Xenotransplantation and the future of medicine – Hindustan Times

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Amid surging Covid-19 infections driven primarily by the Omicron variant comes news of the remarkable achievement by United States (US) surgeons who implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old recipient, David Bennett, who suffered from ventricular fibrillation (a kind of heart abnormality) and had advanced heart failure. The historic procedure performed on January 7 at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) is a major milestone in the field of xenotransplantation the exchange of organs among species, chiefly from pigs to humans.

According to Muhammad Mohiuddin, chief of the cardiac transplantation programme at UMSOM, Bennett urgently needed a transplant and was declared ineligible for a human organ; therefore, a decision was taken to try a xenograft from a pig. The transplant team obtained compassionate use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration, and the organ was made available by Revivicor, a US-based biotech company. The team already had years of experience with xenografting pig hearts into baboons with a fair degree of success and were well suited to try out the exercise in humans. In 2016, they had reported that a pig heart was kept functioning in a baboon for three years.

Xenotransplantation uses animals as a source of organs for replacement therapy in humans whose own natural organs have reached the end-stage of function. Since there is always a big gap between those needing a functioning organ (chiefly heart, kidney, liver, lungs and pancreas) and the availability of the same from humans, alternative sources of donor organs have long been an unmet need.

The most significant issue with using animals as a source of transplanted organs for humans is the spontaneous immunological rejection due to the occurrence of specific antibodies produced by the human host against certain sugars present on the surface of pig cells. These get recognised as foreign, leading to hyperacute rejection in which the recipient begins to reject the organ as soon as it is implanted.

In terms of evolution, pigs and humans are quite divergent, and the major challenges are both immunological and pathophysiological. The fundamental difference is while the human system expresses the well-known ABH blood group antigens, the pigs vascular endothelium expresses a unique protein called Galactose oligosaccharide or Gala1 or simply Gal. Humans are a natural knockout for this protein that quickly triggers anti-Gal antibodies against the transplanted organ.

In recent years, significant progress has been made to genetically modify the developing piglets, rendering their tissues and organs resistant to human immune response. The creation of Dolly the sheep as the first cloned animal in 1996 provided the much-needed stimulus to do so. In their effort to create a clinical-grade facility for raising engineered pigs, Revivicor scientists produced genetic changes in a total of 10 genes: Three in the pig and seven in humans. They successfully knocked out three genes from pigs that enable the enzymes to synthesise Gal sugars, and thus minimise the formation of anti-Gal antibodies.

Simultaneously, they engineered six genes in the human host with the aim of decreasing inflammation (two genes) and blood coagulation, thereby preventing blood vessel damage (two genes) and also silenced another two regulatory proteins that promote antibody response. The final step was something that they had learnt during baboon experimentation and this included knocking out the gene for a growth hormone that ensured that the pig organ remained matched in size with the patients chest and did not outgrow upon grafting.

Two weeks have passed and the pig heart is still functioning in Bennett, making the surgical feat a remarkable achievement. However, the question of whether we have reached the stage for regular use of pig organs for transplantation in humans is still open. More science is needed to determine which modifications are critical and perhaps inescapable. It is also not clear whether different modifications may be required for different organs. For example, could there be differences for kidney versus heart and likewise for other organs? Another major barrier with xenotransplantation is the possibility of endogenous retroviruses carried by pigs and these could create safety concerns.

The other question relates to the type and extent of immunosuppression needed for the recipient because of the possibility of excessive anti-organ-specific antibodies generated in the host. While the standard immunosuppressive regimens may or may not be effective, it would be necessary to investigate immunological tools to suppress the activity of antibody-forming B-cells and inhibit their cross-talk with helper T-cells that effectively coordinate the host immune response.

While there are several issues associated with xenotransplantation, both for the recipient and society at large, the first really successful pig-to-human heart transplant achieved through the meticulous use of the tools of genetic engineering represents a significant step forward in solving the problem of organ shortage, bringing hope to those in desperate need of a transplant.

Dr Narinder Kumar Mehra is an internationally acclaimed expert in transplant immunology and former Dean of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

The views expressed are personal

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Xenotransplantation and the future of medicine - Hindustan Times

Which Drugs Will Survive Climate Change? We Investigated. – VICE

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You might have to experience the end of the world sober, after all.

Thats because climate change will unleash havoc on the world of drugs. And it may be a whole lot tougher on the most mainstream stimulantsgrocery store stuff like coffee, beer and winethan on hardcore illicit narcotics like heroin, cocaine and meth.

Some of those more-powerful, more-addictive, mind-altering substances appear relatively better prepared to survive the oncoming climate crisis than the vulnerable plants responsible for producing traditionally legal recreational highs, according to a review of recent scientific studies and interviews with experts on climate and agriculture by VICE News.

Heroin, for example, is already getting a boost from climate change. One study shows that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have doubled the potency of poppies, the plant used to make the drug. Wine, by contrast, is under serious threat, as changing weather patterns and raging wildfires put celebrated vineyards in jeopardy.

All plant-based drugs, whether theyre narcotics or used for medicine, are going to change, Lewis Ziska, lead author of the poppy study and now an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, told VICE News. In fact, the world is changing faster than our ability to describe the changes.

Though big questions remain about how climate change will impact agriculture, and experts caution that much research remains to be done, long-term agricultural consequences are just starting to come into view.

The short version: The drug world is facing a big shake-up.

To make this easier, we put the results into an oversimplified but handy-dandy chart.

For a more detailed picture, read on.

BEER: DOUBLE THE PRICE

Get ready to pay more for brew.

Climate change might make beer twice as expensive, according to a 2018 study. In Ireland, one of the heaviest beer-drinking countries in the world, the price could triple.

Thats because the cost of a key ingredient, malted barley, could soar as global average temperatures rise and barley becomes harder to grow.

The price of a six-pack in the United States might rise by as much as $8 on average, the study found.

Pricey beer is just another way climate change will suck, tweeted Steven J. Davis, one of the authors of the study.

WINE: A HINT OF ASHTRAY

Wine is decidedly in trouble.

At least, the good stuff is: Those who savor the fine distinctions between a pinot noir and a cabernet sauvignon, or a Bordeaux and a Chateauneuf-du-pape, are going to hate the future.

The world may still be able to produce the same amount of wine as before. But the quality, taste and variety of wines will change, said Benjamin Cook, a NASA climate scientist who has studied the impact of climate change on wine-growing regions.

You can grow wine grapes almost anywhere and make wine with them. Thats why you can go to Trader Joes and get 4-buck chuck, Cook told VICE News. Wine that has these characteristics that make it famous and expensive and high value, thats where the impacts are going to potentially be very severe.

Those nuances depend on the regional mix of weather, rainfall, temperature and humidityall of which will be thrown into chaos. Warmer wine-growing regions, like Australia and California, will be particularly hard hit, Cook said.

California vineyards are especially threatened by the recent surge of climate change-linked wildfires. Grapes that escape the flames can absorb chemicals from smoke that ruin their taste, leaving the dreaded smoke taint. Some winemakers complain that smoke exposure is giving their wine an ashy finish, according to The Washington Post.

Others are reaching for solutions. Kwaw Amos, owner of New Yorks Gotham Winery, blends traditional European grapes with hardier American varieties to create hybrids with better protection against heat, fungus and early budding.

The concept of hybrids is nothing new in grape growing, Amos told VICE News. Cabernet sauvignon is a hybrid. Its just now youre thinking about the next level hybrids that were going to need given whats happening.

COFFEE: DARK TIMES

Coffee is in danger.

About half of all land now used to grow the two main species of coffee, arabica and robusta, may no longer be usable by 2050, according to one estimate. Arabica and robusta make up 99 percent of the commercial supply globally, and have a limited ability to relocate to different climates.

Another study found that six-in-ten of the known species of coffee are now under threat of extinction. Experts believe higher temperatures encourage pesky fungus growth on coffee beans. Changes in rainfall patterns may also put an added stress on the plants.

Good coffee will probably become increasingly harder to grow. And that could become a global economic issue, considering the industry employs over 125 million people, including farmers, distributors and brewers. And, like beer, coffee could also get more expensive.

U.S. consumers should expect much more expensive and lower-quality coffee because of rising temperatures, extreme rainfalls, and higher frequency of severe droughts, Titus O. Awokuse, who chairs the department of agricultural, food and resource economics at Michigan State University, recently told the LA Times.

COCAINE: FINE, THANKS

Coca, the plant responsible for cocaine, is notoriously difficult to get rid of. And that likely means it will survive pretty well compared to more-vulnerable plants.

Charles Helling, a scientist who studied the crop as a soil chemist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has said he thinks higher temperatures wont be harmful, and that they may just encourage the plant to grow at even higher elevations.

"Coca is kind of unique, because it's got a very heavy wax cuticle, a layer on the leaves," Helling told Scientific American. "So that tends to protect it from water loss. It's a pretty hardy shrub. It's actually a lot hardier than a typical crop plant."

Another factor in cocas favor may be genetic diversity. Plants that have been extensively cultivated in mainstream agriculture tend to become more genetically homogeneous, Ziska said. Whereas plants that have thrived in the wildnot to mention, survived sustained attempts at eradicationmay demonstrate greater genetic variability that helps them respond more flexibly to a changing environment.

Its still unclear whether coca would benefit from such an advantage.

HEROIN: AS YOU LIKE IT

Poppy plants, as noted above, have already become twice as potent in natural morphine as they were in the middle of last century, thanks to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or C02, the gas thats principally responsible for climate change, according to one study.

That study was performed in 2008, and atmospheric C02 has only continued to rise since. Pumping even more of that gas into the air may triple morphine levels by 2050, and increase potency by a factor of 4.5 by the year 2090, according to the same study.

Ziska said the reason isnt yet completely certain. But he said one theory suggests that when a given resource becomes more prevalent in an environment, plants will tend to produce more secondary compounds that are rich in that resource, and that this dynamic explains why rising atmospheric CO2 prompts poppy plants to produce more morphine.

Poppy also has another advantage that makes the plant well-suited to a drier climate: Its particularly drought-resistant.

The poppy's hardiness has enabled growers in Afghanistan, a narcostate which provides 90% of the worlds opium, to notch record harvests over the last decade.

CANNABIS: ITS COMPLICATED

Weed will probably be okaymostly.

The plant is likely well-suited to survive a moderately hotter and drier climate, according to Olufemi Ajayi, the author of a recent study on the relative dangers posed by insect pests to cannabis in the context of climate change.

But, he cautioned, only within limits. More extreme temperatures and droughts will stunt growth, or kill plants, he said.

Another 2011 study on the impact of higher concentrations of carbon-dioxide found that the plant may be able to survive under expected harsh greenhouse effects including elevated CO2 concentration and drought conditions.

Cannabis does have an otherwise unsavory link to environmental degradation, however (as do a lot of drugs: see our previous reporting here).

Indoor growing operations have spread rapidly along with broadening legalization, and they take a lot of electricity.

One estimate states that growing one ounce of cannabis indoors can emit as much greenhouse gas as burning through a large cars entire tank of gasolineor 7 to 16 gallons.

Most U.S. cannabis is grown indoors. As the industry expands, its energy consumption is expected to rise, too. In Colorado, emissions from cannabis farms already exceed those from the states coal mining industry.

In other words, weeds relationship to global warming is complex. Even if cannabis is well-positioned to withstand a moderately warmer climate, its own energy use and outsized carbon footprint will need to be accounted for if the world ever gets serious about reducing emissions.

SYNTHETIC DRUGS: FINE

The world of synthetic, lab-based drugs will likely see hardly any impact from climate change, experts including Ziska said. This is because theyre made in a lab, not grown in a field.

This diverse galaxy of stimulantswhich includes MDMA, speed, meth, LSD, synthetic cannabinoids, mephedrone, fentanyl, carfentanyl, and many morewill be relatively unaffected because much of it is far less dependent on the growth of specific agricultural crops.

Synthetic opioids, especially, have been responsible for a tidal wave of recent overdose deaths. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that 36,000 people died from synthetic opioid overdose in the U.S. in 2019, including from fentanyl, a drug 80-to-100 times stronger than morphine.

So as you contemplate the end of the world, just remember that coffee and beer may be in ever-shorter supply and growing more expensive within a few decadesbut that the worlds supply of killer fentanyl may be just as robust as ever.

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Which Drugs Will Survive Climate Change? We Investigated. - VICE

Sema4 : The Positives (and Negatives) of Medical Testing – marketscreener.com

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In its recent article, "When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong,"The New York Times published a discussion on the performance of prenatal blood screening tests. The piece, which also looked at the potential impact of results on patients, has fueled an online debate on medical ethics and misinformation. As a patient-centered health intelligence company with deep expertise in reproductive health and medical testing, we see this as a perfect opportunity to inform our partners on population health topics to help them better understand the accuracies (and inaccuracies) of clinical testing. In this guide, we aim to educate readers about the differences between screening and diagnostic tests and, crucially, why "positive" screening results should be interpreted as "further testing is recommended" and "negative" results as "no abnormalities detected; no further testing recommended."

Screening vs. diagnostic testing

Medical tests look for answers to specific health questions. Screening tests are performed to evaluate the risk of having a disease now or in the future, while diagnostic tests are performed to pinpoint the cause of a disease process and narrow down a diagnosis. Diagnostic tests also tend to be more invasive, associated with some risk, and costly. Screening tests, on the other hand, provide a cost-effective way to identify individuals at higher risk of disease, shifting the benefit-to-risk ratio to justify diagnostic testing and invasive treatments. The goal of screening tests is early diagnosis for early intervention: they provide valuable information that can indicate when diagnostic testing is needed. After diagnostic testing, an early diagnosis can help minimize long-term adverse health outcomes and optimize potential treatment options.

