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The Current Transcript for July 7, 2022

Host: Rosemary Barton

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE 1: 100% shambles, complete shambles. [Unintelligible] as welcome by a long enough budget.

VOICE 2: The writing's been on the wall. And I think it was getting very desperate.

ROSEMARY BARTON: Countless scandals, more than 50 resignations. After trying to cling to power. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned, leaving the United Kingdom to wonder what's next and what Johnson leaves behind as his complicated legacy. That's coming up in 30 minutes. And also.

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Justin Trudeau is going to have the easiest election of his lifetime. And that's why that's why I think the person really gets to celebrate today is Justin Trudeau.

RB: Conservative turmoil in this country, too. Is the party ready to pick a new leader? Candidate Patrick Brown gets dumped from the ballot amidst allegations of improper campaign fundraising. He blames the conservative establishment for his demise. But we begin with waves of COVID 19, sweeping parts of this country yet again. I'm Rosemary Barton in for Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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A look at the summer wave of COVID-19

Guests: Dr. Fahad Razak, Sally Otto, Jennifer Gommerman

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I basically think anybody that is wanting a booster dose should be able to get it at this point. It's been more than four months for just about everybody and we know immunity starts to wane a little bit. The threat of that would be BA5 variant is very real. And if you wait until after the problem's already here, you're already behind the eight ball.

RB: That's Dr. Steve Flindall, an emergency room physician in the Greater Toronto area. Calls for more booster availability are getting louder, not just in Ontario, but also in provinces like B.C. And that's because there's a growing consensus that parts of Canada are at the start of yet another wave of COVID 19, something Ontario's chief medical officer confirmed in this province yesterday. This time, the variant that seems to be responsible for the rising numbers is a new version of Omicron BA5. Dr. Fahad Razak is the scientific director of Ontario's COVID 19 Science Advisory Table. Doctor was that. Good morning to you.

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: Hi. Good morning.

RB: So how concerned are you that that Ontario is seemingly right in this wave of COVID right now?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: Absolutely. It's a source of concern. The sub variant BA5, which is in the Omicron family, has proved against the virus, has the ability to mutate in really ways that make it very difficult to control. And in this case, it has mutated to the extent that it's hard for our body to recognise it as the same virus that even infected us a few months ago for the many millions of Canadians who are infected. And so re-infection becomes very common and the ability to evade our vaccinations has become more common.

RB: So what does that mean for vaccinations? Right now, Ontario is limiting fourth doses to those 60 and older and certain vulnerable populations. In Quebec, there's no restrictions at all. So does that mean that we should be providing boosters more broadly?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: I have to say, I understand the concern, and I heard your interview with Dr. Flindall. My my feeling on this is that the science around this right now only has clearly demonstrated benefits of that fourth dose of the vaccine for the groups that our National Advisory Committee, Narstie has outlined. And what is the policy in Ontario, which is older individuals and individuals who are immuno or high risk? Now, there is an enormous vaccination opportunity, though, and that is the third dose. So as much as we're talking about the fourth dose. There are millions of people across the country, millions of people just in Ontario and many millions across the country who have not received their third dose. Now, that third dose is really critical for not only protection for a few weeks against symptomatic infections, but protection against severe illness, which is what we care the most about.

RB: And why do you think that is? Why has there not been as much uptake on those third doses as there were in the first two?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: It's a very difficult messaging problem, I think, and part of the responsibility lies on us. On the public health side, we emphatically told individuals that those first two doses were what were critical. We didn't anticipate, and I think it wasn't anticipated globally how much the virus would mutate. And we've reached a point where unfortunately the virus has mutated to the point that those two doses alone are no longer sufficient. And getting that message out, you did the best you could. You did what was right and what was scientifically most appropriate six months ago or 12 months ago. But that has changed now. We have a virus that looks different, behaves differently, and now the third dose for most people is essential. That message has been slow to be taken up by the public, and I think we haven't done a job efficiently messaging it.

RB: Well, what do you say then, Doctor, to people who say, well, if I'm going to get infected anyway, why should I bother with a booster? Because then I'll just have my own natural immunity and it's not going to really protect me from getting infected. What do you say to that?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: So there's there's a few good scientific reasons why that is not the best strategy for you as an individual. So I would say there's a there's a few things to consider. The first is that every course of infection is unpredictable still. So for a young or otherwise healthy person, their risk of getting into hospital if they already have two vaccines doses, is low. I, I totally acknowledge that. But there is the risk of things like long COVID, which we don't fully understand, and that can affect anyone who, regardless of age, can be very disabling for work or for family life for people who are affected. The second is that each of those courses of infection are very disruptive. And so some people have mild symptoms, but others can be really not feeling great for a few weeks. And I'll use my staff as an example triple vaccinated and got infected earlier in the on the current wave. It was hard with young children and work to manage for a few weeks time and I think every infection avoid it is valuable. Now the combination of vaccination and infection give you more immunity than just getting infected alone. So for those people that say, what about my natural immune system, my response to them is that if you want the strongest durable immune response, get to the full extent vaccinated, and if you additionally get infected, you have even stronger immune response. But it's not a substitute.

RB: To take everything available to you. In other words.

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: Take everything available for the vaccine. And then if you're unlucky to get infected on top, okay, you get additional immune protection from that. But don't rely on just infection because we know that's not as strong as getting vaccinated.

RB: So hospitalisations are going up again in this province. How worried are you about capacity and strain, given that?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: I am very worried. I'm a frontline health worker. I'm a physician in hospital who cares for these patients who are very sick when they get hospitalised. I in my career have never seen the hospital sector as stretched as it is and it's not just about the infections that are coming in now. It is two and a half years of a system that has rallied against wave and wave of the pandemic. It's also a system that is historically very constrained. Even before the pandemic began, we have one of the lowest per capita number of hospital beds of the OECD wealthy countries. And so the reserve and capacity is just not what it was. And I think we have to be really be worried not only about COVID admissions, but other respiratory viruses, influenza, RSV, and the fact that if you have a heart attack, if you are if you're in a car accident, it's our one common shared resource to care for people. And it is very, very strained right now.

RB: Last question. Other than getting the booster shot, what's the best thing people could do right now?

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: The other public health measures that we've talked about and, you know, at this point of the pandemic, I think most people know them and they are very effective. So wearing a mask in crowded indoor settings is very, very effective. That should be a good quality mask, a surgical mask or an N95, for example, working on ventilation in rooms. Let's say you're getting together with friends and family and of course, keeping the doors and the windows open and a circulating fan. And then finally, beautiful Canadian summer. Get outside with your friends as much as possible. So it's those steps on top of vaccination. We're no longer in a black and white phase of the pandemic. To me, the most important thing is risk reduction. What can I do day to day to reduce my chance of getting infected.

RB: Dr. Razak, thanks for making the time this morning. Appreciate it.

DR. FAHAD RAZAK: Great to be with you.

