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The Current Transcript for December 28, 2018

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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'Don't do it': Trump's criticism of central bank could backfire, warns former vice-chair

Guests: Stanley Fischer, Livio Di Matteo

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

TRUMP: I think the Fed is making a mistake. They are so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy.

TRUMP: My biggest threat is the Fed, because the Fed is raising rates too fast.

TRUMP: But I think the Fed is far too stringent and they're making a mistake and it's not right. And it's despite that we're doing very well, but it's not necessary, in my opinion. And I think I know about it better than they do. Believe me.

PC: The U.S. president has been taking runs at the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Blaming the Fed for bad economic news has come in handy for Donald Trump. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates four times this year and the president is complaining those hikes are too high and are coming too fast. Like the Bank of Canada, the U.S. Federal Reserve is independent from the government in deciding the interest rate and money supply. But President Trump has publicly criticized Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, and privately mused about firing the man he nominated to lead the American Central Bank. And that sparked a legal debate about whether a president can even remove a Federal Reserve Chair. Stanley Fischer is watching all of this unfold from a unique vantage point. He was vice-chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017, serving under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Before that he was governor of the Bank of Israel. And we've reached Stanley Fischer in New York City. Hello to you.

STANLEY FISCHER: Hi, how are you?

PC: I'm okay. When you hear President Trump say those things about the Federal Reserve what do you want to say to him?

STANLEY FISCHER: You're making a mistake. When you criticize the Fed in the way you do, you challenge its independence, and when you challenge its independence, it has to demonstrate its independence. And that may lead to the interest rate being higher, rather than lower, as a result of the criticisms you make. Don't do it. First of all you don't know. Secondly, it's not the Fed that is the cause of everything that's going on. The fact that you are overthrowing a world order that has existed successfully on average, since the end of World War II, is fundamental to what is going on now. The Canadians would know that NAFTA suddenly disappeared to be replaced by something else that is close to NAFTA and this sort of thing is going on all over the place. And if we get ourselves into the world - which we seem to be doing - in which it is okay to impose tariffs on everything, to give subsidies everywhere, we will be in a world of the 1960s and 70s in which we were struggling to get out of the aftermath of World War II and the Great Depression.

PC: Okay so clearly you're clearly not on side with the president's assessment of what's really going on in the U.S. economy. But let me put this to you. You know he does have his defenders and they say look raising interest rates, the Fed doing that, is putting stress on lower and middle class Americans. So how does the Fed justify the increases would be the question.

STANLEY FISCHER: The Fed justifies the increase is because it's defined in law is to keep the economy-- is to maintain full employment and to end low inflation. We are in that situation now as a result of the policies pursued since the great financial crisis. And the problem with his arguments are he assumes that monetary policy works immediately. It doesn't. It takes time. So they've got to ask themselves where - if the economy continues on the path most people think it will - where will we be six months to a year to a bit later from now, if we don't take action now to deal with the fact that the economy is very strong. And that's the problem. With due respect people from the real estate sector always think interest rates are too high.

PC: And so the Federal Reserve, like all central banks, plays a long game when it comes to setting policy, right. It isn't tied to a circle of elections and re-election and all those things. It's looking long game. So how do you think this particular team at the Fed is doing right now?

STANLEY FISCHER: I think they are doing well under difficult circumstances. When the president decides to attack you ,for some reason or the other, you are placed before a dilemma; do you do the right thing professionally or do you try and make peace with the powers that be? You have to do the right things professionally. That is what they are doing.

PC: There are some reports that the head of the Fed, Jerome, Powell may be seeing the president, the U.S. President in January, that meeting may take place and that of course raises the question of the independence of the Federal Reserve which it is built in to the infrastructure that the central bank is independent. Do you think that that kind of meeting might at least send the wrong message at least perception wise?

STANLEY FISCHER: Well the president will of course expect that interest rates come down immediately afterwards. They won't. They'll be kept on a course that has been discussed for a long time and has been talked about within the Fed at every single meeting of the Fed since certainly when I was there, a year and a half ago and is part of the way the Fed does business. It looks ahead and asks what it ought to do. So it's not going to change the polls very much. J. Powell is a very good banker. He's a very reasonable person. And whenever I've read or listen to what he has to say, I say well that makes sense. And I think this is making sense now. And that meeting could go very badly from the viewpoint of the president. If he attacks Powell in the meeting in the way he's attacked others in meetings, Powell is going to have to find some way of demonstrating that he is continuing down the professional road that he's on right now, and that he will not be shaken by the president. Because we know full well that if inflation gets out of control the Fed will be blamed. And that is one of the things that it has to take into account.

PC: You worked at the Fed under this president, Donald Trump, and the previous one, Barack Obama. What differences did you see from the inside in terms of these administration, in terms of how central bankers were expected to go about their jobs?

STANLEY FISCHER: Oh I think that what you see is a remarkably professional organization. I found it amazing when I joined the Fed that it very rarely was necessary for me, if I needed to understand effect to understand something that was happening in the economy, to go beyond the professional stuff we had. Of course we listened to the everybody who was talking about the economy, discussed what they had to say. But it is an outstanding group of people. And the interesting thing is that this board of the Fed, the monetary policymaking group, is actually very strong. And this is a board that was appointed by the president. He may feel unhappy about it now, but his initial choice was the right one.

PC: And so given what you've just said, what is the optimal balance, the relationship between politics and economics in the Central Bank?

STANLEY FISCHER: The Fed can't cannot look at the political situation and say this will make us popular. It's got to figure out what is the right thing to do. It's got the law defines its goals, its goals to maintain full employment and [unintelligible] stable prices. And I think you and Canada have roughly similar goals. And that's what they have to do and that's what they do and that's what the discussion is about. I didn't hear any politics going on. I'd heard about criticisms but I didn't hear anybody saying, "Well we've got to really take that into account". Many many a politician has learnt a lesson that if you attack the Fed, you get yourself into a big problem because you'll be getting inflation down the road if what you want is low interest rates. And when you get that somebody is going to ask, "Well whose idea was that?" The answer will be whoever was pushing and succeeding perhaps, not in this case they weren't succeeding, to push the Fed, the interest rate sitting group in a direction it didn't want to take. It shouldn't do that.

PC: Just to put the American situation in context. When you look around the world, do you see other countries where the central bank is being criticized by its leader or a high level politician and vulnerable to volatile politics?

STANLEY FISCHER: Yes I think when you look, there is a set of countries - I'm not going to get into this in detail - but there's a set of countries in the world who are behaving now according to assumptions and principles that essentially reject the world to which we've evolved or which we had evolved, in the previous American administration and in most of the industrialized world. And those countries which do not follow principles in which they allow the central bank to be independent--.

PC: Like which countries?

STANLEY FISCHER: I am not going to get into, as former Fed person, criticizing which countries. But you know who I'm talking about. Some of them are in Europe. Many of them once were Latin America. They are not there now. They have given central banks independence. And in other countries in the world. So that is a sign of a weak and non-democratic government. That's what's going on.

PC: Stanley Fischer we'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

STANLEY FISCHER: Thank you very much.

PC: Stanley Fischer is a former vice chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve and he's also the former governor of the Bank of Israel. We reached him in New York City. Well heated debate over the central bank in America isn't exactly new in the United States. A fight from 1790 is being revived now on stage in the hit Broadway musical Hamilton.

SOUNDCLIP

Ladies and gentlemen

You coulda been anywhere in the world tonight

But you're here with us in New York City

Are you ready for a cabinet meeting?

The issue on the table

Secretary Hamilton's plan

To assume state debt

And establish a national bank

Secretary Jefferson, you have the floor, sir

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

We fought for these ideals

We shouldn't settle for less

These are wise words

Enterprising men quote 'em

Don't act surprised, you guys, cuz I wrote 'em

PC: In Cabinet Battle Number One founding father Thomas Jefferson argues against Alexander Hamilton's proposal for a central bank. That battle is one of many colorful stories in the history of central banks. And fill us in, I'm joined by Livio Di Matteo he's a professor of economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. Hello.

LIVIO DI MATTEO: Good morning to you.

PC: Let us start with those days of Hamilton What were the conditions that led to the debate over the creation of a U.S. central bank?

LIVIO DI MATTEO: Well this was in the aftermath of the birth of the American republic. There was a lot of Revolutionary War debt. And there was also a debate between those who wanted I guess a stronger federal and more central government - I guess federalists - and the other side which I guess you would term anti federalists, by the standards of the time. So if you look at the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton basically wanted a bank of the United States, a central bank to consolidate the debt and issue a national currency. And the reason he wanted that was to create financial stability which in turn would lead to investment and economic growth Foster manufacturing development, etc. On the other side you had Thomas Jefferson. He basically thought a central bank in a sense would favor Eastern banks and creditors and that would basically create a concentration of financial power and Jefferson was more of a de centralist. You know his vision of the republic in the ultimate sense was a sort of a nation of Stout Yeoman in decentralization. And so the debate in the sense also outlined the powers under the Constitution. So I mean a central bank wasn't specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. And so much of the debate was whether the creation of a central bank was implied under something called the necessary and proper clause. And I don't want to get into too much detail. I'm not a U.S. constitutional expert. But in the end the bank was created but it was tenuous. The first bank was created about 1791. The second one in 1816 and after that in the 1930s, interestingly enough a populist president Andrew Jackson under his tenure the bank ended. And so you had basically a more free banking so to speak until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. And the Federal Reserve in the end its creation also sort of reflected that tension between centralization and decentralization and distrust of Eastern banking interests. Because in the end they went to sort of regional system as opposed to the I guess the decaying system where you have one central bank. They have a Federal Reserve System.

PC: So I'm glad you mentioned Canada because when and why did we get our central bank?

LIVIO DI MATTEO: We were late comers. The first central banks actually start to emerge as market economies start to develop although interesting enough the reason they developed was to finance government war expenditures and war debt, and act as sort of marketers of that debt. So you know the first banks, central banks, are the Swedish central bank 1668, the British banks 1694. Then in the 19th century you get a number of them and France. The Bank of Japan, the Bank of Italy the Reichsbank. Canada is rather late. We emerge during the Great Depression in 1935. And so we come about sort of at the tail end of the 20th century and our bank sort of comes about under the rubric of price stability and maintaining full employment. There is a responsibility for the money supply and the credit system currency, and it's bankers bank also, the bank for the federal government.

PC: I want to ask you about - because we're talking about you know tensions between politicians and central banks - and we've talked to both the U.S. and its president butting on monetary policy. What's the situation like in Canada? Like have we had a dispute between the government and the central bank?

LIVIO DI MATTEO: Well our banks since the late 1960s has been an independent central bank. Day to day operations are free of political influence. However that role in a sense is legislated by the government. I mean the Bank of Canada is created by an act of parliament. So in a sense the independence has been granted by politicians and as defined by the political system. So our central bank like many Central Banks are independent in government but are not independent of government right. So it's a fine line that governments have have to play. Now in our case the major incident that we had is late 1950s early 1960s in which the then governor of the Bank of Canada, James Coyne, began speaking out on government fiscal policy. And so his argument was that the government of the day which is the Diefenbaker government, also by Canadian standards I guess an early populist government in some respects, was running deficits and spending too much and that this would fuel inflation. And so that was resented by the prime minister of the day. And so there was also pressure on the Bank of Canada to basically not raise interest rates. The Bank of Canada wanted to keep its interest rates given policy. So in the end what happened there-- there was also a bit of a personality conflict I believe between the two gentlemen. But in the end the House basically declared the Bank of governors a position vacant. The Conservatives had a majority declare position vacant. The Senate basically turned that down. However once the government of the day has expressed a sort of lack of confidence in the office of the governor of the Bank of Canada he resigned. The aftermath of that was the 67 Bank Act basically laid down the rules in that the central bank is independent on a day to day basis. But the ultimate responsibility for monetary policy and direction does lie with the government. However that's the ultimate responsibility on a day to day basis and even over the longer term. The Bank of Canada has a pretty free rein to basically set long term policy, and that's how it should be and that governments benefit from that. I mean politicians benefit from having an independent central bank because when unpopular actions are taken such as raising interest rates to tame inflation they can point at the bank and say well we're not doing it the bank is independent. But I mean most politicians often [unintelligible] both ways. Then if there's some type of downturn they would like the bank to stimulate the economy and they said you don't mind if the bank lowers interest rates to stimulate the economy during a downturn. But then when the economy improves and inflation starts to pick up they're probably not keen when the bank raises interest rates in order to restrain inflation.

