Feature Stories

Pity the person who makes the mistake of picking on Kieran O'Doherty. The polite and seemingly unassuming UBC assistant professor holds a fourth-degree black belt in karate, a discipline in which he has trained for more than twenty-five years.

Although it focuses on volatile combat techniques, for O'Doherty – a GE³LS researcher at UBC's Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE) who explores social and ethical issues associated with emerging biotechnologies such as biobanks and metagenomics – karate is about much more than just fighting.

"It offers a structured program to continue a life-long process of self-improvement," explains O'Doherty, who began training at age 10, shortly after moving from Austria to South Africa with his Irish father (hence O'Doherty's distinctly Irish name) and Austrian mother. "Earlier on, I wanted to excel physically. I later became fascinated with the history of martial arts and learning the subtlety of movement and technique that has developed over centuries. In more recent years, I've enjoyed the community that comes with the particular karate association I belong to. I also very much appreciate the practical part of self-defence that comes with training."

O'Doherty's evolving interest in the art of karate has, in some ways, paralleled his evolving interest in academia.

Fascinated with the physical world as his main "subject matter", O'Doherty started out his academic career early on with a double major in chemistry and physics from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

"I was young and far less practical than I am now. I was more interested in knowledge for knowledge's sake. I wanted to understand the physical world around me."

"I was a bit naïve. I had no clue whatsoever what the practical consequences of studying certain subjects were, and what you could do for work with a basic BSc. The jobs I could get with my chemistry and physics undergrad degree were not the kind of jobs I was interested in. It was a bit of a wake-up call."

Over time, O'Doherty became equally interested in the more dynamic, human side of life. So while working part-time as a karate instructor, he went back to university part-time, obtaining the equivalent of a major in psychology. This was followed by a one-year stint teaching English in Korea and travel throughout Europe. After landing in Australia a few years later, O'Doherty decided it was "time to get serious about life."

This new-found focus propelled O'Doherty to pursue graduate studies in psychology. As part of his PhD, he conducted qualitative analyses of the language of risk and uncertainty, using genetic counseling for familial cancer as a main case study.

Through a contact from his karate life, O'Doherty followed up a lead on a post-doctoral position focused on consumer behaviour research at a telecommunications start-up in Australia, called "mNet".

"It was unusual to do a post-doc within industry," says O'Doherty, who at that point had just completed his PhD in psychology at the University of Adelaide, "but we applied for a 'linkage grant' between academia and industry, which enabled me to do it."

"The company was very progressive. We did a lot of concept testing on new innovative products. We spoke to people to get their initial reactions. The work involved focus groups, interviews, surveys."

Although working in industry wasn't quite O'Doherty's cup of tea (following the one-year post-doc position, he was offered a permanent position, but left the firm after 8 months to pursue positions in academia), his interest in qualitative research continues to be a main passion.

"In most places in the world, qualitative research is marginalized. People think it's not as good as having hard numbers. But, when it comes to science, often the broader, societal kinds of questions we're looking at have to do with meaning and value. Numbers are great, but if you want to understand what a technology means to a community when it's introduced into that community, you need qualitative research."

Currently working with CAE colleagues Mike Burgess, Peter Danielson, Ed Levy and Dan Weary on a variety of Genome Canada-funded GE³LS projects, including salmon genomics, biobanking, bioremediation and metagenomics, O'Doherty specializes in conducting deliberative public engagements to inform policy on the social and ethical dimensions of emerging biotechnologies.

"I am currently working on bridging the gap between public or community consultation and actual impact in policy and lived experience. New technologies and the various policies that surround their implementation have real effects on people's lives. We need to understand what those effects are, take what people tell us, and integrate that into practical and sustainable policy decisions."

Although his BSc may seem like an unrelated chapter from his earlier life, it is the bridge between his past interest in the physical world and his current interest in the social world that fascinates O'Doherty the most.

"My background in science helps me to connect cutting edge natural science with an understanding of the human element of that research."

Having crossed many continents in his life journey from Austria to Canada – by way of South Africa, England and Australia – O'Doherty has a distinct and intriguing accent that's hard to place. But just like his academic experience, which has crossed the gulf between several disciplines, it is the sum total of his diverse past experiences that makes Kieran O'Doherty so very distinct and intriguing.

