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The Current Transcript for January 23, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Alleged Saudi Arabian phone hack of Jeff Bezos

Guests: Kim Zetter, Adam Coogle

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Our audience is mainly younger kids because we like to do the dance challenges and the comedy sketch. We ask them how old they were because we showed them how close we were. So a lot of those interacting with the posts are saying they're 12, they're 10.

MATT GALLOWAY: Those 10 and 12 year olds are interacting with the Caleon Twins on Tik Tok. If you have a teen or a tween in your household, chances are they're using the wildly popular social network too. In 30 minutes, I'll look at how this app from China became the most addictive and potentially lucrative social media service out there. And parents, if you have no idea what the renegade challenges is, ask your kids and stick around. And then.

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Why in this day and age of supreme technology, are we using such primitive measures still to treat cancer?

MG: Azra Raza has seen the effects of cancer up close, as an oncologist, but also as her husband suffered through this disease. In an hour, the doctors here to explain why she's embarrassed by the state of cancer treatment in 2020. But we begin with the richest man in the world. His hacked cell phone and a trail that may lead all the way back to the Saudi crown prince. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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JEFF BEZOS: I still have an email address that customers can write to. I see most of those e-mails and I don't answer very many of them anymore.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if you're not answering your emails, can you give us your cell phone. Maybe a text is...

[Laughs] Oh my Gosh.

MG: That's Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owner of The Washington Post, speaking at a leadership conference in April of 2018. And no, he did not give his number out to the audience, but that same month he did give the number to someone else: the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and now two experts with the United Nations say there is evidence that the prince may have been involved in hacking Jeff Bezos his phone. Kim Zetter is a cybersecurity reporter who obtained a full technical report on that hack. Kim. Good morning.

KIM ZETTER: Good morning.

MG: How did Jeff Bezos's phone get hacked?

KIM ZETTER: Well, we don't know if it has actually has been hacked. The report says with medium to high confidence that a video file that was sent to Bezos from the prince's What's Up account seemed to have initiated some anomalous behaviour on the phone after that, including large data transfers from the phone. But the forensic report isn't conclusive and the investigators never actually found malware on the phone. They simply suspect that something that was used to deliver, something that sent the video to Bezos's phone might have contained malware that infected the system.

MG: And would he have had it? I mean, the warning is always don't click on the app. If you don't know who it's being sent from, would have had to click or open the file or would it have just taken over his phone because it was sent to him?

KIM ZETTER: It's unclear. There have been vulnerabilities in WhatsApp and another software programs where if something is sent to the phone, the user doesn't need to do anything. And we don't know from the report. The report actually never indicates whether or not Bezos actually clicked on the video to watch it. So there are just a lot of unanswered questions around this report. And the report itself is kind of strange as well, because it indicates at the end that it isn't an incomplete investigation. But the investigation lasts over many months. So it's not clear why people examining the phone didn't finish the investigation.

MG: What would Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman gain by hacking into Jeff businesses phone?

KIM ZETTER: Well, you know, he was likely targeted because of his ownership of The Washington Post and the criticism targeted against him and against the Saudi government through Jamal Khashoggi and columns for one and other Washington Post stories. And I suppose there was, you know, maybe they believed that they would be able to get information about future stories coming from The Washington Post or simply find information that would embarrass him. There was a report out from The Wall Street Journal yesterday saying from sources close to the prince saying that there was a plan to hack Bezos's phone, but they were not aware of any plan to blackmail him. But, of course, there was subsequently photos obtained about Bezos and his girlfriend that the national choir then used to break a story about the affair he was having. But that's still unclear whether all of this is connected and whether the alleged hacking of Bezos's phone by the Saudi government resulted in the leak of photos and information to the national question.

MG: There's a lot in there that I want to unpack. One of the things that's just I mean, what do we know about the personal information that the Saudis may have gained from his phone?

KIM ZETTER: We don't know anything about that. So the investigators were tracking through traffic data leading Bezos's, phone, and all they're seeing is traffic going to traditional websites, news websites, Amazon, other sites like that. And there's nothing that indicates anything, any untoward Web site that is receiving data from his phone. So we don't know what's on his phone. Presumably, there's a lot of business information on that phone, personal information. There would be potentially, I mean, one of the richest men in the world, potentially has important and significant information on that phone, especially if he's in engaging with a lot of high level political people. So there's the potential for gaining a lot of information from that phone if indeed the only thing that got leaked was, you know, the photos, if they were obtained from Bezos's phone to The National Query. If that's the only leak, then that's fairly minor. But that's also raises other questions, if that's the only thing. If those were taken from his phone during the alleged Saudi hack and that's the only thing that got leaked to embarrass him, it raises questions about why something more wasn't leaked.

MG: Do we know, you mentioned that's Jeff Bezos, in addition to being the richest man in the world and owning amazon also owns The Washington Post, the paper that Jamal Khashoggi was writing for had written a number of column columns that were critical of the Saudi crown prince. Do we know whether there was any impact on how the post covered Saudi Arabia?

KIM ZETTER: No. There was none at all. And in fact, they came out hard against the alleged actions against- Well, they're no longer alleged. The intelligence community has definitively stated that the Saudi government was behind, or Saudi officials, Saudi agents were behind the killing of their columnist. So that hasn't affected The Washington Post's coverage. They've remained very aggressive in their coverage against the Saudi regime.

MG: It's interesting that this hack appears to have happened months before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Is there significance to that timing?

KIM ZETTER: Well you know, the U.N. came out with a statement yesterday condemning the alleged action and noted that while Saudi Arabia was supposedly investigating that murder in the fall of 2018, they would have still been a, you know, in extracting data from Bezos's phone. If we can trust, again, the forensic report, it all comes down to whether or not we can trust this forensic report. And if subsequent investigation of the phone will actually conclude that this was happening. But if it was happening, then the two are overlapping. They would have been in the process of still extracting data from his phone during the time that they were supposedly investigating the murder.

MG: What was it that prompted Jeff Bezos to start looking into cybersecurity and wondering whether he'd been hacked into?

KIM ZETTER: It appears to be the revelation of the affair that he was having. So that occurred in January 2019. So he received the video that is supposed to be the conduit for the hacking in May 2018 and then in January 2019. His affair was exposed. And the subsequent month in February, his security person, Gavin de Becker, came out publicly asserting that his phone was hacked. And that's how the photos and the information about his secret affair got leaked. It's interesting that when Gavin de Becker made that public statement in February 2019 saying that his phone had been hacked, they actually hadn't done a forensic investigation of the phone yet. That wouldn't happen until many months later.

