Oh, Those Inconvenient Details

“Mars Base 1” is a Mars simulation center in the Gobi desert. Photographer: Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

"[With lunar exploration], there's always the prospect of rescue or provisioning or supply from Earth or from a midway space station."

"That's not going to be the case for Mars."

Alice Gorman, associate professor, Flinders University, Adelaide, member advisory council Space Industry Association of Australia

"It's a very gruesome way to die [hit by radiation from unpredictable solar flares]."

"We don't have established capacity to observe the Sun from different angles for tracking solar storms."

Lewis Dartnell, professor, astrobiology specialist, Department of Life Sciences, University of Westminster, London

"'During a massive dust storm], it's almost like midnight on the surface of Mars for two months."

"If you are there with solar panels for power, you very likely don't survive."

"You don't have enough energy to keep things warm enough."

Nilton Renno, professor, astrobiology research, University of Michigan

"Today it's definitely a place where we can't live."

"But as we develop science and technologies, the answer might be different in fifty to a  hundred years from now."

Adnan AlRais, Mars 2117 program manager, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, United Arab Emirates

 

There are future plans, ambitious and determined from various sources, to have humans visit Mars and perform preparatory work to form a colony on the Red Planet. NASA plans to send astronauts at some point in the 2030s to Mars. China stated that sending humans to Mars is a long-term goal it holds. The United Arab Emirates promotes a 100-year plan for the creation of a colony; for a starter it has a spacecraft orbiting Mars. For anyone interested in the here-and-now in experiencing what it might feel like to land on the planet, there is a site in the Gobi Desert simulating being there.

And then there's Elon Musk, that forward-looking billionaire, founder of Space Exploration Technologies whose plan is to send humans to Mars within the decade, confident that a crewed mission could occur in 2026. There are risks, he acknowledges, having responded in the face of warning by many scientists that too many unanswered questions confront deep-space travel. "Honestly", remarked the tycoon, "a bunch of people probably will die at the beginning."

It took but a few days for the Apollo astronauts to fly to the moon. Mars, on the other hand, would require between six to nine months for arrival from Earth, the distance between Mars and our planet varying between 35 million miles and 249 million miles taking into account their elliptical orbits, with a small window potentiating when the two would be ideally aligned for space travel; tricky logistics.

 

International Space Station astronauts have been helping to pave the wave for future manned Mars missions. Image via NASA.

 

Exposure during a long flight to one of space travel's terrors, solar flares would await any humans who opted for the experience. Solar flares represent immensely violent hydrogen explosions capable of obliterating everything in their near vicinity, they represent the most powerful explosives in the solar system. A single flare representing the equivalent of 100 million hydrogen bombs. While the Earth's magnetic field can shield orbiting astronauts, a deep-space traveller hit by fierce radiation couldn't survive beyond a few days.

On a multi-month trip to Mars, conceivably shields could be made of water tanks onboard the spacecraft were they to be properly positioned, so in the event of a flare, the spacecraft's version of a panic room surrounded by water tanks could offer a safe retreat to travellers. A bit of a stickler is detecting activity on the Sun, particularly on the side facing away from Earth. So there's the problem of radiation where Mars's thinner atmosphere without a global magnetic shield sees humans risk exposure to solar and cosmic radiation.

 

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy   vis NASA

 

Then, there's the problem of massive storms that can produce dust clouds to block out the sun, since the Mars surface is itself largely comprised of dust. Humans could conceivably use the dust for protection by lining shelters with sandbags filled with Martian soil to block out radiation, offers associate professor Joseph Michalski, who studies the habitability of Mars at the University of Hong Kong. Cave-dwelling could also be a mode of shelter by exploiting some of Mars's lava tubes, large caverns left over from space antiquity when Mars experienced volcanic activity.

There are experiments taking place in growing algae in low-nutrient environments, in greenhouses as a source of food and the production of oxygen. Survival must include a water source. Mars does contain some sub-surface ice that could be transformed to water. For that purpose the use of radar to map the distribution of sub-surface ice would be invaluable to a future Mars mission. "Once you know where the ice is, those are locations where you might send humans", noted Victoria Hamilton, planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

How many people, at a guess, would opt for a one-way trip to Mars, disinterested in returning to Earth? Once on Mars it would take a rocket to return to Earth, and where the fuel would come from to power the spacecraft for a return journey through space remains a huge technological puzzle. "It's not the case that we would bring the rocket fuel with us. It's just too heavy", pointed out Michalski. He offers a potential solution of producing fuel by electrically separating water from sub-surface ice and hydrated rocks, combining the hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. 

An artist’s rendering of SpaceX’s Starship. Source: SpaceX

Don't Forget to Take Your Gendered Vitamins

"[This segment of the retail market is] really interesting, because it has [the] legitimacy of being in [the] pharmacy section, but little regulation of what goes into the messaging."

"Thus, while masculine characteristics were presented through building and improving muscle, feminine characteristics were instead aligned with metabolism-- the chemical process of breaking down food that is often positively affiliated with weight loss."

"We found that 'masculine' products are more likely to be marketed through benefits promising muscle function and prioritizing active professionalism and physical health, while 'feminine' products are more likely to promise improvements to physical appearance and prioritize a decorative, passive role."

Study on gender-advertised multivitamins

Supplements for men, women: What's the difference?  Brant Arts IDA Pharmacy

"They're just very restraining gender roles."

"Those are all genderless issues, yet they were predominantly marketed towards men in order to make room, we argue, for this decorative performance of women."

 Sydney Forde, Penn State University

"[Gender difference reflects an assumption that it is] easier for consumers to make sense of things when they are divided by oversimplified categories of gender appeal."

