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The Current Transcript for March 11, 2019

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE 1: Will my travel be affected when we leave the EU?

VOICE 2: Will mobile roaming change?

VOICE 3: You might also have questions about how leaving the EU on the 29th of March will affect you. Find guidance and up to date information at gov.uk/euexit.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: That is an ad running on the radio in the United Kingdom, as people brace and prepare for an imminent Brexit. The deadline for the UK's controversial divorce from the European Union is currently set to take place in just two weeks time. Whether Britain will leave with a deal in place or not, what will Brexit actually look like? Those little questions are all still up in the air, but some of the answers should come this week with a couple of key votes in the UK parliament. We'll talk about that in a bit. Also on today's show.

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VOICE: We aren't remembering that women are 50 percent of the population and it has spilled over into the way we collect data and the way we've designed the world and it has had incredibly serious negative consequences for women.

PC: James Brown famously said that this is a man's world and decades later it seems that the way our products, policies and society in general are designed, the words are still too true. We'll hear about the gender data gap in half an hour. Also on The Current today.

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VOICE: My mother would turn to anti-vaccine groups online and on social media looking for her evidence and defense, rather than health officials and through credible sources.

PC: That American teen defied his mom and got himself vaccinated and as he points out, there is an overabundance of misinformation online that's making so many parents second guess vaccine safety. We'll discuss how we might stem that tide, but we are going to begin in Ethiopia in the aftermath of an airline tragedy. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is The Current.

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'A gloomy feeling' in Ethiopia's capital city after plane crash kills 157

Guests: Hadra Ahmed

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VOICE: The crash is probably the size of a football pitch and in the middle there's a huge hole at the point of impact where the plane hit the ground. It's quite a devastating scene. Clearly not much has remain.

PC: Well that is a reporter describing the crash scene from yesterday's Ethiopian Airlines disaster, which as he describes, amounted to the size of a soccer field with a huge hole left in the middle and not much else remaining. Today there is grief and questions as Ethiopia marks a national day of mourning. 18 Canadians were among the 157 people killed, including a mother and young daughter from Edmonton, an accountant from Calgary, a Winnipeg woman on her way to a big United Nations conference in Kenya and a professor from Ottawa's Carleton University. Of the 35 nationalities on board, Canadians accounted for the second most fatalities. The plane crashed minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa's International Airport en route to Nairobi, Kenya. Ethiopian Airlines has now grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. Other countries including China and Indonesia have ordered airlines to do the same for now, but airlines in Canada, Air Canada, WestJet and Sunwing have not done the same. For more on the investigation in Ethiopia we're now joined by Hadra Ahmed, a freelance journalist in the capital, Addis Ababa. Hello.

HADRA AHMED: Hello Piya. Hi.

PC: Where are we today in terms of the crash investigation?

HA: It's still ongoing, but the information that I've got a while back is that they've got that black box and they have started their investigation through that and we will know more about what happened after that.

PC: This is a major air disaster that happened just outside Ethiopia's capital city. What kind of reactions are you hearing from eyewitnesses and other residents in and around Addis Ababa?

HA: Everyone is mourning the incident and people are really sad and everyone is questioning what has happened and yey they're trying to wait to see the result of the investigation, but of course you can also see by the government declaring today to mourn the deceased. It's a gloomy feeling. The radio stations and TV stations, everyone sending out their love and wishing trying to everyone who lost their family members and friends and loved ones.

PC: Several of the passengers on board were set to head to a major UN environmental conference that is set to begin today in Kenya. Is there any more information about how many of the passengers were headed to this conference in Nairobi?

HA: According to the records information, it's 22 people. Well that's the latest number we've had, but of course there are also some people whose identities are not known and the investigators are looking into that that. So we might find more people headed to the UN or from other nationality.

PC: Well at this point we know that there were people from more than 35 countries aboard that flight. How is the international scope of this tragedy affecting the way government officials in Ethiopia are dealing with this?

HA: Well I mean the Ethiopian airlines is sort of the hub of transit and it promotes itself as the jewel of Africa and there are always passengers passing through Ethiopian airlines, using Ethiopian Airlines and the fact that there were more than 30 nationalities on board when this accident happened. It's obviously devastating and every government officials, ministries are expressing their condolences. Well yesterday I'm sure you saw the photo that was circulating of the CEO. It was really sad the way he was even talking to us during the press conference. You could tell how sad he felt on the incident.

PC: Ethiopian Airlines, the national airline, is a very big airline throughout Africa and other parts of the world. What kind of safety record does Ethiopian Airlines have?

HA: Ethiopian Airlines has got so far, I mean their saftey record of 8 different airlines impeccable. The last incident was in 2010 and we've never had any big incidents like this before. I think the main reason that this is very devastating is because it happened within the country, just 50 kilometres away from the capital and it basically crash landed in a residential area, where you know the residents heard the sound and it was the witness in that area. It was very scary for them and I think the main reason it was very devastating is because it happened within country.

PC: This was a Boeing 737 MAX 8. It is the same model of a plane that was involved in a Lion Air crash near Indonesia last October and on that flight 189 people died. What do we know about the similarities or differences between these two incidents at this point?

HA: According to the CEO of Ethiopian Airlines even though they're not going to rule out any reasons, he said they are not going to draw any similarities that talk about any connections that might have had with the Lion max. They're waiting for the results of the investigation and everyone that we spoke to after that have also said the same thing. So we really don't know if there are any similarities at this point. What we know is like you mentioned earlier that Ethiopian Airlines has grounded all of its Beoing 737 Max 8 fleet until further notice.

PC: Hadra Ahmed, thank you very much for bringing us up to date. I appreciate your time.

HA: Thank you.

PC: Hadra Ahmed is a freelance journalist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As mentioned, 18 Canadians were on board the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that crashed within minutes after takeoff yesterday. Some of the Canadians included Peter deMarsh who was the president of the International Family Forestry Alliance as well as Amina Ibrahim Odowa of Edmonton and her five-year-old daughter Sofia Abdulkadir. They were on their way to visit family in Kenya. Mohamed Ali had this to say about his sister and niece.

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VOICE: I woke up and it was kind of like is this a dream or real life, you know but then I knew it was real. It's something we don't, you don't expect for somebody to just yesterday was with you here today, they're no more.

PC: Another passenger was Derick Lwugi, a Calgary city accountant who had been involved in the community as the founder of the Kenya Community in Calgary group, Danielle Moore, a young Winnipeg activist, originally from Toronto was on her way to Nairobi, Kenya, excited to be attending the U.N. Environment Assembly. And Pius Adesanmi was a professor at Carleton University and director of the University's Institute of African studies. Here he is giving a TED Talk about Africa in the digital world.