Noninvasive prenatal testing, or NIPT, is a blood-based screening test for expectant mothers. It evaluates the risk of fetal anomalies caused by certain chromosomal aberrations, such as aneuploidies (extra or missing chromosomes) and microdeletions (missing portions of chromosomes). Professional medical societies like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) recommend that all pregnant women be offered prenatal screening or diagnostic testing for common aneuploidies to provide expectant parents with information about their pregnancy's risk of a genetic condition. After informed discussions with their healthcare providers about the benefits and risks of prenatal screening, this information can help parents prepare for potential complications at birth since conditions like Patau syndrome and Edwards syndrome (trisomy 13 and 18) are usually fatal by the first year of life. Early knowledge of potential complications can enable parents to deliver at a facility equipped to deal with high-risk births and connect with specialists who can guide their child's medical care.

As with all screening tests, patients opting to undergo NIPT are evaluated in the context of a larger population, based on a pre-test probability or the disease prevalence (i.e., how often a disease is present in that specific population). For example, Edwards syndrome (or trisomy 18) is the second most common fetal aneuploidy after Down syndrome, with a prevalence of one in 5,500 live births. Therefore, one newborn in 5,500 will be expected to have the condition among affected pregnancies that make it to term without screening. However, the pre-test probability also depends on patient-specific factors like ethnic background and maternal age. As the risk of fetal aneuploidy rises with age, expectant mothers are encouraged to undergo prenatal screening to detect the potential risk of fetal genetic abnormalities.

In short, screening tests are not intended to diagnose a particular condition. Instead, they serve to better personalize a person's pre-test probability of disease and weigh the need for further invasive testing.

Evaluating test utility

Test performance is evaluated based on the ability to reliably distinguish high-risk individuals or patients with disease from healthy people. A test's sensitivity gauges how well it can detect risk or disease in people who are, in fact, at high risk or sick. We can think of test sensitivity like modern home security systems that detect unexpected entries. Screening tests will detect some level of false positive alarms (perhaps, in the case of a home security system, a visiting relative), but better to be safe than sorry. The relationship between a test's sensitivity and false negativerate (the probability that an affected person incorrectly tests 'negative' or, in this case, that an intruder is not detected) can be calculated by subtracting sensitivity from 1. Because no test is perfect, positive screening results should be followed up with diagnostic tests, which are usually more specific, to facilitate a diagnosis.

Specificity gauges how well a test identifies low-risk or unaffected people who are, in fact, truly negative. When a test result is positive, specificity helps us understand whether a positive result is likely due to that disease versus other factors. The false positive rate (the probability an unaffected person incorrectly tests positive) is calculated by subtracting specificity from 1. In an ideal world, medical tests would be both perfectly sensitive and perfectly specific so that all affected individuals reliably have positive results and all healthy individuals confidently test negative. However, adjusting one of these values will generally inversely affect the other. Think of an email spam filter: setting the filter such that all emails received are sent to the spam folder would result in a filter with 100% sensitivity but at the cost of lowering specificity to 0%, which is equivalent to a false positive rate of 100%. In this case, all vital emails would be labeled as spam. In clinical practice, we are forced to strike a balance between sensitivity and specificity.

Sensitivity and specificity help speak to the accuracy of a test. Accuracy is the ability to differentiate healthy or low-risk individuals from high-risk or sick patients. It serves to estimate the strength of association between pre-test probability and post-test probability, a person's 'updated' probability of having a disease after testing. However, even in screening tests with more than 99% sensitivity, specificity, or accuracy, "positive" or "increased risk" results only tell us that an individual falls among the true positive or false positive cases. Screening tests are tuned to have higher sensitivity to cast as broad a net as possible to capture all potentially positive events, even if it means the test has slightly lower specificity, yielding a higher false positive rate. Higher sensitivity helps to maximize the likelihood of capturing all truly positive cases. This approach contrasts with diagnostic tests that aim to diagnose or "rule out" disease with near-perfect sensitivity and specificity.

Predictive values are also highly dependent on disease prevalence (Figure 1). If a disease is highly prevalent and a person tests positive for it, a high PPV means a higher likelihood that this person truly has the disease. However, as the prevalence of a disease decreases, the PPV also decreases because we can expect more false positive results for every true positive result, even with very high sensitivity and specificity. A lower PPV also increases the NPV since, for rare diseases, we can expect more individuals who are truly negative for every false negative result.

Figure 1. PPV is dependent upon disease prevalence. For equally sensitive and specific tests, PPV decreases with decreasing disease prevalence.

Therefore, the best way to think about "positive" screening test results is to interpret the result as "further testing is recommended" and "negative" results as "no abnormalities detected; no further testing recommended."

Figure 2. Post-test risk estimate is dependent on disease prevalence. Screening tests can increase our ability to detect at-risk individuals or pregnancies beyond the pre-test risk estimation for lower prevalence diseases. Pre-test, identifying individuals at risk for a rare disease is like trying to find a needle (positive case) in a haystack (larger population). However, post-test, the pile of hay (sub-population) is much smaller, and finding the needles becomes a more manageable task.

Understanding screening test results

For rare disorders and conditions with a high disease burden, the goal is to detect as many suspected cases as possible to maximize knowledge about related health risks. Take a group of 10,000 pregnant individuals in their first trimester. In this group, suppose the prevalence of a rare disorder with a high risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, developmental disability, and poor quality of life is roughly 1% (100 out of 10,000 pregnancies). Suppose these 10,000 expectant patients undergo screening for this disorder with a 99% sensitive and 95% specific test. In this scenario, we expect 100 individuals to be truly positive. With a 1% false negative rate (1-sensitivity), 99 of these 100 individuals would correctly receive a positive result. However, one affected person would incorrectly receive a negative result. Of 9,900 unaffected pregnancies, screening would correctly identify 9,405 as true negatives, although it might incorrectly label 495 healthy pregnancies as positive. We can expect about five times as many false positives as true positives and an estimated 17% PPV despite this test's excellent sensitivity and specificity.

At first glance, the above screening test may not appear informative, but the insights gained from these results are crucial. This test has captured nearly all true positive cases at higher risk of this rare disorder. Out of 10,000 individuals with a pre-test probability of 1% of having this rare disorder, it identified a subpopulation of 594 (99 true positives plus 450 false positives) individuals as 'positive' with a 17% post-test probability (PPV). That is, the screening test identified a subpopulation that is 17-times more likely to have a severe genetic disorder than the general population that was screened. The resulting 594 "positive" individuals (5.9% of the population) are now armed with results to inform critical discussions with their healthcare providers about the need for confirmatory diagnostic testing. What is important is the degree to which a screening test reliably enriches for positive cases with respect to population prevalence, allowing for a more targeted diagnostic test in a high-risk subpopulation.

In sum, the reliability of test results depends on the test characteristics discussed above. We use screening tests, combined with an individual's medical history and population variables, to determine the risk and benefit of further testing. Medical professionals, ethicists, and society at large help determine whether screening tests with particular characteristics provide enough benefit to offset the risk of potentially more invasive but more accurate testing. These foundations help establish a screening test, such as NIPT, as a standard of care in medical practice.

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT)

NIPT is one form of fetal screening in which cell-free DNA from a maternal blood sample is analyzed for potential chromosome abnormalities. These screenings can also detect microdeletion syndromes characterized by physical and intellectual impairment and a higher risk of adverse health effects. Microdeletions and aneuploidies are rare in the general population, so tests for these conditions naturally have lower PPVs. Microdeletion tests are also less sensitive than aneuploidy tests, given the rarity of microdeletions and the limitations of today's technology. Their false positive rates are higher because of this lower sensitivity. However, microdeletion tests still provide significant information from false negative rates. As these tests continue to evolve, their resolution and the trade-off between sensitivity and specificity will continue to improve.

Screening tests should always be followed up with formal diagnostic testing. Patients with positive NIPT results are encouraged to undergo diagnostic procedures like amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling for more insight into their pregnancy's risk of a genetic condition. Because these diagnostic tests carry a small risk to the pregnancy, screening tests are essential for identifying high-risk individuals who warrant more invasive testing. In addition, we encourage all families to engage in substantiative conversations with their healthcare providers so they can be better informed of their child's health now and in the future. These conversations can help them prepare for their pregnancy and make the best-informed decisions.

Navigating NIPT with Sema4

At Sema4, we know the pregnancy journey can be a whirlwind, and we're here for you throughout that journey. We aim to provide our patients, their families, and healthcare providers with valuable information from our data-driven reproductive and generational health solutions portfolio so they can make thoughtful, well-informed decisions as partners. For patients and providers interested in genetic testing options, we offer Sema4 Elements Noninvasive Prenatal Testing, a reliable, cell-free DNA NIPT screen with more than 99% sensitivity and specificity and patient-specific PPVs. This screen can detect risk with high confidence for common aneuploidies, sex chromosome abnormalities, and microdeletions in singleton and multiple gestation pregnancies. It also detects fetal sex as early as nine weeks gestation.

Support and education are essential when undergoing NIPT. As such, Sema4 provides patients with educational materials to help them learn more about the role of genetic testing. In addition, our genetic counselors are available to offer guidance and support for patients with positive results during what can be a worrisome time. Sema4 is also heavily invested in research to advance maternal-fetal health, including predictive modeling to determine the optimal timing to receive NIPT and achieve the most accurate results.

_ _ _

For more information on Sema4 ElementsTM, our portfolio of information-driven genomic solutions, digital tools, and services that enable providers to treat patients holistically during their reproductive and generational health journey, please click here.

1) Calculated using the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) NIPT/Cell Free DNA Screening Predictive Value Calculator

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Sema4 : The Positives (and Negatives) of Medical Testing - marketscreener.com

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation the libertarian movement – ConservativeHome

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Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.

In the background to the unhappy struggles in the Conservative Party today is a philosophical clash in which the voices of libertarians are loudest. While (mostly) still supporting the man, their accusation is that the Johnson government has abandoned liberty.

These voices call for much that traditional small c conservatives should agree with a smaller state, lower taxes, less regulation but their message carries at its heart a deeply unhelpful strand which would be bad for the country, and calamitous for the Partys prospects of staying in power.

Our most important domestic challenge today is reining back public expenditure so we can lower taxes on struggling families. Government spending is the highest proportion of GDP since the aftermath of the Second World War.

Where I part company from my libertarian friends is that I believe it is time we acknowledged that one of the hidden drivers of runaway public spending is libertarianism itself and its left-wing cousin, the human rights lobby. Both stress freedom and gloss over the responsibilities and consequences which should come with it.

John Stuart Mill formulated the paradox of hedonism: those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.

Similarly, the paradox of liberty is that we can only attain true freedom and a smaller state, if we focus not on selfish individualism but instead on nurturing and rebuilding those natural structures and attitudes which reduce the need for the services of the state. This requires active citizens, robust families, stronger communities and a sense of nationhood. These were themes of the late, great, Sir Roger Scruton.

One of his favourite examples were the American laws which allowed people, in most places, to build freely where they wanted, but then required the American taxpayer to expend huge sums taking roads and power to them. This has created a nightmare of ever-expanding suburbs with social black holes in town centres and heavy government spending.

More broadly, he attacked the growing wish for extending freedoms without accepting any corresponding responsibilities, even crucially where there are heavy costs to the taxpayer and wider community (including later generations).

There is a parallel with Britains NHS. The cost of NHS and social care has exploded to the point where some are claiming Britain is becoming a health and social care system with a country attached. The Party is buzzing with ideas for reform of the NHS and social care from pruning expensive bureaucrats and tackling GP contracts, to moving towards an insurance-based system. Yet there is one way we could reduce NHS spending dramatically and improve productivity in the economy: by persuading millions of obese people to lose weight and the nation to become fitter.

Scandinavian countries adopted a wide range of contrasting approaches to Covid but, with their much fitter populations, all suffered far lower rates of Covid deaths, and lower pressures on their health systems. Indeed, the Swedish approach was never an option here because our large population of obese people would have brought the NHS down.

The impact of Britains obesity, the worst in Europe (apart from Malta), goes far beyond Covid. A range of illnesses from cardiovascular conditions to arthritis to diabetes are made both more likely and more dangerous by obesity and also drive up the cost of the NHS.

Yet libertarians oppose measures to incentivise fitness, from sugar taxes to public health campaigns (what they call the Nanny State). Meanwhile the human rights lobby screams against fat-shaming even in professions (such as the Army and the Police) where fitness is self-evidently important.

So, yes to lower taxation in general. But yes also to taxes targeting unhealthy foods and to tax breaks for gym subscriptions.

A parallel example is opposition to so-called Covid passports. Most of the Covid deaths, for some time now, have been among the unvaccinated. All Conservatives should wish to raise restrictions as quickly as possible. Indeed, the noisy lobby calling until recently for the re-imposition of Covid restrictions was mostly on the Left, but the circumstances which have underpinned their case the existence of large numbers who refuse to vaccinate and get sick is ignored by libertarians and the human rights lobby.

By contrast, millions of Britons saw nothing wrong with those who choose to be refuseniks paying some price (in terms of minor inconvenience) for their potential impact on the NHS. Even as we manage to ease out of the last parts of lockdown, protecting the short-term liberties of the refusenik minority has consequences, not just for public spending, but also for many who have other life-threatening conditions over which unlike the refuseniks they have no choice. Sick refuseniks are occupying beds desperately needed by other sick people.

A broader example is attitude to the family. Individualists on left and right campaigned successfully a generation ago for the virtual end to restrictions on divorce and the end of allocation of fault as a factor in child custody and the division of assets.

Today, attempts to reinforce traditional families are bitterly opposed by many the same people. Iain Duncan-Smiths radical reforms on social welfare reintroduced incentives to work, but he was consistently blocked in trying to remove disincentives for traditional families to stay together.

Yet the result of the decline of the traditional family is not just growing misery among children, with mental health, suicide, self-harm and drug-taking all on the rise and mostly higher than other European countries. It is also extremely expensive for the taxpayer as social security spending and the requirement for police officers, social workers, prison officers and childrens mental health staff grows. Studies consistently show that stable two parent families offer on average the best outcomes for children and family breakdown has an immediate cost to the benefit system.

