A research essay published in PLoS Biology suggests that selfish chromosomes identified in mammals could explain why so many human embryos are lost early in pregnancy.

Getting pregnant and maintaining a pregnancy can be incredibly challenging for the human species. Approximately 4060% of embryos are lost between fertilization and birth, in many cases without a mother knowing that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, one in eight recognized pregnancies will also end in miscarriage.

A common cause for embryo death in utero is aneuploidy an excess or deficit of chromosomes. Gametes, or sex cells (the sperm and egg, in the case of human reproduction), possess half the number of chromosomes (23) as the other cells in the human body (46). When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fertilized egg should possess a total of 46 chromosomes. However, this is often not the case, as Professor Laurence Hurst, director of the Milner Centre for Evolution, describes: Very many embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes, often 45 or 47, and nearly all of these die in the womb. Even in cases like Down syndrome with three copies of chromosome 21, about 80% sadly will not make it to term.

Considering that the human species has been evolving for thousands of years, the high prevalence of aneuploidy which is so lethal to reproduction has puzzled scientists. In a new essay, Hurst outlines several clues, collected through his study of reproduction across different organisms, which may help to explain why it can be so challenging for humans to have a baby.

Aneuploidy is an issue that can often be traced back to the manufacturing of eggs, rather than sperm, with over 70% of eggs estimated to carry the incorrect number of chromosomes. The molecular processes that result in aneuploidy appear to occur in the first two stages of egg manufacturing. Research in mice suggests that the first step is susceptible to genetic mutations capable of sneaking into over 50% of eggs that, upon fertilization, selfishly force the partner chromosome to be destroyed. It has long been suspected that this mechanism, known as centromeric drive, also occurs in humans.

Selfish mutations that endeavor to force out the partner chromosome, but ultimately fail, result in fertilized eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes aneuploidy. Interestingly, Hurst observed that, from an evolutionary standpoint, these mutations may possess an advantage. In mammals, he suggests that it is evolutionarily beneficial for embryos developing from eggs with the incorrect number of chromosomes to be lost, due to the energy expenditure required for a mother to continuously support the developing fetus in the womb.

Aneuploidy has been detected in every mammal that has been studied. However, when studying fish and amphibians which do not carry their offspring this problem has not been identified. In over 2000 fish embryos, not one was found with chromosomal errors from mum, Hurst describes. Chromosomal gain or loss is therefore a downside of feeding offspring in the womb, Hurst suggests.

Hurst believes that the human species as mammals could be vulnerable to the effect of selfish mutations. In mammals such as mice, which typically birth several pups in one litter, the death of an embryo offers resources to the survivors within the same litter. In humans, where a mother most commonly carries one baby at a time, the early death of an embryo with aneuploidy provides the opportunity for a mother to reproduce again, hopefully with a healthy pregnancy as the outcome.

Hursts research also identified that a protein, known as Bub1, could be implicated in aneuploidy. The levels of Bub1 go down as mothers get older and as the rate of embryonic chromosomal problems goes up. Identifying these suppressor proteins and increasing their level in older mothers could restore fertility, he says.

I would hope too that these insights will be one step to helping those women who experience difficulties getting pregnant, or suffer recurrent miscarriage, Hurst concludes.

Reference: Hurst LD. Selfish centromeres and the wastefulness of human reproduction. PLOS Bio. 2022;20(7):e3001671. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001671.

This article is a rework of a press release issued by the University of Bath. Material has been edited for length and content.

Continue reading here:
Why Is It So Challenging for Humans To Have a Baby? - Technology Networks

Twenty years ago, when I was thirteen, I wrote an entry in my journal about abortion, which began, I have this huge thing weighing on me. That morning, in Bible class, which Id attended every day since the first grade at an evangelical school, in Houston, my teacher had led us in an exercise called Agree/Disagree. He presented us with moral propositions, and we stood up and physically chose sides. Abortion is always wrong, he offered, and there was no disagreement. We all walked to the wall that meant agree.

Then I raised my hand and, according to my journal, said, I think it is always morally wrong and absolutely murder, but if a woman is raped, I respect her right to get an abortion. Also, I said, if a woman knew the child would face a terrible life, the child might be better off. Dead? the teacher asked. My classmates said I needed to go to the other side, and I did. I felt guilty and guilty and guilty, I wrote in my journal. I didnt feel like a Christian when I was on that side of the room. I felt terrible, actually.... But I still have that thought that if a woman was raped, she has her right. But thats so strangeshe has a right to kill what would one day be her child? That issue is irresolved in my mind and it will eat at me until I sort it out.

I had always thought of abortion as it had been taught to me in school: it was a sin that irresponsible women committed to cover up another sin, having sex in a non-Christian manner. The moral universe was a stark battle of virtue and depravity, in which the only meaningful question about any possible action was whether or not it would be sanctioned in the eyes of God. Men were sinful, and the goodness of women was the essential bulwark against the corruption of the world. There was suffering built into this framework, but suffering was noble; justice would prevail, in the end, because God always provided for the faithful. It was these last tenets, prosperity-gospel principles that neatly erase the material causes of suffering in our history and our social policiesnot only regarding abortion but so much elsewhich toppled for me first. By the time I went to college, I understood that I was pro-choice.

America is, in many ways, a deeply religious countrythe only wealthy Western democracy in which more than half of the population claims to pray every day. (In Europe, the figure is twenty-two per cent.) Although seven out of ten American women who get abortions identify as Christian, the fight to make the procedure illegal is an almost entirely Christian phenomenon. Two-thirds of the national population and nearly ninety per cent of Congress affirm a tradition in which a teen-age girl continuing an unplanned pregnancy allowed for the salvation of the world, in which a corrupt government leader who demanded a Massacre of the Innocents almost killed the baby Jesus and damned us all in the process, and in which the Son of God entered the world as what the godless dare to call a clump of cells.

For centuries, most Christians believed that human personhood began months into the long course of pregnancy. It was only in the twentieth century that a dogmatic narrative, in which every pregnancy is an iteration of the same static story of creation, began both to shape American public policy and to occlude the reality of pregnancy as volatile and ambiguousas a process in which creation and destruction run in tandem. This newer narrative helped to erase an instinctive, long-held understanding that pregnancy does not begin with the presence of a child, and only sometimes ends with one. Even within the course of the same pregnancy, a person and the fetus she carries can shift between the roles of lover and beloved, host and parasite, vessel and divinity, victim and murderer; each body is capable of extinguishing the other, although one cannot survive alone. There is no human relationship more complex, more morally unstable than this.

The idea that a fetus is not just a full human but a superior and kinglike onea being whose survival is so paramount that another person can be legally compelled to accept harm, ruin, or death to insure itis a recent invention. For most of history, women ended unwanted pregnancies as they needed to, taking herbal or plant-derived preparations on their own or with the help of female healers and midwives, who presided over all forms of treatment and care connected with pregnancy. They were likely enough to think that they were simply restoring their menstruation, treating a blockage of blood. Pregnancy was not confirmed until quickening, the point at which the pregnant person could feel fetal movement, a measurement that relied on her testimony. Then as now, there was often nothing that distinguished the result of an abortionthe body expelling fetal tissuefrom a miscarriage.

Ancient records of abortifacient medicine are plentiful; ancient attempts to regulate abortion are rare. What regulations existed reflect concern with womens behavior and marital propriety, not with fetal life. The Code of the Assura, from the eleventh century B.C.E., mandated death for married women who got abortions without consulting their husbands; when husbands beat their wives hard enough to make them miscarry, the punishment was a fine. The first known Roman prohibition on abortion dates to the second century and prescribes exile for a woman who ends her pregnancy, because it might appear scandalous that she should be able to deny her husband of children without being punished. Likewise, the early Christian Church opposed abortion not as an act of murder but because of its association with sexual sin. (The Bible offers ambiguous guidance on the question of when life begins: Genesis 2:7 arguably implies that it begins at first breath; Exodus 21:22-24 suggests that, in Old Testament law, a fetus was not considered a person; Jeremiah 1:5 describes Gods hand in creation even before I formed you in the womb. Nowhere does the Bible clearly and directly address abortion.) Augustine, in the fourth century, favored the idea that God endowed a fetus with a soul only after its body was formeda point that Augustine placed, in line with Aristotelian tradition, somewhere between forty and eighty days into its development. There cannot yet be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in flesh, and so not yet endowed with sense, he wrote. This was more or less the Churchs official position; it was affirmed eight centuries later by Thomas Aquinas.

In the early modern era, European attitudes began to change. The Black Death had dramatically lowered the continents population, and dealt a blow to most forms of economic activity; the Reformation had weakened the Churchs position as the essential intermediary between the layman and God. The social scientist Silvia Federici has argued, in her book Caliban and the Witch, that church and state waged deliberate campaigns to force women to give birth, in service of the emerging capitalist economy. Starting in the mid-16th century, while Portuguese ships were returning from Africa with their first human cargoes, all the European governments began to impose the severest penalties against contraception, abortion, and infanticide, Federici notes. Midwives and wise women were prosecuted for witchcraft, a catchall crime for deviancy from procreative sex. For the first time, male doctors began to control labor and delivery, and, Federici writes, in the case of a medical emergency they prioritized the life of the fetus over that of the mother. She goes on: While in the Middle Ages women had been able to use various forms of contraceptives, and had exercised an undisputed control over the birthing process, from now on their wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state.

Martin Luther and John Calvin, the most influential figures of the Reformation, did not address abortion at any length. But Catholic doctrine started to shift, albeit slowly. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V labelled both abortion and contraception as homicide. This pronouncement was reversed three years later, by Pope Gregory XIV, who declared that abortion was only homicide if it took place after ensoulment, which he identified as occurring around twenty-four weeks into a pregnancy. Still, theologians continued to push the idea of embryonic humanity; in 1621, the physician Paolo Zacchia, an adviser to the Vatican, proclaimed that the soul was present from the moment of conception. Still, it was not until 1869 that Pope Pius IX affirmed this doctrine, proclaiming abortion at any point in pregnancy to be a sin punishable by excommunication.

When I found out I was pregnant, at the beginning of 2020, I wondered how the experience would change my understanding of life, of fetal personhood, of the morality of reproduction. Its been years since I traded the echo chamber of evangelical Texas for the echo chamber of progressive Brooklyn, but I can still sometimes feel the old world view flickering, a photographic negative underneath my vision. I have come to believe that abortion should be universally accessible, regulated only by medical codes and ethics, and not by the criminal-justice system. Still, in passing moments, I can imagine upholding the idea that our sole task when it comes to protecting life is to end the practice of abortion; I can imagine that seeming profoundly moral and unbelievably urgent. I would only need to think of the fetus in total isolationto imagine that it were not formed and contained by another body, and that body not formed and contained by a family, or a society, or a world.

As happens to many women, though, I became, if possible, more militant about the right to an abortion in the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and caregiving. It wasnt just the difficult things that had this effectthe paralyzing back spasms, the ragged desperation of sleeplessness, the thundering doom that pervaded every cell in my body when I weaned my child. And it wasnt just my newly visceral understanding of the anguish embedded in the facts of American family life. (A third of parents in one of the richest countries in the world struggle to afford diapers; in the first few months of the pandemic, as Jeff Bezoss net worth rose by forty-eight billion dollars, sixteen per cent of households with children did not have enough to eat.) What multiplied my commitment to abortion were the beautiful things about motherhood: in particular, the way I felt able to love my baby fully and singularly because I had chosen to give my body and life over to her. I had not been forced by law to make another person with my flesh, or to tear that flesh open to bring her into the world; I hadnt been driven by need to give that new person away to a stranger in the hope that she would never go to bed hungry. I had been able to choose this permanent rearrangement of my existence. That volition felt sacred.

