A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[Dispatches from an island of exiles
By VAL SEARS
Ottawa Sun
May 24, 2000
I got my first taste of ethical conflict - newspaper ethics, anyway - when I was among the lepers.
It was a shock to be reminded of such a primordial dilemma the other night when I chanced upon a Vision TV documentary called Island of Shadows about a turn-of-the-century leper colony on an island off the coast of Vancouver Island, near Victoria.
I spent a little time on a successor leper colony nearby once long ago when I was a reporter barely out of the egg and frightened to death.
It was my first out-of-office assignment for Canadian Press and I was scared I would bungle it.
For some reason I wasn't particularly concerned about catching Hansen's Disease as it is more properly called. I'd read enough to know it was not easily contagious. But still ... these were the Bible's "unclean," the hideously disfigured, the linen-wrapped horrors of film and legend.
No one else in the bureau wanted to do the story - ordered by head office in the East - but I couldn't afford to risk my $30 a week paycheque so off I went.
The Vision doc was built around a colony on D'Arcy Island about 18 miles off the coast. It was a real piece of awfulness. Tumbledown shacks, no proper food or medical attention.
Just a handful of Chinese immigrants sentenced to exile as they slowly melted away from the disease.
The colony I visited was, I now realize, a whole lot better. There were about a dozen patients, each in his own tiny cottage. There was adequate food, treatment and medical supervision. But it was fearmaking, nonetheless.
I recall I wasn't in great shape when I arrived. The boat trip was rough and there was bile in my throat by the time we docked. I was ordered to wash thoroughly in a pan filled with some disinfectant liquid, briefed on the colony and with a Chinese interpreter and the colony doctor in tow, dispatched on a tour.
It was hard to keep a still face as leper after leper - almost all Chinese - were presented to me.
The ravages of the disease had turned some hands into "griffin claws"; toes were missing; faces ravaged. The lepers seemed passively accepting, answering my questions calmly and with dignity.
EXILED BY DISEASE
At almost the last cottage I was introduced to an elderly Chinese. I asked him where he worked before the disease exiled him to the island.
The interpreter said: "He says he worked as a cook at (a famous Vancouver private school.)"
My jaw dropped. My God, if the parents of the kids at that school heard about this, the school would be emptied. There would be panic, probably a bankrupting number of lawsuits.
What a helluva story.
The doctor yelped with dismay when he heard what the leper had said.
"Please, please don't write that," he begged. "People don't understand that leprosy is rarely contagious. It would cause the most awful trouble for the school."
What to do? I mumbled something, thanked him for his help and climbed back on the boat to return to Victoria.
Should I write it or not ... a truly ethical dilemma. I would get play right across the country, fame and fortune. Or at least $35 a week if I wasn't fired.
I didn't consult my editor, then or ever. Ethics is a personal matter and advice - never mind the endless courses in journalism school - is pointless.
I sat down at my typewriter. And I didn't write about the cook with leprosy.
Over the years that decision has haunted me. Didn't the parents have a right to know? Was I a cop-out on my first big story? Was it the right thing, the responsible thing, to do?
I think so.
But the television show revived all the old doubts.
Sears can be reached by e-mail at valsears@magi.com Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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