MG: Is there anything that would link the Inquirer's coverage of that extramarital affair to Saudi Arabia and the hacking of the phone?

KIM ZETTER: Well, there is a relationship between National Enquirer and Saudi Arabian government. The National Enquirer came out with a special insert, our special publication, that was very positive and glowing towards the government. So there's there appear to be relationships already established there that would conceivably, you know, could have been used for this kind of leaking. But there has also been allegations released by The National Enquirer parent company. They assert that the information came from Lauren Sanchez's brother. Lauren Sanchez, of course, is the woman that Bezos was having an affair with and is now in an open relationship with.

MG: Saudi Arabia has said that these allegations of hacking are absurd. The National Enquirer has said that the crown prince or any other Saudis weren't sources. What do you make of those denials are two separate denials, but about the same thing in some ways?

KIM ZETTER: Well, I'm not sure that we can trust any denials by the government. The government has been engaged in hacking and surveillance of dissidents, people who are critical of governments and not just activists, but also journalists. And so it's expected that any government is going to deny claims like this. So I'm not sure that we can take that at face value.

MG: How did the crown prince of Saudi Arabia get Jeff Bezos's phone number?

KIM ZETTER: In April of 2018, they were apparently seated to side by side at a dinner. And at that point they exchanged phone numbers. And on the same day that they apparently exchanged phone numbers, Jeff Bezos received a WhatsApp text message from an account identifying itself as the Saudi princes account, saying, I've noted your number here. And so that was the first establishment of the connection was that WhatsApp text on the day that they exchanged phone numbers.

MG: Just before I let you go, I mean, there are a number of reasons why people might be interested in this story. It's Jeff Bezos. He's a very wealthy man. It involves perhaps the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. But why to you, as a cybersecurity reporter, why does this matter?

KIM ZETTER: Well, I if it's a good it's a good opportunity for us to examine this use of spyware in general, because we often talk about the spying and surveillance done by governments, against dissidents, against adversaries, things like that. But there's a much more prevalent spying that's going on. And that's against ordinary citizens. Although maybe someone might not say, Jeff Bezos is ordinary citizen, but there this is sort of an example of the kinds of tools that are available. This one in particular that is alleged that they may have used is something that ordinarily only given or sold to governments, law enforcement and things like that. But there are also commercial tools available that anyone can buy. And they're marketed as, you know, keeping track of your employees or tracking your children. But more often than not, used by spouses and partners against each other, by other people. And so there's really no control of this kind of software. And pretty much anyone can do this kind of monitoring. And so this is an opportunity for us to examine this market and the prevalence of this and the risks that pretty much anyone faces.

MG: Kim, I appreciate you talking to us this morning. Thank you.

KIM ZETTER: You're welcome.

MG: Kim Zetter is a cybersecurity reporter and the author of Countdown to Zero Day Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon. There are, as Kim mentioned, many questions remaining unanswered about this alleged hack. In the meantime, human rights advocates say it wouldn't be the first time that Saudi Arabia has done such a thing. Adam Coogle is a Middle East researcher with the non-profit organization Human Rights Watch. Adam, good morning to you.

ADAM COOGLE: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of the United Nations calling for further investigation into this alleged phone hack?

ADAM COOGLE: Well, look, I think for people who have followed Saudi Arabia, particularly under the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, you know, the idea that Saudi authorities would be targeting critics or dissident abroad, dissidents abroad is not much of a surprise. There's a real track record of Saudi Arabia allegedly targeting prominent critics and dissidents abroad with advanced surveillance software through which they are able to essentially infect the phone with malware and extract data. For example, one of the cases that is pretty well known at this point is a dissident in Canada named Omar Abdulazeez, who whose phone was hacked in 2018. And the real pernicious aspect of that was that he was in direct contact with Jamal Khashoggi and they were planning some joint activities together. So it's very probable, based on the phone hack, that the Saudi authorities could have known about everything they were planning and could have been, you know, at least part of the impetus for, you know, wanting to wanting to take down Khashoggi as they unfortunately did. And later on October.

MG: And that's why you say this story fits, in your words, a pattern of surveillance and harassment?

ADAM COOGLE: Absolutely. I mean, as your previous guest said, we don't know for sure there's no smoking gun evidence to indicate that Saudi Arabia was absolutely behind this. But at the same time, it does fit a pattern that we've seen before.

MG: How were those other hacks done? You mentioned the Canadian dissidents. How was that done?

ADAM COOGLE: Those were attacks that allegedly used a software called Pegasus that's created by an Israeli cyber security firm called NSO Group that sent malware through chat applications. And I believe i those instances that you had to click on some sort of linking it, then infected the phone with malware.

MG: So how would the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos then fit into this larger picture? We know, as we mentioned, that he owns The Washington Post, that Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist there was writing columns that were very critical of Mohammed bin Salman. So connect the dots there for us as you see them.

ADAM COOGLE: Well, I think you have to see this within the broader context of how Saudi Arabia has changed under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and become a place that, you know, is not only intolerant of free expression, but is seeking to eliminate all criticism of the kingdom at home and even abroad. So Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman, is engaged in a wide ranging crackdown on free expression. They have arrested hundreds of dissidents in an unprecedented manner that we've never seen in previous Saudi periods. But they've also sought to use their leverage to silence critics abroad. You know, the most prominent example, obviously, is the ghastly murder of a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in October 2013. But I think that these alleged targeting instances of Saudi dissidents, one in London and one in Canada that we know about for sure, also fit that pattern that it's.

MG: The crown prince, was sitting beside Jeff Bezos at this dinner. And that was on the Crown Prince's sort of charm offensive tour when he was touring through the United States, I guess.

ADAM COOGLE: Yes, that's correct.

MG: Befriending sort of tech executives and leaders in the U.S..

ADAM COOGLE: Absolutely. I mean, one of the reasons that the. Does not like bad press and does not like public criticism is because, you know, his whole economic campaign is based on diversifying the Saudi economy through foreign direct investment. You know, he wants to be seen as a young progressive leader who is improving the country's economic situation as well as social situation. And he really thinks, I think, that the criticism that was launched by columns by Jamal as well as others in Western media outlets, you know, could potentially harm his campaign to generate that investment. So, you know, he wants to be seen as a big player, as a country that's open for investment. And I think he wants to minimize as much as possible any kind of negative attention to the country's human rights record.

