WRS6. Ann Swidler on Africa NGOs

Posted on May 3, 2021July 9, 2021 by Project Save The World

WRS6. Ann Swidler on Africa NGOs

Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: WRS6
Panelists: Ann Swidler
Host: Metta Spencer

Date aired: 9 December 2020
Date Transcribed: 13 March 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: David Millar

Metta Spencer

No, it shouldn’t be unlisted. Well, doesn’t matter now, because I don’t have any audience. But maybe I shouldn’t be that public. Anyway, it’ll be public in the long run when I edit it, which is probably what I need to do anyway. go now let me mute that. Now. Okay, so now we can start. Hi, Ann. How are you? Ann Swidler, you’re in Berkeley, California.

Ann Swidler

Yeah.

Metta Spencer

Yes, indeed, in Berkeley, my own stomping grounds. Wonderful. Now, I, somebody may join us in a minute from Burundi. But in the meantime, you can tell me about what you’ve been doing in Africa? Because I know you still keep going there —

Ann Swidler

I didn’t go there this past summer. I haven’t been there in over a year because of the Coronavirus. I’ve been touring to different projects; I was doing a project on religious congregations and chiefs. And that’s sort of the core of my interest. Because I had studied AIDS NGOs for a long time. And I had concluded that AIDS NGOs kept trying to sort of transform lives.

Metta Spencer

What’s GO?

Ann Swidler

I said NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, I had been studying those. And I had concluded that they kept coming in trying to transform the lives of local people, without any lasting result. And so, you know, they would come in, they would do their projects, they would try to create a democratically elected committee to govern a village or to decide on women’s rights or something. And then the minute their money went away, everything they had been trying to accomplish, also went away. And what I noticed is that the institutions that sustain themselves, in lives of regular people were religious congregations. And their people gave their own money in order to keep their religious congregations going, and were hugely affected by the authority of their pastors or sheikhs, leaders of those congregations, and by chiefs, who also have very few legal powers, but have decisive social powers in their own villages. So I started trying to understand their authority and how that works, and how those why those institutions sustain themselves. And the kinds of institutions that we right-hearted liberals try to… import don’t sustain themselves. So … given that institutional crises seem so important in the politics of the rest of the world. It seems like a good moment to be trying to figure out how you get robust, effective institutions…

Metta Spencer

So, it’s really a pity that this pastor isn’t with us now, because he is… apparently a Protestant minister in Burundi, and he goes to Finland for something. And… he has a number of… NGOs that do development work. And that’s what he wants to talk about, his development work. So it’s really a very interesting that, that you’re saying that this is exactly the thing that works. Now, are you saying that these are people who support their own activities? It’s… not foreign aid… they support, they pay for their own activities? And I don’t —

Ann Swidler

That’s my point. It’s the NGOs that don’t sustain themselves, that can’t support their activities that rely on foreign aid, and if they don’t get it, they collapse. And it’s the churches and mosques and chieftaincies that do sustain themselves. That’s what I meant. Yeah, that’s the ones that work are the ones that do that are locally supported. Yeah, the people themselves. Right.

Metta Spencer

Wow, that’s a pretty serious indictment of foreign aid, isn’t it? Well, critique, if you’re saying that that’s generally something you have to count on.

Ann Swidler

Yeah, I mean, I think, again, my focus is not really on what makes good foreign aid. So I want to back off and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. For example, Western-funded aid organizations (including Canadian organizations) support… They did boreholes, for example — Canadians really care about clean water, which is a very high priority. And they do a lot of development work — the global community, the wealthy nations, pay for basically almost 100% of the HIV drugs given in Africa, which are keeping millions of people alive. So, the idea that foreign aid is no good is — I would object completely to that… you know, increases in longevity, that they’re just the infrastructure, the healthcare is all dependent on foreign aid… I don’t think I would critique foreign aid. But I do think that the kind of fantasy that Western ordinary people like you and me might have, which is what African countries really need is someone to come in and teach gender equality in the villages, teach men to cook with their wives, come in and tell local… villagers form an NGO, do HIV prevention work… come in and… teach villagers how to have a democratic form of governance. I think almost every study (it’s not just my research, it’s every study of such interventions) shows they do not work, they do not take hold locally. And they do not become important local sources of political and social effective capacity that just don’t increase the capacity of people to get things they need or want. So they appreciate the money, that’s for sure. If… you do a training on preventing intimate partner violence, that’s the typical kind of thing they do. Everyone wants to come and do the training, because they get a little per diem as part of the training, and they might get lunch, which there is no small matter… to get chicken, for people who can’t afford to eat meat in any form, basically, ever. These are huge benefits, and they love them. But does it actually change ways of life, beliefs? The way people operate on the ground? And I would say, the answer is no.

Metta Spencer

Well, okay… what’s your next move? You want to shut these things down? I’m not mad, I think here, I would say, you’re concerned with us like, what, what’s the next move? What should we do? What should we do? What should we do?

Ann Swidler

I’m actually interested in saying, before we think about what we do, we should really understand how they operate. What is going on? How do local institutions actually function? What is it that pastors, sheikhs are doing? What is it the chiefs are doing? What are they act[ually] — not my stereotype “Oh, the chiefs are all men? So that’s bad” — But how… Why are they such central figures? … if you want to intervene, it’s… like if you want to cure disease in a body, but you don’t know anything about physiology. You’ve never studied the circulatory system, you don’t know what the lungs are, you don’t know what the heart does, then you say, “Oh, my God, this person is ill, we should take out the heart, that will be good, that must improve things, you know, the person’s blood is too hot, that’s what’s wrong… let’s just take out the heart. Well, I think our approach to foreign aid is a little bit like that, which is, we don’t see that it’s incumbent on us to actually understand the systems we’re so confident we have a right to change.

Metta Spencer

Okay, I’m willing to understand — now the problem is, what is it that I if I understood I would want to do I mean, I am so much a policy-oriented person, I have to decide for myself how I’m going to fix the world. And that’s all I do day and night, is trying to fix the world. And I certainly want to know how to do it right. But… don’t tell me “Don’t do anything? Well, because I might say to that —

Ann Swidler

Well, then… that’s your problem. I would say… you can’t do that… before you start trying to fix parts of the world that are very, very different from your world —

Metta Spencer

Okay. I’m willing to listen. I definitely want to understand and let’s say —

Ann Swidler

For instance, there is this sort of growing school in development studies, that — it’s got different names, but “developmental patrimonialism” or something that says something like, it’s better to work with the kinds of institutions that already exist on the ground and work sort of within their structures, encouraging them to evolve in fruitful directions, rather than trying to displace them. Right. Okay. So that’s, that’s the kind of advice I could —

Metta Spencer

I could absorb. I don’t, I’m not in a position to do much with it. But I can listen to that. And now, if I, okay, now, with that maxim, how would that? Could you advise any, anybody in particular about how they should change some practice, they’re actually doing?

Ann Swidler

Well, again, since I’m an academic, and I study things… I’m not an activist… an academic. So, I don’t spend my time trying to change the things I’m studying, I try to understand them. But I would say that you could ask a question like, are chiefs, for example, more effective in what they’re trying to do, which is get clean water for their communities, repair the local roads, so that their villagers can get to and from the market… enforce what we would call property rights, which are critical to the daily lives. I mean, if somebody steals someone’s gold… in the chief’s court I went to last time I was in Malawi, in 2019. An old woman’s dog had eaten a man’s goat. And he only had two goats. So, you know, this was a pretty serious threat to his livelihood. And it’s the chief’s authority. The chief hears this in the court, adjudicates and gets the woman to explain why she can’t keep her dog under control, and so forth. But if you wanted to transform people’s lives, you would… want to preserve their access to legal, effective legal protections. And you would want to be very careful, for example. So right now, there are attempts to privatize landholding, because you have these communal lands and people farm them, but the chief gets to decide who farms which piece of land. And so, no wonder the Chiefs have a lot of power… it means that, well, the theory behind it, which is a good one, I think, is that if one family has very few children, fewer offspring, they don’t need as much land and another family has more offspring and needs more land… so he can kind of reallocate within certain traditionally understood limits. If you come in, you have a landlord that privatizes all the land… there are almost certainly huge abuses. But the second thing is, wait a minute, if you undermine all the powers of the chief, where would people get their basic access to some kind of judicial system? Where would they get somebody to prevent the locals taking sweet potatoes out of their garden, which is what they eat? I mean, a garden isn’t a decorative thing. It’s your farm, basically. So, I think in all these ways, you want to think — when you’re making changes, we don’t have modern institutions to replace, effective modern institutions, to replace these existing local institutions. So, I think you want to tread carefully, before you go, altering ways of life. And then I think you do want to think about how some kinds of interventions work with local patterns. I’ll give you a positive example — when I got to know one chief very well, I met him originally, I guess in 2018, and he’s great. I was —

Metta Spencer

Are these hereditary, or how does a person —

Ann Swidler

There is a lot of negotiation within the ruling lineage about which particular individual will actually become the chief. And sometimes it’s a woman. It’s less common, but it can happen. And they often are kin. So, there’s a whole hierarchy of chiefs, and the local headman, the one who actually runs the village, is often part of the larger kin group of the higher-order group, a village headman who might be part of the kin group of the highest level, they’re called traditional authorities. But… I want to give you a positive example. I was talking with him. And I think he’s a very good chief, if you met him… he’s a tremendously sympathetic figure, I’ll just say, badly, physically disabled from childhood, chosen, I think, for his kind of wisdom. And, you know, if you asked — Why did this person who can barely drag himself from one place to another on a single crutch, and has to be lifted… to use the toilet, his wife has to put him on the bed, they don’t have toilets, but you know, they have pit latrines — Anyway, how did he become a chief, I think it’s, he really is very public-spirited. And I was asking him about his village. And he explained that the best thing that had happened were these village savings and loans. And these were originally sponsored by NGOs. They are local, sort of mutual savings associations, and they don’t require outside funding. Now, once they were promoted, and became common, people use them for everything. And it’s basically enforced saving. So, you come in, the local pressure that all these people are your relatives, and enforces rules… if you put in… the equivalent of 20 cents every week, and then in six months, you get to take out the equivalent of $20 and start a small business, that can really transform your life. So that’s the kind of intervention that can work. And it’s because it works with what are already local patterns, which is… people are highly mutually dependent. They do a lot of petty trading. So, there are opportunities for somebody, once they have a little bit of capital, they can buy a bushel of tomatoes, and then sell it as little groups of four tomatoes. On their front — they make a little thing out of sticks or kind of a platform, and then… as people walk by in the village path, they sell these little groups of tomatoes, and that can generate income that can stimulate growth in the whole village. So, if you understand local patterns, you’re more likely to be able to develop things that now — let me just, I know I’ve talked the whole time. And I haven’t said one thing that really is useful to you. But I’ll say one other thing, which is I’m puzzled by something, which is Malawi is totally deforested. There’s a huge shortage of firewood. And people do make charcoal from — they go into even protected National Forests, or wherever trees have grown a little bit. And they cut them down and they roast them to make charcoal, then they sell charcoal in little bags this big in the market. So, people can cook one meal. And yeah. And so why isn’t there — so I’ll just say that I won’t say the whole background, but I was there’s a nice restaurant in one town about two hours from where I stayed at that summer in a little rural area. And the guy who owns that restaurant showed me — he has an amazing stove, that is some kind of iron contraption, and you put one log in the bottom and it can boil gallons of water for hours on end to make the staple goop they need, a kind of porridge called “sima”… and it’s so much more efficient. So why isn’t there an NGO… using carbon credits to provide those very efficient cooking-stoves to lower, these cooking stoves or — one I saw it just uses a log, you just put a stick into it basically, on one end and it… however it’s designed, that thing burns incredibly slowly and efficiently. And it cooks a vast amount of stuff for almost no input. Since gathering wood is one of the major burdens women face, it’s the you know, it’s a really huge part of people’s… burdens and of course it’s ecologically horrible. So anyway, yeah. Okay, well, I don’t have a very good answer, that I’m not well enough informed, but I would say this.

Metta Spencer

I’ve heard that that deforestation is really largely attributed to the desire for, to making charcoal. And yet, it’s possible to create charcoal cooking stoves that are biochar, they call it, and you can gather things like leaves and twigs and stuff and use it and to make the charcoal and at the time… I understand that… if you look at the island of Haiti, and is it what the Dominican Republic that’s on the other side, you can see the line, if you fly over, you can see one side is green, the other side’s brown, it’s just that simple. And that Haiti is just ruined because of cutting trees for charcoal. But when there was this… catastrophe there several years ago, my contribution was to pay it, to give money to a fund that was making charcoal stoves that were supposed to be extremely efficient. There’s also such a thing as solar cookers… I don’t know how good they are. I do know that that supposedly using, and also there’s another reason for not wanting charcoal… fires indoors… there’s a huge problem with lung disease and illnesses caused by cooking inside. So, these biochar stoves are supposed to be partly anyway, a good solution. I don’t know whether it’s —

Ann Swidler

I just said what puzzles me is — I’ve seen absolutely no — I’ve never seen such a stove, except in this restaurant run by an Italian actually… And… on the ground. in Malawi, at least, there’s no evidence of such things. So, if NGOs wanted to do something really useful, providing things that fit into the ways of life people already have… you know —

Metta Spencer

That’s very useful information. In fact, what it will do is I will now start looking for somebody who knows more about charcoal, you know, by choice, but also try to figure out what these iron stoves they use almost no wood, because that just seemed like a miracle to me.

Ann Swidler

I saw this thing.

Metta Spencer

Well, what about the fumes?

Ann Swidler

So was this guy actually keeps it in it in a shed — people often cook outdoors. So, people, I mean, their houses are…. in Malawi, at least they’re these tiny mud brick huts, and they don’t cook in their houses. They cook outside their houses. There’s still a huge mess of smoke. I have to go it’s 10 o’clock. Yeah. Okay. It was very nice, great plan.

Metta Spencer

And I’m glad whatever accident happened… wonderful to see you and we’re going to get back to you.

Ann Swidler

Take care, dear.

Metta Spencer

Give me give my good wishes, everybody that I should distribute among.

Ann Swidler

Okay.

Metta Spencer

Thank you. Okay, bye.

T166. Rotary and IPPNW

Posted on March 18, 2021July 9, 2021 by Project Save The World

T166. Rotary and IPPNW

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Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 166
Panelists: Dr. Richard Denton
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired: 25 March 2021
Date Transcribed: 11 March 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: David Millar

Metta Spencer

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer, and good morning to you and to Richard Denton. Today we’re going to talk about the Rotary Club, which I’ve heard about all my life, but my goodness, I’m impressed with him lately. And just finding out all the wonderful things that Rotarians do. And Richard Denton is a big time Rotarian. He’s also big time in a whole bunch of other things. He is the co-chair of the North American Committee of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. And he’s involved with Pugwash, very involved. And with the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. I’ve just teased him about being the first bearded lady in the Canadian Organization of Women. Okay, and so we’re going to have a conversation about all these wonderful organizations that he’s engaged in. And he might recruit a few of you. I should say that if you’re watching this live, you can write a question in … the chat box, and my assistant Adam, who is watching… if he sees a really interesting question, he’s authorized to interrupt our conversation and on zoom, and ask Richard whatever question he has… So, you may have a chance to put a question directly to Richard Denton. Good morning, Richard. Hello. wonderful to see you.

Richard Denton

Great to see you.

Metta Spencer

And wonderful to see this wonderful background, which you tell me is not a green screen, but some wonderful, tricky thing that you can put on your computer. So, it’s a virtual background. Virtual background. Yeah. And you have all these words that mean peace, peace, freedom and “pace”… “paz”… all these different languages. Is this Rotarian? I see a gear wheel, which must be a rotary symbol, is that right?

Richard Denton

Correct. Yeah. over that way. …the rotary wheel… was actually designed by a fellow Rotarian. I like liked it, and she was kind enough to offer it to me.

Metta Spencer

Uh huh. Okay, so that gear we although it has been around a while, right, it must have been the founding symbol of the organization.

Richard Denton

Correct. Rotary is the oldest and largest service club in the world. It was founded by a lawyer, Paul Harris in 1905. And we now have 1.2 million Rotarians. And really, it’s probably…about 2 million because when you add younger people in Rotaract and Interact… and spouses, then it swells to about 2 million.

Metta Spencer

What is Rotaract?

Richard Denton

ACT is the ending of it. Correct. And it is for young people University age, and then on up. It used to end at about 30-35, and now there is no limit. And it is now functioning pretty much the same as rotary, it’s on just about equal par with rotary and will be in 2022.

Metta Spencer

What happens they have their own separate meetings or do you get together, or what’s the relationship between oldsters and youngsters?

Richard Denton

Well, obviously, we’re all working in — our motto is “service above self”. So, we work on projects, to better our community and to better our world. And often, we will work together and also can work separately… as clubs.

Metta Spencer

Okay. And is it always — my impression is that it’s quite a progressive organization. In general… anybody could call their orientation service. But is there some sort of consensus about what kind of service you want to perform in the world?

Richard Denton

Well, yes… there’s lots of service organizations… Lions, Kiwanis, etc. And our motto is “service above self”. So, as I said, service to our community and to the world. We follow what is called the four-way test. And one of my mentors has taken the four-way test … will it be beneficial to all? Will it be bringing goodwill and friendship? Will it be fair to all and then when you develop a relationship with another person, then — and you have that trust between each other, then you can get into the nitty gritty, which is the fourth question, is that the truth? And so, you can apply this to just about anything, you know, to any type of discussion, be it in your marriage, be it in your workplace, be it in world politics. And we feel that, you know, if there were more Rotarians in politics, who applied the four-way test, the world would be a much better place.

Metta Spencer

How do Rotarians get along with other service clubs? You know, like Lions and Elks, and I don’t know what all there are. But there are a number of other other I think of them back in the day. When I was in high school, I used to be invited to give talks to the Lions Club lunches. And, and I think they gave me a couple of hundred dollars for a university … for me to go away to Berkeley… I don’t know that they were all that progressive, although I didn’t try to poke them and find out. Do all of these service clubs have a lot in common or is there… do you have strong cleavages between groups of service clubs?

Richard Denton

Well, certainly I would say there’s no cleavages. I mean, we’re all helping our own communities, and to better the world. I think each club has their own niche. And so you’re here in Canada, you hear of the Kiwanis Music Festival. And they put that on. Rotary has historically been a men’s club, old gray-haired men who were at the top of their businesses and professions. And… even back in 1905, they looked for diversity so that you would not have two doctors in a club, you would just have one and you’re trying to have representatives from a variety of professions. Now, of course, what happened then was that… I’m a family physician, but you could have a surgeon, you could have a pathologist, you could have any other type of doctor in sort of subcategories. So that’s how they used to get around it

Metta Spencer

I know… The idea is to prevent a competition to doctors, trying to steal each other’s practice… was that the original…

Richard Denton

I would say, actually, no, the idea was to certainly network. So different business people would network together. And we often have sort of the joke that you’re an outstanding Rotarian. So instead of being in a conference, listening to the speaker, you’re often out in the hallway out standing in the hallway and talking with colleagues about other business pursuits. So, it was very much an organization along those historical lines. Now, as you say, yes, we are a very progressive organization. And now we allow anybody … in who still holds our values, our core values, and who has the time and the energy to put into service projects. And so that… the core value of the of the organization… is to work, helping others in a variety of ways.

Metta Spencer

Well, I can tell anybody without even asking that your core value is peace and that your work … within Rotary must also represent your work for peace, right? So, tell us about the kind of… you have a committee of peace committee or something, don’t you? Well,

Richard Denton

In Rotary, there are what we call six areas of focus, which are health, water and sanitation [mothers and children, education, local economies]… of which peace is also one. And then being a progressive organization, we have just added the environment as the seventh area of focus. So, we’re now looking at climate change and how to address that. But the major project that Rotary has been involved in, of course, is “polio plus”, and we have raised a billion dollars to immunize, vaccinate the world, and the Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation has matched that with another billion. And so, we have almost eliminated polio, plus several other illnesses in the world… such that now only Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world that actually have live polio cases.

Metta Spencer

Uh huh. Yeah, I was hearing about that a few years ago. And then was it after that, that there was a real problem? I think that was in Pakistan, that the US government sent out really spies…, disguised as vaccinator promoters, and this turned the public against them… I’m sure I’m not telling this right.

Richard Denton

Well, yes, that’s the story. The American government had people going around, pretending to be vaccinators, and they were then able to locate Osama bin Laden by that technique, and found out his location… through that. And then of course, as a result, now, people have a great distrust for vaccinators in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And so that has done a great disservice to our organization and to what we are trying to do, and to the cause of ending polio. Oh, yeah, sure.

Metta Spencer

Well, is there a possibility? Or have you considered, has Rotary considered mobilizing people to go out and administer COVID vaccines? Looks like now they’re gearing up, at least in the US. And I’m sure that other countries as well, I don’t know, I haven’t seen that much for about Canada. But to take over stadiums… how people go to the stadiums in, you know, that kind of numbers, to get their stuff jammed in their arm. Could ordinary people… could I for example, if I were able and interested, volunteer to… give these vaccinations or would… it really requires medical personnel to do it?

Richard Denton

Good question. Metta. Certainly, Rotary is using expertise in vaccinations, and because of our experience with polio, and we have the word “polio plus”, meaning that we also vaccinate for other diseases, the measles, mumps, rubella, those sorts of things. And so, we are now doing just as you say, using that expertise to vaccinate against COVID-19.

Metta Spencer

So, I presume there’s no real trick to… I’ve myself done it. I was an office nurse for a few years, and I’ve injected people occasionally. But I think that the rationale was that you need to have a medical person around in case there was… somebody with a reaction, an immediate serious reaction. But I know they give vaccinations at my local pharmacy. I don’t know I don’t think they do COVID. But they do some kind of vaccinations. So, to what extent is that going to…? I know we’re veering off topic, but I am curious about whether or not that is going to have to be a limiting factor, making it necessary to have medical people nearby, in case somebody has an adverse reaction?

Richard Denton

Well, certainly that… is the case. Now with polio. It came in the two forms. The Sabin and the Salk. One was an injection and therefore, yes, you did need to have medical personnel. The other was given as a drop on the sugar cube, or just a drop in the baby’s mouth, child’s mouth. And so, as an oral, it was much safer to give, it didn’t require the refrigeration so much. And… any “volunteer” basically could give that… you’re right, when you’re injecting a needle, though… there is the risk of anaphylaxis reaction, which the patient can have, what one might call the Darth Vader syndrome, where they lose their ability to breathe, their throat will swell… and they can die. And so, you need to have medical personnel who are trained in resuscitation and could administer the drugs immediately to prevent that.

Metta Spencer

Some kind of epinephrine or something like that, is that what… the correct…?

Richard Denton

Yes, adrenaline. Epinephrine is the first drug, and then steroids and then antihistamines.

Metta Spencer

So maybe if we have a whole stadium full of people, there might be a couple of people around just in case, who could —

Richard Denton

need that

Metta Spencer

Okay, well, there we go straight from talking about the Rotary to

Richard Denton

Well, that’s all part of “polio plus”, which is Rotary’s big project.

Metta Spencer

Uh huh. Well, good, wonderful. I didn’t actually didn’t know any of that. So but I know that you have this Rotary peace organization, which must be some sort of club within the club. Is that the general idea? Tell us about that.