Abortion is often talked about as a grave act that requires justification, but bringing a new life into the world felt, to me, like the decision that more clearly risked being a moral mistake. The debate about abortion in America is rooted in the largely unacknowledged premise that continuing a pregnancy is a prima facie moral good, the pro-choice Presbyterian minister Rebecca Todd Peters writes. But childbearing, Peters notes, is a morally weighted act, one that takes place in a world of limited and unequally distributed resources. Many people who get abortionsthe majority of whom are poor women who already have childrenunderstand this perfectly well. We ought to take the decision to continue a pregnancy far more seriously than we do, Peters writes.

I gave birth in the middle of a pandemic that previewed a future of cross-species viral transmission exacerbated by global warming, and during a summer when ten million acres on the West Coast burned. I knew that my child would not only live in this degrading world but contribute to that degradation. (Every year, the average American emits enough carbon to melt ten thousand tons of ice in the Antarctic ice sheets, David Wallace-Wells writes in his book The Uninhabitable Earth.) Just before COVID arrived, the science writer Meehan Crist published an essay in the London Review of Books titled Is it OK to have a child? (The title alludes to a question that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once asked in a live stream, on Instagram.) Crist details the environmental damage that we are doing, and the costs for the planet and for us and for those who will come after. Then she turns the question on its head. The idea of choosing whether or not to have a child, she writes, is predicated on a fantasy of control that quickly begins to dissipate when we acknowledge that the conditions for human flourishing are distributed so unevenly, and that, in an age of ecological catastrophe, we face a range of possible futures in which these conditions no longer reliably exist.

Visit link:
Is Abortion Sacred? - The New Yorker

SINGAPORE - A girl - who was sexually assaulted by a family friend when she was nine to 10 years old - was so badly traumatised that her science lessons and examination paper had to be modified to avoid the topic of human reproduction.

The girl, now 17, continues to display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) connected to the assaults, the High Court heard on Monday (July 18).

Her assailant, now 60, was sentenced to 11 years' jail.

He pleaded guilty earlier to one count each of sexual assault by penetration and outrage of modesty committed in 2015.

Five other similar charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.

He cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victim's identity.

The court heard that the girl, whose parents were divorced, lived with her father and maternal grandmother.

In January 2015, her grandmother agreed to take care of the accused's daughter, who moved into their three-room flat.

Between January 2015 and March 2016, the accused would visit his daughter at the flat, usually during weekends.

During these weekly visits, he would ask the victim to chat with him on the sofa in the living room and took the opportunity to sexually assault her when no one else was around.

In the final incident, the victim was looking out of the kitchen window when the man whispered into her ear and molested her.

She managed to pull away, locked herself in her room and began crying and having panic attacks.

On hearing a knock, she opened the door thinking it was her grandmother, but found the man standing there instead.

He hugged and kissed her but she escaped to the toilet, where she washed away his saliva and stuffed toilet paper into her mouth.

She opened the door only when she heard her grandmother's voice.

See the rest here:
Girl traumatised by sexual abuse had to take modified science exam, assailant jailed 11 years - The Straits Times

To understand how the United States of America became a country without the constitutional right to abortion, look to the history of Black womens long fight for reproductive autonomy.

The reproductive coercion of Black women is a thread running through American history, one that predated and presaged the Supreme Courts recent decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade. Enslaved Black women were forced into pregnancy to help build Americas budding economy. Pregnant Black moms are criminalized or excluded from abortion on the basis of poverty. The state takes away Black children from Black mothers at a disproportionate rate.

Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts chronicled this history in her seminal book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts defines reproductive justice as the human right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to parent your child in a supportive, humane, and just society. Her latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

For Roberts, reproductive rights and the fight for abortion access shouldnt just be about the existence of a choice, but about the right to live in a society that allows for the freedom to make it. Just having a legal choice that you dont have the means to effectuate is not true freedom, Roberts told me.

I reached out to Roberts to talk about the key moments throughout history, like the passage of the Hyde Amendment barring federal funds from paying for abortions that suggested abortion rights were never fully secure. We talk about why adoption is not and has never been a solution to inequality, why Black women have historically used abortion as resistance, and why American history is a better source of analogies than The Handmaids Tale. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

As someone who has studied the historic fight for reproductive justice, particularly through what Black women have experienced, what was your reaction when you saw the leaked draft opinion in May and then when the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe in June?

I cant tell you how many panels Ive been on over the last couple of decades where the issue was what to do in the post-Roe world. So there was a lot of preparation for it, but I was still shaken by it. I happened to be with my daughter and her two best friends theyre all in their 30s and my thought was, My goodness, they have fewer rights to autonomy over their bodies than I did at their age. When I was their age, I thought that I had good control over my body.

At the same time, though, theres a reproductive justice movement thats so much stronger than it was when I was their age. We are in a contradictory time because with the fight for justice, it seems like were going backward while at the same time building movements that are so much further than we were when we were growing up.

You had more autonomy over your body in the past than your daughters do now. But was there something you observed back then that suggested that reproductive rights were not actually secure?

I could see that even though we were legally protected from government laws that barred abortion, there was no legal right to demand government support for abortions due to the Hyde Amendment. So we had the legal right to an abortion, but it excluded funding for women who were poor. This was all happening while there was a bipartisan effort to end the federal entitlement to welfare. Plus, in the late 1980s, I watched the prosecutions of Black women for being pregnant and using drugs.

Those two aspects of reproductive regulation, which disproportionately affected Black women, made me think the fight wasnt over.

The advocacy around abortion was focused mostly on the framework of being able to make a choice, without taking into account these structural impediments to having reproductive freedom.

It also didnt take into full account the devaluation of Black womens childbearing and the punitive policies surrounding it. I was an advocate for abortion rights, but I was more concerned about the failure to advocate with the same force for the human rights of impoverished people, or Black people and other people of color in the United States. Once I started thinking about the Hyde Amendment and the prosecutions of Black women who were pregnant and using drugs, I began to see a whole host of reproductive violations that werent at the forefront of the mainstream reproductive rights movement. That really changed the narrative about progress toward reproductive freedom in America.

I can see today how those infringements of human rights are coming together to create the moment were in now, where pregnancy is criminalized and where we are going to see the arrests and incarceration of people who manage their pregnancies, have miscarriages, or have stillbirths. Theyre all going to be punished under one agenda of controlling womens autonomy over their bodies and participation in society, and also punishing anyone whos capable of being pregnant.

Id like to back up then. It sounds like theres almost a straight line from the 17th century to now that has long told us that these rights were never fully secure. And it sounds like it is specifically bound up in a struggle that Black women have faced for reproductive freedom. Can you walk me through some key historical moments that you think speak directly to the Supreme Courts decision and the ensuing trigger bans?

Id first go back to the institution of slavery to look at the connection between reproduction and bondage. The experiences of the enslaved Black woman and the exploitation of Black womens labor were foundational to the state regulation of reproduction in America.

It still is staggering to me when I think about the very first laws in the colonies that were so directed at regulating Black womens sexuality and reproduction, and how that reverberates today.

Black women, during the slavery era, resisted control of their bodies, including by having abortions. Abortion has been a means of resistance for Black women in the same way that exploiting Black womens reproductive labor has been a form of racial and gender oppression from the very founding of this nation.

That was an aspect of the history of reproductive policy and rights in the United States that I didnt think was getting enough attention. I dont think you can understand where we are today without taking into account the historic regulation of Black womens childbearing, which has its roots in enslavement.

And what would you highlight next?

After the Civil War, white supremacists who wanted to take back control of the South, enforce white domination, and effectively re-enslave Black people used the apprenticeship system to violently capture and take control of Black children again by exploiting their labor against the will of their parents. In many of the narratives about this, Black mothers describe how they fought to get their children back. To me, that system is the root of our current child welfare system, or what I call a family policing system, that also disproportionately tears apart Black families and is especially punitive to Black mothers.

I would also highlight the activism of Black women, demanding welfare rights and government funding for their childbearing decisions and for the care of their children. Because Black women were successful at being included in welfare programs, the state reacted by making those programs more punitive and vilifying, eventually leading up to the abolition of the federal entitlement to welfare. This was fueled by the myth of the Black welfare queen. So theres that.

What else stands out to you?

The way in which prosecutors and policymakers turned drug use during pregnancy from a health care issue into a crime, with the prosecutions of Black women who are pregnant and smoked crack cocaine in the 1980s. I see that as the beginning of this latest chapter of the right-wing criminalization of pregnancy.

This is the chapter in which they criminalize pregnant people who dont produce a healthy baby, whether its by abortion or by alleged behaviors during pregnancy that are seen to risk a fetus. That strategy begins with the prosecutions of Black women and also the taking of their newborns. And that is a prelude to what is happening today.

And how have things shifted to what we are seeing today?

One way in which the conditions now are different from when Roe was decided [in 1973] is that we have medication abortion and its easier for people to self-manage their abortions. But on the other hand, we have this buildup of criminalizing pregnancy with fetal protection laws, prosecutors prosecuting and getting convictions of women who have stillbirths. We see the arrest of women who had self-managed abortions prior to the Dobbs decision. That foreshadows a future where women and girls and people who are capable of pregnancy are going to be arrested and incarcerated for pregnancy outcomes. So again, criminalizing pregnancy whether you want to have a child or you want to terminate the pregnancy those prosecutions are a pivotal point in the story of how we got to where we are today, and how Black women were both targeted and fought back again.

During a period in the 1990s, Black feminists got together and developed the framework of reproductive justice. Thats certainly another key moment though, of course, we can also go back to enslaved women who started this work, and the Combahee River Collective of the 1970s that wrote about interlocking systems of oppression and how Black womens position in society is oppositional to white male rule.

So the crafting of reproductive justice analysis is built on that history that recognizes the human right to not have a child but also to have a child, and to parent a child in a nurturing and supportive and just and humane society. That looks beyond the question of whether there is a legal choice to look at the societal conditions that allow people to actually exercise true reproductive freedom and autonomy.

Youve said that forced pregnancy and family separation taking children away from their parents through the child welfare system are connected and that understanding this connection is key to understanding the struggle for reproductive justice. How are they connected?

One way that we can see they are connected forms of state violence is that the right is arguing that adoption is the solution to both of them. And, unfortunately, some liberal people are also arguing for adoption as a solution to the struggles of families who are feeling the brunt of an inequitable society. I dont think its a coincidence that were seeing adoption thrown around as the solution to what really is state violence and state oppression.

Yeah, Ive been seeing what looks like mostly white or foreign couples or white women holding up signs that say, We will adopt your baby. Yet when asked if they actually will, the answer seems to be, No. What is this about?

Compelling pregnancy and taking peoples children away from them are both ways of upholding a system of white male elite rule where you divert attention away from structural inequities that need to be demolished and replaced and point to private mechanisms, which is what adoption is.

In the case of family separation, we have a family policing system that instead of helping families, blames family caregivers especially Black family caregivers and relies on taking children away. To me, that is a neoliberal form of privatizing issues. Instead of a society that supports families needs, it turns to private citizens taking children and claiming them for their own. That is exactly the same response of a regime that now wants to force people to carry pregnancies to term. They turn to this private response of adoption in place of facing the fact that one of the main reasons that people have abortions is because they dont have the means at that time to take care of children.

For state legislators and the Supreme Court justices to pretend that adoption is going to take care of it is just blatant mendacity.

Every aspect of that is just false theres not going to be enough people to adopt all of the children whose needs cannot be met because of poverty in this nation, because of the structural racism, because of discrimination against women. Children will either grow up in families that dont have the means to meet all of their needs on their own, or theyre going to go into a dangerous and harmful foster system.

Its all about blaming people who are unable to meet childrens needs. Its about denying them freedom to make decisions for themselves and then punishing them for whatever outcomes befall their children. Under this regime, they include the fetuses where there isnt a healthy baby.

This also sounds connected to the idea that abortion for Black women is a form of genocide, an idea thats been repeated for a long time. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even cited this idea.

Yes, this is also related to the false accusation that abortion is a form of genocide that Black mothers are complicit in. Abortion hasnt been used historically as a form of controlling Black reproduction. Sterilization has. Theres a big difference between forcible sterilization and upholding the human rights to control your body and not be compelled to be pregnant. Those are two radically different things. One is about compulsion and unfreedom. The other is about freedom and resisting compulsion. Those arent the same thing.

Clarence Thomas is just wrong. And so are others like him who say that abortion is a tool of Black genocide and that Black women are participating in the destruction of the Black community when they have abortions. And they refer to the eugenics era as a historical reference. Thats just false.

The historical reference is compelled sterilization of Black women, which is akin to compelled pregnancy. Theyve got the references all screwed up when they make that argument. The billboards that went up [10 years ago] to shame Black women for abortion that said, The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb that message supports sterilizing Black women, as well as compelling pregnancies. Its a message about reproductive control. Its a false message that isnt about any kind of liberation for Black people.

And is this another reason why some people claim that abortion still feels like a white woman issue?

Ive heard that, too, believe me. At the time when the Webster decision was being considered and we thought that Roe might be overturned, I was speaking about it at a church and a Black man came up to me and said, Thats a white womans issue. Why are you talking about it? And there is a history of some Black nationalists chiding Black women for any kind of family planning, contraceptives, or abortion. Its just ridiculous to say its a white womans issue when Black women are more likely to seek and have abortions.

Black women have been advocating for reproductive freedom for just as long as white women have been. We have included the right to abortion in our fight, but its just that we havent focused on it since we recognize that sterilization, abuse, and being prosecuted for having babies, and Black maternal mortality, and so many other issues involving our reproductive lives are equally as important.

Theres a long history of Black women advocating for abortion rights. Loretta Ross has been advocating for abortion rights for decades. Shirley Chisholm, in her autobiography and advocacy, championed abortion rights and spoke out against Black men who said that it was a white womans issue. Black women use abortion as a form of resistance against slavery.

Its wrong to say that its a white womans issue. And its also wrong to say that it is a form of Black genocide. Those are false in terms of politics, history, in terms of what Black women have been advocating for for centuries. Theyre anti-freedom. Theyre anti-freedom, and they are inconsistent with the history of Black rebellion and abolition activism.

I also want to get your thoughts on The Handmaids Tale references and memes and the people who declared, Welcome to The Handmaids Tale! when the Supreme Courts decision came down. This is the reference that seems to be the most widespread whenever womens rights are on the line.

But lately some people have been pushing back, arguing that the meme erases the realities that marginalized groups of women have faced for centuries in America America has already been a Gilead for Black women, for example. Why do you think The Handmaids Tale meme is still prevalent?

Mainstream US society has never taken full account of Black womens lives and autonomy and imagination and vision. So the response to any current trend is often to look to white people as the victims and as the visionaries. But as Ive been saying, Black women have been at the forefront of movements to both contest oppression and also reimagine a society that is more just and humane and caring and equal. I think thats just one reason why we would get The Handmaids Tale before we get the very real history of Black womens reproductive labor being exploited or Black women being compelled to be pregnant for the profit of white enslavers. Its not an imagined story. Its an actual history that continues to shape policy today.

Theres a big difference between saying this fictional dystopia is a metaphor for our reality and saying, lets look at the real history of the reproductive violence against Black women and how it actually has shaped policy in the United States since the time of slavery until today.

Its also prevalent because white people dont have to grapple with the reality of how we got to the overturning of Roe. It is a result of the dehumanization of Black people, and it is a white backlash against every advance for liberation that Black people have made. It is a result of policies that have put Black women at the center.

Its mind-boggling but so important to recognize that we can name all these moments of history where thereve been these regressions in freedom, where stereotypes about Black women and policies geared at controlling Black womens sexuality and childbearing have been at the center over and over again. One of the reasons for ignoring this is that its a way to skirt radical social change. Its a way of pretending that America is built on principles of equality and liberty when you ignore the deep roots of inhumanity and slavery and coercion and punishment that are still critical to understanding where we are today.

As someone whos examined and been a part of this fight for a long time, what gives you hope right now?

What gives me hope today that we can continue with a reproductive justice framework is fighting back against these assaults on our freedoms while building a radically different society that doesnt rely on carceral approaches to meeting human needs. This means it doesnt police people or force people into compelled pregnancy. It doesnt take peoples children away from them as a way of meeting childrens needs. I see all of these carceral, punitive, inhumane approaches as part of a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist approach to meeting human needs. Theyre all interconnected.

I find hope in the fact that we have a reproductive justice movement that has been active and flourishing. Im also finding a lot of hope in the very quick action by abortion funds that are taking immediate steps to help people who need abortions.

See the article here:
Americas long, cruel history of reproductive violence against Black women - Vox.com

BUDAPEST -- "If it weren't for a private clinic, I wouldn't have him," Krisztina Kazinczy says, pointing at her little boy collecting branches at a playground in a Budapest suburb. Her son, now almost 2 years old, was born after his parents received in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at a private clinic.

Such stories could be increasingly rare in Hungary, as from June 30, the government has outlawed all private institutions from offering IVF treatment. Hungary's longtime, right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has justified the move, saying it is designed to make the procedure more accessible and help stop the shrinking of Hungary's population.

The country's population has been in an almost constant decline since 1980 and has been under 10 million since 2010. While the number of births has been rising since 2019, there have also been agrowing number of deaths, severely worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government's ban on private IVF treatment has drastically reduced the options for many women and couples who are having problems conceiving. With private clinics now a no-go in Hungary, they are left with two options: try their luck at state hospitals with long waiting lists or pursue expensive treatment abroad.

Kazinczy, 38, a freelance consultant, had multiple rounds of IVF at a state-run hospital before electing to go private.

"I will never forget, one time they called in five of usand told us to get naked. When the doctor was done with the first person, the second went right in. And in the meantime, we stood next to each other naked, because they didn't have enough time to wait for us to undress and dress," she says.

Her experience in the private sector was completely different. She didn't, she says, have to explain her medical history from scratch at every appointment and always felt that her doctors were well-informed and knew her case. After two rounds of treatment at the private clinic, she became pregnant.

The first Hungarian IVF baby was born in May 1989 in the southwestern Hungarian city of Pecs. A year later, Steven Kaali, a Hungarian-born, U.S.-based doctor, decided to open a fertility clinic in Budapest. The center, which opened in 1992 in one of Budapest's more affluent neighborhoods, soon became popular in Hungary and well-known abroad.

By 2017, the Kaali Institute (named after Kaali's father, himself a gynecologist) had assisted in the births of over 25,000 children, according to a letter Kaali wrote to Orban. The letter was published in a biography of Kaali, which also includes a signed photograph of the doctor and Hungary's veteran leader, whose Fidesz party won reelection again in April elections.

All eight Kaali Institute centers around Hungary were bought by the government in 2019 for an undisclosed amount. The reason for the sale has never been publicly announced. In December 2019, the Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler announced that over 10 billion forints ($24.5 million) was to be spent on IVF clinics, treatments, and medications supporting fertility.

In May 2021, the government went further, announcing a ban on private clinics performing fertility treatments starting June 30, 2022. The state bought one more private clinic based in Budapest, the Robert Karoly Infertility Center, and the two remaining private fertility centers in the capital -- the Versys Clinics and the Reprosys Fertility Center -- both closed down, unable to provide services under the new law.

RFE/RL reached out to all three institutions for comment but did not receive any responses.

For people pursuing fertility treatment in Hungary, the shuttering of private services has been a huge blow.

Anita, 41, who for reasons of privacy prefers to only use her first name, lives in Szentendre, a town near Budapest. She has two teenage sons and would like to have a baby with her new husband. She became pregnant twice in the last year but miscarried both times.

"We didn't hear a heartbeat," she says over the phone.

Now, Anita has no other option but to go to a state-run hospital. While the treatment is mostly free, Anita's husband still had to undergo some privately funded examinations.

"When I called the assistant of the doctor in September, they told me the first available slot was in January. But if we pay, we can go as soon as October," she says about her husband's private examinations.

Anita is preparing for her second and last round of IVF within the state system but has doubts about whether she has received the correct diagnostic examinations in advance of the procedures.

"I asked the doctor to at least whisper the name of the [extra] examinations we could do, and we would do them in a private [clinic], but he wouldn't," Anita says. "If I could afford it, I would go to the Czech Republic."

Some Hungarians can afford to go abroad. According to Gabriela Nemethova, an IVF coordinator at the Gyncare clinic in Nitra, a city in western Slovakia, the number of Hungarian patients has "multiplied" in recent years. At the Slovak clinic, a basic consultation is 50 euros ($50) and one full round of IVF costs 1,200 euros.

Nemethova speaks Hungarian and was hired so the clinic could make their services available for Hungarian clients. Both of Gyncare's Slovak clinics have Hungarian-speaking coordinators, and they have nurses, receptionists, and doctors who can speak Hungarian, or at least English.

"We have some patients who didn't want to wait their turn in Hungary," Nemethova says. "But there are others who can't get treatment in these institutions because of their age, for example. And there are some who can afford it, but can't get the treatment they want."

For LGBT people, the challenges are even greater.

Laura, a soft-spoken German woman with a Hungarian wife, splits her time between Budapest and the Austrian capital, Vienna. Now eight months pregnant in the middle of a heatwave, she says that for her and her wife, Zsuzsanna, Hungary was never an option, as IVF is only available for heteronormative couples or single women nearing the end of their fertile years.

With the Czech Republic and Slovakia having similar restrictions on same-sex couples, Laura, who prefers to use just her first name, started her IVF in Vienna, which allows non-heteronormative couples to receive treatment. She did have some medical examinations before treatment in Hungary, but these were done in private clinics -- not, she says, because of homophobia from state doctors but because of language barriers.

The shortcomings of the Hungarian state health sector go beyond fertility centers. Due to what critics say is a lack of funding, Hungarian hospitals often have insufficient equipment and a shortage of staff. According to one estimate, Hungary's health-care sector has a shortfall of 25,000 medical workers, which is only expected to worsen in time as fewer young people go into the field.

One hospital in Szolok, a city with 71,000 inhabitants, recently announced that it can only accommodate births on Mondays and Wednesdays, while another rural hospital's maternity ward shut down due to a lack of medics.

I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures."

Freelance consultant and mother Kazinczy, who in 2021 organized a protest against the ban on private clinics in front of the Hungarian parliament that attracted some 50 people, says that her dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the qualifications or expertise of doctors in state-run institutions. Rather, she says, it has to do with the large number of patients they receive, the lack of specialists, and the relatively low salaries doctors receive.

"[It's a] production line," says Borbala, 30, a mother of a 5-week-old baby who went through state fertility treatment and who also prefers only to give her first name.

"They are there to make us a baby, even if that doesn't sound so nice. Despite this, everyone was nice and compassionate," she writes in an e-mail.

For Borbala, who suffers from endometriosis and adenomyosis, IVF was successful the first time she tried. She had various surgeries for her health conditions, her IVF treatment, and the birth of her child all at the same state hospital.

"From the beginning, I focused on the expertise and not the surroundings, like the dirty corridors and the old furniture," she says, and her experience, overall, was positive. "I do not doubt that I would come back. I felt safe."

Despite her positive experience in the state sector, she is worried about the government takeover.

"I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures. We were lucky, [getting treatment] in the middle of the capital. The real problems are in the rural areas," she says.

Beyond Orban's pronouncements about reversing the Hungarian population decline, many doctors, health workers, and patients are scratching their heads as to why the government has decided to target the private sector. In power for 12 years, Orban's government has long been criticized by the European Union, of which Hungary is a member, for presiding over an allegedly corrupt public procurement system, widespread conflicts of interest, lack of judicial independence, and restrictions on media freedom.

"I simply don't see any logic to this," says Alexandra Toth, a gynecologist and infertility specialist formerly at Budapest's private Reprosys clinic. "I would like to believe that their reason is that they want to make the process available for more people. But I don't really see the truth in that. There are long waiting lists, there isn't any quality control, and there's no competition anymore. I just don't see how this [new system] could be better."

Toth, who is currently working at a private gynecology clinic in downtown Budapest, says she was approached by a state-funded IVF clinic about the possibility of employment. The negotiation "died down," she says, after she communicated her needs from a professional perspective. Having previously studied in the United States, she says she told her prospective employer about the importance of certain practices and protocols, but, she says, she never heard back about whether these things would be available there.

The clinic Toth works at now is bright, full of natural light, with high ceilings and modern, shiny machines. She says many of the women who come to the clinic say they would like to hear a second opinion after consulting a doctor at a state institution. The clinic she works at can undertake certain gynecological examinations and procedures related to fertility treatment but not offer IVF.

It's good that people come for a second opinion, she says, "but there are people who come and ask us to explain what's happening. Because they have only spent two times five-minute [appointments] with a doctor and have plenty of questions before the procedure."

Toth's biggest concern is that there will be even more restrictions in the future. In April, the government announced the need for more oversight of the type of clinic where she now works, where they don't even carry out IVF procedures.

"I have a feeling that they will want to restrict private clinics even more," she says. "And I think they might try to do the same with foreign IVF treatments, too."

In February, the government announced the Directorate of Human Reproduction, which in the future will head the reconstruction of the sector. The president of the directorate is Vesztergom Dora, a doctor and well-known specialist in the fertility field and the sister-in-law of Hungary's president, Katalin Novak. RFE/RL reached out to Dora but didn't receive a response.

For those hoping to become parents, the added layer of insecurity to an already stressful and emotional process is grueling. Many former private patients were upset that their eggs were stored in a clinic that is now state-funded. Others managed to make last-minute transfers to clinics abroad or other state institutions they preferred to the one they were assigned.

For Kazinczy, the issue is pressing, as she plans on having a second child. The private institution that facilitated the birth of her first child is now run by the state, she explains, while chasing her son around the playground.

"This is the most tender part of our lives," she says. Her son stops at the swing and demands his mother join him in the miniature castle. "And we would like to know what's happening in the next few years."

View original post here:
Despite Population Decline, The Hungarian Government Is Making It Harder To Have (IVF) Babies - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

SpaceX launched its 25th contracted supply mission for NASA, delivering new science experiments for the astronauts aboard the ISS. The spacecraft will make a return to trip to Earth with cargo and research from space station in about a month.

Just before 9 a.m. EST on July 14, 2022, SpaceX launched its Dragon cargo spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, headed toward the International Space Station (ISS) (see image below). Two days later, the spacecraft autonomously docked to the forward-facing port of the space station's Harmony module. Aboard the spacecraft were new science experiments for the astronauts aboard ISS.

One of the experiments that arrived, deals with how aging is associated with changes in the immune response known as immunosenescence. As astronauts spend long periods of time in microgravity, it causes changes in their immune cells that resemble this condition, but happen faster than the actual process of aging on Earth. The investigation, sponsored by the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, will attempt to use tissue chips in order to study how microgravity affects immune function during flight and whether those immune cells recover post-flight. The tissue chips being utilized are small devices that contain human cells in a 3D structure, allowing scientists to test how the cells respond to things such as stress, drugs, and genetic changes.

Another study that arrived deals with how microgravity affects metabolic interactions in communities of soil microbes. Soil on Earth has complex communities of microorganisms that carry out important functions in the soil. These functions include cycling of carbon and other nutrients, along with supporting plant growth. This particular study will look at microbe communities that decompose chitin, a natural carbon polymer on Earth.

Other studies that arrived aboard ISS include a high school student weather study called BeaverCube, a study into cell-free technology, and another looking at how microgravity affects the process of creating a concrete alternative made with an organic material and on-site materials.

Top Image Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Originally posted here:
SpaceX Dragon Resupply Ship Docks With ISS To Deliver Science Benefitting Human Race - Hot Hardware

In last weeks column, There is a feminism without abortion, I began to share the interview given to New York Times columnist Ezra Klein by feminist and legal scholar Dr. Erika Bachiochi. She argues in her 2021 book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, that the sexual revolution coupled with hi-tech forms of contraception and easy abortion have been devastating for womens well-being and the cultivation of virtue.

Reflecting on the evolution of feminism, Dr. Bachiochi observes that in capitalism, the market has grown to value women not because they are biological women but when they perform at the workplace like men. The standard has been maleness, undervaluing (indeed ignoring) the roles and functions of women qua women. This is the ultimate patriarchy.

Weve seen women advance in so many ways, except there isnt this concomitant valuing of the work thats done by women in pregnancy, and then the work thats done by both men and women in the home. The modern day womens movement really capitulates to a market logic, where equality is seen in market terms, where instead of women as caregivers and men as breadwinners, both men and women are valued only as breadwinners.

And that really important work of care that women especially but increasingly men too really value, that work of care they do in the home, has not been valued in the market And that has been especially, I think, difficult for poor women.

In capitalism, the market would prefer women to be just like men never getting pregnant, never needing maternity leave. Biological women may get pregnant, requiring absence from work on full pay; someone may have to be paid to backstop. In capitalism, women becoming pregnant is inconvenient, and expensive; this may partially explain why women are often paid less than men for the same work.

According to Dr. Bachiochi, abortion and contraception really serve the needs of capital and the market at the expense of families.

There should be massive realignment where theres a real renewed attention to but support of caregiving. But just the fact that there is a choice [for abortion] means that employers see it as a cheaper choice.

This is exactly why you have employers, corporations states talking about the corporate case for reproductive health its a far cheaper option than accommodations for pregnancy for caregiving. And so when theyre thinking about the bottom line, this is the way theyre going to go.

Suddenly, theres all this talk about autonomy, and theres a very Lockean approach to the way progressives talk about abortion rights and this idea that the child well, they dont [use the word] child the fetus is like a trespasser on their property of their body, the self-ownership of their body, again, in a very Lockean way and they then have this right to dispel anyone who comes through it in kind of an absolute property right, when it seems to me that in the progressive tradition, theres a better understanding of the duties of care we owe one another, that were all interdependent, that theres more of a responsibility for those who are vulnerable and dependent. And the child, who is a human being and is really utterly dependent on his or her mother at that time for those nine months, is the most vulnerable and the most dependent.

Instead of arguing that because the child growing in the womb is vulnerable and dependent upon the mother for life, that very vulnerability is used to argue that the child has no right to live, no right to be called human, because it is not viable outside the womb. Capitalism and the market has no use for the vulnerable the aged, the handicapped, the idle unskilled because they cannot produce, or because they constrain optimal production.

Dr. Bachiochi suggests that the liberal capitalist way of thinking (exemplified by John Locke commonly known as the father of liberalism) may be at the root of a radical individualism masquerading as personal autonomy that is ultimately anti-family and anti-community. This approach to life must be challenged.

In terms of the poor woman by resetting this question the law does teach. By saying that there are all sorts of people, maybe not everyone in the country obviously, who believe that a childs life is taken in an abortion and that we actually owe duties to that child, that it helps reset thinking about sex itself, that I think it ought to help us take sex more seriously.

When we take the natural facts of human reproduction seriously, that there are asymmetrical burdens on women, therefore women should hold men off more and expect more from them.

In the same way, I think that enabling and, again, empowering the poor to take seriously the really important work of the home, of rearing children is basically what the rich already do. And its kind of not fair that the wealthy, the rich, the well-educated see how important it is to prioritize their childrens development, their childrens moral and intellectual development, and then say, oh, well, we shouldnt expect that of the poor.

To me, that is actually more of a flawed way of thinking about the capacities of the poor. And our human equality is not in how much property we own or wealth we have or how much money we make or anything. But its just in our equal human capacity for moral development.

And I think rich and poor both have that and that should be an expectation that our laws have that we all ought to be striving for moral development. We ought not to shield moral responsibility from the poor or the rich, that our laws and our policies should be enabling people to carry out their obligations to one another, because thats how people develop virtuously. And that tends to lead toward both personal and societal happiness.

Engaging in the natural act of sexual intercourse implies moral obligations many seek to avoid. Readily available abortion and contraception assist in this, and lead to a new antinatalism people deciding ex ante that they never want to become parents. This can lead to immature behaviour, and sexual irresponsibility.

People dont realize what theyre missing out on when they make those sorts of determinations well ahead of time. Parenting is profound. And I think for eons and eons, what human beings have seen is that becoming a mother or father really develops the person, requires a great movement away from the focus on self toward another, toward benevolence and in order to then be able to focus on others outside of your family as well, and that maturation process, I think, is most definitely needed in our culture right now on the part of both men and women.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com

Read more:
Peter Espeut | The economics of abortion | Commentary - Jamaica Gleaner

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced the creation of a new reproductive rights task force aimed at protecting abortion access and enforcing federal laws on reproduction rights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

In a press release, the DOJ said the new task force will bring together representatives from several offices in the department, including the civil rights division, the Office of the Solicitor General and U.S. attorneys offices.

DOJ Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who will chair the new task force, said the DOJ is committed to protecting access to reproductive services after the high courts decision last month that cleared the way for states to restrict or ban abortion access.

The Court abandoned 50 years of precedent and took away the constitutional right to abortion, preventing women all over the country from being able to make critical decisions about our bodies, our health, and our futures, Gupta said in a statement.

The DOJ said the reproductive rights task force will monitor state and local laws that infringe on federal protections for reproductive care, impair a womans ability to seek abortion care in states where it is legal, ban federally approved abortion medication or prevent federal employees from accessing abortion care.

