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The Current Transcript for February 22, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

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Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

It is my conclusion and my assertion based on all the information that I have that there was no inappropriate pressure on the minister of justice in this matter.

LAURA LYNCH: Canada's top civil servant, the clerk of the Privy Council someone were not much used to hearing from took center stage yesterday in the SNC Lavalin Jody Wilson-Raybould affair. And after Michael Wernick took the mike it turned out he had a few things to say not only about the seeming scandal in question. First up today the latest unfolding story including the John Wernick's testimony that he did pick up the phone to talk about the file but not to pressure. Also today: Remember at that time that Silicon Valley discovered the fountain of youth.

SOUNDCLIP

Every civilization dreamed of finding eternal youth. But what if there was something to it. And old mouse that gets young blood, looks younger and functions younger.

LL: That's just one of the scientists who launched startups based on the notion that injecting youthful blood into ageing bodies could somehow turn back the clock. It turns out according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that fountain of youth may have just been a mirage. We'll go inside the story and the science behind it in half an hour from now. Also today for everyone who grows up wanting to be an astronaut, there is a part of a job that is seldom talked about. This is the American star-man Scott Kelly who spent a year at the International Space Station, someone who knows what [unintelliglbe] in space can do to your mental health.

SOUNDCLIP

When I was up there for a year I think it felt like at some point I'd look my whole life up there.

LL: More on the reality of space travel and mental health later in the show. Im Laura Lynch in Vancouver and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Clerk's comments before justice committee risked 'raising the perception of bias'

Guests: Emmett MacFarlane, Althia Raj, Norman Spector

LL: If you looked at the political calendar and are on one side the clerk of the Privy Council was testifying before the Justice Committee. You wouldn't necessarily think it might be the most riveting story in town but Michael Wernick should grab people's attention yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm deeply concerned about my country right now and it's politics and where it's headed. I worry about foreign interference in the upcoming election and we're working hard on that. I worry about the rising tide of incitements to violence when people use terms like treason and traitor in open discourse. Those are the words that lead to assassination. I'm worried that somebody is going to be shot in this country this year during the political campaign. I think it's totally unacceptable that a member of the Parliament of Canada would incite people to drive trucks over people after what happened in Toronto last summer. Totally unacceptable and I hope that you as parliamentarians are going to condemn that. I worry about the reputations of honorable people who serve their country being besmirched and dragged through the market square. I worry about the trolling from the vomitorium of social media entering the open media arena. Most of all I worry about people losing faith in the institutions of governance of this country and that's why these proceedings are so important.

LL: The clerk of the Privy Council has before the committee to answer questions about the SNC Lavallette affair. He had some interesting things to say about that too. Joining me now are three people who are watching the testimony closely Althia Raj is Ottawa bureau chief for Huff Post Canada. She is in Ottawa this morning. Emmett MacFarlane is political science professor at the University of Waterloo and he is in Waterloo. And Norman Spector served as chief of staff under former conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney and we reached him in Victoria. Hello to all three of you.

ALTHIA RAJ: Good morning.

NORMAN SPECTOR: Good morning.

EMMETT MACFARLANE: Good morning.

LL: Let's start with, what jumped out at you, all of you, about Michael Wernick's testimony yesterday? Let's start with you, Norman Spector.

NORMAN SPECTOR: Obviously his opening statement which I thought was inadvisable, having come from the school of security advise should not be talked about. Looking at the headline in the front pages of Toronto Star today, he certainly did get that message out and I'd be interested to know whether he was advised by the security services to get that message out. The other thing obviously that struck me was the degree to which he articulated the government position. Frankly did a much better job than anyone in the government has done. He pursued a line that the government should have adopted from the beginning, it would be in a lot less trouble. That said it's important to remember that he is the prime minister's deputy minister. He's hired and fired by the prime minister. In fact the prime minister replaced his predecessor and appointed him. Secondly he was integrally involved in the approach to Jody Wilson-Raybold. He was an architect of that approach. So he would really justify it which is what I think we heard yesterday.

LL: Emmett MacFarlane.

EMMETT MACFARLANE: Yes, I thought he was a surprisingly forthright in his overall testimony. I was surprised by some of the same things that Mr. Specter's indicating there. The opening statement seemed quite disconnected from the purpose of this appearance before the committee. At times he was also very effusive in his praise for the prime minister, for various cabinet ministers and. I think those were probably the eyebrow raising moments of the testimony for me because although he has a sterling reputation as a nonpartisan and a I actually think he came across as very honest in his beliefs. He risked I think at times setting out a perception of partisanship in the degree to which he was effusive in that parties.

LL: Okay, Althia, what stood out for you?

ALTHIA RAJ: Well I would say I don't think he has come out off the top was disjointed with the rest of the testimony. I think it was designed to make Canadians think you know these are the big things that I worry about suddenly being assassinated and the next election. And this is like super smart potatoes because were talking about whether you were pressured or unduly pressured. So I think that was the link he was making. It was really riveting in the sense that he brought us inside cabinet in a way that nobody talks about publicly here like the fight between clearly minister Wislon-Raybould and Minister Bennett on indigenous file, but what was really revealing was the details that we hadn't learned before. Like he told us that Ian September - minister Wilson-Raybould when she was acting as attorney general, made it clear to the prime minister that he had no intention of intervening unless file and then he lays out all the pressure points where he personally tries to convince her otherwise. Like the prime minister is very concerned about the potential business impact on people and pensioners and workers, for SNC Lavalin. And so that was that was very interesting.

LL: Emmett MacFarlane I am interested to know when you hear him testifying about what role he played in all of this and what Wernick himself picked out as points that Jody Wilson-Raybould may find problematic, is that the role of the clerk of the Privy Council to do that kind of thing.

EMMETT MACFARLANE: His role is to effectively faithfully try to implement the wishes of the government of the day and particularly the prime minister and an act his behest. The question of pressure is in this particular instance is an interesting one and it seems to have raised more questions than answers, because it seems to me to come down to what is a question of inappropriate pressure vs. appropriate pressure. I'm not sure a lot of Canadians are going to make that distinction if they're following this story. It became clear during his testimony that pressure was applied. Once you're bringing in the economic consequences of a decision, once you're taking pains to note that yes the prime minister did tell the attorney general that it was her call alone to make, it seems to imply: well, what was the necessity of telling her that? So pressure was applied. Was it inappropriate? We won't know. Charlie was able is able to actually openly testify and in a manner that's free from solicitor crime privilege.

LL: Norman Spector, I'm interested in your views on this because as I said you worked Brian Mulroney's office as chief of staff but you actually had occasion in your capacity to call then just as Minister Kim Campbell about a case.

