I have written about Hélène Campbell twice recently. She is a 20-year-old Ottawa woman who was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It was decided that she would need a double lung transplant, and, while waiting for new lungs, she launched a successful campaign to increase organ donation – while gaining support from such people as Justin Bieber and Don Cherry, and appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

On Good Friday, just as hope was fading, she received new lungs. Despite a few setbacks, she has been doing quite well and is currently out of the hospital – which is happy news in the McLeod household.

Now, for all her work for organ donation, Ms. Campbell has received a Diamond Jubilee Medal, awarded to her by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She is a most worthy recipient, I would say.

(And just to maintain my libertarian bona fides, yes, I do support – tentatively – the sale of organs to address our shortage of donors.)

In a quest to prove Sarah Palin right, doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook hospital have taken to the courts to ask that they be allowed to take a man who may or may not be in a vegetative state off of life support, despite the wishes of the family. Currently, the case is before the Supreme Court of Canada:

Five months after electrical engineer Hassan Rasouli brought his family to Canada from Iran in 2010, he had routine surgery for a benign brain tumour. Bacterial meningitis infected his brain leaving him unresponsive.

 Within weeks, the surgeon wanted the family to take Rasouli off a ventilator that was keeping him alive, but his wife, a doctor in her native Iran, thought it was too soon.

…

In Ontario, cases such as Rasouli’s where there is no agreement are supposed to be referred to an expert tribunal called the Consent and Capacity Board.

Doctors at Sunnybrook Hospital refused to do that and instead took the case to the Ontario Superior Court in February 2011.

The court rejected the doctors’ arguments that they didn’t need consent to remove life support and ruled that Rasouli’s case had to be referred to the CCB.

The doctors’ case was rejected again by the Ontario Court of Appeal in June 2011. It was then appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Actually, the case is by no means as clear as any of that. There are now conflicting diagnoses about whether Mr. Rasouli is irreversibly unconcious. He may be, in fact, be showing signs of responsiveness. Further, The Doctors (as I’m choosing to call them, if only because it’s such a horrendous TV show) may not be seeking to take the man off life support, they might just want to move him out of the ICU.

The earlier rulings are also a bit of a mess. Again, I’ve seen conflicting reports, but either they said that The Doctors had to go through the Consent and Capacity Board (read:  *uses spooky voice* Death Panel) to remove life support/move the man from the ICU; or they said that The Doctors had to provide some level care, but not necessarily the level of care that the man’s family wanted… except that they did have to provide that because they were providing some other level of care… or something like that. As I said, nothing seems particularly clear in all the reports I’ve read (and I’m not spending a sunny Friday reading court rulings).

As it turns out, with Mr. Rasouli showing signs of responsiveness, this case might not even apply to him, anymore. Nonetheless, it presents some important question.

Much of the debate (from what I’ve heard) centres around the question of who gets to decide on the proper use of life saving (or life-sustaining) medical treatment when a patient is unresponsive. I’m a pretty hard-liner on this, preferring that the next-of-kin haev the final say. However, I think reducing the debate down to this question is an over-simplification.

Moving away from the specifics of the case at hand (considering that it’s hard to confirm them), in certain situations, the general argument that The Doctors are making has merit. Not every treatment is going to be appropriate with every patient – especially when you consider the scarcity of our health care resources. As much as I want every patient to be able to demand - and receive - whatever care they desire, we cannot guarantee that we will have the necessary resources.

Our socialized health care system further complicates this matter. We set limits on the services that can be provided, thus increasing scarcity, all in the hope to offer greater universal coverage (which, I think, we often do). As our payment method converges, so does our stake in other people’s treatment.

Quebec has been awash in demonstrations, protests and riots for the past few months – none of which have anything to do with the NHL playoffs. Students are protesting proposed post-secondary tuition increases that would make the lowest tuition rates in Canada, well, still the lowest tuition rates in Canada. The proposed tuition increases aren’t the only cause of the protests, but they are the rallying point, as the students see these increases as contravening the promises of the Quiet Revolution.

From where I sit, there is little sympathy for the students’ cause among Canadians outside of Quebec. Recently, Margaret Wente articulated many of the objections to the protests in the Globe and Mail:

It’s a little hard for the rest of us to muster sympathy for Quebec’s downtrodden students, who pay the lowest tuition fees in all of North America. Even if the government has its way – no sure thing if the Parti Québécois gets back in power – they’ll still have the lowest tuition fees in North America. The total increase would amount to the cost of a daily grande cappuccino.

Students in Quebec are like no others, we’re told. We need to understand that tuition fees are not the real issue. The real issue is social justice. The real issue is the promise made during the Quiet Revolution that universities would eventually be free. The real issue is the fight against the ruling class, the greedy corporations, the tar sands, and the entire capitalist, neo-liberal elite.

Ms. Wente is, up to a point, exactly right. Considering the general economic state of Canada, as well as the fiscal problems most governments (at all levels) are having, a mild increase to artificially-low tuition is not going to strike the average Canadian as a vile, oppressive transgression. Unfortunately, Ms. Wente decides she needs to go a step further – not only denigrating the myriad other causes that the students are championing, but also denigrating the very education that the students desire… and, as author Mike Spry* notes in his op-ed Margaret Wente Hates Herself, the very education Ms. Wente chose:

Wente is an expat American, who holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan and a MA in English from the University of Toronto. She has two degrees (most notably, neither is in Journalism, though that is evident in her writing, a fact that any barista with a BA in Theological Studies or History could recognize) of the exact same ilk as the ones she so joyfully mocks in her column, though she is sure to remove any mention of her English Literature background, instead mocking her Arts and Sciences brethren as if we couldn’t easily discover her hypocrisy.

Mr. Spry notes that there really is much more to the protests than tuition and Israeli apartheid, and it would be useful for all of us to fully understand what is going on:

What’s missing from Wente’s column, besides compassion, understanding, journalistic integrity, and well-researched facts, is what tends to be missing from most of the anti-student sentiment. The students don’t just want a tuition cap, but rather they want the universities to be held more accountable for their spending. If Wente wants to mock or hold accountable those with degrees in “victim-studies” then she should be looking at the administrators and professors who are spending student’s tuition like a drunk 8-year-old at Toys “R” Us with mummy’s credit card. The misuse and misappropriation of budgets in universities is akin to fraud. The amount of pseudo-embezzlement, side deals, overpaid tenured profs, and creative spending is almost as offensive as Wente’s argument. Universities have become legalized money launderers, in a brazen and sanctioned manner that would make the mafia blush.

But, a flaw of Canada’s social democracy that is also seen in healthcare, the arts, and other realms of social funding, is governments are willing to hand over monies without any desire for accountability. And that’s what the students really want, more than jobs, more than capped tuition, more than a life without latte service or daily perusal of Craigslist for cheap bachelor apartments or jobs that 6000 other qualified and educated graduates will apply for, what they really want is accountability. They want the state to make sure that the universities are spending their allowances properly, and not on bubble gum and hockey cards, or in this case six-hour work weeks/six months a year for tenured professors, golden handshakes for ousted administrators, and inflated “travel and research” budgets. Is that too much to ask?

I have other disagreements with Mr. Spry’s op-ed, but this point is rather important. The students aren’t just asking for free stuff. They’re asking for improvements to the provinces universities, and improvements within the Quebec’s government, itself (notable for its degree of corruption).

As a bonus, here’s a track from the late great Montreal band, Destroyalldreamers, Her brother played the riot:

*Interestingly, Mike is yet another writer I went to high school with, whose work I’m only learning about recently.

Nova Scotia is not exactly a beacon of freedom these days. Now we have a report of a high school student suspended for wearing a t-shirt that expresses his faith. The shirt reads, Life is wasted without Jesus.

A rather benign, if contentious, message, the student, William Swiminer, is unwilling to back down. He is scheduled to return to school on Monday, and plans to wear the t-shirt again.

Now, you might be thinking that this silly suspension is the result of a blanket policy banning any religious clothing (not that that’d be constitutional). At the very least, you could think that Mr. Swiminer, while having his rights violated, at least received procedural fairness, being treated the same as any other t-shirt sporting believer would.

You’d be wrong. The school board, in fact, is proud of the arbitrary nature of their rules:

School board Supt. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake said the wording on the shirt is problematic because it is directed at the beliefs of others.

“If I have an expression that says ‘My life is enhanced with Jesus,’ then there’s no issue with that, everybody is able to quickly understand that that’s my opinion about my own belief,” she said.