Richard Denton

Well, we are individual Rotarians that are concerned about the risks of nuclear weapons. And I think, as we have seen this past week, down in the United States, with the storming of the Capitol buildings, things can go wrong. And we have the president, who has… sole authority to push the button… and there’s his conversations there, to put it mildly, with the leader of North Korea. They were joking —

Metta Spencer

Rocket Man.

Richard Denton

They weren’t joking, unfortunately. But they were talking about who had the biggest button and whether it would work or not. And we’ve got nine countries in the world who now have nuclear weapons. And so, it is based on having a rational person who is in control. And this may not be the case. I mean, one can look at presidents of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was in pain and on narcotics, which can affect your mental abilities. Ronald Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer’s in his latest stages. You got Brezhnev who may have been intoxicated at times. So those are some areas where you worry… you obviously need safeguards. So they’re, the military is instructed, of course not to do anything that is illegal, but at the same time, they need to follow the orders of their commander-in-chief… who is the president. So that is a concern. The other concern is certainly the risk of accidents and miscalculations. We’ve seen several movies: Command and Control, we’ve seen The Man who Saved the World, about a Russian who thought that Russia was being attacked by nuclear weapons. But did not launch a counter attack until he had visual proof or radar proof.

Metta Spencer

I think he didn’t believe it. That’s the thing. He was supposed to believe it because this was supposed to be the rock-solid evidence, but in fact, he knew damn well it wasn’t. And then he used good sense… Stanislav Petrov.

Richard Denton

Yeah. But there’s been numerous other examples. during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we now know that the Americans found a Russian sub, they didn’t realize that it was nuclear-armed, they started throwing depth charges at it. The Russians on board said, “Hey, World War 3 has broken out, we need to launch our missiles.” Two of them said yes. And a third said no. And so he was also a Russian man who saved the world. Absolutely.

Metta Spencer

Well, we’re all in the business of saving the world. And this is Project Save the World that we’re on. And you do as much as anybody I know. In those regards, I have to really, really admire your commitment. I don’t know anybody who’s got more zeal for the kind of work that you do.

Richard Denton

Oh, you’re my mentor. You’re the one who’s done this project on how to save the world and come up with your six… possible risks to the world?

Metta Spencer

Well, they’re actually fairly similar to the things that the Rotarians had already identified. Although I must say, not many people were thinking about pandemics when we formed Project Save the World. And we said a pandemic is up there, right with some of the worst ones, as a threat to humankind. And I guess we’ve been vindicated — for what it’s worth, if anybody wants to feel proud of having anticipated COVID. I guess Bill Gates is probably the main one who anticipated that and saw how dangerous the situation was. And, you know, if you compare what we’ve been going through to some of the previous pandemics, it’s hard to say this, but we kind of got off easy, because … there have been pandemics that have wiped out even a larger proportion of the human population. So… really what we need is a movement, a social movement…, there is no social movement — like a peace movement, or hunger campaigns for food in the world, or some of these other social movements. There isn’t anything for the general public, to work on, preventing pandemics, it seems to me that the people working against pandemics are all professional, public health experts or epidemiologists or people in… paid to do medical work. So, I think we need to… build up our awareness in the general public of the importance of… the transmission of viruses and things from animals to people, and maybe from people to animals. I don’t know, that that kind of One Health approach could stand… some help. Maybe we can get Rotary to… take part in that kind of orientation.

Richard Denton

Right? Well, I mean, first of all, you are my mentor, asked me how To Save the World looked at six risks. And I think what the pandemic has shown is that all of these risks are global problems. They transcend borders, and countries around the world have not prepared for these catastrophes. So, I think what we need to do is have a new mindset, a new way of thinking, to stop spending money on the military, and to spend it on treating the six areas of your focus, which are as you say, also the six — and now seven — areas of focus for Rotary… health and infections and sanitation and water, and all of these then go together to create peace. You know, what we’re finding now is that… you can’t vaccinate in Pakistan and Afghanistan, if you don’t have peace, if you don’t have trust, if you cannot build up relationships with people. And so, peace is… fundamental. And one of the things that Rotary is involved in now is the Institute for Economics and Peace, that has come out with the… the eight pillars of positive peace, we often we think of peace as a negative thing, the absence of violence, the absence of fear of violence. But this Australian, Steve Killelea, founded this institute, and came up with a Global Peace Index, a way of measuring peace, and he looks at things like a well-functioning government, equitable distribution of resources, a free flow of information instead of the fake news… the propaganda that we have now… having good relationships with our neighbors… working cooperatively together, multilaterally, multi nations together, and I think this is where the United Nations could play a much larger role. If it… gets better funded. You could look at human levels, our levels of human capital, you know, it would be much more important to fund… scientists…working on your six problems, as opposed to modernizing nuclear weapons at a cost of a trillion plus dollars, over the next 20-30 years. You know, there’s the acceptance of human rights… we’ve certainly seen this in the past year with, you know, Black Lives Matter. And here in Canada, we have systemic racism with our indigenous people… low levels of corruption is another area… in the military, you know, if a hammer costs $3, but if you put military on it, it suddenly jumps to $20 or more for the same hammer… and then of course, sound business environment. So, all of these things are all interrelated. And, you know, I think, as you say, Metta… back in the, during the Cold War, we had a social movement against nuclear weapons. Now that Greta Thunberg and our young people are Interactors — high school people are now addressing the climate crisis down in the States, they’re addressing gun violence… all of these are interrelated. And what we need to do is to show that and… desertification of land which will dry up, people will then be forced into starvation, you’ll have famine, which is one of your areas of focus again, people will then move — become refugees. We then… give arms and weapons. And… then that creates more refugees if they try to flee the violence. And then Canada then looks to taking in the refugees… and I think this is the problem, it’s that we often don’t look at the root of problems. And we’ve just tried to address them superficially saying, okay, we’ll take in the refugees, as opposed to saying, Okay, why did this happen in the first place? It’s the climate, and it’s us selling arms —

Metta Spencer

I think the thing is, people often say… we just can only do so much. So, let’s pick one of these things and work on it. The truth is, I think that if you work on them all together, it gets easier because they’re so connected and connected to everything else, you know. You can’t really solve any one of them without doing something on some of the others. So, just the example you gave of this chain of event of disasters, one leading to the other We have to think of it that way. And, and if we address it as a package then… oh boy, it’s wonderful to be on the same team. As you know what we’ve only talked about Rotary, we haven’t even given you time yet to talk about IPPNW… you are the co- chair, the North American co-chair of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which is a Nobel Peace Prize winner from way back and did a huge amount during the Cold War, to really change policies, especially I think, in Russia, maybe in the US to some extent, but tell. Let’s talk a little bit about that before we wind this up.

Richard Denton

Well, I think maybe… we should end on a hopeful note. At this week, on Friday, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons comes into effect. And this will make nuclear weapons illegal. We’ve known that they’ve always been immoral, illogical, and insane. And now they are illegal as well. And yes, IPPNW was founded equally by a Russian and an American cardiologist, who both looked after their own leaders, and were able to influence their leaders and bring them together, and eventually to end the Cold War. And for that, we got the international… the Nobel Peace Prize in 85. Now, we formed the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, which got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

Metta Spencer

And it was largely supported by IPPNW —

Richard Denton

And now it’s brought… all these various peace organizations around the world, and they pushed the countries to form the UN nuclear ban treaty in 2017. So, the NGOs, the non- government organizations, like the International Red Cross, and Red Crescent societies, and all these other peace organizations came together and pushed the states, the various states to actually come up with this new treaty. And so, this is definitely a positive note. I think, IPPNW is working again, it’s a international organization, and it is working on a number of fronts in the United States, one of our members, Dr. Ira Helfand, has come up with Back from the Brink, which has our five steps: not to be spending the vast sums of money on nuclear weapons… no-first-use, to remove the president from having the sole authority to launch an attack, etc. And so, I think, you know, we’re looking at Don’t Bank on the Bomb, which is a program to divest money from nuclear weapons and their delivery systems and put that into the climate crisis. And to address pandemics and to all the other global problems that need global answers through a strengthened United Nations.

Metta Spencer

Well, within about 24 hours, we’re going to have a new president of the United States, who will make all of those things a little bit easier anyway. I don’t think he’s a red-hot disarmament person yet, but maybe we can push things in that direction. Anyway, you know, what we need to talk about IPPNW further. So later on, I’m going to get you and somebody else or maybe a couple of other people from IPPNW together for a whole conversation… we’ve given our attention so far to Rotary, which absolutely deserves it. And now we’ll move on to some other group one of these days. So, All right, thank you so much, Richard. This has been extremely enjoyable and informative because you’ve told me some things I didn’t know and I bet you a lot of other people don’t know either. So yeah. Share this with other people if you have any opportunity to do so, and maybe we’ll get some new Rotarians in the world knows

Richard Denton

that that’s our what we’re looking forward to do is to increase our membership throughout the world. Definitely. Terrific.

Metta Spencer

Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Richard Denton

Thank you. Bye-bye.

T182. The McIntyre Powder Project

Posted on March 12, 2021July 9, 2021 by Project Save The World

T182. The McIntyre Powder Project

Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 182
Panelists: Janice Martell, Dr. Richard Denton, and Dr. Keith Meloff
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired: 9 February 2021
Date Transcribed: 18 February 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: David Millar

Metta Spencer

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer. And we’ve been talking quite a bit lately about uranium mining. Because one of our main concerns project save the world is about radioactive contamination. So of course, we talk, there’s a lot of radioactive contamination in Canada, I would say, especially in Ontario, because we depend so much on nuclear power. But and so I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve been here talking about the dangers of nuclear waste and problems about mining. Now, I think we need to go a little bit beyond that, because there are other kinds of issues involved in mining as well. health issues, and I would say even they involve human rights issues, because public health and human rights converge at a certain point when you get people being forced to take measures that may not be for their own health, but for other reasons. So, I’ve become acquainted with a lady who is very concerned about an issue called McIntyre pot powder. Her name is Janice Martel,

Nice to join you, Metta. Thank you so much for having me here.

Metta Spencer

It’s wonderful to see you. And I’ve also invited a couple of physicians who are knowledgeable about these matters. Dr. Richard Denton is a dear friend of mine who works quite a lot on the public health safety of mining and exposure to radiation. And he and Janice both live in Sudbury now. So, they’re just about to get acquainted. And Dr. Keith Meloff is a physician who has done work on precisely the health issues that Janice is so concerned about.

Richard Denton / Keith Meloff

Okay, good.

Metta Spencer

I’d like to start off by asking Janice Martell to tell us her story. She’s the founder of the McIntyre Powder project. And tell me about it.

Janice Martell

Well, the McIntyre powder project is a bit of an Erin Brockovich type of project. Basically, my father, his name is Jim Hobbs. He was an underground miner in Elliott Lake Ontario and in the uranium mines. He also worked in the Sudbury area mines. But when he went to Elliot lake in 78, he started underground there and had to breathe in a finely ground aluminum-oxide dust called McIntyre powder. It was named after the McIntyre mine in Timmins, Schumacher, Ontario, developed there in the late 1930s. And by the early 1940s, it was being used in all of the gold mines in the Timmins area, sort of sequentially, and it was introduced into uranium mines in the late 50s and early 60s. And the McIntyre powder was theorized to prevent silicosis, so that the theory was that if you inhale this into your lungs, it would affect the solubility, the aluminum particles would engulf the crystalline silica, which is very sharp-edged pieces of, of silica that happen when you — they’re contained in the ore bodies high in amounts in uranium and gold mining. And when you break apart that rock in mining, this crystalline silica — they, the miners are inhaling this dust. And it can cause scarring in the lungs and make the lungs less flexible so that you can’t breathe. This is silicosis, and the rates of silicosis are really high in, particularly in the in the Porcupine mining camps, around Timmins, and mining executives there came up with this theory, in conjunction actually with the Banting Institute in in Toronto, [it] had some involvement in in trying to solve this silicosis issue. And they started applying miners with it —

Metta Spencer

Excuse me, but what would be the symptoms of silicosis? Anyway, in other words, we were going to pre- it prevented disease but I don’t know what that disease would have looked like.