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Dr. Kieran O'Doherty

Areas of expertise and research

Qualitative methods (discourse analysis, discursive psychology), risk communication, public engagement, consumer behaviour research, and social psychology. Specific areas of interest include agency; social categorization; theory and methodology in the social sciences; deliberative democracy; risk, probability, and uncertainty; and the psychology of health and illness.

Selected publications

O'Doherty, K. (in press). Agency and Choice in Genetic Counseling: Acknowledging Patient' Concerns. Journal of Genetic Counseling.

O'Doherty, K., & Burgess, M. (2009). Engaging the public on biobanks: Outcomes of the BC Biobank Deliberation. Public Health Genomics, 12(4), 203-215.

O'Doherty, K., Navarro, D.J., & Crabb, S.H. (2009). A Qualitative Approach to the Study of Causal Reasoning in Natural Language: The Domain of Genes, Risks and Cancer. Theory and Psychology, 10(4), 475-500.

O'Doherty, K. & Augoustinos, M. (2008). Protecting the Nation: Nationalist rhetoric on asylum seekers and the Tampa. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 18(6), 576-592.

Burgess, M., O'Doherty, K., & Secko, D. (2008). Biobanking in British Columbia: Discussions of the Future of Personalized Medicine through Deliberative Public Engagement. Personalized Medicine, 5 (3), 285-296.

O'Doherty, K. (2007). Implications of conflicting definitions of probability to health risk communication: A case study of familial cancer and genetic counselling. Australian Health Review, 31(1), 24-33.

O'Doherty, K. & Suthers, G. K. (2007). Risky communication: Pitfalls in counseling about risk, and how to avoid them. Journal of Genetic Counseling, 16(4), 409-417.

O'Doherty, K. & LeCouteur, A. (2007). 'Asylum Seekers', 'Boat People' & 'Illegal Immigrants': Social Categorization in the Media. Australian Journal of Psychology, 59 (1), 1-12.

O'Doherty, K. (2006). Risk Communication in Genetic Counselling: A discursive approach to probability. Theory and Psychology, 16 (2), 225-256.

"People find it hard to figure out what I am," comments Peter Phillips. "It's probably because I'm a bit of a chameleon. I can converse with economists, political scientists, people from industry and people from government. Although it's not my core expertise, I can also connect with civil society."

This chameleon-like nature has helped Phillips jump from industry to government and from government to academia. While he may be hard to define, when pressed, Phillips will describe himself as "a classical political economist, concerned about how we make decisions in society." With a laugh, he claims "a series of missteps" led him to where he is today: Professor of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan; co-PI on a large scale GE³LS project, VALGEN; and prolific author of numerous books, book chapters and articles on the socio-economic implications of genomics.

Phillips' peripatetic journey began when he couldn't decide between political science and economics, and so chose a joint honours undergrad program.

"At that time, it was one of two remaining joint departments in Canada, but it was not a popular program. The disciplines couldn't talk to one another."

So, when it came time to choose a graduate program, Phillips picked economics over poli sci.

"I was interested in markets and problem areas, not so much theoretical constructs."

His M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science focused on "hard-core mainline macro trade theory". After graduating, he accepted a position as a research economist with the Economics Division in the Montreal Head Office of the Royal Bank of Canada.

One day, an ad in the careers section caught Phillips' eye. It was for a government position in his home province of Saskatchewan.

"I'm an economist, so I thought, 'hey, this could mean a free trip home'," he laughs. "I had no desire to work in government, but the job did look interesting. But when I got there, they already had a binding offer on the table, which I just couldn't refuse. So I became an economic forecaster in Premier Grant Devine's policy secretariat. For years, I was a career civil servant."

Focused mainly on agriculture policy issues, Phillips slowly became disillusioned with "how the analysis was being framed".

"It was done in a very 'cost-benefit' way, a very political way. Finally I said, 'I've had enough,' and I went after some scholarships so I could do my PhD."