PC: Okay. Livio Di Matteo, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

LIVIO DI MATTEO: Oh you're quite welcome.

PC: Livio Di Matteo is an economics professor at Lakehead university and we reached him in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

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New project looks at 'the most important organ that none of us have': the placenta

Guests: Ashley Moffett, Charles McKenzie

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Kim Kardashian is fighting Baby Blues by - wait for it - eating her placenta.

[Music]

VOICE 1: St. West mom revealed Monday that you freeze dried her placenta, and is snacking on it in [unintelligible] form. She says after learning of her body parts health benefits she thought what do I have to lose.

VOICE 2: Have you ever cooked a placenta.

VOICE 3: Cooked a placenta? Actually no.

VOICE 2: They say you can eat them.

VOICE 1: Back in 2013, Kim thought about eating it when she was first pregnant with North.

VOICE 4: That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard.

VOICE 2: Why?

VOICE 2: I think everyone's just being really weird and closed minded.

PC: Chances are if you've heard anything about placenta in the news in recent years, it's because of the trend touted by celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, of consuming freezed dried placenta pills after giving birth. Despite that fact there's little scientific evidence that consuming placenta is beneficial to new mothers, many followers of the practice swear by its benefits. Last month actor Hilary Duff told Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy podcast about drinking placenta smoothies after the birth of her second child.

SOUNDCLIP

HILARY DUFF: Looking at that thing is just insane. I mean it's really kind of beautiful, not the part that faces you, the part that looks like a steak or somebody, that's nasty. The part that the baby's in is awesome.

DR. BERLIN: It's so incredible. Your body makes this disposable organ, that's complete life support and then pushes it out.

HILARY DUFF: Yes.

DR. BERLIN: Did you did you make something out of it?

HILARY DUFF: I did.

DR. BERLIN: To eat?

HILARY DUFF: So they made me a smoothie.

DR. BERLIN: They made you a smoothie right away? Just the raw piece of placenta. What did you put any movie in besides that?

HILARY DUFF: Lots of berries, lots of fruit juice.

DR. BERLIN: [Laughs].

HILARY DUFF: It was the most delightful smoothie I've ever had.

DR. BERLIN: You can't taste the placenta.

HILARY DUFF: Well not without the sugar that they put in it. I haven't had a smoothie that delightful since I was like 10 years old. It's just calorie filled up, like juice and fruit and everything delicious.

PC: So lots of attention on what some moms choose to do with the placenta after birth. But there's been far less attention paid to how the temporary but vital organ functions during pregnancy and the impact that has on both maternal and fetal health. Now after years of being understudied and poorly understood, promising new research is giving scientists hope they'll soon get a better handle on how the placenta behaves. And they say this could lead to advances in the prevention, detection and treatment of pregnancy problems, including those that lead to miscarriage and stillbirth. Our first guest has spent decades trying to understand the role of the placenta in both healthy pregnancy and ones where something goes wrong. And she helps lead a team of researchers in Britain that has managed to grow many placentas in a lab - a breakthrough documented in the Journal Nature. Ashley Moffett is a professor of reproductive immunology at Cambridge University. Hello.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Hello.

PC: We heard Hilary Duff say one side of the placenta resembles a steak. But for people who don't really know what a placenta looks like, can you just describe it for us?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Well she was describing the placenta after birth, but the placenta actually the first organ the baby makes. It's made by the baby and it really does everything for the baby. It transfers oxygen and nutrients from the mother to the baby. It transfers waste products back from the baby into the mother, makes many hormones and proteins that are secreted in large quantities into the mother's circulation. It's also a barrier between the mother and the babies. It is a sort of no man's land between these two different individuals. Early on it looks actually rather like a very beautiful [unintelligible].

PC: So clearly the placenta is a vital organ, that may be an understatement. How well have scientists and medical researchers understood the placenta over the years?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: When we know very little about human placenta because, unlike say the part of the kidney or the liver,, the placenta is very different in different species. On a human person is really quite different than experimental animal models like the mouse. So it's been very difficult to study it. And that's been a great stumbling block.

PC: Can I ask - there's also a logistical challenge of accessing the placenta right. So it's hard to get, so explain that to me. This is a hard organ to access in terms of for research purposes.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Yes of course because its development depends on its embedding itself into the wall of the uterus, which is the mothers of course. So the lining of the uterus and the placenta or deep tax to each other, and the whole placenta development won't work unless that embedding into the wall of the uterus occurs correctly. So that's of course being very very difficult for logistical and ethical reasons to access.

PC: And I wonder the lack of understanding that we have about the placenta, is it also because of a I don't know a general blind spot regarding women's health?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: My feeling is it is. I came to this as a doctor and I became interested in the disorder Preeclampsia, which is most people know because the blood pressure goes up towards the end of pregnancy. And I realized this was to do with the failure of placental development. And I thought why is this disease not being studied more? You know we know almost nothing about it when we know so much about things like cancer and infection. I think it is because it is a disease of women and it's young women and it's largely being ignored I think.

PC: Okay, so you're trying to help overcome the ignorance with your team. So tell us about the work you and your team at Cambridge are doing in the lab. You're growing something called mini placenta. So when you say 'mini' what are they? How small are they?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Well there you can't see them by the naked eye. They only can be seen under the microscope. So they are little tiny structures that actually form in three dimensions, a structure just like a little placenta and they function like a placenta. So if we stick a pregnancy stick into the medium - that you would normally use to test during to say somebody is pregnant - they read out. They tell us they're pregnant.

PC: And are they real or what are they made of?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: They are made. We isolates some cells from the early presenters and grow them in three dimensions in a sort of gel with special medium and components that sort of mimic environment that you find in the uterus in early pregnancy. And they self-organize into these little structures and then they begin to grow. And we can grow them indefinitely and freeze them and so we can build up a bank of these placentas that can be used to look at from placentas of women who have difficulties so that we might begin to understand why it works normally, and why it doesn't work when it doesn't work.

PC: And so that's what you're hoping to learn from doing this, what behaviors so to speak the placenta has that result in a healthy normal pregnancy and which ones don't or cause a worrisome pregnancy or problematic pregnancy.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: I mean I think there are some other uses as well, that other researchers might be very interested in. Because for example one of the things we don't know is how infections cross the placenta and of recent interest of course is the Zika epidemic. And it's very interesting that Zika does cause the placenta but are very closely related virus dengue does not. So this is a kind of experimental model that you could try and understand why one goes across and the other one doesn't.

PC: And what else could you use the information you learn from during this research with many placentas, in terms of how it affects - not just women's health during pregnancy but as well as fetal health.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Well the whole of the fetal health clearly depends on the placenta. So a normal baby grown normally to nice size is absolutely dependent on a functioning healthy placenta. And that placenta has to be built properly for it to work properly. So in the end if you're studying pre-eclampsia - I mean we know a lot about the the symptoms in the mother early on - but if you really want to understand what goes wrong you have to go right back to early pregnancy and say how is this placenta built and why did it go wrong in these pregnancies. One of the key things to focus on is the interaction of the placental cells with the lining of the uterus, because these two are absolutely interdependent on so we will be able to also start looking at how, for example, the immune cells in the uterine lining respond and react to the placenta.

PC: Any woman who is pregnant and has read a pregnancy book or gone to a medical professional one of the first things they will tell them, in terms of risks, is something called pre-eclampsia. So many of us have heard the term but broadly speaking how common are pregnancy disorders like preeclampsia or fetal growth restriction?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: The preeclampsia is mainly a disease of first pregnancies but not always and it frequency varies among different parts of the world, but in Cambridge it's about 4 percent of those pregnancies. And then fetal growth restriction, which again is a failure of the placenta to form normally and unexplained stillbirth, those probably all those three conditions together account for something like 10 percent of pregnancies. These are common disorders are not rare.

PC: You came to this starting as a doctor, that's what got you interested in this. And you worked particularly in parts of Africa as a physician. What did you see during your years there that made the challenge of pregnancy disorders like visceral for you?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Well I think that African women have a particular risk but they also have of course that delays getting to hospital and the delays getting the treatment they need. So there are actually many deaths, maternal deaths, from pre-eclampsia. And that was very shocking really to see that in the 21st century. These are disorders that we should not now seen [unintelligible] deaths because women can be treated if it's diagnosed early enough.

PC: And what kind of reactions do you get when you tell people, 'I'm an expert in placenta research'?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Well I'm hoping to turn that over. I mean people have always thought it's slightly a joke, but I think you know people don't laugh when people say they're working on the heart or the brain, and the placenta is absolutely crucial for the whole of the next generation coming. So I hope that your program and others like it will actually raise the profile of this organ.

PC: Why do people make jokes about it?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: I suppose it's you know it's a bit of meat it comes out and then it's chucked in a bucket and forgotten about. You know that's what people think about. I'm sure people are aware that it's essential but because we've known so little about it and there's been so little public attention on the importance of it, people just think why would you work on that, it's so horrible.

PC: There have been some other recent gains in placenta research aside from what you and your team has been up to. On the horizon, what else do you see that looks promising in terms of us trying to get a better handle understanding this very very vital organ?

ASHLEY MOFFETT: I think that actually at the moment we've only got one cell type and the percent of these cells are called trophoblast because they actually access all the food so that means. But the placenta is made up of other cell types and we haven't really built a proper, a whole placenta. These are really only a model, an experimental model. So I think in the future we will have to try and put together all the cell types in the placenta and the cell types in the uterine lining, and try and work out how they're talking to each other to make sure this placenta does develop and grow normally.

PC: What are your hopes for help if you take this all together, these various strides will improve, how we approach prenatal health care.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: I hope so because at the moment it's not possible to predict in first pregnancies. This is which women will have pre-eclampsia, stillbirth or growth restriction. Now really only treatment really is is delivery and that's often by caesarian section. So this and that moment of course pre-eclapmsia is diagnosis by putting a woman on a wage scale, measuring her blood pressure and seeing protein in the urine. It seems to me in the 21st century extraordinary to me that we have we do so little. We've made so little progress in actually even being to diagnose his condition. So I'm hoping that some of the proteins for example made by organoids may be predict, maybe if we fall into pregnancy we'll be able to see very early on the ones that are being made in the right amount. And that might give us a clue. So there are quite a few openings that these mini placentas will bring.

PC: I think Ashley Moffett thank you for your expertise and talking to me today. Appreciate it.

ASHLEY MOFFETT: Thank you.

PC: Ashley Moffett is a professor of reproductive immunology at Cambridge University. And we reached her in Cambridge England. It is not just lab grown mini placentas that are generating buzz in the burgeoning field of placenta research. Scientists around the world are also exploring new ways of seeing what's happening inside the placenta early on in pregnancy, as part of a U.S. funded initiative called 'the human placenta project'. Charles McKenzie is among them. He's an associate professor of medical biophysics at Western University and he's working to develop new MRI technology, he hopes will one day allow for closer study of the placenta during pregnancy. Charles McKenzie is in London, Ontario. Hello.

CHARLES MCKENZIE: Hello, thank you for having me.

PC: Well tell us first a bit about the human placenta research at Canada end of this project. What is it?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: So there's actually two groups in Canada that are part of the human placenta project. So there's a group led by John Sledd in Toronto who's looking at how blood flow moves through the umbilical artery and how that interacts with the placenta. And then there's my group here in London, Ontario, and we're trying to develop new technologies that are going to let us actually watch how the placenta uses energy and how it provides energy to the foetus during pregnancy.

PC: So a little bit what actually Moffett said it's a hard organ to actually study because getting access to it is hard. That's what you try to solve.

CHARLES MCKENZIE: It's probably the hardest we're going to look at have any of them. We want to be very careful with the placenta because it is so essential for that growing fetus. It's tremendously hard to access and you don't want to do things, like stick a needle in it, or that kind of thing. You don't want to disturb that pregnancy. So it's immensely challenging to try to look at.

PC: So your project is part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health which invested I think at some 46 million dollars into this project. What do you think the impetus was for it to pour that much money into this field at this particular time?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: I mean the great deal of it is just simply what Dr. Moffett was talking about in that it's an understudy organ. We just know so little about it and yet it's so essential for life. You know I refer to it as the most important organ that none of us have. And I think that's actually part of why it's been so understudied is that none of us walking around actually have a placenta. So it's not something we really think about tremendously. So the NIH recognized that the wording was tremendously important but we really know so little about it. And so they've poured, as you say, a tremendous amount of resources into trying to develop new technologies. They're going to let us investigate this organ and learn new things about how it how it functions across pregnancy.

PC: So how much of the pot of gold, the money, did you get, did your group receive?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: It was about two and a half million dollars US to work on the project. So it was life changing for a while.

PC: And you're using that two million dollars in terms of focusing it on the MRI technology. Tell me more about that exactly what are you trying to do? How does it work?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: So I'm trying to develop a very specialized form of MRI where we actually can look at - rather than just the structure of the placenta which MRI is very good at - We're trying to develop this technology will actually let us look at how it's using energy while it's inside the womb. There are no alternative technologies that you could think about doing something like that with technology like [unintelligible] medicine. But of course you don't want to use those in pregnancy because they involve the use of radioactive substances. So we're developing what's in some ways a non-radioactive alternative to that that we can use MRI for and that actually watch the energy use in the placenta throughout the pregnancy.

PC: And how far along are you in the process?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: We're very early on in the process. We are still very much at the preclinical stage so we're looking at animal models of pregnancy and trying to develop the technology there. So we're showing that we can indeed. We take what's part of sugar molecule and we use a process that lets us actually see that with the MRI we inject that into our animal model, guinea pig in this case, and then we watch how that that molecule is taken into the placenta. And then changed while the placenta is using it to generate energy for the placenta, and also to generate energy that's going to be sent over to the fetus.

PC: And if you look into the future in terms of the extension of this research, would there be challenges to starting clinical trials with pregnant women? Like how safe would it be?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: So we're actually attempting to start a clinical trial. We're going through the regulatory process for that right now. It's very challenging because of course everyone is very conservative about this. What we're doing with this is a technology it's already being used in non-pregnant humans. It's been used to look at prostate cancer in humans for one. The molecule we're looking at, it's we think it's very very safe because it's actually it just forms when you eat food. Part of your food is sugar glucose molecule that gets sent to all the cells in your body and it gets broken down to this molecule called Pyruvate that is then used for energy production. And so we're injecting Pyruvate molecules so we have every indication that it's safe but we've done a lot of work to try and actually demonstrate that.

PC: So when you say you're looking a how a placenta uses energy, explain that more for me. Like are we talking about like metabolism or what are we looking for and at?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: We're actually looking at metabolism as we're looking at the metabolism of this molecule called Pyruvate, and when you're producing energy in a cell there's kind of two ways you can do that. If there's lots of oxygen around then that Pyruvate molecule goes through and the oxygen metabolism and produces lots of energy. If there's not a lot of oxygen around then it goes through what's called a anaerobic metabolism non oxygen metabolism, and it produces just a little bit of energy and it also produces a molecule called lactate. It forms lactic acid. We can actually watch that process happen and we can see is the placenta doing it using oxygen for metabolism, is it going through the non-oxygen metabolism. That's quite important because the fetus itself is in a lower oxygen environment than the mother. We are transferring oxygen from mother to fetus. So the fetus has to be in that low oxygen environment and the placenta is sort of somewhere in between those two. So we're watching how that happens.

PC: And as I understand it you want to look particularly at the impact of diet, specifically the you know the Western diet, on the placenta. Why do you want to look at that?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: So the Western diet is what we call a high fat - high sugar diet. So I sort of refer to that as sort of a cheeseburger and fries diet. And so we're interested in how what the mother eats is going to affect how the placenta is working and ultimately how that's going to affect the foetus. We're interested this because of course the mother is the environment in which the foetus is going to grow for its first nine months of life. But then of course the mother is within society and society as her environment. And so we have an environment where that Western diet, that high fat - high sugar diet, is very commonly consumed. And so we're interested in what effect is that having on how the placenta functions.

PC: And how do you think that knowledge you gain could eventually be applied in a manner that would mitigate against pregnancy disorders which is the reason a lot of this research is now taking off?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: Absolutely. What we're interested in doing ultimately is trying to detect problems earlier than we can now. Our ability to detect problems in placental function, as Dr. Moffett said, is actually quite restricted right now. And so by being able to look at something like metabolism like energy use we think problems with that are going to occur much earlier on than all of these other problems. You know for example with pre-eclampsia and the high blood pressure the results from that, probably there was something going on metabolically earlier than that and that's what we want to try to catch. So that hopefully is going to provide clinicians with more information earlier on so they can make better decisions about how to deal with it.

PC: You're not a clinician. You're background's of physics right?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: That's correct.

PC: And so I was the most surprising thing that you've learned about the placenta when you began to specialize in this field?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: I mean it sounds silly but the most surprising thing for me early on was realising that the placenta is actually not an organ of the mother. It's actually an organ of the fetus. And so it grows from the fetal cells so it's actually part of the foetus because I think often we think of it as something that's the mum creates that then the foetus attaches to, but it's actually the other way round. And so that was you know a surprise for me. Anybody who's taking biology probably would have understood that immediately, but for physicists there was a change in mindset.