RB: Dr. Fahad Razak is the scientific director of Ontario's COVID 19 Science Advisory Table. Sally Otto is an evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of British Columbia. She is a member of the independent COVID 19 modelling team of B.C.. Sally, good, very early morning to you there in B.C.

SALLY OTTO: Good morning.

RB: You've done some analysis for Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and B.C. Tell us what you're seeing in the modelling.

SALLY OTTO: Yes, a very, very consistent picture. And that is a substantial rise in BA5, a slightly slower rise in BA4. So much so that if you project to the present day, I estimate 77% of samples from today would be BA% and another 10% BA4. BA4 is on the way out, though. And so I think it is fair to say we are now in a BA5 wave.

RB: And how troubling should that be for us? Because it is highly infectious, I guess.

SALLY OTTO: It is, and is transmitting that much faster than BA2 and has a 13% selective advantage per day. And that's even higher than Alpha had over.

RB: What does that mean, selective advantage?

SALLY OTTO: In evolutionary terms, we measure how quickly one type can take over another type, and 13% is super fast. That means that over the course of four or five days, one type will double relative to another type. That's just how quick this sweep is. It's happening right as we watch week by week.

RB: And so what does that mean for our protection that we have? Let's assume you have three doses. You've done all that you're supposed to do. How well protected are we then against BA5?

SALLY OTTO: Severe five has two particular mutations in spike that allow it to kind of masquerade and avoid evade our immune system. And that's the problem. One of those is known to allow the virus to get into our cells more efficiently and both of them allow it kind of give it a little bit of a mask. And so our immune system cannot recognise it as well. But our immune system does work against the even this masked virus. If we have enough antibodies in our body, if we don't have a high level of antibodies, then that mask allows enough virus to get into our cells, start an infection, and then it's off. But if we boost, then we see really rapid rise in antibodies and get protection. And that's why it matters that you've boosted and it matters that you've boosted recently because this is such an evolved, changed virus at this point.

RB: So what about the fourth dose then? As I was asking Dr. Razak in B.C., there are still restrictions, too, about who gets the fourth dose. Currently, the province has over 200,000 shots that are set to expire this month. So what would you like to see happen there?

SALLY OTTO: Yes. And in B.C., you're only eligible if you're 70 plus. That's the majority of cases who are eligible and only after six months. And if you look at the data on how effective our antibodies are after six months, there's very little our bodies can't fight off, at least in terms of preventing infections and preventing that transmission from one person to the next. And that, I think is an important. You were saying why get boosted? Well, it's not just the individual reasons of avoiding getting sick, but there's also helping others and avoiding being the one that passed it on to somebody else who gets severely sick. And and so we need our boosters and we need them now. And I would say also NACI recommended a six month dose interval like B.C. has used, but they also say that at least three months, a shorter interval may be warranted in the context of heightened epidemiological risk. And that's where knowing, okay, we are in the BA5 wave and we are in it across the provinces. The one. I have enough data to look at. They all are showing a very similar picture of BA5 rising at really similar rates.

RB: So are we waiting too long to talk about fourth boosters, even though I know there's not enough Canadians who have had a third?

SALLY OTTO: You know, the good news about the booster juice is they work really quickly. If you've already had your initial two doses, we are finding within one week your antibody levels skyrocket up again. So there's no time like the present. And now is a great time because we're right in the kind of upswing of BA5, so now's a good time. In B.C., I think only 40% of people have had their fourth dose. And many, many, I think 30% that haven't had their third dose even. So this is a lot of opportunity for people to go out and get those boosters.

RB: Are you surprised where we seem to be in this wave already in summer when you know what what we know about this would have maybe led us to believe it would have happened in the fall. And what does that tell you about the virus?

SALLY OTTO: You know, I if you look at the interval between the BA1 and BA2 wave, it's about the same as between the BA2 in the BA% wave. And I think the there was more hopefulness than data about it being a fall and not another summer wave. There's the being outside does reduce the infection rate, but people are still inside a lot. They work there and grocery stores, other indoor places. So I think the summer effect is small and this virus evolves. It's not that it mutates at a high rate, but it evolves because there are just so many people that have are infected in the moment. And that gives this virus the opportunity to explore its genetic space by mutating in different individuals in different ways. And with so many infections, that's why we're seeing so many variant after variant case problems.

RB: Keeping you very, very busy. Thank you so much for getting up so early for us this morning. Sally Otto, appreciate it.

SALLY OTTO: You're welcome. Okay. Have a good day.

RB: Sally Otto is an evolutionary biologist. She's professor also a professor at the University of British Columbia and a member of the independent COVID 19 modelling team of British Columbia. Well, as we've been talking about, as parts of the country head into another wave of COVID, still a lot of questions about vaccines and potentially now new vaccine formulas that can help protect us. Jennifer Gommerman is a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto and Canada research chair in tissue specific immunity. Good morning to you, Jennifer.

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Good morning.

RB: So where are we right now, would you say, in terms of what we just heard there, in terms of immunity most Canadians have against COVID and the specific variant we're dealing with right now?

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Yeah. Just to reiterate what you've already heard. The current variant that's starting to dominate our is dominating our population by five is related to Omicron. But it's just different enough that if you had a normal chronic infection, the immunity that you gained from that infection is not enough for you to potentially avoid a Ba5 infection. And so our immunity is going to have to adapt to this new variant that's circulating right now. That's in terms of susceptibility to the infection. However, there's a that's the bad news. But the good news is that we have, based on our vaccination and hopefully three doses, we have a sort of core immunity that we call memory immunity that was generated by that vaccination series that while that you might get infected with BA5, you still have good immunity for fighting off the virus. Once it sort of breaches that firewall of your nose, in your mouth and inches your body, that's still in good shape. And so this is what's keeping hospitalisations from skyrocketing because of that immunity due to vaccination, we would be in a very bad place right now if we hadn't been vaccinating our population.

RB: I like that idea of it having a memory inside your body. What can you tell us about the these bivalent or combination vaccines that everybody's waiting to see if we can get to by the fall?

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Right. So, for example, Madonna, who made one of the many vaccines that many of us have received based on what we call the ancestral or Wuhan strain, have now come up with a vaccine that combines that strain with the Omicron version of the of the virus. Now, that Omicron version they used is not the BA5 version that we are now experiencing as a ways. And so those those two changes that Dr. Otto talked about are not comprised in that current vaccine formulation. And of course, they're busy making BA4 versions as well and BA4 versions. But the current bivalent that they have tested is combining the those the Omicron and the Wuhan. And what they showed is that it does give a bit of an edge for even against BA5, because it's a different starting point. Omicron is very, very different than the original Wuhan version of SARS-CoV-2. And so it sort of teaches our immune system that, okay, the original Wuhan version is in the past. You need to adapt and make antibodies and cells that are good at recognising these more recent strains of the virus.

