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The AIH Transcript for May 15, 2018

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol Off.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening. I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight…

CO: Working wounded. At yesterday's protests in Gaza a London, Ontario doctor was shot in the legs, and not long afterwards his friend and fellow medic became one of the 60 people killed.

JD: Faultlines. Amid criticism of the Israeli response our guest, a deputy minister and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, places the blame squarely on Hamas.

CO: Writing down his wrongs. In a deathbed confession, a Quebec priest convicted of abusing dozens of girls and young women, accuses both police and the Church of turning a deaf ear to his victims.

JD: Wolfe in chic clothing. In the case of the late Tom Wolfe you couldn't judge a book by its author’s cover. That elegant white suit contained a man whose sharp analysis was matched by his curiosity.

CO: A spot of bothering. After getting a rough ride from the British press, Megan Markel’s Father Thomas may not even attend the royal wedding. One columnist believes her colleagues are full of hot air.

JD: And…Nobody knows the dribbles it’s seen. But historians have come to believe the basketball court in St. Stephen New Brunswick is the oldest one that still exists and they wanted recognized as such. As It Happens: The Tuesday Edition. Radio that’s not sure when they got their first clue but we know when they had their first tip-off.

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Part 1: Israel-Gaza doctor/Israel-Gaza MP, Markle dad

Israel-Gaza doctor

Guest: Dr. Tarek Loubani

JD: A day after at least 60 Palestinians were killed at Gaza's border with Israel, hospitals are struggling to keep the scores of injured alive. The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 1,000 people were shot during a protest at the border fence. Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario who was helping treat the injured — then he himself was shot. We reached Dr. Loubani in Gaza City.

CO: Dr. Loubani what were you doing just before you were shot?

DOCTOR TAREK LOUBANI: I was away from the protest scene in a relative lull. There was no smoke or tear gas. There had been lots of that earlier in the day. I was with my medical team and while talking to them — we had just resupplied for tourniquets which we use to stop bleeding and people who are shot in the arms or legs. All of a sudden I heard an incredibly loud bang. I ended up on the ground and the first thing I yelled, just as loud as I could, was "F--k."

CO: You were shot in the leg?

TL: I was shot in both legs. The bullet came from the left part of my left leg went through the left leg and through the right leg.

CO: Did you have a tourniquet that you could use on your own legs?

TL: Yeah, I had a tourniquet in my pocket. We had eight left. We'd already used our entire supply and it was relatively early in the day. The rescuer, a paramedic named Musa came to me and he sort of made a gallows humor comment and then started taking care of me, looked at my leg and said “What do you think doctor should we put on a tourniquet?” I looked at it and I knew that if we were in London or anywhere else we’d tourniquet this thing. But we just had too few and I knew there'd be so many more worse injuries so I said “No.” We bandaged it up as best as we could, it bled like hell for a while but obviously I was fine.

CO: What happened to Musa, the medic who helped you?

TL: Musa, my rescuer he was a very bright guy, incredible man. And about an hour after he rescued me he was trying to get another patient and ended up getting shot in the chest. There was so much fire, live fire in that area, that his colleagues weren't able to take him out for another about 20 minutes and unfortunately he died.

CO: How many of the medic who were there treating people were injured or killed yesterday?

TL: There were 18 paramedics who were injured, plus myself and then Musa was killed. It's unfortunate because we as a medical team always hope for and expect some protection. We're not there politically. We don't condone anything. We just want to make sure that if people get into trouble we're there to help them.

CO: Were you wearing anything, any symbol of being a medic and being a doctor?

TL: Absolutely, absolutely. I actually just found a photo of all of us standing together. Musa, who was shot and killed, was wearing a high visibility orange jacket. Mohammed Migdad, who was on the other side of me and got shot in the ankle, was wearing a high visibility orange jacket. Because I was a physician I dressed differently, I was wearing full hospital greens — London Health Sciences greens actually from London, Ontario, which I'm gonna have to explain to linen why they have bullet holes. But having said that, I was clearly identifiable as medical, I was special in quotation marks, in that they only really would call me over for the very severe cases.

CO: Do you believe that members of your team, the medics, were targeted by the Israelis?

TL: You know, Carol, I don't know. I'm a doctor and doctors don't make conclusions they make observations. So my observation is that I was clearly marked and I was shot. Musa was clearly marked, he was shot and killed. Mohammed Migdad was clearly marked and he was shot. And we were shot in periods of relative lull. Musa not so much, he was actually in a rescue. But I was just standing there doing nothing.

CO: The Israelis say they're using lethal force only to protect their border, that they have the right to defend. They say that those who were there are trying to attack the fence or threaten border security. What do you say to that?

TL: I try not to get involved in the politics so much. What's ultimately important for us as doctors, any doctor will tell you that a peaceful protest shouldn't be summarily executed. Nobody was armed, from what I saw. Everybody was there peacefully. Yes, some Palestinians threw rocks and some Palestinians burned tires. I've frankly seen worse in downtown Toronto protests. It's hard to believe that the Israelis were threatened. There was, from at least my vantage point, very little chance of anybody on the Israeli side getting hurt.

CO: They say also that there were squads or groups among the protesters who were armed with firearms, who were using explosive devices and trying to attack the fence. Did you see anything like that?

TL: No, I didn't see anything like that. And I can tell you if these gangs did exist within the group, they didn't represent the 1,400 people who were shot by live fire.

CO: You know from being a doctor there that the resources are very limited, even before the emergency that you were faced with yesterday. One hospital emergency department said that at least 18 people died waiting for medical attention. They had 500 wounded people arrive at the same time. Do the hospitals in Gaza have what they need to treat all the people who are wounded?

TL: Firstly, I came into the hospital in an ambulance that held six people —five other injured people and me. Once I got there, obviously you know, we were all different levels of severity. And I saw many more people, including one gentleman who was shot in the neck, who came in while the doctors were trying to treat. The short answer is no. There are no resources here to treat the patients who are needed to be treated. And that's not necessary, it's a completely artificial situation.

CO: Because of the blockade?

TL: Yes, we know that the blockade is stopping medications from entering. I, as a doctor, very seldom give anesthesia to my patients who I need to sew because there is no anesthesia. Sometimes I use equipment that is very old and rotting, literally rusting, because that's the only equipment to use. They are so incredibly overwhelmed. They are not able to cope. Yesterday there were 1,400 gunshot injuries, 2,400, or something like that, total wounded people. I mean, if that were in downtown Toronto, which is probably the best ready place in all of Canada, they would be overwhelmed. That's normal. Anybody would be overwhelmed.

CO: You are recovering, you've been discharged from hospital. You have two wounded legs. How long will it take do you think before you're able to return to work? How is your recovery going?