PC: I'd argue that most people don't know the answer to that and it's a good trivia game question. You know as as you and Ashley Moffett both said, part of the excitement of this is that we haven't been doing a lot of research on the placenta. So like just being at the front end of this stuff is exciting and it needs to be studied more. Overall though to what extent do you see the excitement of extending in terms of getting somewhere with this research? Like how vital is it for us to study this vital organ?

CHARLES MCKENZIE: Well it's traditionally important. You know this is an organ that if it fails results in tragic consequences. Babies that are too small or have developmental delays or, in the worst cases, the fetus dies and we have a stillbirth. And in the stillbirth rates in Canada haven't changed in 20 or 30 years. And it's partly because we just had this inability to look at how important organ functions. So we're hoping that by learning more about how this works, developing new diagnostic techniques what we're going to be able to start to put a dent in that problem.

PC: Charles McKenzie thank you for speaking with me. I appreciate your time as well.

CHARLES MCKENZIE: Thank you very much.

PC: Charles MacKenzie is an Associate Professor of Medical Biophysics at Western University in London, Ontario.

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How the daughter of an African revolutionary learned about racism in a Canadian playground

Guest: Sisonke Msimang

PC: Hi I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: Six years ago, these men with a school kids of Soweto. Today they are guerrillas of the African National Congress the ANC. This is the first time they have been filmed, here in the bush, somewhere on the borders of South Africa.

[Singing]

VOICE: They sing of their leader, Nelson Mandela. 'Show us the way to victory', say the words, 'Freedom is in your hands'.

SISONKE MSIMANG: So my father was one of those ANC guerrillas who actually left quite early. So he left just before Nelson Mandela was sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island. So in the early 1960s and he went off to Russia and got military training there and then came back to Tanzania, set up a military camp there and did a lot of revolutionary things and then found his way to Zambia to Lusaka which was the headquarters of the African National Congress in exile.

[Singing]

PC: The African National Congress or ANC is one of the most storied political parties in the world. And for Sisonke Msimang it was in her blood, deeply woven into the fabric of her life from Zambia to Kenya to here in Canada Ms. Msimang spent a childhood in exile until she finally returned to a free South Africa and an unexpected reckoning with the ANC and her country's history. Sisonke Msimang is the author of always another country a memoir of exile and home.

SISONKE MSIMANG: The ANC back then was this collection of deeply ambitious, idealistic driven people. So it was a self-selecting group of excellence, of intellectual excellence of kind of bravery. These people that I referred to in the book as the first people who saw themselves as like you know the first black nuclear physicist and the first black family to ever live in Norway. And you know so this real collection of people who are intellectuals and who were champing at the bit for freedom. So it was a remarkably eclectic and cosmopolitan community you grew up in.

[Singing]

SISONKE MSIMANG: When I was growing up Nelson Mandela meant pretty much everything to us. He was very much the device in our lives that explained why we were moving from place to place. So you know asparents who had to explain to us as kids you know 'we've been here for a little while and now we're going to move again. The reason we had to keep on moving was because there was this guy on this place called Robben Island. And one day he would be free. And until he was we couldn't go home'. So everything in our life was explained by this guy on this island. And when he was free we would be free. And that's exactly, like remarkably what happened [laughs].

[Singing]

SISONKE MSIMANG: The parties and the music were absolutely sort of integral to growing up in Lusaka especially so there was always a cause for some sort of celebration or another. We were often hosting people who had come, who had just arrived in the country and it was very important that we feel like we were a part of a community. And music is very much part of South Africans blood. Our political music is well known. We know how to get down and so the parties were always full of you know Mary Mugaba but also very much like lots of African-American music from the time; the Gap Band; Boney M you know that was very much the sort of 1970s 1980s when we were growing up we.

[Singing]

PC: What comes back to you when you hear that?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Just noise lots of noise comes back too and I hear that song thinking about all the women who would crowd into our apartment, and the sort of all over the place the kind of uncles smoking and often drinking way too much. Any number of the houses that we spent a lot of time in, especially in the Lusaka days in the 1970s, were just always full of people.

PC: Sisonke Msimang, where were you as a child when your father was one of the gorillas?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So by that time I was born he wasn't actively doing that anymore so very much part of underground ANC structures but no longer seeing any kind of action. So when my sisters and I were born my mom was an accountant. She was an accounting student and met my father in Lusaka and he was a part time revolutionizing part time studying, because there was this real in activities for many years. The regime cracked down on the ANC. there was a quiet period in the 1970s before the children of 76. And so we were really lucky that we got to spend quite a bit of time with my dad in that era.

PC: And given that your dad, as you said, was part time guerilla, part time student growing up in Zambia, what did you know about what your dad was fighting for?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Everything because we spent a lot of time here overhearing and then participating in - I guess I mean that sounds really strange to say - but like revolutionary activities. So we were part of the Young Pioneers and the young pioneers would meet every Sunday and we would practice gumboot dancing and we would learn you know revolutionary songs. If there were opportunities to travel for the young people in the community it would be to places like Cuba or to the Black Sea in Russia, because what was then the USSR was backing the ANC in those days. So it was very much a part of our lives, the idea of that we were fighting for nonracist, non-sexist- like I probably could have rattled off by the age of six or seven. We are fighting for a nonracist non-sexist democratic South Africa.

PC: So what were you told about South Africa?

SISONKE MSIMANG: That it was a racist. That it was a country where black people were not free where our parents had to leave in order to fight for freedom. It was a place where our heros Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and others had been sentenced to life in prison simply for daring to have, to try to have dignity. I mean that was very much part of the narrative of us growing up.

PC: It was clear, what the fight was about.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Oh definitely it wasn't something that we grew up to find out about later. We were grazed understanding and knowing that this was the kind of fight for our lives that our parents were involved in.

PC: Your mum worked outside of the home. What did her brand of 1970s African feminism look like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So my mom wouldn't have called herself feminist and actually everybody in the ANC community in which I grew up, all of the women were involved in some kind of labor outside the home. Many of the women who we hung out with were either senior figures in the ANC, who went on to become ambassadors and all sorts of things, representatives of the ANC in different parts of the world, some of them were involved in the military side of things. So I grew up with a very clear sense that women belong everywhere. And I remember that the 1980s was a time in Africa where it was called the decade for African women. And you know there were slogans all over the place 'a woman's place is in the revolution'. You know that kind of message was very clear to me. So my mom wouldn't have called herself feminist probably because she would have bucked against the label, the word but if you had unpacked the meanings she would have of course claimed it.

PC: And she had hopes for you that fit your class at least because you were the first post-colonial middle class.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We were, definitely. I mean I think what's interesting is that that generation of revolutionaries were all middle class. The African National Congress itself if you trace it back to its history is founded by Africans who are lawyers. This is the learned class. These are people who have adopted Christianity. And part of the affront to that dignity about the apartheid system is that they're saying 'Look at us. We know how to read and write. We've known how to do these things for many many generations. How dare you think that you can tell us what to do?' So they're offended obviously along racial lines but there is a strong class basis to there being affronted by this whole situation. So I think lots of those leaders carry that with them. Nelson Mandela is a product of that right. He's very much. He's a lawyer. So I think that the hopes of that generation were very much tied to building a society where all of us could benefit, where all of us could be whoever it was that we wanted to be. That's what my parents wanted for us.

PC: And pushing back against the narrative, the stereotype of uncivilised, uneducated black South Africans.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Which is part of the struggle that people don't often talk about. Part of what the apartheid regime was trying to do was to try and to tribal Africans. So this idea of creating Bantustan homelands and issuing passports for your tribe was both this crude attempt to kind of fracture the nation. But much more importantly it was to essentialise. To say that a metropolis like Johannesburg, where people spoke multiple languages and had developed this really cosmopolitan sense of themselves as Africans with multiple language groups, that could not exist because that's a threat. That kind of an African with a modern forward thinking, able to move easily between their ethnic roots and this new sense of themselves that was very threatening. And that's part of what I think the struggle about apartheid was about.

PC: A threat of freedom in many senses that word.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Definite thing.

PC: So you grew up in Zambia and you write about this in the book, you were sexually assaulted. Comfortable as you are, what happened?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I was seven and there was a guy who worked in the home who was very well trusted. He was a sort of gardener kind of guy who was often did errands nd I was left alone with him and he sexually assaulted me. It was a very obviously difficult and painful experience. But it was also an experience that I've reflected on a lot over the course of my life because I was silent about it. And I was silent about it because it was sexual, the violation was sexual, and even as a 7 year old I understood very well that if I said anything about it, no matter how much everyone loved me and how much you know the whole community was about us as kids, if you are a girl and you say anything about sexual assault, you are marked. You are that kind of girl and you are no longer innocent. And something about you is spoiled. I understood that very very clearly. And no one had to tell me that. I just knew it very well. So it was a difficult experience in and of itself. But it was more difficult I think in that because I knew that I couldn't say anything.

PC: You say as hard and as difficult of an experience that was, it didn't break you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: No.

PC: Why do you think you're so resilient?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I think resilience is a function of a whole range of things that are- It's like an inoculation and it's an inoculation of love, of people believing in you, of confidence, assertiveness, like all of these things that are really hard to quantify. But often I think what happens with sexual violence is that usually it's - mine was quite unusual in that it was a once off, often sexual violence is repeated. So the message keeps being reinforced that you are worthless, that this is how I will treat you etc. So I think that's one part of why I was able to be more resilient. I think the second part of it is that often sexual violence is reinforced by other messages which say that you're worthless. So. Somehow as a kid I figured out, one, that I have to keep this a secret because I didn't want to be marked. But I also figured out that this was one thing that had happened to me and it wasn't me. And I think that's a function of being given many messages all the time every day that said that that's not you. It was an act but it wasn't a defining act.

PC: And I would imagine that also being surrounded by a bunch of revolutionaries who had to be resilient against so much that that kind of ethos of resilience taught to an embedded in you, maybe without using those words, but that that was a function of who you were surrounded by and the life you live.

SISONKE MSIMANG: So it's a double edged sword. So yes on the one hand. On the other hand that's part of why I was silent. There were always many more important things for us to be focusing on than what you were going through as a little person. So when there's a revolution that's bigger than the little kids who happened to be caught up in the maelstrom then those kids learn very quickly to keep quiet about what may be bothering them, because that's not a big deal compared to the fact that there's this man on Robben Island who's really got no freedom.

PC: So then you and your family come to Canada.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. The land in my hometown of Saskatoon.

PC: How did you end up in Canada?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So because my mother was a Swazi citizen which meant that it was a very patriarchal society. She could not pass on citizenship to her children as a woman. She married this guerrilla fighter who has given up his own citizenship effectively by leaving South Africa. So he's persona non grata. He is existing on a series of cobbled together papers, you know always some different new passport, often fake. So there is no security of state for us. And my mother in her infinite wisdom by the time I was about 10 says her husband like, Dude we need to secure something for these kids. You know they need t'o belong somewhere'. And so applied and Canada accepts us with it's really interesting generosity. I think Canada's generosity is a very complex thing. And so my parents always tell this great story about going to the High Commission and asking you know where. So this is the days before Google.

PC: This is like 1984.

SISONKE MSIMANG: It's 1984 and so they say 'So where should we go?' Like you know we get the official things saying yes you can come. Where should we go. And so the official at the at the embassy you know looks at my parents and he says 'Well you've got three girls and they're all under the age of 10. So you need to go to some more quiet and family oriented. Go to Saskatoon.' He says to these revolutionaries who have like lived all over the world and are part of this like have the sense of themselves as being like too big for themselves. And so off we go to Saskatoon, which lasts about six weeks. And off we go to Ottawa.

PC: Off you go to the big city.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We settled in Ottawa. Yes.

PC: What was it like as you say we were black South Africans landing in Canada in 1984. What were you seen as? Did you face racism? What was it like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: We did face racism but that again wasn't the defining feature which is like kind of hard for me to say given that the story that I tell. The story is about racism but Canadians are so nice and so on the one hand we really were welcomed. And I think there's no contradiction between understanding how racism functions and how welcomes function, that people can be hospitable and ignorant. Some people can be racist and people cannot. So it's complicated.

