Boo! A brief history of technology scares

By Peter Nowak - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

Halloween isn’t the only time when everybody seems to enjoy being frightened. We must enjoy it year round, given the steady diet of fear the media keeps us on. It’s particularly true in the technology world. Over the past year, we’ve had the ongoing Wi-Fi cancer scare, more stories about the potential problems with biotechnology and lots and lots of attention paid to how the Internet is threatening our privacy.

Alas, a glance through time shows this is nothing new. People have been worrying about the effects of new technology since, well, fire.

Here, then, are five great examples from history. Continue…

The House will pass judgment on asbestos

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

This evening the House of Commons will vote on the following NDP motion.

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) ban the use and export of asbestos; (b) support international efforts to add chrysotile asbestos to the list of hazardous chemical products under the Rotterdam Convention; (c) assist affected workers by developing a Just Transition Plan with measures to accommodate their re-entry into the workforce; (d) introduce measures dedicated to affected older workers, through the employment insurance program, to assure them of a decent standard of living until retirement; and (e) support communities and municipalities in asbestos producing regions through an investment fund for regional economic diversification.

The government whip’s office won’t say whether this will be considered a free vote for Conservatives.

Conservative MP Patricia Davidson has lobbied the government to reconsider its position on asbestos in the past and restated her opposition to exports two months ago. Former cabinet minister Chuck Strahl, father of current Conservative MP Mark Strahl, has recommended that Canada support the addition of asbestos to the Rotterdam Convention.

Full archive of asbestos coverage here.

Health Canada issues warning about cellphone radiation

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 1:16 PM - 8 Comments

Health Canada is calling on parents to limit their children’s use of cell phones, for fear the resulting exposure to radiation could be harmful. The warning comes despite the health agency’s own admission that “there is currently a lack of scientific information regarding the potential health impacts of cell phones on children,” and that currently available evidence is “far from conclusive.” The warning follows a decision by the cancer arm of the World Health Organization to classify the radiation from cellphones as “possibly carcinogenic” to humans.

CTV News

Seth Rogen makes cancer a laughing matter in 50/50

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 2 Comments

(from left) Anna Kendrick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen in '50/50'

Cancer comedy. Now there’s a genre you don’t run across every day. In fact,  50/50 may well be the first  of its kind—a buddy movie with a narrative arc wrapped around chemotherapy sessions. Not that it’s all laughs. The comedy/drama ratio is about 50/50, the odds that Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the story’s shy and charming protagonist, is given to survive after a large and rare tumour is discovered next to his spine.

Although the script is apparently not autobiographical, it was inspired by screenwriter Will Reiser’s own experience as a young cancer survivor—he was diagnosed with just such a tumour after working as an associate producer on Da Ali G Show with Vancouver writers Seth Rogen and Evan Golberg (the Vancouver high-school mates who would go on to make Superbad.) The film is not just shot in Vancouver, by the way, but explicitly set in Vancouver.

Directed by Jonathan Levine (The Wackness), 50/50 is essentially a buddy movie, with Rogen co-starring as Kyle, Adam’s best friend and ebullient wing-man. As soon as the diagnosis drops, Kyle is whipping out the upbeat one-liners: “Every celebrity beats cancer! Lance Armstrong, he gets it all the time. . . Patrick Swayze . . . Oh, he’s dead? . . . 50/50! If you were a casino game you’d have the best odds!”

After Adam’s girlfriend turns out to be an unsupportive bitch, Kyle tries to get him laid, coaching him to use the C-card to pick up girls—”Get to the cancer thing faster. That’s your hook man.” That, of course, takes a bit of practice. Adam, meanwhile, as a young patient in an old man’s game, latches onto a couple of older cronies in chemo, all of them smoking their blues away with prescribed pot. Continue…

2 million women diagnosed with cancer in 2010: report

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

Around the world, two million women were diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer last year, according to new global statistics from worldwide cancer registries, the BBC reports. A sharp rise was seen in women under 50 in developing countries, while women in developed countries did better due to health policies, screening and better health care. Breast cancer cases are rising each year at about 3 per cent, with death rates rising at 2 per cent per year. An aging population, diet, obesity, and economics are among the contributing factors.

