(For previous installations of “Separated At Birth”, see here, here, here and here.)

Director, Martin Scorcese

Unprosecuted war criminal, Henry Kissinger

In other news, you know those Nigerian diamond scams?  Or any of those “I am a rich foreigner wishing to send you money” email scams?  My uncle just received the latest:

From: Saif Al-Islam <mailmesaif112@yahoo.com.sg>
Date: November 19, 2011 12:17:20 PM EST
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
Subject: From Saif al-Islam
Reply-To: mailmesaif112@rediffmail.com

Muammar Gadhafi

Hello this Saif al-Islam,Muammar Gadhafi Son, i need your help Concerning the money my father keep with Financial Firm in Ghana for safety before his capture by the rebels,this is because of his strong personality with some political mights in the country. My brother-in-law Abdullah al-Senussi and I want to get it secured in your custody please.

If you can help,I will give you more details on how to receive the money. This is secret no one should know or hear about it,I need your number for effective communication.

Upon your reply I will give the contact of my late father’s Lawyer in Ghana so that he would help you process all the payment papers.

Let trust and honesty be our watch word as I will be pleased to perform similar to you when the need arise.

Thanks From
Saif al-Islam.

Email Me On This : mailmesaif112@rediffmail.com

Today is…

The theoretical birthday of Nigel Tufnel.

“Singles’ Day” in East Asia.  (Think about it…. it’s full of ones… singles.)  As a result, tens of thousands of couples are getting married today.

And, of course, Remembrance Day.  When I was a kid, it was still Armistice Day.  Of this, I will only relate the following very lame story…

A few years ago, a friend was getting married.  For his bachelor party, all he wanted was a day of paintball.  If you’ve never played, it’s a game of pseudo-war, in which teams are armed with paint guns.  You can only get hurt if you’re shot in the face or the testicles.  Even if you’re shot elsewhere, it hurts.  But otherwise, it’s harmless.

Now, some people take it very seriously.  They show up with their friends every weekend, in full military regalia, and with hyper-advanced semi-automatic paint rifles.

Anyway…. on the day of our bachelor party, our little group was thrust onto the field with one of these weekend warrior teams, most of whom seemed to be Serbo-Croatian, based upon their accents.

At one point, I was huddled in a bunker with a friend, whom I call Noj (who is tellingly now a diplomat stationed abroad) as paint shots flew over our heads and dudes in military fatigues zipped around us.

Noj then said perhaps the wisest thing I’ve heard come out of his mouth: “I now understand war,” he said.  “War is being simultaneously bored and terrified while some guy around you is speaking Serbian.”

Here is my life.  I’ve been to some scarred parts of the world.  I’ve had guns pointed at me a number of times.  I’ve been to places officially designated as war zones.  But I’m no tough guy, and I definitely am not a particularly brave or strong person.

I’ve even had the chance to play a commando on TV.  (Don’t ask.)  It involved prowling around a darkened parking lot, in military gear, pointing a machine gun menacingly.

What I’ve learned from all these experiences is that I definitely do not have the “right stuff.”  If I were sent into a combat situation to kill and perhaps die, I’m pretty sure I would shit my pants and probably cry like a baby.  I am not war hero material.

I’m on record of having major problems with organized militaries, with the fake and enforced patriotism of blind support for one’s country’s military actions.  Every year, I get into trouble for my position on wearing the red poppy.  My position is detailed in this post from 2007.

As well, you might be interested in Robert Fisk’s position.

But there’s no denying that those who have the strength and courage to actually take up arms in defense of others, and place themselves in harm’s way, are indeed special people deserving of our respect and remembrance.  This is especially true for those who gave their lives in support of a cause that they felt was moral and necessary.  That’s why Remembrance Day remains an important occasion.  I just wish the duplicitous class wouldn’t politicize it so often, using it as an excuse to shout down criticisms of current military adventures.

(A modified version of the following has been submitted to an unnamed journal for publication.  Republication or redistribution without the permission of the author is forbidden.  However, links and references may be made to this specific post.)

In May of 2011, after a decade-long international manhunt, Osama bin Laden was shot dead by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan (1).  It was later reported that bin Laden’s presence, or at least that of his family members, was likely confirmed via the comparison of DNA samples from bin Laden’s dead sister to samples taken from individuals –predominantly children– in the Abbottabad neighbourhood.  The samples were obtained through the inception of a childhood Hepatitis-B immunization program that was devised and implemented by US Intelligence for the sole purpose of locating Osama bin Laden (2).  To appear as authentic as possible, the sham vaccination campaign even started in the poorer part of town, before making its way to the wealthier bin Laden neighbourhood (3).