TL: I'm highly motivated to get back on my feet. If a war starts here in the next few days I want to be in the emergency. My days on the frontline are over for now, but I can be in the emergency if I can get up on my legs.

CO: Dr. Loubani, thank you for joining us.

TL: Thank you so much, Carol.

JD: Tarek Loubani is an emergency room doctor from London, Ontario. He was wounded during the demonstrations in Gaza yesterday. We reached him in Gaza City.

Israel-Gaza MP

Guest: Michael Oren

JD: At a U.N. Security Council meeting today, the U.S. blocked a resolution calling for a probe into the violence in Gaza. And as the UN's ambassador, and permanent observer to the state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour began to speak, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley walked out of the room. Before she left. Here's part of what she said.

SOUNDCLIP

NIKKI HALEY: The Hamas terrorist organization has been inciting violence for years. long before the United States decided to move our embassy. They light Molotov cocktails attached to kites on fire and attempt to fly them into Israel to cause as much destruction as possible. Make no mistake, Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday. I asked my colleagues here in the Security Council, who among us would accept this type of activity on your border? No one would. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. Those who suggest that the Gaza violence has anything to do with the location of the American Embassy are sorely mistaken. Rather the violence comes from those who reject the existence of the state of Israel in any location.

JD: That was U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley speaking at a U.N. Security Council meeting today. Michael Oren is a deputy minister in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel's former ambassador to the U.S. We reached Mr. Oren today in Tel Aviv.

CO: Deputy Minister Oren, is there any limit to the number of Palestinians that Israel is willing to shoot and kill?

MICHAEL OREN: It depends on Hamas, Carol. Israel bears absolutely zero responsibility for this. This is Hamas, which starves out its own population, it burns fuel, it burns food going into Gaza to starve out population, to create despair and then drives the population to the fence hoping these poor people can punch a hole in the fence so the terrorists can pour through and kill our civilians.

CO: OK, so the answer is yes, there is no limit then to the numbers you’re willing to kill then?

MO: It's a question that you have to place to Hamas.

CO: Whose bullets killed and wounded all those people yesterday?

MO: I know maybe this is not the usual. Let me ask you a question. At what point would you let 40,000 people come through your border to murder the people? Where are you in Toronto? Is there a limit to how many people you're willing to kill to defend your citizens in your country?

CO: How many Israelis have been killed or wounded in the course of yesterday or during the course of these confrontations?

MO: Would you prefer that there were?

CO: No.

MO: Do you want me to regret that here weren’t any Israeli’s killed?

CO: Have there been any?

MO: Our soldiers are good and they defended the border. That's their job. Hamas was very, very open about what the goal of this operation was. It was to break through the fence and kill Israelis and destroy our country.

CO: How do you think that look to the world yesterday when all those people were shot dead at their border?

MO: I think it looked to the world the way Hamas wanted it to look to the world. The world that reported this are basically complicit in a terrorist operation by Hamas. You're doing just what they want you to do. Even your line of questioning is just what Hamas wants. And, frankly, Carol you're complicit in further damage and even deaths of Palestinian kids, because Hamas is going to conclude from listening to this interview that it works. And I hope you're proud of it.

CO: Mr. Oren, we are talking to you today only because your forces killed 60 people yesterday.

MO: Hamas sent 40,000 people to our border, to break through the border and kill our civilians. That's the only reason. We’re not killing Palestinians every day.

CO: If Hamas is playing us, then aren't you doing its bidding? If you are going to shoot people because they want this publicity, then aren't you doing exactly what Hamas wants you to do? If you think we’re all being played and that's why we're doing this interview because I've been played, why do the bidding, why do the work that it wants you to do? Why shoot those people so that we end up doing this interview?

MO: Because we have no choice. Because there's no way we can stop them otherwise. And it's not innocent people. Virtually half of the people killed were Hamas armed terrorists who were using these people as human shields. And, frankly, about a two hour drive from where I'm talking to you in Tel Aviv, the Syrian army has invaded the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. There have been hundreds, maybe thousands of Palestinians killed. Do you care? Have you covered it?

CO: We actually do cover the Syrian…

MO: Here is the question you have to ask yourself, Carol. You don't care when Arabs kill Arabs. You don't care. What your care is when Jews have to defend themselves against a terrorist organization that has sworn to kill my people.

CO: What is it you are defending yourself against yesterday? Why did you shoot those people?

MO: Because they were they were rioting at the fence. The goal was to break through and kill. But the way you spin it is just the way Hamas wants it. And, you know, I hope they send you a thank you note because you’re doing great.

CO: Your colleague, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, he said that anyone who approached the fence would be considered a terrorist. Do you agree with that?

MO: Anyone who approached the fence in an area where the Israeli government made it expressly clear that they'd be in a fire zone, yes, was taking tremendous risks on his life. We leafleted Gaza. We warned people to stay away. Everyone knows in Gaza where the limits of the fence are. And this is not a friendly country, this is an enemy country. And I always feel bad for innocent civilians killed, but we don't bear responsibility for it, Hamas does. If you look at the pictures closely you'll see how Hamas issued directives to send civilians up to the border to try to break through it and they had women with black flags waving them on telling them that the fence had been breached to keep going.

CO: And you shot them?

MO: Canada would do exactly the same thing. Any country would do exactly the same thing.

CO: I don't know if we would have shot doctors or medics, because we just talked to a doctor who is from Canada, who was over there trying to help, and he said he was he was 35 meters away from the fence when he was shot. 18 other medics working with him were shot. The man who was trying to help him was later shot in the chest and killed. All of these medics, they were clearly marked, they were not armed, they were not even throwing stones. They were well back from the fence. Why did you shoot them?

MO: 35 metres is not well back in the fence.

CO: Why did you shoot them? Why did your forces shoot the doctors and medics? Why did they shoot the journalists? What were they doing?

MO: Have you seen pictures of this? Have you seen any photographs of what it was like?

CO: Yes, I have.

MO: Nobody — the Palestinians brought up burning tires to close the tire area in black smoke.

CO: They brought tires and set them on fire to camouflage themselves.

MO: And they know exactly where the limits are. They come to the fence then they have to be considered hostile. There are 40,000 people there come at this fence. If we wanted to kill a lot of people we could kill a lot more people. We're not out to kill people we're out to defend our citizens.

CO: So how many of the 40,000, what percentage do you think were terrorists?

MO: Anybody who came up to the fence and tried to break through it was considered a hostile enemy individual.

CO: Some of them were carrying banners in Hebrew trying to send a message. So how can you be sure that they were trying to breach the fence? Why couldn't they just be coming to protest?