If the state can encourage responsible personal choices and the rebuilding of those Burkean structures, from the family to the community to a sense of shared nationhood, expenditure can fall as the use of the safety net declines. If, on the other hand, choices which lead to mounting bills for the taxpayer are protected on the basis that We are not a country which asks to see papers, the size of the state will expand as the safety net gets more and more crowded.

Scruton once commented When government creates an unaccountable class it exceeds its remit, by undermining the relation on which its own legitimacy depends. In courser terms, people hate a freeloaders charter; rights should be balanced by responsibilities.

Boris Johnson led us out of the European Union. The next moves we take should seek to re-establish that balance. So, yes to reducing regulation (such as the Clinical Trials Directive which destroyed East Kents biggest employer). Yes to making strategic choices to cut public spending and taxation (a smaller university sector, an end to the triple lock for pensions?). Yes to forging new global trade and wider partnerships.

But lets have an end to the suggestion by so many of the Prime Ministers critics that a combination of offering freedom, alongside state-funded protection from the consequences, will capture the hearts of the British people.

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Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation the libertarian movement - ConservativeHome

Libertarian Democrat – Wikipedia

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Ideological faction within the U.S. Democratic Party

In American politics, a libertarian Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with political views that are relatively libertarian compared to the views of the national party.[1][2]

While other factions of the Democratic Party, such as the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are organized in the Congress, the libertarian faction is not organized in such a way.

Libertarian Democrats support the majority of positions of the Democratic Party, but they do not necessarily share identical viewpoints across the political spectrum; that is, they are more likely to support individual and personal freedoms, although rhetorically within the context of Democratic values.[3]

Libertarian Democrats oppose NSA warrantless surveillance. In 2013, well over half the House Democrats (111 of 194) voted to defund the NSA's telephone phone surveillance program.[4]

Former representative and current Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, a libertarian-oriented Democrat, wrote in Reason magazine: "I believe that libertarians should vote for Democratic candidates, particularly as our Democratic nominees are increasingly more supportive of individual liberty and freedom than Republicans".[5] He cited opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, support for the legalization of marijuana, support for the separation of church and state, support for abortion rights and individual bodily autonomy, opposition to mass surveillance and support for tax-code reform as areas where the majority of Democrats align well with libertarian values.[5]

While maintaining a relatively libertarian ideology, they may differ with the Libertarian Party on issues such as consumer protection, health care reform, anti-trust laws and the overall amount of government involvement in the economy.[3]

After election losses in 2004, the Democratic Party reexamined its position on gun control which became a matter of discussion, brought up by Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Brian Schweitzer and other Democrats who had won in states where Second Amendment rights are important to many voters. The resulting stance on gun control brought in libertarian minded voters, influencing other beliefs.

In the 2010s, following the revelations by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance in 2013, the increasing advent of online decentralization and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the perceived failure of the war on drugs and the police violence in places like Ferguson, Democratic lawmakers such as Senators Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gilibrand and Cory Booker and Representative Jared Polis have worked alongside libertarian Republicans like Senator Rand Paul and Representative Justin Amash to curb what is seen as government overreach in each of these areas, earning plaudits from such traditional libertarian sources as Reason magazine.[6][7][8][9] The growing political power of Silicon Valley, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is friendly to economic deregulation and strong civil liberties protections while maintaining traditionally liberal views on social issues, has also seriously affected the increasingly libertarian leanings of young Democrats.[10][11][12]

The libertarian faction has influenced the presidential level as well in the post-Bush era. Alaska Senator and presidential aspirant Mike Gravel left the Democratic Party midway through the 2008 presidential election cycle to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination,[13] and many anti-war and civil libertarian Democrats were energized by the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of libertarian Republican Ron Paul.[14][15] This constituency arguably embraced the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of independent Democrat Bernie Sanders for the same reasons.[16][17] In the state of New Hampshire, libertarians operating from the Free State Project have been elected to various offices running as a mixture of both Republicans and Democrats.[18][19] A 2015 Reuters poll found that 22% of Democratic voters identified themselves as "libertarian," more than the percentage of Republicans but less than the percentage of independents.[20]

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Criticism of libertarianism – Wikipedia

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Criticism of libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental and pragmatic concerns and is often focused on right-libertarianism.[1] Critics have argued that laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome,[2] and that libertarianism's philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation fail to prevent the abuse of natural resources.[3] Criticism of left-libertarianism is instead mainly related to anarchism and includes allegations of utopianism, tacit authoritarianism and vandalism towards feats of civilization. Left and right-libertarians also engage in criticism of each other.

The validity of right-libertarian notions of liberty and economic freedom have been questioned by critics such as Robert Lee Hale, who posits that laissez-faire capitalism is a system of aggressive coercion and restriction by property owners against others:[4]

Adam Smith's "obvious and simple system of natural liberty" is not a system of liberty at all, but a complicated network of restraints, imposed in part by individuals, but very largely by the government itself at the behest of others on the freedom of the "some". ... What in fact distinguishes this counterfeit system of "laissez-faire" (the market) from paternalism, is not the absence of restraint, but the absence of any conscious purpose of the part of the officials who administer the restraint, and of any responsibility or unanimity on the part of the numerous owners at whose discretion the restraint is administered.

Other critics, including John Rawls in Justice as Fairness, argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that violate the rights of some individuals as they are beneficial for society overall. This concept is related to philosophical collectivism as opposed to individualism.[5] In response, libertarian philosophers such as Michael Huemer have raised criticisms of the social contract theory.[6]

Critics such as Corey Robin describe right-libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionary conservative ideology united with more traditional conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations:[7]

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and libertyor a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental forcethe opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees.

In his essay "From Liberty to Welfare", philosopher James P. Sterba argues that a morally consistent application of right-libertarian premises, including that of negative liberty, requires that a libertarian must endorse "the equality in the distribution of goods and resources required by a socialist state". Sterba presents the example of a typical conflict situation between the rich and poor "in order to see why libertarians are mistaken about what their ideal requires". He argues that such a situation is correctly seen as a conflict of negative liberties, saying that the right of the rich not to be interfered with in the satisfaction of their luxury needs is morally trumped by the right of the poor "not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs".

According to Sterba, the liberty of the poor should be morally prioritized in light of the fundamental ethical principle "ought implies can" from which it follows that it would be unreasonable to ask the poor to relinquish their liberty not be interfered with, noting that "in the extreme case it would involve asking or requiring the poor to sit back and starve to death" and that "by contrast it would not be unreasonable to ask and require the rich to sacrifice their liberty to meet some of their needs so that the poor can have the liberty to meet their basic needs". Having argued that "ought implies can" establishes the reasonability of asking the rich to sacrifice their luxuries for the basic needs of the poor, Sterba invokes a second fundamental principle, "The Conflict Resolution Principle", to argue that it is reasonable to make it an ethical requirement. He concludes by arguing that the application of these principles to the international context makes a compelling case for socialist distribution on a world scale.[8]

Jeffrey Friedman argues that natural-rights libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent:[9]

[W]e can press on from [the observation that libertarianism is egalitarian] to ask why, if ... the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights, the liberty to own large amounts of property [at the expense of others] should not also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism. ... The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's "right to do wrong."

Philosopher Jonathan Wolff criticizes deontological libertarianism as incoherent, writing that it is incapable of explaining why harm suffered by the losers in economic competition does not violate the principle of self-ownership and that its advocates must "dishonestly smuggle" consequentialist arguments into their reasoning to justify the institution of the free market.[10]

Robert Lee Hale has argued that the concept of coercion in right-libertarian theory is applied inconsistently, insofar as it is applied to government actions, but it is not applied to the coercive acts of property owners to preserve their own private property rights.[11]

Jeffrey Friedman has criticized right-libertarians for often relying on the unproven assumption that economic growth and affluence inevitably result in happiness and increased quality of life.[12]

J. C. Lester has argued that right-libertarianism has no explicit theory of liberty.[1] He supplies a theory of liberty, briefly summarized as the absence of imposed cost. Frederick[13] criticizes Lester for smuggling in concepts not specified in the theory. Lester[14] responded. Both Lester and Frederick are proponents of critical rationalism, the epistemological approach of Karl Popper. Lester has criticized libertarians for neglecting epistemology.

Right-libertarians are accused of ignoring market failures, although not all proponents are market zealots.[15] Critics of laissez-faire capitalism, the economic system favored by right-libertarians, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifled innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that markets do not always produce the best or most efficient outcome, that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health and that humans involved in markets do not always act rationally.[16][17]

Other economic criticisms concern the transition to a right-libertarian society. Jonathan Chait argues that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short-term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long-term.[18]

Reconciliation of individual rights and the advances of a free market economy with environmental degradation is a problem that few right-libertarians have addressed.[19] Political scientist and author Charles Murray has written that stewardship is what private property owners do best.[19] Environmentalists on the left who support regulations designed to reduce carbon emissions, such as cap and trade, argue that many right-libertarians currently have no method of dealing with problems like environmental degradation and natural resource depletion because of their rejection of regulation and collective control.[12] They see natural resources as too difficult to privatize as well as legal responsibility for pollution or degrading biodiversity as too difficult to trace.[5] As a result, some see the rise of right-libertarianism as popular political philosophy as partially responsible for climate change.[3]

Right-libertarians are also criticised for ignoring observation and historical fact and instead focusing on an abstract ideal.[20] Imperfection is not accounted for and they are axiomatically opposed to government initiatives to counter the effects of climate change.

Anarchism is evaluated as unfeasible or utopian by its critics, often in general and formal debate. European history professor Carl Landauer argued that social anarchism is unrealistic and that government is a "lesser evil" than a society without "repressive force". He also argued that "ill intentions will cease if repressive force disappears" is an "absurdity".[21] However, An Anarchist FAQ states the following: "Anarchy is not a utopia, [and] anarchists make no such claims about human perfection. ... Remaining disputes would be solved by reasonable methods, for example, the use of juries, mutual third parties, or community and workplace assemblies [as well as] some sort of "court" system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens".[22][23]

In his essay On Authority, Friedrich Engels claimed that radical decentralization promoted by anarchists would destroy modern industrial civilization, citing an example of railways:[24]

Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

John Donahue also argues that if political power were radically shifted to local authorities, parochial local interests would predominate at the expense of the whole and that this would exacerbate current problems with collective action.[25]

In the end, it is argued that authority in any form is a natural occurrence which should not be abolished.[26]

In 2013, Michael Lind observed that of the 195 countries in the world, none have fully actualized a society as advocated by right-libertarians:[27]

If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn't at least one country have tried it? Wouldn't there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

Furthermore, Lind has criticized right-libertarianism as being incompatible with democracy and apologetic towards autocracy.[28] In response, right-libertarian Warren Redlich argues that the United States "was extremely libertarian from the founding until 1860, and still very libertarian until roughly 1930".[29]

The anarchist tendency known as platformism has been criticized by Situationists,[30] insurrectionaries, synthesis anarchists[31][32] and others of preserving tacitly statist, authoritarian or bureaucratic tendencies.

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Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views – The New York Times

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But then comes the complicating factor, the part of my experience that turned me more right-wing. Because in the second phase of my illness, once I knew roughly what was wrong with me and the problem was how to treat it, I very quickly entered a world where the official medical consensus had little to offer me. It was only outside that consensus, among Lyme disease doctors whose approach to treatment lacked any C.D.C. or F.D.A. imprimatur, that I found real help and real hope.

And this experience made me more libertarian in various ways, more skeptical not just of our own medical bureaucracy, but of any centralized approach to health care policy and medical treatment.

This was true even though the help I found was often expensive and it generally wasnt covered by insurance; like many patients with chronic Lyme, I had to pay in cash. But if I couldnt trust the C.D.C. to recognize the effectiveness of these treatments, why would I trust a more socialized system to cover them? After all, in socialized systems cost control often depends on some centralized authority like Britains National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or the controversial, stillborn Independent Payment Advisory Board envisioned by Obamacare setting rules or guidelines for the system as a whole. And if youre seeking a treatment that official expertise does not endorse, I wouldnt expect such an authority to be particularly flexible and open-minded about paying for it.

Quite the reverse, in fact, given the trade-off that often shows up in health policy, where more free-market systems yield more inequalities but also more experiments, while more socialist systems tend to achieve their egalitarian advantages at some cost to innovation. Thus many European countries have cheaper prescription drugs than we do, but at a meaningful cost to drug development. Americans spend obscene, unnecessary-seeming amounts of money on our system; America also produces an outsize share of medical innovations.

And if being mysteriously sick made me more appreciative of the value of an equalizing floor of health-insurance coverage, it also made me aware of the incredible value of those breakthroughs and discoveries, the importance of having incentives that lead researchers down unexpected paths, even the value of the unusual personality types that become doctors in the first place. (Are American doctors overpaid relative to their developed-world peers? Maybe. Am I glad that American medicine is remunerative enough to attract weird Type A egomaniacs who like to buck consensus? Definitely.)

Whatever everyday health insurance coverage is worth to the sick person, a cure for a heretofore-incurable disease is worth more. The cancer patient has more to gain from a single drug that sends the disease into remission than a single-payer plan that covers a hundred drugs that dont. Or to take an example from the realm of chronic illness, just last week researchers reported strong evidence that multiple sclerosis, a disease once commonly dismissed as a species of hysteria, is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. If that discovery someday yields an actual cure for MS, it will be worth more to people suffering from the disease than any insurance coverage a government might currently offer them.

So if the weakness of the libertarian perspective on health insurance is its tendency to minimize the strange distinctiveness of illness, to treat patients too much like consumers and medical coverage too much like any other benefit, the weakness of the liberal focus on equalizing cost and coverage is the implicit sense that medical care is a fixed pie in need of careful divvying, rather than a zone where vast benefits await outside the realm of whats already available.

