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The Current Transcript for December 6, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Infants, I think, that are formula fed, there are probably the most insecure citizens of Canada because they are only one thing.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: On every maternity ward, in every specialist's office, in every government funded Family Health Center the message is clear: Breast feeding is the best thing for infants. That is not in dispute. But what happens when a new mother cannot breastfeed and cannot afford to buy formula to feed her baby? In a moment Mary Catherine Mackintosh looks at the unintended consequences of a celebrated public health policy. Also today:

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Gina speaks loud and clear. It is a female name. And I was very insistent on making sure that Gina doesn't fall out. Usually they drop their first name. I wanted the Gina to be there.

AMT: Her name is Gina. And when students at Concordia University in Montreal look up, they will see that name on the School of Engineering and Computer Science. And that's the only place they'll see such a thing in engineering because she's the first woman in Canada, in the world with that distinction. Gina Cody has gone from climbing cranes to running her own firm. And the years she received her PhD was the year 14 women, all of them are engineering students, were gunned down at Ecole Polytechnique. Today marks the 29th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. Another gunman took the lives of those young women. He could not stop the ambitions they represented. You will hear Gina Cody in half an hour. Also today you may have seen Passengers, the movie.

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We boarded the Avalon with a destination, 120 years hibernation means a wake up in a new century, on a new planet.

AMT: The research on human hibernation for space travel is under way now and we will hear about it from an entrepreneur, an astronaut and a lemur scientist. Because you know we are more like a fat tailed lemur than we want to believe. Will connect those dots in an hour. I am Anna MariaTremonti this is The Current.

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Formula-fed infants at risk thanks to 'breast is best' approach, says researcher

Guest: Mary-Catherine McIntosh

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We've been talking about this. Can you once again remind our viewers why breast warming is so crucially important?

VOICE 2: Breast feeding is considered the gold standard of nutrition based on the fact that it has special nutrients. It has hormones, antibiotics.

VOICE 3: The health risks of not breastfeeding are huge, not only for the baby but for the mother as well. You know people always tell me well, a mother should make a choice whether they want to breastfeed or formula feed. But only making an informed choice? I think the answer is absolutely not.

VOICE 4: The child has rights. They have a right to have optimal nutrition. So we, as health professionals, have a responsibility to protect children, to support breastfeeding and to promote it.

AMT: For most people in Canada the message is clear. If you want to give your baby the healthiest start in life, breastfeed. The advice is posted across hospital waiting rooms walls. It's dished out by doctors and nurses even before a baby is born and it's spelled out in Canada's public health policy. Some say however that the push to get mothers to breast feed has gone too far in some instances and left many women who feed their babies by formula feeling ashamed. Some even argue that the Breast is Best campaign has made life more difficult for some of Canada's poorest babies and their mothers. Michelle Ward runs a government funded Family Resource Center in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She says she sees new mothers being judged all the time for feeding formula, but none so harshly as poor women. Here she is describing the kind of judgment those mothers are up against.

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If you can feed your baby for free, you have made the choice not to do that. So you should bear the consequences of paying for their formula and how you're going to come up with the money to do it. Why would you give infant formula to a family because they made the choice where they could have fed for free?

AMT: CBC producer Mary Catherine McIntosh has been looking into the unintended consequences of the pro breast feeding movement, and she joins me from our Halifax studio. Hi.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Hello.

AMT: Mary-Catherine, how has the push to get mothers to breast feed affected poorer mothers?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well lots of mothers in Canada want to breast feed their babies. In fact although almost all new mothers try to breast feed when their babies are first born, fewer than a third end up breast feeding exclusively for the first six months, as Health Canada promotes. So a lot of babies are fed by formula in this country, which by the way is cow’s milk that's been altered to be more like breast milk and easier to digest. But the push to get more mothers to breast feed has made it harder for some poor women to access formula for their babies.

AMT: How is that?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well for one thing social agencies that support poor women are discouraged from helping women access formula. So if you're one of those women and you are not breast feeding your baby, the only other food you can give your baby until age six months is formula and it is so expensive. I went to two stores and some packages are over 50 dollars. So if you don't have that money, what's your baby going to eat?

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Baby noise]

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: For one mother I spoke with, Marie Davidson, the struggled to feed her first daughter started the day her baby girl was born and you can hear a little baby here. That's her third.

SOUNDCLIP

I asked for a bottle at the hospital and the nurses refused and they literally, they were grabbing at me trying to force her to eat from my boob, but she wouldn't, because she just didn't want to, I guess. She wouldn't latch.so I left the hospital in a panic. She was so hungry. I had to borrow money from somebody to go get primary care. I cried the whole time. So i just felt so bad. It was awful. I guess that's what you're supposed to. You're supposed to breastfeed. She wouldn't latch. So I was pretty much down for finding formula, it was a struggle and it was very depressing time for me after. It was supposed to be a happy time after you have a baby. It wasn't. It was hard.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So she had no money to buy formula and she had to find someone to lend her the money on the way home from the hospital.

AMT: If she was having trouble buying formula, on the very first day home, how did she manage to feed her baby, Mary-Catherine?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: She told me that it was a real struggle at times, a daily one. One expert I spoke with called the Hunt for Formula, Foraging. Maria was able to breastfeed her youngest son at first but now he's on formula. And one of the ways she finds it for him is by sending away for free samples from formula companies. She was feeding him from a can of powdered formula the day that we met.

SOUNDCLIP

This is one came with actually a sample I got in the mail. Actually my mom signed up for that can.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I spoke to another mum who says she uses the addresses and names of everyone in her family so that she can get as many free samples as possible.

AMT: How does the public health system view those free samples?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It is a real problem with them. In fact the World Health Organization is against free formula samples. And the thinking there that those samples can sway some women from breastfeeding. And there is good reason to want to limit the marketing of formula by big companies because they target women all over the world to buy their product, whether they can afford it or not. And doctors and nurses are used to give out free samples. And although that still happens in some places, it's a lot less common these days. So there is one of the great conundrums of this problem. Free samples can discourage women from breast feeding. And those same free samples can feed a hungry baby.

AMT: So it has quite a dilemma.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Exactly. It's a good health policy that's actually making life harder for some babies. I spoke with a number of people who say that some desperate mothers water down their formula, feed regular cow's milk instead. And if they don't have those things, feed juice and sometimes steal formula. You might have seen in some big cities, formula is behind bars. And the first person who told me about this problem was Leslie Frank. She's a sociologist at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

SOUNDCLIP

Poverty was a daily struggle.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And what you're hearing here is a car ride that I took with Leslie in a little red haven along the country roads in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. She started her career as an outreach worker on these very roads that were traveling.