MO: Because we have it all on film. I think we're the most innovative country in the world, we can actually take photographs of people. And I just watched it on the news and I watched them cutting through the fence. By the way, many them had guns. We’re not in an urban Canadian situation, we're in a war zone. These people are out to kill us.

CO: All of them? The Palestinians are all terrorists?

MO: I think you have to ask yourself at the end of day, two very important questions. Why do you not care when Arabs kill Arabs, only when Jews are forced to kill Arabs to defend themselves? And why do you, you play the role of conspirator with Hamas? You are an abetter of terrorism and I think we should end just there.

CO: May I ask you one last question, Mr. Oren? May I ask you one last question? The IDF, your own chief of Israeli Defense Forces, has warned that Gaza was a humanitarian crisis. That anger and frustration was reaching a boiling point. And he warned the possibility of war. You're saying Hamas is responsible, but what responsibility does Israel bear for the level of anger and frustration that we saw at that fence yesterday?

MO: So there is an actual question, because, yes I realize the humanitarian situation wasn't easy and this is what I found out. Israel alone, had the only open crossing into Gaza, a place called Kerem Shalom. We expanded the number of trucks going in. We greatly open the borders. Here is what happened. Hamas burnt down the crossings to which the food and fuel went into Gaza. Now why are they doing that? Why are they taking the humanitarian situation, which is not easy, and creating a crisis? Because they want to drive their own population to despair.

CO: One last question U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday, it was a great day for Israel.

MO: In opening the embassy it certainly was.

CO: So you agree with this statement that yesterday was a great day for Israel?

MO: In opening the embassy sure it was.

CO: But not in Gaza?

MO: By the way, if Israel stopped because the Palestinians or other Arabs objected to it we wouldn't be having this interview at all. I wouldn't be here, would I now?

CO: Mr. Oren, thank you for your time.

MO: Goodnihgt.

JD: Mike Oren is deputy minister in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We reached him earlier today in Tel Aviv. For more on this story go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Somber Piano]

Markle dad

Guest: Gaby Hinsliff

JD: Poor Thomas Markel. The father of the soon to be royal, Megan Markel, has been the subject of intense scrutiny by the British press. And surprise, surprise they're not going easy on the big American bloke. Tabloids put out photographs of Mr. Markel buying KFC and McDonald's and beer. And now, after a scandal over some staged photos, it is unclear whether he'll even be at the upcoming royal wedding. Gaby Hinsliff finds this whole thing snobby and embarrassing. Ms. Hinsliff is a columnist with The Guardian. And we reached her in Oxfordshire, England.

CO: All right Gaby, which is it? Is Thomas Merkel coming to the wedding or is he not?

GABY HINSLIFF: Well, as of this morning it looked as if Thomas Markel wasn't coming to the wedding and that he felt too embarrassed as a result of the publication of these staged photos of him. And now we hear that maybe is coming after all, although there’s still another three days for that to change. All Kensington Palace will say at the moment is that it's all private and they wish everyone would stay out of it really.

CO: This talk about the photos that were staged, what were they about?

GH: Yes, they were, I mean, they were very endearing looking pictures when they were published of him apparently being measured for a wedding suit and looking at some pictures of the royal family online, you know, as if he was kind of preparing for the wedding. And they were presented as if they were snatched paparazzi photos taken without his permission. Anyway, since then it's emerged that he looks if he cooperated with the photographer. So it wasn't the case of his privacy being invaded, it was a case of him cooperating to get some pictures out there that we assume that he wanted out there.

CO: And it's reported that he took money for those photos.

GH: Well the photos were certainly sold for a fair amount of money. How much of that money reach the Markels is a matter of some debate. His daughter, who is Megan's half-sister Samantha, says they didn’t do it for the money. They did it because they wanted some other images of him out there. There's been some rather unflattering photos of him. Usually he’s coming out of fast food restaurants sort of going about his daily life. And he says that they wanted some photos out there that made him look better.

CO: Can you remind us of the photos that didn't make him look good?

GH: Yeah, the tabloids have run quite a few pictures of him just sort of going around his daily business. He's recently had hospital treatment and he's complained of being followed into the chemist by photographers trying to get pictures. There's been pictures of him coming at a fast food restaurants, which the British papers have run in a slightly snide you know, “Look, this just had a heart attack, should he be going to McDonald’s” sort of way. I wouldn't say they've been kind. They've been calculated to present Megan’s family in a certain way, in not a terribly flattering light.

CO: How difficult do you think that is, to be just an ordinary bloke and suddenly you're on the international stage, everything you do is being looked at and scrutinized and commented upon and criticized?

GH: My guess is it's quite frightening. I think the sense of everyone bearing down on you and that everything you do could potentially be used to embarrass your daughter or expose her to criticism. I think it must be very difficult to cope with.

CO: You've written that this is a nasty snobbish undertone to all of this. And we know Megan Markle, she's a biracial American woman, no aristocratic heritage. Is this about class as well? I mean, you wrote it’s an effort to make Prince Harry's future wife look trashy.

GH: I do think it's about class. By talking about the contrast between her family background and his family background. I mean, previously Kate Middleton had similar levels of attention when she married Prince William, but it was different, I think, in tone. There is an attempt to present the family in not the flattering light. And to present them as very different from what you'd expect a royals in-laws to be.

CO: Given what Prince Harry went through when his mom died and the paparazzi pursuing Princess Diana, what added effect do you think all this has on him?

GH: There was a great outpouring after his mother died. People saying ‘never again’ you know and the press intrusiveness could never be allowed to build to this level and newspapers said they'd never use paparazzi pictures again, so on and so on and so on. And there was a great desire at the time to shelter Harry and William from that kind of scrutiny. I think they have a wariness and a suspicion of the press. And with Harry, in particular, there's been a feeling that past girlfriends have been put off by the idea of becoming part of this set up. The level of scrutiny that goes with it, the requirement to give up your job and your normal life to become part of the firm, and he's clearly been frustrated by that. He's talked about wanting to protect Megan from the exposure, criticisms and the pressure. And I'm sure it's very frustrating that he's not able to do it and her family is being dragged into this because of him. It's sad, really, that in sort of the last few days before their wedding they can't just kind of relax and enjoy it.

CO: Do you think that's the case, that it's become something they cannot enjoy? Especially with this controversy around Thomas Markel, the dad, do you think that that's marred this wedding for them?

