Month: November 2018

…

There’s been a lot of progress in the fight against AIDS over the past 30 years, but as the 30th World AIDS Day is observed on Dec. 1 — people still die from the disease. And others are newly infected every day even though the tools are available to end the epidemic. Fear, stigma and ignorance. The World Health Organization says these are the reasons the AIDS epidemic is not over because doctors can treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.  With treatment, no one needs to die from AIDS, and those with the virus can’t give it to someone else. In addition, with prevention therapy, no one needs to get infected.   Dr. Jared Baeten, an HIV specialist at the University of Washington, spoke to us via Skype and says even with these tools we’re not there yet. “… because the ability to deliver those at the scale and with the coverage needed to be able to get HIV to go away is not nearly where it should be,” said Baeten.  Nearly a million people still die every year from AIDS. Professor Steffani Strathdee at the University of California San Diego says one of the biggest challenges is that HIV often affects people on the fringes of some societies around the world.   “There are populations all over the world that are underserved and these include injection drug users and sex workers, in particular,” Strathdee said. It also includes men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and …

Tremendous progress has been made in efforts to wipe out polio around the world. Before a global eradication program began 30 years ago, about 350,000 children became paralyzed from polio each year. The figure dropped to 28 in 2018.  Nevertheless, Helen Rees, chair of the World Health Organization’s emergency committee, said Friday that polio remained an international threat. She said every available health strategy must be used to prevent the wild polio virus from spreading across borders.  “The fear is that we might well see a resurgence, that we could see exportation again and a reversal of all of the work and all of the country global efforts that have gone into trying to eradicate polio,” Rees said. “And we certainly cannot allow that to happen.”  Polio remains endemic in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Rees said that over the last few months, there has been a worrying exportation of the wild polio virus to and from Pakistan and Afghanistan.  “We have got widespread, positive environmental sampling in Pakistan,” she said. “And in Afghanistan, because of the more difficult situation there in terms of security, we are unable to access probably as many as a million children for vaccination.”   Separately, there is good news from the African region. The director of WHO’s polio eradication program, Michel Zaffran, noted that the wild polio virus has not been seen in Nigeria since it was last detected more than two years ago.  If this keeps up, he said, the regional certification commission could be able to declare the wild polio …

Ahead of World AIDS Day, Uganda is recruiting women to participate in a trial of an injectable antiretroviral drug to replace Truvada, a daily pill that has low adherence by users. The trial will assess if the new drug – Cabotegravir – can further reduce the risk of acquiring HIV. Halima Athumani has more from Kampala. …

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity has announced a $50 million donation to help fight the nation’s opioid epidemic. Bloomberg Philanthropies said over the next three years it will help up to 10 states address the causes of opioid addiction and strengthen prevention and treatment programs. Its initiative involves a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Johns Hopkins University and Vital Strategies. Bloomberg, who has been considering a 2020 Democratic presidential bid, was expected to discuss the funding Friday during his keynote address at The Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington. A spokeswoman said there was “no stated link” between his political aspirations and the $50 million investment to fight opioids. Bloomberg’s charity said CDC data shows there were more than 70,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths last year, including more than 47,000 from opioids, the highest numbers on record. It said those numbers are a leading factor in the decline of U.S. life expectancy over the past three years. Bloomberg called the sobering numbers part of “a national crisis.” “For the first time since World War I, life expectancy in the U.S. has declined over the past three years — and opioids are a big reason why,” he said. “We cannot sit by and allow this alarming trend to continue — not when so many Americans are being killed in what should be the prime of their lives.” He said in a statement he hoped his charity’s work in Pennsylvania, one of …

Scientists working on the frontiers of medicine fear the uproar over the reported births of gene-edited babies in China could jeopardize promising research into how to alter heredity to fend off a variety of disorders. Researchers are rapidly learning how to edit DNA to fight such conditions as Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs and hereditary heart disease, conducting legally permissible experiments in lab animals and petri dishes without taking the ultimate step of actually creating babies. Now they worry about a backlash against their work, too. “The alarmists who claimed that scientists won’t behave responsibly in the development of the next generation of gene editing now have ammunition,” said a dismayed Kyle Orwig, a reproductive specialist at the University of Pittsburgh who hopes to eventually alter sperm production to treat infertility. He said there is a clear public demand for the kind of research he is doing: “Families contact me all the time,” men who can’t produce sperm and aren’t helped by today’s reproductive care. A Chinese researcher sent a shock wave through the scientific community this week when he claimed to have altered the DNA of embryos in hopes of making them resistant to the AIDS virus. He reported the birth of twin girls and said there may be another pregnancy resulting from his work. International guidelines for years have said gene editing that can change human heredity — through altered eggs, sperm or embryos — should not be tested in human pregnancies until scientists learn if the practice is safe. One …

As the 30th World AIDS Day approaches, the World Health Organization says fear, stigma and ignorance are the reasons the AIDS epidemic is not over, because doctors can treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. With treatment, no one needs to die from AIDS, and those with the virus can’t give it to someone else. In addition, with prevention therapy, no one needs to get infected.  Dr. Jared Baeten, an HIV specialist at the University of Washington, says even with these tools more people still contract the HIV virus and eventually die from AIDS each year, “because the ability to deliver those at the scale and with the coverage needed to be able to get HIV to go away is not nearly where it should be.” Nearly a million people still die every year from AIDS. Professor Steffani Strathdee at the University of California San Diego says one of the biggest challenges is that HIV often affects people on the fringes of some societies around the world.  “There are populations all over the world that are underserved and these include injection drug users and sex workers, in particular,” she said. It also includes men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these people. Strathdee says people who are hungry or need shelter are more concerned about their immediate needs than they are about HIV. “My research and research in this field really shows you have to address the whole person and their needs in …

On Dec. 1, we observe the 30th World AIDS Day. There’s been a lot of progress over the past 30 years, but people still die from AIDS. And others are newly infected every day. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, we have the tools to end the epidemic, but it’s far from over. …

Top administration officials are debating whether to create a stand-alone Space Force to handle space defense or a Space Force that falls within the Air Force, officials tell VOA. Either option requires congressional approval, which could prove difficult with a Democratic-led House and a Republican-led Senate. An Oct. 26 memo obtained by VOA directs that the Department of Defense create the “optimal organizational construct to meet (the president’s) intent.”  The memo, signed by Executive Secretary of the National Space Council Scott Pace and National Security Council official Earl Matthews, instructs the Pentagon to focus on whether the Space Force is most efficient as a new independent department or as “a separate service within the Department of the Air Force, along the lines of the U.S. Marine Corps within the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Coast Guard within the Department of Homeland Security.” Support in the House This latter organizational structure has bipartisan support in the House, but the former has often been seen by Democrats as an expensive solution.  Vice President Mike Pence and Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan met Thursday to discuss how to build the first new military branch since 1947, as President Donald Trump has directed.  A National Space Council official told VOA Thursday the October memo does not represent a shift in White House guidance.  “The direction to create the U.S. Space Force remains exactly the same, and the Space Council is continuing to work with the departments and agencies responsible for implementing …

Three tiny rocks brought back from the moon in 1970 by the unmanned Soviet Luna-16 mission sold for $855,000 on Thursday at a New York auction.  They’re the only documented lunar rocks in private hands, Sotheby’s auction house said. The U.S. collector who bought the rocks was not named.  The sellers, also from the U.S., bought the rocks for $442,500 at a Sotheby’s Russian space history sale in 1993. That was the first time that a piece of a celestial body had been offered for sale to the public. The rocks originally had been given to the widow of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the former director of the Soviet Union’s space program, by the Soviet government in recognition of her husband’s work. It is extremely rare for authentic lunar samples to come on the market. All samples collected by American astronauts are deemed the property of the U.S. government — except one. Last year, a bag used by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong to collect moon dust was sold by Sotheby’s for $1.8 million, netting a hefty profit for its owner.    A Chicago-area woman, Nancy Carlson, bought the bag, which had been misidentified, at an online government auction for $995. After she sent it to NASA for identification, the space agency confirmed that it had been used by Armstrong and still contained moon dust.  NASA fought to keep the bag but lost a court fight in 2016.  …

The Chinese scientist who claims to be the world’s first to edit the genetic code of a pair of recently born twin baby girls, to make them resistant to HIV, the AIDS virus, has defended his work and says there is another potential pregnancy. But assurances he has given that the experiment will be reviewed by a scientific journal have done little to set aside growing questions. He Jiankui’s research, which was suddenly revealed shortly before an international gene editing summit in Hong Kong, has sparked a wide range of questions about the safety and ethics of the experiment, as well as the funding of the research. A group of more than 120 Chinese scientists, who spoke out earlier in the week has grown. In a statement released Thursday, which has now been signed by more than 300 scientists both in China and overseas, the petition asks 10 pointed questions, including what is the real point of the experiment? Where did the funding come from and who will guarantee the rights of the two baby girls – known as Lulu and Nana – are looked after? “We not only need to ask was the experiment really carried out to help the couples involved? Or was it just use them as innocent lab rats to fulfill his (He Jiankui’s) own personal ambition or potentially huge business interests?” the statement asked. During a question and answer session in Hong Kong on Wednesday at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, He …

China’s science ministry on Thursday ordered that anyone conducting research in gene editing halt their activities. The order came as organizers of a biomedical conference where a Chinese scientist defended his claim that he has created the world’s first genetically-edited babies denounced his work as irresponsible. The leaders of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing issued a statement Thursday on the last day of their conference in Hong Kong criticizing He Jiankui’s claim as “deeply disturbing.” Dr. He spoke to the summit on Wednesday about his work in claiming to have used a gene-editing technology dubbed CRISPR to alter the DNA of twin girls born to an HIV-positive father to prevent them from contracting the virus that causes AIDS.  The researcher first made the claim in an online video posted Monday.   Dr. He told his colleagues he conducted his research in secret.  His work has not been independently verified, and Dr. He has not submitted his report to any scientific journals where it could be examined by experts.   In their statement Thursday, the summit’s organizers said that even if “the modifications are verified, the procedure was irresponsible and failed to conform with international norms.”  Dr. He was supposed to speak before the summit again Thursday, but canceled his appearance. He’s claims has set off a firestorm of skepticism and criticism.  The Southern University of Science and Technology, the university in the southern Chinese city in Shenzhen that employs him, says he has been on unpaid leave …

Suicides and drug overdoses helped lead a surge in U.S. deaths last year, and drove a continuing decline in how long Americans are expected to live. Overall, there were more than 2.8 million U.S. deaths in 2017, or nearly 70,000 more than the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government began counting more than a century ago. The increase partly reflects the nation’s growing and aging population. But it’s deaths in younger age groups — particularly middle-aged people — that have had the largest impact on calculations of life expectancy, experts said. The suicide death rate last year was the highest it’s been in at least 50 years, according to U.S. government records. There were more than 47,000 suicides, up from a little less than 45,000 the year before. ​A general decline For decades, U.S. life expectancy was on the upswing, rising a few months nearly every year. Now it’s trending the other way: It fell in 2015, stayed level in 2016, and declined again last year, the CDC said. The nation is in the longest period of a generally declining life expectancy since the late 1910s, when World War I and the worst flu pandemic in modern history combined to kill nearly 1 million Americans. Life expectancy in 1918 was 39. Aside from that, “we’ve never really seen anything like this,’’ said Robert Anderson, who oversees CDC death statistics. In the nation’s 10 …