Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2010

RESEARCH, DISCOVERY AND INNOVATION AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY

In the quest to equalize world-wide wellness, the McGill Global Health Programs bring together a range of academics and NGOs. The results are wide-ranging—and sometimes surprising.

Microbes. Medicine.

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Research, discovery and innovation

at McGill University

headway1 MESSAGE FROM THE INTERIM VICE-PRINCIPAL

2 WORKSPACEWhen he’s not in the woods collecting bugs, Christopher Buddle is at his desk, thinking about bugs.

3 NEWSThe latest breakthroughs, awards and research developments.

IN DEPTH

8 Your Kid Fibs (And That’s Okay)From the classroom to…the courtroom? Victoria Talwar’s insights into how children lie have far-reaching implications.

10 Atomic CinemaWe all know what chemistry is, but what does it look like when it’s happening? Using an ultrafast laser and an electron microscope, Bradley Siwick wants to make the shortest—and perhaps most important—movie ever.

COVER STORY

13 World Wide WellnessBridging disciplines and spanning nations, the McGill Global Health Programs are working toward a common health standard for everyone, everywhere.

NEW WAVE

17 Fantastic FourWhat’s the link between decision neuroscience, infectious disease, health disparities and molecular pathology? Meet McGill’s newest Canada Research Chairs.

IN FOCUS

20 Life on Mars?Sure, says microbiologist Lyle Whyte. If a plucky, newly discovered methane-eating microbe can survive the Arctic, Mars isn’t a stretch.

ACT LOCALLY

22 All in the FamiliesWhether the stakes are astronomical alimony payments for a Quebec celebrity, or visitationrights for workaday step-parents, Céline Le Bourdais uses a wealth of statistical data for herthoughtful analysis of how marriage, divorce and separation are affecting Quebec society.

NETWORKS

24 HOIM Is Where the Health IsThe Health care Operations and Information Management program is training Canada’s next generation of smart hospital managers.

26 Law FusionAt the Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law, common law and civil lawneed not be strange bedfellows—and the world is taking notice of this innovative pairing.

FIRST PERSON

28 Gene EthicsInterview with Bartha Maria Knoppers, Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy

29 MAKING HEADWAYRemembering Allie Vibert Douglas, Quebec’s first PhD in astrophysics.Plus: Research funding

Headway (ISSN 1911-8112) is published twice a year by the Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) and the Office of Public AffairsMcGill University

EDITOR

James Martin

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Jennifer Campbell

CONSULTING EDITORS

Susan MurleyJennifer Towell

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Carmen Jensen

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Laurie DevineJane Jackel

CORRESPONDENCE

Headway1555 Peel StreetSuite 900Montreal, QuebecH3A 3L8

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Headway is printed on ChorusArt®

Silk, containing 50% recycled material, including 30% post-consumer waste. The paper is acid and elemental chlorine free.

On the Cover: Montreal illustrator Matt Forsythe (www.matthewforsythe.com)was recently a senior artist at the Banff New Media Institute. He is the author of the graphic novel ojingogo, published by Drawn & Quarterly. His work hasappeared in The Walrus, Wall Street Journaland the McGill News.

McGill University 1

Message from the Interim Vice-Principal(Research and International Relations)

InnovationR

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ryGovernment research and innovation strategies usually focus on science andtech nology—and with good reason: Today’s innovations in areas such asenergy and envi ronment set the stage for tomorrow’s well-being andprosperity. At McGill, we focus on advancing the government prioritiesthat align with our academic strengths. It’s crucial work and, as Headway hasshown over the past five years, McGill researchers are extremely active andsuccessful at meeting these challenges.

But that’s not the whole picture.McGill is a comprehensive university. We are strong in the sciences,

engineering and med icine, areas that usually correspond to governmentpriorities, but we also excel in the social sciences, the arts, law and humanities.As a profoundly multi dis ciplinary university, we are also the hub wheremany of those disciplines intersect. We have a responsibility to ensure that asocial conscience resonates throughout all our education and researchprograms—so that our work doesn’t just make us more economicallyprosperous, but also creates a more just, stable and creative world.

Consider the McGill Global Health Programs, the subject of this issue’scover story. The MGHP’s holistic view of health, of working toward aworldwide common stan dard of wellness, speaks to this commitment tosocial responsibility. You see this at work in the vast array of projects collectedunder the MGHP umbrella. Does helping former child soldiers transition intohealthy post-war lives benefit the economy? Of course healthy adults are moreproductive adults—as illustrated by the entrepreneurial drive of ex-childcombatants in Sierra Leone—but at the heart of the matter, it’s the right thingto do, and it makes our world a better place.

McGill can, and should, have it both ways. Yes, our researchers willcontinue to lead programs in strategic priority areas for the Quebec andCanadian economy—that may be more important than ever in theseeconomically difficult years. At the same time, McGill will continue tosupport and highlight our accomplishments in the social sciences, cultivatingthe social responsibility and the cultural and community values integral tobeing a good citizen of the world.

Rima RozenInterim Vice-Principal

(Research and International Relations)

2 Headway Fall 2010

W O R K S P A C E

Christopher Buddle

The aspirator—or, in British lingo, “pooter”— is “a reallyeffective way to catch small, fast insects.” This is low-tech at itsfinest: Researchers simply inhale insects. (To a point. A screenprevents things from going too far.) “It’s a very impor tantentomological tool,” says Buddle, “and you can make it withabout two dollars’ worth of tubing, gauze and duct tape.”

cliffs. (He was studying hard-to-reach ancient cedar trees in theNiagara escarpment near Guelph.) “Insects can provideinformation about the degree, and rate, of change because they’resmall and have short life cycles. So they respond very quickly tochange.” Members of the project include Terry Wheeler (directorof McGill’s Lyman Entomological Museum), McGill studentsand researchers from the Universities of Toronto and PEI andvarious collaborating organizations and institutions. The team justcompleted the first of two field seasons, and are about to start thetime-intensive process of analysis and comparison. Follow theproject blog at www.northernbiodiversity.com. ■ Christopher Buddle’s research is funded by an NSERC StrategicProject Grant.Christopher Buddle in his Macdonald campus office, and the MorganArboretum, on July 7, 2010. Photographed by Rachel Granofsky.

Exclusive Headway online audio slideshow: Christopher Buddle talks aboutentomology outreach. Visit http://publications.mcgill.ca/headway.

This painting of a web-weaving spider was a giftfrom graduate student AnnieWebb. (Her mom, Micheline,painted it.) Webb now worksat the Institut de rechercheen biologie végétale at theMontreal Botanical Garden.

A few years back, McGillstudents used Lindgren FunnelTraps (a tower of stacked black funnels) to collect, thencatalogue, hundreds of beetlesfrom local forests.

Another gift from an out -going student, this one fromundergrad BrigetteZacharczenko. In her otherlife as “Weird Bug Lady” shesews and sells stuffed insects,like this pseudoscorpion, oneof Buddle’s more obscureentomological interests. (Realpseudoscorpions, by the way,are only five millimetres long.)Zacharczenko is now doinggraduate work at theUniversity of Connecticut.

RESEARCHERS IN THEIR NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS

Grillonthosaur, also known as Harriet, is a Chilean rose-hair tarantula. Buddleadopted the docile spider in 2003, from a student who was moving across thecountry. “She’s become the mascot for our lab. The students all love her.”

For 11 Cold War summers, the Canadian Department of NationalDefence deployed teams of entomologists to the coun try’snorthern extremities. The primary mission was to study theeffects of biting flies on the military personnel standing guardagainst the Red Menace, but the scientists also collected a wealthof data about other insects. Now Christopher Buddle, associateprofessor of entomology, is leading the collection of new insectsamples from 12 of the same sites across Canada’s Arctic, Sub-arctic and Northern Boreal. The aim of the Northern BiodiversityProject is to compare today’s insects to their 50-year-oldpredecessors (housed in the Canadian National Collection ofInsects in Ottawa) and see what the differences reveal aboutchanges to this most fragile of ecosystems. “Spiders and insects aregood barometers for environmental change,” says Buddle, whostarted his research career as a botany student but becamefascinated by all the tiny creatures he saw while dangling from

The sweep net is essential for active sampling ofwhatever insects happen to be flying around orlurking in vegetation. “I’ve learned to be cautious.You never know when you’ve been sweeping tooclose to a wasp nest.”

For passive sampling, Buddle uses yellowplastic dollar-store dishes filled with apreservative liquid. Flying insects areattracted to the colour, while unsuspect -ing crawlers just stumble in.

Buddle uses forceps to explore under rocks and logs.Before he started attaching long fluorescent ribbons,he estimates he lost a dozen of the small tools to theforest floor. “And even now, sometimes I look in mypocket and there’s just a ribbon.”

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THE LATEST DISCOVERIES AND INNOVATIONS

Since joining McGill in 1999, Kaspi has become internationally known for hercutting-edge work on neutron stars, pulsars and supernovae remnants. In 2005,her team discovered the fastest-rotating pulsar known to science and morethan 20 pulsars in a single star cluster in the Milky Way. Most recently, they werethe first to witness a cosmic act of recycling involving a dying pulsar.■ Professor Kaspi is the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics.

Argonautes battle cancer?

Researchers have made a breakthrough discovery on the path to developing new genetically tailored cancertreatments. In an article published online on May 26, 2010, by the journal Nature, professor Bhushan Nagar andgraduate student Filipp Frank of McGill’s Department of Biochemistry, in collaboration with professor NahumSonenberg, reported the discovery of a small segment of Argonaute proteins that interacts with RNA to control thenormal expression of genes.

This control is achieved through a process known as “RNA interference,” whereby micro RNAs obstruct theproduction of specific proteins by interacting with their genetic code. While scientists were already aware that RNAsplay a key role in regulating protein production in human cells (a process that is necessary to maintain cell health),they didn’t know exactly how the correct RNA molecules were selected to carry out this function. Now thatscientists are close to being able to “turn off ” the genes causing cancer, without the negative side effects thatcurrent treatments like chemotherapy have on normal cells, Nagar foresees “being able to rationally modify microRNAs to make them more efficient, and possibly use them to make therapeutic drugs.”■ This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Human Frontier Science Program and theFRSQ’s Groupe de Recherche Axé sur la Structure des Protéines.

Keeping Up With Kaspi

This past spring, professor Victoria Kaspi, McGill’sLorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics andCosmology, added to her ever-expandingconstellation of remarkable achieve -ments with three new distinctions:

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Trickle down?

More like bottoms up.

Jody Heymann’s latest book, Profit at theBottom of the Ladder, flies in the face ofcommon market wisdom with its argument fora direct correlation between a company’sprofitability and the working conditions of itslowest-paid employees. Heymann is thedirector of the McGill Institute for Health andSocial Policy.

