Workers push to unionize at the Jewish Museum in New York

The Jewish Museum workers would be following in the footsteps of the staff at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, also in New York, who voted in to unionize in November 2020.

By ASAF SHALEV/JTA
Published: JANUARY 13, 2022 

The Jewish Museum in Upper East Side, New York City.
(photo credit: VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Employees at the Jewish Museum in New York have launched a unionization drive, adding to a trend across cultural institutions that have been destabilized by the pandemic.

The process officially began on Monday, when representatives of Local 2110 UAW filed a petition for a union election on behalf of Jewish Museum employees with the National Labor Relations Board. If the effort succeeds, the union will encompass art handlers, curators, development staff, educators, visitor experience and retail employees, and other administrative staff.

The workers organizing the drive said the union is needed because of job insecurity, wage inequities, hazardous working conditions, and a lack of sufficient transparency around employment policy at the Jewish Museum.

“Our goal is to create a workplace built upon communication, respect, and integrity, where staff are involved in setting the terms of employment and are allowed to sustainably grow their careers,” the unionizing workers said in a mission statement. “In keeping with our love of the Jewish Museum’s exhibitions, collection, and rich history, the staff is eager to realize a fairer, more inclusive, and more diverse workplace. We believe that collective bargaining with leadership can achieve these goals and strengthen our institution.”

The workers would be following in the footsteps of the staff at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, also in New York, who voted in to unionize in November 2020. That effort was organized through a different union, District Council 37.

''LEGO Concentration Camp'' by Zbigniew Libera, is pictured at the Jewish Museum in New York March 13, 2002. The sculpture is part of an exhibit called ''Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art'' which opens at the museum on March 17. The work of thirteen artists will be presented in the exhibit, which (credit: REUTERS)

Before petitioning for the workers of the Jewish Museum, Local 2110 UAW won union elections at several other institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Hispanic Society of America.

The Jewish Museum released a statement through a spokesperson: “The Jewish Museum is aware that staff have petitioned for a union election. The Museum greatly values its staff and will respectfully engage in any process that transpires.”

Labor organizing at museums has ramped up during the pandemic as many institutions closed their doors to visitors or shifted toward virtual exhibits, causing workers in public-facing positions to face layoffs and furloughs.

At least one unionized staff at a museum with Jewish roots, the Tenement Museum in New York City, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board last year after the museum laid off 80% of its workers. Those workers, too, are organized by Local 2110 UAW.

“Unionization has become a necessity for museum staff,” Rebecca Shaykin, a Jewish Museum curator, said in a statement released by the workers behind the unionization drive. “As museum professionals, we’re expected to work long hours for low wages with little assurance of promotional opportunities. By forming a union, we can join together for conditions that recognize our value as a staff.”

‘A protective bubble’: Covid-sniffing dogs help scientists – and Metallica – spot infection

Researchers find four dogs can identify biomarkers associated with the virus with 97.5% accuracy

Cobra the dog sniffs a mask, a means of detecting Covid.

 Photograph: Florida International University

Adrienne Matei
Wed 12 Jan 2022 

With a sense of smell up to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans’, dogs have been employed in the service of sniffing out everything from contraband to crop molds to cancer.

Yet while researchers first began exploring whether canines could be effective agents in the fight against Covid-19 early in the pandemic, only in recent months have conclusive, peer-reviewed studies begun verifying the hypothesis that dogs know Covid when they smell it.

In late 2021, scientists at Florida International University published a double-blind study of canine Covid detection in which the four participating pups demonstrated a 97.5% accuracy rate in identifying biomarkers associated with Covid-19.

“It’s one of the highest percentages I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing this work for over 25 years with all kinds of detector dogs,” says FIU’s Dr Ken Furton, a leading scholar in forensic chemistry specializing in scent detection. “It’s really remarkable.”

Another study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found dogs could identify Covid 82%-94% of the time, whereas recent German research put their success rate at 95%.