Janice Martell

So, it like I say, you’re breathing in these this crystalline silica molecule molecules, it causes scarring in the lungs, so it makes the lungs less elastic so that it’s harder and harder to breathe. People with silicosis, they have you know, sort of caved in chests because they have a hard time getting their breath. They can have a very blue appearance or you know…. It leads to death and in in Elliott Lake where the crystalline silica content is that much higher in the in the mines, probably close to double what it is in the gold mines. You had miners dying in the late 1960s, early, early 1970s, for mines that just opened in the 1950s. And usually silicosis has a, you know, a 20, 20+ year course before it would lead to death, but they were dying in droves in the what fraction of the of the miners whatever, contract that disease. It’s been a while since I looked at those stats. There was a survey done in in the late 1920s, I believe, by the one of the Interior ministries, to look into it, the Sudbury rates were quite a bit lower because their silica content in the rock was quite a bit lower. And Dr. Meloff is showing you a canister of McIntyre powder, aluminum dust. So, they would grind up this aluminum dust put it into these canisters. And for miners before they went underground, on shift, they would have a formula for the room content. So, it was one gram per 1000 cubic feet of room content. And they would so they would put so many canisters in a compressed airline, they would puncture them and send out this blast of aluminum dust that as miners are changing their clothes to go underground, getting into their work clothes, they would be inhaling this for generally around 10 minutes, or so sometimes a little bit more, but usually around that that amount of time, before they went underground. So, it was a it was a forced… there was no informed consent. They certainly didn’t know. You know, they were just told to breathe deep This is gonna prevent silicosis — there was no, you know, here’s the risks, here’s the benefits. And they really didn’t know. The documentation that I looked at. said it would take at least 15 years before they even know if it had any effect on silicosis. They had no control group for this. It was just a forced human experimentation, public health, industrial health experiment that was conducted from officially from 1943 until 1979. It was a Fifth Estate episode, in a Toronto Star, you know, copro- investigation that really shut that down in, in September 1979.

Richard Denton

They, they take an elevator down the shaft, a stunning depth, actually. And before in the elevator, they blew in this aluminum oxide dust, it was like a cloud of smoke that they were inhaling before they went down the cage all the way into the mine. So, this was a procedure where they actually took numerous breaths of this very fine black or gray powder, depending on the composition at the time, into their lungs.

Janice Martell

Right before they went underground… yeah, it was done before they got into the shaft but in the mine dry or in Quirke Lake where my dad mined where my dad worked, they actually had a like a tunnel between where they, you know, got out of their street clothes and stuff and into their work clothes and they had to sit in that tunnel. And there was no way of going around it, you got locked in there. So, it was basically forcible confinement and forced aluminum dust inhalation as a condition of employment. So, if they, you couldn’t avoid it, you would get suspended if, or threatened with your job loss if you know if you fail to do it, so. So, my dad ended up with Parkinson’s 10 years after the mines closed, and my, and I knew nothing about McIntyre Powder. He didn’t talk about it at the time. I was 11 and 12 at the, at the time that he got it. So you know, I’m a kid I don’t, you know, it’s not something that he would talk to me about anyways. But when I found out about it 10 years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I wanted to know more. So, I started doing research on it. And initially there was there was basically there was two references to McIntyre powder on the internet, when I first looked into it, and one was a study that was done with by Sandra Rifat and colleagues out of the University of Toronto from a 1990 study where she actually compared, she did a mental, mini-mental status, examination. So, the kinds of tests that you would give to determine if there was any kind of dementia, she gave those to miners who had received the aluminum dust and miners who did not. And there was a statistically significantly fact for cognitive impairment in the miners who got the aluminum dust and the longer that they had been exposed to it the worse that that cognitive impairment was so it was like a dose-response relationship.

Metta Spencer

Did it look like dementia or did it just have other quality psychological qualities?

Janice Martell

It was it was a cognitive deficit. So, they didn’t, they struggled more with cognitive functioning. That’s how that’s what that study came out with. So, and the only other reference on the Internet at that time when I looked at it in 2011, was the mining Hall of Fame and it had the general manager from McIntyre Porcupine mines R. J. Ennis and you know, talked about how he cured silicosis in miners, cured that disease by introducing the aluminum dust. So, it was a real vacuum of information out there. I spoke to somebody at the United Steelworkers who had worked in Elliott Lake, and he said, you need to talk to you need to Google ‘McIntyre Research Foundation’. And when I did that there was a hit at the Ontario archives. So, I went to the archives of Ontario and did research there. I went through all of the McIntyre Research Foundation’s archival funds. And then from there started, you know, talking to miners and creating a voluntary registry to see what kind of health issues there were. And I have 545 on my volunteer registry, and I think it’s 53 of them have Parkinson’s. So that it led to that kind of sort of basic mobilizing and mapping of what kinds of health issues are there led to further study. And in 2020, we, the Occupational Cancer Research Center, just published, released their findings of a study that they did, that compared the neurological disease rates in miners who did not get the aluminum dust miners who did get the aluminum dust, and then the general population of Ontario, and it found a statistically significantly higher rate of Parkinson’s in the miners who got McIntyre powder. So, they started to compensate those miners, including my dad.

Metta Spencer

Well did it help with the silicosis in the long run?

Janice Martell

No. There was a Western Australian study, this was this spread out, the use in several countries, not just in mining, actually, in the United States. It was used in dozens and dozens of silica-dust producing factories. But the it was used in the Western Australia gold mines and a study in 2013 found that it had no impact on silicosis rates at all. And there were, that study found that there may be higher incidence of cardiovascular issues. So sudden death by cardiovascular in the miners who got it and potentially higher risk of Alzheimer’s. That’s what that study.

Richard Denton

It is the case… I was a neurologist that served in the underserviced area program of the Ministry of Health for a long time, the better part of 30 years. So, I was a traveling neurologist or an itinerant neurologist based principally in Timmins. But I actually would see patients literally all-over northern Ontario, and even as far north, northwest to Sioux Sainte Marie and Thunder Bay, and also by telemedicine either based in Timmins, which was the beginning actually of telemedicine to the north. And it had a co-location was with Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. So those were those were the two actual sites for telemedicine. So, I consulted with people, even as far as the James Bay and the western shore, James Bay, Moose Factory and so on that I saw, a lot of people, underground miners who are exposed to the aluminum oxide and who also had early onset of dementia and other neurological disorders including Parkinson’s and Parkinson-related illnesses. In other words, Parkinson lookalikes. They weren’t Parkinson’s, but they were Parkinson-like diseases.

Metta Spencer

To ask a dumb question, because I did Google this. And one of the things they talked about was Parkinson’s disease, and Parkinson-ism. Those are two different things.

Keith Meloff

Yeah, that’s a very good question. But and in fact, it’s still in evolution because there’s an ever-increasing number of Parkinsonisms, where we are understanding the pathology is not the same as in, if you will, standard Parkinson’s disease. In any event, it is also the case and I would like to make this brief but it is the case that I collaborated because I worked in pharmaceuticals as well. Aluminum can be chelated as lead can be – copper – you can actually suck it out of the blood with medication.

Metta Spencer

I’ve heard it as some sort of offbeat treatment for some diseases, right?

Keith Meloff

But it’s actually true.

Metta Spencer

I never heard it explained what is chelation?

Keith Meloff

So what it is, is these molecules, metal molecules, iron, aluminum, copper, manganese, lead, they can be che-, there are agents that will suck them out of the blood. The lead is a toxin, ubiquitous toxin, mercury is another, some of them are harder to — so there are actual chemicals that have been around for a long time like pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals that have been around for a very long time, British anti-Lewisite, so on… And there’s one in particular that draws out iron and aluminum and it’s called Desferrioxamine and why is this important? Because there is a population of people who get the disease called thalassemia, you may or may not have heard of thalassemia, it’s actually fairly common, even in Timmins, because it is a disease that’s hereditary that afflicts people from the Mediterranean area, like Italy and Greece and so on. And there were a lot of Italian miners who had this. They would have —

Metta Spencer

I know Nancy Olivieri, who goes to Sri Lanka, I believe, well, I worked with her, with –maybe the Sri Lankans have a high incidence of it, or,

Richard Denton

Actually, we had this molecule — Ciba Geigy. It’s a Swiss company that’s now called Novartis, it’s a colossal Swiss pharma company. They made two key leaders Desferrioxamine which is given by injection, and Desferrel which is oral, and Nancy worked on a drug called Desferrel for thalassemia is a big controversy about that which I don’t want to get into. Fact of the matter is that drug is approved for oral treatment for iron overload, iron overload, specifically for thalassemia, (which is a disease we don’t need to talk about) — but it also sucks out aluminum from the blood. And Dr. McLachlan, Dr. Donald Crapper McLachlan, at the University of Toronto was very, very focused on aluminum toxicity. He was convinced that aluminum was a major contributor to Alzheimer’s disease. He was convinced of it. And he had the brains of miners that were donated to his laboratory in Toronto. Forever. I have tried in vain to find out where those brains are. No one seems to know. It is the case that they likely perished because the freezer that contained those brains broke down in a power shortage at the Tanz Institute [Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Disease] at College Street and University Avenue in Toronto, and have been forever lost. But I don’t know. And I’ve actually contacted people who do know, and the people who do know, don’t know where those brains have gone, which is very unfortunate. It’s America launched.

Metta Spencer

Are you saying that because they’re lost, nobody really knows whether Alzheimer’s or is caused by affected by aluminum?

Keith Meloff

I mean, well, it’s complicated because we, clinically these patients clinically had Alzheimer’s. And that is unequivocal. Dr. McLachlan showed us an experiment which Janice just alluded to, that Desferrioxamine slowed the progression of patients who were exposed to aluminum. It slowed their progression of dementia compared to a group of patients who’ve got a sham injection of drug. And that was published in The Lancet several years ago. And it’s an interesting publication. It’s not a perfect publication, but it’s a very suggestive publication. That Desferrioxamine actually might be useful in treating miners who are exposed to aluminum. It’s not the story is not easy, and he was part of a group scientists, one in Kentucky, who really believed that aluminum was toxic to the brain. And we have aluminum, not just for our mines, but we bake in aluminum, aluminum foil, we have underarm deodorants that are largely aluminum based. So, there’s other environmental toxicities you know, that we’re susceptible to from aluminum in the environment, it’s ubiquitous in our environment, because we eat with it all the time. A lot of food is made in aluminum. Cooking. So —

Janice Martell

if I can interject a bit, the one of the, one of the primary things that differentiates, I think with McIntyre powder is the fine ground aspect of it that it’s in the fine particulate and ultra-fine particulate size. So, we are wondering, beyond the aluminum if the, if the particle size, particulate size itself is causing problems. So, Andrew Zarnke, my, my colleague, at the occupational health clinics for Ontario workers, he’s doing studies on, that, he analyzed canisters of McIntyre powder, and found that it you know, it was in this extremely fine particulate size — in the, you know, things like air pollution where you have this fine, this beyond ultra-fine and fine and fine particulate — they have higher issues of cardiovascular disease and things like that. So those nanoparticles in and of themselves have been found throughout the body in the brain. And one of the concerns that we’re looking at is, is that particulate size itself is that the issue, the formulation of McIntyre powder, was changed in 1956. To make it even more fine. They wanted to, they wanted it to get down to the deepest recesses of the lung. And the Occupational Cancer Research Center study that was published last year showed that was released last year, showed that any mine worker who had the formulation post-1956 had an even higher risk of Parkinson’s. So, it does tend to make us think along those lines, that’s something that we need to investigate a little bit further, with respect to, you know, not just the fact that it was aluminum, but the way the manner in which it was distributed, you know, right before they went underground. I mean, when you are an underground miner, you are exposed to all kinds of, you know, silica, silica dust, diesel exhaust, there’s different kinds of toxins that you are — and some of them are carcinogenic: diesel exhaust… silica dust… arsenic — there’s things that you can be exposed to, in that environment. And right before you go underground to do that, your lungs are being overwhelmed by this, you know, it’s not like you’re, you know, the WSIB time-weighted in over an eight-hour shift. Well, that’s not how it was delivered, you had this extreme dose, right before you go on underground and overwhelmed the lungs’ systems, their natural ability to clear out, clear out dust particles. And so, you have this compromised lung and you’re in there with no ventilation because the specific instructions from the McIntyre Research Foundation, which were the mining industry executives, and some industry doctors, from this foundation, their specific instructions were that you were to have no, you know, airflow, so close all the doors, seal them, you know, get rid of any windows, or at least seal them up, and have no ventilation while you’re taking this stuff. So, you’ve compromised your lungs right before you’re now exposing them to all of these other toxins underground. So those are some of the areas of research that we’re wanting to look into further, beyond just the fact that it was aluminum, because there’s no other population in human history that was exposed to aluminum in this way. You know, this finely ground aluminum dust that they were forced to inhale. So, it’s some of the other studies can be you know, can certainly bring up concerns and things that we want to look at. But there’s this also this other aspect of it that that is really we need to study these particular miners, and in it, one of the human rights issues for me, apart from the lack of informed consent, and that they were essentially in these gas chambers, is that there was no follow up. Once they you know, once they just discontinued it, it was like, Oh, well — you started this human experiment and they — inefficient, they need to follow up with these miners and find out what happened to them? And that’s what I set out to do. And that’s what’s —

Metta Spencer

Because they didn’t. And they should have done. Who should have done that? That’s follow-up research. What should have happened? Well, maybe the whole thing shouldn’t have even taken place in the first place. But, you know, who should have done the kind of work you’re doing, Janice?

Janice Martell

Well, I mean, this was a public health experiment, and it should have been a public health follow up. You know, the government was aware that this was happening. And, you know, they gave their tacit approval. And when the Food and Drug legislation came in, in the late 40s, the research that I looked at is that the McIntyre Research Foundation met with the officials in Ottawa, and they basically said, Well, you know, this is, you know, you’re not giving this to the general public… our inspectors aren’t gonna be very interested in you. So, carry on. So, there was a regulatory oversight that was abysmal. They just dropped the ball and nobody followed up. And it was really when… the media made a big difference in

Metta Spencer

I would, because of what Dr. Meloff said, I’m wondering if there is a possibility that one could get aluminum poisoning and all of the cognitive, and parkinsonism or the other diseases that might result from aluminum exposure, from things like cooking and aluminum pans, or using deodorants — then your, the research would have to be rather complicated in order to separate out the effects of the aluminum that you was inhaled, as opposed to aluminum from other sources. Wouldn’t that complicate the research project? Or have you thought of that yourself in in trying to do this kind of follow up study, Janice?

Janice Martell

Well, I mean, I’m, I’m a lay person, right. So, I’m, I’m a layperson and an advocate, so I’m just kind of trying to gather the information and be a resource around it. But I mean, the …JM aluminum toxicity is unquestionable, it’s neurotoxic. But how the mechanisms, you know how that might affect something like Alzheimer’s or dementia. Dr. Denton has his hand up you? Yeah, jump in there. Go ahead, please.

Richard Denton

I just want to make a couple of points. One, I’m just a country doctor. But as a country, doctor, you have a lot of patients, and you see clusters of disease occurring. And you wonder why. And rarely, though, do we actually then try to find out? What is the case? You know, I can think of my colleague, Dr. John O’Connor, who saw a cluster of cancers in the Alberta tar sands, and traced that to the toxins that were coming from that industry and basically had to leave town as a result of that —

Metta Spencer

The story there. What’s that about? That people got mad because they felt that you found out something they didn’t want to know.

Janice Martell

You don’t bite the hand that feeds you in an industry town.

Richard Denton

Yeah. So that that’s it, but I again, want to applaud people like Janice, because it’s often the lay people or miners. There is a miner in Kirkland Lake, who traced his lung cancer to radon gas that is a heavier-than-air gas. It therefore concentrates in the mines. It’s radioactive. It’s not only in the uranium mines, but it’s in all the mines. And as you were alluding to, Metta, it was hard to eliminate things like smoking, because a lot of the miners smoked. And so therefore, they said, Wow, well, your lung cancer is due to smoking, but he did not smoke and was able to finally get WCB, the workman’s compensation board to recognize that that as a health hazard. And we now know that radon gas is the second cause of lung cancer. And it’s… compensable and it’s also found in basements of houses. And so, you now can test that. So again, I simply want to applaud people like Janice for doing this research, you would think that it should be as doctors, but often it is not. It’s the lay people. And I think the second point also is that workers are exposed to bad situations, toxins, and are not informed of it. And so, you have the women who applied the radioactive radon to… watch dials, and developed cancer as a result of that. And as again, Janice points out, the workers are not informed. And particularly we see this often with indigenous people. The uranium mines often occur on indigenous land, they are hired to do the work, but they are not told of the risks. So, my points are that we need to be doing a lot more research. We need to, it’s people like Janice, and miners and people who are the workers who are really the heroes for pointing these problems out. And then it is finally up, back to people like Dr. Meloff and scientists who then can do the research to find these problems. But to me, the real heroes are people like Janice, and I just want to make that point, who —

Metta Spencer

I’m glad you

Richard Denton

took the risk of workers in situations of being exposed to toxins, and not knowing about it.

Janice Martell

Thank you. I have to say Dr. Meloff, many of the people that I talk to remember you, they bring up your name. And I when I say that I’ve met you and that, you know, they’re just very grateful because you believed them, you know, and you said yes, this person has Parkinson’s or parkinsonism or whatever. And, you know, when I was thinking about coming on this, this this show and having a conversation about this, and thinking about how it how it really connected with peace. In order to achieve peace when there’s been wrongdoing, you have to acknowledge the wound, you have to acknowledge the wrongdoing and that this was swept under the carpet and people like yourself. Dr. Meloff, you, you were a frontline physician who gave validity to their lived experiences and they you know, 30 and 40 years later, those families remember you. And I just wanted to say that.

Richard Denton

Thank you. You know, it’s interesting that the source of the aluminum that I provided for further study was given to me in 1989 by a woman called Erma Vosdingh, from Virginiatown. So, most people in Toronto have no idea where Virginiatown is. I actually know. It’s, it’s not far from Kirkland. But I mean, this was because her father had complications from the aluminum oxide. So, it’s an absolute irony that I have like a dozen canisters, because she provided me with about a dozen canisters [of] the McIntyre, powder, some of which were a little different in color. So, there were some that were grayish, and some that were blackish. And that I think, is what Janice is talking about that the fine powder may have different particle size. There’s no doubt in my mind. We have other epidemiological evidence of metals causing problems. Lead is the best known I would say. Lead is terrible. Because lead affects not only the brain, it also affects your blood forming, because you get anemia. Children who eat paint chips that are leaded. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but it’s a very, this is serious problem is still a problem in North America. And you read about Flint, Michigan, where they have lead in the water, a monumental problem. A pediatrician there was… noticing that children were getting anemia. And it was it was because of lead in the water. I’m so old. I’ve taken care of children with anemia related to lead and brain damage — so that’s how old I am. I actually treated these children who were exposed to lead in Minneapolis. And there’s manganese miners in Chile, they get Parkinson’s disease. And even in the Negev, you may have heard of the Negev, it’s in southern Israel — Bedouins were a migratory… an indigenous population that traveled between Egypt and Jordan and Israel and so forth. They eat, they drink water out of leaded pottery. And there have been cases in, among Bedouins who’ve developed Parkinson’s from the lead. So, this is a really global problem. And the radium, I couldn’t agree more with Richard, I mean… radiation is bad for the brain, it’s bad for your body. It causes malignancies, among many other things. So, this is a monumental, I really think this aluminum powder should be studied in, in animal experiments. To look at the brain after exposure to aluminum oxide,

Metta Spencer

Well, that’s one thing I wanted to ask is we need to move on to talking about the future. I’m wondering, out of all this experience, and experimentation and, and research and tragedy, what has been learned and what needs to be studied further? And what actions are should be taken now? What do we know that we should be doing something about? Probably, maybe Janice and Keith Meloff have different ideas about where to go from here. But I’m always looking for solutions. So what needs to be done, that we should promote as a line of either research or policymaking?

Janice Martell

Certainly what Dr. Malak was talking about with animal experimentation, I think that that is, is something that is being contemplated. The initial review, or the initial assessment of what McIntyre powder is, was necessary to developing something that could be consistent to be able to do those kinds of experiments. So that’s sort of the first step that that Andrew Zarnke, and his colleagues, including Health Canada, had, were part of that review. And, and that would certainly give us some models as to as to what the impacts are, and to be able to study that… there’s a technology… some nano diamond technology where you can attach this tracker to the particles of aluminum, so that when it’s you do the inhalation experiments, you can actually see in the body where it goes. So, can it pass the blood-brain barrier and those kinds of things. So that’s something that is being contemplated. And I think the kind of study that the Occupational Cancer Research Center did for neurological disorders, they could do something similar for the other kinds of health issues that we’re seeing showing up. I mean, respiratory is huge, different cancers, cardiovascular conditions…. One of the things the OCRC study found was they did find higher rates of Alzheimer’s, and higher rates of motor neuron disease in mining in general, not related to McIntyre powder. But compared to the general population and motor neuron disease, that diagnosis, they had some difficulties, because of the number codes that are used in family physician offices versus hospitals, in figuring out, you know, how many of those would be something like ALS, but in general 70% of those diagnostic codes refer to ALS? And I have —

Metta Spencer

Let me unpack that. Are you saying I think I did see reference to this, that ALS itself is one of these motor neuron disease problems, and that it could be could be affected by aluminum or by just any kind of thing in the mining environment? Any mining?

Janice Martell

Yeah. And I, I, I’ve seen some high rates as well around pulp and paper mills. So, I’d be interested in knowing what the common elements were in pulp and paper mill towns in Abitibi. From what I understand, there was an iron ore mine that had I think five, with ALS — in the Kirkland Lake area… So yeah, there’s some, there’s some things, certainly that are beyond my scope. But things that I’d be interested in and on a sort of a public policy issue. I think that there should be a national registry. If you are a worker, I mean, we’ve become a globalized workforce. If you are a worker, you have a right to know everything that is — have a registry, everything that you’ve been exposed to at work, that you and your state, or your legal representatives should be able to have access to that registry, so that they can track and see what are the health outcomes of workers who are exposed to certain things — at some point asbestos was not an issue, right? Because nobody was making the connection. At some point, beryllium wasn’t an issue… Those kinds of toxins and their health effects need to be studied if we’re going to put workers in a situation. And sometimes you don’t know at the time that it could be toxic. And lots of times you did. And I think that we need to have that and push for that. And part of my going into this was… not just to show and find out the answer that I wanted to find out for my dad… was his Parkinson’s related, which I have that answer now… if you can show with this group of workers… this was not an inherent working condition, this was introduced by a powerful mining industry and a government that kowtowed to them. And if you can show what a human rights abuse it was, and how we need to push beyond the way that we deal with workers now? You know, workplaces close down by the time these occupational diseases develop, unions disband. You know, when, you know, when the mining industry in Elliott Lake decommissioned and the mines closed, those locals of the… unions dissolved, because there was no more workplace. We need someone (and it needs to be a national effort) to track what these workers are exposed to. Right now, we’re retroactively doing that at the occupational health clinics for Ontario workers. But it’s… very difficult to do and you have a lot of deceased workers who can’t give you what they were exposed to in their working conditions. So, we kind of look at it as a cluster and try… people who are alive can tell the tales for the people who passed. And the things that I would recommend.

