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"content": "\u003cp>Early in February of 2008, just days after she was born, Tatiana Legkiy lay in a cardiac intensive care unit, her tiny body hooked up to a respirator. After crying for two hours, she was now briefly quiet, the tube in her throat helping her breathe but also preventing her from making any sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana’s heart was failing. A cardiologist, tipped off by a pediatrician who heard something strange in a routine checkup, had examined her earlier that day and grown worried. He sent Tatiana to a nearby hospital in Modesto, California, where she remained for only an hour before being whisked eighty miles west by ambulance to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana’s parents arrived at the hospital shortly afterwards. At the time, Lana and Andrey Legkiy lived in Manteca, a city in California’s Central Valley. Andrey worked at an animal supply company; Lana stayed home and took care of their four-year-old daughter, Anna. 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This time, taking a closer look at small samples of heart tissue, they noted the true cause of death — an extremely rare heart condition known as left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC), in which the heart muscle remains immature and cannot pump blood normally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visually, physicians identify LVNC by the fingerlike protrusions of muscle extending from the wall of the heart into the left ventricle, which supplies the body with oxygen-rich blood. An echocardiogram of Tatiana’s heart showed these same characteristics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gently, the physicians told Tatiana’s parents that there would be no surgery, but only because LVNC has no cure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Hunch\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immediately, Deepak Srivastava, then-attending physician at Benioff, suspected a genetic connection. He was a geneticist, after all, and Tatiana’s unborn sibling had shared the same disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he could not have foreseen it as Tatiana struggled for her life that day, proving this intuition would require over a decade of work. It would also require technology which was only just becoming usable, and the dedication of researchers he had not yet met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming years, Srivastava would move forward with his own career, juggling the roles of biology professor, pediatric cardiologist, and ultimately president of Gladstone Institutes, a nonprofit biomedical research institution in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story of the Legkiys would stay with him. For a decade, he wouldn’t be able to shake the desire to pinpoint a precise genetic cause of LVNC, a necessary first step towards finding a cure for the disease. With that knowledge, physicians could rapidly screen potential drugs using an accurate, personalized model for patients like Tatiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945469\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945469 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anna and Tatiana Legkiy in 2009, just after Tatiana came off medication. \u003ccite>(Lana Legkiy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Adding to the urgency of the Legkiys’ situation: Tatiana was not their only child. Even as Tatiana received her diagnosis in 2008, her happy four-year-old sister, Anna, ran around the hospital waiting room. Blissfully oblivious, Anna charmed the physicians, who began to wonder: did all three Legkiy children share the same disease?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Tatiana stabilized, thanks to medication helping her heart pump and a respirator helping her breathe, Srivastava’s team set about finding an answer. Two days after diagnosing Tatiana, the scientists took an echocardiogram, a kind of ultrasound, of her father’s heart. They observed that Andrey had a less severe, asymptomatic case of Tatiana’s condition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes']‘This is a family who had lost one child, their other child was in a life-threatening situation, and then they find out their other girl has the same thing… it was actually pretty devastating.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So by the time they tested Anna’s heart the following day, Lana Legkiy already knew more than a mother should about what LVNC looked like in an ultrasound. (The team would later examine Lana’s own heart, and find it normal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she saw Anna’s heart up on the screen, she knew without being told that her daughters shared the same disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Lana can’t remember precisely what she felt in that moment— so much happened at once — but she does recall a dream she had while in the hospital, after Tatiana’s diagnosis. Lana doesn’t consider herself a true believer of supernatural occurrences, but she thinks dreams are important. “I saw both of them… as grown women,” she said. “I think that settled me down a little bit, like, ‘Okay, we’re going to be okay.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, however, remembers the Legkiys’ distress acutely. “It was actually very sad,” he said. “This is a family who had lost one child, their other child was in a life-threatening situation, and then they find out their other girl has the same thing… it was actually pretty devastating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Long Search for Proof\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the physicians told the Legkiys, there was and is still no cure or surgical procedure that can remedy LVNC. In cases such as Anna’s, the heart compensates for its left ventricle and swells, allowing it to pump more blood through the body. Anna, like others with enlarged hearts, did not display typical symptoms of heart dysfunction such as fatigue or rapid breathing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, however, told the Legkiys that both girls’ hearts would need to be monitored with yearly ultrasounds. Tatiana was sent home with more of the medication that helped her heart pump; she would take the medicine for a year before her heart muscles improved and the medication was no longer necessary. The family resumed what was, for the most part, a normal life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='small' align='left' citation='Lea Starita, University of Washington']‘For years, I think we’ve known… that not all pathogenicities were going to be caused by single genes. I don’t think there’s ever been a study that so well defined the interaction between three human variants on a phenotype like this.’[/pullquote]As Anna and Tatiana grew into young women, now 15 and 11, Srivastava and his coworkers set about pinpointing the precise causes of the family’s congenital heart disease. The team sequenced the family’s DNA, combing through their genes in search of the variants all three children shared, screening against frequency of occurrence in the general population and for association with the heart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scientists quickly found three mutations in three different genes shared by the three siblings that they suspected to be the cause of the disease, two inherited from Andrey (\u003cem>MKL2\u003c/em> and \u003cem>MYH7\u003c/em>) and one from Lana (\u003cem>NKX2-5\u003c/em>). If not for the advent of a few key technologies, the investigation would have stopped here, the Legkiys left to wonder what was hidden in their genes. Srivastava’s search for proof, however, was just beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CRISPR’s Perfect Timing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 2014, the Legkiys were living in Seattle; Tatiana and Anna were six and 10, both medication-free. Tatiana’s hospital experience seemed like a distant memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Francisco, meanwhile, Casey Gifford, a recent PhD from Harvard, had joined Srivastava’s research team. New to both human genomics and heart disease, she and Srivastava spent a four-hour car ride to a conference in Lake Tahoe discussing what they thought would be the next big questions in medicine. Srivastava brought up the family he couldn’t forget — and realized, as he did so, that the tools they would need to prove which genetic mutations caused LVNC in the Legkiys might finally exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/436872/explainer-the-new-gene-editing-tool-significantly-more-precise-than-crispr\">CRISPR/Cas9\u003c/a>, with which scientists can selectively remove and replace portions of the genome, had just been used in mammalian cells for the first time the year before. Its advent, Srivastava knew, meant that creating a mouse model with a desired genetic condition, which used to take a year, could now be done in three weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945465\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 319px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945465 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"319\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv.jpg 319w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv-160x121.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 319px) 100vw, 319px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fingerlike protrusions, a hallmark of LVNC, extend into the cavity of a three day old mouse’s left ventricle. Cell nuclei are marked in blue, and the lining of the cavity is shown in red. \u003ccite>(Casey Gifford/Gladstone Institutes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Armed with CRISPR/Cas9, Srivastava and Gifford decided to engineer mice with the same three mutations that Srivastava suspected had caused the Legkiy siblings’ heart condition. They hypothesized that the mutations would result in phenotypes, or observable physical expressions of genes, that resembled the phenotype of the human disease. As predicted, the mice with all three mutations showed the same finger-like protrusions in their hearts, demonstrating that, at least in mice, the mutations were enough to cause LVNC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Patient’s Beating Heart (Cells)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mouse heart tissue that resembled the Legkiy childrens’ was an exciting breakthrough, but Srivastava and Gifford knew that to persuade the scientific community of the genes’ importance, they’d need to design an equally convincing experiment in human cells. As Srivastava realized on that car ride, their timing could not have been better: in 2012, Gladstone researchers had won the Nobel Prize for \u003ca href=\"https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2012/press-release/\">induced pluripotent stem cells\u003c/a>, cells that are genetically taken back in time to behave like embryonic stem cells, which scientists can then turn into any cell type in the body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scientists took skin grafts from the family and reprogrammed the cells to grow petri dishes full of heart cells genetically identical to Lana, Andrey, Anna and Tatiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the lab, these cells pulsed (literally; heart cells \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiMUqYp3Jk\">pulse\u003c/a> with a heartbeat all their own) in confirmation of the team’s diagnosis. Even these cardiomyocytes, the one kind of heart cell the researchers had decided to test, displayed hallmarks of LVNC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each family member had their own petri dish of cells. Lana’s cells spread across her petri dish the way normal cells do, as if they were stars in the sky. Anna’s, by contrast, clumped together and did not stick well to the dish. Together with RNA sequencing data, the results showed that cell adhesion, long suspected to play a role in LVNC, had been affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945466\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945466 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Casey Gifford, lead author, and Deepak Srivastava, senior author, examine sections of heart tissue for signs of LVNC. \u003ccite>(Gladstone Institutes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In conjunction with the CRISPR/Cas9 experiments, the cell study showed that the three mutations Srivastava’s team had identified had been enough to cause Anna and Tatiana to display symptoms of LVNC. \u003ca href=\"https://gladstone.org/about-us/news/combination-three-gene-mutations-results-deadly-human-heart-disease\">This result\u003c/a>, published in \u003cem>Science\u003c/em> this May, gave proof to a phenomenon that had long been suspected by the medical community: that multiple genetic mutations could work together to cause a disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lea Starita, a research assistant professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, calls this proof “extremely important” for the field. She points out that the results hinged on the advent of cutting-edge technology and a single cardiologist paying the case a lot of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For years, I think we’ve known… that not all pathogenicities were going to be caused by single genes,” she said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a study that so well defined the interaction between three human variants on a phenotype like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Looking Forward\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana and Anna now live happy, normal lives: Anna is introverted and creative, a walking encyclopedia, her mother says; Tatiana is more outgoing. By now, their hearts seem to have developed normally, at last catching up to their bodies. Neither takes heart medication, though Srivastava says their hearts will need to be monitored for the rest of their lives, especially in moments of stress and when they get older. “It’s my hope that before they get to that point, we’ll have a better way to treat them,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945467\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 550px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945467\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tatiana, Anna and Lana Legkiy. \u003ccite>(Lana Legkiy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With precise knowledge of which genetic mutations caused Anna and Tatiana’s rare heart condition, scientists now have taken the first steps toward identifying a cure. Gifford says that their combination of CRISPR/Cas9 models and use of stem cells illustrates the true power of genome editing. “We can [now] try to create much more faithful models of disease,” she said — models which could accelerate drug screening for a wide range of diseases, including other heart conditions and breast cancer.[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Deepak Srivastava, Gladstone Institutes']‘These cases are the kinds that don’t come along all that often, but they’re the ones that can help us treat other diseases better.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The private sector has also been watching the Legkiys’ case, and is enthusiastic about what it could mean for how other genetic cases are studied. Tim Behrens, senior VP of a start-up company called \u003ca href=\"https://mazetx.com/\">Maze Therapeutics\u003c/a> (not associated with the study), commends the work as “a terrific story of how genetics and functional genomics really [help] us understand the underlying biology driving disease.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behrens does point out that diseases influenced by many mutations would be harder to tackle. Informed by large-scale screening of genes for mutations, Maze is on its way to drug development with the hope that patients like Anna and Tatiana can receive treatment someday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, meanwhile, is still pushing the limits of what technology can do for patients. Advances in single cell assays from the past year are allowing his team to use CRISPR/Cas9 to test a hundred suspected mutations in patients’ cells at once. He says that they’re at work on the genomes of thousands of children with heart disease, all thanks to their experience with the Legkiys. “These cases are the kinds that don’t come along all that often,” he said, “but they’re the ones that can help us treat other diseases better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Tatiana and Anna Legkiy have LVNC, a rare heart condition. After eleven years, their cardiologist finally knows why.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Early in February of 2008, just days after she was born, Tatiana Legkiy lay in a cardiac intensive care unit, her tiny body hooked up to a respirator. After crying for two hours, she was now briefly quiet, the tube in her throat helping her breathe but also preventing her from making any sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana’s heart was failing. A cardiologist, tipped off by a pediatrician who heard something strange in a routine checkup, had examined her earlier that day and grown worried. He sent Tatiana to a nearby hospital in Modesto, California, where she remained for only an hour before being whisked eighty miles west by ambulance to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana’s parents arrived at the hospital shortly afterwards. At the time, Lana and Andrey Legkiy lived in Manteca, a city in California’s Central Valley. Andrey worked at an animal supply company; Lana stayed home and took care of their four-year-old daughter, Anna. Weekends found the the family outside together, camping or fishing in the Delta where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers flow into the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even before Tatiana’s birth, the Legkiys knew medical hardship well. A year earlier Lana had suffered a miscarriage, losing an unborn child, a boy, in her third trimester. At the time, physicians had ascribed his cause of death to pulmonary hypoplasia, or incomplete development of the lungs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given that medical history, when Tatiana arrived at Benioff in critical condition, the doctors requested slides from the unborn child’s autopsy. This time, taking a closer look at small samples of heart tissue, they noted the true cause of death — an extremely rare heart condition known as left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC), in which the heart muscle remains immature and cannot pump blood normally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visually, physicians identify LVNC by the fingerlike protrusions of muscle extending from the wall of the heart into the left ventricle, which supplies the body with oxygen-rich blood. An echocardiogram of Tatiana’s heart showed these same characteristics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gently, the physicians told Tatiana’s parents that there would be no surgery, but only because LVNC has no cure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Hunch\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Immediately, Deepak Srivastava, then-attending physician at Benioff, suspected a genetic connection. He was a geneticist, after all, and Tatiana’s unborn sibling had shared the same disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he could not have foreseen it as Tatiana struggled for her life that day, proving this intuition would require over a decade of work. It would also require technology which was only just becoming usable, and the dedication of researchers he had not yet met.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the coming years, Srivastava would move forward with his own career, juggling the roles of biology professor, pediatric cardiologist, and ultimately president of Gladstone Institutes, a nonprofit biomedical research institution in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the story of the Legkiys would stay with him. For a decade, he wouldn’t be able to shake the desire to pinpoint a precise genetic cause of LVNC, a necessary first step towards finding a cure for the disease. With that knowledge, physicians could rapidly screen potential drugs using an accurate, personalized model for patients like Tatiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945469\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945469 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1020x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/AnnaTatiana2009.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anna and Tatiana Legkiy in 2009, just after Tatiana came off medication. \u003ccite>(Lana Legkiy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Adding to the urgency of the Legkiys’ situation: Tatiana was not their only child. Even as Tatiana received her diagnosis in 2008, her happy four-year-old sister, Anna, ran around the hospital waiting room. Blissfully oblivious, Anna charmed the physicians, who began to wonder: did all three Legkiy children share the same disease?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Tatiana stabilized, thanks to medication helping her heart pump and a respirator helping her breathe, Srivastava’s team set about finding an answer. Two days after diagnosing Tatiana, the scientists took an echocardiogram, a kind of ultrasound, of her father’s heart. They observed that Andrey had a less severe, asymptomatic case of Tatiana’s condition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So by the time they tested Anna’s heart the following day, Lana Legkiy already knew more than a mother should about what LVNC looked like in an ultrasound. (The team would later examine Lana’s own heart, and find it normal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she saw Anna’s heart up on the screen, she knew without being told that her daughters shared the same disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Lana can’t remember precisely what she felt in that moment— so much happened at once — but she does recall a dream she had while in the hospital, after Tatiana’s diagnosis. Lana doesn’t consider herself a true believer of supernatural occurrences, but she thinks dreams are important. “I saw both of them… as grown women,” she said. “I think that settled me down a little bit, like, ‘Okay, we’re going to be okay.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, however, remembers the Legkiys’ distress acutely. “It was actually very sad,” he said. “This is a family who had lost one child, their other child was in a life-threatening situation, and then they find out their other girl has the same thing… it was actually pretty devastating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Long Search for Proof\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the physicians told the Legkiys, there was and is still no cure or surgical procedure that can remedy LVNC. In cases such as Anna’s, the heart compensates for its left ventricle and swells, allowing it to pump more blood through the body. Anna, like others with enlarged hearts, did not display typical symptoms of heart dysfunction such as fatigue or rapid breathing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, however, told the Legkiys that both girls’ hearts would need to be monitored with yearly ultrasounds. Tatiana was sent home with more of the medication that helped her heart pump; she would take the medicine for a year before her heart muscles improved and the medication was no longer necessary. The family resumed what was, for the most part, a normal life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As Anna and Tatiana grew into young women, now 15 and 11, Srivastava and his coworkers set about pinpointing the precise causes of the family’s congenital heart disease. The team sequenced the family’s DNA, combing through their genes in search of the variants all three children shared, screening against frequency of occurrence in the general population and for association with the heart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scientists quickly found three mutations in three different genes shared by the three siblings that they suspected to be the cause of the disease, two inherited from Andrey (\u003cem>MKL2\u003c/em> and \u003cem>MYH7\u003c/em>) and one from Lana (\u003cem>NKX2-5\u003c/em>). If not for the advent of a few key technologies, the investigation would have stopped here, the Legkiys left to wonder what was hidden in their genes. Srivastava’s search for proof, however, was just beginning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CRISPR’s Perfect Timing\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 2014, the Legkiys were living in Seattle; Tatiana and Anna were six and 10, both medication-free. Tatiana’s hospital experience seemed like a distant memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In San Francisco, meanwhile, Casey Gifford, a recent PhD from Harvard, had joined Srivastava’s research team. New to both human genomics and heart disease, she and Srivastava spent a four-hour car ride to a conference in Lake Tahoe discussing what they thought would be the next big questions in medicine. Srivastava brought up the family he couldn’t forget — and realized, as he did so, that the tools they would need to prove which genetic mutations caused LVNC in the Legkiys might finally exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/436872/explainer-the-new-gene-editing-tool-significantly-more-precise-than-crispr\">CRISPR/Cas9\u003c/a>, with which scientists can selectively remove and replace portions of the genome, had just been used in mammalian cells for the first time the year before. Its advent, Srivastava knew, meant that creating a mouse model with a desired genetic condition, which used to take a year, could now be done in three weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945465\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 319px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945465 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"319\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv.jpg 319w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/for_kqed_mouse_lv-160x121.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 319px) 100vw, 319px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fingerlike protrusions, a hallmark of LVNC, extend into the cavity of a three day old mouse’s left ventricle. Cell nuclei are marked in blue, and the lining of the cavity is shown in red. \u003ccite>(Casey Gifford/Gladstone Institutes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Armed with CRISPR/Cas9, Srivastava and Gifford decided to engineer mice with the same three mutations that Srivastava suspected had caused the Legkiy siblings’ heart condition. They hypothesized that the mutations would result in phenotypes, or observable physical expressions of genes, that resembled the phenotype of the human disease. As predicted, the mice with all three mutations showed the same finger-like protrusions in their hearts, demonstrating that, at least in mice, the mutations were enough to cause LVNC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Patient’s Beating Heart (Cells)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mouse heart tissue that resembled the Legkiy childrens’ was an exciting breakthrough, but Srivastava and Gifford knew that to persuade the scientific community of the genes’ importance, they’d need to design an equally convincing experiment in human cells. As Srivastava realized on that car ride, their timing could not have been better: in 2012, Gladstone researchers had won the Nobel Prize for \u003ca href=\"https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2012/press-release/\">induced pluripotent stem cells\u003c/a>, cells that are genetically taken back in time to behave like embryonic stem cells, which scientists can then turn into any cell type in the body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scientists took skin grafts from the family and reprogrammed the cells to grow petri dishes full of heart cells genetically identical to Lana, Andrey, Anna and Tatiana.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the lab, these cells pulsed (literally; heart cells \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiMUqYp3Jk\">pulse\u003c/a> with a heartbeat all their own) in confirmation of the team’s diagnosis. Even these cardiomyocytes, the one kind of heart cell the researchers had decided to test, displayed hallmarks of LVNC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each family member had their own petri dish of cells. Lana’s cells spread across her petri dish the way normal cells do, as if they were stars in the sky. Anna’s, by contrast, clumped together and did not stick well to the dish. Together with RNA sequencing data, the results showed that cell adhesion, long suspected to play a role in LVNC, had been affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945466\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945466 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/Gladstone_SrivastavaGifford.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Casey Gifford, lead author, and Deepak Srivastava, senior author, examine sections of heart tissue for signs of LVNC. \u003ccite>(Gladstone Institutes)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In conjunction with the CRISPR/Cas9 experiments, the cell study showed that the three mutations Srivastava’s team had identified had been enough to cause Anna and Tatiana to display symptoms of LVNC. \u003ca href=\"https://gladstone.org/about-us/news/combination-three-gene-mutations-results-deadly-human-heart-disease\">This result\u003c/a>, published in \u003cem>Science\u003c/em> this May, gave proof to a phenomenon that had long been suspected by the medical community: that multiple genetic mutations could work together to cause a disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lea Starita, a research assistant professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, calls this proof “extremely important” for the field. She points out that the results hinged on the advent of cutting-edge technology and a single cardiologist paying the case a lot of attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For years, I think we’ve known… that not all pathogenicities were going to be caused by single genes,” she said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a study that so well defined the interaction between three human variants on a phenotype like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Looking Forward\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatiana and Anna now live happy, normal lives: Anna is introverted and creative, a walking encyclopedia, her mother says; Tatiana is more outgoing. By now, their hearts seem to have developed normally, at last catching up to their bodies. Neither takes heart medication, though Srivastava says their hearts will need to be monitored for the rest of their lives, especially in moments of stress and when they get older. “It’s my hope that before they get to that point, we’ll have a better way to treat them,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945467\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 550px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1945467\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o-1200x900.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/413223_443577799016188_1715831936_o.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tatiana, Anna and Lana Legkiy. \u003ccite>(Lana Legkiy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With precise knowledge of which genetic mutations caused Anna and Tatiana’s rare heart condition, scientists now have taken the first steps toward identifying a cure. Gifford says that their combination of CRISPR/Cas9 models and use of stem cells illustrates the true power of genome editing. “We can [now] try to create much more faithful models of disease,” she said — models which could accelerate drug screening for a wide range of diseases, including other heart conditions and breast cancer.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The private sector has also been watching the Legkiys’ case, and is enthusiastic about what it could mean for how other genetic cases are studied. Tim Behrens, senior VP of a start-up company called \u003ca href=\"https://mazetx.com/\">Maze Therapeutics\u003c/a> (not associated with the study), commends the work as “a terrific story of how genetics and functional genomics really [help] us understand the underlying biology driving disease.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Behrens does point out that diseases influenced by many mutations would be harder to tackle. Informed by large-scale screening of genes for mutations, Maze is on its way to drug development with the hope that patients like Anna and Tatiana can receive treatment someday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Srivastava, meanwhile, is still pushing the limits of what technology can do for patients. Advances in single cell assays from the past year are allowing his team to use CRISPR/Cas9 to test a hundred suspected mutations in patients’ cells at once. He says that they’re at work on the genomes of thousands of children with heart disease, all thanks to their experience with the Legkiys. “These cases are the kinds that don’t come along all that often,” he said, “but they’re the ones that can help us treat other diseases better.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Gov. Newsom Signs Bill to Clean Up Drinking Water for 1 Million Californians",
