January 24 marked the fifth anniversary of the detainment of eight Iranian scientists, among them our dear friend and McGill alumnus, Niloufar Bayani. Though the details are murky, we understand that the scientists were arrested on January 24 and 25, 2018 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They were accused of espionage, while performing conservation work approved by Iran’s Department of Environment. Nilou – as she is known to family and friends – and her colleagues worked for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a non-governmental organization working towards conservation of Iran’s rare wildlife and ecosystems, including the endangered Asiatic cheetah. 

We are Canadian academics who met Nilou, and each other, on a semester abroad in 2008 while studying for our undergraduate degrees at McGill University. We got to know one another during long bus rides and early morning bird walks — chatting as we searched the trees, pointing out new species. For us, Nilou stands out for her pure joy for life and scientific curiosity. Her bright smile and bounce are infectious. She is open-minded, kind-hearted, and staunchly proud of her Persian heritage. We miss her desperately and fear for her health and life.

Details about Nilou’s current circumstances come from a number of contacts and sources. We learned from a book written by a former cellmate, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, that watching birds from the prison courtyard is a favourite pastime of Nilou’s. We anxiously read any piece of news about Nilou and grasp at accounts like these, which confirm that our dear friend continues to shine brightly, despite the horrendous circumstances of her detention.

Nilou is serving a ten year sentence for the charge of “contacts with the US enemy state” based on her conservation work and a forced confession, obtained under mental and physical torture, which she vehemently retracts. Five years in, Nilou and her colleagues continue to endure Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where so many political prisoners are students and academics that it has earned the moniker ‘Evin University.’ Letters boldly leaked by Nilou mirror former detainees’ accounts of the prison’s abusive conditions – she details extreme mistreatment including an eight-month stay in solitary confinement, 1,200 hours of interrogation, and threats of physical torture, execution and sexual assault.

To understand why Nilou remains in prison, it is vital to consider what she and her conservation colleagues were doing to help save the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah. Found solely in Iran, there are fewer than 100 known individuals of this subspecies remaining. Their survival is threatened by poaching, loss of habitat and prey, and human-wildlife conflict. Understanding the cheetahs’ numbers, habits and movements is an essential step to coordinating conservation efforts. 

With the approval of Iran’s Department of Environment, Nilou and her fellow biologists set wildlife camera ‘traps’ to track the cheetahs’ movements. Camera-trapping has become an essential tool in conservation biology, allowing experts to view and study the behaviour of rare and elusive animals. Cameras are placed along trails in suitable habitats, taking a picture only when motion is sensed. On January 24 and 25, 2018, Nilou and her seven colleagues were detained and accused of using camera traps for the purpose of espionage. But the cameras were all in remote areas, virtually devoid of any sensitive infrastructure, settlement or other possible targets.

Imprisonment of the cheetah scientists has been widely criticized by conservation and human rights groups across the globe. Of the eight who were originally detained, seven remain in prison; sadly, Iranian-Canadian Professor Kavous Seyed-Emami died under suspicious circumstances, while in the custody of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. We are terrified that the same fate might befall Nilou and her colleagues as the Islamic Republic of Iran intensifies execution of political prisoners. When Nilou was first convicted, we had hoped that some kind of prisoner exchange might be possible, but, as an Iranian citizen detained in her own country, she lacks an international passport as leverage.

Five years of unlawful detainment is a long time, almost unfathomable for us as we write comfortably from our homes. The injustice of Nilou’s imprisonment weighs heavy – in those five years, some of us have had children, undertaken and defended graduate work, and started careers. Who would have imagined Nilou’s past five years marked instead by her efforts to resist and expose the Iranian regime? She has leaked information about the torture and unlawful interrogation techniques used by her captors. She stood up during her sham court sentencing to denounce the testimony used against her as having been coerced. For her continued outspoken truth telling, Nilou has been named one of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2022. 

Unfortunately, the story of our friend Nilou is not unique. She is one of many women and men unlawfully imprisoned in Iran, and their numbers are increasing rapidly. We write in solidarity with all Iranians who are unjustly imprisoned and those who continue to speak out about violence and oppression by the state of Iran. We condemn the escalation of violence against the people of Iran, who are calling for governmental reform in favour of freedom of thought and expression. Finally, on this fifth anniversary of Niloufar Bayani’s imprisonment, we join Canadian Members of Parliament to call for her immediate release, along with her Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation colleagues and all others unjustly detained. We urge you to follow the unfolding women-led revolution and take action in support of freedom for Nilou and freedom for the people of Iran.

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“We have so many protocols that govern the ethics of the research that we do, that this would take the onus off of us to review our own research proposals,” she said.

It may shock readers to find, however, that no framework currently exists for ethical review of the harmful applications of research – for example, weapons development associated with thermobaric research, which does not involve humans or animals.

Both Munroe-Blum and Vice-Principal (Research and Innovation) Denis Therien have obscured our request for reporting on harmful applications, through their contention that research receiving military funding should not be singled out.

“It is a wrong equation to say that military-funded is harmful and non-military funding is okay,” said Therien at the Senate meeting on November 4, in which the proposed policy was discussed.

While Demilitarize McGill does feel that military research merits increased scrutiny – it is, after all, one of the only institutions in our society explicitly intended to be harmful to human life – for the purpose of this policy, we are interested in an ethical review process for, or at the very least transparent reporting on, any research with directly harmful applications.

Demilitarize will be the first to point out that McGill’s policy on military-sponsored research had a number of flaws, including the fact that it only applied to researchers receiving direct support from military agencies. If this were the administration’s main concern, however, we would expect that they work with interested stake-holders to strengthen these sections, rather than remove them completely.