Metta Spencer

Thank you, you obviously have something on your mind.

Richard Denton

Just a couple other points, Metta. I think as Janice has pointed out, to see a toxin develop in people, it’s often 20+ years, to show the cancers and that sort of thing. So that makes doing the research difficult. Number two, I think we need to use what we call the precautionary principle, which is: if you don’t know what it’s going to do, don’t do it. And so, you know, we have seen the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, CAPE has launched a ban on the cosmetic use of herbicides and pesticides for lawns, and we know that those are toxins. So that that is something that can be done. And it was interesting that it started in a little community of Hudson, Quebec, just a small community. And now with the help of CAPE it spread across Canada, and the provinces have now restricted that use. So eventually things do change and… come to light. You know, we thought that plastics were inert, that that was not a problem. Now we know that it’s the microplastics that cause problems, it’s now endemic in our lakes in our streams and in the oceans and is affecting all life there. Not only the large plastic that gets into straws, into turtles and things like that, and in the bellies of whales, but is also the microplastics that is now a problem. And as you also said earlier, with cooking… look at Teflon. We think that’s a marvelous agent. It keeps spills… off your clothing. If you don’t have to use a lot of oil in your cooking, it just slips off the pan. But it too is a toxin and a carcinogen. So all of these things are problems. And then the other point I want to make is that it’s not only the miners, but it’s their families. And the mines fill up the lakes with these toxins. And they become the tailings, become the slimes. And they… often have heavy metals, which then can become airborne, and again, get into the food that we eat. Again, Dr. Meloff and I are old enough to remember when it was recommended that we should all be eating liver. Because it was high in iron and —

Metta Spencer

I still eat liver, or I still leave eat liver, what’s the matter with liver I’ve missed? Well,

Richard Denton

It’s been taken off the Canada Food Guide. Back in the day when you and I grew up, we were recommended to eat liver. But now we know that the liver concentrates toxins. And because we feed animals, all these various toxins, you should not be eating too much liver. And you know, you can now get young calves’ liver or baby beef, but you would not be wanting to eat cow’s liver. And again, we don’t recommend eating wild game liver for that very reason. Because again, they are high in toxins. So yes, you should be eating game. Because it’s low in fat. And that tastes good. But you need to be avoiding the organs that concentrate the toxins like livers and kidneys.

Metta Spencer

Well, we started out with a few things to worry about. And now we end the program with a whole lot more things to worry about. This is not cheerful news. I’m sorry. I’d like to end with an upbeat message, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Dr. Meloff can you think of anything cheerful to end with?

Richard Denton

Well, I I agree with Janice, that what would be cheerful for me is to do exactly what she recommends is and that is to have a registry. I mean, the other interesting catchphrase would be class action lawsuit. Because if you actually think about the violation of proper experimental procedures, I mean, all of this work was done in violation of the Helsinki Accords… people who were exposed without informed consent to toxins. And this is I mean, they were there were trials over this, you know, in Nuremberg, I mean, this evolved into the Helsinki Accords, and international standards for doing clinical research. And I can tell you, there are numerous examples in history of violations of these human rights, testing hepatitis vaccines on mentally retarded children, for example, by very good people, I’m not talking the — these were not evil people who did this work. But they were actually in violation of standard experimental practices. And the same applies to the miners. This, this went into the 70s. I mean, this went on into the 70s, long past. These articles that were enunciated in the Helsinki Accords have proper safeguards for “experiments on human beings”. So I think that that would be actually a very interesting exercise. I have no doubt there are a lot of lawyers who would take this on. I don’t think it’s — I think it would be a win. I just think if it goes to the Supreme Court, I honestly think it would win compensation.

Metta Spencer

I’m trying to think organizationally, of how movements work. And I’m running this thing called Project Save the World. And one of our one of what we’ve chosen as a mandate, if you will, is to work on pandemics, and another is to work on radioactive contamination. And both of them are medical issues. But would this larger project that you’re saying — a registry of exposure to potential toxins? If we took that as kind of a plank, that in a way would almost cover both? pandemics to some extent, and certainly the radioactive contamination exposure, wouldn’t it? So that that kind of recommendation or proposal or campaign would be right up our alley, wouldn’t it? Richard, what do you think? You know, our project? And would that be useful for people who are working on uranium mining and exposure to uranium? Or nuclear waste, which is some of the stuff you’ve been engaged in?

Richard Denton

Most definitely, most definitely Metta.

Janice Martell

The cheeriest thing I can think to end this: that there’s hope that what happened to these miners… and to the factory workers in the States, this is used in Mexico, the people that I haven’t been able to even reach yet — that their life experience is going to promote the kinds of changes globally. You know, because there are disadvantaged workers… when a mine cable doesn’t meet Canadian standards anymore, we send it to a third world country and it meets their standards. Well, there should there shouldn’t be a privileged country. Workplace standards in a poor country, workplace standards of … migrant workers or whatever. It’s a human rights issue. People have a right to be safe at work and not be exposed —

Metta Spencer

I’m speaking as a campaigner. How would you if you were going to take this issue up and make this the crux of a campaign? Where would you locate it? Would you try to get it put through the WHO? You’re saying, it’s not just a local thing because poor countries have —

Janice Martell

And so I thought about United Nations, it is on my radar, more than a class action suit, to do a human rights application for what happened to the miners and it’ll that hopefully will be a platform to or a pathway to, to getting this because that would be my ultimate goal, No amount of money is going to,

Metta Spencer

I mean, you need an organizational affiliation and institution to carry them the ball, you know, especially if you want it to be big. So, you need to figure out who is your partner. And I don’t know. Dr. Meloff, or Richard, both of you?

Richard Denton

Well, a precedent is tobacco. And… the provinces and the governments are now going after the tobacco industry for not doing proper testing, not recognizing it, even when the evidence did come out. We’re still advertising a dangerous product, and not making it aware. And so I think, again, it’s government’s that need to be doing this and governments need to be doing the regulation. And when we take away that regulation, then problems happen. We see this every day. We see this in the nursing homes right now with COVID. The regulations have been decreased. The people that were to do the inspections haven’t been doing it simply because that they were cut back, the numbers were cut back. And as a result, we now have a problem with COVID. And so, but I think Keith’s point of legal action is you need to put financial con-, earmark things or tag things with finances, with money. And it’s only when you start to get legal action that things actually start to change.

Janice Martell

I have looked into it and the current premier in Ontario, brought in legislation to change the act around how to sue people. And if you sue, you have to actually — basically negligence is off the table — you have to prove that the person intended to do harm when… so it’s, it’s dead in the water for that reason. And to me whether it did harm or not, it’s the… negligent aspect… the ‘we don’t know what this is going to do’. We think this, we didn’t have a control group… there was some evidence of, you know, manipulation of the — just how the initial experiments were done on humans, you know, that, even by the standards of that day… did not measure up whatsoever, and this was just pushed through. So, I, to me, it’s the issue: that they were exposed is more of a human rights violation than whether or not it did harm. I would certainly want to know whether it did harm. But every person who, who was exposed to this (against any Nuremberg Code) deserves compensation for that and recognition for that, period. And when they have that, that’s how you get a path to healing. How do you how do you heal when it’s just, you know, some of the quotes from my miners, it is mind blowing, you know — “I had a baby, I had a baby. I was 18 years old. I was a father, what am I going to do? I didn’t want to inhale this. What am I going to do? I had no choice.”

Metta Spencer

Thank you so much. It’s really wonderful that you’ve done this. And heroic, really, because you did it on your own. You just took you took the initiative. Dr. Meloff, I’m going to give you the last word, it has to be a quick word, because we’re over time.

Keith Meloff

I would like to follow this up sometime. I’m on the side here. For me, it’s personal as well, because I’ve been involved with this at many levels. And these are terrible diseases. I mean, if it’s, it’s actually one of the more discouraging parts of being a neurologist is dealing with these diseases. They’re all lethal. The ones we’ve all talked about Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, all of these diseases are lethal. And they aren’t curable. They’re treatable, but they’re not curable. And they shortened lives. So I’m on side here.

Metta Spencer

Thank you. I really appreciate this extremely interesting and important conversation. So some follow up, I don’t know but Bless you all for the work that you’re doing.

Richard Denton / Keith Meloff / Janice Martell

Thank you. Nice talking to you. Bye everybody.

T174. Life in Rural China

Posted on February 25, 2021July 9, 2021 by Project Save The World

T176. Peacemakers in the Holy Land

Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 174
Panelists: Ellen Judd
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired: 29 January 2021
Date Transcribed: 15 February 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: David Millar

Metta Spencer

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer, let’s go to China. So we go to China today, this is going to be easy, because I get to sit at my computer and have a wonderful excursion, led by a professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, a woman who has spent a good part of her life doing research in the rural areas of China. This is Ellen Judd. Hello, Ellen, how are you? I’m fine. How are you? Wonderful. All right. So we’re, I know that you can’t go to China these days. So but… you seem to be sending your graduate students abroad. Is that… something that’s working?

Ellen Judd

Well, and they’re coming here so that that’s just the way in which teaching is going these days? But yes, things have been closed down a little bit. So I hope to get back to China later this year.

Metta Spencer

Good. I’ve been to China, but I don’t know where I was. Where were you most of the time, or did you hop around?

Ellen Judd

I went to a fair number of different places. I started out as a graduate student in China and in Beijingand Shanghai. And then I did a lot of spend a lot of time in Shandong, and then later in Sichuan — Chongqing, in the southwest of China, looking at the places that had sent migrants to the cities, and then I went to the cities, where they’ve gone to Guangzhou and Chongqing. And I’ve been to other places, but those are probably the locations where I’ve spent most time.

Metta Spencer

Okay… I was there in 1980. That’s the only time I’ve ever been to China, for a couple of weeks. It was at a time when it was really — we were a novelty. I mean, I remember being in a bus and these people would come in, they put their noses up against the glass, and look at us, as if we were really quite remarkable things. But that must not have lasted very long. But I imagined you you sort of put roots down, right?

Ellen Judd

Yes, I sort of have friends. And it’s been a large part of my life from from my early 20s. Until now.

Metta Spencer

So you have a lot of friends in China and you speak — what do you speak? I mean, I have

Ellen Judd

I speak Mandarin Chinese. And that’s… Yes. That’s usually what we call it in Canada. In China, they just call it the standard language. It’s the language of the North China plain. So it’s widely spoken across northern China and, and down into Sichuan Chongqing too, with regional variations. And then it’s taught in schools everywhere. So one can go lots of places with it. And I can understand some of the local dialects, but it’s a bit as if, when one goes to Yorkshire, one listens to how people speak. But when someone speaks, whatever version of English they speak — so what I speak is Mandarin, but I can get around.

Metta Spencer

Well, I presume that everybody in China, all the students must learn what you call standard Chinese. Right? Yeah, it’s just even if they have a local language, they also would learn the basic Mandarin. Yes, yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense. Right, I was just reading something today about the fact that the there’s more effort to standardize education in some of the peripheral regions of China. And I, I could sort of understand why that might be helpful. But, you know, there’s always a controversy about how much to do, even within Canada, how much one should do in local or ethnic languages and so on. I think in the years past, there were a lot more Saturday schools and things like Ukrainian and stuff in Canada than there is now. So I imagine that we’re becoming more standardized in French and English. Do you think or not? Yes, I think people like to speak their own language. And certainly there’s lots of pushback in China and certainly people who speak a very different language than the minority nationalities want to keep their own language.

Ellen Judd

So that happens and even in localities, there are lots of people just want to speak their own version of Chinese — it’s sort of, it’s what feels comfortable and anything else is uppity and and they don’t want to do it. But it is important in terms of their mobility and so on to also have that ability.

Metta Spencer

Right. Okay, now you I’m impressed with your green screen, which, by the way looks like the real thing. I mean, a lot of times when people use green screens, if they move the funny looking space behind them, but you have a remarkable green screen, obviously, of China, can you can you tell us what we’re seeing in the background?

Ellen Judd

Right, this is a school that’s under construction outside a township in Sichuan, where I was, where I spent a while. And I think it’s, I thought it was nice, and it’s one I use in my classes, because it shows a little bit of the countryside. And it also hints at all the transformations that are underway as people are going to school and preparing themselves for life anywhere. And also, especially in the cities, because there’s this huge movement of people from the countryside, to the cities, that’s fueling China’s rise in the world. So it’s sort of a an optimistic, an important part of what’s happening in China. Yeah, in fact, I, I would imagine that the Chinese modernization or I don’t know, industrialization, or whatever you want to call it. The development of China in the last 30 years, must be one of the most extraordinary rapid changes social changes in the world history. I mean, they have done something spectacular with their economic development. And I’ve yet to see, you know, any of China. But that’s what I hope you’ll tell us more about the move from I think, in most cases, it’s an urbanization move, right? A lot of people in the countryside, move to the cities and take jobs in industry, is that what the basic dynamic of the thing it’s part of what’s happening. So I think that one of the important things about the the Chinese economy and society is that it’s, in a sense bifurcated between the urban worlds and the rural worlds. And to some extent, people are having entitlements and are registered as living in one or the other. And there’s this incredibly modern, fast paced world of the major cities and urban China. That is amazing, the world. And it’s probably all — it’s been a huge cultural center, you know, for 1000s of years anyway. But it is amazing right now in the in these places. And then there is where most of the people in China live, which has been in the countryside, but is increasingly being urbanized. But one of the things that has been happening is that China has that modern industrial economy that’s been developing through the 20th century and into this century. But when it did this opening up since the 1990s, it also became a place to which countries like the United States put out some of their work. So there’s a sense in which China is also a very large Export Processing Zone. So we have these

Metta Spencer

I’m sorry, are you saying that even in the countryside, there’s there are… industrial cities going in for export, or just in the cities…

Ellen Judd

There had been a period in the 1980s, when some of it was in the countryside. But what’s happened since the 1990s, is that that’s been developing more in the cities and the coastal regions, but people who are still considered to be part of the rural population and have a foot in — largely their families in the countryside — in the cities. So something like 250 million rural people are in the cities working in temporarily, but still with ties to the countryside, but they’re in the cities, doing this, making all these things that we buy in all our shops, right. So in a sense that these rural people are one of the motors of Chinese development. And I think some of the time, when we look at what China’s doing, we don’t quite see all of the people who are doing the work. And it is people from the countryside who were going to the cities that are one of the engines of, of China’s economic miracle, they don’t do it by themselves. The secret is, you know, the hinge between the the urban and the rural economies, and the ability of them to work together to transform the Chinese economy.

Metta Spencer

So you specialize more in talking to villagers, right. And people live, rural people don’t live scattered around, they live in villages, mostly right?

Ellen Judd

It depends upon the the region of China, sometimes it’s in nucleated villages. And sometimes it’s a bit more spread out. It’s partly a geographical and regional difference. So you find both. Some of the reality right now is how mobile the rural population is, and how much of it is… partly in the cities. I went to to rural China, I’ve been a student in China, in the 1970s, and I wanted to be able to see the countryside. So when it became possible for international researchers to get to the countryside in the 1980s, that’s what I wanted to do, because it seemed not visible at that time to the outside world. And it’s where most people were, and and so the majority of the Chinese people have a rural designation. So it seemed to me that to understand what was going on in China, this is sort of key to life in China, and at present, you know, people don’t necessarily see it when they traveled to China, but it is… life for a very large portion of, of the Chinese people. So I wanted to see that. So that’s what I did, but it’s not I certainly spend time with colleagues in universities and spend time in the cities as well.

Metta Spencer

So you, you visit universities, what what is it? Do you teach there? Do you hang out in research institutes? Or what what do you do in universities?

Ellen Judd

My research in the countryside is sometimes done in collaboration with people in in universities. So I I’ve given some lectures there, but I haven’t gone to teach, [as] in Canada.

Metta Spencer

Mm hmm. Well, I have heard that and and maybe you can elaborate on whether it’s true that there’s a lot of democratization going on, but it’s it is locally, it is usually in a local sense, that that people in villages have quite a lot of opportunity to make decisions locally. Is that Is that a fair statement? Or would it or not?

Ellen Judd

There’s a tension in that sense in which there there is a strong central government, but there are also local structures, and they’re one of the standard sayings in China is, you know, there’s policy from above, and there’s opposition from below. So, you know, to some extent, what, what people do is they do have some structures for managing their own affairs in communities. But it’s not without paying attention to what national policy is. So there’s a dynamic there that is not structured the same as it is here. But but it is there. And compared with when I first went to China, I would say there’s probably more sphere for people to make individual decisions about where they will go. And it’s sort of a transformation from the situation in which it was more equal. And everybody got those full employment and everybody got a job, but they got assigned one, now it is not so equal. And people have to go out and find their own work, but they get a bit more choice about what they do. And that has an upside and a downside to it as well.

Metta Spencer

I don’t know any foreign language, even French. But I wish I could understand enough of a language to just sit in a coffee shop in you know, some, some little town and listen to what people talk about. So I you know, do you ever write papers about what people are interested in or what they talk about in in everyday life in their social gatherings or so on…? What is life like, from the perspective of people living in a, one of the villages that you’ve, that you’ve studied?

Ellen Judd

…very largely about family. And so what people are dealing with their relationships with other people and their obligations and how they’re caring for their children and their elders and the work that they are doing in order to make their community work. And this life in the countryside, to a large extent, outside the suburban areas is still very hard and demanding, people are tend to be working very hard. And they also have considerable care obligations for for both children and elders, the people of working age are going to the cities, and the countryside has become a place of giving and receiving care in some ways. So there’s a great deal of concern about… how one manages all of these conflicting needs to be working and to be caring for people at the same time.

Metta Spencer

Yeah, well, that’s another thing that I’ve heard a lot about. And maybe, maybe it’s an exaggerated story, I don’t know that so many of the urban people are, are married couples, or at any rate family people who leave their children behind with their parents in the, in the village while they go off and live in the city, and then come home when they can for vacation or to stay in touch. How that’s maybe a stereotype? I don’t know. Is that a predominant pattern? Or is it… does it mean that there’s not enough housing or childcare facilities or things like that for, for them to bring their their children with them?

Ellen Judd

It’s not what one would say was, is a preference. It’s something that people more or less have to do in for at least a portion of their their life, because they can’t very well — it’s difficult for many of the rural people to be able to have a sufficient income and to be able to support their children and work full time in the city– it’s just sort of not manageable. And to some extent, even in the countryside, young people would be working well, grandmothers, and to some extent, grandfathers were also caring for their children during the day. So young people are key to the workforce. The problem with this, this model that’s existed for a while, is that people sometimes have to be more separated from their elders and generationally than in the past, when you can work in in your own grow… community. So in order to care well, for their families, people sometimes have to be separated from from some of their, from their parents and their children for a while, and people have certainly tried very hard to take [children] to the cities when they can. That’s difficult, but one of the transitions that China is working on is to urbanize so that more people are absorbed permanently into the urban workforce, and they can bring their families and they can settle permanently in cities to a greater degree. So that kind of… disruption of family life in order to work can be reduced. And and that’sa process that’s going to take a little while to make work. But there, there’s a sense in which some people are able, then to settle in the cities in a more more settled way. And that will be an important transition. And it’s happened to many other parts of the world that people first of all move temporarily to the cities, and then they become urbanized.

Metta Spencer

But you kind of confirm the impression that I’ve got from general press that this is a very widespread thing now, but that they’re trying to get past it, right. What would they be building apartments or housing for people in, in the cities that would be adequate for family life? Is that the goal or…

Ellen Judd

Increasingly, but it’s for the temporary workers. It’s not great. But yes, there is that kind of transition to a better way of life. And I think that’s one of the things that I think we sometimes don’t necessarily see in terms of contemporary press coverage about China the extent to which China’s economic and political life is driven by an internal imperative to make all of this possible for hundreds of millions of people. So basically, you have to be able to establish all that infrastructure. it’s the product of incredibly hard work, and also trying to manage the economy in such a way that it can sustain that level of growth, and build that infrastructure for people.

Metta Spencer

Well, yeah, now you tell me what, what kinds of articles you’ve written?

Ellen Judd

Well, it’s been a long period with different kinds of research, I started out studying the Cultural Revolution. But then, and I’ve studied, popular performing arts and so on. But as in the countryside, I spent a lot of time looking at the transformation of the rural economy, and how family life and gender relations have been changed. Because some of the time from a distance everything seems about political economy, but as people live it on the ground, it often turns out to be about how they manage their their family life and their household relations. So I did quite a bit of that. And then I looked at how the women’s movement responded to that, and looked at sort of indigenous ideas of the transformation of women’s roles in the economy and, and recognition of, of women’s contributions. Later on, I looked more at… migration, and at the restoration of social programs, in particular, health care in the countryside. Some of that had been dismantled, as in the rural economic reform. That happened, we sometimes call it decollectivization — in China, it was a rural economic reform, and to some extent, social programs were lost when collectives were transformed into local government. And then there’s been a rebuilding of what we would call social programs in China, health care, and pensions and so on, for the last 15 years or so, in the countryside. And so I looked at the re-emergence of the Rural Health Care Program, and then patterns of helping

Metta Spencer

health care programs did you say

Ellen Judd

yes, yes. Okay, and looking at how people manage their health care needs in terms of accessing public… familial… and private resources. So from a from a problem-solving kind of approach, in the countryside and, and for migrants, what I’m trying to get at, is looking at it from the point of view of how it’s lived on the ground. So that’s what I do professionally.

Metta Spencer

Okay. I’m interested in two of the things that you’ve mentioned. One is, what have the changes been in gender relations? And have you been able to see it over a period of time? And can you can you make any sweeping generalizations about how that has gone? And then I’d be interested in more also, the changing healthcare system, if that you’ve mentioned, I remember hearing back in the day when, you know, they were talking about barefoot doctors. And I’ve also had friends who’ve studied Chinese traditional medicine here, as if this is a good way of amplifying what they do. And it’s made me wonder, in fact, I went to China, I’ve gone to three Chinese doctors just for fun more than anything else. But, you know, I’m I’m not sure how much traditional Chinese medicine is, is still a part of the everyday practice of healthcare, in village life. Those are big questions… you can pick either one, gender or health.

Ellen Judd

Okay. So I’ll talk a bit more about gender. But I would say certainly traditional Chinese medicine is still used and and promoted, and the two tracks, and then they’re both and sometimes they’re combined. So all of that sort of flourishing. gender relations has changed a great deal. I think it’s one of the things that’s been quite transformed. A great many more opportunities are open to women than there had been in the past, transformation and access to education in the countryside in particular, that happened earlier in the cities and somewhat later in the countryside. Women are a very active part of, a part of the economy. They’re certainly not, you know, I think we used to have ideas, that they’d been left behind in the countryside. And they’re certainly not, they’re also moving and the ability to move and work in the cities gives a degree of enhanced opportunity and freedom. But they nevertheless, you’ll have extraordinary demands and obligations on them as well that that are not equal —

Metta Spencer

Gender is no nowhere equal yet, may be Scandinavia. But you know, if you were doing a cross, international comparison of progress towards gender equality, how would you say China stacks up in terms of, for example, the role of women in industry or in leadership roles, or government and so on?