"[Mundane it may be, but it demonstrates] how we are told by marketing to exist in the world."

Brittany Melton, Brock University

"All men deserve a supplement that can keep up with their daily active lifestyle": men's version.

"Ladies this one's for you!": packaging in pink.

It's likely that shoppers in a pharmaceutical setting wouldn't have much trouble discerning vitamin packaging meant for men and those designed for women; that old traditional colouration identification; blue and pink. If it's good enough for distinguishing the gender separation in babies, then it's good enough for advertisers making a distinction between their products ... even if the distinction is all imaginary. A sales gimmick, in other words; a personal address to the purchaser; men we've got you covered; women this is a reflection of your needs.

Two researchers undertook a comparison in the packaging of two versions of the very same vitamin by the same manufacturer, one meant for men the other for women. It's not only the colour distinctions but the description of what the product will do for men, or for women; same product different angle set to appeal to the buyer's notion of what is important to them as a male, as a female. Without doubt before embarking on this double-pronged-and-separate messaging, a study in gender preferences and appeal was made and then the producer embarked on their gender-separate messaging for the very same product. Making sales by giving the client what they want.

Men are sold multivitamins with the emphasis on energy; pills they are told will work to build their muscles. Women on the other hand are informed that the multivitamins work as metabolism boosters, weight-loss aids that will give them healthier hair, improving their appearance. Neither gender has any idea that the vitamins they each select by colour code and variant performance descriptions are one and the same vitamin, just boxed differently with a different presentation and explanation.

They're also priced differently; the women's version has a slightly higher price tag attached to it. Marketing at its most sophisticated. Both researchers, Melton and Forde undertook a catalogue of 25 multivitamin products, ten geared to men, and fifteen packaged for women. Coding the information provided on the packaging and the product description given online by the manufacturer. Their purpose was to measure gender stereotypes in advertising that proliferate in a 'grey area' of regulation; somewhere between drugs and personal care products.

Megan Madden

As an example, muscle function was front and centre on 50 percent of men's vitamins, but represented just 20 percent of women's vitamins, and metabolism featured large on 60 percent of women's vitamins, in contrast to 40 percent of men's. The variance of emphasis presents men as "professional" and women as "decorative", points out Ms.Melton. While men's vitamins claim an improvement on eye function, muscle performance, cognitive function and the immune system, women's claim improvement of hair, nails and skin.

Mention of bone health does appear on women's vitamins, but as the exception to the general trend that focuses on beauty. As example, 33 percent of women's vitamins feature hair while no men's vitamins mention it at all, and 67 percent feature skin, in comparison to 30 percent of men's, their research clarifies. Comparable mentions of energy appeared on both men's and women's vitamins, but still greater emphasis on energy as a matter of metabolism related to weight loss distinguished women's pills.

Canada's First Nations Residential School System

"In many cases, school principals simply reported on the number of children who had died in a school, with few or no supporting details."

"[Despite this; many of the schools built so poorly they were virtual fire traps], for much of their history, Canadian residential schools operated beyond the reach of fire regulations."

Report, Truth and Reconciliation Commission

A sign tells how Kamloops pupils were forbidden from seeing their families, practicing their languages or traditions

In the 19th Century, the then-government of Canada in consultation with religious groups put together a plan to gather aboriginal children from their tribes, take them from their families -- in their best interests to achieve a 'civilized' education which would enable them to take their place as model citizens, joining the rest of Canada, rather than have them remain on reservations learning traditional culture, language, way of life as a means by which these children would be 'westernized' and 'civilized', and learn how to look after themselves as they integrated into the broader society. 

This was accomplished by government fiat; no consultation with tribal authorities, much less seeking permission from the parents whose children would be scooped up and taken to the nearest residential school to be taught as the government saw would best fit their plans for future integration; to make 'Canadians' out of First Nations children. The children certainly weren't consulted, much less their parents and it's clear that neither the children nor their parents would have given consent.

Many of the children suffered through their years at the residential schools, many others learned skills that would serve them in later life, and they bore no ill-will toward the program. Many others, however, felt they were deprived of their First Nations childhood and many among them experienced harsh treatment while at the schools; punishment meted out to children who rebelled. Without doubt all the children involved missed their families and their tribal way of life.

When childhood diseases swept through the country in the late 1800s and mid-1900s, the toll among children was inevitable until vaccines and other therapies were produced to save lives. At the residential schools where children lived closely with one another the infection rate among the residents was higher and comparatively many more children died than in the broader community. There was little-to-no communication between the authorities at the residential schools and the parents of the children.

 

Delhia Nahanee from the Nisga'a and Squamish First Nations lays a rose on one of 215 pairs of children's shoes on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery

 

The presence of fair-sized cemeteries on the property of the residential schools has always been a rallying point for First Nations activists and leaders demanding the end of the residential schools, compensation to past residents, and apologies for the heavy-handedness of depriving families of their children. Outside of Kamloops, British Columbia 215 unmarked graves belonging to children resident at the Kamloops Indian Residential School were discovered this week.

Chief Harvey McLeod of the Upper Nicola Band recalled his own experience at the school as a child. "I just remember that they were here one day and they were gone the next", he said of seeing his schoolmates disappearing and never being spoken of afterward. The government appointed a committee in 2008 to look into the simmering issue of the residential schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission produced a damning report detailing the ways in which thousands of First Nations children suffered hardship living away from their parents, many of them never to return.

