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Commentary, Opinion

The spectre of anti-Semitism haunts BDS

by Simon Paransky on

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At a recent forum of McGill’s Task Force on Respect and Inclusion, Associate Professor Laila Parsons defended the existence of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel at McGill. Parsons claimed that “BDS is a normal method of activism, [and] the University’s condemnation of the BDS [movement] exacerbated the tensions,” referring to the ongoing debate surrounding the BDS movement. Her characterization of BDS is more than just plain wrong. Parsons fails to recognize the ways in which BDS and anti-Semitism intersect—a phenomenon that is particularly evident at McGill.

BDS activism at McGill has long been a vehicle for anti-Semitic vitriol. In 2015, even before the McGill BDS Action Network was formed, The McGill Daily was forced to apologize when one of their BDS-supporting editors objectified Jewish students based on their religious garb by tweeting about “sitting in a section of kippas” at a General Assembly vote on BDS.

To borrow Parsons’ words, tensions were truly exacerbated last year. On Feb. 6, 2017, Igor Sadikov, a BDS Action Network member and then-SSMU councillor and director, tweeted a violent threat against Zionists. At a subsequent Legislative Council meeting, Sadikov openly questioned if Jews constituted an ethno-religious group.

Sadikov’s tweets and comments are unequivocally anti-Semitic. I have argued that, at this juncture, the smart move for BDS supporters would have been to condemn and distance themselves from Sadikov. Instead, BDS supporters celebrated Sadikov with increased fervour. They threw the full weight of their movement behind him. They lined up to defend Sadikov because they shared his views: If they let Sadikov go down, BDS activists would go down with him.

To understand this point, it is important to place BDS in the larger context of the long, violent, and ever-changing foundations of anti-Semitism. John-Paul Pagano, a Brooklyn-based writer with a specialty in the foundations of anti-Semitism, points out that anti-Semitism is, at its core, a “conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite.” Unlike other forms of racism, anti-Semitism “punches up.” It views Jews not as inferior beings to be dominated, but as an all-powerful group that dominates non-Jews.  Pagano finds this common thread in all instances anti-Semitism, regardless of the philosophical movement, time period, or geographical location.

This conception makes it dangerously easy for anti-Semitism to seep into modern leftist activism: Because anti-Semitism is based on a conspiracy theory that Jews are all-powerful overlords, the necessary conclusion is that the non-Jews should resist them. Thus, as Pagano puts it, it is “easy to disguise [anti-Semitism] as a politics of liberation, or at least, to embed anti-Semitism quietly in efforts for social justice,” because anti-Semitism enables the conflation of Jews writ-large with an all-powerful group of oppressors. As a result, BDS campaigns have become mired in anti-Semitism across Canada, where pro-BDS students derailed a vote to commemorate the Holocaust; in the United States, where a BDS vote was strategically scheduled on the Jewish holiday of Passover, when most Jewish students couldn’t attend; and in Europe, where Jewish students face anti-Semitic slurs and are forced out from campus clubs.

Until they reckon with the mess they’ve caused, BDS activists don’t deserve space to spread anti-Semitism—at McGill, or anywhere.

Last semester’s “Democratize SSMU” debacle is a perfect example of anti-Semitism rearing its head within pro-BDS activism. The group was forced to apologize for the blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric in its campaign against ratifying several SSMU Board of Directors members with perceived ties to Jewish groups. The material in question has been conveniently deleted, but in its apology, Democratize SSMU expressed its remorse for “tropes of Jewish people as corrupt and politically powerful.” These are more than “tropes.” They are textbook anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. As Pagano’s analysis reveals, this is a way of thinking inherent to Jew-hatred.

To this day, despite the one-off, half-baked non-apologies, McGill BDS supporters have refused to reckon with their movement’s vile anti-Semitic undercurrent. They steadfastly believe in the nobility of their project. They are fighting for the little guy. They are anti-imperialists. They can do no wrong. Any criticism is merely an attempt by powerful groups to silence them and pro-Palestine advocacy. But, BDS’ mission to support the rights of Palestinians has fallen by the wayside. In reality, the noble BDS crusade at McGill has served only to target Jews.