The task force is not entirely new but simply formalizes an existing working group and efforts by the Department over the last several months to enforce federal laws and protect abortion access, according to the DOJ.

The news comes after President Biden signed an executive order last week that instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to protect and expand access to abortion through medication shipped by mail.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has already said he will enforce the protection of abortion medication, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Biden administration has so far resisted calls to allow abortion access on federal lands and to declare a public health emergency after several states have taken steps to severely restricted access to abortion.

The presidents resistance has angered progressives who are urging Biden to do more after the Supreme Court ruling. For his part, Biden has pushed for Congress to codify the right to abortion.

See more here:
DOJ creates new reproductive rights task force - The Hill

Sisters Shirley and Marlene Rutherford often leave people rubbing their eyes in confusion and wondering if they are seeing double.

For the identical twin sisters, now in their 70s, have dressed identically all their lives and still love to do so right down to their shoes. Shirley and Marlene share everything, including their home in Willerby, and have been affectionately nicknamed "double trouble" by their neighbours.

Shirley and Marlene have now opened up on their life as a double act. Speaking to BBC Look North, they said they were used to the stares and had no intention of giving up on their identical outfits anytime soon.

Read more: 'I fancied Killing Eve's Jodie Comer and realised I was a lesbian' - Hull mum

The twins are difficult to tell apart, even to those who have known them for decades. "I think if we'd have dressed different, we'd have looked at one another and thought, 'I wish I had that on'," Marleen said.

"Our mum made all our clothes," Shirley said, recalling their childhood days. "She made our bows in our hair, and we used to go to bed with rags in our hair to make it curly," Marleen added.

"I have never seen them not dressed the same," said friend and neighbour Janet Slater, who has known the sisters for more than 20 years. "Coats the same, scarves, hats, gloves, fleeces. Always the same, always in the same shoes."

The sisters are well-known in Willerby. Kerry Robinson, who works in the village Post Office, said she found it so different to tell them apart, sometimes she had to resort to just addressing them as 'ladies'.

"I can [tell them apart], one day, and then the next day I'm confused again," she added. "I'll think, 'that's Marlene' and then I'll say, 'oh no, is it Shirley?' And then I'll confuse myself so I just won't dare say anything."

It's estimated that twins occur in one in every 2050 births, although identical twins are more rare than non-identical. A recent report suggested that the birth rate for twins was increasing, with more twins born than ever in 2021.

According to the Human Reproduction medical journal, the number of twins born is now particularly high in Europe and North America. Worldwide, the figure has risen from nine twins for every 1,000 deliveries to 12. You can watch the full interview with Shirley and Marlene on the BBC website.

For Marlene and Shirley, being twins defines them. "They do say 'there goes the twins', and 'here comes double trouble'," they added, with one appropriately finishing the other's sentence.

READ NEXT:

The rest is here:
The twin sisters from Willerby still dressing identically in their 70s - Hull Live

According to some estimates, theoceans, which contain 97% of the world's water, keep Earth alive. Over a billion people rely on it as their primary source of protein, and we depend on it to control our climate and absorb CO2. It is believed that a large portion ofplasticgarbage that does not go to a landfill or other means of waste disposal ends up in the ocean. A major issue harming the maritime ecosystem is plastic pollution. It endangers the health of the ocean, marine wildlife, human health, food safety and quality, and coastal tourism, and it causesclimate change.

Although it can be difficult to estimate the exact amount of plastic in the ocean, the largest study to date estimates that there are 5 trillion particles of plastic floating in the water. Massive amounts of plastic have collected across the ocean, even in deep-sea regions that were once believed to be undisturbed by people.

North Pacific

2 trillion

Indian

1.3 trillion

North Atlantic

930 billion

South Pacific

491 billion

South Atlantic

297 billion

The amount of plastic pollution in our oceans weighs as much as 268,000 tons, or 38,000African elephants. The plastic was divided into three sizes by ocean researcher Marcus Eriksen and his team:microplastics(4.75 millimeters and less), meso plastics (4.75 to 200mm), and macro plastics (over 200mm). By 2040, 29 million metric tons of plastic rubbish are anticipated to enter the oceans each year, nearly tripling today's level.

The plastic you discard can end up in the ocean, even if you live hundreds of miles from the shore. Once in the ocean, plastic breaks down very slowly, forming microscopic fragments known as microplastics that can enter the marine food chain and do a great deal of harm tomarine species. Around 80% of the plastic pollution in the world is estimated to come from land use, and 20% from marine-going vessels. The plastic is largely scarcely discernible. The minuscule beads used in cosmetic products like toothpaste and face washes are among the most popular ones. Additionally, the plastic you throw away ends up in a landfill. Plastic is frequently blown away when the trash is being delivered to landfills because it is so light. From there, it may eventually clog drains and infiltrate rivers and the sea this way.

At least 800 species are reportedly impacted by marine waste worldwide, and up to 80% of that trash is plastic, according to theUnited Nations. In addition to piling up in the oceans, plastic is the material that does the most harm to marine life.Fish,seabirds, and marine animals are injured or killed by plastic trash in the ocean. Globally, marine plastic pollution has had an impact on at least 267 species, including 86% of allsea turtlespecies, 44% of all seabird species, and 43% of allmammalian species.

Due to the pervasive plastic pollution on many beaches, there is a decrease inturtlereproduction rates due to the altered sand temperature where incubation occurs. Additionally, plastic garbage kills up to a million seabirds yearly. Like sea turtles, seabirds consume plastic, it occupies space in their stomachs and can occasionally result inmalnutrition. Numerous seabirds are discovered deceased with this material still in their stomachs. Scientists predict that by 2050, 99% of all seabird species will have consumed plastic, up from the current estimate of 60%.

In the end, it's about us. Whether we intend to litter or not, there is always a danger that the plastic we discard will end up in the sea. By 2050, scientists project that the weight of ocean plastics will be more than the total weight of all fish in the seas unless immediate action is made to address this important issue. Small steps lead to big changes, and each of us can change the world.

Read the original here:
How Much Plastic Is In The Ocean? - Worldatlas.com

No evidence Omicron BA.5 is more infectious than measles or is 'the most infectious virus known'

No evidence Omicron BA.5 is more infectious than measles or is 'the most infectious virus known'

17 July,2022 10:29 am

(Reuters) - Scientists say there is no evidence that the BA.5 version of the Omicron coronavirus variant is more transmissible than measles, or that it has a basic reproduction number, or R-naught (R0), of 18.6, which would be greater than that of measles. While BA.5 appears to be spreading faster than other Omicrons still circulating, experts say that BA.5 is unlikely to be one of the most infectious viruses known to man, as some have claimed.

Calculations recently published online (here) and (here) suggested that the R0 of BA.5 is 18.6, which would be nearly six times that of the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in 2019 and was estimated to have an R0 of about 3.0 to 3.3.

Basic reproduction number, or R0, is an estimate of the "number of secondary cases generated by a typical infectious individual when the rest of the population is susceptible (ie, at the start of a novel outbreak)" (here).

The calculation that BA.5 has an R0 of 18.6 was made by the articles author Adrian Esterman, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology based in Australia (here), who implies that BA.5 has displaced measles -- with its R0 of 18 -- as the virus with the highest known basic reproduction rate, writing: "This is similar to measles, which until now was our most infectious viral disease."

The claim made its way into online articles (here) , (here), and has been repeated and shared more than 20,000 times on Twitter.

In sharing Estermans result, one Twitter user remarked, "The latest Covid subvariants have an Ro value of 18.6. If you think its over, guess again" (here) and another said, "The Omicron variants #BA4 #BA5 have an R0 of 18.6. In 2020, the R0 was around 1-3 or 4 at its worst. #COVID19 is now the most infectious disease in human history. Buckle up. This is it." (here).

But many Twitter users, including professional biostatisticians and epidemiologists, questioned the result and how it was calculated. "This statement about R0 is almost certainly incorrect and very frustrating to see going viral" (here), said one.

Another said, "Strikes me that there is some misunderstanding about the relationship between R0, growth advantage, and R_eff - and a bit of gen time as well" (here).

A third said, "Still seeing claims that latest COVID variants have R0 (i.e. R in fully susceptible population) of almost 20. But the same logic would lead to (incorrect) conclusion that seasonal flu has an R0 in the hundreds, if not thousands" (here).

More examples can be seen (here) , (here) and (here).

Estermans calculation is based on multiplying two very different types of measurement, scientists said. One is a context-dependent comparison -- BA.5s growth advantage over the BA.2 version of Omicron, or BA.2s growth advantage over BA.1 -- while the other is a more intrinsic property of the virus and how it would behave on a theoretical level playing field.

In his article, Esterman states the R0 for BA.1, the first version of Omicron to spread globally, is 9.5, citing a review of mostly South African studies (here) done soon after Omicrons emergence in that country. In addition to R0, the authors of that study calculated an average effective reproduction rate (R_eff) of 3.4.

Effective reproduction rate is "the expected number of new infections caused by an infectious individual in a population where some individuals may no longer be susceptible," and is considered a better reflection of how fast an epidemic will actually grow in a real setting (here) and (here).

Esterman then writes, "BA.2, which is the dominant subvariant in Australia at the moment, is 1.4 times more transmissible than BA.1, and so has an R0 of about 13.3." He further adds, "a pre-print publication from South Africa suggests BA.4/5 has a growth advantage over BA.2 similar to the growth advantage of BA.2 over BA.1. That would give it an R0 of 18.6," citing an analysis (here) from the period when BA.4 and BA.5 infections were rising in South Africa while BA.2 infections slowed.

Natalie Dean, an associate professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics, and of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, tweeted about the result, "Just because something has a 50% *growth advantage* in a population does not mean it is 50% more *transmissible.* Some (or most) of that growth advantage may come from immune evasion." (here)

"So if each new variant has a 50% growth advantage, it does not mean that R0 keeps increasing by 50%. And while new variants are more transmissible, R0 is not up to 18 (measles territory). The reality is that R0 is tricky to apply to our current situation. Interpret with care!" (here)

Multiple factors can give one variant an advantage over another, Dean told Reuters. They include a change in the virus that makes it inherently more transmissible, but another is that it can evade recognition by the immune system in people who have been exposed to previous variants or to vaccines based on older versions of the virus.

The R0 is just focused on the transmissibility part, but unless you untangle the two, you cant tell how much of the advantage is due to [immune evasion], she explained. With the assorted Omicron lineages, a large chunk of the advantage they have relative to one another and to previous variants comes from immune evasion, she said.

You dont even need an increase in transmissibility to explain the advantage, Dean noted. But in multiplying R0 by relative growth advantage, at each step, youre attributing those advantages [only] to increased transmissibility.

It would be difficult to calculate a true R0 for BA.5 now because the world has such mixed levels of exposure and vaccination, Dean said. If you put BA.5 and the Wuhan strain in the same population, we dont know what would happen. BA.5 might do better, but not six times as much.

VERDICT

False. The basic reproduction number of the BA.5 Omicron variant was miscalculated as 18.6, scientists say, and therefore it is not greater than that of measles, and BA.5 is not the most infectious viral disease known.

' ;var i = Math.floor(r_text.length * Math.random());document.write(r_text[i]);

Continued here:
No evidence Omicron BA.5 is more infectious than measles or is 'the most infectious virus known' - Dunya News

What seems like a sci-fi movie can be turned into reality if Japans technology is to be believed. Humans can travel across different planets on a train in the near future! Yes, you read that right. Japan has laid out plans in a bid to send humans to Mars and the Moon, according to The Weather Channel India.

Japan has made plans to build a glass habitat structure that would copy Earth's gravity, atmosphere and topography to make us feel like home.

Researchers from Japans Kyoto University in collaboration with Kajima Construction are working on this plan that might shake up space travel, the Weather Channel reported. The researchers announced this last week in a press conference, the EurAsian Times reported.

The interplanetary transportation system by Japanese researchers is called 'Hexatrack'. Hexatrack would maintain a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to lessen the effects of extended exposure to low gravity.

The trains will also have hexagonal-shaped capsules called the 'Hexacapsules' with a moving device in the middle.

According to the proposal of the Japanese researchers, a mini-capsule with a 15-metre radius will link the Earth and the Moon. For connecting moon and Mars, a 30-metre-radius capsule will be needed.

Now, the capsule will employ the kind of electromagnetic technology used by the Maglev trains in Germany and China.

While the station on the moon will use a gateway satellite and will be known as Lunar Station, the train station on Mars will be called Mars Station. It will be situated on the Martian satellite Phobos.

According to the Human Spaceology Centre, the Earth station will be called Terra Station and will be the successor space station to the International Space Station (ISS).

The space train, known as Space Express, would operate on standard gauge track, reported Mashable India.

Most of the space transportation system overlooks the importance of terrestrial natural capital. However, researchers at the Kyoto University plan to build a habitat that would recreate the facilities on Earth.

The researchers aim at building a narrowed living structure in the shape of a champagne flute with artificial gravity, green areas and water bodies, and complete with public transportation. The structure will be known as The Glass.

Low gravity is a major concern as it can affect reproduction. The researchers at the university aim at curbing this concern. The structure will create artificial gravity capable of generating gravity that would be equivalent to Earth's environment by utilising centrifugal force caused by the rotation of moon and Mars in space.

According to Japan's The Asahi Shimbun, the plan might take a century to be a reality. However, researchers are aiming to build a simplified prototype version of the Marsglass and Lunaglass by 2050.

According to the Director of SIC Manned Cosmology Research Center and Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies at Kyoto University, Yosuke Yamashiki, what Japan has in store for Space habitation are crucial for ensuring the realisation of human space colonisation in the future.

Yosuke Yamashiki, the Director of SIC Manned Cosmology Research Center and Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies at Kyoto University, says that

Through discussions over the past few years, these three pillars that we propose this time are core technologies that are not in the development plans of other countries and are indispensable for ensuring the realization of human space colonization in the future, he said.

--- ENDS ---

Read the original post:
Bullet train to the moon and Mars? Here's how Japan's planning interplanetary travel - India Today

Modern technologies prove effective for biodiversity management, but sustainable consumption and production practices have no substitutes

Life forms on Earth have much diversity, ranging from bacteria to plants and animals. No life form can survive on Earth without the direct or indirect support of other organisms. Each of these species and organisms works together in an ecosystem to maintain balance and sustain life. Biodiversity thus includes not only the variety of different species but also the variations within and among them and between ecosystems such as different habitats and ecological processes.

Biodiversity provides humans with a variety of essential resources and ecosystem services, including food production, pollination of plants, air and water purification and climate stabilization. It can also be instrumental in achieving sustainable development goals (zero hunger, improvement of land and soil quality), halting land degradation, building food security, preventing future pandemics and providing jobs in agriculture, fisheries, forestry, etc.

However, the world is currently experiencing an unprecedented biodiversity loss. Over one million species are at a risk of extinction and we are in the midst of a sixth mass die-off ? the largest since the extinction of dinosaurs. The most notable drivers behind this crisis are habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive species, fragmentation, pollution and climate change. Recent climate changes such as rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and more extreme weather events have disrupted species' tolerance limits and nutrient cycling processes.

It is possible that these changes may create opportunities for invasive species which could further add to the stress on species already struggling to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Fragmented ecosystem is often less resilient than a contiguous one, because areas cleared for farms and roads provide pathways for invasion of non-native species, which further contribute to the decline of native species. The genetic loss also threatens species' survival over time, mainly because the number of mates becomes scarce and the chances of inbreeding risk rises. So, the best way to conserve biodiversity is to save habitats and ecosystems, because no organism can exist in isolation. Hence, a diverse pool of data from all possible domains that are directly or indirectly related to biodiversity is required for monitoring and assessing these multiple pressures on species and formulating conservation strategies.

Although, it requires a more coordinated, coherent and strategic approach by all stakeholders such as scientists, biologists, ecologists, government, private sector, forest sector, civil society and individuals. Historically, bio-geographical surveys for conservation usually involved many hours of field work performed by professional researchers, rangers, which certainly could not scale up to meet today's conservation goals.

Surveillance, especially in tropical and inaccessible terrains, is also challenging and complex. It was implausible to predict the global consequences of human activities from these locally collected data. However, recent technological advances have facilitated biodiversity conservation on many fronts, notably for collecting field data and analyzing large datasets, which is expanding human understanding of ecosystems. The increased availability of satellite imagery for instance has revolutionized data collection for ecological survey and monitoring. Similarly, application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also change the dynamics of the field in favour of threatened species. Varieties of algorithms can be developed to harness AI for surveillance, capturing picture, security, animal counting, poaching management, research, etc.

Today, satellites are being used worldwide to collect data of temperature, location, moisture, etc. These environmental information along with geo-location data are essential for understanding the scope of threat to a given species.

Habitat maps or land cover data are usually the most commonly derived product from satellite imagery which can be used to determine species' presence and absence with vegetation types and habitat components.

Even regions that are experiencing rapid change, such as tropical environments, can be closely surveyed through these means. Remote sensing enables faster and more frequent analysis of terrestrial and aquatic landscapes, including chemical and geological parameters and biological processes, which are crucial for taking timely action. It can also help conservation biologists in assessing biodiversity hotspots, maintaining healthy habitats and protecting the life they harbor by detecting failing food webs and excessive human interference.

By conventional means, this kind of surveillance was unfeasible, exhaustive and the territories needed to be monitored by the rangers were humongous when compared with the number of rangers. Fortunately, there are a variety of wildlife tracking systems now that allow us to identify protection priority areas and track animals' movements, assess critically endangered species and protect them from natural calamities and illicit activities. Data gathered from these tracking systems generates massive high-resolution datasets that reflect the ecological context in which animals perceive, interact with and respond to their surroundings.

The AI-enabled robots or drones image datasets are becoming increasingly useful for identifying species, determining animals' social groups, population, location, migration patterns, their daily activities, habitat, repeated behaviors reproduction patterns, foraging routes, hunting habits, etc. Researchers are using floating robots equipped with image classification algorithms to locate and eradicate invasive species of marine algae before they become well-established. Also, drones can also be used to select ideal seeding sites by assessing site conditions like soil types, gradients and competing vegetation.

AI-powered acoustic sensors are helping conservationists in understanding the underwater ecosystem health by observing species behavior and their presence in a specific region or island through their sounds. Acoustic sensors can also be used to detect chainsaws, vehicles and gunshots sounds and alert authorities in real time about illegal poaching, mining or logging. Similarly, camera traps are facilitating conservationists to non-invasively monitor and track both vulnerable species and human presence in largely inaccessible areas and quickly spot anomalies or warning signs. Using environmental DNA, conservationists are quickly and easily collecting traces of animal DNA by scanning water and soil samples which can reveal the presence of unobserved species and make the case for greater protection of an area.

These conservation technologies are rapidly expanding scientific frontiers, improving conservation opportunities and assisting scientists, ecologists, foresters, policymakers and others in better understanding the complex natural environment at national, regional and species level. However, human technology cannot fully replace nature's technology, which has evolved over millions of years to provide essential services to sustain life on Earth. It is challenging to conserve the biosphere with standard economic practices that ignore sustainability issues in relation to resources or excessive stress on the environment. The success of our civilization has been largely dependent on a diverse, productive natural world and a stable climate. Thus, more sustainable production and consumption practices alongwith national and sector policies are required to address climate and biodiversity change together.

The author is former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Uttar Pradesh

See more here:
Saving life on Earth in times of climate change - Daily Pioneer

What's happening

The monkeypox outbreak is still growing in the US. In response, the government is releasing more doses of the monkeypox vaccine to people at higher risk of getting it.

Controlling monkeypox is important for public health. Some people with monkeypox may have only a small rash or blemishes mistaken for something else.

Anyone can get monkeypox, but gay and bisexual men are being disproportionately affected in the current outbreak. If you have an unexplained rash or skin blemish or think you may have been exposed, seek medical care.

There are at least 1,814 cases of the monkeypox in the US, according to Friday's data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while there's an ongoing vaccine response in the US for people most at-risk of catching monkeypox, there's more demand than there is vaccine supply, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, as reported by The New York Times.

Some officials think the monkeypox outbreak is becoming harder to control, and the confirmed number cases is understood to be much smaller than the true number of cases, due to inadequate testing resources or confusion on how the disease is presenting.

Monkeypoxis a disease caused by an orthopoxvirus that belongs to the same family as the viruses that cause smallpox and cowpox. Monkeypox is endemic in West and Central Africa. Reports of it in the US have been rare but not unheard of. (There were two reported cases in 2021 and47 cases in 2003during an outbreak linked to pet prairie dogs.)

In a health alert to medical providers in mid-June on the spread of monkeypox in the US, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that some cases of monkeypox might be getting missed in testing, and that the monkeypox rash could be mistaken for (or come in addition to) other common infections, like herpes.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky had previously said that current monkeypox infections were causing people to develop blemishes that more closely resembled a pimple or blister as opposed to a more classic, spreading rash, as reported by NBC. While no deaths from the outbreak have been reported in the US, it's important for individuals and their health care providers to catch symptoms early to contain the outbreak of monkeypox occurring in many countries.

Here's what to know.

Examples of monkeypox "pox" or rashes.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease, which means it's transmitted from animals to humans. It's caused by an orthopoxvirus of the same family as the one that causes smallpox, though smallpox is considered more clinically severe than monkeypox.

There are two clades or types of monkeypox virus, according to the World Health Organization: the West African clade and the Congo Basin clade. The West African strain, which has been identified in the recent cases, according to a May 26 presentation by the WHO, has a fatality rate of less than 1%. The Congo Basin or Central African clade has a higher mortality rate of up to 10%, per the WHO.

Monkeypox has caused 72 deaths this year in countries where it's endemic, according to the WHO, but no deaths have been reported in the current outbreak in countries where it isn't endemic, including the US.

Monkeypox was first discovered in the 1950s in colonies of monkeys that were being researched, according to the CDC, but it's also been found in squirrels, rats and other animals. The first human case was discovered in 1970.

Monkeypox spreads between peopleprimarily through contact with infectious sores, scabs or bodily fluids, according to the CDC, but it can also spread through prolonged face-to-face contact via respiratory droplets or by touching contaminated clothing or bedding. (Think the close contact you'd have with a sexual partner, or the close contact you have with strangers at a busy event or club.) Experts are currently investigating whether monkeypox can be spread through semen or vaginal fluid.

