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The Soul of a New Vaccine
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, December 11, 2007
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The sign on the wall reads “Emergency Response Procedures for a Mosquito Release.”
Among them are “Do Not Leave the Room or Open Any Doors!!!” and “Do Not Panic!”
Everything in the room is white, including the lab coats and surgical masks — for sterility, yes, but also the better to see a mosquito. Hanging next to the sign, in vivid Coast Guard orange, is the last line of defense, a brace of fly swatters.
This room, the mosquito dissection lab, in an unassuming biotech park in the Washington suburbs, is at the heart of one of the most controversial ideas in vaccine science.
Sanaria Inc. (meaning “healthy air,” a play on the Italian “mal’aria” or “bad air”) is making a vaccine the old-fashioned way, more or less as Louis Pasteur did.
Avoiding modern recombinant DNA technology that injects tiny fragments of parasite protein to prime an immune response, Sanaria uses the whole parasite, extracted by hand from the mosquito’s salivary glands, and weakened so it cannot multiply.
Pasteur weakened rabies and anthrax bacilli by air drying them. Sanaria uses gamma rays.
( Read More )
Warming Trends: In Duck Blinds, Visions of Global Warming
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times, December 11, 2007
RICH HILL, Mo. — After 32 years of hunting ducks in the wetlands of Missouri, Chuck Geier knows when temperatures will drop and waters will freeze. That means he also knows when the birds will fly and hunting will be best.
Except that much of what he knows is now in question.
“It used to be by Dec. 6, this place was frozen,” said Mr. Geier, 51, a national sales manager for a telecommunications company. “That’s not true anymore.”
From the “prairie potholes” of Canada and the upper Midwest to the destination states of Arkansas and Louisiana, the rhythms of the cross-continental migratory bird route known as the Mississippi Flyway are changing.
In Missouri, where the average winter temperature has been rising, hunters say birds are arriving later and sticking around longer before bolting for warmer redoubts. Elsewhere, wetlands are not freezing over the way they once did.
As hunters point their shotguns toward the sky and fire, a question echoes in the spent powder: what is up with the ducks?
“People say it’s cycles, every five to seven years, but it’s just been too long,” Mr. Geier said of the warming trend, which he traces to the late 1990s. “It’s a wake-up call.”
( Read More )
Teenage Birth Rate Rises for First Time Since ’91
By GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times, December 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — The birth rate among teenagers 15 to 19 in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday, the first such increase since 1991. The finding surprised scholars and fueled a debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working.
The federal government spends $176 million annually on such programs. But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.
“Spending tens of million of tax dollars each year on programs that hurt our children is bad medicine and bad public policy,” said Dr. David A. Grimes, vice president of Family Health International, a nonprofit reproductive health organization based in North Carolina.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was “stupid.” Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies.
( Read More )
Essay: A Growing Debate Over Folic Acid in Flour
By DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI, M.D., The New York Times, December 4, 2007
Every year, an estimated 200,000 children around the world are born with crippling defects of the spinal column. Many are paralyzed or permanently impaired by spina bifida; some, with a condition called anencephaly (literally, “no brain”), survive in a vegetative state.
It is a stubborn and terrible problem, in the developed and developing worlds alike. But many experts believe it could be greatly eased by a simple government measure: requiring that flour be fortified with the dietary supplement folic acid, which has been shown to prevent these neural tube defects if taken by expectant mothers from before conception through the first trimester.
The debate over folic acid is a familiar one, and Americans could be excused for thinking it was over. Since 1998, the federal government has required that almost all flour be fortified with the supplement.
But in fact, the requirement has meant women receive an average extra dose of just 100 micrograms of folic acid a day — far below the levels that have been shown in studies to prevent spina bifida and other neural tube defects. For more than a decade, the Food and Drug Administration has resisted calls to require that the amount be doubled.
( Read More )
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, December 11, 2007
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The sign on the wall reads “Emergency Response Procedures for a Mosquito Release.”
Among them are “Do Not Leave the Room or Open Any Doors!!!” and “Do Not Panic!”
Everything in the room is white, including the lab coats and surgical masks — for sterility, yes, but also the better to see a mosquito. Hanging next to the sign, in vivid Coast Guard orange, is the last line of defense, a brace of fly swatters.
This room, the mosquito dissection lab, in an unassuming biotech park in the Washington suburbs, is at the heart of one of the most controversial ideas in vaccine science.
Sanaria Inc. (meaning “healthy air,” a play on the Italian “mal’aria” or “bad air”) is making a vaccine the old-fashioned way, more or less as Louis Pasteur did.
Avoiding modern recombinant DNA technology that injects tiny fragments of parasite protein to prime an immune response, Sanaria uses the whole parasite, extracted by hand from the mosquito’s salivary glands, and weakened so it cannot multiply.
Pasteur weakened rabies and anthrax bacilli by air drying them. Sanaria uses gamma rays.
( Read More )
Warming Trends: In Duck Blinds, Visions of Global Warming
By WILLIAM YARDLEY, The New York Times, December 11, 2007
RICH HILL, Mo. — After 32 years of hunting ducks in the wetlands of Missouri, Chuck Geier knows when temperatures will drop and waters will freeze. That means he also knows when the birds will fly and hunting will be best.
Except that much of what he knows is now in question.
“It used to be by Dec. 6, this place was frozen,” said Mr. Geier, 51, a national sales manager for a telecommunications company. “That’s not true anymore.”
From the “prairie potholes” of Canada and the upper Midwest to the destination states of Arkansas and Louisiana, the rhythms of the cross-continental migratory bird route known as the Mississippi Flyway are changing.
In Missouri, where the average winter temperature has been rising, hunters say birds are arriving later and sticking around longer before bolting for warmer redoubts. Elsewhere, wetlands are not freezing over the way they once did.
As hunters point their shotguns toward the sky and fire, a question echoes in the spent powder: what is up with the ducks?
“People say it’s cycles, every five to seven years, but it’s just been too long,” Mr. Geier said of the warming trend, which he traces to the late 1990s. “It’s a wake-up call.”
( Read More )
Teenage Birth Rate Rises for First Time Since ’91
By GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times, December 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — The birth rate among teenagers 15 to 19 in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday, the first such increase since 1991. The finding surprised scholars and fueled a debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working.
The federal government spends $176 million annually on such programs. But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.
“Spending tens of million of tax dollars each year on programs that hurt our children is bad medicine and bad public policy,” said Dr. David A. Grimes, vice president of Family Health International, a nonprofit reproductive health organization based in North Carolina.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was “stupid.” Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies.
( Read More )
Essay: A Growing Debate Over Folic Acid in Flour
By DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI, M.D., The New York Times, December 4, 2007
Every year, an estimated 200,000 children around the world are born with crippling defects of the spinal column. Many are paralyzed or permanently impaired by spina bifida; some, with a condition called anencephaly (literally, “no brain”), survive in a vegetative state.
It is a stubborn and terrible problem, in the developed and developing worlds alike. But many experts believe it could be greatly eased by a simple government measure: requiring that flour be fortified with the dietary supplement folic acid, which has been shown to prevent these neural tube defects if taken by expectant mothers from before conception through the first trimester.
The debate over folic acid is a familiar one, and Americans could be excused for thinking it was over. Since 1998, the federal government has required that almost all flour be fortified with the supplement.
But in fact, the requirement has meant women receive an average extra dose of just 100 micrograms of folic acid a day — far below the levels that have been shown in studies to prevent spina bifida and other neural tube defects. For more than a decade, the Food and Drug Administration has resisted calls to require that the amount be doubled.
( Read More )
