Hello and welcome to another episode of our special series meeting all odds in these times of crisis which has locked all of us in our houses. We are speaking to leaders who are putting in their best foot forward to keep their businesses going on speak today. We are speaking to Jyoti Bansal CEO PhD India on how she is managing her business and clients and employees in these times of crisis. Jyoti welcome to the show. Hi, nice to be seeing you, Nazia. I think we're all sort of missing that seeing our colleagues at work and missing the human touch and interaction that happens. So really good to be here and seen people in person. Hello also to all our audiences. I hope you're all staying home and staying safe because that's probably the best that we can do to help ourselves and each other in these really strange times that we're finding ourselves in. Thank you, Jyoti. So Jyoti in these, you're CEO of a company, you know, how are you keeping morale of your employees high? What kind of initiatives you've taken for them? So it is a very different, you know, we're working that we're all sort of exploring and grappling with and I think now after almost four weeks of doing it, coming to terms with also in many ways. Of course, as a leader, it is a challenge to, you know, keep people motivated.  But at this scale, I don't think anybody's ever done it and neither have we. It helped because, you know, we sort of put ourselves on a two to three day trial much before the government announced the lockdown, which really helped us to sort of iron out some of the concerns which our employees had about how it would work. That said, yeah, it's, you know, there are strange challenges that crop up, you know, once in a while. What we've done is that, you know, one of the things which I really believe is that in different times, you really need to think differently and get creative with how we sort of do our business as usual in times which are really so unusual in every way that, you know, they could be. So what we've tried to do is to put a little bit of discipline into how we operate, how we connect with each other. So, you know, like I connect with my teams first thing in the morning. So we've sort of put like a cadence to that and I think consistency and a rhythm really helps everybody because, you know, when you're working at home sometimes the boundaries between what is home and what is work tend to blur and, you know, the first week we were all sort of working from like first thing in the morning till like really late at night and then we said, no, we need to sort of, you know, put some sort of methods to this madness.  We take stock of any developments that have happened on the client front, anything which we want to discuss in terms of, you know, any new opportunity or challenge which we think we want to share with each other. And we end the day also with, you know, we sort of put, we are working on a very big project. So we've put like a sort of everyday catch up on that, you know, at the end of the day. So it just sort of helps you to schedule your day a little better. We also then, you know, put a few rules which everybody thought I was being too rule bound, but they've all realized that it's helping them is that, you know, we will not do any calls between one to two, because that's sort of lunchtime and everybody does need to take a break. We try not to schedule any calls on public holidays and weekends. We've had a couple of them and while, you know, everybody says everything seems like a holiday. It's not really holiday because most of us are ending up working, I think longer hours than we do usually. So the scheduling and the cadence has helped. Then of course, you know, at a group level, we've started a half hour sort of de-stress our de-stress time that we call it, where we just sort of, it's like a virtual hangout where we just sort of schedule a program, which is somebody in our own office who will, you know, be bringing their non-work talent to the fall. And that's sort of gone down very well. We've also done things like virtual hangouts where we just sort of chill, don't talk, work and so on. So we're trying to do a mix of work related discipline as well as a little time to still chill with each other because I think some way we're all also wanting a little bit of a break. Too much of staying at home is also not like the best thing to do, right? Especially when you're used to being away from it for long hours every single day. Now, employees are still easier to manage. Clients are more demanding. They're more difficult people. How are you handling them? So I must say that, you know, our teams have really risen up to the challenge of staying connected with their clients in these times quite well.  We are discussing their challenges with them.  So we are definitely trying to do that at a senior level. We are connecting with our clients to understand the, you know, how are they looking at their businesses right now and also, you know, over the next three to six months. And then of course, the sort of midterm horizon because all of us need to be prepared for that. So from that perspective, you know, our teams have been doing a good job at that. The one thing that I think is very important is that, you know, Ph.D. has always been considered a true partner, a very future-facing partner for their, via all our clients. And we are trying to keep an eye on that. And we're working very closely with not only our global teams, but also with some of our, you know, research partners who can sort of mount online consumer sentiment and, you know, what's happening for how our consumers sort of thinking about the future kind of researchers and hot leadership pieces for us. So that, you know, as we get out of it, we can be well prepared to really take this forward in a sensible manner which sort of ties in with what our business requirements are likely to be. So partnership, empathy, you know, understanding that we are all in this together and it's just a phase and we will get over it as we sort of, you know, go by. This is, you know, we have all seen ups and downs in business. This is one which none of us have ever seen before and I hope that we don't have to ever see it again also. But it is a phase and I think as all tough phases, the key is to really hold our nerve and work together. We are also working closely with our, you know, publisher partners, our television channel and other partners to ensure that we can manage the situation now and then start working in a practical manner with them as we go out of it. I don't know if it's the right word to say but you're lucky to have a client like ByteDance at this hour which has seen spikes in its consumption during this lockdown. How are you managing them?  Are they appetizing? What is your strategy for a client like this? Whose consumption has actually gone up during these times?  They are seeing a huge surge in demand and download at this point of time and obviously people have more time to their spending, more time with the app. We are definitely, you know, working very closely with them to see how can we work with them through this phase which is sort of like a built phase for them and what will happen once we get out of it. We are not, you know, I think we have to sort of balance out what the consumer is doing right now and what they need to do therefore with what will happen once the lockdown is over. So we are, you know, having those kind of conversations with them to ensure that we can give them the right recommendations. In general, as an expert, you know, somebody who's been in the agency business for so long what would you advise marketers at this time? I think this is a good time for us to really take a little bit, a very small step back and relook at our businesses from a lens which, you know, sometimes the day-to-day running does not allow us to do. It is also a time for us to really look at what is it that we would like to be as a business, you know, in the next two to three years because once we come out of the lockdown, suddenly, you know, everything was clamped down literally overnight. But when we get out of it, one, it will not happen overnight.  