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The Current Transcript for September 26, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE 1: I like this one because it's got red and red is my favourite colour.

VOICE 2: It reminds me of a Ferrari.

VOICE 3: I think this one looks actually quite pretty.

VOICE 4: Yeah.

VOICE 5: It looks girly. I just like it.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, those children are talking about cigarette packages there, voices in a British public service announcement. But the siren call of cigarettes cleverly packaged is about to lose volume in the UK and in France, as both countries follow Australia's lead with regulations forcing plain cigarette packaging next year. Canada is moving closer to parallel regulations here. In a moment, what we can learn from the Australian experience. Also today, this is the sound of another child pulled alive from the rubble of a building collapse by bombing in Syria.

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[Men yelling in alternate language]

[Baby crying]

[Men start yelling louder]

AMT: A moment of joy for members of an extraordinary rescue team called the White Helmets. They are all Syrian civilians. Their day jobs long ago disappeared. They run toward the scene of an attack to try to save lives. On a Monday after a weekend of even more carnage in Syria, we meet the leader of the White Helmets. That's in about half an hour. And then we’ve got the story of patient HM, who unwittingly gave his brain to science long before he was dead.

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He would be told many times that he was famous. And so he may have, by the end of his life, had this vague sense of his importance.

AMT: Patient HM was lobotomized in his late twenties and for decades right up until eight years ago, scientists studied and tracked him. Now the grandson of the doctor who performed the initial surgery has pieced together his grandfather's track record of brain surgeries in the forties and fifties, raising uncomfortable questions about the ethics of how we know what we know about brain science and memory. Hear that in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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'Nothing to do with public health': Big Tobacco fights Canada's plain packaging plans

Guests: Melody Tilson, Eric Gagnon

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VOICE 1: [Through translator] It’s annoying when you don’t know what’s going on. And in a recent poll, only one in 10 Canadians understood what the latest public consultation was about.

VOICE 2: I had absolutely no idea that the government was about to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes.

VOICE 3: You're being given something without a choice. And this country is about choice.

VOICE 1: And when explained, most of you thought it was a waste of government time and money. Does that seem right to you? Find out more at bothsidesoftheargument.ca. A JTI-Macdonald Corp. initiative.

AMT: Well, that's part of an ad campaign rolling out across the country from one of Canada's largest tobacco companies. As you heard, it is not designed to push one particular brand of cigarettes but to push back against a proposal to remove those brands’ identities, their colours, logos and designs from the packs themselves. The federal government is moving toward a plain packaging rule for tobacco products in Canada. It is something Australia implemented in 2012 and the government says smoking rates there have since declined. But as that ad campaign suggests, there are arguments on the other side of the issue. We're starting with Melody Tilson today. She is the policy director of the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. She's in Ottawa. Hello.

MELODY TILSON: Good morning.

AMT: What is tobacco packaging like now?

MELODY TILSON: There is such a myriad of different packaging sizes and shapes and colour schemes. You would be extremely surprised. Most Canadians have no idea what cigarette packs look like because we have display bands. But you've got everything from the standard slide-and-shell that was around in the fifties to tiny packages called purse packs or lipstick packs that are really not much larger than a box that a lipstick would come in.

AMT: And why are they like that now?

MELODY TILSON: Well, the main reason for the tiny packs is to really obliterate the effectiveness of the health warnings. On those tiny packages, the text is almost illegible. And when you open a flip top pack, you can’t even see the graphic image. And those packages contain what are called super slim cigarettes, which are of course designed to target young women.

AMT: And so in fact, we do have warnings on cigarette packages. They are behind now on shelves where you can't see them when you walk into a store. Why is the move to generic tobacco packaging necessary?

MELODY TILSON: Because over the past 10 years, we've seen the industry constantly innovate what it's been doing with packaging. When all other or most other forms of promotion are banned, the packaging becomes the most important promotional vehicle. So not only do we have these lipstick packs, but the industry is constantly changing size and shape and opening style to keep the image of the brand and to keep belief about smoking itself as something modern and hip and cool and also to detract from the effectiveness of the health warnings. We know that all of these different variants, the one thing they have in common is that they really take away from the impact of the health warnings.

AMT: And under plain packaging rules, what would a pack of cigarettes look like then?

MELODY TILSON: Well, we would have one standard size and shape. It would be the traditional slide-and-shell, which is much larger than most of the other variants on the market and there would be a standardized colour, likely the same color that Australia has used and the UK called a drab olive brown. And the brand name would be permitted on the front and back surfaces in a standardized font and that's it. No colours, no logos, no slogans—none of the things that the industry uses to detract from the warnings and also to convince smokers that certain brands, or brand variants, are less harmful than others.

AMT: So nothing else would be allowed on the package.

MELODY TILSON: Nothing else except government mandated information.

AMT: Okay. How quickly would these changes occur?

MELODY TILSON: Well, unfortunately not quickly enough. So as you heard in the ad, Health Canada has undertaken a public consultation. June to the end of August, there is a regulatory impact analysis underway and then we would hope to see draft regulations in the winter or early spring.

AMT: Which means—when would the actual packaging come in?

MELODY TILSON: Ideally, late next year. Likely a little bit later than that.

AMT: Okay. Melody Tilson, thank you for your time today.

MELODY TILSON: Thank you so much.

AMT: That is Melody Tilson, the policy director of the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. She joined us from Ottawa. Well, as you've heard, Australia is the first country to implement plain packaging for cigarettes. It was not an easy fight. The tobacco industry fought the change. Nicola Roxon is the former minister of health for Australia. She is also the country's former attorney general. She has been talking to Canadian audiences about Australia's experiences with plain packaging. She's in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

NICOLA ROXON: Good morning.

AMT: How similar is the Canadian proposal to the one you implemented in Australia.?

NICOLA ROXON: Well, it's very similar. Obviously the government is consulting so not all of the details are clear here in Canada. But the main purpose, as you've just heard, is taking away any of the kind of sexy glamour that is still attached to smoking because that's used to get new smokers hooked to this very addictive and dangerous product. And in Australia, we said look, take it, make these packs as ugly as you can. You're trying to put people off this dangerous product. You want the health warning and the pretty gruesome pictures to be very obvious. And what we've seen since our introduction is a very significant drop in smoking rates. We've seen the age that people try their first cigarette increase. And we've importantly seen no increase in illicit or contraband tobacco. So I'm pretty surprised to see the industry try to paint Australia's experience as a failed experiment when actually all of the research and data makes very clear that it's had a big impact in its early days even though it's a long-term measure which we expect to see even more impact over the next 10 years.

