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The Current Transcript for November 22, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

We had a very sad case of a nurse. She had been treating people. She felt sick. She was so dedicated but she just kept working until finally she too was too sick to work anymore. Someone identified that she probably had Ebola and then sadly she died a few days later.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Another death from Ebola in a place that rarely makes headlines. For the second time this year Ebola has hit hundreds in a northern province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's along with an already intractable armed conflict and a wider humanitarian crisis. This is risky and often thankless work for those arriving to help and those local health workers who have nowhere else to go. In an hour we'll hear from health workers, including a Canadian, on why they insist on helping and what they face. Also today it's been more than half a century since William Golding's Lord of the Flies exposed the cruelty of adolescent boys.

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If we are stuck here until we get old, then we can't go on acting like kids. We've got to be sensible and make things work. Nooooo.

[Noise]

AMT: What was fictionalized in the 50s has been identified in more modern times as something to be eliminated through anti bullying and empathy building programs. And yet even those who work in the field say it cannot always work. In half an hour or more asking about the cultural and societal connection to adolescent cruelty and aggression, with an eye to what's playing out in the headlines right now. And:

SOUNDCLIP

HOMER: You don't win friends with salad.

BART: You don't win friends with salad. You don't win friends with salad.

HOMER BART AND MARGE: You don't win friends with salad. You don't win friends with salad. You don't win friends with salad. You don't win friends with salad.

AMT: Even before the e-coli the alert and the romaine warning's, The Simpsons were suspicious of salad then leery of lettuce. After all, it's a nutritional loser and environmental user and not really a vegetable but merely a vehicle for your garlic. Time to abandon that Cesar? Eh tu, Crouton? I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Is salad a luxury food? One writer argues it's time to rethink leafy greens

Guests: Bill Marler, Tamar Haspel

AMT: Across North America consumers are being warned about a supermarket staple and you've heard it 'if you have romaine lettuce don't eat it. Throw it out. Sanitize your fridge.' An E. coli outbreak linked to the leafy green has sickened 19 people in Canada and other 32 in the U.S. The U.S. is advising people not to eat romaine and it's advising stores in restaurants not to sell romaine lettuce. In Canada, Loblaws and Selby's have ordered the removal of bar romaine products from their grocery shelves nationwide. So far health and food agencies have not ordered a mandatory recall in Canada. Here is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Question Period yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

Protecting the health and safety of Canadians is our government's top priority. We are collaborating with provincial health authorities, as well as the centers for disease control and prevention and the FDA in the United States to investigate the outbreak of E. coli Infections, linked to romaine lettuce in Ontario and Quebec. People in Ontario and Quebec should avoid eating romaine lettuce and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce, until the cause of contamination is known. We will continues to keep Canadians informed as new information becomes available.

AMT: Well since Prime Minister Trudeau spoke in Question Period yesterday, New Brunswick has been added to the list after a case of E. coli was confirmed there. According to my next guest, more can be done to prevent E. coli like contamination of leafy greens. This outbreak is just the latest in a series of cases over the past decade. Bill Marler is a lawyer who specializes in food safety and we have reached him in Seattle Washington. Hello.

BILL MARLER: Good morning.

AMT: What did you think when you say there have been another outbreak of E. coli linked to lettuce?

BILL MARLER: Unfortunately not surprising. And unfortunately no link to Canada is not surprising. I mean this is the third Romaine outbreak that we've had in 12 months. There was an identical, or nearly identical, outbreak in the fall of 2017 that sickened 42 in Canada and sickened 25 in the US. And then we had an enormous outbreak in the U.S. 210 people sickened in the spring. Fortunately only eight people in Canada. But we obviously are tied to the hip when it comes to the consumption of romaine. My apologies to the Canadians for sending you bad product.

AMT: What have you been hearing from people who may have been affected in this outbreak?

BILL MARLER: In this outbreak I've been contacted by people in the United States who have been sick. And then the day before yesterday by our family from British Columbia who have been vacationing at Disney Land in California came back to British Columbia and the father and son were sick. And father actually called me from the hospital where his son was ill. Fortunately doesn't appear to be very severe but they had been diagnosed with E. coli 0157H7 which is the outbreak strain. They have not been definitively connected. It may well be just because it's a cross border issue. It may just take some time before they're officially counted.

AMT: And they got the E. coli in the United States?

BILL MARLER: Yes yes. Well actually they consumed the product and then came home. So sometimes it takes a while. I mean if you look at what has been reported by the Canadian government and the CBC, the illness that is counted to date are sort of during the course of October. But that does not mean there aren't ill people in November. It's just that it usually takes two to three weeks to count people. Since the product is now just being removed from the shelves, I think unfortunately we're going to see those numbers both in Canada and the US increase over the next week or so.

AMT: And so we are talking about 0157H7 and that's particularly worrisome, why is that?

BILL MARLER: It's a Shiga toxin producing E. coli. There's a handful of nasty bugs that produce that toxin that gets released to the bloodstream. It splits the red blood cells. [Unintelligible] is then carried to parts of the body. The capillaries get clogged up and become necrotic. And so you have damage to the kidneys, to brain, to pancreas, to the liver. You know in five to 10 percent of cases they'll develop what's known as hemolytic uremic syndrome which is acute kidney failure. It unfortunately can cause death. There was a death from E. coli in the U.S. a year ago in an outbreak that also impacted Canadians. Then in the spring, five people died. So it's a bug the people need to be aware of. And it's here in the US's Thanksgiving today, people are obviously gathering for dinners. But you know romance should not be on anyone's menu.

AMT: And the clients who come to you, what are they looking to do?

BILL MARLER: Well most of the people who contact me are families or individuals who were severely injured, who've suffered brain injury, need a kidney transplant, have lost their large intestine and so have naturally gone through operable situation, but you know will for the rest of their lives. And so ultimately they're seeking compensation for medical expenses, weight loss, pain and suffering. You know we in the U.S. don't have you know broad coverage for health insurance and health coverage. So sometimes people are left on their own and they need to be compensated for that.

AMT: And this is, the specifics or lettuce, you've seen this before. Why does it keep happening with lettuce?

BILL MARLER: Well I mean if you look just at the one that happened in the spring, where 210 people were sick and it ultimately has been linked to contaminated water that was irrigating the lettuce fields. And that water came from a canal, irrigation canal, that flowed near a feed lot that had a 100,000 cattle on it. And so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cattle are the main reservoir for E.coli 0157. And if leafy greens are grown in areas where there are cows, the risk is you know exponential. And we've seen that repeatedly in these outbreaks. I've been involved in outbreaks where you go down and you see where the romaine lettuce was grown in. You look across the street, literally across the street, and there's a dairy farm. And so it's not surprising. This outbreak that we're hearing about right now, we don't know yet where the product was grown in the sense of another far more specific location.

AMT: That's why there is no recall, yes.

BILL MARLER: We do know it's from California because it's the only place that's growing lettuce this time of year. What's really fascinating, Anna Maria, is that the outbreak that we're hearing about right now is genetically indistinguishable from the outbreak that occurred in the fall of 2017.

AMT: What does that mean? Why is that significant?

BILL MARLER: It's significant because genetics don't lie. It's the genetics in this outbreak and the one in the fall of 2017 are identical. That means that the likely, to about 95 percent assurance, came from the same location. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the lettuce that's sickening people now, that sickened people in the files 2017 came from the same farm, but it's likely that it came from a same very small geographic area. Because E. coli genetics tend to be very environmentally stable. They stay in the same area.

AMT: So given all of this and you have argued that industry and governments need to do more to actually make leafy greens, grown in the ground, safer.

BILL MARLER: Yes.

AMT: What should they be doing?

BILL MARLER: Well I mean I think we have to clearly look at the type of water that's used to irrigate crops. You know if you're going to produce crops on a massive scale like this that's doesn't have a kill step, that you're eating raw, you're going to have to protect them from contamination from environmental pathogens which E. coli is. So you are going to have to come to grips with the fact that you can't irrigate leafy greens with water with cattle faeces it. Period. You just can't do it.

AMT: So you have to put up more barriers to make sure that doesn't happen.

BILL MARLER: It just doesn't happen. And then you have to look at location. In a lot of these, as romain lettuce has become so incredibly popular, you look for places to grow it sort of encroach closer and closer on areas where it shouldn't be ground. Like across the street from a dairy farm or down the valley from a 100,000 cows in a feedlot. You are going to have to deal with those sorts of issues. And until you do we're going to have these outbreaks happening fairly frequently. The romaine lettuce industry has lost 70 million dollars since last fall. I mean you'd think that they would get the message. Frankly why Colorado continues to import romaine lettuce from the U.S. is that bit of a head scratcher at this point.

AMT: Well Bill Marler thank you for your perspective.

BILL MARLER: Thank you.

AMT: That is Bill Marler a lawyer who specializes in food safety cases. He litigates food borne illness issues. We reached him in Seattle Washington. Well the danger posed by this latest E. coli outbreak is deadly serious, but even without the health risk, leafy greens have always had their detractors. And one of them is Tamar Haspel. Her distaste for lettuce runs so deep that the Washington Post columnist felt compelled to write about it in a piece called Why Salad is so Overrated. Tamar Haspel writes about food in science. She farms oysters in Cape Cod Massachusetts and that's where we have reached her. Hello.

TAMAR HASPEL: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Well we've heard about the health risks of leaving vegetables eaten right. We see what's going on with her I mean right now. But you raise a series of other concerns. Why do you think lettuce is so overrated?

TAMAR HASPEL: Well there are a couple of reasons - but I do want to preface this by saying that such a hater of all of that. I put salad on my table too and I am not against it in all circumstances. But there are a couple of things that go wrong with lettuce. First of all it's not a particularly nutritious vegetable. And you know we're having all these conversations about how we're going to feed a growing population responsibly. And taking valuable crop acreage in growing something that really doesn't do a lot for us in the Nutrition Department is not optimal. And one of the reasons is that lettuce is just about all water. So if you take a liter bottle of Avian, it's 96 percent water and 4 percent bottle. A head of iceberg lettuce is exactly the same. It's 96 percent water and 4 percent actual lettuce material. And so basically you're shipping water across the country only you have to keep it refrigerated and that takes fossil fuels, it takes other kinds of resources. I don't think we should stop eating salad but I think maybe we should start thinking about it as a resource intensive and maybe a luxury food. And so you make the point that when it comes to their nutritional value, the lettuce is really low on the scale.

TAMAR HASPEL: It is. It is. And so are other salad vegetables by the way, like cucumbers and radishes and things. Which doesn't mean you can't make an incredibly nutritious salad. If you do a chopped kale salad with some chickpeas in it. That's incredibly nutritious, but don't invite my husband for dinner.

AMT: So you're making a point though that we're-- because we think we're being so virtuous, so healthful when we chaw down on a salad. But really you're saying it's a vehicle for all that other stuff; the garlic, the croutons.

TAMAR HASPEL: Exactly. When the column ran in in the Washington Post, what they for illustration is they boil a bunch of salads at chain restaurants. Then, they took the lettuce out of them - because the lettuce is you know a handful of romaine or iceberg lettuce. It's really a nutritional nonentity. So they took that out. And then you get a good look at what's left, and what you have left is like a pile of croutons in cheese and maybe some grilled chicken and a whole bunch a dressing and it doesn't look healthful at all. But you add the few lettuce leaves and all of a sudden you think it's a salad and you doing better than, say, a sandwich or a soup. And it's not necessarily the case. And there are salads out there that really break the calorie bank. Applebee's has an Oriental grilled chicken salad, which sounds like it should be okay, but it comes in it's something like 1300 calories. And so people get fooled.

AMT: Tamar when you wrote this column, did somebody try to stick a salad fork in your habd.

TAMAR HASPEL: Oh. Totally, man. [Laughs] I got so much crap on the internet, I can't even tell you. Even now because the calm went out again because of this romaine thing and I get nasty grams on social media; 'don't you know that kale has all of this nutrition?' And, yes, okay I was not talking about kale. Or 'my salads are delicious. They're filled with vegetables and legumes in an olive oil based dressing', and yes salad can be terrific. And like I said, I'm not a hater, but I think when people go out the world thinking that the salads that they order in restaurants are healthful, or that lettuce is a particularly nutritious vegetable that's where things go wrong.

AMT: You know over the last several years we've seen a real growth in the popularity of bagged salad kits. What do you think is driving that?

TAMAR HASPEL: Well I think they're easy. You know if you're talking about a side dish for your-- whatever you're cooking at home - if it's a vegetable that you have to cook, well then you have to cook it. But if it's a salad that comes out of a bag, all you have to do is dump it in the bowl and add a dressing and you're good to go. But there are a couple of things there. First of all, one of the things that Bill Marler didn't mention is that one of the reasons lettuce and other leafy greens that we eat in salads are so often the subject of recalls, is because we eat them raw. And cooking kills all kinds of pathogens. So if you're getting your collard greens and your sautéing them with onions in olive oil, if there is something in there it's likely to die. Whereas if you put in in salad that's not the case. So the bagged salads make a lot of sense for people. But for a variety of reasons, resource wise, health wise, nutrition wise, they're not always the best choice.

