August 04, 2009

Today's summer guest host was Tom Harrington.

It's Tuesday, August 4th.

The so-called Birther movement in the United States continues to insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president. They're calling on him to prove he was born in the U.S., despite the fact that his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii has already been made public.

Currently, Birthers have refused to comply with the White House's request that they produce their Grade 3 report cards.

This is the Current.

Flu Vaccine Ethics

The H1N1 flu vaccine isn't in production yet. But according to Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, there will be enough to make sure that anyone who wants it will be able to get it.

But while the federal health minister expects Canada will have enough doses to vaccinate the entire country, she also acknowledges the vaccine likely won't be ready until November and that not everyone will be able to get it at the start of the flu season. Ottawa says it and the provinces still need to work out who will be given priority for the first H1N1 vaccinations and that it hopes to finalize guidelines by September.

In the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is already one step ahead. Last week, it released recommendations that priority be given to five groups -- including pregnant women, health workers and emergency personnel and young people under the age of 24.

But determining who gets to go to the head of the line for the first doses of the H1N1 flu vaccine is a tricky question fraught with ethical dilemmas. And to help us sort through some of them, we were joined by three people.

Françoise Baylis is a Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy and a professor at Dalhousie University. She was in Montreal this morning. John Blatherwick is a former Chief Medical Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. He was in Vancouver. And Gerald Evans is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Queen's University and the Chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital. He was in Kingston, Ontario.

We requested interviews with Health Minister, Leona Aglukkaq and the head of Canada's Public Health Agency, David Butler-Jones. Neither was available.

Julio Montaner - HIV Treatment as Prevention

Around the world about 30-million people are living with HIV - the virus that is the precursor to full-blown AIDS. And while great strides in anti-retroviral treatment have changed the lives of millions of people living with the disease, more than one in three people don't have access to those drugs - especially in poorer populations.

Dr. Julio Montaner has long supported the idea that people's access to anti-retroviral drugs significantly reduces the disease's spread. And, although initially met with skepticism, his theory is quickly gaining traction within the medical community.

Dr. Montaner is the president of the International AIDS Society and the Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He just returned from the International AIDS Society's annual conference in Cape Town. And he joined us from Sechelt, British Columbia.

Last Word - Khayelitsha Choir

Stay with CBC Radio One. Coming up. it's Crossing Boundaries, featuring the best documentaries from public broadcasters around the world. And make sure to tune in to CBC Television tonight at 10pm for The National.

We ended the program today with some sounds from a community centre in Khayelitsha South Africa, one of the townships that was mentioned in our interview with Dr. Julio Montaner. The youth choir there practices every day in a gymnasium.