BBC News

‘That’s their choice’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 4:43 PM - 17 Comments

A few weeks after a group of doctors and medical professionals called on Conservative MP Kellie Leitch to renounce her government’s position on asbestos, a group of individuals who’ve lost loved ones to asbestos-related illness are calling on Ms. Leitch to choose between politics and her medical license. When she spoke to the Barrie Advance earlier this month, she seemed unpersuaded by the controversy.

“The Canadian government has stated that it supports the safe controlled use of Chrysotile,” said Leitch. “It will continue to do so, anything to do with the decision that [buyers] make – that’s their choice.” … When asked about how her medical expertise affects her decision to support or not support the mining and export of asbestos, Leitch, an orthopedic surgeon, said her expertise is in bones. 

Layton: the final enigma

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 4:49 AM - 150 Comments

[Olivia Chow] won’t reveal the nature of [Jack Layton’s] final illness: “Jack’s wish is that we don’t talk precisely about what kind because we want to give other cancer patients the kind of hope they deserve and should have. If we talk about this kind of cancer, or that, then if you have that particular kind, you would be really worried…” –The Star, Tuesday

Pardon me, fellow Canadians, but this is preposterous. Olivia Chow’s explanation doesn’t even make sense on its own terms: in the absence of information about what kind of cancer killed Jack Layton, patients with any kind of cancer at all might be frightened or upset by his sudden demise. She is denying us information that could ease the minds of the vast majority of these people. But then, this isn’t the first time we’ve been given a strained, unconvincing excuse for secrecy when it comes to Jack Layton’s health, though it is likely to be the last.

When Jack Layton was first diagnosed with prostate cancer last year, his secretary Brad Lavigne told Canadians that we would not be receiving details of Layton’s treatment because, basically, we are too stupid to handle it. Cancer sufferers, Lavigne argued, might perceive such a disclosure “as general medical advice” and conclude that the same therapies “might be suitable for them.” This was an amazingly brazen answer in an era in which “awareness” is worshipped like a tiki. Jack Layton might have been the first cancer victim in decades who believed that his disease did not provide him with a morally binding opportunity to educate others—that, in fact, his duty was to conceal. The question nobody asked: what if there were prostate cancer patients who might learn, by means of Layton’s example, of a treatment that was truly “suitable”?

Instead, Lavigne’s bizarre rationale was accepted, and questions about Layton’s later hip fracture were shrugged off, even though Canadians have abundant, well-founded reasons to suspect politicians, as a group, of habitually queue-jumping and seeking private care outside the country. The NDP cannot shut up about how Tommy Douglas gave us medicare like some cornball Prometheus bringing fire unto primeval man; its leaders therefore might be regarded as having a special responsibility to rise above such suspicions.

This would be the case even if Layton hadn’t availed himself controversially of private clinics in the past, and it would be the case even if it weren’t for the mysterious affair of April’s disappearing “hip replacement”, when we were all asked to believe that Layton’s sister, who was travelling with him and essentially acting his physical therapist, got an exceedingly rudimentary detail of his treatment wrong. Could happen! It would have been awfully simple for him to confirm it with medical evidence!—he said so himself, and offered to provide that evidence!

But by that time, no one in a position to ask was interested: the adversarial relationship between politician and media had already broken down. It has been pointed out incessantly in defence of Layton’s privacy that Canada, unlike the U.S., has not established a full-disclosure norm in health matters for important politicians. What nobody observes is that the U.S. adopted this norm for very good reasons—reasons with labels like Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy. Long experience of republican government has taught Americans that politicians will tell merciless, outrageous lies about their health status to secure electoral advantage unless a full-disclosure norm is aggressively enforced by the press.

Jack Layton, of course, was never the chief magistrate of a republic—just a man who claimed to be running for our prime ministership in earnest, and, later, a officer of state with responsibility for assembling and leading an alternative government. Still, eventually Canada will, like the U.S., begin to oblige men in his position to be excruciatingly forthright about their health. And eventually someone will spill the beans about what killed him. In the meantime, 4.5 million Canadians who voted for a party led by Jack Layton will just have to wait and see what they actually end up with.

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 1 Comment

Here, from this week’s print edition, is a brief consideration of where the NDP now finds itself.

That story is part of a special collection that includes Nicholas Kohler, Anne Kingston, John Geddes and Andrew Coyne on the life, politics and passing of Jack Layton.

‘A politician’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 1:41 PM - 11 Comments

Talking to the Star, Olivia Chow apparently responds to criticism of the politics involved in Jack Layton’s passing.

A message of hope, the letter was also a savvy political document espousing NDP positions by the man who just led the party to an historic breakthrough as the official Opposition.

“Duh, well yeah!” said Chow, referring to a Toronto columnist who wrote about Layton’s deathbed politicking. “A politician. I would expect nothing less,” she added, laughing.

It’s possible I’m imagining it, but I seem to recall someone wondering if Mr. Layton’s passing, or perhaps the public response to that passing, might help get us past the idea that politics is not be to discussed in polite company. (Update: It was Greg Fingas.) If I’m imagining that it’s possibly because I think that might be a good idea. Continue…

‘The values are eternal’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Olivia Chow talks to the CBC and the Star.

“I told him that things are in order,” she said. “He wrote something to say that he has no fear, because he knows that he can trust me. That his soul is his spirit. That when he passes on in his next journey that I will be with him. That was really touching. He wrote it on his iPad a week before.”

And Chow, who has represented the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina since 2006 and sat with Layton on Toronto city council, described her husband as fearless to the end. ”The last hours were, ah, just peaceful, as he was taking the last breath. And knowing that he had no fear, knowing that he had a good life, he did what he can, and watching [daughter] Sarah being pregnant again with another baby. It’s the cycle of life — death and life and let’s just keep moving forward and doing our work. That’s what he wants us to do.”

Jack Layton’s last act on the public stage

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 40 Comments

Andrew Vaughan/CP

In ancient Athens, attendance at the theatre was compulsory. The theatre was where the politics of the polis were acted out—not in the everyday sense of how to collect the garbage, but of what it was to be a man: social being, plaything of the gods, contested ground of character. It was the duty of the citizen legislator to watch, and reflect.

If the theatre is no longer where we conduct our politics, politics remains a kind of theatre: not only the arena for deciding who should have power, but a stage on which we see acted out great questions of character and judgment, some of which might find some echo in our own lives. We watch the players struggle—against each other, against their fates, against themselves—and we reflect.

So it was as we watched Jack Layton dying. It is his death, of course, that the last week was about. Had we been marking merely his retirement from politics, and not his passing from the Earth, there would not have been anything like the same reaction. That he was a fine man, dedicated to important causes, decent with others; that he had a successful career, a loving family, in all a full life: all of these would explain why so many people were fond of him. They do not explain why thousands filled the streets.

Continue…

Steve Jobs put doing ahead of talking

By Peter Nowak - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 12:08 PM - 4 Comments

Photo by shio/Flickr

And the big tech news just keeps on a’rolling. I’m on a mini-vacation in Quebec, but I couldn’t not write something about Steve Jobs’s resignation, which was as surprising as Google taking over Motorola or HP announcing its exit from the consumer business, both of which happened last week. Jobs has been battling illness for some time so the news isn’t that unexpected, but just like the company he built, the man himself seemed somewhat unstoppable so it’s shocking nonetheless.

There will be a lot of commentary extolling what Jobs has meant to the world of technology and not much of it will be overstated. Simply put, no company—probably not even Google—and certainly no individual has made as much of a difference or changed the way things work over the past 10 years as Apple has under Jobs. Continue…

Was Jack Layton sufficiently upfront with voters regarding his health?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 4:04 PM - 21 Comments

Live stream: Jack Layton lies in state in Ottawa

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 12:31 PM - 0 Comments

Click on the image below to watch streaming coverage as mourners pay tribute to NDP leader Jack Layton.