NORMAN SPECTOR: Yes that was a case of the mill guard review Kim Campbell the justice minister had brushed off the mother's request for a review of the case, and the prime minister was confronted by her visit to Winnipeg and asked me to direct the Minister of Justice to review the case which he did. There was obviously no substantive direction. But what this brings up is that effectively Mr. Wernick Confirmed the Globe and Mail story. Globe and Mail reported on February 7th that there was pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould to issue this directive, and effectively there was. And as professor MacFarlane says, the question is whether it was improper unacceptable pressure. But the Globe and Mail report was that he pressured her. There is no doubt that he and the prime minister did pressure her. He's disputing, the report a report of the Glove insofar as to details about conversations related to speeches that the minister of gave but he's effectively you know he's effectively confirmed the story.

ALTHIA RAJ: So we don't know that the prime minister pressured her. We know from his testimony that he communicated with her and in his words it's not inappropriate pressure, but we don't know whether the prime minister personally pressured the .[unintelligible].

LL: Can I just raise one other thing that Michael Wernick said? He also suggested - as the prime minister had - that Jody Wilson-Raybould could have acted if she felt pressure. I just one play a little bit of that tape. Let's hear that now.

SOUNDCLIP

That I conveyed to her that a lot of her colleagues and the prime minister were quite anxious about what they were hearing and reading in the business press about the future of the company and the options that were being openly discussed in the business press about the company moving or closing. So I can tell you with complete assurance that my view of those conversations is that they were within the boundaries of what's lawful and appropriate. I was informing the minister of context. She may have another view of the conversation but that's something that the ethics commissioner could sort out. If she felt, back in September or October or November or December or at any point, that there is inappropriate pressure on her she had recourse. She could have called the ethics commissioner at any time any day. She could have contacted the Prime Minister at any time any day. The prime minister is available through switchboard seven days a week 24 hours a day.

LL: What's the response to that? Norman Specter what do you think of what he had to say about that?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Well we'll hear from Ms. Wilson-Raybould when she's allowed to speak. I think it's important that Mr. Wernick said there's no solicitor client privilege and he was quite clear that there was no discussion of cabinet. So she should be allowed to speak. Mr. Wernick's position Is that everything he did was lawful. This is the nub of the issue. All that pressure, all his discussions with colleagues are lawful. In fact [unintelligible] so far to say that firing her, as attorney general, he used the word cabinet stuff, but effectively she was fired as attorney general replacing her with Mr. Lametti is lawful.

LL: But did she have a responsibility to come forward?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Your position is that any conversations once the director of Public Prosecutions had made the decision not to enter a plea deal was appropriate. That's her position, according to the Globe that she expressed to cabinet. She will have to explain why she did not come forward. I can't say one way or another whether she should have.

LL: Emmett MacFarlane what do you think?

EMMETT MACFARLANE: Yes. I mean I thought that was one of the moments that just further raise another question. We need a little more transparency on what exactly did she think, at what point did she feel pressure if she felt pressured, and what guided her actions and reactions from that point. We really do need her to be free to speak out on these matters.

LL: And I think MacFarlane what's critical here is where the line is between giving context for a decision and applying inappropriate pressure, especially when Mr. Wernick talked about the fact that what he was advising her of were economic implications of the decision, when that seems to be explicitly disallowed in the legislation.

EMMETT MACFARLANE: Yes absolutely. That doesn't necessarily mean that any of these conversations crosses a threshold into your legality. I take the clerk at his word that he does not believe this came close to anything unlawful, but I am actually less interested in that because I don't think this whole thing is just about the law. I think that’s going to be a central point of the analysis and investigation but there's a broader concern about ethics here. So why is the standard just about lawful behavior? What is an appropriate standard just from a broader perspective of ethics? That is something I think Canadians need more light on so that they can reach their appropriate conclusions wealthier as well.

LL: Althia Raj.

ALTHIA RAJ: I think that you know this is the very first time that this has been discussed. Deferred prosecution agreements just come into effect in September 2013, so there is nothing that we can refer back to just say, well, this is how it was done in the past this would be inappropriate compared to that. I think it makes sense that you would still be able to communicate with the A.G. If something changed on the SNC Lavalin file and you know the A.G. - in this case she was from British Columbia and maybe it was a Quebec issue that was brought up surely at communicating with her about the file has to be lawful. The Clerk is adamant that it was entirely appropriate and lawful and legal what he did. And of course he would have that position because if the government, anybody in the prime minister's office, acted inappropriately they would probably be acting on the advice of the cleric. It would be his fault. So he of course has an interest in defending the government to say that they acted appropriately. I think there is too much there we don’t know. You know if she thought it was inappropriate what was happening, I do think it’s a good point to say well then why didn’t you say anything. Did you only say something after you were given a job you didn't like? We don’t even know if that’s really what led to her leaving cabinet, because she didn’t leave cabinet until the prime minister went and told the country that her presence in cabinet spoke for itself and everything was good in the cabinet Liberal family. So there are too many things that we don’t know and right now we just have basically anonymous sourcing in the Globe telling us what Jody Wilson-Raybould thinking is.

NORMAN SPECTOR: We don't know if all this was hunky dory and lawful and ethical etc., is why the principal secretary the prime minister resigned.

ALTHIA RAJ: He says he resigned so he can defend himself.

[Cross talking]

NORMAN SPECTOR: The more senior public servant has just dismissed it with the back of his hand.

LL: But that also brings up the point in terms of things that we don't yet know about that there was another conversation between Gerald Butz and Jody Wilson-Raybould that was not discussed at committee and we don't know what the content of that conversation was.

NORMAN SPECTOR: And there is another conversation we don’t know about between somebody and Ms. Wilson-Raybould chief of staff Jessica Prince.

LL: So lots of stuff that we don't know about yet. We do know that Jody Wilson-Raybould is slated to testify at the Justice Committee next week, when we hope we'll get some more of this filled in. But I just want to refer to another striking moment in Wernick's testimony where he said that the Globe and Mail article which broke this SNC story, contained quote "errors unfounded speculation and in some cases is simply defamatory". Now we reached out to the editor in chief for The Globe for a comment and he sent us a statement which said that Wernick's testimony confirms our reporting that a series of meetings with the attorney general took place after the independent prosecutor had issued what was said to be a final ruling. I also took note of the fact that the Clerk testified. He had spoken to Jody Wilson-Raybould as late as December. So Norman's Spector again what do you think how far did Michael Wernick's testimonies go to clarifying all of this?

NORMAN SPECTOR: Well I agree completely with the article in Globe and Mail insofar as this is also elements to the reporting but recalling that February 7th article towards the end, there were allegations that the court had rebuked the Minister Wilson-Raybould reboard on four occasions for speeches that she had made on indigenous rights, that in his view - and I suppose the view of the prime minister, the view of the government - went beyond the government's policy. So I think that's what he's probably referring to particularly when he use the term defamatory, where he said that it defamed him. and his position is that those were one on one meetings and only he and she can speak to them. But clearly she might have related the contents of those conversations. So we'd know for example, we don't know whether those allegations towards the end of the article were not correct.

LL: Okay. Emmett MacFarlane you were concerned about Michael Wernick coming [unintelligible] not in a completely non-partisan yesterday. What did cross the line for you again?

EMMETT MACFARLANE: Well I'm not sure that anything necessarily crossed the line. I think it raised questions or raised my eyebrows as the fairly effusive praise in some of the language. You know you referred to Carolyn Benet the hardest working Canadian on the field. He was very similarly effusive in his language about the prime minister's actions and integrity. It just raise the question for me you know gave the impression of the kind of circling the wagons effect and a very human tendency. I mean I think this goes directly to what Althia was saying earlier.

LL: Does it compromise his ability to do his job as clerk of the Privy Council?

EMMETT MACFARLANE: No no. My concern is not that she actually necessarily holds bias but that he risked in his comments raising the perception of bias and I think that's an important distinction.

LL: Alethea Raj last word to you what are you going to be watching for next in the SNC story? I bet I know the answer.

ALTHIA RAJ: Well Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony next week and then whether or not the committee decides to call Gerald Butz. And then all those questions that we talked about that we don't have to answer as to. But I think basically this is not SNC Lavalin. My own personal question that I would want answered is what does Jody Wilson-Raybould want may, because nobody has heard this prime minister purposefully more than she has. It is unclear to me what her motivation is. You know just this week when she stood in the House of Commons and said she wanted the opportunity to speak her truth. We didn't know about that.

LL: We will have to leave it there I'm sure we'll all be watching intently next week. Thank you to all three of you.

GUESTS: Thank you. Althia Raj is our bureau chief for The Huffington Post. She was in our Ottawa studio. Emmett MacFarlane is a political science professor at the University of Waterloo and we reached him in Waterloo. Norman Specter is a retired civil servant and a former diplomat who served as chief of staff under former conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney. He was in Victoria. Now we requested an interview with Michael Wernick and he declined. The CBC News is next. Then the FDA issues a warning on a controversial anti-ageing technique some Silicon Valley Titans were paying big bucks to access. So much for young blood transfusion. That's after the break. I'm Laura Lynch. I'm in Vancouver. You were listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

Youth blood won't 'cure' aging, FDA warns after U.S. company charges $8K to transfuse older people

Guests: Sally Adee, Irina Conboy

LL: Hello I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme].

LL: Still to come the technology to send astronauts to Mars may be here before we know it. But the voyage will likely requiring years of travel. And that means serious psychological strain for any astronauts making the trip. Coming up about half an hour from now a look at some of the work that's been done to understand and improve that often overlooked aspect of traveling to the stars: astronauts' mental health. But first, pulling the plug on a fountain of youth.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Everything okay?

VOICE 2: I don't know. Is it?

VOICE 1: Oh sorry. Guys. Bryce, Bryce. Guys.

VOICE 2: Bryce is?

VOICE 1: Very discreet, keep going. This is great..

VOICE 2: Is Bryce your assistant?

VOICE 1: No. Of course not. He's my transfusion associate.

VOICE 2: Which is?

VOICE 1: Are you really not familiar with parabiosis.

VOICE 2: Can't say that I am.

VOICE 1: Well the science is actually pretty fascinating. Regular transfusions of the blood of a younger physically fit donor can significantly retard the aging process. And Bryce is a picture of health. Just look at them, he looks like a Nazi propaganda poster.

VOICE 2: Oh.

LL: On the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley anti-aging blood transfusions are played for laughs but the writers on that show didn't invent them. In real life California today pursuit of longevity is serious business and tech sector billionaires like Peter Thiele are willing to plop down cash for what has been held by some as a real life fountain of youth. That is until earlier this week when the US Food and Drug Administration put a kibosh on the practice. An FDA statement read quote: "We are alerting consumers and health care providers that treatments using plasma from young donors have not gone through the rigorous testing that the FDA normally requires in order to confirm the therapeutic benefit of our product and ensure its safety". Now within hours of the statement, Ambrosia, the most high profile start up charging patients for the transfusion of blood plasma from young donors seized patient treatments. Sally Adee profile profiled Ambrosia and even considered undergoing a transfusion herself for New Scientist magazine back in 2017. We reached her in New York City. Hello.

SALLY ADEE: Hi how are you doing?

LL: Fine thank you. What was it that Ambrosia purported to offer people who came to their clinics and received Youngblood?

SALLY ADEE: Well I'll just let Jesse Karmazin answer that. He told me in 2017 that it was almost a bit like a panacea and that you could basically nearly reverse the aging process.

LL: Jesse Karmazin is the founder of the company Ambrosia. Can you tell me exactly about what kinds of effects he was seeing the youngblood have patients?

SALLY ADEE: Sure. So basically before Ambrosia everything was done in mice injecting young blurred of young mice into all my, human blood into old mice and vice versa. Basically what they converged on was that mice that were retreated with young blood had better heart conditions, better cognitive function, better cartilage. Every physiological sort of marker was starting to resemble younger mice. And so Jesse basically thought, well, these results will certainly translate to humans and that's why he started to put the Ambrosia trial.

LL: Did he talk to you about specific patients and what he'd seen happen to them?

SALLY ADEE: Well yes. He said that there was a one person who had chronic fatigue syndrome who after the treatment was getting out of bed for the first time, and there was another person he told me about who had Alzheimer's and he after the treatment he was cleared medically to drive once more. But you know you have to take these things with a bit of a grain of salt I think because these were second hand reports.

LL: And I'm sure you do but you also spoke to a patient. And what did that patient tell you about why he wanted young blood in his veins?

SALLY ADEE: Well so the patient that I spoke with JR - I am going to call him pseudonymously if that's alright - he actually he wanted to basically have 10 more good [unintelligible]. He was 65 years old and he didn't I guess he just didn't want to go gently into that good night, which I think is a lot of what motivates the Silicon Valley people. They have this kind of you know mindset that you can kind of hack the body to transcend the limits of biology. He just wanted to stay young. He had done a lot of other biologics you know stem cells and things like that. He was really committed to staving off the aging process.

LL: So what did he say about how the transfusions made him feel?

SALLY ADEE: Well so he said that he really felt it. He said he was starting to run again and you know he just felt better at younger. The problem is of course that you know you can't really separate that from the placebo effect. You know any time you've got somebody launching into something with huge expectations you can't really separate that, which is why they have clinical trials. They have no real clinical trials have a placebo wing. And he told me himself that his 39 year old girlfriend who also had a couple of the treatments, she didn't feel any effect.

LL: Now let's just be clear there were no trails for this.

SALLY ADEE: Well so Ambrosia just said that it was a clinical trial but it was not. To be a clinical trial. You have to have a placebo wing. And so there was no placebo wing. He was just basically, just Jesse Karmazin was charging people 8000 dollars. The only thing that you really needed in order to join this trial was the birthdays that you over 35 and a spare 8000 dollars.

LL: You actually also consider getting one of these transfusions yourself and then why did you decide not to in the end?