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VOICE: Human agency It is fundamental so that in this culture, in this worldview, everything you do is supposed to enhance the instrumentality, you know the life reinforce it, you know the centrality of agency, the human. So when we're talking of all these African concepts, Unbuntu, togetherness, community and all that, fundamentally we're talking about human agency. And that is why at this critical moment when there appears to be a crisis of identity in terms of where our friends here in the West are going with human innovation, human genius, human you know science and technology and all that, then you begin to think critically. What's also happening with Africa because science, technology, invention, innovation, moving forward, cutting edge, all the language, everything is there. It used to be that technology, the West understood that you know somewhere along the line man was central and so you invented gadgetry to make his life easier, to make his work easier, to make everything easier. Make life easier for men, human agency, but at some point, somewhere along the line, we got in to a post human dispensation. You know you take man out of it and so you have all these gadgets. Amazon is getting dangerously close to eliminating man. Now the robots are doing, they're picking out the books, drones are mailing it to you, at some point there will be drones replacing you in your house. Science has changed from the fundamental philosophy of enhancing and and making the life of man to easier to replacing them and taking man out of the picture. But Africa says science, innovation, invention, creation, all that must recon with human agency.

PC: That was Pius Adesanmi, one of the 18 Canadians who was killed on that Ethiopian Airlines crash yesterday. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, in Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM.

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Theresa May sticking with Brexit like a 'tedious version of The Terminator': author

Guests: Ian Dunt

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VOICE: The I's to the right, 202. The No's to the left, 432.

PC: Well the last time British Prime Minister Theresa May faced a vote in the British Parliament on her Brexit deal, it was a humiliating defeat of historic proportions and now she is scheduled to be going back for more, with a new vote scheduled for tomorrow. After MPs rejected her deal with the EU back in January, she restarted negotiations with Brussels end even with talks over this past weekend, European officials have made no further concessions. There are just about two and a half weeks left until Britain is set to lead the EU with a deal or without one and Theresa May's message to MPs is pretty clear.

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VOICE: Let's not hold back. Let's do what is necessary for MPs to back the deal on Tuesday because if employees reject the deal, nothing is certain. It would be at a moment of crisis. The British people have already moved on. They're ready for this to be settled. By coming together as a parliament, we can bring our country together, boost our economy, safeguard our security, protect a union.

PC: To break down exactly what could happen this week, we've reached Ian Dunt. He's the editor of the website politics.co.uk as well as the author of "Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?" and he joins us from London, England. Hello.

IAN DUNT: Hello.

PC: Let me take the lead from the title of your book, what the heck happens now?

ID: I like the way you said it slighty there. Well bad things really and we're set up for a series of three votes this week. This week is probably one of the most impactful weeks that we've had in the British Parliament for you know arguably for a generation. The first vote will come tomorrow and there is another vote by MP, similar to the one that you just played a clip of a moment ago on Theresa May's deal. If she loses that, she is then going to put forward another motion to MPs the following day that says okay, you don't like my deal, so do you want to leave with no deal? The expectation is that MPs would not vote for that. They would say we want to leave with a deal. So then on the third day she would put forward another motion to the House of Commons on Thursday saying do you want to extend Article 50? Article 50 is the legal mechanism for leaving the EU. Do you want to ask the EU if we can extend that, we can get a bit more time and hope that out of the end of that we try to come up with something that is either better than no deal and better than my deal.

PC: Okay I know that there's a lot of scurrying going around today in the UK trying to figure out what is going to happen this week, what should happen. But should that first vote happen tomorrow? Is there anything different in the deal that will be presented to MPs compared with the one that they voted on and resoundingly rejected back in January?

ID: No. She has completely failed in every single way to try and get any change to this. And this was all entirely predictable. She was told by the EU very clearly, the deal is done. This thing that she's trying to change it's called the Irish backstop and basically it's an insurance policy to say that whatever happens in the future, no matter what free trade arrangements we do, no matter what our future relationship is, there will never be a hard border on the island of Ireland, between Northern Ireland, which is British and the Republic of Ireland, which is you know part of, which will remain part of the EU. Now that was a British negotiating tactic. Essentially what she has done for the last few weeks is to try to undermine her own achievements in the negotiation because they were not acceptable to the House of Commons. So she's gone back to the EU and said please dismantle the thing that I spent the last year telling you absolutely had to be in that deal and most people in Brussels have just looked at her aghast thinking what on earth are you talking about? How can you possibly be saying this stuff? And they have absolutely closed the door of there being any concessions in that area.

PC: Does Theresa May, I'm curious, given what you just said, does she have really have any leverage in this situation, whether at home in her own Parliament or with the EU? Like where does her leverage remain at this point?

ID: She has no leverage whatsoever and to be honest, most of her negotiating strategy has been a case of reducing her own leverage ahead of time. So you go right back to the beginning right. At the end of 2016., she's just become prime minister. She's just about to trigger you know Britain leaving the European Union the two year timetable. She goes she does a speech to the Tory party conference basically to her own members and says these are my red lines her red lines were an end to freedom of movement removal from the European Court of Justice jurisdiction and that Britain would have control over regulation. Now those red lines were very popular with that audience. But what they did was they massively limited her room to maneuver. They meant that she couldn't stay in the EU single market them and that she would ultimately have to leave theU.S. Customs Union. And once you do those things which are not really about the political sentiments of the EU they're about economic trading elements of the EU. Once you do those things you're suddenly in an extremely precarious economic position you're talking about a real severance from your major trading partner but she made her own red lines public in the first place and therefore massively limited her room to maneuver. She then went ahead and triggered Article 50 without really having any plan of what it was she was trying to get or how she would do it and impose this bludgeoning two year timetable on herself to do something which frankly would take longer than two years and she's facing the consequences now. So to be honest, what leverage she did had, she had already given up very early on in the process.

PC: You know people, some people, will describe Theresa May's ability to survive all this turmoil, not only is it incredible, but incredulous. She has survived within her own party, but also more broadly. How do you explain why she sort of persists through all this, considering she didn't even support leave in the first place, like the psychology of Theresa May.

ID: Yeah it's a sort of deadening endless repetition that typifies her behaviour. There's very little flexibility that she doesn't really think in a particularly new way. Her primary strategic gambit is to kick the can down the road is what she's doing now and it's why we've ended up here with 18 days to go until we leave the EU in the same situation you were in before. And people are frankly baffled by why she behaves this way. They're a bit baffled as to why she wants to be prime minister. She called a snap election last year in 2017, and you know as a journalist you were there in the audience for lots of her speeches and very often you would see that her hands were trembling. She was incredibly nervous being out on the campaign trail, basically doing the sort of things that politicians do and you look at that type of personality. She seems very shy, she seems very introverted. She seems like she hates the attention, now that is not a typical characteristic of a politician. Most politicians from most local to the most prime ministerial are typically very extroverted. They love attention. They like being the center of attention. She is the precise opposite. So people are mostly baffled by why she wanted this job. They are then baffled by why she continues to persist in it despite being humiliated on an almost daily basis by her own party, by her own cabinet, by her own parliament and by the public itself. And yet on and on she goes. She's like a very tedious version of The Terminator. She just will not stop.

PC: The reality is we've been talking about you know what's going on in parliament, but this of course will affect every Britain and every person in the UK and in the EU. I'm wondering in the UK, what is your read, we are 18 days out, how the public feels about Brexit at this stage?

ID: So the polls are mostly unchanged. There's been a slight shift towards remain, not enough for you to be very confident about you know if there was another referendum that remain would win and probably that shift is because of sort of demographic churn. Basically leave voters tend to be older, they tend to be less well-educated, they tend to live in rural areas, rather than cities. And so you know without putting too fine a point on it that they're more likely to shuffle life's mortal coil whereas sort of 16 to 17-year-olds who are much more likely to be remain, much more open about immigration, a bit baffled by Brexit, which is a quite right wing project is starting to enter into the period, starting to turn 18 and be eligible to vote. And I think that's where the shift towards remain is. In terms of people's opinions, people are pretty much stuck where they were and the reason for that is that this is not really a debate about the EU. The EU is all that we ever talk about of course and you know trading relationships and the legal structure and blah blah blah. But in fact it's a debate about identity. It's a cultural debate about identity, which is comparable to what you see in Hungary with Viktor Orban or in Italy with Salvini or of course in the United States with Donald Trump. It's that same debate of do you want to close in your sense of identity? Do you want to put up walls or do you want to sort of work with other people, be open to immigrants, be open to new ideas? And in that sense, the polls don't change because they're mostly to do with how people see themselves, rather than where the negotiations are.

PC: In a word or two, we've got 18 days till this is all supposed to take place. That is a long time in the world of politics, not so much in real life. If you had to place odds on it, what's the likelihood of the UK leaving the EU on March 29th?

ID: I thinks probably below 50 percent. I'd say something like 40 percent for us leaving before March 29th. We'll probably have a short extension. There are various legal problems for why that can't go on too long. I think the chances of us leaving with or without a deal on July the 1st, which is legally the point where it's quite hard to extend it any further, that is pretty high.

PC: Okay, Ian Dunt, we will leave it there. Thank you very much.

ID: Thank you.

PC: Ian Dunt is the editor of the website politics.co.uk and he's also the author of "Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now?" Everything you need to know about Britain's divorce from Europe and we talked to him from London, England. Alright, the CBC News is next and then we will talk about the Invisible Woman and why so many products and policies are designed with only men in mind. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you are listening to The Current. We're back in just a bit.

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There's a gender gap in medical data, and it's costing women their lives, says this author

Guests: Caroline Criado Perez

PC: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

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PC: Still to come, nothing helps the spread of the measles like a lack of immunization. And it seems nothing spreads the so-called anti-vax message quite like social media. We'll talk about countering vaccine information online, that's coming up, but first invisible women.

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PC: Representation of the world like, the world itself, is the work of men. They describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. That is a passage from the French writer Simone de Beauvoir's seminal 1949 book, The Second Sex. And all these years later that same quote is being used to open a new book about the world in which we live today because from smartphones to health policies to snow clearing, so much of the stuff of everyday life is still being planned and designed by men for men. Even if these things are presented as being gender neutral. In her new book, Caroline Criado Perez, which is called, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, lays out how this has real world consequences for women that span from inconvenient to deadly. Caroline Criado Perez joins us now from London, England. Hello.

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Hi.

PC: You have a lot of examples in your book and I want to start with the one that you start your book out with as well. When the Swedish town of Karlskoga re-examined its snow clearing policy through a gendered lens, what did it find out?

CCP: It found out that despite what you might think, gender is actually pretty relevant to snow clearing. So basically what happened was the town was doing a gender audit of all their policies because of course this was Sweden and they are ahead of everyone in terms of gender equality and it started off as a joke actually. One of the counsellors said well at least the gender people won't get their noses stuck into snow clearing. But unfortunately that made the gender people think and they did and what they discovered was that because men and women tend to travel differently, actually the order in which we clear snow, is very very affected by gender. So men tend to drive and they also tend to just do a much simpler twice daily commute out in the morning and back in the evening using main roads, the sort of commute to work. But women and because of their unpaid care work responsibilities, so women do 75 percent of the world's unpaid care, have a much more complicated travel pattern. They do whats called trip chaining, which is lots of short interconnected trips. So for example, dropping the kids off at school before they head to work, picking up the groceries on the way home from work, maybe taking an elderly relative to the doctor and also they're more likely to use public transports, partly because women tend to have less money than men, but also because for example, if a household has one car, men tend to dominate access to it. So what they were doing in Karlskoga was they were clearing the main roads first and the local roads and the pavements after that and so they were prioritizing typically male travel. And so when they realised this they decided to switch it up because they sort of rationalized that well it's easier to drive through three inches of snow than it is to walk or push a buggy. And the thing that they found after having done this was that suddenly they saved a lot of money in health care basically because the majority of people who were falling in icy conditions and ending up in hospital and also those who had the most serious injuries were pedestrians specifically female pedestrians because women were more likely to be pedestrians. And the thing that I think is particularly interesting about this as an example is it shows why it's so important to collect Sextus aggregated data because if they've been collecting that data beforehand on who was being sent to hospital because of falling during icy conditions they might have noticed how much women dominated those figures and then sort of worked their way back. So I mean really the moral of that story is that closing the gender data gap is not just good for equality, it's also good for economics.

PC: And that moral lesson so to speak is one you teach us throughout your book and your book is filled with examples like the one you just gave and I'm going to ask you about more examples in a moment, but take me back Caroline. What got you interested in the subject of the gender gap in the first place?