The book expands on a report, released withthe Harvard Business Review, in which shestudied companies across the world, rangingfrom small firms employing 27 people to largefirms of 126,000. “These companies have beenprofitable for their owners and shareholdersnot only while being profitable for theiremployees, but because they have beenprofitable for their employees,” says Heymann.“Their approaches, which include raisingwages, rewarding productivity with strongearnings and profit-sharing opportunities,providing paid leave and flexibility, providinghealth care, and many other benefits, arefrequently allotted to employees from themiddle to the top of the corporate ladder, yetthey are truly rare for the lowest-level workers.” ■ Jody Heymann is the Canada Research Chairin Global Health and Social Policy.

“Orphan” drug finds home at McGill

Cystic fibrosis (CF) patients suffering from chronic pulmonary infectionsmay soon be offered a new treatment option thanks to a recent “OrphanDrug Designation” granted to McGill researchers by the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration. The FDA initiative funds research into treating diseases ormedical conditions affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S., toosmall a market to excite significant interest from pharmaceutical companies.

Chronic pulmonary infections are the leading cause of sickness anddeath among the 70,000 people living with CF worldwide. Receiving theOrphan Drug Designation for fenretinide was a major stepping stone toobtaining funding for clinical trials. Subsequently, Dr. Danuta Radzioch, incollaboration with Dr. Elie Matouk (director of McGill’s Cystic FibrosisClinic), has received $700,000 from Quebec’s Ministère du Développementéconomique, de l’Innovation et de l’Exportation, as well as contributionsfrom MSBi Valorisation and Pharmascience. The team will soon beginclinical trials to test the safety, tolerability and efficacy of using fenretinideto treat a common infection called Pseudomonas aeruginosa in CF patients.

The research began in 1992 with Dr. Diane Gosselin (now Vice-Presidentof Research and Development at the Quebec Consortium for DrugDiscovery) and Dr. Charles Matouk (then a McGill undergraduate student,now the Endovascular Neurosurgery Fellow at the University of Toronto),who characterized CF mice and their response to Pseudomonas aeruginosapulmonary infections. The project resulted in a patent submissiondemonstrating the protective effect of fenretinide, a drug mostly used incancer research, against abnormal metabolism of omega-3 and omega-6fatty acids and other oxidation-sensitive lipids important in launchingproper defence against lung infections. The last few years of research,conducted by genetics PhD student Gabriella Wojewodka, validated thefindings using plasma collected from CF patients at the Montreal ChestHospital and the University Hospital in Olomouc in the Czech Republic.

“Our research has demonstrated that fenretinide reduced lunginflammation as well as the severity of pulmonary infections,” says Dr.Radzioch. “Based on our research thus far, we believe that this drug canreduce the number and length of lung infections, which would improve thequality of life of patients, protect their fragile lungs and hopefully prolongtheir lives. Getting the Orphan Status for fenretinide treatment of CFpatients was an important factor in securing funding for clinical trialsfrom the Quebec government, MSBi and Pharmascience. In addition, withthe Orphan Drug Designation, we can benefit from funding opportunitiesfrom the FDA and can appear more attractive to investors because manypharmaceutical companies would not even consider entering clinical trialsfor a disease affecting so few people like CF. This FDA program offers toindividuals with rare diseases much-needed hope that new treatmentscan be discovered.”

Currently, Dr. Radzioch is organizing a meeting of the Scientific Board torefine the details of the clinical trial that is scheduled to begin in latespring 2011. ■ Dr. Radzioch is a Senior Fellow of the American Asthma Foundation, andProfessor of Medicine and Human Genetics at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine andthe MUHC. This research is funded by CIHR, the Canadian Cystic FibrosisFoundation, the American Asthma Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defenseand the Ministère du Développement économique, de l’Innovation et del’Exportation.

McGill University 5

The future of Canadian health

Over the next three years, the Government ofCanada will invest $13-million in the CollaborativeHealth Research Projects (CHRP) program, aninitiative of the Natural Sciences and EngineeringResearch Council of Canada and the CanadianInstitutes of Health Research. The CHRP willsupport partner ships, between the natural sciencesor engineering and the health sciences, that arepursuing novel research promising health benefitsfor Canadians. Seven McGill projects will receiveCHRP funding.

David Buckeridge

(Clinical and Health Informatics Research)Knowledge-based detection

of hospital-acquired infections, $426,660

Thomas Hemmerling

(Anesthesia, Montreal General Hospital)“McSleepy” completely automatic anes thesia

delivery system, $416,100

Thomas Quinn

(Chemical Engineering)New technologies and methods for

growth of artificial cartilage and skin, $399,000

Louis Collins

(Biomedical Imaging, Montreal NeurologicalInstitute) Computational and statistical tools forimage-guided neurosurgery of brain tumours,$626,316

Jay Nadeau

(Biomedical Imaging) Self-illuminatingnanoparticles for melanoma therapy, $437,250

Rosaire Mongrain

(Mechanical Engineering) Development of abiomechanical model of the aorta to supportmedical decision and prosthetic design,$418,500

Amir Shmuel

(Visual Systems Neuroscience and Brain ImagingSignals, Montreal Neurological Institute) Modelingand validating the effect of transcranial magneticstimulation in post-stroke recovery and depression,$404,676

APS applauds pain pioneer

Twenty years ago Dr. Gary J. Bennett established a name for himself when he became the first medical researcher toproduce a neuropathic pain state in an animal—a method now referred to as the Bennett Model. It was an achievementthat allowed scientists a much better understanding of the physiological mechanisms that cause chronic pain in peoplewith nerve damage resulting from trauma, disease, toxins or metabolic disease. It was also an important step towardfinding new treatments for such people, for whom standard pain medications are largely ineffective.

This May, the American Pain Society (APS) honoured Bennett with the prestigious Elizabeth Narcessian Award, fordedication to and innovation in education in the field of pain. “One of the APS goals is to facilitate communica tionbetween these diverse groups,” Bennett said. “I’ve always tried to talk to people in a way that everybody couldunderstand, translating clinical findings into terms that the basic scientists found interesting or talking about basicscience and making it intelligible to a lay audience. So, I am very gratified by this award.”■ Dr. Gary J. Bennett is the Canada Research Chair in Pain Control in McGill’s Department of Anesthesia, Faculty ofDentistry and Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain.

6 Headway Fall 2010

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Nanotech takes quantum leap

McGill physicists may well be on their way to revolutionizing computing,thanks to their new cantilever force sensor. The sensor measures theenergy involved in adding individual electrons to semi-conductornanocrystals, also known as quantum dots. Using the sensor, Peter Grütter,McGill’s Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education in the Facultyof Science, and his research team—including graduate students LyndaCockins and Steve Bennett and physics professor Aashish Clerk—are nowable to measure the smallest amount by which physical qualities such asenergy levels can change.

“We are determining optical and electronic transportproperties,” Grütter says. “This is essential for the developmentof components that might replace silicon chips in currentcomputers.” Silicon chips rely on transistors that, although fast,perform only one computation at a time. Quantum dot chips, onthe other hand, would be able to simultaneously executemillions of computations. These new chips are also potentiallymuch more energy efficient than current technology, promisinga new generation of computers that are not only faster andsmaller, but greener. ■ This research is funded by the Natural Sciences and EngineeringResearch Council of Canada, the Fonds québécois de la recherche surla nature et les technologies and the Canadian Institute forAdvanced Research.

McGill principal to advise on future of research

McGill University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum has been named to ablue-ribbon committee of academic and research leaders in the United States. The NationalAcademies, a group that advises the U.S. government on research issues, charged the ad hoccommittee with determining key actions for maintaining research excellence at Americanuniversities.

Munroe-Blum has a background rich in research experience, both as an administrator and asan epidemiologist. Prior to assuming McGill’s principalship in 2003, she served as Vice-President (Research and International Relations) at the University of Toronto. She is a memberof Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) and was a lead contributor inthe development of its State of the Nation Report on science and research progress in Canada.

The National Academies committee will report in late spring or early summer 2011 on “thetop 10 actions that Congress, the federal government, state governments, research universities,and others could take to assure the ability of the American research university to maintain theexcellence in research and doctoral education needed to help the United States compete,prosper, and achieve national goals for health, energy, the environment, and security in the globalcommunity of the 21st century.” ■

Headway is more

than just a magazine.

Get the latest McGill researchnews, exclusive multimedia and more at:publications.mcgill.ca/headway

Heather Munroe-Blum

McGill University 7

■ All of these projects received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.Other sources include the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada,the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the U.S. Department of Defense Breast CancerResearch Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the U.S. National Institutes ofHealth, the NIH Training Program in Basic Cancer Research and the Savoy Foundation.

Genetic Breakthroughs

In the first half of 2010, McGill researchers published several papers newlyimplicating genes in a host of maladies and functions, including:

OBESITY, DIABETES

AND CANCER

Benjamin J. Fuerth, Brandon Faubert, Russell Jones and lead authorDavid Bungard (University of

Pennsylvania), with co-authors fromFudan University, Imperial College

and Université Paris DescartesScience, July 15

BREAST CANCER TUMOUR

DEVELOPMENT

Chen Ling, Dongmei Zuo,William Muller, with co-authors from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,Stony Brook University and the University of Toronto Genes and Development, May 1

VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY

Dr. J. Brent Richards, Dr. David Goltzman,Martin Ladouceur and lead author

Dr. Thomas J. Wang (MassachusettsGeneral Hospital), with a large

international team of co-authorsThe Lancet, June 10

MEMORY

Michael Bidinosti, Yvan Martineau, ChristosGkogkas, Mauro Costa-Mattioli, NahumSonenberg, Wayne S. Sossin and co-authors fromthe Université de Montréal, the University ofToronto and the University of Bergen (Norway)Molecular Cell, March 26

Surveying the universe generates an enormous amount of data—but many hands, or in this case, manyhome computers, lightens the load. Through the Einstein@Home initiative, non-astronomers network theirhome PCs to help process information found with the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope. That’s howvolunteers Chris and Helen Colvin (U.S.) and Daniel Gebhardt (Germany) recently discovered a previouslyunknown pulsar. “The importance of the discovery lies in the fact that it was made using ‘volunteercomputing,’ ” says Slavko Bogdanov, of McGill’s Department of Physics. Bogdanov and fellow McGillresearchers Victoria Kaspi and Patrick Lazarus are part of the international Arecibo Observatory team.“This is the first time periodic signals from pulsars have been discovered in this manner.” Einstein@Homeis based out of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. To join, visit http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/. ■

Discover a pulsar

from the

comfort of home

8 Headway Fall 2010

Hands still sticky with stolen sugar, Mommy’s littlecherub denies any knowledge of missing doughnuts. Anapple-cheeked tyke, all pigtails and big blue eyes, surveysa freshly crayoned wall and then rats out the familybeagle. Nobody knows who put a baseball-shaped hole inthat window; it’s a cold case for the ages. Yes, we mayidealize childhood as a time of purity and innocence, butthe bald truth is that most kids learn to lie around agefour or five. In playground vernacular, their little pantsare very much on figurative fire. And that, says VictoriaTalwar, associate professor in the Department of

Educational and Counselling Psy-chology, is as it should be.