SALLY ADEE: Oh I guess I suffered a little bit from a mild variant of that sort of [unintelligible] mindset which you know I guess you know as a journalist you kind of-- people are in danger of that. And so for a while I thought you know this is fantastic. I looked at the mouse trials a lot and I thought well this is amazing. And then you know Tony Wyss-Coray was doing the Stanford study that was the first study before Ambrosia happened. So they were injecting it in to into people with Alzheimer's, with late stage Alzheimer's and plasma has already been cleared as a treatment. So you know no it's not an experimental crazy drug. I thought, well, this was a great idea. But the more I started doing research on this feature that I was reporting the more I get really got misgivings because you know it's just it's quite risky to get another person's plasma into your veins actually. And then there are these potential side effects I learned about which are fine for people for whom you know plasma is lifesaving but they're not really great for somebody who's already healthy. And I guess the thing that really sort of quenched it for me was when I went to Monterrey and they tried to the doctor who was administering which wasn't Jesse. It was the doctor called Craig Wright and this patient J.R. and they told me about a patient who had just had an anaphylactic shock and they were both really shaken up and they said you know the guys eyes turned bright red. He's swelled up like a tick. He had to have you know sort of medications to you know get rid of the allergic reaction. And at that point I was out.

LL: Understandable but the blood used in these transfusions come from according to the company?

SALLY ADEE: Well at the time Jesse Karmazin told me that they were getting the blood. It was basically left up because what happens with blood is when someone donates blood to a hospital. The red blood cells plight is separated from the plasma which looks a bit yellowy, you know look like yellow liquid, and red stuff has oxygen carrying material. So that's the lifesaving sort of blood transfusion bit. The plasma often goes spare. They just basically stick it in a freezer. And so Jesse Karmazin told me that he was buying back from hospitals.

LL: And then how would he know that the blood was coming from young people?

SALLY ADEE: This was the question. There was an article in The Huffington Post reported by this reporter Dana Liebelson where she actually raised some big questions about the provenance of the plasma. And I think it's probably a good idea that the FDA has put the kibosh on that.

LL: Sally Adee thank you.

SALLY ADEE: Thank you. Very nice to talk to you.

LL: Sally Adee is an independent science and technology writer. She wrote about the company Ambrosia which was infusing patients with blood plasma from younger donors. She wrote for The New Scientist magazine. That company announced this week it had seized patient treatments. My next guest has researched the real science of the effects of young blood in mice. In fact the blood transfusions offered by Ambrosia might have been partly inspired by a misinterpretation of her work. Irina Conboy is a professor of bioengineering at the University of California at Cleveland. She is in Berkeley this morning. Hello.

IRINA CONBOY: Hello.

LL: What do you make of this idea of businesses are offering young blood transfusions?

IRINA CONBOY: It is a horrible idea and unfortunately the hype over the science.

LL: Well where do you think that Ambrosia got the idea that these transfusions could lead to longevity and health?

IRINA CONBOY: Oh I think that it's quite clear that the initial idea came from our work that we published in 2005 and pursued this work even earlier before that, which people know as parabiosis. Not only they came to this idea through parabiosis publications but they try to market that idea to others by their own interpretation of our work.

LL: Okay so let's get into that. What is parabiosis?

IRINA CONBOY: In parabiosis, mice are treated very gently like people in major surgery, so they have general anesthesia and they're pretty much sutured together through their skin. So they go into the surgery as separate animals and they wake up the as [unintelligible] who are connected.

LL: So all of their blood vessels are connected, the blood is channeling through both of them.

IRINA CONBOY: Exactly. But it did not really do vascular surgery. We just suture their skins and then in the sutured skin blood cells develop over about one week, and then the blood now flows from young mouse to the old mouse and vice versa.

LL: So one young mouse, one old mouse. What did you find?

IRINA CONBOY: So what we found then published in Nature which is a very high [unintelligible] journal is the cell of the young mice becomes a little bit worse. But the muscle of the all mouse becomes much younger. In the same story they also found that the brain, the ability of brain to form new neurons, in old mice becomes better and the ability of young guys to form neurons becomes worse.

LL: Based on what you just said I can see why it would be tempting for people to take that result and say, okay, if this works, if hooking up to a younger blood supply makes an older mouse younger, well let's try that on humans. What's wrong with that?

IRINA CONBOY: Absolutely. So why is that interpretation simplistic [unintelligible]. It is because young and old mice when they are sutured together all cells share all of their organs. So now all mouse has benefit of having young kidneys and young liver eviler that can remove continuously all of the toxins and other harmful substances. So this is not only you have young blood but you also have in your backpack brand new set of organs. And that was completely omitted from the simplistic idea that you can do the same just with a bag of black.

LL: I have some tape I want you to listen to. This is Sauk Villeda an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy at the University of California in San Francisco.

SOUNDCLIP

I was very sad to worry that people were being asked to spend money in a way that wasn't a controlled clinical trial, where we would have meaningful data come out of it. This isn't the right way. We have to control this exactly to avoid things occurring that just should be occurring.

LL: Ho problematic it is to you that companies like Ambrosia would offer a service like those without having the pure clinical trial?

IRINA CONBOY: Well it is very alarming. All of this opinion is shared by most of the scientists in this field that you can just see that your system is working or your product does work in particularly when you have conflict of interest because you would like to sell to an individual company. And unfortunately not just in Ambrosia but in [unintelligible] which is a Stanford company, there was never a reputable clinical trials set up that would pass the scientific [unintelligible] at least in my opinion.

LL: So what would you say to someone who told you they were preparing to pay 8000 dollars U.S. for a young person's blood?

IRINA CONBOY: I would say to them that there is no scientific justification not only in humans but even then mice that there is a benefit from that, and there is a lot of scientific evidence that it will harm you. There are known side effects of infusing yourself or transfusing yourself with somebody else's blood or other bodily fluids. So I would tell them to not do. If you already did it then do not repeat it and probably go to your primary care physician and do a number of physical tests and exams to see if he already harmed yourself.

LL: Are some in Silicon Valley including billionaire Peter Thiele who have previously advocated looking into young blood research and anti-ageing. Is there a healthy direction for medical research in this area?

IRINA CONBOY: Absolutely. So this is a positive development not just from peter Thiele but from many other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs because we all hope to significant extension of health span and life span, such as the person who is 95 years old will look and feel in all practical purposes like somebody in their late thirties. So the field is moving there.

LL: So it sounds like there is possibly a fountain of youth on the horizon. Can you tell me about some of the research you're doing now?

IRINA CONBOY: Oh absolutely. So one of the directions that we are pursuing is based on the conclusion is that with aging it is not that you are lacking something that you can get from young blood, but you'll have excessive molecules in your own blood, once the excessive becomes harmful and prevents your body from repairing itself, so you can take a person's blood and use an already FDA approved procedure that we are modifying. Filter it, clear it of the harmful substances and then return it to the same person. It is safer because it is your own blood. And also it seems to be much more effective that putting young blood on top of old blood together.

LL: What effect are you seeing that having? Is it reversing aging or staving off aging?

IRINA CONBOY: We hope that it will reverse aging and make the subject younger.