AMT: Well let's go back to the sort of the resource. So you're making the point that it takes lot of water and a lot of farmland to grow the lettuce and the nutritional value is not worth the effort.

TAMAR HASPEL: So iceberg lettuce becomes a vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table. And I don't think that's anybody's idea of an optimal food system. And if we compare iceberg lettuce to say collard greens. Collard greens still have a lot of water in them. They are there about 90 percent water. But that means twice as much material in them that's not water as there is in a lettuce. And so if we switch our attention from lettuce to some of these more nutritious leafy greens that get cooked, then, all of a sudden, we're basically growing twice as much food on that acreage. And for this to make sense about the difference between cooked in raw vegetables, if you were to take your salad - I'm not recommending this - if you were to take your salad and take out the lettuce and saute it the way you would spinach or a collard greens or kale, it all boiled down to about two bites. People think they're eating a substantial amount of vegetable when they eat a salad because it's all out of volume but it's mostly water.

AMT: So this latest outbreak been urged to get it out of our fridges and get it off the shelves, we should use this to really think about what we are doing nutritionally.

TAMAR HASPEL: I think we should. And I don't want anybody to be afraid of lettuce. I think that the agencies, both in the United States and Canada, are really good at tracking these things. But as you know Bill made the point we need to do these things better. But maybe think about adding some other variations into your rotation. Think about those other leafy greens. Think about what you can do with kale or chard or mustard greens or collards are my favorite and mix it up a little bit.

AMT: And be honest with yourself because really you just want to put something, you just need something for your garlic and your croutons and [crosstalk] and your ranch. Okay we're going to leave it there. Thank you, Tamar.

TAMAR HASPEL: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: Tamar Haspel is a James Beard award winning columnist for The Washington Post. She's in Cape Cod Massachusetts. Oh go ahead weigh in on lettuce. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site C.cbc.ca/thecurrent, some tough words for romaine there. Stay with us. The news is next. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Youth see bullying as 'paying off for some people' in today's world, says expert

Guests: Tracy Vaillancourt, Tony Volk

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

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AMT: Still to come: The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have endured decades of war and armed conflict. They've also endured 10 Ebola outbreaks. Now the country's North Kivu province is struggling with both; an Ebola outbreak in the middle of a conflict zone. We'll hear from workers on the front lines in half an hour. But first curbing teen cruelty and violence.

SOUNDCLIP

The only way that I can, in my mind, try the help reconcile with how he got to that point, is that he got caught up in situations, stuff like that, and made a very very poor decision. Hopefully that's how I can make peace with myself.

AMT: Well that is Jim Elsworth of Glace Bay Nova Scotia trying, as he says, to make peace with his son's cruelty. His son was part of a group of students who forced their classmate Brett Corbett, who has cerebral palsy, to lie face down in a cold creek so they could walk across using him as a human bridge. Video of that incident circulated on social media. The students involved have since apologized. It was also via social media that another incident of cruelty came to light at St. Michael's College, a private Catholic school in Toronto. The Canadian Press spoke with police sources who say a group of boys on the football team allegedly pinned down another student in a locker room sexually assaulted him with a broom handle. Six youth now face charges of assault, gang assault and sexual assault with a weapon. Since that incident came to light more cases of abuse and bullying at the school have surfaced. Sean Fraser went to St. Mikes between 2009 and 2013 but eventually left.

SOUNDCLIP

I was bullied by many students there. There was very verbal abuse. I was never physically or sexually assaulted, but the verbal abuse was just so much. And I was going through a very tough time when I first went to the school, and being bullied like that and being part of a minority group and not fitting in with the larger crowd was very hard on me. I was not only bullied by students, I was also picked on by teacher

And since that of course there is a story in the news today of Police in Ottawa are investigating a beating that happened near and Orleans’s high school two weeks ago, and the teens who have been arrested there. And of course a story out of Grand Prairie Alberta an investigation after a video surfaced online showing two boys brutally beating a coyote to death. These stories are prompted a lot of talk about who and what is to blame when teens inflict pain and suffering on one another. I'm joined by two people who study anti bullying and empathy building programs. Tony Volk is a professor of a child in New studies a Brock University. He joins us from St. Catharine’s Ontario. Tracy Vaillancourt is the Canada Research Chair in school based mental health and Violence Prevention at the University of Ottawa. She joins us from Vaughan Ontario. Hello to you both and welcome..

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Good morning.

TONY VOLK: Good morning Anna Maria, Good morning Tracy.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Good morning Tony.

AMT: Briefly I’d like each of you to tell me what you were thinking and what you do think when you hear stories such as the one in Toronto at St. Mikes or the story of the boy in Glace Bay Nova Scotia. Tony Volk. What do you think when you hear those things?

TONY VOLK: I guess the first thing that i feel is a familiar sadness that this kind of behavior has been going on for a long time, and it isn't really showing massive signs of slowing down. Were making a dent but there is a lot more work to do. That's really what it makes me more sad, yet it motivates me to get back to work.

AMT: Tracy Vaillantcourt.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I think about exactly what Tony said how its pervasive, how we're trying to reduce it without much luck. It also highlights what Ive long advocated for and that if we can accept that people have a capacity for kindness, we should also accept that everybody has a capacity for cruelty, and the context often dictates which side you're going to land on.

AMT: Well Tracy what makes kids capable of colossal cruelty?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: A lot of times they get caught up in the group. So the group has quite a negative influence on young people and in particular young men. It causes this thing called de-individuation, where you feel like what you're doing is sanctioned and you feel like you're anonymous. You do things that you normally wouldn't do so a lot of times what we see kids do in groups is not what they would do alone. So you know when you ask teens just straight out things like what their risk appraisal is that's pretty good. And then when you put them with other teens their risk appraisal is just one example diminishes to zero. They just don’t have the capacity to think well in groups.

AMT: Tony, picking up on what she says, then, is there something about humans that makes us inherently capable of this kind of behavior?

TONY VOLK: Yes. The archeological evidence suggests that humans are no different from any other animals and that we have a capacity for violence. Tracy said at a degree we actually require operation. That's perhaps greater than any other species. But we certainly have a capacity for violence, aggression. There is evidence that going back tens of thousands of years.

AMT: How much of it is genetic?