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Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views - The New York Times

Accomplished Scot Gordon Emslie escaped classism by immigrating to Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Gordon R. Emslie: Cricketer. Psychologist. Tinkerer. Libertarian. Born June 30, 1940, in Aberbeen, Scotland; died Aug. 22, 2021, in Toronto, of Alzheimers disease; aged 81.

Gordon R. EmslieCourtesy of family

In 1963, Gordon, a 23-year-old Scotsman, was offered a lucrative teaching post at a posh English university on the condition that he accept immediately, no questions asked. Armed with three MAs German, French and psychology and a postgraduate diploma in psychology from the University of London, refusal seemed unthinkable. But Gordon, unable to ignore the administrations haughtiness, quickly declined and was told hed never teach in England. One month later he immigrated to Canada a wildly disproportionate response to a bad interview.

That was Gordon. He loved London, but the paperwork he valued the most came from Kingston, Ont.: a rent receipt for his first apartment addressed, Dear Mr. Scotch (sic) Boy; the PhD in psychology from Queens University; an obituary clipping from 1966. The Kingston Whig-Standard erroneously announced his marriage, to Judith Rosemary Cafley, under the title: Death and Funerals. The absurdity of a marriage announcement printed in the obituaries perfectly signified Gordons sensibility and demeanour. A charming libertarian, he was quick to send up anything that hinted of classism. He mocked media coverage of the Royal Family; he decried his sister Moyras voice mail. British Telecom programmed it to talk in a fancy London accent, oblivious to its locale: Aberdeen.

Gordon was a born sportsman. He captained hockey and cricket teams for Robert Gordons College and the University of Aberdeen and extended his career in both sports with Ruthrieston H.C., the Scottish Select Team and London University; and Gordonians C.C. and Aberdeenshire C.C., respectively. He dropped down to one sport when, in Canada, he discovered hockey was played on ice. In 1965, Gordon played with the Kingston Cricket Club and met Judith at one of the many team parties. He captained the team in 1968 and often led the Ottawa Valley Cricket League in scoring.

By the early 1970s, Gordon and Judith had two sons, Ritchie and Andrew. The young family moved to Guelph, Kitchener and settled in Etobicoke, where Gordon selflessly allowed Ritchie to destroy his bamboo-lined cricket pads playing road hockey. Also selfless: driving his son to hockey practice, collapsed in pain over the steering wheel, instead of going directly to the hospital. It took Gordon weeks to recover from the kidney stone surgery.

The family took several trips to Scotland to visit Gordons family perhaps to avoid picking up the phone. Gordon hated telephones. A child from a phone-less house, he was far more comfortable crafting intricate letters, dictating adventures on cassette tapes, even reciting Address to a Haggis on Burns Night.

In retirement, he was thrilled to cheer on his grandson, Luca, playing hockey and baseball. He was in constant amazement of the team spirit, athletic facilities and opportunity. His face would light up.

Gordon was a tinkerer. Old cabinet drawers, lockboxes and peanut butter jars were drilled, hinged and bolted into complex contraptions holding three generations of tools. In his workshops, wild turkey feathers were hollowed out and made into pens. Scotch bottle caps were filled with concrete and used as chess pieces. And letters were carefully burned into driftwood signs.

The latter were for the paths at the cottage, named Stonehaven. He had a panache for path making and the names he etched into the signs were more often than not in Doric, a dialect unique to the Northeast of Scotland: Ceilidh Place, Ben Doric, Bothy Brae, Union Street (a thoroughfare in Aberdeen) and Lower Union Street (in Kingston where Gordon and Judith first shared a home). There are 14 signs. At least two are missing. Every so often I find a new one and rescue it from the moss and mushrooms.

Echoing his marriage notice, the venue hosting his memorial sent an e-mail to Gordons widow congratulating her on their recent wedding engagement. Im sure Gordon somehow orchestrated this.

I can hear his laugh.

Ritchie Emslie is Gordons son.

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Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go online to tgam.ca/livesguide

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Accomplished Scot Gordon Emslie escaped classism by immigrating to Canada - The Globe and Mail

Liz Truss: The Tufton Street Candidate Byline Times – Byline Times

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Sam Bright unravels the ties between Conservative leadership hopeful Liz Truss and Westminsters network of opaque libertarian think tanks

Boris Johnsons premiership of the Conservative Party is dying. It is currently unclear how slowly or quickly the rot is taking hold, but there is little doubt that his political career is on a steep, downward trajectory.

His Downing Street team held multiple parties in breach of lockdown rules both this year and last, some of which were attended by the Prime Minister. The public backlash has been fierce, with focus groups telling former Downing Street pollster James Johnson that the Prime Minister is a coward.

There was something about him that made him a bit more personable to me, one voter in the focus group said, who backed the Conservatives for the first time in 2019. Its gone now, because weve lost that trust in him. Now hes just a buffoon He cant be trusted.

Scenting an opportunity, rivals to Johnsons throne are now encircling the Prime Minister preparing their campaigns for the moment when his leadership begins its final descent. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is a front-runner in this pack, by virtue of her popularity among Conservative Party members.

But Truss also has another crucial constituency of support that may bolster her efforts to seize control of the Conservative Party: for years, she has developed close ties to the Tufton Street network a group of libertarian think tanks and lobbying groups, many of which are opaquely funded, that for years have exerted considerable influence on the policy decisions and the operation of the Tories.

Several of the groups are currently or were formerly based in brick-clad offices along Tufton Street in Londons Westminster, creating an association between a political ideology and the address as well as suspicions that these libertarian organisations closely coordinate their work.

Tufton Street is much like Fleet Street the former habitat of the newspaper industry. While the titles that were once based there have now scattered across London, Fleet Street is still used as a shorthand phrase for the industry much like Tufton Street and the world of libertarian politics.

Indeed, Shahmir Sanni, a Brexit whistleblower who formerly worked within the Tufton Street network, says that these groups regularly held meetings at 55 Tufton Street to agree on a single set of right-wing talking points and to [secure] more exposure to thepublic.

These organisations are bound by their support for Brexit the Vote Leave campaign was originally registered at 55 Tufton Street and their vigour for low taxes, laissez faire economics, a smaller state, and seemingly close relationship with Liz Truss.

Attempting to institutionalise a right-wing political ideology, the Conservative Party has deployed the public appointments system to install sympathetic individuals in prominent government roles.

This strategy has been adopted by Truss, seen actively during her time as International Trade Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, which involved the awarding of public positions to Tufton Street insiders.

In October 2020, for example, the radical, right-wing website Guido Fawkes gleefully reported that Truss had appointed a swathe of free market think tankers to her refreshed Strategic Trade Advisory Group a forum of businesses and academics, which meets regularly to consider the UKs international trade policies.

These appointments included:

Lord Hannan himself was also appointed as an advisor to the Board of Trade a commercial body within the Department for International Trade in September 2020. His Initiative for Free Trade was formerly based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with Colviles Centre for Policy Studies, based around the corner from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Following these appointments to the Strategic Trade Advisory Group, former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake wrote to Truss, asking whether proper due diligence had taken place in the recruitment process. Brake asked her to explain what additional checks had been carried out on the organisations that employ these individuals which have a history of failing to declare their donors to ensure that they are not funded by those who might be deemed to be agents of a foreign principal.

Core members of Truss own team have also been drawn from the Tufton Street network.

Sophie Jarvis who previously worked as head of government affairs at the Adam Smith Institute has been a special advisor to Truss at the Department for International Trade and now the Foreign Office. Nerissa Chesterfield, former head of communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, was also employed as a special advisor to Truss from August 2019 to February 2020 leaving to work for Rishi Sunak, one of Trusss main competitors for the Conservative leadership.

Truss has also recently been given responsibility for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU tasked with ensuring a diplomatic resolutions to various trade disputes. Assisting Truss in this task is Minister of State for Europe Chris Heaton-Harris who chaired the European Research Group, a network of hard-right Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, from 2010 to 2016.

In August 2019, Truss appointed eight advisors to recommend locations for new, post-Brexit freeports ports where normal tax and customs rules do not apply two of whom were senior members of Tufton Street think tanks. One was Tom Clougherty head of tax at the Centre for Policy Studies. Clougherty was previously executive director of theAdam Smith Institute, managingeditor at the libertarian Reason Foundation, and senior editor at the CatoInstitute co-founded and part-funded by the Koch brothers, two radical, right-wing American billionaires.

Truss has surrounded herself with Tufton Street figures, with her departments often relying on their policy advice. She and her ministers held a swathe of official meetings with representatives of Tufton Street think tanks and lobbying groups during her time at the Department for International Trade, departmental records show.

Controversially, two meetings between the Institute of Economic Affairs and Truss were removed from departmental records in August 2020 justified on the basis that they were personal rather than official meetings. Labour accused Truss of appearing to be evading rules designed to ensure integrity, transparency and honesty in public office, and the records were subsequently reinstated.

It was also revealed in December 2018 that Truss met with five American libertarian groups during a visit to Washington D.C. that cost taxpayers more than 5,000. The organisations included:

The majority of these organisations have been closely associated with climate change denial or policies that obstruct efforts to address climate change and its effects.

Americans for Tax Reform belongs to aninternational coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations, according to DeSmog. This includes the TaxPayers Alliance an influential UK libertarian pressure group founded by Matthew Elliot, who was the CEO of the Vote Leave EU Referendum campaign.

Elliott, an authoritative figure on the right, reserved special praise for Truss after an event hosted by Policy Exchange in September 2021, in which they both participated. Truss was on great form, he said, outlining a bold, exciting vision for how boosting international trade benefits UK consumers and workers across the country.

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Truss, along with a number of her colleagues, recently signed up as a parliamentary supporter of the Free Market Forum a new free market project launched by the Institute of Economic Affairs and advised by Elliott.

The MP for South West Norfolk since 2010, she is viewed widely as a political chameleon a former Liberal Democrat and a supporter of the Remain campaign in 2016 but her libertarian convictions have been evident since entering Parliament in 2010.

At the September 2021 Policy Exchange event, the Oxford University graduate emphasised her desire to [champion] open markets and free enterprise, saying that protectionism is no way to protect peoples living standards. This could well have been a veiled swipe at her boss, Boris Johnson, who has been seen as an interventionist Prime Minister using state spending and powers to achieve his political objectives, and raising taxes as a result.

At this critical time, we need trade to curb any rise in the cost of living through the power of economic openness, Truss added.

These sentiments chime with the attitudes of the Tufton Street network, establishing Truss as the Thatcherite contender in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest whenever it may take place.

Johnson has authoritarian instincts, and is certainly not a moderate Prime Minister. However, whichever direction the Conservative Party takes in the post-Johnson era, it seems likely to be more radical particularly in relation to economics. Truss, as the Tufton Street candidate, represents the sharp end of this spear.

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Nuclear and fossil fuel advocates, wind foes among backers of right whale protection suits – Cape Cod Times

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Entangled North Atlantic right whale known as Snow Cone gives birth to calf

The 17-year-old mom has been subject to numerous disentanglement attempts, but the stubborn rope remains stuck. Her first calf was killed by a boat

Georgia DNR/taken under NOAA permit 20556

When Nantucket Residents Against Turbines held a press conference in front of the Statehouse in Boston last August to announce it was suing the federal government for permitting a wind farm south of the island, media outlets noted the presence of David Stevenson, a former Trump transition team member and the director of energy and environment for a libertarian think tank.

They are seemingly oddallies: A group that has the stated goal of saving the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales from the impact of offshore wind farms standing shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who hadappeared before state legislaturesadvocating for the Trump administration's proposal to renew Atlantic offshore oil and gas drilling.

In November, the Nantucket group, known by the acronym ACKRAT, helpedannounce the formation of the Save Right Whales Coalition with the stated goal of stopping offshore wind farms. One of the groups in the coalition was led by pro-nuclear power activist Michael Shellenberger and his California-based group Environmental Progress. Shellenberger believes nuclear power is the only abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy source.

They are not part of our organization, Amy DiSibio, an ACKRAT board member, said of Environmental Progress and Stevensons group, the Caesar Rodney Institute.

There have been some coalitions formed where people interested in whales have some interests that go beyond the whales but our lawsuit is purely environmental and focused on the whale, she said in an interview last week.

ACKRAT'ssuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston claims the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Managementthe lead agency in permitting VineyardWind 1, the 62-turbine offshore wind farm 14 miles south of Nantucket and the first utility-scale project in the country failedalong with other federal agenciesto do an adequate environmental review of its impact on the marine environment, particularly its affect on right whales.

DiSibio said Stevenson and the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, helped with publicity, advice and some money. Stevenson also recently founded the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, which is fundraising to create a permanent wind energy exclusion zone along the East Coast out to 33 miles.

Its a familiar tactic, said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor of environmental law and the director of the Center for Climate Change Law.

We have a long history of industry opposition to environmental regulation and to clean energy projects. The lawyers bringing these cases always want to find the plaintiffs who are the most sympathetic and have standing to sue, Gerrard said. For that reason, its desirable to find groups like fishermen to be the face of the litigation.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, for instance, counted fishermen and wealthy waterfront landowners as supporters in multiple lawsuits against the Cape Wind project, and had backing from fossil fuel interests in William Koch, owner of Oxbow CarbonLLCand a member of the alliance'sboard of directors. He also owned a home in Osterville on Nantucket Sound.

Cape Windhad unsuccessfully proposed to build the nations first offshore wind farm with a 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound. In 2017 it surrendered its federal lease on the project.

A recent lawsuit against Vineyard Wind, with similar claims tothe ACKRAT suit of violations of the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Actand the National Environmental Policy Act, was filed on behalf of six fishing groups from ports from Long Island to New Bedford by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Greenpeace, the Texas Observer and other sources cite Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron, coal companies and other fossil fuel companies and interests as foundation donors. In 2015, the foundation launched its Fueling Freedom Project to oppose the Obama administrations Clean Energy Plan with a mission to redefine the public conversation around fossil fuels, and especially their positive role in society.