LL: And are you seeing that? Where are you at with those trials?

IRINA CONBOY: We are just at data analysis. So if you wait a little bit you will see what happens in a few months.

LL: I'm sure it's going to be really interesting to follow your research. I feel younger just talking to you.

IRINA CONBOY: Thank you.

LL: Thank you. Irina Conboy is a professor of bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley and she was in Berkeley California. The transfusions of young blood to combat aging are just one part of a larger life extension movement that is thriving in Silicon Valley. One so called longevity entrepreneur even told the New Yorker the proposition that we can live forever is obvious. It doesn't violate the laws of physics so we can achieve it. But even if we can should we? Robert Pogue Harrison teaches literature at Stanford University and he's the author of Juvenescence: A Cultural History of our Age. We reached Professor Harrison in Stanford California. Hello.

ROBERT P. HARRISON: Hello.

LL: What do you think when you hear about these people receiving the blood of young donors in a quest to stay young themselves?

ROBERT P. HARRISON: Well find it grotesque to a certain extent obscene. The trans humanist in general are operating under the assumption that death and aging are somehow diseases that can be cured. The philosophical naivety of that - and I'm surrounded here in Silicon Valley with the kinds of people that you've been mentioning - and I just found this fundamental misunderstanding that death is something which is a termination of one's life is in essence of our human mortality. What makes us human in the first place. The idea that we pursue this indefinite extension of life rather than pursue a deepening of it while we're alive, I think it has- there is a certain childishness at the heart of it. There is a childish desire to live forever. A childish desire to arrest the maturation process.

LL: In fact you're saying that the only real thing that gives life meaning is the certainty of death.

ROBERT P. HARRISON: Well as far as we understand death not as that which occurs at the end of life but if we understand death is our distinctly human cognizance of our mortality. Mortality is correlated with natality. If we're going to live 150-200 years maybe even forever, you can be sure that there are going to be no new comers and there's going to be no real genuine rejuvenation in human society if we didn't have these artificial forms of rejuvenation through biotechnology.

LL: Let's just set aside the idea of immortality for the moment and talk about the desire to live a better life as you age, and perhaps that is the goal of these people in trying to research this kind of thing that you don't have to become bent over and crippled and [unintelligible] get Alzheimer's if you actually pay attention to this. What's wrong with that?

ROBERT P. HARRISON: I've engaged in debates that always take this kind of form of: What's wrong with- you don't object to vaccines, do you? No. I don't actually object to vaccines. You don't object of medical cures for a particular diseases. No. I don't. And finally in that case you should be in favor of this technology of rejuvenation. I find that if I am 60 years old, I want to be a 60 year old person. Those are the years I've lived. Those years have left a trace on me physically. They've left a trace on me psychologically. I think that it would be more important for us to learn how to act our age rather than give ourselves over to this frenzy of trying to be another age than the age we are.

LL: But the desire to avoid ageing has been around for a very long time. Where does it come from?

ROBERT P. HARRISON: Well it depends on which period of history we are talking about. That's another assumption that I don't really share. In previous generations not that long ago almost throughout human history, being older was the model of emulation for the young. Because all the privileges and benefits and power and authority in traditional societies came with the elders. Now somehow in the post-war period everything turned around reversed itself and this is a huge cultural change.

LL: You are in the belly of the beast there is Stanford. Is it something that is unique to this moment in Silicon Valley where the possibilities stemming from technological advancements seem limitless?

ROBERT P. HARRISON: I think that has something to do with it. It's the technology and people are intoxicated with the promise of these new technologies. It's unbelievable the fantastications, what some people would actually believe. And I hate to say this about so many people who are my neighbors and my colleagues and even friends. But there is a certain meaninglessness and senselessness in the lives people are conducting in Silicon Valley which makes it almost imperative that you seek to have an extension of your life span, because you feel that you need more time in order to get to the essence of a deeper meaning and purpose. You know of a life.

LL: I want to play you a clip that comes from the novelist Dara Horn, and she is the author of a book about a woman who can't die. It's called Eternal Life. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

What I have noticed in thinking about this more extensively in sort of following that trail of like well what would it be like to live forever? What would it really mean? What would be the ethical implications of it? When you follow the trail as far as it can go, one thing you may discover - at least what I discovered as I followed this trail in an imaginative way - is that vulnerability is what makes us connect to each other. I think there is something about the way we care for each other that has to do with the fact that were vulnerable and that really is [unintelligible] than being immortal.

LL: I wonder what you make of that idea that immortality could make our world a less caring place.

ROBERT P. HARRISON: Well there's no question about that. I think our mortality makes us vulnerable and also gives us the meaningful human relations that we engage in. There is a line of Wallace Stevens the American poet which I think is pertinent here where he says: Death is the mother of beauty hence from her alone shall come fulfilment to our dreams and our desires. And here death is not a negation or a termination of life. It's that which gives birth to the intrinsic potentiality of life. There's another person I would invoke here and that's Epicurus the ancient Greek philosopher. And he spoke about the ungratefulness in the soul that renders the human creature endlessly greedy for more food, more goods and more life. He recommended to his disciples to imagine life as a feast and at a certain point you are grateful for having had a beautiful feast but you've had enough. I think what we need most of all in Silicon Valley is a metaphysics of the enough. Otherwise what Epicurus calls the gluttony - of never being able to have enough - will lead to who knows what kinds of monstrosities when you combine it with the in-house power of biotechnology. So I am a dissenting voice in the midst of this incubator of our new brave future here in Silicon Valley.

LL: And a very interesting place to hear from. Thank you for your time.

ROBERT P. HARRISON: You're welcome. Thank you.

Robert Pogue Harrison teaches literature at Stanford University. Well coming up in just a few minutes: the most important piece of equipment astronauts carry into space is probably their mind. Why space agencies are starting to care more about it. That's coming after the break. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver. You are listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

'It's like a hall of mirrors': In a spacecraft, some personalities work better than others

Guests: Mia Robson, David Williams, Leslie DeChurch1446807619507

LL: I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and this is the Friday edition of The Current as you just heard on the news this morning. The National Energy Board announced its decision on Trans Mountain pipeline. It recommends approval but with conditions. The NEB says the project is in the Canadian public interest but says it will impose 136 conditions on the project, and has made 16 new recommendations to the federal government. Now this isn't the first time the NEB has put forward recommendations on the expansion. Last summer, as you'll recall the Federal Court of Appeal ruled the initial approvals fail to take into account how marine life - specifically the Southern resident orca population would be affected. And despite the only BS this is in today the future of the pipeline still hangs in the balance. I'm joined now by Mia Robson at the Canadian press to tell us more about the decision. She is in Ottawa. Hello.

MIA ROBSON: There is. I mean that's the biggest one. The British Columbia and everything has gone to the court to try and get a sort of confirmation that they can relay what flows through the pipeline. British Columbia wants the deluded bitumen which is what will come through this pipeline. They want to be able to say no you can't send any more of that through until more research is done on how to behave when it is spilled. It's a relatively new product and there hasn't been a lot of research done on what happens if it gets stalled, and this report says if a possibility still is quite remote, if that happens the effects will be quite devastating.

LL: Mia, we're going to have to leave it there but I really appreciate your explaining this for us. Thank you.

MIA ROBSON: You're welcome.

LL: Bye bye. Mia Robson is the Canadian Press's energy and environment reporter and we reached her in Ottawa. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

So the problem you develop here is that everything is the same every day. It can be depressing sometimes if you are very very far away from people you love on earth and that can make you sad, perhaps. You're always with the same people on board, so if conflict arises you have nowhere to go and you have to face it. So it is a challenge.

LL: That Canadian astronaut David St. Jacques speaking in translation to a group of Ottawa students. His lives space appearance helped launch the opening of an exhibition at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum this month. Health in space daring to explore looks at the health and well-being of astronauts, and as you heard him say it can get quite lonely living in the vastness of space, but in close quarters with your fellow astronauts. And astronaut’s mental health and interpersonal relationships can be crucial to a mission success or failure. It's hardly the best understood aspect of space travel although that is changing thanks to projects like a new study known as HERA or the human exploration research analog Project. Researchers have just shared their findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Leslie DeChurch is the principal investigator on the project and a professor of psychology and communications at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois. We've reached her in Winter Park, Florida hello.

LESLIE DECHURCH: Hello Laura.

LL: So tell me more about your project what exactly is the goal?

LESLIE DECHURCH: The goal is just support analog research and give us a location where we can answer questions about what will likely happen when we put small groups of astronauts and cosmonauts and other space explorers together, and they go out and venture out in missions of around 500 to 1000 days where there is really no exit strategy. And so there are a lot of you know as the opening quote kind of went in there are challenges for an astronaut to be isolated and confined with really no one else to talk to. And so one of the concerns for long distance exploration is really the need to build a team that can not only stand to be around each other but that can function at very high levels of performance under extremely harsh conditions.

LL: What were your findings?

LESLIE DECHURCH: So one of the findings is that not everyone is as well suited to it as everyone else. One of the important things to think about in a long distant space scenario is that it's almost like a group marriage. So you know when you're in a normal work group you can have certain relationships with your co-workers and things don't go well, you can get a break. When you're at a long distance space mission, not only can you not get away from problems but you're hyper relying on everybody in your team to help you mitigate some of the challenges that you're facing personally. So it's really one of the things that we're seeing there is that some people - people with a very good sense of humour that use what we consider very positive humour styles - tend to do better. And even some traits that might be very healthy on are things like conscientiousness that we generally considered to be a very good quality can actually drive some of your co-workers crazy when you're stuck in a very small space for a long period of time with an over-developed schedule that has more than you can normally pack into a day but having someone who is very detail oriented can be challenging. The other big finding that we're learning from HERA is that the timing really matters and that no matter how good the crew is that's composed and well suited for the mission, there's periods where they all struggle. And so being in isolation and confinement we know of facts intelligence, memory, mood, aggressiveness and those facts really get exacerbated in what we would consider the third quarter, after they passed the mission half time and when they're in that kind of really boring place where they've experienced half of everything they're going to experience and now they're in a fictional journey home that's when we really are seeing decrements in their ability to work together effectively.

LL: And is that consistent across any chunk of time that when they perceive their three quarter mark it's going to be a problem?

LESLIE DECHURCH: So it's consistent in groups 45 days and longer. So we did not observe that in the one month mission or in a two week or one week missions. I should mention that there was one crew that did exceptionally well and they were able to sort of maintain their performance, by for example in decision making, the ability to put different expertise together and solve problems. We haven't yet had a crew that could perform one of our problem solving tasks effectively in the third quarter.

LL: So how is NASA using your findings?

LESLIE DECHURCH: So the hope is that NASA can the findings in two ways. One of them is to augment their already state of the art astronaut selection program. So teamwork conferences and small group in capabilities are two qualities that have to be essential when you're selecting astronauts. There's just certain people that you wouldn't send on a long distance mission no matter how competent and capable they are. The second way that we can really use these findings is to provide dashboards and support systems that help the crew anticipate some of the challenges they're experiencing and know how to deal with it. Some of the challenge of a mental health issue or any kind of impairment is when you're not expecting it, it can be especially hard to deal with.

LL: But it would seem wise for them to be screaming for any kind of mental illness.

LESLIE DECHURCH: And they definitely are. But one of the things that were finding looking at it even traits like conscientiousness and personal values and humour styles is that you know if you think about a spacecraft, it's like a hall of mirrors. Every quality of every other person is getting amplified and exacerbated. You're seeing it day in and day out. So a characteristic that might be great from nine to five, might not be great from nine and nine for a thousand days straight.

LL: Understandable. Who are the people that got into the study? Are these all prospective astronauts?

LESLIE DECHURCH: A lot of them are very eager and we'd be excited to be considered for the astronaut course they all have to meet some requirements that they need to be between 25 and 55 years old. They need to have a healthy BMI no history of psychological problems or sleep walking and they need to have an advanced degree in a science and math or engineering field. So in that sense they need to be as astronaut-like as possible so that we can ensure that we're steady people that exhibit qualities in their range that would be comparable to future astronauts.

LL: So you mentioned that conscientiousness can actually be difficult on a mission like this. Are there other personality traits that are red flags?

LESLIE DECHURCH: You know anything in that dark triad. So being overly self-focused, people who are extremely narcissistic do not do well. And so one of the things we have the astronaut the simulated astronaut in HERA filling out measures every single day, talking about where your greatest goals and challenges that day are. And one of the things that we see coming up in that 'what are the biggest challenges facing your crew question?' are things like people who are very individualistic. And so they'll site that quality over and over again. 'So and so were so self-focused. They're only thinking about themselves they're not thinking about the fact or having found other people'. And again that quality may be fine in the workplace and might help your group really promote what you're doing to outsiders. But when you're living and working together on the way to Mars and you're relying on these people 100 percent of the time that quality can really start to be negative.

LL: You mentioned Mars there. Your studies are being done for a period of a month to 45 days but a mission to Mars is going to be three to five years. Do you think the study gives you a good enough sense of what could go wrong in the longer time frame?

LESLIE DECHURCH: So I think it's important to view this as one step in an important transition plan to get us to Mars. I wouldn't say that we could go straight from a 45-day mission to a thousand days with an extended time on Mars surface. But I would say that the nice thing about these studies is that we can run a lot of them. So you can think about it as rapid prototyping for teamwork, so we can test out interventions different combinations and people look at different qualities and we can start to get an understanding of what's working and what's not working. So this is really a first step in extending to longer durations. And so in about two weeks we're going to be studying a serious 19 mission in Moscow where that crew of six will be isolated and confined for 120 days.

LL: Then based on your findings so far then, what traits make up the ultimate space dream team?

