FDA expands emergency use authorization for remdesivir
Gilead Sciences manufactures remdesivir under the name Veklury. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 28 (UPI) -- The Food and Drug Administration on Friday expanded its emergency use authorization for antiviral remdesivir to allow it to be used on all hospitalized patients.
The FDA's previous EUA in May allowed doctors to use the drug on only hospitalized adult and pediatric patients with "severe" COVID-19. Now, all hospitalized patients with suspected or laboratory confirmed coronavirus may receive the drug regardless of the severity of the disease
"The FDA continues to make safe and potentially helpful treatments for COVID-19 available as quickly as possible in order to help patients," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said. "The data to support today's action are encouraging. The data show that this treatment has the potential to help even more hospitalized patients who are suffering from the effects of this devastating virus."
Clinic results on the antiviral have been mixed, with one study last week showing the drug doesn't improve outcomes in people hospitalized with moderate pneumonia caused by COVID-19.
RELATED Study: Targeting COVID-19 virus reproduction could halt infections
But research published in May suggested the drug might be effective in people with severe COVID-19.
A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that seriously ill patients infected with the new coronavirus had an average recovery time of 11 days after receiving the drug, compared to 15 days for those given a placebo.
Originally developed to treat Ebola virus, remdesivir works by slowing the production of enzymes that play a key role in the replication of viruses, including coronaviruses, according to Gilead Sciences.
RELATED COVID-19 clinical trials lack diversity, researchers say
Gilead manufactures remdesivir under the brand name Veklury.
"As we learn more about COVID-19 and we further establish the efficacy and safety profile of Veklury, we see benefit to making the drug available to patients at earlier stages of the disease," said Merdad Parsey, chief medical officer at Gilead Sciences.
"Today's action by the FDA enables physicians to consider a broader range of eligible patients to potentially receive Veklury."
Belarus cracks down on journalists; world leaders decry violence
Demonstrators march against Belarus at the Senate Square in Helsinki, Finland, on Saturday. Photo by Mauri Ratilainen/EPA-EFE
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Belarusian authorities have detained dozens of journalists and stripped them of their accreditation after reporting on protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, world leaders and media outlets have reported.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Friday that more than 50 journalists were arrested Thursday night, including those from the BBC and other international media. The Independent reported hundreds of protesters and journalists were detained during protests in Minsk's Independence Square.
"This was a blatant attempt to interfere with objective & honest reporting. The Belarusian authorities must stop targeting journalists & #defendmediafreedom," Raab tweeted.
German news agency Deutsch Welle said one of its reporters, Alexandra Boguslavskaya, was among those detained. She was released after several hours in custody. The agency said the Belarusian Interior Ministry denied making the arrests.
RELATED Belarus protests: President wields rifle, body armor to show defiance
Russia's Tass news agency reported the Belarusian Foreign Ministry stripped a number of foreign journalists of their credentials, citing the Belarusian Association of Journalists. Among those were reporters for ARD TV, DW, BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, France Press and Radio Liberty.
Journalists have come under scrutiny in the eastern European country amid protests over the re-election of Lukashenko earlier this month. Demonstrators decried possible election fraud in the election giving him his sixth term in office.
The European Union last week declined to recognize the results of the election, calling it "neither free nor fair." The body also condemned violence by police forces against protesters and imposed sanctions on those responsible for the excessive force.
RELATED Britain rejects Belarus' 'fraudulent presidential election'
A joint statement by the United States, Britain, Switzerland and the European Union on Saturday showed support for those protesting the election and called for a stop to "brutal and disproportionate use of force by the law enforcement."
"Intimidation and prosecution based on political grounds need to stop," the statement said. "We call on the Belarusian authorities to respect the country's international obligations on fundamental democratic and human rights. We expect a complete and transparent investigation into all alleged crimes and abuses in order to hold those responsible to account. Only this will pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the crisis based on an inclusive national dialogue."
UPDATE
Banksy-funded rescue ship overloaded, unable to move in Mediterranean
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The Italian coast guard came to the aid of a Banksy-funded rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea on Saturday after it pulled more than 200 people from the water and became overloaded.
The ship, named the Louise Michel, said it was in a "state of emergency" after rescuing 89 migrants earlier in the week. It picked up an additional 130 on Friday, bringing the total number of passengers to 219 with 10 crew members.
One passenger died and many had fuel burns or were dehydrated.
The crew of the vessel called for assistance from the Italian and Maltese coast guards.
"#LouiseMichel is unable to move, she is no longer the master of her manoeuver, due to her overcrowded deck and a liferaft deployed at her side, but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance. The responsible authorities remain unresponsive," the ship's Twitter account said Friday.
By Saturday afternoon, though, the Italian coast guard transferred "49 of the most vulnerable survivors," the Louise Michel said.
ritish street artist Banksy funded the ship, which is a former French navy vessel, to assist migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe. It's splashed with bright pink paint and features reproductions of the artist's famous artworks, including one of a girl holding a heart-shaped life preserver. The vessel is named after a 19th century French feminist anarchist.
More than 40,000 migrants have made the trek to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea since January, most from Tunisia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Syria and other Middle Eastern and North African countries. This year, 443 people have died attempting the trip, according to data from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
This year is on track to have the fewest number of crossings since 2014, when the refugee crisis began in the region. Migration peaked in 2015, when 1.03 million people crossed the Mediterranean and 3,771 died. More than 5,000 died in 2016 despite about one-third the number of crossings from the previous year.
The Louise-Michel said some of the migrants it rescued were from Libya, where dueling governments are fighting for control.
The crew managed to keep #LouiseMichel stable for almost 12h now. Our new friends told us they lost 3 friends on their journey already. Including the dead body in our one life raft, that makes 4 lives vanished because of Fortress Europe... And we are still waiting. pic.twitter.com/Te2PKCv2Gn— LouiseMichel (@MVLouiseMichel) August 29, 2020
Far-right activists in Sweden burn Koran, sparking riots
Demonstrators burn tires as protesters riot Friday night in the Rosengard neighborhood of Malmo, Sweden. Photo courtesy of TT News Agency/EPA-EFE
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Video circulating of far-right activists burning a Koran near a mosque in Malmo, Sweden, sparked riots overnight, law enforcement said Saturday.
More than 300 rioters threw stones at police and burned tires in the southern Swedish city after video circulated of far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan's followers burning a copy of the Muslim holy book.
Calm did not return to the area until about 3 a.m. Saturday, according to Patric Fors, a Malmo police spokesman.
"A few policeman have been slightly injured, and I don't have any reports of any members of the public being injured," Fors said. "We currently have 13 suspects wanted for rioting, five of them have been arrested, but they have all now been released."
Malmo police had denied Paludan, the leader of Denmark's extremist Hard Line Party, permission to hold an anti-Islamic protest Wednesday. On Friday afternoon, Paludan was banned from entering Sweden for two years, but that didn't stop his supporters from filming themselves burning one copy of a Koran on Friday night, and kicking another one around the city's main square like a football.
Police arrested three of the followers on suspicion of hate crimes.
Rioters accused police of violating their civil rights by allowing people to burn the Koran, but one officer said they made arrests as soon as the the video came out.
Among the spectators, many of the Muslims opposed the rioting, The Local reported.
Amid the rioting, prominent Muslim leader Samir Muric pleaded with the rioters to stop and accused them of shaming their own religion.
Muric also condemned the rioting on his Facebook page.
"Those who are acting this way have nothing to do with Islam," he wrote on Facebook. "Their screams filled with 'la ilaha ill Allah' and 'Allahu Akbar' are just expressions that they don't mean -- because if they really meant it, they would never have acted like this.
"And again: I am against any type of burning -- of the Quran as well as tires and pallets!" Muric added.
MY LITTLE PONY
France: Up to 30 horses killed, mutilated; probe underway
French agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said Friday that recent killings and mutilations of horses in pastures across the country are being investigated. File Photo by John Sommers II/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- French authorities said they're investigating the killing and mutilation of up to 30 horses and ponies in pastures across the country.