It appears, however, that the administration’s main concern lies in remaining attractive to potential investors and competitive with respect to other research-intensive universities. Demilitarize recognizes that McGill’s chronic underfunding is a serious problem, but we demand that the University not cash in our ethics for research dollars.

Our requests, while portrayed by the administration as unnecessarily bureaucratic, are actually in line with existing ethical review processes. We are asking that research with harmful applications be subject to the same sort of ethical review processes required of research involving humans or animals.

In our proposed amendment, we recognize that researchers can never be aware of all the possible applications of their research, and specify the more reasonable expectation that they must be aware of all potentially harmful applications by agencies that support the research. This expectation is based on a section in the policy preamble that states: “individual members of the University community are best positioned, through special knowledge, to be aware of…the consequences of [their research].” Demilitarize McGill is also opposed, for obvious reasons, to the insertion of a section which allows for directed, anonymous research sponsorship.

In her defense of military research at McGill, Munroe-Blum continues to emphasize research on more benign themes such as prosthetics and medicine, while willfully ignoring the numerous examples of military funding and collaboration for projects related to explosives in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Since 2002, professors from the Shock Wave Physics Group, including David Frost and Andrew Higgins, have received funding from the Canadian military, and have worked in collaboration with the U.S. military on these projects. There are multiple pieces of convincing evidence indicating that the research done by professors at McGill is contributing to the development of new thermobaric weapons for use in Afghanistan and Iraq. The principal and the rest of the McGill community have to stop ignoring this situation and confront its ethical implications, and a policy requiring the evaluation of research with potentially harmful applications is a necessary step in this direction.

It is important to highlight that McGill’s policy on research receiving military support, while not perfect, is unique in Canada, and came about due to sustained student opposition to weapons-related research, including a six-day sit-in in administrators’ offices in 1987. The Daily editors were right in pointing out the irony of a policy that prohibits McGill students from travelling to areas deemed dangerous, yet allows research contributing to this very political instability. McGill’s proposed policy is short-sighted, and research with harmful applications currently taking place on campus contributes to the perpetuation of global hierarchies of power and inequity.

It is interesting to note that the first iteration of a global framework on the ethics of human research – the Nuremberg code – did not come about until 1947 and was in response to the horrendously unethical research undertaken by the Nazis during World War II. In Canada, it wasn’t until the seventies that the Medical Research Council of Canada (currently known as CIHR) developed guidelines for research involving human subjects.

It is unsurprising that McGill administrators are weary of a policy that could place restrictions on academic freedom, just as they must have been prior to the widespread adoption of policies requiring ethical review of research involving human subjects. It is clear to members of Demilitarize McGill, however, that research with harmful applications, like weapons research, should not be conducted at publicly funded institutions.

Given its policy precedents, McGill is well-placed to lead the movement for transparent reporting on and ethical evaluation of research with harmful applications. Either that, or we look back on this moment, shrug, and reason that we were acting “in-line with our sister institutions.”

Nikki Bozinoff is a former Daily Science and Technology Editor. She received a 2009 QPIRG McGill Research Stipend to review research policies across Canada. She is currently a community member of Demilitarize McGill: demilitarizemcgill.wordpress.com

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“Military research is done to better the people of Canada and the United States,” Cytrynbaum said. “Research is independent of what it is used for.”

The notion articulated by Cytrynbaum – that technology is independent of its end use – is one that is often repeated, albeit in varied forms. Joe Schwarcz, McGill chemistry professor and director of the Office for Science and Society, has a similar opinion with regard to chemicals: “They are inanimate; they don’t make decisions. People make decisions,” he said in an interview. “The same chemical that can be used for mankind’s benefit can be used for mankind’s detriment.”

Robert Proctor, history of science professor at Stanford University and author of Value-free Science? finds, however, that there is not always a clear-cut distinction between the design of a given technology and its inevitable application.

“Part of the truth is that anything may be used or abused, but in very complex systems; oftentimes products are very end-specific…. How do you abuse a cruise missile? How do you abuse an atom bomb? Well, an atom bomb can only be used one way,” Proctor said.

But what about breaking it down to a chemical level and the substances used to make that bomb? According to Schwarcz, “You can use the ingredients in a nuclear reaction to produce an atom bomb or to produce a power station and generate electricity. [The effect] all depends on how you use it.”

In his book, Proctor disagrees. “This supposed neutrality describes only the simplest technologies, the most abstract principles. The seven simple machines, perhaps, or the rules of arithmetic, may be neutral in this sense. But an abstract truth often conceals a concrete lie,” he writes. “‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ Yet is it surprising that a society that surrounds itself with guns will use them?”

Use and abuse debates may sound inconsequential at first, but the ethical implications are great. For one thing, if it is true that research itself is neither good nor bad and that only the application of technology matters, scientists can be absolved of responsibility for how their research is used. On the other hand, if intent is built into technologies, then researchers themselves are directly responsible for the consequences.

Science and/or activism
The concept of neutral technology stems from the fact that science is widely represented as a purely objective discipline, where students are taught that the truth can only be discovered through impartial hypotheses and an unbiased attitude. For this reason, many scientists fear the intrusion of partisanship in any scientific pursuit.

McGill professor David Green has extensive experience in conservation biology, a field populated by both activists and scientists. He is the director of the Redpath Museum and former Chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). According to Green, COSEWIC – an organization that has a mandate to give an impartial assessment of how species are doing – owes its success to its impartiality.

“I’ve come to realize that although the scientists on COSEWIC all think in terms of probability values and values of p and assessment lines and graphs and equations… when we send that off to government ministers and managers, the thing that carries the weight is that everyone on COSEWIC agrees with it. It has got that weight of consensual opinion behind the assessment, and that’s what makes sense to politicians,” Green said.

