In light of the recent experience of Canadian physicians, nurses, and other HCWs on the frontlines of the SARS outbreak, we submit that the Canadian health care community should lead the charge to address issues of duty to care and ethical obligations in times of public health emergencies. In place of open and honest discussion, we currently have vagueness and ambiguity. In our view, health care codes of ethics should speak specifically to this issue in order to guide professional behaviour during infectious disease outbreaks. Indeed, the time to address the ethical duty to provide care is at hand -before the arrival of the next public health emergency. Epicatechins Purified from Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) Differentially Suppress Growth of Gender-Dependent Human Cancer Cell Lines The anticancer potential of catechins derived from green tea is not well understood, in part because catechin-related growth suppression and/or apoptosis appears to vary with the type and stage of malignancy as well as with the type of catechin. This in vitro study examined the biological effects of epicatechin (EC), epigallocatechin (EGC), EC 3-gallate (ECG) and EGC 3-gallate (EGCG) in cell lines from human gender-specific cancers. Cell lines developed from organ-confined (HH870) and metastatic (DU145) prostate cancer, and from moderately (HH450) and poorly differentiated (HH639) epithelial ovarian cancer were grown with or without EC, EGC, ECG or EGCG. When untreated cells reached confluency, viability and doubling time were measured for treated and untreated cells. Whereas EC treatment reduced proliferation of HH639 cells by 50%, EGCG suppressed proliferation of all cell lines by 50%. ECG was even more potent: it inhibited DU145, HH870, HH450 and HH639 cells at concentrations of 24, 27, 29 and 30 µM, whereas EGCG inhibited DU145, HH870, HH450 and HH639 cells at concentrations 89, 45, 62 and 42 µM. When compared with EGCG, ECG more effectively suppresses the growth of prostate cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer cell lines derived from tumors of patients with different stages of disease. There is accruing evidence that green tea may have anticancer activity (1) , but the mechanisms for this action are poorly understood. Green tea is produced from the shrub Camellia sinensis (Fig. 1) ; leaves are dried but not fermented so that the green coloration attributed to polyphenols is retained. Commercially prepared green tea extracts contain $60% polyphenols (1) . These polyphenols are the source of bioflavonoids, which have strong antioxidant activity.