MG: To a lot of people Saudi Arabia and the crown prince have been acting with impunity, whether it comes to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi or other actions. People are calling on the Trump administration to do something about that. How should the administration react in the wake of this story?

ADAM COOGLE: Well, I think the Trump administration has made it pretty clear that, you know, they regard Saudi Arabia as a stalwart ally and that, you know, as long as Saudi Arabia keeps, you know, paying money for four weapons deals and military transfers, that, you know, everything's okay. I think at the same time, this will give more impetus for some of the efforts on the Hill among senators, especially to try to provide meaningful checks on Saudi Arabia and to use whatever influence, levers of influence that they have within Congress to try to put pressure on the Saudis to sort of clean up some of this behaviour.

MG: And the other element of this is that Jared Kushner, top White House adviser, apparently communicates with the crown prince as well through WhatsApp. People have said that this is a recipe for disaster.

ADAM COOGLE: It's certainly been widely reported that he does that. You know, look, what's app is very popular throughout the Middle East and the world, really. And it's the primary way in which most people communicate. So it wouldn't be surprising that that's the crown prince's preferred mode of communication. And it is encrypted. However, you know, it certainly has in the past been associated with software, with vulnerabilities to these kinds of attacks. And of course, right now, WhatsApp itself is involved in a lawsuit with the same NSO group in Israel based on an attack that they created exploiting WhatsApp? So, yes, I think the use of these kind of chat applications isn't quite as safe as some people may have assumed in the past. And we need to always exercise caution.

MG: As Kim noted. There is also a push for greater transparency in terms of how whether it's software like Pegasus or other forms of software that could be invasive, that could get into somebodies phone, how they're being sold around the world. What would you like to see when it comes to greater perhaps restrictions or transparency on this kind of software?

ADAM COOGLE: So this software, you know, that we've been tracking and others kind of within the human rights and tech community have been tracking, are a lot of them created by private companies, whether in Europe or in one of obviously with the NSO group in Israel. And I think our primary objective has been to try to get countries that host those companies to enact meaningful export controls. It's challenging, right? This is new technology. You know, it's ostensibly used by law enforcement and governments to combat terrorism in other things like that. But I think the argument that we make is that there are some countries that have such an abusive track record that there's just zero expectation that you can sell them that kind of technology. And they won't use it in purposes that it wasn't intended for.

MG: So it shouldn't end up in the hands of anyone in Saudi Arabia. Is that your point?

ADAM COOGLE: I would say so because, you know, there's no expectation based on their track record that they would ever use it appropriately and not in an abusive manner.

MG: And if someone like Jeff Bezos, I mean, again, presumably very sophisticated man, has created technology that has changed the world. If his phone can be hacked into, whose phone can't be hacked into?

MG: Absolutely. And it's well-known that that one of these softwares was also used to hack the phone of the emir of Qatar several years ago, which actually set off the incidents leading to the to the blockade of the country. So, I mean, anybody can be hacked.

MG: Adam, good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

ADAM COOGLE: Thank you.

MG: Adam Coogle is a Middle East researcher with a non-profit organization, Human Rights Watch. He was in our studio in New York City. The CBC News is next. And then a story about technology. Chinese tech companies are on the rise and that includes in the world of social media. We're looking at the secrets of Tik Tok wildly popular. If you're on it, you know how much time it can take up. It is a. Wildly addictive as well. We'll take a look inside it's viral success. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stick around.

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The rise and rise of TikTok

Guest: Chris Stokel Walker

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, a leading cancer doctor who thinks we're approaching this disease all wrong. Azra Raza says the game changing cancer breakthroughs you keep reading about in the news aren't all they're cracked up to be and patients are suffering as a result. That's on its way. But first, what makes Tik Tok users tick. Tick.

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MG: All right, a pop quiz for you. Do you know what a cringe video is? What about Lauren Grey? If she were sitting beside you on the bus, would you be able to pick her out? No. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? If the app Tik Tok keeps growing, you might be able to answer yes to those questions. Tech talk has already been downloaded more than one and a half a billion times. It has its own means and has its own slang. It has its own star system. And by the way, Lauren Grey is a huge Tik Tok star. And a cringe video, it makes you do just that. You cringe at the embarrassing thing that somebody posted. What exactly is drawing people to this Chinese social media app? Our producer, Peter Mitton went to Hamilton, Ontario to learn the secrets of Tik Tok success.

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SAMANTHA: Hi, I'm Samantha.

MADELEINE: And I'm Madeleine.

SAMANTHA: We are called the Caleon Twins because we are identical twins. We're 23. We are on social media.

[Music]

SAMANTHA: Tik Tok is an app for a short form videos, we're talking about less than a minute. Mostly even 15 seconds or less. So a lot of people dance on the app. They lip sync. They post comedy videos, the blog. They do skits. It's kind of the short form version of YouTube. It takes less effort to create, and less equipment to produce video. With Tik Tok you can literally film on the app, film on your phone and post it within a minute. Right now?

PETER MITTON: Yeah walking through.

SAMANTHA: Okay, so what we do is we scroll through Tik Tok, simply like a dance because usually you copy the trending dances. That's what really gets attention. So we found this one.

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SAMANTHA: Everyone really catches onto these kinds of dances. They're really simple moves that even nine dancers can do because we're not even dancing ourselves. So it's really simple moves that you can do to the song.

MADELEINE: Okay, so we're going to stand in front of the camera, we have our position so she'll stand closer and look further back.

SAMANTHA: The great thing about Tik Tok is that it has a timer, so we don't have to hold it to record. That allows us to dance. So we're just going to put on a timer and we're going to dance.

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MADELEINE: And that's it.

SAMANTHA: That's literally the video.

MADELEINE: Well, we practiced that a bit before, you know.

SAMANTHA: We know you're coming.

MADELEINE: So you didn't want to spend, you know, one hour preparing a dance.

SAMANTHA: After that, it taught us to create a caption and then post it.

MADELEINE: Literally t in 30 seconds you can upload a Tik Tok.

SAMANTHA: Well, we have three point three million followers on the app. Our audience is mainly younger kids because we like to do the dance challenges and the comedy skits. We usually post at least once a day. We try to post a couple times a week. We just post it and then for the first, you know, few minutes we respond to comments, the people who respond to the post early, just kind of get to know them better. But when it comes to Tik Tok, Instagram.

MADELEINE: And even YouTube as well.

SAMANTHA: We get brand deals where sometimes companies will ask us to print products, songs. It can be anything services. So that's how we get paid.

MADELEINE: So you see all the comments here.

SAMANTHA: This one has almost two thousand views. This shows you how many views the video has. And then when you click on it, the likes and the comments are... So see a lot of people answer. We ask them how old they, because we show them how old we were. So all of them are interacting with the post and saying they're 12, they're 10, 16. You know, it's really cool to see.

MADELEINE: We took four, three, four years to get where we are today. And some people do it overnight. And if you're going to compare yourself to those people, you're really going to get discouraged because you're going to be like, why am I not like them? And it's going to stop you from growing. But I feel like if you just concentrate on yourself and your own growth, then it'll help you grow even more like you.

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PETER MITTON: That's it?

SAMANTHA: Yes.

PETER MITTON: It's a good one.

MADELEINE: Thank you.

MG: Chris Stokel Walker is a journalist and the author of YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars. He has been following the rise of Tik Tok. Chris, good morning.

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: We just heard the Caleon twins there. Walk us through the making of a Tik Tok. For people, as old folk who may not be on the Tik Tok, may have no idea what we were just listening to. What exactly is Tik Tok?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Well, it's a short form video sharing app. As one of the twins said it's kind of like a cut down YouTube, but it throws you right into the middle of the action. So I have open on mute my Tik Tok at the minute and I am basically watching a video occur right in front of me. And then all I have to do is flick up with my thumb and I suddenly see another one auto playing and I can keep going through that. There is this thing called the 4 U page, Matt, which is basically Tik Tok's algorithm, the black box that dominates the app that picks interesting videos it thinks you will like to see. And as the Coleon twins who, by the way, they now have three million, 3.31 Million fans, because I've just added my little like to them because they seem really fascinating. It's a lot of dancing. It's a lot of music based videos. It's a lot of means and challenges. It's kind of people doing weird thing.

MG: I was going to say, like, if you have the app in front of you, like, what is what is on your screen right now? IF I were to download this, what would I be watching?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: So you would be seeing, for instance, a person right now trying to jump into a wine glass. Now, obviously, they're not actually doing that. The wine glass is close to the camera. It's this kind of perspective trick, but they are standing in the middle of it. That's wonderful. Fun camera visual trick that does very, very well on Tik Tok. These little things are kind of there to build a community of people who want to pass the time. And it is enormously addictive.

MG: This app has been downloaded a billion and a half times. Who is using it?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: It's mostly teenagers and preteens. If I'm honest, Tik Tok like to say that their main demographic is 18 to 24 year olds with some 25 to 34 year olds. That is what every social network says is their main demographic. But you do have to bear in mind here, a lot of people will go on the app who are under age and they will simply say they are over the age of 13 or over the age of 18.

MG: The Caleon Twins were saying that there were 10 and 12 year olds who are using the app in watching their videos. Is that common?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Yes. That's not unusual. I opened my up and pretty much every morning I will see videos, Tik Toks taken from schoolyards. People kind of bunking off school, doing silly challenges, playing about with lockers and so on and so forth. It's a sad fact of society that we have this difficulty around social media age verification, which means people are going to get on it who are under age and know that is a bad thing in some ways, but it's a good thing in others because they are having a creative outlet to do fun videos. They have a sense of belonging and community and it's all good.

MG: I can, you know, understand this as a parent and, you know, I can concur that it is super addictive for young people. What is it that makes it more addictive, perhaps, than other forms of social media?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: I think it's the snackable element. So, I mean, for instance, I wasted a good 25 minutes this morning lying in bed, just opening Tik Tok. The first thing that I did when I woke up and thought, I'll go on for two minutes and see what's happening. And then suddenly this idea of endless scrolling through videos, the fact that they are short and no one of them is ever going to be longer than 60 seconds at the minute on the app kind of makes it really indulgent. It's kind of like fun size candy bars. You know, you can get a big bar of chocolate or you can get a big box of small ones and think, well, I'll just eat one or two and then suddenly it's two hours later, you have a bunch of rappers by your hand and you're feeling pretty ill.

MG: Have a listen to this.

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I Like really, really skinny guys, like super, super skinny and tall. Like, the more they look like Gumby, the better. Like nobody fat, no muscles. I just want to date spaghetti noodle.

MG: That's Charli D'Amelio, a 15 year old from Connecticut with more than 18 million followers on Tik Tok. That's an eleven second long video. A kid in her bedroom saying she wants to date a spaghetti noodle. It's been liked over three million times. Can you explain this to me?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: That is a hard one, Matt, in the same way that it is very difficult to explain Internet celebrity in any way. I mean, Charlie D'Amelio is an enormously popular talent. She actually just got signed by one of the big Hollywood talent agencies to represent her, which has probably netted her some pretty good cash. But I think what is interesting about it is what is what is interesting about Tik Tok in general. We have YouTube and we have Instagram, which have kind of become the true platforms, they all full of celebrities and the barrier to entry is quite high. You need to have good production values. You need to have smart lighting, a good camera and things like that. With Tik Tok, all you need is a cell phone in your bedroom and something funny to say or something endearing about your personality, which is definitely what Charlie D'Amelio has.

MG: And anybody can do that and anybody can end up being a star on this platform.

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: They can. I mean, for instance, in the last week, I have seen people going viral because they have correctly predicted the outcome of the UK Labour Party election race or think they have predicted it. So, for instance, the New Statesman, a left leaning magazine here in the UK, has co-opted or may be coerced, I think probably, one of their writers in to performing Tik Toks. And it is cringeworthy because this is an old guy who is more accustomed to writing words on a page. Doing a Tik Tok, it's obviously someone young in the office has kind of demanded that he does this and it does look a little bit like a weird hostage video, but it is engaging. The barrier to entry is super low and the chances of actually capturing that Zeit Geist and setting fire to a kind of popularity contest is quite high.

MG: And if you do and you end up like the Caleon Twins, you can make real money from this. They have turned the short videos that they make on Tik Tok into a brand, into an actual brand that people would want to market it. Here they are. And what appears to be a video promotion for Tally, which is a credit card managing app.

SOUNDCLIP

Hey, can I borrow your credit card? I found these super cute shoes online and I need to have them.

Didn't you use my credit card to buy shoes last wee?

Yes, I did, didn't I?

You should download Tally, it can help you with you credit card debt.

MG: Chris Stokel Walker, is branded content a big thing on Tik Tok?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: It is not as popular as you would think, given that pretty blatant advert put Tik Tok is trialling entering into some sort of advertising partnerships. They are offering ad space on the app and they hope, I think in 2020, based on my conversations with some of their executives to start offering specific influencer advertisements. They've introduced a new thing in the last couple of weeks called to create a marketplace, which is really bizarre, but also interesting development, Matt, because what it does is essentially allows a company like that credit card company or CBC, for that matter, to kind of go on to a website, tap in some interesting demographics about an audience they want to connect with, and they will be presented with a bunch of Tik Tok selected influencers that they can maybe partner with as a brand dimension. So, yes, this kind of thing is developing. It's still very early stages, we have to remember for Tik Tok. But this is going to be become more popular I think in 2020.

MG: Interesting. You mentioned influencers. We know on Instagram people can make a lot of money being an influencer. On YouTube, some of the big YouTube stars are making tens of millions of dollars every year from the content that they're creating. How much money are people making on Tik Tok?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Well, it's very difficult to say because people are being super coy about this. It's kind of the great untapped space at the minute. So those who are making a lot of money want to downplay just how much they are earning. Those who don't kind of probably want to overplay it. It's certainly not the level of YouTube at the minutes. On YouTube, you can make, as we know, sort of 26 million U.S. dollars, the highest earning YouTube and made in 2019. This is not there yet. But as you point out, one point five billion users in the last year, Tik Tok had something like 20 times Canada's population in downloads alone. So we are seeing an enormous, enormous app kind of in its very first flourish here. So people are going to be making huge money off the back of this. And Charli D'Amelio will probably be the very first.

MG: What we're seeing now is that some tech talk stars are actually starting to join forces and work together. What is the hype house?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: So the hype house is probably a teenager's dream and an adult's worst nightmare. It is a collection of Tik Tok stars who have decided to band together to live in a house where essentially the whole thing is a massive studio so everything can be recorded. You are with your friends, your rich popular friends on the app, and you can just kind of grab people and say, come appear in my video. There have been an awful lot of these that have popped up in the past around YouTube. So, for instance, in the Kneads 2010s. There was a place called 1600 Vine based in California where a lot of YouTube creators kind of got together and collaborated. There's similar ones in the UK. And we're seeing the first of Tik Tok houses appearing.

MG: What is the goal of this? Is it just to be famous on Tik Tok? Or you mentioned Charli D'Amelio signing up with a studio. Is it that you can play this out to something else?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Well, the motives differ depending on what your end goal is. I once got into trouble with a big You Tuber called Casey Neistat for pointing out that a lot of people join YouTube nowadays because they want to get famous. And he pointed out that a lot of people are doing this simply because of the artistic merit. And I don't deny that that is the case was Tik Tok. There are still people out there having a lot of fun, but certainly there will be some cynical people who will be looking at the playbook of YouTube, who will be looking at people like Lily Singh, one of Canada's own daughters who became famous on YouTube, ended up getting a late night TV deal or traditional TV in the US and is now a bona fide celebrity. So there will certainly be people looking at that and saying, well, if Tik Tok is the hot new video sharing platform and if some celebrities have in the past started on YouTube, justin Bieber or another example, then maybe if I start on Tik Tok right when it's on the up and I gain fame there, I can kind of translate that into or fly in fame or traditional fame or film fame.

MG: This is a service and a social media platform that is getting a lot of attention because of who is using it and because of how many people are using it and what they're creating. But there's other elements of that newsworthiness as well. This is the founder of another social media platform. It's Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg.

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A decade ago, almost all of the major Internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese. And we're beginning to see this in social media, too. While our services like WhatsApp are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on Tik Tok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world. Mentions of these same protests are censored even here in the US.

MG: Now Facebook has its own plane full of baggage that it brings along with it. But what does Mark Zuckerberg talking about there?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Well, he's talking about the fear that this is a Chinese owned company. And therefore, kind of the implicit thing there is that this is state controlled. And I don't deny that any business, any app that is based out of China will undoubtedly have difficulties around sensitivities in China. The fact that YouTube, for instance, does not have a Chinese presence officially and is in fact replaced by Chinese home grown visions of the app is kind of telling. But really a lot of this is kind of overplayed. I mean, we have U.S. senatorial investigations into national security risks of people on Tik Tok. I kind of get that in a way, because this is kind of a growing trend in that a lot of tech firms that we increasingly used or no longer the West and Silicon Valley warns that U.S. senators and congressmen and women could actually drag the executives of those companies in front of them to answer questions. But I would question what exactly the Chinese states, if they had any connection with Tik Tok or Bite Dance, its parent company, which is still very, very much disputed. I have questions as to what exactly the Chinese state would benefit from looking into teenagers bedrooms and seeing what songs that dance.

MG: What are people worried about when it comes to the fact that whether it's got a connection with the Chinese state government or not, that this is a Chinese owned company?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: I think that they're worried primarily about a loss of control. The fact is that they know that their data is being hoovered up and taken to Silicon Valley companies. There is a fear that their data is being taken up, hoovered over to China, and then somehow the Chinese state government is going to be able to triangulate your dancing in your living room with your Social Security number, which I'm not entirely convinced is a logical bunch of steps to conclude, actually. But I think that's largely what it is. It's a combination of this growing acknowledgement that tech companies have our data and kind of increasing data literacy post Cambridge Analytics, and Mark Zuckerberg has a large part to play in that. And then also this kind of fear of the rise of China in terms of its economic growth, and in all of that.

MG: There have been controversies with Tik Tok and issues of race as well and how race is depicted on the app. Have a listen to Brianna Hall. She is an editor with the online publication Quartz.

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Young White teens are we are changing the way that they speak. There's just a plethora of different examples how people view digital blackface, whether it's a young white girl using Nicki Minaj's voice or whether it's just black action or comedy. These people are growing a status using black people as their comedy. I don't think most of these people who do digital blackface would ever post a video of then taking their face black with makeup because they would probably think that is racist. But for some reason they think without the makeup, they're still taking on the character. It's interesting that they can't even realize that it is, you know, blackface.

MG: Digital blackface. What do you make of it?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: This is a massive problem. But again, this is not a problem solely within the confines of Tik Tok. I'm on Twitter right now and if I click on the giff button to provide me with reaction gifs, I have under dance a dance giff of Colton from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which theoretically could be conceived does me doing digital black things, if I did that. I have on 'to deal with it' a giff of Michael Jordan. I have on 'to eye roll' a gif of a black woman providing an eye roll. This is an enormous problem and I as a white guy with a middle class upbringing, I'm certainly not really the right person to be talking about this with any authority. But I will say that the internet has kind of co-opted black culture in general, and it is enormously problematic that we do whitewash that, that we kind of overlook it and say, well, is this a problem? And a lot of people don't seem to think it is. And I think that is an issue because ultimately what we are doing is kind of, as was pointed out by the contributor there, saying that if this was done, literally, we would have an enormous issue with it. But because it is done through the medium of memes, through cooperating songs or something like that, is kind of seen as less important. And I totally disagree with that. I think that that's a massive, massive problem.

MG: How big this Tik Tok want to get do you think?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: I think it wants world domination, to be honest. I mean, wouldn't you, if you set up an up like this?

MG: And you already had a billion and a half users.

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Well, exactly. I mean, the interesting thing to point out, I always point this out with YouTube, which has two billion monthly active users, is that 50 percent of the world's population does not have an Internet connection. So suddenly you start see just quite how big that number is. They are going to grow and grow. I have very little doubt about that. You kind of chart the growth of Tik Tok vs. the growth of YouTube and you see that it's just doing exactly the same thing but on a much more stratospheric level, the kind of pace of growth is enormous. Tik Tok is huge also in emerging markets. So not only does it have a big base in China where a significant proportion of the users who are not actually counted in the one point five billion because it is a separate app called [unintelligible]. They have all of those users. They are hugely popular in India, where mobile Internet is growing enormously. They are going to have the next 500 million users in Africa. They are going to be enormous because it's just this viral concept and this is what happens in the 21st century is these things kind of pick up a head of steam. So I think the future for Tik Tok is pretty limitless.

MG: Are you a consumer or also a creator of tech talk? What tech talks have you made?

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: I have made three and they are so unbelievably embarrassing that I refused to make anymore. Think ticked off as you need to dance. And I have no rhythm and I'm not the best looking person. I have a face for radio. So I kind of stick to that. I am a consumer rather than a creator.

MG: You've opened the gate. Now people are going to go and hunt these videos down. Chris, thank you. Great to talk to you.

CHRIS STOKEL WALKER: Thank you.

MG: Chris Stokel Walker is a tech journalist. He's based in Newcastle, England. Well, coming up in about 90 seconds, what if the cure is worse than the disease?

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It's literally like taking a baseball bat and hitting a dog with it to get rid of its fleas. That's how bad the treatment we are currently using to treat cancer is.

MG: Oncologist Azra Raza says that after decades of research, we're still using primitive methods of treatment and in many cases, survival rates have only improved by a matter of months. She thinks we need to rethink our strategy when it comes to cancer. You'll hear the diagnosis from her, coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Cancer research is an 'embarrassment,' must switch focus to early detection: oncologist

Guest: Dr. Azra Raza

MG: Good morning, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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TRACEY BEAMISH: This is Felicia, my wig. My father used to say, you always hide behind your hair. I always had very, very long hair. I've never been one that's very creative with my hair. It's always been the same length. The moment they told me I'm going to lose my hair was devastating. And it started falling out of my head in chunks.

MG: Tracey Beamish is 42 years old. She lives in Halifax and was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. Naming her wig Felicia for a laugh was just one of the ways she said she survived that ordeal. It wasn't the cancer that she found most difficult. It was the treatment, chemotherapy and 25 rounds of radiation.

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TRACEY BEAMISH: It was probably one of the most horrifying things in my life. Never in my life did I ever understand the word fatigue. My home at the time had three levels and I had to stop halfway up my first level of stairs and couldn't make it. I had to take a break. You'd be watching things on television and - they call it chemo fog - and you lose your ability to pay attention. You're just in the almost fog throughout this treatment that the medicine knocks you out. The thought of ever having to go through chemo again would terrify me.

MG: Tracey Beamish is now in remission and feeling positive about her health. But stories like hers are familiar to Azra Raza. She is an oncologist who's watched thousands of patients and her own husband suffer from both the disease and the treatment. And she'd like to see a whole system change. Dr. Raza is a professor of medicine at Columbia University and the author of The First Cell and the Human Cost of Pursuing Cancer to the Last. Doctor, good morning.

AZRA RAZA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you think when you hear stories like that one from Tracey Beamish about what she's been through and how she coped or tried to cope with the treatment that she received?

AZRA RAZA: The primary rule of medicine is first do no harm. And it's absolutely horrifying to hear Beamish's story and something that I see multiple times a day for the last 35 years. What she described is so true because it's literally likes, as someone said, taking a baseball bat and hitting a dog with it to get rid of its fleas. That's how bad the treatment we are currently using to treat cancer is. What is really most ghastly and unbelievable to me is that I landed in America in 1977, started treating a bone marrow cancer, acute myeloid leukaemia. We were using two drugs, popularly known as seven and three. Today in 2020, I'm using the exact same two drugs with the exact same dreadful results.

MG: Are the results the more difficult thing for the patient to cope with or is it the disease itself? Because there's the moment of diagnosis and that relaying of bad news- But as you're describing it, it's been the baseball bat can be horrifying and incredibly debilitating as well.

AZRA RAZA: It's not just the diagnosis which carried its own stigma of having cancer and it's own scary and life threatening consequences that one imagines. But the treatment makes things even more grisly. And the problem is that not only are we continuing to give the same treatment, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent in trying to find new drugs for the last 60 years, we even don't know how these drugs work when they work. For example, what is the exact mechanism of action of Tamoxifen, the most commonly used therapy in breast cancer? Nobody knows precisely how this thing. We think we know that it's going to kill the cell load. It's going to modify the behaviour of that but really the knowledge is lacking completely. So the idea is that we have now a situation where we are curing 68 percent of cancers that are newly diagnosed. That's great news. But it's not because we are using or have developed any grand new therapies. Most of it is still being treated with chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery, what I call the slash poison and burn approach. We have seen a decline in mortality from cancer one percent a year, which is nothing to write home about. But it's still it's better than nothing because in the last three decades that means we have dropped the cancer mortality by 26 percent. But once again, it's not because we are finding any great new therapies. It's because of two things. One, because of anti-smoking campaigns began to show some results. And two, because we are diagnosing cancer early at an earlier and instituting therapy earlier, and everyone knows that if there is a diagnosis of cancer, the first thing people say is all, but don't worry, it was found early, so it's curable.

MG: In the book you write that this is an embarrassment and he used very strong language. You use that language already in our conversation. Why would you say that the lack of progress is an embarrassment?

AZRA RAZA: Because why are we not looking at the entire overall picture and trying to do something different instead of repeating the same old, same old? This is why it's an embarrassment. Why haven't we been able to do better for acute myeloid leukaemia, for example? The reason is that the disease is horrendously complicated and it's a moving target. So all cancers begin in a single cell. When this cell divides into two new cells, it is likely to make more DNA copying errors which normally occur in cells as they divide. But because cancer cells are dividing faster and faster, they make more errors which can translate powered response to therapy. So potentially it's dawn new cancers every time a leukaemia sailors dividing into two. So why do we think what gives us great confidence then that trying to reproduce this disease in animals, healthy animals who don't get it spontaneously and then testing drugs against this artificially produced cancer will work when it's extrapolated to humans? What is giving us this confidence for the last 50, 60 years?

MG: And yet, I mean, in light of what you're saying, we will often see headlines. I mean, it's almost daily or weekly that you'll see them in the newspaper saying that there has been an extraordinary breakthrough in treatment of some form of cancer. Are you suggesting that the headlines and the stories behind the headlines aren't true?

AZRA RAZA: I'm not suggesting I'm declaring that they are, absolutely, most of them are false. So there are two main explanations for this kind of delusional headlines. The first is that even improvement in survival by a matter of weeks is proclaim from the rooftops as if it's a game changer. Under pressure from advocacy groups, from patients, the FDA in America is willing to approve a drug if it improves survival by as little as two and a half months. You'll tell me if a 22 year old has cancer, what does two and a half month survival improvement mean to that person, especially when it comes with horrendous side effects? And a second important reason is the fine print will always sure something like new drug curing pancreatic cancer. And then in the fine print, it will be: in mice.

MG: And you don't believe that? I mean, if something is cured in mice, it certainly doesn't mean that it's cured in human beings.

AZRA RAZA: Well, these drugs that we find which are curative in animals, we bring them to the patient's bedside and 95 percent of these drugs fail. The five percent that get approved should have failed because they're doing precious little and financially ruining people.

MG: And yet there is a huge cohort within the medical community that will say that progress is being made. Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld is the deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. Have a listen to what he says about advances in research and in treatment.

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I certainly can agree that for some cancers, we have not made much progress. However, we've averted close to three million premature deaths from cancer over the past 27 years. That's nothing to be ignored. We can do better, but let's not ignore that we have had success. We have put a tremendous amount of research effort, tremendous amount of research dollars and stimulating new ideas so we can have new approaches to reduce the burden of cancer. That is true for every successful drug. There are eight or nine drugs that have not been successful in clinical trials. But that doesn't mean the research has failed. And that doesn't mean that everything we do up to that point is necessarily flawed. It's also fair to say that our more traditional treatments have had some success and our ability to screen for cancer is not something to be ignored. A tremendous amount of effort has gone to finding the first cell, to find the first signals of cancer and then deciding how best to treat it. Billions of dollars are being spent right now as we speak and we are making progress in that arena. So I think it's a little presumptuous to say that all we're doing is poisoning people or burning people or cutting people.

MG: Dr. Azra Raza, what do you make of that?

AZRA RAZA: I agree with them completely. We are curing 68 percent of patients, and that's nothing to be frowned at.

MG: But he seems to be looking at the glass a bit. Half full and half empty.

AZRA RAZA: I know this is the issue that people are quite- A family friend of ours once told my younger brother that if the sun rose from the west today, everybody will stop and stare at it and wonder why. But then there are some people who watch the sun rise in the east every day and wonder why. I want to bring to attention all that we have been taking for granted. Why, in this day and the age of supreme technology, are we using such primitive measures still to treat cancer? So where have all the billions of dollars gone that are being invested to develop new therapies? Everything we bring to the bedside literally has just petered out into disappointment. So I'm not saying we haven't developed most fantastic biologic insights into the pathology of cancer. Of course we have. I'm not saying all the research is wasted. Of course it isn't. I completely agree with Dr. Lichtenfeld in everything he's saying. And yes, a lot of money is being spent in finding the first cell, but not enough. I understand we have patients we have to treat today so we can't give up doing all the things that we are trying to do for them. All I'm asking is what about future patients? One in two men and one in three women are going to get cancer. Are we going to continue on this path of slash poison burn and keep pumping our chests and giving ourselves gold medals? Of course, nobody is trying to denigrate what has been done until now. But how can we do better? The only thing that seems to work is identifying cancer early. I'm saying why aren't we using the latest technology to try and identify cancer at its inception?

MG: You write in the book about a number of patients that you have encountered over the course of your career. One of them happens to be your husband, Harvey, who is also an oncologist. How prepared were you for what he had to go through after his diagnosis?

AZRA RAZA: I had already been treating cancer patients for 20 years almost. And yet until I shared a bed with the patient, I had no idea how deeply painful this disease can be.

MG: What do you mean?

AZRA RAZA: I mean literal pain. There is almost no organ or tissue that was not affected by pain in Harvey's case. He suffered such scorching blistering episodes of wrecking pain. It was just unbelievable. His body was completely ravaged and even he was shocked, being an ecologist, at the tolls that cancer takes at so many levels. One of them being that no sooner that you get adapted to one new condition, things change radically. The agonizing combat that we saw between cancer cells, the immune system, trying to fight it. The treatments we are giving, it all becomes so confusing.

MG: I was going to say, I mean, between that and watching your daughter's best friend Andrew go through his experience with a tumour that was on his spinal cord. He was just in his 20s and he dies just over a year and a bit after he's diagnosed. As somebody who sees this close up, what is it like to know of the disease and know so much about the disease, but also watch somebody in the grips of the disease?

AZRA RAZA: This is what brought home the whole issue to me in one fell swoop. When Andrew woke up from anaesthesia and turned to his mother and said, don't worry about it. Just call Ezra. She's on the cutting edge. She's going to find the cure. In that moment, I realized how badly we have failed the Andrews of this world. We have no right to go around prancing and posturing about all the wonderful things we are doing for cancer, as long as there's even one Andrew dying this miserable death. Every oncologist knew from day zero that this poor boy's chances of survival are zero point zero. The second level at which we failed him is kept offering him confusing treatments. You can take this. You don't have to take this. Why are we offering even these choices to a 22 year old? And then in the midst of all this match, you see the expression of human nobility. You experience grace in the presence of someone like Andrew. Two weeks before this for a young man at 23 years of age is dying, they brought to him a form to sign that is called a do not resuscitate form, which means that if he stops breathing, they will not do anything about it or does he want them to intubate? And he immediately told them to go away. He's not going to sign it. But that evening, his father came to the hospital to relieve the mother and sister who had been there all day. Andrew, as soon as his father was alone with him, call the people back, signed the form saying I could not do it in front of my mother. She wouldn't be able to take it. This 23 year old who was dying’s protective of his mother. This is a moment of grace that humbles you like nothing else can.