Although he agreed that science is imbued in social and cultural values, Green argued that there is something to be said for preserving objective science.

“There’s the question of integrity and believability that must be maintained,” Green said. “Reputation takes a long time to accumulate; it doesn’t take very long to destroy. We want science to be trusted in society; if science isn’t trustworthy in society, then there are lots of other people who would love to stand up and say, ‘Well trust us instead.’”

Proctor, however, maintains that it is possible for scientists to wear their politics on their sleeve and still be taken seriously. “Advocates are often the most ‘objective,’ meaning often the most probing, most impassioned, most able to ferret out the truth,” he said. “That’s part of the myth of value-free science – this idea that if you just sit back and observe, you will land upon great truths. Generally speaking, you will not. The great search requires engagement, commitment, passion, including passion for the truth.”

Research as a social process
Researchers make choices about what research takes place, but they in turn are influenced by the social and cultural priorities that fund their work.

Green points to the idea of natural selection, discovered at the same time by both Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin, as evidence of social influence. “It is not just a product of their work out in the field; I mean, why were they out in the field anyway except that it was a socially and culturally acceptable thing to do at the time?” Green said.

Proctor agreed, adding that society also has the power to determine what research should and should not take place. “I think we all have a stake in what kinds of research get done. Research priorities are expressions of social priorities,” he said. “And what a society thinks is important will shape what kind of science gets done.”

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Speaking on Parliament Hill last Thursday at a panel to launch the reform campaign, Senator Yoine Goldstein indicated that amendments to the legislation had already been drafted, and that plans to table the initiative in Senate by the end of April were underway.

CAMR was originally meant to allow generic Canadian drug manufacturers to approach the Commissioner of Patents and request a compulsory license – a scheme which permits the manufacturer to bypass the patent holder’s rights under exceptional circumstances. In so-called developed countries like Canada, HIV/AIDS has become a difficult, chronic condition. Yet, in developing countries with high rates of HIV/AIDS and low access to essential medicines, millions are in need, and the conditions are certainly exceptional. However, only one shipment of drugs has left the country thus far, and the legislation is widely recognized as flawed.

“[The regime] has not put lives before patents – precisely what this groundbreaking legislation was intended to do,” said Marek Krasula, counsel for Senator Goldstein. “No generic manufacturer is willing to go through the CAMR process in its current form.”

Under the current system, manufacturers are required to apply for a separate compulsory license for each country it wants to export to, and for each quantity of medication it wants to export.

According to Richard Elliott, Executive Director of the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the main aim of the proposed reform implementing what he terms a “one-license solution” – a system that would allow generic manufacturers to apply for a single license authorizing the export of a lower-cost drug to any of the eligible countries without predetermining the quantity, and with the requirement that the generic manufacturer periodically disclose the contracts that they land and pay the applicable royalty.

“I think it is not at all premature, contrary to what the government says, to actually revisit this and come up with a much better, simpler process of getting medicines at lower prices to developing countries,” Elliott said.

At the panel, Elliott highlighted the need for government to act immediately. He announced that generic drug manufacturer Apotex – the first and only company to export drugs under CAMR – has committed to making a lower-cost version of an important paediatric AIDS medication, but only once CAMR is streamlined.

Citing problems with current paediatric formulas, including unpleasant tasting syrups, the requirement for refrigeration, and the need for children to take multiple doses, Elliott said that millions of children are in need.

“[A] paediatric formulation is incredibly needed to treat children with HIV around the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, when so few children have access to practicable treatment,” Elliott said, adding that the proposed formulation would only have to be taken once or twice per day.

Apotex’s Director of Public and Government Affairs, Eli Betito, also told The Daily that this would be the first and only medicine of its kind in the world.

Once the bill is tabled in the Senate, however, it is likely to face major obstacles. Though Elliott has been meeting with MPs from all political parties to discuss the proposed reform, history does not show promise: in December 2007, the government tabled a review of CAMR that recommended no changes be made. Elliott speculates that much of the resistance will come from large pharmaceutical companies who have a stake in maintaining the status quo.

“Big pharma has always opposed compulsory licensing as a policy tool to get lower priced medicines, an opposition which is particularly obnoxious and offensive and really damaging when we’re talking about opposing the use of compulsory licensing by developing countries who are facing millions of people who need affordable medicine,” Elliott said.

The Minister of Industry, Tony Clement, did not respond to The Daily’s request for a comment.

Krasula felt that the issue of reform should move beyond partisanship, calling it “apolitical.”

“Even though it is a private member’s bill, all-party support would surely expedite the entire process and give this issue the attention it deserves,” he said.

Elliott agreed, noting that all members of Parliament and the Senate should have an interest in making the legislation work, as they voted unanimously for the original CAMR plan in 2004.

“As more time goes by it just becomes even more and more of an embarrassment that we haven’t got this right. That’s why we’re saying: it is in your hands, Parliament,” Elliott said.

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A paper recently published in the journal Technology and Culture, entitled “Collapse and Expand,” juxtaposes the evolution of sanatorium architecture in Montreal with treatment technologies of the time.

The first articulation of the Montreal Chest Institute, known as the Royal Edward, was located where the Queen Elizabeth Hotel stands today. It was built in 1909, and reflected the dominant tuberculosis treatment method of the period: rest therapy. This treatment regime stressed fresh air, sunlight, and good nutrition as being essential to the patient’s recovery. The paper’s lead author, Professor Annmarie Adams in the department of architecture at McGill, explained that in 1912, an “open-air” school for children aged seven-15 afflicted by tuberculosis, opened.