The ‘fight’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 3:22 PM - 2 Comments

Carly Weeks takes apart a cancer cliché.

“It does set up a battle with a winner and a loser, and I think that some people certainly think that there would be better ways of talking about this,” said Dr. Ellis, who is also an associate professor in the department of oncology at McMaster University.

Instead of fixating on the idea of a cancer battle, Dr. Ellis and a growing number of experts in the field say, it is more important to focus on learning to live with cancer. For those undergoing treatment, this can be much more empowering than the idea they can somehow control the ultimate outcome if they fight hard enough.

A celebration of life (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:34 PM - 4 Comments

The full details as per an official note sent out just now.

Canadians are invited to pay their respects to the Honourable Jack Layton, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and Member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada.

The Lying-in-State for Mr. Layton will take place in the foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa on Wednesday, August 24 and Thursday, August 25. It will be open to the public from 12:30 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday and from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. Canadians can also pay tribute to Mr. Layton as he lies in repose at Toronto City Hall on Friday, August 26 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Saturday, August 27 beginning at 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. The funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 27, 2011, at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. For more information on the State Funeral or to convey condolences to Mr. Layton’s family, Canadians can visit www.commemoration.gc.ca.

A celebration of life

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 6 Comments

From the Globe, details of how Jack Layton will be honoured this week.

Planning now begins in earnest for Mr. Layton’s state funeral, which is to be held Saturday afternoon, likely around 2 p.m., at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. His body will also lie in the foyer of the House of Commons, where he conducted so many scrums with reporters. (The Hall of Honour is where prime ministers and governors-general lie in state.)

The Parliamen Hill visitation will begin at 11 a.m. Wednesday for dignitaries. The doors will open to the public at 12:30 p.m. and stay open until about 8 p.m., depending on the number of people. There will be another visitation on Thursday, which is to end at 2 p.m.

Remembering Jack Layton

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star editorial boards eulogize the NDP leader. The Star reviews his contribution to civic politics in Toronto, Libby Davies recalls his contribution to gay rights, the music community pays its respects and The Agenda compiles his television appearances, while Canadians mourn the loss and celebrate the man.

Outside Layton’s home, his neighbour, Ted Hawkins, laid a single red rose on his doorstep. It soon grew into a shrine of sunflowers, orange lilies, with a photo of Layton dressed up for Caribana. “I guess I didn’t expect him to go so fast, I guess I kind of shared his optimism a little bit,” Hawkins said. “It’s kind of infectious.”

Neighbour and friend Bryonny Nichol held back tears as she talked about his sparkling eyes and clear direct look. “Little kids liked him, he remembered them, he talked to them,” she said, “He believed in people.”

Yesterday’s collection of news and remembrances is here.

From the archives

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:10 PM - 0 Comments

Several points on the timeline.

First, a grey morning in March 2007, when Jack Layton starred in a silly little news conference. In its own way, a strange, perfect moment. Next, this sketch from February 2010, as Mr. Layton held forth a week after announcing his prostate cancer diagnosis. Third, this past April, aboard his campaign plane, when it all seemed futile, or at least as futile as it had always seemed. And finally, from earlier this month, an account of what was going on behind the scenes as he turned to face cancer once again: a look at Mr. Layton, who he surrounded himself with and how they and him regarded each other and what they were doing.

Here, again, is John Geddes’ extensive account of Jack Layton’s life. Here, too, is what John wrote as the NDP’s surge unfolded this spring.

After the jump, a number of other links to stories from the Maclean’s archives. Continue…

The Commons: On the passing of a politician

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 15 Comments

“You know me.”

This is campaign rhetoric, like anything else a politician says to an audience, like anything a politician says to get a vote. Jack Layton is appealing here to some sense of familiarity, maybe even fondness. He wants you to think of him as trustworthy, or at least unthreatening. He wants to make some kind of connection.