Neither will businesses go back to being exactly what they were a few weeks back. So we all need to do a little bit of, you know, future gazing and rethinking about what new business models are likely to emerge, what are the new consumer behaviors that are likely to happen after we get out of this phase. And it is a great time to be really preparing for that. And that is exactly what we are trying to do with all our clients and make sure that, you know, we are not sort of caught going back to the old way of working because that is definitely not going to happen. We all of us are going to have to unlearn a few things, refocus our priorities on a few different things. And of course, some things will continue the way they were, because end of the day, you know, women beings are also creatures of habit and we will go back to some of our old ways of working. But a lot of it will be very different, very new ways of thinking, behaving and conducting our businesses. I think it's a great time for us to be really having those conversations with our clients, amongst ourselves as an agency team. And, you know, that's also what we are really doing. We are really looking at what is it that we, what is it that we can, you know, prepare ourselves for going forward, what are the kinds of offerings that will be more useful to our clients in the, you know, not so easy times that we will all go through over the next 6, to 8, 9, 10 months, maybe depending on how the economy sort of rebounds. These are unique times, as you said. Nobody has seen this kind of a lockdown ever before. How has this evolved you as a person or as a professional, both? Yeah, so I think both have been for me also a phase of unlearning and relearning a few things. So I'll talk about the professional first and the personal later. I think at these times, our people really look to us as leaders, even more than they do in the normal times. And, you know, they want their leaders to be courageous, to be, you know, feeling like they are in charge of a situation, even when sometimes they are not, because you know, a lot of things even we don't really control. But I think leadership and sensible practical leadership at this point of time is something which I think my people expect from me. And one of the things that I'm really trying to focus on is to be as honest, as candid, as empathetic as I can be with all our people, with all our clients, with all the different kinds of never really dealt with before situations that we are really getting thrown into. I think what I would, you know, I had heard a very prominent Harvard professor talk about leadership a while back and one of the things which really stuck in my head was face the facts, acknowledge the fears, but also build credible hope. And that is what our people really expect from us. I'm trying to do as much of that as I can. We understand the challenges many of our colleagues are facing with, you know, working from home, having to deal with doing a lot more of the housework than we usually do, kids who need to be taken care of.   So, you know, a lot of our colleagues have young children, some have aged parents, some of our younger team members are, you know, stuck away from their families, you know, because of the lockdown, they couldn't really travel back to be at home and therefore are staying alone.  And I'm trying to give them a mix of the fact that we can get through this while acknowledging that there is fear and anxiety and, you know, or maybe uncertain future right now ahead of us for many months. That's on the professional front and on the personal front, I think it's been a lesson in learning how these school teachers manage these energetic bundles of energy for like long hours. And, you know, we are really struggling with our own in terms of how to keep them occupied, how to, you know, make the most of this time that, you know, I'm getting at, I don't think I've ever spent so much time with my children as I'm doing now in the same house. Of course, a lot of it goes into work, but we are sort of trying to do that. I'm also realizing that, you know, it sort of makes you relook at your own priorities in life and your own styles of dealing with situations, dealing with people. Some of the things I'm learning are tough, but I think it's good to learn them while we have the time and the energy and the manpower to do it. Jyothi, thank you so much for talking to us. This interview is inspiring on a lot of fronts, not just professional, even personal.  And it is pretty much the same for me. So thank you very much. I feel very connected with you right now and I need you. We wish that you stay at home and you stay safe and we wish good health to you and your family. Thank you so much for talking to Exchange for Media. Thanks Nazia and wish every minute Exchange for Media also good health and hopefully we will all be out of this soon and connecting in person rather than just on Zoom calls. So thank you so much for your time also.


I am Brandon Sells, a PhD student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I am a black engineer. In the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics representation is tough. There's not too many of us walking around in the school at the faculty level or the staff level. It would be great to see that representation in that ranks as well as the graduates to the undergraduates are there but they're far in view. We'd like to see more. It means everything. It's my identity being able to be a part of putting together technologies that can improve people's lives and yes you can do that as an engineer but as a black engineer I feel that you bring a perspective that it's holistic in how people can involve themselves with the technology and we're not just looking at technologies for people that can afford it. In a lot of projects we have these technology feasibility studies where we say if this could happen what's necessary and we find that there's a lot of capital that needs to be made but also we understand that for the people that want to use this technology it needs to be more widespread and I feel that being able to use that basis to develop technology is important and I feel that stems from being able to have different people in the room and so with my research projects they have different backgrounds, different ethnicities in the room and yes that experience is great and academically speaking Purdue does a great job in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I have everything I need but that representation piece is what keeps me up at night. There's not too many of us walking around, there's not too many of us in the classroom and that's something that I think Purdue Engineering and the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics could do better. I think that if they want to truly represent the society that we're trying to improve then I think there needs to be more people that look like the minority in the room. When it comes to using my voice I'm able to put myself in different rooms. I have access to different committees that I've served on where I have interactions with administration, department heads and that's great. I'm able to use that as a tool to bring perspective to people that don't have that perspective. Not saying that it's easy work because again I'm a graduate student, I'm a PhD student so that's my first focus but diversity, inclusion and equity is something that I'm brought to do and my voice will continue to be heard. I just want to make sure that the spaces that I'm in I'm respected there.


Our speaker today is Dr. Abdullah Dhar. Dr. Dhar and I have known each other for 10, 12, 15 years perhaps. I'd like to say we're old friends of Dhar. We are old friends of Dhar. Dr. Dhar comes to us from the McLaughlin-Rochman Center for Global Dhar at the University of Toronto, where he's a professor of public health sciences and of surgery and a senior scientist and director of ethics and commercialization at the McLaughlin-Rochman Center. His academic career has really been quite extensive. When I first met Dr. Dhar, he was the chair of surgery and doing renal transplants at Oman in one of the emerald states, and we met at a UN conference in Germany, as I recall, around Munich in 1997 or 1998 to work on some international questions. But Dr. Dhar is not only a surgeon and organ transplant surgeon, but has been involved in global health and bioethics. His major research focus is on global health inequities, which he will be talking to us about today, with a particular focus on building scientific capacity and increasing innovation in developing countries and in learning how to move things from the land up to the village in terms of health. He studied and later taught at Oxford, was the founding chair of surgery, as I said, at Oman and remains involved with the UN World Health Organization and UNESCO as an advisor and consultant. Currently, Dr. Dhar is the chair of the board of the UN University International Institute for Global Health. And the topic that we may touch on today is also the chair of a quite extraordinary global alliance for chronic diseases, an alliance made up of the leading research institutes of six countries around the world. And so Dr. Dhar chairs that. It's with great pleasure that I introduce a Deladar innovative approaches to reducing global health disparities. Well done. Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure and honor to be here and thank you very much for inviting me. And the timing is pretty interesting considering the elections yesterday, and particularly with the connection to Chicago. I'm going to be talking for about 35 or 40 minutes. And right up front I want to say that 70 to 80% of the work that I'll be describing here involves my dear friend and colleague Peter Singer, who is unfortunately not so well this week. He was due to come here next week to give a talk at the Fellows Conference, but won't be there. And we are hoping that we'll be able to reproduce some of my comments. So consider this as a presentation from both myself and my colleague Peter Singer. So I will describe our work mainly. Some of it is not yet in the literature or is not in an accessible form. And so it'll be quite new. And I hope that we'll have a lot of time afterwards to discuss that. So let me first of all start with the definition of global health. It's one of those things that's a little like the elephant and the blind men. It hasn't settled yet as to exactly what it is. My favorite definition is this one, from the Institute of Medicine report. Health problems, issues, and concerns that transcend national borders may be influenced by circumstances or experiences in other countries and are best addressed by cooperative actions and solutions. And that packs a lot of implications which I hope will emerge as we discuss issues today. So look at this picture. On the right, you have people living in North America, Western Europe and the rich countries of the world, expecting to live 80 years after at birth. On the left, you have sub-Saharan Africa mainly and other places in the world, but mainly sub-Saharan Africa where life expectancy is still 40 years and to some extent in a few countries actually dropping. And so that immediately raises two questions. First of all, how can this be acceptable? We're one species, we live in one planet. How can this be fair? How can it be sustainable? And the second question is what can you do about it? So that's partly why Peter and I got involved in global health. Look at the disparities in global health. And I want to enumerate many of these because the list can go on for hours.  For every woman who dies, another 30 suffer lifelong consequences as a result of complications of their pregnancy or the delivery. And that's not to mention the kids who grow up in utero with malnourished mothers or who grow up in very constrained circumstances which then leave lasting legacy of being exposed to metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and mental health problems. So it's a huge problem predicated on poverty as one of the issues. I also want to highlight a human rights element to global health. Some of you may be familiar with Amartya Sen's article maybe 10, 12 years ago in the New York Review of Books about 100 million missing women.  Now poor health affects the poor predominantly including in the United States. Some of you may be familiar with this statistic that in Washington D.C. as you go down the subway from the richer parts of the city to the poor parts of the city for every two and a half kilometers along that path life expectancy drops by one and a half years. This is a problem between the developed and the developing world but even in the developed world there are disparities and some of the talks that you will be covering including here in Chicago will highlight those issues. Now infectious diseases have received a large part of the attention in the past decade or so. HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected tropical diseases and that has actually attracted some significant funding from many sources, the biggest source being the Gates Foundation to address some of the real big challenges facing us with regards to infectious diseases. Part of this is humanitarian impulses and part of it as I will show you in a minute is national security considerations. So viruses do not carry passports and that has been one of the factors that I say but then neither does climate change or environmental degradation. So people think about infectious diseases but do not give as much attention to the health implications of climate change and environmental degradation and those too don't respect borders. Now our consumption patterns in North America and in the rich countries of the world are such that directly or indirectly we harm people in the developing world. Take our meat consumption, the fact that we have to use good land to produce feed crops to feed the cattle with all the environmental implications of that to the rest of the world and all those greenhouse gases released but also we export things like tobacco aggressively. The markets here are saturated, people are smoking less so what do we do? We export that to the developing world and that's a huge problem as we will see in a minute and then a focus of my work over the past four years on chronic non-communicable diseases that is an area that has been totally neglected and indeed mental health which I'll come to at the very end is even more neglected than that and that is actually not so just in the developing world but throughout the world. So this is the national security angle. This is a comment from Sandy Berger, you guys might remember him from the Clinton days he was a national security advisor and he says that a problem that kills huge numbers crosses borders, threatens to destabilize whole regions is the very definition of a social security threat to dismiss disease as a soft issue is to be blind to the hard reality. So that's been some of the calculation. Let me paint another layer to this. What stresses the planet will stress global health. So if we put a stress on food supplies the poor will suffer. If we don't take care of energy sources the poor suffer and of course climate, if we don't take care of the climate it is primarily the poor who will suffer, not the rich. In some parts of the world like Canada we might actually be better off if the climate got a bit warmer. It is usually the poor that will suffer. Water, totally underestimated as a potential threat to the health of people in the developing world and this is something that we need to pay more attention and areas like Darfur where there are people suffering there are health implications and so on one of the reasons that that war has perpetuated itself is water shortage in that part of the world and underlying it literally under the ground are some aquifers that people are thinking about exploiting in the future. And then another element which is not often thought about in global health is this willful negligence of the consequences of military action. So you go into Iraq you have your policy objectives but you forget that you have displaced 4 million people and those 4 million people from the moment they are displaced become not only victims but then become a problem in terms of health but we never think of that as a health issue and it is happening in Afghanistan too displaced people, migrations, etc. are a huge health problem. So let me tell you now a little about our center which Peter Singer and I have built over the past decade and it is evolved from various different prior institutionary arrangements to what we have now which is the McLaughlin Rotman Center for Global Health which is at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network. The niche that we have evolved is this interesting intersection, convergence between global health as defined here looking at the bigger picture life sciences, we came to this via genomics initially and then biotechnology and now we just call it life sciences wider definition. And innovation, I feel in its own right innovation studies, commercialization, product development, entrepreneurship. So that's the area where our work has ended now. It's that interesting intersection. Our work is currently organized under 4 pillars. One is grant challenges which is what I'm going to be talking about next. A whole area of ethics, most of that work now we do with the Gates Foundation and it's funded by the Gates Foundation. We have a large body of work looking at commercialization and I will talk about that. And then we actually have a laboratory component. So we have a big research lab led by Kevin Cain ahead of the Sandra Rotman Labs and he does interesting work on tropical diseases, malaria and so on. So it is actually a center that encompasses lab to village in a real sense and that part after you leave the lab is really the most complex to do. We work closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We have several grants from them and I'll talk about some of them now. And we host in the McLaughlin Rotman Center this interesting new initiative called Grant Challenges Canada which I'll describe. So let's just look at if you took a new technology or even new policy for health and kept it at the center and then asked yourself how would we actually implement that and get it to the people that need it in the village in the derogatory sense village but where it's needed. So you need to look at the science behind it. You need ethical, social and cultural considerations. You need to find financing and then there are politics and then with each of those you can subdivide the issues and you can just keep going outwards with this kind of diagram finding more and more