“The really exquisite images we have from the Royal Edward show a school-like situation set up on an open-air porch where casement windows actually flip in and the whole wall of windows is open to the fresh air,” Adams said.

Blue Ridge Sanatorium, in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, is another example of a sanatorium built with consideration for the physical environment and architecture as a treatment technology. Daniel Bluestone, Professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, has studied the architecture of the sanatorium, and has been part of efforts for its preservation.

“They were really built around a notion that patients would basically be confined to their beds for much of the day, but that the beds would be on what amounted to porches that had great ventilation, circulation of air, and a kind of orientation to the sun so that they were flooded with light and air for most of the day,” Bluestone said. He also noted that at Blue Ridge, patients were able to benefit from the agricultural products of the surrounding land, which fit in with doctors’ belief in the importance of good nutrition as a form of treatment.

In 1933, the Royal Edward moved to its Saint Urbain location, south of Pine Avenue, where the current Montreal Chest Institute still stands. This new construction saw continued use of rooms for sunlight and fresh air treatment, but also included specialized rooms to house technologies such as X-ray machines. Two important medical technologies followed the construction of the first Saint Urbain building: surgical procedures, as well as antibiotic treatments.

Beginning in 1942, surgery related to tuberculosis was increasingly conducted at the Royal Edward, when it had previously been performed at the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital. This surgery was usually thoracoplasty, a treatment which involves breaking a patient’s ribs and pushing them into the thoracic cavity in order to collapse the lung beneath. As a result of increased need for surgical operations, a renovation on the 1933 building was undertaken to include an operating room as well as a surgical ward. Streptomycin, the first antibiotic to target the bacterial cause of tuberculosis, was first tested in Canada in 1945 and was soon after used to treat tuberculosis patients at the Royal Edward.

Despite the effectiveness of these two treatments, the architecture in the 1956 construction of an additional tower immediately south of the 1933 building did little to reflect best treatment practices. Adams argued that the hospital’s resistance to new technologies as evident in its architecture, demonstrates its place as a conservative force in tuberculosis treatment.

“Even after streptomycin was developed in the post war era, buildings continued to look like the same old TB sanatoriums – for example, the fresh air porches persisted,” said Adams. “What it teaches us, as a case study, is that medical buildings are really culturally determined more than medically determined.”

Bluestone on the other hand, felt that the changing architecture of buildings at the Blue Ridge Sanatorium did reflect the changes in technologies in the post-war era. “The buildings that were built after the antibiotic regimes came into play were actually much less open to the elements, less concerned with view, less oriented toward the sun, and so you could actually see on the Blue Ridge site the movement from this kind of environmental consciousness to a kind of systems approach where the technology of building and the management of patients trumped this notion of bringing patients in direct contact with light and air and scenery,” Bluestone said.

Adams argued that charting the history of medical buildings is important. “There is a lot of misunderstanding about medical buildings. Historic hospitals are declared obsolete without really studying why or when they became obsolete,” said Adams.

“There is something to be learned from focussing and having in the landscape buildings that help us engage and interpret the history of people in a society pulling together to confront major public health crises,” Bluestone said of the importance of preservation.

And yet, Adams noted that the Montreal Chest Institute in its current form retains little architectural remnants of rest therapy.

“It’s been renovated inside. I can’t think of any room that persists…but you can still see the entrance to the [former school for tuberculosis-affected children],” Adams said.

Professor Annmarie Adams will be speaking as part of a World TB Day seminar on March 24 at 12 p.m. at the Montreal Chest Institute, 3626 Saint Urbain.

The post Designing for tuberculosis appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“I’ve always had snakes, turtles, frogs, and lizards,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s just part of who I am.”

I think I knew Hoops’s voice, and the shape of the back of his head, before I ever met him. His was the hand that was always stretched up from within the sea of heads in our 700-person first-year biology classes. A lot of the time, I had no idea what he was asking – that would have required keeping up with the readings.

I distinctly remember a moment in second year, when a professor gave us a lecture about invasive species and included the classic example of the brown tree snake that invaded the island of Guam. Our professor diligently reported to us that the snake had likely arrived as a stowaway on a cargo ship coming from the South Pacific. Once it had colonized the island, it nearly obliterated all bird life and caused the extinction of at least three bird species. The next class, our professor showed us a picture of a smiling student holding a brown tree snake.Apparently, this student felt that the snake had been unduly vilified; that student was Hoops. That year, I sat down beside him in one of my classes; it became something of a habit in classes to come.

When I travelled with him to East Africa last year as part of the Canadian Field Studies in Africa program, our whole group would report reptile sightings to him, and he diligently told us their scientific names – you see, Hoops had always spotted the same reptiles, only a few hours earlier than the rest of us. Children from areas nearby would hear of Hoops’s interest and bring him turtles to identify. He also compiled the longest bird identification list of any of us – it had over 400 species.

There is something a little bit mesmerising about the amount of knowledge Hoops possesses about the creatures of our world. He has worked on breeding birds in New Zealand, on sea turtle tagging in Australia, and on chimpanzee and monkey rehabilitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other projects. He also likes to care for reptiles, and has kept over 100 in his lifetime.

“Most people react surprisingly well,” he says, referring to his under-the-bed pets. I wasn’t especially surprised when he told me about his slithering friends, and his roommates don’t seem to mind either.

He keeps three snakes – two corn snakes and one bull snake – and has four mud turtles that live in an aquarium. Hoops explains that it’s not that he prefers reptiles over other animals; it’s simply that reptiles are much easier to care for.

“A plant is more work than a snake,” he says. “They [snakes] actually prefer to be left alone.”

