathan Schanzer, thank you both for your assessment of this today.

JONATHAN SCHANZER: Thank you.

PC: Mary Fitzgerald is a freelance journalist and researcher specializing in Libya. She was in Marseilles, France. And Jonathan Schanzer is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. We reached him in Washington, D.C.. All right, coming up next we are going to move from the Middle East to Latin America, where there is a tremendous urgency in the fight against the Zika virus. The quest for a vaccine must proceed with utmost care, though, and that is because clinical trials, clinical tests, will need to involve pregnant women. We’ll talk about all of that. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current. We're back in mere moments.

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Concerns over clinical trials with pregnant women could delay a Zika vaccine

Guests: Dr. Peter Hotez, Francoise Baylis

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi, I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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REPORTER: There's no cure for the virus, terrifying pregnant women like Vanessa Dos-Santos.

VANESSA DOS-SANTOS: I asked the doctor if what I heard was true. Since then I've been taking special precaution like using insect repellent.

REPORTER: But for three-and-half month old Daveed, precautions are too late. His sister Maria-Sophia dotes on him, while his mother Cassia worries about how she will take care of a child who may be seriously handicapped.

CASSIA: My main concern now is to go back to work. But the daycare centres refuse to take him because he has microcephaly. They say it's too much responsibility.

PC: Well, that report is out of Brazil for Al-Jazeera News and it underscores why so many are fearful in the face of the Zika virus. Earlier this week the WHO, The World Health Organization, declared a global health emergency. The virus is spreading across Latin and South America and its apparent link to microcephaly, a serious birth defect that leaves babies with smaller heads and brains, means pregnant women have the most to fear from Zika. But even though the race is on in the scientific community to find a Zika vaccine, the prospect of clinical tests involving pregnant women does raise serious concerns. Dr. Peter Hotez is one of the world's leading experts on the Zika virus. He is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Dr. Peter Hotez joins us now from Houston, Texas. Hi.

PETER HOTEZ: Thanks for having me on today.

PC: Well, thank you for being with us. Zika is not new in terms of that it emerged first in the late Forties in Uganda, but you know, it sprouted up recently in Brazil and now is spreading. Can you first set this up for me, why are we seeing a spike now?

PETER HOTEZ: Well, it's a great question. You know, this was a virus that was relatively obscure, there were only a few reported cases in the Forties and Fifties and Sixties, and then beginning around 2005-2006, into 2007, we began to see larger epidemics in Micronesia, on Yap Island where there were 11,000 cases, then 27,000 cases in Tahiti, so it kind of marched from Africa to the Indian Ocean across the Pacific, then on to Easter Island off the Pacific coast of Chile, and then this explosion in terms of number of cases in Latin America, more than 1,000,000 cases in Brazil, now 700,000 cases in Colombia, marching rapidly into Central America and southern Mexico. Now, every few days we hear about a new Caribbean island.

PC: And the reason why, we don't know?

PETER HOTEZ: Well, we don't know. Clearly this is what we would say is an immunologically naive population. These people have never seen this virus before so people are susceptible. There's been some thought about the role of climate change in this 2015, 2016 and El Nino year where there are alterations in temperature and rainfall that could be promoting mosquito habitats and behavior. Some human migrations, there's some speculation that World Cup soccer games may have something to do with introducing the virus, but it’s speculative at this point, but we really don't know. This is clearly going to be all over Latin America and the Caribbean in just a few weeks.

PC: Okay, I just want to point out that, you'll tell me if my numbers are wrong here, but as I understand it, 80 percent of people who get Zika don't even know it, so we're concerned about the 20 percent and within that 20 percent is pregnant women because of this microcephaly, which is babies being born with smaller brains. How sure is the medical community that there is this link between the Zika virus and microcephaly?

RETER HOTEZ: Well, just to clarify a couple of points. First of all, you say 80 percent are without symptoms. We don't really know that. I mean, I think I'm supporting the point out that almost nothing about this outbreak in Latin America and the Caribbean is published in the scientific literature, it has not gone through peer review. Much of this is being--there's a lot of information being thrown out there in the media, on social media, and conversations and e-mails, but we really don't know that for sure, that's point one. I think point two is it’s important to point out that it could be that you could be without symptoms and be pregnant and yet still be susceptible to passing the virus on to your baby so, I think just to clarify that point, the link between microcephaly and Zika virus is based on three pieces of evidence that we know about, but again nothing's been published in the literature. One, the Brazilians have reportedly isolated the virus from babies with microcephaly, not all babies, but many babies. Second, they've isolated the virus, or the genome of the virus, from the amniotic fluid of mothers who by ultrasound are carrying babies with microcephaly, and then the CDC reportedly has identified the virus in the placenta of some of these pregnancies. So, we're piecing it all together and saying there is a very strong association. We don't have all the I's dotted and T's crossed, but I think there's enough there that we can't be can't wait for the papers to come out in six months. We need to act now in order to prevent more tragedies from happening.

PC: And do we know at this point that if a woman is infected with the Zika virus, a pregnant woman, is she always at risk of having a baby with microcephaly?

PETER HOTEZ: We have no idea. So, if a mother, a pregnant mother, is infected with the Zika virus and passes it onto her baby, does that mean the baby has a 50 percent chance of developing microcephaly, a five percent chance, a zero point five percent chance? We have no numbers and this makes pregnancy testing very complicated. Let's say we develop a test for amniotic fluid to look for the presence of the Zika virus, what do we advise the mother? We’re really shooting blind here and it makes it very frustrating.

PC: I want you to break that down a little bit for us. When we’re testing a vaccine on pregnant women, and I know we generally don't do that, but what is the step-by-step process between the development of vaccine and then testing it on pregnant women?

PETER HOTEZ: Well, first of all we're not even at that point yet because we’re starting from practically zero when it comes from making a Zika vaccine. With Ebola for instance, actually candidate vaccines have been around for more than a decade, it’s just that no company had licensed the technology and made it into a vaccine. Here, we're not even at that point. Up until just a few months ago, nobody thought Zika was a terribly important virus because we didn't know about the link to microcephaly. So, we're starting from zero, and this means we're probably at least a couple of years away before even having a prototype vaccine that we could consider testing. That's point one. Point two is, when we do testing it goes through a series of what are called phase one, phase two, and phase three trials, and phase one is safety testing that would almost certainly be done on non-pregnant adult human volunteers. And then you move gradually into thinking about immunizing pregnant women. This is usually regulated in the US by the FDA, United States Food and Drug Administration. There's also the European equivalent to that and appropriately, the FDA is very conservative about moving trials into pregnant women because you have to have a very high safety bar because of the risk to the fetus. So, this has to move in a very gradual fashion. There is really no way to really, really speed it up much more than that, I'm afraid. So, almost certainly, we will not have a Zika vaccine in time for this epidemic, but whether or not downstream we’ll have one, we’ll have to see. I think we're looking—-we are at least a few years away.

PC: Okay, and given that we’re a few years away and we're in the midst of this outbreak spreading across Latin America, let me ask, maybe this is a naive question, this is a mosquito borne virus. Couldn't women, all people, just wear insect repellent to help them not get this virus?

PETER HOTEZ: Well, it's hard to be vigilant to that extent. I think one of the features of Zika that not many people are talking about is this is a virus like many arboviruses, viruses transmitted by mosquitoes, that's disproportionately affecting women who live in poverty. That's because they live in inadequate housing with no windows, or no window screens, or broken window screens, or box-like air conditioners that have-- mosquitoes can get into the house. They live in areas where there's a lot of environmental degradation, there's uncollected garbage that helps promote the mosquitoes, discarded tires along the side of the road filling with water. That's one of the reasons why we're seeing this epidemic in northeastern Brazil, it's one of the poorer areas of Brazil. It’s why we're going to see throughout the poorer areas of Latin America, Venezuela, Colombia, and it's why Haiti is going to get decimated. I'm worried about it because there are 250,000 pregnant women in Haiti at any one time according to UNICEF, and basically all of those mothers are going to be highly susceptible to being bitten by mosquitoes. We could be looking at a terrible humanitarian tragedy unfolding in a few months.