TONY VOLK: Genetics play a role. The thing about genetics, there is an example I like to use, is that genetics are like the chocolate chips in the chocolate chip cookie. So they are important to have but so is the oven, which would make them into the final products. So if Tracy said if you have the right environment then he can promote the genetics. If you have a different environment that can inhibit the genetics sure. It's really the combination of genetics which I would say is probably a lesser role. And then the environment and the way that these kids have been raised and are being encouraged to behave.

AMT: Tony you have identified essentially a payoff for teens who engage in cruel and bullying behavior. What are you talking about?

TONY VOLK: Yes we looked at his problem when he saw how pervasive it was. We thought that this is either a worldwide historical cross cultural problems of kids, failing to learn how to behave, or maybe there is something in it for the kids who are doing it to explain it to its prevalence. And so we have looked into the evidence and found that bullying in particular can get you three different kinds of resources. The first are the physical resources: bullying for lunch money, bullying for the best spot to play at recess, bullying for the best seat in the cafeteria, bullying for dating, and sometimes for sex as Well, bullies date, have sex at a younger age more often. [Unintelligible] and bullies get popularity. That is a result we get across the world, throughout many different cultures. The same thing is people are sometimes attracted to powerful and dominant individuals. That's what we probably repeatedly say, you only have to look south of the border to get a really good example of how somebody can be really mean but really popular at the same time.

AMT: So are you saying that there is something going on in our brains, on some kind of conscious or subconscious level, where we're doing a cost benefit analysis on whether we should actually partake in something that is bullying?

TONY VOLK: Yes absolutely. We do with all kinds of decisions that we make. Are you going to take the long way to work that's pretty or the short way to work that's not as nice? We make cost benefit decisions all the time. And for many adolescents who hurt other children there are to be caught or low. There are to be disciplined or lower. And if the benefits are that they are going to be more popular and potentially get more dates from their peers at school, that's a pretty compelling argument for some of these individuals especially if you're fired up in a group situation to engage in these kinds of behaviours.

AMT: Tracy, given what Tony's saying, why do some teens and other kids engage in this kind of behavior while others do not?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I think it's again about this risk appraisal and that's probably how they perceive the environment. So people who bully often hold a biased perception of what their influence is. It can be real or perceived support. So as tony mentioned bullies are seldom punished for their behavior. Rather they're often reinforced or actively supported. They tend to think that people respect them and fail to appreciate that they are in fact feared. By definition, people who are bullies hold more power than their targets. Our research and the research of Tony has consistently shown that people who wield power are held in higher esteem. They influence the group more. They'll looked at more. They're validated more. They're respected more by the peers, the peers that they're attacking which is kind of ironic. And then I think this translates into this erroneous perception of approval and a belief that they're justified in their actions. There is also some evidence to suggest, including studies on brain imaging, that suggest that people who hold power are less sensitive to the cues of distress of others. So they pay less attention to subordinates in general. And this is problematic because they're harming these individuals and they're not seeing the cues of suffering in their victims, and so they feel quite justified. You know when you look across different primate groups. In non-human primates you see that alphas are also paid attention to. Typically they're paid attention to because survival is linked to pleasing them.

AMT: I want to I want to explore a little bit more of that and ask about morality and moral judgments and how that plays into this. We have a clip here from a researcher who has been looking at morality in much younger children. Kylie Hamlin is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

SOUNDCLIP

I study basically whether infants make very basic social judgments in the realm of things that we would consider moral as adults. So things like do they like those who help others more than those who harm others. Do they like those who are fair more than those who are unfair. And basically we've found that from just a few months of age infants will - if you show them these kinds of helpful and unhelpful actions happening in between individuals, none of whom they know. They're just sort of you know hand puppets or a little character or shape character and things like that - that nevertheless infants will subsequently prefer those who are helpful to those who are unhelpful. Our work suggests that there is absolutely a moral propensity that emerges extremely early in life but I don't think that that means that the end state of the morality emerges extremely early in life. And you know just because we have the capacity to get to a highly moral place doesn't mean that everybody will.

AMT: Tony what are the kinds of factors that might influence how a child's morality develops as they go from infant to child to adolescence?

TONY VOLK: Well there are a couple of different factors that run the spectrum. At the environmental level, certainly the ways that the parents behave; do they encourage the child to compete really vigorously expense of others? So winning is everything kind of mentality. Are they modelling the kinds of behaviours that show that bullying works for the parents? Are they bullying the child? Do their friends do the same thing ,coaches, teachers? Do they have competitive harsh environments? Those things tend to increase aggression. And then at the individual level, the individual's personality and temperament can also influence how likely they are to engage in bullying or violence.

AMT: And Tracy what about gender? How does gender affect a child or a teen's capacity for cruelty?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Well across studies we see that always in men are invariably more aggressive than girls and women. It's not to suggest that girls and women don't have this capacity. And when we do aggress we tend to be more circuitous and indirect. So we'll shun and we'll spread rumors and we'll exclude somebody from the peer group and not necessarily punch them or call them names directly. So there's a pretty robust sex difference in terms of the form it takes and how often it’s used. But one thing I want to the point now when you’re talking about morality is that humans have this great capacity to make their egregious acts more palatable and they use this process called moral disengagement. And its basically restructuring of what you did. So justifying what you did in order to not feel like a jerk. And so people will do things like use euphemistic labels or say 'I was just teasing the kid' when they were actually bullying them or they might use advantageous comparisons and say 'well I just looked at her funny I didn't shove her in the locker'. Or they will diffuse responsibility, so 'I was just recording the fight I wasn't actively participating'. Or they'll distort the consequences to the victim saying things like you know 'the person is just a drama queen', I hear often. They'll blame the victim. So we have this capacity to try and make ourselves feel better when we are less than appropriate. And that's also problematic because then you get used to your behaviour. And it can transform people to be really awful because they get used to these tiny incivilities that then roll to be something quite sinister and ugly.

AMT: And put that in with a surrounding societal culture. Tony, people are talking about a culture at St. Mikes that may have contributed to this. Former student of the school have said it goes back decades. How much influence does the culture of a school, a family, a society have compared to natural impulses or instincts?

TONY VOLK: Well we can have a large influence. We can think in the past that you know these hazing incidents were much more common historically. Most schools have gotten rid of them. I was one of the last few to go through high school and we officially had a slave day, when the senior students could buy the incoming students. So in a school that is perhaps clinging to older tradition as well as clinging really strongly to an elite kind of identity, like St. Michael's. It's unfortunately less surprising to see something like this happen there. When you have a historical precedence as well as a modern precedent for considering yourself elite and therefore making people pay to be part of your group.