Anyone can be infected with monkeypox, but many of the cases in the US recently have been in men who have sex with men, the CDC says. The close contact you have with a sexual partner may expose you to monkeypox, and the current outbreak is linked to social networks or sexual activity within some communities.

Gay and bisexual communities tend to have particularly "high awareness and rapid health-seeking behavior when it comes to their and their communities' sexual health," Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, the WHO's regional director for Europe, said in a statementat the end of May, noting that those who sought early health care services should be applauded.

The "close" in close contact is a key element in the transmission of monkeypox. That, along with the fact that the virus that causes monkeypox appears to have a slower reproduction rate than the COVID-19 virus, sets it apart from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in June at a media briefing.

While scientists are still learning about monkeypox in the newer outbreaks, and some experts are pushing back on the idea it isn't airborne, "It's not acting like influenza or COVID or chicken pox or measles -- things that spread quickly in an unvaccinated community," Inglesby said. "It's acting much more like a disease that requires close contact."

"It's not a situation where if you're passing someone at a grocery store, they're gonna be at risk for monkeypox," Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director at the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said at a May briefing with the CDC.

Because many of the recent cases of monkeypox in Europe have resulted in lesions in the genital region and resemble symptoms of sexually transmitted infections like herpes, you should ask to be evaluated if you have an unexplained rash in your genital region, Dr. John Brooks, epidemiologist in the division of HIV/AIDS prevention, said at a May CDC media briefing.

Symptoms of monkeypox in humans are similar to (but milder than)smallpox, which WHO declared eliminated in 1980.

A monkeypox infection typically begins with flulike symptoms, including fatigue, intense headache, fever and swollen lymph nodes. Within one to three days of a fever developing, according to the CDC, a rash or sores develop and can be located pretty much anywhere on the body, including the hands, genitals, face, chest and inside of the mouth.

But wherever they develop, the rash or monkeypox lesions can be flat or raised, full of clear or yellowish fluid and will eventually dry up and fall off.

You can spread monkeypox until the sores heal and a new layer of skin forms, according to the CDC. Illness typically lasts for two to four weeks. The incubation period ranges from five to 21 days, according to the CDC.

Notably, some people never experience flulike symptoms, the CDC says, and you may experience all or only few of the typical monkeypox symptoms. For safer sex and social gatheringswhere you may be in close contact with other peoples' bodies, the CDC has a fact sheet for practices to consider.

Monkeypox doesn't have the same ability to infect people like the virus that causes COVID-19, says Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

"Monkeypox is not contagious during the incubation period, so it doesn't have that ability to spread the way certain viruses like flu or SARS-CoV-2 can," he said. Experts are studying whether this will remain true in the current outbreak.

Monkeypox lesions progress through a series of stages before scabbing, according to the CDC.

While traditionally the rash starts on the face before becoming more widespread, monkeypox blemishes can be limited, resemble a pimple or other sore and aren't always necessarily accompanied by flulike symptoms.

Yes. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Jynneos to prevent smallpox andmonkeypox. Because monkeypox is so closely related to smallpox, vaccines for smallpox are also effective against monkeypox. In addition to Jynneos, the US has another smallpox vaccine in its stockpile, called ACAM2000. Because ACAM2000 is an older generation of vaccine with harsher side effects, it's not recommended for everyone, including people who are pregnant or immunocompromised.

Jynneos is what's being shipped out to states, though states can also request ACAM2000 because supply of Jynneos -- a two-dose vaccine with each dose given four weeks apart -- is relatively low. Individual health departments will determine eligibility for the vaccine, but they're meant for close contacts of someone with monkeypox or people who believe they're at high risk for an exposure.

Vaccinating people who have been exposed to monkeypox is what Adalja calls "ring vaccination," where health officials isolate the infected person and vaccinate their close contacts to stop the spread. Because cases may be going undetected, the US and the UK have expanded the eligibility for who can get vaccinated (to include those without a confirmed exposure).

Dr. Daniel Pastula, chief of neuroinfectious diseases and associate professor of neurology, medicine and epidemiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said the vaccine is used in people who've been exposed but aren't yet showing symptoms of monkeypox, because the incubation period for the disease is so long.

"Basically what you're doing is stimulating the immune system with the vaccine, and getting the immune system to recognize the virus before the virus has a chance to ramp up," Pastula said.

Though health care and lab professionals who work directly with monkeypox are recommended to receive smallpox vaccines (and even boosters), the original smallpox vaccines aren't available to the general public and haven't been widely administered in the US since the early 1970s. Because of this, any spillover or "cross-protective" immunity from smallpox vaccines would be limited to older people, theWHO said. According to the WHO, vaccination against smallpox was shown to be about85% effectiveat preventing monkeypox.

Now playing: Watch this: Monkeypox Explained: What You Need to Know

6:44

It's important to be aware of the symptoms of monkeypox, and to know your current individual risk level. Monkeypox spreads through close contact and doesn't require sex.

"This shows the need for public health," Pastula said. "As we saw with COVID, it is so important to have a robust public health system and to support our public health system."

It also calls attention to the wide variety of viruses we live with. All zoonotic diseases (which includeCOVID-19) have the potential to be serious, which is why monitoring them is so important, he said.

"I think this shows that there are lots of potential zoonotic threats -- these are diseases that can hop from animals to humans," Pastula said. This exemplifies the need for public health surveillance, he said, "but it also really shows that we should be careful and deliberate in our interactions with both wild animals and domestic animals."

It's also a developing situation, he said, so recommendations made by public health officials will change as the information does; the same goes for all diseases and new science.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Read more here:
What to Know About the Monkeypox Outbreak - CNET

In two blockbuster decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court throttled the power of government to regulate pollution (West Virginia v. EPA) and expanded the power of government to regulate women's reproductive lives (Dobbs v. Jackson). There is no contradiction in these two decisions. They continue a hundred years of right-wing support for private enterprise and control over women's autonomy.

The American right has held together as a political movement through its core commitment to conserving what it views as traditional Christian values and private enterprise. American conservative politics is not about limited government, states' rights, individual freedom or free markets. These are all dispensable ideas that the right has adjusted and readjusted to protect core principles. Conservatives have built their own versions of big government and carved out innumerable exceptions to free markets for tariffs, business subsidies, friendly regulations and pro-business interventions abroad. They have backed individual choice and states' rights, for example, on racial issues, but not on alcohol and drug use, pornography, contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage. In defense of core objectives, conservatives shifted from being isolationists before Pearl Harbor to aggressive warriors against communism and terrorism. They have abandoned protectionism for free trade, public education for private school vouchers, and deficit control for "supply-side" tax cuts.

Control over women's allegedly dangerous sexuality and autonomy grounds the moral appeal of conservative politics. In this view, a morally-ordered society requires a morally-ordered family, with clear lines of divinely ordained masculine authority and the containment within it of women's erotic allure. Salacious, non-motherly displays of female bodies, sex education in schools, abortion rights, easy divorces and the tolerance of homosexuality and other forms of "deviance" undercut the reproduction and orderly progress of civilization. Feminist demands since the 1920s to upset manly and womanly distinctions and erode patriarchy, through the right's lens, de-feminizes women and feminizes men, opening the family and the nation to conquest (rape) and subversion (seduction). The history of failed civilizations, conservative physicianArabella Kenealywrote in 1922, "shows one striking feature as having been common to most of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and [sexual] license of their women were conspicuous."

Conservative politics has had an enduring appeal to Americans seeking the clarity and comfort of absolute moral codes, clear standards of right and wrong, swift and certain penalties for transgressors and established lines of authority in public and family life. Ultimately conservatives have engaged in a struggle for control over American public life against a liberal tradition they have seen as not just wrong on issues, but sinful, un-American and corrosive of the institutions and traditions that made the nation great. To achieve their ambitious aims, conservatives had to stay disciplined, mobilize their resources and wage total war against liberals, with unconditional surrender as the only acceptable result.

During the 1920s, conservatives pioneered their programs for enforcing their vision of traditional values and protecting private enterprise, which endure today. Efforts to uphold the traditional family and control the licentiousness of women emerged in the 1920s, not just through the prohibition of alcohol but in lesser-known campaigns against sexual "deviance," "smut" and drugs, and in defense of conservative motherhood. In 1925, British historianA.F. Pollardcited the U.S. as "the rising hope of stern and unbending Tories." American laws, he said, "were not so much a means of change as a method of putting on record moral aspirations, a liturgy rather than legislation; and the statutebook was less the fiat of the State than a book of common prayer."

The erotically charged society of the 1920s led to fears that Americans, especially the young, were falling victim to deviant sexuality, such as oral sex and homosexuality, and to the scourge of venereal disease. After World War I,however, efforts to prevent venereal disease through education and the administration of chemical prophylaxis gave way to moral uplift and law enforcement. For moral reformers of the 1920s, preventative measures only encouraged prostitution and promiscuity.

Conservative answers to venereal disease involved the restoration of the supposed moral integrity of society and the rigorous prosecution of prostitutes and other sex offenders. Congress failed to renew wartime appropriations for controlling venereal disease, and state censorship boards banned as obscene sex-education films and other forms of anti-venereal propaganda. In 1926, the federal government eliminated federal aid to the states to prevent venereal disease, while state appropriations for this purpose declined.

After World War I, the Catholic Church crusaded worldwide for moral renewal. In 1920,Pope Benedict XVwarned that atrocities of war had led to "the diminution of conjugal fidelity and the diminution of respect for constituted authority. Licentious habits followed, even among young women." In 1930, his successorPope Pius XIissued 12 rules designed to assure that "feminine garb be based on modesty and their ornament be a defense of virtue." Catholic authorities joined by evangelical white Protestants promoted in the 1920s the censorship of books, plays, movies and artwork that displayed obscenity, nudity, drinking, sex outside of wedlock, suggestive dancing, drug use, homosexuality, prostitution and love between people of different races.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

In the 1920s, conservatives backed the closing of America's public drug treatment clinics and, as they did with venereal disease, adopted a moral and law enforcement approach to narcotics. Addicts had no recourse other than illegal sources of supply. For moral reformers, drug and alcohol use undermined the family and threatened the purity of American women. Even more than drink, however, enslavement to narcotics was understood to undercut discipline, self-mastery and the free will needed to follow a godly life.Richard P. Hobson, head of the International Narcotic Education Association, charged that civilization was "in the midst of a life and death struggle with the deadliest foe that has ever menaced its future." Narcotics threatened "the perpetuation of civilization, the destiny of the world, and the future of the human race." In 1929, Congress began the national war on drugs by establishing a Federal Bureau of Narcotics to enforce the drug laws.

Conservative women drew on a maternalist ideology that affirmed inherent differences between the sexes and women's unique role in rearing children as healthy, moral and productive citizens. Conservative maternalists urged women of the New Era not to slip the bonds of men and custom but to reclaim their motherly responsibilities to rear courageous sons and domesticated daughters. They opposed reforms that confused sex roles, weakened families or substituted state paternalism for parental responsibility.

Conservative women warned against radicals who would rip children from the home and rear them in nurseries run by the state. The radicals would end sexual restraint and manly competition. They would feminize men and coerce women into "unnatural" masculine roles through forced work and conscription. Conservative women found dangerous sex-role reversals in women who embraced the unisex hedonism of the times: short skirts and bathing suits, bobbed hair, drinking, smoking, vigorous sports, necking and petting, and sensual music and dancing. Patriotic mothers would uphold family morals and shun the competitive male spheres of business, politics and war. Like women of Sparta, they would raise patriotic sons ready to risk their lives for the common defense. This view of women and their place in society was represented in such 1920s organizations as the Women's Auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Legion Auxiliary and the Daughters of 1812.

