Michael Swan

‘(Bill S-211) doesn’t stop slavery, it doesn’t stop the problematic’

Janelle Delorme was practically born into social justice activism. At 12 she participated in her first ThinkFast with the Development and Peace club at her school. Through high school and university Delorme was an active member of Canada’s Catholic international solidarity organization, and travelle...

Church picking up pieces after drought, COVID, civil war

Hope and energy brought to Church in Africans’ new homeland. Edna Amuri remembers arriving in Canada from Kenya 20 years ago and heading straight out to church. She wanted Mass. She wanted to celebrate this new stage in her life. But a Sunday liturgy in Canada — the same in its outward form, made up...

In the first harsh blast of summer heat, just over a dozen protesters gathered in the shade of the Archdiocese of Toronto offices on Yonge Street June 1, prayed the rosary and demanded that Archbishop Francis Leo remove from Catholic school boards and Catholic health care institutions their right to...

Freelance journalist Dan O’Reilly loves history — particularly the ways history persists in his own parish, family and community. The whole package — history, family, Church — all came together for O’Reilly just before COVID when the writer and amateur historian donated a photo album to the Ar...

Are we losing our ability to think deeply, purposefully? The fathers and godfathers of artificial intelligence are beginning to worry about a future in which the machines no longer need or want us. But in the same week that leading artificial intelligence researchers and scientists warned of fu...

A Jesuit at the University of Toronto is helping to map the unknown. For the first time ever, what we see now through a glass darkly includes dark matter. St. Paul predicted we will one day see this reality, indeed reality itself, face to face (1 Cor 13:12). For now, Jesuit cosmologist Fr. Adam Hinc...

On LGBT issues, abortion and euthanasia, theologian David Deane of the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax does not disagree with Church teaching. But, he decries what he calls the unChristian and non-traditional ways Catholics have tried to win these arguments. “I think we’ve got to foreclose up...

Background: Endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle biopsy (FNB) is the gold standard in tissue acquisition of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). There is a paucity of evidence of the impact of needle type or size on the genetic yield and quality.Methods: Patients 18 years and older with PDAC who underwent FNB were retrospectively identified from a single database from 2016 to 2021. Genetic quantity is measured in micrograms (µg) and quality defined by RNA or DNA integrity number (RIN and DIN). FNB needles examined were Acquire 22 gauge (Boston Scientific, Marlborough, MA, USA) and ProCore 22 and 20 gauges (Cook Medical, Bloomington, IN, USA).Results: Two hundred seventy-seven patients were identified. ProCore 20G needle procured higher RNA quantity (4125.8µg, IQR: 2003.8, 5954.8, p = 0.012) compared to ProCore 22G (2050µg IQR: 966.4, 3181.6) and Acquire 22G (2310.6µg, IQR: 1439.3, 4312). Median DNA quantity was 3340.5µg (Acquire 22G), 2610.4µg (ProCore 22G) and 3499.7µg (ProCore 20G) (p = 0.763). Median DIN was 7.3 (Acquire 22G and ProCore 22G) and 7.4 (ProCore 20G) (p = 0.449). Median RIN was 3.0 (Acquire 22G and ProCore 22G) and 2.7 (ProCore 20G) (p = 0.886).Conclusion: ProCore 20G was associated with higher quantity of RNA. There were no differences in the quality acquired by different needles.