GH: I really hope that's not the case and I really hope everyone can put that behind them and just get on with it. A wedding is supposed to be a nice feel-good story. Two people in love, getting married, happily ever after. It's a national event to some extent, although much smaller than in previous royal weddings. It ought to be a feel-good story and it sort of ends up being a situation in which one feels slightly guilty by association. But hopefully everyone can now put it behind them. If he's coming great, you know, and whoever she wants to walk her up the aisle, should be able to walk her up the aisle. And we as a nation should make clear that Megan Markel’s family are guests of the nation. It’s a royal wedding and they deserve to be treated with some respect.

CO: Gaby, thank you.

GH: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

GH: Bye-bye.

JD: Gaby Hinsliff is a columnist with The Guardian. We reached her in Oxfordshire, England and we have more on that story on our website.

[Music: Banjo Strums]

St. Francis Xavier Forearm

JD: She just wanted to express her love for her kids but she created a permanent affectionate tribute to her ‘childreln.’ Now ‘childreln,’ of course, is not a word. That extra ‘L’ messes everything up. But you don't have to tell Johanna Giselhäll Sandström that because a single ‘L’ in the wrong place changed Johanna Giselhäll Sandström’s life. Three years ago she went to get a tattoo of the names of her two kids Nova and Kevin. Nothing flancy, just their names joined by an ampersand. When it was done, she went home. Whereupon, she discovered something very unfortunate. The tattoo artist had added an ‘L’ to Kevin's name. Her Tattoo read Nova and Kelvin. Now this was terribly upsletting, but according to an article in a Swedish newspaper, when Ms. Sandström returned to the tattoo parlour the artists just laughed. All he could do was give her a reflund and the name of a tattoo removal place. But tattoo removal is no flun. So she and her husbland made a blig decision. Rather than change the tattoo, they would change Kevin to Kelvin. Mr. Sandström told the paper quote “When I thought more about it I realized that no one else has this name. It became unique. Now we think it is better than Kevin.” Well flantastic and ultimately not that big a deal for Kelvin. He was only 2 at the time and so everything turned out just fline. Because in this case the road to ‘L’ was paved with glood intentions.

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Part 2: Priest abuse letter, New Brunswick basketball

Priest abuse letter

Guest: Bruce Johnston

JD: He was convicted of abusing them. Now, in a series of letters he wrote from his deathbed, late priest and convicted child predator Paul-Andre Harvey is offering his survivors hope. Earlier this month, Abbott Harvey died in prison. He was serving time after confessing to sexually assaulting 39 girls and young women as he was moved from parish to parish and Quebec’s Saguenay region in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Before his death Abbott Harvey sent a series of letters to the lawyers representing his victims in a civil suit against him and the Catholic Church. The letters contain the priest's accounts, not just about what he did, but about what his superiors and local law enforcement knew. Bruce Johnston is one of the lawyers who got those letters. We reached Mr. Johnston in Quebec City.

CO: Mr. Johnston, what does Paul-Andre Harvey say about the church and his superiors in these letters?

BRUCH JOHNSTON: He says what we thought was the case, that his superiors knew that he was a pedophile all through his work in various parishes in the Saguenay region in Quebec.

CO: He goes beyond that too, doesn’t he? He is saying that they helped move him around.

BJ: They said pray more and be more prudent, which we're not really sure what that could mean. It could mean don't get caught, and when the community started complaining or there was a danger of him being found out they moved him from parish to parish, as unfortunately, we've seen cases in many, many countries in Catholic diocese.

CO: How detailed are these letters?

BJ: Well they are letters that he wrote while in prison and there are several pages long, carefully typed with no spelling, grammar mistakes and he really, I think, wanted to come clean on certain events in his life and we're very lucky that he did that before dying.

CO: But why did he not do this much earlier? These were 39 young people who suffered because of what he'd done. Why didn't he say all this much earlier?

BJ: Well, he was a pedophile and he was a criminal and he was, for his victims, a monster. But he had asked for help from his superiors. He said “I can't help myself.” And they reacted to that by putting him in contact with one group after another of future victims. And had the church not acted in the way they acted, instead of being three or four victims — and 39 is the number of criminal cases that were brought against him — but we have 92 victims who have signed up on our website. And instead of being 92 victims, it could have been three or four had the church acted as they should have.

CO: He describes the story of one young girl who came with her parents to say what was going on. Can you tell us that story that he tells?

BJ: The most troubling aspect of that story is that our lead plaintiff Suzanne Tremblay told us a story and we alleged that in the proceedings, of her being brought by a priest before the bishop who called her a liar because she had denounced the fact that she had been a victim of sexual abuse and he called her a liar. And the letter that Mr. Harvey left tells a story of exactly the same thing happening, that is as a young victim showing up with her parents to the diocese and the bishop treating them very cavalierly and denying what he knew was true.

CO: Mr. Harvey is alleging that this happened after he had told the bishop that he had this problem.

BJ: Yes.

CO: What did he want the church to do when he actually went to tell them that he was doing this to children?

BJ: I think he was asking for help to restrain himself. That is if he had not been put before temptation again and again that he would have been more able to control his urges. And this is, I think, one of the most shocking elements of this case, is that in order to protect itself, the Church chose willingly to expose victims to this pedophile.

CO: He alleges that the police knew about his abuse as well. What does he say?

BJ: He said that he was visited four times by different police officers in relation to complaints by victims. And that each time he received a warning, a sort of slap on the wrist and no other consequence.

CO: What do your clients, these once children, now women, what do they say? How have they reacted to the information that's contained in these letters?

BJ: Well, it's obviously mixed feelings, because they had the courage to come forward and confront their aggressors and they had a tremendous amount of fear and shame and difficulty coming forward, and yet they did. But they also have a tremendous amount of anger against the church, which they suspected and now we know, was in a position to prevent what happened to them and didn't do so. And they are determined to press the church on this because this happens in dioceses everywhere in the world.

CO: How did you come to have these letters? How did it fall Paul-Andre Harvey arrange to have these sent to you?

BJ: He was in prison and he was a named defendant in our case, and yet the diocese and the diocese’s insurer tried to prevent us from speaking to him. So we litigated that issue and won Superior Court and in the Court of Appeal, and just as we were going to be able to talk to him he died. But in the meantime he’d received notice of the judgment by the Court of Appeal allowing us to talk to him and he took the initiative to communicate these letters to his carceral lawyers. And so she contacted us, told us that her client had relieved her of her duty to professional secrecy and had mandated her to provide us with the letters. And when we saw them we thought ‘Well, we should get him to swear to these,’ because his lawyer had told us that he was in very poor health and so he swore nine days before he died.

CO: What can you do with them? I mean, you know that the church is likely to challenge the validity of the letters as evidence, and they were letters written by a criminal, a convicted man who is not there to answer the question. So what can you actually accomplish with these letters?

