Canadian scientists must brag more
Canada home to health research successes in fight against COVID-19, but needs culture shift: expert
VANCOUVER — Canada is home to significant scientific expertise and research tackling COVID-19, though one expert says long-standing hurdles make it difficult for the country to punch above its weight in the global fight against the virus.
Among the standout contributions is a Vancouver biotech company that’s producing a key component of several vaccines, but a University of British Columbia professor says Canada could do more to support its experts.
Dr. Srinivas Murthy, who also co-chairs the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 clinical characterization and management committee, said Canada needs greater integration between health care and research.
He said clinicians in the United States are better equipped to conduct “good quality research at the bed side,” while in Canada, separate budgets, personnel and infrastructure make it difficult to get clinical research up and running quickly, especially in response to a crisis like the pandemic.
“When the rubber hits the road, it’s patients and providers and hospitals that are doing the work,” and that’s where Canada lacks on-the-ground operational resources for research in clinical settings, he said.
“If you look at clinical trials or vaccines or diagnostics (and) the testing of each of those things, if we start something and build something and then get swept away by (research) that’s gone faster in another part of the world,” he said, it becomes harder to implement those home-grown ideas.
Murthy would like to see research centres established at local hospitals across
Canada, an approach he said constitutes a “culture shift” that hasn’t happened yet and requires money and research staff at each hospital.
While he said there’s yet to be a defining contribution of COVID-19 global research that Canada may call only its own, Murthy acknowledges the contributions of experts across the country.
“We shouldn’t look down on the fact that we are good at this,” he said.
In Vancouver, for example, biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics is contributing a key component to several COVID-19 vaccines: lipid nanoparticles that help deliver the drug in the form of messenger ribonucleic acid or mRNA.
Acuitas CEO Thomas Madden said in recent years they’ve developed carrier systems that are uniquely effective at protecting fragile mRNA when it enters the body and delivering it inside cells, where it provides instructions.
In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the mRNA is “delivering a message to our cells that allows them to express the spike protein that’s on the outside of the virus,” he explained.
“When our cells make this protein, it’s recognized by our immune system as being foreign, and so we develop a protective immune response against that protein.”
Acuitas’ lipid nanoparticles help deliver a larger portion inside the cells than other carrier systems, said Madden.
That means vaccine developers can administer a lower dose of mRNA while reaching effective protection.
When Acuitas began working with Pfizer and BioNTech, CureVac and Imperial College London on mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19, the company realized their contribution was an important Canadian story, said Madden.
“Canadians should be aware that a Canadian company and Canadian technology (are) playing a critical role” in vaccine development, he said.
Meanwhile, a team led by researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton caught Pfizer’s attention as they develop an algorithm to predict COVID-19 cases and deaths up to 10 weeks into the future by using massive amounts of public data from Canada and the United States.
The pharmaceutical company has a partnership with the provincial Crown corporation Alberta Innovates and Pfizer signalled its interest in supporting work on the algorithm, said Mark Lewis, Canada research chair in mathematical biology and co-applicant for the $220,000 grant.
The company is “not dictating any of the research,” he noted.
A key feature of the algorithm is it learns from the data, said Lewis, in contrast to mathematical modelling that relies on certain hypotheses about how the illness spreads and other factors, such as the impact of vaccines.
“We’re not really hypothesizing how things are working,” he said.
“We’re just saying, here’s all the data we can find, learn from it and make a prediction. So, it’s philosophically quite different.”
Their results so far have been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, said Lewis, who hesitated to share too much until that evaluation is complete.
But he said the algorithm appears to do a “good job” predicting cases and deaths up to 10 weeks in advance, offering insight for policymakers.
“It’s a way to help reduce uncertainty.” Making predictions about the pandemic is a tough job, said Lewis, because factors affecting the pandemic are always in flux, from public health rules to the availability of vaccine to everyday human behaviour.
Pouria Ramazi, an assistant professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said their algorithm uses data from at least 25 variables from several thousand counties across the U.S., such as ICU capacity, the ratio of smokers to non-smokers, age and income levels, the temperature outside and the public health policies in place at the time data was collected.
Data is “less transparent” in Canada, he said, but they’ve still gathered a range of information from across the country to feed into the algorithm, which they hope to make publicly accessible.
The online video-sharing platform YouTube has taken to banning videos that, the company states, promote harmful beliefs or contain hate-filled language.
Some of this is unexceptional. If we’re talking about militia organizations employing overtly racist speech, for example, there is no reason why YouTube should give them a platform.
Likewise, if resurgent Nazi groups want to deny the Holocaust, let them do it elsewhere.
But like all forms of unregulated censorship, crusades of this kind often surge past the boundaries of moderation. YouTube recently removed a video by two American physicians concerned about COVID-19 isolation measures.