While acknowledging that the Hepatitis-B campaign was implemented for reasons unrelated to public health, the CIA nonetheless insists that the actual injections were real and can therefore be considered a genuine and valid public health intervention (4).  While the so-called “bin Laden vaccine” might have been a real formulation, reports suggest that the duplicitous nature of its delivery did not allow for provision of the follow-up dosages required for proper conferral of immunization against Hep-B (5).  This means that the inoculated children do not in fact have full immunity, and that their health has therefore been compromised in the wake of this covert military operation.  Future related cases of morbidity and mortality are unlikely to appear on anyone’s ledger of collateral damage caused by the Abbottabad raid.

Concern has been voiced in the international public health community about the damage that this operation has done to the image and effectiveness of genuine current and future public health campaigns.  The concerns can be summarized into two themes: fear of greater distrust of public health campaigns, leading to reduced treatment compliance and vaccination coverage, and fear of backlash, perhaps violent, against individual health care workers.

Public health campaigns, particularly vaccination programs, already suffer from public distrust.  This is particularly true in Pakistan, where a 2007 polio vaccination program famously failed to immunize 160,000 children due to rumours that the campaign was “a conspiracy of the Jews and Christians to stunt the population growth of Muslims” (6) or an “American conspiracy” to cause widespread sexual impotence (7).  Similar stories arise from other parts of the developing world, such as Nigeria, where accusations of a population control agenda were also laid against the polio vaccine (8).  In such areas, the success of an immunization campaign depends strongly on the cooperation of local religious and community leaders. With public admission now that at least one such campaign was in fact a CIA operation, the chances of such future cooperation in that region –and others– are greatly reduced. In wealthier countries, of course, the anti-vaccination movement is similarly driven by conspiratorial sentiments, usually with pharmaceutical companies, rather than government agencies, typically painted as the villains.

Unsurprisingly, with distrust of the vaccination campaigns has come distrust of the workers.  The 2007 anti-vaccination scare in Pakistan involved cases of violence against the clinicians tasked with giving the inoculations (9).  Violence against health care workers is a growing issue worldwide, as in the attacks on caregivers during the political demonstrations in Bahrain earlier this year (10).  By undermining the legitimacy of health development programs, the Abbottabad raid has possibly increased the likelihood of violence against public health caregivers abroad.

American international health and development efforts have long been accused of being fronts for American political, intelligence or military purposes.  According to William Blum, a few decades ago USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) maintained “a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover” (11).  And well before the Abbottabad raid, the media reported on Pakistan’s suspicion that USAID efforts in that country were thin cover for CIA activities (12).  Health care and development workers engaging in what they assume to be altruistic foreign endeavours are often unknowingly tainted and burdened by the weight of a history of official duplicity.

Steps must be taken immediately to assuage the damage to public health that the Abbottabad raid and similar operations have wrought upon workers’ ability to protect both themselves and the populations in need.  While most international health workers have become experienced in helping to diffuse anti-vaccination propaganda, now is the time for more official and systematic steps to be taken.  There are rumours that WHO and UNICEF are devising special identification procedures for vaccination workers, to make it harder for them to be infiltrated by intelligence agents (9).  While this is unlikely to deter infiltrations that have official state sanction, it is at least a first step in restoring public confidence.

What is truly needed is for key agencies — e.g.,WHO, UNICEF, USAID, CIDA—to issue individual and joint public statements, first to condemn the use of public health as cover for an act of military violence, and second to make assurances that despite whatever activities might have been permitted in the past, in future all public health activities and interventions will be free from any type of political or intelligence-related duplicity.

In fact, this shameful affair presents a unique opportunity for Canada in particular to adopt a leadership role in the return of honour to international public health.  A declaration in Parliament, followed by a renewed formal statement in policy, that no Canada-funded public health endeavour will be provided under false pretences, would be a bold and needed declaration to the world that Canadians take the health of populations seriously, and that our projects and our workers are to be trusted.