Officers are looking into whether the motive for the slayings in recent weeks is linked to satanic rituals or an online challenge.
The reported mutilations include up to 30 incidents of horses being found dead with their ears sliced off, eyes removed, genitals cut, sides slashed and blood drained without meat taken from the carcasses.
"We do not understand the motivation," a police spokeswoman in Paris said. "Is it a satanic rite, insurance fraud, some macabre trophy hunt or an Internet challenge? We don't know. It is very traumatizing."
The incidents have caused fear in the equine community.
Nicolas Demajean, who runs a refuge for about 100 abandoned, mistreated and rescued animals, Ranch of Hope, said his arm was injured while he struggled with a knife-wielding intruder, while another slashed two ponies in their sides.
He said the ponies were traumatized but recovering.
"I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture," Demajean told TV station France 3. "Today, I have fear in my gut."
Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie described the incidents as "acts of barbarism" in a tweet.
"All means are mobilized and implemented to put an end to this terror," he added.
The Polarstern, released too early from a floe, returned to the North Pole in August amid thin ice.STEFFEN GRAUPNER
By Paul Voosen Aug. 25, 2020
In March, soon after arriving aboard the Polarstern, a German icebreaker frozen into Arctic sea ice, Jennifer Hutchings watched as ice broke up around the ship, weeks earlier than expected. Even as scientists on the research cruise scrambled to keep field instruments from plunging into the ocean, Hutchings, who studies ice deformation at Oregon State University, Corvallis, couldn’t suppress a thrill at seeing the crack up, as if she had spotted a rare bird. “I got to observe firsthand what I studied,” she says.
Arctic sea ice is itself an endangered species. Next month its extent will reach its annual minimum, which is poised to be among the lowest on record. The trend is clear: Summer ice covers half the area it did in the 1980s, and because it is thinner, its volume is down 75%. With the Arctic warming three times faster than the global average, most scientists grimly acknowledge the inevitability of ice-free summers, perhaps as soon as 2035. “It’s definitely a when, not an if,” says Alek Petty, a polar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Now, he and others are learning that a warming atmosphere is far from the only factor speeding up the ice loss. Strengthening currents and waves are pulverizing the ice. And a study published last week suggests deep heat in the Arctic Ocean has risen and is now melting the ice from below.
Ice has kept its grip on the Arctic with the help of an unusual temperature inversion in the underlying waters. Unlike the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, the Arctic gets warmer as it gets deeper. Bitter winters and chilly, buoyant freshwater from Eurasian rivers cool its surface layers, which helps preserve the underside of the ice. But at greater depths sits a warm blob of salty Atlantic water, thought to be safely separated from the sea ice.
As the reflective ice melts, however, it is replaced by darker water, which absorbs more of the Sun’s energy and warms. Those warming surface waters are likely migrating down into the blob, which robotic temperature probes, moorings, and oceanographic surveys show is steadily warming and growing. With enough heat to melt the Arctic’s ice three to four times over, the blob could devour the ice from below if the barrier of the cold surface layers ever dissipates.
Measurements from the eastern Arctic Ocean, published last week in the Journal of Climate, show the blob, usually found 150 meters below or deeper, has recently moved up to within 80 meters of the surface. Increased turbulence means some of that heat is now melting ice, says Igor Polyakov, an oceanographer at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “This heat has become, regionally, the key forcing for sea ice decay.”
The process, called “Atlantification,” is already well underway in the Barents Sea, north of Norway, where fingers of warm Atlantic water have spread north and risen, melting sea ice even in winter months. The invasion shows no sign of stopping, says Helene Asbjørnsen, an oceanographer at the University of Bergen who has helped chart this migration. “Ultimately we expect it to extend into the Arctic more.”
Going, going …
Summer Arctic sea ice covers half the area it did in the 1980s, and it could disappear by 2035. The ice faces threats not only from warming air, but also from waves, currents, and melting from below.