The commission put the number of children who had died while attending a residential school at 3,200; one in every 40 students throughout the 120-year existence of the schools. Most of the schools had graveyards sitting adjacent the school buildings; many of the graves were unmarked, records never kept of children's names, tribes, ages; their parents obliquely notified but given no details, and never was the body of a child sent back to his/her parents for burial and the ritual of mourning.

"It's staggering to think that families would not have known what happened to a child that was sent off to the residential schools", noted Ontario;s Chief Coroner in 2012 when his office initiated an inquest into unrecorded residential school deaths. When a mother near Cornwall, Ontario heard of her son's death at residential school as a result of meningitis, she requested his body be returned home for burial. "It is not the practice of the Department to send bodies of Indians by rail excepting under very exceptional circumstances", the Department of Indian Affairs responded.

Tuberculosis was the most prolific killer of the children. Negligent health practices and cramped conditions made residential schools hotbeds of infection. The years 1870 to 1920 were the deadliest years at the Indian Residential Schools. Opened in 1884, the first six years of the Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School saw over 40 percent of its students die. In southern Alberta, the Sacred Heart Residential School had an annual student death toll of one in 20.

As late as the 1940s, the death rates at residential schools were up to five times greater than among Canadian children as a whole. Nearly one third of the students at the Kuper Island Residential School located in British Columbia died in the years following its 1889 opening. "The Indians are inclined to boycott this school on account of so many deaths", a school inspector wrote in 1922.

There was a marked absence of the most basic of medical care at the residential schools. James Gladstone who became the first Status Indian appointed to the Senate of Canada, wrote in his memoirs of a fellow student who died when no medical attention was given the boy after he stepped on a nail. "I looked after Joe for two days until he died. I was the only one he would listen to during his delirium", wrote Gladstone.

Poor construction and the lack of basic safety standards led to residential school fires with mass-casualty incidents. A fire in 1927 at the Beauval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan  led to the death of 19 students. Three years after that 12 students died at Cross Lake Indian Residential School in Manitoba when a fire broke out there. 

And then there was the sad reality of children attempting to run away from the schools in hopes of reaching their homes. On these occasions when children ran away, the schools appeared to make little effort to recover the children by launching search parties. On New Year's Day, 1937 a group of four boys aged 7 to 9 ran away from Fraser Lake Indian Residential School with the intention of reaching their families at the Naldeh reserve seven miles' distance. 

When the school eventually assembled a search party, the boys were found frozen to death less than a mile from home, 24 hours after they had run off. With this latest discovery of 215 undocumented graves of children, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Seewepeme First Nation revealed that a ground-penetrating radar specialist had aided in the location of the graves. Speaking of the discovery as an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School".

Researchers found the remains of at least 215 Indigenous children on the property of the former Kamloops Residential School

Solving The Problem of Academic Contract Cheating

More research is needed to effectively ensure academic quality.   Shutterstock

"There was about 20 years of research before the pandemic that showed that there was less academic misconduct in online courses compared to face-to-face learning. [It's the fact that students were] forced into online learning when they didn't want to be] as well as inexperienced teachers [not well trained in how to deliver their classes in online learning."

"The pandemic has really affected how we teach and learn. It's impacted all aspects of education."

"You can have an awesome online learning experience, and you can have a terrible online experience. But I think during the pandemic, students have not generally had awesome online experiences, unless they were working with a teacher who already knew how to teach online."

"There was one big study done in Canada, maybe about 15 years ago. And since then, there's been very little data collected in Canada on a large scale."

"These companies [specializing in 'contract cheating'] are doing direct marketing outreach to students via Instagram, by a TikTok video, via YouTube."

"We will help you [they say], we will support you, we will give you a COVID discount. Your school is open from 8:30 to 4:30; we're there for you 24/7 [examples of messaging to students]."

"They use words like 'help'. But what they mean is we'll do it on behalf of the student [homework completion by contract]."

"Students might think doing it once isn't so bad, or they're experimental -- especially it's being pushed on them quite aggressively. And then find themselves not being able to get away from these companies."

"We need to name the problem in our policies and our procedures in schools. We need to talk to students about the real risks of engaging with these companies."

Sarah Eaton, professor, Wurklund School of Education, University of Calgary

Professor Eaton speaks of an increase in education-cheating that has risen from about 40 percent to 200 percent, basing her numbers on countrywide reports published by academic institutions. It is not Canada alone that has been impacted by students contracting out their work to companies specializing in producing academic papers to match students' assignments, profiting from a business that is in fairly high demand from students who for one reason or another resort to falsifying their educational credits. Misconduct in Canadian post-secondary institutions has absorbed her attention with a special focus on online learning.

General student dissatisfaction, Professor Eaton believes, has led to their becoming prey to a $15-billion global industry specializing in 'contract cheating', defined as students taking steps to outsource assignments, having someone for a fee produce what they feel incapable of doing themselves, in hopes of getting good credit for work not their own. The anonymous writers who work for the 'contract cheating' companies mostly represent underpaid ghostwriters, skilled in writing academic papers and prepared to hire themselves out for that purpose.

 

There is insufficient research about academic misconduct in Canada   Shutterstock

 

The companies they work for, in the absence of legislation outlawing their services and actions, the advertise their services to students, luring them with the prospect of paying a reasonable fee to release themselves from the work involved in producing completed assignments worthy of moving them closer to the degrees they're working toward. The companies, once a student is snagged, are interested in keeping them indebted with aggressive marketing tactics, and even blackmail; threatening to reveal their forbidden access to contract cheating.

According to pre-pandemic modelling, over 75,000 students attending Canada's post-secondary institutions, have taken part in contract cheating. It is as yet unknown to what extent students have compromised their studies and academic records during the time of the pandemic, but by all indications that would be a growing number of students. Being online means contacts of all kind are routine, and among them are unsolicited offers to provide students with affordable papers reflective of their personal requirements.