AMT: In fact, the industry says that yours is a failed experiment and that smoking rates were already on a downward trend. How do you respond to that?

NICOLA ROXON: Well, smoking rates are on a downward trend because there has been repeated public health interventions to make it harder and harder for the industry to lure people into smoking their very dangerous product. But we now have clear data from independent sources that make clear what the impact has been.

AMT: But can you tell me what more specifically then? What have you seen?

NICOLA ROXON: Yeah. Well, so in 2010, we had just over 15 per cent of our population smoking. In 2013—because we do a three year survey which we've done for 30 years—it was down to 12.8 and that was the biggest drop, so not just the trajectory smoothly going downhill, but a big extra drop. And I think this is really important because the industry knows if they can get someone hooked on a product, particularly a young person, they've got most of them for life. So we need to act to stop that chain. I mean in Canada, there's 37,000 people that die every year from tobacco-related disease. In Australia, it was about 15,000. And we want to do everything we can. That's why I'm here to correct the record and to support the moves in Canada to introduce this measure. We don't want young people taking up a habit that will curse them for life.

AMT: And how did the tobacco industry respond to what you were trying to do in Australia?

NICOLA ROXON: They threw everything at the campaign. And what is so interesting to be here right now, is the ads almost spookily the same. You know absolutely that you know we threaten legal action, we say illicit contraband tobacco will go up, we say it will cost taxpayers lots of money. They don't then say because we're going to sue them and try to make the government spend money in the courts. So there's a playbook that's used by the industry which is a multinational one. And I wanted to make sure I was here to clarify that there is evidence that is independent that makes clear what the impact of these measures are, and to ask the Canadian public and the media and politicians to be very skeptical when the industry makes a claim. Mostly it's based on material that they've paid for or has been designed by the people who produced it. Like the example that used in the ads that some of your listeners, [unintelligible], but from KPMG, they actually—this big multinational accounting firm—actually put out a statement saying our report is being misrepresented and that's by the tobacco industry that it’s being misrepresented. So be wary of what the industry tries to do in delaying and diverting the people from this health campaign and deceiving people about the evidence.

AMT: We also heard something about choice there in that ad. What advice would you have for the Trudeau government then, as it tries to implement this, with the arguments on choice being part of this argument as well?

NICOLA ROXON: Well, you know choice is something that in countries like Australia and Canada plays very importantly. We're proud of our freedoms. But a freedom for a teenager to be addicted to a deadly product is not something that most governments are going to stand by and let it happen. And the industry has become increasingly aggressive in the way they target young people. It's not legal to smoke as a 14 or 15 year old but we know that's when a lot of people do get first hooked to smoking. So my message to Canada is this did work in Australia. Stay firm in your focus and keep the focus on the important health message, not all of the other diversions that the industry would like the debate to move on to.

AMT: You are the former minister of health for Australia. Your party is no longer in power.

NICOLA ROXON: That's right. That's right.

AMT: And so the implementation of this is going on with your successor.

NICOLA ROXON: Absolutely. And you know the research that is relied upon, the really comprehensive research, was not conducted by the government that I was part of. It was conducted by the next government that didn't love this measure although they did ultimately support it. So if there were any weaknesses or problems, they would have had no hesitation in pointing them out. In fact, the evidence is very clear. It continues to be strongly supported by who were then our political opponents and I think there's a message there, that this crosses all boundaries. All politicians care about young people having healthy and happy lives and they cannot do that if they become addicted to this very dangerous tobacco product.

AMT: Nicola Roxon, thank you for your time.

NICOLA ROXON: It's a pleasure.

AMT: Nicola Roxon, former minister of health for the government of Australia, also the country's former attorney general. She joined us from Ottawa. While anti-smoking advocates enthusiastically support plain packaging laws, the tobacco industry does not. Eric Gagnon is the head of external and corporate affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada. He's in our Montreal studio. Hello.

ERIC GAGNON: Good morning.

AMT: Nicola Roxon says plain packaging isn't working in Australia. Why shouldn't we use it here?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, first of all, I've listened to Mrs. Roxon and there's a number of things I agree. Kids should not smoke. I mean there's important health issues associated with smoking and it's a product that should be consumed by adults that make an informed decision. But I think the real question is why do kids start smoking? And government data says that 75 per cent of kids that start smoking do it because of peer pressure of friends and families. You alluded to it. Today in Canada, we already have a 75 per cent health warning on the cigarette packs. It's hidden from public view. And what we're saying is by introducing plain packaging, it's not going to reduce smoking incidence and it's not going to prevent youth from smoking.

AMT: And yet in fact, their studies show that the prevalence of youth smoking is down and the studies show not peer pressure, but youth giving it to friends as opposed to pressuring friends, we know.

ERIC GAGNON: Well, you know when you talk about the data in Australia, it's very interesting the way the position that those studies because when you look at smoking incidence in Australia since 2005, the decline rate has not accelerated between—after plain packaging. What people need to understand in Canada is it's a declining industry. I mean we decline by one or two per cent a year or so. You know Australia says that their smoking incidence is at an all-time low. It is accurate but it's going to be at an all-time low every year moving forward because it's a declining industry.

AMT: Well, they say that their statistics actually have taken that into account and in fact, they do see a lower number because specifically of their own, of this campaign. Why do you disagree?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, because what they did is they started all the way back to 2001 to calculate the data. But there's some credible reports out there that say the government did that in order to make them look good because when you look—

AMT: Which credible report are you talking about?

ERIC GAGNON: I don't have the name. I’m more than happy to share with you. But when you look at 2005 all the way to 2013 and 14, that trend did not accelerate and I'll give you another concrete example—

AMT: I want to ask you about credible reports because you had—your industry had KPMG do a study and KPMG put in a caveat saying that you can't rely on the numbers because of the sample size and because of the way that it was done. You actually—the industry asked them to come to a certain conclusion. So when you talk about credible studies, the Australian government study rejects your studies.

ERIC GAGNON: Well, obviously they're going to reject studies.

AMT: Well, KPMG is actually warning against its own study.

[crosstalk]

ERIC GAGNON: Well, that’s a question for KPMG.

AMT: Well, they did it for you.

ERIC GAGNON: Mrs. Roxon talked about contraband and she says that contraband did not increase in Australia. Well, then why did Australia inject $7.7 million Australian in June of 2000 this year to fight contraband?

AMT: Well, talk to me about contraband. What's your concern about contraband in Canada?

ERIC GAGNON: Yeah. We already have a big contraband problem in Canada. I mean 30 to 35 per cent of the market is illegal. The RCMP says there's 50 illegal manufacturing operations. And one of the concerns that we have is with a plain pack, it's going to become very easy for illegal traffickers to copy those packages, right? And one of the concerns that we have is that in addition to a contraband problem, we'll be stuck with a counterfeit issue.

