Your hosts this week are Lynn Desjardins, Levon Sevunts, Marie-Claude Simard and Carmel Kilkenny. (Video of show at bottom of page)
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Humboldt Broncos hockey player Logan Boulet had signed an organ donation card, inspiring other Canadians to do the same in the wake of his death. (Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League)
Humboltd, Saskatchewan has been in the national spotlight for the last week, following the tragic accident there.
A transport trailer collided with the bus carrying the town’s young hockey players, leaving 16 people dead to date, and another 13 severely injured
Just a few weeks ago, 21-year old Logan Boulet had signed an organ donation card and talked to his family about why. When it became clear he would not survive the accident, he was placed on life support and several of his organs were retrieved by surgeons.
These will help six people who are waiting for transplants. News of this inspired many Canadians to sign up to donate their own organs in the event of death.
Several provinces in Canada noted big increases in their registries. Lynn Desjardins spoke with Michael Terner, the program lead for the Canadian Organ Replacement Register at the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean seeds. (Dan Gill/AP)
The US Dept of Justice gave provisional approval to the takeover of bio-tech giant Monsanto by German chemical giant Bayer, this week.
Both organizations are already huge multinationals in the global agricultural market. The multi-billion dollar deal now greatly reduces the competition in agricultural chemicals and seeds.
Meanwhile two giant fertilizer companies, Potash Corp and Agrium, have merged to form the company, Nutrien. ChinaChem and Syngenta combined in another chemical and bio tech mega merger worth billions of dollars. And Dow and Dupont did the same.
Farmers world-wide fear the global agricultural market is now clearly dominated by just three or four huge corporations.
This means likely increased costs for fertilzers and disease and pest control chemicals, more genetically modified crops and fewer varieties of crops, and increased costs for consumers.
Marc Montgomery spoke to Jan Slomp, vice president of Canada’s National Farmers Union, and asked him about their concerns over this latest mega merger.
Rohingya refugee children fly improvised kites at the Kutupalong camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on December 10, 2017. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
Dr. Megan Doherty is a pediatrician and palliative care specialist who works at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO).
She recently returned from a trip to Bangladesh where she and some colleagues visited the Rohingya refugee camps.
She was struck by the lack of palliative care. A little 4-year-old girl who was suffering horrible headaches due to eye cancer was one case that really moved her.
In an interview this week, Dr Doherty told Levon Sevunts, there was nothing she could do. The little girl died in terrible pain because the clinics in these camps do not have the medicine to treat and manage pain in chronically or terminally ill patients.
Now she is trying to raise awareness about this hidden crisis in refugee camps. Dr. Doherty says with so many resources going to save lives, there is little left for those who are beyond saving.
Images of the week
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