RB: You've been pushing for more attention on nasal vaccines, which frankly, I hadn't even really heard of. So how much better would they be for? I mean, I guess getting people boosted but also fighting off variants?

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Well, exactly. I think that they should be used as boosters. And what we're learning in the literature is that it's the combination of this really good foundation of memory that is induced so well by a series of three vaccines that then you come in with an intranasal boost that then teaches that immunity to to colonise the upper respiratory tract. And so that's the strategy. And I think that has a lot of promise because for two reasons it puts the immune system where the virus enters the body. And so when you get a boost, as Dr. Otto said, your, your antibody levels skyrockets, you get some protection against infection. But it's very short lived because you're getting that needle in the arm. And so those antibodies are really concentrated in the blood and not so much the nose in the mouth. And then they decline. And if they're already low in the nose, in the mouth because of the route of vaccination, they'll decline even more precipitously at that site. But if you're boosting in the nose, then you're actually making antibodies locally in that tissue. So that's one advantage. It's like putting a bouncer outside the club so that so that you don't get the undesirables in the body. So it's making a firewall, if you will. Yeah. And then the second advantage is that those bouncers that are in the mucosa, they have they're little more multitaskers, if you will. So it's like they don't just know karate, they know jujitsu as well. So they have they have that because of the nature of those antibodies. They're little they're shaped differently than the ones in our blood. They have the capacity to maybe be a little more promiscuous in terms of what types of variance they see. And there's some evidence in the literature that that can confer some better immunity across variance. So there's a couple of really good reasons to develop these mucosal intranasal boosts. And I should mention this would not be a needle, it would be a spray.

RB: It was very vivid description of why it might be better. I only have about a minute left, but you know, there's a lot of people out there trying to enjoy their summer, tired of talking about listening to hearing about anything about COVID. What would you say to them just in the months ahead here as someone who's watching this closely?

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Well, I would say exactly what Dr. Razak and Dr. Otto said. There are some very simple things you can do to protect yourself against an infection. And the most simple one is wearing a mask in a crowded indoor space. No one likes doing it, but because our vaccines in their current format will only give you temporary protection against infection due to that antibody surge, that's not going to last forever. And so if if you have had a boost recently, great. But if you it you should really be wearing masks right now. It's I know we don't have a mask mandate, but my own behaviour has changed over the last week. Unfortunately we have COVID in my household, but it's just, it's everywhere and I think we have to accept that and not put our heads in the sand and realise that it is circulating.

RB: Thank you. Jennifer Gommerman, what a pleasure to meet you and thank you for that very good description of thing. Have a good day.

JENNIFER GOMERMAN: Have a great day.

RB: Jennifer Gommerman is a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto and Canada. Research Chair in tissue specific immunity. The CBC News is next. Then ballots are in the mail. But one name has just been disqualified already from the federal conservative leadership race. After the break, our national affairs panel here to discuss the future of Patrick Brown and the Conservative Party. I am Rosemary Barton. And you are listening to The Current.

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British PM Boris Johnson to resign

Guests: Dr. Fahad Razak, Sally Otto, Jennifer Gommerman

RB: Hello. I'm Rosemary Barton, and you're listening to The Current.

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RB: Still to come, we continue with our presentation of the CBC podcast, Unlocking the Fountain. Today's final episode asks the question Is it really a good idea for all of us to live to 150 years and beyond? But first, questions around leadership in two conservative parties here in Canada and in Britain.

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RB: It's a story of he said, he said and accusations of sabotage.

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First of all, it was pure poorly of supporters on York who are the ones advocating for this. On top of that, members of his campaign had even communicated to my campaign chair, John Reynolds, that they were going to be successful in pursuing this. And so very clearly, Peter's campaign was behind this.

RB: Whatever this is, it has resulted in Patrick Brown being disqualified from the conservative leadership race. His campaign has been charged with serious allegations of wrongdoing that appear to violate the financial provisions of the Canada Elections Act. This according to a statement from Ian Brodie, chair of the Leadership Election Organising Committee, or LEOC Patrick Brown has denied the allegations. Joining me now to discuss all of this are Robert Benzie, the Queen's Park bureau chief for the Toronto Star, and my colleague, the host of Power and Politics, Vassy Kapelso. Good morning to both of you.

ROBERT BENZIE: Good morning.

VASSY KAPELOS: Good morning, Rosy

RB: Vassyy, I'm going to start with you because you talked to Patrick Brown yesterday. How is he and his campaign responding to all of this?

VASSY KAPELOS: Well, they're responding just as you kind of outlined in the introduction there. They're denying that they're aware of any wrongdoing. They say basically that what the Conservative Party is charging is without merit because they don't have the details of it. He calls it kind of a phantom allegation. So what the Conservative Party was saying was, as you said, sort of like a breaking of the law or the rules of potential of doing that through a corporation, basically paying members of his staff or paying people to act on the campaign's behalf. That's the only details that we have. We don't actually know which corporation or what they were paying someone to do. And Brown is saying, well, I don't know either. And so I can't really fight back. The party kind of disagrees about that. And then following that up by saying, actually, it's not just a phantom allegation, it's one that pure politics camp cooked up and persuaded Leo to kind of do so that probably could be coronated leader.

RB: Okay, we'll get to that notion. Rob, you two have details about what exactly Lisak found or was looking at?

ROBERT BENZIE: Well, so Rosy. My colleague, Stephanie Levinson, our auto guru, and I talked to several conservative operatives yesterday and they said that that it was someone within Brown's campaign. Now he has 1800 campaign volunteers. So it could be one of them who alerted the party to these to these these alleged transgressions. And they took them seriously enough that obviously they had this hourslong meeting the other night and then emerged at 11:00 at night and said he's being disqualified. I think Ian Brodie and Company on Lock are taking it very seriously, understandably that if if there's a violation of election law, Canadian election law, that is very, very serious. But the problem is they haven't detailed what those specific allegations are. We still don't know, as she was saying, the name of the company. I asked Mr. Brown yesterday if it was the- is it the corporation of the City of Brampton, where, of course, he is the mayor here in Ontario. He says he doesn't know. So theoretically, it could have been someone who worked at City Hall who was working on the campaign. Mr. Brown says that's not so.

RB: Okay. So it's very complicated here. Actually in the clip with Brown that in the interview you did. Again, as you said, he puts the blame on Poilievre's camp. How is how is his team responding to that? And where is he getting that idea that somehow here, Poilievre, is behind this?

VASSY KAPELOS: So he says that someone in politics campaign a little while ago told his campaign co-chair that something like this was going to happen. And beyond that, to be fair, like there is not he has not presented any proof. A big part of my interview with him was like, well, how do you know that? What proof do you have? And he didn't really have any he sort of set like he has deduced because he thinks that Pierre Poilievre didn't want him as the leadership rival, that he was, you know, a big rival to him, that he may be jeopardise. Pierre Poilievre quote unquote certain win of this leadership race that's kind of he didn't the Conservative Party doesn't like the ideas that he was putting forward because they're more progressive than other candidates. These are all the reasons that he put forth as to why he has concluded that Pierre Poilivre campaign was behind this. But like, there is no proof of that at this point Poilievre's campaign denies it and they're kind of throwing it back on Brown saying like, this isn't a surprise. This guy is in there. You know, they're characterising it as this guy has been kind of ethically compromised in many other instances. And then the party itself, as Rob was saying, I mean, Rob, others in the party's president on the show last night said that the the complaint came from within Brown's campaign that it wasn't another campaign. So in the absence of proof otherwise, I sort of get why the argument is being made, because there isn't a lot of evidence being presented by the party, but at the same time, there's not a lot of evidence being presented by Brown to prove that that is the case.

RB: Yeah, I thought I heard someone I saw someone tweeting today that. Call was coming from inside the house in Brown's own campaign. So. So, Rob, I mean, the I guess the point of this for Brown and for the rest of us, journalists and others, would be to know more details about what the allegations are. I don't think when I last checked, they had yet been handed to the Election Elections Commission or Elections Canada. Why do you think the party is not being more forthcoming about the nature of the allegations?

ROBERT BENZIE: I don't understand this either. I mean, I guess they can cite privacy, but the problem is rosy that they are. Brown is now filling the narrative. There's a vacuum of of of what's going on. And to that point, I and he said the same thing to me that he said the bastion to other journalists yesterday. He these he's calling them phantom phantom allegations. And until the party specifically cites what those allegations are, he's not wrong. I mean, we all we have is this alleged transgression. We don't know specifically what it is. Last night, Brown hired Marie Henin, who was maybe the best lawyer in Canada. Very, very talented, capable defence attorney and, you know, defended Jian Ghomeshi if we're allowed to say his name on CBC and amongst other prominent clients. And and I think that's that is that tells me this is not going to be any less of a circus today. Tomorrow, a week from now, this is going to be a high profile case. It's going to look very bad on the Tories for the next few months until they pick their new leader.

RB: Yeah, although I guess in fact, and Vassy I'll get you to weigh in here before I another play, another clip of your interview. I don't know how much courts can get involved in sort of private internal party matters or how much they would want to get involved in that. So he may you may have hired a good lawyer. I don't know how much use that will be to him.

VASSY KAPELOS: Yeah, that's a really, really good point. I mean, I think history and a couple of experts were telling us this yesterday. History shows us that usually the courts don't want to involve themselves in internal party matters. So that may in fact be the case. But kind of gets confusing now is like what avenues he does have even outside of pursuing the legal one. So for example, his campaign is talking about appealing what happened. But then there are rules that kind of stipulate for candidates. Whatever left decides the race stands. So it doesn't appear like there is even a real avenue for an appeal. But at the same, I don't know. So those are the logistics. But like Rob is right, you know, the logistics are one part of this, the politics are another. And it's not like this story is going away without more meat on the bone as to what he's actually accused of. Yeah.

RB: I mean, I'll say yesterday he did a very good job to both of your points of taking up all the media space to try. Oh, is that his own narrative? Here's a little bit more of what he told Vassy yesterday.

Speaker 2: And this is not new behaviour for the tactics of the polio of campaign. They have bullied employees. My campaign co-chair, Michelle Rempel, got threatened to be thrown out of caucus for calling out his campaign for their association with a convoy. Ed Fast, one of the leading members of John Kerry's campaign, got booted as finance critic by the Pollie Have supporters in caucus. He is using his majority in caucus to bully.

RB: I'll put this to both of you. So put aside the allegations that he's making there. What kind of damage is this doing to the party writ large, do you think, Rob?

ROBERT BENZIE: I think it makes the party look like they couldn't organise a fiasco. And I think it's a really if if there were concerns about Patrick Brown, which there were I mean, we've talked about it ad nauseam over the years since the 2018 scandal that cost him the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. He would have probably been the premier of Ontario, not for that 2018 affair. And now this is happening. So it's not like that. There was any surprise that there could be a concern, a controversy surrounding Mr. Brown. This is, you know, he wrote a book about about controversies involving himself. So the party but the party still greenlit him to be a candidate. And because they did that, this sort of they've sort of got this problem now. I mean, you you speak to Tories, Rosie, about this, and they all of them said, well, we could have seen this coming. And, yeah, they could have seen it coming, but why didn't they do anything about it before?

RB: Vassy.

RB: Yeah, I think like I put myself in the shoes of people who are watching and listening, who don't know, for example, who Ian Brody is or who Rob Mathison is to people who are, you know, the first one leading the leadership organising committee, the second the party president. And and, you know, they are pretty reputable people. I don't think that most people assume that they're out to get one candidate or other or they're kind of have been bought by pure politics. But if you aren't familiar with that, which I'm going to guess is the majority of Canadians, then I think all you see is a party sort of like unable to get its leadership race in order. You see tons of controversy at the outset of the race and through the initial first few months. And now you see in the middle of this race, just a few months from the day the new leader is chosen, someone disqualified for some possible serious allegation with no details and him saying, you know, this is a corrupt. Hardy. Doing it like that does damage to the brand of the party. I don't see how it wouldn't. And I, you know, you'd assume that there's got to be some discussions going on about how to counter that narrative, because the long term effect of it being so out there in the public, I mean, this was the Canadian story yesterday and it probably will be today and for the next few days like that. Does some damage in the long term.

RB: Well, Bojo may bump him out a little bit just for the day anyway. Okay. Let's talk about what it what it means for the race. Rob Benzie. Some people think, okay, well, this means probably I've got it now sewn up first ballot. Other people saying, well, maybe there's some room there for Joshua Ray to go after Patrick Brown's supporters. What do you think?

ROBERT BENZIE: I think that it's going to be very hard for Poilievre up to lose this race. And I think this is where he needs to start pivoting. Even yesterday, Rosa, he released a statement that was really triumphalist and and actually a bit sophomoric, frankly, about Brown's departure from the race. Instead of taking the high road, I don't not understand why he has not pivoted to try to appeal to the broader swath of Canadians who don't support convoys or cryptocurrency or crazy conspiracy theories about vaccines, things like that. He needs to start looking.

RB: Does he do that? Does he need to do well right now?

ROBERT BENZIE: I think he's well, I think he's already got this thing locked up pretty much. So I don't know why he isn't. It's to me, it's lunacy to continue to appeal to that fringe that isn't going to help him beat Justin Trudeau or Chrystia Freeland, who or whoever the Liberal leader is in 20, 20, 25.

RB: Vasy, what do you think it does for the race? I mean, it changes it, obviously, but in what way?

VASSY KAPELOS: Yeah, I think I think the assumption that maybe we all make is that maybe Pierre Poilievre doesn't believe that a lot of that stuff and doesn't, you know, is just doing it to appeal to the base. But but maybe he does, right? And so maybe that maybe that pivot right now, which is which is fine. That's that's what he's entitled to. But like, maybe that pivot isn't on the road ahead and maybe the kind of reaction that you might have anticipated from him on all on all of that, what transpired with Patrick Brown is not the one that he was going to give in the first place. Right. Like they are pretty bitter rivals. And it was a very pointed reaction in which he basically took a 50 million swipe at Patrick Brown. I think overall, though, like does this I think the big question is, as you put it, like, does this cement his win? And I'm so I don't know. It's so hard to quantify where things stand in this race. I think it's obvious that he is the clear, clear front runner. But at the same time, I guess you never know. Like, where do those 150,000 members, if that is true, what the Patrick Brown campaign signed up, like where do they go? Do they stay home? Do they migrate to Josh or do they migrate elsewhere? I'm not sure I can say that Joshua's campaign was reaching out to me last night, sort of sending links to an article where I can't remember where it was, it said Joshua Ray will benefit the most from this. They are hopeful that that will be the case. But I just feel like I feel like it's a bit of a guessing game. Right. It's it will have an impact. I just don't know to what degree yet.

RB: Just quickly, what does it mean for Justin Trudeau and the liberals? Yes. Rob, I hear you. He says he's going to be around the next election. Who knows? But right now, they must be. I don't know. They must be just enjoying, enjoying, watching what they're seeing, Rob.

ROBERT BENZIE: Yeah, of course they are loving it and they should love it. And Patrick Brown told me yesterday, he said the one who should be celebrating Justin Trudeau because he's going to have a very easy time running against a lot of fringe opinions in 20 to 25. Now, lots can happen between now and then, and we don't know if Mr. Trudeau will still be the Prime Minister and still be the Liberal leader at that point. But if I were him I'd I'd be happy that people are talking about this instead of talking about problems at airports, problems the gas pump, problems in the grocery store with inflation. I think it's a wonderful distraction for Mr. Trudeau.

RB: Last word to you, Vassy.

VASSY KAPELOS: Yeah, I'd say the same thing. I think somebody messaged me yesterday saying your liberal panellist tonight was really glowing. I go watch.

RB: Not just skin care.

VASSY KAPELOS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's beautiful, but she was also going for some big smile because a week ago we were talking about serious allegations about the liberals, you know, and, you know, exerting undue pressure allegedly on the RCMP, plus the gas pump, plus inflation, plus the tone deaf nature of their response and things like that, you know, as some would characterise it. And now a week later we are squarely focussed on the Conservative Party's latest controversy, and that's exactly where I think the Liberals would love for the media to be.

RB: Well, listen, we're just happy that there's news in the summer. That's all I can say. Vassy, thank you. And Rob, good to talk to you, to appreciate it, both of you.

ROBERT BENZIE: Same to you, guys.

RB: Have a great day. Vassy Kapelos is the host of CBC's Power and Politics. Rob Benzie is the Queen's Park bureau chief for the Toronto Star.

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Strong campaigner, but poor prime minister: Boris Johnson leaves with a mixed legacy, says professor

Guests: Vassy Kapelos, Robert Benzie, Nick Pearce

The security minister, the Pensions Minister, the Education Minister who was appointed to the job less than 48 hours earlier, all quitting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet this morning, bringing the tally of ministers and aides who have left over the last few days to more than 50. And after months and months of tussle, a resignation from Boris Johnson.

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In the last few days, I've tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we are delivering so much. I regret not to have been successful in those arguments, but of course it's painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myself, my friends in politics. No one is remotely indispensable. And to you, the British public. I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But then's the breaks.

RB: Classic Boris Johnson there for a look at how the United Kingdom finally got to this point and what's next. I'm joined by Nick Pearce. He's a professor of public policy and director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath and worked himself at ten Downing. Nick Pearce, hello.

NICK PEARCE: Hello there. Hi. Hi.

RB: Are you surprised at where we've ended up now?

NICK PEARCE: No, I'm not surprised. I think that this has been coming for some time now. The scandals were mounting up. They wouldn't go away. The Prime Minister's behaviour in office didn't change and Conservative MPs finally just got to the point where they'd had enough and it couldn't carry on any longer. And when we had cabinet resignations and then a number of ministers following yesterday into this morning, it was inevitable that the Prime Minister would have to go, that he would have to resign. You heard that his leaving speech at Downing Street. I'm speaking to you from central London. There are helicopters up in the air above filming Downing Street. They usually do this. They film the Palace of Westminster, Downing Street and the car of a departing prime minister as he or she goes to the Buckingham Palace, to the queen to hand in their seals of office and resign. And that isn't happening today because he is remaining in office. And for how long? We do not know yet, he says, until a new conservative leader is appointed. But that could take weeks or months and there are calls for him to stand down immediately and for a caretaker prime minister to be appointed in his place. So there's still an argument about the manner and timing of his departure.

RB: Yeah, that is strange. I mean, he was before he came out there to to speak to people, appointing a new cabinet with whomever was left and was willing to do it. And I heard a couple of people say it was more like resigning ish. How does he stick around? How does that how will that work? And is that really possible, do you think?

NICK PEARCE: Well, he has appointed new new members of the cabinet on the expectation that they are simply there as caretaker ministers until a new leader and prime minister is appointed. I mean, you wouldn't put much past Boris Johnson in terms of wanting power, and he showed no contrition in his resignation speech. There was no sense that he'd done anything wrong. You can well see the sort of mobilisation of a betrayal, myth or stamp in the blackness of his time in office from the words he gave today. But he has to leave. There's no question now that the Conservative members of Parliament, his party, have withdrawn their confidence from him and whatever happens at some point in the coming days are more likely a matter of weeks he will leave office. What he does then, I don't know. But he has unequivocally lost the support of his party.

RB: I mean, he on what point in that speech talked about the Darwinian system that led to his that will lead to the next leader as though. Yeah. As though there was going to be some sort of evolution. You talked about sort of the build up of scandals without going through all of them. And there are many. What do you think was the one that sort of pushed people to the edge here and they just said, okay, he can't hold on much longer?

NICK PEARCE: Well, I think that there were two really the main one was the fact that the parties took place in number ten during the COVID lockdowns. And the public were just horrified by that, a significant turn against him amongst the public. And that was reflected in opinion polls, in byelection defeats for the Government. It put Conservative MEPs on notice that his leadership would mean, you know, the likelihood of their defeats of the election, many of them. But last week, you know, he in the scandal over his deputy chief whip sexually assaulting two men in the in the car at the club, the conservative club, the lines that his ministers were given to defend his position turned out not to be true. And I think that, you know, for employees, for ministers of the crown being sent onto radio programmes, onto television, saying things which turned out not to be true, which number ten had to then correct was the last straw for many of them. It demeaned their dignity and decency just far too much. They put up with a lot. They made him leader because he won the elections. He did that for him, for them, but even that they could not stomach.