“Sometimes worried parents sayto me, ‘Oh no! My son just told hisfirst lie!’ but learning to lie is actu -ally part of normative behav iour,”Talwar explains. “It’s related to cog -nitive devel opment. Lying is almosta by-product of coming to under -stand that other people have know -ledge and thoughts that are differ -ent from them—and that they canmanipu late those thoughts andbeliefs. So parents shouldn’t worry.”

“Besides,” she wryly adds, “thatprob ably wasn’t the first lie thatchild told. Just the first one theparents clued into.”

Lying is difficult to observe in thefield—it’s an inherently secretivebehaviour, for one, and detection

requires knowledge of the truth that observers may notnecessarily have—so Talwar’s research is largely built oncontrolled, empirical studies based in the lab. In hertemptation-resistance paradigm study, for example, shetells a child there is a toy behind his or her chair, and theymustn’t peek at it. She then leaves the room, and a hiddencamera captures the child’s behaviour; 82 per cent of chil- dren sneak a look within 10 seconds of being left alone.Talwar returns to ask questions about the mys teriousobject. Seventy-four per cent of peekers lie, but theirsuc cess largely depends on age, with children less thanseven years old usually showing difficulty sustaining thedeception:

Did you look at the toy?No.What do you think it is?A red doggie!Why do you think it’s a red doggie?Because I saw it!Older children become more skilled at keeping lies

afloat, feigning ignorance about forbidden knowledgeor attempting to fabricate additional lies to explain whythey know things they shouldn’t. This isn’t necessarily abad omen; most children develop into adults who telloccasional lies to navigate sticky social situations (maybefor self-gain, maybe to spare someone else’s feelings).

But some children, like some adults, lie a lot. Talwaralso studies how lying goes from being normal to mal -adaptive, and ways that adults can promote truth-tellingin kids. Working with frequent collaborator psychologyprofessor Kang Lee, she looked at lie-telling behaviouramong students at two very different schools in West

By Phi l ip Trum

(And That’s Okay)Professor Victoria Talwar on the lies that spring from the mouths of babes.

Your Kid

Victoria Talwar’sresearch helped

revolutionize childwitness compe-tency testing in

Canadian courts.

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Africa (as part of the research agreement, the schools’locations are kept confidential). Teachers at one schoolfavoured severe corporal pun ishment, routinely slappingstudents for giving wrong answers and spanking childrenwho misbehaved; teachers at the other school used non-physical discipline methods, such as time-outs. Studentsat the latter school were, generally, not terriblysophisticated liars and many didn’t lie at all. Studentsfacing corporal punishment, however, lied frequently—and well. “You might as well go for broke and try lying toavoid getting hit,” reasons Talwar, “but you’d better begood at it. So certain discipline styles actually provide astrong motivation to learn to lie well.”

She’s found that telling children moral stories thatemphasize positive consequences (e.g., George Washing -ton’s father praising the budding lumberjack for hishonesty) are more effective than those emphasizing nega -tive outcomes (e.g., boy cries wolf too many times, boyloses flock). “If you give children reasons why it’s impor -tant to be honest,” she says, “they’re more likely to inter -nalize the moral standards and change their behaviour.You might get immediate compliance from emphasizingpunishment, but it doesn’t change them to become morehonest.”

Talwar’s research has obvious implications for parentsand teachers, but it has also had unexpected resonance inCanada’s legal world. In 2005, the Canadian parliamentinvited Talwar, Kang Lee (then at Queen’s University,now at the University of Toronto), and Queen’s law pro -fessor Nicholas Bala to present a brief on the effectivenessof competency testing for child witnesses. Traditionally,before a child was allowed to give testimony, they had toanswer a series of questions to show they can differentiatebetween truth and lies. Good idea, says Talwar, “but inpractice it had no utility. They would ask children thingslike, ‘Can you tell me what the truth is?’ That’s a hardquestion even for an adult. Children’s inability to answerthose kinds of questions has no bearing on their like -lihood for telling the truth.” Many cases fell apart becausea key child witness failed this test. In a January 2006ruling, later upheld by the Supreme Court, child witnesscompetency testing was removed from Canadian courts.

How, then, can we best assure truth from youngwitnesses? Well, as much as reality flies in the face of our“innocence of children” pipe dreams, the answer is simple.

“If you ask children to promise to tell the truth,” Talwarsays, “my studies have shown they’re 50 per cent lesslikely to lie. It doesn’t mean all children will tell you thetruth, but it does have a significant impact on theirbehaviour, especially at a young age.

“Just ask any parent who’s heard complaints about notkeeping their promise to stop for ice cream after soccerpractice—children take promises seriously.”■ Professor Talwar’s research is funded by the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada, the CanadaFoundation for Innovation, the National Science Foundationand the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et laculture.

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Structure is central to all science: proteins and biology,molecules and chemistry, the crystal lattices and physics.But what these structures look like while undergoingcrucial transformations—say, during protein function or chemical reactions—is still the stuff of imagination. “We all make mental pictures of what’s happening,”says Bradley Siwick, “but we don’t know.” Siwick wantsto pull back the curtain on this mystery and takepictures of these blazingly fast changes. Hisfemtosecond laser and electron microscopy laboratory,three years in the making, just might do the trick.

AtomicCinema

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I N F O C U SI N D E P T H

Familiarity doesn’t preclude mystery.Humans and horses, for example, go way back. At

least 16,000 years, according to cave paintings. We carefor horses, ride them, rely on them, bet on them. They area familiar sight (and smell). We know horses. So it’s oddthat, up until 1878, we had no idea whether all four of agalloping horse’s hooves ever left the ground at the sametime—a knowledge gap that was the stuff of seriousdebate. It took an Englishman named Eadweard Muy -bridge and a newfangled process known as photographyto settle the question. (The short answer is yes, they do.)

Humans and atoms, too, go way back. Around 400BC, Democritus argued that unbreakable particles werethe building blocks of everything. It took some convin -cing, but by the time the 20th century rolled around,scientists had embraced the basic notion of these “ato -mos.” McGill professor Ernest Rutherford famouslydeveloped the nuclear model, which held that each atomwas made up of an incredibly dense nucleus (itself madeof protons and neutrons—themselves divisible intoquarks, so Democritus was a bit off ) surrounded by oneor more electrons. Rutherford even went so far as tocleave an atom in half, ushering in the atomic age andearning a Nobel Prize.

Like horses, we know atoms. Most of the time.Modern physics has its own horse hoof quandary:

How are the atoms inside a molecule arranged during achemical transformation? And how are the atoms in amaterial arranged through the transformation betweenphases? Using a range of well-established techniques,such as X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance andelectron microscopy, we know the equilibrium structureof many molecules and materials before such transfor -mations, and we know the equilibrium structure of theresults. It’s what happens during that change, all in amatter of 10-13 seconds, that’s the big question mark.

“What do we know about these short-lived transientstates?” muses McGill researcher Bradley Siwick. Heshakes his head. “Not very much.”

Now he just might be on the verge of counting thehooves.

* * *An assistant professor in the Departments of Chem istryand Physics, Siwick believes photography, in a man ner ofspeaking, is the way to pin down a trans forming atom’shooves. But, while Eadweard Muybridge merely had to setup a few cameras alongside a racetrack, Siwick has had tocarefully erect a maze of lasers, amplifiers and lensestogether with a specially designed electron microscope ona vibration-free steel table in the basement of McGill’sOtto Maass Chemistry Building. It took three years of

painstaking precision to set up the rig. Now Siwick isgetting down to making movies of atoms in action.

The big problem is that this action moves really, reallyquickly. Atoms can change position by one angstrom inmere femtoseconds. These measures, although incred iblytiny, are, in Siwick’s world, huge: An angstrom is approxi -mately the distance between atoms in matter; a femto -second is to one second as one second is to 60 millionyears. So, yes, atoms are fast. To bottle this particularlightning, one needs a camera with a correspondingly fastshutter speed. In this case, the “camera” is actually thecombination of an ultrafast laser and a specially designedelectron microscope.

Developed in the 1980s, the ultrafast, or femtosecond,laser produces brief pulses of light, not the continuousstream found in laser pointers and the like. The pulse iscrucial because, as Siwick says, it “allows us to interactwith molecules and materials ‘instantaneously.’ You candump energy into a sample before its atoms have time torespond.” Siwick’s apparatus splits each pulse into twobeams: one beam of photons that can be tuned to virtu -ally any wavelength, from ultraviolet to infrared, andanother that is transformed into a pulse of electrons(through the well-known photoelectric effect). The pho -tons initiate a chemical reaction by exciting the moleculeswhile the electrons pass through the mole cules, pro -ducing a scattering pattern that provides an indirect, yetaccurate, document of the atomic arrange ment at onlythat instant. The result is an atomic-level view of thefleet ing structural changes that make up chem ical reac -tions. (All this occurs faster than literally anything else inthe world.) Put together enough of these sequential snap -shots and, in the fine tradition of “flip book” anima tionsdoodled in the margins of a textbook, you’ve got a movie.“If we can make measurements faster than atoms canmove, it opens up amazing opportunities,” says Siwick.“We’ll be able to actually watch chemistry as it occurs.”

* * *When Siwick founded his McGill lab four years ago, histeam was one of just a few pioneering the field; nowthere are some 20 groups racing to understand molecularstructure in flux. It’s a competitive world, but BradleySiwick is a competitive guy. He was a high school hockeyand football star hoping to obtain a sports scholarship inthe U.S.—his dream was to study medicine—when hebroke his neck while ski-jumping near his hometown ofToronto. Just four vertebrae short of total below-the-neck paralysis, he refocused his energies, becoming aninternationally ranked wheelchair tennis player andstudying commerce. He loved the tennis (he toured theEuropean circuit and was part of the wheelchair equiv a -

By James Mart in, with f i les from Al ison Ramsey

Headway Fall 201012

lent of Canada’s Davis Cup team) but hated accounting.A re quired physics course, however, sparked hisimagination. Instead of the “really boring old stuff aboutballs rolling down an inclined plane” that he had to sufferthrough in high school, modern physics fascinated him.Seven years later, his University of Toronto doctoraldissertation earned the rare distinction of beinghighlighted in a Science magazine cover story. His thesisdocumented his development of a prototype molecularmovie camera and its use in studying the changing atomicstructure of melting aluminum.

Setting up his McGill lab has taken time. He and histeam of graduate students—Chris Godbout, RobertChatelain and Vance Morrison—had to custom-buildmore than half of the equipment in the laboratory. Duringthis period they designed a “temporal lens” for electronpulses, which will result in an overall performance in -crease of a factor of 10,000 compared to the currentstate-of-the-art. (To put this achievement in the properper spec tive, consider the dictum of experimental science:“Anything better than a factor of 2 is worth fighting for.”)“Some graduate students are horrified by having to buildtheir own experiment,” Siwick grins. “These kinds ofprojects draw the really ambitious ones.”