REFERENCES

1. BBC.  Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama. BBC News, May 2, 2011.  Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13256676.  (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
2. Shah S.  CIA organized fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA.  The Guardian, July 11, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna. (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
3. Shen S.  (July 28, 2011).  CIA Vaccination Program to Catch Bin Laden Makes Middle-East Even More Suspicious of Vaccinations.  Foreign Policy in Focus, July 28, 2011.  Available at:   http://www.fpif.org/blog/cia_vaccination_program_to_catch_bin_laden_makes_middle-east_even_more_suspicious_of_vaccinations.  (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
4. Ukman J.  CIA defends running vaccine program to find bin Laden.  The Washington Post, July 13, 2011.  Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-defends-running-vaccine-program-to-find-bin-laden/2011/07/13/gIQAbLcFDI_story.html.  (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
5. Chambers A.  (July 13, 2011).  Was Bin Laden vaccine plot worth all the risk?  The Guardian, July 13, 2011.  Available at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/13/bin-laden-vaccine-plot-cia.  (Accessed Aug 31, 2011).
6. Albon C.  The hidden perils of covert action.  Foreign Policy, July 13, 2011.  Available at:  http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/13/the_hidden_perils_of_covert_action.  (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
7. Yusufzai A.  Impotence fears hit polio drive.  BBC News, Jan 27, 2007.  Available at:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6299325.stm.  (Accessed Aug 30, 2011).
8. Mckenna M.  File Under WTF: Did the CIA Fake a Vaccination Campaign?  Wired, July 13, 2011.  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/wtf-fake-vaccination.  (Accessed Aug 31, 2011).
9. Reardon S.  CIA’s Fake Vaccination Drive Angers Public Health World.  Science, July 13, 2011.  Available at: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/07/cias-fake-vaccination-drive-angers.html.  (Accessed Aug 31, 2011).
10. Friedrich MJ.  Human rights report details violence against health care workers in Bahrain.  JAMA.  2011 Aug 3;306(5):475-6.
11. Blum W. Killing Hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II.  London, UK.   Zed Books. 2003;142, 200, 234.
12. Ditz J.   Concerns in Pakistan that USAID Officials Are CIA Spies.  Antiwar, April 29, 2011.  Available at:  http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/29/concerns-in-pakistan-that-usaid-officials-are-cia-spies.  (Accessed Aug 31, 2011).

Two things you should know, as the impending US debt debacle plummets the world into economic Armageddon:

1. During the Bush Presidency, Current GOP Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion

and

2. This:

Well, I’m drunk.  And not in a happy way.  We in Canada just elected Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party, to a majority government.  This is not a slur against those who voted Conservative.  He’s just not my guy.  And so I am unhappy and drinking.

And while I am tipsy, I thought I’d make a few observations before the alcohol drives me to my bed:

1. Two consecutive minority Conservative governments prevented Harper from embracing his social conservative agenda, lest he alienate the centrist voters whose support he needed to win a majority.  Now he has that majority.  I fully expect movement on two important social fronts: reformation of Canada’s immigration policy, i.e. its tightening; and the drafting of a new federal abortion bill.  Canada presently has no functional abortion law, which suits pro-Choice people like me just fine.  But I strongly suspect that there will be some attempt to codify the practice before the next mandatory election in 2015.

2. Jack Layton’s NDP are the official opposition, which is great news for progressives.  The Liberals haven’t done an effective job in this role in quite some time.  The NDP deserve their shot.  However, one strong card that the Liberals always had was that the ruling Conservatives always considered them to be a threat to one day form the next government.  At present, the NDP don’t have that kind of stature.  Despite their impressive number of seats, I think the NDP’s potential to be an effective opposition is hampered by such derision, and of course by the mathematical barrier of the Conservative majority.

3. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, whom I have discussed many many times in this space before (most notably here, here and here), has lost his own riding and led his party to one of its worst defeats in history.  This, despite having been hailed as the party’s messiah when he first arrived a few years ago.  I think it’s safe to say that Ignatieff’s run as leader is done.  Who’s next?  The obvious choice is Bob Rae.  Rae has all the skills: the intelligence, the toughness, the experience and the desire.  But Rae has two great failings: he is persona non grata in Ontario, and he is not French.  Many voters arent aware of the Liberal party’s tradition of alternating Anglo and Franco leaders.  It’s a Francophone’s turn.  So where does that leave them?  Sigh.  I fear it might be Justin Trudeau.

4. Elizabeth May and the Green Party have their first ever seat.  Big whoop.  On everything but environmental issues, their platform most resembles the Conservatives’.

5. So 40% of voters elected a so-called “majority” government.  This nonsense continues to piss me off.  This country needs something resembling proportional representation, and we need it now.  The world, and this country, is increasingly urban.  Cities run our economies, are the seat of most of our people and represent the values of most Canadians.  Yet we have a system that disproportionately rewards a rural, or at least non-urban, way of thinking.  I’m tired of the sparse suburbs dictating policy to densely-populated downtown.

6. The Bloc Quebecois was all but eliminated in this election.  I won’t shed a tear for them.  Gilles Duceppes was a formidable warrior in the debates, and I enjoyed his no-nonsense contributions.  But Bloc policy and rhetoric were, frankly, racist.  And I like to think that Canada is in a post-separatist era.  The Bloc’s platform has no relevance anymore, either for Anglos or Francophones.  It seems “Le Gros Bon Sens” is alive and well.

