Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 23, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba A12 Winnipeg May 2000 editorials Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights respect for privacy canadians might reasonably expect that the Federal government departments they Deal with particularly Revenue Canada would possess relevant personal information about it is that information from a myriad of government sources and agencies has been compiled and maintained As a Central citizen file and kept by one human resources development despite years of it turns out that those tax returns Are not kept completely after the called the longitudinal labour Force contains Pri personal details As Many As differ ent bits on More than 33 million Liv ing and dead which have the potential to be improperly mis stolen or the file is Legal and human resources minister Jane Stewart defending the govern ment for keeping the information As a research although is Stewart was not responsible for the creation of the which dates Back to she clearly misses the it May be but the existence of such a secret database May not reflect the the principles or the objective of the privacy says Bruce the country privacy no one likes to feel spied or monitored from Cra dle to until Phillips announcement last the minister responsible for the master file had never told canadians it even As for the databases declared its not Clear How a centralized profile of a persons ethnic child tax immigration matters and Edu cation might be useful in detecting fraud or determining the effectiveness of Public As is Stewart data kept on canadians who have not even taken part in any of her departments employment programs Are particularly irrelevant to is stewarts canadians should also be concerned about who might have Access to this database outside govern How information is safeguarded and whether individuals ought to be Able to or their consent if information is to be doled is Stewart says her department will endeavour to assure and All that Ade quate Security will keep information confidential and not for Sale to private companies and Justice minister Anne Mclellan has promised to review privacy and information legis these Are and do not address the ethical issues concerning the privacy of Canad when it is necessary to the governments Busi information about its citizens can be requested by the appropriate department or in that each department can track its own program Success and Monitor but those details about citizens should not then be shared with other departments or profiled and used to create some opposition maps Are encouraging canadians to file applications to rdc to see their potentially flooding Ottawa with this bit of grandstanding would serve no real other than to waste taxpayers Money in meeting this to overload and tie up the flow of other Access information and to give some politicians an Issue to Crow the government cannot justify the ongoing maintenance of a integrated information Bank about the practical and ethical solution is to purge the saving lives United states president Bill Clinton recently declared aids to be a threat to american National his concern was a reflection of the grow ing concern internationally Over the rapidly increasing spread of the situation appears to be worst in where aids has gone beyond epidemic conditions to pandemic As Many As 25 per cent of adult africans Are reported to have contracted the deadly with the number increasing each according to Clinton proclamation is one More of the louder and louder International alarms about aids in Africa designed to mobilize a counterattack against the and there can be no doubt that it is a serious problem that needs to be it is a that needs also to be kept in some the number of aids cases in Africa is Only an an extrapolation of what Little testing can be done in nations with primitive National health care the estimate is certainly but what the actual number is is anybody other such As malaria and on the other Are Well documented in Africa and Asia and Are More deadly than killing far More they Are also cheaper to treat and to prevent and More easily but they attract far less aids is a serious problem around the world and it is growing More diseases such As malaria Are less dramatic because they Are familiar they can be cured but they pose today just As grave a there is a strictly finite amount of Money that will go into health care from International Aid funds aids deserves its but attacking other diseases directly May save More lives More All the news that fits John Dafoe help in getting buried in newspapers and i can get Early in the sometime before i hear in my sleep the Clunk of the first paper Landing on my front by the time i get two or three hours they Are All there waiting for the free of but also the the Globe and mail and the National the first three i subscribe to the Post arrives free and uninvited through the i of its Conrad invited or i read or at least some of on monday there is a heavier thump than usual As the sunday new York times hits the a Day late but still full of stuff to with barely a the lightweight guardian weekly finds its Way into my filled with news and views from the perspective of Britain Lead ing Liberal newspaper with additional material from the Washington Post and be and All those pounds of newsprint Are packed into plastic bags and hauled away in a Large truck to be before they Are hauled they get pretty thoroughly but not quite from cover some sections can be set aside some stories provided by wire services can appear in identical form in All four daily some indeed especially in the so called National is just too trendy or gossipy to bother but keeping up with the columns and commentaries that Are Worth the Effort can take up a Good chunk of the being and being a lifetime newspaper i can find the time to read a lot but not All of the things i want to read in the new spa still i wonder about people who have to work for a considering that Many of them Are reported to spend an hour or two a Day on the one wonders when they find the a few years when i was working full time in the newspaper i was concerned at what i perceived to be a trend towards excessive tenseness in newspaper executives were convinced by sur Veys and focus groups that most people no longer had the time to read Long articles in their news they were presumed to prefer to have their news boiled Down to a couple of preferably in Point form sort of a newsprint ver Sion of what they had already heard on Over the past few the pendulum has swung in the opposite newspapers Are tending to produce longer stories with More orig Inal research and More of what we like to Call in depth it is not unusual these Days for