The goal may not be to win a lawsuit.

There certainly have been numerous suits against wind and solar projects that have torpedoed them, not because of favorable court decisions, but because of delay and uncertainty, Gerrard said. It is often enough to derail a project. It can make people financing the project nervous and sometimes deadlines for tax subsidies are missed.

Gerrard pointed to the American Bird Conservancy, which has routinely spoken out against land-based and offshore wind projects on the basis that turbine blades kill birds.

In an October 2021 article on the nonprofit, the magazine Gristallegedthe conservancy was accepting money from fossil fuel interests and inflating claims of potential and existing mortality from wind turbines. In response,Mike Parr, the conservancys president, told the magazine thata significant portion of the American economy is derived from oil wealth and that most philanthropic ventures have some oil investment.

The conservancy allied itself with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in opposing Cape Wind, saying in a comment letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the science was poor and studies showed that loons will likely abandon the area for years to come, and there may be significant impacts to endangered Roseate Terns. But in 2016, the Massachusetts Audubon Society concluded that after five years of review and three years of ornithological fieldwork, it found no discernible impact from the turbines.

And while they claim an interest in saving right whales, none of the groups involved in litigation have any history of activism, funding or research on their behalf.

For decades, the New England Aquarium and its Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life have been researching and advocating for ways to save North Atlantic right whales, who number around 366 individuals, from extinction. Senior scientist Jessica Redfern said shes not familiar with any of these groups as right whale advocates and knows of no grassroots efforts out of Nantucket to save right whales.

We havent been involved with or approached by any of those groups, she said.

While ACKRAT claims it will be the wind farms that will drive right whales into extinction, Redfern said the greatest threats to their continued existence come from collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear, particularly lobster pot buoy lines.

If youre really concerned about the fate of right whales, thats your focus, Redfern said. Another big factor is climate change and one of the ways we can minimize that is adopting clean energy (policies) and offshore wind is a great source of that.

Climate change is the greatest overall threat to all marine species, particularly in the Northeast where the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than nearly any other marine water body on Earth. Researchers believe that temperature increases have affected the distribution of the copepod species calanus finmarchicus, the right whales preferred prey. These zooplankton prefer cooler, subarctic waters and right whales have largely deserted their traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine in recent years and ventured offshore andinto cooler Canadian waters in search of food.

Unfortunately, that put them in the path of heavier lobster gear that requires stronger lines to withstand the currents and depths of fishing far from shore. Until recently, Canadian waters saw relatively few right whales and Canada didnt have the regulations now common in the U.S. requiring gear that whales could more easily break or shed, or procedures to detect and shut down areas to fishing and vessel traffic where the whales were congregating.

The result has been 34 dead right whales due to entanglement or vessel strikes since 2017, with another 16 with injuries serious enough to be deemed life-threatening, according to NOAA. This in the face of research showing that less than one right whale a year can die from human causes if they are to avoid extinction.

Redfern is in charge of the Anderson Cabot program that monitors and maps human impacts on whales including ship strikes, chronic noise, entanglementand minimizing impacts of wind energy. While initial survey work used to establish wind energy lease areas showed little right whale activity there, recent aerial and ship survey work has documented their presence year-round south of Nantucket and in the lease area.

Its something that has caused concern among whale researchers and conservation groups about the impact of wind farms on right whales.

A 2021 study by researchers from Anderson Cabot, NOAA and Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown found that, on average, a quarter of the right whale population including half the remaining breeding femaleswas using an area south of Nantucket and occasionally portions of the state wind energy lease areas. Researchers believed that with a median residency time of 13 days it was likely to be a transition area and not a major feeding or breeding ground.

Two years ago, Vineyard Wind signed an agreement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federationand the Conservation Law Foundation that included seasonal restrictions on pile driving employed during the construction phase and a ban from January to April when right whales were more likely to be present. The agreement also called for increased monitoring by ship and aerial surveys as well as stationed observers on vessels, acoustic monitoring, restrictions on sound surveying, underwater noise reduction measures, reporting requirements and vessel speed restrictions.

The agreement could be revisited if the proposed plan didnt reduce impacts to close to zero. Vineyard Wind said findings from the 2021 study would be incorporated into its mitigation plan.

Redfern agreed with the study's conclusion that there was little science demonstrating the effects of wind farm construction and operation on right whales. Because wind energy has not been developed in our EEZ (ExclusiveEconomic Zone, the so-called 200-mile territorial limit claimed by the U.S.), theres still a lot that were going to learn as development occurs, Redfern said.

In 2019, a workshop convened by the Anderson Cabot Center and the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling developed a framework for studying the effects of offshore wind development on marine mammals and turtles. They postulated there was a high likelihood of short-term effects of displacement, and behavior disruption, but that it was also relatively easy to test for those impacts. A change in distribution whales and turtles either avoiding or being attracted to wind farm areas was considered a long-term impact of high probability that was also relatively easy to evaluate.

Along with other researchers, Redfern feltthe construction and operation of the nations first offshore industrial sized wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1, would provide researchers with the test area and research opportunities that could inform mitigation on succeeding projects.

I do think well learn a lot from Vineyard Wind as a model for development along the East Coast, she said.

Follow Doug Fraser on Twitter:@dougfrasercct

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Nuclear and fossil fuel advocates, wind foes among backers of right whale protection suits - Cape Cod Times

10 Denim Industry Experts on the Highs, Lows and Predictions for 2022 – Sourcing Journal

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A new calendar year represents a new beginning for individuals and industries alike. While 2021 unlocked new growth opportunities for the denim sector, driven by demand for new fits and sizes, versatile work-friendly attire and sustainable product stories, the year also saw sweeping changes in sourcing strategies, production ,and raw material and freight costs.

This state of flux will likely carry into 2022, and with consumers increasingly aware of the challenges facing the apparel industry, denim experts anticipate a year of education and truthtelling ahead.

2022 is a time to address consumerism, educate, [and] collaborate, and retailers need to stop pretending they are genuinely delivering solutions when many decision makers barely understand how to wash a pair of jeans, said Salli Deighton, responsible denim development consultant.

Here, experts from across the denim industry specializing in circularity and sustainability, trends and design and events share their lessons learned in 2021 and what the blue world has to look forward to in 2022.

Fabio Adami Dalla Val, Denim Premire Vision show manager: Looking at the production side of the value chain, 2020 wasnt so bad for many countries despite the period of lockdown. The start of 2021 was hopeful but all the problems that we are facing now shows that the difficulties arent finished yet and all the players need to find common solutions. Effects of the pandemic will impact our lives for a long time from every perspective, but I feel positivity in the people of the denim industry.

Ana Paula Alves de Oliveira, Be Disobedient founder: Everything has prepared us for where we are today. In times of crisis, the fashion industry always suffers, but it has the power to recover fast. There is a strategic change in the way we are selling and a huge change in the way we buy. This time, I felt that we were able to adapt during the crisis, betting on transparency, traceability, technology, and collaboration. I saw the industry unite and work together side by side.

Michelle Branch, Markt&Twigs, Inc. founder: Although theres no clear-cut version of our [new normal], the industry was in a better place in 2021. That said, we are still facing residual effects from 2020, impacting things like costs and calendars. Well see how those things are worked through in the coming months.

Salli Deighton, responsible denim development consultant: Im based in London, so we had a very slow start to 2020 as our stores were closed until April. After the dramatic halt on production last year, retailers rushed to buy denim close to home from the Turkish and North African suppliers. Mills are under pressure, not only with cotton price hikes but escalating freight costs have increased the need for local denim. It has been a rocky year, but I wonder if we have really learned anything. Our industry has worked hard to create solutions and I believe this year and next will start to see a long overdue reset for manufacturing and buying practices.

Lucia Rosin, Meidea founder and head designer: In general, I would say better than 2020, despite the increases in raw materials. I saw a slow recovery in the second half of 2021.

Panos Sofianos, Bluezone innovation curator and circular denim consultant: Much better than expected, although the pandemic hit the apparel market hard enough. The denim community had some good reflections, setting new standards in production and the supply chain.

Brian Trunzo, VP, events (mens) Informa Markets Fashion: We saw an uptick in denim this year. After spending a year in sweats, people felt the urge to get dressed up again. Denim represented the perfect middle ground: still clearly casual, but more dress-up-able than what most people were wearing throughout the early days of the pandemic.

Aydan Tuzun, Naveena Denim Mills executive director of sales and marketing: Covid-19 affected the denim industry in many ways: by directly affecting production and demand, by creating supply chain and market disturbance, and by its financial impact on firms and financial markets. The rapid switch to remote working and lockdowns also had a negative impact, but in 2021 the category was already set to make a speedy recovery, driven by demand for comfort and sustainability. The recent rise of loungewear and sportswear has put pressure on denim-focused brands and retailers to keep innovating. And that is what the industry did in 2021, with success.

Andrea Venier, Officina+39 managing director: In 2021, the denim industry discovered a new enthusiasm which gave it a fresh [perspective]a desire to start again and to work together to achieve common goals. The trade fairs Munich Fabric Start and Denim Premire Vision Milan are positive examples of a sector that wants to be a protagonist again. If 2020 was a slow year with not much that could be done, 2021 saw a greater focus on new technologies and projects.

Vivian Wang, Kingpins Show managing director and global sales manager: 2020 started strong, so the temporary shutdowns forced by the pandemic was a shock to many businesses, including ours. We were forced to adjust to a new way of doing business, and then adjust again (and again) as we navigated through uncertain times. In 2021, we found new opportunities to connect the denim community and settled into a new way of workingin-person when we could but more often, remotely.

FA: The opportunity to meet each other again. The fact that suppliers can meet their customers again in different places of the world and restart work is a highlight.

AA: Digital is the word. Buying jeans online wasnt an easy challenge to solve, but in 2021 weve seen greater propensity toward trying new brands, new players and having new conversations. There are no boundaries in the online space where brands and consumers are open for change.

MB: An industry highlight was how it kept moving forward, not just from a community perspective, but also with innovations. The innovations that were developed based on need in the last year and a half are astonishing.

SD: Meeting denim friends again. I dont think I have ever been so excited to board a plane and head to a trade fair. Bluezone in Munich was so well-organized, and we connected again with our denim community. Denim, to many of us, is bigger than a day job and we love to learn, innovate and find future solutions and this comes through discussion and sharing. After 18 months of Zooms and home-working, it was wonderful to be in person, touching fabrics, seeing trends, and discussing all the new ideas which have emerged while we have all been grounded.

LR: Finally seeing each other again and talking to each other in person at the first physical fairs after almost two years at Bluezone in Munich and Denim Premire Vision in Milanthis makes the difference. And the general push by brands to be more [sustainable] and mindful of circular solutions. Theres a now a real need.

PS: The rise of back to basic activities including trade shows, sourcing and distribution aided by blockchain.

BT: Not entirely denim focused, but the Heron Preston collaboration with Calvin Klein was a personal favorite of mine. The sustainably minded polymath (DJ/designer/marketer) created an interesting capsule for this storied heritage brand featuring all sorts of interesting green products, including denim manufactured out of recycled bottles. While there are fully sustainable denim ranges doing similar things for close to a decade now, it felt fresh coming from Calvin Klein through the lens of a young visionary designer.

AT: I think there were two highlights for the industry in 2021: casualization and sustainability.

We have seen a global casualization thats taking hold right now, and we think that it is here to stay. After being home for months, nobody wants to update their wardrobe with dressier styles. In 2021, sustainability has again helped revolutionize the denim industry. Though at times misused and overused, the intention behind the term signals a more environmentally conscious future for the sector at large.

AV: The Covid era corresponded with an introspective phase that gave us the opportunity to reflect on the global situation and to restart by investing in new projects. During this period, the gap between those who actively believe in a different future and those who remain statically anchored to outdated models has steadily increased. Our industry was hit hard by the pandemic, but despite the difficulties, we should continue to produce innovation, collaborations and new initiatives. A lot of opportunities are rising for those who invest in technologies, sustainability and circularity.

VW: At Kingpins, we spent the year developing new avenues for the denim industry to work and collaborate. That included new Kingpins24 shows in new markets such as Latin America, Australia and Canada. We also struck a deal with Material Exchange to bring the Kingpins Show experience to the digital space, which was something we had always planned to do but it took on new urgency during the pandemic.

AA: There is more demand than supply now. This is part of the crisis and its consequences with cost, price, and sourcing. We are going through a consumption detoxification process. New generations want to know more. Its a circle: if we know more, we choose better and buy with quality and awareness.

FA: It will change the jeanswear ecosystem. In the upcoming months, it is possible that well see prices increase for the end consumer, or we will have suppliers working without margin or below the cost. In the first case, for many, it will be a market positioning issue, and in the second case, we will face another ethics problem.

The lack of and delay of the raw materials is another story and its even worse than the price rising because it will require companies to redesign the way the value chain is working.I think that it will take a few months to see the impact of it and it will affect the small brands with less bargaining power more. At the end of the day the loser is the product because it will be difficult to develop it.

MB: I think well be feeling the impact of this for some time to come.

SD: I hope it will make brands and retailers savvier and more sensible with planning. We dont need to reinvent the wheel each season. Volume, core denim is a slow transition, and we can take time to develop the products sensibly and sustainably to minimize the impact on the supply chain and the planet. Nearshoring will now grow in partnership with the long-haul suppliers, and we can move some of the finishing locally to enable more flexibility and response to sales. It will also allow us to reprocess unsold goods which will make a huge impact on the waste we create. Cotton price instability will see the use of more bio-based, recycled and alternative fibers. We have many options to work with thanks to the research and investment many mills have made.