Hoops feeds each snake one thawed, pre-killed mouse every two weeks. He also has a space heater to keep the temperature slightly warmer in his room, and he places an electric heating pad under each of the containers so that the snakes can warm up if they need to. A snake’s body temperature varies with that of its environment, so if Hoops didn’t heat his apartment, the snakes would probably freeze. For this reason, Hoops notes that snakes are commonly and erroneously known as cold-blooded animals.

“Cold-blooded isn’t really the right word, because reptiles actually often have warmer blood than humans. The proper term is actually ectotherm,” he says.

While Hoops doesn’t recommend keeping animals you don’t like, he says that compared to other animals, keeping reptiles is pretty easy and inexpensive for university students. He cautions however, that students should be careful which snakes they buy.

“All the time, I see animals that are endangered [in pet stores] and it’s very destructive,” he says. “I’m very careful to buy animals that are common in the wild and are bred in captivity.”

He asks me if I want to hold Claudius. I think about myself, the snake, and a cool Facebook photo, but decide that I just really don’t especially like snakes.

“Maybe another time,” I say. Maybe, but probably not.

The post Eating up reptile culture appeared first on The McGill Daily.

One of the studies presented the results of a clinical trial conducted by the Microbicides Trial Network, examining the efficacy of two candidate microbicides – gels, creams, foams, and depositories developed for physical application inside the vagina, to halt sexual transmission of HIV from males to females. The trial, known as HPTN 035, enrolled 3,099 women at sites in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the United States, and tested two candidate microbicides: Pro2000 and BufferGel. The study found that women offered PRO2000 gel plus condoms had 30 per cent fewer HIV infections than those offered only condoms or condoms plus a placebo gel. However, the study also found that BufferGel did not reduce the risk of HIV in women.

Though the PRO2000 results were not statistically significant, this is the first time that a microbicide trial has shown “proof of concept,” or proof that the idea of using a product applied to the vagina could work to prevent transmission of HIV. Anna Forbes, Deputy Director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, expressed hope that these results will improve morale among those who were losing hope that a candidate microbicide trial would yield positive results – thus far, all previous clinical trials have either ended prematurely due to safety concerns, or have not reduced the risk of HIV in women.

“I think that it will encourage funders and researchers and government officials to see that there is reason to believe that the concept of a microbicide may actually work…. The trends in the data certainly suggest that there is a possibility [that a microbicide could prove effective] and this is the first time we’ve even seen that,” Forbes said.

Currently, Pro2000 is being tested in another clinical trial known as MDP 301. This trial has enrolled 9,000 women in Zambia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, and the results are expected in November of this year.

“The trial is three times larger than the HPTN 035 trial, so we feel that there is a good chance that it will provide us with a much more accurate reading on whether the product is effective or not,” Forbes said.

In another study presented at CROI, researchers Dr. Charles Dobard and Dr. Walid Heneine, both from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, found that when applied as a gel prior to vaginal simian human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) exposure, a single antiretroviral drug (tenofovir) was just as effective as two antiretroviral drugs (tenofovir and FTC) in preventing SHIV infection in female macaques; this approach, is called Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP).

Dobard was quick to mention, however, that results from clinical trials are necessary before it can be determined to what extent, if at all, PrEP is effective in preventing HIV transmission.

“People feel that this particular intervention is promising, but again, these are animal studies and so we are waiting for the studies from the human clinical trials, and that’s going to allow us to really hopefully validate our animal model,” Dobard said.

Forbes agreed that Dobard et al.’s results were promising, but that more research is needed.

“It’s certainly always good news to see positive results in animal trials. I think we’ve all learned the hard way that that doesn’t necessarily translate to positive results in people, but it’s always a step in the right direction,” Forbes said.

Currently, there are a number of clinical trials planned or under way to test the efficacy of antiretroviral-based gels, including one that will test a tenofovir vaginal gel. The results of the first trial are expected in 2010.

Dobard explained that the antiretroviral-based gels may prove more effective than the first-line microbicides such as Pro2000, because they are specific to HIV.

“Tenofovir and FTC – they are inhibitors of reverse transcription of HIV, and their primary mechanism is that they are nucleocide anologues – so they block reverse transcription by basically incorporating analogues that are dead end products, so that it basically shuts down reverse transcription,” Dobard explained.

Pro2000, however, is an entry and fusion inhibitor that binds to a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, to prevent them from binding to and infecting healthy cells.

Forbes, for one, is confident that the past week’s announcements are a sign that the development of an effective microbicide is possible.

“We believe very strongly that it is possible to put an HIV prevention tool for women in women’s hands, and the evidence produced this week by HPTN 035 only strengthens our belief in that,” Forbes said.

The post Progress for women in fight against HIV appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Based on in-depth interviews with families or caregivers and their LGB children, the researchers identified 106 specific behaviours that parents use to express rejection or acceptance. Some “rejecting behaviours” identified were verbally expressing shame, blocking access to gay friends, or pressuring a child to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. The researchers then administered a survey to 224 white and Latino self-identified LGB youth aged 21-25. They assessed an individual’s level of rejection based on the frequency of having experienced specific rejecting behaviours. The survey also assessed nine negative health outcomes among the participants such as depression, life-time suicide attempts, sexual-risk behaviour, and substance abuse.

Caitlin Ryan, the paper’s lead author and a clinical social worker, explained that though it is difficult to generalize, low self-esteem as a result of rejection by parents or caregivers may be partly responsible for poor health outcomes.

“For a child who only hears negative messages about who they are, who is punished or excluded from the family…you could see how their sense of the future is more limited,” she said. “Those are the kinds of experiences that could lead a person to really live in the present. You know, ‘Why should I bother to use a condom,’ or ‘Why should I bother to use a seatbelt, what difference does it make?’”

Common sense?

Although the link between family rejection and poor health outcomes may seem evident, Ryan explained that parents are generally surprised by the results.

“For more than two years we’ve actually been sharing these findings with very ethnically diverse families…and we find that they are shocked. First of all, they’re shocked because they didn’t realize that these very specific behaviours had consequences…. Secondly, they’re shocked by the very high risk related to those behaviours,” she said.

Stephanie Brill, co-founder and Director of Gender Spectrum Education and Training – a Seattle- based organization that supports parents and caregivers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) children through support groups and an annual conference – explained that families are largely unaware of the effects of their rejecting behaviours because a lot of these behaviours are a result of the parents’ desire to protect their children.

“When parents parent an LGBT child in isolation, frequently without support or other resources, of course they do their best, but their best often unknowingly happens to be the worst. In other words, as they try to get their children to change, perhaps to ensure their safety, they unknowingly are rejecting their child which then leads to all these now well-researched potential outcomes that are negative,” Brill said.

Ryan agreed that parents’ reactions are often motivated by good intentions.

“What we saw was that these specific behaviours of trying to change them [LGBT youth], or prevent them from being who they were, came from love and concern. They wanted their children to have a good life, to fit in, to be happy. And when they learned that their child experienced these behaviours as rejection, as very hurtful, as a very deep kind of wound, they were shocked,” Ryan said.

Staying positive

Though the paper focused largely on negative, rejecting behaviours, Ryan also hopes that this information will help promote positive behaviours among parents. Specifically, she stressed that the project is less about parents’ personal beliefs, and more about how they interact with their children.

“We have not done this work to change families’ deeply held beliefs, we are really working with them as an ally to decrease their children’s risk. There are a lot of behaviours that we’ve identified on the positive end that parents can do to support their children and a very neutral one for parents that are rejecting and conflicted is just to sit with their child and talk with them,” Ryan said.

Brill agreed that education about what appropriate and ideal parenting behaviour might be for parents or caregivers of LGBT youth, would go a long way in helping them cope.

“I think the most important thing is for each and every parent to recognize that where they are now, where they’re starting from is perfectly fine, but that the goal is to grow, step by step incrementally toward greater acceptance,” Brill said.

The next step

This research is part of a much bigger project that has consumed the better part of the past seven years for Ryan. She and her team will now work to develop interventions and a new family-related approach to help families help their LGBT children.

“I think part of what we’re able to do here is to create a bridge between parent and child, to help the parent understand that there are very specific empirically identified behaviours that can help their children, and others that put them at great risk,” Ryan said.

Brill was enthusiastic about the results of the study and hoped that they will help parents of LGBT children better understand their role in their LGBT child’s life.

“Frequently by the time a parent starts parenting a preteen or a teenager they often feel like their role is no longer so significant and what this study shows us, is absolutely that it is untrue, that the parent or caregiver’s role is actually the most critical in terms of future longterm health, well-being, and resiliency of LGBT children,” Brill said.

In Ryan’s words, “We have a great sense of hope because we’re building on something very, very deep, which is the bond that families have with [their children]. Underneath whatever disappointment or anger that may emerge when a parent finds out that a child is LGBT…underneath all of that, is love.”

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Gerts, whose TVs and beer generally attract a crowd of the politically inclined during election season, was dead Tuesday night – in stark contrast to the high turnout for the American presidential debates.

International Relations Students’ Association of McGill (IRSAM) member Sarah Quinn was surprised by the low attendance.

“Last election, there were so many people here. Even for the American debates, there were so many people here,” she said, referring to the well-attended Democrats Abroad and Students for Obama events held at Gerts for the American Presidential debates.

During the 2004 U.S. elections the bar was packed wall-to-wall.

An email was sent to campus political groups on behalf of Gerts Promotions and Events. While some, such as IRSAM and the McGill Global AIDS Coalition, did show up, others were conspicuously absent.

However, one reason for the poor turnout at Gerts may be that the Political Science Students’ Association (PSSA) opted to host their election event at Benelux. A sizeable number of people attended the PSSA event, and the atmosphere was decidedly more rowdy than Gerts, though there was still no sign of campus political parties.

Others, like Boily, were unsurprised by the results, but disappointed by the Bloc and Conservative advances.

Quinn suggested that the Gerts turnout was a reflection of people’s attitudes anticipating the relatively predictable results.

“I think this will be an election that people will easily forget.”

Barring any recounts, the Tories will end up with 143 seats, up 16 from when Parliament was dissolved, but 12 short of a majority. The Liberals stand at 76, down 19 seats; the Bloc at 50, up two; and the NDP at 37, up 7. Two independents, one from Quebec and one from Nova Scotia, round out the 308 winners. No representatives of the Green Party were elected, even though they were the only major party to get more votes than they did at the last election.

Disheartened students at Benelux booed when Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s loss in Central Nova to incumbent Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay was announced.

“It’s a shame,” said PSSA President Roy Jahchan of May’s loss. “I was really hoping that the Green Party would be heard in Parliament, especially considering their strong and articulate leader.”

The crowd was equally animated by the announcement of Liberal Justin Trudeau’s win over Bloc incumbent Vivian Barbot in the Montreal riding of Papineau. Some booed, others cheered, and still others laughed.

And as the Conservatives gained seats, the mood at Benelux turned anxious and frustrated.

“One seat that I really cared about,” said Patrick Boily, a Liberal supporter, “was Saint Boniface, and it just went Conservative.” He was referring to the Manitoba riding that has been a Liberal stronghold since its creation in 1924.

Few were surprised by the Conservative minority win, and some said that they were satisfied with the results.

“I think the minority situation is good for Canada, because it forces moderation,” said Jahchan.

…………………………………..

Student leaders run for federal office

Some of last year’s campus politicians ran for the House of Commons. Former Law senator Erica Martin won 8.2 per cent of the vote for the NDP in Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, the riding covering the Northern half of the province. Former arts senator Lynne Champoux-Williams, won 2.5 per cent for the Greens in Lévis—Bellechasse, which stretches from suburbs across the St. Lawrence river from Quebec City to Maine. Last year’s PSSA president, Charles Larivée, ran for the Bloc in Westmount—Ville-Marie, the downtown riding that includes most of McGill campus, garnering 7.2 per cent. No candidate placed higher than fourth.

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The idea that immune-response stimulants are under-expressed in HIV-resistant subjects may seem counter-intuitive, but as Adam Burgener, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba, and one of the paper’s authors, explained, the results actually makes sense.

“In the case of HIV [lower expression of proteins that stimulate immune-response] is actually beneficial because HIV infects immune cells. So if you have less immune cells present, then perhaps HIV doesn’t have as many targets to infect,” Burgener said.

Researchers at the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi have been collaborating on research of infectious diseases since 1980. The women who participated in the study are part of a larger cohort of 2,000 commercial sex workers, more than 140 of who have been characterized as being relatively resistant to HIV-1.

Burgener and his colleagues’ work is being praised by many of those interested in the science of HIV prevention, including Anna Forbes, Deputy Director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides.

“We’ve known about the phenomenon of the [HIV-resistant] Nairobi sex workers for a while…but it is very interesting to see more research being done on it. I think what it tells us is that there is a great deal that we still need to understand about the ecology of the vagina, about how the vagina actually works, and how the vagina actually defends itself,” said Forbes.

Burgener was also enthusiastic about the implications this research may have on the advancement of tools for the prevention of HIV transmission.

“Anything that we find can certainly aid in the development of new microbicides or better ones, since this is a natural model of resistance against HIV,” Burgener said.

Microbicides – gels, creams, foams, and depositories developed for physical application inside of the vagina or the rectum to halt the transmission of HIV – have been in development for some time now. According to Forbes, 50 candidate products have been identified thus far; three are in late-stage efficacy trials. However, none have yet been proven to halt the transmission of HIV.

Forbes highlighted the importance of Burgener’s research, saying that the development of an effective microbicide could significantly help women.

“The right to protect oneself from HIV is a human right, and right now, for millions of women around the world, it’s a human right that they have no ability to realize because insisting on condoms is not an option, and insisting on abstinence is not an option,” Forbes said.

The next step, according to Burgener, is to replicate the study on a larger scale in order to ensure broader validity among HIV-resistant women, and to confirm that the differential expression of these proteins is not confined to these specific cases. Currently, 600 women are involved in a follow-up study.

“Once we do that, then we’ll tackle the hard biology – looking at how exactly these proteins may be inhibiting HIV, if at all. Trying to figure that out will be years of work,” Burgener said.

What’s more, Forbes explained that this kind of research could be happening in more labs and could be moving at a quicker pace if more funding was directed toward it.

“We would like to see much more research going on,” she said. “Women’s health has always been a very under-served area, and microbicide research, because it compounds the stigma of women’s health with the stigma of HIV, is even more under-served.”

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Civil society organizations and generic manufacturers are lauding the delivery, but say that unless the legislation – called the Canada Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) – is modified, this first shipment will also be the last.

Wednesday’s delivery of 7-million three-in-one antiretrovirals manufactured by generic pharmaceutical producer Apotex Inc. and expected to save the lives of 21,000 people is the first shipment of generic drugs to leave Canada in the four years since the legislation has been in place.

Apotex has been working since 2004 to produce inexpensive drugs for export to the developing world – a process they describe as long and unnecessarily bureaucratic.

“There is a reason no other company has tried to provide medicines under this regime,” said Jack Kay, Apotex’s president. “It is too complex and has to be repeated for every request that comes in from a country.”

Currently, generic manufactures must conduct what they say are typically lengthy and unfruitful negotiations with patent-holders to ask them for a voluntarily license to produce the drugs. Should patent-holding manufacturers not wish to grant a voluntary licence, as happened to Apotex, the generic manufacturer must then file for a compulsory license with the government. This process must be repeated for each recipient country and for each quantity of drugs intended for export.

With generic manufacturers unwilling to repeat the process under the current Regime, Richard Elliott, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, was concerned that Canada’s regime would do little to alleviate the health problems facing the developing world.

“People are not getting medicines that they need…and it is clearly not because [of a lack of need]. It is because the process is unnecessarily time consuming and cumbersome,” he said. “[CAMR] has worked once…. Our concern is that it won’t get used again. It’s not good enough.”

Intended to facilitate the export of inexpensive generic drugs to treat diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis that affect the least-developed countries, the CAMR was created to exempt generic pharmaceutical companies who produce these drugs for the least-developed countries from patent laws that grant long-term monopolies to the research-based pharmaceutical companies that develop the drugs.

Many groups have asked for a “one-license solution,” which would allow generic pharmaceutical companies to produce the licensed drug without having to reapply for a separate license for each shipment and country, paying a royalty based on the quantity produced. While Industry Canada reviewed the system, it concluded that more time was needed before a proper assessment of the Regime could occur.

Canadian Grandmothers for Africa: A National Advocacy Network demonstrated last night at Union Station in downtown Toronto to show support for Apotex’s efforts, and to try to mobilize support for CAMR reform prior to the October federal election.