PC: And the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights just this morning is talking about some of the countries, saying women should abstain from having sex in order not to get pregnant, and she raises the concerns that you just did ,that we're dealing with a population that is largely poor and she also raises that there are situations where sexual violence is rampant, so this isn't an ask that we can do to these women, that this abstinence question is just out of the question for her. Do you agree with that?

PETER HOTEZ: Well, I don't know if it's totally out of the question but it's a desperation measure to have to rely on something like that. She's right, I think women who live in poverty often lack access to birth control methods. There are a number of human rights issues that affect women living in poverty so, like many infectious diseases, they really are going to strike the most vulnerable. I think it is interesting advice to give. I understand the basis for it, but implementing it is going to be something very challenging. There is only one thing we can do right now and it's unfortunate that I'm not seeing the political will yet to make it happen, and that is to aggressively exercise mosquito control in the poorer areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. We know this works. Between 1947 and 1962, in an effort to combat another arbovirus infection, dengue and also yellow fever, the WHO, the World Health Organization and its Pan American Health Organization division, successfully led an eradication campaign that removed the Aedes mosquitoes from 18 Latin American countries and several Caribbean countries.

PC: You mean spraying against mosquitoes?

PETER HOTEZ: It wasn't just spraying, it was, spraying was certainly a component of it with insecticides, but also being very aggressive in its source reduction, getting rid of all standing bodies of water that could harbour the mosquitoes. It was a military style campaign, and it was highly effective and it is to me, something that we have to seriously look at given that there is proof of construct that it works. We need to have the political will to now move forward on this, especially in the areas where the virus is just moving in now. So, we look at places like Haiti or Jamaica or some of the Central American countries. The virus is just happening now and we would then expect, if Zika goes by the same playbook as it did in Pernambuca State, Brazil, nine months now we could be looking at lots of babies appearing in obstetrical wards, in labor and delivery suites with microcephaly. So, the idea is intervene now and limit the exposure of pregnant women to mosquitoes and we can then make a big dent in this epidemic.

PC: Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you for walking us through this all this morning. I appreciate it.

PETER HOTEZ: Thanks for having me on.

PC: Bye. Dr. Peter Hotez is the Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine Baylor College of Medicine. He was in Houston, Texas. So, as we were talking about there, clinical tests involving pregnant women raise some important ethical issues. Francoise Baylis joins us now to help us walk through some of those. She's a Professor and Canada Research Chair in bioethics and philosophy at Dalhousie University. Francoise Baylis is in Halifax. Hello.

FRANCOIS BAYLIS: Good morning.

PC: So, you heard Dr. Hotez talk about some of the challenges in finding a vaccine for the Zika virus because well, for many reasons, but one of them being the high bar for clinical tests for pregnant women. What do you think about that?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Well, I think it's probably a very big concern in the context that we typically have a routine exclusion of pregnant women from clinical trials, so it's almost a boilerplate approach to how we do research involving humans. Now, many people, myself included, have long been arguing not just in the context of vaccine research, but also in the context of pharmaceutical trials, that we actually are doing a disservice to pregnant women by constantly excluding them from clinical trials. Why? Because they need access to good medicines and they need access to good vaccines and the way in which we provide that for the general population is through a process of clinical research. By excluding pregnant women from that research, we, in effect, undermine their access to good drugs and good vaccines One of the things that are interesting here is that the push is going to come to include this particular population.