SOUNDCLIP

I could drive a thousand kilometers in one month. This is a rural area and people don't have cars.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: This is where Leslie first realized that there was a problem.

SOUNDCLIP

We just drove through Port Williams, is one of the lowest child poverty rates in the country. But that town that we were just in has one of the highest, so.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: A big part of Leslie's work was to promote breastfeeding among poor women, but she found that a lot of women had a lot of trouble breastfeeding.

AMT: Why is that?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well she says some women were subsisting on toast and tea. So they were very malnourished themselves. And other women had to go back to work right after their babies were born because they didn't qualify for EI benefits. She encountered all sorts of reasons why women were breast feeding, not because they didn't want to. So how Leslie ended up spending most of her time instead was foraging for formula. And that's her term, along those country roads we were just travelling.

SOUNDCLIP

You know it would have been counter our breast feeding initiative, policies of our organisation now. So you're always caught in this position where you were looking and trying to secure formula, but you would never really want to let anybody know that. And when push came to shove and all of those avenues failed, you'd go to the store and buy it and hope no one saw you.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So it was like she was sneaking around, helping to feed the babies.

AMT: Wow. Have things changed since then?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well, this is now our field of research at Acadia and she's looked at this problem across the country, and she thinks that the problem is actually worse. She says poor women are foraging for formula everywhere, especially those who live rurally. And she's about to release a book with a pretty unsettling conclusion.

SOUNDCLIP

Infants I think there are formula fed, I actually think they're probably the most food insecure citizens of Canada because they only eat one thing and it's not easy to find.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And there are nearly a million children in Canada who are considered to be food insecure. Just to give you an idea how big this problem could be.

AMT: So why aren't mothers able to find formula at a food bank?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well for many food banks, what's on the shelves depends on what's donated. At the first food bank I called when I was researching this story was out. But it's also a controversial thing to stock. I spoke with the head of a breastfeeding advocacy group who petitioned food banks Canada against continuing its sponsorship with a big formula company. Because even though the organization did not receive formula from the company, the breastfeeding group says the company should not have that kind of access to these new moms. And the WHO agrees.

AMT: So do some food banks just refuse to carry formula for their reason?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I didn't find any food banks where that was the case. But Leslie Frank says they do exist. And I should say that some food banks do make it a real priority to have a good stock of formula. But many don't. I visited a food bank in Kentville, Nova Scotia and the waiting room there was packed as well.

SOUNDCLIP

As you can tell, it is one of those days that...

It's open four hours a week on Thursdays, and like most food banks there are rules about how often you can come. Usually about once a month.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We have formula. We have cereal. We have snacks for babies.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Do you always have formula?

VOICE 1: Not always.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: When you don't have formula here, what do you do?

VOICE 1: We have Open Arms downtown and we have Pregnancy Center which provides us.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So when they don't have any family at that food bank they refer to another charity like the Salvation Army.

VOICE 1: You know formula is one of things that if you don't have, you can't just go and usually find it.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And it is expensive.

AMT: This is exactly why you can't find it.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Interestingly though the food bank there in Kentville gets a lot of its formula donations from a group of local doctors.

AMT: And is that because they see women needing formula for the babies in their practices?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: That's really what it seems to me though I did speak to two family doctors who said they don’t see this problem in their practice. And one of them said though that she wonders if that's because they don't ask.

AMT: So we also heard in that tape I guess as Leslie Frank says, you just have to keep foraging then, go around to the different ones till you find what you need.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: You just keep going. Leslie Frank also told me that women are actually searching online for formula. She has collected thousands of classified ads in Facebook posts from women who are either looking for formula or offering to share or sell it.

SOUNDCLIP

Here is all these seeking ads. 'Looking for free samples of Similac formula that come in the mail. I can pick it up' things. I just think what state are you in if you're going to go across the city, buy an open can of formula for five dollars, from a stranger. And I think it exposes mothers to risks, exposes babies to food risks. This says, 'Looking for a formula for my five month old baby. Sorry I have nothing to trade at the moment. Please contact me if you have any you can give away. Thanks so much.' When you have to go online and make public your inability to feed your baby. Think of what that must feel like.

AMT: Listening to her read those adds, it's heartbreaking. You mentioned earlier that social agencies are discouraged from giving out formula. How so?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well in many parts of the country there are family resource center and they are government funded. And a big part of what many of them are funded to do, besides offering parenting support, is offering breastfeeding support.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Babies' noise]

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I visited one of those centres in New Glasgow and as you can hear new mothers were lining every sofa and chair when I was there. And they were breastfeeding posters all over the centre and even a big cut out of a nursing mother.

SOUNDCLIP

They are everywhere but we kept one right there.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: That's Executive Director Michelle Ward, who we heard at the beginning of this story. And she told me that she totally supports the Breast is Best policy but that she's run into some problems.

AMT: What kind of problems?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well she tried to give a cautious on safe formula feeding and the local health centre took down her posters advertising the session. She says she is allowed to give women information on formula but it should only be one on one and it should only be when women ask for it.

AMT: So a mother has to ask for formula information to get it.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: That's how some people interpret the policy. For instance Nova Scotia puts out a pamphlet on formula feeding but the pamphlets are not allowed on a table for you to grab. And I want you to listen to what happened when I asked for one of them. And just a note, you'll hear in this tape that one of the employees says BFI. That's the Baby Friendly Initiative which is the breast feeding strategy.

SOUNDCLIP

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: If a participant came in looking for information around formula formula feeding, where do you keep the pamphlets from the Nova Scotia health authority on that?

VOICE 1: [Laughs] Hidden in the back room. The recommendation is to not have things that may discourage breastfeeding.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: So the employee there took me to a back room and on a back shelf in that room was where the pamphlets were kept.

SOUNDCLIP

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: It's a secret stash.

VOICE 1: Not really a secret stash no. Like that thing is though the purpose of the BFI committee is to make sure that people are making educated choices.

AMT: She's whispering about the real answer. It sounds like you're doing something illicit.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And the thinking though behind all of this is that having a pamphlet out makes it seem like the Center is endorsing formula. I want to say too that I did follow up with the province here and was told that information shouldn't be kept from mothers but that women should first know about those consequences.

SOUNDCLIP

Well I don't know what if we've got the formula today.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Some Family Resource Centers told Leslie Frank the researcher that they give out Formula, but on the down low, that they kind of hide it. At the center in New Glasgow formula was right up front in the supply cupboard. But Michelle Ward did tell me that she only gives formula that's been donated.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: And why is that?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: She doesn't want to spend any of her budget on it so that she can be sure that if she's ever ordered it she won't have to show receipts for formula and run into funding problems. The center by contrast though does buy diapers and gives mums taxi money when they need it, and those things can come out of a budget.

AMT: So the health care system actually have a problem with feeding a hungry baby some formula.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: I can't imagine that anyone would ever have a problem with feeding a hungry baby. But the point here is that the public health policy to promote breast feeding and to limit the promotion and marketing of formula, which are very very important goals in public health. No one that I spoke with disagreed with that. But there is a huge practical problem that's ignored and that's poor formula fed babies need a dependable source of food and that should be number one.

SOUNDCLIP

What we are doing is we're creating policy from white middle class agenda and not really recognising the fact, or not understanding the fact that people live in poverty. So we have no concept of what it might be like not to have the 10 or 15 dollars on a Friday afternoon to buy infant formula. And so I think that we just need to take a little bit of time to talk to and recognise the realities the families are living in, and then making good policy decisions around our entire population as opposed to our middle class population.

AMT: Mary-Catherine what do health officials say about this problem?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well I did try to get an interview with our Federal Health Minister Ginette Petitbas Taylor. For two weeks, I called an emailed seven times and did not get a response. There are some provinces where there are programs where new mums get extra money and that can be used to buy formula. But money is so tight for so many of these women that often those supports aren't enough. Leslie Frank says a huge part of the problem is that no one is talking about it. And she wonders if people at the top of our health care system even know about it.

AMT: So are there any ideas on how this problem can be addressed?

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: Well the U.S. has a super controversial program, federal program, that supplies formula for mothers who need it. Leslie Frank though is not necessarily pushing for something similar. And she said again and again that she's not sure how to fix the problem. One thing she did say though is that many poor women in Canada don't qualify for maternity benefits when they have a baby. So one way to make things better would be to improve access to that program. But for now women like Marie Davidson continue to forage for formula.

SOUNDCLIP

I cry sometimes, but I figure it out. I hope things get easier for all three of my kids, because growing up for me, it was third. So I kind of hope they have it easier and they are better than we did anyways. And I just want them to be happy.

AMT: Really important to hear about the unintended consequences of a program everybody thought they were bringing in to help. Mary-Catherine, thank you.

MARY-CATHERINE MCINTOSH: You're welcome.

AMT: Mary-Catherine McIntosh is a CBC producer in Halifax. Let us know what you think of what she's reporting. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Stay with us. CBC News is next and then Concordia University in Montreal is now the only university in the world where there's an engineering faculty, an engineering building named after a woman. And that name is Gina Cody. She will join me in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current. 2

École Polytechnique massacre 'left a scar,' says first woman to have engineering school named after her

Guest: Gina Parvaneh Cody

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

[Music: Theme].

AMT: Still to come you may have heard the news that Ali Bongo he is not dead. The president of Gabon is only the latest leader to have to dispel rumors of his own demise. In half an hour, we're going to delve into the other politicians, pop stars and more whose deaths were at one time greatly exaggerated. But first, engineering, some inspiration.

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The name Gina Cody means opportunities for women. For women, more women in engineering to encourage young women not to this scared of their dreams and to go for what they believe.

That's an engineering student at Concordia University in Montreal where the name Gina Cody now graces a new engineering building. That's a first.. Concordia is now the only university in Canada with an engineering building and faculty named after a woman. Here's what some other female engineering students at Concordia had to say about that noose.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Since the name just came out. I think it would push more girls younger than me to go into engineering because they know that 'oh look' there is this person who went through, and she's making such an impact in the field then so it will push them to go into the field as well.

VOICE 2: Her name signifies an importance for women because women don't actually have recognition in the engineering field, as a lot of males are coming in the feel and Gina Cody is like a new definition for engineering now.

AMT: Female engineering students at Concordia. Of course it is 14 specific women who were studying engineering at the University of Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique who came who come to mind today. 29 years ago today they were killed on campus by a gunman in the Montreal Massacre, targeted because of their ambitions but those ambitions persist. Gina Cody’s School of Engineering and Computer Science was christened after Concordia received the largest endowment in its history; 15million dollars this September from Gina Cody. Gina Cody is with me in our Toronto studio. Hello and congratulations.

GINA CODY: Thank you.

AMT: I was watching you as you listened. What are you thinking?

GINA CODY: Emotional. So it's nice to see that the effect that was in my heart and in my mind is flourishing and women are being encouraged to go to engineering, because frankly I believe they do belong as much as their male counterparts.

AMT: One of them said you're the new definition engineering, how do you see yourself?

GINA CODY: I'm just a small part of the big issue. I'm doing my very very small part in making women realize their capacities and pursue their degree. You cannot believe how many women have come to me and told me that they wanted to pursue engineering and their parents discouraged them.

AMT: I sat right? Even now?

GINA CODY: Even now.

AMT: So you gave them a 15 million dollar endowment. Why?

GINA CODY: Giving back to university was not for me a choice rather than a duty. I felt that you all have a duty to pave the road for a future generation, if they can. When they came to Canada in 1979 I arrived with 2000 dollars in my pocket. I was supposed to go to another university but I didn't even have enough to pay my tuition. So my brother, who had just graduated from Concordia at the time in engineering, had spoken to another professor and he had arranged from me to me meet this professor named Cedric Marsh. So the day after Labor Day weekend I went to meet him and after an hour interview he liked what I was talking. He looked at my transcript. He looked at my acceptance from the other university and said, "Why don't you come here. I provide you, Concordia provide you with a scholarship and financial means'. So that day, the day after the Labor Day weekend while I arrived two days before in Canada my life changed.

AMT: So it was a man who encouraged you to be the engineer that you became through that school. Where you expecting to have your name put on the building.

GINA CODY: The notion came into fruition as you spoke and it wasn't about me really. All I wanted to create a gender identity in the engineering and computer science. So the whole issue was how to do it. For me it was the identification of the faculty of engineering in computer science, a female. That's what I cared for.

AMT: And you put your anglicised name there, Gina. And your Iranian name is?