“Part of the draw was to make the machines, and theopportunity to be involved in novel research,” says physicsdoctoral student Robert Chatelain. A graduate of theUniversity of Western Ontario, Chatelain joined Siwick’sproject on the ground floor. “But it wasn’t just novelresearch, but novel instrumentation, groundbreakinginstruments that people around the world could startusing.”

Siwick refers to his equipment as “our homemade base -ment project,” a typically self-effacing quip. But the termdoes accurately convey its frugal nature: Siwick’s lab costa relatively paltry $1-million. Other researchers arepursuing the same ends, but using X-rays instead ofpulsed electron beams. Researchers at Stanford Univer -sity, for one, modified a 40-year-old linear electronaccelerator to create the necessary X-ray intensity. Thatlab’s price tag is in the neighbourhood of $1-billion. The

Stanford project is also three kilometres long. Siwick’sequipment fits on a five-by-two-metre optics table.

But Siwick’s approach isn’t just more cost- and space-efficient than his competitors’ projects. Electrons do farless damage to a sample than X-rays and they interactmuch more strongly with matter, giving researchers moredetailed information. A springtime trial run confirmedthat their apparatus works, making lab-scale experimentsa viable alternative to larger, more expensive efforts. Thetest also sent the team into a flurry of tweaks and fine-tuning, notably the addition of the temporal lens.

Now they’re ready for the real fun. “I’ve been waitingthree years for this,” says Siwick. The team is beginningwith self-styled “baby steps,” testing the temporal lens bybombarding nanoparticles so they can watch how thepho to excitation leads to atomic motion. From there,they’ll provoke and document a material system, in thiscase vanadium dioxide, as it transforms from an insulatorinto a metal. They hope to observe how, over the span of500 femtoseconds, a very tiny change in atomic positionresults in a product with dramatically different electricalconductivity. “Materials scientists have great difficultydetermining what connects processing conditions to thefinal structures,” says Siwick. “It’s kind of shake-and-bake. Being able to get high-quality structural informationon short-lived intermediate states during processingcould be very valuable to that community.”

The team will also experiment with biological mate -rials, such as a bacteria equivalent to the rhodopsinprotein found in the human eye. Those molecules are bigand complicated, but—because biologists know thatprotein structure is dynamic—there’s great value in betterunderstanding the relationship between structural changeprotein and function. “This is not only fundamentallyinteresting,” says McGill biology chair Paul Lasko, “itcould be of great utility for drug design.”

Siwick is excited—”We can now look at the atomicstructure of matter faster than the atoms can move!”—butremains humble. “This work is a continuation of a reallylong road,” he says. “Scientists had been working in thisdirection for almost a century before I came along.”

Charles Gale, McGill physics chair, is more effusiveabout his colleague’s work. “As was the case for thedouble-helix structure of DNA, the understanding ofthe topology at the smallest length scales is bound toopen the doors to new science,” he says. “This is a bigdeal.”■ Bradley Siwick is the Canada Research Chair in UltrafastScience. His research is also funded by the CanadaFoundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences andEngineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds québécoisde la recherche sur la nature et les technologies and theMinistère du Développement économique, de l’Innovation etde l’Exportation.

An atomic-level view ofreal-time chemistry:

Diffraction patterns showhow the atoms in a

polycrystalline rearrangeas the material melts.

McGill University 13

C O V E R S T O R Y

By Chris Atack

When it comes to many things—politics, currency, language, culture—borders can be much more thanhypothetical demarcations. But as far as something like a virus is concerned, the division betweencountries A and B is just meaningless lines on a map. “A classic example is the H1N1 outbreak,” says Dr.Timothy Brewer, director of the McGill Global Health Programs and an associate professor in McGill’sFaculty of Medicine. “We had cases in Canada, we had cases in Mexico, we had cases all around theworld. Grappling with something like pandemic influenza is a problem everyone needs to worryabout—it’s not just a problem that affects a low-income country somewhere else. When it comes tohealth, we’re realizing there’s no such thing as ‘their problem.’ There’s only ‘our problem.’”

As its pluralized moniker suggests, the McGill Global Health Programs (MGHP) embracesmultiplicities. Within the University, the MGHP database provides a central repertoire for globalhealth research, education and service projects, featuring more than 70 researchers. Not surprisingly,traditional health-focused disciplines are very much on board—one of Brewer’s own research projects,in collaboration with Harvard Medical School and the International Society for Infectious Diseases, isthe creation of an outbreak report database, which he hopes to use to better recognize, and thereforemore quickly contain, future outbreaks—but Brewer aims to reach out to every research nook, no matterhow incongruous a pairing may seem at first blush.

Bridging disciplines and spanning nations, the McGill Global Health Programs are working toward a common health standard for everyone, everywhere.

Collaborations drive

the McGill Global

Health Programs,

bringing together

researchers such as

Kris Koski (left)

from the School of

Dietetics and Human

Nutrition and

Marilyn Scott

from the McGill

School of Environ-

ment. The pair are

partnering with

the government

of Panama to study

malnutrition.

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chronically malnourished, and they have a range of in-fectious diseases as well.

In 2002, Leslie Payne, a master’s student working withScott and Koski, went to Panama to study whether a vita-min A supplementation program actually improvedresistance to nematode parasites that impair nutrientabsorption in their human hosts’ intestines. The projectwas the first of several studies evaluating the benefits ofprograms created by the Panamanian Ministry of Health.Payne found that over 80 per cent of indigenous Panama-nian children were infected with intestinal nematodes(commonly known as roundworms). She also made a sur-prising discovery: Supplementation improved resistancein children who were growing normally, but not in thechronically malnourished. “Children whose growth isstunted lack not only vitamin A but a whole range ofmicro nutrients,” says Scott. “We suspect that, while theprogram improved their vitamin A status, other nutri-tional deficiencies impaired their immune systems.”

Another Panamanian government initiative offers fam -i lies living in extreme poverty either a monthly cash sup -ple ment or food vouchers so long as mothers get theirchildren vaccinated and keep them in school. Over atwo-year period, PhD student Carli Halpenny comparedover 225 children whose families received cash withalmost 150 children from families who received vouchers.She monitored their diets to learn whether one programincreased food availability more than the other. Then shetried to establish how dietary changes affected theirnutritional status and their rates of infection with variousdiseases.

Halpenny presented her preliminary results to thegovernment of Panama, along with representatives fromthe communities, at a symposium in June—it’s an impor -tant step, given how eager Panamanian officials are totranslate research into practical initiatives. Scott and hercolleagues therefore work very closely with the govern -ment to develop optimal policy changes. “Because somany issues are inter-related, policy development hasto be done with great care,” she says. “In global health, weoften need to consider a range of issues. For example,infant growth is influenced not only by infections and dietof the children but also infections and nutritional statusof their mothers during pregnancy and lactation. Diet andinfection are in turn influenced by social conditions, byagricultural practices and by access to water. Together, weare trying to define sustainable policies that take into

“We want to have engineers,musicians, lawyers, sociologistsand physicians working togeth-er on global health activities,”he says. Recruiting people fromother disciplines is vital becausemany of the problems need tobe considered from a numberof vantage points. “Consider thechallenge of treating a personwith HIV/AIDS in sub-SaharanAfrica,” says Brewer. “Patientsthere may not have access toessential medicines because of

patent restrictions. We need our colleagues in theFaculty of Law to help us find solutions.”

Intra-McGill collaboration is just the start. Crucially,the MGHP works to connect McGill researchers withpeople on the ground—in NGOs, in academicinstitutions, in government. “It’s not about sendingCanadian experts to fly in, fix the problem and leave,”says Brewer. “It’s about creating partnerships capableof finding long-term, locally sustainable solutions.”

As diverse as its efforts are, all the work under theMcGill Global Health Programs umbrella is united bya single goal. “We want to create a common healthstandard for everyone no matter where they are in theworld,” says Brewer. “How can we address the dividebetween the haves and have-nots? There’s a lot to bedone. We have big plans, because it’s a big world outthere.”

McGill researchers have forged a fruitful McGillpartnership with the Ministry of Health in Panama.Parasitologist Marilyn Scott, director of the McGillSchool of Environment, and long-time colleague KrisKoski, director of the School of Dietetics and HumanNutrition, are currently directing research into therelationships between nutrition and health in a coun-try that isn’t a stranger to extreme poverty.

Among the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous peoples ofwestern Panama, for example, households of 10 peoplesurvive on a paltry $50 US a month, or about 16 centsper person per day. More than 60 per cent of childrenunder five—the focus of Scott’s research—are

Here is a samplingof some of theMcGill Global HealthPrograms’ principalinvestigators andtheir currentresearch iniatives: Neurodevelopment

in infants (Australia)Dr. Davinia Withington,neuroscience

Early childhood health(Bangladesh, Indonesia)Frances Aboud,psychology

Middle ear mechanics(Belgium)Dr. Robert Funnell,biomedical engineering & otolaryngology

Trial of latent TB therapy(Brazil)Dr. Dick Menzies,medicine

“There’s no such thingas ‘their problem,’” says

Dr. Timothy Brewer,director of the

MGHP and an infec-tious disease

researcher. “There’sonly ‘our problem.’”

McGill University 15

C O V E R S T O R Y

McGill University 15

account all these factors in a holistic, multidisciplinaryapproach.”

Nowhere is the need for a multidisciplinary approachmore evident than in the area of trauma care, whichrequires doctors, surgeons, nurses, pre-hospital personneland all sorts of other medical technical staff (and, often,police) to work together. “Trauma is a huge problem indeveloping nations,” says Dr. Tarek Razek, director ofthe McGill University Health Centre Trauma Program.“Road traffic crashes involving cars, pedestrians orcyclists are all increasing, due to increased road trafficand urbanization. Workplace injuries and violence arealso major factors.”

Razek and his colleagues have worked with theCanadian Network for International Surgery, theUniversity of Dar es Salaam Muhimbili College and theMuhimbili Orthopedic Institute (MOI) in Tanzania to setup trauma databases at major hospitals. (They’ve alsocollaborated with partners in Uganda and other Africannations.) Recently, they created a database in Dar esSalaam to collect information on all injured patientspresenting to the MOI. This information includes patientdemographics, injury severity, types of injuries and thetype of incidents that produced the injuries.

“Having this data is important on many levels,” Razeksays. “First, it’s vital to understand what the real problemsare, so you can gauge policy and get the ‘biggest bang foryour buck.’ Services, training and education must all beadjusted to cope with the realities of the situation. As dataaccumulates, you can see how the health system is doingin terms of outcomes. Finally, you can use trauma data-bases to develop injury prevention policies.

“For example, our database in Uganda showed a hugespike in pediatric injuries. Further investigation showedthese injuries were taking place on the way to and fromschool. Huge numbers of kids were walking great dis -tances pre-dawn and after dusk in an area with poorroads and no lighting or sidewalks. Knowing this,Alexandra Michailovic, a surgical trainee and PhD stu-dent in public health, was able to develop an interventionalong with the local partners. The kids were given three-cent reflective armbands—super-cheap and really brightwhen headlights hit them. Since the program started,the injury rate for pediatric pedestrian injuries has plum-

meted. Building databases is not just an academic pursuit.It actually translates into lives saved.”

Training and education are also key activities for Razekand his colleagues. They work with local partners, includ-ing academic centres in Ethiopia, Mali and Rwanda, usingstandardized educational programs to teach the skillsneeded to deal with emergency situations. Hundreds ofpeople have already received training through this pro-gram. “We train whoever is most appropriate to train inthe local context,” explains Dr. Razek. “We train whoeverwould benefit from the training who is actually doing thework. These are often medical trainees who require moretraining, especially in skills and overall management ofinjuries. But we also train nurses and other medicaltechnical staff as there are very few actual physiciansout there to do the work.”

Not all programs in the McGillGlobal Health Program are direct-ly related to physical disease orinjury; sometimes health is amore holistic concept. An esti-mated 300,000 children, manyyounger than 15 years old, areactively engaged by armies orother military groups each year.(Children are deployed in almost75 per cent of the world’s armedconflicts.) Myriam Denov, anassociate professor in McGill’sSchool of Social Work, is work -ing toward a better under stand -ing of how these children areforcibly recruited, how theirengage ment in violence affectstheir post-war lives and mentalhealth, and how they reintegrateinto society, post-conflict. Herwork focuses on these children’slong-term rehabilitation andcommunity reintegration.

Denov has been studyingformer child soldiers recruit-ed against their will by the

Inuit health study(Canada)Grace Egeland, dietetics and human nutrition

Genetics of commoninfectious diseases(Brazil, France, India,Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Vietnam)Erwin Schurr

Effects of Parkinson’sdisease on communi-cation (Germany)Marc D. Pell,communication sciences and disorders

Mental health outcomesof political violence and natural disasters(Guatemala)Dr. Duncan Pedersen,psychiatry

Epidemiology of HPVinfection (Haiti)Dr. Timothy Brewerand Dr. MarkWainberg, infectiousdiseases

Dr. Tarek Razek,

director of the

MUHC Trauma

Program, works with

universities and

NGOs in several

African nations to

provide emergency

room training.

Maternal vitamin Adeficiency and kidneydevelopment (India)Dr. Paul Goodyer,pediatrics

HIV resistance (Canada, Spain)Nicole Bernard, medicine

Dengue and HIV infections (Thailand, Zimbabwe)Dr. Brian Ward, infectious disease

Headway Fall 201016

Revolutionary United Frontrebel militia during SierraLeone’s brutal civil war,which ended in 2002. Work-ing with Defense for Chil-dren International, a smalllocal NGO, Denov has pain-stakingly built relationshipswith hundreds of formerchild soldiers. Most of theseboys and girls were con-scripted when they werebetween the ages of sevenand 14, but some were asyoung as four. The childrenserved not only as soldiers,

but also in supporting roles, carrying arms andammunition, acting as spies and messengers, and takingcare of military camps by doing cooking and laundry. Inaddition, many girls were victims of repeated sexualviolence and forced to act as “wives” to male soldiers.

Reintegration has been difficult for the majority ofchildren in Denov’s groups. Families and communitiesoften refuse to take back ex-soldiers because of the shameand stigma associated with their former affiliation withthe rebels and wartime violence. Former girl soldiers haveoften been shunned by their communities for trans -gressing traditional gender roles, as well as having beenvic tims of sexual violence. “While the needs of formerchild soldiers across Sierra Leone are extensive, we havefound that girls and boys living in urban areas can beworse off than those in rural areas, as they appear to ex -pe rience greater levels of poverty and have fewer availablesystems of support,” Denov says. “We have begun to workwith a group of former child soldiers, both boys and girls,living in the slums in Freetown. This group is facing in -cred ibly challenging conditions: most have lost their par -ents in the war, they are homeless, and they struggle to eatregularly. They have few prospects for education or remu - nerative work, and experience high levels of violence.Most survive on less than a dollar a day by carrying loads,stealing, drug dealing and engaging in prostitution.”

To empower these former child soldiers, Denov is exper-imenting with a community-based participatory researchmethod known as PhotoVoice. She and her colleagueshave given cameras to a small group of young people andhave trained them in photography. The young people

then take pictures of what is important or meaningful tothem in their community, what they appreciate abouttheir community, and what they would like to change. Itis also a means by which young people can express theirviews and perspectives about life in the post-war context,and a way to raise public awareness of the challenges thatthese largely marginalized youth are facing. The researchteam plans to mount a large exhibition of photos, and willinvite key officials from government, NGOs and com-munity leaders and organizations to attend.

“It’s a way to let these young people speak about issuesthat matter to them, and for policy makers, governmentofficials and community members to become moreaware of these often invisible issues,” says Denov. “How-ever, helping to build awareness at the local level andencouraging policy change are small steps given thatthese children’s needs are so great.” Many of the humanrights issues that led to the war continue to persist, par-ticularly in relation to the political, economic and socialmarginalization of youth in Sierra Leone. Far greater at -ten tion needs to be paid to youth empowerment andparti cipation. Denov notes, however, that young peopleare not passive or powerless in relation to their own post-conflict rehabilitation or reintegration. Another groupthat she’s been studying is the former child soldiers turnedmotorbike taxi-riders living in Bo, Kenema and Makeni,who have created a new job category for them selves.Most conventional taxis were destroyed during the war,and an enterprising group of ex-combatants have pio -neered the motorbike taxi industry. Cheaper than regularcabs, and able to negotiate Sierra Leone’s busy streets, themotorbike taxi is now an important staple—and themotor bikes are almost entirely driven by former childsoldiers. The drivers have even organized labour unionsfor themselves. “Sierra Leone’s new motorbike taxi-ridersprovide a great example of young people who are findingalternative means to contribute to their own reintegra -tion, creating new niches in the job market and organiz -ing politically. Challenging stereotypes of former childsoldiers as a ‘lost generation’ or being destined to a life ofviolence, these young people are showing that formerchild soldiers are actively navigating the post-war terrainand rebuilding their lives in the absence of violence.These youth are responding to post-war challenges withorganized dissent and trade unions, rather than withguns.” ■

Myriam Denov, anassociate professor

in the School of Social Work,

has inter viewedhundreds of former

child soldiers inSierra Leone abouttheir reintegration

into society.

McGill University 17

Antoine BecharaCHAIR IN DECISION NEUROSCIENCEThe holder of North America’s only joint appointment inPsychiatry and Management, Antoine Bechara divides hisresearch on the neurology of decision-making into twocamps: addiction and preventive health.

“Neuroscience tells us that food is no different thandrugs or alcohol,” says the California transplant, whoarrived at McGill in September 2009. “It’s addictive. Aswith alcohol or narcotics, high-calorie food has thepotential for triggering dopamine release and that’s whypeople prefer it.”

Bechara is studying the neural systems, genes andbehavioural mechanisms that underlie food choices andhabits—insights that may, he says, help us “fool the braininto making better decisions.” Given, for example, thatreward systems in the brain also trigger dopamine release,could a particular kind of non-food incentive entice anindividual to choose a small meal over a larger one?Maybe. Fast food chains regularly use this reward tech -nique, Bechara points out, as when they offer scratch-and-win cards as incentives for customers to upsize theirmeals, or include toys in combos marketed to children.Using fMRI scans of individuals making decisions, and

By Victor ia Leenders-Cheng

Clockwise from upper left: Antoine Bechara, John Dalton,Jay Kaufman,Alan Spatz

4FantasticN E W W A V E

Over the past decade, McGill has

used the federalCanada Research

Chairs program torecruit exceptional

researchers fromaround the world.

Now meet theUniversity’s four

newest CRCs.

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studies comparing the behavior of over -weight and low-weight sub jects, Becharahopes to explain the neural effect ofincen tives and food choices.

Bechara’s work also includes studieson how patients with focal brain lesions

experience changed eating behaviours. Hehopes to apply this knowledge about human

neurology directly to economics as part ofthe Desautels Faculty of Manage ment’s

“Brain-to-Society” agenda. “This is what Icall transla tional marketing,” he says. “We’re

trans lating something about basic brainscience into marketing and into the business

world.”Medical research and profit-driven business models

often work in opposition to each other, he adds.“Medicine always says fast food is bad because they’remaking all those unhealthy foods. But the food industryisn’t out to intentionally harm people—they’re sellingwhat people like. I’m approaching this conflict scientif -ically, creating a new research perspective thatunderstands the problem a little bit better to find a happymedium between the two.”

John DaltonCHAIR IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES The sprawling greenery of the Macdonald campus, visiblefrom John Dalton’s office at the Institute of Parasitology,provides a vivid contrast to the minute scale of the organ -isms of tropical and animal infectious diseases he studiesin the laboratory.

Dalton leads a team of scientists investigating howpar a sites use enzymes called proteases to break downproteins in their human hosts. The cellular parasitemalar ia, for example, uses proteases to break down thehemoglobin in red blood cells, stealing the resultingamino acids to use as building blocks for its own growth.Malaria is endemic throughout most of Africa, South-east Asia and Latin America, causing an estimated 300 to500 million clinical cases and 1 to 3 million deathsannually.

By identifying the enzymes parasites use to pillagehost cells, Dalton says, scientists can design drugs to pre -vent the parasite from growing. In 2009, his team showedthat protease inhibitors kill the malaria parasite inside thecell, paving the way for the development of a new class ofurgently needed anti-malarials. His team is currentlypreparing to test specific enzyme inhibitors using malariagrown in incubators; animal and human trials will followin the next few years.

With worms, which are tissue-level parasites, proteaseresearch has even further-reaching implications. In

studying parasites’ protease effects on their hosts, Daltonfound that many worms release these enzymes not onlyfor feeding activity but also as a way of manipulatingthe host’s immune response in their favour, switching offkey cellular signals between the white blood cells and theT-helper cells. A compromised immune system is lessprotective of the body, allowing the worm to survive andreproduce for years. Understanding this mechanismcould change not only our understanding of parasitesaffecting billions of people, but also of common immune-related diseases such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis andType 1 diabetes.

“These are all diseases where the immune system turnson the body and damages your own tissues,” he says. “Ifwe can figure out how worms control the immune sys -tem, we might be able to use that information to treatsystems that have gone wrong for other reasons.”

Jay KaufmanCHAIR IN HEALTH DISPARITIES Questions about human identity and health disparity lieat the heart of social epidemiologist Jay Kaufman’s work.Why do some populations experience higher rates ofchron ic or infectious diseases than others? And whatdoes it say about us as a society if these disparities cor-respond to differences in race, ethnicity, gender or sexualorientation?

In Canada, for example, existing studies of newbornchildren among indigenous populations show a muchhigher risk of adverse birth outcomes such as pre-termdelivery or low birth weight. In Chile, however, whereKaufman has conducted preliminary comparative research,indigenous women shared the same socio-economicdisadvantages as their Canadian counterparts, yet were atno higher risk for adverse birth outcomes than otherChilean women. His ongoing studies are exploring nutri -tional, psychosocial and health services factors to under -

N E W W A V E

3 4McGill University 19

stand how the indigenous women in Chile do so wellduring pregnancy despite their higher risk profile.

“I’m interested in finding out more about comparisonsin terms of social structure and how people live, theirsocial opportunities, issues of discrimination, medicalcare,” he says, “as well as how health care systems are or -gan ized in these countries and how that manifests itselfin these kinds of disparities.”

Kaufman is also very interested in how quantitativemethodology can reflect existing ideologies rather thandata. He cites 19th-century physician Samuel Morton,who attempted to measure intelligence by counting howmany lead pellets he could fit in skulls of people ofEuropean and of African origin. (The idea may seemlaughable now, but it was considered highly scientific at the time.) “The skulls were not really different in sizebut Morton always managed to squeeze a few extra BBsinto the skulls of the whites. Our modern statistical tech -niques often allow for similarly unconscious fudging toconfirm our existing beliefs or strong social expectations,which is why the careful study of methodology isespecially important.”

To prevent such improprieties in the future, Kaufmanis working toward establishing a “thoughtfully quanti -tative foundation” for social epidemiology. “Should dis -parities be measured on the absolute scale or the relativescale?” he wonders. “The prevailing ideology in biomed -ical research is to see demographic categories like raceand gender first and foremost as intrinsic, which oftentranslates into ‘genetic.’ But this view is narrow and worri -some, since race, ethnicity and gender mean very dif -ferent things in different settings.

“Health disparities are among the most profoundinequalities that threaten any society, and yet they can’t beunderstood merely in terms of biological traits. I’mlooking at fundamental questions about issues of technol -ogy and methodology and science on one side—andabout our identity, our sense of ourselves, on the other.”

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Alan SpatzCHAIR IN MOLECULAR PATHOLOGYLike pieces of a large and complex puzzle, the differentbranches of pathologist Dr. Alan Spatz’s research haveslowly come together to offer a clearer picture of criticalcancer pathways, pointing to new cancer treatmentpossibilities.

Dr. Spatz comes to McGill from the Gustave-RoussyInstitute in Villejuif, France. His prior research demon -strated that hereditary genetics, based on the differingmake-up of the sex chromosome in females (XX) and inmales (XY), means that the same cancer progresses dif -ferently in women than in men.

“We’ve known since [British geneticist] Mary Lyon’swork half a century ago that in females, one of the X chro -mosomes has to be silenced to keep a functional dosageof different genes, to avoid having genes in double dose,”he explains.

Building on this model, Dr. Spatz conducted in vivostudies of cutaneous melanoma, the most lethal form ofskin cancer. He found that if a certain gene defect occurs onthe active X chromosome, it leads to a cancer or tumour.If the same defect occurs on the silenced X chromosome,however, disease is unlikely.

These results point to the role of skewed X chromo -some inactivation in cancer progression. “We now havedata about the role of the X chromosome inactivationmach inery in the silencing of autosomal genes,” says Dr.Spatz. “I’m totally convinced that this could lead to theidentification of totally new biological processes in cancerdevelopment.”

Dr. Spatz’s work on gene silencing also led him toiden tify a particular gene as a fruit ful target for furtherresearch. “PPP2R3B,” as it’s known, is found on the Y chro - mosome in males and on the X chromo some in females—and it es capes silencing on the inac tive female X. Its lossor inacti vation is associated with short survival inmelanomas. Impor tantly, PPP2R3B plays a major role inregulating the crucial replica tion origins firing sys tem.“This means its study could change the paradigm ofcancer therapy. So, clearly, we want to better characterizethese X-chromo some-related pathways in can cer pro -gression to be able to find innovative drugs.” ■

20 Headway Fall 2010

Lifeon

At the McGill Arctic Research Station on remote Axel Heiberg Island, professorLyle Whyte (front) and PhD students Nancy Perreault and Blaire Steven analyzemicrobes found in the permafrost.

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I N F O C U SI N F O C U S

By Lucas Wisenthal

The average annual temperature on Axel HeibergIsland (79° 26’ 0” N), home to the McGill ArcticResearch Station (MARS) since 1960, is minus-15degrees Celsius. To get to the station, you have to fly toResolute, Nunavut (pop. 229), then switch to a smallerplane, weather permitting, for the remaining 700kilometres. From an accessibility point of view, MARSis practically, well, Mars. From a microbial point ofview, maybe it is.

McGill Department of Natural Resource Sciencesprofessor Lyle Whyte has trekked to MARS once,sometimes twice, each year for the past decade. He’sinterested in what microbes may be flourishing in theforeboding permafrost. “Very little is known about thelower limits of life of micro-organisms on this planet,”Whyte says. “Do they grow at sub-zero temperatures?How do they survive?” His work has extraterrestrialimplications, too: If Earth’s most unforgiving climesaren’t entirely inhospitable, then what surprises awaitbeneath the “barren” surface of, say, Mars?

In 2008, NASA deployed its Phoenix Mars Lander.For Whyte, the images Phoenix sent back weren’t allthat alien. “It looked like the same type of geomorphol -ogy, the same type of terrestrial geology or geographythat we see right around the McGill station.” In 2003,Whyte and his team discovered that the icy permafrostsoils of the high Arctic are actually brimming withmicrobes. In collaboration with Wayne Pollard(Department of Geography), the team has beenanalyzing the microbial communities inhabiting coldsaline springs around the McGill Station. Their study ofa methane seep in thick permafrost uncovered acommunity of sulphate-breathing microbes thrivingin a hypersaline, sub-zero environment. Such weebeasties were previ ously thought to exist only at thebottom of the ocean. Now, they could conceivably turnup almost anywhere on Earth. Or off.

Mars?Organisms that are invisible to the naked eye may

not figure into the popular imagination’s idea of “littlegreen men” on Mars, a cold planet with no oxygenand a sur face rendered sterile by radiation, but a fewfeet below that wasteland, shielded from the outsideenvironment, microscopic life could thrive. “If wecouldn’t find microbes in, say, high Arctic permafrostor glaciers or ice sheets, then there’d really be no sensein looking on places like Mars,” Whyte says. “But we arefinding these environments that are full of microbes.”He believes that finding such life, even if it’s as simpleas bacteria, would have enormous scientific andphilosophical implications for humanity, “because itmeans life is capable of evolving on other worlds evenin our solar system.”

At the time of the Phoenix mission, NASA didn’thave the tools to retrieve permafrost samples. Whyteand others from the NSERC-funded Canadian Astro -biology Training Program (of which he’s the principalinvesti gator) are working with the Canadian SpaceAgency to develop technology to extract samples of theMartian subsurface.

“For me, seeing is believing,” Whyte says. “And itwill be great when someone actually brings a sampleback and I look at it under an electronic microscopeand I can see microbes.” That might happen soonenough. Whyte expects a sample-return mission to belaunched in the 2020s. “We’re at the forefront of thisgreat adventure.”■ Lyle Whyte’s research is funded by the Natural Sciences andEngineering Research Council of Canada, the CanadaFoundation for Innovation, Canada Research Chairs, thePolar Continental Shelf Program, Indian and Northern AffairsCanada, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA. Whyte is theCanada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology andwas the Chair of the Astrobiology Discipline Working Group ofthe Canadian Space Agency from 2007 to 2009.

If micro-organisms can make it in the highArctic, they can make it anywhere. Professor Lyle Whyte has spent years digging inseemingly inhospitable tundra, unearthing new insights into microbial life at sub -zerotemperatures—on Earth and beyond.

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The traditional nuclear family is no longer a given. For some, “family” now means living with a step-parent, step-brothers and sisters. For others, it’s living with a mother or a father, but not both. Besides the effects they have on family members, the consequences of these changestouch a wide range of sectors in our society, from the economy to family law. By mining a wealth of statistical data, Céline Le Bourdais is gaining important insights into how marriage, divorce and separation are affecting Quebec society.

All in the

Families

By Thierry Harr is The recent lawsuit was easy tabloid fodder. A Brazilian expat, known onlyas “Lola,” was suing her former common-law partner, the father of her threechildren, for a $50-million lump sum plus $56,000 in monthly alimony. Theman, “Eric,” was said to be a high-profile Quebec tycoon. Tongues waggedabout Eric’s identity, and about a high-rolling lifestyle alien to most people.But what intrigued Céline Le Bourdais about the case wasn’t the specu -lation, the schadenfreude or the salaciousness. She was interested inserious questions about the changing nature of the Quebec family.

Céline Le Bourdais is a professor in McGill’s Department of Sociology.Since the mid-eighties, she has measured the extent of family trans -formation from a demographic point of view. In 1951, for example, 96.9 percent of Quebec parents were married. Today, marriage produces less than

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I N F O C U SA C T L O C A L L Y

40 per cent of Quebec babies. In June 2010, Le Bourdaisended her 10-year run as director of the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics. The centre, whichhas a secured data laboratory at McGill, brings togetherthe University and six other Quebec schools—Concordia,the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, theUniversité Laval, the Université de Montréal, theUniversité de Sherbrooke and the Université de Québecà Montréal — and provides researchers with access to thedetailed data from Statistics Canada’s population censusesand large surveys, such as the General Social Surveys(GSS) on “family transitions” (2006).

Le Bourdais’s insights into the changing realities ofCanadians’ day-to-day lives caught the attention of theAttorney General of Quebec, who asked her to act as anexpert witness on the Lola-Eric case. The AttorneyGeneral asked Le Bourdais and her colleague, ÈvelyneLapierre-Adamcyk (an emeritus professor at the Univer -sité de Montréal), to document, from a demographicpoint of view, the similarities and differences betweenmarried couples and common-law couples. Le Bourdais’sresearch reported that—when it came to money man-agement, stability and even fertility rates—the differencesbetween the two unions run much deeper than theexistence or absence of a marriage certificate.

“We looked at different countries and found thatmarried couples everywhere shared money a lot morethan cohabiting couples. The latter are more likely to keeptheir money separate. But at the same time, cohabitingcou ples share domestic work more equally. Marriedcouples are more likely to specialize in work. They poolmoney, instead of pooling work,” says Le Bourdais. Herstudy also showed that cohabiting unions are moreunstable than marriages, and that married couples havemore children than those living common-law. Her find -ings helped the judge render a decision in July 2009against Lola’s constitutional argument that, in terms ofpartners’ post-separation rights and obligations, cohabit -ing partners are equal to married couples. (At time ofwriting, an appeal was pending.)

Le Bourdais’s research has also made an importantimpact on public policy in Canada. Along with her tworesearch colleagues, Nicole Marcil-Gratton (Université deMontréal) and Heather Juby (then at INRS-Urbanisation,Culture, Société, now the knowledge transfer coordina-tor for the Canadian Research Centre Data Network), LeBourdais conducted a research series on children’s familytrajectories, examining contact between fathers and theirchildren after separation. The research, funded by theMinisters of Justice in Quebec and Ottawa, is con spic u -ous for approaching the subject from the father’s point ofview, as opposed to the traditional mother-focusedapproach. The study followed a large number of childrenover time, which made it possible to study how a variety

of factors (such as the employment status and incomes ofparents, the sharing of roles and the organization offamily life while living together) influence child care andalimony settlements. Their findings contributed to thefinal Federal-Provincial-Territorial Report on CustodyAccess and Child Support and served as a background fordiscussions that led to the adoption of the CanadianChild-centred Family Justice Strategy in December 2002.

Le Bourdais remains active in the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics. In April 2010, sheand Èvelyne Lapierre-Adamcyk received a grant fromthe Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council(SSHRC) of Canada to continue analyzing the ongoingtransformation of family life in Quebec and Canada.Building upon the information gained through StatisticsCanada’s surveys and Quebec birth sta tistics, they’refocus ing on changes in the impor -tance and meaning of both marriageand common-law unions in Quebecand Canada, and looking at whetherbirth rates respond to family policies,such as $7-a-day childcare servicesand extended parental leave andbenefits. Le Bourdais is also collab -orating with two of her PhD students,France-Pascale Ménard and ChristineProulx, on a study of how babyboomers’ low fertility, and high con -jugal instability, affects their familynetworks when they reach old age.She hopes the latter project will helppaint a fuller, more accurate portraitof the challenges that lie ahead.

“Right now we’ve been looking atwho cares for old people,” says LeBourdais. “Usually it’s the spouse orthe children, but what happens afterparents separate? Statistically, men who have bothbiological children and stepchildren are more likely to livewith their stepchildren and their mother, and to havesporadic or even lose contact with their biological chil -dren. In this case, who will take care of those sep aratedfathers as they grow old? The biological kids they left orthe stepchildren? The answer is far from clear, as theadults who have gone through these changes are juststarting to reach retirement age.”

■Céline Le Bourdais is the Canada Research Chair in SocialStatistics and Family Change. The Quebec Inter-UniversityCentre for Social Statistics is funded by the CanadaFoundation for Innovation, the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada, the CanadianInstitutes of Health Research and the Fonds québécois pour larecherche sur la société et la culture.

Céline Le Bourdais,professor in McGill’s Department of Sociology

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trainees from Canada, the U.S. and Europe.) The pro -gram brings togeth er research expertise in four dis -ciplines: electronics and telecommunications, infor -mation systems and sof tware architecture, operationsresearch, and process design and improvement.

Paul Intrevado is a PhD student in health care oper -ations research. After receiving his BCom fromMcGill, he completed a BSc and MSc in industrial en -gi neering at Purdue University. While there, he saw hisideas for im prov ing batch order preparation at theWishard Hospital in-patient pharmacy in Indi anapolissuccessfully implemented. The experi ence hookedIntrevado on creat ing academic work with concretereal-world applications. Back at his undergrad almamater, he’s now serving as the student repre sentativeon the CREATE-HOIM Advisory Board. “It’s impor -tant that the aim of my research isn’t just to line thepockets of shareholders, but to contribute to the over -all good,” he says. Intrevado is translating data gath -ered at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital andHôpital Notre-Dame into a dissertation about how thelack of various types of long-term-care facilitiesincreases hospital stay times for older patients.

“Hospitals are data rich, but information poor,” saysWojtek Michalowski, CREATE-HOIM faculty memberand professor of health informatics and decision sup-port at the University of Ottawa. “They produce a lot of data but are very bad at extracting information out ofthis data. What the program is trying to accomplish isto train people who understand what they should know.We want to make people aware of what they don’tknow, so they’ll use the data to get that information.

By Phi l ip Trum

“ There are still some research fields where you can bepurely theoretical,” muses Vedat Verter, “but healthcare management isn’t one of them. You have to showrele vance, you can’t just do your research from anoffice.”

Verter is a professor of operations management inthe Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill. He’salso the program director of the NSERC CREATE-funded program in Health care Operations andInformation Management, a new PhD and post-doc -toral fellowship program that brings together expertisefrom McGill, the Université de Montréal, Queen’sand the Universities of British Columbia, Ottawa andToronto. CREATE-HOIM’s goal is to train managerswho can improve Canadian health care by tacklingproblems such as emergency room waiting times andaccessibility to family physicians, or improve the use ofstate-of-the-art information and telecom municationtechnologies in the health sector.

The Canadian tradition of filling managerial roleswith doctors, reasons Verter, just isn’t working—andnot just because it cuts into a physician’s caregivingtime. “These individuals are highly trained, excellentclinicians and very smart—but we won’t turn aroundour health care system by assuming that they’llintuitively find the right ways to manage,” he says.“Other sectors don’t do this; aero space doesn’t onlyhire engineers, they hire managers to work with thoseengineers.”

CREATE-HOIM launched in September 2009, withsix doctoral students and three post-docs. (This pastJune, a one-week summer school also attracted 30

HOIMisWhere theHealthis

Canada’s hospitals need smart managers. The Health care Operations and Information

Management program is training them.

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I N F O C U SN E T W O R K S

“If you want to find out how a system behaves, and youwant to improve it, you have to develop some sort ofmodel. Models provide new insights that can be used inevidence-based decision making.”

Although the program is in its first year, it’s essentiallya formal continuation of a kind of collab orative researchthat’s been happening between the Desautels Faculty ofManagement and McGill’s affiliated hospitals for severalyears. (See sidebar.) In order to ensure interuniversitycollaboration, each PhD student works with supervisorsfrom two differ ent schools, and participates in a weeklyteleconfer ence seminar with the other students across thecountry. A six-month to one-year exchange is also part ofthe training; for example, a Queen’s PhD stu dent study -ing cancer-care relationships may spend a year at UBCworking with collaborators at Cancer Care BC studyinghow to improve access to oncology departments.

There are still obstacles to overcome. Nurses andphysicians may be rightly skeptical of outsiders arriv ingwith fancy new ideas about how things should work.That’s why, says Verter, it’s essential to engage collabo -rators on the health care front lines in all stages of thisresearch; the program includes a network of 40 healthcare providers and decision makers. “If they’re part of thework, and they’re impressed with a stu dent’s researchoutcome, it increases the likelihood that the knowledgewill actually be implemented.”

And implementation is CREATE-HOIM’s ultimate goal.“Over the next six years, we’re aiming to fund 15 doctoralstudents and five one-year post-docs—and we’re hopingthe health sector will absorb at least 10 of those PhDs,”says Verter. “We want our graduates to work in theCanadian system.”■The CREATE Health care Operations and Information Man-agement training program is funded by the Natural Sciencesand Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Some of the peoplebehind CREATE-HOIM(from left): PaulIntrevado, advisoryboard studentrepresentative;professor VedatVerter, programdirector; KristenOliver, programcoordinator

When Vedat Verter applied for NSERC funding, he illustrated his visionusing recent research done by his doctoral students and post-doctoralfellows in the Desautels Faculty of Management. One such example wasthe work of Beste Kucukyazici, who gradu ated in 2009 and is now assistantprofessor of supply chain manage ment with MIT-Zaragoza and a CREATE-HOIM collaborator.

By studying patient files at the Montreal Neurological Institute,Kucukyazici determined that the longer a stroke patient stays in emer -gency before being transferred to the stroke unit, the longer they’ll stay inhospital overall. “It’s a loop,” she explains. “A patient waits in emergency,where they’re not getting the specialized care they need right afterthey’ve had their stroke, because there isn’t an empty stroke unit bed.When they finally get to the unit, they spend longer there because theydidn’t get that early specialized care—and thus cause the next strokepatient to wait in emergency.” Further, she found these patients have“worse func tionality when they are discharged, compared to patientsadmitted quicker to the stroke unit, to the degree that, instead of goinghome, they may need to go to a long-term-care facility.”

The solution isn’t as easy as just adding more beds; patients need the specialized care that goes with those beds, too. Working with Dr.Richard Riopelle, chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery,Kucukyazici adapted some man agement techniques traditionally used formanufacturing systems, in order to develop a flexible bed allocationpolicy. “Instead of having, say, eight beds reserved for stroke patients, andeight reserved for non-stroke neurological patients, our simulation modelshowed that you can increase your capacity by making all 16 beds flexiblefor all types of patients in that ward. You reduce the waiting time inemergency and you improve outcomes.”

Kucukyazici presented her findings to Riopelle in May 2009. He wasimpressed, but the project remains very much a work-in-progress.Riopelle describes CREATE-HOIM as “critical in terms of advancing thehealth system from the perspective of effectiveness and efficiency,” butstresses that change is necessarily slow. “We’re beginning to get theevidence, like Beste’s work, but now we need to build the expertise toimplement these great initiatives—and that just takes a lot of time.” ■

Creating CREATE-HOIM

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In the McGill Faculty of Law’s undergraduate program,every student is trained in civil and common law, anunusual education that produces lawyers able to work ineither of the Western world’s two major legal traditions.Montreal is an obvious location for this crossroad: WhileQuebec follows the civil law tradition, inherited fromFrance, the rest of Canada is governed by the commonlaw, derived from England. But McGill’s integratedphilosophy isn’t about maintaining twin solitudes, and itisn’t restricted to the classroom. Rather, the University’slegal scholars use their understanding of both traditionsto find innovative ways of approaching and under -standing juridical challenges, both old and new.

At the heart of this ambitious intertwining is theQuebec Research Centre of Private and ComparativeLaw. Founded in 1975 by eminent civil law professorPaul-André Crépeau, the QRCPCL researches thefundamental private law of both legal traditions. Thecentre brings together not only a large proportion ofMcGill’s law professors, but also undergraduate andpostgraduate student researchers and scholars fromother Quebec and Canadian universities, as well asprofessors and other visitors from all over the world.

Law FuThe Quebec Research Centre ofPrivate and Comparative Law is

breaking new ground with inter-national research programs intolegal education that integratescivil and common law, and theglobal expansion of trust law.

“The great irony is that people from each traditionlook at the other and think it’s less flexible,” says LionelSmith, James McGill Professor of Law and director of theQRCPCL since 2007. “Common lawyers look at a civilcode, which may be 3,000 sections long, and think,‘You’ve frozen everything in time with this text.’ Andcivil lawyers look at the common law, in which the casesmake the law—because one judge is bound to follow aprevious judge’s decision on a similar point—and think,‘You’re shackled by this doctrine of precedent.’ But thetruth is interpretation changes the law over time. Bothtraditions are always evolving, and there are highly valu-able insights to be gleaned from each.”