PC: Okay, except for, you know I've been pregnant twice and you're scared of everything and so someone says: Hey people, put up your hand while you're pregnant to get tested for this thing, I think the sort of natural reaction is yeah, no I don't want to take that risk. So, help me understand it. If pregnant women need to be tested in clinical drug trials when it comes to Zika or other things, I mean does it matter if those tests take place in the first, second or third trimester?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Well, it absolutely does matter when those tests take place in terms of the development of the fetus. There's no doubt about that, but there are many ways in which we could think about staging trials, clinical trials involving pregnant women. One of them is definitely to pay attention to the stage of development, the stage of the pregnancy. But another thing to think about, and Peter made reference to this earlier, is that when we do research involving humans, we do them in a number of discrete phases. The first phase is Phase One where we're really just looking at safety, so does this new product, this new drug, this new vaccine, do harm? Does it hurt people? Once we're reasonably clear that it doesn't do that, we move on to what we think of as a Phase Two. Now we want to know does it actually work? So, we know it doesn't hurt anybody, but does it actually do what it is that we would like it to do? So, in the context of vaccines, is it actually protective? And then once we've done that, we move further and by the further I just mean we continue to expand the base of people that we involve in the research to check for effectiveness; does it work in the real world? One of the things that's interesting is that those of us who've been advocating for including pregnant women in research have been talking about altering the way we think about trial design. Why not have your trial start in a general, healthy population? Do your Phase One research, which is about checking for harm. Do your Phase Two research which is about efficacy and checking that it actually does some good, that it's protective in the context of vaccines. And at that point, when you're moving into your Phase Three trials, why not bring in a new cohort of participants, which would be pregnant women. Now, you're still going to look for safety issues with them, so it's kind of going to be a Phase One trial within a Phase Three trial. That may sound complicated, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are people like myself who really believe that if we're committed to helping pregnant women, we have to deal with those kinds of design challenges.

PC: When you lay out those sort of three phases, we're talking about years.

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Absolutely.

PC: Okay. I take your point that we need to include pregnant women in clinical tests. There are concerns about the appropriate nature of that. Do you think those are overblown?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: I think that they are misguided. I think that the net result of thinking that the best way to help pregnant women and to protect pregnant women is to keep them out of clinical trials, ultimately means that when it is offered to them in a therapeutic context, they are offered a drug as a therapy of they are offered a vaccine and it's going to work, they're really in a trial, anyways. They are just in a trial by themselves. Because if it has never been tried in that population, you don't actually know are there going to be additional potential harms? Is it going to work the way in which it worked in a healthy, non-pregnant person? And that's why it's really important to understand that--you made an earlier comment how many women are holding up their hand and saying “Me. Me. Pick me”. You're absolutely right, there are not a lot of pregnant women beating down the doors saying “please put me in your clinical trial. Please expose me to risks”, but when pregnant women understand that in the real world they're already exposed to risks, you live in Latin America, you live in the Caribbean, you are already exposed to a risk environment and what we're trying to do is, we are trying to say look, in a particular kind of controlled context, we may be able to change or mitigate that risk. Now, we may make it worse. One of the things we need to appreciate is that's what research is, and one of the things I worry about is people thinking that getting access to a clinical trial is actually getting access to the latest, greatest best medicine. That's not what research is. Research is a potentially risky activity, but we can explain to people why it may be in their interest to at least think about enrolling in a clinical trial. And some women will make that choice.

PC: In Canada, what are our rules about doing clinical trials on pregnant women?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: So in Canada, unlike other countries, we don't actually have legislation for research involving humans. What we have are guidelines, and the guidelines have specific content with respect to research involving pregnant women. They basically say that they should not be excluded unless there is a good reason. The good reason is supposed to have something to do with weighing up the harms and the benefits. I've been arguing with the people that write those guidelines for probably close to 20 years right now, saying that one of the problems with the way in which the guidelines are written, is that they're in theory, permissive but their starting point isn't right. And what I mean by that is, I think the starting point in Canada and elsewhere ought to be that pregnant women are eligible to participate in a clinical trial and sometimes they are to be excluded. When they are to be excluded, give us a reason. There would be many cases in which that's true. Right now, the working assumption is the starting point is, keep women out that are pregnant and you have to argue to get them in. So, you're starting with the wrong assumption. At least, that would be the claim that I'm making.

PC: So, you're making the claim that, basically flip it on its head?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Absolutely. Turn it around. The starting assumption should be researchers, you have an obligation to provide all Canadians with access to good medicines, good vaccines, and that includes pregnant women. So, design your research in a way to make sure that all Canadians get to benefit. Instead, we allow them to start off and say no, let's be cautious, let's not include them now. But the problem is, they never get around to including them. It’s not like they start off with a cautious approach, which is what I am advocating, they just never have a plan to include them at a later date when it would make sense to include them, if you thought they were worthy patients. And the problem is, pregnant women are not a very strong patient advocacy group, you know. They're pregnant for nine months and then they go on with their life. And maybe they get pregnant a second time, but in a North American context, we don't have huge families, we get through our pregnancies and then we're busy.

PC: Much of what you're saying, for me, certainly reminds me of the thalidomide disaster. Late 1950s, pregnant women given an experimental anti-nausea drug resulted in thousands of babies having birth defects. Given what you just said about the industry's approach about our guidelines, and then just about pregnant women wanting to be involved as, I mean, how much does thalidomide and what happened, haunt all of us, and the industry in particular?

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Well, I'm actually really glad you brought that up because in terms of my view, I think thalidomide is the best argument in support of what I'm arguing for. I know that that's going to sound unusual, but why? Well, first of all if you actually know the history of thalidomide, it didn't go through proper clinical trials involving pregnant women. My claim is, if it had done that, would we have had children born with the limb deformities that we associate with the thalidomide? Absolutely. Would we have had between 12 and 20,000 children born with those deformities which, depending who you trust, are the numbers. Absolutely not. There's no way you could run a clinical trial and have those kinds of side effects. I mean, you would have one child born with it, you would have two children born with that, the trial would have been stopped. We could have prevented the thalidomide tragedy had it been done in the context of a clinical trial because those women would have been monitored, we would have identified the problem. Part of why it took so long, and part of why we had so many children born with those deformities, is because it wasn't happening in a controlled environment. People were buying this over-the-counter, people were sharing drugs, people were giving it to their friends in different countries, and nobody understood what was the cause, what was the connection.

PC: Francoise Baylis, always nice to talk to and get your perspective. Thank you.

FRANCOISE BAYLIS: Thank you.

PC: Francoise Baylis is a Professor and a Canada Research Chair and Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University. That's where she joined us from in Halifax.

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PC: I’m Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current. We have a couple minutes to look at what you had to say about an interview on Wednesday’s Current with host Anna Maria Tremonti, of course. It has been said that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, but what if it's really about location, location, location? That is the theory author Eric Weiner puts forward in his new book. It's called The Geography of Genius.

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ERIC WEINER: One of the important roles that place plays is audience. You know, you began the segment with some beautiful music from Mozart. Well, he was coming of age professionally in Vienna of the 18th century. He actually moved there from Salzburg because it was the place to be and one of the things he loved about Vienna was his audience. The audience pushed him and prodded him, and in a way, you could say the audience was a co-genius.

PC: Well, that particular remark from Eric Weiner prompted this note from Sorin Iftimie of Montreal:

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The most beautiful statement of all was when Eric Weiner said that Mozart composed so well because he had great ears to listen to him. For quite some time, I have thought that the value of any statement made comes half from the person making it and half from the person listening.

PC: Curt Town of Calgary had a different take on that notion. He writes:

Reading:

To state that genius is also dependent on an audience,would be like saying a falling tree only makes noise when it has an audience. Genius thrives even moreso without the influence of misguided social norms. I speculate that the contemporary genius doesn't have a Facebook account.

PC: Richard Chapman of Montague, PEI had this to say:

Reading:

Genius doesn't stand alone. We wouldn't have had Mozart without Haydn, Einstein; without Planck & Maxwell. We tend to focus the work of the many on the one, and in this respect I agree with your guest, genius is, to the public anyway, what and whom we decide it is. Genius, in many respects, is a collective project - which is probably why your guest found them in cities.

PC: And here's one more comment from Facebook. This is from Duncan Chisholm who says:

Reading:

Any objective argument based on the lives of artists disproves this thin theory. Look at the travellers amongst both painters and musicians. Was Handel a worse composer in arts-heavy Rome or arts-light Naples? Did London draw in music or did the composers who settled there attract other musicians? The whole argument is just empty.

PC: You can judge for yourself. If you missed the conversation, you can download it on The Current's podcast, or listen from our website at cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you have something to add on anything you hear,email us from our site, post on our Facebook page or tweet us @thecurrentcbc.

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Feb. 5, 2016 episode transcript

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