AMT: And why is that a real concern?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, it’s a concern.

AMT: What are the implications of that?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, the implication is that nobody wants an illegal market to take over the market. I mean you know the government in Canada is already losing $2 billion because of illegal tobacco. Obviously the industry is losing money to it also. But no other industry you know would accept that illegal traffickers take over their industry. But it’s funny because when it’s—

AMT: Well, Mr. Gagnon, stop right there because I really want to pick up on this. Because in April of 2010, as you are likely aware, the news story was that a decade-long legal battle that pit the tobacco industry against federal and provincial governments drew to a close. The RCMP called it the—once called it the biggest corporate fraud in Canadian history. Your company, along with Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, RJ Reynolds Tobacco and Imperial and JTI-Macdonald Corporation were fined a total of $1.7 billion because you were making cigarettes in Canada, you were sending them to the states with export on them and then you were bringing them back through the Akwesasne reserve and you were found guilty of contraband.

ERIC GAGNON: No—

AMT: So now you are concerned about contraband so help me understand why it was okay.

ERIC GAGNON: Seriously. Seriously.

AMT: You know this. You had to pay all sorts of fines.

ERIC GAGNON: Seriously. You're talking about an old story—

AMT: 2010. It’s 2016.

ERIC GAGNON: We weren’t even accused of contraband. We weren’t even accused of contraband.

AMT: Because the deal was that you didn't have to plead guilty but you paid $1.7 billion and you actually were part of a contraband operation. So six years ago, that was okay and now contraband is a huge problem for Canada? Help me understand the double meaning here.

ERIC GAGNON: Okay. Well, if you let me speak a little bit, I’ll help you understand. What we did is we pleaded guilty to an account of excise. Alright? And it's an old story. Today, there's 100—the RCMP says there's 175 organized crime groups dealing illegal tobacco in Canada. And like it or not, these people will move on and take over the industry. At the end of the day, the government—

AMT: Why was it okay when you did it? [chuckles]

ERIC GAGNON: Seriously. And the question—

AMT: Seriously. I’m very serious, sir. I’m very serious.

ERIC GAGNON: I am serious too. So today, the question is—

AMT: Six years ago, you were part of contraband and now you’re saying contraband’s a problem and I'm trying to understand why the double standard?

ERIC GAGNON: It's not a double standard. If there was a double standard, why isn't the government going in? They know where the 50 illegal manufacturing operations are. Why don't they do the same? Why don't they go in there?

AMT: What will—

ERIC GAGNON: No, but answer me. And today you want to ask me about plain pack. What we're saying is plain packs not going to work. The reason that plain pack is being discussed in Canada has nothing to do with public health. It has nothing to do with that. It's because there's a number of anti-tobacco lobbyist group that for them, plain packaging is important and that's the truth.

AMT: Okay. Well, let me ask you this then. If it's not going to work, why are you so against it? If it's not going to work, it's not going to hurt your sales, why does it matter?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, I didn’t say it won’t hurt our sales because I said—

AMT: So how won’t it work?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, because it's going to hurt our sales because counterfeit is going to take over. But as any legal company in this country, we believe we have the right to have our trademarks on our brands. Why would we be different than any other industry? Would any other industry accept to be in plain packaging?

AMT: But no other industry has the death rate.

ERIC GAGNON: Oh no. So the Canadian Cancer Society, who is pushing this initiative, right? It's really them pushing the plain packaging in Canada.

AMT: Cancer Society tries to fight cancer. That's right.

ERIC GAGNON: Really? Well, okay. The report from the government of Canada came out last week says that three per cent of Canadian youth is smoking tobacco products, 17 per cent of Canadian youth is smoking marijuana and 40 per cent of Canadian youth is drinking alcohol. After that release, the Canadian Cancer Society came out with a press release asking for what measures to be introduced? Plain packaging. And when asked by the government whether their position was on marijuana, the spokesperson from the Canada Cancer Society said we don't have a position on marijuana legalization. And then you're going to tell me that this group is fighting for protecting our youth? Really? Really?

AMT: Okay. At the same time, let's go back. I'm going to quote Andre Picard in the Globe and Mail who wrote: “Selling death in brightly coloured ‘Come hither’ packaging is not a constitutional right.” Why do you think it is?

ERIC GAGNON: Well, tobacco is still a legal product in this country. The government has the right tomorrow morning to make it illegal but then as a society, we need to accept that people will not stop smoking and 100 per cent of the market will be illegal.

AMT: Okay. We have to leave it there. Eric Gagnon, thank you.

ERIC GAGNON: Thank you.

AMT: Eric Gagnon, head of external and corporate affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada. He's in Montreal. We want to hear from you. Should we move to plain packaging for cigarettes in Canada? Tweet us. We are @thecurrentCBC. Post a comment on this story on our Facebook page. E-mail us by clicking on contact at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us, the news is next.

[Music: Sting]

AMT: And then in the chaos of Syria, they are the ones who run toward the bombs. They're known as the White Helmets. They saved tens of thousands of lives with no regard for which side of the conflict the victim is on. They say to save one life is to save humanity. We'll talk to the White Helmets when we return. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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How Jasmeet Singh used comedy to diffuse anger facing racism

Guests: Jasmeet Singh

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, author Luke Dittrich's grandfather was a renowned neurosurgeon—famous for the many minds he saved—but best known today for the one he ruined. It was a lobotomy that left patient HM as the so-called “man with no memory.” A look back on how that operation changed many lives and changed our understanding of the brain in half an hour. But first, the moment of disruption that made Jus Reign.

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[Music: Sci-Fi]

The Disruptors.

AMT: Well, this season is part of our project The Disruptors. We’re featuring some of your own stories about moments of personal disruption. Today’s life-changing moment comes from Jasmeet Singh. Jasmeet grew up in Guelph, Ontario. He’s Sikh. He wears a turban. And he felt the sting of racism growing up. But the bullying he experienced in high school set him on a path toward a surprising career. Here is how Jasmeet Singh became Jus Reign, one of Canada's biggest YouTube stars.

[Music: Guitar]

JASMEET SINGH: Imagine looking totally different from everybody else in the country that you moved to. So I mean I obviously grew up in a Sikh family. All the males in my family wore turbans, long hair, beards and in the nineties, it was like—beards weren’t cool in the nineties like they were now. Now they're like you know socially acceptable, they're cool, you know girls think they're sexy. But back then, it was all about that clean shaven look. A lot of curiosity from my peers. Naturally, there's bullying. A lot of me growing up questioning who I was, trying to figure out who I was, trying to walk the fine line between you know staying traditional to my parents’ wishes, to my grandparents’ wishes but also wanting to be accepted by Western society.

