An unexpected early morning phone call from the hospital is never good news. When Joy Johnson answered, her first thought was that Sharon Birzer, her partner of 15 years, was dead. Her fears were amplified by the voice on the other end refusing to confirm or deny it. Just come in and talk to one of the doctors, she remembers the voice saying.

Johnson knew this was a real possibility. A few weeks earlier, she and Birzer sat in the exam room of a lymphoma specialist at Stanford University. Birzers cancer had grown, and fast first during one type of chemotherapy, then through a second. Out of standard options, Birzers local oncologist had referred her for a novel treatment called chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy or CAR-T. Birzer and Johnson knew the treatment was risky. They were warned there was a chance of death. There was also a chance of serious complications such as multi-organ failure and neurological impairment. But it was like warning a drowning person that her lifeboat could have problems. Without treatment, the chance of Birzers death was all but certain. She signed the consent form.

Johnson hung up the phone that early morning and sped to the hospital. She met with a doctor and two chaplains in a windowless room in the cancer ward, where happy photos of cancer alumni smiled down from the walls. This is getting worse and worse, Johnson thought. As she remembers it, the doctor went through the timeline of what happened for 10 minutes, explaining how Birzer became sicker and sicker, before Johnson interrupted with the thought splitting her world in two: I need you to tell me whether shes alive or dead.

Birzer wasnt dead. But she was far from okay. The ordeal began with Birzer speaking gibberish. Then came seizures so severe there was concern she wouldnt be able to breathe on her own. When it took a few different medications to stop Birzer from seizing, her doctors sedated her, put a breathing tube down her throat, and connected her to a ventilator. Now, she was unconscious and in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Birzer was one of the early patients to receive CAR-T, a radical new therapy to treat cancer. It involved removing Birzers own blood, filtering for immune cells called T-cells, and genetically engineering those cells to recognize and attack her lymphoma. CAR-T made history in 2017 as the first FDA-approved gene therapy to treat any disease. After three to six months of follow-up, the trials that led to approval showed response rates of 80 percent and above in aggressive leukemias and lymphomas that had resisted chemotherapy. Patients on the brink of death were coming back to life.

This is something I often dream of seeing but rarely do. As a doctor who treats cancer, I think a lot about how to frame new treatments to my patients. I never want to give false hope. But the uncertainty inherent to my field also cautions me against closing the door on optimism prematurely. We take it as a point of pride that no field of medicine evolves as rapidly as cancer the FDA approves dozens of new treatments a year. One of my biggest challenges is staying up to date on every development and teasing apart what should and shouldnt change my practice. I am often a mediator for my patients, tempering theoretical promises with everyday realism. To accept a research finding into medical practice, I prefer slow steps showing me proof of concept, safety, and efficacy.

CAR-T, nearly three decades in the making, systemically cleared these hurdles. Not only did the product work, its approach was also unique among cancer treatments. Unlike our usual advances, this wasnt a matter of prescribing an old drug for a new disease or remixing known medications. CAR-T isnt even a drug. This is a one-time infusion giving a person a better version of her own immune system. When the FDA approved its use, it wasnt a question of whether my hospital would be involved, but how we could stay ahead. We werent alone.

Today, two FDA-approved CAR-T products called Kymriah and Yescarta are available in more than 100 hospitals collectively across the U.S. Hundreds of clinical trials are tinkering with dosages, patient populations, and types of cancer. Some medical centers are manufacturing the cells on-site.

The FDA approved CAR-T with a drug safety program called a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS). As I cared for these patients, I quickly realized the FDAs concerns. Of the 10 or so patients Ive treated, more than half developed strange neurologic side effects ranging from headaches to difficulty speaking to seizures to falling unconscious. We scrambled to learn how to manage the side effects in real time.

Johnson and Birzer, who I didnt treat personally but spoke to at length for this essay, understood this better than most. Both had worked in quality control for a blood bank and were medically savvier than the average patient. They accepted a medical system with a learning curve. They were fine with hearing I dont know. Signing up for a trailblazing treatment meant going along for the ride. Twists and bumps were par for the course.

* * *

Cancer, by definition, means something has gone very wrong within a cell has malfunctioned and multiplied. The philosophy for fighting cancer has been, for the most part, creating and bringing in treatments from outside the body. Thats how we got to the most common modern approaches: Chemotherapy (administering drugs to kill cancer), radiation (using high energy beams to kill cancer), and surgery (cutting cancer out with a scalpel and other tools). Next came the genetics revolution, with a focus on creating drugs that target a precise genetic mutation separating a cancer cell from a normal one. But cancers are genetically complex, with legions of mutations and the talent to develop new ones. Its rare to have that one magic bullet.

Over the last decade or so, our approach shifted. Instead of fighting cancer from the outside, we are increasingly turning in. The human body is already marvelously equipped to recognize and attack invaders, from the common cold to food poisoning, even if the invaders are ones the body has never seen before. Cancer doesnt belong either. But since cancer cells come from normal ones, theyve developed clever camouflages to trick and evade the immune system. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to two researchers for their work in immunotherapy, a class of medications devoted to wiping out the camouflages and restoring the immune systems upper hand. As I once watched a fellow oncologist describe it to a patient: Im not treating you. You are treating you.

What if we could go one step further? What if we could genetically engineer a patients own immune cells to spot and fight cancer, as a sort of best hits of genetic therapy and immunotherapy?

Enter CAR-T. The technology uses T-cells, which are like the bouncers of the immune system. T-cells survey the body and make sure everything belongs. CAR-T involves removing a persons T-cells from her blood and using a disarmed virus to deliver new genetic material to the cells. The new genes given to the T-cells help them make two types of proteins. The first giving the technology its name is a CAR, which sits on the T-cells surface and binds to a protein on the tumor cells surface, like a lock and key. The second serves as the T-cells caffeine jolt, rousing it to activate. Once the genetic engineering part is done, the T-cells are prodded to multiply by being placed on a rocking device that feeds them nutrients while filtering their wastes. When the cells reach a high enough number a typical dose ranges from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions they are formidable enough to go back into the patient. Once inside, the cancer provokes the new cells to replicate even more. After one week, a typical expansion means multiplying by about another 1,000-fold.

Practically, it looks like this: A person comes in for an appointment. She has a catheter placed in a vein, perhaps in her arm or her che
st, that connects to a large, whirring machine which pulls in her blood and separates it into its components. The medical team set the T-cells aside to freeze while the rest of the blood circulates back into the patient in a closed loop. Then, the hospital ships the cells frozen to the relevant pharmaceutical companys headquarters or transports them to a lab on-site, where thawing and manufacturing takes from a few days to a few weeks. When the cells are ready, the patient undergoes about three days of chemotherapy to kill both cancer and normal cells, making room for the millions of new cells and eradicating normal immune players that could jeopardize their existence. She then gets a day or two to rest. When the new cells are infused back into her blood, we call that Day 0.

* * *

I remember the first time I watched a patient get his Day 0 infusion. It felt anti-climactic. The entire process took about 15 minutes. The CAR-T cells are invisible to the naked eye, housed in a small plastic bag containing clear liquid.

Thats it? my patient asked when the nurse said it was over. The infusion part is easy. The hard part is everything that comes next.

Once the cells are in, they cant turn off. That this may cause collateral damage was evident from the start. In 2009 working in parallel with other researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the National Cancer Institute in Maryland oncologists at the University of Pennsylvania opened a clinical trial for CAR-T in human leukemia patients. (Carl June, who led the CAR-T development, did not respond to Undarks interview request.) Of the first three patients who got CAR-T infusions, two achieved complete remission but nearly died in the process. The first was a retired corrections officer named Bill Ludwig, who developed extremely high fevers and went into multi-organ failure requiring time in the ICU. At the time, the medical teams had no idea why it was happening or how to stop it. But time passed. Ludwig got better. Then came the truly incredible part: His cancer was gone.

With only philanthropic support, the trial ran out of funding. Of the eligible patients they intended to treat, the Penn doctors only treated three. So they published the results of one patient in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented the outcomes of all three patients, including Ludwig, at a cancer conference anyway. From there, the money poured in. Based on the results, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis licensed the rights of the therapy.

The next year, six-year-old Emily Whitehead was on the brink of death when she became the first child to receive CAR-T. She also became extremely ill in the ICU, and her cancer was also eventually cured. Her media savvy parents helped bring her story public, making her the poster child for CAR-T. In 2014, the FDA granted CAR-T a breakthrough therapy designation to expedite the development of extremely promising therapies. By 2017, a larger trial gave the treatment to 75 children and young adults with a type of leukemia B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia that failed to respond to chemotherapy. Eighty-one percent had no sign of cancer after three months.

In August 2017, the FDA approved a CAR-T treatment as the first gene therapy in the U.S. The decision was unanimous. The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, a branch of the FDA that reviews new cancer products, voted 10 to zero in favor of Kymriah. Committee members called the responses remarkable and potentially paradigm changing. When the announcement broke, a crowd formed in the medical education center of Penn Medicine, made up of ecstatic faculty and staff. There were banners and T-shirts. A remarkable thing happened was the tagline, above a cartoon image of a heroic T-cell. Two months later, in October 2017, the FDA approved a second CAR-T formulation called Yescarta from Kite Pharma, a subsidiary of Gilead Sciences, to treat an aggressive blood cancer in adults called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, the trial of which had shown a 54 percent complete response rate, meaning all signs of cancer had disappeared. In May 2018, Kymriah was approved to treat adults with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

That year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology named CAR-T the Advance of the Year, beating out immunotherapy, which had won two years in a row. When I attended the last American Society of Hematology meeting in December 2018, CAR-T stole the show. Trying to get into CAR-T talks felt like trying to get a photo with a celebrity. Running five minutes late to one session meant facing closed doors. Others were standing room only. With every slide, it became difficult to see over a sea of smartphones snapping photos. At one session I found a seat next to the oncologist from my hospital who treated Birzer. Look, she nudged me. Do you see all these non-member badges? I turned. Members were doctors like us who treated blood cancers. I couldnt imagine who else would want to be here. Who are they? I asked. Investors, she said. It felt obvious the moment she said it.

For patients, the dreaded c word is cancer. For oncologists, its cure. When patients ask, Ive noticed how we gently steer the conversation toward safer lingo. We talk about keeping the cancer in check. Cure is a dangerous word, used only when so much time has passed from her cancer diagnosis we can be reasonably certain its gone. But that line is arbitrary. We celebrate therapies that add weeks or months because the diseases are pugnacious, the biology diverse, and the threat of relapse looming. Oncologists are a tempered group, or so Ive learned, finding inspiration in slow, incremental change.

This was completely different. These were patients who would have otherwise died, and the trials were boasting that 54 to 81 percent were cancer-free upon initial follow-up. PET scans showed tumors that had speckled an entire body melt away. Bone marrow biopsies were clear, with even the most sensitive testing unable to detect disease.

The dreaded word was being tossed around could this be the cure weve always wanted?

* * *

When a new drug gets FDA approval, it makes its way into clinical practice, swiftly and often with little fanfare. Under the drug safety program REMS, hospitals offering CAR-T were obligated to undergo special training to monitor and manage side effects. As hospitals worked to create CAR-T programs, oncologists like me made the all too familiar transition from first-time user to expert.

It was May 2018 when I rotated through my hospitals unit and cared for my first patients on CAR-T. As I covered 24-hour shifts, I quickly learned that whether I would sleep that night depended on how many CAR-T patients I was covering. With each treatment, it felt like we were pouring gasoline on the fire of patients immune systems. Some developed high fevers and their blood pressures plummeted, mimicking a serious infection. But there was no infection to be found. When resuscitating with fluids couldnt maintain my patients blood pressures, I sent them to the ICU where they required intensive support to supply blood to their critical organs.

We now have a name for this effect cytokine release syndrome that occurs in more than half of patients who receive CAR-T, starting with Ludwig and Whitehead. The syndrome is the collateral damage of an immune system on the highest possible alert. This was first seen with other types of immunotherapy, but CAR-T took its severity to a new level. Usually starting the week after CAR-T, cytokine release syndrome can range from simple fevers to multi-organ failure affecting the liver, kidneys, heart, and more. The activated T-cells make and recruit other immune players called cytokines to join in the fight. Cytokines then recruit more immune cells. Unlike in the early trials at Penn, we now have two medicines to dampen the effect. Steroids calm the immune system in general, while a medication called tocilizumab, used to treat autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, blocks cytokines specifically.

Fortuity was behind
the idea of tocilizumab: When Emily Whitehead, the first child to receive CAR-T, developed cytokine release syndrome, her medical team noted that her blood contained high levels of a cytokine called interleukin 6. Carl June thought of his own daughter, who had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and was on a new FDA-approved medication that suppressed the same cytokine. The team tried the drug, tocilizumab, in Whitehead. It worked.

Still, we were cautious in our early treatments. The symptoms of cytokine release syndrome mimic the symptoms of severe infection. If this were infection, medicines that dampen a patients immune system would be the opposite of what youd want to give. There was another concern: Would these medications dampen the anti-cancer activity too? We didnt know. Whenever a CAR-T patient spiked a fever, I struggled with the question is it cytokine release syndrome, or is it infection? I often played it safe and covered all bases, starting antibiotics and steroids at the same time. It was counterintuitive, like pressing both heat and ice on a strain, or treating a patient simultaneously with fluids and diuretics.

The second side effect was even scarier: Patients stopped talking. Some, like Sharon Birzer, spoke gibberish or had violent seizures. Some couldnt interact at all, unable to follow simple commands like squeeze my fingers. How? Why? At hospitals across the nation, perfectly cognitively intact people who had signed up to treat their cancer were unable to ask what was happening.

Our nurses learned to ask a standardized list of questions to catch the effect, which we called neurotoxicity: Where are we? Who is the president? What is 100 minus 10? When the patients scored too low on these quizzes, they called me to the bedside.

In turn, I relied heavily on a laminated booklet, made by other doctors who were using CAR-T, which we tacked to a bulletin board in our doctors workroom. It contained a short chart noting how to score severity and what to do next. I flipped through the brightly color-coded pages telling me when to order a head CT-scan to look for brain swelling and when to place scalp electrodes looking for seizures. Meanwhile, we formed new channels of communication. As I routinely called a handful of CAR-T specialists at my hospital in the middle of the night, national consortiums formed where specialists around the country shared their experiences. As we tweaked the instructions, we scribbled updates to the booklet in pen.

I wanted to know whether my experience was representative. I came across an abstract and conference talk that explored what happened to 277 patients who received CAR-T in the real world, so I emailed the lead author, Loretta Nastoupil, director of the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Fortuitously, she was planning a trip to my university to give a talk that month. We met at a caf and I asked what her research found. Compared to the earlier trials, the patients were much sicker, she said. Of the 277 patients, more than 40 percent wouldnt have been eligible for the very trials that got CAR-T approved. Was her team calling other centers for advice? They were calling us, she said.

Patients included in clinical trials are carefully selected. They tend not to have other major medical problems, as we want them to survive whatever rigorous new therapy we put them through. Nastoupil admits some of it is arbitrary. Many criteria in the CAR-T trials were based on criteria that had been used in chemotherapy trials. These become standard languages that apply to all studies, she said, listing benchmarks like a patients age, kidney function, and platelet count. But we have no idea whether criteria for chemotherapy would apply to cellular therapy.

Now, with a blanket FDA approval comes clinical judgment. Patients want a chance. Oncologists want to give their patients a chance. Young, old, prior cancer, heart disease, or liver disease without strict trial criteria, anyone is fair game.

When I was making rounds at my hospital, I never wandered too far from these patients rooms, medically prepared for them to crash at any moment. At the same time, early side effects made me optimistic. A bizarre truism in cancer is that side effects may bode well. They could mean the treatment is working. Cancer is usually a waiting game, requiring months to learn an answer. Patients and doctors alike seek clues, but the only real way to know is waiting: Will the next PET scan show anything? What are the biopsy results?

CAR-T was fundamentally different from other cancer treatments in that it worked fast. Birzers first clue came just a few hours after her infusion. She developed pain in her lower back. She described it as feeling like she had menstrual cramps. A heavy burden of lymphoma lay in her uterus. Could the pain mean that the CAR-T cells had migrated to the right spot and started to work? Her medical team didnt know, but the lead doctors instinct was that it was a good sign.

Two days later, her temperature shot up to 102. Her blood pressure dropped. The medical team diagnosed cytokine release syndrome, as though right on schedule, and gave her tocilizumab.

