Ultrasound Blasts 'Jumpstarted' The Brains of 2 People in Coma-Like State

DAVID NIELD
31 JANUARY 2021

Scientists have reported finding some success in using low intensity, focused ultrasound to 'jumpstart' parts of the brains of people in coma-like conditions, reawakening certain functions in patients who had previously been in a "minimally conscious state" (MCS).

The method uses ultrasound stimulation to excite the neurons in the thalamus, a processing hub for the whole brain, and a region that's known to be weaker after a coma. Two 10-minute treatment sessions were given to three MCS patients, with a week between each session.

While one patient showed no response, researchers observed significant improvements in the other two patients. The research builds on similar findings from 2016, involving one patient who was recovering from surgery and a medically induced coma. In the new study, the coma-like states had lasted much longer.

A person in a minimally conscious state may show clear but subtle or inconsistent signs of consciousnesses. These signs, like blinking on command or wakefulness, are generally sustained enough that they aren't seen as reflexive behaviours, and they help to differentiate MCS from comas or vegetative states.

"I consider this new result much more significant because these chronic patients were much less likely to recover spontaneously than the acute patient we treated in 2016 – and any recovery typically occurs slowly over several months and more typically years, not over days and weeks, as we show," says neuroscientist Martin Monti, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).


"It's very unlikely that our findings are simply due to spontaneous recovery."

One of the patients to respond to the treatment was a 56-year-old man, who had been in a minimally conscious state for more than 14 months, unable to communicate at all. After treatment, he could not only look towards the photographs of relatives when their names were mentioned, he could also drop or grasp a ball on demand. When asked simple questions about his identity, he was able to shake his head 'yes' or 'no'.

The other patient to show signs of progress, a 50-year-old woman, had been in an even deeper MCS for more than two-and-a-half years. After the ultrasound sessions, she was able to understand speech and recognise basic objects, including a pencil and a comb.

Researchers say the technique is safe as it only uses a small amount of energy, and there were no changes to the blood pressure, heart rates, or blood oxygen levels of the patients.

A small device aims ultrasound at the thalamus. (Martin Monti/UCLA)

"This is what we hoped for, but it is stunning to see it with your own eyes," says Monti. "Seeing two of our three patients who had been in a chronic condition improve very significantly within days of the treatment is an extremely promising result."

It's important to emphasise that the research is still in an early and experimental phase. While the 50-year-old woman showed increased signs of awareness months afterwards, the differences from the MCS starting point weren't that significant. And after a few months without treatment, the 56-year-old man had returned to something close to his original coma-like state.

Add in the one patient that didn't respond at all to the treatment, and the researchers remain cautious about how successful ultrasound can be, and how quickly it can be rolled out. Nevertheless, these results are very encouraging – there are definite signs that this kind of treatment could help some patients some of the time.

The treatment can be applied in a device about the size of a saucer, and the researchers are hoping that it can eventually be used in the home on patients who are in long-term minimally conscious or vegetative states.

"Importantly, these behaviours are diagnostic markers of emergence from a disorder of consciousness," says Monti. "For these patients, the smallest step can be very meaningful – for them and their families. To them it means the world."

The research has been published in Brain Stimulation.

New COVID-19 test uses a smartphone microscope to quickly analyze saliva samples

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Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jan 29 2021

Researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a COVID-19 testing method that uses a smartphone microscope to analyze saliva samples and deliver results in about 10 minutes.

The UArizona research team, led by biomedical engineering professor Jeong-Yeol Yoon, aims to combine the speed of existing nasal swab antigen tests with the high accuracy of nasal swab PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests. The researchers are adapting an inexpensive method that they originally created to detect norovirus - the microbe famous for spreading on cruise ships - using a smartphone microscope.

They plan to use the method in conjunction with a saline swish-gargle test developed by Michael Worobey, head of the UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and associate director of the University of Arizona BIO5 Institute.

The team's latest research using water samples - done in collaboration with Kelly A. Reynolds, chair of the Department of Community, Environment and Policy in the UArizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health - is published today in Nature Protocols.

We've outlined it so that other scientists can basically repeat what we did and create a norovirus-detecting device. Our goal is that if you want to adapt it for something else, like we've adapted it for COVID-19, that you have all the ingredients you need to basically make your own device."

Lane Breshears, Biomedical Engineering Doctoral Student

Yoon - a BIO5 Institute member who is also a professor of biosystems engineering, animal and comparative biomedical sciences, and chemistry and biochemistry - is working with a large group of undergraduate and graduate students to develop the smartphone-based COVID-19 detection method.

"I have a couple of friends who had COVID-19 that were super frustrated, because their PCR results were taking six or seven days or they were getting false negatives from rapid antigen tests. But when they got the final PCR tests, they found out they had been sick, like they'd suspected," said Katie Sosnowski, a biomedical engineering doctoral student who works in Yoon's lab. "It's really cool to be working on a detection platform that can get fast results that are also accurate."

Cheaper, simpler detection

Traditional methods for detection of norovirus or other pathogens are often expensive, involve a large suite of laboratory equipment or require scientific expertise. The smartphone-based norovirus test developed at UArizona consists of a smartphone, a simple microscope and a piece of microfluidic paper - a wax-coated paper that guides the liquid sample to flow through specific channels. It is smaller and cheaper than other tests, with the components costing about $45.

The basis of the technology, described in a 2019 paper published in the journal ACS Omega, is relatively simple. Users introduce antibodies with fluorescent beads to a potentially contaminated water sample. If enough particles of the pathogen are present in the sample, several antibodies attach to each pathogen particle. Under a microscope, the pathogen particles show up as little clumps of fluorescent beads, which the user can then count. The process - adding beads to the sample, soaking a piece of paper in the sample, then taking a smartphone photograph of it under a microscope and counting the beads - takes about 10 to 15 minutes. It's so simple that Yoon says a nonscientist could learn how to do it by watching a brief video.

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The version of the technology described in the Nature Protocols paper makes further improvements, such as creating a 3D-printed housing for the microscope attachment and microfluidic paper chip. The paper also introduces a method called adaptive thresholding. Previously, researchers set a fixed value for what quantity of pathogen constituted a danger, which limited precision levels. The new version uses artificial intelligence to set the danger threshold and account for environmental differences, such as the type of smartphone and the quality of the paper.

On-campus impact

The researchers plan to partner with testing facilities at the University of Arizona to fine-tune their method as they adapt it for COVID-19 detection. Pending approval of the university's institutional review board, students who are already being tested on campus through other methods will have the option to provide written consent for their sample to be run through the smartphone-based testing device as well. Ultimately, the researchers envision distributing the device to campus hubs so that the average person - such as a resident assistant in a dorm - could test saliva samples from groups of people.

"Adapting a method designed to detect the norovirus - another highly contagious pathogen - is an outstanding example of our researchers pivoting in the face of the pandemic," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. "This promising technology could allow us to provide fast, accurate, affordable tests to the campus community frequently and easily. We hope to make it a regular part of our 'Test, Trace, Treat' strategy, and that it will have a broader impact in mitigating the spread of the disease."

Yoon and his team are also working on another idea, based on a 2018 paper they published in Chemistry--A European Journal, which is even simpler but leaves slightly more room for error. It involves the same technology, but instead of a smartphone microscope and specially designed enclosure, users would only need to download a smartphone app and use a microfluidic chip stamped with a QR code.

"Unlike the fluorescent microscope technique, where you get the chip into just the right position, you just take a snapshot of the chip," said biomedical engineering master's student Pat Akarapipad. "No matter the angle or distance the photo is taken from, the smartphone app can use AI and the QR code to account for variances and run calculations accordingly."

The method requires no training, so, if perfected, it could potentially allow students to pick up microfluidic chips from a campus location and test their own samples. The team is also working with other members of the university's COVID-19 testing group, including Deepta Bhattacharya, an associate professor in the Department of Immunobiology.