CCP: Well it was basically, I was researching my first book and I came across a really shocking example, which was that female heart attack symptoms are not the same as what I had been taught the standard heart attack symptoms. So we're all taught to look out for pain in the chest, pain shooting down the left arm, but it turns out that's actually the typical male heart attack sympton and women are much more likely to experience breathlessness, nausea, what feels like indigestion, but because we aren't teaching this, women who are having a heart attack, don't realise they're having one, but it gets worse than that because it's also, it's not just that women aren't realising it because public health information isn't good enough. Also medical training isn't good enough because doctors are also not recognizing it and women in Britain for example are 50 percent more likely to be mis diagnosed if they're having a heart attack sometimes for certain types of heart attacks that goes up to 60 percent. Women in both the US and the UK are more likely to die following a heart attack than a man and this is essentially for all these reasons that I've been talking about that it's about the data gap. We dont know as much about how female heart attacks function mechanically as we do about male heart attacks and the diagnostic tests that we've been that we've developed are around the male heart attack. And I just found that so shocking you know as you said in your intro we kind of are used to the idea that women are misrepresented and underrepresented in our culture, you know in films, in the media and I knew that, but you expect medical science to be objective and you know if there's one place you expect male and female bodies to be accounted for, it's surely in medicine. So the idea that women were not only being underrepresented in culture, but actually in data, in numbers, in medicine, was just like a red rag to a bull really. I was so shocked and so angry.

PC: So far you've told me that when I walked down the street compared to say my husband, I have more chance of severely injuring myself because he's driving alongside me on his way to work. And secondly if I have a heart attack, I'm more likely to die from him because people aren't going to recognise my symptoms and I've been told not to even know my symptoms?

CCP: Essentially yes and there are all sorts of other ways that you are at more danger than your husband. In fact if you were driving that car instead of him, you would also be more at risk because women are 47 percent more likely to be seriously injured and I'm talking life changing injuries here and 17 percent more likely to die if they're in a car crash than a man who is in the same crash car.

PC: Because?

CCP: And that is because of the gender data gap. So cars have been designed around the male body. So pedals are often too far away. So women have to because you know we tend to be shorter, so we have to sit further forward in order to be able to reach the pedals and that puts us at greater injury in a frontal collision. Also the crash test dummy that is most often used and until fairly recently was exclusively used is based around the fiftieth percentile male and that is too tall and too heavy and has the wrong muscle mass distribution. It doesn't account for all the ways that female bodies are different to male bodies. I mean we have different spinal columns. We have different pelvises and even the crash test dummy that they have recently developed, which is which they call a female crash test dummy, is just a scaled down male dummy, which as I've just explained is not what women are. Women aren't just scaled down men. You know there are very important differences between the male and female body that just aren't accounted for.

PC: Okay that's three for the men, zero for the women, so far in terms of the outcome. Let's keep going. I want to talk to you about another example of gender bias in medicine because as you say, you know the art and literature stuff, we culturally we kind of knew about the medicinal stuff. You say this is where like science happens, where data happens and you were shocked by this. So let's talk about, there was a 2013 clinical trial conducted for a drug known as sildenafil citrate. What was found out?

CCP: I'm glad you said it, so I don't have to.

PC: Sildenafil citrate, I'm sticking with that. I think that's how you say it. What was found out in that clinical trial?

CCP: Well nothing was found out for sure because they ran out of funding and so they weren't able to confirm their primary hypothesis. But the indications were that this drug which is more commonly known as Viagra can potentially relieve period pains for up to four hours and it was it has been denied funding ever since. In sort of larger trials you know the people who led the trial have tried to get more funding and the funding was denied several times by the National Institute of Health because it wasn't deemed a public health priority and you know if you compare that to your erectile dysfunction which apparently is a public health priority and it's just sort of staggering to me there are five times as many research projects that get funded for erectile dysfunction as get funded for PR mess and Im not for one second saying that erectile dysfunction shouldnt be treated of course it should and of course we should be researching it but it isn't as common as PMS isn't as common as period pain and there's just this glaring disparity in how seriously women's health complaints are taken compared to male health complaints. I mean even just the fact that this drug is by Angra you know the way via aggregate discovered was in an surprise, surprise, all male clinical trial for heart medication and it didn't really work for heart attacks but it turned out that there was this side effect this very helpful for erectile dysfunction side effect. But you just sort of think, what if they'd included women in that drug trial. They might have discovered at that point that this could potentially help period pains and we might by this point have a solution for period pains.

PC: So Caroline, you know you say if women were involved in the trials with Viagra, maybe we'd be using it to treat our period pain. I use that as the example, but the other ones you've listed I could also use. It is 2019. So overall, how can it be that even now, a male person, is the default person. Whether it's a car crash test dummy, whether it's in science or medicine, like what is going on?

CCP: I think it's just that it's such a pervasive way of thinking. We're just so used to seeing a man as the default human. And I don't think you can separate this from the cultural stuff that we were talking about because that is so much part of the way that we conceive of the world and if we see the world reflected back to us in the news media, in politics, in films, you know only 28 percent of speaking roles in Hollywood films are given to women then I think it's understandable really. I mean it's not at all surprising that we dont really notice when we are excluding women. I mean and I think if you're honest with yourself, most of the time if someone says you know doctor, lawyer, politician or even person, you the majority of us, the first thing we'll think of is a man. And in fact there are studies showing this. So this is just an unconscious bias that we all have where we aren't remembering that women are 50 percent of the population and it has spilled over into the way we collect data and the way we've designed the world and it has had incredibly serious negative consequences for women.

PC: So let's stick with realms like you know work that has traditionally associated men, which is dominated still by men. So I'm thinking things like police or the military soldier and I want to talk about design because if we treat the male body as the default when we're talking about things like the gear that they wear, like a bulletproof vest or a stab vest or something like that. Have they made any adaptations for women who are wearing this?

CCP: Well actually the U.S. military recently did make some adaptations. So for the first time introduced some adaptations for female bodies, but they have by no means you know fixed everything. So for example you still can't get boots for female shoes, even though women tend to have narrower feet and higher arches. Just to name a couple of issues, but overall no. Most personal protective equipment that is used in the workplace has not been adapted to female bodies and as a result, despite the name, personal protective equipment, they're not really protecting women. So there are some terrible stories. I mean one woman in the UK had a breast reduction so she could wear her police stab vest. Another woman was actually killed because she took the stab vest off in order to be able to ram, use a ram to open a door and then she was stabbed and killed. Yeah. So I mean it is incredibly shocking.

PC: So I know from wearing a flak jacket and my women who are my colleagues have said they're really heavy, they aren't designed for our bodies and we sort of get the answer back like it's what's designed, it's what you get. We don't have one specifically for you. So when women come forward with these kinds of problems and concerns, especially in traditionally male dominated workplaces like the military or the police, what kind of responses are they being told?

CCP: They're being dismissed mostly. You know there's loads of stories of women who have been fighting for incredibly long time to for example get gloves that are small enough for their hands. So women who work in the rail industry and are climbing on and off locomotives and need to have gloves to protect their hands don't have ones that fit their hands, which makes them incredibly dangerous you know if you are having to use your hands and youre wearing these big gloves that dont fit. It makes your job not just much more difficult but also compromises your safety and I think there is just this sense that women are being unreasonable. Women are complaining. Women are expecting special treatment. Well were not expecting special treatment were expecting to be treated as well as men are. And the difficulty is that the men who are dismissing them, don't really understand the issue because the world has been designed for them and so they don't experience this.