He returned to the London School of Economics and completed a PhD on international political economy "exactly two years to the day" after starting the program. His thesis on wheat, Europe and the GATT trade deal was later turned into a book (Phillips, P., Wheat, Europe and the GATT: A Political Economy Analysis, Pinter Publishers, 1990).

Although Phillips had "no intention" of going back to Saskatchewan, or back to the civil service, the Province of Saskatchewan clearly had other ideas. Soon after getting his PhD, the Province made Phillips another offer he couldn't refuse. Although the department that hired him was eliminated after only "one minute on the job", he was made Director of the Policy and Research Branch, in the Ministry of Economic Diversification and Trade. In 1992, he was promoted to Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, in the Ministry of Economic Development – a post he held for five years.

"I outlasted three ministers, eight deputies and two governments. It was an exciting job, and fun."

But after seven years in policy development, Phillips felt he needed a change. Once again, perusing the careers section, he came across an ad seeking a Research Chair at the University of Saskatchewan.

"It was one of those jobs you dream about, but never think you'll actually get to do. The chair was focused on trade policy in agriculture and designed to bring people in for short periods of time. I thought, 'this looks interesting, let's try academia'."

Phillips has never looked back. After the two-year term as Van Vliet Chair in USask's Department of Agricultural Economics ended in 1999, he developed and occupied a five-year NSERC/SSHRC Chair in Managing Knowledge-Based Agri-Food Development within the same department.

It was during this time that his zigzag path towards GE³LS research started to pick up speed. During his first year of academic life, a "drinking party with a bunch of natural scientists" got Phillips thinking about genomics for the first time.

"By then, the first GM canola had entered the market, but nobody had put any effort into looking at it. A few of us ended up writing a book on this, which was published in 2001. Here we were natural scientists and social scientists voluntarily working together, looking at regulation and governance issues [relating to the emergence of canola]."

The award-winning book (Phillips, P. and G.G. Khachatourians, The Biotechnology Revolution in Global Agriculture: Invention, Innovation and Investment in the Canola Sector, CABI, 2001) marked the beginning of Phillips' now long-time involvement in GE³LS research. Among other GE³LS-related work, he was appointed to the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, known as "CBAC", and co-chaired the review of GM regulation in Canada. Later, he was asked to join a NAFTA Chapter 13 expert panel to examine a corn-related dispute in Mexico.

Prior to becoming Professor of Public Policy at USask, Phillips was Professor of Agricultural Economics, Managing Technological Change, and Political Studies – in that order. His most recent project is the large-scale, Genome Canada-funded "Value Addition through Genomics and GE³LS", "VALGEN" for short. The research team is investigating how Canada can benefit from genomics-based agricultural applications, and focusing on "the crucial factors that affect how scientific discoveries make their way from laboratory to the marketplace". (See feature article on VALGEN in the last issue of Impact.)

"When you get GE³LS and genomics people in the same room, one umbrella we all seem to live under is knowledge management. This includes issues of democratic engagement, regulation, knowledge creation, IP management and technology transfer."

For now, Phillips seems more than content to pursue his research and teaching interests in international political economy, governing transformative technological change, and public policy. But given his chameleon-like track record for changing colours, and his propensity for dreamily perusing the career section, who knows where he'll go next?

A self-described "townie" who hails from a personal circle of "teachers, farmers, cowboys, cattle people, and a few builder-developers", Camille Ryan often strains to explain how she earns a living when she's at family gatherings.

"I'm the first person in my family to get a graduate degree. They really don't understand what I do, so I just tell them I'm a researcher."

But lately, instead of stopping conversation, Ryan's vocation has stirred it up. After Canadian flax exports to Europe were severely restricted when traces of "Triffid" – a genetically modified variety of flaxseed developed in Saskatchewan – were discovered in some shipments, Ryan's research work has provided fertile ground for animated discussions among family and friends.

"It's a pretty hot topic. They all understand what flax means to the Canadian prairie economy. Suddenly, there's a lot to talk about," laughs Ryan.

Now a professional research associate, Ryan is working on the integrated GE³LS component of a Genome Canada-funded project called, Total Utilization Flax Genomics, or "TUFGEN" for short. As her contribution to the project, Ryan is exploring the intellectual property and regulatory challenges of innovative crop varieties. She works closely with flax producers, government, stakeholder groups and academia.

While happily entrenched as a GE³LS researcher, Ryan admits she never planned to go to university at all, and certainly never dreamed she'd earn a PhD.

"Growing up, it just wasn't part of my mindset," she explains.

How she got to where she is today – a published researcher with interests ranging from governance and intellectual property to technology transfer and social network analysis – is partly due to serendipity and partly due to Ryan's innately practical nature.

Back in the early nineties, Ryan was working as a freelance graphic designer in Saskatoon.

"I was a single mom and I was struggling. It was a hand-to-mouth existence. I decided I needed a steady job."

In 1991, she accepted an admin position at a local plant biotech company called Prairie Plant Systems in Saskatoon. The company happened to be located in Innovation place, an Agricultural biotech cluster adjacent to the University of Saskatchewan. She eventually landed a position with AgrEvo Canada Inc., a larger biotech company located in the same cluster. Ryan not only used her graphic design skills while with the company, but began practicing a new skill: communicating science to laypeople.

"The mid-nineties was a significant time for agricultural biotech in Saskatchewan. The company I worked for was launching genetically modified canola – Saskatoon was a canola research hub. We hosted people from all over the world. We needed tools to communicate the science in a simple way."

As an administrator, who did "everything, including inventory", she realized that if she wanted to work her way up, she'd need a degree.

"I would have loved to get a fine arts degree, but I was a single mom with two small children, so I had to be practical."

Ryan enrolled in the College of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan. Even back then, she saw the value of a cooperative program, linking the College with the local biotech sector.

"I remember saying, 'We have a canola research centre right out our backdoor. Why aren't we leveraging that?'"

By her fourth year, the College had instituted a business cooperative education program. She moved into the newly minted Biotech Management program at the University of Saskatchewan. When she started her Masters, she was referred to Peter Phillips, who became her supervisor.

She counts Phillips as a generous mentor, describing him as "very creative and open to ideas, even bad ones – you can truly brainstorm with him."

Under Phillips' supervision, Ryan's Masters was eventually rolled into a PhD.

"I thought I was too old to be getting a PhD. Again, I was trying to be practical. Then someone told me, 'you're going to be forty anyway, nothing will change that, so why not be forty and working on your PhD'?"

So she did just that and eventually earned her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies with a thesis aptly entitled: "Performance of Public-Private Collaborations in Advanced Technology Research Networks: Network Analyses of Genome Canada Projects". She later took on three part-time post-doc positions: working on a team effort to develop a patent landscape of the mouse genome; exploring terminator gene technology in the public sphere; and examining systems of governing access to knowledge and benefit-sharing. And somehow, between work, studies and family (she also got married and settled on acreage outside of Calgary), she even found time to publish her first book, "Evaluating Performance of Research Networks: A Socioeconomic Framework for Assessing Funded Research Projects".

Now working full-time with TUFGEN, Ryan commutes back and forth between Saskatchewan and Calgary. Her children, who remain in Calgary along with Ryan's husband, are now in their late teens and early twenties. "We make it work," says Ryan.

It seems fitting that the young woman who happened to take an admin job at a small plant biotech company now spends most of her time studying institutions, intellectual property and economic and social issues related to the ag-biotech sector.

"I've really come full circle", she says with a smile that can almost be heard over the telephone.

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Dr. Camille Ryan

A woman of diverse talents, Camille is an avid painter, artist, photographer, graphic artist and author of short stories and poetry. She's traveled all over the world and devotes considerable time to a number of community organizations, including the Foothills Therapeutic Riding Association, the Saskatoon Adlerian Society, AIDS Saskatoon and The Saskatoon Jazz Festival. Check out her blog, "Kaleidoscope".

Her favourite quote and mantra

"Do one thing every day that scares you." – Eleanor Roosevelt

In 1972, young medical student Abdallah Daar was forced by circumstances to pack his bags and flee Uganda. The country's new self-styled leader, Idi Amin, had recently seized the country through a military coup. He gave Ugandan Asians little more than two months to leave the country. Caught up in the ensuing chaos, Daar had to leave.

"When the expulsion started, there was chaos everywhere. There was violence, death."

