Miro Cernetig 2013-05-21T10:57:52-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=miro-cernetig Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Miro Cernetig Good old fashioned elbow grease. The Google of Medicine tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1415167 2012-04-13T11:40:09-04:00 2012-06-13T05:12:01-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/
Call it the age of Medical Meta Data. It's the focus of a cutting-edge conference taking place in Vancouver June. 5, called The Data Effect.

It is hardly news that governments have been collecting our medical records, as well as demographic information, and placing it in vast digital data bases for instant retrieval. Doctors in developed health-care systems can now often assess your medical history with a push of a button.

But it only scratches the surface now that we've linked the stethoscope and the microchip.

Add in the rapidly evolving science of computational analytics -- using algorithms and breathtakingly fast computers to analyze health data -- and you get a revolutionary opportunity; the power to sift through those vast troves of our collective bits and bytes to identify previously unnoticed patterns and anomalies. This can save lives and billions of dollars spent in healthcare.

Researchers explain it like this: Use these new tools to delve into the data, which contains the fine-grain of individuals, and how they react to drugs and treatments, and you can discover things it would take years for human researchers on their own to discover, if they ever could.

Mining medical meta data can unearth overlooked negative effects of a drug or, conversely, reveal unexpected benefits, and new treatments. Track how a drug has performed over a vast population, and you might discover what doses are most effective, which are wrong-headed or perhaps dangerous, and even how specific drugs can be tailored to the genetic and lifestyle traits of individual patients.

Open up medical meta data to analytics and you can find out if a medical procedure really gets the results we want. Or it might reveal diagnostic and treatment mistakes we are making and suggest overlooked ways of improving health care. Plug in genetics, a factor that often influences how medicines and treatments work on an individual basis, and you are suddenly looking at the possibility of bespoke medicine -- health care tailored to an individual, in much the same way as a custom-made suit.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that such uses of medical meta data could create $300 billion in value annually for the U.S. health care system. However, it would take time for that to happen because U.S. health care data isn't yet collected on a population-wide basis to offer optimal data sets for analysis.

British Columbia however, is ahead of the curve.

For four decades now, Canada's western-most province has been a world leader in collecting and digitizing health and demographic data of all its citizens. Moreover, it has linked much of this data to the heath care numbers of individuals. That means you can follow an individual's, or a group of individuals', pathway though the health-care system, to see precisely how drugs and treatment worked.

Yet almost every researcher you talk to will also acknowledge this public data resource is not being used to the degree it should be. Why?

In part the answer is privacy. Big Data -- what data-base linking and analysis is sometimes called -- can easily morph into worries of Big Brother if privacy safeguards are not in place. Yet researchers will tell you that technologies and laws exist to ensure individual information is stripped off all data research, guaranteeing privacy.

Another stumbling block is who gets to use this public data resource, for what purposes and who profits from the results? But we already have the ethics boards and public-policy decision makers who can make those calls.

B.C. has built up a world-class database for health-care research. It will help ensure the province, and Canada, are international centers of excellence in health-care research. It's time our best minds and policy makers make a bold move, open up the data and unleash is benefits.]]> Putin's Bearish Threats to Canada's Arctic tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1337976 2012-03-12T13:53:07-04:00 2012-05-12T05:12:01-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/ polar bear his image-makers had tranquilized on the ice, Vladimir Putin looked at the unconscious beast and declared: "He's the real master of the Arctic."

We were all assuming Putin was talking about the bear, of course. But now that he's back in the Kremlin, Canadians would be justified in wondering if it's Putin who wants to be the Arctic czar.

Russia's president has big Arctic ambitions. Russia is pouring billions of dollars into major investments in Arctic shipping routes, northern cities, military development, and resource exploration and extraction. No country in the world can compete on such a scale with Russia in the Arctic.

Unfortunately for Canada, Russia's Arctic ambition reaches areas that Ottawa believes belong to Canada. And claiming sovereignty over those disputed areas is clearly one of Putin's priorities in the years ahead.

In the days before his re-election as Russia's president, Putin told The Globe and Mail that Canada and Russia ought to set up a joint scientific council to determine who owns what parts of the Arctic. Putin's intent, ostensibly, is for Canada and Russia to warm up relations and cooperate in determining how far each country's continental shelf extends toward the North Pole.

Determining that fact is crucial because it will decide which parts of the Arctic Canada and Russia can each claim. And in an age when the icecap is opening up to shipping and drilling rigs, that Arctic sovereignty means acquiring not ice, but the rights to vast reserves of oil, gas, and other resources under the pole.

Canadians should be cautious of Putin's proposal for a joint council. The Russian president probably knows a two-nation council is unlikely to ever reach the sort of clarity or joint scientific consensus that will be needed to carve up ownership of the Arctic and its valuable resources.

Canada and Russia are already deeply mired down on the sovereignty issue. One of the key disagreements is over an obscure, under-sea range of mountains known as the Lomonosov Ridge.

Russia claims the Lomonosov Ridge extends from Russia's landmass into the Arctic Ocean, a supposition that would extend Russia's continental shelf deep into Arctic territory, increasing Russia's claim to resources that in dollar terms are worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions.

Canada, meanwhile, has studied the ridge and its geology extensively. It believes hard science now proves the Lomonosov ridge is not Russian in origin. Canada's former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, spelled out Canada's position in Moscow in 2010.

"We will submit our data on the Lomonosov Ridge and we are confident that our case will prevail backed by scientific evidence," Pravda reported Lawrence Cannon telling reporters, with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in attendance.

The good news for Canada is that its claim seems to be supported by most scientists. "The Lomonosov Ridge, which Russia claims is part of their continental shelf, is clearly a separate oceanic seafloor volcanic ridge and thus not part of Russia's continental shelf," GlobalSecurity.org concluded in a recent analysis.

But Russia and its president are not about to give up. Russia continues to invest in scientific studies to make a counter-claim. And if science isn't enough, Russia continues a military and economic buildup in the Arctic that has not been seen since the Cold War. Stephen Blank wrote in the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasian Daily Monitor:

... a key element in Putin's agenda has been his aggressive campaign to assert Russian interests in the Arctic. The aggressiveness has been manifested in earlier rhetorical exchanges and the resumption of Russian military flights over and from the Arctic, as well as pronounced efforts to rebuild Russia's military in addition to its economic presence there. The purpose, along with the ongoing Russian scientific expeditions in the Arctic, is to gather the materials needed to substantiate Moscow's claims to major portions of the disputed Arctic territory when it presents its case to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in 2012.


Facing off with Russia in the Arctic isn't going to be easy, but Canada punches above its weight. And in April of 2013, we take over the head of the Arctic Council, the eight-nation international body that exerts considerable influence at the top of the world. ]]> Jim Green's Life: An Opera We Should All Applaud tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1287939 2012-02-21T09:01:03-05:00 2012-04-22T05:12:01-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/ battling cancer. And it's spreading.

If you know Mr. Green, you also know it's not smart to ever count out the man with the black fedora, his sartorial trademark. He's beaten cancer once before. And Green doesn't like losing -- to anyone or anything.

Still, after decades of devoting his life to Vancouver's civic scene, now is the moment for Vancouver and its citizens to give Green his public due.

No matter what your politics, regardless of whether you were on Green's side or not in past political battles, there's no denying he is the exemplar of what it means to devote oneself to a city. Green has made Vancouver a better place.

He was fearless in defending the poor who were being kicked out of rooming houses before Expo '86. He remains a tireless voice for affordable housing, to keep Vancouver accessible to all. And through the years he helped mobilize the residents of the Downtown Eastside into both a distinctive neighbourhood and a formidable political advocacy.

Green ran for mayor twice, both times losing. But he was never seen as a loser. Each time he brought heart and an important voice to the city's political stage. His passion was formidable, and that has won him respect, even from his opponents.

Those who have befriended Green over the years (and this is a legion of Vancouverites) know him for his other passion, too -- the opera.

Sit with him over a bottle of red wine in an Italian restaurant and the conversation soon meanders to that subject. He can recite librettos of the great works, he can run you through a history of the divas, and he'll often flash back to his trips to the world's great opera houses for performances that still make him misty. For all his bluster, Jim Green is a softy.

It's really no wonder Green is drawn to the opera, with its grand narratives of triumph and loss, rich and the poor, often pitted in battle. The arc of Green's life -- from Vietnam draft dodger to taxi driver, to longshoremen to city councilor, to university instructor to development consultant and fearless anti-poverty activist -- is a breathtaking opera in itself.

Hearing of his latest battle with cancer, the City of Vancouver is reportedly moving to award Green its highest honour -- the Freedom of The City award. That's a well-deserved accolade.