issues that need to be tackled before you'll get success. This is based on a study that we carried out at the center which we published about three years ago in Nature describing these very complex issues. If you develop a fantastic vaccine today and you think that the job is done, you're completely wrong. That's just the beginning. So let me just now begin to talk about this idea of grant challenges. A grant challenge as it has evolved. You may be familiar with the grant challenges in mathematics about 100 years ago that led to departments of mathematics all over the world focusing on those grant challenges but as it has evolved particularly with our work with the Gates Foundation and more recently a grant challenge is a specific critical barrier. So for example if you don't have a vaccine against malaria the answer is the question is what is the critical barrier? Why haven't we done that? We've been researching this for 50 years. So it is about focusing on the barriers, the critical barriers that if removed would help solve an important health problem in the developing world with the high likelihood of impact globally through widespread implementation and implementation is now becoming a science in its own right. More money is going to go into implementation research in the future in the next few years and perhaps in any other area of global health research.  One is the Gates Foundation grant challenges in global health initiative which was launched seven years ago. Then the grant challenges in chronic non-communicable diseases. Grant challenges Canada which I've just talked about and I'll say more in a few minutes and then lastly some of the work that I'm involved in at the moment with NIH and the Wellcome Trust and others in identifying what are the grant challenges in global mental health. And I think for me that's and I'm sure for many people that's the next big, big challenge to address. So this approach of grant challenges which is quite different from funding research in the traditional way. You're all familiar with the NIH where you put in your ideas it goes through peer review etc. Here it's a rather different approach. It's more hands-on. It's based on those critical barriers that we need to do and we will fund the best ideas without bureaucracy and if someone comes with a great idea presenting a two-page proposal we'll fund it and we'll see if they can take it to the next stage. That kind of approach. And it's brought in very significant resources. Bill Gates put in, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put in $450 million to address 14 grant challenges and funded just 44 research projects. Just 44, $450 million or more to try and solve those really critical barriers. It's brought in new talent so that particular initiative by the Gates Foundation brought in three Nobel Prize winners who are working on other things refocus them on global health research and a lot of talent, some of it from the developing world. It has energized communities to rise and meet the challenges particularly in providing funds for research and I'll talk about the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases in a minute. It's fostered public engagement so people have become excited like after talking to you, those of you who haven't heard about this will probably go and read about it on the Internet so people get engaged because of the idea of this grant challenge. As I said, it's an antidote to conservative approaches to funding research and to a certain extent it addresses the defects that we have in global governance of global health. You would imagine that the World Health Organization would be a governing body for this. Well, they do serve a purpose but they don't have funds to do research so it's not the global governance mechanism that you would expect. There are huge gaps in global governance and this grant challenges approach with its focus on priorities is one way to address those gaps. Let's start with the grant challenges in global health. We worked with the Gates Foundation and the NIH in 2003. We did the research in Toronto to identify those 14 grant challenges laid out in the form of seven aims. So just let's look at some of the aims to improve childhood vaccines meaning let's try and make a vaccine that doesn't require refrigeration to stop it from degrading. Develop needle-free delivery vaccines and so on. Create new vaccines that currently don't exist. Control insects that transmit agents of disease. So how can we stop the mosquito from carrying malaria both through genetic approaches and chemical approaches and so on. So these were 14 huge challenges and as I said nearly half a billion dollars went into funding 44 research consortia and that's become pretty successful. Not only in terms of the research that is produced some of which is really fascinating particularly with vector control, biology and also producing better food crops for the developing world particularly for micronutrients. And then there have been a lot of subsidiary outcomes people emulating the methodology, people using the priorities and so on and also including our grant challenges Canada which in a way was very inspired by the grant challenges in global health program. Secondly, let me talk about chronic non-communicable diseases so just let me paint the scene here for you. So about, I'm sorry, I don't know what I did there. So about 60 million people die every year and people imagine that a lot of people in the developing world die from infectious diseases. Well, it's not so.  And then if you look at communicable diseases maternal and perinatal conditions and nutritional deficiencies which are big killers all that amounts to only 30% So chronic diseases which are cardiovascular diseases mainly heart disease and stroke certain cancers, not all of them doesn't include infectious cancers chronic respiratory conditions which kill more than 2 million people just from indoor pollution alone and diabetes that has been an area that has been totally neglected in the developing world understandably partly because they have to deal with tuberculosis, malaria, HIV other neglected diseases and what's the budget? The budget in many sub-Saharan African countries for health is 20-25 dollars per person per year which is remarkably low so how do you deal with this kind of problems? There is factors I actually pretty well understood not exactly how they interact and what you can do about them but it's tobacco so smoking will kill 1 billion people this century if we don't do anything about it 1 billion people unhealthy diets so both over nutrition and under nutrition physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol So we did a study to identify what are the grant challenges in chronic non-communicable diseases and published in Nature exactly 3 years ago and we identified 20 grant challenges and suggested 39 research approaches to deal with those 20 grant challenges and we put those 20 grant challenges in the form of 6 goals so it's easier for me to just give you the 6 goals and then you can imagine the challenges arising raise public awareness enhance economic legal and environmental policies modify risk factors engage business and community mitigate health impacts of poverty and urbanization and re-oriented health systems including medical and health education now it might sound wow that's easy that's easy as physicians and scientists we would focus on goal C risk factors we know a little about that genetics etc but the others are actually more difficult much much more difficult so at the end of that paper we said chronic non-communicable diseases must urgently receive more resources research and attention as mapped out in these grant challenges in action is costing millions of premature deaths throughout the world so you can't just end with that what do you do having identified this crucial need so we went ahead and got together NIH, the Canadians, Australians, Chinese and we created this global alliance for chronic diseases so you can read about it in a piece of science at the time we launched it so that's Betsy Nable, a visionary who was at the time the director of NHLBI at NIH National Heart Lung and Blood Institute she's now president and CEO of Brigham and Women's in Boston the head of the Canadian body which is equivalent to the NIH the head of the British body Chinese, Australian who got India now coming aboard in South Africa so what is this global alliance about so it's a funding agency it's an alliance of funders together these six agencies account for about 80% of all research funding available for biomedicine and health it's the first of its kind it focuses on chronic diseases in low-income countries and low-income populations of high-income countries it supports collaborative, coordinated research at global scale on low-cost interventions and capacity building and it identifies common approaches to provide the evidence that policymakers need in order to put in programs so that's what that's about and we can discuss a little more about what are the priorities to be funding first and so on when we come to the discussion now let me transition to Grand Challenges Canada which in some ways is even more exciting because it is a policy development of a government which is very creative as you will see so Grand Challenges Canada is an organization it's a funding body it's not for profit organization Peter Singer is the CEO and the chief scientist at the consortium with two government-related bodies in Canada the International Development Research Centre which has amended to do research for development for the developing world and the Canadian Institute of Health Research which is our NIH equivalent it's governed by a very tough and strong Board of Directors it's advised by an international scientific advisory board which I happen to chair the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre as we heard its mission is to identify Grand Challenges so from an idea you test it you say well this is important you then go and talk to content experts and you go through scientific advisory board identify a Grand Challenge so phone me and I after this talk we'll be discussing one of these in the area of cancer to see whether it's something worth funding and then you get the board to say well this is great put in this much money and develop an RFP so it's a really exciting kind of work and we will support implementation and commercialization of the solutions that emerge so we are building a capacity to actually support commercialization which is not an easy thing to do so we've got 225 million dollars for five years to just do five programs one of them is going to be in chronic non-communicable diseases one is going to be in in a point of care diagnostics and another one in maternal neonatal child health and we are working on others but just five and the government in its budget 2008 talked about supporting the best minds in the world as they search for breakthroughs in global health and other areas so that other areas they haven't yet funded there might be funding of equivalent amounts for let's say energy or agriculture but those have yet to unfold now here's the clincher and the most important part of all this this money comes out of the foreign aid budget of Canada about five percent of the foreign aid budget and this is the first time that any country in the world has taken the risk of taking money out of foreign aid budget and putting it into this kind of grand challenges approach to solve problems for the benefit of the developing world and that's controversial we can discuss that whether that's the right way to spend foreign aid money or not but if other countries did take this up then this could be a way to get a lot of money into global health and other areas environment, energy, agriculture etc to solve real problems rather than simply hand out money which sometimes doesn't work and grand challenges Canada has this particular niche so the Gates Foundation focused primarily on fundamental basic science there are people that do social sciences research on health systems and cultural issues and so on how to get technologies and policies to improve health and then there are business schools that think about business innovation the sweet spot we think is where those three meet and that's where our focus is between technological scientific innovation business innovation and social innovation that spot in the middle is where we want to do some creative work and finally amongst the grand challenges is this new initiative going on for about 10 months now I'm working with this with the National Institutes of Mental Health at NIH our center in Toronto the Welcome Trust and all under the aegis of the Global Alliance so the initial impetus for this came from the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases and although the definition of chronic diseases that we used and the WHO and the World Bank uses for what constitutes chronic disease does not include mental health and indeed the risk factors and the approaches are a little different from the others this needs a treatment of its own and we will finish this research before the end of the year and publish it early next year and my hope is that this will lead to the same kind of energy in terms of funding as did the chronic diseases one and then we will have more focus on this totally neglected area global mental health so those are the four grand challenges that I was going to talk about let me now transition to some other work that we have been doing and I want to introduce that by talking about the hepatitis B vaccine which was discovered in 1967 here in the United States the virus was discovered by Baruch Blomberg the vaccine was created very rapidly two years later it became available initially from the blood of patients later on genetically modified form in the early 80s and was adopted quite widely in the developed world, the rich world but if you look at what happened to the poor countries even now a large part of the developing world does not have hepatitis B vaccine and I'll show you how cheap it's become and yet it's not available so what do you do about this problem? and when we asked ourselves that question the first thing we did is we went out and studied Cuba, Brazil, China, India, South Africa and what the countries were doing in terms of internalizing modern scientific knowledge and producing health products then we went to the level of looking at companies and then we went to the level of looking at technologies regenerative medicine for example so this piece of work was at the companies level and an example is a company in India a pretty remarkable country called Shanta Biotechnics which is in Hyderabad and to cut us a long story short one of its products was a hepatitis B vaccine that they made, they improved on the process and at the time the vaccine was available for actually more than $15 at that time if you wanted a shot in New York it would cost $175 they were able to bring that down to 50 cents and in fact now UNICEF purchases this for 39 cents or less a shot so now this one company supplies 40% or until recently did of the hepatitis B vaccine for UNICEF then distributors throughout the world so we say to ourselves if India can do that and there are companies in China doing this and there are companies in Brazil those emerging markets what about Africa which is the area of the most need and the area of the most opportunity in terms of being able to do something about it let me just introduce this work by quoting Paul Kagami of Rwanda who says that we in Africa and I was born in Africa I have a sensitivity for that country I was born in Tanzania we in Africa must either begin to build up our scientific and technological capacity or remain an impoverished appendage to the global economy so what that says is not only do we want to find solutions to our health and development programs sorry concerns but we also want to benefit economically from this if we can so we begin on a program of identifying both stagnant technologies in Africa in Sub-Saharan Africa and there's a paper coming out in science in the next month or two which documents these stagnant technologies developed by African academics and researchers but going nowhere I'll give you some examples now so what did we think was a way to stop that constipation of knowledge and get it out to where it's needed we started working with that's to tell me I have five more minutes so we started working with Tanzania with Uganda where I initially went to medical school before becoming a refugee and then Ghana and more recently with Rwanda and it was all at the invitation of these countries that had somehow found out about our work and said come and help us think through we do a lot of research and you'd be surprised at how much research there's been even starting from colonial times there have been research institutes so there have been around 60, 70 years and the best that they can do is research very little of that research actually gets translated into policy improved lives improved economies or makes much difference other than to the CV of the researchers and the governments are saying how long can we continue to fund research so come and help us identify ways of unclogging that so that we can get some benefit so one of the things that we began to think about was we were based in this incredible center in Toronto called the Mars Center Mars supposedly stands for medical and related sciences and this is Toronto General Hospital, the facade which we kept and built a huge complex behind this is where insulin was first used for diabetes and the idea of the Mars Center is to bring business, science and capital together so in that building in the complex behind it we have laboratories we have venture capital companies we have legal experts working on intellectual property issues we have incubators for new companies and so on in one building they meet for lunch