Source:

University of Arizona College of Engineering

Journal reference:

Chung, S., et al. (2021) Norovirus detection in water samples at the level of single virus copies per microliter using a smartphone-based fluorescence microscope. Nature Protocols. doi.org/10.1038/s41596-020-00460-7.

FAA is reportedly investigating SpaceX over its Starship tests

By Georgina Torbet January 30, 2021 DIGITAL TRENDS

The SN8 Starship prototype explodes as it lands hard following a high-altitude test flight in December 2020.SpaceX

SpaceX’s high-altitude test of its Starship prototype SN8 in December 2020 ended in an explosive fireball, though company CEO Elon Musk seemed happy with the data collected during the test. But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which oversees regulations for rocket launches is concerned about the explosion and other issues, according to reports which say SpaceX is now the subject of an FAA investigation.

As reported by The Verge, the explosion in December is not the FAA’s only concern. The agency is reportedly also concerned about breaches of SpaceX’s test license, and has opened an investigation into the company. The exact details of what SpaceX supposedly did in violation of its license has not yet been made public.

“The FAA will continue to work with SpaceX to evaluate additional information provided by the company as part of its application to modify its launch license,” FAA spokesman Steve Kulm said, as reported by The Verge. “While we recognize the importance of moving quickly to foster growth and innovation in commercial space, the FAA will not compromise its responsibility to protect public safety. We will approve the modification only after we are satisfied that SpaceX has taken the necessary steps to comply with regulatory requirements.”

The issues with the FAA put the brakes on plans for another high-altitude test of the newer SN9 prototype, which had been expected to go ahead this week. The test had to be postponed after the FAA lifted the temporary flight restrictions in the airspace around the test site.

In this context, CEO Elon Musk was critical of the FAA on Twitter, saying its space division has “a fundamentally broken regulatory structure” and that its rules were not reflective of the modern situation of multiple expendable launches being performed regularly.

Now, SpaceX has two prototypes ready to test — both the SN9 and the SN10. Both prototypes have been seen side by side on the SpaceX pad at Boca Chica. Space.com speculates that the next test flight could go ahead next week, from Monday, February 1, as long as the approvals from the FAA are granted in time.

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BUILD BACK BETTER WILL USA JOIN

UK to apply to join free trade pact with nations on other side of world

Liz Truss to seek to join 11-nation trans-Pacific partnership, whose nearest member is 3,000 miles away

COMRADES TO BE

Liz Truss elbow bumps Vietnam’s minister of industry and trade, Tran Tuan Anh, after signing a free trade agreement in Hanoi in December. Photograph: Nhac Nguyen/AFP/Getty Images

PA Media
Sat 30 Jan 2021 23.07 GMT


The British government is to formally apply to join a mammoth free-trade pact that includes Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand now that it has left the EU.

Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, will ask to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) when she speaks to ministers in Japan and New Zealand on Monday.


Negotiations are expected to start later this year, Truss’s department said, in announcing the move on the anniversary of the UK’s formal departure from the EU.

Joining the CPTPP will cut tariffs in trading with its members. UK trade with the group last year was worth £111bn, according to the Department for International Trade.

The pact’s 11 members are:


Australia.


Brunei.


Canada.


Chile.


Japan.


Malaysia.


Mexico.


New Zealand.


Peru.


Singapore.


Vietnam.

Boris Johnson said: “One year after our departure from the EU, we are forging new partnerships that will bring enormous economic benefits for the people of Britain.

“Applying to be the first new country to join the CPTPP demonstrates our ambition to do business on the best terms with our friends and partners all over the world and be an enthusiastic champion of global free trade.”

British businesses reacted warmly to the plans, with the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) saying the move would help firms “thrive and succeed more than ever”.

But the shadow international trade secretary, Emily Thornberry, said Labour will closely scrutinise any pact and called on the government to consult the public.

“Like any other trade agreement, the advantages of joining the CPTPP will have to be assessed once we see the terms on offer,” she said.

“At present, Liz Truss cannot even guarantee whether we would have the right to veto China’s proposed accession if we join the bloc first.

“More generally, people will rightly ask why we have been through five years of debate in Britain over leaving a trade bloc with our closest neighbours only to rush into joining another one on the other side of the world without any meaningful public consultation at all.”

Truss said joining the pact would “create enormous opportunities for UK businesses that simply weren’t there as part of the EU”.

The Confederation of British Industry president, Lord Bilimoria, said: “Membership of the bloc has the potential to deliver new opportunities for UK business across different sectors.”

Sue Davies – head of consumer protection and food policy at Which? – said ministers must ensure joining CPTPP “will bring clear consumer benefits” and will not dilute standards.

Two new Covid vaccines have less efficacy against South African strain

Early trial data shows Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have much less efficacy against new variant

The Novavax vaccine had 50% efficacy in mid-stage trials in South Africa, compared with 89.3% in late-stage results from the UK. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

Molly Blackall

Sat 30 Jan 2021 

Early data from two new coronavirus vaccine trials has indicated that they have less efficacy at protecting from the South African variant of coronavirus.

Clinical trial data showed that the vaccines from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson had significantly less efficacy at preventing coronavirus in trial participants in South Africa, where the new variant is widespread, compared with countries where the variant is less common.

Novavax reported that results from mid-stage trials on Thursday showed its vaccine had 50% efficacy overall in preventing Covid-19 among people in South Africa. In late-stage results from the UK, the vaccine had up to 89.3% efficacy

On Friday, Johnson & Johnson said a single shot of its vaccine had 66% efficacy, judging by a large-scale trial which spanned three continents. In the US, which recorded its first cases of the South African variant this week, the vaccine’s efficacy reached 72%, but it was just 57% in South Africa, where the new variants constituted 95% of the coronavirus cases in the trial.

The trial results also raise questions over the efficacy of the vaccines currently in circulation, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech which has been distributed in the UK. While the vaccines showed high efficacy, the trials were largely undertaken before the South African variant had spread widely.

Dr Dan Barouch, a researcher at Harvard University medical school’s Beth Israel Deaconess medical centre in Boston who helped develop the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, said the new variant meant this was a “different pandemic now”.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, said there was “a high possibility” that the new strains could eventually mean the firm’s vaccine was redundant.

“This is not the case yet … but I think it’s a very high likelihood that one day that will happen,” Bourla said. Pfizer is considering whether its vaccine needs to be altered to protect against the South African variant.

Despite the new variant, experts said that existing vaccines were still valuable in the fight against coronavirus, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was 89% effective at preventing severe disease in South Africa.

“The end game is to stop death, to stop hospitals from going into crisis and all of these vaccines, even including against the South African variant, seem to do that substantially,” said Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The number of people suffering from flu has plunged to levels not seen in more than 130 years

One expert has said that flu had been 'almost wiped out'

By Cathy Owen Breaking News Editor
 31 JAN 2021

Flu cases are down by 95% (Image: Getty Images)

While coronavirus infection rates remain high, flu has been "almost wiped out" with cases plunging by 95% to levels not seen in more than 130 years.

The peak of the season is usually the second week of January, but official data for that time shows that the number of flu-like cases reported to doctors was 1.1 per 100,000 people, compared to a five-year average rate of 27.

In Wales, the latest figures show that that figure in Wales for the week ending January 24 was 0.8 per 100,000.

(Image: Public Health Wales)

Simon de Lusignan, professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and director of the Royal College of GPs research and surveillance centre, which focuses on flu told The Sunday Times that flu had “almost completely wiped out."

He added: "I cannot think of a year this has happened."

John McCauley, director of the World Health Organisation's collaborating centre for reference and research on influenza and one of the world's leading flu experts, told the paper: "The last time we had evidence of such low rates was when we were still just counting influenza deaths, and that was in 1888, before the 1889- 90 flu pandemic."

Flu is virtually non-existent in Wales so far this winter

It is thought the health measures taken to combat Covid-19 like social distancing and hand washing are likely to be the main reason for the dramatic fall in cases.

A similar trend was seen in the southern hemisphere last year with very few cases of seasonal flu in Australia, Chile and South Africa there between April and July 2020.

A Public Health Wales spokesman has said social distancing, better hand hygiene and masks to contain the spread of Covid-19 were having an impact on flu rates.

Former QAnon Follower To Anderson Cooper: ‘I Apologize For Thinking That You Ate Babies’

MIKE COPPOLA / GETTY IMAGES NEWS

Damir Mujezinovic INQ UISITER

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper recently interviewed Jitarth Jadeja, a former QAnon supporter, who earnestly believed in some of the most absurd conspiracy theories peddled by the mysterious Q.

As HuffPost reported, according to a clip of the interview that was released on Saturday, Jadeja apologized to Cooper for once thinking he “ate babies.”

“Did you, at the time, believe that Democrats, high-level Democrats and celebrities were worshipping Satan, drinking the blood of children?” Cooper asked.

“Anderson, I thought you did that. And I would like to apologize for that right now. So, I apologize for thinking that you ate babies.”

Cooper was taken aback by Jadeja’s apology and asked him to confirm that he really thought prominent political and media figures ate small children.

“Yes, I did,” Jadeja replied, noting that many QAnon followers believe that, though some actually think Cooper is a robot.

Jadeja explained that he once believed QAnon was part of “military intelligence” and stressed that he also thought that aliens were involved in the QAnon movement and supporting the mysterious individual.

The man said that he believed that “the people behind him were actually a group of fifth dimensional intra-dimensional extra terrestrial bipedal bird aliens called blue alien.”

“I was so far down in this conspiracy black hole that I was essentially picking and choosing whatever narrative that I wanted to believe in,” Jadeja added.

Jadeja, who lives in Sydney, Australia, abandoned the QAnon movement in 2019. He claims to have been deradicalized by YouTube videos that debunked the very premise of the bizarre conspiracy theory.

Dozens of different theories fall under the umbrella of QAnon, but most of the claims are centered around the suggestion that former President Donald Trump and his allies are secretly fighting a global cabal of Satan-worshiping child traffickers.

Donald Trump’s ‘Criminal Ineptitude And Apathy’ Doomed COVID-19 Vaccination Efforts, Report Says

AARON P. BERNSTEIN / GETTY IMAGES US POLITICS

Nathan Francis INQUISITER

January 30, 2021

Donald Trump doomed the efforts to roll out the COVID-19 vaccines through his own “criminal ineptitude and apathy,” a new report claims.

Writing for DC Report, Jillian S. Ambroz noted that Trump had no plan for the distribution of the vaccines once they were ready to roll out at the end of 2020. She noted that even though Trump’s own White House had seen a number of outbreaks, he had done nothing to prepare for them to be distributed, which could likely lead to more unnecessary deaths.

Instead, his failure to properly prepare dumped the mess on his successor, Ambroz added.

“Trump’s criminal ineptitude and apathy crushed the vaccination effort before it could get off the ground, presenting President Joe Biden’s administration with a monumental disaster,” she wrote.

Others have called out Trump for his lack of planning on how to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. As The Guardian reported, Biden’s team spent the first week having to manually track down close to 20 million doses of the vaccine that went through the federal distribution pipeline to be administered at clinic sites. As the report noted, Trump’s administration had failed to track how these moved through the pipeline between distribution and when the shot was administered to patients.

Those involved in the rollout said it left a confusing situation for the new team.

Biden team scrambles to find 20m vaccine doses Trump reportedly failed to track

Officials work to pinpoint doses in pipeline between federal distribution and administration by states

People wait in line to receive a vaccine at a high school in Paterson, New Jersey. The Trump administration did not track vaccines between federal distribution and administration to patients, Biden officials told Politico. Photograph: Ted Shaffrey/AP

Jessica Glenza
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 30 Jan 2021 


The Biden administration has spent its first week in office attempting to manually track down 20m vaccine doses in the pipeline between federal distribution and administration at clinic sites, when a dose finally reaches a patient’s arm.

The Trump administration’s strategy pushed the response to the coronavirus pandemic to individual states and omitted pipeline tracking information between distribution and when the shot is actually administered, Biden administration officials told Politico.

The lack of data has now forced federal health department officials to spend hours on the phone tracking down vaccine shipments, the news website reported.

“Nobody had a complete picture,” Dr Julie Morita, a member of the Biden transition team and executive vice-president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told Politico. “The plans that were being made were being made with the assumption that more information would be available and be revealed once they got into the White House.”

As of Saturday, 49 million doses of vaccine have been distributed by the federal government, but only 27 million administered by states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About two million of those doses are believed to be accounted for by a 72-hour lag in reported administration, Politico reported. That still leaves millions in the pipeline between delivery and patient. At least 16 states have used less than half the vaccine doses distributed to them, USA Today reported this week.


Revealed: study exposes racial disparity as whites vaccinated at higher rates than Black Americans
Read more

“Much of our work over the next week is going to make sure that we can tighten up the timelines to understand where in the pipeline the vaccine actually is and when exactly it is administered,” Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told USA Today.
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Among the problems in the rollout identified by the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices are the need to improve scheduling, increase staffing and define administration site workflows. States must also improve supply-demand mismatch.

In one example, a hospital in Arlington, Virginia, had to cancel 10,000 appointments after the state sent doses to county health departments. The state then directed patients to reschedule appointments through the county health department as they became available.

“It’s very disappointing,” Jeff Gorsky, a resident whose 3 February appointment was canceled, told NBC4 Washington. “We’re all stuck in the house, I rarely leave my house now, just to go grocery shopping. It would have freed me up.”

Similarly in Wisconsin, lawmakers quizzed the state’s health department on where 180,000 federally distributed vaccines that had yet to be administered were in the pipeline, according to a report from the right-leaning MacIver Institute.

A state health department official told lawmakers there was not enough vaccine to meet demand, but also that 50% of the doses had been set aside for a pharmacy partnership to vaccinate staff and residents of long-term care homes.

But adding to the confusion, a spokesperson for the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin later said pharmacies had not received the doses from the health department, and still others were set aside for second shots despite federal guidance not to do so. “Some of [the vaccine] was being held back for second doses,” said Danielle Womack, a spokesperson for the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin, the MacIver Institute reported. Wisconsin does not expect a vaccination scheduling website to go live until February, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.

If the Biden administration can’t get a handle on the rollout, inequities could also exacerbate racial health disparities between the populations worst impacted by Covid-19 and already behind in immunization.

An early look at the 17 states and two cities that have released racial breakdowns through 25 January found black people in all places are getting inoculated at levels below their share of the general population, in some cases significantly below.

“We’re going to see a widening and exacerbation of the racial health inequities that were here before the pandemic and worsened during the pandemic if our communities cannot access the vaccine,” said Dr Uché Blackstock, a New York emergency physician and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, an advocacy group that addresses bias and inequality.

That is true even though they constitute an oversize percentage of the nation’s health care workers, who were put at the front of the line for shots when the campaign began in mid-December.

For example, in North Carolina, black people make up 22% of the population and 26% of the health care workforce but only 11% of the vaccine recipients so far. White people, a category in which the state includes both Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites, are 68% of the population and 82% of those vaccinated.

The racial immunization gap is partly explained by higher levels of distrust of medical personnel by racial minorities who for centuries have been subject to abusive and discriminatory medical practices.

However, it is also a practical matter. In Florida, a plan to distribute Covid-19 vaccines through pharmacies with the supermarket chain Publix – which have been shown to cluster in affluent communities – left residents of Belle Glade 25 miles from the nearest vaccine center.

Most residents of the predominantly black community “walk everywhere they go”, said Mayor Steve Wilson. The state later provided a vaccine site for the community.

The CDC’s first report on early vaccine rollout is expected in February.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Trump’s Death Penalty Zeal May Pave the Way for Its Demise

LOSING GROUND

Death penalty support is wide rather than deep, even among conservatives in deep red states.

Maurice Chammah DAILY BEAST
Published Jan. 31, 2021 

Mike Simons/Getty

Earlier this month, Rep. Ayanna Presley and Sen. Dick Durbin announced a bill to end the federal death penalty. With Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, it’s possible to see the path to passage, as well as a historical irony: President Donald Trump oversaw ore executions than any president in decades, and in doing so he galvanized the left, allowing opponents of the death penalty to link each of these executions to systemic problems, from the all-white jury that sentenced Orlando Hall to the history of trauma and mental illness that marked the life of Lisa Montgomery. In the end, Trump’s zeal for the death penalty may end up paving the way for its demise.

President Joe Biden has promised to eliminate the death penalty, and even without Congress, he can commute the sentences of the 50 people still on federal death row. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, can bar federal prosecutors from seeking new death sentences. The two can order Bureau of Prison employees to dismantle the federal execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, and cart the lethal injection gurney off in a truck. The death penalty has never been given to more than a minuscule fraction of the thousands of people who commit murder each year, but it’s the ideological pinnacle of a punitive criminal justice system, rendering very long sentences lenient by comparison. So the political symbolism of a dismantled death chamber would be potent.

Supreme Court Won’t Kill Death Penalty
IMMORTAL
Mike Sacks


So would the backlash, especially since those on death row include such public villains as Dylann Roof and Dzhokar Tsarnaev. A majority of Americans still support the punishment, and framing the end of the death penalty as a partisan overthrow of Trump’s legacy invites further reversals; a future administration or Congress could, both literally and figuratively, just put the gurney back in the room. And none of this would have an effect on state prisons, where the vast majority of death sentences are carried out. Already, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, and Ohio have scheduled executions for later this year.

Under Trump, the death penalty appeared to be a partisan wedge issue, but the punishment has been declining in popularity for the last quarter century, in both red and blue states. To understand the choices that politicians on both sides of the issue will face this year, it’s worth revisiting how we got here.

In 1966, death penalty support dropped to 42 percent. At the time, executions seemed like a relic. Electric chairs were gathering dust in storage. Then, in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that every death penalty law in the country was unconstitutional. Crime was on the rise and Americans believed that unelected judges had robbed them of their ability to fight crime. The film Dirty Harry embodied the era, portraying a police officer hamstrung by case law as he attempted to capture a killer.

By 1994, public support had reached 80 percent, and by the end of the millennium, state prisons were executing more than one person each week. Democrats had more to prove. Around this time, then-Gov. Bill Clinton left the presidential campaign to preside over an execution in Arkansas—of a man who was missing part of his brain, by the way—while then-Senator Joe Biden touted a bill in which “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking.”

The political ground began to shift in 1998, when Karla Faye Tucker was executed in Texas. Having left a pickax in the chest of one of her victims, she had undergone dramatic and, by all accounts, sincere conversion to Christianity while on death row. Gov. George W. Bush did not stop her execution, but he was open about his ambivalence as a fellow born-again Christian. Her death illustrated the conflict between ideals of retribution and redemption.

Around this time, the rise of DNA made it possible to prove that some people on death row were innocent, and newspapers showed images of men and women tearfully reuniting with their families on the courthouse steps. Conservative columnist George Will wrote in 2000 that the death penalty “is a government program, so skepticism is in order.” That year, Republican and Democratic legislators teamed up in Texas to increase funding for public defenders and improve access to DNA testing. Sen. John Cornyn was the state’s attorney general at the time, and he publicly acknowledged that racial bias had infected several death row cases, paving the way for a handful of new sentencing hearings.


“Democrats can attempt a big, quick win, or they can try to bring the trend of conservative opposition from statehouses up to Congress,”

On top of all this, prosecutors—especially in conservative, rural areas—began to acknowledge just how expensive it had become to send someone to death row and framed their turn away from the death penalty in fiscal rather than moral terms.

None of this was enough to seriously crack Texas’ particular cultural attachment to executions, but over time similar arguments about cost, redemption, and mistakes featured prominently in the conversion narratives of conservatives and liberals alike across the country. Republican legislators have recently pushed to repeal the punishment in Utah, Kentucky, Colorado, and Montana, while the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, has expressed misgivings. So have more populist conservative thought-leaders like Tucker Carlson, Michelle Malkin, Jay Sekulow, and Richard Viguerie. Death penalty support is wide rather than deep; in 2019, 56 percent of Americans said they favored the death penalty when asked about it in isolation, but 60 percent said they preferred life imprisonment.

Scholars have suggested ways that Biden might promote a bipartisan consensus. Harvard law professor Carol Steiker recently told me the president could create a blue-ribbon commission to study the death penalty, which would ultimately “offer practical grounds to limit or abolish it to those who do not oppose it on principle.” (Obama promised a similar study but never delivered.) Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, suggested that the Biden administration prioritize funding for the defense of military veterans facing the death penalty in state courts, since their crimes can often be traced to PTSD and head injuries from their service. It’s easy to imagine how this might further erode death penalty support on the right.

Democrats will now face a political choice. They can attempt a big, quick win, or they can try to bring the trend of conservative opposition from statehouses up to Congress, setting off a deeper conversation about mercy and rehabilitation that might apply to the broader criminal justice system. The seeds of a reckoning are here; it was Donald Trump who, after signing a bipartisan measure to reduce the federal prison population, announced, “America is a nation that believes in redemption.”

RIP

The Animals guitarist and founding member Hilton Valentine dies aged 77

By Michael Astley-Brown GUITAR WORLD

Valentine arranged and performed the iconic intro to The House of the Rising Sun

(Image credit: Stanley Bielecki/ASP/Getty Images)

Hilton Valentine, founding member of The Animals and guitarist on one of the most iconic intros in music history, has died aged 77

His death was confirmed by the band’s label ABKCO in a statement posted to Twitter on Saturday night: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Hilton Valentine’s family and friends on his passing this morning, at the age of 77.”

“A founding member and original guitarist of the Animals, Valentine was a pioneering guitar player influencing the sound of rock and roll for decades to come.”

Born in North Shields, UK, Valentine founded the Animals in Newcastle in 1963, alongside singer Eric Burdon, bassist Chas Chandler, organist Alan Price and drummer John Steel.

One year later, the group landed their biggest hit, a cover of blues standard The House of the Rising Sun, opened by Valentine’s arpeggiated guitar riff – it went on to become one of the most iconic intros in music history and essential learning for every guitarist who followed.

“I was coming up with my arpeggio bit and Alan Price said to me, ‘Can you play something different because that is so corny?’” Valentine – who played a Gretsch Tennessean through a Selmer Selectortone on the track – told Guitar International in 2010.

“So I told him, ‘You play your damn keyboard and I’ll play me guitar!’ Then, after a few rehearsals, he started playing my riff and we recorded it.”

The band followed The House of the Rising Sun with a number of hits, including reworkings of blues classics Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood and We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, before the group disbanded a few years later.

Valentine moved to the US shortly after, recording a solo album, All in Your Head, in 1969. But it wasn’t until he reconnected with his love of skiffle that a follow-up was released in 2004, It’s Folk ‘N’ Skiffle, Mate!. Two other skiffle releases followed in 2011 and 2012.

In 1994, Valentine and his fellow Animals Eric Burdon, Chas Chandler, Alan Price and John Steel were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Of their legacy, Valentine told Guitar International, “I do think that we were among those responsible for turning on white America to the blues music that was already right in their own backyard, they just didn’t know it.”

A cause of death has yet to be announced.