Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 27, 2015, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A9 IDEAS �o ISSUES �o INSIGHTS THINK- TANK A 9 Winnipeg Free Press Monday, July 27, 2015 O N World Hepatitis Day, Tuesday, there is cause to celebrate a positive story about a virus that imperils more than an estimated 242,000 Canadians. But so few know about it. While there is no vaccine against hepatitis C ( as there is for hepatitis A and B), there is a cure. And the necessary treatments to halt the ravages of Hep C are today much quicker to work - as short as 12 weeks - and easier to take. Fewer pills, fewer side- effects. A year- long ordeal, sometimes with side- effects such as severe depression, is a thing of the past. Canadians either don't know, or overlook, this good news at their peril. The fact is one out of 100 Canadians has been infected with Hep C in their lifetime. Cure rates may be higher than ever, but many Canadians are not being linked to care because they are not being diagnosed. Many Canadians don't think they could possibly have the disease. An estimated 44 per cent of people who have Hep C don't know they have it. And that's the bad news. Hep C is a silent killer. Hep C, which is transmitted through blood- toblood contact and slowly harms the liver, often shows no symptoms until infection is at a late, and sometimes fatal, stage. You can live with it for 20 years or more and not know it. With Hep C, it's out of sight, out of mind. Canadians don't know they are at risk You may be at risk of having Hep C and not know it. Some people have been identified as being more likely to have the virus: . People who have shared drug- use equipment; . Canadians born between 1945 and 1975: The Canadian Liver Foundation says rates of infection are estimated to be higher in this group; . Aboriginal people, whose rates of infection are estimated to be higher than those of non- aboriginal Canadians; . People who received a blood transfusion in Canada before 1992 ( at which point effective Hep C blood screening was introduced); . Immigrants from countries with a high rate of Hep C. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that 35 per cent of past and present Hep C infections in Canada are among people born outside of the country; and . People who got a tattoo or piercing when standard sterilizing procedures may not have been followed. The only way to know you have Hep C is to get tested. Catching it early will greatly increase your chances of a quick recovery. And if you are diagnosed, take heart that access to the new drugs is improving. Many of the new drugs that have shorter treatment periods and fewer side- effects are available for people who do not have private drug coverage. Many provinces and territories have added the new treatments to their public drug plans, though there are eligibility criteria on when people are able to access public coverage of these treatments. A Hep C diagnosis today is not what it used to be, and a cure is now easier than ever. But unless Canadians at risk are tested and connected to care, the virus will continue its reputation as the silent killer, with a devastating impact on the health and health- care costs of Canadians. More people getting tested for the virus, more learning if they have contracted Hep C and more people having access to treatment, would be good news for all of us. Laurie Edmiston is the executive director of CATIE, Canada's source for HIV and hepatitis C information. ledmiston@ catie. ca I T'S the eyes that couldn't see me I remember most. But I also remember a generous heart. That heart stopped beating on June 1, when Amber Armette died following an illness. She was 34. I met Amber in December 2009, during one of my first Pennies from Heaven campaigns after the late Free Press columnist, Lindor Reynolds, decided to pass the wings on to me. Amber was 29 when I walked into the bungalow she shared with her parents to meet and interview her. Her mother, Wendy, had called me to say that because her daughter knew that Pennies helped our city's hungry, she started saving the coins for a year, even cajoling family members to contribute and help out. I quickly learned Amber, who could only see shadows, wasn't always deemed blind. She lost most of her sight when she was only 19 months old and needed radiation after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. The radiation not only left her with greatly diminished sight, but also some cognitive issues. Her mother told me Amber went through elementary and high schools and had been working with other adults with special needs in the community when she had a stroke the August before I met her. For the rest of her life, Amber needed a wheelchair to get around. But while Amber also needed a feeding tube after the stroke and through the years to come, a few months later she surprised doctors by being able to swallow food the consistency of pudding. Amber was never able to eat independently, but she was able to enjoy the taste and smell of certain foods. Through it all, family members said Amber never complained. Not about her loss of sight. Not about her stroke. Not about her mobility. Not about her life. And the stroke didn't stop her from embracing life. She played cards. She was a Blue Bombers fan. She went to her brother's football games. And she would sing every word if a Nickelback song came on the radio. Amber figured, quite rightly, that as a person who knew the value of food and what it meant when she had lost the ability to eat most of it, she was qualified to help the hungry. Pennies, she reasoned, would be the vehicle because they were pretty easy to collect. She ended up collecting several large bottles filled with coins. Through the years, I received many calls from Wendy. We'd have the kind of chats that only parents of children with special needs can have with each other. Complete strangers are able to bond through the challenges of our children. But over time those conversations became further apart until I hadn't heard from her for a few years. Then, this week, came the news that Amber had died last month after falling into a coma after sustaining irreversible brain damage. The news actually came to me on what would have been Amber's 35th birthday. The Pennies column I wrote about Amber started with " Some people can't see the magic in the holiday season. Others can't see, but do see the magic." Maybe that's the best way to remember Amber. And maybe it's the way we all should treat both the holiday season and life in general. Because, while Amber couldn't see like us, when it comes down to it, she really could see better than us. Rest in peace Amber. Kevin Rollason is an award- winning Free Press reporter and the father of Mary Rollason- MacAulay. Kevin. rollason@ freepress. mb. ca A FEW weeks ago, the third season of Masters of Sex began. Based on the 2009 book of the same name by American writer Thomas Maier, the American television series portrays the complicated lives and careers of the pioneering sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson ( actors Michael Sheen and Lizzie Caplan). The couple, who were married from 1971 to 1992, were significant " modernists" who championed a progressive or liberal shift in values and attitudes about sex that continue to reshape the western world. Masters and Johnson and others battled " traditionalists," who conceived morality and social norms through a narrow, male- dominated and white Anglo- Saxon Christian 19th- century lens - one that was sanctioned and enforced by the state. Into the 1960s, the traditionalists deemed that sex was for procreation only, not pleasure - especially by women. The third season of Masters of Sex begins in 1966 when Masters and Johnson are about to publish Human Sexual Response , the best- selling book that transformed their lives and made them household names. Much to Masters' discomfort more than Johnson's, who enjoyed the fame, they became popular icons, feted by Hugh Heffner of Playboy magazine and invited on to TV talks shows. As Maier writes, Human Sexual Response , which sold 300,000 copies in a few months, " transformed the public discourse about sex in America, opening a new era of candidness never seen before in the media." Nevertheless, many of Masters' medical colleagues were shocked by his unorthodox work on orgasms, sexual stimuli and the inner- workings of human anatomy. For years, he was shunned by the medical establishment. As sexually liberating as the 1960s proved to be, lingering puritanical values never would have permitted a series like Masters of Sex to be broadcast. Even today, in 2015 where almost anything goes, the show has far too much nudity and sexual content for conventional TV networks. One of Masters and Johnson's few lapses of judgment came late in their careers. In 1979, they published Homosexuality in Perspective . This controversial study postulated that homosexuality was a learned behaviour and that it was possible to convert a homosexual back to a heterosexual. Their findings were immediately challenged in the press and by other researchers. Masters remained unapologetic, but Johnson soon regretted the promotion of such a regressive theory based on insufficient data, as she was forced to admit. The traditionalists, as we know now, never really had a chance in the fight against the modernists, despite never surrendering their position easily. The battle they have waged has been marked by bitter intransigence on every moral issue from a women's role in society to censorship of literature and films to sex between consenting adults to gay marriage. When, for example, women in Britain, the U. S. and Canada demanded the right to vote, male politicians sabotaged their campaign for years. Women, they argued, were tampering with the laws of nature and God. Such leaders of the women's rights movement as Emmeline Pankhurst in Britain, Alice Paul in the U. S. and Nellie McClung in Canada refused to take no for an answer. And by 1920, women had ( more or less) had obtained the vote in all three countries. The achievement of gay rights - which last month received a huge boost when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled gay rights is a constitutional right - has been more than a century in the making. For decades, the vast majority of Americans and Canadians believed homosexuality or " inversion," as it was then called, was a sinful abomination. Now homophobia is unacceptable and can lead to a job suspension or termination - as an Ontario professor, who posted homophobic remarks on Facebook, recently discovered. In Canada, which has been ahead of the U. S. on this issue, federal anti- sodomy laws were revoked in 1969 and provincial governments passed laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexuality during the 1970s and 1980s. In 2005, the federal government under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin gave legal sanction to same- sex marriage. And a year and a half later in a telling sign of the times, a motion to reopen the debate on gay marriage was defeated in a vote in the House of Commons. From traditionalist Prime Minister Stephen Harper's point of view - he voted in favour of the motion - the matter was closed and he has held firm on that position. Harper understood that in the age of tolerance we now live in, the recognition of gay rights was inevitable - though as U. S. President Barak Obama conceded in his remarks about the Supreme Court ruling, " progress on this journey often comes in small increments." The achievement of women's suffrage did not end the fight for women's equality. Likewise, the U. S. court decision on same- sex marriage has not ended the fight for gay rights, though it is a positive step forward, one both Masters and Johnson would have no doubt approved despite their flawed analysis on this subject. Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. NOW & THEN ALLAN LEVINE Rights progress comes in small increments Cure for silent killer Hep C now faster and easier KEVIN ROLLASON Some see better than others WAYNE. GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Reporter Kevin Rollason remembers Amber Armette for her kind heart and love of life and not for her disabilities. By Laurie Edmiston A_ 09_ Jul- 27- 15_ FP_ 01. indd A9 7/ 26/ 15 4: 32: 45 PM ;