[Music]

JASMEET SINGH: 9/11 was for me and for a lot of South Asians—Muslims, even Sikh kids—was a very confusing time in our life. Like one example I give is like the racism before 9/11 was very, very cartoonish, I would say. So it was a lot eluding to like—it was the same type of racism that like Apu from The Simpsons would get, right? It was like oh, your dad owns a convenience store or gas station, you’re taxi drivers, curry, you know it was things like that. And then after 9/11, what I noticed was the racism totally switched straight to like terrorists. It was straight “you're an Arab.” It was straight—you know you were pinned as a dangerous member of society, something that people needed to steer clear of. Even some of my closest friends, even though they were my friends, kind of were hesitant to hang out with me because of what the other kids would think. And this is a time when you're 11, 12, 13 and kids are really brutal at this age, so I was just naturally just confused and saddened and angry. And a girl came up to me—and this is how I knew—after a month of school or something, I would believe I was at the office and she came up to me and she said so like is it true? And I was like I don't—what do you mean? She’s like is it true what everybody is saying, the kids. And I’m like I don't know what they're saying so I can't tell you if it's true or not. And essentially she asked me if I was the nephew of Osama. I had just as much relation to Osama bin Laden as this girl probably did.

[Music: Melancholic]

JASMEET SINGH: I remember being hit at that moment with this feeling of like that's really not fair. Like that's—I can't believe that. And it was like I couldn’t do anything about it. Like no matter if I—if I wanted to say no that's not true, that's not true, there was still this like reason to believe or like this doubt that people held that it could be true. So I mean that was like one of the first times I really, really felt extremely just confused, felt like it was unfair and I felt alone. That kind of forced me to break out of my shell and like just kind of peel away these layers of like being an introvert. That's when I started to get angry a lot. I noticed myself getting into a lot of conflicts and fights. At one point, instead of fighting with people, I remember just joking back. So I would just throw jokes back or kind of deflect the situation or kind of flip a certain joke and just kind of flip it on them and get it back and I noticed like other kids will start laughing, be like oh wow, this is pretty funny. It's like this kid is pretty funny. So I think that is the time where a lot of my comedy intuitions came up. It was kind of like the path of least resistance. Instead of being involved in a conflict or you know physically or just being violent with somebody, I would just defuse whatever ignorant remarks they would say and just kind of prove why it was ignorant but in a humorous way. It's funny to see how all those old things kind of led to where I am now. I wanted to go into film school. But you know there's some resistance with my parents because they were really set on me being a doctor. I think the day I was born, they’re like he's going to be a doctor. So I rolled out into biomed and I did that for a year and I was just—I hated every second of it. And then when I was like studying and procrastinating, I would watch YouTube videos and I noticed like people start gaining an audience off watching YouTube videos. And I’m like this is really interesting. Like there's people that are making skits in comedy and vlogs and things like that are like legit getting an audience and a following and it's like such an easy medium to use. And I wanted to go to film school and do this and it's here. I can do this by myself.

[Sound: Video in background]

JASMEET SINGH: The first ever video I made while I was studying was called 25 random things in my room. And I was in my room and I recorded off my MacBook camera.

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JASMEET SINGH: [In video] iPod. Cell phone. Glasses. Receipt. Kleenex.

JASMEET SINGH: So I posted that on like, on my personal Facebook and people watched it and were like what are you doing? What the hell are you doing? Like what is this? And a couple people were like yeah, alright, man. You’re dumb but that was kind of funny. And I was like this is pretty cool. People were like commenting and watching. Like I like this. And so I just started making more videos and more skits. I parodied Punjabi commercials. A lot of advertisements—obviously low-budget coming from the Punjabi community—growing up as a kid watching that, a lot of them were so hilarious.

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JASMEET SINGH: One shopping cart, training and repairman services school. [Speaking in alternate language]

JASMEET SINGH: Just like the reverb effects and the delays and just like the cheesy transitions. This very popular truck driving school in Brampton and Mississauga, and I just took their format and replaced trucks with shopping carts.

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JASMEET SINGH: Regular shopping carts. [unintelligible] shopping carts. [unintelligible] shopping carts. Ask anybody which shopping carts—

JASMEET SINGH: The response for this was unreal to me. It was like 10,000 views in a week. I felt like Dave Chappelle. Like what Dave Chappelle did for black comedy. There's levels of breakout. I had the breakout with the Punjabi community, then I had a breakout with like South Asians—when I started making videos about like Indian parents, the Gujaratis would come up to me, South Indians, even Bengalis and things like—Pakistanis would come up and be like yo, this is crazy, like this is so true. This is insane.

SOUNDCLIP

Does the colour of your turban like represent your mood or something like that?

JASMEET SINGH: And then shit white guys say to brown guys came out and that just like—it got a million views in like two or three days and it went super viral. It was on like YouTube home page for like a week or so.

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VOICE 1: Teach me how to say “What’s up?” in Indian.

VOICE 2: Teach me how to say “You suck” in Indian.

VOICE 1: Oh, no, no. Teach me how to say “Your mom is [beep] and I hope she dies” in Indian. Yo, I love Indian food, man.

VOICE 3: Curry in a hurry?

VOICE 1: All day.

JASMEET SINGH: And I remember like white guys coming up and being like that is so me. Like that whole video is me. I remember my white friends that I went to high school with like would hit me up and be like dude like you owe us royalties because we wrote that video for you. [laughs] It's just white dudes like dude like that is so me. I just realized how dumb these questions sound now that you've compiled them together and threw on a wig.

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VOICE 1: Yo, where are you from?

JASMEET SINGH: Toronto.

VOICE 1: Nah. Like where are you from?

JASMEET SINGH: Canada. I was born here.

VOICE 1: Man. Like where are you actually from? What do you have under that? What’s under there?

JASMEET SINGH: I think that also like just kind of parallels going back to my childhood, just being able to defuse like negative comments with comedy. This was that but it was on like a bigger platform. As lame as it sounds, like maybe I was meant to do this. Like this is just where my happiness lies.

[Music]

AMT: A personal moment of disruption from Jasmeet Singh of Guelph, Ontario. We’ll link you to that YouTube channel of his from our site www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can find all the moments of disruption we feature this season on our website: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on features and The Disruptors. We want to hear your story about a moment that disrupted your life. You can e-mail us your story by going to our website and clicking on the contact link.