An online presence also leads to sharing all manner of social-interest items, but more to the point, academic work and answers to test questions. "Many educators made an assumption that students wouldn't share online. And yet, all of us share online all the time", Professor Eaton observed. Companies whose business is that of luring students into their cheating world of profit and academic corruption, percolate easily within post-secondary groups on social media, sending out irresistible messages to those students struggling with assignments.

Shutterstock

Payment from students to these alluring companies are made online with use of credit cards and personal contact data exchanged. The unaware student's personal information is now in the company's corrupt possession; email addresses, phone number, enabling the companies to aggressively monitor and harass the student,  luring them on to continue plagiarizing academic assignments. Turnaround is fast, texts completed and forwarded within a seven-day period. 

In some instances, companies withdraw monthly payments, unauthorized, from the student's credit card, billing them as 'subscription fees'. If any objections are raised, the company can threaten to report the situation to the student's school should the student make an attempt to cancel their credit card. Some countries, like New Zealand, Ireland, Australia have produced legislation making it illegal for contract cheating businesses to operate in their jurisdictions. Britain has tabled similar legislation.

Studying the academic integrity policies of 80 institutions in Canada, Professor Eaton and her study group discovered that only two make mention of contract cheating. "If they're not naming the problem, we're not solving the problem", she commented. Noted, that most institutions make mention of academic misconduct policies which are frequently antiquated and inconsistent. "So the way one university defines plagiarism is totally different from the way another university defines plagiarism", she said.

Convincing the Unconvinced

"You want kids to get vaccinated not just for herd immunity, but [for] their own health."

"Parents may do a different kind of cost-benefit calculus when they are thinking about vaccinating their children."

"[Evidence from some jurisdictions show that] ethically justified legal mechanisms [have an impact on vaccination rates]."

"Get vaccinated and you have access to a 'public good' -- such as a school".

Timothy Caulfield, Canada research chair, health law and policy, University of Alberta

 

"What has changed is those that were unsure. Among those that were unsure in the early days of the pandemic, about half have said they now plan to vaccinate, while the other half remains unsure."

"So, we can expect that while acceptance may have improved somewhat since the early stages of the pandemic, it's likely that this is lower for children than [for] the general population."

Erin Hetherington, social epidemiologist, lead author of study

 

"We have a much more human-rights-based view of children as persons with value unto themselves who are afforded human rights [in Canada]."

"Most 12-year-olds really are quite well informed."

"Sometimes the answer is to say, 'Let's not do it this week. But let's think about it next week'."

"As far as kids are concerned, if it will get them back to normal life, then it's a good thing. We do know that children are struggling with loneliness, depression and anxiety."

Michelle Mullen, bioethicist, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario 

Mae Smith, 13, gets her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic held at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School in Toronto on Wednesday. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Now that anti-COVID vaccination doses are relatively flush in Canada, the gradual opening to age groups for inoculation has finally resulted in most provinces opening their vaccination clinics to all age groups, including children over age 12. Everyone is anxious to see life graduate back to the kind of social routine that is customary. Health professionals worry in particular about people's mental health, struggling with isolation and loneliness. And children are no exception. Schools closed to in-person learning, pivoting to remote learning has been a difficult transition for most children.

They miss the company of their peers, they miss the routine discipline, they miss the casual-by-comparison lives they left behind a year-and-a-half ago through no fault of their own. Other than the fact that transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19, among the young gathered together in school classrooms, despite the exceptional care given to try to maintain distance and to remain in discrete bubbles and to wear masks and observe necessary hand-washing hygiene, remains high. And while children tend to become less ill with COVID, variants arise and transmission from schools to community accounts for a fairly high percentage of COVID cases.

Now that teens are being invited to make appointments for vaccinations, the question arises; how many will respond affirmatively. Initially there was a rush of those committed to gaining vaccine coverage making appointments as recommended. What remains open to speculation is how many teens, including the parents of those teens, will continue to book those appointments? Acknowledged as being key to prevention of the virus spread, plus the variants, it is of great importance that young people be vaccinated. It is also the very way that they will themselves benefit more directly by returning to school, to sports and to normal social activities, to ensure sound mental health.

 

Young people in the 12-16 age cohort got their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine at the vaccine clinic at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School in Toronto this week. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

While it's true that the COVID experience has demonstrated that children tend not to have serious symptoms of the virus, thus have far less reason to be hospitalized, much less die, if seriously infected, an estimated 83,000 young people under age 20 have tested positive for COVID in Ontario alone since the advent of the pandemic. Four of them have died of COVID-19. Some parents vacillate over vaccination for their children; many are prepared to have their children inoculated, others plan not to, but there is a middling number who remain uncommitted, preferring to 'wait and see'.

A survey was undertaken of 1,321 mothers in Alberta with children aged between nine and twelve who were asked whether they intended to vaccinate their children. Of the total, 60 percent stated their unhesitating intention to vaccinate, and nine percent that they had no intention of doing so, leaving 31 percent who felt uncertain. What did crop up as an anomaly was that only 60 percent of families whose children had complete infant routine vaccinations, agreeing they intended to vaccinate against COVID.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States recommended everyone over age 12 be vaccinated, leading to reports of teens who have been placed in the position of waiting until they turn 18 years of age when they are deemed legally able to make their own decisions independent of parents who will not agree to permit their children to be vaccinated. The legal position of teens in Canada is not the same. Under Ontario's Health Care Consent Act, no age of consent is stipulated; a presumption of capacity rules. The patient is held to understand the nature of the medical treatment under proposal in a way that is appropriate and accessible.

The patient is held to comprehend consequences, positive and negative; the vaccine will prevent serious illness and hospitalization, even while there may be some side-effects and rare reactions. Also understood must be the decision to accept a medical treatment be informed and voluntary. Even should parents reject vaccination, no young person seeking vaccination will be denied. On the other hand, any young person who clearly states they have no wish to be vaccinated, cannot be coerced into inoculation.

In this Wednesday, March 24, 2021 image from video provided by Duke Health, Alejandra Gerardo, 9, looks up to her mom, Dr. Susanna Naggie, as she gets the first of two Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations during a clinical trial for children at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. (Shawn Rocco/Duke Health via AP)

Will The Spirit Molecule Aid Recovery from Ischemic Stroke?

"The idea is can we stimulate neurogenesis without being psychedelic? And I think that's a really clever idea. No one knows. But if it works, it's very exciting."

"How you keep it [N-Dimethyltryptamine] a sub-psychedelic dose is going to be challenging, and we've got some ideas about that, but also if people are conscious, they can talk to you. If they start to say 'I don't like the side effects I'm seeing, I'm thinking funny thoughts', you can just turn it off and literally within a minute the effect dissipates."

"The barriers are still immense [to testing psychedelic drugs]. But we're hoping that the more research is done and the more clinical utility is demonstrated that the barriers begin to come down. At present they're enormous and they add vast costs but also time. Getting import-export licenses for these drugs is a pain in the butt. It can take months to get permission to move the source compound across to another country to do the testing."

"Before I was sacked, no scientists in Britain would actually tell the truth about drugs, they didn't ever want to confront the fact that the biggest killer in Britain is alcohol. And after I was sacked everyone said, 'Of course it is. It's obvious. So why do we care about these psychedelics that aren't very harmful at all?' So the public completely swung around to us."

"The fact that Oregon is now legalizing mushrooms, against federal law, against the UN Convention, tells us we won the argument in the public. But we've still got to win it with the politicians."

Dr.David Nutt, psychiatrist, neuropsychopharmacology professor, Imperial College London

In February, Algernon Pharmaceuticals announced it was planning to be the first company in the world to test DMT in human clinical trials for stroke. Photo by GORODENKOFF / iStock / Getty Images

When Dr. Nutt was the top drug adviser to the U.K. government his condemnation of alcohol as the drug responsible for untold deaths, along with tobacco, as opposed to mild-to-moderate psychedelic drug use that was in contrast relatively harmless, landed him in hot water. His candid assessment ran counter to political views and he was fired from his position with the government of the U.K. ten years ago for his opinion expressed publicly that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful to individuals and society than LSD, ecstasy or cannabis.

While the learned professor, now 70, is still teaching and doing research at Imperial College and remains involved in trials with psychedelic medicines, he is also a consultant on a new trial that may bring hope to the treatment of ischemic stroke. Most strokes are ischemic, occurring when blood flow to the brain becomes obstructed. Options for treatment remain limited. A study published in the Annals of Neurology documented over a thousand drugs thought of as potential neuroprotective therapies tested from 1957 to 2003, none of which tested as viable options for effective treatment.

A clot-clearing drug, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) was approved by Health Canada in 1999 for the treatment of ischemic strokes, but for the drug to be effective, it requires administration within several hours of the onset of stroke symptoms. Since tPA can also be deadly administered to someone who has experienced a hemorrhagic stroke, patients must wait for a CT scan before receiving treatment, a delay whose outcome can be devastating.

Billions of dollars and decades have been spent while researchers searched for alternative drugs capable of preserving neurons and which in the best of all possible scenarios could be administered to patients without a scan being required. Algernon Pharmaceuticals based in Vancouver announced its plans to test the psychedelic compound recognized as belonging to the tryptamine family which includes substances like psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. DMT is familiarly known as "the spirit molecule". It occurs naturally in varieties of vegetation, some made use of in South America for religious ceremonies for centuries.

The pharmaceutical company anticipates that the drug will prove able to promote neurogenesis and neural plasticity to initiate new synaptic connections, and if it succeeds, stroke victims would be enabled toward faster recovery, with less ensuing damage. Continuous intravenous injection is visualized at a sub-psychedelic level so patients would not be exposed to hallucinations in its administration. Algernon submitted a proposal to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration respecting the design and scope of its preclinical and early phase stroke clinical programs.

Phase 1 of the trials purposes to establish dosages and the safety of the treatment, with the next phase to focus on recovery and rehabilitation. There is an existing foundation of pre-clinical studies demonstrating that DMT is capable of promoting neuroplasticity. The neuroprotective effect of DMT was demonstrated in a study published a year ago in the journal Experimental Neurology, with the use of an animal model. Once blood flow to the brain in rats was restricted, those treated with DMT suffered fewer lesions on the brain and recovered faster, with fewer severe effects.

Algernon which harbours the expectation that its microdosing approach may serve to encourage a wider review and acceptance of the therapeutic potential of DMT, introducing the opportunity for further research, believes its approach could have the potential to lead to a Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA, enabling priority review and fast-tracking of the clinical trial process. Dr.Nutt notes that these types of substances require rescheduling for real progress to occur. "If the schedules don't change, they're not going to be medicines, that's a fact."

"[I'm] hanging on to see sanity eventually prevail over the drug policy."

"It is buzzing at present and I think that even if only half of the hope comes to fruition [it] is still going to be a hell of an event."

"I hope I live long enough to see it all sorted."

Dr.David Nutt, psychiatrist, neuropsychopharmacology professor, Imperial College London

Restoring Vision

"The retina is a biological computer at the back of your eye. It's like a hamburger, the top bread is a photosensitive layer and the bottom bread forms the optic nerve and talks to the rest of our brain. In between, representing the salad, tomato and meat, are the computational layers that compute the visual field."

"In retinitis pigmentosa, the photosensitive layer is damaged but the rest is intact, like a hamburger without the top bread."

"In optogenetic therapy, we create an artificial photosensitive layer targeting ganglion cells, which are the lower bread. The brain has to learn a new language because the signals from the ganglion cells are not the usual ones."

Botond Roska, professor, founding director, Institute for Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology, University of Basel, Switzerland

"Before the treatment the patient couldn't see anything but spontaneously he was able to see stripes on the street and then was able to detect objects on the table and to grasp the objects, and count the objects."

Jose-Alain Sahel, professor of Ophthalmology, Medical School of the Sorbonne Université and Founder and Director, The Vision Institute, Paris, ...Sorbonne University, Paris

A 58-year-old man who lost his sight nearly four decades ago successfully locates various objects placed on a white table following an experimental procedure that involved genetically modifying one of the man's eyes.  Jose-Alain Sahel/Botond Roska

Lacking sight for a period of forty years it could only seem like a miracle to someone who has taken part in an experiment to restore his eyesight through a new medium that will task his brain to adjust to signals received in a different way, enabling him to 'see' again. The man had undergone the fate of those who suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, where the top layer of the retina degenerates, leaving the eye incapable of sensing light.

Scientists had theorized that the intact ganglion cells at the retina base could be repurposed as light-sensitive cells, in essence repairing the damaged top layer of the retina to enable the man to see again. Now that the man has undergone the experimental treatment where his eye cells were modified genetically to become sensitive to light, he is able once again to see.

One of his eyes was modified through inserting genes from light-sensitive algae into the ganglion cells. Those cells are triggered into action with the use of special goggles which record the world in real time, converting image into pulses of red and amber light to shine into the retina, activating cells connected to the optic nerve, thus restoring sight.

The man who had undergone the experimental treatment was able to recognize, count, locate and touch objects where to do so had eluded him for decades. The work was published in the journal Nature Medicine, attracting much attention from the medical community, leading British scientists to consider the outcome a brave new experiment in rectifying a critical organ failure.

No treatment exists for retinitis pigmentosa beyond gene replacement therapy appropriate only when the eye disease is in its early onset, and it works to prevent further damage. It is believed by the scientists involved in this ground-breaking procedure that the patient's eyesight will gradually improve as the patient is trained to make the most of its potential in brain-eye communication.

 

The researchers feel that the technique will have great take-up in the impaired-vision community in part reflecting the simplicity of the gene insertion technique and the use of non-intrusive goggles to accomplish the seemingly impossible; restoring long-lost eyesight.

The treatment regimen enabled the unnamed man to 'locate, count and touch' different objects. (Nature Medicine)

Doubting the Efficacy and Safety of a Vaccine

"The benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 with the associated risks of hospitalization and death, continue to outweigh the risks of the vaccine for the vast majority of people."

"Our safety monitoring systems are working and working effectively, these extremely rare side effects have been identified and analyzed by the best of scientific minds and enabled us to provide scientifically based up-to-date information and advice."

"The balance of benefits and risks of the vaccine is very favourable for older age groups, but it is more finely balanced for younger people, and so we advise that this evidence should be taken into account when considering the use of the vaccine."

Dr.June Raine, chief executive, U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency 

People drink and eat in outdoor street dining areas as lockdown restrictions are eased amid the coronavirus pandemic in Soho, London on April 24, 2021. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

"The U.K. did not have a great supply of the Pfizer vaccine and so, given the decision to vaccinate your population versus a very prolonged vaccine rollout with a pretty significant wave that they had in January 2020 they pushed forward with AstraZeneca."

"They were bold about it, but they should be congratulated on it. They followed the science and they pushed an aggressive campaign to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible."

If you were to put everything on a scale and add public good to it, it absolutely would make sense to continue to get as many vaccines to as many people as possible and finish their series."

"But we live in an individual society with individual decision-making and so this is part of the consequences."

Dr.Zain Chagla, infectious disease expert, associate professor, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

A man receives a dose of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine at a conference center in Rome on 24 March. Italy halted use of the vaccine on 15 March, but resumed immunizations 4 days later. Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

Oxford-AstraZeneca is a vaccine developed in the United Kingdom, so it's hardly surprising, given its fairly high efficacy rate that the U.K. was among the first countries worldwide to approve its use, dispensing millions of doses expeditiously, while the rest of the world was still considering whether to approve the vaccine. In Britain, Pfizer has been utilized half as much, representing the second most-used vaccine in the country.

Developed at Oxford University, the U.K. estimates as of mid-May that 23.9 million doses of AstraZenca were dispensed as a first dose, with nine million second doses. In comparison 11.7 first doses of Pfizer were dispensed, with 9.9 million second doses. Moderna vaccines are only just now beginning to enter Britain, with roughly 200,000 doses being dispersed. The United Kingdom now stands as one of the world's leading countries in vaccinations with at least the first dose having been used to inoculate 56 percent of the population, and fully vaccinating 32 percent of residents.

Britain's view of the rare blood clots associated with AstraZeneca is that of a risk well worth taking in the struggle to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID. The country has been determinedly aggressive in rolling out the vaccine. A situation quite the reverse of what has been happening in Canada. Where the use of AstraZeneca has fallen under a cloak of trepidation over the rare occurrences of vaccine-caused blood clots, despite that COVID-19 is capable of and has indeed caused infinitely greater numbers of blood clots and deaths.