Ellen Judd

I think the striking thing in China is that the the pace of change is extraordinarily rapid. But we don’t find large numbers of women at the highest levels of the political system. But as you say, these are problems that exist everywhere. So I think that —

Metta Spencer

Does anybody know whether anybody’s done an international comparison of gender advancement or feminist advancement?

Ellen Judd

I’m not aware of it but then I don’t specialize in feminism. So I don’t know. I think that there are people who have looked at that. And at one point when the Chinese women are also particularly the Chinese women’s movement, I could see efforts being made particularly to put women into positions of greater responsibility. And it was a very interesting program that the Women’s Federations at that time were developing, that were very intentional about linking women who were more professionally placed and educated, and linking them with women with less advantage, to build patterns of mentorship and cooperation. And we find that more widely in the world now as well. So I think that the pace of change is very fast, there are people who’ve done those comparative studies of women moving into elite positions. It’s not what I’ve done in particular…Yeah, but but it does, it does exist. And I think the world is improving on this, but still has a long way to go.

Metta Spencer

Okay, now, let’s turn to health. Well, if you have a choice, would you have would you choose to go to a Chinese traditional doctor or a modern hospital for whatever you’re likely to come down with in in your travels in China? Where would you rather go —

Ellen Judd

I use both. Yes, I mean, a lot of the time what happens, what’s happening with traditional Chinese medicine is it’s the use of herbal treatments that later have been adopted in pharmaceutical treatments in the West. So it’s, it’s perfectly legitimate, you may have to take — It’s not as refined as it is in tablets, but it’s quite effective for colds and various other treatments. And that’s just fine. It depends on what ails you. But some of the time, I’ll admit that I have a lot of respect for biomedicine… when really sick to go for that. But what I’ve been looking at mainly is the effort to increase people’s access to any form of health care. And because that is so critical to people’s well being. And that I think has been something that’s been really important to see.

Metta Spencer

So that we’re emphasizing or, you know, I guess I’m interested in this comparison of if the average person in a village, do they care what kind of healthcare they get, modern or traditional. And, and how do they think about this? Is it Are they is there really a lot of improvement in access to treatment? And and are they blending the two, are they mixing them? Or do you find doctors that specialize in one and the other but but have no contact with people in the other branch of medicine.

Ellen Judd

There are somewhat separate streams for training people in one or the other. But a lot of practitioners are able to use both. And so that from an ordinary person’s point of view, you can choose one or the other in the countryside, where you may have a smaller number of practitioners available, sometimes they’re able to do both to some degree. But but they are separate specialized streams and people have access to, to both. I think the the big issue is being able to ensure that people do have access. And that has been, I think, really important, because I don’t think there’s a place where access to health care is not important. So basically, being able to recreate a structure that improves people’s access to health care, I think is one of the important things that China’s managed to recreate. So at present, there’s a structure for this that ideally reaches everybody. It’s still underfunded, which is one of the reasons why China’s pushes constantly for more economic development. So there’s a structure there, that still needs to be more fully funded. But there’s… efforts to to recreate that a bit, underway for… a time, when we’re trying to talk about post-neoliberalism which one hardly hears anymore, but there had been a moment before the economic crisis in 2008, where we were talking about that in the recreation of social programs throughout the world — and some places, it’s been hard to sustain. And it’s certainly been a struggle to create in China, but there’s been a determination also to go ahead with that, with the healthcare system, and with the creation of income support for elderly people in the countryside, to some health care, and pensions are being recreated. That this there’s still a lot of inequality, but there’s work on this…

Metta Spencer

you know, in in the world now, one of the things that interests me most because I’m a political sociologist, is, is the rise of course of populism, and, and the all of these movements such as Trump in the US and … in other countries, Bolsonaro you know, you name it. And even Modi in India and so on — cleavage between rural culture and urban culture. You know, we have a real war practically going on between educated elites, in cities … in the knowledge industries and so on. And the traditional people who want to stabilize life by going backward, I found in the US that the biggest gap in voting for Trump or Biden was the gap between rural and urban residents. So that we have all these people wanting, you know, everything, opposition to abortion, right to carry guns, opposition to gay, gay marriage, or gay partnerships, and so on. And, and, and so, I see a huge cultural split in, between rural and urban. And what I’m wondering is, how much of that is similar to the case in China?

Ellen Judd

There is a similar divide. But I don’t think it gets in, the sense of there’s a rural-urban distinction. But I don’t think it’s elaborated in quite the same way, the way in which a preoccupation in China is very largely in terms of inequality and/or disparity. So that there’s a sense that life is improving very much more in the cities — not for everybody in the cities. there’s also people who’ve been laid off from failing enterprises and so on that there, there are certainly problems for some people in cities. But there’s a sense in which there’s enormous inequality in China and there’s this sense on the part of many people even privileged people in the cities, to be rather uncomfortable about the disparity and the situation that they know exists in remote rural areas. So there’s a sense that it probably comes out of this… more the socialist past in in China, which I think is how a lot of people in China would also think of it except nobody should necessarily say so at present, but there’s a sense in which things have become — the disparities have widened during this period of rapid economic growth, and greater engagement with the global capitalist economy, so that some people are doing very well and other people aren’t. So it’s this huge disparity that is felt on both sides. And there’s a sense that this is somehow not right. But nevertheless, it is. It is part of the structure. And the overall thrust has been that if China is able to economically improve its situation rapidly enough, this can be shrunk, or conditions can be approved for a larger number of people. And to some extent, you know, from… 1996, to 2010, there was sustained 10% growth in GDP. And so people did experience an enormous increase in their standard of living. And it’s still one of the issues in China in the past year, for example, is China’s seen to be such a force in the global economy. At the same time, the Premier was saying that their goal, by the end of last year was to raise 600 million people out of poverty. And looking at the standard of 1000 renminbi a month income, which is about five US dollars per capita, per day, they were trying to get, they still had that as a challenge before [COVID]. And to some extent, they felt they were on track to meet it until the COVID thing happened, but they still felt they’d gotten somewhere by the end of last year to do to meet ths goal. So in many ways, the issue is the enormous inequality between these two worlds. So there’s this enormous wealth, and then there are still people who are having to go to the cities under difficult circumstances and increasingly informal economy, and people in the countryside who are dependent on somebody else making that kind of move in order to send funds home to them to sustain life.

Metta Spencer

That’s true. I’m glad you mentioned the fact that there’s a socialist background, because maybe that explains quite a bit. You know, I’m thinking of the people you know, the the basic value that leftism promotes is aegalitarianism, you know, that that is what leftism is all about, I would say, it isn’t necessarily achieved, but it certainly is considered a very high priority, and every kind of left wing government, socialist government, and so on. And and I think, in capitalist societies, and Canada and the US and Britain and so on, I don’t think there’s ever been the sense of what you say, shame or the feeling that there’s something really wrong with having a lot of economic inequality. I don’t think most American voters are convinced that greater equality is the most important thing to be pursued. But I do see I do remember seeing it so much in Russia when I was going to Russia quite quite a lot in the 80s. And, and it it was very important then, and I think it’s not even as much the case in Russia now, I think that equality is not something that is so much a highly prized value as it used to be. And but if people in formerly socialist societies, I just wonder it’d be interesting to see whether that value still has a strong appeal to, to I don’t even know whether to call… China, a communist society, would you call it a communist country? They call themselves communist, but they don’t look like any communist I ever saw. And they look like capitalists that are beating us hands down with, you know, playing a much better game of capitalism than we are. So is that reflected in a change in in the value system that it’s okay to make more money than your next door neighbor, and be competitive and all of that. I’m asking a lot of silly questions that are all piled in together. But there’s some common thread about this transition from… communism to capitalism, or maybe they don’t think that’s what they’re doing.

Ellen Judd

Those are a lot of really important big questions.

Metta Spencer

Sorry. I shouldn’t dump that on you, too, as we’re getting toward the end of our conversation, but, but those are the, to my mind the questions I’d like to explore if I were in your shoes.

Ellen Judd

And I certainly spend a lot of time thinking about them. If I do this other research, it’s because I’m wanting to make it on the ground and concrete with real people. And sort of the the summary statement probably about, you know, if we want the aspirational goal of, of the People’s Republic, would be that simple phrase from Mo Zedong, “serve the people”. And that, in a sense, would get past some some some of the finer ideological or political points, if you think of it in those in those terms. So certainly on the official position in the United States and China, interestingly, the governments of the two countries are sort of agreed that China’s a socialist county, but you know, for quite a long time, you know, Chinese people haven’t, you know, since the 80s, they sort of suggested that they didn’t think they quite had socialism anymore —

Metta Spencer

They would tell you that they don’t see it as a socialist country is that it?

Ellen Judd

Even in the countryside they would tell me that because they thought it was being dismantled in the new economic reform —

Metta Spencer

And does that bother them? Did it did did they say, oh, shoot, we’re losing socialism, or goody goody, we’re losing socialism.

Ellen Judd

I think they had mixed feelings about it. To some extent, there’s greater opportunity and well being, but then they lost some of their social supports. In any event, they would just sort of comment on it, because everybody in China has been through political study, right. So all these categories are available to people in in different ways. And they comment on them and think about them. What’s been distinctive in or one of the things that’s been distinctive in the recent period, is that Xi Jinping is very determined to put to make China into his idea of a socialist country. And and that has… certainly included a great strengthening of the role of the party and of state owned enterprises and of end of the role of the government. And and certainly claims that China is leading the way to socialism in the world at present. And there’s a strong argument that China is making to this effect, but nevertheless, it’s still quite involved in the global capitalist system. So this is a very difficult thing to analyze… and using labels like socialism and capitalism is really complicated, because sorting out just exactly how you want to think about China in that sense, in the view of, of many people studying China, I think you could look upon China as perhaps part of the capitalist world system, but having taken a different route to get there, where it’s been really important that it has been through what was more clearly a socialist experience in the in the 50s 60s, into the 70s. And then that consciousness is still there, and it’s alive and well in the thoughts of young people who are voluntarily going into the, the informal, the unofficial labor movement in China. So these are deas are alive and well in China, and they’re promoted in certain ways… by the government of China as well, but then it’s also part of the global economy. So and labor power is a commodity, and so on. So you’re basically there are, it’s it’s really complicated to, to conceptualize, but you have elements that we would recognize as both socialist and capitalist in China at present in a, in a complex way —

Metta Spencer

You know, comparing Xi with Putin, because from what you’ve said, it sounds as if Xi would claim that he’s aiming toward a better socialist society. I don’t think Putin would ever use the word socialist as an aspiration for his politics. I don’t know whether he’d like to call himself a capitalist either. I don’t know what they say. But certainly, I think the, the role of well, there’s no role for a communist, the Communist Party in Russia, but there certainly is a role for the Communist Party of China. And they must have an identity as to whether or not they’re more socialist or capitalist.

Ellen Judd

There was a time when I was looking comparatively at other post-socialist societies in the 1980s and 90s. And I looked at the Eastern Bloc a little bit more. So I can’t say that I know very much about Russia. In China, I would say that Xi Jinping, I think, is certainly trying to create his version of socialism. I think there’s a commitment to that. And he does, you know, his father was a leading figure in the Revolution as well. And he’s supported by that generation of the children of the people who were decisive in in that era. So he, he comes out of that background, but it isn’t quite the same. So I guess there’s a question of, you know, just how one’s going to conceptualize this other the path that China is on right now.

Metta Spencer

And when you take your next trip, I will get back in and have another conversation about what surprised you. Very nice to talk to you. All right, here, and we’ll be back in touch. Thank you. Bye.

Tag: Civil

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