Photo credits: Liam Maloney
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Why health journalism? Couldn't
get into med school? Well, I got a job at the Globe
as a summer student around the time AIDS was breaking
into the mainstream press. The other reporters didn't
want to cover it — it was an "icky" story —
and so they said "Send the summer student." I started
covering it and then it became a huge story. I kind
of stuck with it ever since.
Do you think there are too many
Chicken Littles reporting on health? I think there's
a little of that "The sky is falling" going on. If you
do it too much you're not believable. I try not to use
the word "cure" in a story — we have all these
little rules. My biggest problem with daily reporting
is it lacks context. "Vitamin E is good today, it's
bad tomorrow. One day it's going to save your life,
the next it's going to kill you." I think that bothers
the public, they get confused.
You yourself were accused of
a bit of 'the sky is falling' reporting about the PCB
pollution from the St-Basile chemical fire in 1989.
Well, I think if you work for a daily newspaper you've
been accused of everything under the sun on a weekly
basis!
Do you ever get nasty letters
from doctors? Oh, absolutely, they're avid emailers.
Usually criticism of an article. But I also get a lot
of tips, which I really like. Stuff like, "You did a
story on this, but why not tackle something more important,
what I do research about?"
Has covering the health beat
turned you into a hypochondriac? I hear a lot of
people who write about health become hypochondriacs,
but I don't take it too seriously. I covered politics
for a while, and that was way, way more dreary and depressing.
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 Five
things you didn't know about... Andr� Picard
The Captain Jean-Luc Picard
of Star Trek connection Every time I go to
the States, without fail, when I check into a
hotel, the desk clerk always says, "Ooh, Captain
Picard!" Without fail, every time.
His favourite author
Probably Kurt Vonnegut, for his brevity and his
wit.
Why a French guy from Montreal
writes in English for a Toronto paper I grew
up in a mixed Franco-Ontarian family. I went to
the University of Ottawa where the French and
English student papers were across the hall. The
only reason I went to the English paper was because
the French paper was run by a cabal of Marxist-Leninists
at the time — it was sort of luck of the
draw.
Grey's Anatomy or
House? House. It's more gory.
I've never seen Grey's Anatomy to tell
you the truth. Hugh Laurie is a good actor, and
it's absurd so it's good entertainment. I'd like
to be his lawyer. I'd be very rich.
His hot Montreal restaurant
tip One place I went recently and loved was
Jolifou. Tiny little gourmet restaurant. Fabulous
food, little toys on each table, a couple who
owns it with their little baby. That's where I
send the doctors who ask me... depending on how
rich they are. If they're really rich I send them
elsewhere.
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Seems like every hack in town
has got themselves a subscription to The Lancet these
days. Yeah, we didn't use to do this stuff. I cover
a lot of infectious diseases — I'm writing about
HPV now — and we never would have covered stuff
like that before. It was considered marginal for a long
time. I think it's fuelled by the consumer movement.
A lot of the credit goes to the people with AIDS, and
then breast cancer got onto it. And to its credit the
medical profession — which used to be a chummy
boy's club — realized that the best way to answer
that demand is to do it through the press.
Do you have a fave disease?
I guess it'd be infectious disease. Although that sounds
kinda weird...
Ever had a story you just didn't
know how to write? An example that pops to my mind
is a story on co-sleeping, sleeping with the baby in
the bed. It's an interesting topic, something that's
really emotional, but what am I going to hang that story
on? So it sat around for years and then somebody phoned
me and said — and this was the best story lead
that ever got my attention — "I killed my baby."
You know, I get a lot of stuff so it's hard to get my
attention, but she got my attention. And it was a really
sad story of someone who had rolled over in her bed
and suffocated her baby and wanted to tell her story
to warn other people. And I said, 'Here's my hook.'
What was the biggest health
story of the last year? The HPV vaccine. I don't
think it has been covered too well so far, but I think
it has a lot of implications for public health. It's
very important.
Were you surprised the feds
included HPV funding in their budget? I'm not sure
it's the federal government's role to tell them how
to spend their money. But I thought it was politically
quite bold for a Conservative government to be promoting
this vaccine, so I liked the idea in theory.