Every day, the nurses would ask her questions and have her write simple sentences on a slip of paper to monitor for neurotoxicity. By the fifth day, her answers changed. She started saying things that were crazy, Johnson explained.

One of Birzer's sentences was guinea pigs eat greens like hay and pizza. Birzer and Johnson owned two guinea pigs, so their diet would be something Birzer normally knew well. So Johnson tried to reason with her: They dont eat pizza. And Birzer replied, They do eat pizza, but only gluten-free.

Johnson remembers being struck by the certainty in her partners delirium. Not only was Birzer confused, she was confident she was not. She was doubling down on everything, Johnson described. She was absolutely sure she was right.

Johnson vividly remembers the evening before the frightening early-morning phone call that brought her rushing back to the hospital. Birzer had said there was no point in Johnson staying overnight; she would only watch her be in pain. So Johnson went home. After she did, the doctor came by multiple times to evaluate Birzer. She was deteriorating and fast. Her speech became more and more garbled. Soon she couldnt name simple objects and didnt know where she was. At 3 a.m., the doctor ordered a head CT to make sure Birzer wasnt bleeding into her brain.

Fortunately, she wasnt. But by 7 a.m. Birzer stopped speaking altogether. Then she seized. Birzers nurse was about to step out of the room when she noticed Birzers arms and legs shaking. Her eyes stared vacantly and she wet the bed. The nurse called a code blue, and a team of more doctors and nurses ran over. Birzer was loaded with high-dose anti-seizure medications through her IV. But she continued to seize. As nurses infused more medications into her IV, a doctor placed a breathing tube down her throat.

Birzers saga poses the big question: Why does CAR-T cause seizures and other neurologic problems? No one seemed to know. My search of the published scientific literature was thin, but one name kept cropping up. So I called her. Juliane Gust, a pediatric neurologist and scientist at Seattle Childrens Hospital, told me her investigations of how CAR-T affects the brain were motivated by her own experiences. When the early CAR-T trials opened at her hospital in 2014, she and her colleagues began getting calls from oncologists about brain toxicities they knew nothing about. Where are the papers? she remembered thinking. There was nothing.

Typically, the brain is protected by a collection of cells aptly named the blood-brain-barrier. But with severe CAR-T neurotoxicity, research suggests, this defense breaks down. Gust explained that spinal taps on these patients show high levels of cytokines floating in the fluid surrounding the spine and brain. Some CAR-T cells circulate in the fluid too, she said, but these numbers
do not correlate with sicker patients. CAR-T cells are even seen in the spinal fluid of patients without any symptoms.

What does this mean? Gust interprets it as a patients symptoms having more to do with cytokines than the CAR-T cells. Cytokine release syndrome is the number one risk factor for developing neurotoxicity over the next few days, she said. The mainstay for neurotoxicity is starting steroids as soon as possible. In the beginning we didnt manage as aggressively. We were worried about impairing the function of the CAR-T, she added. Now we give steroids right away.

But the steroids dont always work. Several doses of steroids didnt prevent Birzer from seizing. The morning after Johnsons alarming phone call, after the meeting at the hospital when she learned what had happened, a chaplain walked her from the conference room to the ICU. The first day, Johnson sat by her partners bedside while Birzer remained unconscious. By the next evening, she woke up enough to breathe on her own. The doctors removed her breathing tube, and Birzer looked around. She had no idea who she was or where she was.

Birzer was like a newborn baby, confused and sometimes frightened by her surroundings. She frequently looked like she was about to say something, but she couldnt find the words despite the nurses and Johnsons encouragement. One day she spoke a few words. Eventually she learned her name. A few days later she recognized Johnson. Her life was coming back to her, though she was still suspicious of her reality. She accused the nurses of tricking her, for instance, when they told her Donald Trump was president.

She took cues from the adults around her on whether her actions were appropriate. The best example of this was her I love you phase. One day, she said it to Johnson in the hospital. A few nurses overheard it and commented on how sweet it was. Birzer was pleased with the reaction. So she turned to the nurse: I love you! And the person emptying the trash: I love you! Months later, she was having lunch with a friend who asked, Do you remember when you told me you loved me? Birzer said, Well, I stand by that one.

When she got home, she needed a walker to help with her shakiness on her feet. When recounting her everyday interactions, she would swap in the wrong people, substituting a friend for someone else. She saw bugs that didnt exist. She couldnt hold a spoon or a cup steady. Johnson would try to slow her down, but Birzer was adamant she could eat and drink without help. Then peas would fly in my face, Johnson said.

Patients who experience neurotoxicity fall into one of three categories. The majority are impaired but then return to normal without long-term damage. A devastating handful, less than 1 percent, develop severe brain swelling and die. The rest fall into a minority that have lingering problems even months out. These are usually struggles to think up the right word, trouble concentrating, and weakness, often requiring long courses of rehabilitation and extra help at home.

As Birzer told me about her months of rehab, I thought how she did seem to fall somewhere in the middle among the patients Ive treated. On one end of the spectrum was the rancher who remained profoundly weak a year after his infusion. Before CAR-T, he walked across his ranch without issue; six months later, he needed a walker. Even with it, he fell on a near weekly basis. On the other end was the retired teacher who couldnt speak for a week she would look around her ICU room and move her mouth as though trying her hardest and then woke up as though nothing happened. She left the hospital and instantly resumed her life, which included a recent trip across the country. In hindsight, I remember how we worried more about giving the therapy to the teacher than the rancher, as she seemed frailer. Outcomes like theirs leave me with a familiar humility I keep learning in new ways as a doctor: We often cant predict how a patient will do. Our instincts can be just plain wrong.

I asked Gust if we have data to predict who will land in which group. While we can point to some risk factors higher burdens of cancer, baseline cognitive problems before therapy the individual patient tells you nothing, she confirmed.

So we wait.

* * *

Doctors like me who specialize in cancer regularly field heart-wrenching questions from patients. They have read about CAR-T in the news, and now they want to know: What about me? What about my cancer?

So, who gets CAR-T? That leads to the tougher question who doesnt? That depends on the type of cancer and whether their insurance can pay.

CAR-T is approved to treat certain leukemias and lymphomas that come from the blood and bone marrow. Since the initial approval, researchers have also set up new CAR-T trials for all sorts of solid tumors from lung cancer to kidney cancer to sarcoma. But progress has been slow. While some promising findings are coming from the lab and in small numbers of patients on early phase trials, nothing is yet approved in humans. The remarkable responses occurring in blood cancers just werent happening in solid tumors.

Cancer is one word, but its not one disease. Its easier to prove why something works when it works than show why it doesnt work when it doesnt work, said Saar Gill, a hematologist and scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who co-founded a company called Carisma Therapeutics using CAR-T technology against solid tumors. That was his short answer, at least. The longer answer to why CAR-T hasnt worked in solid cancers involves what Gill believes are two main barriers. First, its a trafficking problem. Leukemia cells tend to be easier targets; they bob through the bloodstream like buoys in an ocean. Solid tumors are more like trash islands. The cancer cells stick together and grow an assortment of supporting structures to hold the mound together. The first problem for CAR-T is that the T-cells may not be able to penetrate the islands. Then, even if the T-cells make it in, theyre faced with a hostile environment and will likely die before they can work.

At Carisma, Gill and his colleagues look to get around these obstacles though a different immune cell called the macrophage. T-cells are not the only players of the immune system, after all. Macrophages are gluttonous cells that recognize invaders and engulf them for destruction. But studies have shown they cluster in solid tumors in a way T-cells dont. Gill hopes genetically engineered macrophages can be the stowaways that sneak into solid tumor and attack from the inside out.

Another big challenge, even for leukemias and lymphomas, is resistance, where the cancers learn to survive the CAR-T infusion. While many patients in the trials achieved remission after a month, we now have two years worth of data and the outlook isnt as rosy. For lymphoma, that number is closer to 40 percent. Patients celebrating cures initially are relapsing later. Why?

The CAR-T cells we use target a specific protein on cancer cells. But if the cancer no longer expresses that protein, that can be a big problem, and were finding thats exactly whats happening. Through blood testing, we see that many patients who relapse lose the target.

Researchers are trying to regain the upper hand by designing CAR-Ts to target more than one receptor. Its an old idea in a new frame: An arms race between our medicines and the illnesses that can evolve to evade them. Too much medical precision in these cases is actually not what we want, as it makes it easier for cancer to pinpoint whats after it and develop an escape route. So, the reasoning goes, target multiple pieces at once. Confuse the cancer.

Then theres the other dreaded c word: Cost. Novartis Kymriah runs up to $475,000 while Kite Pharmas Yescarta is $373,000. That covers manufacturing and infusion. Not included is the minimum one-week hospital stay or any complications.

They are daunting numbers. Some limitations on health care we accept maybe the patients are too sick; maybe they have the wrong disease. The wrong cost is n
ot one we as a society look kindly upon. And drug companies shy away from that kind of attention.

Cost origins in medicine are notoriously murky. Novartis, confident in its technology, made an offer to offset the scrutiny in CAR-T. If the treatment didnt work after one month, the company said it wouldnt send a bill.

Not everyone agrees that cost is an issue. Gill, for example, believes the concern is over-hyped. Its not a major issue, he told me over the phone. Look, of course [with] health care in this country, if you dont have insurance, then youre screwed. That is no different when it comes to CAR-T as it is for anything else, he said. The cost conversation must also put CAR-T in context. Gill went on to list what these patients would be doing otherwise months of chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, hospital stays for cancer-associated complications and the associated loss of income as patients and caregivers miss work. These could add up to far more than a one-time CAR-T infusion. A bone marrow transplant, for example, can cost from $100,000 to more than $300,000. The cancer-fighting drug blinatumomab, also used to treat relapsed leukemia, costs $178,000 a year. Any discussion of cost is completely irresponsible without weighing the other side of the equation, Gill said.

How the system will get on board is another question. Logistics will be an issue, Gill conceded. The first national Medicare policy for covering CAR-T was announced in August 2019, two years after the first product was approved. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has offered to reimburse a set rate for CAR T-cell infusion, and while this figure was recently raised, it remains less than the total cost. Despite the expansion of medical uses, at some centers referrals for CAR-T are dropping as hospitals worry its a net loss. And while most commercial insurers are covering CAR-T therapies, companies less accustomed to handling complex therapies can postpone approval. Ironically, the patients considering CAR-T are the ones for whom the window for treatment is narrowest. A delay of even a few weeks can mean the difference between a cure and hospice.

This, of course, poses a big problem. A breakthrough technology is only as good as its access. A major selling point of CAR-T besides the efficacy is its ease. Its a one-and-done treatment. Engineered T-cells are intended to live indefinitely, constantly on the alert if cancer tries to come back. Compare that to chemotherapy or immunotherapy, which is months of infusions or a pill taken indefinitely. CAR-T is more akin to surgery: Cut it out, pay the entire cost upfront, and youre done.

Birzer was lucky in this respect. I asked her and Johnson if cost had factored into their decision to try CAR-T. They looked at each other. It wasnt an issue, said Johnson. They remembered getting a statement in the mail for a large sum when they got home. But Birzer had good insurance. She didnt pay a cent.

* * *

One year after Birzers infusion, I met her and Johnson at a coffee shop near their home in San Francisco. They had saved a table. Johnson had a newspaper open. Birzer already had her coffee, and I noticed her hand trembling as she brought it to her mouth. She described how she still struggles to find exactly the right words. She sometimes flings peas. But shes mostly back to normal, living her everyday life. She has even returned to her passion, performing stand-up comedy, though she admitted that at least for general audiences: My jokes about cancer didnt kill.

People handed a devastating diagnosis dont spend most of their time dying. They are living, but with a heightened awareness for a timeline the rest of us take for granted. They sip coffee, enjoy their hobbies, and read the news while also getting their affairs in order and staying on the lookout, constantly, for the next treatment that could save them.

Hoping for a miracle while preparing to die are mutually compatible ideas. Many of my patients have become accustomed to living somewhere in that limbo. It is humbling to witness. They hold out hope for a plan A, however unlikely it may be, while also adjusting to the reality of a plan B. They live their lives; and they live in uncertainty.

I see patients in various stages of this limbo. In clinic, I met a man with multiple myeloma six months after a CAR-T trial that supposedly cured him. He came in with a big smile but then quietly began praying when it was time to view PET results. He asked how the other patients on the trial were doing, and I shared the stats. While percentages dont say anything about an individual experience, theyre also all patients have to go on. When someone on the same treatment dies, its shattering for everyone. Was one person the exception, or a harbinger of anothers fate? Who is the outlier?

I look at these patients and think a sober truth: Before CAR-T, all would likely die within six months. Now, imagine taking 40 percent and curing them. Sure, a naysayer might point out, its only 40 percent. Whats the hype if most still succumb to their cancer? But there was nothing close to that before CAR-T. I agree with how Gill described it: I think CAR-T cells are like chemotherapy in the 1950s. Theyre not better than chemotherapy theyre just different. For an adversary as tough as cancer, well take any tool we can get.

There remain many questions. Can we use CAR-T earlier in a cancers course? Lessen the side effects? Overcome resistance? Streamline manufacturing and reimbursement? Will it work in other cancers? Patients will sign up to answer.

For now, Birzer seems to be in the lucky 40 percent. Her one-year PET scan showed no cancer. I thought of our last coffee meeting, where I had asked if she ever worried she wouldnt return to normal. She didnt even pause. If youre not dead, she said, youre winning.

* * *

Ilana Yurkiewicz, M.D., is a physician at Stanford University and a medical journalist. She is a former Scientific American Blog Network columnist and AAAS Mass Media Fellow. Her writing has also appeared in Aeon Magazine, Health Affairs, and STAT News, and has been featured in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing."

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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The Possibilities and Risks of Genetically Altering Immune Cells to Fight Cancer - Smithsonian.com

Washington D.C., Nov 9, 2019 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Food trends come and go, and the trend du jour is plant-based meat that is partially made in a laboratory.

Many vegans and vegetarians have rejoiced at the growing popularity and relative mainstream success of both the Beyond and Impossible brands, and there is a growing claim that eschewing meat choices in favor of these new products is a more ethical choice for consumers.

CNA spoke to Catholic moral theologians to discuss the ethics of eating meat, and the morality of eating faux meat during penitential fasts. And, lest CNA coverage of these products seem incomplete, we conducted a taste test.

According to Dr. Joseph Capizzi, a professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America a person is not morally obligated to choose a vegan patty, like the Impossible Burger, over a beef or chicken burger.

Theres no reason, in my opinion, to think the consumption of products so dependent upon technology are superior to the consumption of animal products, said Capizzi.

I do think, however, in both cases, ethically relevant issues include the production of the foods, including not merely the environmental impact, but also the ways technologies might distance the human being from creation, he added.

Capizzi told CNA that while he does not think it is ethically superior for people to stick to eating mostly plant-based food, he does think that people need to reflect on the ethical nature of eating.

Though eating is a basic human need, how we eat, what we eat, with whom we eat--including whom we exclude--are all questions that need our reflection, said Capizzi. While these alternative products have done some work to address some of these concerns, there is much work to be done.

One thing Ive noticed is the lack of hospitality that can accompany over-restrictive diets, he explained, recounting the experience of seeing a poor person offer meat to guests, presented as a luxury, only to see the meat rejected because of the guests vegetarianism.

Dr. Charles Camosy, a professor at Fordham University who has written extensively about veganism and vegetarianism, disagreed with Capizzis take. Camosy told CNA that these new products make it harder for American Catholics to justify eating meat.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church insists we have a moral duty not to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly, said Camosy.

With good-tasting protein available from so many sources now, including from new imitation meat products, the teaching of the Church would seem to indicate that the necessity of participating in the suffering of death of animals, for most of us, isn't what it might have been in the past.

Camosy noted that the Bible states that in the new Kingdom of God that will come with Christs second coming, animals are to be our companions, not our food.

The new kingdom will be a Peaceable Kingdom among all creatures: lambs, lions, snakes, and babies, he said, and there will be no need to slaughter animals.

The faux hamburger market is dominated by two companies: Beyond Meat makes the Beyond Burger patty, Beyond Beef ground meat substitute, Beyond Sausage, and Beyond Beef Crumbles. Impossible Foods sells the Impossible Burger patty and the Impossible Sausage.

Protein, fat, minerals, carbohydrates, and water are the five building blocks of meat, says Beyond Meats website. Beyond uses plant-based versions of protein--including protein from peas, mung beans, fava beans, brown rice, and sunflowers--and fats to create its products. Additionally, Beyond uses beet juice to create a burger that bleeds.

Impossible Food uses heme, a protein that is found in nearly all living things, to make its plant-based burgers taste like meat. This heme also mimics a bleeding effect.

Impossible Burger gets its heme from the protein soy leghemoglobin, which is naturally found in soy roots. Impossible Foods produces soy leghemoglobin through genetic engineering and fermentation. Thanks to heme, Impossible Burger has a rich, beefy flavor that satisfies the most discerning meat-eaters but it contains no animal products whatsoever, the companys website says.

Dunkin, the restaurant once known as Dunkin Donuts, launched a Beyond Sausage sandwich nationwide Nov. 6 after a successful test market in Manhattan. Customers can choose to substitute a veggie egg white patty for the fried egg. CNA paid $3.99 for the Beyond Sausage sandwich.

An ordinary pork sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin from Dunkin costs $4.99.

CNA recruited three journalists for a blind taste test of the Beyond Sausage sandwich and pork sausage sandwich. Two out of the three testers were unable to determine at first glance if the sandwich they were eating contained Beyond or pork sausage, and one mistakenly thought the pork sausage she was eating was actually the Beyond Sausage.

Two out of the three testers said they preferred the pork sausage sandwich to the Beyond sandwich, but one said she liked that the Beyond sandwich reminded her of a falafel. This tester was the only one who said she would order the sandwich again in the future.

The sandwich was not extremely popular among testers. But some Catholics have asked whether it would be good enough to eat on a Friday, when Catholics are instructed to abstain from (actual) meat.

CNA asked Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., the academic dean and vice president of the Dominican House of Studies, to weigh in on whether or not an Impossible Burger (or similar product) would be appropriate for a day when Catholics abstain from meat.

The Churchs universal norms say that we should abstain from meat on Fridays, especially Fridays in Lent, explained Petri. The Impossible Burgers are not technically meat. So, of course, someone could argue that we can eat them on Fridays.

Still, he said that giving up meat but having Impossible Burgers that taste like meat seems to me to be a technicality to get out of the spirit of the penance, he said.

We should remember the point here is to give up something in union with Christ crucified. If a person is seeking Impossible meat to skirt the penance, its hard to believe theyve really understood the point of it all.

It is important for Catholics to remember that fasting and abstinence are not done for purposes of dieting, or to respect animals, said Petri. The purpose of fasting is to unite our offerings to the perfect offering of Christ, and so to prepare for the great feast of his coming.

And for those who are still struggling (or hungry) on a Friday, Petri had some advice.

If youre craving meat on a Friday, offer it up.

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The Impossible Burger: Ethics and a CNA taste test - Catholic News Agency

Lee Silver,Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World,Avon Books, 1997, 317 pp.

What can we expect from human genetic engineering? How will cloning change our species? Can governments misuse genetic technology? These are some of the questions Lee Silver tries to answer inRemaking Eden.This book is so breezy it reads as if it were pitched to readers ofMademoiselle,but Prof. Silver clearly knows his field and makes no secret of his enthusiasm for using science to improve on nature. Whatever scruplesreligious or otherwiseone may have about the advisability of tinkering with human reproduction, this book leaves little doubt that human cloning and designer babies are likely to be common in the next century.

Just a Small Business

Prof. Silver explains that cloning will be a crucial step in our ability to manipulate reproduction. Last years successful cloning of a sheep means there should be no scientific obstacles to doing the same thing with humans, but what is a clone and how does cloning work? A clone is an exact genetic copy of an organism. Clones are easily produced by plants that can be propagated from cuttings, but animals dont reproduce that way. A clone of a person would be made by putting his genetic material into an embryonic cell, implanting that cell in a womb, and letting it develop to term. Biologically, a clone is no different from an identical twin, except that it is born laterperhaps many years later.

The news of the sheep cloning was met with widespread hostility, and people from President Clinton on down urged that cloning of humans be prohibited. Prof. Silver thinks opposition is both futile (because cloning will be impossible to ban) and misplaced (because cloning will be good and useful). He argues that fancy reproductive genetics cannot be prevented because it does not require large-scale investment, and can be done virtually anywhere. If the United States bans it, Singapore or North Korea or the Cayman Islands will welcome the small businesses that will inevitably spring up to provide it.

According to Prof. Silver, cloning and its associated techniques are good, partly because only individuals, not governments, are likely to use them. There are several reasons for this. First, human cloning starts with a single cell that must be grown into an adult, so it takes 18 to 20 years. Champion athletes or obedient soldiers cannot be cranked out of a clone factory fully-grown, and Prof. Silver suspects that few governments have the patience to wait for clones to grow up. He also reports that in the foreseeable future the chances of creating an artificial womb are slim to none, since the chemical communications between mother and fetus are too complicated to reproduce. Cloning will therefore require human wombs, and large-scale government cloning would require a slave army of young women compelled to produce and rear government-issue babies. This is improbable even under the worst dictators.

Who, then, would clone and why? Since cloning will be labor-intensive, only the rich will be able to afford it. Some peopleand not necessarily egomaniacswill want the nearest thing yet to another chance at life: the opportunity to rear a genetic carbon copy of themselves.

Prof. Silver offers other more exotic possibilities: A couple could go infertile before it had all the children it wanted and could decide to clone the one(s) it already had rather than adopt. A lesbian could decide to clone herself and implant the embryo in her partners wombboth women would then be biological mothers of the resulting child. If the only child of a couple were killed in an accident the parents might decide to clone the child (from its remaining tissue) rather than start over. At a more gruesome level, a clone might be produced because it would be a perfectly compatible organ donor for someone who needed new parts. Some types of useful tissue are already present in the fetus, so the clone could be aborted and all its useful bits harvested.

Cloning makes for startling possibilities. A woman who particularly admired her parents could clone them, have them implanted in her own womb, and rear them. She would then be the birth mother of people who were, genetically, her own parents. Also, since human tissues can be stored indefinitely in the deep freeze, a long-dead ancestors genes could be thawed out and given another try. A child could grow up to learn that what he had always thought was his brother wasgeneticallyhis great-grandfather.

Prof. Silver points out that it is possible to clone someone who has never been born. An aborted fetus has all the genetic material anyone needs for cloning. Spookier still is what could be done with the fact that male and female fetuses already contain eggs and the precursors of sperm. If these were harvested and used for in vitro fertilization, someone could be born of parents who were, themselves, never born. Prof. Silver does not necessarily endorse any of thishe is simply explaining what is now or soon will be possible. And to those who find these ideas repulsive, he points out that when in vitro fertilization was first achieved in 1978 it was denounced as playing God. It is now practiced without controversy in 40 different countries, and by the end of 1994 some 140,000 people had come into the world that way.

He also notes that surrogate motherswomen who rent out their wombscontinue to ply their trade, despite bad publicity. In 1986, Mary Beth Whitehead refused to turn over a contract baby she had agreed to carry for an infertile couple, and the saga of Baby M wore on for months. Since then, states have passed laws governing commercial surrogacy, some banning it outright. Others, like Arkansas, are receptive to reproductive contracts and will enforce them even if the surrogate mother does not want to hand over the baby. Prof. Silver reports that surrogates are now selected with such care that there are no more battles over possession. His point is that a procedure that once provoked an outcry is now quietly flourishing. He predicts that other reproductive techniques that now seem outlandish will also gain wide acceptance.

Whatever happens, this will be sport for the rich: In vitro fertilization costs anywhere from $50,000 to $200,000 and the total costs of hiring a stranger to carry your child run to about $50,000.

Improving on Nature

Even more troubling for some people is the prospect of human genetic improvement, but simple techniques of this sort are already being used. If parents use amniocentesis to test an unborn child for genetic diseases, they have the option of aborting the fetus rather than have a baby with a serious defect. This is crude, all-or-nothing selection but it is still a refusal to leave reproduction to chance. Embryo selection is similar but more complex. When infertile couples resort to in vitro fertilization, they usually fertilize several eggs at once to make sure at least one will be usable. If several embryos are left to develop they can be examined and the most promising chosen for implantation. Soon it will be possible to change the genetic contents of the embryo so as to eliminate hereditary diseases and even add desirable qualities.

Prof. Silver notes that cloning will be central to this process because at the pre-implantation stage that will make it possible to work with batches of embryos rather than just one. Biological procedures are never 100 percent reliable, so reproductive genetics needs the margin for error that comes with genetically identical copies. A technician who would never attempt an uncertain maneuver on a single, laboriously-harvested, fertilized, and partially-developed embryo could try it confidently on 100 identical embryos.

Needless to say, there is much controversy about all this. Some people would view the 99 failed-and-discarded embryos as 99 abortions. Likewise, there are doubts about the advisability of tinkering with genetic characteristics that could be passed on to succeeding generations. Indeed, some of the probable meth
ods do seem strange. For example, it should soon be possible to modify the precursor cells that produce human sperm. Harmful characteristics could be eliminated and helpful ones added. These cells could then be implanted into the testes of a pig or mouse, which would produce improvedhuman sperm,which could be harvested and used for in vitro fertilization.

Whatever techniques are used, Prof. Silver suggests that in 100 years or so, true designer babies will be possible. A couple could select their own most desirable traits and add nice features from other people and evenother species.There is no theoretical obstacle to stitching into humans the genes that give dogs a keen sense of smell or even those that permit echolocation in bats or dolphins. Humans may some day be able to see radio waves and infrared light, or even perform photosynthesis.

Prof. Silver recognizes that the children of people who can afford these techniques will dominate society. Every parent with enough money could have beautiful, talented, genius children. Prof. Silver even recognizes that these improved humans could quickly become a distinct species, or even several distinct species, depending on the set of characteristics they selected. Is this eugenics? Indeed it is, says Prof. Silver, who argues that even if the Nazis gave it a bad name, it would be irresponsible not to take control of our genetic destiny now that we are able.

Fantastic as all of this may sound, Prof. Silver is probably at his most convincing when he argues that unless the United States or some other superpower launches a global effort to prevent anyone anywhere from perfecting and practicing these techniques, reproductive engineering will surely come to pass. Parents want the best for their children, and with or without their governments permission they will find a way to get it. Although there will not be new, improved human super-species in our lifetime, Prof. Silver argues that there is no harm in getting used to the idea now.

Original Article

Topics: Book Review, Classics, Eugenics and Dysgenics, Fertility, Science and Genetics

Link:
What Can We Expect from Human Genetic Engineering ...

Should we welcome human genetic engineering? Tyler Cowen

If you could directly alter your kids genetic profile, what would you want? Its hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dismayed to read one recent research paper by psychologists Rachel M. Latham and Sophie von Stumm. The descriptive title of that work, based on survey evidence, is Mothers want extraversion over conscientiousness or intelligence for their children. Upon reflection, maybe that isnt so surprising, because parents presumably want children who are fun to spend time with.

Would a more extroverted human race be desirable, all things considered? I genuinely dont know, but at the very least I am concerned. The current mix of human personalities and institutions is a delicate balance which, for all of its flaws, has allowed society to survive and progress. Im not looking to make a big roll of the dice on this one.

Amazon robots bring a brave new world to the warehouse The Financial Times

Another way to look at US wage growth The Financial Times

The robot tax gains another advocate Wired

Kim got the idea of a robot tax from Bill Gates, who mentioned it in an interview in February. Since then, shes been meeting with stakeholdersunions and business types and the likeabout how San Francisco, and California, might explore such a thing.

Among the issues with a robot tax: What is a robot? Even roboticists have a hard time agreeing. Does AI that steals a job count as a robot? (Nope, but youd probably want to tax it like one if youre going to commit to this.) Were still working on what defines a robot and what defines job displacement, Kim says. And so announcing the opening of the campaign committee is going to also allow us to have discussions throughout the state in terms of what the actual measure would look like.

Video: Powerball lotteries and the endowment effect Marginal Revolution

3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet rewrites the history of math The Telegraph

Winner-takes-all effects in autonomous cars Benedict Evans

Transcript: Gary Cohn on tax reform and Charlottesville The Financial Times

FT: So what exactly will you have in the tax bill?

GC: On the personal side, we have protected the three big deductions charitable, mortgage and retirement saving. We want to raise the standard deduction caps and get rid of many of the other personal deductions. We want to get rid of death taxes and estate taxes.

On the business side, we are proposing to get rid of many of the deductions that companies can take right now to lower taxable income. At the moment we start with a high corporate tax rate in America but companies use deductions: what we are trying to do is get everyone to pay at a lower rate. This is a big base-broadening exercise.

Revenue may decline in the medium term but it will then explode for the government. When we grow the economy we will see substantial growth in revenue.

The rest is here:
Around the web: Concerns with human genetic engineering, Gary ... - American Enterprise Institute

On the eve of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and MedicineInternational Summit on Human Gene Editing, theCenter for Genetics and Societyand Friends of the Earth released a new report Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future: Reclaiming Emerging Biotechnologies for the Common Good.

Read thefullreportor theexecutive summary.

Read thenews release.

Summary: Recent research in genetic engineering and synthetic biology has enabled scientists to artificially redesign life everything from microbes to people. Amid the breakneck speed of recent developments in genetic engineering and synthetic biology that could be used to alter human DNA, this report examines health, regulatory, social and ethical questions about proposals ranging from genetically altering human gut bacteria to implementing germline editing altering human embryos and reproductive cells to produce permanent, hereditary genetic modification of future children and generations. It also examines the systemic and commercial incentives to rush newly discovered biotechnologies to market, regardless of their social utility and ahead of appropriate, transparent assessment and oversight.

The report calls for:

BackgroundEmerging biotechnologies are enabling researchers and corporations to control and manipulate the basic building blocks of life. The impacts of these technologies are already rippling through society, as corporations patent our genes and those of other organisms.

Researchershail synthetic biologya new set of extreme genetic engineering techniques as the future of manufacturing, engineering and medicine. Some of these techniques have also brought the prospect of genetically engineered humans closer to reality.

In April 2015, researchers from Sun Yat-sen University reported that they had used gene editing techniques toalter human embryos, thefirst time in historythis is known to have occurred. In September 2015, a group of six major UK research funders and theHinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells and ethics, both released statements advocating for gene editing research in human embryos.

Recent genetic engineering discussions have focused onCRISPR/Cas9, a molecular complex intended to edit a genome by cutting out and/or splicing in parts of DNA sequences. This technique (which is not yet perfected, but is rapidly being refined) has been promoted as a promising tool to prevent genetic diseases. But, if used to modify embryos, it could result in permanent, heritable changes to future generations.

Risks and concernsThere are significant scientific, environmental, health and ethical challenges to the human applications of synthetic biology, which currently include reengineering the human microbiome, gene drives, xenotransplantation and gene editing.

Prominent individuals and organizations, including some scientists working in the field, haveexpressed deep concernsabout the unforeseen consequences that human applications of genetic engineering could have. Some believe there are lines that should not be crossed, especially attempts to create genetically modified human beings (sometimes called designer babies), and suggest that the risks to individuals and to society will never be worth any supposed benefit. Others argue that if its safe, anything goes. A few even hypothesize that humanity will have a moral duty to genetically enhance our children if the technology and underpinning genetics progress.

Using gene editing at the request of health-impacted patients with specific diseases, often referred to as somatic gene therapy, may be acceptable, if it is feasible, proven safe and the patient understands implications of such procedures. But using the same techniques to modify embryos in order to make permanent changes to future generations and to our common genetic heritage thehuman germlineas it is known is far more problematic. It is exceedingly difficult to justify on medical grounds, and carries enormous risks, both for individuals and society. The advent of human germline genetic engineering could lead to the development of new forms of social inequality, discrimination and conflict. Among the risks of heritable genetic modification is the possibility of a modern version of eugenics, with human society being divided into genetic haves and have-nots.

Lack of regulationFriends of the Earth believes that everyone needs to be aware of these new society-changing technologies and be able to engage in decisions about what is safe, ethical and beneficial.

Despite the outstanding environmental, safety and ethical concerns,the synthetic biology marketis expected to reach close to $39 billion by 2020. Already products of synthetic biology, such as synthetic biology-derived vanillin, stevia and oils, are entering food and consumer products ahead of independent environmental and safety assessments, oversight and labeling a worrying precedent for human applications.

Dozens of countries, including those with the most highly developed biotechnology sectors, have explicitly banned heritable human genetic modification, as has the Council of Europes binding 1997 Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. However, many countries, including the U.S., have not already enacted such a prohibition.

Friends of the Earth reiterates the call in Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology, signed by 116 civil society groups from around the world, for a prohibition on the use of gene editing and synthetic biology to manipulate the human germline; for safeguards to be implemented to protect public health and the environment from the novel risks of synthetic biology; and open, meaningful and full public participation in decisions regarding its uses. Countries that have not already adopted laws prohibiting the creation of genetically modified human beings, especially including the United States, should do so as soon as possible.

Further information on this topic and recommendations are outlined in the new report Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future.

Gene patentsSynthetic biology techniques and applications for human engineering raise significant questions about intellectual property rights and the ownership of DNA.

About 20 percent of the human genome has already been patented by corporations and scientists, granting companies ownership and sole access to these fundamental building blocks of life. Gene patents are dangerous and unfair: They give corporations monopolies over potentially live-saving research and treatments that are based on pieces of genetic code that have evolved naturally over millenia and are part of our common human heritage.

Scientists are only beginning to understand the complexity of the human genome. Research to date indicates that many common diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimers, correlate with a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

Patents on genes limit the ability of scientists and health researchers to learn more about gene-to-disease correlations and limit progress in fields that could benefit the health of all people, resulting in increasing prices for tests, impediments to alternative research and barriers to patients access to potentially life-saving technology. As weve seen in the case of patents on two genes that correlate to increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, gene patents can also prevent patients from receiving second opinions on genetic diagnostic tests.

Friends of the Earth is working to ban the patenting of human genes and all genes that occur naturally on our planet. Our current focus is passing a bill in Congress that would end this practices in the U.S. by reinforcing a fundamental principle of patent law that patents only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occur in nature. Decoding genetic material is akin to figuring out the composition of water. Both water and genetic material are common goods that occur naturally. Neither should be patentable.

In a June 2013 decision, the Supreme C
ourt ruled that human genes are may no longer be patented, invalidating the existing patents for over 20 percent of the human genome. Friends of the Earth, represented by the Center for Food Safety, had submitted an amici brief arguing that naturally occurring genes, DNA and cDNA must not be patentable. This marked a huge victory on the issue only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occurring in nature.

Originally posted here:
Extreme genetic engineering and the human future - Friends ...

The DNA of early human embryos carrying a sequence leading to hypertrophic cardiomyopathya potentially deadly heart defecthas been edited to ensure they would carry a healthy DNA sequence if brought to term. The Nature paper announcing this has reenergized a terrific national and international debate over whether permanent changes in DNA that can be passed from one generation to another should be made. Bioethicists are asking, Should we genetically engineer children? while some potential parents are almost certainly asking, When will this technique be available?

The Should questions bioethicists are asking are probably not relevant. The only question whose answer ultimately matters is: Can techniques like CRISP-R be used to genetically engineer children safely? Because a variety of forces guarantee that if they can be, they will be.

The key questions reliable practitioners must answer are: Can we prove it works? Then: Can it be used safely?. If yes on these questions, then we will see: Who is marketing this technique to potential parents? Finally, we will learn: Where was it done, who did it, and who paid for its use?

We are closer than ever before to using CRISP-R to replace dangerous DNA sequences with those that wont keep a baby from being healthy. Fortunately, this Nature paper leaves many questions Unanswered because the embryos were not allowed to come to term.

Most importantly, we still dont know Could the embryos have developed into viable babies? Just as in 2015 when researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China didnt implant engineered embryos into a womans womb, the scientists who published in Nature recently didnt feel ready (and didnt have permission) to try this potentially enormous step. As experiments proceed, this question will, at some point, be answered.

It will be answered because there is an enormous, proven market for techniques that can be used to ensure that a baby will be born without DNA sequences that can lead to genetically-mediated conditions; many of which are devastating as we have been tragically reminded of late.

Under the best circumstances, in-vitro fertilization leads to a live birth less than half of the time. As a result, whoever tries to see if an embryo that has had targeted DNA repaired using CRISP-R will doubtless prepare a lot of embryos for implanting in quite a few women. When those women are asked to carry these embryos to term we will not know about it. We will probably not find out if none of the embryos come to term successfully.

We *will* know about this procedure if even one baby comes to term and is born with the targeted genetic sequence corrected as intended. Until now, (and maybe even with our new knowledge), any baby brought to term after CRISP-R was used to edit and replace unhealthy DNA would have almost certainly had other DNA damaged in the editing process. This near-certainty and other concerns have held people back from trying to genetically engineer an embryo that they would then bring to term. They could not, until recently, have confidence that only the sequence being targeted has been affected. With this new Nature report, this, at least, is changing.

The results of these newly reported experiments are many steps closer to usability than the Chinese experiments reported in 2015. This is the nature of scientific experimentation, particularly when there is demand for the capability or knowledge being developed.

People try something. It either works or it doesnt. Sometimes when it doesnt work, we learn enough to adjust and try again. If it does work, it often doesnt function exactly the way we expected. Either way, people keep trying until either the technique is perfected or it ultimately proves to be unusable.

This Nature paper is an example of trying something and doing a better job than the first attempt. It does not represent a provably safe and reliable technique . Yet. If market driven research works as it often does, people will work hard to publish data (hopefully from reliable experimental work) suggesting they have a safe and effective technique. Doing so will let them tell some desperate set of wealthy prospective parents: We should be able to use this technique with an acceptable chance of giving you a healthy baby.

Princetons Lee Silver predicted parents desire for gene editing in his Remaking Eden, a book published in 1997. He argued this because people fear sickness or disability and feel strong personal, economic and social pressures to have healthy, beautiful children who should become healthy attractive adults.

People already spend a great deal on molecular techniques like pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). PGD is regularly used to reduce couples risk of having babies with known (or potential), chromosomal abnormalities and/or single gene mutations that can lead to thousands of DNA-mediated conditions.

As I showed in my Genetics dissertation published from Yale in 2004, different countries respond differently to controversial science like this. Similarly, different individuals responses are equally diverse. One poll indicates nearly half of Americans would use gene editing technology to prevent possible DNA-mediated conditions in their children. Policy makers who object to the technology therefore have a problem: if they succeed in blocking it somewhere, research and real world experience indicate other governments may well permit its use. If this happens, these techniques will be available to anyone wealthy and desperate enough to find providers with the marketingand hopefully scientificskill needed to sell people on trying them.

This gene editing controversy is a reminder that we are losing the capacity to effectively ask, Should we? As our knowledge of science grows, becomes more globalized, and is increasingly easy to acquire for people with different morals, needs and wants, we must soon be ready to ask, Can we? and ultimately, Will someone? Their answers will give us the best chance to ensure any babies that may come from any technique described as genetic engineering are born healthy, happy, and able to thrive.

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It's Time to Stop Asking Whether Human Genetic Engineering Should Happen and Start Planning to Manage it Safely - HuffPost

Planet Earth Report provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.

We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance Genetic engineering will bring us new Bolts and Shaqs. For many years I lived in Eugene, Oregon, writes Stephen Hsu for Nautil.us, also known as track-town USA for its long tradition in track and field. Each summer high-profile meets like the United States National Championships or Olympic Trials would bring world-class competitors to the University of Oregons Hayward Field. It was exciting to bump into great athletes at the local cafe or ice cream shop, or even find myself lifting weights or running on a track next to them. One morning I was shocked to be passed as if standing still by a woman running 400-meter repeats. Her training pace was as fast as I could run a flat out sprint over a much shorter distance.

Significance of Pangolin Viruses in Human Pandemic Remains Murky Scientists havent found evidence that the new coronavirus jumped from pangolins to people, but they do host very similar viruses, writes James Gorman for the New York Times. Pangolins, once suspected as the missing link from bats to humans in the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, may not have played that role, some scientists say, although the animals do host viruses that are similar to the new human coronavirus.

The Pandemic Has Grounded Humankind Space missions around the world are on holda poignant reminder of how COVID-19 has upended civilization, writes Marina Koren for The Atlantic.

The spread of the coronavirus will be exponential which is bad. But its inevitable decline will also be exponential, which is good, writes Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at SETI.org. In the case of the coronavirus, the growth in the number of infected persons will inevitably be exponential, at least for a while. Thats because the rate of new infections clearly depends on the number of people who are already contagious. The resulting tally of the infected will increase very rapidly as is typical of exponential growth. Note that its not that the number is large, but only the behavior of the growth rate that merits the designation exponential.

Scientists Are Stuck on an Ice-Locked Ship in the Arctic Due to Coronavirus Organizers of the MOSAiC expedition are determining the best way to bring a relief crew to the ship without spreading the virus, which could leave roughly 100 scientists and crew on board for an extra six weeks, reports Maddie Stone for Motherboard Science.

Pablo Escobars Hippos Fill a Hole Left Since Ice Age Extinctions -Invasive herbivore mammals seem to restore functions missing in some food webs and ecosystems since the Pleistocene era, writes Asher Elbein for the New York Times. When Pablo Escobar died in 1993, the Colombian drug kingpins four adult African hippopotamuses were forgotten. But the fields and ponds along the Magdalena River suited them. One estimate puts their current population at 50 to 80 animals: By 2050 there may be anywhere from 800 to 5,000 in a landscape that never before knew hippos.

Stranded at sea cruise ships around the world are adrift as ports turn them away, reports The Guardian. A Guardian analysis of ship tracking data has found that, as of Thursday, at least ten ships around the world carrying nearly 10,000 passengers are still stuck at sea after having been turned away from their destination ports in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the ships are facing increasingly desperate medical situations, including one carrying hundreds of American, Canadian, Australian and British passengers, currently off the coast of Ecuador and seeking permission to dock in Florida.

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On the eve of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Medicine International Summit on Human Gene Editing, the Center for Genetics and Society and Friends of the Earth released a new report Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future: Reclaiming Emerging Biotechnologies for the Common Good.

Read thefull reportor theexecutive summary.

Read the news release.

Summary: Recent research in genetic engineering and synthetic biology has enabled scientists to artificially redesign life --everything from microbes to people. Amid the breakneck speed of recent developments in genetic engineering and synthetic biology that could be used to alter human DNA, this report examines health, regulatory, social and ethical questions about proposals ranging from genetically altering human gut bacteria to implementing germline editing --altering human embryos and reproductive cells to produce permanent, hereditary genetic modification of future children and generations. It also examines the systemic and commercial incentives to rush newly discovered biotechnologies to market, regardless of their social utility and ahead of appropriate, transparent assessment and oversight.

The report calls for:

Background Emerging biotechnologies are enabling researchers and corporations to control and manipulate the basic building blocks of life. The impacts of these technologies are already rippling through society, as corporations patent our genes and those of other organisms.

Researchers hail synthetic biology --a new set of extreme genetic engineering techniques --as the future of manufacturing, engineering and medicine. Some of these techniques have also brought the prospect of genetically engineered humans closer to reality.

In April 2015, researchers from Sun Yat-sen University reported that they had used gene editing techniques to alter human embryos, the first time in history this is known to have occurred. In September 2015, a group of six major UK research funders and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells and ethics, both released statements advocating for gene editing research in human embryos.

Recent genetic engineering discussions have focused on CRISPR/Cas9, a molecular complex intended to edit a genome by cutting out and/or splicing in parts of DNA sequences. This technique (which is not yet perfected, but is rapidly being refined) has been promoted as a promising tool to prevent genetic diseases. But, if used to modify embryos, it could result in permanent, heritable changes to future generations.

Risks and concerns There are significant scientific, environmental, health and ethical challenges to the human applications of synthetic biology, which currently include reengineering the human microbiome, gene drives, xenotransplantation and gene editing.

Prominent individuals and organizations, including some scientists working in the field, have expressed deep concerns about the unforeseen consequences that human applications of genetic engineering could have. Some believe there are lines that should not be crossed, especially attempts to create genetically modified human beings (sometimes called "designer babies"), and suggest that the risks to individuals and to society will never be worth any supposed benefit. Others argue that if its "safe," anything goes. A few even hypothesize that humanity will have a moral duty to genetically "enhance" our children if the technology and underpinning genetics progress.

Using gene editing at the request of health-impacted patients with specific diseases, often referred to as somatic gene therapy, may be acceptable, if it is feasible, proven safe and the patient understands implications of such procedures. But using the same techniques to modify embryos in order to make permanent changes to future generations and to our common genetic heritage --the human germline as it is known --is far more problematic. It is exceedingly difficult to justify on medical grounds, and carries enormous risks, both for individuals and society. The advent of human germline genetic engineering could lead to the development of new forms of social inequality, discrimination and conflict. Among the risks of heritable genetic modification is the possibility of a modern version of eugenics, with human society being divided into genetic haves and have-nots.

Lack of regulation Friends of the Earth believes that everyone needs to be aware of these new society-changing technologies and be able to engage in decisions about what is safe, ethical and beneficial.

Despite the outstanding environmental, safety and ethical concerns, the synthetic biology market is expected to reach close to $39 billion by 2020. Already products of synthetic biology, such as synthetic biology-derived vanillin, stevia and oils, are entering food and consumer products ahead of independent environmental and safety assessments, oversight and labeling --a worrying precedent for human applications.

Dozens of countries, including those with the most highly developed biotechnology sectors, have explicitly banned heritable human genetic modification, as has the Council of Europes binding 1997 Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. However, many countries, including the U.S., have not already enacted such a prohibition.

Friends of the Earth reiterates the call in "Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology," signed by 116 civil society groups from around the world, for a prohibition on the use of gene editing and synthetic biology to manipulate the human germline; for safeguards to be implemented to protect public health and the environment from the novel risks of synthetic biology; and open, meaningful and full public participation in decisions regarding its uses. Countries that have not already adopted laws prohibiting the creation of genetically modified human beings, especially including the United States, should do so as soon as possible.

Further information on this topic and recommendations are outlined in the new report "Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future."

Gene patents Synthetic biology techniques and applications for human engineering raise significant questions about intellectual property rights and the ownership of DNA.

About 20 percent of the human genome has already been patented by corporations and scientists, granting companies ownership and sole access to these fundamental building blocks of life. Gene patents are dangerous and unfair: They give corporations monopolies over potentially live-saving research and treatments that are based on pieces of genetic code that have evolved naturally over millenia and are part of our common human heritage.

Scientists are only beginning to understand the complexity of the human genome. Research to date indicates that many common diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, correlate with a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

Patents on genes limit the ability of scientists and health researchers to learn more about gene-to-disease correlations and limit progress in fields that could benefit the health of all people, resulting in increasing prices for tests, impediments to alternative research and barriers to patients' access to potentially life-saving technology. As we've seen in the case of patents on two genes that correlate to increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, gene patents can also prevent patients from receiving second opinions on genetic diagnostic tests.

Friends of the Earth is working to ban the patenting of human genes and all genes that occur naturally on our planet. Our current focus is passing a bill in Congress that would end this practices in the U.S. by reinforcing a fundamental principle of patent law -- that patents only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occur in nature. Decoding genetic material is akin to figuring out the composition of water. Both water and genetic material are common goods th
at occur naturally. Neither should be patentable.

In a June 2013 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that human genes are may no longer be patented, invalidating the existing patents for over 20 percent of the human genome. Friends of the Earth, represented by the Center for Food Safety, had submitted an amici brief arguing that naturally occurring genes, DNA and cDNA must not be patentable. This marked a huge victory on the issue only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occurring in nature.

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Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future

Sam Erickson followed his love of science to outer space one summer during an internship at NASA. He came away fascinated by seeing into deep space by interpreting interaction between matter and infrared radiation.

Now a full-fledged researcher at the University of Minnesotas College of Biological Sciences, the 25-year-old Alaska native is immersed in something far more earthly: killing carp. His fast-moving genetic engineering project is drawing attention from around the country as a potential tool to stop the spread of invasive carp.

I want to make a special fish, Erickson said in a recent interview at Gortner Laboratory in Falcon Heights.

In short, he plans to produce batches of male carp that would destroy the eggs of female carp during spawning season. The modified male fish would spray the eggs as if fertilizing them. But the seminal fluid thanks to DNA editing would instead cause the embryonic eggs to biologically self-destruct in a form of birth control that wouldnt affect other species nor create mutant carp in the wild.

His goal is to achieve the result in a controlled setting using common carp. From there, it will be up to federal regulators and fisheries biologists to decide whether to translate the technology to constrain reproduction of invasive carp in public waters.