Smith, one of Canada’s foremost experts on the law oftrusts, doesn’t just teach lessons of legal interaction, helives them firsthand. He was teaching at Oxford Univer-sity when he joined the international comparative lawproject called the Common Core of European PrivateLaw, a step that ignited his emerging interest in the civillaw. In 2000, he jumped at the opportunity to work inboth legal traditions at McGill. But he decided that, inorder to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity, heneeded more formal education in civil law—so, while

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’’I N F O C U SN E T W O R K S

Far left:Professor Lionel Smith is the director of theQuebec Research Centre of Private andComparative Law, whichbrings together theWestern world’s twomajor legal traditions:Quebec follows the civillaw tradition, inheritedfrom France but rootedin sixth-century Rome(top inset), while therest of Canada followsthe common lawtradition thatoriginated in MiddleAges England (bottominset).

“ The great irony is that people from each tradition look at the otherand think it’s less flexible....Both traditions are always evolving, andthere are highly valuable insights to be gleaned from each.”

– PROFESSOR LIONEL SMITH

working as a full-time professor and associate dean, hepursued a civil law degree as a part-time student at theUniversité de Montréal. Although it was odd to be twicethe age of most of his classmates, and juggling work andschool was a challenge, he loved the experience. “Learn-ing about the civil law, I felt the same excitement aswhen I first went to law school,” Smith remembers. Helaughs and adds, “Maybe going back was just a justifi-cation to experience that excitement again!”

QRCPCL researchers are interested in points of inter-section, with a particular interest in law and language.Under Smith’s leadership, the centre has carried on a longtradition of the elaboration of dictionaries of Quebec civillaw that are widely used in legal practice and in the courts.(This research unfolds in collaboration with the Univer -sité de Moncton’s Centre de traduction et de terminologiejuridiques, the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Trans -lation and Legal Documentation and the Collègeuniversitaire de Saint-Boniface’s Institut Joseph-Dubuc.)Another dimension of this research entails examininghow legal concepts and norms are expressed in multiple

sion

tional investors is leading more and more countries to askhow they can combine a version of the trust with theircivilian understanding of the law of property.

The QRCPCL’s scholarly contribution to these globaldevelopments is reflected in events such as “The Worldsof the Trust/La fiducie dans tous ses États,” a three-daycon ference that it will host in September 2010. The cen -tre will welcome scholars from all over the world toexplore how civil law and “mixed” jurisdictions havereact ed, or are reacting, to the legal stranger enteringtheir midst.

“The civilian world looks to Quebec in regard to trusts,”says Smith. “They’re interested in the particular legaltheoretical solution for incorporating trusts into a civilianlaw of property.” Although trusts have been part ofQuebec law at least since 1879, it was the 1994 CivilCode of Quebec that truly “civilianized” the concept tomake trusts more than an ill-fitting transplant. The com-mon law understanding of trusts—according to which thetrustee and the beneficiary both “own” the same thing,but in different ways—is at odds with the civilian defini-tion of ownership. “In civil law, either you’re the owner oryou’re not,” Smith explains. “The Quebec solution seeksto make the trust property ‘ownerless.’ The trustee hasmanagement powers over the property and the benefi-ciaries are understood as having claims to that property—two ideas that are consistent with civil law.”

One benefit of these new research programs has beenthe attraction of significant funding from new sources. Inthe last two years, the QRCPCL has received a four-yeargrant from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur lasociété et la culture for its work on the implications of theintegrated approach to legal education, and a three-yeargrant from Quebec’s Ministère du Développementéconomique, de l’Innovation et de l’Exportation for thework on trusts. The ministry usually funds research forcom mercial innovations, but Smith suc cess fully madethe case that the Quebec trust is an innovation untoitself—and one that’s caught the atten tion of lawmakersfrom France to China. “Putting the trust in the Quebeccivil code is symbolically significant in the civilian tra -dition,” says Smith. “It means that the trust is not a spe cialthing that exists to serve some commercial or other par -ticular purpose, but rather is part of the basic law thatapplies to everyone and that everyone can use. A lot ofthe world is very interested in knowing how the Quebectrust works, and how Quebec overcame the obstacles toimple menting trusts in a civilian system.” Smith notes thatthere remain a number of theoretical questions about theQuebec trust, some of which are being studied bypostgraduate researchers at the QRCPCL. “We can learnfrom other systems and other jurists, just as they canlearn from us. If the centre can help to make that happen,then I’ll be happy.” ■

languages; centre researcher Edmund Coates, forexample, was the principal researcher for a full reviewof the English text of the Civil Code of Quebec,flagging both simple translation errors and much morenuanced issues of connotation and meaning. (Coates isnow working with Justice Quebec to implement thoserecommendations.)

Smith has also sought to take the Centre’s activitiesonto a more global stage. He has launched an ambitiouslong-term project aimed at understanding the impli-cations of McGill’s integrated approach to legaleducation for our understanding of the law itself. Oneaspect of this research has grown into a fully fledgedagenda of its own: a global study of the legal institutionof the trust. Traditionally considered to be characteristicof common law legal systems, trusts provide a legalmeans for one person, a trustee, to manage property onbehalf of another person, the beneficiary . Today a widerange of property, from land in Italy to shares in theNew York Times Company, is held in trust. And yettrusts do not exist in most civil law jurisdictions.(Quebec and Louisiana are notable exceptions.) Inthe modern world, however, pressure from interna-

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In June 2009, Bartha Maria Knoppers left her longtimeacademic home at the Université de Montréal, where shewas the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine, toset up the new Centre of Genomics and Policy at McGill.Researchers in the CGP are tackling the most pres singethical and legal issues facing human genetics, with a par -ti cular focus on regenerative medicine, pediatrics, publichealth, privacy and personalized medicine.

You completed your first law degree at McGill.What drew you back to the University after 25 years away?

I had the very exciting opportunity to have my own cen-tre integrated in the scientific community of the McGillUniversity/Génome Québec Innovation Centre here oncampus. I’m surrounded by people in bioinfor matics,genotyping, phenotyping, microbiomes, you name it—aswell as my colleagues in the Faculty of Law across theaqueduct. The team was built, the funds were there. I hadalready developed policy and research know-how, buthere there was the chance to go to the next step, to applythose things in a more integrated setting. I’m get tingmore of a feel of the scientific community’s ideas, their pas-sions, their ongoing application cycles! It was a big move.

Reflecting on the first year of the CGP, what were the highlights and challenges?

Bringing over about 12 full-time researchers and another10 support staff and assistants is quite a major move. So,most of last summer was spent getting organized, butnow we’re very well housed. There a new team dynamic,not only amongst my own team, but amongst those whowant to come and work with us here. Even in theInnovation Centre itself, there’s now a monthly scienceethics policy debate organized by the younger staff.

What are your priorities for year two?

Some of our ongoing projects, such as CARTaGENE[the collection of blood samples and detailed demograph -ic data from the Quebec population] were left at U de Mbecause, legally speaking, it would have been too difficultto bring them over. So we’re building new projects here,in fields that we weren’t involved in before, such as vac -cines, microbiomes and metabolomics. But one projectI’ll bring over soon is the Public Population Project(P3G). It’s a tool-building organization for allowing large

biocollections and population studies to share data andgain statistical significance. Biobanks are systematicorganizations of information and tissues; interoperabilitymeans we’ll see the fruits of these efforts much earlier.

Another priority is more of an open-access dissemi -nation strategy, for the know-how, be it P3G tools orpolicy know-how. I’m looking for funding particularly forcommunication. Countries should be able to have accessto our tools, like our international database called Hum-Gen. We’ve never had time to publicize it properly, but westill get over 500 hits a day. Those are the kinds of thingsyou would like everyone to know about, so that policy-makers, funders, researchers do not have to continuallyreinvent, and they can actually just use these resources.

Looking back 10 years, what surprises you?

I never thought that the momentum of big internationalresearch collaborations, like the sequencing of the humangenome, would continue. [Knoppers chaired the Interna -tional Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Project.]People really thought that would just be a one-time thing,but they’ve continued this philosophy of creatingresources, of data-sharing, of building large consortiaacross political and legal jurisdictions. So that’s a reallyexciting, positive impetus to keep going.

What do you hope to see in the next 10 years?

Science is international, and so we need internationalgovernance that makes sure researchers are authen -ticated, that the science is being carried out as it said itwould be in the protocol, and that the consent andprivacy of the participants are respected. I would like tosee some thing of a flexible structure that has input fromthe different projects or different countries, where therewould be trust that this committee structure wouldactually be looking at the science that is approved, andprovide a simplified system for delegated ethics reviewfrom the different countries. You need a lot of trust, andyou need a lot of competent people in whom peoplehave such trust. ■ The Centre of Genomics and Policy is funded by GénomeQuébec, Genome Canada, the Canadian Institutes of HealthResearch, the Stem Cell Networks of Centres of Excellence, theFonds de la recherche en santé du Québec, the CanadianPartnership Against Cancer and the Institut national desanté publique du Québec.

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*McGill and affiliated hospitals

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Making MCGILL RESEARCH FACTS AND MILESTONESHeadway

Alice Vibert Douglas (1894-1988) was a pioneering

Quebec astrophysicist.

A crater on the southernhemisphere of planet

Venus is named in hermemory.

name Venusian landmarksafter women.) The Vibert Douglas

patera is 45 kilometres in diameter and is located at11.6° south latitude 194.3° east longitude—earningAllie a permanent place in the heavens, alongsideluminaries such as Cleopatra, Sappho and Emily Carr. ■

liceVibertDouglas’spath into thehistory books—and, in a manner

of speaking, onto the swelteringsurface of Venus—was not withoutits detours. Allie, as the Montreal teenwas known, began her undergraduate studies inmathematics and physics at McGill, but the First WorldWar soon drew her to London. After distinguishedservice as a statistician in the War Office (for which sheearned the Order of the British Empire), she returnedto her studies, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1920 anda master’s the following year. She then went back toEngland, this time to Cambridge, where she began herdoctorate studies under Arthur Eddington, whom shecalled “one of the super-giants in an age of giants.”She came back to McGill and, in 1925, barely 30 yearsold, she became the first person—male or female—toearn a PhD in astrophysics from a Quebec university.For a long time, she was also the last such person; thenext Quebec PhD in the subject was earned in 1972.

Vibert Douglas taught at McGill until she moved toQueen’s University in 1939. Although she spent therest of her career at Queen’s—where her achievementsincluded helping persuade the university to acceptwomen into engineering and medicine—she’s remem -bered as a Quebec pioneer, both for her ground -breaking academic achievement and her passionatepopularizing of astronomy by establishing amateursocieties in the province. In 2003, Quebec astrophysicistYvan Dutil successfully lobbied the InternationalAstronomical Union to honour Douglas’s memory bynaming a crater on Venus after her. (It’s IAU policy to

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