Even as one of more than 80,000 forced to flee, leaving everything behind, Professor Daar counts himself "lucky".

"I survived," he states matter-of-factly.

Once in the UK, Daar was determined to resume his medical studies, but there's no doubt the young man was now a changed man.

"I wasn't officially a refugee, but the disruption left me with a strong feeling of dislocation and vulnerability that I believe has shaped my approach to bioethics," explains Daar, now Senior Scientist and Director of Ethics and Commercialization at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, Professor of Public Health Sciences and of Surgery at the University of Toronto, and Chief Science and Ethics Officer of Grand Challenges Canada.

Daar's journey from medicine to bioethics was a circuitous one. After finishing medical school in London, followed by a brief stint at the University of Texas, Daar completed postgraduate clinical training in surgery and internal medicine at the University of Oxford, eventually receiving a doctorate in transplant immunology.

After completing a fellowship in transplantation, Daar became a transplant surgeon and a renowned one at that – he continues to hold the world record for the youngest ever cadaveric donor kidney transplant. For a time he was a clinical lecturer in Oxford, before going to the Middle East to help start two medical schools and build centres for organ transplantation, surgery and biomedical research. In Oman, he became the founding Chair of Surgery.

But Daar was never quite able to shake his earlier experiences in Africa. While growing up in Tanzania, he had witnessed "severe disparities among peoples and between countries". Before the expulsion, as a medical student in Uganda, he wasn't able to ignore the "really obvious health disparities. I became quite conscious of the inability of the Ugandan health system to deal with those inequities."

These early life experiences meant Daar couldn't ignore broader questions of global health, and health and wealth disparities between developed and developing countries.

"There were many serious ethical issues involved with kidney transplants in living donor transplantation. Issues with donor safety, rights, consent and coercion. Issues with patients going to other countries to buy kidneys from living donors. Issues with brain death regulation in cadaveric donation. I started to ask hard questions and pretty soon transplant ethics became a major focus of my research."

This nascent interest in transplant ethics soon led to a deeper interest in the broader field of bioethics. Daar focused extensively on xenotransplantation, including consulting with the World Health Organization (WHO). During a sabbatical at Stanford University's Centre for Biomedical Ethics in 1998, he was approached by WHO's Director-General to research and write a report examining the implications of genetics and biotechnology for global health.

An unexpected invitation ended up taking Daar's life in a new direction. In 1999, he was invited to the University of Toronto as a visiting professor in the faculty of law, during which time he completed the Daar-Mattei report for WHO. Expecting to stay in Toronto for only a short time, he ended up settling there more permanently on account of a fortuitous encounter.

Soon after arriving at U of T, Daar met Peter Singer, then Director of U of T's Joint Centre for Bioethics (JCB). The meeting led to a long-term friendship and academic partnership, the latter becoming the basis for their collaborative work over the next decade. Realizing they shared a mutual interest in the potential of applying life sciences to reduce global health inequities, they initially founded the Program on Applied Ethics and Biotechnology and subsequently founded what was then known as the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health at the JCB. Many of the Program's research projects were funded by Genome Canada.

"I've been truly impressed with the visionary way that Genome Canada has funded GE³LS research in Canada. This has put genomics in Canada on a sound footing, and has allowed Canada to be at the forefront of bioethics."

Since its creation seven years ago, the program has evolved to become a major part of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, an academic centre at the University Health Network and U of T with an international and multidisciplinary research team of over 35 members. In the process, the program has become an internationally-renowned leader in innovation policy and global health.

The group's goal is for all countries, not just developed countries, to benefit from new diagnostics, vaccines, drugs and other life science-based solutions. They've had a hand in several high-profile international initiatives, including helping the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launch the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, and helping the United Nations Secretary General's Office internalize the linkage between bio-development and bio-security issues, which led to a speech delivered by Kofi Annan at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland in late 2006.

More recently, Daar chaired a major independent external review of the WHO/World Bank/UNDP/UNICEF Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). He is also the founding Chair of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases and Chair of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University International Institute of Global Health.

When Daar and Singer began their work, their focus on helping developing countries benefit from biotechnology – which they describe as a "lab to village" approach – was novel.

