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Gifted scientist Margaret Thompson had a lasting impact on health care

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Margaret Thompson was one of Canadas most respected geneticists, a pioneer in genetic counselling and a devoted researcher into the causes of certain diseases.

She also participated in one of the darker chapters in this countrys history.

Hailed as a gifted scientist who had a lasting impact on Canadas health care system, Dr. Thompson also served for two years on the Alberta Eugenics Board, which approved the forced sterilization of individuals deemed unfit to reproduce.

Margaret (Peggy) Anne Wilson Thompson, who died in Toronto on Nov. 3 at the age of 94, was born on the Isle of Man, in England, on Jan. 7, 1920, and was six years old when her family moved to Saskatchewan. Like many young women at the time, she completed teacher training, and taught in rural schools for two years. She graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1943 with a degree in biology, and completed a PhD in zoology, specializing in metabolic genetics, from the University of Toronto in 1948.

She spent two years teaching at the University of Western Ontario before moving to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she taught zoology and started the Hereditary Genetic Counselling clinic. She also served on the Alberta Eugenics Board from 1960 to 1962, which authorized the sterilization of institutionalized mentally defective people who presented the danger of procreation if discharged and risked transmission of [their] disability to potential children. She was the boards last surviving member, according to the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada.

Eugenics was introduced in 1883 by Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwins cousin, to apply the ideals behind the selective breeding of plants and animals to humans in order to weed out defects, including insanity, criminality and mental incompetence, and improve the quality of the human gene pool. It is widely dismissed today as pseudo-science and a violation of basic human rights.

Founded in 1928 to implement Albertas Sexual Sterilization Act, the rotating, four-person eugenics board approved the mostly involuntary sterilization of 2,834 individuals until it was shut down, and the act repealed, in 1972 by the government of then-premier Peter Lougheed. The only other eugenics board in Canada existed in British Columbia from 1933 to 1973.

In 1999, then-premier Ralph Klein apologized for the Alberta boards work and offered millions of dollars in compensation to survivors.

Dr. Thompsons death notice, the many online condolences and tributes, various biographies, her entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia and, most notably, her 1988 Order of Canada citation none makes any mention of her involvement on the eugenics board. Instead, they focus on the life and work of a protean scientist, mentor and teacher.

[Eugenics] was not a subject that I recall her speaking about, said her son Bruce Thompson, until the mid-1990s, when she informed us that the actions of the board were being investigated and that her testimony would be required. Other than knowing that she was giving testimony in Alberta, I recall no further conversations with her on this matter.

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Gifted scientist Margaret Thompson had a lasting impact on health care

Cass R. Sunstein: Why free marketeers don't accept climate science

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It is often said that people who don't want to solve the problem of climate change reject the underlying science, and hence don't think there's any problem to solve. But consider a different possibility: Because they reject the proposed solution, they dismiss the science. If this is right, our whole picture of the politics of climate change is off.

Here's an analogy. Say your doctor tells you that you must undergo a year of grueling treatment for a serious illness. You might question the diagnosis and insist on getting a second opinion. But if the doctor says you can cure the same problem simply by taking a pill, you might just take the pill without asking further questions.

Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay of Duke University's business school call this phenomenon "solution aversion." And they have found compelling evidence for it in the context of climate change.

In the most important of several experiments, they presented a large number of participants, both Republicans and Democrats, with this description of the current science of climate change: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that there would be an increase of 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit in worldwide temperatures in the 21st century and that humans are responsible for global climate change patterns." This statement was placed alongside a recommendation that the U.S. impose restrictive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers also presented a similar group of people with the same description of the science, but alongside a recommendation that the U.S. profit by leading the world in green technology.

In both instances, Campbell and Kay asked the participants whether they agreed with the IPCC. And in both, about 80 percent of Democrats did agree; the policy solutions made no difference.

Republicans, in contrast, were far more likely to agree with the IPCC when the proposed solution didn't involve regulatory restrictions. Given the prospect of regulation, only 17 percent of Republicans agreed with the IPCC. Given the prospect of profit from green technology, however, 64 percent of Republicans agreed.

Here, then, is powerful evidence that many people (of course not all) who purport to be skeptical about climate science are motivated by their hostility to costly regulation.

A follow-up study fortified this conclusion, finding that even within a group consisting solely of Republicans, those with unusually strong free-market commitments are especially likely to accept the strong views of the American Lung Association on air pollution when they are presented with policy responses that are consistent with those commitments.

Liberals are hardly immune to solution aversion. Consider this question: Should Americans be very worried about "intruder violence," committed by criminals who come into people's homes? You might think that the answer wouldn't depend on the respondent's attitude toward gun control. But it turns out that liberals express much more concern about intruder violence when they're told gun control would reduce such violence than when they're told gun control would increase it.

For decades, social psychologists have emphasized the pervasiveness of "motivated reasoning": If people really don't want to believe something, they will work hard to find a way not to believe it. Campbell and Kay draw on this idea by suggesting that people's willingness to believe a diagnosis often turns on the proposed course of treatment.

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Cass R. Sunstein: Why free marketeers don't accept climate science

Amazing Kimball Winding-Drum Elevator at Biochemistry Hall: UNL East Campus, Lincoln, NE – Video

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Amazing Kimball Winding-Drum Elevator at Biochemistry Hall: UNL East Campus, Lincoln, NE
This is my 2nd Year Anniversary on YouTube. Two years ago today I uploaded my first video of those elevators in Minneapolis. In those two years I #39;ve gained over 10000 views and 70 subscribers,...

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Amazing Kimball Winding-Drum Elevator at Biochemistry Hall: UNL East Campus, Lincoln, NE - Video

‘Inherent Vice’ | Anatomy of a Scene w/ Director Paul Thomas Anderson | The New York Times – Video

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#39;Inherent Vice #39; | Anatomy of a Scene w/ Director Paul Thomas Anderson | The New York Times
Paul Thomas Anderson narrates a sequence from Inherent Vice featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Jefferson Mays. Produced by: Mekado Murphy Subscribe to the Times...

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'Inherent Vice' | Anatomy of a Scene w/ Director Paul Thomas Anderson | The New York Times - Video