BJ: The circumstances — normally this letter would be hearsay in a court of law but they do provide the guarantees of veracity to inform the court as to what he would have testified to. So we're quite confident that we'll have them admitted as evidence and testimony.

CO: We will be following this case, Mr. Johnston. I appreciate speaking with you. thank you.

BJ: My pleasure, thank you.

JD: Bruce Johnston is a lawyer for the survivors of the convicted child predator and priest Paul-Andre Harvey. We reached Mr. Johnston in Quebec City.

[Music: Ambient Tones]

New Brunswick basketball

Guest: Vaughn McIntyre

JD: As any Canadian basketball fan will tell you the game was invented by a Canadian. James Naismith, who was born in Almonte, Ontario, first shot hoops in 1891. You may remember they made a Heritage Minute about it.

SOUNDCLIP

ACTOR PORTRAYING JAMES NAISMITH: No, no Frank. Don’t carry it, dribble it.

VOICE: Is this some kind of Canadian joke sir? I mean, I know you’re the instructor an d everything but if we can’t carry the ball how can we get a decent shot at the peach basket?

[LAUGHTER]

JAMES NAISMITH: All right. Maybe we can allow a carry of a couple of steps.

JANITOR: Hey, Mr. Naismith sir, it sure slows things to climb up here every time.

JAMES NAISMITH: Well then let's cut the bottom of the basket.

JANITOR: But I need these baskets back.

JD: Sadly the court where James Naismith invented the game of basketball no longer exists. And for years the oldest basketball court in the world was believed to be in Paris. But a few years ago local historians in the town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick rediscovered a long forgotten court that is even older. They have set up an organization to preserve the court called ‘Canada First Basketball’ and they have just agreed to purchase the building. Vaughn McIntyre is the group's general manager. We reached him in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.

CO: Vaughn, how do you know that you have the world's oldest basketball court?

VAUGHN MCINTYRE: So we have a historian on our committee Darren McKay, who's been looking at this since 2010 when we first discovered the floor. And at that time we thought we might have a place where the first basketball game was ever played in Canada. But we do know that there were YMCAs at that time in Toronto and Montreal where the first game was played. What we've determined over that time though is this is the only place we know of that still exists from 1893. So we believe it's the oldest basketball court. There is a newspaper article describing a game on October 17, 1893. We've been unable to find anything recorded prior to that in any facility.

CO: So this is a newspaper report about St. Stephens and that this is where it was being played.

VM: Yeah, our local paper the St. Croix Courier reported the big game played at the YMCA on October 17th 1893.

CO: And so this court and you say you found it by accident, right? I mean, they're ripping up carpets and what did they find?

VM: It was actually a fire. The building is being used by a thrift store and they stored materials before they took it down thrift store to sell. And one of the things that they had donated was flammable and it actually started a fire on the second floor where this court is located in the front of the building. And so the firemen, when they were putting out the fire, discovered this wonderful basketball court at the back of the building. That’s how it all started.

CO: Does it look like modern basketball court?

VM: Not at all. You know, it is in many ways, what we would describe as a gymnasium. It also has lights that hang from the tin ceiling. It would have no out of bounds, the walls are the out of bounds. One wall has four big windows on it. They had to screens on the windows so the basketball wouldn't go through it when they played the game. The grommets are still there that held the nets down. It was a probably a nine person team versus five and that was pretty rough in the early days.

CO: What did they use for hoops? I mean, we heard in the Heritage Minute they were using wooden peach baskets.

VM: We have a peach basket at one end of the court. Now we don't believe it's the original piece basket but it's they were 10 feet high and they were peach baskets and there was a small hole at the bottom of the peach basket originally where they poked a broom up through that hole to take the ball back out of the peach basket. When you walk in that room, Carol, it's so awe inspiring because you really can sense the history.

CO: How significant is this discovery of your basketball court in New Brunswick?

VM: You know, in New Brunswick it's very large, just simply because these historical buildings and the finds you get in them are really quite amazing. But with basketball being one of the largest and most interesting sports in North America in particular, the scope of this building and what we might make out of it is way beyond New Brunswick and even beyond Canada in many ways. The game is just that big. Of course the one competition we might have is a a court in Paris, France that also, early on, declared that they might be the first basketball court in the world. We think their game took place in December of 1893 and ours took place in October of 1893.

CO: So it is a matter of months before the Paris game?

VM: Right, right, right. And the court in Paris, from the pictures I've seen, doesn't look as close to the kind of court as we have today as our court does.

CO: You've bought the building. What are you planning to do with it?

VM: We actually have an agreement to buy the building. So one of our first challenges is to complete that purchase. We want to make it, not just a static museum, but a place an entertainment centre where people might come and feel the games, see the size and scope of the players that are there today and also understand the history of where it's come from. Although, there's a Basketball Hall of Fame in the United States there isn't one in Canada. I know there's been a lot of interest in that. We were hoping to contact people who had an interest in creating a Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame. And we think we have a venue that absolutely suits the idea.

CO: And you think you could get a game, a match, going there and that in that basketball court now?

VM: That would be a challenge. It wouldn't be a conventional basketball game, that's for sure. The walls are the lines. So in order to inbound the ball you have to put your heel on the back wall and throw it in. The game has come a long way. We could we could have fun replicating an old game. It certainly wouldn’t be today’s game.

CO: All right, sounds fun. Vaughn, thanks for speaking with us.

VM: Yeah, you're very welcome. Thank you.

JD: Vaughn McIntyre is the general manager of Canada First Basketball. We reached him in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.

Tom Wolfe obit

Guest:

JD: His prose was instantly recognizable and so was Tom Wolfe himself. Mr. Wolfe, who was known as the grandfather of new Journalism, has died. He was 88 years old. He was known for his immersive and experimental takes on everything from the space race to LSD. His book The Right Stuff was adapted into the film starring Sam Shepard, Ed Harris and Dennis Quaid. And his 1973 anthology The New Journalism included work by the likes of Truman Capote, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson. But Mr. Wolfe also wrote fiction, which tackled the big issues. Issues like race, class, politics, greed. But it was his technicolor takes on real life that truly changed the game. In a 1990 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, Tom Wolfe lamented the inability of American writers to find inspiration in what was happening all around them.

SOUNDCLIP

TOM WOLFE: There's been a stream of articles in the literary press over the past 10 years wondering why the American novel had become so anemic, so inward turning, so esoteric, so removed from everyday life, so removed from the life of society. I thought of a rather obvious suggestion ‘Why don’t you just get up and look around and see what's going on?’ This all seemed to come from a statement that Philip Roth had made at a time when he was the hottest young novelist in the United States. He'd won the National Book Award for Goodbye Columbus. He had lit up the sky with Portnoy's Complaint and he said “We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless before what he knows he's going to read in tomorrow morning's newspaper.” But it seems to me an entire generation of American novelists drew exactly the wrong conclusion from this perfectly accurate piece of evidence. They began to avert their eyes, go into these rather esoteric forms of the novel, culminating in a marvelous novella by Robert Coover, of course very prestigious novelist, which began “To start with I went to live alone on an island and committed suicide,” and that was the first sentence. And in this novella there are no flashbacks. It was a tremendous piece of virtuosity but something of a dead end.