Sadly, Parsons’ comments fall within this same pattern of anti-Semitism apologia: Proclaim the absolute innocence of BDS, and blame anyone but yourself for the harm done to countless Zionist and Jewish students. Until they reckon with the mess they’ve caused, BDS activists don’t deserve space to spread anti-Semitism—at McGill, or anywhere. Faculty members like Associate Professor Parsons who defend BDS are complicit in this hatred.

Simon Paransky graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Law in December ’17.

@mcgilltribop | [email protected]
Editorial, Opinion

Textbook costs need more than a textbook solution

by McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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Post-secondary textbooks are expensive. Any McGill student can attest to this: For many, spending hundreds of dollars at the bookstore is an unfortunate reality of every semester. Others turn to scouring the internet for alternatives and older editions of required texts, or pawning off last year’s gargantuan, intro-level books on the McGill Textbook Exchange Facebook group. Some students simply forgo a required text altogether.

As with any hurdle that comes with being a McGill student, students across faculties and demographics have innovated their way around outrageously-priced books, which range from $50 to $450 for books for a single course. Yet, the fact remains that the price of textbooks is an enduring financial barrier preventing students from making the most of their degrees. At best, the steep price of textbooks discourages students from the extra reading and work that contribute to and sometimes, are necessary for success in a class. At worst, it is a serious barrier that may prevent students from taking a given course or pursuing a degree at all.

This is not a new problem on campuses, but with the rising costs of overall tuition at Canadian universities, it has only become more urgent. As a result, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Vice-President (VP) University Affairs Isabelle Oke is raising awareness about Open Educational Resources (OERs)—free, online educational resources developed by professors and faculty internationally—and encouraging McGill to contribute to these resources and consider them as a cheaper alternative to print textbooks. Professors, faculty departments, and administrators should follow students’ lead. It is time to innovate solutions to the problem of textbook costs, in order to relieve some of the burden from students.

Part of the problem lies beyond the University; textbooks are expensive because the very small number of academic publishers that dominate the market can make them expensive and incorporate cost-raising extra features to edge out their few competitors. Still, this should not preclude McGill from making changes that are within its scope to alleviate some of the financial burden for students. McGill does have some resources in place to address the problem already, such as alternatives to buying new textbooks: Students can take some course books out from the library, and the McGill library’s online database provides a range of online material.

However, these solutions are far from surefire. As they do not carry enough copies for an entire class, course reserves rely on the majority of students buying their textbooks. The helpfulness of these alternatives also varies significantly across courses and departments. A political science undergraduate student may be able to find most of their required readings on WorldCat, but for a physical science major with latest-edition textbooks required each semester, it is a different story. Some professors are aware of this bind for students, and tailor their syllabi accordingly; however, others do not, or cannot, because their courses demand the use of textbook problem sets, for example.

Professors, faculty departments, and administrators should follow students’ lead. It is time to innovate solutions to the problem of textbook costs to relieve some of the burden from students.

McGill can do better for its students at the level of individual instructor and departmental choices as well as in broader administrative reform. Faculties and departments should consider OERs and other options available to improve access to course resources. The McGill administration should also look at facilitating solutions. Even in the absence of decisive reform, simply consulting with faculties, departments, and students about areas of greatest need, and the feasibility and effectiveness of solutions, could go a long way.

Change need not come exclusively from the administration, though. As the key decision-makers on required course materials, individual professors and departments stand to have the most immediate impact on student textbook costs. Professors should certainly assign the reading materials that they see fit for a course. However, they should be flexible about the version of a textbook students can use. Moreover, as part of the selection process of these materials, instructors must keep students’ finances in mind. If a professor chooses to require the latest edition of a very expensive textbook, then that decision should be based not only on the material’s merits, but its merits relative to costs to students. Departmental oversight of textbook choices should enforce this principle across course sections.

The cost of textbooks is a real and enduring burden that acts as a barrier to learning for post-secondary students, at McGill and elsewhere. It is high time that the University take more concerted, consistent steps to alleviate it.

Commentary, Opinion

Gender-neutral bathrooms have impact beyond the stall

by Grace Gunning on

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In October 2017, the Social Work Students’ Association (SWSA) launched a campaign to designate the bathrooms in the School of Social Work’s Wilson Hall as gender-neutral, meaning that students of any gender would be able to use any bathroom they please. On Jan. 9, the campaign succeeded, and most of the building’s bathrooms have been degendered. The impact of deconstructing gendered bathrooms at McGill goes deeper than just making students more comfortable in the moment. It creates a public space where compulsive gender performance—that is, alignment with a binary gender—is less necessary, altering the gendered architecture of the school. In the context of the gendered bathroom’s history, this is especially notable.

Most humans living before the Victorian era, when the private bathroom first entered the scene, would be baffled by the SWSA’s victory. Until 1739, public facilities in the Western world were not only, in some circumstances, communal, but also reserved for men. Men in ancient Rome sat alongside each other in communal public toilets, and public women’s toilets were unheard of. In the United States, bathrooms were not legally segregated by gender until the early 1900s, as a manifestation of the idea that men and women belonged in separate spheres, intellectually and spatially.

The short history of gendered toilets teaches us, first, that washrooms are a place where public notions of gender are expressed, and second, that these notions of gender are dependent on social context beyond the stall.

If the public washroom is a place where acceptable gender performances are reinforced, as Sheila Cavanagh argues in her book, Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality and the Hygienic Imagination, then the SWSA’s grassroots initiative challenges the social control of gender on campus. In degendering its bathrooms, the SWSA deconstructs gender roles instead of reinforcing them, and opposes a history in which gender politics and taboos play out in the washroom. This has positive implications not just for individual students, but for McGill’s campus culture as a whole.

By affirming trans and gender non-conforming individuals— thereby making them feel safer at school—the change in physical space created by the SWSA contributes to creating a larger academic environment that does not rely on notions of binary gender.

By affirming trans and gender non-conforming individuals— thereby making them feel safer at school—the change in physical space created by the SWSA contributes to creating a larger academic environment that does not rely on notions of binary gender. Degendered washrooms tacitly encourage people of all genders to contribute in an academic context, by creating an inclusionary physical environment that allows trans and gender non-conforming students to feel more comfortable. As the history of washrooms shows, a shift in washroom culture can be indicative of a shift in wider cultural factors—factors that also influence academia and student life. Although a small detail such as degendered bathrooms may not seem revolutionary to unaffected students, it is a signpost of larger social change on campus. For example, the breakdown of the bathroom binary could occur alongside the breakdown of homogenous academic norms that prioritize the perspectives of straight, white, cisgender men. The creation of physical learning spaces that allow for a multiplicity of student identities might encourage such diversity in academic research.

As laudable as the achievement of the SWSA is, it was an entirely student-driven initiative. Similar grassroots movements at schools such as Brown University and Wesleyan University have also been student-run. Tellingly, the only floor in Wilson Hall that has retained its gendered bathrooms is reserved for administrative offices. Administrators at McGill should support their students in reworking their spaces to fit their needs and provide resources to enact lasting institutional change, rather than acting apathetic or hostile. Degendering bathrooms stands to positively impact all members of the McGill community, not just students.

Gendered bathrooms are neither natural nor necessary, and they are bastions of a gender ideology that hurts McGill students. The SWSA has it right: It is time to reach the next phase in the history of bathrooms.

Grace Gunning is a U3 History major, occasional artist, and columnist for The McGill Tribune. She enjoys climbing, gardening, and cheesy 80’s sci fi.

 

@mcgilltribop | [email protected]
Arts & Entertainment, Music

Where do I begin: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

by Karl Neumann on

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With a name like “King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard,” a band is likely to be either out-there and silly, or innovative and revolutionary. Luckily for the music world, this group delivers on both accounts.

Formed in Melbourne in 2010, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is a seven-piece ensemble that includes two singers, two drummers, and three guitarists. The group is signed to their own label, Flightless Records, owned by drummer Eric Moore.

Since their debut, King Gizzard has released 13 albums, with five albums promised—and delivered—in 2017 alone. Those albums genres’ include, but are not limited to, jazz, folk, psychedelia, progressive rock, and metal.

If one can get past their admittedly-ridiculous name, King Gizzard deserve exploration from all listeners. They are transforming the music scene by bridging genres and releasing an unreasonable amount of music, all while not taking themselves too seriously.

Integral to the band’s aesthetic is their tongue-in-cheek attitude. It manifests in bits and pieces of their music, but can also stretch across entire tracks. This can result in the group repeating a single lyric ad nauseum—à la “Rattlesnake” or “Trapdoor”—until the words ring in your head; at other times the group will sneak in goofy riffs that harken back to carnivals or reuse old, tired motifs that spring to life in their new context.

With their dizzying and, perhaps, overwhelming discography, the question of where to start listening can be daunting. While tastes differ, the three albums below are a starting point for newcomers, each representing a different genre.

Without further ado, the best album to start with is Paper Maché Dream Balloon (2015). This folksy acoustic album begins with my personal favorite King Gizzard song, “Sense.” The track is defined by a smooth saxophone line and the unusually subdued voice of the band’s frontman Stu Mackenzie. Paper Maché is a departure from King Gizzard’s typically heavier and more distorted sound. Other tracks that shouldn’t be overlooked include “Bone” and “Cold Cadaver.”

Next is the third of five albums released in 2017, Sketches of Brunswick East. This mellow psychedelic jazz album was created in collaboration with the Melbourne-based Mild High Club. The name is in reference to Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, while also paying homage to the Melbourne neighborhood. The album’s standout track is the six-eight metered “The Spider and Me” that includes samples of running water, birds chirping, and bandmates laughing. While the whole album is a jazz-infused extravaganza harkening back to the Rhodes keyboards and experimental improvisation of the golden era of jazz, its shining moments include the laid-back “You Can Be Your Silhouette” and instrumental “Rolling Stoned.”

Lastly, the fifth of five promised albums for 2017, Gumboot Soup, was squeaked out on Dec. 31. This album is an anthology of B-sides from the four albums that preceded it, yet coalesces as something greater than that. The first track, “Beginner’s Luck,” begins sparsely with Mackenzie’s reverb-affected and distorted voice asking to the listener to gamble, then breaks into an upbeat verse. As the chorus arrives, Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s sultry voice warns the listener to avoid hubris. Another notable track, the relatable “I’m Sleeping In” is a fitting anthem for lazy mornings during this gloomy and frigid semester.

King Gizzard has also released several metal and progressive rock albums. If these genres are your cup of tea, check out Murder of the Universe, Nonagon Infinity, Flying Microtonal Banana, and Polygondwanaland.

Regardless of your musical preference, there’s something in King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s discography that is sure to catch your ear. If the three albums mentioned above don’t do it for you, check out some of their other albums such as Oddments, with its groovy, indie sound, or the long-form jazz album Quarters. Whether you’re already a diehard fan or if you can’t find a single song that appeals to you, King Gizzard is bound to drop a least another album with a fresh, genre-blending sound before the year ends that could easily become your new favorite.

Science & Technology

Reducing chemical waste through sustainable ketone-making

by Emma Gillies on

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Pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and plastics all owe their existence to chemical synthesis. Ketones, a functional group with a central carbon double-bonded to an oxygen, are an important ingredient in a wide range of useful chemicals. Unfortunately, their synthesis is energy-intensive and requires many steps, creating significant chemical waste. Bruce Arndtsen, a professor in McGill’s Department of Chemistry, has discovered a less wasteful and more efficient method to synthesize functional groups.

Organic functional groups are collections of atoms that are responsible for the characteristics of a compound. Depending on their connectivity and the strength of their bonds, different functional groups have unique properties and behaviours.

Aside from ketones, several other common organic functional groups are found in pharmaceuticals, including esters, amides, and alcohols. The syntheses of these groups require a starting molecule which can then be used to create the functional group. This method generates a lot of waste, however, and negatively impacts the environment.

According to Arndtsen, the way that organic functional groups are currently made creates waste because the synthesis consists of three to five steps.

“Every synthetic step you do makes waste,” Arndtsen said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “The more steps you can eliminate, the less waste you create.”

This is a general philosophy in green chemistry, a scientific field that emerged in the 1980s as the environmental movement was picking up steam. Arndtsen and his fellow researchers used a green approach to find a more efficient and less wasteful way of synthesizing functional groups. His recent article on ketone synthesis in Natural Chemistry uses an alternative method with less steps.

“What we did in this paper is […] we came up with a way of essentially using two readily available substrates,” Arndtsen said.

The substrates Arndtsen used were carbon monoxide, a toxic gas that is a byproduct of combustion, and arenes, ringed chains of hydrocarbons, which come from petroleum. Both chemicals are easy to acquire and inexpensive.

Ketones are also detrimental to human health: Carbon monoxide deprives vital organs of oxygen and can result in death, while arenes are carcinogenic. Coupled together, these two chemicals react in a synthetic chemical reaction to form a more complex product – in this case, ketones.

Using carbon monoxide and arenes as substrates in turn reduces the abundance of these harmful compounds all the while eliminating unnecessary, waste-producing steps in ketone synthesis. While this method still produces waste, Arndtsen said that it’s a lot better than the previous way of doing it.

“Classic organic chemistry is very powerful because it lets us make all the organic molecules we have around us […], especially in the drug industry,” Arndtsen said.

But now, researchers are trying to find ways around classic organic chemistry methods because they generate waste. With more complex molecules in particular, the amount of waste created through their synthesis is huge because multiple reactions are needed to build the molecule.

Arndtsen would like to look beyond the pharmaceutical world to create an even more efficient way of creating ketone structures or related products. He would also like to apply the synthesis not only to arenes but also to alkanes, which are linear hydrocarbon chains like methane that can be used in natural gas.

Sustainable solutions are needed for problems such as food waste, climate change, and plastic pollution. Arndtsen’s research is a reminder that green chemistry is a field that is open to innovation and new ideas–and it’s working to prevent pollution in the first place.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

In celebration of ugly dancing

by Sophie Brzozowski on

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I would have loved nothing more than to see Lorde murder her Grammys performance on Jan. 28, and it broke my heart that she didn’t get to. After an exhausting six or so months of scandal, I had just about lost all faith in the entertainment industry. I was ready to ring in the new year with some kind of celebration. I was ready for Lorde to shake, shimmy, and violently convulse all over that Grammys stage and to shake my fist triumphantly in the air as I watched because I just love it when she does that.

See, for a while there, I thought that kind of stage presence was a thing of the past for women. Those awkward, disarming spasms, funny faces, absolute, ugly abandon—I figured it had come and gone and that I had missed it. Showmanship like Lorde’s was something I’ve admired since forever, but only from afar because it appeared to be going extinct.  

Take Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, for example. She was a front-woman to be reckoned with. Whether it was her hideous costuming, her outlandish choreography, or because she’d shamelessly fellated a microphone before an audience of thousands, Karen never failed to scandalize and to amaze.

“Every photo you’d see [in the press] would be the most unattractive, ugly moment of every show,” O said once in an interview with Elle, “But it’s pretty awesome that that’s what they wanted to showcase. The real. The gritty, visceral, bleh real.”

I will be forever grateful to Karen O for carrying the legacy of Hole, of The Raincoats, of Blondie, and of so many other female-fronted bands who like to get freaky on stage, into the 21st century.

But of course, we mustn’t neglect the solo acts. Fiona Apple was always an unlikely hero of ugly dancing in my eyes. Though her smooth, crooning ballads might conjure up images of elegance and demureness, she could headbang with the rest of them. Her 1997 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman is bound to stick with you. She was only 19 at the time, but with a  brash confidence far beyond her years. During the performance of her would-be hit song, “Criminal,” Fiona throws an absolute tantrum on-stage. She growls into the microphone, she stomps her feet, she howls her lyrics. It’s amazing.

But, of course, audiences outside of the artists’ cult following were never especially kind to Fiona, or to Courtney Love, or to any of them for that matter. In fact, it seemed for a long time that this kind of stage presence was being used as further proof of the singers’ drama queen, angst-ridden personas. It seemed like maybe Ugly Dancing would come to be remembered as one of the kitschy, retro signifiers of late 1990s/early 2000s angry girl music, alongside poorly executed plaid and that one Meredith Brooks song.

I figured that while David Bowie and Eddie Vedder would forever be canonized in music history for their theatrics, Alanis Morisette would only ever be remembered as angry. But, whenever I see Lorde perform, and whenever I see Este Haim’s infamous bass face, I think, “They did it! They brought it back!”

There are few things more rock ‘n’ roll than being strange or ugly or spooky onstage. Ugly Dancing is about more than defying traditional standards of beauty and femininity, although this is a huge part of it. It’s about feeling so at home and comfortable in your own body that for the length of exactly one set, you let it do whatever it wants. I can only imagine how good, how revolutionary, this must feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4hUmKZvBBE
 

I’m bummed that Lorde didn’t get to perform last week, but I’m trying not to let that disappointment eclipse my joy at seeing a mainstream pop artist continue to be so unapologetically strange every chance she gets. Whether or not she realizes it, every time she gets up onstage and does something ugly, her fans are watching and they are shaking their fists triumphantly!

Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Coronas set to take North American stages by storm

by Kevin Vogel on

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In the summer of 2016, an indie pop rock band hailing from Dublin called the Coronas burrowed themselves in the quaint County of Dingle on the southwestern coast of Ireland. The work they created would eventually evolve into their fifth studio album, Trust the Wire, which made waves in both Irish and international markets upon its June 2017 release. Like much of their repertoire, the record explores introspective themes concerning love and fraternity, and, more specifically, touches on subjects like the band members’ experiences and uncertainty in the music industry.

“[When making the album, we asked ourselves] ‘What are we going to write about that we haven’t written about before?’” Danny O’Reilly, the band’s lead singer, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “You have to write about what you’re going through and hope that people relate to it [….] I find that the more honest I am, the more that people relate to [my music].”

While Trust the Wire adds some zest to the Coronas’ typical easy-strumming guitar style with some folksy riffs like those in “Not What You Know,” the collection largely sticks to what has made the band so successful in its 10 years in the Irish spotlight: Gentle, harmonic chords that slowly crescendo into the crux of the songs. “Real Feel” features an electric guitar solo to finish up the song, and “We Couldn’t Fake It” culminates in a climatic fortissimo.

“These songs are about moments,” O’Reilly said. “Oftentimes we write a song and really it’s just about that climatic moment, and we try to build and create moments that create a special impact on people [….] Maybe it’s because we know it’s our strength. It just happens naturally.”

The album creation process began with the Coronas breaking away from Island Records, feeling like the label was not supporting the band enough as artists. The London-based production company that has managed talents including U2, Drake, and Ariana Grande, and worked with the group on their 2014 album The Long Way.

“We were at a crossroads,” O’Reilly said. “ [We] did some soul searching and made the decision to leave and release our content independently.”

Breaking away from Island Records eventually led to the formation of the Coronas’ independent production company, So Far So Good Records. With this newfound freedom, the band determined to experiment a new way of writing music. They traveled to the Irish countryside and the rest is history.

“With the last album we had it back in our mind that we signed with a major so let’s write singles, let’s write hits,” O’Reilly said. “[With] this album we didn’t go over the top, we tried creating something a little more atmospheric, a little more chill.”

The result came to be the most successful album the band has created to date. Topping at number one on the Irish music chart and just coming off a world tour last fall, the Coronas’ future looks promising. With British singer-songwriter Bobby Long opening, they begin their North American tour on Feb. 8 at Petit Campus in Montreal, to be followed by shows across Canada and the United States.

O’Reilly cites the band members’ close friendships with each other as a prime driver of their sustained success over the years and how that fuses itself in with their music.

“Obviously [while our music in Trust the Wire is] still about relationships and friendships, really it’s about the band and our desire and our ambition, you know, songs about writing songs,” O’Reilly said. “Trying not to get too caught up in the music industry.”

The Coronas are set to be on tour for much of 2018, after which O’Reilly hopes to work on a new album.

The Coronas are set to perform at Petit Campus this Thursday, Feb. 8 at 8pm. Tickets are available online.

From the BrainSTEM, Science & Technology

Cloning: A tale of two monkeys

by Océane Marescal on

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At the end of 2017, researchers in Shanghai successfully cloned primates for the first time: Two macaque monkeys they named Hua hua and Zhong zhong. Published in the latest edition of the journal Cell, this was the first time that a Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT)—a reproductive cloning strategy—was used on monkeys. SCNT is not a new technology: Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned using SCNT in 1996, and other animals like frogs, mice, rabbits, cows, and dogs have also undergone cloning via this method. Previous attempts to clone primates had failed before Mu-Ming Poo and his team from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences successfully carried out the procedure.

While celebrated as a scientific advancement of epic proportions, the cloning of primates comes with many ethical considerations, and science is obliged to weigh the pros and cons of animal cloning.

Erika Kleiderman is a lawyer and an academic associate at the Centre of Genomics and Policy. Kleiderman shared her support for animal cloning and emphasized its potential in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

“One of the most important impacts of animal cloning is with regard to biomedical research,” Kleiderman said.

Animal models, notably primates, are the most reliable model organisms for researchers to study complex human diseases and test new treatment options. Genetically identical clones allow researchers to have better regulation of differences between treatment and control groups. Any difference between the clones post-treatment can be attributed to the testing condition, and not genetic difference.

Kleiderman also suggested that animal cloning could serve a useful purpose in species conservation efforts and food production.

“[There is also] the possibility to save endangered species, improve animal breeding, and increase humans’ food sources by producing more meat at a quicker rate,” Kleiderman said. “Another more ethically contentious argument is the possibility of cloning deceased pets.”

Critics of animal cloning have argued against the claim that it could have beneficial scientific applications. The most common concerns surround animal cruelty or suffering, and the conditions in which cloned animals are kept in laboratories.

Many question the financial feasibility of keeping cloned animals as test subjects. Cloning is a time and labour-intensive area of research with a very low success rate and a high price tag. In Poo’s study, only two macaques of the 109 cloned embryos survived until birth.  

Some scientists worry that cloning is a “slippery slope”: If we allow animal cloning, it might only be a matter of time before we move on to cloning humans. The recent cloning of these monkeys, being members of the order of primates, brings greater attention to this question.

Kleiderman explained the basics of human cloning.

“When we talk about human cloning, there are two categories: Therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning,” Kleiderman said. “Therapeutic cloning entails creating a cloned embryo to harvest stem cells for the purpose of treating a disease or an injury, whereas reproductive cloning entails implanting a cloned embryo into a woman for the purpose of creating a human being that is genetically identical to another human being.”

Some countries, including Belgium, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Israel, allow the use of therapeutic cloning. Human reproductive cloning, on the other hand, is banned internationally.

“Banning reproductive cloning aims to protect the identity and integrity of the human species, as well as human life in general,” Kleiderman explained.

In Canada, both forms of human cloning are prohibited under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, with any individual found guilty liable to a fine of up to $500,000 or imprisonment of up to 10 years, or both.

As advancements in science bring human cloning closer to reality, it’s important to figure out where we stand.

“It would be important to reignite public discussion on the topic of human cloning in order to consider permissible applications of the technology, if any, as well as the best ways to move forward regarding its regulation,” Kleiderman said.

 

What are your views on animal cloning?

pro-cloning
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Science & Technology

Tide Pods: Uncovering the science behind the meme

by Ariella Garmaise on

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In an internet age that boasts impressively dumb viral video challenges—neknominations, the cinnamon challenge, and the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, to name a few—it takes both creativity and tenacity to rise above the rest. Enter the Tide Pod trend, the YouTube phenomenon in which challengers attempt to eat chemically toxic detergent packets. The game has landed over 12,000 participants in the emergency room in 2017 alone, where Joe Schwarcz—chemistry professor and the director of the Office of Science and Society (OSS)—explained that doctors are “forced to treat teenagers who had fallen off the evolutionary ladder.” The Tide Pod challenge has become fashionable even among Canada’s supposedly best and brightest, and includes an incident at McGill’s very own Upper Residences. Nonsensical but literally bursting on the scene, the challenge’s danger can be attributed to the detergent’s complex chemical makeup.

With the detergent’s bright blue and orange pattern and lollipop-esque swirl, infants confused Tide Pods for candy long before it was an Internet gag. For the first two years after the product’s release in 2011, an average of one American child was sent to the hospital every day for mistakenly ingesting a Tide Pod. Developers at Proctor & Gamble—the multinational corporation that manufactures Tide products—began responding to this health crisis in 2015.

“They coat the outside of the tide pods with a bitter taste to discourage children from eating it,”  University of Toronto Doctor of Pharmacy student Charlotte Boone explained. “That bitter taste makes children automatically feel nauseous.”

Even if you can’t get past the bitter taste and nausea, Tide Pods can do damage even before you swallow.

“When you first put [Tide Pods] in your mouth, the pH can begin to kill the cells in your mouth before it even reaches your gastrointestinal tract,” Boone said.

The damage increases after the Tide Pod is ingested, harming the body’s internal organs.

“The irritation going down your esophagus can cause you to rapidly inhale,” Boone said. “If the detergent gets into your lungs, it can even damage the mucous membrane in your lungs. As well, it can cause heartburn [….] If you’re consuming many pods, it can even perforate your esophagus, cause your stomach to ulcer, cause further heartburn, and this is when it gets really, really dangerous.”

Tide Pods are packed with over 700 chemicals, and while their constitution parallels that of regular detergent, their toxicity is compounded by a high concentration. To prevent the pods’ contents from dissolving the external packaging, Tide Pods must have a maximum water weight of seven per cent. At such high concentrations, chemicals in Tide Pods can be deadly when ingested.

“There’s hundreds of chemicals in [Tide Pods], such as quaternium-15,” Boone said. “When absorbed in the human body, [quaternium-15] can actually release formaldehyde [….] Formaldehyde will cause irritation in the respiratory tract, and skin and rash irritations, but then it can be fatal at really high concentrations.”

Moreover, scientists are still unsure of the total extent of the effects that Tide Pods can have when ingested.

“It’s not as though there’s randomized control trials to see the effects of these chemicals on the human body, because they’re not meant for consumption,” Boone said.

Scientists have numerous recommendations for how to prevent poisonings. For families with infants, they recommend liquid or powdered detergent that will deter toddlers from mistaking the pods for candy. Parents can also carry Ipecac, a drug that induces vomiting in the event that their child ingests any toxic substances. In an effort to mitigate the damage that this viral social media challenge has inflicted, YouTube has begun removing Tide Pod challenge videos to discourage viewers from participating.

As Schwarcz explained in an OSS Newsletter on Jan. 26, the Tide Pod challenge is simply not worth the medical risk.

“Biting into a laundry pod has no point,” Schwarcz wrote “Other than to demonstrate the mental shortcomings of the biter.”

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