 

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After temporarily suspending the use of AstraZeneca altogether, the province of Ontario has altered its decision somewhat announcing it would once again use the vaccine, for those people who have already been given their first dose of AstraZeneca, as a follow-up. Other provinces which also had suspended the use of AstraZeneca have not yet decided whether to relax that position. 

 

In the United Kingdom, roughly 250 cases of the rare blood clots associated with the vaccine have occurred. Given the total number of vaccines used, the medical experts place the risk at about one in 100,000 in first doses. Only a handful of clots have arisen in the use of second doses; a rate of one in a million. Percentages that rate similarly in the Ontario experience. 

 

The key difference, according to Dr.Raine, being that the rare, potentially deadly clots are identified in the U.K. medical system, enabling health authorities to treat the clots as they occur. People under 40 who may be at higher risk of acquiring clots are advised to consider waiting for the Pfizer vaccine, while emphasizing that any vaccine is safer than acquiring COVID.

"What we're saying and what we've said all along is that mRNA vaccines are the preferred vaccine", said Dr.Shelley Deeks, co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Immunization in Canada, a volunteer advisory group comprised of health experts, tasked to produce recommendations on vaccine use to the federal government. Their position is that Canadians who can wait for an mRNA vaccine are advised to do so preferentially, bypassing the AstraZeneca vaccine, in an excess of caution.

In early January, Britain was identifying close to 60,000 cases on a daily basis. At the present time, under 3,000 are being presented, with hospital occupancy at its lowest since September. Contrasting with Canada's peaks in early January and in May at around 8,000 cases, with but half the population of the United Kingdom. Britain's 66 million residents recorded over 128,000 COVID deaths, in comparison to Canada's 25,000 deaths among its 36 million population.

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Canada is now faced with a moral dilemma. Having advised the population to wait for a mRNA vaccine as represented by Pfizer or Moderna, the country has a stockpile of AstraZeneca vaccines whose expiry date is ticking steadily away; some will expire at the end of May, other stock in June. Canadian provinces must decide whether to proceed with their use during the overall drive to inoculate a large percentage of the population, or to donate them to another country that will intend to use them before they expire.

Countries in desperate need for vaccines would welcome a fresh infusion. "That answer probably needs to come now, especially if doses are expiring at the end of the month You really only have a two-week window to get those doses into people", explained Dr.Chagla.

Vaccine Dose Interval in Canada

"I think having the single dose strategy, which was put forth by our Canadian public health agencies, has really saved a lot of lives and has been really instrumental and will be important for us getting back to a more normal life." 

Alyson Kelvin, vaccinologistm University of Saskatchewan, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization

"With such a highly protective first dose, the benefits derived from a scarce supply of vaccine could be maximized by deferring second doses until all priority group members are offered at least one dose."

"Given the current vaccine shortage, postponement of the second dose is a matter of national security."

Researchers Danuta M.Skowronski, Gaston De Serres, paper, New England Journal of Medicine

According to multiple vaccine experts, delaying or mixing vaccine doses may seem unorthodox on the surface, but the approaches are rooted in decades of science, backed up by emerging research, and could be preventing COVID-19 deaths. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

 

Canada -- in a carefully considered move advanced by a special committee of medical experts assigned to give critical advice on the coronavirus pathogen in Canada -- decided to take on a move to preserve vaccine doses by lengthily spacing out second doses so that the second dose intended to complete the vaccine manufacturer's recommended time of 21 days between doses, was instead diverted to be used as a first dose for other, unvaccinated people. The theory being that fully vaccinating as many people as possible with two doses is desirable, but vaccinating twice as many people with a single dose to be followed up much later (four months on) with a second dose, would be even more desirable, to give a larger proportion of the population protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

Initially, Canada was facing a threatening situation where the onset of a third wave of COVID seemed inevitable, but worse, that third wave would be comprised largely of more infectious variants, mostly the British variant, but followed by the South African one, and more latterly the mutation that took place in Brazil and India. There were concerns over whether the vaccines would be as protective with the variants. And there were larger concerns that with a third wave imminent, not enough vaccines were available to inoculate enough people in high-risk categories.

During the third wave, the variants turned out to be more communicable, but vaccinations proceeded apace, even though Canada lagged well behind other countries in its capacity to vaccinate given its shortage of vaccines. The country began its vaccination program later than many others who were already in possession of a considerable number of vaccine doses; countries who had the manufacturing capacity to produce their own vaccines like the U.K. and the U.S. and India, for example. When Pfizer and Moderna and then AstraZeneca came on line and by contract began delivering to Canada, the vaccinations picked up.

And when the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) advised the federal government of its conclusion that withholding second doses to those already having been once vaccinated would enable greater numbers of Canadians to obtain at least their first dose, the federal government concurred and so did the provinces and territories. This was in essence, a bold move, a recommendation that came about through desperation to speedily vaccinate as many people as possible, to stay ahead of increasing cases of COVID-19. Canada became the only country to initiate such a program, a controversial program criticized by some within the scientific community as not adhering to manufacturers' guidelines.

Canada's experiment appears to have emboldened other countries to do the same thing, and for the very same reasons, and the U.K. and India have both seen fit to follow suit. Simple math as much as an observed goal succeeding in inoculating a greater percentage of the population with a single dose was the persuasive element.  The first persuasive bit of intelligence that guided the NACI was the  amount of gain realized between the first and second doses, where the Pfizer vaccine first dose is up to 85 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 infection at 15 to 28 days following the shot.