But why not go one step further?

Green has literally defined Vancouver's skyline. He has deeply influenced its political and cultural life and, despite his local fame, he never lost touch with life in the Downtown Eastside, the neighbourhood that is his muse.

So isn't it time to name a public place in Vancouver's inner city for Jim Green?

Perhaps Pigeon Park or Crab Park, those green spaces he fought to preserve because he knows they are crucial to a good life in the city's poorest neighborhood. Maybe Green's name should be on a street or lane way. Or the square of the new Woodward's building, the edifice Green helped make a reality and is now a catalyst for the Downtown Eastside's revitalization without forgetting its less wealthy residents.

As he will probably tell you, Jim Green's own opera won't be over until the guy in the black fedora sings.

But as he battles through this latest act in a remarkable life, I imagine it would give Green -- and his many friends -- pure pleasure to know Vancouver and its citizens have decided the name Jim Green will be etched onto Vancouver's map, and into its heart, forever.
]]> Oil Orgy and Canada's New Man in London tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1011105 2011-10-14T15:18:03-04:00 2011-12-14T05:12:02-05:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/
That's where former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell found himself in one of his first official public appearances as Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Attending The Energy Roundtable's gathering of Canadian and European business leaders two days ago, the former premier found himself with a front-row seat to one of the more imaginative anti-oil sand protests I've seen -- the oil orgy.

Two protesters -- a man and a woman -- stripped down to their delicate under things and climbed atop a table at Lancaster House. The woman with underwear emblazoned with the maple leaf represented Canada. The man in Union Jack boxer shorts was Britain.

As they stood on top of the table, manhandling each other, the duo soaked themselves in molasses, to represent Alberta oil. Nobody seemed to know what to do at first about the sticky situation, so the duo pretty much took over the room for a minute or two.

The province of British Columbia's ex-premier seemed to get a quiet laugh out of the display. Then, as the protesters were taken away, he slipped back into diplomatic mode to discuss the matter at hand: Where does Canada's energy, including the oil sands, fit in the current world demand for energy?

What the former premier is going to find is that this is just a taste of the sort of protests he -- and Canada -- will encounter in Europe. The protesters on the other side of the Atlantic are organized and as determined as the environmentalists in British Columbia were in the 1980s and 1990s.

Here was part of their official statement of the UK Tar Sands Network, explaining the oil orgy to the rest of us:

"Protesters interrupted the Canada-Europe Energy Round table in London today, to expose the UK government's opposition to European legislation, which would label tar sands oil as highly polluting. The campaigners stripped down to Union Jack boxers and maple leaf underwear and covered each other with oil while kissing and groping in a provocative 'oil orgy'...


"We interrupted the Energy Round table today because the UK and Canadian governments flirtations are developing into friends with benefits. This seedy relationship puts profits for the oil industry and banks ahead of much needed legislation which will curb emissions from transport fuel in Europe..."


Welcome to the foreign service, Mr. Campbell.
]]> With Osama bin Laden Gone, U.S. Asks Pakistan the Same, Troubling Questions tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.894198 2011-07-10T19:12:58-04:00 2011-09-09T05:12:02-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/ holding back $800 million of aid to Pakistan. We've been down this road before. And it's good we're on that road again.

I was in Pakistan days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center as a journalist. Camped out in Islamabad with the other shaken members of the fourth estate, we were unsure what Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf would do.

Would he continue supporting the Taliban, and thus aid in the protection of Al Qaeda, risking war with the United States?

Or would Pakistan's president support the United States? That move carried the risk of Musharraf being deposed by militants or a revolution. But being a U.S. ally promised a big reward, too -- restoration of billions of dollars in military aid Congress had stopped sending in the 1990s, when Pakistan went rogue, developing nuclear bombs against Washington's wishes.

Pakistan's president chose the United States. He weathered the subsequent anti-U.S. protests. Predictably, U.S. aid money began pouring in. His country became a forward operating base in America's hunt for Osama bin Laden.

While the cooperation between the two countries did deepen on the surface after the 9/11 terror attacks, those who knew Pakistan understood the relationship was still defined by suspicion on Washington's part on two counts: Pakistan's connections to Islamic extremists and the Taliban, as well as doubts over the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

The latter point remains a global security issue. Pakistan has been linked to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technology, particularly to North Korea. The U.S. has also spent heavily [with little results] to help the Pakistani military try and achieve "command and control" of its nuclear arsenal, to ensure those nukes don't fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to destroy an infidel city.

When the hunt for Osama bin Laden was in full swing, many of these troubling questions were downplayed in public. The United States needed the deepest level of support it could muster from Pakistan and support its strongman, President Musharraf.

But now that Osama bin Laden has been killed by a team of U.S. Special Forces -- in a hideout on Pakistani soil, near a military academy no less -- the United States is free to once again press hard for answers to these lingering doubts about Pakistan.

First, to what degree are Pakistan's institutions -- its military, government, secret service and religious establishments -- influenced or infiltrated by Islamic extremists?

Second, what are the systems in place to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and, should the government or military fall into the hands of extremists, what measures are in place to keep those nukes from being obtained by people who believe in mass terror?

This isn't fiction from the TV show 24. These are questions under active consideration. U.S. officials and legislators were warned last May that Pakistan might be using some of its U.S. aid to add to its 80 to 100 nuclear devices. Meanwhile, the security of those systems, and the stability of the Pakistani military and its security services, remains unclear.

Bruce Riedel, of the Brookings Institution and co-author of President Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review, put the issue into stark relief. He told the New York Times that Pakistan "has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth."

If you think this all does sound like it could be lifted from an unused episode of 24, you're right. But Jack Bauer is gone, the show cancelled. This is a real-life episode left for us to deal with.

The world needs a stable Pakistan, if it can get it. So do ordinary Pakistanis, the majority of who want a democracy or, at a minimum, a nation that works. To reach that goal, all countries -- including Canada -- need to ensure aid money goes to the right people.




]]> Battleground Vancouver: We Look World-Class Silly tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.879176 2011-06-17T22:04:11-04:00 2011-08-17T05:12:01-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/
That was from a friend in Boston, the first email in my inbox after I go back home from the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.

Here was the second email, from another friend a few thousand kilometers away, watching Lotusland burn on live on TV.

"In Arab nations we see images of violent riots by angry citizens demanding democracy.... in Vancouver we see violent riots by angry fans demanding ?????"

Let's face it Vancouver, we look silly.

The good citizens of Vancouver keep telling themselves it's not so -- it was just a few hooligans, a cabal of crazy anarchists that turned downtown Vancouver into a scene from Clockwork Orange Wednesday night. Unasked, thousands of them showed up the day after with good will and brooms, joining city workers in cleaning up the ash, glass and other detritus of our riot.

But that won't get much airtime on Fox, CNN, the BBC, RAI or any of the other networks that covered our Stanley Cup imbroglio. When Rome burns, no matter how small the fire, that's where the camera's gaze always goes. And in a space of few hours, Vancouver's glorious Olympic afterglow was snuffed out.

Before Game 7 of the Vancouver Canucks vs. the Boston Bruins, we were remembered as a great, mid-size city that in 2010 hosted the best Olympic Games ever. We also held the best ever hockey game ever played at an Olympics, taking home the gold from the Americans. We were the new, confident face of Canada.

Now TV screens around the world -- and these images really are being shown everywhere -- are re-casting Vancouver as a city that has a weird predilection for rioting when it loses hockey games, which we did spectacularly in Game Seven against the Boston Bruins.

Our one bad night, when we had to seal off Battleground Vancouver by closing all the bridges into the downtown, has done serious damage to the image we spent billions of dollars buffing when we held the Olympics.

The Vancouver Sun zeroed in on this damage. Bob Whitelaw, the man who analyzed the first Stanley Cup riot in 1994, when the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the New York Rangers, told the paper the property damage might be $1 million from Wednesday night's riot. But the image damage will take $1 billion to repair.

"That's not just going to take months to heal, that's going to take another five years plus to recover," Whitelaw told the Sun, adding he's not buying into blaming hooligans and anarchists for the riot. "They talk about hooligans, but hooligans generally cover their faces with balaclavas or the like... but some of these people were wide open about letting their faces be seen on camera."

Vancouver's image will eventually recover, of course.

International TV will soon move onto other scenes of burning cars, riot squads and crowds lighting their city in flames. Riots -- far bigger ones -- can be picked from today's turbulent world, where young people are legitimately fighting for human rights, food, democracy or maybe an end to their local tyrant.

Vancouver's riot won't be remembered with such gravitas. Our rioters [or should we just call them sore losers] chose to immolate Vancouver's international image over a game, to get pictures for their Facebook pages, maybe break into the Bay for some free underwear or storm the drug store to get chocolate bars, toothpaste or a new computer.

As riots go, it really was a sad, laughable and small-minded affair. Yup, Vancouver looks silly. World-class silly.
]]> Vancouver: No Place for Globaphobes tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.876248 2011-06-14T07:46:16-04:00 2011-08-14T05:12:02-04:00 Miro Cernetig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miro-cernetig/
Yet when Asia shows interest, Vancouverites have a history of responding with what you might call globaphobia. Sure, we want to be part of Asia's boom. But some of the locals don't always want to deal with the consequences of those rich globals bringing in the dollars.

The latest proof of this schism between the globals vs. the locals is seen in Vancouver's rising real estate prices. Rich Chinese from mainland China [the globals] are showing up at open houses on the city's leafy west side, chequebooks open and Mont Blanc pens drawn to ink deals starting at a $1-million-plus for teeny, tiny bungalows.

Now, some Vancouverites are delighted by this. Their aging little bungalows are going for record prices. If you're an owner -- a minority in Vancouver -- you are getting richer.

Nobody keeps statistics on how many Chinese are actually buying in Vancouver, but the anecdotes are telling. Eric Christiansen, a top relator in West Vancouver, told the Wall Street Journalthat 14 of the 16 homes that sold for more than $5 million this year were bought by these Chinese globals.

It's unquestionably heating up the market. One of my friends flew in a week ago from the east, sold his home for a handsome profit, and then promptly left town. Another pal was given a $2-million-dollar-plus offer on their house and, if he accepts, will now be able to semi-retire -- if, that is, they leave Vancouver for a smaller city.

But there's a whole other subset of Vancouver -- made up of the locals who don't own or are getting nervous about all the change coming in from abroad. They just can't see how they can keep up with China's globals, who they suspect might just be parking their money here, as if the city were a safety deposit box in case things go sideways in China.

One former Vancouver city councilor had the courage to say publicly what's on the minds of a lot of Vancouver's globaphobes: "If our prices are being driven up by people who are simply investing in our community and not living here, there are a whole lot of problems that result. (The high prices) erode the economy, it erodes the community when people come here and buy homes they don't live in and it makes the neighbourhoods unsafe and -- and less vibrant, it splits up families."

Sound familiar? It should.

In the 1990s, as China's communist regime got ready to take back Britain's colony Hong Kong, a wave of nervous Hong Kong Chinese also began flooding into Vancouver, snapping up passports -- and real estate.

Back then the major complaint from the locals was the new arrivals were bulldozing quaint Vancouver cottages to put up their so-called "monster houses" (which, incidentally, everyone seems to do now when they buy an old Vancouver bungalow). In that era, there was also endless debates about Hong Kong's astronauts -- those rich Chinese who seemed to spend most of their lives on jets going back and forth from Hong Kong (where they made their money) and sleepy Vancouver (where they domiciled their wives and children).

That era's backlash from the locals was often characterized as xenophobia. It did seem to echo Vancouver's history of anti-Chinese racism from generations before.

In retrospect, however, that 1990s debate over monster-homes and astronauts wasn't Vancouver's old racism showing. The city had outgrown that sort of nastiness. It was actually Vancovuer's early brush with globalism and it sparked the first flash of globaphobia.

A new sort of immigrant was jetting in, challenging the town's old hegemony. It was the locals (we don't need too much change, thanks very much) vs. the globals (sorry, we have the money and smarts to do what we want). The new arrivals were global citizens from Hong Kong. They didn't come to Vancouver to start up laundromats and noodle houses. They were here to build luxury penthouses and buy them.

Who won? Well, we all did.

Almost two decades after those complaints about the 1990s' wave of Hong Kong immigrants, Vancouver is clearly a more dynamic place.

It is renowned as an international city, perhaps the most Asian metropolis on the continent. Entire new pockets of Vancouver have sprung to life, such as the distinctly Hong-Kong style high-rise enclaves of Coal Harbour and Yale Town. Billions of dollars of foreign investment -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of highly skilled immigrants -- have poured into Vancouver. It's all helped the city climb the ranks as one of the world's great places to live.

So when anyone starts complaining to you that the mainland Chinese are now pricing Vancouverites out of their own city, keep that recent history in mind. Don't join the globaphobes. Vancouver is a place where the locals and globals don't just coexist -- they are actually building a dynamic city for us all.
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