LR: I think that those who have retained their customers with a good relationship can explain the increases. It is understandable why this is happening in all sectors. The delays we experienced during the pandemic are pushing [buyers to create] closer production.

PS: Nearshoring is promisingan antidote to a turbulent situation caused by skyrocking transportation prices. Were already seeing projects like C&As urban factory in Germany and Candianis microfactory in Milan and many more are in the pipeline.

AT: The pandemic disrupted the whole supply chain, leading to a rise in prices of raw materials, especially cotton and cotton yarn. Surging prices coupled with logistical problems such as congested ports and tight shipping capacity have created the perfect storm. To say times have been challenging of late for the denim industry would be an understatement. At Naveena, we are widening our menu of fibers, with an emphasis on hemp, Tencel and Lycra EcoMade as well as post-consumer waste and post-industrial waste. However, cotton will always be important. It is impossible to replace it totally with alternatives for the time being.

AV: This is certainly the most negative aspect of 2021. In the last 6-7 months we have had to face a situation never seen before in our 30-year experience. We have experienced moments of difficulty and pressure for various reasons, but this crisis in raw materials and the radical and impressive increase in transport, packaging and energy costs is something totally new for us.

Just as when people anticipate a food shortage by stocking up on food for the next six months, our customers are now reacting to the raw material crisis by ordering in anticipation of the future. Orders that we used to receive for 40 tonnes per month are now being requested for 120 tonnes. This only makes the situation worse because by asking for more raw materials, we are increasing the scarcity of raw materials, which is pushing up prices. If the situation is not tackled responsibly and with foresight, the risk of making it worse is very real: that is why in recent weeks we have tried to encourage both our internal team and our partners and customers to not panic and to just order according to real needs.

VW: The impact of the pandemic continues to ripple throughout the global denim market, making this a challenging time for all of us. In this ever-shifting landscape, flexibility is crucial. To be sure, there will be new opportunities as some countries and regions step up their sourcing capacities. This could be a time for companies to look beyond the traditional sourcing centers and investigate new ones. Similarly, brands and retailers are already looking to add new materials to their offerings.

One thing that should remain unchanged is the importance of sustainability and the ambitious goals and targets set before the pandemic began. To help the industry continue to pursue those goals, Kingpins partnered with the Conscious Fashion Campaign, in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships. We support the Conscious Fashion Campaigns call to reach 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, by urging the industry to incorporate SDGs into their business models. At all our events, we highlight SDGs, circular production solutions, sustainability innovations and facilitate knowledge within the denim industry.

FA: Indeed, more people face to face interactions. Thats what I really miss.

AA: I want to see people who are curious, inquisitive, aware and willing to innovate, creating new paths for our industry. I want to keep this trend for learning and sharing. This is the best way to collaborate with each other.

MB: Its been encouraging to see several in our industry step up their efforts around responsible practices in the last 18 months or soactually doing the work and not just offering lip service. Denim has led the way, but the whole fashion industry benefits from more purpose-driven companies, big and small, that have this philosophy legitimately built into their DNA. Id like to see more of the industry on this path in 2022 and beyond.

SD: More emphasis on UN Sustainable Development Goals, transparency and nearshoring.

LR: Research and innovation being the driving force in a new level of design and production. I would like to see a renewed style and creativity in collections with more awareness.

PS: Honesty, transparency, low-impact products and a real ethical industry that has empathy for suffering companies. Id also like to see restructuring in consumer habits and in companies green investments.

BT: Bigger fits and fuller cuts. No need for JNCO-level roominess, but a more relaxed fit feels more contemporary in the third decade of this century. But please, no bootcuts!

AT: Responsibility. I hope the denim industry truly acts in responsible and respectful ways towards the planet and humanity.

AV: I believe we still need to work hard to redesign a better sustainable model, where circularity represents the new sustainabilitynot only when it comes to the materials, but also to water. In the textile industry water is used to vehicle colors and chemical auxiliaries but luckily today many technologies aim at significantly reducing water consumption. For that, we need to involve young designers and technicians to develop products based on this circular approach. I think the right perspective between creativity and circularity should turn into a simple question of what if we could redesign everything using sustainable, resilient, circular materials? Imagination must have no limits; creativity with circular and sustainable materials should give us the confidence to redesign the world we live in.

VW: Obviously, we cant wait to see everyone in person in 2022, as [Kingpins] return to holding physical trade shows. But we also recognize that the way we do business has changed post-pandemic. Going forward, there needs to be more integration between digital and physical interaction and collaboration.

FA: Less egoism.

AA: Greenwashing.

MB: Weve all seen it, so its no surprise when I say that the number of companies in our industry that are still making unsubstantiated and untrue sustainability claims is tragic. The term greenwashing itself is almost as overused as sustainable. Id really like to see less of this in 2022.

SD: Greenwashing.

LR: I dont want to see overly destroyed jeans anymore. Its fine if you buy second-hand, but there are many other ways to make a new product attractive without destroying it. Enough washes with devastating chemistry. And enough with objectifying the image of women in advertising.

PS: No more greenwashing, less textile waste and no going back to business as usual.

BT: Skinny fits, particularly for men.

AT: Less greenwashing, more accountability.

AV: I certainly hope for less panic [in the supply chain]. I hope that we can return to an ordinary situation with greater awareness and an active attitude to change, not only on a personal level but also at work. We need to build a new denim industry, inspired by balance and respect for our planet. But to do this, we need to get out of this feeling of emergency chaos and the toxicity of its consequences, to get back into action.

VW: I would like to see the industry keep the focus on long-term goals over short-term gains. Ive spent much of the last two years talking to people in our industry about how they had been doing business before the pandemic and how they hope to do business in the future. I hope as businesses reopen and rebuild, we all continue our efforts to make the industry better and work together toward a more sustainable future.

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10 Denim Industry Experts on the Highs, Lows and Predictions for 2022 - Sourcing Journal

Fact Check: Evolution of CRPF tactical gear over the …

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It is the first day of the New Year and misleading posts have already flooded social media. Several viral tweets from January 1, 2022, claim that India's largest Central Armed Police Force - the CRPF - has undergone a gear upgrade in the last decade.

"CRPF jawan 2011 Vs CRPF Jawan 2022. Choose wisely India. Jai Hind," says the claim along with two images of what is said to be of CRPF personnel.

India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading. The image of a jawan has been shared as from 2011, while it was originally photographed in 2017. The second picture is of a member of CRPF's elite commando wing.

The first photo, claimed to be taken in 2011, shows a jawan donning khaki pants, an army-green vest and armed with an INSAS rifle.

A reverse search showed the photo was clicked by photographer Arbaz Mughal for Alamy News Live in Srinagar in 2017.

Hence, the first photo is not a decade old as the post wrongly claimed.

The second image shows another personnel in far-advanced military gear, including a night-vision-attached military helmet and a communication device. The word 'Commando' can be seen stitched on both sides of his grey uniform. A closer look showed the insignia on one of his sleeves that read "Valley QAT".

Using this clue, we ran a keyword search to learn that the CRPF's elite anti-terrorism commando unit in Jammu & Kashmir is called the Valley Quick Action Team or 'Valley QAT'. They are highly trained and equipped to work in close quarters with the Indian Army and Jammu & Kashmir Police during counter-insurgency operations.

A reverse image search of the commando's image - with 'Valley QAT' as a keyword - cleared our doubts. The same photo, along with a handful of similar images, was found on the website of stock photo firm Getty Images.

This answered the question of why the equipment owned by the officer in the second image is far advanced than that of the jawan in the first.

But has the CRPF altered their uniform post-2017 to grey? We checked the latest parade of the CRPF from December 23, 2021, on the YouTube channel of Doordarshan National. This confirmed that the khaki uniforms are still in place for CRPF personnel.

Thus, it can be concluded that the two photos of CRPF jawans in the viral claim were not taken a decade apart or represent the upgrades the force has undergone over the years.

ClaimA photo comparison of upgraded gear used by the CRPF in 2011 and 2022.ConclusionThe claim is misleading as the image shared as that of the CRPF jawan from 2011 was clicked in 2017, while the second image is of an elite commando of the paramilitary force.

The number of crows determines the intensity of the lie.

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Fact Check: Evolution of CRPF tactical gear over the ...

Welcome | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

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The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology was created in 1997 and currently comprises 14 primary and 8 affiliated faculty members, approximately 40 graduate students, 18 postdoctoral fellows, lecturers and research scientists, and 100 undergraduates with an EEB concentration. Our offices and laboratories are spread across the historic Osborn Memorial Labs (OML), the Environmental Science Center (ESC) and Building 31 on Yales West Campus.

The mission of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University is to achieve the highest possible quality of research, undergraduate, and graduate education in the fields of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology.

We discover, create, synthesize, and disseminate knowledge about the earths biodiversity, its ecological interactions, and its evolutionary history. We pursue integrative, interdisciplinary, and global research on phenomena that range from molecules to ecosystems.

We prepare Yale College undergraduate majors for careers in biology and medicine and educate other Yale College students in ecology, evolution, and biodiversity.

We seek to attract the most capable, promising, and diverse graduate students and postdoctoral appointees from the nation and the world and to prepare them for positions of leadership in research, education, and society.

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Welcome | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

How Omicron’s Mutations Allow It To Thrive – The New York Times

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Because an immunocompromised host doesnt produce a lot of antibodies, many viruses are left to propagate. And new mutant viruses that resist the antibodies can multiply.

A mutation that allows a virus to evade antibodies isnt necessarily advantageous. It could make the viruss spike protein unstable so that it cant latch quickly onto a cell, for example. But inside someone with a weak immune system, viruses may be able to gain a new mutation that stabilizes the spike again.

Similar mutations could have built upon themselves again and again in the same person, Dr. Pond speculates, until Omicron evolved a spike protein with just the right combination of mutations to allow it to spread supremely well among healthy people.

It certainly seems plausible, said Sarah Otto, an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the study. But she said scientists still needed to run experiments to rule out alternative explanations.

Its possible, for example, that the 13 spike mutations offer no benefit to Omicron at all. Instead, some of the other spike mutations could be making Omicron successful, and the 13 are just along for the ride.

I would be cautious about interpreting the data to indicate that all of these previously deleterious mutations have been adaptively favored, Dr. Otto said.

Dr. Pond also acknowledged that his hypothesis still has some big gaps. For example, its not clear why, during a chronic infection, Omicron would have gained an advantage from its new bubble method for getting into cells.

We just lack imagination, Dr. Pond said.

James Lloyd-Smith, a disease ecologist at U.C.L.A. who was not involved in the study, said that the research revealed just how hard it is to reconstruct the evolution of a virus, even one that arose recently. Nature is certainly doing its part to keep us humble, he said.

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How Omicron's Mutations Allow It To Thrive - The New York Times

Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought – Popular Science

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The oldest evidence of Homo erectus comes from an arid hillside near the border of Ethiopia and Kenya. Though the 1.9-million-year-old fossil is only a tiny shard, more complete, if more recent individuals show that the species looked recognizably human. The species had long legs and short arms. Its face was flat, without a chimp-like snout. Behind that face was a hefty brain, bigger than that of any of its predecessors.

The question, then, is what forces shaped H. erectus, and further down the line, its descendant Homo sapiens.

One popular theory has it that a meat-heavy diet allowed H. erectus to invest in its brainpower. But a new report casts doubt on the basic evidence to support the idea.

The theory that a meaty diet allowed human brains to develop is sometimes called the meat made us human hypothesis. One of the leading ideas is that if you switch from a plant-based diet towards a diet thats rich in protein and fat, like eating meat and bone marrow from carcasses, you have the energy you need to feed a larger brain, says Andrew Barr, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, who studies the environment of early human evolution.

Meat-eating could explain another feature of H. erectus: its dainty, human-like digestive system. The guts of other apes are shaped almost like a skirt, says Briana Pobiner, a zooarchaeologist at the Smithsonians Museum of Natural History, with a small top and a wide bottom. A modern humans is like a slim skirt as opposed to a wide skirt.

For decades the theorys proponents pointed to physical objects for support. The archeological evidence has lined up with this, says Pobiner. In the 1980s, archaeologists started finding butchery marks on fossil bones in East Africa, and going, okay, early humans were eating these animals.

Plenty of other apes eat meatchimps even use basic tools to huntbut the proliferation of butchered bones suggested that perhaps, H. erectus or its close ancestors had become more skilled carnivores.

But that evidence isnt what it appears, according to a new study co-authored by Pobiner and Barr, and published in the journal PNAS. There is an explosion of recorded butchered bones and stone tools after 1.9 million years ago, when H. erectus was wandering aroundbut it appears to be because anthropologists have excavated more sites from that period.

We definitely see an increase in the number of cut-marked bones, says Pobiner. But what we were trying to figure out is: is that a real behavioral signal? Or is it just that you get more cut marked fossils if you pull more fossils out of the ground?

[Related: Is it time to change the way we talk about human evolution?]

To get an overhead view of the evidence, the team went back to sites dating to 2.6 million to 1.2 million years ago, and counted the number of fossils and the number of butchered bones.

If the theory were true, they would have seen a higher proportion of cut bones after the emergence of H. erectus, say from 10 percent to 50 percent. Instead, the proportion of butchery didnt change with timesites with more bones just had more butchered ones, as well. That suggests that earlier hominids were also chopping up meat, but contemporary researchers just havent found as many bone stashes from that period.

After Homo erectus, theres been a lot of intensive research activity on finding these smoking guns of human carnivory, Barr says. Whereas prior, theres less research effort. Our study shows that it is influencing how much evidence is available.

The lack of pre-H. erectus fossils is also related to a quirk of geology, says Barr: The rock containing the pre-H. erectus period tends to be less accessible. Were at the whim of mother nature and Earths crust in terms of what sediments are easily exposed at the surface.

The study doesnt fully disprove the meat made us human idea. Future sites could find that earlier hominids werent eating much meat. The available evidence just doesnt say one way or another.