AMT: Tracy what about the role of social media? The two cases we talked about the most here, the St. Mikes, the Glace Bay cases. There were videos of those incidents. How does that change the risks, rewards, the thinking for a teen who is engaging in bullying behaviour?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I think it's a bit of a double edged sword because on the one hand it's just highlighting the role of bystanders in terms of their participation in bullying. So they're often joining in or encouraging the bully either indirectly or passively. So you know then that gets put online and everybody reacts to it. And typically they react positively. So that can be quite problematic because you know you create this situation that's quite full - it's quite it is awful - and then you're rewarded at the moment and then you're rewarded after the fact. So there's that component. But then on the other side we also have some pretty compelling documentation of what's going on. And we can then behave or react to the situation a little bit better as adults, because you're not going to get the 'no I wasn't participating, no I didn't see it' or 'that's not when happened', all these conflicting reports. You actually have this really compelling evidence of what had happened. So I'm kind of torn on it. What I would prefer kids to do instead of videotaping these incidents; I would prefer that they left the situation and got help from an adult. And a lot of times individuals will say that they're doing this in order to protect the victim, but I think if they look at themselves a little bit more closely and held themselves a little bit more accountable, they were really doing it because they found it entertaining and they wanted to be part of this this fever pitch of what was taking place during the aggressive incident.

AMT: You know harping about all of this against the backdrop of all the attention and resources that have been directed to anti bullying programs in schools across Canada. Tony what does that tell us about how they're working?

TONY VOLK: Yes regrettably we're making a limited amount of headway so would to be completely for nothing. But it shows that this was a really difficult problem to tackle. Virtually nowhere in the world, despite worldwide investment in anti-bullying strategies, has bullying been eliminated or brought down by more than 50 percent for any lengthy period of time. So it shows that this is a really challenging problem and we need to keep on better understand it.

AMT: Tracy do you think the programs are failing?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: A lot of them are failing and I don't want people to be discouraged we're making some strides. Tony spoke about something that happened quite commonly in his high school and we don't see that anymore. And when I think about where I grew up when what was quite normal, it's not happening today. So I think we've made some strides and there's some evidence that we're getting about a 20 percent reduction in bullying. What causes me a lot of concern, and that's the thing that Tony and I study the most are these really high status bullies which actually is most kids who bully others are popular within their school. What causes me concern is that powerful people are typically only dissuaded by other powerful people or because they've incurred a cost. And so when we look at even the best programs in the world like the KiVa program, which comes from Finland that has pretty decent reduction rates, the kids they're impervious to the effects of the intervention by your high standards bullies. And part of the reason I think is because it's pretty difficult to dissuade somebody to give up their source of power. So they achieve and maintain hegemony through the use of cruelty. And so then how do you get kids to give up their power base. So this cause me concern when the most influential leaders in your school are also using aggression with impunity.

AMT: Well and Tony you make the point that in our wider world we are giving messages to young people that actually this can get you stuff. This isn't so bad

TONY VOLK: I think we are making strides. The Me Too movement is a really strong statement against sexual harassment and sexual bullying, but at the same time you can see that its effects were largely limited to the entertainment world. There wasn't a massive surge amongst many groups of politicians. There wasn't any storage at all in business. So certainly there is a lot of examples in our society of how power counts and power can really help you, even if it's not deployed in a moral way. So it is not at all surprising that these youth who were growing up, who are intelligent functional human beings look around them and say 'yeah this is really paying off some people. Maybe I should do the same thing'.

AMT: So how do you convince kids to give up the potential benefits of being a bully?

TONY VOLK: Well one of the ideas we have to really try and focus on some of the carrot as well as the stick, which means that we need to understand as we've been talking about why people do these things. And then try to find better ways for them to achieve those goals without having to hurt other people.

AMT: And how's that working?

TONY VOLK: Well we have a pilot project called Meaningful Roles that we've rolled out in Arizona. It has been deployed in the Netherlands and hopefully here in Ontario in the next year or two. And essentially what we try and do is give the adolescents to come up with a list of jobs that everybody in the class can do. So it's triggered by the adolescents not by grown-ups, which means they don't react strongly to it. And then we try to find roles for the bullies that fit with their goals. So if you want to be popular and socially central, you could for example be the person who greets everybody who comes into the classroom. And by doing that you're getting that kind of visibility, that's social power that you want but in a pro social way. And the evidence is preliminary. We only have it at the school level, with a few schools but it does suggest that that can reduce bullying and aggression by around 30 percent, and in truancy illnesses and detentions by 50 to 70 percent. So there is a possibility that we can take some of these predispositions and channel them into a positive direction, but I think it's going to take a lot of work.

AMT: And Tracey what do you think of that?

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: I think that sounds great. I think you need to engage the bystanders. And so the power that is afforded to these individuals by the peer group and we should be encouraging them to fore power to appropriate leaders. And if we can do that I think we'll be in a better space. And I know that this as possible because I go to schools all the time and I'm sure Trollied does too. You'll go to some schools where you see bullying is rampant. You know I was at a school recently I heard one homophobic slur after the other. And then you go to another school where LGBTQ students are embraced and well received. And so you wonder what the differences between these two schools, and it's about the culture of the school and what they decide is acceptable or unacceptable. Because the peer group establishes the norms and if the norm is prosocial you'll see prosocial behaviour. If the norm is anti-social, you'll see anti-social behaviour.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Thank you both for your insights today. It's really important hearing your voices. We really appreciate it.

TRACY VAILLANCOURT: Thank you.

TONY VOLK: My pleasure.

AMT: Tony Volk professor of child abuse studies at Brock University. He's in St. Catharines Ontario. Tracy Vaillancourt is the Canada Research Chair in school based mental health and violence prevention at the University of Ottawa. She's in Vaughan Ontario. Let us know what you think of that conversation you can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. We're talking about an outbreak of Ebola in Congo. It's really disappeared from the headlines you can hear from a Canadian trying to help.

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Congo's armed conflict is stopping Ebola patients from getting help, says aid worker

Guests: Trish Newport, David Bisimwa, Gwen Eamer

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. For the second time this year Ebola has hit the Democratic Republic of Congo. This time the province of North Kivu is in the midst of a deadly outbreak of the virus. The numbers of active cases has reached more than 350. An estimated 200 people have died. And as have an Ebola outbreak isn't enough to manage North Kivu who is also currently plagued by armed conflict, ongoing armed conflict. Last month Washington pulled U.S. health workers from the front lines citing security concerns. We have reached three people were trying to treat and contain the virus and the first person we're going to hear from is Trish Newport a Canadian nurse and the emergency coordinator and medical coordinator for Ebola in the DRC for MSF Medicine SansFrontier and Trish Newport is in Bunia in the DRC. Hi.