PC: You say in your book that some of the responses when women raises concerns, something you describe as Henry Higgins Effect, the Henry Higgins Effect from My Fair Lady. So explain that.

CCP: Yeah so, Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady for those who don't know the story, he is this sort of hectoring man who takes on this young woman Eliza and tries to turn her into a lady. She's a flower girl and he's spent you know months training her, aka, putting her down and you know basically treating her terribly and eventually she has this barnstorming number where she fights back and then he has this whole wining section where he basically says Why can't a woman be more like a man. And that is basically the response to women often. So whenever there is a sense that you know even when there is a realization that things aren't fitting women properly that things haven't been designed properly. Often our response is to try to fix the women rather than take a step back and realise Hang on maybe 50 percent of the population isn't the problem here maybe the problem is that we have designed the world for only one half. But I mean that to me also really exemplifies the issue that I'm highlighting, only in a world where male is seen as the default, would it occur to you that women are the problem, rather than a world designed for men.

PC: You know I want to talk more about work because of course more and more women are in the workforce and the area that you examine your book about occupational health and safety. Talk to me about what the gender gap plays out like in workplace injuries. You talked about walking down the street maybe on my way to work on a snowy street, but what happens to me once I get to work?

CCP: Well there's basically no data. So all over the thresholds for safe working practices in terms of what level of toxins you can be exposed to, what you can safely lift, pretty much all the data we have is in male populations and also in male occupations and so women are sort of screwed over twice. So the male traditional male occupations where we do know things like what's safe way to lift what's a safe weight to lift what's a safe exposure. Even when women were working in those industries and therefore data on them was collected their data was excluded from the studies as a confounding factor. But then in traditional female occupations we just haven't collected the data at all. So for example cleaners can lift more in a single shift than a construction worker. We know everything about safe lifting for construction workers but no one's done anything about it for cleaners. And then for example also women who work in nail bars. We know everything about for example exposure to dust or Bastos from typical male occupations but women are now bars are exposed to all sorts of things like dust from finding acrylic nails which is all in the air. All the chemicals and vapors that are in all sorts of nail polishes and removers and shell acts. So they're working in this toxic stew and all the research we have which is very little but there is some being done actually in Canada where some of the some of the health researchers are sort of leading the way on female occupational health for some reason you all seem to have congregated in Canada. So well done Canada. There is evidence that these women are suffering from issues ranging from dermatitis to potential infertility.

PC: You know we live in a world where data collection is everywhere, online data collection and in a world of Silicon Valley, it seems that the trend is towards you know the hyper customized date. So is there a way in which that kind of microtargeting could make these concerns about gender, the gap and data a problem of the past?

CCP: Well I mean you would hope so, but the problem is the data that we are training all our technology on is so hopelessly biased that if anything, Silicon Valley is making the problem worse, not better. So things like voice recognition software, online dictionaryies, these are all trained on databases that are around 70 percent male and the concern there is that you know when it starts moving beyond translating things online where you know a female teacher in Spanish gets translated as a male teacher in German, the algorithms that are increasingly ruling our lives are now expanding into things like jobs. So hiring and firing, looking at CVs. They are potentially moving in to the medical world. And this is incredibly concerning because there is absolutely no indication that the men and it is mainly men in Silicon Valley understand how corrupt their data is, how heavily biased towards men it is and what a potentially massive negative impact they could be having. And the other problem of course is that because algorithms are often proprietary software, it's very difficult for people to be able to tell whether or not the designers are correcting for the bias in their data.

PC: I want to end our conversation by playing you a clip and it comes from Londa Schiebinger, who is the director of the Gendered Innovations in Science, Health and Medicine Engineering Environment Project. Here she is. Take a listen.

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VOICE: So too often, something is developed and then customers, users complain or from medicine, people die and then there's the process of going back over and revising, redoing it. So we don't need to go through that process. Gendered innovations, which is this global project that I direct, what we want to do, we've developed methods of sex and gender analysis, so that researchers can see how to get the research right from the very beginning.

PC: Caroline Criado Perez, what will it take for more people to pick up on Professor Schiebinger's approach?

CCP: Well it won't surprise you to know that I'm a huge fan of her and I use her work in my book. What will it take? I am hoping that a huge groundswell of anger amongst women, which is one of the reasons that I wrote the book because I think it is a product of a way of thinking but I think it is also a product of laziness of thinking this is just the way things have always been done it's too difficult to change. Well it's not too difficult to change what is too difficult. What I will not accept is that women are dying and I think that that is an compelling argument and I hope that enough if enough people are making it then we will start to do the incredibly simple thing, which is the one policy recommendation basically of the book, which is just simply collect data on women. It's as simple as that. It's so easy to do. Let's just start doing it.

PC: Caroline Criado Perez, I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much.

CCP: Thank you.

PC: Caroline Criado Perez is the author of the new book, it is called, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. And we reached her in London, England in honour of what Criado Perez has dubbed the Henry Higgins Effect. Here is Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins in the 1964 musical, My Fair Lady.

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Clip from the musical "My Fair Lady."

PC: A little snippet from the 1964 musical, My Fair Lady, as sung there by character, Henry Higgins. OK if you have anything to say about the gender data gap in my conversation with Caroline Criado Perez, do get in touch with us here on The Current. @TheCurrentCBC is our Twitter handle. Facebook.com/cbcthecurrent is where reach us on Facebook. cbc.ca/thecurrent to e-mail us. Once you're on our website site, click on the Contact Us link. Coming up in our next half hour with measles popping up again and again across North America and beyond, how do we combat the social media misinformation that's keeping so many parents from vaccinating their kids? We'll talk about that. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to The Current.

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Misinformation on social media can spread hesitancy about vaccines, expert warns

Guests: Tim Caulfield, Fuyuki Kurasawa, Theresa Tam

PC: Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay sitting in Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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VOICE: I went my entire life without numerous vaccines against diseases such as measles, chicken pox or even polio. However in December 2018, I've been catching up on my missed immunizations, despite my mother's disapproval.

PC: Well that is 18-year-old Ethan Lindenberger testifying last week before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He was there to tell the US Congress how he'd become part of a growing group of young people defying the wishes and beliefs of their parents by getting themselves vaccinated. Mr. Lindenberger has said that misinformation, largely found online, is to blame in his mother's case.

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VOICE: My mother would turn to anti-vaccine groups online and on social media, looking for her evidence in defense, rather than health officials and through credible sources. Ideas that again vaccines cause autism, brain damage and also that the measles outbreak is of no concern to the society and to America, were ideas that were pushed by these sources that she would go to. For certain individuals and organizations that spreads misinformation, they instill fear into the public for their own gain selfishly and do so knowing that their information is incorrect. For my mother, her love, affection and care as a parent, was used to push an agenda to create a false distress and these sources which spreading misinformation, should be the primary concern of the American people.

PC: Americans aren't the only ones who should be worried about this. The measles are back and not just in the U.S. where in Washington State more than 800 students have been asked to stay home for up to three weeks to try to prevent the virus from spreading there. The highly infectious disease was largely thought to have been eradicated from Canada, but last week Vancouver confirmed its 17th case of the year. Over the weekend an 18th case was confirmed, this one in the interior of B.C. and new cases reported in Toronto and Inuvik have health officials working hard to contain further outbreak. The spread of infectious disease isn't the only thing health officials are looking to stop. They are trying to deal with the spread of misinformation that discourages parents from getting their children the shots they need and at least one platform appears to be listening. Last Thursday, Facebook announced it will lower its search rankings of groups and pages that promote anti-vaccination content. Today we're going to explore how social media helps spread the fear of common vaccines and what doctors, parents and officials can do about that. First off we're joined by Tim Caulfield, a Canada research chair in health law and policy, a professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health and research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. He is in Washington. And Fuyuki Kurasawa is the director of the Global Digital Citizenship Lab at York University. He's here with me in our Toronto studio. Hello to both of you.

TIM CAULFIELD: Good morning.

FUYUKI KURASAWA: Good morning.

PC: Well first of all, Tim Caulfield, let me begin with you. How concerned are you about the spread of infectious diseases like the measles outbreak we are seeing both here in Canada and the United States?

TC: Well very. I mean it's kind of ridiculous unfortunately. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but it's not. Vaccines are probably the greatest single achievement of biomedicine. They save millions of lives every single year and measles is a preventable disease. The measles vaccine is extremely effective. So this is very very frustrating and it is I think really a modern phenomenon that is associated with the spread of misinformation.

PC: Fuyuki Kurasawa, when you look at these current outbreaks, what are you seeing in terms of what you think is driving these outbreaks other than obviously illness and disease?

FK: Well I think there's a series of phenomena. I think what we've learned by looking at research on this is that the online movement that is contradicting the safety of vaccines is not only affecting people who are focused on really hard core refusal vaccines, but it's also shifting the window of what is considered to be acceptable doubt about vaccines. So vaccine hesitancy, it's only a matter of convincing the general public simply refusing vaccines, but it's also the idea that there is a risk or that there is uncertainty about the safety of vaccines. And so we're seeing outbreaks, but outbreaks are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. It's more that the general population that is starting to doubt the safety of vaccines, as Tim pointed out, quite rightly, this is one of the major achievements of science in medical science and so the idea that that is being questioned in the 21st century is completely unfathomable.

PC: And what do you attribute the growth as you say it's seeping into the mainstream population. This isn't fringe, people on the fringes who you know are conspiracy theories or whatnot, this is really seeping into a lot of people that you and I and everyone else knows.

TC: Yeah and I think that social media platforms and just online platforms in general have a big responsibility for this. What we're seeing is that there's a lack of kind of final arbiter for the truth and when it comes to social media platforms so opinion by and if it becomes popular viral is as influential if not more influential then the studies done by medical professionals or a public health official declarations. So were seeing the spread of these on people's news feeds online or seeing also the way in which vaccination groups have been very effective at mobilizing algorithms on the part of platforms such as YouTube or Facebook or Instagram in order to game the system so that their messages whether they be advertising or whether they be so-called news stories or fake news stories in this case are spreading in or becoming popular online and appearing on everyday people's news feeds, even though you may not be interested in anti-vaccination or even concerned about vaccines themselves.

PC: Tim, when you look at you know social media and you see the misinformation or perhaps arguably better put, the falsehoods, the lies about vaccination. How much do these sites, the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the whatevers on social media, how much is that responsible for the falsehoods that are spreading?

TC: I think you know gets a lot of blame. You know as was noted you know the hardcore antivaxxers are a relatively small, cohort. You're looking at, depending on the survey, you're looking at, 2 to 5 percent of the population. We're probably not going to change their mind, but it's this broader vaccination hesitant group that, which depending on the survey by 20 to 30 percent of Canadians have some degree of doubt. The spread of this kind of information can really have an influence and studies have shown that's just be exposed to conspiracy theories. You don't have to be a hardcore conspiracy theorist just being exposed to that information can create a degree of hesitancy. Being exposed to false balance you know suggesting that there is this ongoing debate about the value and the risks and create hesitancy and so this kind the spread of this information just being exposed to it can really have an impact.

PC: Tim Caulfield I mean you took on Gwyneth Paltrow and her claims and sales of purported health product. When it comes to anti-vaxxers there is a celebrity culture that also surrounds this, most notably Jenny McCarthy. To what extent does that amplify the misinformation and this going sort of mainstream, this vaccine hesitancy movement?

TC: It's played a huge role, I think. And in part because the way in which celebrities can have an impact. So Jenny McCarthy is the classic example right. When she was on Larry King years ago talking about the idea that her child got Autism from from a vaccine, which is an entire myth. That is completely false. She was telling this compelling story right. She had this narrative to tell. So she's on Larry King and it's Jenny McCarthy and I think there were three other experts on there with her and these are probably people who studied vaccines their entire life, you know immunologists, physicians and e remember Jenny McCarthy. Yes it's because she's a celebrity, but also because she's telling this compelling story that's going to resonate with parents, who want to do what is best for their kids. So she's inviting doubt and she creates this fear. So we remember that and you know research tells us if something is compelling, we're more likely to recall it and that again creates this hesitancy.

PC: Would it be useful if another celebrity, let's use Beyonce as the example, went out there and said I got my kids vaccinated and they don't have the measles. Right. And if they told their story, would that be helpful in terms of countering this celebrity culture around anti-vaccination, I'm not saying all celebrities, I'm just saying that when celebrities say things it gets amplified.

TC: Yeah. I do think it would help. And I think we can put this more broadly, we need to think of creative communication strategies right. I'm not saying that we should use anecdote to find the right anecdote because you hoes want to rely on the good and the good evidence and you got to use fear mongering. But we can use you know these kinds of strategies whether you're talking about you know whether you're talking about using stories and there's interesting research that shows that if you use a story from the perspective of a parent about the impact of these diseases it can sway the vaccination hesitant towards vaccinating. So I do think we have to average you know the same kind of tools that pop culture uses to get across the misinformation to get across to good science.