they meet in the cafeteria, they interact they walk to each other's offices and somehow magic happens as opposed to the old approach which scientists still for I'll do my science I'll publish in nature or in science or somewhere important and maybe somebody will pick it up and maybe somebody will fund it and I really don't give a damn I've got my CV and I've got my promotion and so on but this does a different kind of thinking and we thought that it's been rather successful in Toronto and it may be a solution for those countries so we have identified a mechanism which is localized to the circumstances called life sciences convergent centres, initiatives which are partly physical, smaller scale virtual and a lot of other kinds of activities with the idea that this would promote commercialization and African innovation by bringing together science, business and capital develop innovative products and services to address local health and agriculture needs create one-stop shopping for investors establish an innovation-based business environment and move Africa towards a knowledge-based economy now forgive me for saying Africa as if it's one country it's varied countries that are far ahead of others they're really quite varied but they do also have a certain amount of commonality and then reduce reliance on aid and promote self-sufficiency so that's what we're working with those four governments at the moment to do now I've talked about Peter Singer I've talked about myself but this kind of work needs a team and we have quite a large team we have component we're talking of 60-70 people we have people in our team working in South Africa, in India in Ghana and so on so this is quite a large team and these are some of our funding sources thank you very much you know in our discussions around ethics we often talk about challenges that patients face locally here and people why should we invest and spend our our dollars globally your ethics background likely to address two issues one we have a moral imperative to do so and secondly how did Canada get to the point where they actually decided to donate $20 million to the initiative that has global you know such a global scope I think those are two very important questions why should we care partly because we are one species and we will either survive and thrive or destroy ourselves as a species not as Americans and Tanzanians and Rwandans if we have a disease it's like the bees currently dying from unknown causes the whole species will die so if you think species wide there is an imperative as you said and it's a moral imperative to try and save each other and make our lives better there are also those national security issues there are also there is also the understanding that we have contributed to those problems either through colonialism through global warming through selling tobacco and that somehow we go to take responsibility for what we have done and so on so I think that a child born in Chicago is as valuable as a child born in Kigali and if we think like that and actually understand our responsibilities that answers your question partly Canada has always been slightly different in the sense that we neither Europeans nor Americans much of our policies are somewhere in between it's a country that actually respects diversity very seriously Toronto is the most multi-ethnic city in the world something like 135 140 ethnicities in one city and of course New York is closed and there are other places and it's already had this IDRC the only one the first one of its kind that actually has been funded for 35 years now 30 or 35 years by the Canadian government to do research and fund research in the developing world but research to find solutions to developmental problems and then we had a minister of the finance department that got captured by partly the grant challenges of the Gates Foundation partly from reading some of the work that we had published and said we'll take a risk on this and partly it's this conservative government saying that direct charity doesn't always work let's try something else and see if that will work so it's a combination of things and they took a risk and they have been questioned about this approach but they're continuing with it at the moment, it's pretty new it was only launched this May some of us in the room are very jealous of your extraordinary successes and look to see the model that you developed to achieve both funding from the Canadian government but also this ability to create a global alliance of the six major scientific funders from six great countries the MRC in England, the NIH here the Canadians, the Chinese I mean that's incredible it looks to me like and correct me on this one is it's really a question what you work from is that you put together a fabulous group of people I saw that first paper with Varmas as the lead author and Zarouni and Little and then your people near the end you publish in very high quality journals so much is published in science and nature journals with international distributions you then use the group and the publication to go for high level financial support for the projects that you've identified as important and maybe with reliance on Gates a sort of a backdrop you get enormous credibility in your applications and you're able to get 225 million from the Canadian government for five years I don't know how much this grand alliance for chronic disease may give over the years but it's tremendous achievement have you thought through this model or have I described sort of what you're doing it is sort of what we're doing we've been lucky I think identifying that niche life sciences, global health and innovation early on was important there aren't other groups working even now in a focused way we were lucky to get substantive grants right early on the 225 million is not for us we are going to disperse it so people will be applying for grants from Grand Challenges Canada and our hope Mark is that other countries and other centres will particularly other countries and Grand Challenges Canada approach and put in 3, 4, 5% of foreign aid money into finding long term solutions as opposed to charity and end outs which are needed I mean if there are people dying of malaria you need to save them now so that's needed I'm not saying that's not needed but put a tiny percent into doing some research that will be long lasting it will actually provide a huge amount of resources so you remember the 1990 there was a report that identified this 1090 gap that 10% of research money goes into solving the problems of 90% of people so only 10% for the rest of the world 90% is for the rich 10% of the population somebody took a look recently in the last 2 years to see is it gone up to 20% now 2080 the current figure is 1.5% and 98.5% so it's got worse we need more resources to address these very complex issues and if other countries adopt this we might begin to solve this problem somebody over there wants to ask a question Thank you for your talk your comments on the collect of unintended consequences with the war western wars on global terrorism and tyranny made me think of a related question are there potential unintended consequences as we declare war on global chronic illness and global disparities are there unintended consequences that we may be guilty of neglecting as well and is that a place where your hypertension is give me an example of what you were thinking of what's in mind at first glance trying to do away with a tyrannical dictatorship seems like a good obvious unintended consequences that have happened to a culture with this place I'm doing away with early death and thinking or hypertension seem like a good but are there impacts on society that our western culture are blind to I mean we see in our current one of the consequences of living longer is we have a silver tsunami and a change of our whole economic structure and the way that we now institutionalize the sixth, the dying the old and firm there's a great impact culturally to the biomedical model I think it is something that one has to be alert to all the time and also it's not something that individuals or centers or even countries can can address ab initio will we have more problems down the road if more people survive maybe but not if you think about more people surviving as ingenious people creating jobs building economies consumers even then it's a different perspective and you see this with countries that have a lot of immigrants the United States Canada there's always people say they're taking our jobs away but in fact these economies wouldn't grow without immigrants so there's always the flip to that are they potential black swans yeah but it's in the nature of black swans that we don't know about them now but you know your question is really valid we've got to just be aware and think about these issues I hope you all join me in welcoming Dr. Dara for visiting it's been a pleasure thank you very much