What were developing is a tool, Erickson said. If we could make this work, it would be a total game-changer.

Supervised by University of Minnesota assistant professor Michael Smanski, Erickson recently received approval to accelerate his project by hiring a handful of undergraduate assistants. He also traveled last month to Springfield, Ill., to present his research plan to the 2020 Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference.

Were pretty excited about where his project is at, said Nick Phelps, director of the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center at the U. Things are sure moving fast. Theres excitement and caution.

Ericksons research has received funding from Minnesotas Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. No breeding populations of invasive carp have been detected in Minnesota, but the Department of Natural Resources has confirmed several individual fish captures and the agency has worked to keep the voracious eaters from migrating upstream from the lower Mississippi River. Silver carp, bighead carp and other Asian carps pose a threat to rivers and lakes in the state because they would compete with native species for food and habitat.

Erickson views his birth control project as one possible piece in the universitys integrated Asian carp research approach to keep invasive carp out of state waters. Already the DNR has supported electric barriers and underwater sound and bubble deterrents at key migration points. Another Asian carp-control milestone was closing the Mississippi River lock at Upper St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis in 2015.

Shooting star

Growing up in Anchorage, Erickson had never heard of Macalester College in St. Paul. But he visited the campus at the urging of a friend and felt like he fit in. He majored in chemistry and worked for a year at 3M in battery technology. But his interests tilted toward the natural world and how to better live in cooperation with nature, he said. Erickson met with Smanski about research opportunities at the university and was hired on the spot.

Smanski, one of the universitys top biological engineers, said carp is not an easy organism to work with and Erickson lacked experience in the field. But he hired the young researcher and assigned him to the carp birth control project because he seemed to have a rare blend of determination and intelligence.

I could tell right away when I was talking to him that he was like a shooting star, Smanski said. If you set a problem in front of him, he wont stop until he solves it Hes taken this farther than anyone else.

In two short years, Smanksi said, Erickson has mastered genetic engineering to the point that his research is starting to bear fruit.

With his new complement of research assistants, Erickson aims to clear his projects first major hurdle sometime this year. The challenge is to model his experiment in minnow-sized freshwater zebrafish. The full genetic code of zebrafish like common carp is already known.

Ericksons task is to make a small change to the DNA sequence of male zebrafish, kind of like inserting a DNA cassette into the fish, he said. During reproduction, the alteration will create lethal overexpression of genes in the embryonic eggs laid by females.

By analogy, Erickson said, the normal mating process is like a symphony with a single conductor turning on genes inside each embryo, Erickson said. But the DNA modification sends in a mess of conductors and the mixed signals destroy each embryo within 24 hours.

In the lab we have to make sure were causing the disruption with no off-target effects, he said. If we can do this in zebrafish, we hope to translate it. They are genetically similar to carp.

Ericksons upcoming experimentation with tank-dwelling live carp could be painfully slow because the fish only mate once a year. But hes working his way around that problem by altering lighting conditions and changing other stimuli in his lab to stagger when batches of fish are ready to reproduce.

The birth control process projected to be affordable for fisheries managers if it receives approval is already proven to work in yeast and insects. And Erickson said the same principles of molecular genetics have been used to create an altered, fast-growing version of Atlantic salmon approved for human consumption in the U.S.

Were not building a new carp from the bottom up but its kind of a whole new paradigm, so we have to get it done right, he said.

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Solution for a scourge? University of Minnesota scientist is progressing with carp-killer tool - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Imagine computers taking over the world. This scenario has been the grounds for many movies such as The Terminator. The debate over whether AI is dangerous or not has been a popular topic since the birth of the technology. As Elon Musk cautioned at SXSW 2018, AI is far more dangerous than nukes.

The same can be said about CRISPR, the new genetic engineering tool with the potential to delay aging, cure cancer and forever change the human species for better or worse. While it has been slowly gaining traction in the media and was discovered as early as 1993, CRISPR remains widely unknown despite the magnitude of its potential.

In my work focusing on AI, carbon offsetting, blockchain and CRISPR, I'm seeking to understand the big problems that I believe we will tackle this century. I'm currently networking with promising biolabs in Japan to increase my CRISPR expertise, and I would like to share what I've learned.

Now is the time to start educating yourself about CRISPR, keeping an eye on the market and establishing yourself as an industry leader.

How have we already changed life itself?

We have been engineering life since the dawn of time through selective breeding, but after discovering DNA, scientists began to take the process to a whole new level.

In the 1960s and 70s, scientists used radiation to cause random mutations in the hopes of creating something useful by pure chance. Sometimes it worked. A famous 1994 example is the FLAVR SAVR tomato, which was given an extra gene to suppress the buildup of a rotting enzyme to increase its shelf life.

In 2016, the first baby was born using the three parent genetic technique for maternal infertility.

What is CRISPR?

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is part of bacteria's immune system against bacteriophages, viruses that inject their DNA and hijack bacterias genomes to act as factories.

When a bacterium survives this attack, it saves part of the genetic code of the virus to form a protein (e.g. Cas9), which in turn scans the bacterium's insides for virus DNA matching the sample. If it finds any, the virus DNA gets cut out, effectively repelling the attack. This DNA archive is what we call CRISPR.

Here's the game-changer: Scientists discovered that it is programmable. In other words, programming it will give us the ability to modify, add or remove DNA parts with relative ease. This has the potential to cut gene editing costs, reduce the time to conduct experiments and vastly lower the complexity of the process.

Its potential applications are not limited to genetic diseases, either. Being able to edit DNA is opening up research possibilities for fighting other diseases, including cancer. It has the potential to slow aging and extend our lifespan. It can alter our bodies, leading to talk that it could eventually give us superhuman powers.

Are ethical concerns warranted?

Just like GMOs, there is also a lot of controversy and ethical debate surrounding CRISPR. It is sometimes referred to as Pandora's box.

Every parent wants a healthy child, but once genetic modification becomes commonplace in reproduction, I predict it won't be long before purely aesthetic changes are requested. This could ultimately lead to a cliff between genetically enhanced and unenhanced humans, where designer babiesare considered superior.

We have come quite a long way since the initial discovery, but CRISPR is still in its infancy. As precise as Cas9 editing is, errors are being made. Should germinal genes be edited, these changes could potentially be passed on.

However, at this point, I do not believe the question is whether it is good or bad. We have already been altering human DNA and will continue to do so. In my opinion, improper regulations are only likely to incentivize less transparent research in a more dangerous environment.

What are some early stage best practices for industry leaders?

Progress is slow but steady. The topic is complex and is far less tangible than, say, blockchain. Investments will require very patient pockets, due to potential temporary bans on clinical research using CRISPR. But with the sheer magnitude of its potential, I believe there won't be any industry that won't be affected by it in the future.

If, like me, you're a business leader getting involved in this industry, there are a few best practices you can keep in mind. Should your regulator become too much of a roadblock for your project despite your best efforts to be transparent and compliant consider moving it to a different jurisdiction. I predict others will do the same if U.S. regulations become stricter and slow the process.

As with AI, it's important to apply necessary caution. Projects must be transparent and compliant with regulators. The danger, if regulators become too uncooperative, is that CRISPR projects will move to less regulated spaces. Avoid jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to riskier procedures and experiments.

I believe ethical concerns need to be addressed logically. We have already crossed many boundaries, and there will always be those who are willing to do what others are not. That's why it's in everyone's best interest to discuss ethical concerns and bring critical thinking as an active part of research and development.

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CRISPR: Its Potential And Concerns In The Genetic Engineering Field - Forbes

GLOBAL

Development of human intelligence

This new revolution is just one in a long line of revolutions in human history over the past 10,000 years. The first major revolution was the Agricultural Revolution (also known as the Neolithic Revolution), which occurred in the Middle East around 10,000 BCE. This transition marked a turning away from nomadic hunting and gathering to stationary agricultural societies.

During this period, humans established non-nomadic societies centred on crop and animal farming. Humans domesticated both plants (for example, wheat, lentils and flax) and animals (for example, poultry and livestock) in order to establish a readily available and predictable source of food and clothing. The development of human intelligence allowed people to find a variety of uses for plants and animals.

Animals were also a source of transportation and labour as well as having symbolic value (for example, artistic, mythological and religious purposes) and a familial use (for example, for protection and companionship). The wide range of ways animals were used suggests that human intellectual ability and capacity advanced very quickly over a relatively short period of time and paved the way, cognitively and socially, for the development of written language around 3,000 BCE.

Growth of human intelligence

The ancient period (circa 3,000 BCE to 500 CE) and medieval period (circa 500 CE to 1450 CE) represented an era of continued social development, although at a relatively slow pace.

However, with the advent of the Democratic Revolution (circa 1760 CE), as well as the Industrial Revolution (circa 1760 CE), brought about by the use of water power and machinery to mechanise production systems, and the use of electrical power and steel in the 19th century to create mass production systems, the development of human societies shifted into high gear.

With innovations in information and digital technology starting in the mid-20th century, societies became more service-oriented and digitised. As a result, they have progressed from being predominantly agricultural and industrial-based societies to service and technology-based societies.

Political, economic, social and environmental changes have challenged our ability to respond effectively to these changes, especially with regards to upholding justice, rights and other democratic ideals.

The survival-of-the-fittest and a winner-takes-all paradigm, which largely characterised the agricultural and industrial-based eras, tends to create a society with greater political, economic and social inequalities and instabilities.

Thus, one of the main challenges for service- and technology-based societies is to find effective ways to make innovation work for all people. The development of civil society, democratic systems, universal education and universal human rights in the 20th century are a few such ways.

Impact of human intelligence

Every revolution was the result of new ways of thinking and transferring knowledge within and across societies. Not only do innovations bring about greater possibilities for a higher quality of life, but they also bring about greater risk and uncertainty. Without a framework of laws and ethics to guide their use, innovations can create greater levels of inequality and result in increased social tensions.

Thus, in the modern era, in addition to a humane rule of law, lifelong and lifewide education is a necessary condition for equity and inclusion. Today, humans live in a highly globalised world. Through mobile technology and the internet, they can transcend space and time boundaries to instantly connect to people and information that is, their access to knowledge is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

As we develop the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, mixed realities, synthetic biology and neural interfaces, the global systems of producing and consuming knowledge will be transformed, and, as a result, our entire political, economic and social way of life will change. This emerging paradigm will alter the relationships and interdependency among living and non-living entities in many ways.

Rethinking higher education

This emerging paradigm will also bring challenges and opportunities for higher education. The question then becomes: how do we steer and manage the direction of this emerging reality so that we can control it for the betterment of the planet (people, animals and the environment)?

Innovation is a catalyst for change and often results in major disruptions in the daily lives of people. This not only occurs in the disruption of labour markets through the demand for new knowledge and skills, but also in the way humans understand and interact with others and the environment. Thus, lifelong and lifewide learning is now viewed as a universal human right.

People must have the opportunity and means to continually learn though formal and non-formal systems of education in order to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills needed to function effectively in the emerging global knowledge society.

This also means learning how to learn and learning how to think both critically and creatively. All else being equal, talent development and creative thinking have now become as important as knowledge and skills. Fortunately, talent development and creative thinking can be learned by anyone just as the acquisition of knowledge and skills can be learned by anyone.

Talent development and creative thinking should be viewed as a renewable resource and should therefore become an essential component of higher education if it wants to remain relevant in the lives of people and society.

It is important for decision-makers not to become stuck in antiquated modes of thinking which no longer address the realities of the modern era. Higher education institutions, like all institutions, must learn to adapt to change. For instance, most universities now offer multiple ways to access teaching and learning through innovative e-learning systems (for example, web-enabled, hybrid and online courses).

The aim is to provide high-quality, lifelong access to education in ways that fit the needs of all students. The University of South Africa, for example, is able to serve 400,000 students from Africa and around the world because of its innovative use of e-learning.

Adapting to the contemporary needs of students and society means universities can help shape the future of education.

Patrick Blessinger is an adjunct associate professor of education at St Johns University, New York City, United States, and chief research scientist for the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association or HETL. Enakshi Sengupta is director of the Center for Advanced Research in Education at HETL. Mandla Makhanya is principal, vice-chancellor and professor at the University of South Africa and president of HETL. HETL will explore the issues raised in this article in its upcoming conference, The International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Conference.

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HE institutions must learn to adapt to innovate - University World News

Credit: Shutterstock

The flu virus, shown here as an illustration, evolves quickly, helping it escape our vaccines and immune systems.

Credit: Bethany Halford/C&EN

Although the Wuhan coronavirus is dominating headlines across the globe, influenza kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. In the US, millions of people roll up their sleeves annually for a flu shot. But this ritual is confusing for many. Why is it that most vaccines are effective for a lifetime while the flu vaccine is only effective for a year? And why do we sometimes get the flu even when weve gotten the vaccine? The answer is evolution: the flu is constantly evolving to evade our immune systems. In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, scientists who study flu evolution and pandemics explain what makes fighting the flu so difficult.

Subscribe to Stereo Chemistry now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

The following is the script for the podcast. We have edited the interviews within for length and clarity.

StefanieOlsen: This is the info sheet from the CDC on the flu vaccine. Kind of who should get it, why you should get it, who shouldnt get it, what to expect, whats normal, whats not normal. All that sort of stuff. So Ill give you that for your perusal.

Matt Davenport: Thats Stephanie Olsen. Shes a nurse practitioner at a MinuteClinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thats where C&EN senior correspondent Bethany Halford and her son went to get the flu vaccine back in the fall.

Stefanie Olsen: Are you a righty or a lefty?

Bethanys son: Im a righty.

Stefanie Olsen: OK. Cool. Well use your left arm. Find this big muscle. Here we go: clean, clean, clean. OK. One, two, three. Good job. Done. There you are.

Bethanys son: One tiny sting.

Stephanie Olsen: One tiny sting and done. Good job.

Matt: That didnt seem so bad.

Bethany Halford: It really wasnt bad at all.

Matt: Well hello there, Bethany.

Matt: Thanks so much for bringing your recorder along with you for the flu shot.

Bethany: No problem. Im actually glad I made this recording because I plan to replay it for my son every year just before we go to get our shots. Its a process thats met with no small amount of dread. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that most people get the flu vaccine every year.

Matt: So you and your son went in September. Its now almost February. Lets pretend youre a podcast cohost who has not gotten their flu shot. Is it too late?

Bethany: Well, CDC does recommend getting the flu vaccine by the end of October because it takes a few weeks for your body to create the antibodies that fight the virus. And this year the flu seems to be ramping up early. But doctors say that even now, its not too late to get the vaccine.

And were right in the thick of flu season. During the last flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, from October 2018 to May 2019, as many as 42.9 million people in the US got sick with the flu; 647,000 of those people were hospitalized, and 61,200 died.

Matt: Those numbers are from CDC, and theyre pretty typical for a flu season. So influenza is this huge problem, and its been that way for a long time. And its not going away, right? Unlike other vaccines, the flu shot is something you should get every year. And sometimes that flu shot isnt going to work.

Bethany: And this episode is all about how the flu outfoxes our vaccines and immune systems: through evolution. The flu virus is constantly changing itself to evade our immune systems response. And the virus changes enough each yearsometimes even enough within a single flu seasonthat the vaccine weve created is simply no longer effective.

Matt: So Beth, at the risk of sounding like a chemist right after the Nobel Prize announcement, isnt that a little more biology than chemistry?

Beth: Well, yes. But the evolutionary changes to influenza are really chemical changes. Theyre mutations in the viruss RNA that lead to amino acid changes in the viruss proteins. So there is plenty of chemistry to dig into. Were going to talk to three experts to learn how those changes happen and how studying them could help protect us better in the future. Well also look at what happens at the molecular level when a certain strain of flu becomes a pandemic that spreads quickly across the globe.

And were going to start by talking to a chemist.

Jesse Bloom: Hi, my name is Jesse Bloom.

Bethany: Jesse studies protein evolution at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Hes also affiliated with the University of Washington and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Jesse Bloom: I actually did my PhD in chemistry, working with Frances Arnold, who studied the directed evolution of proteins.

Matt: Wait. The Frances Arnold?

Bethany: Yes, the Frances Arnold from Caltech who won a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Jesse Bloom: After working with Frances, I remained really interested in protein evolution, but I wanted to study the evolution of proteins in a context with biomedical significance. So my lab now focuses on viral evolution, particularly the evolution of influenza virus. And the reason for that is these viruses evolve their proteins very rapidly.