PC: Fuyuki Kurasawa, I'm a kid of the 70s. Kids of the 70s and 80s, most of us are vaccinated, right. So we are now parents who are probably vaccinated ourselves, who are adopting anti-vaccination perspectives. What's at the core of that because it's almost a contradiction?

FK: It's a contradiction, but the problem of course is that a lot of the language has been used by the anti-vaccine movement, they've appropriated language that was that was and is popular to the States. So they're speaking in terms of freedom of choice. They're speaking about the idea of having a kind of voluntary consent around this, informed consent. This is language that we are all of us. None of us are informed consent or the freedom of choice. The problem is the appropriation of that type of language and the misuse of it by the axing movement such that parents today who may subscribe to these who may also be suspicious of big pharma in various ways or who have a tendency towards an inclination towards natural medicine or natural forms of healing will be receptive to the kinds of messages the at over acting movement is promoting. So in many ways I think that what we have to do is also go back to the idea of trusting expertise medical and scientific expertise. One of the things that social media is really bad at doing is exactly that acting as a kind of promoter of forms of expertise, forms of scientific truth and evidence and treating those as not equal to the opinions of anti-vaxxers and the spread of misinformation and pseudo science by these movements.

PC: You know I was speaking, interviewing someone yesterday who I said who at one point was vaccine hesitant and she said, I said what did you do. She said well I went on Google, I said did you just say are vaccines safe, she said no I typed in like dangers of vaccines and I got all these "credible results," people with MD behind their names. So doctors that are saying this. So this isn't just like opinion of mother whose child they say got something from getting a vaccine. This is quote unquote or perhaps realistically medical experts who are also weighing in on social media.

FK: Well I think it's important to know that the percentage of credible medical experts who actually are anti-vaxxers is minimal, if not infinitesimal. So it is possible of course that one could find a doctor possibly somewhere who will believe this, but again it's a very very fringe belief and it's something that mainstream medical associations and scientific national scientific academies have completely debunked. So of course one can find the information of the problem and the phenomenon that you point out is that the vaccine movement has been excellent in gaming algorithms whether it be Google search algorithms or whether it be on Facebook or on YouTube in order for the ordinary person doing a search and vaccines one of the first options that comes out is vaccine choice or danger of vaccines one when simply topes and vaccines or vaccine risks so they've been very effective at promoting their views in terms of showing the type of Google or Facebook searches or news feeds in addition to using social media to promote aggressively through advertising campaigns their messages.

PC: Let's talk about the companies, right, the Googles, the Facebook, Facebook who owns Instagram. So last week, Tim Caulfield, Facebook announced it's going to crack down on anti-vaxxer groups. It says you know we're going to take down the private groups, we're not going to promote them. We're going to do what we need to do to sort of make those searches less possible, if I can put it that way. How confident are you in Facebook's ability to do that?

TC: Well look I'm glad they're starting, I'll put it that way. You know I think it's going to be really challenging because these groups are nimble right. They're going to figure out ways around the adjustments that have been made, but I think it's a good start. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you know these really are polarisation machines. They polarized the discourse and they create the impression that there is a debate to be had about the safety and efficacy of vaccines right. And so creating algorithms are adjusting their algorithms to help with that phenomena I think is is a good thing. But you know this is going to be an ongoing battle right that we're not going to be able to fix it all at once it's going to be an ongoing battle not just in this Fiorino this is the age of misinformation. And I really think that this we need to think of new strategies to constantly combat this but also to get out the good information there is interesting research that shows that social media can also be a constructive force raids not all bad news. You know you can use social media to spread the information about the value of vaccines and to spread stories about vaccines and to really hopefully inform parents. So they can make what I think is a science informed choice.

PC: You know vaccines are good for you, nothing to see here kind of stuff, isn't really the kind of information that people like to spread. Right, like everything is good.

FK: Right and I think that's one of the phenomenons with social media is that it works according to an attention economy model, which is to say that the more spectacular, the more viral, the more opinionated or polarizing claim is the more attention it's going to get, the more views its going to get on social media platforms. And so the fairly moderate opinions of medical health professionals or scientific experts of people like I was speaking about this is not necessarily going to provoke a kind of great reaction online. The business model of social media platforms is also based on a kind of monetization of personal data that requires user engagement. The more users there are the longer they spend on these platforms the more data is harvested from them the more valuable it is. So on the one hand Facebook and Google and others are trying to either eliminate or at least decrease the influence and the presence at home axing movement online beyond overhand the fact that there is a controversy the fact that people are discussing this is promoting user engagement and is also a mechanism by which they can monetize their platforms even further. So there is that there is a paradox in the within the business model social media platforms and how they deal with anti-vaccine movement sand other fringe groups online.

PC: And so Tim Caulfield said look the Facebook move is a good first step. Where are you, like what more can and I guess I shouldn't pick on Facebook because there is a lot of social media sites and Google and search engines, that are sort of perpetuating this. So what else can social media companies and big companies do to stave the spread of misinformation?

FK: Well I think when it comes to Facebook in particular, there is for instance the presence of we know a large private Facebook groups where the anti-vaxxing message is being spread and they become impervious to the kinds of evidence that would contradict them. These Facebook groups simply have to be banned I think that that's one of the steps that Facebook.

PC: Like go in and ban private Facebook groups that talk about anti-vaccination?

FK: Yes absolutely, I think that's one of the steps that Facebook should definitely consider taking. I think that we can take heart and the fact that Pinterest for instance simply has banned vaccination content on its platform, particularly anti-vaxxing messages and has done that because it noticed that most of the content about vaccines on its platform was actually from parents and was actually in the vaccine hesitancy of the vaccine camp.

PC: So you can't do anything about vaccine or anti-vaccination on Pinterest.

FK: Well you can't according to their latest policies around that and that's been you know for some people I think a necessary measure that's been taken.

PC: You know we did an interview on this program a couple months ago about how Russian trolls are exacerbating the vaccine debate. They're right in there, the trolls separating and you know being fake humans and getting into the debate. So Tim Caulfield, you know you had said earlier that we got a long way to go. It almost seems like this time of fake news and misinformation that this is kind of an untenable thing to harness at this point.

TC: It is extremely difficult. Sophia Rosenfeld, you know the academic great quote in The New Yorker recently where she pointed out that the social media really promotes what is popular, right. It doesn't promote what is true, it doesn't promote what's factual. And she knows that it creates this culture of untruth. I love that phrase because I really think that that's that's what's happening here. You know your you're wrestling with the enemy when you're trying to get this information. But if we have any other other choice but to try to tackle what social media is doing in this domain and again not just with vaccines, but with so many other things. You know GMOs, with how people view dieting and on and on and we've got to figure out strategies and it's going to be an ongoing battle.