7. What does all this mean for science?  I mean that in both a substantive and metaphorical way.  The Harper ethic is notoriously unscientfic; dare I say “anti-scientific”.  Their dismissal of Climate Change and unofficial backing of Creationist tendencies are good examples of this pattern.  Will policies be even less evidence-based, now that a majority government does not require the cooperation of the other parties?  Obviously, this is an issue close to my heart.  Human civilization sits a precipice.  The world is choosing whether to return to the Byzantine past of religious dogma and spirtualist ephemera, or to embrace a universe of observable and predictable results.  Where will Harper take us?

8. There’s been much boo-hooing over the poor voter turnout in this election. I think it was around 30%.  I’m one of those people who isn’t bothered by voter turnout.  I’d much rather have a small number of committed and invested voters than a large number of ballot-casters who did not bother to educate themselves on the pertinent issues.  As I’ve said before, who are these mystical “undecided voters” who can’t be bothered to vote?  The dumbest motherfuckers on the planet, that’s who.  Frankly, I won’t lose any sleep if they’re not picking the government that will rule me.

That is all for now.  Gotta go cry into my beer.

I was just reading an article on Gawker about NASA’s new Mars rover.  The first reader comment, right on schedule, was an image of a starving African child and the statement, “shouldn’t we spend our millions worrying about life on earth, before worrying about life on Mars?”

Arrrgh!  How I hate that naive argument.  And how I hate the manipulative and simpleminded appropriation of the images of Black children to sell simplistic ideas of global health and development.

Now, I’ve tackled this before, as in this blog post about the idiot and hypocrite Ashton Kutcher.   Beyond their obvious exploratory value, I made the point then that each and every space mission is essentially a mini-industry that employs thousands and that re-injects millions of dollars into the local economy, serving as an investment in a nation’s high level human capital.  And this is done with a completely peaceful purpose and process, unlilke similar endeavours that are undertaken by the military.

Another reader of the Gawker article linked to the following clip from the TV show The West Wing, which sells the idea from a different perspective:

But what really annoys me is the unconcious hypocrisy of the people who insist that we should turf our scientific exploration budgets in favour of humanitarian aid.  Science expenditures are actually miniscule, but end up having enormous impacts down the road on everything from local and international economies to the development of new technologies that allow the actual humanitarian aid that we seek.  Few people realize that almost all of the techniques and materials utilized in the provision of primary health care by humanitarian aidworkers traveling to the most benighted parts of the world were developed in large part as a result of the space programme.

As Sam says in the clip above, “No one is hungrier, colder or dumber because we went to the Moon” (or something like that).  More to the point, I think it is demonstrable that many people are warmer, healthier and smarter exactly because we went to the Moon.

But the hypocrisy that eats at me is the inability for people to see the much larger expenditures wasted on frivolous items that have much fewer positive impacts on the world than does the space programme: fast food production and consumption, the glorification of professional sports, subsidized gas and agriculture, a bloated government bureaucracy, massive corporations that exist to do nothing more than move money from one pile to another, the bloated salary of any North American who makes over 100K/year, and, of course, pretty much anything military.

A given space mission costs tens of millions of dollars, is profoundly peaceful, publicly transparent, economically stimulating and results both in increased human knowledge and spin-off industries in textiles, manufacturing, information technology, medicine, and scores of other related disciplines.  Now think about the fees of top Hollywood actors, athletes and CEOs, each of whom could fund a space mission per year on his salary alone.  Now think about the cost of a single nuclear aircraft carrier, which exceeds the price of the entire Apollo space programme that employed tens of thousands and that sent 14 men toward the Moon.  And now ask yourself how much return on investment society gets for allowing so much of our resources to be controlled and pooled by such players.

We choose each day to spend the bulk of our treasure on frivolities that do nothing more than two things: line the pockets of a privileged few and spin the wheels of a few local economies in an unsustainable fashion.   And yet some insist that a fraction of that total invested in peaceful scientific exploration, despite the profound and wide-reaching intellectual and economic implications of such exploration, is a selfish waste because we could be saving starving kids in Africa.  Until you accept that sacrificing our other luxuries –professional sports, Hollywood movies, the empty middle-man roles of the corporate  West, the military, or indeed our daily latte and 20 minute hot showers– would do the job a million times better than denying us knowledge of the universe, then you are engaging in both hypocrisy and poor math.

You want to save starving African children?  So do I.  But I also want to explore the cosmos.  Here’s the thing: there’s plenty of money out there to do both.  It’s all about priorities and will.