JD: Tom Wolfe speaking in 1990. Mr. Wolfe was the author of novels including The Bonfire of the Vanities and experimental nonfiction, like the 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now he claimed to never have used LSD himself but that book's tales of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had a kind of a ‘you are there’ quality nonetheless. He didn't look like a guy who would have such a grasp of the counterculture. Tom Wolfe was famous for wearing a white suit all year round. In 1976, when he appeared on this program to speak with Barbara Frum about his essay collection Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, he discussed why so few men at the time were willing to step out in style.

SOUNDCLIP

BARBARA FRUM: This new book of yours is all about what you call status problems, the fact that people are now willing to talk about everything but they're afraid to reveal their status secrets, their longings, their humiliations.

TOM WOLFE: That's true. That's the last — that really is the last taboo. People are so frank about their sex lives now you kind of wish they'd shut up. But you ask anybody to define their own status, where they rank in society, who they are ahead of, who they are behind and so on, and you'll see somebody squirm. And I think one reason so many writers want to be considered intellectuals is that somehow the status of being an intellectual puts you outside of the hated category, which is middle class — most all invective is directed against the middle now.

BF: Where do you see that? You mentioned in the book the anti-fashion fashion, for example.

TW: Well I happen to have been, yesterday, at Harvard University visiting and I started counting the legs because everyone, men and women, were wearing pants and the score in that particular room was 12 denim, four corduroy, and one worsted — I was the one wearing the worsted. One of the ways that you show today that you're not middle class and are upper class is by wearing rags, absolute rags. I live in a neighbourhood, same neighbourhood as Dustin Hoffman, who I don't know and Joe Namath, whom I also do not know, but I see them going around the neighbourhood in what might be called decayed army surplus outfits. These rubber ponchos with the rubber peeling off and kind of cigarette burn holes in the ponchos, and green combat boots with the top the upper is coming away from the soles and broken strings and in the boots. When I go to Los Angeles now and walk into a restaurant dressed the way I dress with my suit on and a double breasted vest and so on, people come to me and ask me if there's a table available, because in Los Angeles the only people who wear a necktie into a restaurant or a suit or anything of that sort is the waiters. And I worry about Jimmy Carter now. You see these pictures of him walking through his peanut fields in his denim outfits. He’s got a denim jacket on and denim pants and so far people think that this is a down home and he's a man of the soil. But all he needs to do is to add some beads with shark teeth hanging off of him or some kind of violent steel necklace, and he would be right at home in the Polo lounge in Beverly Hills. That's the kind of period we're in now.

JD: That was American writer Tom Wolfe speaking with Barbara Frum on this program in 1976. Tom Wolfe died yesterday in New York City. He was 88 years old. For more on Tom Wolfe, his life tune into q tomorrow at 10:00, 10:30 in Newfoundland. Tom Power’s is going to be speaking with journalist Lee Quarnstrom, one of the original Merry Pranksters who was part of the schene Tom Wolfe chronicled in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

[Music: Trance Bass]

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Part 3: Amber alert, Kansas police custody sex, Sultan Saldin

Amber alert

Guest: Molly Sauter

JD: While officials were searching for a missing boy in the Thunder Bay area of Ontario yesterday they issued an Amber Alert. And if you live in Ontario you might have seen the alert as it arrived on your device, or heard it. It was sent to some people's phones as part of the country's new mobile emergency alert system. And police found the eight-year-old boy safe and sound later in the day. But there has been some criticism in Ontario over the alert system, including from Molly Sauter, who tweeted yesterday, quote “Congrats, you have trained me to ignore emergency alerts. Molly Sauter is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University, who researches the social impact of technology. We reached them in Toronto.

CO: Molly, where were you when you received this emergency alert yesterday?

MOLLY SAUTER: I was in a cafe and my phone started buzzing very insistently because I keep my phone on silent most of the time. But the barista's phone started talking, it read the alert out loud.

MS: How many of these alerts did you receive?

MS: I ultimately received three alerts. There were two alerts related to the child being missing and one alert, several hours later, which told me that the child had been found. Some friends of mine in the Toronto area received five alerts some in English and some in French.

CO: OK the purpose was to alert people so that in case they find this child. Was that useful do you think in any way for you?

MS: It certainly wasn't useful to me, given that the child went missing and was ultimately found in Thunder Bay, which is a two days drive away from Toronto. So instead what happened was I got a lot of very insistent emergency broadcast system alerts that were both unhelpful to me and ultimately unhelpful to any effort to find this child.

CO: And then you tweeted ‘Congrats, you have trained me to ignore emergency alerts.’ What do you mean by that?

MS: So when a system alerts a user about a problem, the goal of that alert is to help that user take an action to either remedy the situation or to help the user themselves. So we know a lot about this behavior from how people interact with pop up notifications on their computer. Unfortunately, many people have been trained by excessive pop up notifications on their computer to ignore them and to just click through them and click ok. And unfortunately what this has done is trained a large population of computer users that this information that their computer is telling them is not useful to them and should be ignored. What this leads to is people accidentally downloading malware, accidentally downloading viruses or accidentally divulging information that they don't mean to divulge. So when an emergency broadcast system alert, which is intended to be very arresting, so you're supposed to pay attention to it because it's information, in theory you really need right then, when that information is conveyed that way and is not immediately actionable and isn't relevant to the end user, all the system is doing is training those end users to recognize emergency broadcast systems alerts as irritation that shouldn't be listened to.

CO: The OPP told CBC News yesterday that a significant event like an amber alert is only issued five to eight times a year. So the numbers are low. So are people really going to get annoyed and to ignore them and become desensitized to these alerts?

MS: So here's how the emergency broadcast system should be considered. It should be considered as sending a uniformed officer of the state to someone's house knocking on their door and telling them information, because you're telling them information in a way that is intended to not be ignorable and it's intended to be highly relevant to them at the time. So if this isn't a piece of information that you would send, say, a uniformed Mountie to every house in Toronto to tell them that there's a missing child in Thunder Bay, then this use of the system needs to be reconsidered.