"headTitle": "Gov. Newsom Signs Bill to Clean Up Drinking Water for 1 Million Californians | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fight ended in Carolina Garcia’s backyard in Tombstone Territory, California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent\">For years, Sacramento lawmakers fought over how to fund efforts to clean up dirty drinking water in small towns and communities like Tombstone across the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, flanked by lawmakers, advocates, and residents like Garcia, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">carve out $130 million annually to pay for clean water projects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The fact that more than a million Californians can’t rely on clean water to drink or bathe in, is a moral disgrace,” said Newsom in a prepared statement. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry about their kids drinking from the water fountain at school, and families shouldn’t have to dump water over their heads to shower every day.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Garcia says her problem is that recent tests of her domestic well show high levels of contamination from nitrate, a by-product of nitrogen fertilizer commonly used by farms outside of Tombstone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Not only do I have to conserve my water and make sure [my well] does not go dry, but I also am living with the fear of being exposed to nitrates,” she said in Spanish to Newsom with the aid of a translator.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jovita Torres said that the well at her house went dry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It cost us $30,000,” she said, also in Spanish. “We are surrounded by agriculture. During the drought, they drilled deeper wells, which meant that our wells went dry, sooner. We have to dig deeper to have water, and that is our problem.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945576\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 486px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1945576\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"486\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water.png 486w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water-160x123.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 486px) 100vw, 486px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left to right: Jovita Torres; Senator Anna Caballero; Assemblymember Richard Bloom; Gov Newson; Veronica Garibay; Senator Bill Monning; Carolina Garcia \u003ccite>(Governor Newsom's Office)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tombstone, located in Fresno County, is a small rural community with about 40 homes that are all on domestic wells, according to the\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/water-and-drought/article233039957.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fresno Bee\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The state estimates that more than a million California residents don’t have access to clean drinking water. Lawmakers all agreed that the problem needed to be addressed — just not where the money should come from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“My own daughter pays $200 a month for her water bill,” said civil rights icon Dolores Huerta to Newsom at one point during the signing, which is archived on the Governor’s Facebook page\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/CAgovernor/videos/1245002185670910/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“$200 a month?” Newsom said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“And she still has to buy bottled water,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“So, she’s paying for water that she can’t drink?” Newsom said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Exactly… and just like her, hundreds of thousands of people are in the same situation as she is,” Huerta said. “They have to pay the water bill, and they still have to buy water.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While she spoke, Newsom looked on with his hands pressed together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huerta spent her \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/120851/dolores-huerta-the-civil-rights-icon-who-showed-farmworkers-si-se-puede\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">life\u003c/a> advocating for better working conditions for farmworkers. She co-founded the United Farm Workers of America union with Cesar Chavez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to Huerta, Newsom was joined by state Sen. Bill Monning, D-Caramel;\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas; Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica; and Veronica Garibay, co-founder and co-director of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a public-interest law firm that’s advocated for cleaning up drinking water for residents in the San Joaquin Valley. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley and beyond have had to deal with not having safe drinking water,” said Garibay, who translated the conversation between Newsom and the residents. “They are living with the fear of contamination, living with the fear of a well going dry, not having bottled water, not having the economic means to have bottled water in your home. The scale of the crisis is huge.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Last January, Newsom made clear his intention to rebuild broken drinking water infrastructure with a tax on water bills, but the Legislature didn’t approve the plan, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">with some lawmakers worried that their constituents wouldn’t accept a new monthly tax given the state’s huge budget surplus. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Instead, Newsom and the Legislature decided to use revenue from California’s cap-and-trade climate program, which was created to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists and some lawmakers — most notably, State Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943578/climate-funds-for-clean-water-democrats-enviro-groups-are-split\">balked\u003c/a> at that decision, arguing that it weakens the integrity of the climate program. They argued that, while important, the issue of clean drinking water has nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wieckowski was the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1944788\">only\u003c/a> state senator to vote against the plan, which passed the Senate in a 38-1 vote earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom didn’t say anything about the criticism, but his staff addressed it in a press release that was emailed to reporters. It asserted that the state will be more resilient to climate change by securing drinking water across California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California will use 5% of its cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fight ended in Carolina Garcia’s backyard in Tombstone Territory, California.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"background-color: transparent\">For years, Sacramento lawmakers fought over how to fund efforts to clean up dirty drinking water in small towns and communities like Tombstone across the state.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, flanked by lawmakers, advocates, and residents like Garcia, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">carve out $130 million annually to pay for clean water projects.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The fact that more than a million Californians can’t rely on clean water to drink or bathe in, is a moral disgrace,” said Newsom in a prepared statement. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry about their kids drinking from the water fountain at school, and families shouldn’t have to dump water over their heads to shower every day.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Garcia says her problem is that recent tests of her domestic well show high levels of contamination from nitrate, a by-product of nitrogen fertilizer commonly used by farms outside of Tombstone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Not only do I have to conserve my water and make sure [my well] does not go dry, but I also am living with the fear of being exposed to nitrates,” she said in Spanish to Newsom with the aid of a translator.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jovita Torres said that the well at her house went dry.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It cost us $30,000,” she said, also in Spanish. “We are surrounded by agriculture. During the drought, they drilled deeper wells, which meant that our wells went dry, sooner. We have to dig deeper to have water, and that is our problem.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1945576\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 486px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1945576\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"486\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water.png 486w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/water-160x123.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 486px) 100vw, 486px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left to right: Jovita Torres; Senator Anna Caballero; Assemblymember Richard Bloom; Gov Newson; Veronica Garibay; Senator Bill Monning; Carolina Garcia \u003ccite>(Governor Newsom's Office)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tombstone, located in Fresno County, is a small rural community with about 40 homes that are all on domestic wells, according to the\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/water-and-drought/article233039957.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fresno Bee\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The state estimates that more than a million California residents don’t have access to clean drinking water. Lawmakers all agreed that the problem needed to be addressed — just not where the money should come from.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“My own daughter pays $200 a month for her water bill,” said civil rights icon Dolores Huerta to Newsom at one point during the signing, which is archived on the Governor’s Facebook page\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/CAgovernor/videos/1245002185670910/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“$200 a month?” Newsom said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“And she still has to buy bottled water,” she said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“So, she’s paying for water that she can’t drink?” Newsom said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Exactly… and just like her, hundreds of thousands of people are in the same situation as she is,” Huerta said. “They have to pay the water bill, and they still have to buy water.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While she spoke, Newsom looked on with his hands pressed together.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Huerta spent her \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/120851/dolores-huerta-the-civil-rights-icon-who-showed-farmworkers-si-se-puede\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">life\u003c/a> advocating for better working conditions for farmworkers. She co-founded the United Farm Workers of America union with Cesar Chavez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to Huerta, Newsom was joined by state Sen. Bill Monning, D-Caramel;\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas; Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica; and Veronica Garibay, co-founder and co-director of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a public-interest law firm that’s advocated for cleaning up drinking water for residents in the San Joaquin Valley. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley and beyond have had to deal with not having safe drinking water,” said Garibay, who translated the conversation between Newsom and the residents. “They are living with the fear of contamination, living with the fear of a well going dry, not having bottled water, not having the economic means to have bottled water in your home. The scale of the crisis is huge.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>Last January, Newsom made clear his intention to rebuild broken drinking water infrastructure with a tax on water bills, but the Legislature didn’t approve the plan, \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">with some lawmakers worried that their constituents wouldn’t accept a new monthly tax given the state’s huge budget surplus. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Instead, Newsom and the Legislature decided to use revenue from California’s cap-and-trade climate program, which was created to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists and some lawmakers — most notably, State Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943578/climate-funds-for-clean-water-democrats-enviro-groups-are-split\">balked\u003c/a> at that decision, arguing that it weakens the integrity of the climate program. They argued that, while important, the issue of clean drinking water has nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wieckowski was the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1944788\">only\u003c/a> state senator to vote against the plan, which passed the Senate in a 38-1 vote earlier this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom didn’t say anything about the criticism, but his staff addressed it in a press release that was emailed to reporters. It asserted that the state will be more resilient to climate change by securing drinking water across California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California will use 5% of its cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Pregnancy care is poised for a 21st century upgrade.\u003cbr>\n[pullquote align='right' citation='Dr. Thomas McElrath']‘Frequently people want the reassurance that it’s fine, but they haven’t thought through what happens if something isn’t fine. ‘[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Algorithms promise to detect the difference between real labor and a false alarm. Wearables give women a way to track contractions. Apps relay home blood pressure readings directly to doctors, offering a possible way to cut down on prenatal visits — and catch certain pregnancy complications before they become full-blown crises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors say the new technologies have the potential to transform prenatal care. But for all the promise, doctors caution that some direct-to-consumer devices might cause anxiety or unnecessary trips to the clinic — without strong evidence that they offer any real benefits to pregnant women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Prenatal care is burdensome. It requires patients to be in at minimum, once a month. People have jobs. It’s hard to get in… You could imagine some kind of virtual substitute would be very welcome,” said Dr. Thomas McElrath, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But we would have to figure out and think carefully about how to do that,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetrician-gynecologists are particularly worried about direct-to-consumer devices that aren’t woven into the fabric of prenatal care. Among their concerns: Faulty or confusing data might send women to their doctors when they don’t need to go. And for some devices, doctors say the lack of research or a true need to use them means they’re simply a waste of money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I [sometimes tell] my patients to save their money, because babies are expensive,” said Dr. LaVonne Simmons, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their fears aren’t completely unfounded. Some women say they bought devices to give them more data about their pregnancy, but ultimately felt they were more of a headache than a help. Others say they raised false alarms or made them second-guess their gut instincts about what was happening in their bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But other women say DTC devices have given them peace of mind and the feeling of more control during a time that can be biologically overwhelming. That’s fueling a growing tension: As pregnancy tech grows more popular with patients, doctors are left to figure out if and how such devices fit into a woman’s prenatal care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s clearly the way of the future,” said Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN at George Washington University “This is an enormously popular, highly utilized field … It’s not going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Kind of Prenatal Care\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The field of pregnancy tech has grown rapidly in recent years, from home ultrasounds that capture kicks to wearable belts that play music to the womb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One popular device is Bloomlife, a sensor that’s designed to pick up uterine activity. Women stick the sensor three fingers below their belly buttons, sit still, and watch as uterine activity pops up in spiky peaks on the Bloomlife app. More than 10,000 women have rented Bloomlife’s $20-a-week “smart pregnancy tracker” to count millions of contractions since the company launched in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife’s office is in downtown San Francisco, situated in a coworking space that doubles as a retail store, with space-age phone pods lined up next to vintage furniture for sale. The basement is a lab space that was repurposed from a photo processing lab once run for Ansel Adams. Now, Bloomlife is using it as home base as it tries to do for pregnancy what its Silicon Valley peers are doing in other areas of health: Give it the tech treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way that we manage prenatal care fundamentally hasn’t changed in decades,” said Eric Dy, Bloomlife’s president and a biomedical engineer by training. “That’s our North Star — we believe we can define a new standard within prenatal care,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Bloomlife’s device hasn’t been approved by the FDA, the company is careful not to veer into medical advice. Many women use it simply to see what’s happening in their bodies. It’s popular among women who might live far from their providers — nearly half of users live in rural areas, according to a Bloomlife breakdown of users’ ZIP codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going direct-to-consumer has allowed the company to collect a massive amount of data, Dy said. While the company only relays contraction data to users, the device also tracks maternal heart rate. Bloomlife now has what it says is the world’s biggest physiological data set during pregnancy, with more than 500,000 hours of data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife is using that data to train artificial intelligence algorithms to not just track contractions, but identify labor. That could have a big impact, given the high cost of hospital trips for false labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company recently wrapped up an observational study to test the accuracy of a “digital biomarker” — specifically, data on uterine activity and heart rate variability — in 150 pregnant women who used Bloomlife’s device.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a medical conference earlier this year, Bloomlife’s team presented an abstract on results from the first 50 women in the study. The company reported that it is able to detect if a woman is in labor with 80% sensitivity and 93% specificity. Bloomlife says that shows its device is as accurate as the current standard of tracking contraction patterns and conducting a pelvic exam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But outside experts still have questions, starting with the results from the other 100 women in the study. McElrath, the OB-GYN in Boston, said the analytic technique used to crunch the data wasn’t as rigorous as it needs to be to prove the test is valid. He also pointed out many women don’t have contractions in a clear pattern until the end stages of preterm labor and delivery. At that point, he said, it’s likely too late for a tool like Bloomlife’s to be useful in identifying the onset of preterm labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife says it is preparing the full results of the study for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The company plans to apply for clearance from the FDA next year and wants to run more studies on the device’s potential use in prenatal care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, though, the device continues to gain traction among women who say they like seeing data on their pregnancies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought this would be a good way to track things at home without staring at the clock,” said Christine Hall, a 32-year-old woman who lives in Fayetteville, Tennessee. Hall, who Bloomlife identified as a customer who could speak about her experience with its tracker, rented the device while pregnant with her fifth child. She started having contractions earlier than expected with previous pregnancies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me, it really just brought peace of mind,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘To a Patient, a False Positive Feels Very Real’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the potential peace of mind, some doctors are wary about what might happen when patients are flooded with health data from devices that aren’t part of their medical care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Frequently people want the reassurance that it’s fine, but they haven’t thought through what happens if something isn’t fine,” said McElrath, the OB-GYN in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McElrath and other providers said they’re worried that direct-to-consumer pregnancy tech might cause unnecessary anxiety, particularly if they’re not reliable and sometimes signal something is wrong when it actually isn’t. Some devices, like home heart rate monitors or ultrasounds, are also prone to user error if a patient isn’t trained properly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tact I take with [patients] is that this might actually increase anxiety. That’s my biggest concern with these devices,” said Simmons, the University of Washington OB-GYN.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faulty results could also send women to their health care providers when they might not need to make the trip. OB-GYNs said they see patients who were using home fetal heart rate or activity monitors when they couldn’t pick up a heartbeat or saw less fetal movement than normal. The woman calls up a doctor, who isn’t sure how to interpret data she isn’t looking at from a device she isn’t familiar with. She asks the patient to come in, only to find that everything is fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then we’ve had a hospital visit and created an anxious patient. To a patient, a false positive feels very real. They don’t know it’s false,” said McElrath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors also noted that in the case of many pregnancy tech products, there’s not much data to show whether the tools can even improve health outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of this [risk] is acceptable if we know it’s for a good reason,” said McElrath. “When we’re not sure, it becomes a potential burden.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s been the case for some women who have turned to tech while pregnant. Leah Hutson kept seeing Facebook ads for Bloomlife when pregnant with her first child. “I was like, this seems like it would be really cool. This is my first child, I want to be as informed as possible,” said Hutson, a 31-year-old who lives in San Antonio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She started using the monitor in January 2018, about a month before her due date. It picked up some uterine activity she felt. But a few days before her daughter was born, Hutson started feeling uncomfortable and wasn’t sure what was going on. She put on her Bloomlife, but it didn’t pick up any contractions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She bounced on a birth ball. She went to work. She took a trip to Target, hoping she could walk off the discomfort and grab some snacks for when she did go into labor. Hutson tried Bloomlife a few more times, but said she saw no activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Turns out, during that time, I was actually in the beginning of labor,” she said. By the time she went to the hospital, Hutson was already 7 centimeters dilated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bloomlife made me second guess myself. It wasn’t showing any contractions,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tech Companies Court Providers as Customers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By and large, health care providers and patients all agree on one thing: Tech does have the potential to make pregnancy care far better — if it’s done the right way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It [should be] an entry to interacting with the medical environment, rather than having patients do this on their own,” said McElrath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But McElrath and other clinicians said new tools demand more research. They want evidence that at-home devices are as good as existing care or even better. Providers also say device makers need to think carefully about how new technology will fit into a woman’s overall care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to [need] more integration with clinical oversight to help make it safer to manage all this patient-generated data,” said DeNicola, the George Washington University OB-GYN. DeNicola also serves as the chair of the telehealth committee at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several companies are developing tech tools for clinicians that they hope will one day fit seamlessly into prenatal care. Rather than being shipped right to a pregnant woman’s door, the products would be “prescribed” by providers who send women home with the tools, monitor their data remotely, and help patients interpret it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DeNicola has conducted research on one such system, called Babyscripts. Women measure their blood pressure, glucose levels, and weight at home, then log that information in the Babyscripts app. The app also asks users questions about their mental health during pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Providers can see that data on a dashboard and call patients anytime something seems amiss. Women can keep using the app after birth, potentially giving providers a new way to see dangerous blood pressure problems after birth. An added bonus for clinicians, per the company’s website: “By automating elements of care, you can reduce the need for routine in-office visits while capturing the same global fee.