Bethany: Jesse says there are really two main forms of flu evolution. One is called antigenic drift, and the other is called antigenic shift.

Matt: I like the rhyme scheme.

Bethany: Catchy, right? So lets start with the drift.

Jesse Bloom: Antigenic drift is the much more common form of flu evolution, and that essentially can be thought of as last years strain or a couple years ago strain of human flu evolving to be a little bit different, each year. Our immune systems are actually great at mounting antibody responses that protect us against flu, and theres pretty good evidence that if youre infected with a particular strain of flu, your body will provide very good, long-lasting immunity to that particular strain of flu.

Bethany: So, if our bodies provide long-lasting immunity, Im sure youre wondering why we still have to get a flu shot every year.

Bethany: Heres how Jesse explains it.

Jesse Bloom: The challenge with flu is the virus evolves very rapidly. In particular, the positions on the viral proteins that are recognized by our immune system, primarily by our antibodies, change, and they change enough that after about 5 years, many of those antibodies sort of dont work anymore. So antigenic drift and what typically is responsible for the seasonal influenza outbreaks is the virus that was present last year or the year before changing a little bit so that after about 5 years, its mostly evaded your immune systems memory.

Bethany: Now, I told you this was a chemistry story, so before we go any further, let me give you a picture of what Jesse is talking about. There are two proteins that scientists think are most important with respect to immunitywe create antibodies that bind to these two proteins in order to mount a defense against influenza. The first protein is hemagglutinin, which helps the influenza virus latch on to cells and infect them. The second is neuraminidase, which helps cleave new virus particles away from infected cells so the virus can continue to attack healthy cells. If you think of the flu virus as a sort of blob, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase stick out of that blob like pins in a pin cushion. Scientists name different strains of flu based on which types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase they have.

Matt: Are those the proteins were referring to when we talk about like H1N1 influenza or H3N2 influenza ?

Bethany: Thats right. Right now, there are three types of flu circulating in humans: H1N1, H3N2, and influenza B.

Jesse Bloom: I mean, they all evolve pretty fast, like, compared to almost anything else we encounter in life. But definitely H3N2 evolves the fastest. H1N1 is sort of in the mi
ddle. And influenza B is the slowest, although influenza B is still pretty fast. And this plays outfor instance, influenza B is most known for infecting children because its relatively less good at escaping immunity. Obviously children dont have any immunity at all, if they havent been vaccinated, anyway, to escape. So theyre always going to be susceptible. And then H3N2 is sort of best at infecting older peopleits also good at infecting younger people, but its good at affecting all agesand probably the reason is that H3N2 is evolving the fastest. So it can best get away from that prior immunity.

Matt: So, when he says something is evolving fast, what does that mean on a molecular level?

Bethany: Take H3N2 influenza, for example. The hemagglutinin protein on H3N2 will change three to four of its amino acids every yearan evolution rate that Jesse says is extraordinarily high.

Matt: OK, so I understand why these gradual changesthe antigenic driftmake it so that we have to get the flu vaccine every year. But why dont we need frequent vaccinations for all RNA viruses? Like measles?

Bethany: CDC recommends just two shots for measles as part of whats called the MMR vaccine. It protects you from measles, mumps, and rubella. You get the first shot when youre about a year old, the other when youre about 5 years old. It seems that the parts of the measles virus that the immune system goes afteror makes antibodies forjust dont seem to be changing that much. We know this because before the measles vaccine existed, people who got measles only got it once in their lifetime. And in the 50 or so years since weve had the vaccine, people who get it dont get measles. As Jesse explains, theres no reason measles cant drift like the flu, thats just not what we see. So the thinking is that measles is mutating, but not in a way that helps the virus. Its not as wily as influenza.

Matt: That is super interesting. But . . .

Bethany: How does knowing this help fight the flu?

Bethany (in interview): Can you talk a little bit about how studying flus evolution can help us fight the virus?

Jesse Bloom: So first, the way the flu vaccines are made currently, theres sort of this forecasting problem. We know that the vaccine works better when the vaccine is more similar to the virus that is infecting people. But it takes a while, maybe about 9 months, to really produce enough vaccine to be given to everybody. And because the virus is changing a little bit every year, you have to predict what virus is going to be circulating 9 months in the future. So you basically have to say, How do we think the virus is going to be evolving? And so by understanding the viruss evolution, we can make better decisions about which flu strain should go in the flu vaccine. And when those decisions are better, the vaccine will work better.

Bethany (in studio): Jesse also says that studying evolution helps scientists understand which parts of the flu virus change the least or mutate less frequently. It could be that some of these less-dynamic parts of the flu could become targets for longer-lasting vaccines.

Matt: I can dig it. So whats driving the evolution? Whats making the proteins change?

Bethany: Good question. Lets get another influenza evolution expert to chime in.

Adam Lauring: So Im Adam Lauring. Im an associate professor here at the University of Michigan. I am a physician-scientist, which means I spend part of my time actually doing clinical work in infectious diseases. But most of my time I spend actually running a research lab, in which we study virus evolution, including influenza virus. Evolution is really for me kind of the be all, end all in the problem of influenza. Evolution has immediate and real-world impacts.

Bethany (in interview): When we say flu is evolving, what is actually going on?

Adam Lauring: At its simplest, the flu will mutate, and that means that its making changes in its genome which will lead to changes in its proteins, and those protein changes will make the virus different. And then theres selection. And so viruses that are better at doing what viruses do will take over, and the viruses that are less fit will die away. And so its kind of like you learned when you first learned biology: its survival of the fittest, or the best one wins. And so the virus is mutating all the time, and the ones who are best able to make copies of themselves and spread from person to person are going to become the new viruses and replace the old ones.

Bethany (in studio): Now, flu evolution is a complex process thats influenced by many things. But one thing that helps flu evolve especially fast is that its an RNA virus. That means its genes are stored in ribonucleic acid, or RNA. RNA viruses, in general, evolve faster than viruses that store their genetic information in DNA. Both DNA and RNA viruses have proteins called polymerases, and the job of these proteins is to make copies of the viruss genetic code. DNA polymerases, however, have a built-in proofreading function. They can check their work for mistakes and correct them. RNA polymerases dont do that.

Adam Lauring: Because of this, most RNA viruses have mutation rates or error rates that are about a thousandfold higher than for DNA viruses. That means that an RNA virus can generate mutants way more quickly, and then some of those mutants will confer an advantage to the virus, and that will lead to faster evolution.

Bethany: Adam says that all of the flu viruss proteins can and are evolving but that mutations to the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteinsthe Hs and Nsare the ones that matter most.

Adam Lauring: Mutations in those proteins tend to make a bigger difference in terms of whether the virus succeeds or fails, and a major reason is those proteins, theyre on the surface of the virus, and so theyre targeted by the immune system. And so you have antibodies targeting those proteins. So if a virus figures out a way to escape those antibodies, it will do better than its brothers and sisters.

Bethany: So weve been talking a lot about mutation, but Adam also points out that theres a lot more to evolving quickly than just how fast a virus mutates. For instance, the number of people infected could play a role. The example he gave me is the more people infected, the more opportunities the virus has to evolve. Thats because a greater diversity of people would mean a wider variety of immune systems, and the virus would need to generate new or different versions of itself to survive.

Adam Lauring: Broad strokes, flu does evolve quickly but maybe not for the reasons we typically think. And there are probably subtleties yet to be uncovered.

Bethany: To try to uncover some of those subtleties, Adams lab has been collaborating with Arnold Monto and Emily Martin, who are epidemiologists at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. For about 8 years, they have been following 300 or so Michigan families to see what viruses are circulating among them and how their immunity changes over time. The flu virus is part of this sampling. As part of the work, they collect nose and throat swabs anytime someone from one of those families gets sick.

Matt: Oh, wait. Everyone gets swabbed when anyone gets sick?

Bethany: Right. Heres why.

Adam Lauring: Its really kind of a slice of what flu is doing locally, and youre not really biased by only getting sick people or people who tend to go to the doctor.

Bethany: Adams group realized that the collection of samples the epidemiologists had accumulated gave them a great opportunity to see how flu viruses were evolving outside of a laboratory. So they raided the freezer and then did in-depth genetic sequencing of all the influenza viruses they found.

Adam Lauring: The virus makes a lot of mutations. Everybodys flu viruses, their population is actually a little bit different. So I could have the flu and you could have the flu and wed be in the same room, but our flu viruses might be a little bit different if you really looked hard enoug
h. And so what were able to do with our sequencing is really understand those subtle differences in kind of the overall flu mixture that each person has in them.

Bethany: And then they compare, see which versions are actually being transmitted from person to person.

Adam Lauring: And that is really important in understanding evolution, right, because you may generate all sorts of cool viruses inside you. But if they dont make it onto the next person, its kind of a dead end. And that virus could be the most awesome virus there is, but if it doesnt get transmitted, its gone forever. And so what we tried to do is understand exactly how many viruses kind of go across from one person to the next. And we found that its actually a really small number. Its hard for a new virus to kind of make it both within a host and to get on to the next host.

Matt: Thats wild. So, if its hard for a new flu virus to survive within a host and also hard for that virus to make it to the next host, how is that much evolution happening? Why do we still need to get the flu vaccine every year?

Bethany: Adam says its really just a numbers game. Hundreds of millions of people are infected with the flu each year, which gives the virus lots of opportunities to make a successful mutant.

Adam Lauring: One analogy I give is flu viruses are sort of like people playing the slot machines. And so most of the time the virus is losing when you talk about kind of on an individual host or in a household. But if you have a hundred million people playing the slot machines, youre going to hit the jackpot with some frequency.

Matt: I like that analogy. Its kind of empowering. Like humanitys the house and the flus a rube giving us their money.

Bethany: Sure. Just remember, the flus currency isnt money. Its trying to survive, and when it thrives, it makes you sick. So its not like a casino catches fire whenever someone hits the jackpot. And the analogy really works best for antigenic drift. Weve got a whole other type of evolution to talk aboutremember how I said there were two? This second kind leads to pandemics, and well talk about it . . . after the break.

Matt: Hey. Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but dont worry. Theres going to be a silver lining. Were not just going to be like. The flu. Yeah, its brutal. Welp, see you later.

Thats the great thing about covering chemistry. Its that were not just talking about problems, were talking to the people solving them.

In fact, earlier this month, Leigh Krietsch Boerner wrote a phenomenal piece for C&EN about how researchers are examining the effectiveness of flu shots, especially vaccines made using eggs.

Weve got a link to Leighs story in the description, but if you want to inoculate yourself against the possibility of missing more of our great coverage, sign up for our newsletter. Well send a weekly dose of chemistrys biggest goings-on right to your inbox. Head to cenm.ag/newsletter to subscribe.

Matt: So, Bethany, you said there were two main forms of influenza evolution: antigenic drift, which weve been talking about. But there was also, what was that rhyme again?

Bethany: Antigenic shift.

Matt: Right, antigenic shift. Whats that?

Bethany: When the influenza virus undergoes antigenic shift, it experiences a much larger change. It changes so much, in fact, that we usually dont have much of an antibody arsenal built up to fight it.

Matt: And how does it make such a dramatic shift?

Bethany: So, antigenic shift can happen a few different ways. Another way flu is different from measles is that flu doesnt just circulate in people. It also circulates in many other animal species, like pigs and whales and birds.

Bethany: Yeah. But it turns out, the vast majority of influenza strains that exist in the world actually are circulating in wild waterfowl. And sometimes those viruses will jump from birds to people or from birds to pigs to people, for example.

A single animal can also get infected by two different strains of flu from two other animals. Those viruses then swap some of their genetic material to make a new, third strain.

However its happening, when the flu is evolving outside of humans, vaccine makers and our immune systems are largely blind to what these viruses look like. That means if one of these viruses does jump to humans, it could hit us hard. Were talking global pandemic here. Thats because the virus would look very different from anything our immune systems have seen, and we might have little or no ability to recognize the strain or fight it.

Matt: That sounds gnarly. And a little scary.

Bethany: It is. Global flu pandemics occur when a novel influenza virus spreads quickly around the globe.

Matt: Is that why were so concerned when people get infected with flu on chicken farms, for example?

Bethany: Yes. And you may have heard about the recent outbreak that started in Wuhan, China. Thats a coronavirusso, not the flubut its another example of a pathogen that made the jump into people from animals. But theres actually a lot more to becoming a global pandemic than just generating a virus people havent seen before. Lets talk to someone who studies how global influenza pandemics emerge.

Seema Lakdawala: My name is Seema Lakdawala. I am an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the School of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Bethany: Seema says there are several hurdles a new virus has to overcome before it can become a pandemic

Seema Lakdawala: And the first hurdle is that they have to be able to infect the human host. And so its hard for some viruses that may be emerging in birds to infect the human hosts unless theres access. And so it doesnt happen as readily, but that does happen in many occasions.

Matt: That makes sense, right? Its kind of like what Adam was talking about earlier. How you can have all these cool bugs being made in humans, but if they cant survive, and if they cant make the leap in humans, they really arent a threat.

Bethany: Right. And Seema says the next hurdle, after a virus has made it into a human, is the virus being able to survive in respiratory systems. In humans, the flu is a respiratory infection, but in birds, its gastrointestinal. Influenza virus can move from birds to people through contact with feces or other secretions, butdont worrynot from eating poultry or eggs.

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Podcast: Why do I have to get a flu shot every year? - Chemical & Engineering News

Researchers at KU Leuven have discovered that a defect in the ATP13A2 gene causes cell death by disrupting the cellular transport of polyamines. When this happens in the part of the brain that controls body movement, it can lead to Parkinsons disease.

With more than six million patients around the world, Parkinsons disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders. Around twenty genetic defects have already been linked to the disease, but for several of these genes, we dont know what function they fulfill. The ATP13A2 gene used to be one of these genes, but researchers at KU Leuven have now discovered its function in the cell. The researchers explain how a defect in the gene can cause Parkinsons disease in their article ATP13A2 deficiency disrupts lysosomal polyamine export published in Nature.

We found that ATP13A2 transports polyamines and is crucial for their uptake into the cell, explains senior author Peter Vangheluwe, PhD, from the Laboratory of Cellular Transport Systems. Polyamines are essential molecules that support many cell functions and protect cells in stress conditions. But how polyamines are taken up and transported in human cells was still a mystery. Our study reveals that ATP13A2 plays a vital role in that process. Our experiments showed that polyamines enter the cell via lysosomes and that ATP13A2 transfers polyamines from the lysosome to the cell interior. This transport process is essential for lysosomes to function properly as the waste disposal system of the cell where obsolete cell material is broken down and recycled. However, mutations in the ATP13A2 gene disrupt this transport process, so that polyamines build up in lysosomes. As a result, the lysosomes swell and eventually burst, causing the cells to die. When this happens in the part of the brain that controls body movement, this process may trigger the motion problems and tremors related to Parkinsons disease.

Unraveling the role of ATP13A2 is an important step forward in Parkinsons research and sheds new light on what causes the disease, but a lot of work remains to be done.

Vangheluwe continues: We now have to investigate how deficient polyamine transport is linked to other defects in Parkinsons disease such as the accumulation of plaques in the brain and malfunctioning of the mitochondria, the energy factories of the cell. We need to examine how these mechanisms influence each other, he says. The discovery of the polyamine transport system in animals has implications beyond Parkinsons disease as well, because polyamine transporters also play a role in other age-related conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and several neurological disorders. Now that we have unraveled the role of ATP13A2, we can start searching for molecules that influence its function. Our lab is already collaborating with the Centre for Drug Design and Discoverya tech transfer platform established by KU Leuven and the European Investment Fundand receives support from the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

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Defect in the ATP13A2 Gene Can Lead to Parkinson's - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

As the labour market rapidly changes, new, nearly real-time data and metrics give us better insight than ever before into what the jobs of the future will look like.

The kinds of jobs emerging in the global economy span a wide range of professions and skills, reflecting the opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels to take advantage of emerging jobs and the new economy. Identifying emerging jobs and the skills that they require provides valuable insights to inform training investments, and paves the way for a Reskilling Revolution, as individuals seek new skills to keep pace with change.

But for all of the opportunities that the new economy will bring, there are stark skills gaps and gender gaps that must be addressed. If we dont, they will continue to widen in the future.

Here are five things we can learn from this new data:

Not every emerging job requires hard tech skills, but every emerging job does require basic tech skills such as digital literacy, web development or graphic design. Three of the jobs in the World Economic Forum's Jobs of Tomorrow report cloud, engineering and data clusters, which are also among the fastest-growing overall require disruptive tech skills like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or cloud computing. Because technologies like AI are so pervasive, many roles in areas like sales and marketing will require a basic understanding of AI.

These disruptive tech skills are in high demand across the board. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning and AI are among the most in-demand tech skills we see on LinkedIn.

While they arent growing as quickly as tech-dominated jobs, new sales, content production and HR roles are also emerging as a complement to the rapidly growing tech industry. Our research shows talent acquisition specialists, customer success specialists and social media assistants among the fastest growing professions all roles that rely on more diverse skills sets, especially soft skills.

Share of skills clusters by selected professional cluster

Image: World Economic Forum

Demand for soft skills is likely to continue to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Our latest Global Talent Trends Report shows that HR professionals are identifying the demand for soft skills as the most important trend globally. Skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration which all top our list of most in-demand soft skills are all virtually impossible to automate, which means if you have these skills youll be even more valuable to organizations in the future.

While the data reflects a diversity of opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels, further analysis shows a worrying imbalance in those obtaining the latest skills. In our ongoing research on gender with the World Economic Forum, we found that the largest gender gaps among emerging jobs are in roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills, with the share of women represented across cloud, engineering and data jobs below 30% (for cloud computing its as low as 12%). Its critical to close this gap because these disruptive tech skills will have an outsized impact on the direction of society and the economy.

While there is certainly room to improve gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclusive managerial practices, our data suggests that those gains, while important, will not be sufficient to achieve parity.

We have to think creatively about ways to fill these emerging skills and roles so that we prevent these gaps from intensifying in the future. Our research to understand these issues has uncovered some very achievable, scalable solutions.

Firstly, taking advantage of existing and adjacent talent can make a massive contribution to the rapid expansion of talent pipelines. Our research reveals that training and up-skilling near AI talent could double the pipeline of AI talent in Europe.

Opportunities by selected professional cluster and occupation, 2014-2019

Image: World Economic Forum

Taking a similar approach with the gender gap, weve found that sub-groups of disruptive tech skills where women have higher representation genetic engineering, data science, nanotechnology and human-computer interaction could expand the pipeline of talent for the broader set of tech roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills.

While both of these approaches can help us make meaningful progress, closing the skills and gender gaps depends on a lot more than just making sure talent has the right skills. Its a simple truth that who you know matters, so we also have to close the network gap the advantage some people have over others based purely on who they know.

Our research on the network gap shows that living in a high-income neighbourhood, going to a top school and working at a top company can lead to a 12x advantage in accessing opportunities. This means that two people with the exact same skills, but who were born into different neighbourhoods, may be worlds apart when it comes to the opportunities afforded them.

All of these new metrics and insights can help us pinpoint the skills and jobs of the future, but its going to take more than data to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an equitable one. If we are going to make meaningful change, we need businesses and political leaders to re-evaluate the norms through which we shape policy, make hiring decisions and ultimately level the playing field for those who face barriers to opportunity.

As we convene at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Im asking leaders to join us in making progress towards closing these gaps. It will create better, more innovative businesses, stronger economies and ultimately help create fairer societies.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Allen Blue, Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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5 things we know about the jobs of the future - World Economic Forum

The concept of using bispecific antibodies for tumor therapy has been developed more than 30 years ago with many initial struggles. However, new developments such as sophisticated molecular design and genetic engineering have helped tremendously in solving many technical challenges and created the next generation bispecific antibodies with high efficacy and safety profiles.

With many successes recently, the zoo of bispecific antibodies now consists of more than 100 different formats, and about 80 bispecific antibodies are currently in clinical trials.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Current Landscape and Outlook of Bispecific Antibody

Roland Kontermann, PhD, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology, University of Stuttgart

Bispecific antibodies have experienced a dramatic interest and growth for therapeutic applications, with more than 80 molecules in clinical development; e.g., in oncology, immuno-oncology, but also for non-oncology applications. An overview will be given on the making of bispecific antibodies and the various therapeutic concepts and applications, e.g., for dual targeting strategies, retargeting of immune effector cells, and substitution therapy by mimicking the function of natural proteins.

Functional Screening Unlocks the Therapeutic Potential of Bispecific Antibodies

Mark Throsby, PhD, CSO, Merus NV

Case studies of clinical assets will be discussed that highlight the role of empirical functional screening. Examples will include both I-O and targeted therapies demonstrating that diverse functional readouts can be incorporated into bispecific antibodies screens.

Selection-Based Development of a Heavy Chain-Light Chain Pairing Technology

Paul Widboom, PhD, Associate Director, Antibody Discovery, Adimab LLC

A significant challenge in the development of multivalent bispecific antibodies involves solving the heavy chain-light chain pairing problem. While most heavy chain-light chain pairs possess a preference for their cognate partner, noncognate mispairing occurs. Avoiding these undesired mispairs is a relevant challenge in the field of bispecific antibody manufacturing. Here we present a solution to the heavy chain-light chain problem derived from a novel selection system. This system finds mutations that improve cognate heavy chain-light chain pairing while maintaining antigen binding affinity.

A Novel Class of Fully Human Co-Stimulatory Bispecific Antibodies for Cancer Immunotherapy

Dimitris Skokos, PhD, Director, Immunity & Inflammation, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

T-cell activation is initiated upon binding of the T-cell receptor (TCR)/CD3 complex to peptide-MHC complexes (signal 1); activation is then enhanced by engagement of a second co-stimulatory receptor, such as the CD28 receptor on T cells binding to its cognate ligand(s) on the target cell (signal 2). Recently described CD3-based bispecific antibodies act by replacing conventional signal 1, linking T cells to tumor cells by binding a tumor-specific antigen (TSA) with one arm of the bispecific, and bridging to TCR/CD3 with the other.

Next-Generation Bispecifics for Cancer Immunotherapy

Michelle Morrow, PhD, Vice President, Preclinical Translational Pharmacology, F-star

The use of bispecific antibodies can potentially modulate anti-tumour immune responses. Bispecific antibodies: an attractive alternative to cancer treatment combinations. F-stars approach to create bispecific mAb. In vitro and in vivo efficacy of F-star bispecific antibodies targeting oncology pathways observed in preclinical studies.

Bispecific Gamma Delta T Cell Engagers for Cancer Immunotherapy

Hans van der Vliet, MD, PhD, CSO, LAVA Therapeutics; Medical Oncologist, Amsterdam UMC

V9V2 T cells constitute the largest T cell subset in human peripheral blood and are powerful anti-tumor immune effector cells that can be identified in many different tumor types. This presentation will discuss bispecific antibodies designed to engage V9V2 T cells and their use for cancer immunotherapy.

Combinatorial Approaches to Enhance Bispecific Anti-Tumor Efficacy

Eric Smith, PhD, Senior Director, Bispecific Antibodies, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

This presentation will describe Regenerons bispecific platform and present preclinical data on REGN4018, a clinical stage T cell engaging bispecific targeting Muc16 for solid tumor indications. In addition, status updates on Regenerons other clinical stage bispecific antibodies (REGN1979, REGN5458, REGN5678) will be presented as well as a discussion of new combinatorial approaches being taken to enhance bispecific anti-tumor efficacy.

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Advances in Bispecific Antibody Development are Leading to an Evolution in Anti-cancer Drugs - OncoZine

The first batch of genetically engineered salmon at a fish farm in Albany has grown from the size of a thread to 60 grams, or about two ounces, as shown here through a portal.(Photo: AquaBounty Technologies)

ALBANY, Ind. The first batch of genetically engineered salmon eggs that arrived here in May/Junehasmade it from thehatchery into nursery tanks the size of backyard swimming pools and then into grow-out tanks that hold up to 70,000 gallons of water apiece.

The formerly threadlike salmon,the size of the end of your thumbnail, had grown to a length of about 8 inches and a weight of around60 grams (about two ounces) by early December and is increasing in size daily, according to AquaBounty Farms-Indianaowner AquaBounty Technologies.

"The first cohort of AquAdvantage Salmon that hatched in our Albany farm in June are healthy and growing well," AquaBounty spokesman Dave Conley told The Star Press via email.

The fish, engineeredto grow faster than conventional Atlantic salmon,are attracting attention because they're the first genetically modified animals approved for human consumption in the U.S.

The fish were mentioned Dec. 20 by U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., when he recapped the farm and agribusiness stops he made in the Hoosier state, including Albany, during 2019.

Young learned about regulatory challenges facing the fish from fellow Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who reportedly has used riders to single-handedly block genetically engineered (GE)salmon for years. Murkowski's office told The Star Press her efforts are all about ensuring clear labeling of GE salmon before they go to market.

The batch of conventional Atlantic salmon that AquaBountystarted farming in June of 2018 is growing well and is expected to be harvested beginning in the third quarter of2020, followed by the first harvest of the GE AquAdvantage Salmon in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Conley.

A second batch of AquAdvantage Salmon eggsarrived at the land-based farm in Albany in mid-October, has now hatched and is almost ready to be moved to the nursery for their first feeding.

AquaBounty Technologies CEO Sylvia Wulf talks to reporters at the company's Albany facility.(Photo: Seth Slabaugh, The Star Press)

Sylvia Wulf,AquaBounty's CEO, said in a prepared statement:We are thrilled with the progress of our salmon at our Indiana farm. The fish are growing extremely well, and they look fantastic."

In its most recent quarterly report, AquaBounty notes that its AquAdvantage salmon remains the subject of a federal lawsuit pending in the northern district of California, brought by Friends of the Earth and other plaintiffs, versus the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Issues include the risk of AquAdvantage Salmon escaping and threatening endangered wild salmon stocks.

But last month, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in favor of the FDA, writing, "The lawsuit is both a broadside attack on the FDAs authority to regulate the genetic engineering of animals and a targeted attack on the particular process by which the agency approved the salmon.

(Netting covers the Albany farm'snursery fish tanks to prevent the salmon from jumping out. If any got through the netting, they would land on a concrete floor that drains to a trench containing screens to prevent them from advancing.

(As the fish grow in size and move to larger tanks, they encounter a number of screens, filters, gates, grates and cages to prevent an escape into the wild the chances of which AquaBountysays are zero. But even if a breakout occurred, the fish couldn't breed, the company says, because they're all sterilized females).

FDA has approved the production of the GE salmon eggs in a hatchery in Canada and the grow-out of the eggs in Albany.

The quarterly report also notes that legislative action could result in restrictions on or delays in commercialization of the GE salmon: "We could be subject to increasing or more onerous regulatory hurdles as we attempt to commercialize our product, which could require us to incur significant additional capital and operating expenditures and other costs in complying with these laws and regulations.

Murkowski included a provision within the Agriculture Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2020 to postpone the introduction of GE salmon to the U.S. market until a consumer label comprehension study is completed, to determine the effectiveness of USDAs new labeling guidelines for bioengineered foods, the senator's spokesperson, Karina Borger, told The Star Press earlier this month.

That bill advanced out of the full Appropriations Committee unanimously and then passed in the full Senate at the end of October as part of a funding package.

"Her efforts are all about ensuring clear labeling of GE salmon before they go to the U.S. market," Borger went on. "Murkowski has said we owe it to American consumers to ensure that the standards put in place for labeling GE salmon are clear, effective, and understandable. Murkowski believes that a clear, text-based label is the high standard that American consumers deserve, and has also introduced stand-alone legislation to that effect. That bill is the Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act."

Sen. Todd Young talks to AquaBounty's Peter Bowyer during a tour.(Photo: Jordan Kartholl / The Star Press)

Sen. Young and fellow Hoosier Sen. Mike Braun have said in a letter the legislation would set "a troubling precedent regarding the function and authority of federal regulatory agencies. There are a great number of important agriculture innovations in the research, development and regulatory pipeline behind the bioengineered salmon. To effectively ban a first-in-class product for no legitimate reason will cast a chilling effect on the willingness or ability of other researchers and developers to invest in the United States."

Responding to Murkowski's position, Wulf, the CEO of AquaBounty, told The Star Press, "The senators feigned attempt at consumer concern is a smokescreen for her decade-long campaign to financially cripple a small company with an innovative way to combat the negative effects of climate change, which is a more significant threat to Alaskas salmon fishery than a faster-growing salmon. Putting 30 people out of work in Indiana will not solve her problem."

Because fresh and frozen fish are flown to markets all over the world, seafood has a large carbon footprint, AquaBounty says, adding that itsAquAdvantage Salmon can be grown in land-based facilities built closer to consumers to reduce the need for energy-intensive air freight shipping and transportation.

In September, the farm hosted a visit from Cornell University's Alliance for Science, which in turn was hosting a group of Turkish government regulators through a United States Department of Agriculture-funded program.

Since July 1, AquaBounty Farms-Indiana hashired 22 new people to work at the Albany farm, which now employs 30, according to Conley, who added the new hirescome from backgrounds in manufacturing, security andteaching. Some are recent Ball State graduates.

The farm also has added a lot of new equipment, including an automobile disinfecting system to improve bio-security, and has worked with local companies on farm improvements, including Versatile Metal Works of Muncie, which designed and fabricated fish handling equipment.

Fish manure is being spread as fertilizer on local crops.

The farm hosted a presentation for the town of Albany at the farm in October and sponsored a carriage ride for the Albany Christmas Festival on Dec. 8.

Non-genetically altered Atlantic salmon are raised in tanks at AquaBounty Technologies in Albany. The company began raising unmodified Atlantic salmon at the facility while waiting for FDA approval to transport genetically modified eggs across the Canadian border. (Photo: Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press)

Genetically engineered fish hatched in Albany

AquaBounty farm in Albany first of its kind endeavor

Conta
ct Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834 or seths@muncie.gannett.com

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Genetically engineered salmon: An update on how they are growing in Albany - The Star Press

A conversation about why outsourcing the moral responsibilities of AI is not an option. Miguel Luengo, AI expert, entrepreneur and chief scientist at UN Global Pulse, speaks with Konstanze Frischen, Ashokas global leader on Tech & Humanity. (Full bios below.)

Miguel, you have spent a lot of time examining the AI & Ethics landscape. What did you find?

Konstanze Frischen: In the AI field, there is a lack of consideration for some of the core principles that went into constitutions around the world and inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). When you look at what principles most corporations, think tanks, or governments propose should underpin AI, youll see there is overwhelming emphasis ontrustworthy AI AI that is transparent, reliable, non-biased, accountable, safe, etc. This is indeed a necessary condition, but it basically means technology working as it should. And I am thinking: this is great, but its not enough.

Why not?

Take genetic engineering: We all like to have genetic engineering that is trustworthy in that it works as it should; but that doesnt imply it is okay to copy and paste pieces of genome to create chimeras. Same with AI.

What then?

I argue that we need to move to a humanity centric AI. If AI is a real game changer, we musttake into considerations the implications of AI for humanity as a whole - at present, and in the future. I call that solidarity. Yet, only 6 out of 84 ethical AI guidelines examined (by the Health Ethics & Policy Lab from the University of Zurich) mention solidarity as a principle.

Miguel Luengo, social entrepreneur and chief data scientist at UN Global Pulse.

How do you define solidarity in the AI context?

We need to a) share the prosperity and burden of AI, which implies the re-distribution of productivity gains, and collaboration to solve global problems caused by AI; and b) we must assess the implications that AI has on humanity long-term before developing or deployingAI systems. In other words, solidarity lives in the present and also is strategic long term thinking for the future.

How do we share prosperity?

For instance, by giving back the productivity gains that stem from AI, literally. We can look at it from two perspectives.One is that we share directly with the ones who inputteddataand actionsto create and train the AI models.Currently, the norm is that they dont benefit financially in the outcome. But what if the data didnt belong to the company supplying a service, butto the people who contributed? Lets assume patients provide data and doctors train an algorithm to detect a disease. Shouldnt they all be compensated each time this algorithm is being used for diagnosis somewhere else? Not in a one-off way, but each time?There could be a royalty model, like it happens in the music industry: each time you play a song, the artist gets remunerated.

And the other way to share prosperity is indirect, i.e. via taxes?

Yes, in my view, at the public level, taxes on AI or automation (i.e. robots) are an interesting option and could be a solution for a deep underlying problem: that these technologies will put many people out of jobs. As Yuval Harari says, we are in danger of creating a new, irrelevant class of people that cant play in the digital economy, and more importantly that is not needed to create wealth. This is especially dangerous with the platform economy system, where the winner takesall. But if all our data is extracted and used and the gain is concentrated in the hands of few corporations, well, then well need to tax the use of AI.