–

Want some more?  Here’s another great West Wing clip on the same topic.

Yes, Dick Tater is my new porn name.  It has replaced “David Cop-a-Feel”.  Of course, once you choose a porn name, you must also have an image to go with it.  I choose this one:

I posted this on Facebook and got the regular comments.  Dr Barry W from down south, however, upped the ante with this limerick:

“There was a potato named Ray

Who was shaped in a specific way

If you gave him a prick

In his tater-shaped dick

You could bake him in less than a day.”

You’re welcome, Barry.

In Other News…

As history continues to be made in Egypt today, looting has spread to the Cairo museum.  Soldiers were sent in to protect the antiquities.  Al Jazeera had interesting video of kitted soldiers patrolling the museum, surrounded by sarcophagi and mummies et al, but sadly I can’t find an image to post here.  See, it looks so much like a scene out of Stargate!

As most of you know by now, I’m the new editor of the national newsletter of the Canadian Society of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.  We recently put out our second edition under my direction, and I wanted to share with you one of the more controversial articles I penned.

For those of you not in Canada, this country recently underwent a bit of a political storm when our right-wing government decided to do away with the mandatory long-form census.  This became a rallying cry for a lot of organizations and institutions in Canada.

I decided to explore the other point of view, and in the process risk the wrath of many of my colleagues.  But this is the nature of open intellectual activity, right?  I dunno.  In any case, I’m reproducing for you below an article from the December 2010 edition of the CSEB Bulletin on the topic of the Canadian mandatory long form census.  Here ya go…

————————————————–

A Perhaps Surprising Take on the Census Controversy

By Raywat Deonandan

CSEB’s Executive Board took a position on July 12, 2010 on the on-going census controversy, stating the following:

“We are writing in our capacity as the Executive of the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics. As a professional organization, we are concerned that the long-form (Form 2-B) of the Census will no longer be mandatory, and we strongly recommend that this decision be reversed.

We understand that this decision was based on two major concerns, one being that of privacy. We are not aware of any breaches of privacy over the many years that this form has been used. Statistics Canada has always protected the privacy of survey and census respondents, and it is a respected leader nationally, and internationally, in this regard.

A second reason is that of the coercive/intrusive nature of the process. We note that Canada was founded on “peace, order, and good government”. To this end, in the interests of the public good, the duty to provide information that is protected under the law is necessary. Further, as a democratic country, accountability and transparency are principles that are integral to our governance; a representative method of gathering data is foundational to satisfying these principles.

Our members are epidemiologists, statisticians, health care practitioners and other health scientists from across Canada.  The Census provides a major source of information used by our members in the research and practice areas of public health in which they are involved.  The long-form of the Census provides the only source of detailed information on specific sub-populations, including those with special needs, those living in poverty and new immigrants with language barriers, among others. The information is used extensively for research, but also for understanding population needs and for the planning of local services such as health promotion, screening, health care interventions and social services.

In addition to the intrinsic importance of the information collected, the Census long form also serves as the gold standard against which other population surveys are measured in Canada.

In our considered opinion, allowing voluntary response to the long form of the Census would be regressive. Voluntary response will certainly result in the non-representation of the Canadian population due to inadequate response in certain geographic areas. The data will be biased and hence of poor utility because people who volunteer are not representative of the population. Without representative information, accountability and transparency in resource allocation decisions would not be able to be defended.

We urge the government to reinstate mandatory reporting of the long-form of the Census, and we congratulate Statistics Canada on producing a much-needed service to Canada.”

A PDF of this letter was sent to the PMO and can be found at the following link:  http://www.cseb.ca/documents/news/Census-letter.pdf

Now, fellow health researchers, watch carefully as I, an otherwise sane and risk-averse individual, tread onto uncertain career terrain …

The big news in our profession is, of course, the federal government’s plan to cease the mandatory long-form census.  This will likely, as has been well discussed all over the country, play havoc with many research endeavours and perhaps hobble policy work.  It may also cause droughts, rust our cars, cheat on our spouses and make our babies cry; the list of its potential evil effects is seemingly interminable.  I’m not going to go over that list here.  (Yes, I’m being a bit facetious, but I just want to make clear that pretty much everyone who deals with data acknowleges that this development poses a significant blow to many important procedures that are information dependent.)

As indicated above in the reproduced letter to the Prime Minister, the CSEB has taken an appropriate official stance in opposition to the discontinuation of the long-form census.  My intent in this very informal article is not to repeat that argument, but to do something quite different.  I want to present to you a case for the other side.  That’s right: an argument for why perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to demand that a mandatory census be pursued at all costs.