PC: I do want to ask you about the racist incident that you referred to in the book, one of them, because for any person of color you remember the littlest transgressions to the biggest ones.

SISONKE MSIMANG: They stay with you.

PC: They stay with you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes.

PC: I want you to tell the story about you were called a monkey. It's important to tell the story and as you explain it we'll know why.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. So we've just moved to Ottawa and I think it was actually the first week of school. And we were playing on the playground and this boy - we were on the on the on the monkey bars, and he so you know, smart boy, he says 'Look at that African monkey'. And he starts making noises that a monkey makes. Everyone else on the playground joins in and starts laughing and sort of making the noises. And it was very humiliating. I was 10. I burst into tears and off I go and get home and tell my mom and I'm crying. She comforts me and my father gets home from work and we tell him the story. And my dad's response, classic, is 'but what did you do on it?' Said I cried. And he said 'Why did you cry. What kind of a coward child am I raising?' This is the revolutionary. [Laughs] And so my mom intervenes. She like 'She's a child. You know this was hard. She is not the problem here.' So we have this whole discussion and in the morning he takes me to school. So this is mortifying to me as a 10 year old. I want nothing more than to be swallowed up by the earth. And we go and we have a chat with the principal. So we sit in the principal's office and my father tells him what happened the day before and the principal is very kind and nice and says 'I'm sorry that happened'. And so my father is like 'So we need an apology'. And the veneer of niceness stops when you demand accountability. And so the principle was kind of surprised like 'Oh well I mean. You know this is Canada and there's very few of you guys. And so this is kind of going to happen', you know. And my father is like 'Absolutely not. This is not going to happen. I did not come to this country. I did not leave South Africa to fight for freedom for this to happen to my child. So that's not Okay, under your watch or anybody's, it's not okay to be in a public school system where this happens'.

PC: So what's your take away from that?

SISONKE MSIMANG: I mean what was important about the story is that we went to the classroom and the kids collectively apologized because my father insisted on it. And so everyone sort of in the class in the sing songy voice sort of said 'Sorry Sisonke'. What was important for me was that I saw in action, being role modeled by my own father, that when you are the subject of racism you have agency, number one. Secondly, that racism is the problem of the racist not the person who suffers the racism. So it was a very clear lesson in accountability. It was a very clear lesson that I should not own the problem. And one of the connections that I hadn't made, that readers have made since I published this book, was that when I was sexually assaulted I owned the problem because women continue to own the shame of sexual violation. And when I was racially abused I knew because of my upbringing that it wasn't my problem. So I was initially humiliated but I knew enough that I could tell my parents and that they would help me. So there's still this gap between racial abuse and sexual abuse that we need to think about like why was it that this this kid knew without anyone telling her that on this one she has to be silent and that when she can seek help.

PC: It's interesting talking to because your Blackness in different context means different things for you and you're discovering along the way different things about yourself, different things about the various societies that you lived in. You go to college in the United States. So what was your experience of being black in America like?

SISONKE MSIMANG: America teaches you so many things. Because it's history of anti black racism is so intense, if you are black in America you are anonymous. So often people would like stand in front of me in a queue as if I didn't exist. You're tracked immediately as soon as you walk into a shop. So you become this criminalized person and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Like it's so not personal. And this is the thing about racism. It's not personal. The person enacting the racism doesn't care whatsoever about your individuality. So that [unintelligible] of yourself is so confronting, so difficult to grapple with. Which is why my approach to racism has been to take solace in the fact that has nothing to do with me. Because if I allow it to erase my humanity then the racist wins. And I'm saying that their racism is correct. If I simply recognize that the act of racism is an act of erasing my individuality then that's the racist problem. I refuse to own the racist problem. So America teaches me many of those kinds of lessons because you have to to navigate it.

PC: So as you're going about the world so to speak Zambia, Kenya, Canada, the United States were South Africa in all of this?

SISONKE MSIMANG: So South Africa is always there. It's always there in my mind. It's always there in our hearts. We are constantly thinking about what will happen when we come home. And of course there's a point when my sisters and I are like 15, 16, 17 and my parents are like 'When we go home...' and we're like 'Come on guys. Like this thing is never going to happen'. And then remarkably it does happen. So South Africa is this very clear place where we belong. Everything in our lives is in limbo towards this time when we will go home.

PC: You came home. Mandela is president.

SISONKE MSIMANG: We get to live in the country and he is the president of the country. He doesn't die for a really long time. He gets to see the fruits of freedom.

PC: And so when you get there in the early part of your time there, what are your hopes for the future and your future at this point.

SISONKE MSIMANG: There's no difference between the hopes I have for myself and the hopes they have for my country. I went to all the truth and reconciliation commission hearings. I covered them for work. I knew every single cabinet minister. I had picture of them on my wall in my office. You know I sound like such a nerd. But this was special and important time.

PC: But the exchange rate you get disillusions. Fair word?

SISONKE MSIMANG: Yes. I think disillusionment is a fair wordage because the people who build this new society were responsible for tearing down the old society, there were people whom I loved, whom I respected, whom if I didn't know them personally I knew of their presence. So they were heroes and I think it's really important for society to come to terms with the fact that politicians are not heroes. I think over time my view on the politics of South Africa has really matured. I am no longer disillusioned. I am skeptical of claims of Saviour's and I think that we are in a really healthy moment of reflection and challenging. And I think a whole new generation of politicians are being born who we have very low expectations of which is great.

PC: It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you.

SISONKE MSIMANG: Thank you very much.

PC: Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile & Home. We spoke in September. That's our program for today. Stay tuned for Q. Singer/songwriter Jason Mraz will be in the q studio, with guest host Ali Hassan, for an acoustic preview of his new record, "Know". Sisonke Msimang talked about her own soundtrack of the Anti-Apartheid movement, songs of revolution that you could really get down to. We'll leave you today with one of the best. This is the late, great African American artist Gil Scott- Heron, from 1975, with Johannesburg. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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[Song]

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Friday December 28, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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