"Few researchers were considering the needs of developing countries when they thought of cutting-edge life sciences," Daar explains.

As Daar reflects back on the early days of modern biotech, he thinks his background enabled him to more clearly see the potential for biotech to improve global health. Perhaps it required someone from the developing world, someone who had experienced inequities firsthand and who also happened to be very familiar with the science, to help shift people's thinking.

"You have to think beyond the obvious."

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Dr. Abdallah Daar

Select list of publications:

• Harnessing Genomics and Biotechnology to Improve Global Health Equity (Science, 2001)
• Top 10 Biotechnologies for Improving Health in Developing Counties (Nature Genetics, 2002)
• Grand Challenges in Global Health (Science, 2003)
• Health Biotechnology Innovation in Developing Countries (Nature Biotechnology, 2004)
• Genomics and Global Health: A Report of the Genomics Working Group of the Science and Technology Task Force of the United Nations Millennium Project, 2005
• Pharmacogenetics and Geographical Ancestry: Implications for Drug Development and Global Health (Nature Reviews Genetics, 2005)
• Nanotechnology and the Developing World (PLoS Medicine, 2005)
• Regenerative Medicine and the Developing World (PLoS Medicine, 2006)
• Scientific Diasporas (Science, 2006)
• India's Health Biotechnology Sector at a Crossroads (Nature Biotechnology, 2007)
• Grand Challenges in Chronic Non-communicable Diseases (Nature, 2007)
• A tough transition. (Nature, 2007)
• Genomic medicine and developing countries: creating a room of their own. (Nature Rev. Genet., 2008)
• Race and ancestry in biomedical research: exploring the challenges. (Genome Medicine, 2009).
• Whole genome scanning: resolving clinical diagnosis and management amidst complex data. (Pediatr Res., 2009)
• Cultivating regenerative medicine innovation in China. (Regen. Med., 2010)

For Concordia assistant professor of journalism, GE³LS researcher, and former "amoeba-guy" David Secko, it had always been a toss-up between science and writing. It's just that science happened to grab an early lead.

"I'd always loved writing, but I also really liked science. For some reason – and I'm still not sure why – I decided to study science first," explains Secko.

After high school, Secko enrolled at Queen's University to pursue an honours B.Sc. in Life Science. During his final year, he became enraptured by the unlikeliest of creatures: the soil amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. The tiny bug kept Secko focused on science for several more years.

"Here's a little guy that lives on the forest floor. It eats the yeast and bacteria. Suddenly, it starts sending out signals to its kin to congregate together – some 100,000 of them – into a gooey, amorphous slug that you can see moving with the naked eye. But it only does this when it's starving to death; it's a survival mechanism. The crazy thing is that, when they congregate to move toward a food source, about 20 percent of the cells give up their lives to save the other 80 percent. It was whether this was 'altruism' that I found fascinating and wanted to study."

To pursue his 'slimy' research interests (to see some of these slime molds 'in action', see "spiral waves in aggregation"), Secko moved west to begin a Masters in molecular biology at UBC, which soon "snowballed" into a PhD.

"I was looking at Ras signaling cascades, and how they affect how the cells move, how they divide. But in the last year or so, my life was not so charmed. I was running 36-hour experiments, doing proteomics and looking at spot patterns to better understand their cellular signaling. As much as I loved science, I knew this wasn't the exact life for me."

Despite his waning interest in bench work, Secko never lost the 'writing bug'. So, after receiving his PhD in 2004, he started pitching science magazines with ideas for stories on science careers and "how scientists live their lives". He ended up with enough clips to begin writing for The Scientist magazine.

Still working for The Scientist magazine and intent on getting some formal journalism training, Secko began the Masters of Journalism Program at UBC, quickly gravitating to the work of journalism ethicist Stephen Ward. His ultimate goal was to move to New York or the UK to work as a full-time science writer. But while exploring Ward's work, Secko began to morph from working journalist into journalism academic.

"I always seemed to be asking myself, 'Why am I doing journalism the way I'm doing it?' 'Why are they teaching me these particular methods?' 'What are the norms that 'frame' science media?' 'What purpose does it serve in the world, and which groups does it marginalize?'"

Working with Ward, Secko began studying the democratic role of the media as it relates to ethical reporting on British Columbia's salmon industry. Post-MJ, Secko accepted a post-doctoral position with Michael Burgess and Peter Danielson at UBC's Centre for Applied Ethics (see Q&A with Burgess in this issue of Impact), collaborating with the consortium for Genomics Research on All Salmonid Project (cGRASP) and studying GE³LS issues related to salmon genomics.

"Salmon genomics was the topic we used to test our theories out. We began developing frameworks for how science journalists think in certain situations. We also wrote test stories and examined how they played out over about a seven-month period. We were trying to map how the community – science journalists, scientists, GE³LS researchers, members of the public – made use of the information provided."

That earlier GE³LS work underpins Secko's current running of the Concordia Science Journalism Project (CSJP), a pioneering research program he got off the ground in 2008. Comprising a collection of projects and collaborations, the CSJP is funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Genome Canada/Génome Québec. Through the CSJP, Secko and a handful of research colleagues investigate current and theoretical practices in science journalism, to see how it can be improved to better support public engagement with science.

"There's much more of a reflective element in science journalism now. It used to be that people spoke about our role as simply to provide people with information. They could do whatever they wanted with it, and we'd move on to the next story. But it's not just about information or education anymore; it's about helping people to meaningfully engage with science, make better decisions, and be more involved in the course of science itself."

One of the CSJP's larger-scale research projects is integrated with "Genozymes" – a four-year Genome Canada-funded scientific project aiming to develop fungi enzymes to convert plant material into biofuels, biochemicals and other products for industrial use. The integrated GE³LS project team, of which Secko is PI, is developing and testing various models of science journalism. Two anticipated outcomes are guidance for assisting science journalists in communicating genomics-based innovations, and a process for engaging the public in informed discussion of the results of the Genozymes project.

Apart from the research opportunities, a big draw for Secko and his spouse, a scientist-turned-graphic designer, was the Montreal location. The couple, along with newborn baby son Carver, live in St. Henri. It's close to downtown and a short walk to the Atwater Market, a mecca for foodies.

Having left the lab years ago, Secko doesn't focus as much these days on what may be crawling in the soil beneath his feet. But he stays 'grounded' nonetheless, in his ongoing efforts to better explain what scientists discover about living organisms, and more meaningfully engage the public about those discoveries.

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Dr. David Secko

Research interests

Science journalism, journalism ethics, empirical testing of new models of journalism, social and ethical studies of genomics (GE³LS), democratic studies, public engagement.

Concordia Science Journalism Project

Science journalism is an important source of information for the public. However, in the midst of politically and ethically contentious issues, science journalism has often been criticized. Critics deem it polarizing, sensationalistic, and unable to connect with citizens in ways that allow meaningful engagement with the governance of science. In this way, science journalism's ability to positively support democracy has been questioned.

For this reason, the CSJP formed in the Summer 2008 to investigate current and theoretical practices in science journalism, with a focus on determining how it can be improved so as to better support public engagement with science.

Sometimes being broke can have an upside. In Fern Brunger's case, her need for extra money ended up taking her medical anthropology career in an entirely new direction – from the post-doctoral study of Tamil refugees in Canada, to a focus on genomics science and genomics scientists.

"I was doing my PhD in medical anthropology at McGill. I had scholarships, but I needed to earn some extra money, as PhD students often do," Brunger explains with a laugh. "My supervisor, [well-known medical anthropologist and McGill professor] Margaret Lock, happened to tell me about a research assistant position with Abby Lippman."

It just so happened that Lippman, professor of epidemiology at McGill and a well-known feminist academic and activist, was in the midst of thinking and writing about what she was calling the "new genetics". The year was 1995.

"She was looking at the whole issue of what she was calling 'geneticization' – the extent to which genetics was starting to take precedence in how we see health and social problems. I found the whole area fascinating."

Brunger's exposure to Lippman's thinking inspired a fundamental shift in her research, towards ethical issues in genetics and genomics.

"I don't know if I would have ever stumbled upon genetics had I not done that job."