(Yes, I’m ducking right now, in full expectation of the virtual shoes that are being hurled at my head.)

Before I continue, I want to be absolutely clear about three things:

• The argument that follows is a personal reflection –an intellectual vanity, if you will – and certainly not necessarily reflective of the opinions of the CSEB, its Board or its members.
• My arguments below are in no way to be interpreted as partisan support for the current Conservative government.  Personally, I find this government to be profoundly anti-science and anti-democratic.  And while I believe that their decision to discontinue the long-form census was made for brazen and ugly political reasons, this does not mean that we cannot discuss the role of mandatory censuses in a liberal democracy on a wider philosophical stage, without the need to be dragged down by considering the singular motivations of this particular government at this time in history.
• As a corollary to the point above, my following arguments are not to be construed as support for the recent decision to discontinue the mandatory long-form census.  Rather, it is merely a quasi-academic discussion of the role of mandatory collection of personal information in a society that purports to value civil rights and autonomy.

So, let’s all take a deep breath and consider the issue from a wider social, legal, historical and ethical perspective.  Let’s put aside our professions and the keen insights we have on the fragility and power of well collected data, and consider instead some of the more macro forces that operate on liberal democracies.  Let us think, for a moment, like ordinary citizens of the 21st century, and not like epidemiologists and biostatisticians.  And by that I mean, let us remember that we live in a time when data has phenomenal power –for both good and evil—and also in a time when vulnerable people need to be armed with rights that celebrate their autonomy.

What I propose is that we explore the issue along three domains or questions: (1) How important are these data? (2) How much do you trust your government? and (3) How much do you value your autonomy?

How Important Are These Data?

We all agree that decades of research programs are in jeopardy, and that the ability to use census data as a supremely reliable comparator for validating survey sampling data is also compromised.  Potentially, the ability to make precise estimates for social planning is also affected, as is the power for watchdog groups to validate quantifiable claims made by the government.  Many bad things abound.

Yes.  The data are important.  Very important, dare I say.  The efficient running of our society may indeed depend on them.  But the existence of our society does not.  This means that a census-free society is possible; but at what price?

This is the philosophical question that faces us: where does a mandatory census fit along a continuum of rights vs responsibilities?  For the most part, Canadians believe that citizens have a right to privacy and a right to not have to share with the state some personal characteristics that have historically made populations vulnerable to abuse.  At the same time, citizens have a responsibility to allow their rights to be curtailed if the cause is sufficiently important to the greater good.

The perceived importance of census data clearly has a role in helping us to decide whether the responsibility to share outweighs the right to remain silent.  Trust in our government also plays a role, since it is they who are ultimately the custodians of these most precious bits of information.

How Much Do You Trust Your Government?

Much has been made of Statistics Canada’s fortress of dependability.  No one protects privacy and data like they do.  We Canadians have a hard time imagining our hard-won responsive and ethical governmental institutions ever compromising their honour over something as banal as census data. And indeed one would be hard pressed to find any documented instances of StatsCan ever having violated the national trust.

But let us consider the wider family of liberal democracies.  A cursory glance through the literature to seek instances of abuse of census data yields a few shocking hits.  I will list just three:

• The Nazis, seemingly aided by the computing power of IBM, used German census data to identify and locate Jewish citizens for reasons of which we are all sadly aware [1].
• A few years later, the U.S. government used census data to identify and locate Japanese-Americans for the purposes of creating internment camps [2].
• In 2005, U.S. Homeland Security used census data to identify and locate Arab-Americans for the purposes of initiating race-based surveillance programs [3].

In each of the above instances, it was argued that the public good necessitated the abuses of the data, and thus the curtailment of civil rights for a specific demographic group.  Of course, even without census data, it is possible for misguided states to pursue such draconian policies.  But there’s no denying that a mandatory national database that compels potentially vulnerable groups to identify themselves and their characteristics makes the job much easier.

It is true that all data collection paradigms, even sample surveys, that identify individuals are ripe for abuse by those with less than honourable agendas.  The crucial element that sets the census apart is its mandatory nature.  In the examples above, it would have been illegal for any German Jew, Japanese-American or Arab-American not to have identified himself.  Now extend vulnerability due to ethnicity to other demographic data types: sexual preference, age, language, maybe even marital status or elements of socioeconomic status –one cannot predict the prejudices of the future.

The point here is not that Western governments of the past did some bad things with census data.  Rather, the point is that the very existence of mandatory, state-controlled, individual-level data, regardless of how or where they are stored and released, is a tool that can be heinously abused by an ill-intentioned state.  History suggests that such abuse is most likely to occur when a state or society is engaged in a foreign war or under threat from domestic terrorism.