How would we get to an AI economy that works on the principle of solidarity?

The change will happen in overlapping and iterative stages. First, there is awareness: citizens are recognizing that the status quo is not okay - that our data is taken for free and sold. Second, new businesses and initiatives will emerge that will take solidarity principles into account: they will give back to the people who helped them create their AI. Social entrepreneurs and B-corps can pave a way forward here. This alignment with citizens motivations and interests can give them a competitive advantage.They will be the responsible choice. We expect big companies to then turn in this direction. And thirdly, that dynamic can push new regulation. We urgently need AI regulatory frameworks contextualized in each sector like marketing, healthcare, autonomous driving or energy.

This will also enable international coordination to respond when AI fails or spirals out of control.

Absolutely.That is solidarity with humanity. Take deep fakes, for instance. Anyone who is tech savvy can train a machine to automate hate speech. Fake videos are easily made and look 100% real. Imagine its election day in a country with a history of genocide, and thousands of deep fakes on ethnic violence circulate on the internet. That might constitute an emergency where the red lines violating Human Rights are crossed in the digital world and the international community needs to act. Even in seemingly less dramatic instances, the complexities to respond to AI failures can be huge: assume someone finds theres a bias in a widely used AI model that underpins X-ray analysis at scale or manages global telecommunications infrastructure.This finding will require an orchestrated, complex operation to roll that back everywhere.Right now, these digital cooperation mechanisms are not in place.

And the principle of solidarity will require us to develop mechanisms in both case prosperity and burdens.

Correct. The key is thinking far ahead and factoring in the impact of AI, even on future generations.I am concerned that leadership is too short-sighted when it comes to societal and economic implications. For instance, right now very, very few researchers and companies take into account the carbon footprint of their AI efforts.The CO2 implications of AI are huge. It should be the norm that you estimate the CO2 impact of creating and operating your AI model, and weigh it against the perceived benefits. Is it reasonable to waste incredible amounts of energy to teach a machine to spot pictures of cats and dogs on the internet?Not just solidarity, butsustainabilityshould also be a core principle for the development of AI. And the principles are just the frame. AI must be applied beyond internet businesses and marketing. There is a global untapped market for AI to accelerate the attainmentof the SDGs.

What do you think are some of the perhaps less-obvious obstacles that prevent a change towards thinking long-term about solidarity and sustainability in the tech industry?

Part of the problem is that people work in silos. Most of the time, discussions around ethical principles of AI and their practical implementations are made by lawyers and ethicists, or business people or technical experts separately. And they do not speak the same language, so a lot is lost in translation. Ive seen meetings with many high ranking policy makers talking about AI with expert technologists and business leaders; and the higher up you go the clearer it often is that theres a lack of real understanding that prevent people on either side to put all the pieces together. We need a new generation which deeply understands the technical details and societal and economic implications of AI.

It seems employeesof big tech companies are increasingly demanding that the industry takes more responsibility for their actions. Im thinking for instance of the letter thousands of employees signed that got Google to abandon a plan to provide AI for drone analysis to the Pentagon.

Yes, and that trend will grow. Top talent is starting to choose to work in companies whose values and impact make the world better. We cannot outsource the moral responsibilities of the technology we develop.Its time to be clear: Those who develop scalable technology, we need to think upfront about the potential risks and harms and take a precautionary approach if needed
. And ultimately, we must be held accountable forthe consequences of using that technology at scale.

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Next Now: The 21st century has ushered in a new age where all aspects of our lives are impacted by technology. How will humanity anticipate, mitigate, and manage the consequences of AI, robots, quantum computing and more? How do we ensure tech works for the good of all? This Ashoka series sheds light on the wisdom and ideas of leaders in the field.

Dr. Miguel Luengo-Oroz isa scientist and entrepreneur passionate about technology and innovation for social impact.As the first data scientist at the United Nations, Miguel has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence for sustainable development and humanitarian action. He is the Chief Data Scientist at UN Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General. Over the last decade, Miguel has built teams worldwide bringing AI to operations and policy in domains including poverty, food security, refugees and migrants, conflict prevention, human rights, economic development, gender, hate speech, privacy and climate change. Miguel is the founder of the social enterprise Spotlab, which uses mobile phones, 3d printing and AI for diagnosis of global health diseases. He is the inventor of Malariaspot.org videogames for collaborative malaria image analysis, and is affiliated with the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid.He was elected anAshoka Fellow in 2013.

Konstanze Frischen is the global leader for Ashokas emerging focus onAI,technology, and ethics. A journalist,entrepreneur and social anthropologist, among other things, she was one of the key actors introducing social entrepreneurship to Western Europe, founded Ashoka in her native Germany and co-led Ashoka in Europe to build up the largest network of social innovators. She is a member of the organizations global leadership group and based in Washington, DC.

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AI, Solidarity And The Future Of Humanity - Forbes

There is bad news everyday about the negative impact of climate change on every nook and corner of the planet. Most of the planet (with parts of the US and Brazil serving as illustrative, and dishonourable, examples) is currently engaged with setting goals to avoid a catastrophic point-of-no-return, even though scientists have argued that some systems are already dangerously close to tipping points: the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, some coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest, etc.

But what isnt entirely clear is how all this relentless gloom and doom is affecting the children. The climate action movement led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg appears to have found some traction among the youth but what should they aspire to beyond simply demanding that business as usual wont do?

At the moment, these aspirations include a vegetarian diet, no travel, and a constant background fear of sea-level rise, disease, pests, floods, droughts and forest fires. Obviously, this is not a good way to grow up or think about the future.

There is a clear need here to use the climate crisis as an opportunity (arguably of a lifetime) to turn the focus of current and future generations towards climate solutions. Even as human activity continues to emit more greenhouse gases faster, precipitating deforestation and other forms of environmental degradation, there are simultaneous efforts to invent new solutions for problems in energy, water, food and health. Indeed, just as much as there are enough reasons to become cynical about the worlds prospects, theres also ample reason to be optimistic that humanity will wean itself off fossil fuels.

Some examples follow.

With global heating, especially in the tropics, the demand for air-conditioning is expected to grow exponentially. This in turn means more and more hydrofluorocarbons, which are powerful greenhouse gases, being released into the atmosphere. In 2015, scientists reported developing a carbon-nanotube-based coating for a wood fibre which has been shown to be able to regulate surface body heat. That is, clothes made of this fibre with the special coating can double up as wearable thermal regulation systems. Imagine a future in which the ghastly window-units found nearly everywhere in India have disappeared because everybody is wearing clothes that heat or cool them naturally.

Building materials have been improved the same way. In May this year, researchers reported in a paper that theyhad created a material called cooling wood from which all the lignin has been removed and which was then compressed to form a high-density material. Cooling wood was found to be strong enough to build structures with as well as so reflective that it absorbs very little heat during the day.

A fancier way to help cool or heat buildings involves the use of photovoltaic envelopes: devices that that can generate electricity, provide heating or shade for cooling, and control daylight inside the building. Dynamic envelopes can also track the Suns position in the sky and move its modules accordingly to be more efficient. Savings of up to 50% in electricity use have been achieved.

Water, like temperature, is another major problem, but water-related crisis have been happening and are in the offing for climatic as well as non-climatic reasons. On this front, scientists have devised compounds called metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Their molecular structure contains micropores that can trap gaseous substances in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide or water vapour such that a kilogram of MOFs can yield a litre of water in a xeric environment in 24 hours. Researchers expect the yield can be increased to 7-10 litres by combining the compounds with a solar-powered fan and a heater.

Warmer air, land and water is very conducive to the growth of human pathogens, rendering the worlds tropics a hotbed of waterborne diseases. To tackle this challenge, researchers created an affordable and biodegradable water filter using plant xylem in 2014. When water is pumped through them at high pressure, they remove harmful microbes.

Where cleaner water might not be enough to beat back, say, malaria, researchers have also been experimenting with technologies like genetic engineering. In this approach, scientists infect mosquitoes with bacteria that can prevent the insect from spreading diseases. For example, scientists have injected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with Wolbachia pipientis, a bacterium that prevents viruses from replicating within the mosquito. The mosquito will subsequently fail to transmit the virus when it bites a human. There have been successful reports of such tests in Australia, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Scientists have also been able to genetically engineer Escherichia coli bacteria, which are natural heterotrophs, to become autotrophs. They tested their efforts by engineering a variety of E. coli that powers itself by consuming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

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This is only a small cross-section of R&D currently underway to help humankind deal with the climate crisis. We must share their stories as much as we spread news of negative effects if only to motivate the youth to work towards humans as well as the planets wellbeing. In fact, we dont just need scientists and engineers; we also need sociologists, anthropologists and humanities scholars to help strike the increasingly finer balance between improving the human condition and protecting our planet.

Positive news will also help counter the immutable psychological impact and keep away the sense of hopelessness arising from contemplating individual responsibility. The infinite opportunities offered by the growing need for solutions can, and should, drive an optimistic vision of the future.

RaghuMurtuguddeis a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science and Earth system science at the University of Maryland. He is currently a visiting professor at IIT Bombay.

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The Climate Crisis Is Also a Chance to Motivate a New Generation of Inventors - The Wire

In August of this year, Gail Bradbrook, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, called for the widespread ingestion of psychedelic substances to help bring about a transformation in attitudes to the climate crisis and the living world. The proposal may sound far-fetched, but it has some science behind it. Studies show that, in the right setting, psychedelics can not only be effective against addiction and depression but can also help people feel more connected to nature. Yet the living world of tropical coral reefs surpasses in wonder and beauty anything engendered in the human mind by psychedelics. As the evolutionary biologist Leslie Orgel once said, evolution is cleverer than you are. A reef will convince you that it also has a bigger, stranger and subtler imagination.

Most damage of the last couple of decades has been from manageable stresses like pollution, overfishing and development

There are few better guides to the glories of reefs than Callum Roberts. Reef Life is a vibrant memoir of the joys, as well as the grind, of a research career beginning in the 1980s that has spanned a golden age of coral reef science. It is also a fine introduction to the ecology of reefs and the existential threats they now face. Roberts is well equipped for the task. He is chief scientific adviser to Blue Planet II, and has given us two of the best books in the last 15 years about the ecology of the sea and its fate in human hands: An Unnatural History of the Sea and Ocean of Life.

Roberts revels in the details of life on a coral reef. A mantis shrimp, for instance, has a carapace of mottled green edged with a thin red line like the piping on an iced cake. Its eyes, frosted glass balls on blue stalks, marked with a horizontal line like the slot of a helmet visor, give it an almost supernatural power to see linear and circularly polarised light. This book also addresses the major questions regarding human responsibility and possibilities for change. We live at what is probably the zenith of coral reef evolution in hundreds of millions of years in terms of their diversity and productivity, but human action might bring this all to an end within a few generations: It is an extraordinary position that I still grapple with daily to understand.

Coral reefs are, arguably, lifes greatest miracle. Hugely productive ecosystems in nutrient-poor waters, they harbour a quarter of all marine diversity in less than 0.1% of the oceans extent. On a healthy reef, top predators such as sharks are abundant, while life lower down the food chain appears to be scarce a seeming inversion of the pyramid were familiar with on land, where a vast savannah supports a herd of wildebeest, but only a few lions or leopards. (The solution to the apparent paradox is that life at the lower trophic levels on reefs provides abundant resources for predators but turns over very fast.)

Despite their intense vibrancy, reefs are also vulnerable, both to direct human impacts such as overfishing, pollution and insensitive development, and to indirect impacts of the large-scale combustion of fossil fuels, which result in global heating and changes to ocean chemistry. In the past four decades, three pulses of heat have devastated many reefs around the world, including, in 2016 and 2017, the Great Barrier Reef. The risk to their future is unlike anything they have experienced in millions of years.

There is already a rich literature, and to a lesser extent a filmography, on the threats they face and what, if anything, can best protect them. Among the highlights are John Charlie Verons sober and devastating A Reef in Time, the gripping documentary film Chasing Coral, and Coral Whisperers, Irus Bravermans fluent account of 100 or so interviews with leading scientists and conservation managers. Journalists continue to document how the destruction of reefs impacts on the mental health of researchers, who report ecological grief. Roberts is a humorous, determined expert, who has spent more than three decades trying to come to terms with such issues. As his book begins, he is a fresh-faced student assisting in some of the first detailed studies of coral reefs on the Saudi Arabian coast of the Red Sea. Working in harsh conditions, blundering into embarrassing situations and sometimes exposing himself to danger, he is carried forward by thunderclaps of wonder. A few years later, and now a respected marine biologist, he is assessing the aftermath of the huge releases of oil into the Persian Gulf by Saddam Husseins forces as they fled from Kuwait in the first Gulf war. Remarkably, some of the reefs here among the most northern in the world survive, having escaped the tide of pollution.

Further adventures, from the Caribbean to the Maldives and far beyond, follow. In 2013, Roberts is in Australia supporting scientists and environmentalists who are trying to slow and even reverse the impact on the Great Barrier Reef of the development of new port facilities for the export of coal. By this time, scientists are warning that even a relatively small increase in the global average temperature, let alone the 2 Celsius or more that now looks probable, is likely to have a devastating impact on most of the worlds reefs. Roberts finds himself deployed as part of what turns out to be an effective campaign to change minds regarding the proposed coastal development; by 2015 the opposition Labor Party come to power with a promise to protect the reef. It is poignant to read this in 2019, long after Australian voters have returned a government that does not appear to believe that the climate crisis should be a cause for concern.

I dont know a single coral expert who is not haunted by doubt, Roberts writes. It is already possible to glimpse the most dystopian of futures. But, he stresses, there are hopeful strands. It has been found, for example that some corals can survive in hotter and more acidic waters than was previously thought. Further acclimation and adaptation may be possible in some instances. Genetic engineering to make more heat-resistant corals may be feasible, though controversial. But above all, according to Roberts, there is a role for well-managed marine parks. Most coral reef damage of the last couple of decades has been from manageable stresses like pollution, overfishing and development rather than climate change. Where these pressures are reduced, corals and the endless forms of life they support have a fighting chance.

In a moving penultimate chapter, he describes a visit to Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific, the worlds most isolated reef, and currently among its most intact. Palmyra is part of a huge US conservation zone called the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Roberts, with his irrepressible warmth and passion, concludes: Now is the time for action, not mourning. There is everything to play for.

Reef Life: An Underwater Memoir by Callum Roberts is published by Profile (16.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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Reef Life by Callum Roberts review miraculous and threatened - The Guardian

The Human Genome Organization (HUGO) and the European Union developed genetic information privacy regulations to protect the public. A majority of experts have agreed for the need for genetic information privacy. In 2014 the HUGO Committee on Ethics, Law and Society (CELS) presented a human rights approach to an international code of conduct for genomic and clinical data sharing. The code of conduct is supposed to prevent human rights violations during the research of genomes, allowing enough protection to allow scientific research in the genome field.

However, China and Russia do not have any protections. China is actually attempting to collect such information on all its citizens. China is not new to human rights violations. Russian lawyers have been raising concern, but thus far no laws have materialized, nor does Russia believe in the HUGO conduct policies. Russia relies on its constitution Section 21, but in reality it does not protect genetic information whatsoever. In the US, HIPPA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was modified to include genetic information as medical information pertaining to privacy.

Putin is fascinated with Hitlers eugenics project. This summer it was announced that the Russian military will be assigning soldiers based on their genetic passport. The project involves not only the assessment of their physiological state, but also a prediction of their behavior in critical situations in combat.

Also Putin, issued a decree in March 2019 that consists of social engineering propaganda to collect its citizens genetic information under the guise of protecting Russians from a western chemical or biological attack. A proposal was raised this week to add additional amendments to make the project country wide and disregard privacy laws. This would further violate the human rights of Russian citizens and forcefully gather and store their genetic data.

The second phase will be implemented at the beginning of 2020 to start testing all potential cosmonauts and even intelligence officers. The Russian Academy of Sciences is in charge of the project, which is sounding more like a Nazi eugenics operation for the master race. The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia, a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation.

HUGO code of conduct main principles:

Russia is violating human rights and the Kremlins direction into a eugenics program is a direct violation of the HUGO code of conduct and the rights of Russian citizens. Putin is a danger to the West.

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Law, Privacy and Genome Human Rights Failure in Russia - Putin's Fascination with Hitler's Eugenics Project - Communal News