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another company, Nuvo, has developed a wearable belt that doctors send home with women to keep tabs on maternal and fetal heart rate, along with uterine activity. A woman can’t use the device to see data outside of the scheduled times and tests set by her provider, which Nuvo hopes will prevent patients from poring over data on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really believe in making the mother the point of care, and having the data seamlessly travel between the doctor’s office and the home,” said Debra Bass, the chief marketing officer of Nuvo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nuvo’s customer is the provider, not the patient. The company is eyeing maternal-fetal medicine specialists who care for women with high-risk pregnancies as its first target audience. The company knows it’s critical for its success to not only score the endorsement of clinicians, but also get them to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To win over doctors — and demonstrate its efficacy — Nuvo has applied for FDA approval for its device, called Invu. As part of its application, the company ran two studies: one to demonstrate that the device works as well as existing tools to monitor heart rate, and one to show that it’s safe and simple for patients to use at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have been another gadget that launched at the [Consumer Electronics Show and started selling on our website or Buy Buy Baby,” Bass said. “It’s been harder, longer, and a lot more expensive, but we believe [running trials] is the right and responsible approach,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nuvo is expecting a decision from the agency later this year. Clinicians, meanwhile, are watching with anticipation as more research unfolds and regulators begin to review the new tools that have the potential to make prenatal care easier and more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole idea is to protect against the potential hazards, so then we can take advantage of all the benefits,” DeNicola said. “This has much more promise than peril.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> \u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/23/pregnancy-tech-help-headache/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Algorithms promise to detect the difference between real labor and a false alarm. Wearables give women a way to track contractions. Apps relay home blood pressure readings directly to doctors, offering a possible way to cut down on prenatal visits — and catch certain pregnancy complications before they become full-blown crises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors say the new technologies have the potential to transform prenatal care. But for all the promise, doctors caution that some direct-to-consumer devices might cause anxiety or unnecessary trips to the clinic — without strong evidence that they offer any real benefits to pregnant women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Prenatal care is burdensome. It requires patients to be in at minimum, once a month. People have jobs. It’s hard to get in… You could imagine some kind of virtual substitute would be very welcome,” said Dr. Thomas McElrath, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But we would have to figure out and think carefully about how to do that,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetrician-gynecologists are particularly worried about direct-to-consumer devices that aren’t woven into the fabric of prenatal care. Among their concerns: Faulty or confusing data might send women to their doctors when they don’t need to go. And for some devices, doctors say the lack of research or a true need to use them means they’re simply a waste of money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I [sometimes tell] my patients to save their money, because babies are expensive,” said Dr. LaVonne Simmons, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Washington.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their fears aren’t completely unfounded. Some women say they bought devices to give them more data about their pregnancy, but ultimately felt they were more of a headache than a help. Others say they raised false alarms or made them second-guess their gut instincts about what was happening in their bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But other women say DTC devices have given them peace of mind and the feeling of more control during a time that can be biologically overwhelming. That’s fueling a growing tension: As pregnancy tech grows more popular with patients, doctors are left to figure out if and how such devices fit into a woman’s prenatal care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s clearly the way of the future,” said Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OB-GYN at George Washington University “This is an enormously popular, highly utilized field … It’s not going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Kind of Prenatal Care\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The field of pregnancy tech has grown rapidly in recent years, from home ultrasounds that capture kicks to wearable belts that play music to the womb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One popular device is Bloomlife, a sensor that’s designed to pick up uterine activity. Women stick the sensor three fingers below their belly buttons, sit still, and watch as uterine activity pops up in spiky peaks on the Bloomlife app. More than 10,000 women have rented Bloomlife’s $20-a-week “smart pregnancy tracker” to count millions of contractions since the company launched in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife’s office is in downtown San Francisco, situated in a coworking space that doubles as a retail store, with space-age phone pods lined up next to vintage furniture for sale. The basement is a lab space that was repurposed from a photo processing lab once run for Ansel Adams. Now, Bloomlife is using it as home base as it tries to do for pregnancy what its Silicon Valley peers are doing in other areas of health: Give it the tech treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way that we manage prenatal care fundamentally hasn’t changed in decades,” said Eric Dy, Bloomlife’s president and a biomedical engineer by training. “That’s our North Star — we believe we can define a new standard within prenatal care,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Bloomlife’s device hasn’t been approved by the FDA, the company is careful not to veer into medical advice. Many women use it simply to see what’s happening in their bodies. It’s popular among women who might live far from their providers — nearly half of users live in rural areas, according to a Bloomlife breakdown of users’ ZIP codes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going direct-to-consumer has allowed the company to collect a massive amount of data, Dy said. While the company only relays contraction data to users, the device also tracks maternal heart rate. Bloomlife now has what it says is the world’s biggest physiological data set during pregnancy, with more than 500,000 hours of data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife is using that data to train artificial intelligence algorithms to not just track contractions, but identify labor. That could have a big impact, given the high cost of hospital trips for false labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company recently wrapped up an observational study to test the accuracy of a “digital biomarker” — specifically, data on uterine activity and heart rate variability — in 150 pregnant women who used Bloomlife’s device.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a medical conference earlier this year, Bloomlife’s team presented an abstract on results from the first 50 women in the study. The company reported that it is able to detect if a woman is in labor with 80% sensitivity and 93% specificity. Bloomlife says that shows its device is as accurate as the current standard of tracking contraction patterns and conducting a pelvic exam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But outside experts still have questions, starting with the results from the other 100 women in the study. McElrath, the OB-GYN in Boston, said the analytic technique used to crunch the data wasn’t as rigorous as it needs to be to prove the test is valid. He also pointed out many women don’t have contractions in a clear pattern until the end stages of preterm labor and delivery. At that point, he said, it’s likely too late for a tool like Bloomlife’s to be useful in identifying the onset of preterm labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bloomlife says it is preparing the full results of the study for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The company plans to apply for clearance from the FDA next year and wants to run more studies on the device’s potential use in prenatal care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, though, the device continues to gain traction among women who say they like seeing data on their pregnancies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought this would be a good way to track things at home without staring at the clock,” said Christine Hall, a 32-year-old woman who lives in Fayetteville, Tennessee. Hall, who Bloomlife identified as a customer who could speak about her experience with its tracker, rented the device while pregnant with her fifth child. She started having contractions earlier than expected with previous pregnancies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For me, it really just brought peace of mind,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘To a Patient, a False Positive Feels Very Real’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the potential peace of mind, some doctors are wary about what might happen when patients are flooded with health data from devices that aren’t part of their medical care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Frequently people want the reassurance that it’s fine, but they haven’t thought through what happens if something isn’t fine,” said McElrath, the OB-GYN in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McElrath and other providers said they’re worried that direct-to-consumer pregnancy tech might cause unnecessary anxiety, particularly if they’re not reliable and sometimes signal something is wrong when it actually isn’t. Some devices, like home heart rate monitors or ultrasounds, are also prone to user error if a patient isn’t trained properly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tact I take with [patients] is that this might actually increase anxiety. That’s my biggest concern with these devices,” said Simmons, the University of Washington OB-GYN.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faulty results could also send women to their health care providers when they might not need to make the trip. OB-GYNs said they see patients who were using home fetal heart rate or activity monitors when they couldn’t pick up a heartbeat or saw less fetal movement than normal. The woman calls up a doctor, who isn’t sure how to interpret data she isn’t looking at from a device she isn’t familiar with. She asks the patient to come in, only to find that everything is fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then we’ve had a hospital visit and created an anxious patient. To a patient, a false positive feels very real. They don’t know it’s false,” said McElrath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors also noted that in the case of many pregnancy tech products, there’s not much data to show whether the tools can even improve health outcomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of this [risk] is acceptable if we know it’s for a good reason,” said McElrath. “When we’re not sure, it becomes a potential burden.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s been the case for some women who have turned to tech while pregnant. Leah Hutson kept seeing Facebook ads for Bloomlife when pregnant with her first child. “I was like, this seems like it would be really cool. This is my first child, I want to be as informed as possible,” said Hutson, a 31-year-old who lives in San Antonio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She started using the monitor in January 2018, about a month before her due date. It picked up some uterine activity she felt. But a few days before her daughter was born, Hutson started feeling uncomfortable and wasn’t sure what was going on. She put on her Bloomlife, but it didn’t pick up any contractions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She bounced on a birth ball. She went to work. She took a trip to Target, hoping she could walk off the discomfort and grab some snacks for when she did go into labor. Hutson tried Bloomlife a few more times, but said she saw no activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Turns out, during that time, I was actually in the beginning of labor,” she said. By the time she went to the hospital, Hutson was already 7 centimeters dilated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Bloomlife made me second guess myself. It wasn’t showing any contractions,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Tech Companies Court Providers as Customers\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By and large, health care providers and patients all agree on one thing: Tech does have the potential to make pregnancy care far better — if it’s done the right way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It [should be] an entry to interacting with the medical environment, rather than having patients do this on their own,” said McElrath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But McElrath and other clinicians said new tools demand more research. They want evidence that at-home devices are as good as existing care or even better. Providers also say device makers need to think carefully about how new technology will fit into a woman’s overall care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to [need] more integration with clinical oversight to help make it safer to manage all this patient-generated data,” said DeNicola, the George Washington University OB-GYN. DeNicola also serves as the chair of the telehealth committee at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several companies are developing tech tools for clinicians that they hope will one day fit seamlessly into prenatal care. Rather than being shipped right to a pregnant woman’s door, the products would be “prescribed” by providers who send women home with the tools, monitor their data remotely, and help patients interpret it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DeNicola has conducted research on one such system, called Babyscripts. Women measure their blood pressure, glucose levels, and weight at home, then log that information in the Babyscripts app. The app also asks users questions about their mental health during pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Providers can see that data on a dashboard and call patients anytime something seems amiss. Women can keep using the app after birth, potentially giving providers a new way to see dangerous blood pressure problems after birth. An added bonus for clinicians, per the company’s website: “By automating elements of care, you can reduce the need for routine in-office visits while capturing the same global fee.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another company, Nuvo, has developed a wearable belt that doctors send home with women to keep tabs on maternal and fetal heart rate, along with uterine activity. A woman can’t use the device to see data outside of the scheduled times and tests set by her provider, which Nuvo hopes will prevent patients from poring over data on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really believe in making the mother the point of care, and having the data seamlessly travel between the doctor’s office and the home,” said Debra Bass, the chief marketing officer of Nuvo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nuvo’s customer is the provider, not the patient. The company is eyeing maternal-fetal medicine specialists who care for women with high-risk pregnancies as its first target audience. The company knows it’s critical for its success to not only score the endorsement of clinicians, but also get them to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To win over doctors — and demonstrate its efficacy — Nuvo has applied for FDA approval for its device, called Invu. As part of its application, the company ran two studies: one to demonstrate that the device works as well as existing tools to monitor heart rate, and one to show that it’s safe and simple for patients to use at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We could have been another gadget that launched at the [Consumer Electronics Show and started selling on our website or Buy Buy Baby,” Bass said. “It’s been harder, longer, and a lot more expensive, but we believe [running trials] is the right and responsible approach,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nuvo is expecting a decision from the agency later this year. Clinicians, meanwhile, are watching with anticipation as more research unfolds and regulators begin to review the new tools that have the potential to make prenatal care easier and more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole idea is to protect against the potential hazards, so then we can take advantage of all the benefits,” DeNicola said. “This has much more promise than peril.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> \u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/23/pregnancy-tech-help-headache/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sen. Kamala Harris is introducing legislation designed to ensure all Americans, particularly those in at-risk communities, have access to safe, affordable drinking water, the latest response to burgeoning water crises across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Democrat and presidential candidate’s “Water Justice Act” would invest nearly $220 billion in clean and safe drinking water programs, with priority given to high-risk communities and schools. As part of that, Harris’ plan would declare a drinking water infrastructure emergency, devoting $50 billion toward communities and schools where water is contaminated to test for contaminants and to remediate toxic infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislation, being introduced on Monday, also would establish a $10 billion program to allow states to offset the cost of water bills in low-income communities and environmentally at-risk households. Additionally, Harris would invest $20 billion in a variety of sustainable water supply, recycling and conservation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is focusing on the issue as she and other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates turn their sights on Michigan, where the city of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/FlintWater\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Flint has faced a major water crisis\u003c/a> . Harris, who \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/1648ca2ef0fe4d9897212b8e91571f5a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">launched her campaign\u003c/a> in January, is among the party’s candidates speaking at the NAACP’s national convention in Michigan this week. And \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/2756b13a05bb42d693e57def743d24aa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">20 candidates \u003c/a>seeking their party’s nomination will take the stage for the party’s \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/57b80aa37bd746b9a5160ba58f958dd3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">second set of presidential debates\u003c/a> in Detroit on July 30-31.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is partnering with Michigan Reps. Dan Kildee, who represents Flint, and Brenda Lawrence. While Flint has dealt with lead that leached into some homes after officials tapped into the Flint River in 2014, the problems also are dire in Harris’ home state, where 1 million of its nearly 40 million residents don’t have access to clean drinking water because of pollution from humans or natural causes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every American has the right to clean water, period,” Harris said. “We must take seriously the existential threat represented by future water shortages and acknowledge that communities across the country — particularly communities of color — already lack access to safe and affordable water. Achieving true justice in our nation will require us to recognize the precious nature of water and take bold action to invest in long-term, sustainable solutions to ensure it is accessible for all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is not the only presidential candidate to focus on the water crisis plaguing communities around the country. Among them are former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who earlier this year visited Flint and released a plan to combat lead exposure, and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/87184b84e9c64c92b0d64c778121db2f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">traveled to Denmark, South Carolina,\u003c/a> where residents have struggled with tainted water.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sen. Kamala Harris is introducing legislation designed to ensure all Americans, particularly those in at-risk communities, have access to safe, affordable drinking water, the latest response to burgeoning water crises across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Democrat and presidential candidate’s “Water Justice Act” would invest nearly $220 billion in clean and safe drinking water programs, with priority given to high-risk communities and schools. As part of that, Harris’ plan would declare a drinking water infrastructure emergency, devoting $50 billion toward communities and schools where water is contaminated to test for contaminants and to remediate toxic infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislation, being introduced on Monday, also would establish a $10 billion program to allow states to offset the cost of water bills in low-income communities and environmentally at-risk households. Additionally, Harris would invest $20 billion in a variety of sustainable water supply, recycling and conservation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is focusing on the issue as she and other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates turn their sights on Michigan, where the city of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/FlintWater\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Flint has faced a major water crisis\u003c/a> . Harris, who \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/1648ca2ef0fe4d9897212b8e91571f5a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">launched her campaign\u003c/a> in January, is among the party’s candidates speaking at the NAACP’s national convention in Michigan this week. And \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/2756b13a05bb42d693e57def743d24aa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">20 candidates \u003c/a>seeking their party’s nomination will take the stage for the party’s \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/57b80aa37bd746b9a5160ba58f958dd3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">second set of presidential debates\u003c/a> in Detroit on July 30-31.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is partnering with Michigan Reps. Dan Kildee, who represents Flint, and Brenda Lawrence. While Flint has dealt with lead that leached into some homes after officials tapped into the Flint River in 2014, the problems also are dire in Harris’ home state, where 1 million of its nearly 40 million residents don’t have access to clean drinking water because of pollution from humans or natural causes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every American has the right to clean water, period,” Harris said. “We must take seriously the existential threat represented by future water shortages and acknowledge that communities across the country — particularly communities of color — already lack access to safe and affordable water. Achieving true justice in our nation will require us to recognize the precious nature of water and take bold action to invest in long-term, sustainable solutions to ensure it is accessible for all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris is not the only presidential candidate to focus on the water crisis plaguing communities around the country. Among them are former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who earlier this year visited Flint and released a plan to combat lead exposure, and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Cory Booker of New Jersey, who \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/87184b84e9c64c92b0d64c778121db2f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">traveled to Denmark, South Carolina,\u003c/a> where residents have struggled with tainted water.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "State Regulators Move to Protect Workers From Wildfire Smoke",
"headTitle": "State Regulators Move to Protect Workers From Wildfire Smoke | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Wildfire smoke isn’t great for anybody, but a new rule California regulators vote on today recognizes that it’s particularly dangerous for workers while they’re on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board will decide whether to require employers to offer workers additional protections under specific circumstances when air quality is poor. The move comes after especially active fire seasons in 2017 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all of California, and it’s not just a certain time, it’s all year round,” says attorney Nicole Marquez, with the advocacy group Worksafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' citation='Nicole Marquez, Worksafe']It’s an emergency because fire season is upon us. Workers are already being exposed to some of this fine particulate matter while they’re working outside, and they don’t have this protection.[/pullquote]Small and often toxic particles of pollution in smoke — also called PM2.5 — cause chest pain and coughing, trigger asthma attacks, and boost hospital admissions during wildfires. Under the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke-Emergency-txtbrdconsider.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">proposed rule\u003c/a>, employers who cannot reschedule shifts or move their workers away from smoke hazards must provide them with N95 filtering masks when air quality reaches “unhealthy” levels on the air quality index.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So that way, they can use those respirators,” Marquez says, “and not be told that you have to go to Home Depot to buy an N95 when your employer should really be providing that for you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As fires still burned last December, Worksafe, the California Labor Foundation, and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation together petitioned the state’s Department of Industrial Regulation about the health risks of wildfire smoke on outdoor jobs such as construction, landscaping and farming. In March, the board \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/petition-573-adopteddecision.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">approved consideration\u003c/a> of an emergency rule. Thursday, the board will consider both whether an emergency is happening, and if so, whether a temporary rule should take effect for 180 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='science_1926793']“It’s an emergency because fire season is upon us,” Marquez says. “Workers are already being exposed to some of this fine particulate matter while they’re working outside, and they don’t have this protection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmful wildfire smoke has long been common in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1929784/breathing-fire-californias-central-valley-bears-the-brunt-of-harmful-wildfire-smoke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Central Valley\u003c/a> and in Southern California. But last year Northern California fires smothered San Francisco in more than a week of days deemed unhealthy on the AQI, and bad air hovered for almost two weeks in San Jose and Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quantifying the hazard of wildfire smoke is difficult for geophysical reasons: Smoke interacts with weather and wind patterns, for example, which is why the Bay Area’s inversion layers have locked pollutants in place for longer periods of time. And particles of the same size can contain different combinations and different amounts of toxicants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, research is establishing stronger evidence that breathing smoke bears long-term health impacts as well as the acute ones during the fire itself. A \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GH000144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> published last year projected that premature deaths associated with wildfire smoke could double nationally by century’s end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trade groups and the Chamber of Commerce have not objected to the rule in principle, but have \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/doshreg/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke/Comments-1/Chamber-Coalition.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">critiqued\u003c/a> it as “impractically vague” and broad in scope. State workplace officials are already moving toward a permanent regulation, with a meeting \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/doshreg/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">scheduled\u003c/a> August 27th.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Wildfire smoke isn’t great for anybody, but a new rule California regulators vote on today recognizes that it’s particularly dangerous for workers while they’re on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board will decide whether to require employers to offer workers additional protections under specific circumstances when air quality is poor. The move comes after especially active fire seasons in 2017 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all of California, and it’s not just a certain time, it’s all year round,” says attorney Nicole Marquez, with the advocacy group Worksafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Small and often toxic particles of pollution in smoke — also called PM2.5 — cause chest pain and coughing, trigger asthma attacks, and boost hospital admissions during wildfires. Under the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke-Emergency-txtbrdconsider.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">proposed rule\u003c/a>, employers who cannot reschedule shifts or move their workers away from smoke hazards must provide them with N95 filtering masks when air quality reaches “unhealthy” levels on the air quality index.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So that way, they can use those respirators,” Marquez says, “and not be told that you have to go to Home Depot to buy an N95 when your employer should really be providing that for you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As fires still burned last December, Worksafe, the California Labor Foundation, and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation together petitioned the state’s Department of Industrial Regulation about the health risks of wildfire smoke on outdoor jobs such as construction, landscaping and farming. In March, the board \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/petition-573-adopteddecision.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">approved consideration\u003c/a> of an emergency rule. Thursday, the board will consider both whether an emergency is happening, and if so, whether a temporary rule should take effect for 180 days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s an emergency because fire season is upon us,” Marquez says. “Workers are already being exposed to some of this fine particulate matter while they’re working outside, and they don’t have this protection.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmful wildfire smoke has long been common in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1929784/breathing-fire-californias-central-valley-bears-the-brunt-of-harmful-wildfire-smoke\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Central Valley\u003c/a> and in Southern California. But last year Northern California fires smothered San Francisco in more than a week of days deemed unhealthy on the AQI, and bad air hovered for almost two weeks in San Jose and Santa Rosa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Quantifying the hazard of wildfire smoke is difficult for geophysical reasons: Smoke interacts with weather and wind patterns, for example, which is why the Bay Area’s inversion layers have locked pollutants in place for longer periods of time. And particles of the same size can contain different combinations and different amounts of toxicants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, research is establishing stronger evidence that breathing smoke bears long-term health impacts as well as the acute ones during the fire itself. A \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GH000144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">study\u003c/span>\u003c/a> published last year projected that premature deaths associated with wildfire smoke could double nationally by century’s end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trade groups and the Chamber of Commerce have not objected to the rule in principle, but have \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/doshreg/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke/Comments-1/Chamber-Coalition.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">critiqued\u003c/a> it as “impractically vague” and broad in scope. State workplace officials are already moving toward a permanent regulation, with a meeting \u003ca href=\"https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/doshreg/Protection-from-Wildfire-Smoke/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">scheduled\u003c/a> August 27th.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Elon Musk’s Latest Startup Wants to Test Brain-Reading Sensors in Paralyzed Patients",