CO: Again, if it's only now and then I mean, will people say well this is just an annoyance we have to put up with because it might be relevant? I mean, to those who are in the vicinity where they might be able to help or need to have this information it's crucial, is it not? I mean, this is helpful, this is why the police are doing this, why the CRTC wants this to happen. So is it just the kind of minor annoyance to a lot of people half a dozen times a year that's of significant assistance, perhaps, to the police for something like an Amber Alert?

MS: So there actually hasn't been a lot of research that justifies the Amber Alert system as very effective for helping to find and recover lost children. Similarly to how there wasn't a lot of research that supported putting the faces of lost children on milk cartons. But there has been research that said that Amber Alerts, and this type indiscriminate use of the emergency broadcast system, simply tends to frighten people and confuse them. There isn't enough information available in the small compressed size of these messages to help them figure out what exactly is going on, why they're being alerted and what they can do if they want to help or assist in another way. So the question of well is what about if it's only eight times a year. That's significant. That's like more than every other month that someone will be receiving in on the un-ignorable push notification to their phone that is demanding their attention that may be occurring up to two days drive away from them. So there are ways to restrict the broadcast area of these messages. That wasn't done in this case for reasons that we don't know, either because of error on the part of the broadcast system itself or because that choice wasn't made. The takeaway, I think though, from this experience, is that if you don't make these messages relevant and you don't consider the needs of the end users, which are the people receiving these messages, they're going to start ignoring them and if they ignore them then the system itself fails at a basic level.

CO: You're not calling for it to be scrapped, right?

MS: Oh no, the emergency broadcast system is incredibly important and should be maintained for instances of weather emergencies, large scale violence, boil water alerts — things where you need people to know something right away. In this case however, I feel like more harm was done because it encouraged people to find other ways to ignore these alerts that are coming through that weren't relevant to them.

CO: All right. Thank you Molly, we'll leave it there.

MS: Thank you so much.

JD: That was tech expert Molly Sauter in Toronto.

[Music: Ambient Bass]

Tadeusz Stabrowski

JD: The mystery of a Gatineau man's grandfather has finally been solved with the help of an unexpected DNA test. Michael Melaney’s grandfather Tadeusz Stabrowski flew Spitfire plane alongside the British RAF during the Second World War. In 1943 he was shot down over the English Channel. His body was never found and his fate remained unknown to his family all these years. Until a call came from Poland asking for a DNA sample. Michael Melaney shared that story with Hallie Cotnam on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

MICHAEL MELANEY: We knew that he landed his plane on the water. We knew that he had gotten out of the plane with a life jacket and they had gone back to rescue him in a seaplane and they had spotted him on the way there and then when they turned around they lost sight of him. And so at that point they abandoned the mission to rescue him. And then my grandmother had always thought that he had survived because he had he was fluent in German written and spoken, so she always thought that he was on some secret mission, right, because you're always hoping that they're alive.

HALLIE COTNAM: So last fall your family got a call from Poland. What was that call?

MM: Well, it wasn't really out of the blue. They had contacted us about two years ago, right around Remembrance Day, and they had said there was a grave and the grave is marked as an unknown Polish airman. And they had asked if it was okay if we could get a DNA sample from my father to compare. And then they sequenced his DNA and then they gave us the results just this past year. So just really recently. The answer is it's 99.999 — it's absolutely him.

HC: So what did it mean to you personally, Mike, to know with this DNA proof that you had determined your grandfather's fate?

MM: It definitely gives you a sense of relief, it gives you a sense of belonging. You know who he is, you know where he was.

HC: So you recently traveled to Europe to go to this reburial, I guess?

MM: It was a military official ceremony burial. It was an amazing day.

HC: What did Teddy mean to the Polish government and the French army? What did Teddy mean?

MM: It meant it was a symbol for them a symbol that they could put a name, not just to this person, but it's a name to all of the people who are missing and it's still very fresh over there. One of the speakers who was the ambassador of Poland to France, he spoke about his grandfather who was missing and that they had no idea where he is and it's like he said that it brought closure to even that. How even though he was a hero it was for all the heroes.

JD: Michael Melaney on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning yesterday.

[Music: Oboes]

Kansas police custody sex

Guest: Cindy Holscher

JD: Until extremely recently it was perfectly legal for police officers in Kansas to have consensual sex with people they had detained. If that seems like a bad idea to you, state representative Cindy Holscher agrees. And that is why she introduced a bill to make it illegal. Last week it was signed into law. We reached representative Holscher in Overland Park, Kansas.

CO: Representative Holscher, I'm going to get to what's in your law in a moment, but first of all, why is it necessary to have a law that prohibits police from having sex with someone who's in their custody?

CINDY HOLSCHER: Because the law that has been on the books, there's a loophole, so to speak. The law that we had basically said that law enforcement cannot engage in sexual relations with someone in prison or in jail. However, it did not cover cases where we are talking about somebody who was not in that situation. So essentially, somebody in their neighbourhood, somebody being detained by the law enforcement officers. And upon investigation we aren't the only state that had the loophole, there are over 30 others that currently do.

CO: And the loophole is something that you understand has been exploited, that there were police officers who claim to have been having consensual sex with those whom they were arresting or had detained or stopped for some reason?

CH: And as long as they claimed it was consensual there really wasn't anything that could be done. And that's kind of the heart of the matter. When we're talking about a situation where we have law enforcement officers, there's a hierarchy of power. And obviously, it makes it very difficult for somebody to feel that it was consensual when there are possible threats and threats of retaliation. And some of the cases here in the Kansas City, Kansas area, we're talking about officers who would ask for sexual favours from minority females, and if they did not comply would indicate they would arrest family members.

CO: I understand that it was one particular case that did help to inspire your bill — the case of Lamonte McIntyre. Can you tell me about that?

CH: Yes. I'm friends with Cheryl Pilot ,an attorney who works on wrongful conviction cases. Last summer she, along with Midwest Innocence Project, gained the release of Lamont McIntyre the gentleman who was imprisoned for over 20 years for murders he didn’t commit. And after his exoneration Cheryl and I met and she mentioned something to me about the case that I found particularly disturbing and it was this. She mentioned that through their research they found many women had come forward indicating that a detective involved in Lamonte’s case had been preying on minority women for sex for over a decades. And it's believed there were other law enforcement officers who were involved.

CO: And including the mother of Lamonte McIntyre. She is someone who says that she was coerced into having sex with this the officer who arrested her son?

CH: Yes, that's correct. She is one of the alleged victims. She has indicated that she was coerced into sexual acts by a particularly detective and harassed for many weeks thereafter. And she believes that because she spurned that particular detective’s advances that he retaliated against her son.

CO: He wasn't the only one that you were told was taking advantage of minority communities like this?