This is rhetoric. This is sloganeering. This is about who you’d want to have a beer with, however much that is supposed to have a bearing on who would best govern the country. This is politics.

This is also—possibly, just maybe—simply true. Continue…

Jack Layton’s letter to Canadians

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 12:25 PM - 13 Comments

Jack Layton’s family has now released the letter he wrote to be released in the event that he passed away.

Jack Layton 1950-2011

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 11 Comments

A statement issued this morning by the family of NDP leader Jack Layton.

We deeply regret to inform you that The Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones. Details of Mr. Layton’s funeral arrangements will be forthcoming.

9:11am. Bob Rae, Carolyn Bennett, Hedy Fry, Wayne Easter, Cathy McLeod, Keith Martin and Governor General David Johnston are among those paying their respects.

9:23am. John Geddes explored Jack Layton’s life and times for this Maclean’s cover story last June. We wrote about his new fight with cancer for this cover story earlier this month.

9:28am. Condolences from Rodger Cuzner, Lewis Cardinal, Colin Carrie, Mike Sullivan and John McCallum.

9:36am. NDP deputy leader Libby Davies talks to reporters in St. John’s.

“He was a great Canadian. He gave his life to this country. His commitment to social justice and equality and a better Canada in the world and at home and I think that’s how people saw him,” Davies told reporters. “They saw him as someone who deeply, deeply cared for people. And they saw that in the campaign and all his work. They saw the courage that he had. He faced cancer and he kept on working, doing his job, because he felt so strongly about what he believed in, so I think people think of him as a great Canadian and we think of him as a great leader, in a political sense but (also) in a personal sense.”

9:43am. More on the life of Jack Layton from the CBC, Toronto Star and Canadian Press.

He was a believer. He made that clear in the first sentences of “Speaking Out Louder:” ”Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.”

9:54am. Mr. Layton’s Facebook page has become a makeshift memorial.

9:59am. Greg Fingas marks the NDP leader’s passing.

After spending a decade laying the foundation, Jack Layton has tragically died before getting to complete the house that so many said couldn’t be built. For now, there’s little to do but to offer condolences and grieve the loss of a great Canadian and friend. But hopefully Layton’s inspiration will only encourage us to finish what he started.

10:01am. A statement from the Prime Minister. Continue…

Hugo’s government-by-Twitter

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Reuters

During a recent stay in Cuba, Hugo Chávez took to Twitter to stay in touch with his people. The president of Venezuela has cancer and was in Havana to have a tumour removed, but he took time out to tweet to his more than 1.8 million followers. “We’re moving along here, brother! With God and the Virgin!” read one post, according to a translation by the Associated Press. “In my modest opinion…THEY ROBBED US OF THE VICTORY GOAL,” said another, a reference to a soccer match between his country and Paraguay.

Chávez’s Twitter campaign earned wry headlines abroad. But back home, it was his choice of medical locale that was causing a stir. The Venezuelan health system has been a shambles for decades; under Chávez, opponents say, things have grown dramatically worse. By seeking treatment abroad, critics charge, Chávez has tacitly acknowledged that the Venezuelan system is not up to snuff. What does the president think? At this point, he has yet to express himself on the issue, on Twitter or anywhere else.

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

From this week’s print edition, a behind-the-scenes look at Jack Layton’s announcement last month.

The story is primarily based on interviews with Mr. Layton’s chief of staff Anne McGrath, his press secretary Karl Belanger, his principal secretary Brad Lavigne and MPs Libby Davies, Thomas Mulcair, Joe Comartin and Paul Dewar. Martin Patriquin, our man in Montreal, spoke to Nycole Turmel (note: that conversation took place before her membership in the Bloc Quebecois and Quebec Solidaire were reported). Cathy Gulli in Toronto sought out medical advice. The result is something like 3,000 words that hopefully shed light on the month leading up to Mr. Layton’s announcement and the immediate aftermath.