As a child growing up in relatively affluent Canada during the 1950s and 60s, some of my most powerful formative influences were the frequent famines and horrors of conflict – the wars in Biafra, and the Congo, starving children in India and Pakistan. Layered on top were the ghastly polio epidemics which interceded into my childhood summers, with the spectre of iron lungs and paralysis brazen images onto my psyche. These events, together with the enormous scientific and medical advances which promised to put an end to hunger and disease, and my father's exhortations that with my brains I could significantly help mankind, hugely shaped my motivation to try to help people who were ill and starving.