The rest, as they say, is history. Soon after, Brunger moved to Vancouver for family reasons. Her work with Lippman led to further post-doctoral studies with UBC's Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE), under UBC professor Michael Burgess. Research at the CAE officially marked Brunger's move into the realm of bioethics.

While at the Centre, Brunger wrote a seminal paper on genomics and society. The Medical Ethics Legal Social Issues (MELSI) Advisory Committee of the Canadian Genome Analysis and Technology Program (CGAT) – precursors to GE³LS and Genome Canada, respectively – had put out a call for a research paper on the impact of genomics on society. Brunger, along with colleague Ken Bassett, answered the call. "Culture and Genetics" was later published in Socio-Ethical Issues in Human Genetics, a book edited by Bartha Knoppers, Director of McGill's Centre of Genomics and Policy and a long-time GE³LS researcher.

"They expected a paper about how genomics would impact society and culture. Instead, I argued that it was the other way around: that society and culture actually shape genomics research. I looked at how cultural norms, values and assumptions shape the production and application of genomic science itself, and what drives the genome industry. It blew people's minds and helped launch me into the field."

Now Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics in the medical faculty at Newfoundland's Memorial University, she is co-investigator on several integrated Genome Canada-funded GE³LS projects, all part of the Atlantic Medical Genetics and Genomics Initiative (AMGGI), a four-year, $9.27 million project studying monogenic disorders in Atlantic Canada. The GE³LS component is focused on the impact of genetic information on patients, health care workers, and the Canadian health care system.

Brunger is overseeing research on individuals' experiences with genetic testing for ARVD5 - a genetic condition which results in sudden cardiac failure among young, healthy individuals - and on the uptake and use of these genetic tests by service providers. The GE³LS projects were integrated with the science projects from the start.

"We all sat down at the same table and designed the project together." (See story describing these integrated GE³LS projects in the last issue of Impact.)

Brunger's training as a medical anthropologist is central to her work in ethics and genetics, and she continues to work at the intersection of bioethics and anthropology. She uses the framework of cultural anthropology to understand genomic research, examining the cultural, economic and political contexts in which genomic knowledge is produced and applied. Her current research focuses on the values, interests and practices that shape population-specific genomics research; and how this "culture" of genomics research shapes, and is shaped by, the values, interests and practices of researched communities.

"People often think medical anthropologists are 'bone doctors'," says Brunger, "but a better descriptor of medical anthropology is the 'social studies of science and medicine'. We look at science and medicine as a cultural system, from a critical theory perspective. We ask questions about relations of power, about who's getting funding to do genetic research and why. We're similar to medical sociologists, but the key difference is that we're more interested in groups rather than individuals. We're interested in issues such as genetic discrimination in socially identifiable communities."

"I'm still an anthropologist, only my 'primitive tribe' is genetic scientists. I live amongst them and study them," she says with a laugh. "I want to know about the science. I'm interested in how people talk about science – the hidden assumptions and values behind how they understand and use genetic science."

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Dr. Fern Brunger

Advice to up-and-coming GE³LS researchers

"It's a challenge for GE³LS researchers – who take a critical social-studies-of-science approach – to critique the system we're working within. It can be viewed in some cases as constituting biased research. But being immersed in the science is also what makes the research exciting and it can be very effective as long as you make your role obvious, apparent and explicit. Medical anthropology graduate students might be discouraged from working from within, but I would encourage them to do so. Our role as anthropologists is to hold up the things everyone takes for granted as being normal – our common sense assumptions – to scrutiny. It's often a 'reality check'. We can look at who drives the research agenda and why. You can still have a critical edge if you're working from within. I'd rather be an insider." — Fern Brunger

Career highlights

• PhD, medical anthropology at McGill University
• postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council on the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community in Montreal (research on the Tamil's ideas around health and illness and the construction of identity)
• postdoctoral training in applied health ethics at UBC and consulting work for the BC Office of Health Technology Assessment and the Centre for Applied Ethics, UBC
• research associate and assistant professor, Dalhousie University's Department of Bioethics from 2001-03 – research on ethics of stem cell research and gene therapy
• member of numerous ethics boards; National Council for Ethics of Health Research; CIHR Ethics and Health Law Grants Review Committee; and Canadian Bioethics Society