“If the shirt were to say ‘Without Jesus, your life is a complete waste,’ then that’s clear that it is an opinion aimed at somebody else’s belief.”

Pynch-Worthylake said the school has spoken with Swinimer a number of times about the shirt, asking him not to wear it again.

That’s some nice hair-splitting Ms. Pynch-Worthylake is attempting, but it demonstrates an ignorance towards Mr. Swiminer’s faith. Christianity is, certainly, an incredibly personal faith, but it is not introverted and it is not weak. The message of the t-shirt is a universal declaration. It is unequivocal, but it is not pointed. It is evangelism, not proselytizing.

An educator would wise to learn the difference.

If this story is correct, Nova Scotians should be deeply, deeply embarrassed by their government:

A transgender man in Nova Scotia has filed a human rights complaint after he was handed a $3,400 bill for a hysterectomy that he claims was medically necessary.

…

“The gynecologist said I had two options to deal with the symptoms I was having. The first would be to take birth control to raise my estrogen levels but she ruled that out as an option because I take testosterone. I’m a man. And the second option was the abdominal hysterectomy, which was her suggestion.”

In October 2010, MacDonald went to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax and had the operation.

He said after he woke up, his doctor gave him a bill for $3,400. He said he was stunned.

…

A week later, MacDonald said he discovered that MSI considered his operation sexual reassignment surgery.

“Once I got back home, I ended up having to take the staples out myself because no one could guarantee that the followup care would be covered as well,” he said.

Charles Lewis, writing in National Post, on his run-in with the Secret Service:

I happily told the agent all about Seth, and what an idiot he was, and how he once got his younger brother to jump out of a second-storey window onto a snow bank. The agent wrote everything down. I wondered aloud if Seth might be a communist, but the agent shook his head non-committally.

Pure. Gold.

At Blinded Trials (probably my favourite sub-blog here at the League), Rose has a post up titled, Why male circumcision is (sometimes) morally kosher. I could not disagree more (keeping in mind that we’re talking about routine infant circumcision – grown ups can do what they want). However, I don’t have the stomach to get into the weeds of that comment section (circumicison discussions always get nasty), however, I did write a series of posts on circumcision last year, so I’ll just offer those – they can be found here, here and here.

Bonus link: Here’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Bonus links: Take a trip in the way-back machine and read Freddie while he was still writing for the League, here and here.

National Post‘s Jonathan Kay has some interesting thoughts on the Derb and The Talk:

This is not ordinary racism. It is more interesting and antique than that: explicitly racialist in substance, but also ornamented with editorial grace notes and exhortations to humane acts of tokenism. One is reminded of, say, old-fashioned British types putting up their slide show from a safari in South Africa, or a charity trip to an inner-city school.

I recognize the style because Derbyshire wrote precisely the same sort of article about gays nine years ago. In a National Review piece entitled “The One and the Many”…

As with Derbyshire’s racism, his homophobia is leavened by a tortured intellectual effort to reconcile (a) his old-fashioned revulsion and fear at black and gay collective sub-cultures; with (b) the modern, liberal, earnestly felt reflex to treat each person as an individual.

With Rick Santorum out, the Mitt Romney nomination is even more of a done deal. It seems to me that Romeny has left everyone feeling a little underwhelmed, so…

Yes. This was just an excuse to post the video. I think I’ll be listening to a lot of Sloan, today.

Friday brought great news. Hélène Campbell (whom I wrote about in January) received a double lung transplant. She had been waiting for such a transplant for months and, recently, it had been reported that before the surgery, her lungs were functioning at only 20%. She still has a long way to go, but within a day or two she was responsive and able to communicate (though not speak).

Hélène’s story is more than just the story of a young woman waiting for a transplant. She decided raise awareness about organ donation, and her efforts not only dramatically increased the number of organ donations in Ontario, but also got the attention of Justin Bieber, led to a surprise appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and resulted in Hélène Campbell Day here in Ottawa.

Hélène’s surgery has been big news and her picture has been on TV a lot. Each time she appears, my almost-four-year-old daughter turns to my wife and says, with glee, Mommy, it’s your friend! She has new lungs!

We’re all very happy for Hélène, and hope she recovers quickly.