RB: What about his legacy? Because it hasn't been all about I think people might point, for instance, to his actions on Ukraine in the past number of months.

NICK PEARCE: Yes. I mean, I think certainly the Ukrainian people and its political leadership are very grateful for what the United Kingdom has done in supplying weapons, training the troops and standing behind them. There's no question about that. I don't think that would have been different any under any other prime minister. However, it's a consensus position in British politics is one where we're fully aligned, as we often are in foreign policy with the United States. So I'm not sure that would have been different, although there clearly is goodwill towards Boris Johnson in Ukraine as a consequence of this. On other issues, he will be remembered as the Prime Minister who finally took us out of the European Union for good or ill, whatever you think about that, just as just as Ted Heath, his predecessor, took us into the European Union, Boris Johnson will be remembered for that, but he will also be remembered, I'm afraid, for his style of government, for what he's done in office and for. Spectacular fall from grace, going from a very large majority in 2019 to leaving office now in relatively rapid time. So history will not judge him kindly, I'm afraid.

RB: Do you think he is-was a good politician, or do you think that he was self-involved and worried about his own image and what have you?

NICK PEARCE: I think he's certainly a very successful campaigning politician. He clearly had popular appeal. He did as mayor of London and certainly did when he when he won that election in 2019. And there will be a section of the British people that regrets his passing, but most people will have decided and concluded that he was not fit for office. And number ten is a very unforgiving place. It's very hard to be prime minister in the British system when so much power is concentrated in that building and in the office of the Prime Minister at that time, you come under considerable scrutiny and any character flaws, any problems in your conduct, any of these things would get magnified. And eventually all of those things about the Prime Minister, about Boris Johnson, sort of caught up with him and couldn't be avoided any longer. So I think if you asking me, was he fit for office, I'm afraid the verdict of history will be, No, he wasn't.

RB: What happens now if he's let's assume he will stick around until there's a new leader. Will Parliament be able to govern? Because there are real issues in Britain, just like everywhere else, there's more COVID, inflation, those kinds of issues.

NICK PEARCE: Yes, we face a very difficult set of circumstances as as other countries do. And I think that will lead the Conservative Party in the House of Commons to want to get its leadership election done relatively quickly. And so a matter of weeks, if that isn't looking likely and the Prime Minister wants to stay on until October, then I think the Labour Party, the Labour Opposition will try to force a vote of no confidence in him. So it's still a bit messy. There's still things to be determined and I think there will be. I mean, I have to say that the manner of his departing speech today, even though, of course, he went back through the door of number ten as prime minister, was such that I think many Tory MP will say it's a risk leaving him there and it's time we got to go.

RB: Nick Pearce, nice of you to make the time this morning. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Nick Pearce is a professor of public policy and director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. All right. Now, coming up after your regional update, the final episode of the CBC podcast, Unlocking the Fountain, host Keith McArthur will look at the implications of us all living for an extra decade or two or ten. That sounds very tiring. I'm Rosemary Barton. You're listening to The Current.

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The final episode of Unlocking the Fountain

RB: I'm Rosemary Barton, and you're listening to The Curren t. It's time to conclude the CBC podcast Unlocking the Fountain. Today, co-host Keith McArthur looks at the implications of extreme longevity. This is the final episode. Dream or Dystopia?

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KEITH MCARTHUR: So how old are you now and how long would you like to live?

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: I am 73 and I would like to outlive Methoselah.

KEITH MCARTHUR: How old was Methoselah when he died?

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: I was supposed to be 969 years.

KEITH MCARTHUR: I'm speaking with Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a philosophy professor at Brown University. When she was a kid, a teacher at Jewish school asked Ackerman and her classmates what Bible character they'd most want to be. The boys picked Moses or Abraham or King Solomon. The girls mostly picked Queen Esther, who risked her life to save the Jewish people of Persia. But even back then...

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: I wanted to be Methoselah. People thought it was funny. Which was fine. I was happy to bring live in a boring lecture. And I meant it seriously.

KEITH MCARTHUR: But not everyone is so excited about the idea of extending lifespan.

SUNITA PURI: I think my immediate reaction is why would someone want to live for 150 or a thousand years?

KEITH MCARTHUR: That's Sunita Puri, a physician and author who directs the Palliative Medicine Programme at the University of Southern California. She spends a lot of time with people in their final months and final moments. And she's written about it in her 2019 book That Good Night.

SUNITA PURI: I don't know that we have a good way of attending to our elderly folks now. I only see a future and I hope I'm not being too pessimistic, but where these trends intensify rather than reverse. And so I'm not sure if we had a bunch of people who were 130 years old and basically functioning the way an 80 year old functions now. How is that really changing anything? Does everybody want to live till they're completely broken down?

KEITH MCARTHUR: And so why do you want to live that long?

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: Because life is good. I like being alive, so I want to stay alive.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Are you surprised that some people are? Shocked when you say that.

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: I'm not surprised any more. But I do think it's a very good illustration of how far we've gotten away from the common sense idea that if life is good.

FELECIA NIMUE ACKERMAN: Plant life is also good.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Since ancient history, humanity has dreamed of a magical source, a fountain of youth or philosopher's stone that can keep us young. But in the stories we imagine about this magic. Things don't usually go well. In Greek mythology, the goddess Eos asks Zeus to grant eternal life to her lover to Tithanus. Zues grants the wish. But since Eos asked for eternal life and not eternal youth, Tithonus continues to age to the point where he can no longer move. And he just babbles non-stop. In some versions of the story, he turns into a cicada begging for death. And the curses of immortality are also common themes in science fiction and horror.

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Do you want to live forever the way you are now? Old, sick?

It's better than die.

No, you're wrong. It's death. It gives this world its point.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Depicted in multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek.

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Captain. If you're an explorer, what if you had nothing left to explore? Would you want to live forever? When life has become a few meaningless, unendurable, it must be about to end.

KEITH MCARTHUR: I'm Keith McArthur and this is Unlocking the Fountain, a podcast about the mysteries of ageing and the scientific quest to slow, stop or reverse it. From art to pop culture, it seems the fountain of youth is both humanity's greatest ambition and our greatest fear. So what does a world with extreme ageing actually look like? Would it be the utopia Felicia and the Ackerman dreams of? Or the dystopia Sunita Puri fears. This is episode eight. Dream or Dystopia? I first set out on this exploration of ageing because I want to be around as long as possible for my son Bryson, who has profound physical and cognitive disabilities. I've talked to researchers who believe people could soon live decades or even centuries longer. And don't get me wrong, I'm still super excited about that. It's just. I'm also starting to worry about the dystopia part.

SUNITA PURI: Historically, with advances in medicine, we leap to the technology before we consider its implications. If we want to extend life, what are our reasons and what are the trade-offs and how can we consider the implications before we go down that road?

KEITH MCARTHUR: These are critical questions. So I reach out to John K Davis, a philosopher from California State University, to help me navigate this ethical minefield. When did you first start getting interested in longevity?

JOHN K DAVIS: Well, I think in some sense I've been interested since I was a teenager. I used to read a lot of science fiction, so I always felt it was in principle a possibility. When I got interested in a more serious way back around 1999. I was writing my doctoral dissertation in my graduate programme in Philosophy on End of Life Care, and it occurred to me that a related topic would be life extension, which it seemed no one was working on it, very few people. And so that's really where my interest started.

KEITH MCARTHUR: In his book, The New Methoselahs, Davis imagines how things would be different in a world of extreme agers.

JOHN K DAVIS: We would presumably have to rethink things like tenure and seniority. Right. I'm tenured as a professor. Should I be tenured for centuries? Not so clear. We might get a slower rate of change and innovation. We might have dictators who want to live forever. We might have older relations with our own relatives. You know, if you and your mother both look 25, that's going to be rather odd after 75 or 80 years.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Davis says it's also possible that extreme life extension could delay menopause and allow people to have children much later in life. Someone might choose to have a couple of kids in her thirties and a couple more in her sixties, and that could have profound implications for how we think about family. Longer lifespan might even lead to a kinder, more considerate population.

JOHN K DAVIS: You might find that if enough people live long enough that the human race finally matures and grows up and becomes less violent, a little more risk averse, a little more concern for the welfare of future generations, a little more concern for the environment. A little calmer and more sensible.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Davis sees two primary ethical concerns around extreme longevity. The first is environmental. What effect would it have on the world's population? And can our planet cope with so many more people? The second is around access. Would extreme longevity be limited to the richest people in the wealthiest nations? Let's start with the environmental concerns, also known as the Malthusian objection. Not to be confused with Methuselah, the guy in the Bible who supposedly lived for 969 years. Thomas Robert Mathis was an English minister and demographer. He published an essay in 1798 warning of the dire consequences of unchecked population growth. Malthis calculated that populations were doubling every 25 years and said the planet's resources couldn't possibly keep up with that demand. His dire predictions never came true when I studied Malthis university in the nineties. He was kind of considered a joke for grossly underestimating the carrying potential of planet Earth. But the last couple of decades have changed some minds.

JOHN K DAVIS: I think climate change and global warming are the forms that the Malthusian crisis has taken. He thought it would take the form of food shortages. I think it's actually taking the form of of the sustainability of the ecosystem.

KEITH MCARTHUR: The United Nations predicts that with declining global birthrates, the Earth's population will peak and stabilise at about 11 billion people around the year 2100. But that assumes that life expectancy remains constant. Davis wanted to know how radical lifespan increases would change those population projections. So he teamed up with the demographer. If global life expectancy grew to 150 years, they calculated, the population would triple in about a century before stabilising at around 30 billion people. Now all this is just a thought experiment contingent on science that raises global life expectancy to 150 years. But in that scenario, this projection might even be conservative. Because it assumes that women will have two children, the first at an average age of 25. And the second, not till 75. But if most women still have a couple kids in their twenties or thirties, the generations will pile up even faster. And if longer life leads to people having more kids, the population would grow well beyond 30 billion people. What all this lead to a malthusian crisis. Davis thinks it will.

JOHN K DAVIS: You're talking about a several fold increase in the world's population. We're already dealing with climate change. Even at our present population.

KEITH MCARTHUR: He proposes a solution, but I don't think you're going to like it.

JOHN K DAVIS: It will be a policy where you're forced to make a choice. You're going to have a normal life span and have as many kids as you watch as we do right now, or are you going to have life extension but as part of that, you've got to agree to limit your reproduction. And I think that's a reasonable thing to ask because people do have a choice. If they want it that badly, then they can go ahead and do it. But they have to give up extended life.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Yeah, that it sounds like it sounds like a pretty extreme policy.

JOHN K DAVIS: It is to be very, very difficult politically to implement. I really don't know what the odds are that we could succeed in this. This is maybe one of these situations where what we need to do politically cannot be done. And I am concerned about that.

KEITH MCARTHUR: The second big ethics question is around who gets access to longevity medicines. Remember how it was only the rich who could afford monkey gland transplants back in the 1920s? I think we can safely assume that the rich will also be the first to access real longevity medicines. John K Davis.

JOHN K DAVIS: A world where a few people or some portion of the human race gets to live a lot longer than everybody else is a morally unattractive world. There's no doubt about that.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Yeah, that writes itself as a dystopian sci fi novel. But what do we do about it? You might say the rich shouldn't get early access, that they should wait until everyone can benefit. In politics and philosophy, this is known as the levelling down theory of equality. Philosophers generally believe that levelling down so nobody benefits from an available resource is actually less ethical than if only a few benefit.

JOHN K DAVIS: And we don't call for levelling down when it comes, for example, to organ transplants. You know, if there aren't enough hearts available for transplant, we don't deny heart transplants to everyone.

KEITH MCARTHUR: But what if the resource isn't available yet? The quest to cure ageing is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. So is it ethical to invest resources to allow an 80 year old to live until 90? Rather than helping more people to make it to 80 in the first place? Average life expectancy in the world's least developed countries remains 15 years lower than in the most developed. Even in a country like Canada with a government run universal health care system, drugs aren't covered for people under 65, and there are many other ways wealth affects lifespan. Samir Sinha, a Toronto gerontologist sees patients from across the economic spectrum from the 1% to the homeless.

SAMIR SINHA: And when you don't have homes and you can't access regular health care and you have mental health issues and you have a health care system that wasn't designed to meet your needs, because often society is not set up to support these people to live long and healthy lives. So, yes, there are going to be new treatments, there'll be new designer drugs. But my worry is that it'll only exacerbate that divide between rich and poor and healthy and unhealthy people and successful ageing and not so successful ageing.

KEITH MCARTHUR: We've got these two massive challenges that we're not making progress on today climate change and health inequality. And Davis says that unless we can figure these out first, rolling out medicines for radical life extension may well be unethical. Now, the longer we extend life, the more significant these moral objections become. And it's the same with the economic impacts of life extension. Over the past couple of decades, we've heard a lot about the costs of getting old.

NEWS CASTER: Now, economies around the world are facing the challenge of an ageing population and the strain that puts on health care resources. People are living longer and seemingly more healthy lives and need more care later into life.

DANA GOLDMAN: If you go to countries around the world and you talk about ageing, there's a lot of hand-wringing by the governments because they're worried about the costs of ageing and what are they going to do with their social programmes.

KEITH MCARTHUR: That's Dana Goldman, an economist at the University of California. One of the ways governments have responded is to increase the age at which people qualify for old age pensions. Goldman says age 65 made sense in the 1930s when most people didn't work or even live much past that. But that's not the case today.

DANA GOLDMAN: You know, you take the the retirement age of 65, which used to be near the end of life, and suddenly it's middle age and you need to adjust for that or it's going to be unsustainable for government.