LESLIE DECHURCH: Oh the ultimate space dream team that's a hard one. I think people who are very affiliative. So llet's start off by saying people who are extremely intelligent, resilient, and have the knowledge and expertise necessary. Beyond that, I would add that teamwork qualities of people that are affiliative, that have values towards universalism that are very collectivistic in their interactions, and that are generally very self-aware in thinking about the fact that they're having on other people. So people who are not extremely individualist.

LL: So going forward, with all the study you've done, what do you think space agencies could be doing better to support good mental health in space?

LESLIE DECHURCH: I think one of the things they can do is just really emphasizing - and I know NASA is doing this as part of their recruit training - emphasizing the teamwork role and responsibility. So you know in the early days of the space program the motto grew out of more of a literary hierarchy and I think one of the things we learn when we talk to astronauts who've been in space is that they really are quite good at monitoring one another recognising who needs help. And when they realise that you're only as strong as the weakest person on board and they do things like 'let me hurry up on my timeline so I can help you know'. The astronauts seem than most satisfied with the experiences that they're having.

LL: Leslie DeChurch, thank you very much.

LESLIE DECHURCH: Thanks so much.

LL: Leslie DeChurch is the principal investigator of the human exploration research L'Isle project at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and professor of psychology and communications at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois. While space agencies weren't always paying attention to the mental health of their astronauts, in December of 1973 three astronauts aboard America's first space station known as Skylab start talking to earth for an entire day. They were rebelling against Mission Control. They switched off their radios, stopped working and spent the day looking out the window. Prior to their space straight the astronauts had repeatedly told Mission Control they were being overworked and needed downtime. Noshir Contractor is a corps investigator on the HERA project we've been talking about. He has looked at what happened in Skylab's fine mission that so called mutiny in the sky, to see what it could teach us about the warning signs that astronauts are under stress.

SOUNDCLIP

We went back and look at all these conversations they had with each other more recently both amongst themselves as well as with mission control. We were able to predict the extent to which the individuals in the crew were having the shared mental model was so low that they were not able to connect with mission control. And therefore we were able to predict what is going to be some dysfunction. It was promising because it means that now with the technology which we have and all of developing in AI and [unintelligible] we do have the ability to do if nothing else forecast a potential problem and then find ways to deal with it.

LL: The three astronauts on the Skylab mission never flew in space again, reprimanded by NASA for disobeying orders. But the incident was also a turning point in the way NASA treats its astronauts. It's when the space agency realized that the right stuff was about more than smarts and physical stamina. It was also about psychological wellness. Dave Williams can speak firsthand about wellness in space. He is a former Canadian astronaut who was flown to space twice and done more than 17 hours of spacewalks. He's the author of Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe and he joins us from Oakville, Ontario. Hello.

DAVID WILLIAMS: Hello.

LL: Can you relate to what we've been hearing about the importance of talking more about astronauts and their mental health?

DAVID WILLIAMS: Oh very much so you know certainly for a long duration mission on board the space station and looking at missions beyond Earth orbit going back to the moon and Mars, behavioral issues are one of the most important areas for us to focus on. And of course probably one of the hardest. We always tend to focus on the things your logic changes but those mental changes are important as well.

LL: And in your experiences did those issues pop up?

DAVID WILLIAMS: There's no question. My first flight was called Neurolab and was a mission focused on doing neuroscience in space. We used to joke because we have a 24 hour day called the post leak period a period that you're allowed to use and get ready for the day and enjoy the view look out the window, catch up on e-mail. We used to call post pre science. So we call it prescience and post science activity because there is so much to do. We were working overtime to get ready for the day.

LL: You heard Leslie DeChurch to talk about what personal details are not good on a space mission, what's your response to that?

DAVID WILLIAMS: I would agree with her. Imagine we're on our way to Mars and somebody on the crew keeps saying 'Are we there yet'. Oh my goodness gracious. You know it's going to take us seven months to get there. It's really critical to be able to select people who have behavioral skills to be able to go in the space on these long duration missions. But more importantly to train them. And that's one of the things that the Canadian Space Agency is very focused on. We have Johnson and [unintelligible] at the University of British Columbia that have been using crew diaries onboard the International Space Station to understand those phases of space, you know that three quarter phenomenon repeat three quarters of the way through a mission they begin to feel some of the challenges of mission.

LL: You've been there. Have you ever encountered some of those less than desirable personalities?

DAVID WILLIAMS: You know I think one of the things that I've been blessed with is having fantastic crews to fly in space with. And metaphorically, a space crew is like a family and especially when you're in space you can't really leave. You have to deal with the issues. And you know amongst our loved once at home, conflict exists. So it's not surprising that in space we have to have conflicts between crewmembers but also potentially conflict with mission control. We get behind the time line. Oh my goodness what happens if we make a mistake in space and the mission objectives become compromised because of human error. So these are things that we need to anticipate, train for and then in order to be able to work together as a team to optimize our ability to succeed. And on my last spaceflight, FTS118, the crew trained together for three years before we even went to space together and during that three year time period you spent a lot of time bonding, learning how to work together and how to be able to succeed.

LL: You talk about family being having conflict as well but the thing is you can actually walk away from family or get a break from family, sometimes. You can't in this situation. So when conflict arises as you've experienced how do you handle it?

DAVID WILLIAMS: You know I think it's important to teach people first of all the conflict will arise. So it's not bad that conflict arises. It's not a failure. It's just the way things are. And then to give people the breadth of skill they need to be able to solve whatever the problem is that's creating the conflict. And in fact many of the issues as David St. Jacques alluded to, earlier when we first play that tape of David, it's not solely conflict that we're talking about. There are times when you feel isolated. There's times you may feel lonely and you're separated from your family. So behaviour or support plan it's critical for astronauts in a long duration mission to give them hobbies that they might do on air, play a guitar, reading a book, giving them the mechanism to be able to speak to loved ones for support when they're in this extreme harsh environment.

LL: How did you deal with it?

DAVID WILLIAMS: You know I write a little bit of home with me. I had pictures of my wife and my kids. I was able to speak to them on the ground. I really enjoyed looking out the window taking photographs. I played the guitar while I was in space. And more importantly I tried to share the experience by writing notes through it. They ultimately turned into my book Defying Limits and then sharing those experiences with family members.

LL: Let's just back to conflict for just a second because I want to hear from you. Any story you can share with us. So you were in space for weeks at a time. How did you and your crew deal with it?

DAVID WILLIAMS: You know whenever there is an issue that comes up we talk about it as a crew and we put the issue candidly on the table to be able to work through it. Scott Kelly was our commander and I would say of Scott as a commander he's one of the most objective people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. He was able to look at the issue, depersonalise the issue and focus on solving the problem.

LL: Can you give me an example?