GINA CODY: Parvaneh. Actually, believe or not, when I was born I had big eyes. Everybody starting saying - it was during the Gina Lollobrigida's fame. So these story calling me Gina. So it's not a name that was adopted, rather than was given. So it was my , not actual name but it was my nickname.

AMT: But also it was a conscious decision to put that name because it was so obviously a female name.

GINA CODY: Yes because also if I had Parvaneh they don't recognize. Parvaneh in the North American society is a female name. But Gina speaks loud than clear. It is a female. And I was very insistent on making sure that Gina doesn't fall off. They don't refer to as school of Cody because usually they drop the first name. I wanted the Gina to be there.

AMT: Again as a message that this as a woman and again it's a first.

GINA CODY: Yes.

AMT: Are you surprised that it's the first engineering school to carry the name of a woman?

GINA CODY: Yes I was. I wasn't aware of it till it happened and then we did the research. It's a first Engineering and Computer Size faculty I believe in the world.

AMT: I shouldn't lave out computer science because computer science is huge too. And so what's it like to see your name up there?

GINA CODY: I think it puts more pressure on me to carry the message further. I look over and say this is my school. I have a responsibility to carry the message.

AMT: Well I want to know more about how you got to this point. You say you came in 1979 from Iran. That was the year of the revolution. That's when Ayatollah Khomeini took over the country became a theocracy.

GINA CODY: Yes.

AMT: First of all what was your life growing up until that point.

GINA CODY: I grew up in a family that was very open. You know one of the things for example my father encouraged me, and so did my mother, like I had to learn to swim very young. I had to learn to ride a bicycle. I had to learn horseback ride. I had to learn driving the minute I was allowed to get my license. My dad used to say you have to be able to get out of any situation. So if you're in a river and you want to rescue yourself you should be able to swim. So as independent woman, you have to stand on your feet. You have to study hard. My mother who married young and never finished high school, her message to me and my sister who became a dentist was: as a woman, to be independent you have to pursue higher education.

AMT: Did she regret that she had to curtail her own studies?

GINA CODY: I believe she did it. But she had children. She had five kids; three boys and me and my sister. I was the youngest one. But her focus on me and my sisters’ education was much more than her focus on the boys.

AMT: What about your dad? What did he do?

GINA CODY: My dad ran a boys' high school. He was a teacher. At the time when I was 16, he made me teach at his boys' high school during summer.

AMT: What was that like?

GINA CODY: He would sit at the end of the class so he made sure the boys are behaving and his message was if you can manage these boys you will be able to manage anyone.

AMT: And how did that experience inform other parts of your career as you move forward then?

GINA CODY: I think it made me to be strong and never feel out of place. Because in the area that I practice, I was many many times the only women in a group of men. So I never felt out of place because I was brought up that way.

AMT: And so you came here. What were your impressions of Canada when you first got here?

GINA CODY: Iran of that day was much different than the Canada of that day. However what I loved was the way the university as a whole embraced me with open arms. The society accepted me with open arms. So when I take both inclusivity, diversity, equality for different genders I really want them to have the experience I had.

AMT: And so you become the first woman to graduate with a PAGG in building engineering at Concordia.

GINA CODY: Correct.

AMT: What year was that?

GINA CODY: It was in 1989.

AMT: 1989 was the year that four women were killed at Ecole Polytechnique.

GINA CODY: That's correct.

AMT: They were engineering students.

GINA CODY: Correct.

AMT: Do you remember that night?

GINA CODY: Absolutely.

AMT: Tell me about it.

GINA CODY: It left a scar. But what I learnt from that tragic experience is to look to the future, make a future that the women are allowed in engineering. This should be shot at just because they women. That is my hope by poor thing a name that we are equal. We belong there, we are going to be there. We are going to be strong in numbers and we will get there.

AMT: But you know when I asked you about it, right away I could see you getting emotional like it really did hit you back then.

GINA CODY: It still does. It's a scar. It will be there, but I look at this in a way for the future, that we will have women in engineering that outnumber maybe even their male counterparts.

AMT: And on their say anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, the 29th anniversary, how do you think those women should be remembered?

GINA CODY: They have to be respected for who they were and who they wanted to be. They will always be a reminder to women of today that they have to pave the road for more women to come into-- I think they have to and I can't believe that we are in 2018. The numbers are so low.

AMT: Well I was just going to say to you the image of a woman in a hard hat is still something foreign to a lot of people, what would change that?

GINA CODY: The numbers. I constantly say the strength is in numbers. If we have only 20 percent of the graduates from engineering are only women and then from that we reduce it to 12.8 percent - based on Engineers Canada - that are practicing in January, and then goes to some fractions of engineering that are way more male dominated then women. So then the number keep reducing in computer science the numbers are even lower. So we are living in an era, we are in the fourth industrial revolution where computer science, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, these are all replacing the old way of manufacturing. And society is changing as a whole. And if women don't get into computer science and engineering, they will be left further behind.

AMT: We had one of our producers go to Concordia University to speak to Amir Asif who is the dean of the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. I want you to listen to what he had to say about you and women in engineering. So.

SOUNDCLIP

The adamant, first of all, establish Cody as a great role model for young women in juniors, for young woman students. But the participation of women in engineering has always been a big issue for Canada, as a matter of fact for all developed nations. If you look at all different levels of women representation starting from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty members, professional engineers working in the field, it's about 20 percent.

AMT: He's saying you're going to have an impact just by making sure that other people know who you are now.

GINA CODY: I hope so. That's my vision and hope that there will be more of women in engineering and computer science.

AMT: And so he uses that 20 percent figure and you have made the point that the number of engineering students and faculty is 20 percent female. But the number in the work place is 12.8 percent. So where do the rest of them go?

GINA CODY: Exactly. They may not work in the field. They may go to other areas of practice. They may go to other professions and they do.

AMT: What was your first engineering job?

GINA CODY: My first engineering job actually was when I came to Toronto I worked there with the ministry of housing in the development of building code. And shortly after that I started, believe it or not, inspecting cranes.

AMT: What would that entail?

GINA CODY: Climbing up the cranes and looking at the structure, designing foundations for them, designing how they can be climbed in the structure. I was the only woman in that industry at the time. I remember attending a conference. There were 700 participants. I was the only woman. And when the MC stated his introduction he said, "Lady and gentleman".

AMT: And how were you treated? How were you received on those job sites way up there in the sky?

GINA CODY: The people who knew me, they respected me. But one winter day which was very very cold, it was -30 or something. There was a construction side that was shut down because they had some deficiencies. They wanted me to do the inspection the early in the morning so I can correct the deficiencies and the start the job. So after I came back down from the tower crane, an elderly construction worker called me to the corner said, "Miss. Miss, why don't you learn how to type? You don't have to do this". He didn't mean it in a bad way. He meant that I am a weak person, I shouldn't do that. That's how women were received on construction site.

AMT: How did you respond to him?

GINA CODY: I was very pleasant to him. I said thank you very much and I really admire your concern for me, but I love what they do.

AMT: So you go up to the top of the crane.

GINA CODY: Yes and to the boom. The end of the boom.

AMT: You've walked to the end of the boom?

GINA CODY: Yes.

AMT: So you are both literally and figuratively not afraid of heights.

GINA CODY: No no absolutely.

AMT: Did you have to get used to that? You're talking to someone with a bit of vertigo here.

GINA CODY: Yes you do get used to it. To be honest, but the first time I did it was not as comfortable as the second time and then you started loving it. Then I used to make a joke that people pay to go to wonderland and those places and here it is, I'm getting paid to go up these places.

AMT: And what did the men on the site then think when you first started doing it? Were they looking for weaknesses, or you would get out on that crane and not show any?

GINA CODY: The people who were in that business they all knew me because it was a very very exclusive type of work. But I remember once that I was at the tip of a very tall building. At the time was the tallest building in the skyline. And the power crane operator started moving the boom, while I was there, which is totally unacceptable and it illegal. He just was trying to see if I'd get scared and I was just smiling. Came back. Said bye to him and came down.

AMT: You could have slapped him with a fine if you were looking for safety. Could you not?

GINA CODY: Yes. By the time I think I wanted to be accepted then creating yeah people who dislike me. So you have to prove yourself constantly.

AMT: I want to ask you a little bit more about as you progressed up the other career ladder, not the literal one but the figurative one. You become principal shareholder and president of a large engineering firm and Toronto’s CCI group. You also would allow women returning from maternity leave to work at home.

GINA CODY: Absolutely.

AMT: At that time that was unusual.

GINA CODY: I received more productivity from women who worked from home than those who came to work. It was amazing. They would get up early in the morning because now they had the time. If the kid was asleep they would get up and do the work and deliver it. I had once an advertisement to hire someone. She showed up she was seven months pregnant, and when she came in I said, "Oh my god you're going to be giving birth soon". She says, "I want this job". I said, "You have this job. A woman that comes for an interview, seven months pregnant, to me should be rewarded and admired for their strength and devotion. You're starting tomorrow" and I cancelled the rest of the interviews.

AMT: Um were you seeing others hiring like that or were you seeing people afraid to hire a woman for fear - "fear" in quotation marks - that they would leave to have children? Because that sort of these stereotypical view in very traditional business.

GINA CODY: It is a real thing for men. The first thing they interview, even though these days it's illegal to ask, but subconsciously in their brain is that question when is this woman going to leave to have babies.

AMT: You have a real problem with that view?

GINA CODY: Yes I do because I believe in their subconscious, they never ask themselves when is that man I am interviewing is going to leave me for another job that pays more. And also I believe having a child is a dual responsibility. I think we have to come to a point that men take as much responsibility for bringing up their children as much as the women do. We feel that it is our obligation to constantly nurture and give and multitask and work and cook, pick up the children, do all of that while our male counterparts and the fathers have the ability to go to work, go networking drinking beer after work, have their golf courses taken care, and without taking the responsibility that there is a child at home. So I think we have to change the mindset first.

AMT: Do you have kids?

GINA CODY: Yes I have two daughters. One is doing her PhD engineering and the other one is finishing her degree.

AMT: And when you talk to them do you channel the words of your mother back when you were a teenager?

GINA CODY: Absolutely. I think they have enough of that. And I'm hoping that they will pass that message down to their children and people around them.

AMT: Is your mum still alive?

GINA CODY: Unfortunately not. Both my parents have passed away. I wish they were alive to see.

AMT: I was just going to ask you. What would they think? What would your mother think after telling you, you and your sister, this all those years about education what would she think about seeing your name on that faculty?

GINA CODY: I think she would be proud. I think she would feel that she has then okay by bringing her daughters up.

AMT: And you came here many years ago now with 2000 dollars and a hope of getting a place in a school. What would you say to other women who have just arrived in Canada with their own hopes and dreams?

GINA CODY: They tell them if a woman from Iran can do it, you can do it. Nothing stops you. Just pursue your dream, whatever that dream is.

AMT: When you walk down the streets of Toronto and you see those cranes still over so many construction sites, knowing what it was like to be up there early on in your career, what do you think?

GINA CODY: I see the this city is getting bigger and bigger it is improving. I wish there were still more women climbing up those and there are not that many. It still is very very minimal, but I am a proud Canadian. I'm a proud woman. I am an immigrant. So I am also sending a message to immigrant people that they are contributors. We want to be good citizens and giving back is part of our DNA. We just don't Take things for granted. We are grateful the opportunity is given to us and we want to provide a platform for those coming after.

AMT: Gina Cody good to talk to you. Congratulations. Thanks for coming in.

GINA CODY: Thank you. It's great to be here.

AMT: Gina Cody is a former executive chair and principal shareholder of the engineering firms CCI group in Toronto. She is the first woman in Canada to have an engineering school named after her and she was with me in our Toronto office. And we have this discussion on the 29th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre 14 engineering students in Montreal killed 29 years ago today. Let us know what you think of what she had to say about women and their place in some of these jobs. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. And stay with us. Coming up in our next half hour: If human beings hope to explore the galaxy we will likely have to master the art of hibernation first to survive the trip to the stars. I will speak with a scientist, an astronaut and a biologist about the average to help humans hibernate. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Lemurs could hold the key to human hibernation, says scientist Deck

Guests: Dave Williams, John Bradford, Peter Klopfer

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Coming up in a few minutes why a particular lemur in Madagascar may hold the secret to human space travel. But first,.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Bring out your dead.

VOICE 2: Here is one.

VOICE 3: I'm not dead.

VOICE 2: What?

VOICE 1: Nothing urgent [unintelligible].

VOICE 3: I'm not dead.

VOICE 2: He isn't?

AMT: A particularly resilient plague victim from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. His family was ready to toss him on top of the pile of corpses on a cart ready, to be hauled off and buried, but he wasn't having it.

[Music]

AMT: History, pop culture and world events have famously killed people off before their time. In 1897 Mark Twain penned the often misquoted correction The Report of my Death was an Exaggeration, when newspapers erroneously announced his death. And for centuries since the trend of people mistakenly declared dead has continued. This week the president of Gabon showed up very much alive after being reported dead.

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French media reported that Gabon's president has just died.

AMT: Ali Bongo surfaced in a proof of life video on Monday, his first appearance since collapsing at a conference in Saudi Arabia in late October. News that he's suffered a stroke soon more often to rumours that he died. But there he was on Monday sitting down in a blue and white robe talking to the king of Morocco. The president of Gabon's non death came just one day after the president of Nigeria Muhammadu Bahari denied rumors that he had died and had been replaced by a Sudanese lookalike named Jabril. The rumour spread like wildfire on the internet and even had the Nigerian president himself laughing at the conspiracy theory, while addressing and dismissing news of his death.

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[Laughter and applause]

AMT: It's not just African leaders who have been declared dead before their time. Paul McCartney was the subject of a decades long conspiracy theory that said he died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced with a look alike. The conspiracy theorists claim to see and hear proof of McCartney's demise in beadles album covers and songs. On the album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, McCartney sported an OPP badge on his jacket, which he picked up actually on a visit to Canada, but which many mistook for saying OPD or officially pronounced dead. Earlier this year host James Corden asked Paul McCartney about the rumours that swirled around his demise. Well they drove round for a carpool karaoke.

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Paul is dead. Yes I mean experience at that time, there were like millions of legends. So we're just kind of let them go. There wasn't really any way you could stop it.

AMT: And by the way if you haven't seen that one on you tube, you got to watch it. The wild west of the Internet has also taken on the role of killing people, who are always shocked to hear about their own deaths. Here's Jeff Goldblum recounting the story of how he found out that he had died in 2009.

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It was crazy. It was crazy. I was at my house in Los Angeles. I was working on something. My publicist called me and said, "you're okay first of all. I'm glad you answered the phone". Yes yes yes. "There's a rumor going around. They reported it that you died. You were in New Zealand". I said that's crazy. Well I never, I've never been ot New Zealand. And then you know viral technology...

AMT: Here at home, Canadian stars William Shatner, Justin Bieber and Avril Lavigne have all been declared dead. With some people even believing that, like McCartney, Avril Lavigne had been replaced with a look alike.

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[Music]

AMT: And the always larger than life Cher was herself declared erroneously dead in 2013 when news of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's death spawned a hashtag that she got caught up in.

SOUNDCLIP

When Margaret Thatcher died.

[Laughter]

But in America we would have said "now that Cher is dead".

[Laughter]

VOICE 1: Did you get a lot of people tweeting?

CHER: Yes I did. There is a big Twitter fest. It was trending. She is dead.

[Laughter]

AMT: There is no telling who the next victim of a viral fake Internet death will be. But for now don't believe the hashtag fueled rumor mills because Cher, Avril Lavigne, Jeff Goldblum, Paul McCartney and most recently, the presidents of Gabon and Nigeria have all survived their own deaths and lived to tell the tale.

[Music]

AMT: Okay there you go. I am Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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COMPUTER: Good morning James. How are you feeling?

JAMES: Wait, what?

COMPUTER: It's perfectly normal to feel confused. You just spent 120 years in suspended hibernation.

JAMES: What?

COMPUTER: Just breathe. Everything is okay.

JAMES: Where am I?

You're a passenger on the Starship Avalon. The Homestead company's premier interstellar star liner.

AMT: Well that is from the 2016 passengers as Chris Pratt's character awakens many decades early from his space travel hibernation. And while that is science fiction, hibernation may be just the key to any real life interstellar exploration. The only problem is that as human beings we don't know how to hibernate. Other animals from bears to frogs use lowered metabolisms, reduced brain activity and cool down body temperatures to survive prolonged periods in difficult environments. And in a few moments we'll hear about one animal fat tailed dwarf lemur of Madagascar that may hold the secret to human hibernation. But first I'm joined by two guests: John Bradford is the president and chief operating officer of SpaceWorks Enterprises which is working with NASA to limit the health impacts of space travel on humans. He's joining us from Atlanta, Georgia. And Dr. Dave Williams has experienced the health impacts of space travel firsthand. He is a retired Canadian astronaut and a former emergency room doctor who has made two trips to space. He is the author of the memoir Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe. And Dr. Dave Williams is in our studio. Hello to you both and welcome.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Good morning.

JOHN BRADFORD: Good morning.

AMT: Dave Williams I want to start with you. You have been displaced twice. What does it do to your body?

DAVE WILLIAMS: There are number of changes that take place when you're in space. Most particularly and probably most relevant is decrease in bone density and loss of muscle strength, which of course makes sense because we're working in an environment where there is no gravity to stimulate the muscles, to stimulate the bones to continue to grow.

AMT: And what about fluids in our body what happens?

DAVE WILLIAMS: There are a number of changes that take place in fluids in our body. There a shift in flowed from our lower extremities up to our chest and our face. We get what's called the puffy face bird legs syndrome. When you come back to Earth you actually have problems standing up. You feel very laid his hand faint. As though you're going to collapse because of the fluid changes.

AMT: So the fluids are going to- how do you actually go to the washroom if your fluids are going backwards?

DAVE WILLIAMS: We still have fluids in other areas of our body.

AMT: Okay fair enough. But the issue of the bones and the muscles what do they do to counter that?

DAVE WILLIAMS: So we have a rigorous exercise protocol onboard the International Space Station, a whole series of what is called individualized countermeasures. And we use a resistive exercise to help maintain bone density and also aerobic exercise for muscle conditioning and cardiovascular conditioning.

AMT: Because it happens rather quickly right? It doesn't take that long at zero gravity?

DAVE WILLIAMS: It does, we done density one and a half to two percent per month. So if you're in space six months you're looking at roughly 10 to 12 percent of your bone density.

AMT: It doesn't do anything you brain?

DAVE WILLIAMS: We don't know and that's an interesting area to study looking at the effects of radiation on the human central nervous system. When we first flew in space my mission was looking at neurolab, understanding how the brain and body adapted to being in space. But we still need more research in this area.

AMT: And that is radiation, the cosmic radiation, that's coming through.

DAVE WILLIAMS: Yes.

AMT: Okay. So John Bradford and you work with NASA and you're focusing on adapting therapeutic hypothermia. First of all what is therapeutic hypothermia?

JOHN BRADFORD: Yes that is a medical procedure that's done in clinical settings for treatment of traumatic brain injuries, cardiac arrest or stroke. If you suffer from one of those, they will try and get to the hospital as quickly as they can and cool your body down and hold you in that state for two or three days. That you give your body time to recover and reduces your oxygen demand and at a time in your body is probably not able to provide the oxygen that it needs.

AMT: And where does this have potential in space travel?

JOHN BRADFORD: So that was our rationale or extension is to look at what if we go to longer durations from the current clinical practice for two or three days. What happens to the body in what are the potential benefits if we could do this for weeks or months at a time. Clinically there is no need to go beyond two or three days. So it's an unexplored territory, in terms of what would happen, but there's been some limited cases up to about two weeks for that application and with that limit you know we're really confident we could base on those outcomes go to two week periods. And that would be very beneficial in terms of space flight for missions within our solar system.

AMT: Why would it be beneficial to lower like our oxygen intake or to do that your body in space travel?

JOHN BRADFORD: Sure. Yes. And what you're primarily doing there is lowering your metabolism so we're trying to get the crew in an inactive low metabolic state for long periods of the mission in the transit phases, maybe six months on a trip to Mars. So if we can put you in that state and put the crew in that condition we can put them in a small habitat that reduces the mass, the amount of consumables they need during that part of the trip goes way down. You know it takes thousands of pounds of your propellant to get there. So we're able to reduce all that. We can put him in a better condition for things like radiation shielding. So if they're in a confined space we can increase the shielding around the crew during that part of the habitat. Whereas right now we can't really shield the entire habitat or space craft for the mission. So there's multiple engineering as well as medical benefits that we think you can gain.

AMT: So for a layperson we're essentially high maintenance and this would basically take care of people on a longer scale without the fuel and all the food and all that weight that that would entail moving through space.

JOHN BRADFORD: Exactly.

AMT: Okay. Okay. So Dave Williams from your medical background how effective would you say therapeutic hypothermia is?

DAVE WILLIAMS: We actually know - based on my experience as an emergency physician - we know that calling the body helps protect the organ systems. There are many cases reported of near drownings where an individual fell into an icy lake. They were suspended under water for 30-40 minutes rescued and successfully resuscitated with no apparent cardiac activity when they were initially rescued. And that's because the lower body temperature protects the organ systems and protects the brain. What's exciting is we see this used in space now in science fiction movies. The space program is all about making science fiction into science fact and see how we can use this in the future.

AMT: So the concept of the movie we just heard, that's the idea.

DAVE WILLIAMS: That's the idea.

AMT: Maybe the timelines are a little different, waking up after a hundred years but that's the concept. John Bradford your work focuses on turning therapeutic hypothermia into low metabolic torpor state - am I saying that right? - or hibernation. So walk us through what youre trying to do. How would you get someone there?

JOHN BRADFORD: Yes so there's definitely differences and changes we need to make from the clinical center on the ground here. The applications for space flight you dont have all that medical support personnel, just be limited to the crew, so we are dependent on advanced [unintelligible] autonomous systems and robotics to monitor and maintain the crew. On the ground, in a hospital setting, you would use a lot of cold saline injection to cool the body down, icepacks, gel pads. So those are not really conducive in space to doing that. So we're looking at different cooling techniques on the body. So the result is the same. You know we're trying to get the reduced metabolism and make the crewmembers inactive but there's definitely adaptations made for what you will do in space versus what we had on the ground. But the overall process we have a level of confidence in the outcome you know we can get to.

AMT: And how would they get nutrition in that state?

JOHN BRADFORD: Yeah nutrition is a good question. So fortunately right now at least we can get a stock up like animals do hibernate and put on 100-200 pounds in just you know consumed that during the emission so humans can't do that. So we're switching from to all liquid solution which makes it easy to kind of process and manage the waste. Since they're inactive you know they won't to actually be able to eat. We're looking at this. It's called a PEG tube which is poured directly into the side of your stomach being your abdomen. And we can supply the nutrients directly there and then would go through your normal digestive system. And people use this PEG tube that have elements that they have to bypass, the esophagus are unable to consume food.

AMT: So it's the same concept.

JOHN BRADFORD: Yes, kind of a simple procedure, can be undone and it's easy to maintain and kind of low risk in terms of infection and things like that which is always a concern.

AMT: What would you do about muscles and bone?

JOHN BRADFORD: So the lowering of the metabolism, there are some evidence of that your activity will slow down some of the effects of your muscle atrophy and bone loss. That's on the medical side. On the engineering side it allows us to introduce some new techniques, things like neuromuscular electrical stimulation. So we can do a whole body stimulation while the crew is in active. And on the bone mass, we're looking at some artificial inducing some artificial gravity on the spacecraft that can help out with provide some of that loading that bones need in space to maintain their mass.

AMT: And what would the understanding be? Would some people be like on a shift? You would do this like for a certain period of time and then they'd be working in a space station and then they'd go back into that. Or is that still in the planning stages?

DAVE WILLIAMS: That's correct. So our near term plan has this, rotating the crew members and by four to six on a near term mission through two week periods of inactivity and then they'd be up for two or three days. And then they'd repeat the cycle. And they'd be staggered. So there's always kind of this caretaker person available. So NASA was more comfortable with that than everybody, kind of being out. The process of calming down and warming up can take hours. So in emergency we want to have somebody on standby, or ready to respond so we'd be staggered. And in the long term though we think we can extend from the two week period to 30 days or months and the ultimate vision is to get to the full duration, the transit phase of the mission where the crew would be completely inactive. So I think they'll take a while to get there.

AMT: Well this brings us to the Lemur man who is waiting in the wings. I want to introduce someone else to into our conversation because he is awaiting. Peter Klopfer is a professor emeritus of biology at Duke University. He founded the Duke Lemur Center, home to the only captive colony of fat tailed dwarf lemurs in the world. He joins us from Orange County, North Carolina. Hello Peter Klopfer.

PETER KLOPFER: Good morning.

AMT: I had no idea that the fat to our free mount would be so important to our lives. But you know this. So first of all why is it important in potentially unlocking hibernation in humans?

PETER KLOPFER: Well let me make a distinction between hypothermia that is lowering of body temperature and metabolic rates and torpor. What the dwarf lemur does is basically suspend the metabolic regulation of body temperature. It becomes Poikilothermic that is it becomes like a snake or a lizard, cold-blooded. It doesn't regulate body temperature at all. It allows the ambient temperature, whatever the environmental temperature is, to determine what the body temperature is. That's what torpor means. So for example bears who are said to hibernate really do not enter torpor. They was simply reducing their metabolic rate and procedures that your other speaker has described does the same. It's lowering body temperature, suppressing metabolic rate, but not turning off the regulatory mechanism. And that's an important difference.