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"content": "\u003cp>In front of a crowd of techies packed into a planetarium, Elon Musk strode out on stage, waxed philosophical about achieving symbiosis with artificial intelligence, and made his latest ambitious pronouncement in a career that’s been full of them: His startup Neuralink has developed technology meant to be implanted into the brain that’s designed to allow people to operate computers and smartphones with their thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With some early animal testing under its belt, Neuralink wants to start human testing of its so-called “brain-machine interface” in paralyzed patients by the end of next year. Notably, the startup has yet to convince the Food and Drug Administration to allow it do so, said Musk, who has tangled with regulators over his other companies Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And down the line? Musk wants the implants to be as safe and easy for healthy people to get as an elective procedure like LASIK vision correction surgery, the billionaire entrepreneur said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s much-hyped presentation, delivered by Musk and his team Tuesday night here at a science museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, marked the first time that the secretive startup has spoken publicly about its work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company also released an \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6204648-Neuralink-White-Paper.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unpublished research paper\u003c/a>, authored by “Elon Musk & Neuralink,” that described its technology. At its core are thousands of electrodes, laced into flexible “threads,” which are high-tech wires much thinner than a human hair. Neuralink has also built a surgical robot to insert the threads deep into the brain. The idea is that the electrodes would relay brain signals to an AirPod-like device mounted behind the ear that would wirelessly hook up with a smartphone app that people could control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 19 surgeries on rats, the startup successfully placed the threads 87% of the time, the paper said. Musk and his team said the technique has promise to capture more neural data more safely than existing approaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink will face a long list of formidable obstacles as it aims to move from rats to the clinic. Decoding the mysteries of the brain is a steeper challenge than manufacturing cars or drilling tunnels or even building rockets. Even peer-reviewed and published data in rats usually disappoints when it gets translated to human patients — and Neuralink doesn’t even have that yet. And there are plenty of reasons that neuroscientists who have worked on brain-machine interfaces for years have yet to make nearly any commercial traction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk, whose eccentricities and outlandish Twitter presence have helped him build a cult following, put that offbeat personality on full display on Tuesday night. Donning a black jacket, a white button-up shirt, and no tie, he mused at one point about his technology giving people the option of merging with AI. “We are a brain in a vat,” he remarked at another point. Later, he spoke dreamily about communicating telepathically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about Neuralink’s animal research by a member of the audience, Musk turned earnest for a moment in speaking about the startup’s seriousness in caring for the rats it uses in its research — before making a joke that didn’t quite land about “karmic payback” for the Black Plague.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink is also conducting research in monkeys at the University of California, Davis, Musk said. Then he spilled the goods: “A monkey has been able to control the computer with its brain,” Musk said. (At no point has the company provided evidence to support that assertion.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk had clearly gone off-script. Max Hodak, the company’s president up on stage beside him, seemed a bit rattled. “I didn’t realize we were running that result today, but there it goes,” Hodak said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for its planned clinical study, Neuralink said it would focus on enrolling patients with paralysis of all four limbs due to a spinal cord injury. No details were shared about the intended size of study, nor the specific endpoints it would aim to evaluate. Musk did, however, say offhandedly that one of the company’s goals is to allow patients who are paraplegic to use their thoughts to type at a rate of 40 words per minute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about the company’s FDA pathway, Hodak said Neuralink would attempt to pursue an early feasibility study, under what’s known as an investigational device exemption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryan Stellar, vice president of product management at Enzyme, a startup working on software to help life sciences companies with the regulatory process, told STAT that he expects technology as ambitious as Neuralink’s will demand rigorous, long-term study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unless the FDA is blinded by Elon’s star power, a premarket trial of significant size” — 100-1,000 people — “will probably be needed, with a minimum observational period of two years, but perhaps as much as seven,” Stellar speculated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Tuesday night’s event, Musk trotted out several key members of the team of scientists and executives he’s assembled to carry out the company’s ambitions. Among them were the company’s senior scientist, Philip Sabes, who was previously a full-time professor at the University of California, San Francisco, researching how the brain processes movement. Another was the company’s head neurosurgeon, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, who delivered his part of the presentation in blue scrubs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk said the event’s primary purpose was to recruit talent to the San Francisco-based startup, which has a headcount near 100. Neuralink’s website \u003ca href=\"https://jobs.lever.co/neuralink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lists\u003c/a> a handful of job postings, including for an accountant and a software engineer who can build robots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink, which was incorporated in 2016, has brought in $158 million in funding, $100 million of it from Musk himself. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1708503/000170850319000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission\u003c/a> this past May, the company said that it had brought in $39 million of an anticipated $51 million funding round.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s big reveal, which was also \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">live-streamed online\u003c/a>, had an atmosphere unlike that of a typical corporate update. Attendees sipped red wine and posed for selfies. After the presentation, many of them crowded around a display case filled with several prototypes of Neuralink’s technology, jostling to take a perfectly framed smartphone photo. The scene was reminiscent of tourists in a museum shoving their way to the best position to snap a photo of a precious treasure from antiquity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s event was invitation-only — interested attendees had to fill out an online form making a case for why they should get a golden ticket — and those who received an emailed invitation were asked, “for security reasons,” to refrain from publicly sharing the location of the event and to avoid bringing “any bags larger than a purse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until Tuesday night, Neuralink had disclosed little about its research, despite big promises from Musk. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/elon-musk-discusses-neurolink-on-joe-rogan-podcast.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">September 2018 appearance\u003c/a> on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Musk smoked pot, drank whiskey, and posited that brain-machine interface technology “will enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/578542v1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">paper posted to a preprint server\u003c/a> in March, a team of researchers affiliated with Neuralink described a technique, which they likened to a “sewing machine,” similar to what was unveiled on Tuesday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink has the highest profile among a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbinsights.com/research/neurotech-startups-to-watch/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">number of startups working on brain-machine interfaces\u003c/a>. A few of the buzziest include \u003ca href=\"https://kernel.co/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kernel\u003c/a>, founded by the 41-year-old tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, and \u003ca href=\"https://paradromics.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Paradromics\u003c/a>, which is working on an implantable chip designed to record and stimulate electrical activity in the brain. DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense agency focused on futuristic research projects, has \u003ca href=\"https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-05-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">its own initiative\u003c/a> that’s funded research with an eye toward the development of brain-machine interfaces that could be used by members of the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the excitement around brain-machine interfaces, the field has made little commercial progress since the development of the first prototypes more than a decade ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first applications of the technology focused on movement. They aimed to read electrical signals in the motor cortex corresponding to the intention to move — and then used software to try to translate those signals into instructions to operate a computer cursor or robotic arm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, decoding brain signals into speech has \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/15/brain-computer-interface-translate-thoughts-speech/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">become the next frontier\u003c/a> in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/07/17/elon-musk-wants-to-test-brain-reading-implants-in-paralyzed-patients-next-year/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In front of a crowd of techies packed into a planetarium, Elon Musk strode out on stage, waxed philosophical about achieving symbiosis with artificial intelligence, and made his latest ambitious pronouncement in a career that’s been full of them: His startup Neuralink has developed technology meant to be implanted into the brain that’s designed to allow people to operate computers and smartphones with their thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With some early animal testing under its belt, Neuralink wants to start human testing of its so-called “brain-machine interface” in paralyzed patients by the end of next year. Notably, the startup has yet to convince the Food and Drug Administration to allow it do so, said Musk, who has tangled with regulators over his other companies Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And down the line? Musk wants the implants to be as safe and easy for healthy people to get as an elective procedure like LASIK vision correction surgery, the billionaire entrepreneur said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s much-hyped presentation, delivered by Musk and his team Tuesday night here at a science museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, marked the first time that the secretive startup has spoken publicly about its work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company also released an \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6204648-Neuralink-White-Paper.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unpublished research paper\u003c/a>, authored by “Elon Musk & Neuralink,” that described its technology. At its core are thousands of electrodes, laced into flexible “threads,” which are high-tech wires much thinner than a human hair. Neuralink has also built a surgical robot to insert the threads deep into the brain. The idea is that the electrodes would relay brain signals to an AirPod-like device mounted behind the ear that would wirelessly hook up with a smartphone app that people could control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 19 surgeries on rats, the startup successfully placed the threads 87% of the time, the paper said. Musk and his team said the technique has promise to capture more neural data more safely than existing approaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink will face a long list of formidable obstacles as it aims to move from rats to the clinic. Decoding the mysteries of the brain is a steeper challenge than manufacturing cars or drilling tunnels or even building rockets. Even peer-reviewed and published data in rats usually disappoints when it gets translated to human patients — and Neuralink doesn’t even have that yet. And there are plenty of reasons that neuroscientists who have worked on brain-machine interfaces for years have yet to make nearly any commercial traction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk, whose eccentricities and outlandish Twitter presence have helped him build a cult following, put that offbeat personality on full display on Tuesday night. Donning a black jacket, a white button-up shirt, and no tie, he mused at one point about his technology giving people the option of merging with AI. “We are a brain in a vat,” he remarked at another point. Later, he spoke dreamily about communicating telepathically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about Neuralink’s animal research by a member of the audience, Musk turned earnest for a moment in speaking about the startup’s seriousness in caring for the rats it uses in its research — before making a joke that didn’t quite land about “karmic payback” for the Black Plague.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink is also conducting research in monkeys at the University of California, Davis, Musk said. Then he spilled the goods: “A monkey has been able to control the computer with its brain,” Musk said. (At no point has the company provided evidence to support that assertion.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk had clearly gone off-script. Max Hodak, the company’s president up on stage beside him, seemed a bit rattled. “I didn’t realize we were running that result today, but there it goes,” Hodak said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for its planned clinical study, Neuralink said it would focus on enrolling patients with paralysis of all four limbs due to a spinal cord injury. No details were shared about the intended size of study, nor the specific endpoints it would aim to evaluate. Musk did, however, say offhandedly that one of the company’s goals is to allow patients who are paraplegic to use their thoughts to type at a rate of 40 words per minute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about the company’s FDA pathway, Hodak said Neuralink would attempt to pursue an early feasibility study, under what’s known as an investigational device exemption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ryan Stellar, vice president of product management at Enzyme, a startup working on software to help life sciences companies with the regulatory process, told STAT that he expects technology as ambitious as Neuralink’s will demand rigorous, long-term study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unless the FDA is blinded by Elon’s star power, a premarket trial of significant size” — 100-1,000 people — “will probably be needed, with a minimum observational period of two years, but perhaps as much as seven,” Stellar speculated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Tuesday night’s event, Musk trotted out several key members of the team of scientists and executives he’s assembled to carry out the company’s ambitions. Among them were the company’s senior scientist, Philip Sabes, who was previously a full-time professor at the University of California, San Francisco, researching how the brain processes movement. Another was the company’s head neurosurgeon, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, who delivered his part of the presentation in blue scrubs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Musk said the event’s primary purpose was to recruit talent to the San Francisco-based startup, which has a headcount near 100. Neuralink’s website \u003ca href=\"https://jobs.lever.co/neuralink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lists\u003c/a> a handful of job postings, including for an accountant and a software engineer who can build robots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink, which was incorporated in 2016, has brought in $158 million in funding, $100 million of it from Musk himself. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1708503/000170850319000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission\u003c/a> this past May, the company said that it had brought in $39 million of an anticipated $51 million funding round.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s big reveal, which was also \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vbh3t7WVI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">live-streamed online\u003c/a>, had an atmosphere unlike that of a typical corporate update. Attendees sipped red wine and posed for selfies. After the presentation, many of them crowded around a display case filled with several prototypes of Neuralink’s technology, jostling to take a perfectly framed smartphone photo. The scene was reminiscent of tourists in a museum shoving their way to the best position to snap a photo of a precious treasure from antiquity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink’s event was invitation-only — interested attendees had to fill out an online form making a case for why they should get a golden ticket — and those who received an emailed invitation were asked, “for security reasons,” to refrain from publicly sharing the location of the event and to avoid bringing “any bags larger than a purse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until Tuesday night, Neuralink had disclosed little about its research, despite big promises from Musk. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/elon-musk-discusses-neurolink-on-joe-rogan-podcast.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">September 2018 appearance\u003c/a> on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Musk smoked pot, drank whiskey, and posited that brain-machine interface technology “will enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/578542v1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">paper posted to a preprint server\u003c/a> in March, a team of researchers affiliated with Neuralink described a technique, which they likened to a “sewing machine,” similar to what was unveiled on Tuesday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neuralink has the highest profile among a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbinsights.com/research/neurotech-startups-to-watch/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">number of startups working on brain-machine interfaces\u003c/a>. A few of the buzziest include \u003ca href=\"https://kernel.co/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kernel\u003c/a>, founded by the 41-year-old tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, and \u003ca href=\"https://paradromics.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Paradromics\u003c/a>, which is working on an implantable chip designed to record and stimulate electrical activity in the brain. DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense agency focused on futuristic research projects, has \u003ca href=\"https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-05-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">its own initiative\u003c/a> that’s funded research with an eye toward the development of brain-machine interfaces that could be used by members of the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the excitement around brain-machine interfaces, the field has made little commercial progress since the development of the first prototypes more than a decade ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first applications of the technology focused on movement. They aimed to read electrical signals in the motor cortex corresponding to the intention to move — and then used software to try to translate those signals into instructions to operate a computer cursor or robotic arm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, decoding brain signals into speech has \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/15/brain-computer-interface-translate-thoughts-speech/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">become the next frontier\u003c/a> in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "This Will Be a Sweltering Century in California and the Nation",
"headTitle": "This Will Be a Sweltering Century in California and the Nation | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Extreme heat \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/phoenix-flights-canceled-heat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grounds\u003c/a> planes in Arizona. Last year in Australia, the government \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44720166\">blamed\u003c/a> it for melting tires on a road. And during a particularly brutal July in 2006, heat \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/epic/impacts-biological-systems/heat-related-mortality-and-morbidity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">killed\u003c/a> at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627866/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">163 Californians\u003c/a>, with state epidemiologists estimating that it contributed to hundreds more deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='right' size='medium' citation='Kristina Dahl, Union of Concerned Scientists']‘These results are really terrifying to me.’[/pullquote]If emissions aren’t seriously curbed — that is, even if the climate continues to warm with some abatement — researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists say millions more people in California alone can expect at least \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a month\u003c/a> of extreme heat days each year, those days bringing with them more health risks and rippling environmental impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even in the next few decades we’ll see \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">major increases\u003c/a> in the frequency of really hot days,” says Kristina Dahl, a researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who authored the study. “These results are really terrifying to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global climate models project how the planet will warm under various scenarios, anticipating a range of atmospheric conditions. The study’s authors ran climate models with two different emissions scenarios: one, where emissions begin to be curbed by mid-century; and a second, where no policies achieve significant reductions in emissions. Using daily high temperatures, the researchers calculated what’s known as heat indexes for cities and counties \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">around the country\u003c/a>; the heat index is what the temperature “feels like” when humidity is taken into account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/6OZjI/8/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along a national “sunbelt,” inland cities, including in California’s Central Valley, could count dramatic increases in days with a heat index above 105 degrees. Until recently, Fresno averaged three such days a year, but the study found by late century, Fresno could have 58 days that feel like 105 degrees, in the absence of emissions limits. Even if governments rapidly move toward arresting global warming at a threshold of 2 degrees Celsius, parts of the Central Valley could still experience more than two-and-a-half weeks of heat that severe each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where high heat is already common, as in Southern California, the study projects it will continue to grow. Los Angeles has experienced a heat index of 90 for twenty days a year, on average; even with some emissions curbed, the study projects that number will triple toward the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/37joO/12/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indio, a Sonoran Desert town in San Bernardino County, historically has racked up more than 100 high heat days a year, but it’s been rare that the heat index is so high as to be “off the charts.” Without action to curb emissions, the study’s authors say Indio can expect, on average, 37 days a year of excessive and dangerous heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Significantly, modeling suggests that the most dramatic transformations in the state are likely to come where the climate has been temperate — along the coast and in Northern California. Within a half century, the Sonoma County town of Petaluma could have 11 times as many days where the heat feels like 90 degrees. Santa Barbara County could have 27 times the number of days where that happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='right' size='small']To Protect Yourself and Loved Ones From Heat:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Drink more water whether you’re active or not\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Go to an air-conditioned building, such as a library, movie theater, senior center, grocery store, or shopping mall.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Check on elderly people twice day\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>See \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11753650/bay-area-braces-for-extreme-heat-advisory-in-effect\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">these tips\u003c/a> from KQED’s audience[/pullquote]\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>No one heat index or temperature definitely protects against health risks, and no one threshold triggers public response to heat. According to the National Weather Service, heat cramps, sun stroke, and heat exhaustion are possible at a heat index of 90 for some groups; in California, state labor regulations offer outdoor workers additional protections at that point. At a heat index of 105, according to federal authorities, even healthy adults are at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study may well underestimate some contributions to rising heat, especially in cities. In the built environment, concrete, asphalt and glass warm cities; so does energy consumption, including air conditioners that release heat to the atmosphere; so do greenhouse gases, like those released from cars and power plants. The resulting urban heat island isn’t accounted for in the new study, according to Dahl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That makes some of the results we have for cities conservative,” she says, “because, realistically, they’ll be experiencing even hotter temperatures earlier than we’re projecting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the projections don’t account at all for some other climate-driven temperature shifts. In temperate northern California, nighttime lows have risen, making it harder for people’s bodies to recover when they become overheated. In 2017, during a Labor Day heat wave in San Francisco, it was still \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1932692/climate-change-dishes-up-dangerous-heat-even-in-the-bay-area\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">80 degrees near midnight\u003c/a>; that weekend, the city’s coroner’s office counted six deaths attributable to heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While Dahl says the new study focuses solely on high heat index days, “we do know that if people don’t have the opportunity to cool down at night, their bodies just carry that potential heat stress over from one day to the next, and that can build up over time.