Women of the right mobilized against the first federal welfare measure, the Sheppard Towner Bill of 1921, which provided aid to the states for the health care of mothers and infants. They argued that the law would weaken families, undercut traditional values and advance paternalistic government. In the Sheppard-Towner fight, wrote editor Mary Kilbreth of the conservative publication Woman Patriot, "we have with us as allies the Constitution, and all the institutions on which 'Western civilization is based.'"

The right's pro-business policies included the anti-government initiatives of deregulation and tax cuts. Yet they also turned to government for protective tariffs, support for foreign trade and investment, controls over strikes and labor organizing, and pro-business regulations. Our goal is "putting government behind rather than in business,"Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hooversaid in 1924. In 1926, under Hoover's guidance, the Republican Congress stabilized the struggling airline and railroad industries with the Air Commerce Act and the Railway Act. On the seas, Congress extended subsidies to shipbuilders and operators in the Merchant Marine Act of 1928. To impose order on the broadcast spectrum, Congress established a Federal Radio Commission in 1927 and let broadcasters keep or sell their existing frequencies and block competitors from sharing airtime. Republican presidents appointed pro-business jurists to regulatory agencies and the federal courts.

Support for profit-seeking enterprise may contradict the right's emphasis on moral probity. However, conservatives linked private enterprise to stable, traditional families that nurtured the virtues of thrift, sobriety, self-reliance, honor and diligence. Even as Americans evolved from savers and craftsmen to producers and consumers, conservatives sustained the linkage between family virtue and enterprise. "The whole fabric of Business rests upon these moral forces," wrote journalistEdward Bokin 1926. Cultural warfare, in turn, gave the right a mass base and a passion that economic conservatism lacks. By uniting traditional Christian values and enterprise, conservatives claim to have protected Americans' pocketbooks and saved their souls.

Cultural and business conservatism converged forcefully again when the right regrouped in the 1970s. Conservatives then put a positive spin on their cultural prohibitionism. They weren't just against sinners and feminists; they were the "pro-family" and "pro-life" champions of wholesome "family values." Still, defense of the family meant battling the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, pornography, gay rights and gun control. Phyllis Schlafly, the prime mover of the pro-family agenda, described "the family as the basic unit of society, with certain rights and responsibilities, including the right to insist that the schools permit voluntary prayer and teach the 'fourth 'R' (right and wrong) according to the precepts of the Holy Scriptures." At a well-attended "Pro-Family Rally" that upstaged the feminist 1977 "International Year of the Woman" gathering in Houston, she warned that feminists were "going to drive the homemaker out of the home. They want to relieve mothers of the menial task of taking care of their babies. They want to put them in the coal mines and have them digging ditches." The ERA would "only benefit homosexuals. The American women do not want ERA, abortion, lesbian rights, and they do not want childcare in the hands of government."

In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell issued a call to arms by conservatives shortly before his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. The "Powell Memo"guided the rebuilding of business conservatism and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He warned that new regulations that cut across industry to limit pollution, control energy production, advance minority and consumer rights and protect worker health and safety threatened the survival of private enterprise. Powell insisted that conservatives, aided by the financial might of business, should not have "the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system. Nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it." Conservatives must aggressively capture the centers of power that shaped policy and public opinion: the political parties, the academy, the media, the courts and popular culture.

Consistent with the reformulation of cultural issues, conservatives in the 1970s put a positive spin on their pro-business policies, labeling them "supply-side economics." Entrepreneurs would create a new era of American abundance if they were free to innovate without penalty or control. They would produce enough goods and services to cure inflation, accelerate government revenue growth and reduce the deficit. Supply-side advocates promised that their bonanza to business would flow down or "trickle down," as critics charged to the lower strata because employment and wages would boom.

After his transformation election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan turned the supply-side dream into reality. His conservative economic policies rested on reducing tax liabilities for corporations and the wealthy, relieving businesses of civil rights, environmental, and economic regulations, cutting social spending and curbing the power of labor unions. It was a blueprint that the right would follow through today.

The history of the modern American conservative movement demonstrates that the Dobbs and EPA decisions are not aberrations. In fact, they realize priorities that the right has pursued since the 1920s. The only change is a right-wing grip on the Supreme Court that is unprecedented in modern American history. The court will likely extend its curtailment of air pollution regulation to water pollution in the upcoming case ofSackett v. EPA. And despite surface disagreement from other justices, it is also likely to follow Justice Clarence Thomas' call for reconsidering the rights to contraception, private sexual encounters and same-sex marriage. Given the right's quest for absolute power, it would not be surprising if the court then grants state legislatures controlled by Republicans in key swing states exclusive control over federal elections.

Read more

on the far right's assault on America

Originally posted here:
How the right waged a 100-year war to conquer America and why it's winning - Salon

We have long been baffled as to why men live around five years less than women, on average. But now a new study suggests that, beyond the age of 60, the main culprit is a genetic defect: the loss of the Y chromosome, which determines sex at birth.

Its clear that men are more fragile, the question is why, explains Lars Forsberg, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.

For decades it was thought that the male Y chromosomes only function was to generate sperm that determine the sex of a newborn. A boy carries one X chromosome from the mother and one Y from the father, while a girl carries two Xs, one from each parent.

In 1963, a team of scientists discovered that as men age, their blood cells lose the Y chromosome due to a copying error that happens when the mother cell divides to produce a daughter cell. In 2014, Forsberg analyzed the life expectancy of older men based on whether their blood cells had lost the Y chromosome, a mutation called mLOY. The effect recorded was mindblowing, the researcher recalls.

Men with fewer Y chromosomes had a higher risk of cancer and lived five and a half years less than those who retained this part of the genome. Three years later, Forsberg discovered that this mutation makes getting Alzheimers three times as likely. What is most worrying is the enormous prevalence of this defect. Twenty percent of men over the age of 60 have the mutation. The rate rises to 40% in those over 70 and 57% in those over 90, according to Forsbergs previous studies. It is undoubtedly the most common mutation in humans, he says.

Until now, nobody knew whether the gradual disappearance of the Y chromosome in the blood played a pivotal role in diseases associated with aging. In a study just published in the journal Science, Forsberg and scientists from Japan and the US demonstrate for the first time that this mutation increases the risk of heart problems, immune system failure and premature death.

The researchers have created the first animal model without a Y chromosome in their blood stem cells: namely, mice modified with the gene-editing tool CRISPR. The study showed that these rodents develop scarring of the heart in the form of fibrosis, one of the most common cardiovascular ailments in humans, and die earlier than normal mice. The authors then analyzed the life expectancy recorded in nearly 15,700 patients with cardiovascular disease whose data are stored in the UK public biobank. The analysis shows that loss of the Y chromosome in the blood is associated with a 30% increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

This genetic factor can explain more than 75% of the difference in life expectancy between men and women over the age of 60, explains biochemist Kenneth Walsh, a researcher at the University of Virginia in the US and co-author of the study. In other words, this mutation would explain four of the five years lower life expectancy in men. Walshs estimate links to a previous study in which men with a high mLOY load live about four years less than those without it.

It is well known that men die earlier than women because they smoke and drink more and are more prone to recklessness. But, beyond the age of 60, genetics becomes the main culprit in the deterioration of their health: It seems as if men age earlier than women, Walsh points out.

The study reveals the molecular keys to the damage associated with the mLOY mutation. Within the large group of blood cells can be found the immune systems white blood cells responsible for defending the body against viruses and other pathogens. The loss of the Y chromosome triggers aberrant behavior in macrophages, a type of white blood cell, causing them to scar heart tissue, which in turn increases the risk of heart failure. Researchers have shown that the damage can be reversed if they give mice pirfenidone, a drug approved to treat humans with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition in which the lungs become scarred and breathing becomes increasingly difficult.

There are three factors that increase the risk of Y chromosome loss. The first is the inevitable ageing process. The longer one lives, the more cell divisions occur in the body and the greater the likelihood of mutations occurring in the genome copying process. The second is smoking. Smoking causes you to lose the Y chromosome in your blood at an accelerated rate; if you stop smoking, healthy cells once again become the majority, says Walsh. But the third is also inevitable: other inherited genetic mutations can increase the gradual loss of the Y chromosome in the blood by a factor of five, explains Forsberg.

Both Forsberg and Walsh believe that this study opens up an enormous field of research. Still to be studied is whether men with this mutation also have cardiac fibrosis and whether this is behind their heart attacks and other cardiac ailments. We also need to better understand why losing the Y chromosome damages health. For now, we have shown that the Y chromosome is not just there for reproduction, but is is also important for our health, says Forsberg. The next step is to identify which genes are responsible for the phenomenon.

The loss of this chromosome has been detected in all organs and tissues of the body and at all ages, although it is more evident after 60. It is abundant in the blood because this is a tissue that produces millions of new cells every day from blood stem cells. Healthy stem cells produce healthy daughter cells and mutated ones produce daughter cells with mLOY.

A previous study showed that this mutation of the Y chromosome disrupts the function of up to 500 genes located elsewhere in the genome. It has also been shown to damage lymphocytes and natural killer cells, evident in men with prostate cancer and Alzheimers disease, respectively.

There are hardly any tests for mLOY at present. But Forsberg and his colleagues have designed a PCR test that measures the level of this mutation in the blood and could serve to determine which levels of this mutation are harmful to health. Right now, we see people in their 80s with 80% of their blood cells mutated, but we dont know what impact this has on their health, says Walsh.

Another unanswered question is why men lose the genetic mark of the male with age. The evolutionary logic, argue the authors of the paper, is that men are biologically designed to have offspring as soon as possible and to live 40 to 50 years at most. The spectacular increase in life expectancy in the last century has meant that men and women live to an advanced age 80 and 86 years in Spain, respectively which makes the effect of these mutations more evident. Another fact which possibly has some bearing on the issue: the vast majority of people who reach 100 are women.

To transform all these discoveries into treatments, we first need to better understand this phenomenon, says Forsberg. We men are not designed to live forever, but perhaps we can increase our life expectancy by a few more years.

Biochemist Jos Javier Fuster, who studies pathological mutations in blood cells at the National Center for Cardiovascular Research, stresses the importance of the work. Until now it was not clear whether the loss of Y was the cause of cancer, Alzheimers disease and heart failure, he explains. This is the first demonstration in animals that it has a causal role. The human Y chromosome is different from the mouse chromosome, so the priority now is to accumulate more data in humans. This is a great first step in understanding this new mechanism behind aging-linked diseases, he adds.

The cells of the human body group their DNA into 23 pairs of chromosomes that pair up one by one when a cell copies its genome to generate a daughter cell. The Y is the only one that does not have a symmetrical partner to pair up with: instead, it does so with an X chromosome; and the entire Y chromosome is often lost, explains Luis Alberto Prez Jurado from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. For now, six genes have been identified within the Y chromosome that would be responsible for an impact on health, he says. All of them are related to the proper functioning of the immune system. In part, this would also explain the greater vulnerability of males to viral infections, including Covid-19.

Here is the original post:
mLOY: The genetic defect that explains why men have shorter lives than woman - EL PAS USA