YouTube’s argument was these physicians were contradicting established public health policy. Perhaps they were.
But that isn’t hate speech or an invitation to armed insurrection. There are reasonable people on both sides of this debate.
Both Twitter and the search engine Google have also removed commentary that didn’t meet their standards.
In effect, social-media behemoths are now America’s fact checker. And not just America’s. Ours too. Part of the problem is that within their own field of operations, private firms such as YouTube or Twitter are not subject to the same freedom-of-speech requirements as public bodies.
Yet with the advent of the internet and social media, those fields of operations have broadened exponentially.
A handful of executives can now regulate what the rest of the world sees, hears and thinks. Likewise, they can silence anyone with whose views they disagree.
This is a power over thought and speech never contemplated when companies were originally given the legal tools required to manage their workplace.
These provisions date back, in some cases, to the 18th century and earlier. They envisaged a workplace confined within factory walls.
They did not foresee a workplace that can blanket the globe, and a workplace, moreover, that controls the circulation of knowledge and ideas essential to an open society.
And it’s not only social-media outlets that are deciding for us what we can see and hear.
Sir John A. Macdonald’s statue was removed from Victoria City Hall because of the role he played in establishing the residential school program.
A statue of George Vancouver was vandalized. Across the country efforts have been made to expunge memorials to Winston Churchill, Egerton Ryerson and Samuel de Champlain.
At what point does this sort of group-think merge into intolerance? And how is it to be resisted? Many former luminaries, now held in contempt, led what were at the time held to be blameless lives. More than that, several made major contributions to their communities.
San Francisco’s school board voted to strip Abraham Lincoln’s name from its schools. The board claimed some of his policies were injurious to Indigenous people.
But didn’t he also free the slaves? Shouldn’t that count for something?
Cancel culture leaves no room for redemption or atonement. We are to see only the harm someone has done. We are to look into that individual’s heart and find only evil.
This is an unworthy instinct. And hypocritical. Has anyone ever lived who did only good, and never sinned?
That it should be necessary to make these points serves as a warning. Cancel culture represents a narrowing of dialogue and a closing of minds that threatens our most basic freedoms.
With the likelihood that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to call a spring election, he is playing a bit of a shell game to take Canadians’ eyes off his numerous ethics violations and many dismal failures, including, but not limited to, the lack of securing sufficient COVID-19 vaccine to actually save Canadian lives and get our economy moving forward.
We must remember with his recent announcement regarding the gun ban and buyback program that is projected to cost the Canadian taxpayer $300-$400 million that the gun registry implemented in 1995 by the Liberals was projected to cost $85 million but ended up costing Canadians $1 billion, and it didn’t save one life, a failure that has been abandoned.
Just think how much shorter our waiting lists for medical procedures could be had that billion been injected into health care in 1995.
Look for a similar result with Trudeau’s latest announcement.
I do not own restricted firearms or a handgun. The only people that Trudeau is setting his sights on are law-abiding Canadian citizens.
To quote our illustrious borrowand-spend PM: “One Canadian killed by gun violence is too many,” but sadly his gun ban and buyback program will not save one Canadian life.
Criminals desiring to obtain a gun do not do so by legal means so his new ban will not prevent them from obtaining guns.
Neither did criminals ever use the costly failed gun registry. Regardless of Trudeau’s new policy, gun violence will not be reduced.
We are all tired of hearing about the latest shooting every other evening on the news and something needs to be done to curb it, but a gun ban and buyback program will not change the gun-violence cycle.
What would make a difference would be strict laws with real teeth and mandatory sentences.
What would be so wrong with a real life sentence with no eligibility of parole ever for anyone committing a crime using a firearm and that sentence increased to capital punishment if that crime resulted in death?
The current consequences for these crimes are obviously not strong enough to be a deterrent and criminals will always find a place to obtain guns.
Just look south of our border to the United States, which is probably the easiest place on Earth to procure firearms.
You don’t think guns get smuggled across the border?
If Trudeau was serious, he would use new tougher laws to stop gun violence.
This recent announcement is just an expensive game, the cost of which will once again be passed along to the taxpayers while he pumps his chest and claims to be tough on gun violence.
It’s all about showmanship. Maybe we can put a ban on Trudeau via the polls.
Guy Bissonnette,
Lake Country
The NFL has increased the salary cap to a minimum of $180 million for the 2021 season.
The league and the NFL Players Association had previously set a minimum of $175 million because of revenue losses incurred during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a memo sent to clubs Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, the league says a decision to increase the floor by $5 million came after discussion with the union about 2020 revenues and projected attendance for 2021.
The final cap number will be determined following further review of revenue figures for 2020 and other accounting. The cap was $198 million last season.
Total attendance was 1.2 million, down from 17 million in 2019.