Genome analysisMaggie Bartlett
Weekly insights from The Globe newsroom and highlights of our best stories and videos. I welcome your comments.
Want to know where the stock market will be a year from now? For sure. Care to see who will win the Stanley Cup (or whether there will be one this year)? I'm in.
Want to know how you'll die? Maybe not.
We all want to know what tomorrow holds, except when it's uncomfortable. Sickness, disease and death are definitely uncomfortable, which is why they're the focus of The Globe's latest Our Time to Lead project, which launches Saturday. The project's question is simple: Are you willing to trade your most intimate information (God's intel, if you will) for a shot to change your fate?
It may be our most contentious Time to Lead issue yet, as this video of one family's dilemma shows.
OTTL – as we know it in our newsroom – began with our website and newspaper redesign in 2010. It was meant to bring together our readers and journalists to explore issues central to our country. The future of Canada's military and the future of boys in Canadian schools were among the most compelling early topics.
This year, we've already invited informed Canadians – staff and readers – to explore two more contentious questions. Should we use immigration to take our country to 50 million people? Will that country need universities as we know them today?
We come up with the topics after a lot of internal debate, and a lot of reader feedback. For the genomics debate, we relied on our award-winning medical writer Carolyn Abraham, who told us of the most under-reported controversy in health sciences.
You don't need a medical degree to understand the tensions emanating from DNA knowledge. Me? I come from a family with a history of multiple sclerosis. Would I want to know of my prospects? Would I want my insurance company to know of my prospects?
There's no simple answer, which is why we're turning it over to you, our readers, to help Canada through this thorniest of ethical issues. Pore over the debut material this weekend, add your voice to the debate and stay tuned as the project progresses over the next two weeks.
Video pick
Toronto Mayor (for now) Rob Ford does not make himself readily available to the media, so video host and producer Hannah Sung had to get creative to examine his legacy on the city.
Enjoy your weekend,