So let us recognize that those who are wary of sharing identifying data to the state have at least some historical precedence on their side.  Assurances of data security are irrelevant in the longest term, since the circumstances of the future cannot be predicted.  Arguments for maintaining mandatory sharing of personal information, such as in the national census, must therefore be couched within the rights vs responsibilities dialectic.

How much do you value your autonomy?

We, as professional and responsible health researchers, know the steps we are administratively required to follow when developing a project; one of those steps is to apply for ethics clearance.  Our society has determined that it is fundamentally unethical for anyone to conduct research on human subjects without first going to great lengths to secure the “informed consent” of those subjects.  Informed consent springs from a respect for autonomy, and represents the core belief that an individual must not be coerced or compelled to participate in, or share information for, projects imposed by agents expressing authority or power.

In my opinion, the national census is a form of research:  it is information collected from individuals for the purposes of drawing conclusions.  Moreover, it is research conducted on human subjects by the most powerful authority in the land, the government.  Not only are these subjects not permitted to refuse, but their consent is compelled through threat of the use of the greatest blunt instrument in the land: criminal law.

However…

We live in a society of legal and moral rights, and these rights are ultimately expressions of our autonomy.  But our rights are not absolute.  A liberal democracy expresses its acceptance of the limits of our rights by allowing transgressions against those rights to be well defined in law.  The assumption underlying a democratic state is that rights are sacrosanct, except when they can be limited for the public good.

The word “accept” may be troubling to some.  It is assumed that most laws reflect social values that have evolved over time.  As a society, we have chosen to “accept” those laws as a price for living in a free society; this is the hallowed social contract.  But the level of acceptance needs to be calibrated to reflect the true extent of need for those laws, and to allow for full appreciation of the potential costs of overly stringent application of such laws.

For example, in times of epidemic, we express our acceptance of rights curtailment by allowing the state to limit our right of assembly and impose quarantines.  Similarly, in times of extreme civil unrest, we accept that the state can even institute martial law.  In times of war, we accept that conscription –the compulsion and coercion of individuals to fight and possibly die—is a price of freedom.  More troubling still, past generations have accepted that, in times of national insecurity, internment camps could be created to segregate and control citizens with specific demographic characteristics.

And, as a less extreme example, we accept that the state can wield the hammer of criminal law and insist that we pay our taxes, otherwise society would bankrupt and fall.

In some ways, the “acceptance” of the selective curtailment of our “rights” is, in fact, our “responsibility”.  Our liberal society depends on an appropriate balance of rights and responsibilities.

So, the question every liberal democracy asks itself every moment of every day is … which public goods are worth curtailing our rights for, and which ones are not?  Moreover, what criteria do we apply to make that decision?

The problem with the census controversy isn’t that the government was invading our privacy by forcing us to share personal information.  And, it isn’t that the government is compromising our ability to make policy and to understand our population by discontinuing the mandatory census.  The problem simply is that we haven’t had two very important public debates:

• What criteria do we employ to define the expanse of the continuum between the poles of autonomy and public need?
• Where does a mandatory census fit on that continuum?

Epidemiologists, statisticians and other data professionals are saddened by the demise of the mandatory long-form census.  But one good thing that might arise from this episode is society’s engagement in these debates.  If we approach this well, we might emerge a stronger democracy with a better sense of our values.

REFERENCES

1. Black E.  IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation.  New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.
2. Seltzer W & Anderson M. After Pearl Harbor: The Proper Role of Population Data Systems in Time of War.  University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.  (28 March 2000).
3. Weber TM. Values in a national information infrastructure: a case study of the US census. 14th International Conference of the Society of Philosophy and Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, 2005.

Get it? Commonwealth? Commonpoor?  Get it?  Me so clever.

First off, did you hear about Stephen Colbert’s appearance at the US Congress, talking about the rights of undocumented migrant workers?  I love this quote:

So, I’m sure most of you have heard of the controversy surrounding the “national shame” felt by Indians that the athletes’ residence in New Delhi, for the upcoming Commonwealth Games, are not up to standard.  A Canadian “advance team” reports that the residences are intolerable, citing feces on the grounds, dirt in the rooms, non-functioning plumbing, etc.  Then comes word that several Canadian athletes are refusing to compete, for fear of “health and safety concerns” in the Delhi residence.

Several things come to mind:

1. India had wealth and manpower and organizational acumen and time.  They dropped the ball hugely and the Indian government has no one to blame but themselves.  They deserve all the derision being pointed their way.

