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The Current Transcript for December 2, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: He had animals that were getting tumours. Their teeth were turning black. They were wasting away. He could see white foam coming out of a pipe on a landfill near his property.

LAURA LYNCH: Robert Bilott's career and life changed the day he went to Earl Tennant's farm in West Virginia. Bilott had built a successful practice as a lawyer defending corporations like Dupont. But he switched sides, spent years fighting the chemical giant and winning. Now there's a new film out depicting his battle, and he's written a book. A conversation with Robert Bilott in half an hour. After that.

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VOICE: The treatment is very simple. You essentially need to re-activate this memory and then you let the drug do the work.

LL: It may seem simple for researcher Alain Brunet, but using a drug to in a sense, edit painful memories raises a lot of other questions about who we are and how we remember. That discussion in an hour. But we begin today with vaping. The initial promise of a device designed to get people off cigarettes seems to have disappeared, vaporized, if you will. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

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Is Canada breeding a new generation of nicotine addicts thanks to legal vapes?

Guests: David Hammond, Andrew Pipe

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VOICE 1: Because it's like the flavours and everything, people would be like, OK, this is like actually something I want to try. And since they think there's like candy flavour, they would actually want to get more of it.

VOICE 2: I walk into the bathroom and all I smell are different like flavours. Like it smells good, but like you can tell that they're doing that.

VOICE 3: Now that like the government actually knows more about it and it's like they're trying to step in. They should have did it before it's too late.

LL: These young people who spoke with CBC News are the real faces behind a dramatic increase in teen vaping and the failure of Canada's health authorities to prevent it. Vaping has been around in Canada for at least a decade and legal since 2018. It was hyped as a harm reduction tool for cigarette smokers. But now research is showing that many smokers haven't made the switch and a new generation of nicotine addicts is being created thanks to vaping. David Hammond is a professor at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo and one of the foremost experts on vaping. He's in Waterloo, Ontario. Hello.

DAVID HAMMOND: Good morning Laura.

LL: I want to get into this increase in youth vaping in a moment, but first, I want to talk about adults. In 2018 when vaping was made legal, describe who the adults were who were using vapes.

DAVID HAMMOND: Well, the idea is we still have 4 to 5 million tobacco smokers in this country. About 1 of every 2 or 3 will die if they don't quit. So, you know, we've done a better job warning people off smoking than we have helping them quit. So the idea was, is that this could be a new form of nicotine replacement therapy like the patch or the gum. Harmful, but a lot less harmful than smoking and maybe help those adults to deal with their craving. So, you know, that still stands today. The problem is, is who these products have been targeted at and that actually the companies have been much more successful selling them to kids than they have to adults.

LL: But when it comes to adults though, how has the landscape changed? Adults are simply not using vapes or they're not getting off nicotine? What's going on?

DAVID HAMMOND: That's right. Certainly some are using them. But there's no, as best we can tell, there are no more adults vaping today than there were about four or five years ago. And so, you know, four or five years ago is a bit of a lifestyle product for some of these adults. The idea was that they'd see them as a smoking cessation and it would be sort of a therapeutic device, but over the period where we've seen increases in kids, we haven't seen the same increase among adults. And that tells us a lot of the things that happened in the market, more advertising, promotions, flashy flavours, higher nicotine levels, that it's actually failed both constituencies in terms of the adult smokers who could benefit as well as the people entering the market.

LL: At the time that vaping was legalized, what research was there to show that vaping was a better alternative than traditional smoking?

DAVID HAMMOND: Well, we had evidence that it delivers nicotine very well. Lots of smokers don't like to use the patch or the gum because it doesn't deliver nicotine all that efficiently. And we still believe that vaping is less harmful. Now, that's not you know, that's no great shakes when you're comparing it to smoking that again, kills one out of every two or three of its users. So a lot of the intoxicants in combustible cigarette are from actually producing smoke when you light something on fire and inhale it. Vaping doesn't have that. It still has harmful chemicals that could be harmful over the long term, but much less so than smoking.

LL: OK, so you've mentioned the teens. How many teens now are regular vape users in Canada? Do you have those numbers?

DAVID HAMMOND: Yeah. We've got over half of Canadian adults that have tried vaping. We have about a quarter that are vaping every month and about 15 percent that are vaping every week. Now, we haven't seen that level of use for nicotine products in Canada for a very long time. And for a while people were questioning, well, maybe this is just a fad, kids are just doing it you know, once or twice at a party. Well, kids are more likely to vape on a daily or near daily basis than they are to smoke in 2019 in Canada.So the idea that these products could produce dependence, well, I think we now have very good evidence for that.

LL: Is there an actual number though of how many teens are regular users?

DAVID HAMMOND: Yes, so the best that, so it's just about 1 in 10 that vape daily or near daily. So as I said, even for cigarette smoking, you don't usually see progression to that regular use until they're young adults. So that's about as frequent as a measure that we have.

LL: I want to bring in another guest. Dr. Andrew Pipe is a clinician and researcher in the Division of Prevention and Rehabilitation at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He's an expert in smoking cessation and he's in Ottawa. Good morning.

ANDREW PIPE: Good morning.

LL: When you hear these numbers of teens vaping, what's your reaction?

ANDREW PIPE: Well, it's one of astonishment. But also, it's one of, gee, we should've seen this coming. And I think those in the tobacco control and the smoking cessation community where we're pointing out that, look, the potential for harm reduction using these devices is there. But if you're gonna use these devices as harm reduction, they've got to be regulated. We got to know what's in them. And also recognize that these deliver nicotine in a highly effective way, deliver large amounts of nicotine and deliver them, particularly after the aggressive marketing directed towards young people, deliver them to adolescents and teenagers whose brains are much more likely to become to facilitate the development of addiction. And what we also know is that once you become addicted to tobacco as an adolescent, you're far more likely to become addicted to other drugs later in life as a consequence of the establishment of the kind of the brain pathways that underpin addiction. So it's an alarming situation. It's one that could have been foreseen. And thoughtful, forceful regulation of these devices was recommended by many, but totally ignored. So who's to blame? Well, I think we have to say that our our policymakers have failed to anticipate this problem. I think. I suppose in our own community, our scientific and clinical community, perhaps we we weren't speaking loudly enough. But, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think. And it's astonishing to me that we're in this situation today when it could have been foreseen.

LL: Do you have any idea what the long term effects of vaping are, even if you don't move on to other kinds of like smoking or other things like that. What's the long term effect of vaping?

ANDREW PIPE: Well, I think the simple answer is we really don't know. But the signals that we're seeing are quite alarming. Obviously, in the last several months, we've seen across North America, particularly in the United States, a dramatic increase in acute lung illnesses and many, many deaths. And that number is probably underestimates the actual significance of of that. Let me call it epidemic. But we're also seeing alarming signals now, both on the basis of basic scientific research, but also the experience of clinicians that other forms of lung disorders. Let me give an example. There's a class of disease called interstitial lung disease, which is very, very rare. But we're now seeing signals that that the features of these diseases are now being becoming apparent in those who vape regularly. And in that respect, it's important to recall that in the 1930s, lung cancer was very rare. We had an epidemic of smoking and 20, 30, 40 years later, lung cancer is now the leading cause of death amongst Canadian women. And given the signals that we're seeing, it's not unreasonable to anticipate that we may be triggering an epidemic of a totally different form of lung disease with exactly the same concept consequences in terms of inducing a chronic disease which ultimately will have fatal outcomes.

LL: David Hammond, let me come back to you. You testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health in 2014 and said on the addictive nature of vaping, this is a quote, "They're almost certainly more addictive than the nicotine patch or gum are, but also certainly less so than cigarettes are." Do you still believe that?

DAVID HAMMOND: Well, I certainly feel that comparison to NRT is true. You know, it's not so much how much nicotine a product has, but how effectively it delivered. I think that statement was true until about 2017 when we had new technology, a new type of e-cigarettes. Most people recognized the name Juul as the leading brand, and we now know that it can deliver nicotine just as quickly, spike it the same way to get it to your brain in the same rapid way as conventional cigarettes. So that may have changed. And, you know, I think the principle is still there that there could be some value in getting smokers off these products. But as Andrew said, we need the regulation. And, you know, I'd also point out that I've heard many politicians rightly concerned and outraged about where e-cigarettes are today and talk about things like bringing them out of the store. We should be having the same conversation about conventional cigarettes, which killed more people in one day than we've seen across the entire existence of vaping.

LL: Andrew Pipe one when vaping products hit the shelves, what sort of regulation was in place to inhibit teens from getting access to them?

ANDREW PIPE: I would say none. There were, you know, sort of blend rules and regulations that said lifestyle advertising couldn't be used and health claims couldn't be made. Those were the kind of regulations that surrounded these products. Those regulations were honoured more by their breach than their observance. And of course, once the tobacco industry got behind these products, as they are now in a very big way, all of the lessons tobacco industry learned about how to influence adolescents behaviour came to the fore. So it's as if we learn nothing over the decades of dealing with tobacco and as a consequence, we're seeing the challenges before us now that we're talking about today.

LL: I just want to play some tape for you. This is Darryl Tempest, the executive director of the Canadian Vaping Association, talking about youth and baking vaping. He was speaking to CBC Radio's Metro Morning earlier this year.

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VOICE: Youth vaping almost did not exist prior to 2018, prior to these products being readily available. That's why we've asked the government to increase regulation to make sure that these products are only seen and sold in adult environments. We've asked for no national brand advertising across the nation, and we've asked that any online shipments are ID verified so that we know that these products are only going to adults.

LL: Andrew Pipe I would think that you agree with much of what Darryl Tempest said there.

ANDREW PIPE: Yeah, I would agree with all of those elements. I would also argue for much stronger and more far reaching regulation.

LL: Such as?

ANDREW PIPE: I think we need to be licing the manufacturers. I think we need to be increasing the price of these particular products. I think we need to register, as I would argue, we need to register those who sell any form of tobacco products. I think at the same time, and to pick up on what Dr. Hammond said, we need to ensure that we're continuing to address combustion products as well. It's just mindblowing to me that as I approach the twilight of my career, that a problem persists and continues to grow, that when I was in medical school, I thought would be over in 10 years, given the evidence that was there and and expecting that public policies would developed to address to address these these monumental health issues. You know, one in three persons in every hospital in this country would not be there today if they were not currently or formerly a smoker. The tobacco industry continues to make enormous profits and now making even bigger profits from from these devices while the public, you and I as taxpayers, are expected to pay for the mess that they create.

LL: David Hammond, Andrew Pipe just brought up the big tobacco companies. They have bought vape companies. What influence do you think that's had on the public health failure?

DAVID HAMMOND: Well, it's certainly ironic that when Juul was becoming investigated in the U.S., that's the biggest cigarette company, who did they bring in to help them deal with their youth issue? They brought in executives from Philip Morris, Altria USA. So, you know, honestly, I think we can spend a lot of time looking at the motives of these companies, what matters is their actions. And at a time when I heard a lot of companies expressing concern about rising youth vaping, I'm not aware of any of them ceasing their advertising. Companies like Juul stopped selling certain flavours in the U.S. They continue to sell them in Canada. So, you know, I don't think we would put much stock in their motivations. The tobacco companies have always argued if that they never wanted youth to start smoking, including in the 60s and 70s. And I don't regard their statements any differently today.

LL: You're both part of Health Canada's Scientific Advisory Board on vaping products. We asked Health Canada and the federal minister of health for an interview on this, and they declined. David Hammond, what recommendations do you have for Health Canada to start fixing this problem?

DAVID HAMMOND: Look, anyone who expressed a surprise that you take a highly addictive drug, wrap it in nice packaging with flavours like cotton candy, put ads and sell it in every corner store in the country, anyone who expresses surprise that kids are going to use those products, I think needs to check themselves. We still, to this day in 2019, we have millions of consumers using these products, we don't know what the ingredients are. If I sell bottled water, I need to list the ingredients. So we need to regulate these in a way where they are, we recognize them as a highly addictive drug. If they have therapeutic benefits, then we should probably regulate them the way we regulate other drugs, which is no what's in them, test them for safety and efficacy and make sure that they're targeted to the people that should be using, which is to say adult smokers, that we've got a long road to go.

LL: Andrew Pipe, you've addressed some of this already, but what about you? What what recommendations would you make?

ANDREW PIPE: Well, I would echo what everything that Dr. Hammond has just said. I think it's ludicrous. The most highly addictive drug in our community, nicotine, is permitted to be sold in merchandised. In a form, I mean, these are highly sophisticated drug delivery devices. I would say outside of the insulin pump, the new versions of E-devices are the most sophisticated drug delivery devices in the community. They deliver high doses of nicotine to the arterial system. We get concerned about intravenous drug users, these drugs go directly to the arterial system. And it's inevitable that there are going to be very substantial and ongoing consequences. All of that underscores the need for thoughtful, forceful regulation and equally thoughtful, forceful enforcement of that regulation.

LL: Alright. I can hear you both loud and clear. I wonder if Health Canada can as well. Have you got any sense that they are getting ready to move on this? Either one of you.

DAVID HAMMOND: I mean, I think the answer is yes. We've heard I think every single province and we now have a new health minister and I would expect some announcements soon. I think what we'll be looking for is a meaningful change and e need to, look, vaping as a form of drug delivery isn't going away. It's also gone up considerably for things like THC and most of the illnesses Dr. Pipe mentioned are actually from THC vaping. So this is mode of delivery isn't going away. We need to figure out how it can fit into our society and we probably need a different type of regulatory framework. So this isn't just about saying we're going to ban one flavour, we'll pull some ads from the corner stores. They need to articulate a different regulatory framework that works.

LL: I was just going to ask you Dr. Pipe, how much more complicated does it get when you bring legal cannabis into the equation?

ANDREW PIPE: Well, it certainly complicates the picture, but I think as was identified in our conversation. It's ironic that the rules and regulations that surround cannabis use via inhalation, they're there, right? Product warnings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's a complete absence when it comes to e-deices.

LL: Right. But you've heard David Hammond there's talk about maybe some provinces doing some regulation. Would it be preferable, do you think, to have a federal framework on this?

ANDREW PIPE: Oh, absolutely. And I think it's ironic that the provinces are now moving to fill the policy void, if I can use that term that's been created by the absence of any meaningful Health Canada regulation. And I would also note that the bar is being raised in this respect considerably, almost weekly. If you look at what's happening in the United States, where state legislators, cities, et cetera, are now introducing very significant and very substantial legislation, unfortunately, governments and politicians have consistently been timid. They've been weak, they've been hesitant to take action against tobacco products, the tobacco industry and my hope is that timidity will not continue to persist both in both in terms of regulating these devices, but also not taking our eyes off the big tobacco ball, if can use that use that term. We talk about these being disruptive technologies, what they disrupted much to the tobacco industry's amusement is our determination to address the health consequences of tobacco, nicotine addiction in every respect, despite the way it's delivered.

LL: You use the word timidity. Do you sense that Health Canada is getting ready to do anything?

ANDREW PIPE: Well, I would note that, as David has observed, it's reasonable to expect that there would be regulations. I would welcome seeing in the mandate letter to the new minister of health instructions and expectations that she would deal in a very robust fashion with this significant public health issue. I am assailed daily by parents, by educators, by teachers, by principals. What are you doing about this? Why has this been allowed to happen? Why do we have to take the bathrooms off all of the, pardon me, the doors off the bathrooms in all of our high schools? How can I talk to my kids? My kids are telling me everybody's doing it. It's happening in public school. It's ihard not to sound strident when you talk about this issue, but it really is exasperating. There has been this inability to recognize what was coming and a seeming inability to respond to it.

LL: David Hammond, what is at stake if if this is not addressed quickly?

DAVID HAMMOND: Well, the problem with nicotine addiction is that for many unfortunately, it's a lifelong addiction and you know, there remains to be seen with vaping. But we have not seen an expansion of the nicotine market like this amongst Canadian kids for decades. So the concern is that this isn't just sort of an acute problem, that this could be something that many Canadians take with them for their life. And I tell you what, if politicians and governments don't regulate this product properly, then the products are going to disappear. And that's unfortunate because these could help us usher out the era of the dirty cigarette. But the way it's going now, it's A, not doing that and B, it's threatening the entire existence of it. So if the goal is harm reduction, then let's regulate this in a way that it actually reduces harm among those that should be using it.

LL: Alright, gentlemen, I thank you both for coming on and talking about this today.

ANDREW PIPE: Thank you.

DAVID HAMMOND: My pleasure.

LL: David Hammond is a professor at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. He was in Waterloo. Dr. Andrew Pipe is the former chief of the Division of Prevention and Rehabilitation at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He was in our Ottawa studio. CBC News will have more on this tonight on The World at Six and The National. CBC News is coming up next. Then.

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VOICE: The first thing we need you to do, Mr. Barish, is to go home and collect everything you own that has some association with Clementine. Anything. You want to empty your home, you want empty your life of Clementine. And after the mapping is done, our technicians will do the erasing in your home tonight.

LL: In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, two lovers erase memories of each other after a painful break-up. Now researchers are looking at whether that might be possible. Maybe not the memories themselves, but at least some of the pain. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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In Our Blood: How an American chemical giant poisoned America and the world

Guests: Robert Bilott

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, it sounds like science fiction, but it's real. New research shows you can actually edit your bad memories. Sort of. But first, the lawyer who took on DuPont.

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VOICE 1: They should say what they done.

VOICE 2: You're right. They should. And it kills me that they won't. But that would mean going to trial and proving that CA killed your cows. And every scientist who knows anything about any of this already works for these chemical companies. That's not an accident, Earl. Earl, these companies, they have all the money, all the time and they'll use it. Trust me. I know. I was one of them.

VOICE 1: You're still one of them.

LL: In that scene from the new film Dark Water, Mark Ruffalo's character warns a farmer about the risks of going up against the DuPont Chemical Company. He stars as Robert Bilott, a corporate lawyer from Cincinnati, Ohio, who went from defending chemical companies to suing them. The real Robert Bilott has just published a book about that fight. It's called Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty Year Battle Against DuPont. And Robert Bilott joins me from Cincinnati. Hello.

ROBERT BILOTT: Hello. Thank you for having me.

LL: So what did you think of the movie?

ROBERT BILOTT: I thought they did a tremendous job. You know, really, it's not easy taking a 20 year story and condensing it into two hours. But they did a fantastic job of really being able to capture, you know, what that community went through, what these what these real people in that community went through to bring the story out for the rest of us. I really can't, I really couldn't think of a better group of people to have worked on it. They did a really tremendous job.

LL: Now, we asked DuPont about it. They didn't have as great a reaction as you. This is a quote from the statement they sent us. "Unfortunately, while seeking to thrill and entertain, this movie misrepresents things that happened years ago, including our history, our values and science. In some cases the film depicts wholly imagined events." Robert Bilott, how accurate does the movie seem to you?

ROBERT BILOTT: Well, again, you know, you're talking about taking a story that spans 20 years and condensing it into two hours in a way that really captures the feeling and the essence of what happened there. And I think they did a tremendous job doing it. And, you know, one of the things I think that's that's that I tried to do as well as, you know, put put this story together in a book form as well, you know, through exposure, the book, you know, to give people the the background in the story, laying out all the details, you know, that that information's out there now. People can see the film. People can can look at the book and judge for themselves who is telling the truth here and where the facts lie.

LL: Alright. Let's focus on your real life experience. The guy who gets this whole legal odyssey in gear is a farmer in West Virginia named Earl Tennant. Tell me about him.

ROBERT BILOTT: You know, this is a really unique individual. He came to me in 1998, convinced something really bad was happening on his property. He had animals that were getting tumours. Their teeth were turning black. They were wasting away. He could see white foam coming out of a pipe on a landfill near his property and, you know, contaminating the water that his cows were standing in and drinking out of. But nobody would would listen to him. He went to the state. He went to the federal agencies. He contacted the company. But nearly nobody wanted to get involved because of this issue involved one of the company's biggest employers in town. So he came to me, brought his videotapes, brought us photographs, you know, and just wanted somebody to take a look. You know, somebody could look at these facts and would see something really bad was happening here. And we did.

LL: How did he end up coming to you?

ROBERT BILOTT: Well, you know, my grandmother actually grew up, you know, her whole family, my mom's family outside of Parkersburg, West Virginia. And Mr. Tennant had been talking to one of his neighbours complaining, you know, that he wasn't able to get anybody to talk to him. He wasn't able to find a lawyer locally. And one of those neighbours just happened to have been on the phone that morning with my grandmother. They were longtime friends, went back many, many years and my grandmother had mentioned to her that her grandson was a environmental lawyer up in Cincinnati. So his neighbour told him, hey, you ought to give him a call. Surely he can help you. He's an environmental lawyer. So that's one day I got a call in my office from Mr. Tennant, you know, saying, hey, your grandmother gave me your name and she thought, you could help me.

LL: Well, she was right in part. You were an environmental lawyer, but was this the kind of lawsuit you or your firm would normally take on?

ROBERT BILOTT: No, not exactly. You know, I started with the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister in Cincinnati back in 1990. And most of what I had been doing up to that point was helping our corporate clients, primarily large chemical companies, comply with all the different state environmental laws. I mean, we were representing mostly corporate clients and so this was definitely not the kind of thing we normally did. But, you know, when he came to us and I looked at those videotapes and those photographs, we thought, hey, you know, we could help him. This is somebody from what I viewed as sort of my hometown, a place where I spent a lot of time as a childhood. And I thought this could be fairly straightforward. We'd pull the permits for this landfill, figure out what kind of listed hazardous materials were there. Maybe something was there too high and we should be able to get to the bottom of it. This is what I did all the time for our corporate clients, but didn't turn out that way.

LL: No, it didn't. Tell me, what is PFOA.

ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah. We found out that we were dealing with a completely unregulated chemical, this chemical PFOA. This was a chemical that was a completely manmade material invented right after World War Two, didn't exist on the planet prior to the 1940s. The 3M company invented it and they started selling this material to DuPont in the early 1950s and DuPont was using it as a chemical in what they called a surfactant. That was something they used in the manufacturing process for Teflon. And it so happened that the world's largest Teflon manufacturing facility was located right outside of Parkersburg on the Ohio River. And DuPont was using massive quantities of this chemical. You know, again, beginning in the 1950s and this is decades before there were federal laws in the United States dealing with the regulation of chemicals. You know, the United States Environmental Protection Agency didn't even come into existence until 1970 and some of the first federal laws regulating chemicals didn't come in out until 1976. So we're talking about a manmade chemical that had been out there being used, being emitted in massive quantities into the air, into the water for decades before the the agencies even existed. And by the time we found out about it, around the year 2000, you know, this had been going on for decades.

LL: When I think of Teflon, I think of frying pans and non-stick frying pans. What other products is it used for?

ROBERT BILOTT: We're talking about material. This PFOA was used in manufacturing of a really wide variety of different consumer items, not only a non-stick cookware, but things like stain-resistant carpeting, stain=resistant or waterproof clothing, firefighting foams, wire cabling coverings, fast food, wrapper packaging. I mean, you name it. It was by the year 2000 this chemical had been used in making a huge variety of products.

LL: And how important was this chemical then to DuPont's bottom line?

ROBERT BILOTT: This was something that the company viewed as really instrumental in their Teflon manufacturing processes. You know, they had looked at whether there were alternatives to this chemical way back into the 1980s where they were becoming aware, yeah, that this stuff was extremely toxic. It was causing cancers. They started looking at, you know, whether they should switch away from it, but it was something that was generating a pretty high profit margin at the company. And unfortunately, the company decided to to keep on using it. And even after 3M announced in the year 2000 they were going to stop making it, DuPont jumped in and started making it themselves and continued to do that for years.

LL: So tell me about what how it becomes toxic to humans. What does it do once it gets into the human body?

ROBERT BILOTT: You know, this is a really kind of a strange chemical. You may hear them referred to now as a forever chemical. It's because this chemical has a really unique structure. It's got carbons attached to fluorine, which make it a really strong chemical bond. So when it gets out into the environment, it's almost impossible to break it down under natural conditions. So when it's emitted out into the air, out into the water, it stays there virtually forever. And not only does that stay out there in the environment, this chemical has this unusual ability to get into living things. And when it gets in the us, in not only animals, but humans, it gets in and kind of sticks to the blood and then circulates throughout our bodies. And our bodies are you have a very hard time breaking it down. So it stays in us. It builds up over time. So you hear it referred to as persistent and toxic and biocumulative. Yeah, the more we get exposed to it, the more it builds up in our body and into our blood at higher and higher levels over time. And that's what really concerns scientists and folks who are looking at this chemical. It's this inability of humans to break it down and its tendency to build up in us over time.

LL: Tell me about some of the people you met while you were working on this case and their health conditions that became linked to PFOA.

ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah. You know, as we started digging through the internal documents at DuPont about what the company had known about what this chemical could do, we're talking about studies that went back into the 50s and 60s and 70s and, you know, studying workers, studying animals. And what we saw was it was associated with all kinds of toxic effects to the liver. People were getting elevated liver enzymes. We saw people developing cancers. And early on, there was no concern that this chemical could be causing birth defects. And we started interviewing the folks that had started developing some of these symptoms, you know, and eventually, you know, we ended up realizing we're able to confirm through a massive human health studies done in the community that the chemical was linked with six different diseases: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, pre-eclampsia and high cholesterol.

LL: So did PFOA appear in any of those documents that you initially got on the original water testing on Earl Tennant's farm?

ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah, in fact, that's how we first found out about it. I was digging through all the documents we were getting from DuPont about this landfill and really not finding much. And you know, what we were getting at the time really was just documents about listed regulated hazardous materials at the landfill. So when I really wasn't finding anything, I finally decided, look, I'm going to ask for everything that's at that landfill, hazardous or not. And we got some pushback from the company and eventually had to go get a court order. But once we started getting documents about what was actually being made at the plant and shipped to this landfill, that's when I stumbled upon a letter from DuPont that made a reference to this chemical, a PFO, also known as PFOA. And that's when I started trying to find out what is this stuff, because it seemed like they were using an awful lot of it at the plant and that a high a really high amount of it had been sent to this landfill. And I really couldn't find anything out there in the published literature about what this chemical was. So we really started asking DuPont for more information, had to do a lot of fighting with them legally, and finally started getting these documents and found out that there was an awful lot known internally about the chemical. But unfortunately, the regulators, the community, the scientific community outside of the company really was unaware of the chemical.

LL: The contamination, it did contaminate Earl Tennant's Farm, but it went beyond his farm. How bad was it in the area's drinking water?

ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah. We found out that, you know, this chemical had been used for for so many years and at one point, thousands of tons of contaminated sludge had been dug up from the factory and dumped into the landfill. So we realized this is what was coming out and causing the foam in the water that the cows were drinking. So we were able to settle that case for Mr. Tennant when we realized what was going on with the cows and the white foaming water. But what was really disturbing is when we were getting into the documents, we realized it wasn't just Mr. Tennant and his farm and his animals, this chemical had been found in the communities drinking water. DuPont had gone out and sampled for it as early as 1984. And it found the chemical in drinking water, not only in West Virginia, but Ohio across the river, and had been monitoring it for years and had not told the community. ThecCommunity had been drinking this for decades. So it was quite disturbing to see not only was it in the community's water and then we realized this was being found in blood across the United States and nobody seemed to know about it. So at one point, I, you know, looking at this information, realizing this was a public health threat, because even though the regulators didn't know about the chemical, DuPont's own scientists had sat down and said no more than one part per billion in drinking water and the levels they were finding were way above one part per billion and nobody was being told.

LL: What did DuPont say about the dangers appear PFOA once it became public, once it became known that the chemical was in the drinking water?

ROBERT BILOTT: Well, unfortunately, DuPont took the position that despite what we were seeing in the animal studies, which included their own DuPont's own internal classification of the chemical as a confirmed animal carcinogen and possible human carcinogen back in the 80s. And despite what we were seeing in their workers studies where there were elevated cancers and all kinds of impacts, DuPont was taking the position with the public that the the evidence was simply insufficient to say that there was any threat to people who were drinking it in the water.

LL: How did the case involving Earl Tennant finally end?

ROBERT BILOTT: Well, when I finally figured out what was going on with PFOA, that, you know, this chemical had been used at the DuPont Teflon factory, that over 7000 tons of PFOA soap sludge as had been dumped into the landfill right next to Mr. Tennant's property, and that this had been in the water these cows were drinking for years and DuPont knew that and simply hadn't told Mr. Tennant or his family. When I finally called the DuPont folks and explained that, I had figured that out, that case settled very quickly. So fortunately, we were able to settle that for Mr. Tennant and his family and then that left the bigger issue at that point of time, you know, how do we get this information out to the community? Mr. Tennant was very concerned, you know, that the rest of his neighbours and everybody else in the community that had been drinking this and, you know, had been exposed that everybody else needed to know this, too. And so luckily, we were able to find a way to try to get that information out and take steps to help the community through that class action lawsuit that came next.

LL: Right. That's the next thing I wanted to ask you. Tell me the outcome of the class action.

ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah, we filed that case in 2001. And again, really the main concerns of the community at that point were we want this out of our water. If it's in our water at levels above what even DuPont says it should be, we want it out and we want to know what will it do to us. We spent several years fighting DuPont through the court system and eventually we were able to settle that case in 2004. We got everybody, you know, water filtration systems. We wanted to immediately stop the exposure, which fortunately we were able to do. We were able to get DuPont to pay to put water filters in for the public water supplies, people on private wells. But one of the key things we did is we sat down and said, we want to confirm what this chemical actually does to people. And we sat down with DuPont and agreed that we would create what really I don't think anybody had ever done before, an independent panel of scientists that both sides would pick, both sides would agree that these are the right guys to study this, that we would pick an independent panel to look at all of the data, all of what was in the internal files, everything, and do new studies of the community to confirm what this chemical would do to people that drank it over time. And that took a long time. We we were fortunate that we were able to use money from the settlement to actually pay people to come in and have their blood tested. And nobody'd really done that before. So we had no idea whether people would participate and if so, how many we ended up getting. Sixty nine thousand people out of the approximately 70000 in the community. So a really massive participation within the community to come forward, give blood samples, give us health information. And we turned all that over to this panel. So they had a really unprecedented amount of data and they were able to design what became some of the most comprehensive, expansive human health studies ever done on any chemical. It took them seven years to complete those studies. And at the end of the day, they were able to confirm, you know, the drinking that that chemical in the water was linked with the six diseases we talked about, rhe two types of cancer and the other diseases as well.

LL: You mentioned earlier that it is right across the United States and I'm wondering how widely used as PFOA now, both in the United States and here in Canada?

ROBERT BILOTT: Luckily, PFOA has been phased out in the United States in any continued manufacturing of it, but it's still being made in other places in the world. And the thing that people need to remember is because this is a forever chemical because it gets out and stays in the environment, all of the PFOA that was has been made over the last 60 years, even though we may not be making any more of it in the United States, it's still out there in our soil, in our water, in our blood.

LL: So is your legal work on PFOA and its related chemicals done?

ROBERT BILOTT: No. No. You know, as PFOA was phased out and these new replacement chemicals started started being made and brought out into the environment and once information about PFOA started trickling out to the agencies and U.S. EPA and other other countries started testing for it, we now know that we now have not only PFOA in drinking water and in our blood. We have a lot of these related chemicals. PFOA is just one of hundreds of chemicals, if not thousands that are in this class of completely manmade per fluoridated chemicals called P FOSS PFA s PFOA is just one of them. We now know there are dozens, if not hundreds of these out there in our water, in our blood. And scientists are really raising the warning signs, warning flags about these these this broader class of chemicals. So one of the things I've done is just recently I filed a new case where I am seeking to require the companies that are putting these these P Foss chemicals, still putting them out into our environment, into our blood. I've filed a case to require the companies to pay, to do whatever scientific studies are necessary to tell us what these are actually doing to us. You know, it took us 20 years to dig out the information about PFOA, which finally led to it being phased out in drinking water standards, finally starting to come out for PFOA. Yet what's happening is these these other chemicals are popping out and people are saying, oh, well, we don't have information about those and we don't need to be playing what becomes almost like a whack a mole game where we find out about one chemical. And so we tweak it a bit and call it something new and start all over again. So I'm I'm trying to to encourage comprehensive studies of this broader group of chemicals and to have the companies that are putting them out there, exposing us to them, using all of us as guinea pigs to find out what they do. Those companies should be paying to tell us exactly what those chemicals are doing to us. So that case just got filed and I am seeking to bring it on behalf of everyone in the United States that has these chemicals in their blood.

LL: Robert Bilott, your persistence and your determination is remarkable. Your book is terrific. Thank you so much for talking to me about it today.

ROBERT BILOTT: Thank you so much for having me.

LL: Robert Bilott' new book is called Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed and One Lawyer's Twenty Year Battle Against DuPont. Earlier, I read part of the statement we received from DuPont. Here is a bit more of it. "Safety, health and protecting the planet are core values at DuPont. We are and have always been committed to upholding the highest standards for the well-being of our employees, our customers and the communities in which we operate. As a science-based company, DuPont is innovating in all facets of our business, in our policies and protocols, as well as our products. Nothing is more important than the safety of our employees and the communities in which we operate. Although DuPont does not make the chemicals in question, we agree that further action needs to be taken. That's why we are leading the industry by supporting federal legislation and science based regulatory efforts to address these chemicals." Well, coming up in our next half hour, glimmers of hope in Sudan. Omar al-Bashir's regime has fallen and the new transitional government is repealing a series of restrictive laws restricting women's dress and movement. You'll meet one of the activists who's been pushing for the change. I'm Laura Lynch, and you are listening to The Current.

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A glimmer of hope in Sudan

Guests: Fadia Khalaf

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

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[Sounds from demonstrators singing in Sudan]

LL: Dubbed Kandaka, or the Nubian Queen, Alaa Salah became a symbol of protest in Sudan last spring, after a video of her leading demonstrators in a song went viral. Protesters like Ms. Salah Were calling for an end to three decades of rule under former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and they got their wish when the dictator was forced from power in a military coup last April. The fact that a woman could take such a prominent role in demonstrations was a signal that change in Sudan was finally afoot. For decades, Sudanese women were rarely seen in public because of repressive laws that controlled how they dressed and acted. They were barred from wearing pants in public or mixing with men other than their husbands. But that too, is changing. Last week, Sudan's transitional government announced it was repealing those restrictive public order laws, as well as dissolving the former president's political party. Fadia Khalaf was a protester during the demonstrations. She is also the founder of the Initiative for Missing People, which is working to find people who disappeared during the protests. She's in Khartoum. Hello.

FADIA KHALAF: Hello.

LL: How are people responding to the government's decision to repeal these so-called public order laws?

FADIA KHALAF: Well, I guess they are cheerful and they're actually happy because these rules were put to humiliate people and to get money out of them. And it did not make sense to people. Because of this law you get to go on a trial and you cannot have a lawyer to defend you. So they just charge you and put you in the court immediately. Of course, people are happy now.

LL: Tell me what the end of these laws means to you personally.

FADIA KHALAF: Well, it means a lot to me at considering those out that I was arrested last year for dressing trousers on the road. So I was charged and put in jail for like since 5:00 p.m. till 2:00 a.m. It means a lot to me because I feel relief now that it's over. I mean, you cannot charge people for how they dress or how they look.

LL: Right. You were charged with wearing trousers in public. I'm wondering how widely were those laws being enforced. Were lots of people charged?

FADIA KHALAF: Well, a lot of people and the punishment is bad. It's like you have to pay a bill and you get flagged. You know, people get lashed. So it's over now.

LL: The government's also announced it's dissolving the National Congress Party of the former president, Omar al-Bashir. How significant is that?

FADIA KHALAF: It's a very big thing. It's what all the people have waited for to be done after 30 years of humiliation, suppression, killing and destroying the country and destroying its economy. This is what people have waited for.

LL: The party itself is saying that its ideas will survive even if the party doesn't. I'm wondering how much support remains for Omar al-Bashir.

FADIA KHALAF: They're not getting any support. Believe me. All the people outside over there are angry and pissed off of them. That they cannot stand them. They will not let them return back anymore. And they will not let all the Islamist ideas get back or find its way in a different party. It's not going to happen. People realize how deceived they were in the past in the name of religion or in the name of ideologies or whatever it is. I think they think differently right now.

LL: Aside from thinking differently, tell me how life has changed in Sudan since Omar al-Bashir's government was toppled last spring.

FADIA KHALAF: Well, a lot of things has changed. People are becoming more open and aware of their rights, what to do, what not to do. How to be treated, I mean, we were missing that. We were, I'm not going to say living under fear, but I think it was. We used to fear soldiers, police, now this new government is trying to fix all the things and trying to make it a better place for us to live with the rules, with how police react towards the civilians. Things are changing, it's very obvious. And people are actually optimistic and they're looking forward to achieve justice.

LL: Tell me where you've seen the greatest improvements.

FADIA KHALAF: Well, the greatest improvement I've seen so far for me, and it makes a lot of sense is establishing the investigation committees regarding what happened on June 3rd and what happened on the military coup when al-Bashir took over in Sudan and as well to see them also establishing this committee regarding the Ramadan massacre back in the 90s. Also going to investigate about it. Most important, they're investigating about the enforced disappeared people since June 3rd. So I think there is improvement towards achieving justice that we're looking for.

LL: Fadia can you remind us what happened on June the 3rd, when a protest, a group of protesters were stormed by security forces?

FADIA KHALAF: In the days before the crack of the sit in, I've noticed that the number of people are going, it's going down. And I mean, people are getting less. Probably most of them travelling back to their states to attend Eid and in some kind of how we felt that something bad is going to happen. But we never expected it to be hundreds of people killed, many of them being killed and thrown in the Nile, tied with blocks and bricks. That was just we never expected this. And people are still traumatized related to what happened on June 3rd, like finding one of the missing people who was shot and thrown in the Nile, we found him in the morgue after three months. So everything keeps bringing the pain back again to us.

LL: Fadia, what areas do you think still need the most work?

FADIA KHALAF: The states definitely, because I think most of the focus is usually on Khartoum and the centre. I think that Darfur and the Blue Nile states and Nuba Mountains or South Kordofan meets this focus more than any other place because they have survived wars and conflicts over the years.

LL: What do you want to see happen in those states then?

FADIA KHALAF: To end war, to stop the conflict, to put away the weapons and the guns and to start develop and rise up with the country and to save people, defeat them, to build schools, to let them get the least rights of medical treatment and education. And so this is what I really wanted to see to happen.

LL: Now Omar al-Bashir is facing a raft of charges that include corruption and war crimes indictments by the International Criminal Court. How prepared is Sudan, do you think, to reckon with the legacy of his rule?

FADIA KHALAF: They are very prepared. They wish to sue him as soon as possible. Yes.

LL: Do you think he should be tried in Sudan or at the International Criminal Court? Or maybe even both?

FADIA KHALAF: Both. Matter of fact, most of the people saying that way. Let's say both.

LL: Why?

FADIA KHALAF: Well, some of the people are not 100 percent sure of the law over here. So they're looking for international trial.

LL: What would that bring to Sudan to see him go on trial internationally?

FADIA KHALAF: It will make people relieved for, you know, committing all these crimes against humanity and against people.

LL: I'm wondering, after everything we've talked about, you know, especially what you say still needs to be done in so much of the country, how hopeful do you think Sudanese people are today for their future?

FADIA KHALAF: Well, I've never seen them this hopeful and powerful. And I wish for them to keep on like that and actually convert this energy into actions on the ground. And I think they're capable to do it. They did the sit in on June 3rd. Everyone came from all the states around Sudan. They built a small Sudan inside the military headquarters. I believe they can build a better Sudan all over the states.

LL: Fadia, I hope that your country continues down a good path the way you believe it is now. I thank you for talking to us.

FADIA KHALAF: You're most welcome.

LL: Fadia Khalaf was a protester during the demonstrations that led to the end of Omar al-Bashir's rule in Sudan. She's also the founder of the Initiative for Missing People, which is trying to find people who disappeared during the protests. She was in Khartoum, Sudan.

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It may be possible to 'alter' memories of heartbreak so they hurt less, research finds

Guests: Alain Brunet, Judy Illes

LL: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

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VOICE: I feel like, like I think of myself like as a broken person or what not. I recognize in me a few things are broken that weren't before. Like, I feel that.

LL: Heartbreak can leave you feeling just that: broken and afraid.

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VOICE 1: You can feel the impact of what you've been through, that it's changed you in some way.

VOICE 2: Like over Christmas, a customer was life, I'm sure when you find somebody, you know, who's like the right person for you. You know, like you're older now. You're wiser. In just a few months, you'll probably make a choice. And as she said that I wa just like like, like, no. No that's actually not true. You know, I think that I would need to date somebody for like out of anxiety. I would probably want to be with somebody like for years before I could ever make a commitment because I'm so afraid. I guess I don't trust myself to make the right choice.

LL: That's a patient in a therapy session featured on the CBC podcast, Other People's Problems. Betrayal, break-ups, abandonment, if you've been through any of that, you know how painful the memories can be. But would you change those memories if you could? A new study is looking into just that, whether it's possible to edit bad memories. Alain Brunet is professor of psychiatry at McGill University and he joins me from our Montreal studio. Hello.

ALAIN BRUNET: Hello Ms. Laura Lynch.

LL: Editing memories sounds a bit like science fiction. What did your study look at?

ALAIN BRUNET: It does a little bit sound like science fiction, but it no longer is. We've been conducting studies on reconsolidation therapy, that's how it's called, for more than 15 years now. And we've worked with people suffering from PTSD, substance abuse, adjustment disorders. So the possibility of decreasing the strength of an emotional memory is definitely with us now and we're using it to help patients recover from very difficult events.

LL: What exactly is memory reconsideration?

ALAIN BRUNET: When you recall the memory, it needs to be saved again to long term memory storage. And this opens the door to interfering with this process. And so reconsolidation therapy involves thinking precisely about this specific event and interfering with the re saving of this event in your long term memory.

LL: So it's less about erasing a memory or editing the memory than altering your emotional reaction to the memory?

ALAIN BRUNET: The emotion is a memory. So when you recall an event, you get in touch with the original emotion. And that emotion is also a memory. So we're essentially decreasing the strength of this emotion.

LL: Well, why were you studying heartbreak?

ALAIN BRUNET: I got interested in heartbreak because it's the number one reason why people consult a psychotherapist. It's also the stuff that Greek tragedies are made of and it's something really at the core of the human experience.

LL: But is there an actual psychiatric condition attached to heartbreak?

ALAIN BRUNET: Yes, there is. In the most severe cases, it can be considered as an adjustment disorder. So you have essentially anxious and depressive symptoms.

LL: And before we get into the details of your study, I'm wondering if you can try to explain for us, non-scientist, how memory actually works.

ALAIN BRUNET: Well, I'm not sure that I can explain to you in a nutshell how memory works, but there are certain features of memory that we certainly understand better than we used to. And it has to do with the way how memories are created, stored and recovered. What we now understand much better is that when you recall the memory, it needs to be saved again to long term memory storage. And that discovery allows us to try to interfere with that process and decrease the strength of certain memories, because we are now also understanding that there's a whole class of mental disorders that have at their core an emotional memory. Consider phobias, consider post-traumatic stress disorder, consider adjustment disorders such as a romantic betrayal or other types of adjustment disorders. We are understanding that there's this class of disorders where if we could decrease the strength of that emotional memory, we would probably get rid of the symptoms and we would effectively cure this person of this mental disorder. And as a result of that, this person may not have to revert to anti-depressants or a long term psychotherapy. So it's really a big step forward from the perspective of mental health.

LL: So take me through what you had the participants in your study to do.

ALAIN BRUNET: So you're talking about the romantic betrayal study?

LL: Yes.

ALAIN BRUNET: Well, essentially, we had people write an account of their romantic betrayal event. We asked people to read this account to us under the influence of a beta blocker drug called propranolol. And so propranolol has this property of interfering with the rerecording of parts of the memory and particularly the emotional component of that memory. So the treatment is very simple. You essentially need to reactivate this memory and then you let the drug do the work. And you do this once a week for four to six weeks.

LL: And the drug does its work and what are the results of the study then?

ALAIN BRUNET: So the result is that week after week, if you measure, if you use a self report questionnaire to measure the severity of the symptoms, what you see is that the symptoms associated with the adjustment disorder decrease week after week after week and after four to six weeks, people are able to read their narrative with very little, they don't feel so emotional about it and they feel like it could be a page that's been taken from a novel.

LL: What did the participants tell you then about how they felt?

ALAIN BRUNET: Well, they feel they're really amazed at what the treatment is doing to them. They feel less emotional. They feel like, you know, they're getting their life back.

LL: So you had 60 participants in the study. That doesn't seem to me like a huge sample size. How confident are you the results can be replicated?

ALAIN BRUNET: I'm very confident that the results can be replicated because this is the same protocol that we've been using in traumatic stress and this is the same protocol that's been used in phobias. So we've conducted several studies, including one in Paris with survivors of the terrorist attacks.

LL: Does it replace other PTSD treatments entirely?

ALAIN BRUNET: It can replace other PTSD treatments entirely that would take months to years to obtain good results.

LL: What are the benefits then of memory?

ALAIN BRUNET: There are lots of benefits to memory. It's actually what from an evolutionary perspective, it's what saved our lives for a number of times, countless times, actually. Memory is very important to learn and to learn from one's experience. But I don't think that what we're doing is preventing people from learning and from growing. Essentially, I think what we're doing is bringing people back to where they were before the event.

LL: But that's an interesting question, isn't it? Because there must be risks if you alter a memory, even the hard ones. That whole question of learning from it and making you the person that you are.

ALAIN BRUNET: To be honest, I've been using this treatment since 2004 now, and I haven't had one single patient come back to me and say, Dr. Brunet, you have really robbed me of some of my most important memories and I don't feel myself anymore.

LL: And that's enough for you?

ALAIN BRUNET: Yes.

LL: What about this idea of deleting memories altogether? I think of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Where's science on that front?

ALAIN BRUNET: Well, that's a different story, really. I know that researchers are working on that at the M.I.T. and elsewhere around the world. I wouldn't be surprised if this line of research was eventually successful, maybe 10 or 20 years down the line, I don't know. But that raises more important ethical questions. If you can erase the memory altogether because that's not what people want.

LL: But tell me the ethical problem if somebody said, I do want to erase this memory.

ALAIN BRUNET: Most people you know it might be problematic to erase the memory altogether. This being said, you know, I've always been a very lunatic person and I lose my memories all the time and I have to deal with it. It's not always fun, but fortunately, I'm here today and I remembered to come.

LL: Well, I was actually going to ask you, if you have a memory that you'd be willing to share that you'd like to have altered.

ALAIN BRUNET: I would have tons of them.

LL: Any in particular, you'd like to share?

ALAIN BRUNET: Oh, my God. No.

LL: OK, that's fair enough.

ALAIN BRUNET: I don't think so.

LL: I can ask the question. You don't always have to answer it. Well, Alain Brunet, thank you very much for sharing your research. It's really interesting.

ALAIN BRUNET: My pleasure.

LL: Alain Brunet is professor of psychiatry at McGill University. He was in our Montreal studio. Those ethical and philosophical questions Alain Brunet touched on are a major concern as brain science advances. And for insight into that, I'm joined by Judy Ellis. She is Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. And we reached her in Vancouver. Hello.

JUDY ILLES: Hello. Thanks for having me on the show today.

LL: What do you make of the research Alain Brunet is doing?

JUDY ILLES: I'm so encouraged by any approach, and intervention that is effective in mitigating some of the profound psychiatric disorders that we see among our in our society today. And I think in the context of the clinical application of the procedure and the drugs that Dr. Brunet is applying, there's really a lot of hope for patients who are profoundly debilitated by their traumatic memories.

LL: What ethical concerns do you have around treating memories this way?

JUDY ILLES: So, you know, I think that it's a really important question and a place where what I would call anticipatory ethics really comes into play. And that is what are some of the consequences of having the kind of drug that dampens the emotional component of memory available not only inside the clinic, but potentially outside it and even in a predictive way. So you know one question we have to ask is what is the role of trauma and bad memories in our individual life experiences, in our overall humanity? And even as our history of people, there's no question that a memory that is traumatic and that is debilitating to the extent that it can be mitigated and managed, it is essential for people who are truly suffering. But there is an element of suffering and burden of trauma that gives us experience and learning from our mistakes that actually is vital in shaping who we are, giving us a sense of agency and responsibility, knowing right from wrong. So in that respect, in the clinic, as Dr. Brunet is applying these procedures, I think fundamentally important, but there are concerns about thinking about these interventions potentially outside the clinic.

LL: That distinction that you made about inside the clinic and outside the clinic. Could you explain that to me a little bit more?

JUDY ILLES: So I think the the clinical work of Dr. Brunet, for example, will have to and I'm sure he's doing this carefully screen to whom these approaches, these interventions really apply, I'm going to say medically. So that is in the case where there really is a pathological suffering from those individuals who might come in and have had a bad break-up, but who's suffering isn't really pathological. And there's a slippery slope there. There's going to be a lot of assessment that has to be done there to ensure that these kinds of interventions aren't used in any sort of trivial ways. Now, if we move outside the clinic, let's take the context of, you know, having a hangover drug. Imagine if this was used as a hangover drug. Somebody had a bad night at the party before and, you know, this becomes available over the web on the black market, available like other kinds of drugs that we have for intervening, for example, on ADHD. You know, there are drugs that were developed for biomedical reasons and now they're just being used a bit more socially or trivially and I think we want to be concerned about that. If we dampen our memories of our bad experiences, we may actually dampen our potential for learning from them and good behaviour going forward.

LL: So if the person with the hangover takes the pill and then forgets about the behaviour and the feeling of being hung over, then they'll go out and get smashed again?Is that the idea?

JUDY ILLES: Or cares less. So maybe the hangover isn't the most important example, but let's take an example of war. What does it mean for our war fighters, many of whom are our Canadian heroes, to have their memories of a traumatic event if they are subject to war, to have their memories dampened? I think it's you know, those memories are what allow us to really check what we do from a moral point of view and ensure that those final decisions, to the extent possible, are the right ones. If we start to dampen those memories either retroactively in the way that Dr. Brunet is applying them or even potentially in a method that could be used to use them proactively, that is we might be able to train war fighters to be less cautious about their actions, either on the ground or even taking risks as they're flying airplanes or other manoeuvres because the dampening of those memories and experiences has taken place.

LL: Right. And I just want to be clear, when it comes to PTSD sufferers who believe memory manipulation help them, do you support alleviating that kind of suffering?

JUDY ILLES: I absolutely do support that. So here we're talking about a frank mental health disorder that may well intervene on an individual's ability to affect a quality of life that is fulfilling and contributing to the whole. So in the case of frank mental illness, absolutely yes.

LL: What do you think this field of research says about our relationship to suffering?

JUDY ILLES: Well, that is a really interesting question. You know, we have been, since the ancients, making every effort as clinicians and ethicists and scientists trying to improve the life of people who are suffering from mental illness, where the inability to be happy to function as a person to contribute meaningfully has been a focus. We've seen that with surgical procedures dating back to the ancients all the way through to the psychosurgery of the 1960s and that was a very dark time in the use of those procedures. The drug interventions such as those with propranolol are less invasive surgery that certainly than surgical procedures. I think it's a positive step forward, but what it says is that we as humans value suffering. It's a funny way to phrase it, but we value suffering as a focus of our efforts that require utmost attention and mitigation. It's something that as humans may shape us, but also may take us down in the most profound ways. Managing suffering and trying to keep it at bay is is equally one at the heart of our social, ethical and medical attention.

LL: Such a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much.

JUDY ILLES: Thank you, Laura.

LL: Judy Illes is the director of Neuroethics Canada. We reached her in Vancouver. That is our program for today. Stay tuned though to Radio One for Q with Tom Power. I'm Laura Lynch. Thank you so much for listening to The Current.

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Dec. 2, 2019 episode transcript

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