“[This demonstration] is a call to action to fix this system and to fix it now,” said Carole Holmes, spokesperson for the Grandmothers. “If the political will was there, we know that it would have been fixed in weeks, not years.”

According to Elliott, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network has submitted questions to all five federal parties, and responses will be made available to the public on the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network’s web site on Monday.

Elliott suspected that the government may try to trumpet Tuesday’s drug delivery as evidence that CAMR is functional.

“I would assume that now that the drugs are finally leaving that [the government] will reiterate their position. I didn’t think it was convincing then, and I don’t think that it’s convincing now,” said Elliott.

Elliot seemed to be correct. While Industry Canada will continue to monitor the effectiveness of the program, it has said that CAMR does seem to be working.

“This [Tuesday’s drug shipment] demonstrates that CAMR can help deliver generic drugs to help combat disease in the developing world,” Industry Canada’s senior media-relations advisor Annie Trepanier, wrote in an email to The Daily.

Holmes said that Canada has an obligation to fix CAMR so that it can live up to its commitment to provide access to essential medicines for developing countries.

“I think that for Grandmothers, who tend to keep their promises, this just doesn’t do it,” Holmes said.

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According to a paper recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, war may have once been a good thing. Marc Feldman, a professor, and Laurent Lehmann, a post doctoral fellow at Stanford University, discovered that wars among groups of early humans may have been rational according to evolutionary standards because the benefits for the group outweighed the costs to the individual.

Using a population-genetics model, Lehmann and Feldman suggested that reproduction-enhancing plunder obtained through conquest may have played a role in the evolution of aggressive behaviour among men. In their model, resources include additional women for males to mate with and additional territory for females. Because both additional mates and territory increase the number of children a group can support, traits that make groups more successful in war are favoured – even if, as in the case of belligerence and bravery, the traits are costly.

Through their model, Lehmann and Feldman found that belligerence was beneficial because it makes a group more likely to start a war – despite its high costs in time and energy. Bravery, too, was beneficial, because the benefits of victory that came with courage outweighed the increased risk of death.

The study results suggest that these two traits may have evolved because men mated with women from conquered tribes. Women from the winning groups benefited as well, by getting resources, like food and shelter, to support children.

According to Lehmann, the findings have received a lot of media attention, but have not exactly rocked the science community.

“The question and the model are quite standard. The predictions that come out are also standard…. It’s the behaviours examined that catch the imagination,” he said.

Indeed, it’s tempting to project the model on today’s seemingly aggressive society, but Lehmann warned that their model is based on how humans used to live – in small, isolated groups. Prehistoric conditions don’t translate well into today’s state-versus-state warfare.

“The thing that is really important is that you need kinship ties. You need that group of homogeneous individuals whether it is genetically transmitted or culturally transmitted,” Lehmann said.

As size of groups and mating between groups increases, kinship – relatedness within a group – will decrease. And as kinship decreases, belligerence and bravery lose their value, because part of the value of bravery is that even if you die, your siblings will still be around to pass on the genes that you share with them. The model shows that if belligerence and bravery are passed on by genes alone, the maximum group size in which the traits may have evolved is roughly 50 people.

To explore the possibility of larger groups, Lehmann and Feldman considered cultural transmission of belligerence and bravery. Culturally transmitted aggression occurs when aggression is learnt, rather than passed genetically, and can evolve no matter the group size.

Yet Lehmann remained unconvinced of the applicability of his results on modern-day warfare.

“Decisions taken by states today are more complicated. There are economic models which attempt to explain why states go to war, but our model doesn’t apply to this situation,” Lehmann said.

Still, this is the moment when Canadians can breathe a sigh of relief. If wanting to go to war was ever a cultural phenomenon of our distant past, we most certainly would have left it to our less rational cousins down South.

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Courtney Kirkby, a volunteer at CKUT hopes that when students listen to GroundWire this Friday, they’ll hear something fresh.

“Often when you listen to the TV, it’s the same vocal persona,” she said. “It’s neat listening to Groundwire because there are so many voices.”

Production of Groundwire rotates monthly among all 20 of the community radio stations involved in the project – an unprecedented initiative, according to Gretchen King, CKUT news director. Submissions can come from any independent Canadian producer, and each program has content from all over the country.

The September edition of Groundwire, which airs Friday during CKUT’s weekday news program Off the Hour, will feature labour-related content including a piece commemorating the 1978-79 nickel workers strike in Sudbury and an investigation into present-day labour action in Montreal.

King was excited that GroundWire will prioritize issues absent from other news sources.

“All of these issues are never explored in mainstream media…. Much of the media has turned toward profit rather than content,” she said. The program aims to emphasize human rights activism, labour rights, democratic information exchange, and progressive political and social policy.

Kristin Schwartz, a Groundwire contributor who is a former member of directors of the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA), agreed that the program’s content sets it apart from other news sources, and said that students will likely identify with it.

“Youth in particular have a critical view on mainstream media, and are looking for alternatives,” she said.

The idea for an independent national news program came out of the NCRA’s 2004 conference in Edmonton, but due to funding constraints and a lack of news producers, it took until this past April for the first edition to air. King explained that CKUT played an important part in keeping the idea alive.

“CKUT has been the Bunsen burner on the project, and has made an effort to make sure that this project gets off the ground,” she said.

Kirkby, who is a contributing producer on this month’s program, said the project gave radio journalists a great wealth of experience.

“It is a good opportunity for journalists who are just getting their feet wet to produce with guidelines, and for a national audience,” King said.

Schwartz was also positive about what listeners will gain by tuning into Groundwire.

“I hope that young people in particular will appreciate a program that amplifies the voices of people who are engaged in community struggles,” she said.

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