 

A woman walks by a sign advertising for COVID-19 vaccines in Montreal on May 14. (CBC / Radio-Canada)

 

With the second dose that number can rise to 95 percent effectiveness, so all that much is not being gained by giving two doses in the recommended time-frame as opposed to inoculating twice as many people, with a single shot, to be followed at a later date of approximately four months with the second dose. Two people given 85 percent immunity against COVID-19, is an improvement and decided advantage over one person inoculated, given 95 percent immunity.

That scarce supply of vaccine situation that gave birth to the hypothesis of immunizing a greater proportion of the people for greater immunity protection overall, is more latterly being relieved, with vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca now fulfilling their contractual obligations in providing the numbers of vaccine doses they were contracted for. Which has led to a situation where the latest update on numbers vaccinated now stands at 48.5 percent of Canadians having received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.

None of the vaccine manufacturers has publicly endorsed the decision taken to stretch out the time interval between doses. There is however, the argument that taking examples from other vaccines, immunologists generally recommend a longer gap between doses; where for example, whooping couch gets a booster after two months. It appears to be generally understood that a longer dosage interval (between six to 12 months) usually increases immunity, while serving to reduce the potential for side effects to occur. It is pointed out as well, that COVID-19 vaccines earned such short dosing intervals resulting from the emergency situation of a devastating world pandemic, and tight timelines.

Among people 80 and over, antibody response was 3.5 times greater when the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine was administered at 12 weeks instead of three weeks, according to a May14 study out of the United Kingdom. Similarly, studies of AstraZeneca effectiveness have seen that immunity is raised when the gap is lengthened. 

 

Healthcare workers with Humber River Hospital administer doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at a temporary clinic for member’s of Toronto’s Spanish-speaking community at the Glen Long Community Centre on May 14, 2021. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

The Dread Lyme Disease

"What we see a lot -- both with pain and Lyme disease -- is that when we can't provide a good explanation about what's going on, we act like it's somehow the patient's fault. Like it must be all in their head."

"Imagine if you had these terrible symptoms and they occurred every day and they got in the way of your ability to socialize, to work, to enjoy your family -- and people kept telling you that you were making ti all up. That's a terrible way to live. It's a challenging problem and one that we would like to reverse."

"We're starting from the idea that people's symptoms are real and we want to hear about them. Sometimes in these studies we treat variations and individual differences as 'noise'. We'll say, 'This person doesn't really fit the profile of what we're looking at. Maybe we should study someone else who fits better'. What we're saying with this study is 'We've got you'."

"There's been lots of good research on Lyme disease and we've got some good treatments now, but a lot of people are being left behind. We're hoping to narrow that gap."

Dr.Tim Salomons, professor of psychology, pain research, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

"I told my daughter the other day that living and dealing with colon cancer is so much easier than living with Lyme."

"Doctors believe you and they're willing to treat you [with cancer], whereas with Lyme disease it's so painful trying to find a doctor who is actually willing to listen to you and treat you."

"Most doctors are afraid. There's so much backlash against Lyme."

Julie Konzuk, environmental engineer, Brampton, Ontario

Fourteen years ago while on a job site in Virginia, environmental engineer Julie Konzuk contracted Lyme disease through tick bites. Usually in the spring months deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks, fasten themselves to any exposed flesh when people (or animals) walk through forests or tall grasses. Once a tick latches on it begins to engorge itself with its victim's blood over a period of time, and this can be overlooked by the afflicted person, feeling nothing, oblivious to the presence of the tick. At the point of entry before drawing blood, the tick injects an anesthetic; little wonder people are unaware they're bitten and the tiny tick is drawing blood. And at the same time conferring on its victim a miserable affliction that can entirely change their lives.

In that fourteen years since Ms.Konzuk was diagnosed with Lyme disease, as a result of her exposure to black-legged ticks infected with the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, she has been prescribed countless regimens of antibiotics, and she has tried naturopathic remedies, but the fatigue, headaches and muscle pain always return. Shortly after she was exposed to the tick bites she suffered searing headaches, face and joint pain, severe fatigue sapping her energy and "brain fog", leaving her forgetful of her normal vocabulary. It took a matter of weeks and she lost 10 kilograms of weight.

She underwent round after round of therapeutic antibiotics, resulting in brief temporary respite, but her symptoms always returned. Some doctors refused her treatment, citing the many she had already undergone. Simultaneously she also suffers from Stage 4 colon cancer, the treatment of which she is better able to accept than the frustration and pain of living with Lyme disease. It is precisely her experience, mirroring that of many other people who have contracted Lyme disease that the new research project headed by Dr.Salomons hopes to address.

 

Lyme-bacteria-carrying ticks slowly made their way from the south-eastern United States into Canada over the years. Now, in the Ottawa area the last five years has seen these ticks become well established. There were 22 recorded cases of Lyme disease in 2014; by 2019 that number had risen to 181, and last year the number reached 120. In some areas of the city, of the ticks collected, two-thirds tested positive for the Lyme-causing bacteria. The surveillance has been placed on temporary hold while all attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic. Strangely enough symptoms of both COVID-19 and Lyme overlap.

The research team from Queen's University partners with experts in genetics, antibiotic resistance, biochemistry, pain research, and environmental and ecological factors. Their focus is analyzing the collection of experiences people living with Lyme disease relate to them, in hopes they can more fully understand more about the various ways the disease can manifest its presence. "There may be one person whose symptoms perhaps seem atypical, but if you put them all together then maybe there's a bunch of people in the Ottawa area that have similar symptoms. 

 

"And people in Vancouver might have different symptoms. Once we have a lot of data, we can cluster those people together and have a basis for our other studies", explained Dr. Salomons.