2. Do people in the “North” realize what was done to an etire slum of indigent in order to accommodate these games?  Before you start feeling sorry for your athletes who might have to sleep in a stinky room, consider that hundreds, and likely thousands, were dispossessed to give them that luxury.  Direct your sympathy to those who truly deserve it, please.

3. Do people in the “North” realize how the site is being built?  Probably largely with underpaid, untrained, impoverished slum-swelling labour whose daily working conditions would horrify most of us.  Many of them would just love to be living full time in these quarters that our athletes deem unsuitable for their “health and safety”.   Again, direct your sympathy to those who truly deserve it.

4. There is photographic evidence of child labour (by which I mean toddler labour) being employed to get the job done on time.  This, of course, plays into all the stereotypes the North has of India as an exploiting, uncaring land of dirt and suffering.  And, for a lot of people living that experience, that stereotype is accurate.  However, this is an opportunity for us to step back and consider the true price of many things we of the developed workld take for granted.  The shoes we wear, the TVs we watch, the mobile phones we use, and the sporting events we enjoy are all the products of the interminable labour of legions of poor and often children.

5. Corollary to #4: Calls for the games to be moved to a “developed” country miss the point.  If they were to be held in England or Australia, for example, the suffering would merely be invisible.  The athletes would still be wearing shoes and jerseys, etc, made by slave labour in the developing world.  So let’s not get all high and mighty about this, shall we?

6. Yeah, I would prefer to sleep in a comfy air conditioned hotel suite than in a hastily built room in which a dog had pooped a couple of days earlier.  But you know what?  If I had the chance to compete in the Commonwealth games in my chosen sport, I would happily sleep on the street and eat garbage for the privilege.  So yes, I’m with the writer of this editorial: if poor accommodations are enough to cause you to cancel your participation, then I don’t ever want you representing me or my country abroad.  Heck, it’s lack of hygiene, it’s not a freakin’ war zone!  Suck it up and learn to appreciate the incredible privilege you enjoy as a tax payer-subsidized athlete being sent abroad to glory in the public eye and to party with your pals afterwards, all on the tab of the hundreds of millions underpaid Indian labourers who built and paid for your rooms.

7. If nothing else comes of this, I hope people in the North come to appreciate the desperate living conditions of the poor of the global South.   You can’t handle the Commonwealth games residences?  Try living in the shacks, shared by rats and neighbours, like the ones in which the labourers who built that residence have to live.  We have it damned easy, in large part at the expense of those who suffer, and it’s about time more of us started to realize it.

8. Why do we even have these big state-funded sporting events anyway?  Dave Feschuk in the Toronto Star foolishly said that it’s “for the athletes”.  Bullshit.  It’s for political capital, both for the host nation and for the nation whose team brings back the most shiny discs.  These things are properly the domain of corporate interests.  Let companies compete for them and run them and pay for them.  Or let’s not have them at all.  Problem solved.

Okay, now I’m pissed off.

Today is the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks and the 37th anniversary of the overthrow of the Chilean government.  Both are worthy of remembrance.  The former will probably receive wall-to-wall coverage.   The latter will likely receive nothing.  I wrote about this already back in 2008.

Now, on to something else….

Earlier this week, I was up for 48 hours straight.  After I finally crashed, I had the weirdest dream.  Normally I subscribe to the rule that people’s dreams are only interesting to the people who had the dream.  That’s probably true in this case, as well.  But since this is my blog, you’ll have to suck it up.  See, this dream wasn’t in traditional dream format.  Rather, it was a series of TV commercials!

I only remember one of the commercial.  It was from some South American or Latin American Spanish-speaking country.   It was one of those exciting, urban market affairs, catering to the cosmopolitan condo-dwelling young professional.  It featured a young couple sharing a glass of wine in big glasses, nestled in their penthouse condo overlooking a sprawling South American city… perhaps Buenos Aires.

And what was the commercial about?  Urban farming.  Specifically, it was for a company that provides one sheep and one goat for every highrise condo unit.  I don’t know why any urban condo-dweller would need a sheep and/or a goat, but you can let your imagination wander.  All I know is what I saw in the dream commercial.  And the best image was the final image.  We pan away from the happy yuppy wine-sipping couple to their balcony.  The sun is setting over the smog-filled mega-city.  And there, on the balcony, a goat and a sheep perch on their hind legs with their forelegs on the balcony railing, both peering thoughtfully into the sunset.

There you have it.  A glimpse into my subconscious.  Do with it as you will.

In Other News…

I just discovered something fantastic on Youtube.  It’s a series of videos produced by RedLetterMedia that are presented as film reviews by a serial killer.  It really is some of the most entertaining shit I’ve seen in a while, especially if you know your films.  A good place to start is with the review of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: