February 19, 2010

Today's guest host was Bob McKeown.

It's Friday, February 19th.

Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Kent says "an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada."

Currently, He also says that each and every critic of the Vancouver Olympics is an anti-Semite.

This is the Current.

Georgian Luge - Ambassdor

Yesterday, the head of Georgia's Olympic Committee stated unequivocally that the Olympic luge track in Whistler was at fault in the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili. He's the 21-year-old Georgian luger who died just hours before the opening of the Winter Olympics last week.

Even before his death, athletes were remarking on how fast, not to say dangerous the track was. And since the crash, there have been allegations that the track's design might have made it unsafe. VANOC -- the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee -- insists the track is safe. But that's not how Batu Kutelia sees it. He is Georgia's Ambassador to Canada, the United States and Mexico. He was Kalispell, Montana this morning.

We did request interviews with VANOC, the IOC and the International Luge Federation and they all refused our request. The luge events are now over. But the track is still being used for skeleton and bobsled events.

Georgian Luge - Walmsley

One of the questions looming over this incident is who is responsible for athlete safety and to what extent do the athletes sign on for a certain amount of risk just by competing in such events at the Olympics.

For his thoughts on those questions, we were joined by Kevin Wamsley. He's the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He's also the former Director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies. And he was in London, Ontario.

Listen to Part One:

Footnotes in Gaza - Joe Sacco

We started this segment with a clip with how CBC Radio reported on the Suez Canal Crisis back on November 5th, 1956. France and Great Britain, along with Israel, had launched a coordinated assault on Egypt. The French and British wanted to topple Egyptian President Abdel Gammal Nasser, who had just nationalized the Suez Canal.

But their ally, Israel didn't have the same geopolitical concerns. Many people have parsed those tense days, but Joe Sacco has gone back to focus on a little-known story buried in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's the subject of his new book, Footnotes in Gaza. And Joe Sacco joined us from Portland, Oregon.

Listen to Part Two:

Vegetative State - Martin

We started this segment with a clip of Martin Pistorius. He's now 34 years old . But when he was a young boy growing up in South Africa, he was diagnosed with a severe form of meningitis as well as tuberculosis. He lost his ability so speak, to walk and to communicate. Doctors said he probably wouldn't live long.

But through a chance meeting with a care-giver who had an interest in a technique called Augmentative Alternative Communication, Martin Pistorius was assessed again and paired with a voice-generating technology that enabled him to communicate. If you can visualize this ... he wears a band around his head fitted with an infrared light that he uses as a pointer to a keyboard. That's how he's communicating with us now. But before he had that ability, he spent 14 years in a vegetative state ... aware of himself and his surroundings, but unable to communicate with anyone. We asked him to tell us about that time.

Vegetative State - Dr. Owen

One of the most difficult things for the family and friends of people who are in a vegetative state is that they can't know what - if anything - their loved one is experiencing. So many see huge potential in techniques such as Augmentative Alternative Communication. Some methods, though, are controversial. Critics suggest that in some cases, communication has been nothing more than a hoax... with others communicating on behalf of the person in the vegetative state. We put those criticisms to Martin Pistorius and he told us that because he uses infra-red typing technology, no one else would be able to input information on his behalf.

But Dr. Adrian Owen thinks he may have found a way to prove, scientifically, whether someone in a vegetative or "locked in state" understands what's going on around them. He is a neuroscientist at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University in England. And he and his team of researchers have recently published intriguing findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. Adrian Owen was in Cambridge, England.

Vegetative State - Bonnie

That kind of technology creates hope for people like Bonnie Snaith. Three years ago, her son Denton was badly brain-injured in a motorcycle accident. Early on the family was warned there was little hope for his recovery. But Bonnie and her husband continue to believe their son can understand them. Bonnie Snaith was at her home in Cold Lake, Alberta.

Vegetative State - Joseph Fins

For Bonnie Snaith or people like Martin Pistorius, the benefits of advances in alternate forms of communications are pretty obvious and a bit overwhelming. But when you begin to consider the implications of having technology that could potentially show whether there is, indeed, understanding in someone in a vegetative state... the consequences seem a bit more complicated.

For his thoughts on the ethical questions raised by this new research, we were joined by Joseph Fins. He is the Chief of the Medical Ethics Division at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

Listen to Part Three: