No description available.

Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST) is a biotechnology for increasing milk production in dairy cattle. The purpose of this research was to investigate and to build a better understanding of the complexities and controversies around this product in Canada. To accomplish this, I examined the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestrys inquiry into rBST and the drug approval process. I compared and contrasted the testimony of witnesses and Senators and I uncovered emerging issues, patterns, and themes. This research was an exploratory and qualitative exercise that analyzed how the participants of this Senate inquiry conceptualized and contested the meaning of science, safety, and the states regulatory functions. <p> This research revealed several commonalities between Health Canada management, the human safety panel, and industry representatives. These witnesses argued that the drug approval process must be efficient, standard-driven, and based upon available scientific studies. These witnesses stated that they had confidence in the neutrality and competency of internal standard setting-agencies. They emphasized transparency rather than public participation in the drug approval process. Health and safety were conceptualized as static phenomena to be measured and evaluated by experts. <p>In contrast, Health Canada employees had several commonalities with the Senators, dairy representatives, and witnesses from citizen interest groups. Their testimony supports the argument that health and safety are dynamic social constructs. These actors transformed the boundaries of science to accommodate their precautionary framing of safety. They highlighted several problems with Canadas science-based regulatory framework and demanded that they have a decisive voice in the rBST decision. They challenged the hegemony of industrial capitalism by combining both scientific and lay knowledge to expose the limits and contradictions of industrialized agriculture.

Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST) is a biotechnology for increasing milk production in dairy cattle. The purpose of this research was to investigate and to build a better understanding of the complexities and controversies around this product in Canada. To accomplish this, I examined the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestrys inquiry into rBST and the drug approval process. I compared and contrasted the testimony of witnesses and Senators and I uncovered emerging issues, patterns, and themes. This research was an exploratory and qualitative exercise that analyzed how the participants of this Senate inquiry conceptualized and contested the meaning of science, safety, and the states regulatory functions. <p> This research revealed several commonalities between Health Canada management, the human safety panel, and industry representatives. These witnesses argued that the drug approval process must be efficient, standard-driven, and based upon available scientific studies. These witnesses stated that they had confidence in the neutrality and competency of internal standard setting-agencies. They emphasized transparency rather than public participation in the drug approval process. Health and safety were conceptualized as static phenomena to be measured and evaluated by experts. <p>In contrast, Health Canada employees had several commonalities with the Senators, dairy representatives, and witnesses from citizen interest groups. Their testimony supports the argument that health and safety are dynamic social constructs. These actors transformed the boundaries of science to accommodate their precautionary framing of safety. They highlighted several problems with Canadas science-based regulatory framework and demanded that they have a decisive voice in the rBST decision. They challenged the hegemony of industrial capitalism by combining both scientific and lay knowledge to expose the limits and contradictions of industrialized agriculture.

Social historians have been understandably wary of the contents of motion pictures. Their reticence to use film as a socio-historical document stems from a valid assumption that, since almost every film is to some degree a fictional construction, no film or group of films may be said to accurately reflect a society. In this study, however, a society is presented that a historian may credibly claim to be accurately represented by film since it exists wholly in film. It is the cinematic society created by the film archives of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). 'NFB society' is set in the 8,000 films produced since 1939 under the NFB mandate: "to interpret Canada to Canadians." Anchored physically, socially, and intellectually to the course of Canadian society and the state, this cinematic micro-society possesses a coherent Social history, which can be re-created by juxtaposing, synchronically and diachronically, films with like social scenarios. In so doing, patterns of social life, especially social relations in the micro-society may be observed in transience. NFB children play a significant role in this transience of NFB society, particularly in regard to dramatic changes in family, school, and community life which take place after the 1960s. Key to an explanation of the historical movement that develops within NFB families, schools, and communities are the 'progressive' socializing structures that replace traditional ones in the society in celluloid. Of particular interest are the social outcomes of the mental hygiene movement following its introduction into Film Board families in 1946 and schools in 1953. Over the decades of this study, the authority of NFB parents, teachers, and community leaders over the socialization of children is diminished by their adoption of the principles of mental hygiene, their influence over their children gradually supplanted by the influence of the cinematic state.

Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in health are ubiquitous in developed countries; however, the modifying effect of gender on the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and health over time is less clear. The potentially different health effects of changes in SEP on changes in health for working-age women and men are examined over a 10-year period. Three main questions are addressed: (1) are there gender differences in health over time, (2) do changes in SEP lead to health inequalities and (3) do changes in SEP impact health differently for women and men? Generalized estimating equations (GEE) were used to analyze the Canadian National Population Health Survey for four measures of health, number of chronic conditions, self-rated health, functional health, and psychological distress, and three measures of SEP, income, education and employment status. Men and women in this nationally-representative sample of Canadians do not differentially embody changes in SEP, though both gender and SEP independently impact health.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was first recognized in Guangdong Province, China, in November 2002. Subsequent to its introduction to Hong Kong in mid-February 2003, the virus spread to more than 30 countries infecting over 8,000 individuals across five continents. Toronto was particularly affected and SARS's outbreak there resulted in the emergence of five ethical issues in the following areas: isolation and quarantine, privacy and personal information, professional duty of care, collateral damage and the WHO's SARS-related Travel Advisory for Toronto. In what follows each of these issues will be explored in depth.

Social historians have been understandably wary of the contents of motion pictures. Their reticence to use film as a socio-historical document stems from a valid assumption that, since almost every film is to some degree a fictional construction, no film or group of films may be said to accurately reflect a society. In this study, however, a society is presented that a historian may credibly claim to be accurately represented by film since it exists wholly in film. It is the cinematic society created by the film archives of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). 'NFB society' is set in the 8,000 films produced since 1939 under the NFB mandate: "to interpret Canada to Canadians." Anchored physically, socially, and intellectually to the course of Canadian society and the state, this cinematic micro-society possesses a coherent Social history, which can be re-created by juxtaposing, synchronically and diachronically, films with like social scenarios. In so doing, patterns of social life, especially social relations in the micro-society may be observed in transience. NFB children play a significant role in this transience of NFB society, particularly in regard to dramatic changes in family, school, and community life which take place after the 1960s. Key to an explanation of the historical movement that develops within NFB families, schools, and communities are the 'progressive' socializing structures that replace traditional ones in the society in celluloid. Of particular interest are the social outcomes of the mental hygiene movement following its introduction into Film Board families in 1946 and schools in 1953. Over the decades of this study, the authority of NFB parents, teachers, and community leaders over the socialization of children is diminished by their adoption of the principles of mental hygiene, their influence over their children gradually supplanted by the influence of the cinematic state. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

An infant stimulation program developed for mothers from low income areas with children under the age of three years is described. The program was developed for use in a public health setting and involved close collaboration with personnel from a number of community service agencies. The program, which had a duration of eight weeks, involved a combination of group meetings and home visits. Outcome was assessed in terms of developmental quotients and estimates of the quality of the home environment. Three additional programs consisted of a waiting list control and programs in which each of the two intervention components, home visits and group meetings, were offered separately. Assessments were carried out prior to the programs, immediately following them and four months later. Pre-assessments established the equivalence of the four groups on both the dependent measures and socioeconomic indices, although the groups were found to differ on the measure of maternal intelligence obtained. Following intervention, the scores obtained on both dependent measures for the home visits plus group meetings program were found to be significantly greater than those obtained by the waiting list control clients. The effect of the home visits only program was indeterminate as the scores did not differ significantly from either the control group or the home visits plus group meetings program. Clients in the group meetings only program did not differ significantly from control group clients on either measure. Similar results were obtained at follow up assessments, with no evidence of any decline in scores following the end of intervention. Whereas the correlations observed between maternal intelligence and children's developmental quotients remained much the same over the three assessment periods, the correlations between the home environments and the children's developmental quotients increased, both concurrently and predictively, following intervention. These findings were interpreted as providing support for the hypothesis that the changes in the home environments resulting from the programs were indeed important ones in terms of the children's development. There was some evidence to suggest that the socioeconomic indices of age, education and income of mother were positively related to outcome, while, in addition, maternal intelligence was related to the maintenance of treatment effect at follow up. The correlation of socioeconomic status with outcome was consistent with the results of other infant stimulation programs but was not considered to reflect on the effectiveness of the program as all of the clients in the study were of low socioeconomic status. The implications of these results are discussed both in terms of the further development and implementation of the program described and in the context of research in the area of infant stimulation. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamics between professional knowledge and the power to construct social realities. The focus is on the institutions which contributed to mental hygiene as a protocol for public policies directed toward children. The social history of the child in the twentieth century is juxtaposed with shifts in the configurations of private and public institutions in a sociology of mental illness. The mental hygiene movement created one of the twentieth century's major paradigms. Mental hygiene was conceptualized as the development of a science of promoting mental health and preventing mental illness. The' working premise of the movement was that early life experiences determined adult competence and constituted the root cause of major social problems from crime and dependency to labour unrest and war. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene was established in the United States in 1909 and a second National Committee was established in Canada in 1918. Mental hygienists developed an ideology of child oriented prevention in public health, welfare and educational policies which legitimated public intervention into the private spheres of family relations and child rearing. The idea of mental hygiene was based on a medical model and as such it was part of the new psychiatry and public health movements of the Progressive Era. As a paradigm mental hygiene fostered the identification of children according to scientific standards. Mental hygiene contributed to the transformation of juvenile delinquency into a psychiatry of maladjustment in childhood. As a positivistic approach to public health, mental hygiene research elaborated criteria to determine age related stages of normal psychological and biological progress. Mental hygiene was a product of professional researchers and policy makers. The knowledge base of mental hygiene grew with the expansion of higher education in the United States especially in regard to scientific medicine. The medical model was subsequently applied to research in the behavioural and social sciences. Scientific philanthropy provided funds for research, professional education, and the distribution of knowledge. The accumulation of monetary resources by nineteenth century entrepreneurial capitalists, who applied these funds to further the growth of scientific models, were a sustaining factor in twentieth century mental hygiene. The agents of power described as part of the mental hygiene movement include: 1) the National Committees for Mental Hygiene in the United States and Canada; and, 2) general purpose foundations in Rockefeller related philanthropy and the Commonwealth Fund. By mid-century, the federal, state/provincial and local governments of the United States and Canada had assumed major aspects of the former role of the National Committees and philanthropy in mental health advocacy. The theoretical foundation of mental hygiene evolved in conjunction with the development of the scientific method as applied to preventive medicine, especially in fields related to psychiatry. Mental hygiene was a primary carrier of the medical model into applied disciplines in the social and health sciences. The professionalization of education, social welfare and psychology, as imbued with mental hygiene, translated technological change into revised concepts of public and private spheres in relationship to family and child life. The medicalization of human differences limited the potential for radical revisions in social organization. It justified unequal access to political and economic power on the basis of psychological and biological characteristics. The mental hygiene paradigm served to maintain established social configurations in the face of social change. The function of justifying inequalities was especially important in the United States but less so in Canada for reasons of the timing of nation-building, national history, character, and culture. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate