October 2023

Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

The award was given to Katalin Karikó, a professor at Sagan’s University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Drew Weissman, who performed his prizewinning research together with Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the panel that awarded the prize said.

Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly, announced the prize and said both scientists were “overwhelmed” by news of the prize when he contacted them shortly before the announcement.

Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam, part of the panel that chose the winners, said of their work that “in terms of saving lives, especially in the early phase of the pandemic, it was very important.”

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was won last year by Swedish scientist Svante Paabo for discoveries in human evolution that unlocked secrets of Neanderthal DNA which provided key insights into our immune system, including our vulnerability to severe COVID-19.

The award was the second in the family. Paabo’s father, Sune Bergstrom, won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1982.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 9.

The prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

The prize money was raised by 1 million kronor this year because of the plunging value of the Swedish currency.

The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The prestigious peace prize is handed out in Oslo, according to his wishes, while the other award ceremony is held in Stockholm.
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The World Health Organization warns that soaring rates of severe malnutrition, acute hunger, and deteriorating health conditions are threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people in South Sudan with the situation set to worsen as the climate crisis kicks in.

“South Sudan is a country where you see the overlap and compounding impact of conflict, climate crisis, hunger crisis, and disease outbreaks that have been going on for several years,” said Liesbeth Aelbrecht, WHO incident manager for the Horn of Africa. “Three in four South Sudanese need humanitarian assistance this year; two in three are facing crisis levels of hunger,” she said. “And these numbers are only getting worse.”

The United Nations reports 6.3 million South Sudanese are suffering from acute hunger and more than 9 million of the country’s population of 12 million people depend on humanitarian assistance.

As conditions continue to deteriorate, the World Health Organization reports 500,000 more people this year will need international aid. Among the most vulnerable are the children.

Aelbrecht said, “The numbers of children with severe malnutrition needing medical intervention have been higher this year than at any point in the last four years,” adding that almost 150,000 children had been treated for severe acute malnutrition so far this year.

She warned the humanitarian crisis facing South Sudan will worsen with the onset of El Niño, a climate phenomenon that can cause temperatures to rise and excess rains.

“Flooding and hunger and drought will increase hunger even further. But it is also very likely to increase the risk of mosquito-borne diseases, especially malaria and dengue and water-borne diseases,” she said, adding that malaria is one of the five main causes of death in South Sudan.

Aelbrecht recently returned from a mission to South Sudan, where she visited so-called stabilization centers for severely malnourished children in the capital, Juba, and in Bentiu, the capital of Unity State.

Speaking Friday from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to journalists in Geneva, Aelbrecht said she watched doctors trying to resuscitate babies on life support. In one of these centers, she said she saw a baby pass away in her mother’s arms.

“I quote figures. I give you percentages, but behind those figures there are just faces. I am standing there as a bystander and watching this child die of hunger and of preventable diseases,” she said. “Even after doing humanitarian work for 25 years now, it does remain one of the most difficult things to do.”

She said the international community must not act as a bystander but help South Sudan during this time of immense need. Since conflict in Sudan erupted in April, she said there has been a large inflow of refugees and returnees from Sudan, putting an even greater strain on South Sudan’s overstretched health system.

“In fact, one out of four of all the people who had fled Sudan, 1.2 million people who fled Sudan are being hosted now in South Sudan,” she said.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, reports humanitarian operations in both Sudan and South Sudan are severely underfunded. It says lack of security in these countries is also a huge hindrance to the delivery of aid to the millions in need.

“South Sudan and Sudan are the world’s most dangerous countries for aid workers,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesman.

Of 71 aid worker deaths recorded so far this year, he said 22 were in South Sudan and 19 in Sudan.

“The victims are overwhelming local humanitarians working on the front lines of the response,” he said.
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Nine years after a massive waste spill from a copper mine in the northern Mexican border state of Sonora, locals are still suffering from “alarming” levels of soil, air and water pollution, Mexico’s Environment Department said Thursday.

Summarizing a 239-page report, officials also confirmed, using satellite images, that the spill was not solely caused by dramatic rainfall, as was initially reported, but by the “inadequate design” of a dam at Buenavista del Cobre mine, owned by the country’s largest copper producer, Grupo México.

Locals and environmental advocates say the report offers the clearest view yet of the catastrophic scale of the accident and, with it, new hope that Grupo México may finally be held financially accountable after almost a decade of legal battles and broken promises.

“We expect that, with this new document, we’ll have an easy path for getting the money,” said Luis Franco, a community coordinator with regional advocacy group PODER. “At the moment, I’m happy but at the same time I know this is just the beginning for the people of Sonora,” he said. “We have to keep fighting.”

On Aug. 6, 2014, after heavy rainfall, 40 million liters of acidified copper sulfate flooded from a waste reservoir at Buenavista mine into the Sonora and Bacanuchi rivers, just under 100 kilometers from the border city of Nogales, Sonora.

After the spill, Grupo México first agreed to give 1.2 billion pesos (about $68 million) to a recovery fund, but in 2017 that trust was closed and the remaining funds returned to the mining company, PODER claims. After a legal battle, the trust was reopened three years later but, said Franco, without any new funding.

Mexico’s environmental secretary María Luisa Albores González insisted Thursday during a news briefing that the report was solely “technical,” not “ideological,” but added that the trust would remain open until 2026.

“We in this institution do not accept said trust is closed,” said Albores González.

In another report earlier this year Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change calculated the total cost of the spill at over 20 billion pesos ($1.1 billion), more than 16 times the size of the original support fund.

“Under no circumstances” have locals been given enough money to recover, according to the report. “Neither the amount paid for the fine, nor the compensation given to the Sonora River Trust cover the direct, indirect or cumulative effects on the population, the ecosystem or the economy.”

The initial fund promised to open 36 water treatment stations and a toxicology clinic. But according to the Sonora River Basin Committees, a group of locals from the eight polluted townships, only one water station is open and the clinic has long been abandoned.

Unsafe levels of arsenic, lead and mercury have been recorded across over 250 square kilometers around the spill. Across the Sonoran townships of Ures, Arizpe, Baviácora, Aconchi, Banamichi, Cananea, Huépac and San Felipe de Jesús, locals have complained of health risks and decreased productivity in their farms and ranches.

In what officials described as one of their most “alarming” findings, 93% of soil samples from the city of Cananea did not meet international requirements for arsenic levels.

Adrián Pedrozo Acuña, director general for the Mexican Institute for Water Technology, said the pollution had also impacted the region’s drinking water. “The results presented here show very clearly that there is a safety or health problem in the water the population consumes,” he said.

Franco, who lives in the nearby city of Hermosillo, said this brings the most urgency for communities in which many cannot afford to buy bottled water.

Since the spill, Buenavista del Cobre has continued to operate — and grown in size. In the years immediately before the accident production increased threefold, according to Pedrozo. By 2020 it had grown half as big again, in what he described as “chronic overexploitation” of the area’s water supplies.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has tested positive for COVID-19 and will work remotely while isolating, his office said Sunday, just two weeks before a general election in which his Labour party is struggling.

The positive test will temporarily sideline Hipkins in the campaign for the Oct. 14 election. Labour has been sliding in the opinion polls, with the center-right National party leading by 31.9% to 26.5% in a recent survey.

Hipkins has cold and flu symptoms that began Saturday and will isolate for five days or until he returned a negative test, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“He will continue with engagements he can undertake via Zoom,” the statement said.

Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni would stand in for Hipkins at a Samoan church service in Auckland on Sunday, a spokesperson said.

“Thanks to all of Labour’s great volunteers and supporters who I know will keep our campaign going in my absence,” Hipkins said on his official Facebook page. “There’s a lot at stake this election, and I’ll be working doubly hard when I can get back out there to make sure Labour is reelected.”

The prime minister’s office said further updates on his schedule “will be provided in due course.”

The government removed its last COVID restrictions in August, but health authorities still recommend that people stay home for five days if feeling unwell or if they have tested positive.
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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday laid out a proposal to begin regulating laboratory medical tests, a multibillion-dollar industry that the agency says poses a growing risk to patients because of potentially inaccurate results.

The proposed rule would end decades of regulatory ambiguity and formally bring thousands of tests performed in large laboratories under FDA oversight. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said the change will help ensure tests used to diagnose cancer, heart disease and many other conditions are safe, accurate and reliable.

“A growing number of clinical diagnostic tests are being offered as laboratory-developed tests without assurance that they work,” Califf said in a statement. He added that the agency has long worried that many tests offered by laboratories are not as accurate or reliable as those that undergo FDA review.

Here’s a look at the history and background of the testing issue:

What are laboratory-developed tests?

Most Americans are familiar with medical tests like those used to screen for COVID-19, strep throat and other health conditions. Those tests are developed by a handful of large manufacturers that undergo FDA review before selling their test kits to hospitals, doctors offices or pharmacies.

The tests targeted by the FDA’s latest action are developed and used by high-tech laboratories, including those at academic medical centers and companies such as Quest Diagnostics. They include tests for complex diseases like cancer, as well as simpler conditions like high cholesterol and sexually transmitted infections.

Over time, laboratory-developed tests have grown into a multibillion-dollar nationwide business, with labs processing thousands of blood, urine and other samples per week from hospitals and clinics. Others advertise directly to consumers — including some claiming to measure the risk of developing ailments like Alzheimer’s and autism.

Laboratory-developed tests have long skirted FDA oversight, though the agency has maintained that it has the authority to step in. The debate over regulating the space stretches back to the 1990s, with several government advisory groups recommending greater FDA oversight.

Why does the FDA want to regulate them now?

Many lab-developed tests are staples of medical care, used to make important decisions about pregnancy, nutrition and many other health issues.

FDA officials have long voiced concerns about the accuracy of some tests, pointing to patients who have received inaccurate results for heart disease, Lyme disease, cancer and other conditions. Inaccurate tests can lead to patients getting an incorrect diagnosis, skipping treatments or receiving unnecessary medication or surgery.

More than a decade ago, the agency drafted tougher guidelines for the industry, but they were never finalized.

The tests attracted new scrutiny with the downfall of Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes, who was sentenced to prison last year for misleading investors about the potential of her company’s blood testing technology.

What do test makers say?

The laboratory industry has long argued that FDA regulation would stifle their ability to quickly innovate and develop new tests. They also say that additional federal regulation is unnecessary because it would duplicate existing requirements.

Under a quirk of federal law, testing laboratories are overseen by the same agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid, the government health plans for seniors, the disabled and the poor. Inspectors evaluate the general conditions and procedures at labs, but not specific tests or the claims used to market them.

Lawmakers in Congress drafted a bill last year — backed by FDA officials — that would have given the FDA explicit authority to regulate high-risk tests. But the measure failed to pass the House or the Senate amid opposition by testing industry lobbyists.

What is the FDA proposing?

Under the new proposal, FDA would gradually phase in tighter regulation of lab tests over five years. The agency is considering exempting some existing tests from review but is seeking public input on its approach. At the end of the process, most new tests would be subject to FDA standards and regulatory review before launching.
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