CH: That's correct. I've been told there were other law enforcement officers affiliated with this particular detective and many different women involved. I've also been told that if this were thoroughly delved into, it could potentially rival what we saw recently with the sexual scandal involving the Olympic gymnastics team. Apparently again, this has been going on for decades.

CO: You mentioned that there were 33 states in the U.S. who have the same thing, that you can have consensual sex with someone that you're taking into custody. We did the story in New York state of two NYPD police officers who had sex with a teenage woman.

CH: Oh yes, that was Anna the 19-year-old.

CO: And she was handcuffed at the time and they claimed it was consensual. They've been charged with rape. They're saying they've pleaded not guilty to that. So was that also a case that inspired your bill?

CH: That actually came out after I had submitted my bill. It was interesting though as far as some of the same type of situation. And a lot of people's reaction is probably the same as mine, that we expect our law enforcement officers to serve and protect. We don't expect them to engage in sexual activities while they're on duty and while on the taxpayer's dime. And we certainly don't expect them to be intimidating and coercing vulnerable citizens.

CO: And I understand there are some people who opposed your bill. They thought that there were circumstances where it would be OK. What was the opposition all about?

CH: I wouldn't necessarily say it was opposition, it was more like questions about ‘Would there be scenarios if we are talking an off duty officer?’ So, I mean, as part of the process and vetting a bill and having it in committee, you know, we discuss a lot of different situations. And really what it amounted to was that something went much just needed a little bit tighter in the bill and that got addressed.

CO: Are there any exceptions to this? Any place where police who are on duty it would be, according to the law you're passing, it would be OK for them to have sex with people? Not just people with people but who they are engaged with professionally.

CH: No, no. Now this law says that police officers cannot engage in that activity.

CO: So under any circumstances, traffic stop, an interview, an investigation — there's no circumstances in which police can have sex with people while they're on duty?

CH: There shouldn't be, but I don’t know if there's something else out there we haven't thought of, I guess. But again, it should really close the loophole as far as what's been going on.

CO: Do you think the other states in the U.S. will follow suit?

CH: Well, I certainly hope so. And, you know, I'm guessing and many of them they probably didn't realize this loophole existed. In fact, some of my peers didn't realize this issue. So, like I said, I'm sure there are other states out there that aren't aware that there is this loophole.

CO: All right, well I appreciate speaking with you Representative Holscher. Thank you.

CH: I appreciate it so much. Thank you.

JD: Cindy Holscher is a Kansas State Representative. We reached her in Overland Park, Kansas. And we do have more on this story on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Industrial Pop]

Sultan Saladin

Guest: Philip Mackowiak

JD: in the 12th century the Sultan Saladin was a military hero in the Muslim world. He was the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and famously took back Jerusalem from Christian crusaders. He died at the age of 56 of a mysterious illness. But now scientists believe they know what that illness was. The diagnosis was made at the annual Historical Clinical Pathological Conference, where doctors, scientists and historians gather to solve ancient medical mysteries. Dr. Philip Mackowiak is the director of that conference. We reached him in Rehoboth, Delaware.

CO: Dr. Mackowiak, how did Sultan Saladin die?

DOCTOR PHILIP MACKOWIAK: Well, that's a great mystery. We can just take our best guess based on a limited amount of information. Based on his symptoms and the physical exam, as limited as it was, and the diseases that were common in that area of the world at that time, typhoid fever or a some form of tuberculosis are the two most likely possibilities.

CO: Why do you think that might be the case?

PM: Well, both of them are febrile illnesses with high fevers, drenching sweats, which he had and then difficulty thinking at the end of his illness. It fits one of those two diagnoses best.

CO: We're talking about the 12th century here. So what kind of treatment was there for typhoid fever in those days?

PM: Well, I mean, there was treatment. Those treatments included clysters, which he received and clysters are enemas, a bleeding, which he had done to him to correct the balance of his humours, the humors being, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, and some dietary interventions, broths and things like that.

CO: If this Sultan this 12^th-century Sultan had not died or if there had been a cure for typhoid fever, how might history have been different?

PM: Well, he had fought Richard the Lionhearted to a draw. But before he obstructed Richard the Lionhearted’s efforts to try to retake Jerusalem, Richard and the European forces had recaptured a number of the major cities in the near east. And so possibly if he'd survived he might have brought them back into Islam quicker than they were. But those are questions that are just impossible to answer.

CO: But this is something you have done you said at other conferences, you're looking at other figures, other people who have died and just trying to diagnose how they died and how the world would have been different had they not died. Who are the other people you have investigated?

PM: I mean, let me first say that biographers spend very little time on the medical histories of their subjects. Beethoven for instance, everybody knows that he went deaf during the course of a very long illness. Very little speculation as to how his music might have been different if he hadn't gone deaf, and almost no time spent whatsoever on discussing all the other interesting aspects of his illness. So another example would be Alexander the Great. Alexander when he died had already fought his way all the way to western India when his troops finally said no more and forcing them back to Babylon. But in Babylon he was planning another campaign across North Africa. One could speculate ad nauseum what he might have accomplished if he had not died of his febrile illness. He would have come in contact with the Romans, for instance, who were just beginning to emerge as a as a world power.

CO: Well one that you've looked at that does tell you something about the person is Florence Nightingale and how she died.

PM: Yes, she died of old age and senile dementia. The question is not what did she die of, the question is what sent her to bed, literally, for 30 years after she returned from the Crimean War. Personally based on the experience she had in the Crimea and the deaths and the dying and all the patients she had to take care of and the responsibilities she had, I think she had a rip roaring case of post-traumatic stress disorder that sent her to bed for 30 years.

CO: Some have theorized that she had syphilis.

PM: Well, as a matter of fact, my wife who is a nurse, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969, was told that categorically. And that theory has resurfaced over and over again. But I've studied Florence Nightingale pretty intensively and I have to conclude that, first of all, none of her symptoms fit syphilis. Secondly, it's just impossible to imagine that syphilis could have caused 30 years of physical and psychological havoc and then cleared up all on its own without any treatment. And thirdly, I believe she was celibate her whole life. There's no evidence that she had a sexual relationship with anybody.

CO: Is there is a medical mystery that you are going to take a crack at next?

PM: Yes. Usually I keep that a secret. And so I will tell you this much. We try to do something different every year, and so next year we're doing a major religious figure with a very mysterious illness, that will be next May.

CO: Very mysterious and rather than try to speculate and guess we will wait and see what happens. I appreciate speaking with you Dr. Mackowiak.

PM: Thank you very much for having me.

JD: Dr. Philip Mackowiak is the director of the Historical Clinical Pathological Conference. We reached him in Rehoboth, Delaware.

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May 15, 2018 episode transcript

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