PC: Let's end this way. Fuyuki Kurasawa, what you want medical professionals and doctors to do? People who are anti-vaxxers and some people who are vaccine hesitancy, don't go to see traditional medical professionals because they want to get lectured about why they should get vaccines and so they just don't go. What do you want to see doctors and medical professionals doing to help combat the misinformation?

FK: Well I think the first thing to say is that I think the doctors and medical health professionals have been doing a lot already. We can see that there are campaigns in clinics and medical clinics across the country with posters and doctors themselves speaking about this topic. We also know that there are many doctors who have been active on social media and traditional media by speaking about the safety of vaccines but I do think that medical health professional scientific experts we tend to have a kind of traditional model to communicate with the general public which is a top down model where we have the sources of expertise. But the problem of course is that when it comes to social media when it comes to the kind of war on truth that is occurring those kinds of top down strategies are not always that effective and so I think outlying public health professionals medical experts with people in public relations and social media campaigning can be really really useful to speak about the art of marketing a message that is one that will grip people on social media platforms, the kind of form of communication that is much more horizontal, that is more grass roots, that is a network-based is going to be much more effective.

PC: Tim Caulfield, what do you think medical professionals, doctors and others should be doing?

TC: When you're having that one on one conversation, you know I think it's really important to listen. You know not everyone is hesitant for the same reason. There could be access issues with vaccines that could be have to do with who their healthcare provider is. So you know listen to what those concerns are, tailor the message to that individual's particular values. Use different kinds of strategies don't just pour more information on them. Yes emphasize with the scientific consensus is I think that's important. But but but also use use other strategies use those stories in order to ensure that you are dealing with what ever that Bridgewater's personal concerns are. I do think that we have to invite the scientific community to become more engaged get online, let's be part of this broader science communication answer because that's the only way we're going to win this battle.

PC: Tim Caulfield and Fuyuki Kurasawa, thank you both for your time. I appreciate it.

TC: Thank you.

FK: Thank you.

PC: Tim Caulfield is a Canada research chair in health, law and policy at the University of Alberta. And Fuyuki Kurasawa is the director of the Global Digital Citizenship Lab at York University in Toronto. By the way, we did request comment from a number of social media platforms including Facebook and YouTube. We had no response. Well for more on what can be done to help doctors and other medical professionals, I'm joined now by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer. Dr. Tam is in Ottawa. Hello.

THERESA TAM: Hello.

PC: So as you listen to our last two guests, what was going through your mind?

TT: A lot of what they're saying really resonates with me in terms of doing a better job at tackling social media. Facebook, Twitter, these corporations, need to take more responsibility, need to take up their corporate social responsibility because measles and other vaccine preventable diseases are spreading and people are dying around the world. I also think that what they've announced recently in terms of Facebbok and Pinterest, is a start, but I think they're still learning and we're learning about some of the better strategies to use to reduce the impact of the false information and up the ante on the truth basically.

PC: Well let me ask you about the public health realm of this because you're the chief medical officer. So you know you're not getting people into your doctors office to talk to them about the pros of vaccination. You are trying to convince you know a whole bunch of people to go out and get vaccinated. So what are the challenges that you are facing in trying to address this issue?

TT: Well I think first of all just to put everything into perspective only about you know three percent of people are absolutely against vaccine. So one of the really key things that we're trying to do is enable the frontline healthcare professionals because based on our surveys parents and Canadians still trust their physicians nurses on the front line. So one of the first things that we have been doing is galvanizing resources and information supporting a site called canned vac which provides that information to my physician through the information about vaccines and how they should approach a parent and being open and respectful listening to their individual needs because the vaccine group is not homogeneous. They all have slightly different needs and we need to be able to answer those questions. While I can't do this personally in every clinic, I'm trying to empower those who are in front of parents to have the right information at hand.

PC: And to those parents who aren't going to doctors or not taking their children to doctors or pediatricians, who instead are maybe taking them to a natural path or some some kind of "medical professional," how do we reach them?

TT: The reality is that everybody goes online and search for things right. So I think that tackling the online environment are important. No one wants to actually be scammed, but we need to arm our public just as I think people are doing in schools now and how to spot false information or fake news and then we need to do a better job I think in redirecting people to trusted sources. So we need to increase our visibility. We are improving on our ways. For example using the Google Adwords search engine marketing to up the search so that when someone does Google a word it goes to our site Public Health Agency of Canada, Government of Canada or other credible sites. By directing traffic to our site we've increased for example our web visits by 1600 percent. So that's a simple leveraging of social media platforms. You know we tend to give a bunch of data and facts, but we need to engage people much more at an emotional level. Celebrities on the other end are for providing compelling stories. We need to give parents and others with a compelling story the platform to tell them as well.

PC: And are you doing that? Like are you in the process of launching a campaign like that?

TT: Absolutely. So we have launched a much broader campaign and in January of this year we put out a narrative a story called Colton's story a very unfortunate story from a heartfelt parent about the risk of dying from influenza and the fee for influenza vaccine. There's also some very powerful stories of parents who have changed their minds over time and I think they are actually really good at taking someone through their thought processes.

PC: What about putting literature in schools because we know that there is evidence that if an eight-year-old child gets a pamphlet to go home with their mom, the mom usually reads it and that often does convince their mother.

TT: That's a brilliant idea, getting kids involved. So we have a really neat project that we're supporting called Kids Boost Immunity to raise student literacy, but it's done a fun and interesting way. There's quizzes and things and competitions and students and teachers get engaged. The one really cool aspect of this platform is encourages learning by appealing to the student altruistic tendencies because by participating and providing and doing quizzes, every time they do that a donation is made to provide vaccines for children in developing nations.

PC: Okay here's your chance to make your pitch because there's someone listening who is pregnant or they have young children, a mother or father, what do you want to say to them? They're struggling with the sheer amount of information and misinformation. These are well-intentioned people, just want to do the best for their kids or their soon to be born children and they're trying to figure out what to do. Make your pitch.

TT: Well there is actually no debate. Vaccines are safe. We have been using them for many many decades and the side effects are extremely rare and they're really effective. They haven't seen the impact of vaccine-preventable diseases, but I encourage them to actually go to the public health agency website, which is a credible website. Get your information from the right sources. Don't be scammed and ask your doctor as many questions as you wish to ask. Don't be afraid to do it. We're trying to make sure you get that information and no question is ever a silly question. Go ask it.

PC: Dr. Theresa Tam, thank you for your time. I appreciate it as well.

TT: Great. Thank You.

PC: Bye bye.

TT: Bye bye.

PC: Dr. Theresa Tam is Canada's chief public health officer. That's it for The Current today. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay. We'll talk again tomorrow.

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Mar. 11, 2019 episode transcript

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