The $134 million Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), based on the Polarstern, is exploring another ice-destroying feedback. The ship froze itself into a floe in October 2019, to give the team a chance to observe the floe for one full year as the summer melt season shifted back into freezing. But the project ran into challenges. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which made planned personnel rotations difficult. Then the ice drifted too far south too quickly. In late July, the day after the team pulled up its remaining instruments, the floe broke up and melted. “To me that is a big loss, and I’m pretty bummed about it,” says Matthew Shupe, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who helped lead U.S. contributions to the cruise. But, he added, there was a bonus: “We never planned to be around for that ‘death of an ice floe’ process.”
The Polarstern’s floe is not an isolated case. Remote sensing satellites show that over the past 20 years, ice has been drifting faster, potentially sweeping it into warmer waters, says Sinéad Farrell, a sea ice scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. One reason for the change in pace could be faster currents in the Arctic Ocean, as ice melt exposes more water to the push of the wind, says Arild Sundfjord, a physical oceanographer at the Norwegian Polar Institute. “We think we see signs of that.”
Another factor could be an increase in the roughness of the sea ice, which allows wind to catch and propel it. MOSAiC scientists deployed GPS stations across the floe’s melange of first-year and thicker multiyear ice to monitor its speed and deformation. They suspect that as the ice becomes thinner and weaker, it is more prone to the crunch and crumble that builds up wind-catching ridges, Hutchings says, but they’re still resolving whether that is true. The turmoil took a heavy toll on the expedition, crushing some instruments like aluminum cans and destroying snow sampling sites. It was frustrating, Shupe says. “We don’t really control anything here,” he says. “The Arctic is telling us its story and we just need to be clever enough to document it.”
ICESat-2, a laser altimeter launched by NASA in 2018, will help extrapolate findings from MOSAiC to the rest of the Arctic. Unlike previous satellites, ICESat-2 can distinguish between ice floe cracks and melt ponds on top, and it is already showing stark differences between multiyear and first-year ice, Farrell says. In a surprise, the ICESat-2 team is finding that the multiyear ice overall is twice as rough as first-year ice. “It’s kind of like aging skin,” she says. “They get more wrinkly over time.” The satellite also seems to be capable of capturing waves amid the ice, and linking them to nearby storms, Petty says. It’s another worrying mechanism that could speed up ice loss, he says. “As waves break the ice apart, it gets more exposed to heat—and melts further.”
The retreat of the ice bodes ill for global climate, but it is making the Arctic easier to study. This month saw the start of the Synoptic Arctic Survey, which will knit together more than a dozen national Arctic cruises by ice breakers and other research ships. The survey will cover the Arctic’s entirety, providing a near-simultaneous picture of currents, life, and water conditions and chemistry, rather than a collection of regional snapshots over time. The pandemic delayed all but two of the cruises, which were planned for this summer: those of Japan’s Mirai and South Korea’s Aron. But once completed, the survey could answer basic questions, such as whether the Arctic is a net source or sink of carbon dioxide.
And it could not have been done in the ice-bound Arctic of old. “Now,” Sundfjord says, “we can go wherever, and whenever, we want.”
Portland protesters demonstrate at police union building, mayor's condo
Demonstrators set an object on fire near the boarded-up Portland Police Association building early Saturday, following a demonstration earlier in the evening in the lobby of Mayor Ted Wheeler's condominium building. Photo courtesy Portland Police Bureau
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Protesters took to the streets for the 93rd night in a row in Portland, Ore., demonstrating at Mayor Ted Wheeler's condominium building and at a separate location near the Portland Police Association building.
The Oregonian reported that the first demonstration, in the Pearl neighborhood near downtown, ended with a dance party Friday. At the second, multiple people were arrested early Saturday after someone set a large burning object near the police union building.
Portlanders have protested against racism and police brutality every night since May 28, with demonstrations drawing the ire of President Donald Trump and criticism over handling of crowds by both local police and federal law enforcement officials.
On Friday afternoon, Wheeler posted an image of a letter he wrote to Trump on Twitter declining the president's repeated offer to send federal law enforcement to Portland.
"We don't need your politics of division and demagoguery," Wheeler wrote. "We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you've reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection."
"If the incompetent Mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, doesn't get control of his city and stop the Anarchists, Agitators, Rioters and Looters, causing great danger to innocent people, we will go in and take care of matters the way they should have been taken care of 100 days ago!" Trump wrote later that night.
The North Portland demonstration began at a neighborhood park as a vigil for Emmett Till on the 65th anniversary of his lynching in Mississippi.
Later that night demonstrators lit fires in two dumpsters placed in the street and set an object that appeared to be a mattress or box spring against the boarded-up police union building.
According to media and police reports, someone appeared to add accelerant to the object, causing the plywood on the building to catch fire.
Officers then demanded that protesters scatter and began making arrests. As of Saturday afternoon the Portland Police Bureau had not announced the number of people arrested or the names of arrestees.
Early Saturday morning, witnesses said a car drove by the demonstration and fired shots, according to a video of the scene posted to Twitter by an Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter. An observer found shell casings at the scene, but no one was hurt.
The demonstration in Wheeler's building was punctuated by an encounter between activists and former Minnesota Timberwolves executive David Kahn, who lives in the same building and said he was a friend of Wheeler's.
He offered to set up a meeting with Wheeler to discuss the situation, but activists declined, saying they wanted to talk to the mayor -- who did not emerge Friday -- directly.
Thousands of Mauritians protest government's handling of oil spill
People during a protest over the governments handling of the Wakashio oill spill in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, Saturday. Citizens and various political parties denounced the government's handling of the Wakashio case. Photo by Lura Morosoli/EPA-EFE
Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Thousands of people marched through the Mauritian capital Saturday to protest the government's handling of a massive oil spill that has leaked an estimated 1,000 oil into the waters around the island nation since the end of July.
Some wore black and waved the national flag, where others wore T-shirts bearing the inscription, "I love my country. I'm ashamed of my government."
On July 25 a Japanese oil tanker, the MV Wakashio, was en route to Brazil when it hit a coral reef off the Indian Ocean, spilling oil near the small island nation.
In mid-August the ship broke in half, causing more oil to leak into the waters around Mauritius.
The affected area includes a sanctuary for rare wildlife, and the Mauritian government reported Friday that 39 dead dolphins have washed ashore on the island -- up from a reported 18 earlier this week.
Activists say the government could have done more to prevent the spill, and have criticized the decision to deliberately sink the ship after it split in half.
"They didn't do anything when the ship approached our coastline - 12 days they didn't do anything until the oil spill and now thousands of people and marine people are affected," a demonstrator told the BBC.
RELATED Japanese government under fire for Mauritius oil spill
Environmental activists have also criticized the Japanese government for failing to take responsibility for the damage caused by the spill.
The Mauritian government has promised to investigate the spill, and the captain of the ship has been arrested and charged with endangering safe navigation.
Demonstrators in other countries -- including Canada, New Zealand and Australia -- also took to the streets Saturday to show solidarity with protesters in Mauritius.
Ancient megadrought may explain civilization’s ‘missing millennia’ in Southeast Asia
Laos is now wet and verdant, but new findings suggest it experienced a 1000-year megadrought starting about 5000 years ago. FBXX/ISTOCK.COM
By Charles ChoiAug. 24, 2020 , 2:05 PM
A megadrought that lasted more than 1000 years may have plagued Southeast Asia 5000 years ago, setting up dramatic shifts in regional civilizations, suggests a new study of cave rocks in northern Laos. The researchers believe the drought began when the drying of the distant Sahara Desert disrupted monsoon rains and triggered droughts throughout the rest of Asia and Africa.