DAVID WILLIAMS: Oh yes certainly on my last base we actually had damage to the tile on the undersurface of the orbiter. And of course this was unforeseen. We found out about it during the inspection of the tile after we lifted off. And to be able to resolve the damage to the tile, Rick Mastracchio and I would have to go outside and do a spacewalk. And we were talking through the spacewalking procedure, who's going to be operating the robotic arm, and because this would be the first time in history this has ever been done, needless to they were getting a lot of input from different crew members on how we're going to be performing the task and who's going to be doing what, etc. As it turns out we planned it and everybody came to a consensus on what we're going to do. We didn't have to do it. The ground determined that we did not have to repair the tiles. And we came back re-entered and landed successfully. So it wasn't an issue but more importantly the crew was able to work through the whole discussion and planning of that with mission control in a manner where issues were quite candidly on the table and resolved.

LL: So within that there was conflict, was there?

DAVID WILLIAMS: It depends what you mean by conflict. You know there's differences of opinions on how we should do whatever it is we have to do. And I think one of the things that's important whether it's honor offering space, imagine the same thing in an operating room with surgeons, is to be able to intervene early. So before people get to the point where they're emotionally invested, before people are getting the point where other upset, voices may be raised or whatever. So we're able to objectively depersonalise the issue and then work together collaboratively to find a solution.

LL: Now the finding of a study also talked about the importance of humour. What role did he play in your missions?

DAVID WILLIAMS: You know it's critical to have a sense of you know. Oh my goodness gracious. We have fun you know. If you're not having fun during the mission it's going to be a problem, particularly if you have a six or seven month one mission. And on my second spacewalk as a Canadian I had a chance to ride the Canadarm an amazing way proud moments. But I'm holding on to a gyroscope that weighs 650 kilograms, it's right in front of my face. And our pilot Charlie [unintelligible] who was operatin the robotic arm that I'm end up. The first comment Charlie says 'well Dave, you've got to remember this is not a jettison task, meaning that you know don't throw away the gyroscope because we need to install on the space station.' Which I suggest [unintelligible] .and then he jokes and says 'How's the view out there?' And he knows perfectly well all I've got to put on my face is this 650 is kilogram gyroscope. I can't see anything. I can't see the earth or anything else like just this big gyroscopes. And he said 'well I'm waiting on that scorch.'.

LL: That helps diffuse any tension or nerves you might be feeling, right?

DAVID WILLIAMS: Of course it's so critical. You know we're outside in an extreme harsh vacuum of space, where if you make a mistake we kind of joke and say you may have the rest of your life to solve the problem. So it's important to have humor. Levity is a good thing.

LL: But when you think about- I mean you've been out there for months at a time but these missions to Mars would take years at a time. You have a sense of how difficult or challenging would it be, to be in constant contact with a crew for that length of time.

DAVID WILLIAMS: You I'm a short duration person. I've not spent months on the space station. I helped build it. It's very important to address these issues because the three quarter phenomenon is very real. So we're on our seventh, eighth month voyage to Mars three quarters away there people are going to be feeling a little bit low. And boredom will be a really big issue actually on the way to Mars having to deal with all these things. And then you arrive on Mars. People are really excited for that three to four week period before they arrive on Mars. Then you're on Mars for one Mars year, which is two earth years and three quarters and will take place as well. And the same thing coming back to earth. One of the most important things to think about is we used to say that short duration missions were like a sprint. You were always going around 24/7. And we said long duration missions you know six months, one year missions onboard the International Space Station were like a marathon. But if you talked to the long duration astronauts we will tell you the one duration mission is like a six month sprint or a one year sprint. So together with mission control we used to readjust the time line to create realistic expectations that people weren't working 24/7. And even if we do that you always have this sense that you’re on, that you have to be ready to perform.

LL: Well one think it's taken so long for our attention to be paid to the mental wellbeing of astronauts?

DAVID WILLIAMS: To be fair we've been aware of this weight in the early days of planning for the International Space Station program and we developed - with NASA - we developed what's called expeditionary behavior trying to identify how things go well in missions. Interestingly a lot of times the psychology of long duration missions focuses on why things go wrong as opposed to why things go well. If you can identify why things go well and the attributes associated with success you can train those. You can teach people about conflict resolution. You can teach people how to interact with individuals from different cultures. Now we've had 18 years’ experience, going on 19 years’ experience of humans continuously working in space. All that information will be captured to help us go back [unintelligible] Mars.

LL: If they are willing to spot a year’s long Mars mission given all you know would you say yes?

DAVID WILLIAMS: Sign me up tomorrow. There is one caveat though. I was the return flight right. I'm not going one way or anything like that. I want a return flight and I think it would be an amazing experience.

LL: David Williams thank you very much.

DAVID WILLIAMS: My pleasure.

LL: Dave Williams is a former Canadian astronaut and the author of Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe. He is in Oakville, Ontario. Well that is our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio 1 for Q. Today Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon speaks to guest host Lori Brown about his new essay collection. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app it's free from the App Store or Google Play. Now as I mentioned that Canada Space and Aviation Museum in Ottawa opened a permanent exhibition this month focusing on the health and well-being of astronauts. CBC Ottawa producer Salma Mahgoub dropped by the Museum this week. Here is some of what she heard. I'm Laura Lynch in Vancouver. Thank you for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

My name is Erin Polten and the expedition interpretation officer here at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Astronauts are living and working 400 kilometers away from Earth. They're not able to have an in person medical exam. They're not able to get a quick blood test and so there needs to be other technologies and other communication tools for people on earth to make sure that they're staying healthy while they're working in orbit. The fact that they're working in an isolated environment, very small environment with the same people day in day out. So there's a psychological side to how they stay mentally healthy and alert because it's so important for them to be on top of their game as they're performing all of this complicated and work up on the space station. Canada has been a leader in space science research. So this bio monitor shirt and headband is currently being worn by David Saint-Jacques as he's serving on the international space station. It looks like a [unintelligible] core workout style tank top. I would think that it kind of-- a person on earth might think this was something for yoga. And it's sort of a stretchy fabric. But inside the shirt and inside the headband there is a series of sensors and these sensors collect information about the wearer's temperature their vital signs, the paths. The information is collected by a computer and sent down to earth so that researchers and medical professionals can access it actually through an app. This piece of equipment was used by Roberta Bonder Canada's first female astronaut during her mission and space shuttle Discovery back in 1991. It looks kind of like a homemade rowing machine though the body of it is very low to the ground and there the sliding seat. But where is the person sitting in it - where their head would be - there an umbrella there with polka dots - colourful polka dots - if a person was taking part in testing the umbrella would be spinning. And the idea is that when you're in space, when you're in microgravity your body doesn't feel which way is up. And if you don't feel which way is up and the cues that you get visually tell you different messages, perhaps something on the wall is hanging sideways and your brain starts to get confused about where up is, you can start to feel dizzy and you can even actually start to feel noxious. The side the artifact itself to have an interactive that we're calling the disorientation station where families can come and test this out for themselves. We've got sort of a mock-up of the polka dot umbrella where people can put their head in the circle stare straight ahead and feel that sensation of visual disorientation and testing whether they themselves would feel dizzy or maybe even a little bit nauseous within that environment.

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Friday February 22, 2019 Full Transcript

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