MG: What did your daughter want from you, not as a mom, but as a doctor and a cancer expert when it came to the situation that her best friend found himself in?

AZRA RAZA: My daughter, Andrew and their other friends, they were all so confused. Andrew's mother and grandmother have survived cancer. How is he dying at 22? And she pointedly told me once in the middle of the night when she called almost hysterical. She said, Mom, I heard all my life that you and dad help cancer patients, but you're not helping Andrew. Why?

MG: That's a sobering moment for not just a doctor, but for a mother.

AZRA RAZA: I decided I have to really now double my efforts. Back in 1984, I turned my attention to trying to find cases at the pre [unintelligible] and try to prevent the appearance of this end stage terminal monstrosity called acute myeloid leukaemia by intercepting it early. So this is not something that I just decided to see after I experienced the ghastly scenes with Andrew. This is something I have been saying repeatedly since 1984 and trying to do it. Not just saying it. I started banking cells from my patients and today I have a tissue repository with 60000 samples in it. And this tissue repository has yielded a huge number of insights. What has become very clear is that going after one gene studying one pathway or two pathways in a few patients, this reductionist approach is not working. What we need is a more pluralistic approach, by which I mean try to use the latest technologies, ways of studying the proteins and the genome of the cell and then all the imaging and scanning devices we have. Redirecting our funds and our resources in such a way that it brings the competition that was seen during the landing of man on the moon between America and Russia and the cooperation that was seen between scientists around the world doing the human genome project.

MG: As you say, we're in in some ways looking at the last cells. If you want to get to the first cancer cell, how do you get at that? What are the technologies that might offer some promise that you say are already almost on our doorstep?

AZRA RAZA: The fact is that it's very clear that treatment alone is not going to be sufficient to address the cancer problem. We need to develop techniques just like vaccines, just like we have for prevention, for infectious disease. We will need to find preventive measures. How do we do it? Well, this is where I am asking for redirection of funds being wasted in doing useless clinical trials or trials that are yielding a five percent success rate to trying to develop, for example, ways of finding the presence of cancer in any secretion through a liquid biopsy, blood, sweat, saliva, tears, a urine. You know that Toshiba just announced last month that from one drop of blood, with 99 percent confidence, they can now detect the presence of 13 different government types of cancers just based on detection of micro [unintelligible] signatures that they have identified.

MG: When could you start that testing, how early in life?

AZRA RAZA: This test can start from birth to death. And why are we again, once again, why are we only using screening measures on a once a year basis and screening measures that were developed 50 years ago? We should be using these kinds of sophisticated technologies to monitor the human body continuously from birth to death.

MG: And you don't worry about the costs or the concerns that people raise around issues of false positives and then that that could create more strain, not just on the health care system, but on the mental health of those patients who are being tested.

AZRA RAZA: Of course, I worry about it. And of course, there'll be a lot of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, isn't there now? And yes, finding that you have early cancer present in your body can be very scary emotionally. But then if we have a solution for treatment of that early cancer, then it won't remain that scary. So I think all this will go evolve simultaneously. That is once we find that this is actually a potentially lethal threat to the body, only then are we going to direct some kind of treatment. The many treatments that are failing today, maybe because they are being used when the disease is far too advanced.

MG: I want to ask you about that word: death. Often the stories that we will hear of cancer are the stories of survivors and those are used in inspirational ways. They are used for fundraising. They're used to generate hope among those who would be facing a bleak diagnosis. Why did you want to tell the stories of patients who died?

AZRA RAZA: It was not to revel in their suffering or pain. The reason I told the stories of patients who died is to bring the patient back into every conversation about cancer front and centre and to look at everything through the prism of human anguish. I have interviewed patient families, sometimes ten years after they lost a beloved member. Probably the most important part of the book is the voice of these families. A mother of a 22 year old, Andrew, saying that even if there was a one in a million chance, we would have taken it and we would not give up doing everything that we did, because they are mothers.

MG: This is hard reading, though, and there's a lot in the book that, given the prevalence of these diseases, can drive people down, can make people feel as though it is bleak, that the outlook is not optimistic. Where do you find hope in the work that you do?

AZRA RAZA: Well, I'm very optimistic. And in fact, this is not a gloom and doom book. Yes, I have written about the patients who have died, but also there are twice as many stories of the patients who are alive and who have defied all odds. The idea is to also tell cancer patients that you are not alone. Most of us are at risk of getting cancer tomorrow and that there are hundreds of thousands of amazing researchers and amazing on ecologists who are working very, very hard to try and find a solution. So it should bring a modicum of relief to the people who are anxious about it. And it would be the best thing for cancer survivors to insist upon more funding and resources being directed towards the identification of the earliest stage of cancer so that they don't have to go through the same thing all over again. I am 100 percent sure that we will, in the very near future, have the technology at least to find the earlier footprints of cancers and that along with that revolution will come better treatment options. So I'm very optimistic.

MG: Dr. Azra, it's great to speak with you about this- it's powerful reading and so familiar to so many of us who have friends and family who have gone through this. Thank you for joining us.

AZRA RAZA: Thank you very much for having me.

MG: Dr. Azra Rasa is an oncologist and the author of The First Cell and the Human Cost of Pursuing Cancer to the Last. She was in New York. That's The Current for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One. Qs on its way. Tom Powers, guest Rajni Perera, a visual artist who is inspired by Hindu and Buddhist imagery and science fiction. And this morning on the CBC News podcast Front Burner, you'll hear calls for a moratorium on facial recognition technology. You can hear both of those through the CBC Listen app wherever you get your apps. That's where you can find it, CBC listen. Before we go, we thought we'd pay tribute to one of the biggest songs of the year. Nominated for three Grammys, the Grammys are handed out on Sunday. This whole thing and it is a thing started and spread on Tik Tok Chinese social media app that we were discussing earlier in the program. If you search for it on tech talk, you will find thousands of videos where fans are busting out some very creative moves and some very terrible moves as well. Old Town Road by Little Mouse X. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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[Song: Old Town Road]

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Thursday January 23, 2020 Full Transcript

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