newspaper Sto Ries to run for a full or even several sometimes Over two or three not All of these longer and More detailed articles add significantly to the fund of human some of that vast Supply of newsprint is devoted to celebrity gossip and exercises in self indulgence by trendy every time i see the word zeitgeist in the Globe and mail i reach for my some and i never thought i would make this complaint can go on too Long even about serious newspaper executives seem to have come to the conclusion that the Best Way to get people to read their papers is to give them something to that is a trend i even if it does take a Large chunk out of my John Dafoe is a former editorial Page editor of the free his column appears on a curious passage we Are standing in a subterranean corridor far beneath the Law courts a carefully hid Den passageway designed to allow judges to pass from their offices to their courtrooms without danger from a grudge holding its and the players who make up the Justice system have left the building to plot strategy or curse their there Are four of us in this Only one of whom could really be counted on to get us Back to the surface before panic sets magistrate Sharon a former court leads a his wife and the journalist through a Maze of stairwells and secret Eleva she could navigate this underworld it secure that she has Long since memorized the floor the world under the Law courts belongs in a Lewis Carroll elevators Are marked As offices keys work at one end of a passageway but not the other and the very existence of the labyrinth is denied by most everyone who knows it is we Are All in the corridor like i was initially denied curio user and i there must be something special Down there were secrets built into the Law courts building from the time the first plans were the government had the building constructed Between 1912 and 1916 on the site of the old land titles this was to be a modern courtroom and Library a complement to the new legislature being built across the the same Thomas was chosen for both scandal As scandal and the con tractor was accused of a million a piffle today but significant at the judicial inquiries and Royal commissions were Kelly was jailed and the government there have always been Clandestine tunnels and prisoners have to be lawyers need to reach their basement lounge in the deep recesses of an underground connection Between the Law courts and the legislature was deemed if that Burrow still exists no one is the a longtime acquaintance who agreed to the secret corridor established some ground no no specific locations no dozens of phone Calls were exchanged before the tour was All of them made by skittish people who dont realize i can get lost coming Home from the grocery there is no danger i will spill the Beans and relay the floor there is Only the risk i will wander off and be lost appealing As that idea might be to is Phillips keeps close court clerks and sheriffs Are expected to Mem Orize the Back elevators and passage ways that judges use to travel the there Are but they Are closely it would be if not for a judge to make a Solo there not Given the appropriate keys is Phillips they could have a set if they not one has the basement Halls Are scuffed when the numbered doorways actually Lead to real they Are often storage they Lead you find an ele Vator but Are unable to use it because you dont have the right key or proper Keypad its like being trapped in a Maze without this place does not officially it cannot be entered or left without a some would say it bears a significant parallel to the floors where tradition and an innate understand ing of the Lay of the land Are curio user and Lindor Reynolds is a free press her column appears on taming genome Gold Rush the following editorial appeared in yesterdays los Angeles times within scientists Are expected to release a rough draft of the entire human the string of Chemi cals in Dan that governs How we grow and in Large part How we some of the decoded Gene sequences have already advanced medical care by allow ing doctors to test Peoples predisposition to diseases such As breast and prostate research into cures for myriad other diseases is expected to skyrocket once scientists can see the rudimentary map of the genes in the human in a development that has amazed and incensed Many leading disputes Over Patent Law Are already threatening to deprive scientists of full Access to this revolutionary new arguably the most significant biological Advance in the Rush to decipher human genes has triggered a moneymaking free Orall Akin to the Gold Only this time the participants Are Rushing not to the land Bureau but to the Patent and Trade Mark which has handed out patents on More than genes so far and has More than Patent applications on human genes each time a biotechnology company wins a Patent on a Gene it claims to have it gets the right to keep information about that Gene secret and even to sue any scientist who experiments on that Gene without its Permis guidelines Patent commissioner Todd Dickin son is now finalizing guidelines that will rein in part of this genetic Stampede by tightening the rules for obtaining a Patent the new guidelines will require researchers to discover a genes theoretical critics say that still gives Overly Broad rights to biotech theoretical they is just a fancy term for biotech rightly argue that they should be Able to profit from funding the study of a Gene even if their study Doest reveal that genes Overall Dickinson can address the concerns of both scientists and entrepreneurs by requiring that companies receiving Gene patents make affordable Cross Licens ing agreements available to any researchers wishing to Experiment with their such an agreement would protect an entrepreneurs right to prof it while ensuring that genetic data Are fully accessible to All perhaps the Best reason Dickinson should be wary of granting sweeping new Gene Patent rights to biotech companies is that their genetic discoveries were partly generated through Federal As los Angeles times staff writ ers Peter Gosselin and Paul Jacobs reported last a computerized called a Dan that biotech companies have been using to decode genetic was devel oped partly through Federal taxpayer excessively Broad privatization of the genetic code could impede the rapid Progress that is expected to yield a rough draft of the human genome next the Gold Rush is no paradigm for scientific Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1872 Winnipeg Tribune esl 1890 vq11i mow 2000 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson Canada limited published seven Days West at Mountain Manitoba re pm 6977000 a ii quor of if Mil Ulto pc i Courtl Rudy email rutyr8dekop@freepress.mt i Nicholas Patrick editor f t ;