KEITH MCARTHUR: One thing is certain, if we did get decades more healthy years, many of those would need to be extra years of work. Maybe we'd go back to school and change careers a few times, but we no longer expect to retire at 65. The other variable is health care costs. Now. If life extension met more sick years, health care costs would rise dramatically, especially if more people were living in assisted living facilities. But let's assume, as we've done throughout this podcast, that we're talking about prolonging healthy years without more sick years. Many people in the ageing field believe that life extension would actually reduce health care costs. That's because targeting ageing would also minimise age related diseases and the costs associated with them. Goldman thinks that's a stretch.

DANA GOLDMAN: I think they make a big mistake when they try to argue that it's cost saving.

KEITH MCARTHUR: But he doesn't think additional medical costs will be all that significant either, because there's no clear correlation today between how long someone lives and their total lifetime health care costs.

DANA GOLDMAN: We don't save any money on the health care side if someone dies early because most of the costs are at the end of life and everyone has an end. A good example for this would be to people come in to Medicare and Social Security in the United States at age 65. One of them is in great health and can perhaps live as much as 30 to 40 years. And the other one has a much shorter life expectancy because they have a multiplicity of chronic conditions. They're both going to cost the same and future value in terms of health care expenses.

KEITH MCARTHUR: So if life extension offers promise to individuals but financial risk to governments...

DANA GOLDMAN: The challenge in economics is how do we balance those two.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Economists have tried to figure out ways of comparing the dollars and cents costs of longer life with the non-economic benefits. One estimate values an extra year of human life in the range of $150,000 to $300000. This is based on how much danger pay companies need to shell out to get people to work jobs that might shorten their lives. Now, these numbers don't show up in a country's gross domestic product.

DANA GOLDMAN: But really it contributes to gross welfare of a society.

KEITH MCARTHUR: The maths is complicated and can be based on problematic assumptions, like valuing a year of life in a wealthy country higher than in a developing nation. But these are the kind of trade offs governments will need to consider if new medicines allow people to live much, much longer. There's one more objection we haven't talked about yet. It goes something like this. Death is essential to the human experience. Watching our loved ones die puts things in perspective. It helps us live better lives. More importantly, knowing that we only have a short time on the planet is part of what makes us us. There's a classic X-Files episode called Tithonusafter the Greek legend.

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VOICE 1: You know, most people want to live forever.

VOICE 2: 75 years is enough. Take my word for it. You live forever. Sooner or later, you start to think about the big thing you're missing in that everybody else gets to find out about you.

KEITH MCARTHUR: The big thing he's talking about, obviously, is death. And that's the thing about the death gives life meaning objection and the many myths and stories that revolve around it. They're focussed on the downside of immortality. But that's not what we've been exploring. John K Davis.

JOHN K DAVIS: I think a lot of people get confused about that. Immortality means you literally cannot die. You are immortal. Whereas a life extension simply means you either don't age or you age more slowly than we do now. So you'll still be at risk from diseases and violence and automobile accidents, just as you are now. But the age related causes of death would be absent.

KEITH MCARTHUR: And that could change the way we think about death itself. When it's natural and when it's a tragedy.

JOHN K DAVIS: We tend to think that how bad it is to die depends on how many years you have left when you die. So it's much better to die at 90 than it is to die at 19, for example. And so if life extension comes along, there is no longer a fixed amount of time that you're losing. It's very hard to get a grip on the idea of how much longer you would have lived. I think it's a lot easier to accept an accidental death if you feel like you've got only a certain number of years left anyway. But it's a number of years you've got left is indefinite. It could be much, much more difficult to contemplate.

KEITH MCARTHUR: It's hard to think about ageing without thinking about death. No matter how many years we live, death will always be part of the human experience. And while that's tragic, it's also profound and beautiful. Sunita Puri.

SUNITA PURI: I think just like the moment of birth is sacred. A soul in a body is entering this world. When the soul leaves the body. That's a migration that I think is worthy of pause and dignity and sometimes even celebration, because it is a movement. And I think there's something really profound in every death I've ever attended, where you see that person slipping away and watching that happen can bring a whole lot of peace. It can bring a lot of other things. Fear. Anger. Regret. Deep grief. Sadness. But if you're able to look at it as a passageway or a portal to another place, I think it can be so profound that words fail to describe what it's like to be there with a dying person, even if they're someone you very deeply.

KEITH MCARTHUR: This season of Unlocking started with a bet.

VOICE 3: Remember? For me to win my bet. Only one person has to make it to 150. There isn't anybody that's going to make it 250.

KEITH MCARTHUR: Throughout this journey, I've been trying to make up my mind on which side of the bet I would take. And honestly, it's been tough. But I'm reminded of a quote from German economist Rudy Dawn Bush. And I'm paraphrasing here, but he basically said that things always take longer to happen than you think they will. But once they start to happen, the change comes much more quickly than you could ever have imagined. And I think that's what's going to happen with ageing medicines too. So I'm going to side with demographer S.J. Olshansky and say I don't think the first person to live to 150 has been born yet. But I have become a believer in ageing medicines that will have a dramatic impact not just for our kids and grandkids, but for you and I. Based on everyone I've talked to and everything I've read, here's my best guess. Over the next few years, we'll see the first signs of an ageing revolution. It'll start with drugs or gene therapies we can give to our pets to extend their healthy lifespan by a couple of years. In the 2030s, similar treatments will start becoming available to people. People born in the 1960s will be the oldest to benefit for people on these medicines. Life expectancy could increase by a decade, and many of us will remain healthy, active and independent into our nineties. Age related diseases will still happen, but they'll come much later and we'll only suffer from them for the last couple of years of life, just as we've seen with the COVID 19 vaccine rollout. It will take a shamefully long time for these drugs to become available to people living in the world's poorest nations. But eventually they'll benefit too. Of course, validating AIDS related medicines is just the first step. If we're going to use these drugs in an ethical way, we need to work much harder to address climate change and health inequality, and will need to prepare for a radical rethinking of everything from practical considerations like parenting and retirement, to more profound questions like How will this change our understanding of life and death? It's going to take longer until we have drugs that could add several decades or centuries to our lives. But I wouldn't rule that out either. The first 150 year old may not be born yet, but her mom might be.

RB: That was the final episode of the CBC podcast, Unlocking the Fountain with Keith McArthur. And that is our programme for today. Stay tuned, of course, to Radio One for cue. Acting legend Denzel Washington sits down for an in-depth interview with Tom Guest host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is the way is there to and CBC listen is the new free app that lets you discover the very best in Canadian audio from CBC Radio, CBC Podcasts, CBC Music Listen to the current live from anywhere on your phone. That's the way I do it or tablet and catch up on show highlights on demand any time. All right. I hope it was busy news day. I hope I see you back here tomorrow. I'm Rosemary Barton. Thanks so much for listening to The Current. Have a great day.

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Thursday July 7, 2022 Full Transcript

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