For years, archaeologists studying mainland Southeast Asia—an area encompassing modern-day Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam—have been puzzled by what they call “the missing millennia,” a period from roughly 6000 to 4000 years ago with little evidence of human settlements. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Joyce White, a co-author on the new paper, says she and others long thought this was because researchers hadn’t yet pinpointed where people of the era lived. Now, she believes the settlements could be missing because a megadrought devastated their populations and drove them to find water elsewhere.
To re-create the climate of that time, White and her colleagues investigated stalagmites in Tham Doun Mai, a cave in northern Laos. Stalagmites are tapering pillars of rock that rise from the floors of caves; they slowly grow taller as mineral-rich water drips from cave ceilings—often after rainfall. By analyzing the content of the slowly deposited rock, researchers can gauge not only the age of the rock, but also how wet it was at the time.
Scientists first radioisotope dated sections of three stalagmites from 9500 to 700 years ago. They next examined oxygen isotopes in the rocks to see how rainfall might have varied over those times. When rain falls, drops bearing heavy oxygen-18 isotopes land before those holding lighter oxygen-16 isotopes. Frequent downpours let loose both isotopes, but arid places that see only spotty showers tend to be depleted in light oxygen. By looking for stalagmite layers that were enriched in oxygen-18, the researchers could identify times when the climate was dry.
Paleoclimatologist Michael Griffiths collects a sample of calcite growth that precipitated onto a glass plate left in Tham Doun Mai Cave in Laos for 2 years. KATHLEEN JOHNSON
The researchers found that rainfall in the cave was relatively steady for more than 4000 years before abruptly decreasing between roughly 5100 to 3500 years ago. That suggests the region may have experienced a prolonged, heretofore unrecognized drought that lasted more than 1 millennium, the researchers report this month in Nature Communications.
If so, it may have been part of a larger series of megadroughts that hit Africa and Asia between 5000 and 4000 years ago, says study co-author Kathleen Johnson, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Irvine. During this time, civilizations across western Asia and the Middle East went through major upheavals, such as the collapse of the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia and the abandonment of cities in the Indus Valley. The climate shift, which some have dubbed the “4.2-kiloyear event,” is the basis for the Meghalayan, a controversial new geological age. It coincided with—and may have resulted from—the end of the Green Sahara, when once-verdant north Africa became a desert.
To determine whether African desertification could be linked to the Southeast Asian megadrought, the researchers simulated the ancient climate, incorporating interactions among the oceans, the atmosphere, dust, and vegetation. They found that the drying of the Sahara might have increased airborne dust, pushing the Pacific Ocean into a prolonged El Niño–like cycle that disrupted mainland Southeast Asia’s summer monsoon rains. This in turn could have triggered a megadrought over large swaths of Southeast Asia and flooding across East Asia. This was, in essence, “a redistribution of moisture across Asia,” says Michael Griffiths, a paleoclimatologist at William Paterson University and lead author on the study.
Raymond Bradley, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says the new study suggests the 4.2-kiloyear event—which many consider an abrupt climate shift—may have been part of a larger trend that began roughly 800 years earlier. He hopes the new study will spur researchers to review well-dated records from other regions across Asia to see where and when similar climatic shifts occurred. “Only then can we try to figure out why such changes occurred and how they might or might not be related to societal changes.”
To that end, Griffiths and his team are planning to explore caves in Vietnam and Thailand to get a better look at the period. And their answers may also inform modern-day climate projections, he says. “Perhaps studying the past can help illuminate our current situation in new ways.”
doi:10.1126/science.abe4757
Utah State University researchers have grown cannabis plants since 2018, when hemp cultivation was legalized. ELI LUCERO/THE HERALD JOURNAL VIA AP
Cannabis research database shows how U.S. funding focuses on harms of the drug
By Cathleen O’GradyAug. 27, 2020 , 4:05 PM
A new analysis of cannabis research funding in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has found that $1.56 billion was directed to the topic between 2000 and 2018—with about half of the money spent on understanding the potential harms of the recreational drug. Just over $1 billion came from the biggest funder, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which doled out far more money to research cannabis misuse and its negative effects than on using cannabis and cannabis-derived chemicals as a therapeutic drug.