Is Canada's health system really
in the toilet? I am lucky enough to get to travel
around the world and to see other health systems. I
don't like to sound like Jean Chr�tien but I don't think
people realize how blessed we are. People are really
down on it, but the system is way better than 20 years
ago, there's no question.
How would you rate Stephen Harper
on health? I think he could show more leadership,
and leadership isn't just shovelling more money into
somebody's backyard. What I'd like the federal government
to do is to essentially make its health system —
which deals with aboriginals, prisoners, soldiers, the
RCMP — a model for the rest of the country of good
healthcare. I think right now it's the worst in the
country. They should be ashamed and they don't have
any business telling people what to do.
You've said that Canadians would
"turf" any politician who meddled with our health system.
Since then Stephen Harper, Jean Charest and Gordon Campbell,
among others, have all fiddled with it. Were you wrong?
No. I don't think they've actually questioned the main
principles. Our philosophy of healthcare hasn't changed
a lot since Tommy Douglas, it has the same values, and
that's good. All this little trivia about do we deliver
something with a public facility or a private one, to
me that's really not that relevant to people. People
don't care. What matters is access.
Do you think things like Bill
33 in Quebec are chipping away at medicare? No,
those are little adjustments that will come along. I
think a lot of those should have come a lot sooner and
we should probably have a lot more of them. We hide
behind the five big principles of medicare. I think
they allow us enormous flexibility to do all kinds of
things and we just don't do it, for all kinds of political
reasons.
You know a lot of docs —
are they happier or more miserable nowadays? I think
that doctors principally are more concerned with their
quality of life now. We have a lot more doctors working
part time who are saying, "Listen, I am not going to
work 100 hours a week and kill myself," which many of
them did. It's sad. You know, those wonderful old country
doctors, it's a nice Norman Rockwell image, but it was
a horrible life for their families.
Does your doctor walk on eggshells
around you, fearing you'll do an expos�? No, I have
a doctor at a community health clinic in Montreal who
I've been going to forever. I don't think she knows
what the Globe is, to be honest. She knows what I do,
she knows I write about health, but beyond that... I've
never interviewed her for a story or anything.
Are you squeamish? Not in
the least. I've gone into kidney transplants right in
the operating room and stuff. There are things that
make you much more squeamish than medical procedures.
I've gone off and covered wars and stuff and that gives
you a lot more perspective.
What wars? The one I spent
the most time at was in Rwanda, and I've also been to
Haiti.
As Canada's first Public Health
Hero, what heroic deeds have you done? I think that
was a very nice gesture on the part of the Canadian
Public Health Association, and I don't want to be ungrateful,
but I think heroes are something else entirely. Nelson
Mandela's a hero. Somebody who pulls a kid out of a
burning building is a hero. But people who write a bunch
of stuff and make a good living doing it are not heroes.
OK, but since you technically
are a hero, when's the Andr� Picard superhero comic
book coming out? Oh that job's already been taken
by Peter Parker and Clark Kent. They have that nailed
down!
Finish this sentence: my healthcare
hero is...? Helen Mussallem, the dean of all nurses
in Canada. A nurse who began her nursing career after
the Second World War. She's a fabulous woman, a visionary.
I always encourage people to read her submission to
the Hall Commission in 1961. Its suggestions are the
same things we still need today — and that was
fifty years ago. Those are the people who should be
getting these kinds of awards, not low-lifes like myself.
After the tainted blood scandal
you accused the Red Cross of being a bunch of fat cats.
When they went down in flames, did you get high on the
power? I think the media overall played a big role
in making the blood system safer, and I was one of the
reporters. But we have to be careful not to overblow
our importance. I've written other stories where I've
thought, "Oh, this is really important," and then nothing
happens.
What's the next big tainted
blood or HPV story? I think the one's that's really
emerging for me is the whole link between health and
environment. The environment has become a hot issue
and ultimately it's about people's health. I don't think
there's any leadership on it yet, and that's why it's
interesting. There's a real opening there for public
health people to make their mark.
Interview conducted by Sam Solomon
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