AMT: Okay well I'm going to move you ahead just because of time, but you are looking at the genes in the lemurs that do this.

PETER KLOPFER: Among other things members of the group with which I work Ammy Yoder and Sheena Feherty are doing the genomic analysis looking to see which genes are activated at the time the levers go into this torpor phase, where they become basically cold blooded use the vernacular.

AMT: And what is their hope that somehow those genes- do we have any commongenes with the lemur?

PETER KLOPFER: Well we've identified what we think are the seven major genes that are involved in regulating metabolic system. Yes we humans have those genes as well. What we seem to lack is the switch that activates them. We're looking for that now and of course given the capability for gene transfer, if they switch can be identified there would be the potential for allowing humans to become torpid.

AMT: And would you one like that by using the gene editing chrisper?

PETER KLOPFER: That presumably would be the tool that would be used. Correct. We have yet to identified the activating factors, of course.

AMT: And that's what you're working on among others.

PETER KLOPFER: Among other things, yes.

AMT: And the fat tailed dwarf lemur in Madagascar is the one that has the parallels that are closest to humans?

PETER KLOPFER: That's correct. There little mouse lemur goes into torpor for short periods of time but the dwarf lemur will go to torpor for six to seven months of the year. So that's, the dwarf lemur, is the primate we know that has that capability. So that's why we're focusing on the dwarf lemurs hibernation.

AMT: Are there other beneficial applications besides space travel that hibernation could have for humans Professor Klopfer?

PETER KLOPFER: All kinds of medical applications as your other speaker indicated. There are all kinds of conditions for a long term torpor would be a godsend for us physicians.

AMT: Dave Williams with your medical experience how significant do you think a partial hibernation and torpor could be for surgeries?

DAVE WILLIAMS: for surgeries it's very important and in fact currently we do use reduced metabolic rate hypothermia for surgical procedures. We use in trauma patients and of course one of my roles as an emergency physician is to resuscitate people who are hypothermic. So it's used clinically. What we're talking about today though is very important in terms of looking at alternative approaches for the future, particularly for space travel. Missions to Mars where it's six months, that's one thing, but going beyond Mars, if we were to think about [unintelligible] or Titan moons of Saturn, that's potentially six year journey. It's a totally different ballpark.

AMT: And it would give the body the potential to trigger something on its own without some of the mechanics, that would be happening internally as opposed to an external. Am I right on that?

DAVE WILLIAMS: No question. In fact if we can learn these lessons from the lemur and basically turn a human into a poikilothermic individual where the temperature is controlled by the temperature around them, then technologically it provides us with an opportunity for a solution. And of course if bone density and muscle mass is maintained, which in hibernating animals tends to be the case, well we don't know stay and help that would actually work in humans yet.

AMT: Okay so John Bradford as you watch the sun fall what are you thinking?

JOHN BRADFORD: I think the we have a near term approach that were developed in, or developing and that is what got us the support from NASA was, you know, there is this science fiction aspect of being able to do this. And I think we've outlined it maybe in near term by extending our current medical capabilities and how we could apply it for some early human exploration of space. But ultimately we were trying to get the crew in this inactive low metabolic state and how we achieve that, I think we will see are some benefits. So whether it's through a little more artificially induced hypothermic state or if we can actually do some gene editing on humans to support them and get them into the state in the longer term stuff. I think the benefits for spaceflight would be enormous. The key technology.

AMT: Peter Klopfer when you first started your research with the lemurs did you have any idea that it would take this direction?

PETER KLOPFER: None. None at all. We actually started the study because of the conversation I had with a colleague who's director of the sleep lab. He'd pointed out to me how important sleep was for survival in primates and I asked him how sleep could take place in an animal whose body temperature was just a few degrees above freezing, which is the case with our lemurs in Madagascar. He didn't know. And so that is what initiated our study of hibernation in the fat tail lemur. I'll just tell quickly. They do become thermic, that is to say raise body temperature a few degrees. It [unintelligible]ranging from three days to two weeks depending on the ambient temperature during that [unintelligible]. They raise the body temperature for just a few hours, and during that time they have intense bouts of sleep both REM sleep and ordinary sleep. Then they sink back into full torpor again.

AMT: Okay well we have to leave it there but I thank you for that. It's just proof again that scientific research takes you places you don't always know when you start. Gentlemen thank you all for weighing in on this today. John Bradford president and chief operating officer of SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta. Dr. Dave Williams retired Canadian astronaut, emergency room doctor ,the author of Defying Limits, here with me in our Toronto studio. Peter Klopfer professor emeritus biology at Duke University in Orange County, North Carolina. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q. Got one correction for you. We brought you a special edition of The Current truth. Tuesday, we heard from a philosopher, a psychologist, a senator, an outspoken journalist. But the part that got the most feedback was about the Calgary Aquarium.

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This Saturday what we're defying families to come down to the aquarium and we're basically having a big grill out. Point at any of the fish in any of the tanks that you want and we will simply grill it up on an open pit barbecue. It may be one of the only chances you have in your life to enjoy grilled manatee or sea otter.

AMT: You may recognize that as a clip from the CBC radio show This is that. Peter Oldring and Pat Kelly joined us to talk about making satire in a post truth world. And we shared some of the misplaced outrage they routinely receive.

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They are going a grill up the fish and the sea otters?

I've never heard of anything quite so barbaric.

AMT: But it's what I said that got so many of you writing and calling in.

SOUNDCLIP

Hey I am calling from Calgary. I was listening to Anna Maria Tremonti special on the truth. Anyway at the end of it she was playing part of This is That thing about a Calgary aquarium at the end of that she said before you phone in, you should know there never was a Calgary aquarium. And in fact there was a Calgary aquarium, and it was shut down many years ago. It was an aquarium. It was big. It had exotic fish. Yes. So you need to correct that up, because after all it was a so in truth she did today and she told an untruth. Take care.

Well thanks for the call You're right. I stand corrected. There was no Calgary aquarium when This is That their program. It is not to say there never was one. The Calgary Brewery Aquarium opened in 1960, it closed its doors in 1972 and they did not grill the sea life. They donated it to the Quebec City Aquarium. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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