[Music]

Back To Top »

Ordinary Syrian people 'biggest losers in this war,' says White Helmets leader

Guests: Raed Al Saleh

AMT: You are listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. As you've been hearing in the news today, parts of Aleppo that are not held by the Syrian government were pummeled over the weekend. As many as 60 people were killed just yesterday and according to rescue teams on the ground, hundreds died over the entire weekend. It's been almost a week since the end of a shaky cease fire in Syria. The UN Security Council was meeting yesterday to address the violence. Mostly Russia and the United States traded accusations over who had caused the renewed fighting. And while the diplomats traded barbs, residents of Aleppo said they were under attack from weapons they haven't even seen before. Ismail al-Abdullah is in Aleppo and he describes the rockets hitting the city yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

Very big explosion and the land under your feet, somehow I don't know, it's like dancing under your feet. Many buildings collapsed because of this rockets and I have seen this and all the people have seen this. We know the barrel bombs. We dealt with the barrel bombs and we know the rockets look—rockets that Assad forces fire on our area. But this time, it’s completely different. It's new—[unintelligible] new methods to kill everything that’s alive in Aleppo city.

AMT: That is Ismail al-Abdullah, a civilian volunteer with the White Helmets, a group that is the focus of a new documentary that is now available on Netflix. When the bombs fell in Syria this weekend, the White Helmets were there searching through the rubble for survivors. The group has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives but it says now it's being deliberately targeted by Syrian air strikes. For its efforts, the group has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Raed Al Saleh is the head of the Syrian Civil Defence—that's its official name—now known as the White Helmets. He was at the UN in New York last week and I spoke with him through translation. This is our conversation. Hello

RAED AL SALEH: [Alternate language]

AMT: Mr. Saleh, when a bomb falls and the White Helmets hear it, what do they do?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] The White Helmets teams are always ready in their stations working on three shifts. And when rockets or barrel bombs attack civilian neighbourhoods, they move immediately to respond to the attacks and to help the civilians rescue those who are under rubble and evacuate them and take the wounded persons to the hospital.

AMT: And I'm wondering when you hear an attack and you know you have to run to it, what are the kinds of things that run through your mind the moment you understand that you have to get out and start rescuing people?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] It is a mixed feeling of fear and hope. We feel afraid of double take or another attack that may target the rescue teams when they are gathered to rescue people. And this happens and we lost many of our colleagues who were killed or wounded when the airstrikes come back and hit the same place again. And it's also a feel of hope of getting people alive and saving lives from the rubble.

AMT: How many White Helmets now work in Syria?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Now there are almost 3,000 volunteers. They are based in the 120 centres from the north to the south. And we've been able to save lives of more than 62,000 people during the past three years. But we lost 134 of our colleagues who were killed while they were on duty.

AMT: And who joins? Who comes to you to do this job?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Volunteers, men and women who join the White Helmets are from all different backgrounds—doctors, traders, carpenters, teachers, taxi drivers—and who are ready to dedicate themselves to rescue others and comply with the principles of the White Helmets and the values of peace and humanity.

AMT: And what are the principles of the White Helmets?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] The White Helmets comply with the international humanitarian law and work as a humanitarian neutral and impartial organization offering assistance for all people without any differentiation based on religion or ethnic background.

AMT: So in other words, no matter who is hurt, you will help us.

RAED AL SALEH: Yes.

AMT: Can you work in areas controlled by the government?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Till now, we are not able to walk in areas of the regime despite we expressed readiness on several occasions before when there is a need. We are ready to go anywhere as long as we are allowed to operate.

AMT: And of course, the only entity with air power right now is the Assad regime and its backer Russia. Am I correct? The only ones dropping bombs are government support.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] For three years, the Assad regime was the only power that has the Air Force to drop bombs from the air. Then later on, Russia joined and the international coalition also joined.

AMT: Can you describe what it’s like then, when you're on the ground and something flies over? What you start to look for, what you hear, what goes through your mind.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] It is very difficult to describe that feeling, especially when the aircraft drop barrel bombs. Barrel bombs that are used by the Assad regime are entirely indiscriminate weapons. Imagine yourself on the ground seeing the barrel dropping from the sky and you don't know exactly if it will hit you or not. People feel scared, feel anxious and they don't know where to go because nobody can define the exact hitting area of that bomb.

AMT: And what is it like when you get there after a barrel bomb has hit? Help us understand.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] When the barrel bomb drops and explodes on the ground, it's like an earthquake. And if it hits a marketplace for example, or a bazaar, sometimes maybe 100 people who would be killed and more than this number will be wounded. We may face fires, the smell of burnt bodies, people and children crying. It's very difficult to look at and I can't explain that feeling. It requires a very strong tolerance and patience in order to face that situation and work under that pressure to rescue those who are still alive.

AMT: And how do you stay focused then, as you try to do that? Because I would imagine you do have people who are panicked and in great trauma and pain all around you.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Sometimes some of our [unintelligible] may fall down because of the shock, the psychological pressure. But the hope of saving lives and children from under rubble is the main power that keeps us focused and committed to continue our work regardless of all the pressure that we face and the frustration that we have because of the ignorance of the international community.

AMT: Tell me more about why you say the ignorance of the international community.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] For example, over the past seven months, we've heard of two agreements for ceasefire or cessation of hostilities. But actually on the ground, we didn't see significant change. Those agreements give peace for one day maybe. And after that, the relations begin and bombs continue.

AMT: Is there one thing or are there many things that you cannot forget from going to the scene of a bombing and attempting to help people and rescue them? Is there something that stays in your mind that you can share with us?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] I have two stories in my mind that I don't ever forget. These two stories give me a message of hope. I remember in 2013, in Darkoush down in Aleppo [unintelligible], the day just before the Eid al-Adha, the bazaar of Darkoush was so much crowded by the people who were buying food and gifts for their Eid. And that time, an explosion took place at that bazaar. At that time, we were just at the beginning of the establishment of the White Helmets, just five or six months after the starting. And we had very light equipment and we did not have enough experience and enough training. So it was a very, very difficult situation for us. And at that time, 112 civilians were killed and many others were burned or wounded. And we could rescue only two or three persons and we couldn't handle that big catastrophe. And for us, it was a shock. After that incident, we felt so depressed for a while but after that, we made a pledge that we will work hard to develop our work and our skills to be able to be more efficient in the future. And two years later, in 2015, the same day, the day before Eid al-Adha, nine air strikes targeted the same bazaar, the same place again. And there was a big catastrophe there in the beginning but we were more equipped, more trained with more skills. We responded using six White Helmets teams who moved immediately from several neighbouring areas and worked collectively to rescue the people there. We were able to rescue almost a 120 civilians and we evacuated them to hospitals. Then we cleared the rubble, cleaned the streets and within 24 hours, the bazaar returned as it was before the incident. While in the previous incident two years before, it took 40 days until the bazaar worked again.

AMT: What does it feel like when you know you have saved a life?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Honestly, for us, these are the only moments of happiness and joy that will live in Syria now. It is the price that we feel we are awarded after the hard work.

AMT: You know I looked at the documentary The White Helmets and I've seen pictures of the devastation in Aleppo and in other Syrian cities. It's unimaginable how much has been destroyed. And that's just the buildings. There were people in those buildings. Help us understand the price that regular people have paid in this war.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] The ordinary Syrian people are the biggest losers in this war. Their homes were destroyed. Many people were killed. Their lives were dramatically changed and we lost a whole generation of children without education, which is the biggest prize for us as a nation, for the future.

AMT: I'm speaking to you. You're in New York at the United Nations. Why have you gone to the United Nations?

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] I'm here carrying the message and living the voice of the ordinary Syrian citizens and casualties who suffer from that big crisis in Syria and from the killing and the bombs, a way of those who negotiate power sharing or making agreements to protect their interests. I'm speaking for ordinary people who want to live in peace and dignity.

AMT: You are speaking for many people and you were speaking to big officials but your whole organization is based on helping individuals. You feel very strongly about saving one life.

RAED AL SALEH: [Through translator] Our motto since the beginning is, “Saving one life is saving all humanity.”

AMT: It is important to hear that. Mr. Saleh, thank you for speaking with me today.

RAED AL SALEH: Thank you all very much.

AMT: That is Raed Al Saleh. He is the head of the Syrian Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets. I spoke with him through translation when he was in New York late last week. Stay with us. Coming up next, this man's grandfather was a famous neurosurgeon pushing the limits of science in his day but he may have gone too far—the story of Dr. Scoville and patient HM. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Author learns dark truth about lobotomist grandfather and his famous patient

Guests: Luke Dittrich

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I would like to try something, Henry. Usually when a brain short-circuits like yours, we take out half a region called the hippocampus. Only your case is so severe, I'd like to take up the whole thing. Now, it's never been done before but I've got a hunch it will work.

VOICE 2: I don't know, Doc. Sounds kind of risky.

VOICE 1: Life is risk, Henry. And to be honest, with the life you have—

VOICE 2: [Starts having a seizure]

VOICE 1: Bob. What have you got to lose?

AMT: That's a dramatic re-enactment of a very real and momentous episode in medical history. The two men portrayed there were the neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville and the man who for decades to come would be known simply as patient HM. There's a good chance you've come across patient HM in science class or a textbook at some point because after that fateful operation performed by Dr. Scoville, patient HM would become a major figure in the field of brain research. Writer Luke Dittrich has taken up the story for his new book and he has a personal connection to it—the neurosurgeon Dr. Scoville was his grandfather. The book is called Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets. And we've reached Luke Dittrich in Whitehouse. Hello.

LUKE DITTRICH: Hello. Thanks for having me.

AMT: Who was patient HM?

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, patient HM—before he became patient HM—was Henry Molaison. He was a young man who grew up in Hartford, Connecticut sort of working-class family. And when he was about eight years old, he was walking home from a playground at night and he stepped out into the street and a bicyclist knocked him over. He hit his head hard, knocked him unconscious for about five minutes. He came to and everything seemed to be alright but shortly after that, he began developing seizures and the seizures got more and more severe and more and more frequent until by the time he was in his mid-teens, they were really debilitating. He was having major seizures sometimes several times a day. You know his high school principal wouldn't let him walk across the stage to collect his diploma because he was worried that Henry might have a major seizure which would embarrass the school. And so he—

AMT: Embarrass the school. Wow.

LUKE DITTRICH: Right. Exactly, yeah. So he and his family were really in pretty desperate straits and they were you know willing to try almost anything to help alleviate these seizures and so they turned to a man, my grandfather, who offered them hope in in the form of this sort of radical experimental brain operation. As it turned out, the operation had actually sort of devastating catastrophic consequences for Henry.

AMT: So by the time he is introduced to your grandfather, he's around 27. What year is this?

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, he actually—they met earlier. They met in the mid-1940s at some point. But the operation that my grandfather performed was in 1953 when Henry was 27 years old.

AMT: Okay. And we heard that little clip there, a dramatization of what it was believed to have been like, telling him that he wants to remove part of his brain. Can you describe the operation that your grandfather performed on Henry Molaison?

LUKE DITTRICH: Sure. The operation involved basically you know peeling down the skin of Henry's forehead and drilling two silver dollar-sized holes in his skull, one above each eyebrow. And then you know levering up Henry's frontal lobes in order to access this sort of deeper region of the brain known as the medial temporal lobes which include structures like the hippocampus, the amygdala, the uncus, the entorhinal cortex. And then basically suctioning out these structures or most of these structures bilaterally, meaning from both hemispheres of the brain.

AMT: He used a spatula.

LUKE DITTRICH: Right. He used something called the flat brain spatula in order to lever up the frontal lobes in order to gain access to this sort of central location.

AMT: So we hear him talking about the hippocampus in that clip. He also affected the amygdala. Am I right?

LUKE DITTRICH: Correct. He destroyed the amygdala along with most of the hippocampus.

AMT: And what did that operation do to Henry Molaison?

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, it did not cure his epilepsy which was the intent of it. The most dramatic effect it had was on Henry's memory. For the rest of his life, you know 55 years, he lived his life in more or less 30 second increments. The present would just constantly slide off of him. He could not retain you know his experiences. He could not create new long-term memories. It had a number of other effects as well. But that was certainly the most profound and the most sort of devastating one to Henry.

AMT: Did he have his long-term memory still?

LUKE DITTRICH: He had memories from prior to the operation although those memories themselves were affected. And that sort of aspect of his memory disorder actually didn't become clear until later in his life. Basically he didn't remember the past, even the past from before the operation in the same way that we do. He couldn't kind of create stories from his past. His past had become sort of distilled down— semanticized is how scientists referred to it—into just sort of this kind of constellation of facts but the facts were in some ways sort of disconnected. He really you know experienced the world in a way that's fairly alien to us.

AMT: And would you call what happened to him a lobotomy then?

LUKE DITTRICH: It's fair to call it just strictly speaking a lobotomy in that it affected—that it was an operation that targeted the medial temporal lobes. But it wasn't a lobotomy in the sense that it was a psychiatric procedure. It was not a psycho surgical procedure which is what we usually call lobotomies because Henry did not suffer from a psychiatric disorder. He had epilepsy. But the operation was in fact identical to the operation that my grandfather had actually sort of pioneered and invented in the back wards of asylums to treat psychiatric patients. And so he basically was taking an operation, this lobotomy that he had developed initially to use on psychiatric patients, and then using it on Henry to see if it would help Henry.

AMT: And how did your grandfather come to perform lobotomies then?

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, this was—you know one of the things that I sort of came to realize as I was working on the book was that the lobotomy was this sort of mainstream procedure back in the 1940s –and well, starting in the 1930s—but 1940s and 1950s. It was not a fringe procedure. It was a procedure that many of the leading surgeons of the day, including my grandfather, were quite passionate about. He though had this particularly kind of personal you know desire to explore psychosurgery that came from my grandmother, his wife. My grandmother was mentally ill and she was institutionalized during the 1940s. And my grandfather became one of the world's most prolific lobotomists, in part because he was you know desperate to find a surgical fix for his own wife, which is both you know poignant and also you know troubling.

AMT: He performed a lobotomy on your grandmother.

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, that's—it's somewhat up for debate. A man that was in a position to know that did tell me that he had done so, which was a great shock to me as well as a shock to a number of people in my family. But yes. There’s reason to believe that he did do so. In secret.

AMT: And you're making the point that he was passionate about this as a surgical procedure to help people with psychiatric illness. Just help us understand what a lobotomy is because this is something that we don't want to see people have done to them today and we forget.

LUKE DITTRICH: Sure. Yeah. I mean the lobotomy came out of this sort of very strange era in the history of medicine, when medical practice and medical research really overlapped and there was a sort of blurry divide between the two. It came out of—Yale University is actually sort of ground zero for the lobotomy. It came—it grew directly out of primate research that was conducted in the department of physiology at Yale in the early to mid-1930s. They began lesioning the frontal lobes of chimpanzees and they discovered that chimpanzees, after you you know lesion their frontal lobes, would exhibit less so-called experimental neurosis. If you gave them a task before the operation and then afterwards, after the operation, they couldn't perform the task as well but they wouldn't get as upset about not being able to perform the task. A surgeon, actually a Portuguese neurologist, quickly decided to see if the same would be true in humans. If you lesioned a human’s frontal lobes, would that person then develop less neurosis or exhibit less neurosis afterwards? And he sort of came to the conclusion that yes, these patients that he was lobotomizing were less neurotic after the operations. That became this sort of sensation in the world of neurosurgery. It quickly left the Atlantic and a man named Walter Freeman took it up and then men like my grandfather began sort of experimenting and tinkering and refining the operation in the sort of the back wards of asylums all over the country and in fact all over the world. And they had this—you know I found this one letter from the department, the head of the department of physiology at Yale encouraging a young researcher to go spend time with my grandfather to study his cases and he wrote in his letter that you know you should go there because Dr. Scoville has been given unlimited access to the psychiatric material of these asylums. I had to read that twice before I realized that psychiatric material referred to human beings. There was this real attitude where you know another neurosurgeon/lobotomist wrote shortly after he began performing the operation that man is certainly no poorer as an experimental animal merely because he can talk.

AMT: So what were some of the conditions that doctors believed lobotomies could fix in their patients?

LUKE DITTRICH: Right. The conditions—at the beginning, the operation was sort of viewed as an operation of last resort. It was one that would only be applied to the most sort of desperate cases. As time went on though, it was applied to hyperactive children, women who liked women, people who suffered from you know all sorts of kind of like obsessive compulsive disorder. It sort of was broadened in its kind of scope. And that's—I mean I think it had some—there were some sort of troubling implications for that.

AMT: And some people understood that at the time though, right? I mean you're basically saying psychosurgery was used to try to get people to conform to the moral codes of the day.

LUKE DITTRICH: I think that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. I mean it was you know in a lot of ways, it was viewed as a way of sort of bringing misfits to heel. You could say.

AMT: You mentioned someone else. You mentioned Walter Freeman. Your grandfather was in competition with him on some level. He was a lobotomist. Tell us a little bit about him. What did he do? What was his procedure like?

LUKE DITTRICH: Sure. Freeman had a couple of procedures. The first one was very much like the one developed in Portugal but then he came up with a sort of radical new version of the lobotomy, sort of a cheap quick version of the lobotomy that's technically called the transorbital lobotomy, but has become known sort of in popular culture as the ice pick lobotomy, which would involve often a literal ice pick tapped through the orbital bones which are the thin bones behind the eyeballs. And then just sort of swished back and forth which is you know messy and imprecise—

AMT: I have to tell you. As I read this and as you say this now, I’m cringing. I’m like clutching myself.

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, yeah. It's a natural reaction.

AMT: He had something called a lobotomobile?

LUKE DITTRICH: Right. He drove around the country in you know it was actually just his camper van but he dubbed it—he himself dubbed it—his lobotomobile. He was a real sort of showman. He loved putting on a show with these operations. He considered himself half a performer and half a doctor. And he liked to shock people too. I mean I think he realized that there was something shocking about what he was doing and he kind of embraced that aspect of it.

AMT: And how did lobotomies change the scientific research?

LUKE DITTRICH: Sure. Well, I mean I think really the most important kind of product of this age of lobotomy, sort of scientifically speaking, is patient HM. Henry Molaison. I mean his—what was so significant about his operation was that it targeted these very specific regions in the brain that were—the functions of which were pretty much entirely mysterious at the time—nobody knew what they did. And it quickly became apparent as soon as the operation concluded, that at least one of the major functions of these regions was to create new long-term memories.

AMT: And how much of your grandfather's work was based on trying to help patients and how much of it was done out of scientific curiosity?

LUKE DITTRICH: You know these were very different times that he was operating in, some of the standards of informed consent were different at the time, for example. And I do believe that he passionately wanted to help people. And I also try to keep in mind that he saved you know probably thousands of lives over the course of his career and I've saved you know zero. And so he was a man who did a lot of good. At the same time, I think that in some ways, kind of his desire to advance science caused him to you know cross some lines that he probably shouldn't have.

AMT: I can hear your pride in him as you tell me about the other things he did. But you struggled with knowing what your grandfather was doing with these surgeries.

LUKE DITTRICH: I definitely did. It was—you know it's a book about memory and in a strange way, reporting the book has kind of changed my own memories of my childhood. He died when I was quite young and when he—and in my memories sort of prior to working on this book, he always loomed as this sort of large you know almost mythical figure. But it was sort of I don't know that he had sort of a sunny glow on him. And I got to say that you know some of the things that I uncovered have kind of recast those memories in a sort of troubling way.

AMT: And so what did you learn about your grandmother? And how he was treating her and what like—what was happening there?

LUKE DITTRICH: Yeah. Well, my grandmother was—she had a breakdown in the mid-1940s and she ended up being institutionalized in an asylum. The asylum itself is almost a character in the book. It was a place called the Institute of Living, which is such a sort of an Orwellian name. And it was a beautiful place. The grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who was the man who designed Central Park. But beneath this—it had a bowling alley, outdoor swimming pool, all sorts of things—but beneath this very kind of you know civilized façade, there was all sorts of kind of dark, more or less kind of human experimentation going on under the surface. The treatments that she endured that I found out about when I got hold of her clinical notes—some of which I'd never even heard of—one of them was called pyrotherapy, which is a fever therapy where they would kind of lock her in a box and heat her up till she experienced a fever of 105 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit for eight hours a day. And for a week straight, there were all sorts of things that you know—electroshock therapy being one that most people are familiar with.

AMT: Who was giving consent for that?

LUKE DITTRICH: That’s not clear from the notes. And again, the standards of informed consent at the time were very different. But I would imagine that it was my grandfather who sort of okayed most of what happened to her.

AMT: How different is the experimentation you talk about from experimentation done during the Third Reich?

LUKE DITTRICH: I want to be very clear that I don't think in any way that you know my grandfather did things that were analogous to what the Nazi doctors did. I can say that whenever you have a situation in which you know people become viewed as material—as you know again my grandfather was often described as working with the psychiatric material of these of these institutions—troubling things can happen. And also you know the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis did lead directly to the Nuremberg Code which established for the first time sort of our modern notions of informed consent, which then were you know arguably violated repeatedly by not just my grandfather, but many other neurosurgeons of the day working with these you know these very vulnerable patients.

AMT: What happened to your grandfather?

LUKE DITTRICH: My grandfather continued to operate. He continued to be sort of this passionate proselytiser for the lobotomy throughout his career. He was one of the last men standing as far as lobotomizing people went and he was still an active neurosurgeon when he died in a car crash at the age of I believe 77 in 1983. It was something he never really let go of even when his own sort of hospital supervisors were trying to kind of ease him out the door because they I think were worried about you know potential lawsuits and all that. He held on to the scalpel.

AMT: What eventually happened to patient HM?

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, patient HM, after he left my grandfather's operating room, basically lived the rest of his life 55 years as more or less kind of a human guinea pig. I mean he was intensely scrutinized, first by a brilliant neuropsychologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute named Brenda Milner who really came up with the sort of seminal discoveries about patient HM and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sort of inherited him as a patient. And during the last four decades of his life, he spent a huge chunk of time at living basically on site at the laboratory there.

AMT: How does that work? Like basically institutionalized.

LUKE DITTRICH: Well, not institutionalized per se. I mean it was more like a hospital ward and he would spend as long as a month every year at this place known as the Clinical Research Center where he was then made available to researchers who wanted to perform experiments with him.

AMT: Did he have a life? Did he have a job? Did he manage to get married? Or was he debilitated by this surgery?

LUKE DITTRICH: He was debilitated. He did work occasionally. He would he would get jobs doing very sort of menial labour: packing balloons into plastic bags, things like that. He really was not able—because of his memory dysfunction—he was not able to do sort of sophisticated work. Not that he wasn't smart. I mean he was smart. He was engaging in some ways but he was not able to remember anything that was happening to him. And so not only did he never get married, he was possibly—among the other deficits that the operation left him with—he was possibly rendered sort of asexual by the operation.

AMT: What year did he die?

LUKE DITTRICH: He died in 2008.

AMT: And he was studied right up until his death.

LUKE DITTRICH: Studied right up until after his death actually. His brain, after he died, was immediately removed and then was ultimately sort of sliced into very, very thin slices and sort of digitized and became kind of the cornerstone of this sort of new type of you know procedure for archiving the human brain. The idea being that they could then sort of you know scrutinize sort of and tease out some of the last sort of mysteries of patient HM by getting a close look at his actual lesion.

AMT: So you make the point that he was essentially a human guinea pig for the last four decades of his life, if not longer. And you make the point that when all of this started, there was a different ethical level at which surgeons and those studying the brain operated. What's the excuse for 2008? How could this man have been a guinea pig all those years? Does that raise ethical questions for you in today's society?

LUKE DITTRICH: I think that the question of informed consent is sort of maybe the essential question in his case and it's a question that sort of I don't know echoes throughout the book and it begins with all these sort of psychiatric patients that were lobotomized and then it continues throughout Henry's sort of status as you know as this experimental research subject. I think that the book shows that his informed consent was questionable at best pretty much throughout his career as a human research subject. There was a period of more than a dozen years when Henry himself was the only person providing consent. And this is a man who not only couldn't remember anything but he also—the removal of his amygdala made him sort of neurologically predisposed to consent to almost anything. It made him a very tractable passive person.

AMT: What's the lesson that modern medical researchers can learn from the story of Henry and of your grandfather?

LUKE DITTRICH: Henry is this immensely important case when it comes to sort of illuminating how memory works and when it comes to understanding ourselves. But I think he's also—and this is a part of his story that's never really been looked at before—I think he's also an important case when it comes to you know the study of medical ethics and medical and research ethics. And that—you know I think researchers moving forward always have to kind of bear those two aspects of his story in mind or should bear those two aspects of his story in mind.

AMT: It's a very disturbing and important story to learn about. Thank you for sharing it.

LUKE DITTRICH: Thank you so much for having me.

AMT: That is Luke Dittrich. He is the author of Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets. Luke Dittrich joined us from Whitehorse. That's our program for today. Finally, tonight is a “yuge” night in American politics. The much anticipated first presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. All the world will be watching. And late last week, a well-known world figure weighed in on the race in a way you may not have expected. The interviewer Piers Morgan asked none other than the Dalai Lama on Good Morning Britain last week for his thoughts on the race. The spiritual leader responded with his impression of Donald Trump. He was using his hands to imitate the Republican politician’s hair and he was gabbing his mouth. And we'll leave you with what that sounded like. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

PIERS MORGAN: Let me ask you then about the American elections which are coming in a month. Donald Trump is a very controversial character. Have you met Donald Trump?

DALAI LAMA: Never.

PIERS MORGAN: What do you think of him?

DALAI LAMA: I don't know. Sometimes he’s sort of—the way his hair… Something like that. And his mouth… small. That’s my impression.

PIERS MORGAN: That’s a good impression.

DALAI LAMA: But I don’t know.

[Music: Ending theme]

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