“The government’s budget is a political statement about what we value as a society,” says Daniel Mallinson, a cannabis policy researcher at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, who reviewed the funding analysis provided to Science by the consultant who conducted it. “The fact that most of the cannabis money is going to drug abuse and probably to cannabis use disorder versus medical purposes—that says something.” The data confirm “word on the street” that government grants go to research that focuses on harms, says Daniela Vergara, who researches cannabis genomics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
However, overall cannabis research funding in the United States is rising steadily, from less than $30.2 million in 2000 to more than $143 million in 2018, and money to explore cannabis medical treatments is growing—although not as fast as funding for research on harms
The analysis is based on a database assembled by Jim Hudson, a consultant for medical research charities and government agencies, who collected publicly available grant data from 50 funders, including public agencies such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health and charities such as Canada’s Arthritis Society. Based on his own reading of the 3269 grants that included cannabis-related keywords, Hudson classified each into categories that captured the focus of the research.
Compared with the $1.49 billion spent by the United States over the 19-year period, Canada spent $32.2 million and the United Kingdom $40 million. Whereas U.K. spending was similarly dominated by research on the harmful effects of cannabis, Canada’s funding focused on the endocannabinoid system—the body’s own system of cannabinoid receptors and naturally produced endocannabinoids that bind to them.
In 2018, research on the potential harms of cannabis received more than 20 times more funding than research on cannabis therapeutics, according to an analysis of cannabis research grants from 50 public agency and charity funders.
The tools Hudson developed to access and sort the public grant data are ultimately destined for his consulting work on cancer research funding, but he says the much smaller field of cannabis offered a bite-size test drive. Hudson made the broad findings public on his website today, although the raw data behind the analysis are not. It’s the first attempt to consolidate cannabis grant data from a wide range of sources and classify it, says Lee Hannah, a cannabis policy researcher at Wright State University, and it’s useful to see “how the lion’s share in the U.S. remains focused on negative consequences and prevention.”
The analysis also hints at the legal hurdles to studying cannabis. In 2018, the $34 million spent by the three countries on cannabis medical treatments was dominated by research on cannabinoids—chemicals found in cannabis—rather than the cannabis plant itself.
This is probably in part because of practicality, Vergara says: It’s often easier for researchers to work with isolated compounds and create regulated doses than to use the whole marijuana plant with its psychoactive properties. But in the United States, it’s also difficult to get governmental permission to use the whole plant for research, she adds. Right now, the only legal producer of cannabis for research in the United States is the University of Mississippi, which grows cannabis that is less potent than recreational pot.
Although NIDA still dominates cannabis research funding, both nationally and internationally, new sources have appeared in recent years. The U.S. Department of Defense has spent a few million dollars on cannabinoid research over the past few years, and, in 2014, the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment created a medical marijuana research program. That’s part of a wider pattern of U.S. states legalizing cannabis and setting money aside for research despite ongoing federal restrictions, Hannah says.
The analysis isn’t an exhaustive picture of worldwide cannabis research, because it only captures public data from a short list of countries. Despite a reputation as a major center of cannabis research, Israel doesn’t feature, although Hudson hopes to expand the list of included countries and funders. The analysis of NIDA funding does not distinguish between money for outside scientists versus the institute’s own researchers. And Mallinson points out that there’s no record of the private research funding that has increased recently, like Harvard Medical School’s International Phytomedicines and Medical Cannabis Institute, which has received funding from Canadian cannabis producer Atlas Biotechnologies and other companies.
The limited funding for therapeutic research is part of a vicious circle, Mallinson says: Research is restricted because the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning it is considered to have high potential for abuse and no evidence for medical benefits—but the threshold needed to demonstrate evidence of medical benefits is hard to reach because the research is restricted. “It’s difficult to break that,” Mallinson says.
Putting marijuana on the less-restricted Schedule II list, alongside such drugs as oxycodone, felt “inevitable” more than 10 years ago, Hannah says, but no change has yet materialized.
doi:10.1126/science.abe5328