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1932736\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-674x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"334\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-674x1200.jpg 674w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-160x285.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-240x427.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-375x668.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-520x926.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px\">\u003c/a>Some Bay Area counties trigger warnings well below a heat index of 90 degrees. The city of San Francisco considers it an extreme heat day when temperatures hit 85; based on Cal-Adapt projections, by late century city officials are \u003ca href=\"https://sfgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=093e26ddb26a4e3180fa1e35158858bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">planning for \u003c/a>that to happen 15 days a year. Last month, San Francisco’s departments of public health and emergency management \u003ca href=\"https://sfmayor.org/article/mayor-breed-announces-update-citys-air-quality-and-extreme-weather-emergency-preparedness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">updated\u003c/a> the city’s emergency plan, including directions for respite centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a heat wave last month in San Francisco, two sites in Bayview and Hunters’ Point, Mother Brown’s Kitchen and the Adult Day Senior Center, provided cooling resources to their clients. The San Francisco Foundation has funded that work with a grant to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.empowersf.org/resilientbayview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Resilient Bayview\u003c/a> initiative, a program of the city’s Neighborhood Empowerment Network. The network also sponsors block-by-block potlucks known as Neighborfests; the idea is that through planning a party, neighbors can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1933237/investigation-finds-home-can-be-the-most-dangerous-place-in-a-heat-wave\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">develop skills\u003c/a> in community resilience and disaster response. This year, San Francisco’s Neighborfest idea is expanding in the East Bay and \u003ca href=\"https://srcity.org/2897/Neighborfest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in Santa Rosa\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But experts say planning for diffuse and spotty heat waves in the greater Bay Area is challenging when there’s no historical practice or a response infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’ve had the impetus to take my kids to the library, thinking, ‘Well, of course the library will be cool,’ but not all of the libraries here are air-conditioned,” says UCS’s Dahl, a San Francisco resident. “So we don’t have places to escape the heat when our homes aren’t air-conditioned here in the Bay Area.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Risks related to heat, such as wildfires and air pollution, aren’t analyzed in the study. And local public officials are still taking the full measure of heat’s impacts. In San Mateo County, officials are using a CalTrans planning grant to study climate hazards, map heat islands where the tree canopy is low and more vulnerable people live, and communicate risk to the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jasneet Sharma, an acting program manager for sustainability in San Mateo County, says the county is considering wider impacts. For example, sustained high temperatures threaten public transit systems by warping tracks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“An inability to cool homes would mean not just discomfort but unsafe conditions for seniors, farmworkers on the coastside and vulnerable community members,” Sharma says. “We know for certain we’re going to be impacted by rising heat. The full story goes beyond just the temperatures.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Extreme heat \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/phoenix-flights-canceled-heat/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">grounds\u003c/a> planes in Arizona. Last year in Australia, the government \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44720166\">blamed\u003c/a> it for melting tires on a road. And during a particularly brutal July in 2006, heat \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/epic/impacts-biological-systems/heat-related-mortality-and-morbidity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">killed\u003c/a> at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627866/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">163 Californians\u003c/a>, with state epidemiologists estimating that it contributed to hundreds more deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>If emissions aren’t seriously curbed — that is, even if the climate continues to warm with some abatement — researchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists say millions more people in California alone can expect at least \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a month\u003c/a> of extreme heat days each year, those days bringing with them more health risks and rippling environmental impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even in the next few decades we’ll see \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">major increases\u003c/a> in the frequency of really hot days,” says Kristina Dahl, a researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who authored the study. “These results are really terrifying to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Global climate models project how the planet will warm under various scenarios, anticipating a range of atmospheric conditions. The study’s authors ran climate models with two different emissions scenarios: one, where emissions begin to be curbed by mid-century; and a second, where no policies achieve significant reductions in emissions. Using daily high temperatures, the researchers calculated what’s known as heat indexes for cities and counties \u003ca href=\"https://ucsusa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=e4e9082a1ec343c794d27f3e12dd006d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">around the country\u003c/a>; the heat index is what the temperature “feels like” when humidity is taken into account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/6OZjI/8/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along a national “sunbelt,” inland cities, including in California’s Central Valley, could count dramatic increases in days with a heat index above 105 degrees. Until recently, Fresno averaged three such days a year, but the study found by late century, Fresno could have 58 days that feel like 105 degrees, in the absence of emissions limits. Even if governments rapidly move toward arresting global warming at a threshold of 2 degrees Celsius, parts of the Central Valley could still experience more than two-and-a-half weeks of heat that severe each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where high heat is already common, as in Southern California, the study projects it will continue to grow. Los Angeles has experienced a heat index of 90 for twenty days a year, on average; even with some emissions curbed, the study projects that number will triple toward the end of the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/37joO/12/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indio, a Sonoran Desert town in San Bernardino County, historically has racked up more than 100 high heat days a year, but it’s been rare that the heat index is so high as to be “off the charts.” Without action to curb emissions, the study’s authors say Indio can expect, on average, 37 days a year of excessive and dangerous heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Significantly, modeling suggests that the most dramatic transformations in the state are likely to come where the climate has been temperate — along the coast and in Northern California. Within a half century, the Sonoma County town of Petaluma could have 11 times as many days where the heat feels like 90 degrees. Santa Barbara County could have 27 times the number of days where that happens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "To Protect Yourself and Loved Ones From Heat:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Drink more water whether you’re active or not\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Go to an air-conditioned building, such as a library, movie theater, senior center, grocery store, or shopping mall.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Check on elderly people twice day\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>See \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11753650/bay-area-braces-for-extreme-heat-advisory-in-effect\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">these tips\u003c/a> from KQED’s audience",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>No one heat index or temperature definitely protects against health risks, and no one threshold triggers public response to heat. According to the National Weather Service, heat cramps, sun stroke, and heat exhaustion are possible at a heat index of 90 for some groups; in California, state labor regulations offer outdoor workers additional protections at that point. At a heat index of 105, according to federal authorities, even healthy adults are at risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study may well underestimate some contributions to rising heat, especially in cities. In the built environment, concrete, asphalt and glass warm cities; so does energy consumption, including air conditioners that release heat to the atmosphere; so do greenhouse gases, like those released from cars and power plants. The resulting urban heat island isn’t accounted for in the new study, according to Dahl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That makes some of the results we have for cities conservative,” she says, “because, realistically, they’ll be experiencing even hotter temperatures earlier than we’re projecting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the projections don’t account at all for some other climate-driven temperature shifts. In temperate northern California, nighttime lows have risen, making it harder for people’s bodies to recover when they become overheated. In 2017, during a Labor Day heat wave in San Francisco, it was still \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1932692/climate-change-dishes-up-dangerous-heat-even-in-the-bay-area\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">80 degrees near midnight\u003c/a>; that weekend, the city’s coroner’s office counted six deaths attributable to heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While Dahl says the new study focuses solely on high heat index days, “we do know that if people don’t have the opportunity to cool down at night, their bodies just carry that potential heat stress over from one day to the next, and that can build up over time.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1932736\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-674x1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"334\" height=\"594\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-674x1200.jpg 674w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-160x285.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-240x427.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-375x668.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B-520x926.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2018/10/KQEDScience_Heat_181012B.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px\">\u003c/a>Some Bay Area counties trigger warnings well below a heat index of 90 degrees. The city of San Francisco considers it an extreme heat day when temperatures hit 85; based on Cal-Adapt projections, by late century city officials are \u003ca href=\"https://sfgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=093e26ddb26a4e3180fa1e35158858bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">planning for \u003c/a>that to happen 15 days a year. Last month, San Francisco’s departments of public health and emergency management \u003ca href=\"https://sfmayor.org/article/mayor-breed-announces-update-citys-air-quality-and-extreme-weather-emergency-preparedness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">updated\u003c/a> the city’s emergency plan, including directions for respite centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a heat wave last month in San Francisco, two sites in Bayview and Hunters’ Point, Mother Brown’s Kitchen and the Adult Day Senior Center, provided cooling resources to their clients. The San Francisco Foundation has funded that work with a grant to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.empowersf.org/resilientbayview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Resilient Bayview\u003c/a> initiative, a program of the city’s Neighborhood Empowerment Network. The network also sponsors block-by-block potlucks known as Neighborfests; the idea is that through planning a party, neighbors can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1933237/investigation-finds-home-can-be-the-most-dangerous-place-in-a-heat-wave\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">develop skills\u003c/a> in community resilience and disaster response. This year, San Francisco’s Neighborfest idea is expanding in the East Bay and \u003ca href=\"https://srcity.org/2897/Neighborfest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in Santa Rosa\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But experts say planning for diffuse and spotty heat waves in the greater Bay Area is challenging when there’s no historical practice or a response infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I’ve had the impetus to take my kids to the library, thinking, ‘Well, of course the library will be cool,’ but not all of the libraries here are air-conditioned,” says UCS’s Dahl, a San Francisco resident. “So we don’t have places to escape the heat when our homes aren’t air-conditioned here in the Bay Area.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Risks related to heat, such as wildfires and air pollution, aren’t analyzed in the study. And local public officials are still taking the full measure of heat’s impacts. In San Mateo County, officials are using a CalTrans planning grant to study climate hazards, map heat islands where the tree canopy is low and more vulnerable people live, and communicate risk to the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jasneet Sharma, an acting program manager for sustainability in San Mateo County, says the county is considering wider impacts. For example, sustained high temperatures threaten public transit systems by warping tracks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“An inability to cool homes would mean not just discomfort but unsafe conditions for seniors, farmworkers on the coastside and vulnerable community members,” Sharma says. “We know for certain we’re going to be impacted by rising heat. The full story goes beyond just the temperatures.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob Wieckowski stands alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was the only state senator to vote against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to clean up dirty drinking water in the California’s poorest communities, which passed the Senate in a 38-1 vote on Monday.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill — \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SB 200\u003c/a> — passed the Assembly last week without a single vote in opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To be clear, Wieckowski thinks clean water is an important priority. His quibble is that California will pay for it with revenue generated from the state’s cap-and-trade auction.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His argument: money in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is supposed to be spent on, well, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Diverting limited GGRF dollars away from cutting greenhouse gas emissions to other important causes, is not a path we should go down now or in the future,” Wieckowski said in a speech on the Senate floor.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Members, we are falling farther behind in our commitment to meeting the Paris Accord,” he said. “We should not be creating a false dichotomy that is a by-product of this deal – pitting clean air against clean water. We know all Californians can, and must, have both.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bill includes $100 million from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and another $33 million from the general fund to be spent on rebuilding broken drinking water infrastructure in unincorporated communities and small towns across the state. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it’s not a one-time money diversion. The bill also seeks to use 5% of California’s cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this year, the governor proposed a tax on all Californians’ water bills that would fund programs to clean up the dirty water, and in January, Newsom and his cabinet visited Monterey Park Tract in Ceres, a Central Valley city with contaminated wells, to highlight the issue.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/agsecross/status/1083853934081372160\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Legislature didn’t approve the plan, as some lawmakers worried that their constituents would object to a new monthly tax at a time when the state is enjoying a budget surplus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill hasn’t reached Newsom’s desk yet, but he will have 12 days to sign it, when it does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob Wieckowski stands alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was the only state senator to vote against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to clean up dirty drinking water in the California’s poorest communities, which passed the Senate in a 38-1 vote on Monday.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill — \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SB 200\u003c/a> — passed the Assembly last week without a single vote in opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To be clear, Wieckowski thinks clean water is an important priority. His quibble is that California will pay for it with revenue generated from the state’s cap-and-trade auction.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His argument: money in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is supposed to be spent on, well, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Diverting limited GGRF dollars away from cutting greenhouse gas emissions to other important causes, is not a path we should go down now or in the future,” Wieckowski said in a speech on the Senate floor.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Members, we are falling farther behind in our commitment to meeting the Paris Accord,” he said. “We should not be creating a false dichotomy that is a by-product of this deal – pitting clean air against clean water. We know all Californians can, and must, have both.” \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bill includes $100 million from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and another $33 million from the general fund to be spent on rebuilding broken drinking water infrastructure in unincorporated communities and small towns across the state. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it’s not a one-time money diversion. The bill also seeks to use 5% of California’s cap-and-trade proceeds, up to $130 million annually, for clean water projects until 2030. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this year, the governor proposed a tax on all Californians’ water bills that would fund programs to clean up the dirty water, and in January, Newsom and his cabinet visited Monterey Park Tract in Ceres, a Central Valley city with contaminated wells, to highlight the issue.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "How Scientists Detect the Most Lethal Shellfish Toxin You've Never Heard Of",
"headTitle": "How Scientists Detect the Most Lethal Shellfish Toxin You’ve Never Heard Of | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There is a weapon that is released by algae around the world and concentrated, invisible, in the flesh of shellfish. An amount the size of a poppy seed is enough to kill a grown person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s part of an onslaught from which we’ve defended ourselves for decades, which might be why you’ve never heard of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saxitoxin is lethal at concentrations 1,000 times lower than is cyanide. It is a powerful neurotoxin released by plankton in algal blooms. Saxitoxin is so potent, in fact, that it was the only marine toxin declared a \u003ca href=\"http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/cwc/text\">chemical weapon\u003c/a> by the 1993 international treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, and bears a long and complex history with the U.S. government in particular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CIA \u003ca href=\"https://www.eucom.mil/media-library/article/23319/this-week-in-eucom-history-april-30-may-6\">reportedly gave\u003c/a> pilots of U-2 reconnaissance planes a coin containing saxitoxin that they could use to commit suicide if they were captured. President Nixon ultimately banned the military’s use of biological weapons, including saxitoxin, in 1969, but the CIA neglected to destroy a stockpile of 10 grams of the substance that it had distilled from butter clams. The supply was rediscovered in a storage facility and distributed to scientists at NIH after a pharmacologist begged the CIA not to destroy the cache. He predicted, correctly, that the toxin’s potency offered enormous potential for medical research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1946490\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1946490\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1200x798.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Washing or heating does not make saxitoxin-contaminated shellfish safe to eat. \u003ccite>(Fadel Senna/AFP/GettyImages)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In both marine and freshwater systems, shellfish accumulate saxitoxin and concentrate it into doses dangerous to humans, fish, birds and marine mammals, although the shellfish themselves remain unharmed. The toxin is undetectable by sight or smell and is heat-stable, which means that even a pan-seared toxic mussel is still a toxic mussel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When ingested by humans, saxitoxin causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, symptoms of which include tingling, numbness, and, if consumed in high enough quantities, paralysis, asphyxiation and death. There is no known cure for saxitoxin poisoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>California’s History of Toxin Monitoring\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So why haven’t you heard of this potent algal toxin? Thank state health officials. In California, risk is managed by the diligent monitoring of the California Department of Public Health. Every year, CDPH issues a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CEH/DRSEM/Pages/EMB/Shellfish/Annual-Mussel-Quarantine.aspx\">mussel quarantine\u003c/a> for all coastal areas from Oregon to the Mexican border between May 1 and Oct. 31, adjusting its window according to changes in saxitoxin concentration. When concentrations are dangerously high, the state prohibits all recreational harvesting of mussels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public health department requires commercial seafood harvesters to submit shellfish samples at least weekly to retain their certification, which is one reason shellfish are available even when bans are in place. However, no commercial shellfish harvest occurs in San Francisco Bay, and that’s because, while coastal shellfish are monitored for paralytic shellfish toxins, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568988318300258\">no such monitoring \u003c/a>occurs in the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the earliest recorded instances of saxitoxin poisoning occurred in San Francisco, before seasonal bans were commonplace, even before scientists knew what was poisoning their coast. In 1927, more than 100 people fell ill and six people died from paralytic shellfish poisoning. Panic spread. Public health workers quickly posted warning signs and scientists worked to identify the source of the widespread sickness. No cases were reported the following year, perhaps, as noted in a scientific paper published in 1937, because “people showed little desire, after the experience of 1927, to gather shell-fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the monitoring that began in 1927 has kept poisoning numbers low; Dr. Eddie Garcia, a fellow in medical toxicology at UCSF and the California Poison Control Center, says that in 2017, only 117 cases were reported across the entire United States, none of them fatal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Saxitoxin is Relevant Now\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944161\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/psp-e1562172091893.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-complete_open_graph wp-image-1944161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/psp-1200x1129.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"602\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Recorded cases of PSP in 1970 and 2018. Scientists say that we’ve only recently begun to understand the full extent of how common PSP really is. \u003ccite>(US National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists agree it’s critically important to have infallible toxin detection methods, particularly in the coming years. For one thing, experts say algal blooms are becoming more common, likely due to pollution and climate change, among other reasons. And even with decent monitoring already in place, some people are still getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a sense, it’s like a bad intersection where, if you put up some good traffic lights, you can improve it a lot,” said Don Anderson, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who has spent more than 40 years studying harmful algal blooms. “It’s the people who don’t obey the restrictions, whether it be a stop light or a closure, that get sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014, for instance, a family vacationing on the coast of Washington made a soup out of mussels. It was midnight, too dark to read the signs that might have warned them not to eat shellfish they had caught themselves, and all seven ended up in the emergency room. One woman lost the ability to stand. The next day, the Washington Department of Health detected a saxitoxin concentration over 75 times the alert level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in daylight, not every Californian might be aware of the quarantine; some may not be able to read signs because of a language barrier, or they may think different rules apply. If you’re relying on the old adage that you can’t eat mussels in months without the letter ‘r’, for example, it’s time to update your guidelines — this belief can be traced all the way back to at least 1599, when a \u003ca href=\"https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A17373.0001.001/1:12.19?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\">cookbook\u003c/a> warned against consuming oysters during summer months, most likely because bacteria were especially rampant during summer heat without refrigeration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944164\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 290px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1944164\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign.jpg 547w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign-160x243.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An example of a warning sign posted in San Mateo County. \u003ccite>(San Mateo County Health)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Although widely performed, saxitoxin testing is not terribly humane. In order to determine saxitoxin concentration, the most popular of three FDA-approved methods is to inject a mouse with a small amount of liquid containing an expected toxin, wait for the mouse to die, and record the time of its last breath. According to Maggie Broadwater, acting Harmful Algal Bloom Program Manager at NOAA, this mouse test is still used by CDPH to monitor toxin levels. Other methods do exist, but they involve transporting samples back to a laboratory and days of testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As algal blooms become more frequent and we begin to better understand how saxitoxin levels change, new methods have emerged that may transform the dynamics of our relationship with toxins — how we detect them, how we treat them, and how we learn from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Lesson from the Bullfrog\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of saxitoxin detection may come from an unlikely source: the common bullfrog. Researchers at UCSF published a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/06/414716/frog-protein-may-mitigate-dangers-posed-toxic-marine-microbes-fueled-climate\">recent study\u003c/a> describing the structure of a protein called \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaax2650\">saxiphilin\u003c/a>. It’s found in the heart and blood of the American bullfrog, which is resistant to saxitoxin poisoning. Using x-ray crystallography, researchers in the laboratory of Daniel Minor, professor at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, identified a pocket-like region in this protein that binds to saxitoxin. Scientists think that the bullfrog’s store of saxiphilin naturally reduces the concentration of saxitoxin in its bloodstream, giving the liver time to destroy the toxin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Structurally, the protein and its binding pocket look a lot like transferrin — that’s a family of proteins that bind to iron and ferry it around the body. Saxiphilin is so similar, in fact, that Minor believes the two proteins must share a common origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really evolution at work: repurposing a protein scaffold to do something else,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability to bind to saxitoxin could also someday lead to a treatment for shellfish poisoning. It might provide scientists with a blueprint for developing synthetic molecules that could be administered to patients who digest the toxin, to prevent paralysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Vision for Monitoring Shellfish\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are also designing new-generation detection methods to improve coastal monitoring efforts. A hundred miles south of UCSF, scientists are developing a robotic technology that could replace the mouse-poison test. A team of researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has a device they affectionately call “lab in a trashcan,” or more officially, \u003ca href=\"https://www.mbari.org/technology/emerging-current-tools/instruments/environmental-sample-processor-esp/\">Environmental Sample Processor\u003c/a>. [pullquote size='medium' align='left' citation='Daniel Minor, UCSF']‘This is really evolution at work: repurposing a protein scaffold to do something else.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When submerged in seawater, the substances in these devices sense algae toxin levels and can provide health officials with real-time data. Some are already being tested \u003ca href=\"http://science.whoi.edu/esp/fieldcelldata\">across the country\u003c/a>, and researchers have their sights set on a next-generation sample processor, shaped like a torpedo, which could move across the ocean floor, monitoring toxin levels as it goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute say the sensor elements, particularly those that detect saxitoxin, could still be improved by a greater knowledge of what governs the toxin’s binding behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944186\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 424px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1944186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"424\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robotic sensors, called Environmental Sample Processors, are designed by Chris Scholin and colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. ESPs could be the future of toxin detection, leading to more dynamic monitoring systems informing shellfish bans. \u003ccite>(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“To have that information, the structural information, and to potentially synthesize that, is really a pretty big step,” said Greg Doucette, a research oceanographer at NOAA who works on the ESPs. “[It’s] something that might provide us with another tool that we could use on instruments like the ESP to detect the toxins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers like Don Anderson are excited by the potential of a toxin-binding blueprint to impact new detection methods. Anderson dreams of a future, maybe only 5 to 10 years away, in which coasts are lined with robotic sensors like the ESP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States could then lift mussel consumption bans for portions of the coast. Families could make soup with shellfish. It’s possible that, in this imagined future, a little frog protein would be the key to opening the coast again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story stated that the saxitoxin coin was given to pilots of spy planes during WWII. That is incorrect; during WWII, pilots had a pill they could take to commit suicide if they were shot down. The CIA developed saxitoxin in a search for a replacement for the pill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Saxitoxin is a potent neurotoxin released by shellfish all around the world. So why haven't you heard of it?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There is a weapon that is released by algae around the world and concentrated, invisible, in the flesh of shellfish. An amount the size of a poppy seed is enough to kill a grown person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s part of an onslaught from which we’ve defended ourselves for decades, which might be why you’ve never heard of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saxitoxin is lethal at concentrations 1,000 times lower than is cyanide. It is a powerful neurotoxin released by plankton in algal blooms. Saxitoxin is so potent, in fact, that it was the only marine toxin declared a \u003ca href=\"http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/cwc/text\">chemical weapon\u003c/a> by the 1993 international treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, and bears a long and complex history with the U.S. government in particular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CIA \u003ca href=\"https://www.eucom.mil/media-library/article/23319/this-week-in-eucom-history-april-30-may-6\">reportedly gave\u003c/a> pilots of U-2 reconnaissance planes a coin containing saxitoxin that they could use to commit suicide if they were captured. President Nixon ultimately banned the military’s use of biological weapons, including saxitoxin, in 1969, but the CIA neglected to destroy a stockpile of 10 grams of the substance that it had distilled from butter clams. The supply was rediscovered in a storage facility and distributed to scientists at NIH after a pharmacologist begged the CIA not to destroy the cache. He predicted, correctly, that the toxin’s potency offered enormous potential for medical research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1946490\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1946490\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1200x798.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/07/mussels_GettyImages-150458709.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Washing or heating does not make saxitoxin-contaminated shellfish safe to eat. \u003ccite>(Fadel Senna/AFP/GettyImages)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In both marine and freshwater systems, shellfish accumulate saxitoxin and concentrate it into doses dangerous to humans, fish, birds and marine mammals, although the shellfish themselves remain unharmed. The toxin is undetectable by sight or smell and is heat-stable, which means that even a pan-seared toxic mussel is still a toxic mussel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When ingested by humans, saxitoxin causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, symptoms of which include tingling, numbness, and, if consumed in high enough quantities, paralysis, asphyxiation and death. There is no known cure for saxitoxin poisoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>California’s History of Toxin Monitoring\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So why haven’t you heard of this potent algal toxin? Thank state health officials. In California, risk is managed by the diligent monitoring of the California Department of Public Health. Every year, CDPH issues a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CEH/DRSEM/Pages/EMB/Shellfish/Annual-Mussel-Quarantine.aspx\">mussel quarantine\u003c/a> for all coastal areas from Oregon to the Mexican border between May 1 and Oct. 31, adjusting its window according to changes in saxitoxin concentration. When concentrations are dangerously high, the state prohibits all recreational harvesting of mussels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public health department requires commercial seafood harvesters to submit shellfish samples at least weekly to retain their certification, which is one reason shellfish are available even when bans are in place. However, no commercial shellfish harvest occurs in San Francisco Bay, and that’s because, while coastal shellfish are monitored for paralytic shellfish toxins, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568988318300258\">no such monitoring \u003c/a>occurs in the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the earliest recorded instances of saxitoxin poisoning occurred in San Francisco, before seasonal bans were commonplace, even before scientists knew what was poisoning their coast. In 1927, more than 100 people fell ill and six people died from paralytic shellfish poisoning. Panic spread. Public health workers quickly posted warning signs and scientists worked to identify the source of the widespread sickness. No cases were reported the following year, perhaps, as noted in a scientific paper published in 1937, because “people showed little desire, after the experience of 1927, to gather shell-fish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, the monitoring that began in 1927 has kept poisoning numbers low; Dr. Eddie Garcia, a fellow in medical toxicology at UCSF and the California Poison Control Center, says that in 2017, only 117 cases were reported across the entire United States, none of them fatal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why Saxitoxin is Relevant Now\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944161\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/psp-e1562172091893.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-complete_open_graph wp-image-1944161\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/psp-1200x1129.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"602\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Recorded cases of PSP in 1970 and 2018. Scientists say that we’ve only recently begun to understand the full extent of how common PSP really is. \u003ccite>(US National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists agree it’s critically important to have infallible toxin detection methods, particularly in the coming years. For one thing, experts say algal blooms are becoming more common, likely due to pollution and climate change, among other reasons. And even with decent monitoring already in place, some people are still getting sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In a sense, it’s like a bad intersection where, if you put up some good traffic lights, you can improve it a lot,” said Don Anderson, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who has spent more than 40 years studying harmful algal blooms. “It’s the people who don’t obey the restrictions, whether it be a stop light or a closure, that get sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2014, for instance, a family vacationing on the coast of Washington made a soup out of mussels. It was midnight, too dark to read the signs that might have warned them not to eat shellfish they had caught themselves, and all seven ended up in the emergency room. One woman lost the ability to stand. The next day, the Washington Department of Health detected a saxitoxin concentration over 75 times the alert level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in daylight, not every Californian might be aware of the quarantine; some may not be able to read signs because of a language barrier, or they may think different rules apply. If you’re relying on the old adage that you can’t eat mussels in months without the letter ‘r’, for example, it’s time to update your guidelines — this belief can be traced all the way back to at least 1599, when a \u003ca href=\"https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A17373.0001.001/1:12.19?rgn=div2;view=fulltext\">cookbook\u003c/a> warned against consuming oysters during summer months, most likely because bacteria were especially rampant during summer heat without refrigeration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944164\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 290px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1944164\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign.jpg 547w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/warning-sign-160x243.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An example of a warning sign posted in San Mateo County. \u003ccite>(San Mateo County Health)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Although widely performed, saxitoxin testing is not terribly humane. In order to determine saxitoxin concentration, the most popular of three FDA-approved methods is to inject a mouse with a small amount of liquid containing an expected toxin, wait for the mouse to die, and record the time of its last breath. According to Maggie Broadwater, acting Harmful Algal Bloom Program Manager at NOAA, this mouse test is still used by CDPH to monitor toxin levels. Other methods do exist, but they involve transporting samples back to a laboratory and days of testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As algal blooms become more frequent and we begin to better understand how saxitoxin levels change, new methods have emerged that may transform the dynamics of our relationship with toxins — how we detect them, how we treat them, and how we learn from them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Lesson from the Bullfrog\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of saxitoxin detection may come from an unlikely source: the common bullfrog. Researchers at UCSF published a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/06/414716/frog-protein-may-mitigate-dangers-posed-toxic-marine-microbes-fueled-climate\">recent study\u003c/a> describing the structure of a protein called \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaax2650\">saxiphilin\u003c/a>. It’s found in the heart and blood of the American bullfrog, which is resistant to saxitoxin poisoning. Using x-ray crystallography, researchers in the laboratory of Daniel Minor, professor at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, identified a pocket-like region in this protein that binds to saxitoxin. Scientists think that the bullfrog’s store of saxiphilin naturally reduces the concentration of saxitoxin in its bloodstream, giving the liver time to destroy the toxin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Structurally, the protein and its binding pocket look a lot like transferrin — that’s a family of proteins that bind to iron and ferry it around the body. Saxiphilin is so similar, in fact, that Minor believes the two proteins must share a common origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is really evolution at work: repurposing a protein scaffold to do something else,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability to bind to saxitoxin could also someday lead to a treatment for shellfish poisoning. It might provide scientists with a blueprint for developing synthetic molecules that could be administered to patients who digest the toxin, to prevent paralysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Vision for Monitoring Shellfish\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists are also designing new-generation detection methods to improve coastal monitoring efforts. A hundred miles south of UCSF, scientists are developing a robotic technology that could replace the mouse-poison test. A team of researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has a device they affectionately call “lab in a trashcan,” or more officially, \u003ca href=\"https://www.mbari.org/technology/emerging-current-tools/instruments/environmental-sample-processor-esp/\">Environmental Sample Processor\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When submerged in seawater, the substances in these devices sense algae toxin levels and can provide health officials with real-time data. Some are already being tested \u003ca href=\"http://science.whoi.edu/esp/fieldcelldata\">across the country\u003c/a>, and researchers have their sights set on a next-generation sample processor, shaped like a torpedo, which could move across the ocean floor, monitoring toxin levels as it goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute say the sensor elements, particularly those that detect saxitoxin, could still be improved by a greater knowledge of what governs the toxin’s binding behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1944186\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 424px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1944186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"424\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/esp1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robotic sensors, called Environmental Sample Processors, are designed by Chris Scholin and colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. ESPs could be the future of toxin detection, leading to more dynamic monitoring systems informing shellfish bans. \u003ccite>(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“To have that information, the structural information, and to potentially synthesize that, is really a pretty big step,” said Greg Doucette, a research oceanographer at NOAA who works on the ESPs. “[It’s] something that might provide us with another tool that we could use on instruments like the ESP to detect the toxins.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers like Don Anderson are excited by the potential of a toxin-binding blueprint to impact new detection methods. Anderson dreams of a future, maybe only 5 to 10 years away, in which coasts are lined with robotic sensors like the ESP.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States could then lift mussel consumption bans for portions of the coast. Families could make soup with shellfish. It’s possible that, in this imagined future, a little frog protein would be the key to opening the coast again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story stated that the saxitoxin coin was given to pilots of spy planes during WWII. That is incorrect; during WWII, pilots had a pill they could take to commit suicide if they were shot down. The CIA developed saxitoxin in a search for a replacement for the pill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "CRISPR Wipes Out HIV in Some Mice",
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"content": "\u003cp>For the millions of people infected with HIV, the best way to manage the disease is antiretroviral therapy, which can lower the amount of HIV replicating in the body to undetectable levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003carticle>\n\u003cdiv class=\"body-text\">\n\u003cp>But antiretroviral therapy (ART) can only manage HIV, never eliminate it — leading people to rely on the \u003ca href=\"https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/guidelines/html/1/adult-and-adolescent-arv/459/cost-considerations-and-antiretroviral-therapy\">expensive drugs\u003c/a> for decades. Plus if ART is halted by these patients, HIV bounces back and its levels rise in a matter of weeks. In 2017 the World Health Organization \u003ca href=\"https://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/\">reported that of\u003c/a> 36.9 million people living with HIV, 21.7 million were taking ART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new study of mice charts a preliminary path to eliminating this medication dependency, through an injection of gene-editing \u003ca href=\"https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genomicresearch/genomeediting\">CRISPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing HIV from a person’s body is so hard because “once the virus infects cells [the] viral genome integrates into the host genome and then becomes part of our DNA,” said Kamel Khalili, a neurovirologist at Temple University who co-led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once this integration happens, ART can’t reverse it — at least not on its own. But Khalili and his colleagues found combining CRISPR, which can alter DNA, with ART can remove the lingering signs of HIV in a mouse model of the disease. The collaborative effort between researchers at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center was \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10366-y\">reported today in Nature Communications\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Results in mouse models do not always translate into effective treatments in humans, but Fyodor Urnov says this study is an “important next step” in addressing a disease like HIV with a technique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Gene editing is the first-ever technology we have had to address disease at the DNA level,” said Urnov, who works at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California Berkeley and was not involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CRISPR, which scientists can program to cut DNA at specific sites, has garnered attention as a potential cure for genetic diseases, such as \u003ca href=\"https://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/crisprcas9-approach-for-cystic-fibrosis/\">cystic fibrosis\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/02/26/more-progress-toward-gene-editing-for-kids-with-muscular-dystrophy/\">muscular dystrophy\u003c/a>. Using CRISPR and ART to develop an HIV cure could eventually eliminate the cost and distribution barriers that come with current treatments. To date, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/05/london-patient-becomes-second-man-to-be-cleared-of-aids-virus\">only two people have been cured of HIV\u003c/a>after receiving stem cell therapy to treat cancer. This expensive and invasive treatment has failed in every other HIV patient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But CRISPR comes with its own caveats — namely, at the moment it isn’t as precise as many in the general public might think.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What the Study Did\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The researchers used “humanized” mice, meaning mice were infused with the type of human immune cells that HIV infects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In three separate trials, HIV-infected mice were given one of three injection therapies: a slow-release version of the common HIV drug ART, the CRISPR protein that finds and cuts genome-incorporated HIV, or a combination of the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After four weeks of ART treatment, the researchers dispensed CRISPR into the mice by packaging the protein inside of a completely separate virus, called adeno-associated virus, or AAV. AAV doesn’t cause illness, but it acts like a mail carrier, increasing the circulation of CRISPR. CRISPR then becomes more likely to find and cut out all of the HIV DNA, an essential step to prevent the disease from rebounding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers waited eight weeks after all the mice were taken off of ART, then searched for traces of HIV genetic material in blood, spleen, kidneys, gut, lungs, bone marrow and the brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After eight ART-free weeks, more than 30 percent of the mice that received ART and CRISPR lacked detectable amounts of HIV in any of the tissues the researchers studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, HIV was still detectable in all of the other mice, including those that were treated with ART or CRISPR alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Cautious Way Forward\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though the researchers used “humanized mice,” the technology has a long way to go. “Clinical trials…will not start tonight. It will take a few years,” said Urnov. However, Khalili revealed that early data from preliminary trials in monkeys looks promising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khalili and his colleagues have applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to start human clinical trials as early as next year. Khalili has also launched a for-profit company that is developing CRISPR-based technology to treat disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That the technology is moving this fast concerns Zandrea Ambrose, a retrovirologist at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. CRISPR comes with a downside, in that it sometimes accidentally cuts the wrong gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relative to other gene editors, CRISPR has fewer of these “off-target effects” as they’re called, but even a single error is worrisome. If CRISPR makes a hazardous mutation, it could disrupt any cell’s normal behavior and cause an inadvertent disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With billions of letters in the genome, it’s going to take a lot of work to avoid all possible off-target effects, Ambrose said. This study is promising, she added, but scientists in the CRISPR field need to get better at detecting these potential accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before clinical trials can begin, she said, researchers need to be sure these accidents won’t occur in humans by first testing them in animals. When researchers scanned the DNA from the “cured” mice, they didn’t find any signs that CRISPR had made cuts outside of the HIV DNA. But they could tell that CRISPR had made cuts within the HIV DNA, meaning the instructions for making new virus were broken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with possible off-target effects, Ambrose worries that CRISPR, enclosed in an AAV virus, will remain in the body long after its job is done. If that’s the case, she says “there’s no way to turn” the CRISPR editing off, increasing the chances of an off-target cut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Khalili is confident that CRISPR is only cutting the DNA where it’s supposed to, based on searches for the “footprints” CRISPR leaves on DNA when it cuts. And CRISPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/jumping-genes-could-help-crispr-replace-disease-causing-dna-study-finds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">continues to improve everyday\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While a comprehensive, single-shot cure for HIV may be years away, Khalili is encouraged that this milestone “will give those affected hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/crispr-gene-editing-eliminates-hiv-in-some-mice-what-does-it-mean-for-humans\">This story\u003c/a> was originally published on PBS Newshour.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/article>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For the millions of people infected with HIV, the best way to manage the disease is antiretroviral therapy, which can lower the amount of HIV replicating in the body to undetectable levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003carticle>\n\u003cdiv class=\"body-text\">\n\u003cp>But antiretroviral therapy (ART) can only manage HIV, never eliminate it — leading people to rely on the \u003ca href=\"https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/guidelines/html/1/adult-and-adolescent-arv/459/cost-considerations-and-antiretroviral-therapy\">expensive drugs\u003c/a> for decades. Plus if ART is halted by these patients, HIV bounces back and its levels rise in a matter of weeks. In 2017 the World Health Organization \u003ca href=\"https://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/\">reported that of\u003c/a> 36.9 million people living with HIV, 21.7 million were taking ART.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new study of mice charts a preliminary path to eliminating this medication dependency, through an injection of gene-editing \u003ca href=\"https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genomicresearch/genomeediting\">CRISPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing HIV from a person’s body is so hard because “once the virus infects cells [the] viral genome integrates into the host genome and then becomes part of our DNA,” said Kamel Khalili, a neurovirologist at Temple University who co-led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once this integration happens, ART can’t reverse it — at least not on its own. But Khalili and his colleagues found combining CRISPR, which can alter DNA, with ART can remove the lingering signs of HIV in a mouse model of the disease. The collaborative effort between researchers at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center was \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10366-y\">reported today in Nature Communications\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Results in mouse models do not always translate into effective treatments in humans, but Fyodor Urnov says this study is an “important next step” in addressing a disease like HIV with a technique.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Gene editing is the first-ever technology we have had to address disease at the DNA level,” said Urnov, who works at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California Berkeley and was not involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CRISPR, which scientists can program to cut DNA at specific sites, has garnered attention as a potential cure for genetic diseases, such as \u003ca href=\"https://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/crisprcas9-approach-for-cystic-fibrosis/\">cystic fibrosis\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/02/26/more-progress-toward-gene-editing-for-kids-with-muscular-dystrophy/\">muscular dystrophy\u003c/a>. Using CRISPR and ART to develop an HIV cure could eventually eliminate the cost and distribution barriers that come with current treatments. To date, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/05/london-patient-becomes-second-man-to-be-cleared-of-aids-virus\">only two people have been cured of HIV\u003c/a>after receiving stem cell therapy to treat cancer. This expensive and invasive treatment has failed in every other HIV patient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But CRISPR comes with its own caveats — namely, at the moment it isn’t as precise as many in the general public might think.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What the Study Did\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The researchers used “humanized” mice, meaning mice were infused with the type of human immune cells that HIV infects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In three separate trials, HIV-infected mice were given one of three injection therapies: a slow-release version of the common HIV drug ART, the CRISPR protein that finds and cuts genome-incorporated HIV, or a combination of the two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After four weeks of ART treatment, the researchers dispensed CRISPR into the mice by packaging the protein inside of a completely separate virus, called adeno-associated virus, or AAV. AAV doesn’t cause illness, but it acts like a mail carrier, increasing the circulation of CRISPR. CRISPR then becomes more likely to find and cut out all of the HIV DNA, an essential step to prevent the disease from rebounding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers waited eight weeks after all the mice were taken off of ART, then searched for traces of HIV genetic material in blood, spleen, kidneys, gut, lungs, bone marrow and the brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After eight ART-free weeks, more than 30 percent of the mice that received ART and CRISPR lacked detectable amounts of HIV in any of the tissues the researchers studied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In contrast, HIV was still detectable in all of the other mice, including those that were treated with ART or CRISPR alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Cautious Way Forward\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though the researchers used “humanized mice,” the technology has a long way to go. “Clinical trials…will not start tonight. It will take a few years,” said Urnov. However, Khalili revealed that early data from preliminary trials in monkeys looks promising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khalili and his colleagues have applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to start human clinical trials as early as next year. Khalili has also launched a for-profit company that is developing CRISPR-based technology to treat disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That the technology is moving this fast concerns Zandrea Ambrose, a retrovirologist at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. CRISPR comes with a downside, in that it sometimes accidentally cuts the wrong gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Relative to other gene editors, CRISPR has fewer of these “off-target effects” as they’re called, but even a single error is worrisome. If CRISPR makes a hazardous mutation, it could disrupt any cell’s normal behavior and cause an inadvertent disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With billions of letters in the genome, it’s going to take a lot of work to avoid all possible off-target effects, Ambrose said. This study is promising, she added, but scientists in the CRISPR field need to get better at detecting these potential accidents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before clinical trials can begin, she said, researchers need to be sure these accidents won’t occur in humans by first testing them in animals. When researchers scanned the DNA from the “cured” mice, they didn’t find any signs that CRISPR had made cuts outside of the HIV DNA. But they could tell that CRISPR had made cuts within the HIV DNA, meaning the instructions for making new virus were broken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with possible off-target effects, Ambrose worries that CRISPR, enclosed in an AAV virus, will remain in the body long after its job is done. If that’s the case, she says “there’s no way to turn” the CRISPR editing off, increasing the chances of an off-target cut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Khalili is confident that CRISPR is only cutting the DNA where it’s supposed to, based on searches for the “footprints” CRISPR leaves on DNA when it cuts. And CRISPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/jumping-genes-could-help-crispr-replace-disease-causing-dna-study-finds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">continues to improve everyday\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While a comprehensive, single-shot cure for HIV may be years away, Khalili is encouraged that this milestone “will give those affected hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/crispr-gene-editing-eliminates-hiv-in-some-mice-what-does-it-mean-for-humans\">This story\u003c/a> was originally published on PBS Newshour.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/article>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Best Health and Science Books to Dip Into This Summer",