The study shows us that sometimes in science we need to look even more critically at data sets that fit our preconceptions and expectations, says Peter Ungar, an anthropologist at the University of Arkansas who has written extensively on the role of diet in human evolution, and wasnt involved with this new research. The results underscore the fact that the story of human evolution is too nuanced and complex for simple answers to the question of what made us human.

[Related: How to build the best cooking fire right on the ground]

Other possibilities that could have given our brains more fuel include technological shifts, like cooking, that unlocked extra nutrients. Social changes, like elders foraging food for young children, could have contributed.

Ungar cautions against latching on to any one theory. I do not think that fire made us human or stone tools made us human, he says. But all of these things are part of the story of increasing access to a broader variety of foods to fuel our ancestors bodies given ever-changing conditions.

H. erectus is also the first hominid to have unambiguously left Africathe first fossils were found in Indonesia, and its possible that it evolved somewhere in Asia in the first place. H. erectus wasnt a specialist. Like us, it was probably shaped by its ability to live through massive changes.

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Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought - Popular Science

Neil Thomas: An Autopsy of Darwinism – Discovery Institute

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Image source: Discovery Institute Press.

A new episode ofID the Futurekicks off a three-part series featuringTaking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas interviewed by radio host Hank Hanegraaff. Hanegraaff lauds Thomass book and underscores how influential Darwins theory of evolution has been on Western culture. Thomas sketches the cultural milieu and individual motivations that hes convinced drew Darwin toward his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Here the focus is not on the various evidential weaknesses of Darwins theory (which Thomas does cover in his book) but on a question that puzzled Thomas once he became convinced of just how evidentially weak the case for Darwinism was: How was it that a theory so poorly supported by the evidence (such that even some of its most ardent supporters found themselves rejecting key aspects of it) nevertheless came to dominate the academy? Tune in to find out what Thomas ultimately concluded from his autopsy of the theory and its early reception. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

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Neil Thomas: An Autopsy of Darwinism - Discovery Institute

Chromosomal Fusion and Correcting Mistakes – Discovery Institute

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Photo: Przewalski's horse, by Solar Olga, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Over a series of articles Ive been reviewing a 2007 lecture at the American Museum of Natural History by Eugenie Scott, titled What Do Creationists Believe about Human Evolution? The lecture was recently posted on the Leakey Foundations YouTube channel. As weve seen, Dr. Scott, who at the time led the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), makes themistake of conflating ID with creationism,overstates the evidence from hominid skulls for human evolution from apelike precursors, andhinders science by prematurely (and ultimately wrongly) declaring the beta-globin pseudogene to be non-functional junk DNA.

The final argument for evolution in her lecture comes from human chromosomal fusion. As the argument goes, apes have two more chromosomes than humans (48 in apes versus 46 in humans). So if common ancestry is correct then we must account for this missing pair of homologous chromosomes in humans. Purportedly, we can do this by finding that human chromosome 2 appears to be the result of fusion between two ape chromosomes. Scott calls this one of the very best bits of evidence for common ancestry of humans and apes.

As in the pseudogene example, Scott is borrowing arguments from Kenneth MillersKitzmiller v. Dovertestimony. I responded to Miller long ago, in late 2005 or early 2006, at the IDEA Center in an article titled And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Millers Cold (Chromosomal) Fusion. In her lecture Dr. Scott cites and critiques my article, saying it is so full of basic misunderstandings of basic biology that it isnt funny.

This may seem like ancient history, but bear with me. Before we get into the specifics, its important to observe that Dr. Scott never even attempts a rebuttal to my main argument in the article. My main point about chromosomal fusion has never been to dispute the evidence for fusion in human chromosome 2 my article concedes that there is good direct empirical evidence for a chromosomal fusion event which created human chromosome 2. Mymainargument is also not that an individual with a fused chromosome could not spread that trait throughout a population. My purpose instead has been to rebut what Francis Collins wrote about human chromosomal fusion inThe Language of God.As he said there, it is very difficult to understand this [fusion] observation without postulating a common ancestor. This is not at all the case, because humanity could have been separately designed from apes with 48 chromosomes, and then we experienced a fusion event in our history. Under this simple scenario the evidence would appear exactly as it is, as seen in the diagram below:

Thus, its very easy to account for the fusion evidence without requiring a common ancestor between humans and apes. At most what this evidence requires is that we derive from a 48-chromosome ancestor. Whether that ancestor traces back to a common ancestor we share with apes is a separate question that is not addressed by the fusion issue.

When considering phylogenetic relationships, its important to appreciate the fact that this fused chromosome is foundonlyin humans (and not apes). In the language of cladistics, therefore, our fused chromosome is considered an apomorphy,definedbyOxford Referenceas a A novel evolutionary trait that is unique to a particular species and all its descendants. Because this trait is found in only a single living species (humans), we would call it an autapomorphy. According toOxford Reference, under the logic of cladistics, autapomorphies cannot provide useful information about phylogenetic relationships:

An apomorphy that is restricted to a single species is termed an autapomorphy. It alonecannot provide any information about the phylogenetic relations of that species, although it can indicate the degree of divergence of a species from its nearest relatives. An example is speech, which is found solely in humans (Homo sapiens) and not in other primates. [Emphasis added.]

The same could be said of this fusion trait: it is found only inHomo sapiensand not in other primates. Similarly, the textbookTree Thinking: An Introduction to Phylogenetic Biologystates:

These characters are uniquely derived characters (sometimes called autapomorphies). Because they can be parsimoniously explained as having evolved on a terminal branch of the tree,they do not help tell us which tips share more recent common ancestry.

Likewise, the volumeThe Character Concept in Evolutionary Biologystates:

Characters that tend to show unique states in each taxon of a clade, like any autapomorphy,will contribute little to resolving phylogenetic relationships.

ID critics arequick to slamID proponents when we make (supposed) mistakes related to cladistics or systematics. But in this situation, leading evolutionary scientists are trying to claim that an autapomorphy provides evidence of an ancestral relationship between two different types of organisms. Their own literature says this shouldnt be done, meaning that they are trying to carve out an exception to their own rule. Scotts lecture doesnt touch this problem, which undercuts the import of fusion for supporting common ancestry.

I grant that there is one aspect of this evidence that provides evidence for common descent namely that common descent requires a fused chromosome in humans given that apes have 48 chromosomes and humans have 46. In that sense this is a fulfilled prediction of the model, but its not special evidence for common ancestry because the same evidence is not at all hard to explain if common descent were false. Given that fact, and given that there isother evidenceagainst common descent, I see this as a non-determinative factor in the overall debate.

The foregoing was the main subject of the article I wrote that Scott critiques. But at the end of those 1,800 words, I added a 370-word section titled, It only gets worse for Neo-Darwinism. That section included a secondary argument. It was always intended to be an afterthought. But it made a point worth raising: Millers story implies that at some point a 48-chromosome ancestor experienced a chromosomal fusion event and then that individual interbred with others so that eventually the fused chromosome spread through the population. Yet initially, individuals with the fused chromosome would have had an abnormal number of chromosomes compared to most members of the population. And that frequently leads to problems, typically one of the following: either you arent viable, or you cant produce offspring, or your offspring arent fertile.

Reduced to its essence, this basic point was valid, as many sources attest:

Textbooks and authorities on genetics observe that changes in the number of chromosomes frequently lead to disease, nonviability, sterility, or sterility of offspring. This suggests that left to its own course, such a fusion event might have a hard time spreading to fixation. But Eugenie Scott seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge these basic points. In fact, it was because of this very point that she said my article was full of basic misunderstandings of basic biology and called it absolute nonsense.

But I did make a mistake and Scott points this out. In my original post, I said that allof our experience with mammalian genetics tells us that such a chromosomal aberration should have resulted in a non-viable mutant, or non-viable offspring. That was too strong a claim, because, as well see, in rare situations it is possible that individuals with fused chromosomes can survive, reproduce, and in very rare cases even leave fertile offspring.

I fixed this error in my article years ago, deleting the words all of and should and changing the sentence to read:

our experience with mammalian genetics tells us that such a chromosomal aberration could have created a non-viable mutant, a normal individual who could not reproduce, or a normal individual whose offspring were infertile.

Nonetheless, both the original and fixed versions support the same conclusion: Neo-Darwinism has a hard time explaining why such a random fusion event was somehow advantageous.

I wasnt the only one who overstated things here. In her lecture Dr. Scott claims that I argued (her paraphrase) if there was a translocation [fusion] of that sort, that the animal, the organism would not be able to reproduce. I never said anything like that. Even the original version of my article acknowledged that an individual with a fused chromosome could potentially reproduce:

In most of our experience, individuals with the randomly-fused chromosome can be normal, but it is very likely that their offspring will ultimately have a genetic disease.

I further said (in the original): a random chromosomal fusion event in our experience ultimately results in offspring with genetic diseases. Now that language does wrongly suggest that chromosomal fusion must ultimately result in a genetic disease (Ive also fixed this language). But it doesnotdeny that an individual with a fused chromosome can reproduce.

I never denied that an individual with fused chromosomes can survive and even leave offspring. But its offspring may have severe disabilities, as is the case with Translocation Downs Syndrome (where a parent has a fused chromosome) and other genetic abnormalities.

In her lecture, the main evidence that Dr. Scott cites to argue that chromosomal fusions arent necessarily deleterious comes not from humans but from horses. A rare and endangered breed from Mongolia called Przewalskis horse (Equus przewalskii) has 66 chromosomes two more than the common domestic horse (Equus ferus caballus), which has 64 chromosomes. It has been proposed that the domestic horse arose from a 66-chromosome ancestor like Przewalskis horse that underwent a fusion of two chromosomes during meiosis. Theres good evidence for this hypothesis: these two breeds of horse can still mate and produce fertile offspring.

Scotts claim about horses traces back to a 1974 article by Shortet al.in the journalCytogenetics and Cell Genetics,Meiosis in interspecific equine hybrids. They proposed a potential genetic mechanism by which a chromosome could have been fused in Przewalskis horse, which then could have spread through a subpopulation via genetic drift. The key is that all of the original genetic material is there its just been moved around (translocated) as two chromosomes became fused. Whether or not something like this happened in humans, its not impossible for a fusion of this type to become spread in a population.

But as to my updated argument, this paper supports my point. There are at least seven different living species of equines, and they all have different numbers of chromosomes. The paper has a very useful table showing what happens when those different species of horses attempt to interbreed:

Of all known cases of attempted cross-breeding between these seven living species, in only one example can the mating lead to fertile offspring. This is the one that Eugenie Scott cites a fertile hybrid between Przewalskis horse and the domestic horse. In all the other cases you either get no offspring (8 cases, it would seem) or sterile offspring (12 cases). Thats pretty interesting. In the best case that Eugenie Scott raises horses only 1 in 21 types of potential hybrids is known to produce fertile offspring. This shows its not impossible for a fusion event to be spread throughout a population, but it also supports my general point that changes in differences in chromosome numbers are frequently barriers to evolutionary success.

Should I have known about this obscure paper from 1974? Ideally, sure. But theres a lot of literature out there.

Yet the hypothesis that the beta-globin pseudogene is functional,which I discussed in my previous response, also existed long before Scott and Miller declared it was a non-functional broken gene to courts, the media, and the public. The2013 paper which first identified empirical evidence supporting functionality for this pseudogenemakes a relevant passing comment:

Several decades ago, a hypothesis was formulated holding an important regulatory role ofHBDandHBBP1in the Hb fetal-to-adult switch that matches quite well the assumption of strong negative selective forces acting on these sequences (Ottolenghi et al. 1979; Bank et al. 1980; Chang and Slightom 1984; Goodman et al. 1984).

So, papers from the 1980s had already proposed that the beta-globin pseudogene is functional and has a regulatory role. I dug up those citations and found that one of them from 1984 clearly stated a hypothesis that the beta-globin pseudogene (often called-globin)appears to have a conserved sequence, has a function to function regulate other protein-coding beta-globin genes, and is involved in the switch from fetal to adult globin expression. Heres exactly what was proposed byChang and Slightomin theJournal of Molecular Biology:

Our analysis of the-globin gene family of gorilla and chimpanzee, by lambda cloning followed by restriction mapping, blot hybridizations, and DNA sequencing clearly shows that these primate species have the same organization of-globin genes, including the pseudogene, as that found for humans. The-genes of the three hominoids contain the same transcriptional and translational defects. they were clearly pseudogenes before the three species separated. The accompanying papers by Harris et al. (1984) and Goodman et al. (1984) confirm that this gene locus has a very long evolutionary history.

Reasons why this locus has been conserved are not yet apparent. Possibly after its inactivation its role may have changed from that of a polypeptide-encoding gene to that of regulation of other genes in the-globin gene family. Fritsch et al. (1979), Bernards & Flavell (1980) and Collins & Weissman (1984) have suggested that DNA sequences located between the y- and b-genes may be important in maintaining acis-acting regulatory signal necessary for the switch from fetal to adult globin gene expression, which occurs shortly before birth. Such acis-acting regulator may not directly involve specific sequences in the-gene locus, but the presence of this locus may be necessary for the proper phasing of the regulatory mechanism. In this connection, our major finding is that the stretch of DNA which constitutes the-globin locus is evolving at a rate much slower than that expected for non-functional DNA. Indeed, these hominoid-gene sequences are evolving even slower than the IVS 2 sequences for the human and gorilla fetal globin genes. With our evidence showing that the nucleotide sequences in and around the-globin locus are conserved in hominoids, the suggestion that this locus is involved in the regulation of other-globin genes may have merit.

This 1984 paper was prescient and turned out to be basically correct. The hypothesis, albeit stated in a relatively obscure paper, was out there in 2005 when Ken Miller testified at Dover, and in 2007 when Eugenie Scott gave her lecture claiming the-globinwas non-functional and didnt do diddly.