My dear niece, I'm writing you this letter in explanation of certain recent actions of mine, about which you're probably curious. As you know, since that day four years ago when your dear uncle died, may he rest in peace, I've been living a busy, if lonely life, fortunately in a city as small as Hilton, one as many friends, but they in no way could make up for the loneliness I felt. As you recall, you were continually urging me to try to get some sort of a position, and so finally I took your advice and placed an advertisement in our local paper. It was six weeks ago this next Friday that I inserted the ad. I'm sure you must have chuckled when you read it. Good woman, gentile, some secretarial experience, drives own car, desires position of interest with reliable business house, address Ms. Emily Rogers Box 2B, or phone Hilton 22412. I was somewhat surprised to receive a reply the next morning. I'd finished my breakfast, yes you're right, I still drink a cup of hot water from arising each morning. I'd finished at all events, and the phone rang. Hello? Mrs. Emily Rogers, please. This is she speaking. I'm calling about the ad, you ran an evening paper yesterday? Oh yes. I think I can offer you a position you'd be interested in, Mrs. Rogers, my name is Bruce. How do you do, Mr. Bruce? We have a very small publishing house, Mrs. Rogers, and need someone to take care of any of the contacts we might wish to make in your part of the country. Aren't you from Hilton then? No. The offices are in Los Angeles, and we'd pay you $50 a week providing you could use your home as an office, although there wouldn't be much office work required. As I say, the position primarily would be one of establishing contacts. Why, it sounds fine, Mr. Bruce. Oh, it sounds fine, Mr. Bruce. Good, good. Then consider yourself under salary beginning immediately, Mrs. Rogers. I'll phone you again as soon as there's something more definite for you to do. And that's how I got the job. I assumed naturally that I would immediately receive instructions from Mr. Bruce as to how I should go about establishing contacts. The first word I had after the telephone conversation was when the postman arrived the next Saturday with an envelope for me containing a check for $50. There was no return address on the envelope, and the check was a personal one bearing no company name. It was signed R. L. Bruce. Three weeks went by in this fashion. Each Saturday I would receive the $50 check in the mail, but always the envelope was without a return address, and the check was a personal check. All the envelopes were postmarked Los Angeles, but other than that I had the smallest clue as to the identity of the company by which I was employed. I've always believed that money is very precious, and as your uncle, may his soul rest in peace, used to say, no self-respecting person would accept it without doing a lick of work for it. I was dissatisfied with the arrangement, and I'd tell this to Mr. Bruce when he phoned that I wished to resign my position with his small publishing house. It was on the Wednesday, after the arrival of the third check, that I again received a telephone call from Mr. Bruce. He was charming as he'd been on the first call, and before I had the chance to tell him that I wished to resign. Well, I have your first assignment for you, Mrs. Rogers. Well, I wanted to talk to you about that, Mr. Bruce. Oh, getting impatient were you? Well, this will keep you busy for a while. Really? Yes. Mr. Paul Stevens will arrive and he'll come this afternoon. Now he's one of our most promising new authors, and I'm going to have to ask a big favour of you, Mrs. Rogers. Oh, what sort of a favour, Mr. Bruce? Well, Mr. Stevens has some rewriting on a novel we planned, publishing in a few months, and too many people interrupt him here in Los Angeles, so I wonder, could you put him up at your home until he finishes? Why, I... I don't know. Oh, he'll be no bother, Mrs. Rogers, and of course all expenses will be covered. He has an awful lot of work to do. Well, yes, I suppose I could. Oh, that's fine, that's fine, it's just a place for him to get away. Oh, and one more favour. Yes? Just so we're sure he's not bothered. Don't tell anyone he's staying with you. And that's all I knew of the job, my dear niece. Well, at last I'd be doing something for my pay, which to me was very important. I waited around the house all day, afraid to leave, even to do my shopping. For fear I'd miss the telephone call from Mr. Stevens. It was quite late in the afternoon, almost five o'clock, when the telephone rang. Hello? Mrs. Rogers? This is Mrs. Rogers. This is Paul Stevens, Mrs. Rogers. Oh, yes, Mr. Stevens, I've been expecting your call. Where are you? I'll come and pick you up. Well, that's Brookside and Sierra Madre. The corner of Brookside and Sierra Madre, fine. I'll be driving a black Buick convertible, and the right fender is dented. A parking station attendant did it. What? Goodbye, Mr. Stevens. Oh, Mr. Stevens! I remember I hadn't asked Mr. Stevens what he looked like, so that I'd be able to recognize him. But then I thought that Brookside and Sierra Madre is not a busy intersection, and that the chances of there being more than one stranger of the corner were slight. I left the house immediately, and drove through town to where Brookside crosses Sierra Madre. The first nervousness I felt was, when arriving at the corner, I found myself faced with this problem of identification. There were many cars there, and a rather large and excited crowd gathered at the corner. All right, now come on, stand back, everybody. Oh, hello there, Mrs. Rogers. Officer, what's happening? A hit-and-run accident a few minutes ago. How dreadful! Who was hit? Well, a man about 35, no one I know. Was he badly hurt? He's dead. Oh, oh, that, that, oh. Yeah. Officer, I... Well, I was supposed to meet someone. A gentleman here. A Mr. Paul Stevens. I don't suppose that this poor gentleman could be. Well, the ambulance will be here in a few minutes, Mrs. Rogers. I'll call you when we find out who it is, if you like. Would you? I'd be very grateful. I'll call you later. All right, now come on. Uh, Mrs. Rogers? Mrs. Rogers? Yes? I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm Paul Stevens. Mr. Stevens? Oh, I'm so relieved. Of course. Please get in. The accident upset me. I was afraid for a moment it was you. No, it wasn't me. Won't you get in? Thank you.  Oh, yes, thank you, thank you. I'd like to go to your house if you don't mind. Of course, Mr. Stevens. It won't take long. I was really terribly relieved. And I thought what a warrior I was. Because for a few minutes I really had been sure that Paul Stevens was dead. But now, everything was fine. I tried making conversations with Mr. Stevens on the drive home, but he seemed tired, not inclined to talk. So we drove quietly back through town and to my house. We went inside, and I showed Mr. Stevens to his room. Then went into the living room to tidy up. The telephone rang as I was setting out some ashtrays. Hello? Hello, Mrs. Rogers. This is Officer Barnes. Oh, yes, Officer. I'm glad you called. I wanted to tell you that I never... I checked that identification for you. Yes, well, that's what I wanted to tell you, Officer. The name was... He was wanted for a payroll robbery in L.A. And he wasn't hit by a car. He was thrown from a car. He was murdered. I couldn't answer. I stood there, frozen with the telephone receiver in my hand, looking at the door to the hallway, where the man who called himself Paul Stevens stood smiling tightly, holding a gun in his hand. A gun that was pointed right at me. My mouth felt frozen. My throat dry. I stared fascinated down the barrel of the gun pointing at me. Mrs. Rogers, you there, Mrs. Rogers? Thank him and hang up. Hello, Mrs. Rogers. Are you all right? Yes. Yes, I... I'm all right, Officer. I was... Thank him and hang up. I was... Thank you, Officer. He walked away from me then and sat across the room when he could watch me and also see anyone who had come to the front door. The gun rested in his lap. I stood and stared at him. My mind raced. I tried to think what to do. I was surprised when he spoke. Sit down, if you like. Who are you? Why did you tell me you were Mr. Stevens? Sit down. Who are you?   What? I didn't think they'd find out who he was. I didn't know he was hot. You killed... Yes. I killed Paul Stevens. That's all he would say. I tried to find out who he was and why he'd chosen me and why he'd killed Mr. Stevens, what he was going to do next. He wouldn't answer me. He wouldn't say anything. He looked over at me occasionally and smiled. Just beginning to get dark, I got up to turn on the lights. What are you doing? It's dark. I thought I... I like it dark. My house doesn't look well in the dark. We'll be going out in a few minutes, Mrs. Rogers. Where are we going? We're going out for dinner, Mrs. Rogers. You're going to be my dinner guest. Why did the cop call you? How did you know who called me? The phone upstairs. I was expecting a call. Why did he call you? I thought you were dead. I mean, I thought Mr. Stevens was dead. All right.  I have a very important engagement. We left the house then, got in the car, and drove to a restaurant I'd never been in before. It's on the highway, out past the other side of town, and it's quite a bad reputation. The man didn't know where it was, but he knew the name. All the while, I was trying to remember who he was. I say remember, because there was something familiar about him. But what that something was, my dear niece, I couldn't for the life of me think. An attendant took the car when we arrived at the roadhouse and we went inside. We just sat down at the table when a small and very thin dark complexion man slid into the seat next to the man who wasn't Mr. Stevens. What are you doing here? I had to come. It didn't work. They found out who he was. Why didn't you stay hidden? Because I'm not Stevens, the cop told him. You could stay at her house anyway, couldn't you?  Take it easy, Al. That's easy. What's the matter with you? Mary figures out a fool-proof way for you to get rid of a guy and hide out right under the cop's noses and then you go and lock up the whole deal. It's not locked up yet. It will be if you don't get away quick. Yeah, maybe. Oh, I don't think you've met Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers, this is Mr. Al Newhold, who owns this restaurant. Oh, yes. How are you? Look, you better get back to LA. What good would it do? Have you had any contacts in that part of the country? Suddenly, I knew. I knew who the man was. Because as you talked to Al, I remembered that voice. We need someone to take care of any contacts so we might wish to make in your part of the country. It was Mr. Bruce. The same Mr. Bruce who'd given me my job and sent me the checks and who called me that morning and told me to expect Mr. Stevens that afternoon and to put up Mr. Stevens at my home for a while. How did they find out? What? You said they found out who he was. How? He was hot. They had pictures and prints on him. I dumped him at the corner just before I met her. You're Mr. Bruce. He did that payroll job. What did you say? He's Mr. Bruce. That's very good, Mrs. Rogers. How did you know? I just remembered your voice. Don't make any difference. You know too much about this anyway. Doesn't make any difference. You want me to take her with me? I don't want her around here. Somebody might see her car drive in. They'd look. I think we'll go back to her house and start fresh. That way it'll be harder checking where she went. Whatever you do, do it now. The crowd starts coming for dinner soon. Someone will see you. Yeah. Shall we leave now, Mrs. Rogers? Where are we going? We're going to your house, Mrs. Rogers. After that, I'm not sure, but I think I'll have to kill you. We left then. I can't describe my fright. But it all seems so hopeless. I suppose I was more resigned than frightened. We drove back through town. Mr. Bruce sitting very quietly next to me in the front seat. My car's not new as you know. And although I walk in trouble with it, I never before had the horn stick. But that night, it stuck. Right on the corner of Brookside and Sierra Madre.  I'm sorry, Mr. Bruce. I'm not blowing my horn. It's gotten stuck. Stop the car. Stop the car. Now, there we are. And don't try to drive away, see? Yes, I see. Let's get out of here. What was that? Good evening, Mrs. Rogers. Tell them everything's okay. Want me to fix that horn for you? Mr. Mayers, no thank you. It's all right. It'll only take me a second to fix it so you can use it. Oh, never mind. Mr. Mayers, this is Mr. Paul Stephens. Oh, great to meet you. Yeah. I see you pulled in wires to stop the horn. I usually take care of Mrs. Rogers' car myself. It makes me feel funny when something goes wrong with it. Oh, of course. I'll bring it in in the morning, Mr. Mayers. Oh, no sense. You're bothering Mrs. Rogers. I'll go along with you now if you like. I can take you home. Not safe, driving without a horn. Oh, I think that's an excellent idea. I believe you said you wanted to show me the town this evening, Mrs. Rogers. Wouldn't you need the car? Oh, well, I suppose... I was looking forward to the drive. No. You don't mind? Of course. You pick up the car though in the morning, Mr. Mayers. I had promised Mr. Stephens I'd take him for a ride. Sure, of course. Thanks for your trouble, Mr. Mayers. Oh, glad to help. This is such a little town. We all know each other and like each other and like to help each other. And so, Mrs. Rogers? Yes. Yes. Good night, Mrs. Rogers. Oh, I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Stephens. The rest of the drive was uneventful. The street lights were on now, and flashes of light from them darted into the car and lighted up the sullen face of the man who sat tensely by my side. I tried to remember all the conversations I had had with him to find the reason for his choosing me out of all the people who must have placed the persons that day as the person with whom he would hide out. For by now, my dear niece, I was convinced that Mr. Bruce had deliberately set out to murder Mr. Stephens for some reason and hide out in my house where the police were the most unlikely to look for him. But why my house? Why had he chosen me? When we got to my house, Mr. Bruce directed me to leave my car on the street and we went up the dark pathway to the front door. Mr. Bruce a few steps behind me all the way. It's quite dark tonight, isn't it? Yes. Why are we going inside? I have to make a phone call. Oh, I see. Open the door. How's that light? Pardon me? Turn off the light. Oh, sorry. Pull the blinds down on that window. Yes. Now the light. Now get the telephone. Ask Long Distance for Crestview 9177 in Los Angeles. I'd like Long Distance, please. Crestview 9177 in Los Angeles. All right, give it to me. Mary, look. Meet me at ours as soon as you can get here. Something's wrong. No, no, no, I'm all right. I'll tell you later. Get here fast.  Where are we going? A little trip. You ready to go? Don't answer that. It might be the operator calling back. She'll wonder. Well, okay, answer it. But I'm right here. Hello? Residents, say oh yes operator. Oh, yes operator. Is he still there? Say yes or no operator. Yes, operator. Well, stall him a little. Thank you, operator. Dear Mr. Mayers, he'd understood me, and he told the police. And they were going to save me. But you just can't imagine, I felt exactly like the heroine in an emotion picture. I simply had to prevent Mr. Bruce from leaving the house. Just a few minutes, the officer said. Just time enough for them to get here. All right, let's get going. I wish I knew where we were going. Do I have to take anything with me? Will we be gone long? Yeah. A long time. Okay. Then I need several changes of clothes. Now, let me think. My brown suit with the grey be better. It's older. Come on, come on. You won't need anything. Oh, the heater. What? I left the heater on in the other room. I'd better turn it off. I don't like anything to catch on fire while we're gone. Fire? You mean those heaters could set the house on fire? No, no, no, not really. I meant that, well, I'd rather not pay a gas bill that's been run up against me because I neglected to turn the heater off. All right, I'd be fast. Well, what's the trouble? This thing always sticks. I never can fix it. I remember it did it last fall. I was just starting off to meet my niece Mary. And here, let me do it. There. Oh, thank you. Now, I feel better about it. I'm sure there must be something I've forgotten. Now, let me think. Come on, come on. You ready? Yes. I'm ready. It was quiet on my street. Peaceful and dark. All the neighbors' lights were out except for the gangsters across the way. One night was on upstairs in the back of their house. It threw a diffuse pattern diagonally across the pavement. And I thought for a minute that I saw a figure move suddenly towards us. Mr. Brooks motioned me to go ahead and I walked slowly down the park towards the car. I could feel Mr. Brooks a few steps behind me. Suddenly, it happened. All right, Bruce, get down, Mrs. Rogers. What? I'll... No. Mrs. Rogers, are you all right? Yes, I... I'm all right. Thank you. I'm all right. And there it is, Mary. The explanation I promised you. I feel as your aunt that I should tell you how you happened to be in the penitentiary. When Mr. Allen, the Roadhouse, first mentioned your name I was suspicious. But not until Mr. Brooks made the phone call to you did I begin to piece the story together. You had suggested the advertisement. Your husband answered it and implored me. If only you told my dear that you'd gotten married when you were in Los Angeles. After all, I'm your only living relative and I could have come to your wedding. Then this whole thing wouldn't have happened, would it, dear? Because I would have known Mr. Bruce all the time. Let me know after the trial watch on your addresses to be and I will continue writing. As always, Aunt Emily.