"headTitle": "The Best Health and Science Books to Dip Into This Summer | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he first day of summer has arrived, and so has STAT’s annual book list of great reads in health, science, and medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read on for recommendations from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and CDC Director Robert Redfield. Plus, STAT readers from Boston to Ireland to Australia share their picks, in addition to our staff. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Notable Figures\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805071806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0805071806&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7bf123ab6184f5cac33d58beddbb56f6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Claudia Dreifus\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis is an awesome collection of 38 interviews, published originally in the Science Times section of the New York Times, that captures the wonder and excitement of scientific discovery. As an outstanding journalist and a relative outsider to science, Dreifus elicits from her subjects the passion, frustration, inspiration and, ultimately, the joy of doing science. Her writing reminds me of the work of John McPhee: deep and expansive with a sense of fun. A great read!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jennifer Doudna, professor and HHMI Investigator, UC Berkeley; director, Innovative Genomics Institute of UC Berkeley/UCSF/Gladstone Institutes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006122796X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006122796X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7cfcc6b0801cc1e4c567331d7f105411\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul A. Offit\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nPhysicians, parents, and public health professionals seeking credible, timely information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines will find those answers in Dr. Offit’s “Vaccinated.” He writes a compelling narrative, sharing the underlying science and historical context behind the vaccine regimen recommended today. This fact-based retrospective dispels myths and underscores the importance of immunization for children and adults alike. Readers will have a better understanding of the science-based reasoning to embrace vaccination for themselves, their families, and their communities.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520229134/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520229134&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f6872536969b6885c29cba642778c5ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul Farmer\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book highlights so well the very inception of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute itself and our mission to develop treatments and preventive agents for diseases burdening the world’s poorest people. Tenderly, Farmer tells the stories of those who suffer, offering their complex circumstances in the face of overwhelming data. The Partners in Health co-founder challenges those determined to care for the most vulnerable to challenge the status quo. Although written 20 years ago, the stories ring truer than ever. Inequities in health have only become magnified and are now manifest in our own backyard. Although sobering, it is also inspiring and may make the reader leap to other resources such as “The Age of Living Machines” by Susan Hockfield, who posits that convergence across scientific disciplines led to the current technological capabilities. Can these not be leveraged with know-how and fortitude to meaningfully address inequities in health?\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Penny Heaton, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1845291557/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1845291557&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=424b9e11f98c4fb76b3a018ce157005a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“A Brief History of Medicine: from Hippocrates to Gene Therapy”\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cem>By Paul Strathern\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Among the many histories of medicine, Paul Strathern’s narrative stands out for its lively prose and colorful portraits of figures who broke with dogma and proved new paradigms. Even the expert reader will find much that is novel and nuanced, not only in stories about prominent characters like Galen and Harvey, but less well known individuals like the Venerable Bede, an English monk who revived Greek and Roman knowledge during the Dark Ages, and Al-Razi, an Islamic scholar who challenged Aristotle’s prevailing notions with experimental data and showed that pediatric disorders need not be viewed as untreatable and hopeless. Each chapter offers a rich tableau depicting advances in medical thinking based on astute observation and rigorous induction. Strathern brilliantly succeeds in both educating and entertaining his reader, a perfect blend for a summer treat.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Jerome Groopman, New Yorker staff writer and author; Recanati Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345804570/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345804570&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=137ae7f66e5eee834172c881aa8f1b7a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Prum\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWhether you agree with Prum or not, his case for renewed attention to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection — that considerations of beauty, and not just functional adaptation, shape evolution — is eye-opening. The book also reminds us that politics (in this case, 19th-century disapproval of Darwin’s views on female mate choice) can influence what we are taught about science. Even if you are skeptical, Prum will make you think twice about the natural world, and will definitely change how you look at ducks.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Ron Klain, President Obama’s Ebola czar during the West African outbreak\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062338781/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062338781&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=a08377a6dbaebf506ffcb6efb996c457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Katherine Eban\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>In her fierce and fearless book, “Bottle of Lies,” the investigative journalist Katherine Eban takes us on a journey through the loosely regulated and often corrupt manufacture of generic drugs. Weaving together the story of a terrified but determined whistleblower from India, shady drug producers from China, and a notably timid FDA, Eban’s compelling book should serve as cautionary tale and a wake-up call for consumers, manufacturers, and physicians — “should” being the operative word.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Deborah Blum, author of “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Readers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735224153/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0735224153&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=e88ba9aa97ec231e13dcca5e20cbc7bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Michael Pollan\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith cannabis medicine now getting the attention it deserves, Michael Pollan has done a tremendous job at digging into the history of psychedelic use, both recreationally and in therapy, together with his own observations as a new psychedelic experimenter at the age of 60. All in all, a comprehensive history of the topic, together with interviews from key psychedelic researchers, and a call for serious researchers to think twice about hasty judgments surrounding this interesting compound.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jon Calder, Belfast, Northern Ireland\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006289627X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006289627X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ea6fc765acd3cc5ad1ccd85342cb04ae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Kris Newby\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Bitten” is a riveting narrative that digs into the origins of the Lyme disease epidemic. It connects many dots with compelling evidence and page-turning storytelling that point to the likelihood that a bio-weaponized tick program gone awry could have contributed to the more virulent forms of tick-borne illnesses that have been wreaking havoc on unwitting people for the past five decades. Doctors are not well-trained on tick-borne illness, diagnostics are inadequate, and there are no career tracks in the field other than a few courageous pioneers. Biotech is largely on the sidelines. Yet millions of people are being disabled. Perhaps this book will help stir some action. After all, we all are just one bite away from a nightmare illness.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Nancy Dougherty, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544114515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0544114515&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4f6ff933051d07a5d66bb8d7906db1a2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gregory Berns\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nFabulous book for anyone interested in the realities of research. Getting MRI data on dogs to confirm the similarities in where dogs and human brains respond to stimuli sounds like a good idea. Getting permission to get the dogs into the places where there are MRIs, getting the dogs used to the MRI, selecting real-life animals, and the implications for the experimental conclusions is very different from what usually shows up in methods and results.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Joanna Haas, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316418080/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316418080&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ab87c536d62f16a84be8997dbe897c72\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Riveting account of a scientist trying to save her husband through a combination of sheer will, determination, and cutting-edge science. It’s an amazing blend of mystery, thriller, and microbiology.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Mallory Johnson, Berkeley, Calif.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671510576/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0671510576&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=cb77504e40e1a9467241ae7547ca194a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Barry Werth\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Billion Dollar Molecule” is a thrilling story about the development of a now powerful pharmaceutical company, its revolutionary approach in structure-based drug development, and how closely it came to failing along the way. At a time when people doubt the justifications of pricing for pharmaceutical drugs, peeking at the risks involved in development and the arduous journeys of the scientists involved through this story could add nuance to the conversation.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Kishel, Buffalo, N.Y.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190916834/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0190916834&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4c465b27e88b48c0879f78555b17f6ef\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sandro Galea\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Well” moves beyond talk of health disparities as simply numbers and statistics, dissecting the factors that influence health and well-being. This is an excellent read for health professionals or anyone interested in better understanding all the variables that impact our decisions and behaviors, like power, politics, and luck.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jamie Klufts, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312430000/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312430000&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=35421e550159f565498198501246b2c1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Atul Gawande\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nYears after reading it, the message and themes of this book still resonate with me. One for everyone involved in health.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eliza Metcalfe, Melbourne, Australia \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/154164414X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=154164414X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=9df8ac5f5bb7af175e206e2ce490fcfb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Harris\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Rigor Mortis” delves into data reproducibility and scientific rigor in biomedical research. Using deft anecdotes and commentary, Harris explores how sociocultural forces and perverse incentives in funding mechanisms can conspire to create a dirge of confidence in the research process. Anyone interested in learning about how flawed science undermines medicine should pick up this book for a relatively quick and incisive read.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kyle Penrod, Providence, R.I.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316051632/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316051632&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=102a5090c27ba3b32e74ee3014fa30fc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sam Kean\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book is an entertaining and amazing look at the history of the periodic table and the discovery of the elements. Kean writes in a narrative fashion that gripped me from the very first page. This book is a must for lovers of science, history, and science history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Katie Reeves, Augusta, Ga.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Reporters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608192075/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608192075&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7aa079684701270fecebca869fe0c79e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Nick Reding\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe 2016 election sparked a national obsession with reporting from “flyover country” — a hasty attempt from the national media to remember the forgotten swathes of land between the coasts. But some of the resulting coverage was so full of caricatures it seemed like just another version of flying over. Stumbling across “Methland” in the public library provided a strong antidote to those datelines without depth. Nick Reding’s portraits of small-town Iowans who are cooking, using, or working against meth are so deeply reported that you feel as if you’ve met these people in the flesh. The details are striking — kids mixing “crank” in soda bottles as they tootle around on their bikes, a dealer investing in car selling and horse racing as fronts for her drug empire — but the book also has an impressive sweep: It chronicles rural economies overtaken by agricultural behemoths, towns left behind by everyone with the means to leave, and public health and existential crises ensnaring the people who remain.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Boodman, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568585810/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1568585810&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=c7392af7e5427afc8fbd10e2f028fc99\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Abby Norman\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAny woman whose pain has been dismissed as being “part of what it means to be a woman” will highly relate to this book. “Ask Me About My Uterus” is the story of Abby Norman, whose long and frustrating journey of finding out what was causing her excruciating pain, unexplainable weight loss, and a host of other symptoms meant she had to drop out of college her freshman year. Norman describes how relationships and hobbies all fell by the wayside as the constant pain kept her at home. Only after she got a job at a hospital and spent hours educating herself did Norman finally get a diagnosis of endometriosis. The book weaves together Norman’s own story as well as research and evidence to indicate how medicine continues to ignore women’s pain. I learned a lot of things, but how to be more assertive when I visit with a physician is at the top of the list!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Shraddha Chakradhar, reporter and Morning Rounds writer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP6MSJG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07DP6MSJG&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=169853d1a860b739e89a5805d07eee17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Christie Aschwanden\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nLike many who live life with a daily dose of sweat, I’m always on the lookout for the best ways to recover from exercise and get myself back out the door. In her new book, science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden deftly unravels the complex web of science, pseudoscience, and downright bogus claims in the world of exercise recovery. She takes the reader into infrared saunas, ice baths, and float spas and tests techniques I’d never heard of (meditation headbands are a thing?) meant to help athletes bounce back from their hard efforts.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Brittany Flaherty, news intern\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812997417/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812997417&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=3df4e39b8793e8725667e7c8b16161f3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Lake Success”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gary Shteyngart\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Lake Success” is the story of Barry Cohen, a superlatively successful hedge fund manager whose enviable Manhattan life comes hideously unglued after he makes an ill-advised bet on what is clearly a stand-in for Valeant Pharmaceuticals. What ensues is a never sanguine, always empathetic, reliably funny portrait of a fabulously wealthy person who seems to have forgotten the concept of failure. It’s also a fascinating character study for those of us biotech schnooks who looked at alleged insider traders like Mathew Martoma and wondered how on earth they thought they’d get away with it all. Plus there’s fancy watches, generational angst, and a meditation on the creeping financialization of everything that promises to bring about a new Gilded Age. You know, beach stuff.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Damian Garde, national biotech reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524732710/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1524732710&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f0f49695f97eea1f87af0be2c561a5fe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Dani Shapiro\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWherever she speaks during her book tour for “Inheritance,” memoirist Dani Shapiro is approached by people who, like her, discovered through a DNA spit test that their biological father is not who they thought he was, and that their family history is a lot more twisted than they realized. Indeed, when I heard her in Boston, a man stood up during the Q&A and announced he’d learned he was the product of a sperm donor who turned out to be a fertility doctor who’d fathered dozens of children. Shapiro’s book is a very personal story, but clearly one that resonates broadly in our DNA-obsessed age.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Gideon Gil, managing editor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501168681/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1501168681&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=22c75b403593e8a3a77e635029a3d63f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal West”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By David McCullough\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nA great way to gain perspective on the impact of modern medicine is to consider life before it arrived. McCullough’s account of the pioneers who settled America’s Northwest Territory — an area that includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — offers a window into the ruggedness required of both doctors and patients who stared down deadly illnesses in the unbroken wilderness with few defenses. Episodic disease outbreaks swept across the frontier like wildfire, often decimating settlements and taking the lives of multiple children in the same family. As a father living in present-day Ohio, it is hard to imagine the panic this must have instilled, and the resolve required to push forward despite the heart-wrenching costs. But this book has given me fresh insight and a few reasons to reconsider my own grievances in the relative utopia we’ve carved out of the Wild West.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Casey Ross, national technology correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812982525/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812982525&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ca6e6c07db5238906a40e5ea31a25d71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Luke Dittrich\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe book weaves the neuroscience legend of Henry Molaison with author Luke Dittrich’s own family dramas. After Dittrich’s grandfather operated on Molaison’s brain in an effort to treat his debilitating epilepsy, he wasn’t able to form any short-term memories. For decades after the surgery, researchers worked with Molaison to better understand how human memory works. Patient H.M.’s story is interesting enough. But when the story is mentioned, the surgeon is usually a minor player. This time, Dittrich brings his grandfather to life — and uses his family’s own history to explore some of the darker chapters in neuroscience history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kate Sheridan, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525552960/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0525552960&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=0abcda54b107dd77066adae0db4d637f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Darius The Great is Not Okay”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Adib Khorram\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAdib Khorram’s debut novel is about many things: identity, immigration, family, friendship. It’s also about living with clinical depression as a teen, and being a teen with a parent who has depression. Khorram is able to give readers a window into living with mental illness without making it the sole focus of the characters or their stories. And while it’s technically a young adult book, I’d recommend it to adults of all ages.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Megan Thielking, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he first day of summer has arrived, and so has STAT’s annual book list of great reads in health, science, and medicine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read on for recommendations from CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and CDC Director Robert Redfield. Plus, STAT readers from Boston to Ireland to Australia share their picks, in addition to our staff. Enjoy!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Notable Figures\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805071806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0805071806&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7bf123ab6184f5cac33d58beddbb56f6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Claudia Dreifus\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis is an awesome collection of 38 interviews, published originally in the Science Times section of the New York Times, that captures the wonder and excitement of scientific discovery. As an outstanding journalist and a relative outsider to science, Dreifus elicits from her subjects the passion, frustration, inspiration and, ultimately, the joy of doing science. Her writing reminds me of the work of John McPhee: deep and expansive with a sense of fun. A great read!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jennifer Doudna, professor and HHMI Investigator, UC Berkeley; director, Innovative Genomics Institute of UC Berkeley/UCSF/Gladstone Institutes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006122796X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006122796X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7cfcc6b0801cc1e4c567331d7f105411\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul A. Offit\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nPhysicians, parents, and public health professionals seeking credible, timely information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines will find those answers in Dr. Offit’s “Vaccinated.” He writes a compelling narrative, sharing the underlying science and historical context behind the vaccine regimen recommended today. This fact-based retrospective dispels myths and underscores the importance of immunization for children and adults alike. Readers will have a better understanding of the science-based reasoning to embrace vaccination for themselves, their families, and their communities.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520229134/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520229134&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f6872536969b6885c29cba642778c5ca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Paul Farmer\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book highlights so well the very inception of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute itself and our mission to develop treatments and preventive agents for diseases burdening the world’s poorest people. Tenderly, Farmer tells the stories of those who suffer, offering their complex circumstances in the face of overwhelming data. The Partners in Health co-founder challenges those determined to care for the most vulnerable to challenge the status quo. Although written 20 years ago, the stories ring truer than ever. Inequities in health have only become magnified and are now manifest in our own backyard. Although sobering, it is also inspiring and may make the reader leap to other resources such as “The Age of Living Machines” by Susan Hockfield, who posits that convergence across scientific disciplines led to the current technological capabilities. Can these not be leveraged with know-how and fortitude to meaningfully address inequities in health?\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Penny Heaton, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1845291557/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1845291557&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=424b9e11f98c4fb76b3a018ce157005a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“A Brief History of Medicine: from Hippocrates to Gene Therapy”\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003cem>By Paul Strathern\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Among the many histories of medicine, Paul Strathern’s narrative stands out for its lively prose and colorful portraits of figures who broke with dogma and proved new paradigms. Even the expert reader will find much that is novel and nuanced, not only in stories about prominent characters like Galen and Harvey, but less well known individuals like the Venerable Bede, an English monk who revived Greek and Roman knowledge during the Dark Ages, and Al-Razi, an Islamic scholar who challenged Aristotle’s prevailing notions with experimental data and showed that pediatric disorders need not be viewed as untreatable and hopeless. Each chapter offers a rich tableau depicting advances in medical thinking based on astute observation and rigorous induction. Strathern brilliantly succeeds in both educating and entertaining his reader, a perfect blend for a summer treat.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Dr. Jerome Groopman, New Yorker staff writer and author; Recanati Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345804570/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0345804570&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=137ae7f66e5eee834172c881aa8f1b7a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us”\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Prum\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWhether you agree with Prum or not, his case for renewed attention to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection — that considerations of beauty, and not just functional adaptation, shape evolution — is eye-opening. The book also reminds us that politics (in this case, 19th-century disapproval of Darwin’s views on female mate choice) can influence what we are taught about science. Even if you are skeptical, Prum will make you think twice about the natural world, and will definitely change how you look at ducks.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Ron Klain, President Obama’s Ebola czar during the West African outbreak\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062338781/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062338781&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=a08377a6dbaebf506ffcb6efb996c457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Katherine Eban\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>In her fierce and fearless book, “Bottle of Lies,” the investigative journalist Katherine Eban takes us on a journey through the loosely regulated and often corrupt manufacture of generic drugs. Weaving together the story of a terrified but determined whistleblower from India, shady drug producers from China, and a notably timid FDA, Eban’s compelling book should serve as cautionary tale and a wake-up call for consumers, manufacturers, and physicians — “should” being the operative word.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Deborah Blum, author of “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Readers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735224153/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0735224153&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=e88ba9aa97ec231e13dcca5e20cbc7bf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Michael Pollan\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith cannabis medicine now getting the attention it deserves, Michael Pollan has done a tremendous job at digging into the history of psychedelic use, both recreationally and in therapy, together with his own observations as a new psychedelic experimenter at the age of 60. All in all, a comprehensive history of the topic, together with interviews from key psychedelic researchers, and a call for serious researchers to think twice about hasty judgments surrounding this interesting compound.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jon Calder, Belfast, Northern Ireland\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006289627X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006289627X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ea6fc765acd3cc5ad1ccd85342cb04ae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Kris Newby\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Bitten” is a riveting narrative that digs into the origins of the Lyme disease epidemic. It connects many dots with compelling evidence and page-turning storytelling that point to the likelihood that a bio-weaponized tick program gone awry could have contributed to the more virulent forms of tick-borne illnesses that have been wreaking havoc on unwitting people for the past five decades. Doctors are not well-trained on tick-borne illness, diagnostics are inadequate, and there are no career tracks in the field other than a few courageous pioneers. Biotech is largely on the sidelines. Yet millions of people are being disabled. Perhaps this book will help stir some action. After all, we all are just one bite away from a nightmare illness.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Nancy Dougherty, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544114515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0544114515&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4f6ff933051d07a5d66bb8d7906db1a2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gregory Berns\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nFabulous book for anyone interested in the realities of research. Getting MRI data on dogs to confirm the similarities in where dogs and human brains respond to stimuli sounds like a good idea. Getting permission to get the dogs into the places where there are MRIs, getting the dogs used to the MRI, selecting real-life animals, and the implications for the experimental conclusions is very different from what usually shows up in methods and results.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Joanna Haas, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316418080/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316418080&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ab87c536d62f16a84be8997dbe897c72\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Riveting account of a scientist trying to save her husband through a combination of sheer will, determination, and cutting-edge science. It’s an amazing blend of mystery, thriller, and microbiology.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Mallory Johnson, Berkeley, Calif.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671510576/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0671510576&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=cb77504e40e1a9467241ae7547ca194a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Barry Werth\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Billion Dollar Molecule” is a thrilling story about the development of a now powerful pharmaceutical company, its revolutionary approach in structure-based drug development, and how closely it came to failing along the way. At a time when people doubt the justifications of pricing for pharmaceutical drugs, peeking at the risks involved in development and the arduous journeys of the scientists involved through this story could add nuance to the conversation.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Kishel, Buffalo, N.Y.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190916834/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0190916834&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=4c465b27e88b48c0879f78555b17f6ef\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sandro Galea\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Well” moves beyond talk of health disparities as simply numbers and statistics, dissecting the factors that influence health and well-being. This is an excellent read for health professionals or anyone interested in better understanding all the variables that impact our decisions and behaviors, like power, politics, and luck.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Jamie Klufts, Boston\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312430000/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312430000&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=35421e550159f565498198501246b2c1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Atul Gawande\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nYears after reading it, the message and themes of this book still resonate with me. One for everyone involved in health.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eliza Metcalfe, Melbourne, Australia \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/154164414X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=154164414X&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=9df8ac5f5bb7af175e206e2ce490fcfb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Richard Harris\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Rigor Mortis” delves into data reproducibility and scientific rigor in biomedical research. Using deft anecdotes and commentary, Harris explores how sociocultural forces and perverse incentives in funding mechanisms can conspire to create a dirge of confidence in the research process. Anyone interested in learning about how flawed science undermines medicine should pick up this book for a relatively quick and incisive read.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kyle Penrod, Providence, R.I.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316051632/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316051632&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=102a5090c27ba3b32e74ee3014fa30fc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Sam Kean\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThis book is an entertaining and amazing look at the history of the periodic table and the discovery of the elements. Kean writes in a narrative fashion that gripped me from the very first page. This book is a must for lovers of science, history, and science history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Katie Reeves, Augusta, Ga.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STAT Reporters\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608192075/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1608192075&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=7aa079684701270fecebca869fe0c79e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Nick Reding\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe 2016 election sparked a national obsession with reporting from “flyover country” — a hasty attempt from the national media to remember the forgotten swathes of land between the coasts. But some of the resulting coverage was so full of caricatures it seemed like just another version of flying over. Stumbling across “Methland” in the public library provided a strong antidote to those datelines without depth. Nick Reding’s portraits of small-town Iowans who are cooking, using, or working against meth are so deeply reported that you feel as if you’ve met these people in the flesh. The details are striking — kids mixing “crank” in soda bottles as they tootle around on their bikes, a dealer investing in car selling and horse racing as fronts for her drug empire — but the book also has an impressive sweep: It chronicles rural economies overtaken by agricultural behemoths, towns left behind by everyone with the means to leave, and public health and existential crises ensnaring the people who remain.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Eric Boodman, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568585810/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1568585810&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=c7392af7e5427afc8fbd10e2f028fc99\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Abby Norman\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAny woman whose pain has been dismissed as being “part of what it means to be a woman” will highly relate to this book. “Ask Me About My Uterus” is the story of Abby Norman, whose long and frustrating journey of finding out what was causing her excruciating pain, unexplainable weight loss, and a host of other symptoms meant she had to drop out of college her freshman year. Norman describes how relationships and hobbies all fell by the wayside as the constant pain kept her at home. Only after she got a job at a hospital and spent hours educating herself did Norman finally get a diagnosis of endometriosis. The book weaves together Norman’s own story as well as research and evidence to indicate how medicine continues to ignore women’s pain. I learned a lot of things, but how to be more assertive when I visit with a physician is at the top of the list!\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Shraddha Chakradhar, reporter and Morning Rounds writer\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP6MSJG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07DP6MSJG&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=169853d1a860b739e89a5805d07eee17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Christie Aschwanden\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nLike many who live life with a daily dose of sweat, I’m always on the lookout for the best ways to recover from exercise and get myself back out the door. In her new book, science journalist and athlete Christie Aschwanden deftly unravels the complex web of science, pseudoscience, and downright bogus claims in the world of exercise recovery. She takes the reader into infrared saunas, ice baths, and float spas and tests techniques I’d never heard of (meditation headbands are a thing?) meant to help athletes bounce back from their hard efforts.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Brittany Flaherty, news intern\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812997417/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812997417&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=3df4e39b8793e8725667e7c8b16161f3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Lake Success”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Gary Shteyngart\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n“Lake Success” is the story of Barry Cohen, a superlatively successful hedge fund manager whose enviable Manhattan life comes hideously unglued after he makes an ill-advised bet on what is clearly a stand-in for Valeant Pharmaceuticals. What ensues is a never sanguine, always empathetic, reliably funny portrait of a fabulously wealthy person who seems to have forgotten the concept of failure. It’s also a fascinating character study for those of us biotech schnooks who looked at alleged insider traders like Mathew Martoma and wondered how on earth they thought they’d get away with it all. Plus there’s fancy watches, generational angst, and a meditation on the creeping financialization of everything that promises to bring about a new Gilded Age. You know, beach stuff.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Damian Garde, national biotech reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524732710/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1524732710&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=f0f49695f97eea1f87af0be2c561a5fe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Dani Shapiro\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWherever she speaks during her book tour for “Inheritance,” memoirist Dani Shapiro is approached by people who, like her, discovered through a DNA spit test that their biological father is not who they thought he was, and that their family history is a lot more twisted than they realized. Indeed, when I heard her in Boston, a man stood up during the Q&A and announced he’d learned he was the product of a sperm donor who turned out to be a fertility doctor who’d fathered dozens of children. Shapiro’s book is a very personal story, but clearly one that resonates broadly in our DNA-obsessed age.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Gideon Gil, managing editor\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501168681/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1501168681&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=22c75b403593e8a3a77e635029a3d63f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal West”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By David McCullough\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nA great way to gain perspective on the impact of modern medicine is to consider life before it arrived. McCullough’s account of the pioneers who settled America’s Northwest Territory — an area that includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — offers a window into the ruggedness required of both doctors and patients who stared down deadly illnesses in the unbroken wilderness with few defenses. Episodic disease outbreaks swept across the frontier like wildfire, often decimating settlements and taking the lives of multiple children in the same family. As a father living in present-day Ohio, it is hard to imagine the panic this must have instilled, and the resolve required to push forward despite the heart-wrenching costs. But this book has given me fresh insight and a few reasons to reconsider my own grievances in the relative utopia we’ve carved out of the Wild West.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Casey Ross, national technology correspondent\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812982525/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0812982525&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=ca6e6c07db5238906a40e5ea31a25d71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Luke Dittrich\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe book weaves the neuroscience legend of Henry Molaison with author Luke Dittrich’s own family dramas. After Dittrich’s grandfather operated on Molaison’s brain in an effort to treat his debilitating epilepsy, he wasn’t able to form any short-term memories. For decades after the surgery, researchers worked with Molaison to better understand how human memory works. Patient H.M.’s story is interesting enough. But when the story is mentioned, the surgeon is usually a minor player. This time, Dittrich brings his grandfather to life — and uses his family’s own history to explore some of the darker chapters in neuroscience history.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Kate Sheridan, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525552960/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0525552960&linkCode=as2&tag=stat03d-20&linkId=0abcda54b107dd77066adae0db4d637f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>“Darius The Great is Not Okay”\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>By Adib Khorram\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAdib Khorram’s debut novel is about many things: identity, immigration, family, friendship. It’s also about living with clinical depression as a teen, and being a teen with a parent who has depression. Khorram is able to give readers a window into living with mental illness without making it the sole focus of the characters or their stories. And while it’s technically a young adult book, I’d recommend it to adults of all ages.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>— Megan Thielking, reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Here We Go Again: Feds Reopen Patent Dispute Between UC and Broad Institute",
"headTitle": "Here We Go Again: Feds Reopen Patent Dispute Between UC and Broad Institute | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The U.S. patent office has \u003ca href=\"https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/news/pdfs/106115-NoticeDeclaringInterference.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">declared an interference\u003c/a> between a dozen key patents awarded to the Broad Institute on the genome-editing technology CRISPR and 10 CRISPR patent applications submitted by the University of California and its partners, according to documents posted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1943947\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-800x531.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-800x531.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-768x510.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-1020x677.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-1200x797.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The declaration of an interference means that the patent office has determined that one or more patent applications describe inventions that are substantially the same as those for which patents have already been issued. In this case, the patents awarded to the Broad, beginning in 2014, describe the use of CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genomes of eukaryotes — organisms whose genomes are enclosed within a cell nucleus, including all plants and animals — based on the research of Broad biologist Feng Zhang. UC’s patent applications also cover the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes, based on the work of UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC and the Broad already went through an interference proceeding that went all the way to federal appeals court, with the Broad \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/10/appeals-court-upholds-crispr-patents-awarded-to-broad-institute/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prevailing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That history made patent experts react almost identically to this latest development. “Here we are again,” said attorney Kevin Noonan of the Chicago law firm McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP, who specializes in biotech patents. “I can only imagine that this will go on, and on, and on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the Doudna and Zhang teams did their research under a system that awarded patents based on who was the first to invent (the current system, in place since 2013, awards patents based on who was the first to file). The interference proceeding will entail motions filed with the patent office, which will likely take a year, and then possibly a hearing. At some point, the patent office will therefore have to determine who was the inventor of CRISPR genome editing in higher organisms — not bacteria, and not DNA floating freely in a test tube.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now we’re having the fight over who invented CRISPR in eukaryotes,” said Eldora Ellison of Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, who represents UC. The declaration of interference, she said, “means that the patent office has recognized that it has a duty to determine who invented this important invention. The fact that the Broad has patents does not resolve that question.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer to that question would reverberate well beyond the potentially billion-dollar market for CRISPR therapies. Those are being developed by at least three companies, including Editas Medicine, CRISPR Therapeutics, and Intellia Therapeutics. The outcome could also affect who the science record books, to say nothing of the Nobel Prize committee, recognizes as the inventors of this revolutionary technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Broad said, “We welcome this action by the [patent office], which has previously ruled that the claims of the Broad patents, issued for methods for eukaryotic genome editing, were properly granted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike the last interference, which UC requested, neither party asked for this one. But that can be done “indirectly,” Noonan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting thing in terms of the [University of California] strategy is that they seem to have filed a bunch of patent applications intended to provoke an interference,” by describing the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes even though the UC team was not the first to achieve that, Noonan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you write the [patent] claim the right way, and the patent examiner is aware that the Broad’s patents [on that invention] exist, it wouldn’t take a genius examiner to say, aha,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The patent office has designated the Broad as the “senior party” in the interference and UC as the “junior party.” That means the Broad, with patents in hand since 2014, is presumed to be the rightful, first inventor. UC therefore has to prove its case to the patent office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The U.S. patent office has \u003ca href=\"https://www.broadinstitute.org/files/news/pdfs/106115-NoticeDeclaringInterference.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">declared an interference\u003c/a> between a dozen key patents awarded to the Broad Institute on the genome-editing technology CRISPR and 10 CRISPR patent applications submitted by the University of California and its partners, according to documents posted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1943947\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-800x531.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-800x531.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-768x510.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-1020x677.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1-1200x797.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/DESKTOP_CRISPR_171115-1.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The declaration of an interference means that the patent office has determined that one or more patent applications describe inventions that are substantially the same as those for which patents have already been issued. In this case, the patents awarded to the Broad, beginning in 2014, describe the use of CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genomes of eukaryotes — organisms whose genomes are enclosed within a cell nucleus, including all plants and animals — based on the research of Broad biologist Feng Zhang. UC’s patent applications also cover the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes, based on the work of UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC and the Broad already went through an interference proceeding that went all the way to federal appeals court, with the Broad \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/10/appeals-court-upholds-crispr-patents-awarded-to-broad-institute/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prevailing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That history made patent experts react almost identically to this latest development. “Here we are again,” said attorney Kevin Noonan of the Chicago law firm McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP, who specializes in biotech patents. “I can only imagine that this will go on, and on, and on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the Doudna and Zhang teams did their research under a system that awarded patents based on who was the first to invent (the current system, in place since 2013, awards patents based on who was the first to file). The interference proceeding will entail motions filed with the patent office, which will likely take a year, and then possibly a hearing. At some point, the patent office will therefore have to determine who was the inventor of CRISPR genome editing in higher organisms — not bacteria, and not DNA floating freely in a test tube.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now we’re having the fight over who invented CRISPR in eukaryotes,” said Eldora Ellison of Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, who represents UC. The declaration of interference, she said, “means that the patent office has recognized that it has a duty to determine who invented this important invention. The fact that the Broad has patents does not resolve that question.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answer to that question would reverberate well beyond the potentially billion-dollar market for CRISPR therapies. Those are being developed by at least three companies, including Editas Medicine, CRISPR Therapeutics, and Intellia Therapeutics. The outcome could also affect who the science record books, to say nothing of the Nobel Prize committee, recognizes as the inventors of this revolutionary technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, the Broad said, “We welcome this action by the [patent office], which has previously ruled that the claims of the Broad patents, issued for methods for eukaryotic genome editing, were properly granted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike the last interference, which UC requested, neither party asked for this one. But that can be done “indirectly,” Noonan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting thing in terms of the [University of California] strategy is that they seem to have filed a bunch of patent applications intended to provoke an interference,” by describing the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes even though the UC team was not the first to achieve that, Noonan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you write the [patent] claim the right way, and the patent examiner is aware that the Broad’s patents [on that invention] exist, it wouldn’t take a genius examiner to say, aha,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The patent office has designated the Broad as the “senior party” in the interference and UC as the “junior party.” That means the Broad, with patents in hand since 2014, is presumed to be the rightful, first inventor. UC therefore has to prove its case to the patent office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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},
"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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},
"radiolab": {
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