TRISH NEWPORT: Hi there.

AMT: Tell us what are you seeing where you are?

TRISH NEWPORT: In Bunia and in Ituri Province. There's actually no confirmed cases right now. And what MSF is doing here is we're doing really preventive activities and setting up an isolation, in case there's ever a case. Tomorrow I'm heading to Butembo, which is in North Kivu, because MSF is running treatment centres in Butembo and Mangina and a transit center in Beni.

AMT: Do you know what condition some of the people are in when they get there for treatment?

TRISH NEWPORT: This is one of the really challenging things. We worked really hard trying to gain the trust of the community so that they understand and have the information about Ebola so that they can come early to the treatment centres. The problem is a lot of people come really late. So some people can be extremely sick. Some people die within a few hours of arriving, because they've come in, they've waited far too long to be able to get to the treatment center and to be able to get treatment early.

AMT: So Trish tell me who you've met in some of these very urgent conditions.

TRISH NEWPORT: Well we had a very sad case. I mean there's many many sad cases. We had a very sad case of a nurse that came in the last week into the Botembo Ebola treatment center and she had been working in a health center. She had been treating people. She felt sick but she was so dedicated to treating people that she just kept working until finally she was too sick to work anymore. Someone identified that she probably had Ebola. She came to Ebola treatment center and people- we really connected with her because she was a nurse, she was full of life even though she was so sick you really really wanted to live. People grew so attached to her. She told funny stories. And even if were wearing the whole PPE, the personal protective equipment, that's the big yellow suit, it doesn't mean that we don't build relationships with the patients. We hear their stories we talk with them. And then sadly she died a few days later because she just came in far too late. And it's stories like that where you know maybe if she'd come in a little bit earlier, then we would have been able- that she would have maybe been able to survive.

AMT: Have you had pregnant women coming in?

TRISH NEWPORT: Yes we have heard some pregnant women come in. Pregnant women it's very difficult for them in Ebola. They often have miscarriages or the baby dies. Many women that are pregnant they also die. We have not yet, at least in the Botembo treatment centre, we've not yet had a pregnant women who has survived Ebola. But we have some pregnant women there right now who we see getting better and we have real hopes of her having them survive and come out of the Ebola treatment center.

AMT: I want to ask you, you talk about the fact that they come in late when they're already so advanced with the disease because of a trust issue. What is that issue?

TRISH NEWPORT: Gaining trust in the community, i one of the most important aspects of Ebola response. So usually we have health promoters going into the communities to share information with the community, so that they have the knowledge about Ebola. They know the signs and symptoms. They know what to do when they get sick. And they also understand the need for a safe and dignified burials and disinfection of homes. The problem here at this moment in North Kivu is the insecurity. So because of the insecurity in many areas we're not able to access communities, as well as the Ministry of Health isn't able to access many communities. And because of that we're not able to gain the trust of the population, and that impacts the entire Ebola response.

AMT: You know you've made the point that MSF is working with people who have the disease. You try to get ahead in the communities where it hasn't appeared yet but you also work with the survivors. What do you do?

TRISH NEWPORT: So survivors are the real heroes in Ebola outbreaks. When someone revives Ebola, it means that they are then immune to that strain of Ebola. So a problem that we have in the Ebola treatment centers is that we have children coming in and when there are there is no one that's able to take care of them. Our medical staff pass through. But children need someone that are with them all of the time, and the only people that can do that are the Ebola survivors because they can stay in these Ebola treatment centers they live. They wear some weight protection, but they're the ones that are able to stay and play with the children and take care of them and feed them. And so when we have survivors that are discharged from the Ebola treatment center we then employ them, if they want to be employed, to work in the Ebola treatment center to take care of children. We could not manage the Ebola treatment center without them there. They're such a key part of the Ebola response.

AMT: There is also a stigma. So how do they do that with you and be in their own community?

TRISH NEWPORT: So when people are discharged from the Ebola treatment centre, they go home with a team of psychological support and health promoters who then can explain to their family and to their community that now these people no longer have Ebola and they're no longer infectious. Even with all this information and education, there's still stigma but from reality he says Ebola is terrifying. And people are afraid of it and it's hard to understand that someone could have been so sick and so infectious and now they're healthy and no longer infectious. So it takes a lot of work from health promotion teams and the psychosocial support teams to really continue [unintelligible] the inspiration in the communities and to provide support to the survivors in those really challenging situations.

AMT: Have you noticed changes now that there are new treatments and that there are vaccines? And are you getting access to that kind of thing for your patients?

TRISH NEWPORT: So we do have the treatment so that the developmental treatments. We have available in Ebola treatment centers. We also are vaccinating. So the Ministry of Health, they vaccinated the contacts and the contacts of contacts but there so many contacts that even though the Ministry of Health is trying so hard. It's very hard for them to be able to manage all of the contacts and contacts of contacts as well as the frontline workers. So in Botembo right now we are vaccinating the frontline workers. And the frontline workers are people that are working in the health care centers, religious people who touch the sick, traditional practitioners, people that are doing safe and dignified burials. So anyone that has close contact with sick people, because when they have to be protected because they're at high risk. But also if they get sick there at the risk of transmitting that almost too many many people because they're in close contact with many people. So vaccinating the frontline workers is extremely important. And having the vaccines and having the treatment now makes a big difference because back in the day, when we didn't have treatment and we didn't have vaccines, all that we could provide them with were symptomatic and supportive care. And now at least we have hope. We have options to provide patients when they come. And then the vaccine at least this is a positive thing we can provide to the community because when there is an Ebola response we go in we tell them what behaviours they have to change. We tell them that they have to be changing their traditions for funerals. And it's rare. In the past we never had something positive that we could offer the community. And the vaccine even though it's experimental, developmental, at least we have a positive thing we can offer the community. And people are happy to be receiving it most of the time.

AMT: hard is it to do what you do, for you?

TRISH NEWPORT: It's challenging. It's extremely tiring. But when I see the teams in the field we have a means in teams that are working with us. And when I see their dedication and how hard they're willing to work, it gives me motivation to keep working hard.

AMT: Where's home for you Trish home?

TRISH NEWPORT: Home is the Yukon.

AMT: So you're a long way from home. And how long will you stay?

TRISH NEWPORT: In Ebola response, MSF only sends people, international staff, for two months at a time because we want to make sure that people don't get too tired because when you get hired that's when you make mistakes. And in Ebola, and considering biosecurity, we can't afford for people to make mistakes. So I've been here for six weeks which means I will leave in about two weeks’ time.

AMT: Well thank you for your time and thank you for your work.

TRISH NEWPORT: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak me.

AMT: Trish Newport emergency coordinator and medical coordinator for Ebola in the DRC from Medicine Sans Frontier MSF. She's a nurse from Whitehorse Yukon. We've reached her in Bunia in the DRC. My next guest is also on the front lines of the Ebola crisis in the DRC. David Bisimwa is Congolese and like so many in his country he's lived through the decade’s long violent conflict. He says ongoing attacks have made it hard for humanitarian workers to reach those in need, and that many people are so devastated by war they can barely contemplate the added threat of Ebola. David Bisimwa is the humanitarian coordinator for the DRC for the international aid organization CARE. And we've reached him in Goma. Hello.

DAVID BISIMWA: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: How Seriously are people taking the threat of Ebola where are you are?

DAVID BISIMWA: The big challenge is really that the community believe on this disease. Ebola is [unintelligible] and it’s affecting the North Kivu province. And CARE International, we are focusing mainly on community awareness raising and providing only basic [unintelligible] kit which include gloves water container with [unintelligible] and hand washing station in the community which is target of our interventions.

AMT: This is your country. Where is your family? Are you worried about yourself and your family in this outbreak as well?

DAVID BISIMWA: Yes my family is based in Goma. Beni is, you know not far from Goma and there is people who are moving from Beni to Goma and Botembo area which is currently afflicted by the Ebola epidemic.

AMT: And when you talk about education, I'm wondering what kind of misinformation you have to counter when it comes to the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu.

DAVID BISIMWA: There is some message that has been spread in the community and saying that this is not true. This disease is not true, because they were thinking that is just the government who is playing on this in order to assure that they can delay again the elections in the DRC.

AMT: And how do you counter that kind of misinformation?

DAVID BISIMWA: We have improved the knowledge to the community health worker, who are living in the same community. We used to train them to understand and know what is Ebola disease and the ways of contamination and how people can prevent themselves from this disease.

AMT: And of course in the midst of all of this there are still armed conflict in North Kivu. What impact is that having on the crisis and the efforts to confront it?

DAVID BISIMWA: We understand that many people are really traumatized and it is one of the reasons why there is some resistance from the community to understand and to agree that Ebola is also a killer.

AMT: So what does that mean for your ability to treat them? Does that mean because they are so traumatized and numbed by the conflict that they don't often come for help soon enough?

DAVID BISIMWA: Yes. It is one Of the reasons why they are not really searching for support in case there is some case in the community. There is those people who lost their relatives. There are some of them who lost their friends, their [unintelligible], their sisters. They were killed by the [unintelligible] in the area. And when we're talking with them about the risk of Ebola, sometimes they are not really [unintelligible] on our message.

AMT: If this outbreak is not treated properly, what's at stake? What could happen?

DAVID BISIMWA: Really, it will be a catastrophe, because currently we have the average of four cases confirmed each day. And most of some cases are not already known as a contact, which means that there is a risk to this epidemic to be extend to other towns and also even the bordering country like Uganda, Rwanda. And this will affect the region in case there is not more efforts to contain this epidemic

AMT: So you're telling me that you're getting four new cases a day.

DAVID BISIMWA: Exactly is what I mentioned. Everyday we have more new cases. Comparing the beginning of this epidemic, currently we have more cases a day which is recorded, which is confirmed.

AMT: Mr. Bisimwa thank you for speaking with me today.

DAVID BISIMWA: Thank you so much Anna Maria.

AMT: David Bisimwa, humanitarian coordinator for the DRC for CARE. We reached him in Goma in the DRC. My next guest has witnessed what can happen when Ebola goes untreated. From August through September Gwen Eamer was responsible for managing what they call safe and dignified burials in Beni, in DRC, for the Red Cross. She now works out of Geneva with the International Federation of the Red Cross. Hello.

GWEN EAMER: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: We just heard our last guest say that there could be a national catastrophe if they don't get this under control. What do you think of what he's saying?

GWEN EAMER: I think anyone who has been in a previous Ebola epidemic, whether in the DRC or in other countries, will tell you that this is the toughest that we've faced in terms of the context where we have communities facing conflict, communities very serious distrust of authorities or of acts of other communities. I think the resources out there in terms of people with very good skills, very good experience from past outbreaks. And we're adapting as we go in and sort of figuring out what works best, using all the best practices that we've had from other own breaks and adapting them to get to this very difficult context. That being said, there's preparations in the neighboring countries to make sure that those countries are not caught flat footed if indeed a case does cross the border. And you know I think everything that can be done at this point is being looked at but it is a very very difficult situation.

AMT: Well I want to pick up on some of the best practices specifically in what you were involved with earlier this year. Why does the safety of burials matter so much when it comes to the prevention of Ebola?

GWEN EAMER: So unlike a lot of diseases that might kill people, Ebola is actually still very transmissible when the person has died. And so as you can imagine when you look at traditional burial practices, if it involves you know washing the body or wakes or someone touches the body, physically moving the body from where they died to the place of burial. All of these things have a very high risk transmitting the virus to the people around them. And so safe and dignified burials is really critical to the stopping the chain of transmission. And we do safe and dignified burials not just for people who die in hospitals or any other treatment centers, but really critically for people who die in the community, who may have had a fever or other symptoms that sort of trigger the thought that maybe this could have been Ebola.

AMT: Okay so let's separate that phrase and talk about the first part first. What happens for a burial to be safe?

GWEN EAMER: A safe burial is safe on two sides. It's Safe for the family and for loved ones that they're not being asked to touch the body, that they are not actually doing the burial themselves that religious leaders for example are not washing the body. And it's safe for our volunteers as well that they are equipped with personal protective equipment and that they follow incredibly strict protocols about how to actually go through this process. So they're highly trained volunteers who go in and with a team of eight to 10 people, and go through and follow this step by step protocol to ensure that they have no risk of contaminating themselves, that the site is secured, that the body is secured, and can be removed safely without contaminating themselves or without contaminating family members or members of the community.

AMT: And so then much to get to the dignity part. How do you do this with dignity for the family while respecting the local cultural and religious traditions?

GWEN EAMER: The dignity is a huge part because as scary as this disease is as easy as it can be transmitted from a deceased person, it's still someone's family member. This is someone's mom. Their dad. Their brother, their sister, their child. You have to treat that person and that person's family with the respect that you would treat you know anyone who died of any other disease. And so that means engaging with the family and actually walking them through or going to do a step by step process so that they understand what's going to happen to their loved ones. We actually have the ability to invite one family member into the room to do it. So we'll actually dress them up in protective equipment. And they can come in and bear witness to what we're doing to kind of reassure themselves to communicate to their family and to the community that what we've done was acceptable to them and that we treated their loved ones respect. And then also, how you do it. You know making sure that if there are religious practices to be respected. If for example when we put the coffin in the vehicle to be taken away, should go head first or feet first? These are things that don't impact at all the safety of the burial. They do impact how the family feels about how it was done.

AMT: So you sick to those strict protocol but you do have the ability to kind of adjust a bit depending on what the family might want.

GWEN EAMER: Exactly. It can mean something as simple as for example burying a child with their favorite toy. That does not impact how safe the burial was, but it does impact how the parents feel about it. And so depending on religious or cultural traditions they may have beliefs that you need to take specific guidance with you into your grave, so that you have those in your next life or in the afterlife. Those are not things that we need to push back on, those can be done entirely safely.

AMT: You know you're still showing up in those personal protection suits. You're kind of inserting yourself in to a very traumatic moment in the lives of the loved ones of the person who's died. How do you do that? Would you work with in the community to get in there?

GWEN EAMER: So a couple of things. One is that Red Cross volunteers are from these communities. And so when we have a team of burial experts who go into the community very often they will come from that area. They speak the language. They share religion. They share cousins are friends or family. And so that first and foremost is using local people to do local work. These people understand the cultural norms. They understand religious needs. They understand social needs. They speak the local dialect what have you. But also there is an engagement process. And so sometimes in these variables it can take hours to negotiate to explain what Ebola is, why this person might be a risk. It's tough to tell someone your child might be a risk to you after they've passed. As you said this is a very difficult situation. It's an emotional time for the family and they've experienced a loss. Regardless of the outside epidemic, this is a very personal tragedy for them. And so engaging that the family really explaining clearly what you're going to do and also walking them through what services are available because it's also scary. If you then believe that Ebola is real and this person your family may have had it, well that means there's a good chance that maybe you could have it too so that's personally scary. When you looked at what happened to your loved one. And so making sure that families know what resources are available, what we're going to do and really engaging them and making sure that they are fully on board. You know that it's enthusiastic consent for what we're doing. And that process can take hours but you have to let that process happen.

AMT: Do your teams ever get pushback from the community?

GWEN EAMER: We have had pushback and actually more often not so much from the family itself but from outside community actors. And so that's why over time we've adapted our protocols to have a larger and broader community engagement. In past outbreaks what we found was that engaging directly with the family was sufficient, that if the head of the family if the parents say we accept this then the community also accepted. But what we found in North Kivu is that that's not the case and it requires a broader engagement across a broader sector of society.

AMT: Why is that in North Kivu? Is that because there are ready sort of farm engulfed in armed conflict and so many other traumas even before the arrival of Ebola?

GWEN EAMER: I think that's a huge part of it. I think a previous guests have talked about trust and the issue of trust. And I think sometimes when we think of working in an armed conflict we kind of think stay away from people with weapons, or stay away from the front lines, or stay away from the clashes. But it has a larger impact on the actual communities that look this for a generation. So it's not just staying away from active fire. It's recognising that you're working in a traumatized community, recognising that these communities may have self-protective practices, for example, excluding outsiders.

AMT: So what do you think needs to happen to really contain this and keep it from getting worse?

GWEN EAMER: The communication with communities I think is progressing. It's really important because that building of trust is really critical, because it means that if you trust that the disease is real and you trust that someone can help you it means that you’re unlikely to seek care faster. On a personal level means that people are more likely to survive the disease. It also means that they seek care faster. They are isolated faster which means they are less likely to spread the disease. And that trust is really critical for people who die in the community who may not have known they had Ebola or suspect that they had Ebola so that they actually get access to a safe and dignified burial so their family is not affected. And that trust takes time to build. But there are a number of organizations that are working very actively to build that trust to spread the message in these communities across th eprovince.

AMT: Okay well Gwen Eamer thanks for taking the time today.

GWEN EAMER: My pleasure.

AMT: Gwen Eamer works with the International Federation of the Red Cross as its focal point for health in conflict settings. She joined us from Geneva Switzerland. We want to know what your thinking as you've been listening to what we've been talking about on the program today. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or our Facebook page or go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And a reminder, of course you can always listen again if you missed part of it, you can joining us halfway through. You can hear us on podcast or go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. For other Rocky fans out there stay with Radio 1 for Q. Guest host Saroja Coelho is speaking to director Steven Caple Jr. about how Ming creed to the latest installment in the boxing franchise now in its fifth decade. We begin the program examining the danger posed by Romain lettuce. From any meat lovers those health risk will be the excuse you need to swear off greens altogether. Well I leave you today with this anti-salad bit from the late great comedian John Pinette. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

JOHN PINETTE: I went to one nutritionist and she said to me 'the good news is you can have all the salads you want'. Phew!

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: That Is good news. I was nervous. I came in here thinking 'Please God' anything. Don't take away my salad.'

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: Stop. I'm getting a chubby. [Laughter] She wanted me to have salad as the food. No. Salads are not food. Salad comes with the food. Salad is promisary note that food will soon arrive.

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: As my brain sees the salad it says 'something good is going to happen soon. Wait right here.'

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: Plus, there's no joy with salad. I've been on diets on and off my whole life and salads has been a part of every diet. I see a salad, there's no joy. It sends me in the other direction, salad. What would you like on your salad? 'Haagen-Dazs' She said how about stealing vegetables? 'Ooh! You spoil me.' Thant's heated salad. She said how about sushi? There are some wonderful Japanese . Japanese food has great aesthetic, great presentation but sushi; it is wrapped in seaweed. That's ocean's salad. I don't think you're supposed to eat sea weed. I know it's good for you, but I pick it out of the crack of my butt at the beach.

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: Is that really food? I never went to the beach and said 'hey honey, we've got sandwiches here, hold on.

[Laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: What are you ordering pizza for? It's an ass vegetable. Is that how it's harvested, off the sumo wrestlers up and down the beach Japan.

[laughter]

JOHN PINETTE: I am full now.

[/sc]

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Thursday November 22, 2018 Full Transcript

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