Mistakes happen. Thats OK. Whats important is what you do about that. Ive corrected my error. I hope Dr. Scott does the same with hers.

In her lecture, though, she goes much further than merely critiquing a mistake. She uses it as an occasion to smear an entire class of people, stating:

Creationists excel at misunderstanding science, misunderstanding its conclusions, and getting things wrong.

The Darwin lobby has a long history of such broad-brushing and stereotyping, and theyve never really reformed their ways. Back in 2009 I shared the stage at a symposium with an NCSE-affiliated theologian, Peter Hess, whosaid, A third problem with intelligent design is that its practitioners are either ignorant of science or seriously deluded or fundamentally dishonest. Scott herself is famous forhaving stated, There are no weaknesses in the theory of evolutiona blatant falsehood. Statements like this are still made today. This is not ancient history at all.

Yet should we say that Scott and Miller have basic misunderstandings of basic biology simply because they werent aware of an obscure paper from the 1980s? No, that would be unfair. Should we indict them and say they excel at misunderstanding science, misunderstanding its conclusions, and getting things wrong simply because they made an inaccurate evolutionary prediction about a pseudogene being non-functional? Nope. That would be uncharitable and wrong.

Speaking about evolution, Eugenie Scott closes her talk by saying, How sad that students are not being able to learn this wonderful, fascinating science. She implies that we are among those who dont want evolution to be taught. Then, as now, her statement is false. Studentsarelearning about evolution, and Discovery Institute andproponents of intelligent designdowant evolution to be taught. What we dont want are dumbed-down versions of evolution that pretend there are no weaknesses in the theory or use oversimplified proofs of evolutionary that dont hold up to scrutiny. To my knowledge, Scott has never backed down from her no weaknesses claim. That, like her uncorrected smears from 2007, is a legacy that hurts this debate. But it doesnt have to be that way. As I hope this episode has shown, its not too late to correct past mistakes.

Link:

Chromosomal Fusion and Correcting Mistakes - Discovery Institute

The evolution of security analytics – Help Net Security

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As networks continue to evolve and security threats get more complex, security analytics plays an increasingly critical role in securing the enterprise. By combining software, algorithms and analytic processes, security analytics helps IT and security teams proactively (and reactively) detect threats before they result in data loss or other harmful outcomes.

Given that the average time to identify and contain a data breach in 2021 was 287 days, its more important than ever for organizations to include security analytics in their threat detection and response programs. But how has this technology changed over the last decade? In this article, I will explore the evolution and importance of security analytics.

This evolution has had two main trends.

First, security analytics is becoming more sophisticated. In the last 10 years the industry has transitioned from rule-based alerting to big data and machine learning analysis. Second, products have become more open and customizable.

As these technologies have advanced, so too have their specific use cases, with organizations using these for identity analytics (examining authentication, authorization and access for anomalies), fraud (finding anomalous transactions), and more. Today, security analytics plays a central role in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions and Network Detection and Response products (not to mention standalone security analytics software).

To better understand this evolution and the capabilities of current security analytics solutions, lets dive into the three primary generations of security analytics advancement.

Traditional security analytics focused on correlation and rules within a proprietary platform.

Users imported data into a closed database, the data was normalized and run through a correlation engine, and then the system produced alerts based on rules. Products typically included alert enrichment, which provided more useful context along with an alert, such as linking it to a specific user, host, or IP address.

However, this era often suffered from alert fatigue where the analytic solution produced more alerts than the security team could investigate, including high numbers of false positives. Sorting which alerts were important and which ones werent involved a great deal of manual work. Furthermore, these solutions were often entirely proprietary, with little to no options for customization. This prevented the security team from tweaking rules to cut down on the number of bad alerts. They were stuck with the alert fatigue issue.

The second generation of security analytics began to incorporate big data and statistical analysis, while remaining a black box to users.

These solutions offered data lakes instead of databases, which allowed for a greater variety of data to be gathered and analyzed, but they were still proprietary. New analytics capabilities emerged, such as the ability to include cloud data, network packets and flow data, but users still couldnt see how they worked or verify the results.

Data enrichment was better, but users largely could not customize the contextual data they wanted with their alerts. For example, a security team might want to add asset criticality data so they can prioritize events that affect key pieces of their infrastructure or include information from external sources like VirusTotal.

Many solutions started offering threat hunting capabilities as well, which made it easier for security teams to proactively search for suspicious activity that evaded perimeter security controls.

But false positives and limited bandwidth on security teams continued to be a major challenge. In fact, this remains a challenge today. According to the 2021 Insider Threat Report from Cybersecurity Insiders, 33% of respondents said the biggest hurdle to maximizing the value of their SIEM was not having enough resources and 20% said too many false positives.

The third generation of security analytics technologies brings us to the current day, where machine learning, behavioral analysis and customization are driving innovation.

There are now SIEM products that allow organizations to use their existing data lakes, rather than forcing customers to use proprietary ones. And some solutions have opened their analytics, enrichment, and machine learning models so users can better understand them and modify as needed.

Today, powerful algorithms find patterns in data, set baselines and identify outliers. Theres also a greater focus on identifying anomalous behavior (a user taking suspicious actions) and on prioritizing and ranking the risk of alerts based on contextual information like data from Sharepoint or IAM systems. For example, a user accessing source code with legitimate credentials might be a low-priority alert at best, but that user doing so in the middle of the night for the first time in weeks from a suspicious location should trigger a high-priority alert. Thanks to these capabilities, analytic solutions are reaching the point where they can trigger remediation actions automatically.

Security analytics have evolved quickly in recent years and as we look ahead, the industry is starting to combine SIEM, User Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA), Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) for a more automated and telemetry rich approach to threat detection and response.

But today, the latest advancements are helping to reduce the workload on security teams, allowing them to better detect and contain both known and unknown threats more quickly. Open access to security analytics is also a monumental shift that helps teams better understand and tweak these solutions so they can verify models and generate better results.

Ideally, analytics solutions should have strong pre-built libraries of machine learning models that dont require users to be data scientists to edit them (but give them the editing option if needed). As these capabilities continue to develop, I believe theyll be a key factor in helping security teams reduce that 287-day average time to contain a breach in the coming years.

See the rest here:

The evolution of security analytics - Help Net Security

Evolution: how Victorian sexism influenced Darwin’s theories new research – The Conversation UK

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Sex is an expensive business, biologically speaking. Finding a suitable mate takes time and energy. Offspring are also a huge investment of resources. But sex does offer a rewarding possibility: children who are fitter than their parents thanks to new and better combinations of genes. Darwin realised that many animal species therefore carefully select their mates.

There is an innate biological inequality, however. Eggs are relatively few in number a large and costly investment while sperm are small and vastly more abundant. And embryos often need further investment in the body or outside. Since the greater investment tends to fall on females, they are often the more selective sex (while males compete to be chosen).

But according to a new paper, published in Science, Charles Darwins patriarchal world view led him to dismiss female agency and mate choice in humans.

He also downplayed the role of female variation in other animal species, assuming they were rather uniform, and always made similar decisions. And he thought there was enormous variation among the males who battled for female attention by showing off stunning ranges of skills and beauty. This maintained the focus on the dynamics of male dominance hierarchies, sexual ornamentation and variation as drivers of sexual selection, even if females sometimes did the choosing.

But do Darwins ideas on sexual selection hold up today?

When animals choose a partner, their appearance, sound and smell can all be accurate guides to the survival ability of the prospective mate. For example, large antlers in deer are a good indicator of fighting ability, dominance and overall fitness. But many other traits can be chosen because they are otherwise conspicuous and attractive yet may be a poor guide to overall genetic quality, or even misleading.

Females may evolve to choose mates with whom their offspring are less likely to survive, provided there are more such offspring as a trade off. In some species of poecilid fish, for example, male attractiveness is linked to genes that can reduce their survival. Females therefore face a dilemma: mate with a more attractive male and produce some highly attractive but otherwise less vigorous sons, or mate with a less attractive male to maximise the survival of those sons. Which strategy will produce most grandchildren?

Females may therefore select for traits in males that apparently have no other bearing upon their ability to survive. The peacocks tail is a handicap in most other aspects of its life an impediment to flight and evading predators save for the attraction of a female. However, it may also be true that the ability of a male to manage such a burden is itself a marker of overall genetic quality and rigour.

It isnt always females who choose. In pipefishes, the males invest heavily by carrying the fertilised eggs until they hatch, and it is the females who compete with each other in order to secure the attentions of males.

Optimal mate choice is not the same for all individuals, or at all times in their development. For example, younger satin bowerbirds are frightened by the most vigorous male displays, while older females typically find these most attractive. And many fishes are sequential hermaphrodites, changing sex and therefore mate choices as they age.

Research since Darwin therefore reveals that mate choice is a far more complex process than he may have supposed, and is governed by variation in both sexes.

So, is the accusation of sexism levelled at Darwin really valid, and did this cloud his science? There is certainly some evidence that Darwin underestimated the importance of variation, strategy and even promiscuity in most female animals.

For example, Darwin - possibly as a result of a prevailing prudishness - placed little emphasis on mechanisms of sexual selection that operate after mating. Female birds and mammals may choose to mate with multiple males, and their sperm can compete to fertilise one or more eggs within the reproductive tract.

Cats, dogs and other animals can have litters with multiple fathers (the gloriously named heteropaternal superfecundation - even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious!). There is even some suggestion that the human penis being thicker than our nearest primate relatives is an adaptation for physically displacing the sperm of competing males. Such earthy speculations were anathema to Darwins sensibilities.

Female blue tits often mate with multiple males in order to ensure their protection and support - a somewhat manipulative strategy when paternity for the prospective fathers is uncertain. All this challenges Darwins assumption that females are relatively passive and non-strategic.

Where males make a greater investment, they become more active in mate choice. Male (rather than female) poison dart frogs (Dendrobates auratus) protect the young, and therefore attract multiple females who compete to lay eggs for them to fertilise. Many bird species have biparental care, and therefore a richer diversity of mating systems.

Inevitably, Darwins world view was shaped by the culture of his time, and his personal writings make it difficult to mount a particularly robust defence. In a letter from 1882, he wrote I certainly think that women, though generally superior to men to [sic] moral qualities are inferior intellectually; & there seems to me to be a great difficulty from the laws of inheritance in their becoming the intellectual equals of man.

He also deliberated over the relative merits of marriage, famously noting: Home, & someone to take care of house Charms of music & female chit-chat. These things good for ones health. but terrible loss of time.

Unsurprisingly there is much that Darwin did not fully understand. Darwin like Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Ironically, he knew nothing of genetics and the mechanisms by which close relatives are more likely to have offspring with certain genetic diseases. Intriguingly, our closest relatives in the tree of life, the chimpanzees, naturally circumvent this problem, since females select mates that are more distantly related to them than the average male in the available pool.

Despite its omissions, however, Darwins understanding was radically more advanced than anything that preceded it. When combined with the subsequent understanding of genetics and inheritance, Darwins writings are still the bedrock of all modern evolutionary biology.

Excerpt from:

Evolution: how Victorian sexism influenced Darwin's theories new research - The Conversation UK

Emo to e-boy: the evolution of a subculture – Campus Times

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The emo subculture had teens by the throat during the late 2000s. Unfortunately, when the great MySpace-to-Facebook migration happened, the emo subculture that had floundered there lost a lot of its members and soon faded into the background. Now, most would say that emo is dead, and that is true to an extent: the genre itself and its standing in modern pop culture is practically on life support. That being said, however, emo has evolved into a new, possibly more popular subculture.

The emo subculture stemmed directly from the music of its namesake, which featured the likes of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! at the Disco. Its fashion was characterized by skinny jeans, eyeliner, painted nails, band t-shirts, studded belts, wristbands, and the iconic straight jet-black hair with an asymmetrical fringe. Emo managed to become an influential subculture through MySpace, which allowed young people to interact with each other without having to leave home, giving young emos easy access to like-minded people across the world. But as the subculture found mainstream popularity, so did the negative connotations it carried, often being associated with depression, self-harm, and suicide. These stereotypes led to a lot of backlash against the emo subculture, and consequently caused Panic! At the Disco and My Chemical Romance to deny being emo. This negative reputation and the eventual migration from MySpace to Facebook spelled the end for the emo subculture in its original form.

Luckily for emo, before the end of its original run, it had already evolved into a new subculture, known as scene. Scene saw emo expand its musical repertoire to include metal, crunk, electronic, indie rock, emo pop, and pop-punk, taking a detour away from emotional emphasis while still leaning towards rock influences. Fashion-wise, scene took the core of emo fashion and added more color and accessorization to it. Unfortunately, the popularity that emo found in its new life as scene wouldnt last much longer. By the late 2010s, scene began losing its popularity and eventually faded away completely.

However, scene wasnt the end of emos evolution; the two would further evolve into a new subculture. E-kids, the collective term for e-boys and e-girls, are the most recent iteration of emo. The e-kid subculture started in 2018, and quickly rose to popularity following the worldwide release of TikTok in the same year. Unlike scene, the e-kid subculture continued to pull away from its rock-based roots while also returning to the emotional emphasis of the emo genre. E-kids are strongly associated with sad boy music, which is music that focuses on sadness and mental illness, such as emo rap.

With e-kids being the most recent iteration of emo, their success in infiltrating pop culture raises an important question: why are e-kids so popular while emo and scene kids werent? E-kids beat out emo and scene in popularity due to various reasons, such as being associated with more mainstream music and more fashionable styling, making the subculture easier to get into. This new iteration of emo is primarily known for fashion and thirst traps, which are popular both within the subculture and on TikToks platform as a whole. On top of this, e-kid fashion draws considerable influence from K-pop fashion, which started becoming mainstream in western media around the same time. Simply put, a lot of the subcultures popularity comes down to the timing of its emergence and its fresh spin on what its predecessors left it with.

Follow this link:

Emo to e-boy: the evolution of a subculture - Campus Times