Dogs are capable of generalizing odors, meaning they can detect all currently known Covid-19 variants, similar to how they can recognize all manner of explosives when trained, explains Furton.

Yet Omicron has affected search protocols used by the Ohio-based Bio-Detection K9, a company that trained dogs to identify crop diseases prior to the pandemic, and that began providing Covid detection services in October 2020 to clients including Nascar and the rock bands Metallica and Tool.

“Omicron more than any other variant has changed the biology of the infection,” explains the company’s president, Jerry Johnson. Prior to Omicron, Johnson’s team of 14 dogs were trained to approach a line of people and sniff their hands or feet – where humans have many sweat glands – before sitting in front of those they considered infected. Because Omicron is expressed less through the lungs, which transfer the virus throughout the body and into our sweat, and more through the bronchial tube, people must now offer the dogs their worn mask for a sniff.

Johnson’s dogs are able to screen between 200 and 300 people ran hour, and require breaks every 20 minutes to maintain their enthusiasm for the job. When they work with musicians, the dogs are not screening audience members at live shows; rather, they hang out backstage, focusing on a much smaller group of talent, engineers and entourage.


US delivery apps have a new high-end ‘wellness’ product: Covid tests

“This is not a tool that you’re going to use to get 70,000 fans into the Rose Bowl,” says Johnson. “But we can be very effective if you’re trying to maintain a protective bubble.” That efficacy comes at a price; the daily rate for one of Bio-Detection K9’s teams – comprising one dog and its trainer – is $5,000.

Based on his experience with detector dogs, Johnson has a theory that canines are particularly adept at finding viruses because of a biological predisposition towards identifying and avoiding disease among their ranks. The logic is that a wolf in the wild couldn’t care less about cocaine and explosives, or other things we train dogs to find, but would be naturally interested in the health of their pack.

Some institutions are training their own dogs to detect Covid, such as the Freetown-Lakeville regional school district in Massachusetts, which worked with FIU to turn Labradors Huntah and Duke into school safety inspectors last summer.

Dogs are not yet an FDA-approved diagnostic tool, so if they flag someone as infected, that person still must take a Covid-19 test to confirm it. However, some research indicates that dogs may be more sensitive to the virus than PCR tests, identifying infected individuals even before they have amassed sufficient viral load to register on a test.

Sidney Poitier was a defining figure of distinguished Blackness

At a time when Black actors were forced into submissive or inarticulate roles, the actor showed strength moving through hostile white spaces with dignity

Sidney Poitier in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! 

Photograph: United Artists/Allstar

Todd Boyd
Tue 11 Jan 2022 

Upon the announcement of Hollywood legend Sidney Poitier’s death, I sent out a tweet that featured my favorite photo of him. The photo in question shows a shirtless Poitier, wearing dark sunglasses like Miles Davis on the cover of ’Round About Midnight, playing the saxophone alongside jazz man Sonny Stitt, while standing in the street, surrounded by a community of appreciative onlookers, otherwise known as “the people”. The reason I dig this photo so much is because it offers a more complex image of Poitier than the one that had come to define him at the height of his fame in Hollywood. I have never been able to confirm the context of this photo, but I have always assumed that it was taken while he was preparing for his role as the expatriate horn player in the film Paris Blues. Whatever the circumstances, though, the image itself suggests an authenticity, a certain street credibility that is much more complex than the conveniently integrationist symbolism that his persona has so often been reduced to.

Sidney Poitier’s defiance, grace and style changed me – and shaped my life as an actor
David Harewood

By the late 1960s Sidney Poitier was the biggest box office draw in America. With movies like In the Heat of the Night, To Sir With Love and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, his films had become their own genre. Accomplishing this was no small feat. When Poitier began his career, most movies featuring predominantly Black casts were musicals. Black men who appeared in otherwise all-white films tended to be represented as inarticulate, child-like buffoons; racial clowns who scratched when they didn’t itch and laughed when nothing was funny. Poitier’s rise to the top of the Hollywood mountain changed this. He was often the lone Black person moving through hostile white spaces. His refined, erudite and dignified image was a counter to the coonery and buffoonery that figures like Stepin’ Fetchit, Mantan Moreland, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Willie Best had previously represented. Like so many elite mid-century jazz musicians, Poitier wanted people to see him as an artist, not as a stereotypical entertainer. And in this he succeeded.

When perhaps his most famous character, Virgil Tibbs from In the Heat of the Night, demanded that the racist southern white cops put some respect on his name, “They call me Mister Tibbs!” Poitier was like Muhammad Ali who had demanded the same thing in the ring and in real life. In the film, the character of Endicott took offense to the fact that the “uppity” Tibbs had actually spoken to him as an equal, instead of like the fawning obsequious fool that he expected him to be. So, Endicott slaps Tibbs across the face for getting out of what he perceived to be his place. But quicker than the blink of an eye, Tibbs responded in kind, slapping the taste out of Endicott’s mouth, as it were. The “slap heard round the world” – this legendary cinematic moment when Poitier’s stardom afforded his character the opportunity to retaliate against a white man without fear of retribution – demonstrated that just because he was known for playing these proper gentlemen on screen, he could still handle his business, if need be.

Poitier’s image in film has often been associated with that of Dr Martin Luther King Jr; Poitier won the Academy Award for best actor the same year that King won the Nobel prize. But in this instance, when Tibbs slapped Endicott back, the character that he would most be associated with demonstrated that there were multiple layers to his complex persona. He may have reminded some of MLK, but in the late 60s when the civil rights movement was being challenged by assertions of Black Power, Virgil Tibbs did not turn the other cheek. Here he had more in common with Malcolm X than he did with Dr King, despite what his measured persona may have lead some people to believe.

Seeing In the Heat of the Night as a kid left an indelible imprint on my adult mind. Being a distinguished gentleman did not mean accepting humiliation, literally or figuratively. Demanding that those celluloid racists respect him and showing them that he could maneuver in a variety of ways said to me that being well-rounded and multidimensional, defying categorization, mixing supreme intellect with authenticity was indeed the way to go. This is what Tibbs, Poitier’s larger cinematic persona, and especially that photo of him playing the sax in his shades, surrounded by Blackness, came to stand for.

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in In The Heat Of The Night.

 Photograph: United Artists/Allstar

Many years after I initially saw Poitier in this groundbreaking film, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him. In the late 1990s Poitier was the commencement speaker at the USC School of Cinematic Arts where I have spent the last 30 years of my professional life. Watching him as a kid, the lone Black man navigating labyrinthine white spaces, was comparable to the occupational life I found myself living in the rarified spaces of academia. Exhibiting a gentlemanly manner coexisted alongside an understanding that not everyone agreed that I actually belonged in such an elite space. Like Virgil Tibbs, I could be diplomatic, but as that hilarious malt liquor ad from the 1980s said, “Don’t let the smooth taste fool you.”

Standing on the graduation stage in full academic regalia, as I placed a PhD hood on a newly graduated doctoral candidate, thinking about how the people who created all of this higher education pomp and circumstance most certainly never imagined that a cat like me would be representing in this way, I turned around to see Poitier approaching me, with his hand extended, smiling broadly. His words, “Nice to meet you, Dr” echoed as I shook his hand. As we stood there, I absorbed the magnitude of the moment. He offered multiple compliments and pleasantries, as gracious in life as that of his persona. We shared a knowing laugh. But this was Sidney Poitier, not Virgil Tibbs. He understood what this all meant, and so did I. Things that are understood often need not be articulated.

Sidney Poitier was a giant of American culture. He stands as one of the most important figures in the history of Hollywood, without question. The monumental legacy of Poitier’s style is evident in those that he influenced. Be it the career of contemporary Hollywood royalty Denzel Washington, or that of the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama. Sidney Poitier, the distinguished gentleman of cinema was groundbreaking, inspirational, cool, complex and authentic as well. The era he represented is long gone, but the foundation he laid is one we’re still building on. Rest in power!


Dr Todd Boyd is the Katherine and Frank Price endowed chair for the study of race and popular culture at the USC School of Cinematic Arts

REST IN POWER

Ronnie Spector, pop singer who fronted the Ronettes, dies aged 78

Influential singer of hits including Be My Baby, who married abusive producer Phil Spector, dies of cancer

Ronnie Spector performing in 2014.

 Photograph: Samir Hussein/Redferns/Getty Images

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Wed 12 Jan 2022 

Ronnie Spector, the singer who defined the sound of mid-century girl groups as the frontwoman of the Ronettes, has died aged 78.

A statement on her website states:

Our beloved earth angel, Ronnie, peacefully left this world today after a brief battle with cancer. She was with family and in the arms of her husband, Jonathan.

Ronnie lived her life with a twinkle in her eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked sense of humor and a smile on her face. She was filled with love and gratitude.

Her joyful sound, playful nature and magical presence will live on in all who knew, heard or saw her.

The Ronettes with Phil Spector. Photograph: David Magnus/Rex / Shutterstock

With her towering beehive hairdo and powerfully melancholic, melodramatic voice, Spector is among the most distinctive figures in American pop. Her hits with the Ronettes include the vastly influential Be My Baby – whose distinctive drum beat has been recreated countless times – as well as Baby I Love You, Walking in the Rain and a series of enduring Christmas cover songs. She also survived an abusive marriage to the group’s producer, Phil Spector, who was later imprisoned for murder.

Spector was born Veronica Bennett in New York in 1943, her heritage spanning African American, Native American, and Irish American. “When you don’t look like everyone else, you automatically have a problem in school,” she told the Guardian in 2019, saying her peers “would beat me up because I was different-looking”.

She formed the Ronettes in 1957 and the lineup quickly coalesced with her elder sister, Estelle Bennett, and cousin Nedra Talley. The trio earned a residency at a local club and a record deal, but early singles failed to chart. Estelle arranged an audition with Phil Spector, who signed the group, and whose co-written song Be My Baby became their first hit, reaching No 2 in the US in 1963, and No 4 in the UK.

With striking style based on form-fitting dresses and heavy makeup – “We weren’t afraid to be hot. That was our gimmick,” Spector later wrote – and backed by Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” production, the group had seven further US chart hits and contributed three songs to the 1963 compilation A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. They toured the US in 1966 as a support act to the Beatles; the Rolling Stones supported them on a Ronettes tour of the UK. “They could sing all their way right through a wall of sound,” Keith Richards later said, as the Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. “They didn’t need anything. They touched my heart right there and then and they touch it still.”


Ronnie Spector: ‘I love #MeToo and Time’s Up – because men’s time is up’

The Ronettes split in 1967, Ronnie started a solo career, beginning with the George Harrison-penned single Try Some, Buy Some in 1971. She didn’t reach the chart highs of her previous group and an attempt to reform the Ronettes with new members failed in the early 1970s, but she continued to release music throughout her life.

In 1976 she duetted with Southside Johnny on the Bruce Springsteen-penned duet You Mean So Much to Me. “It was an honour to produce her and encourage her to get back on stage where she remained for the next 45 years,” said Steve Van Zandt of the E Street Band, who produced the song, paying tribute in the wake of her death.

She returned to the US top five in 1986 as a guest singer on Eddie Money’s Be My Baby-interpolating song Take Me Home Tonight. In 1999, she collaborated with the Ramones frontman Joey Ramone, who produced her EP She Talks to Rainbows. Her most recent album was English Heart, in 2016.

Her romantic relationship with Phil Spector began in 1963 as an affair while Phil was married. He divorced his wife in 1965 and married Ronnie in 1968, becoming controlling, paranoid and abusive during their relationship. Notorious behaviour included making Ronnie drive with a life-size dummy of Phil alongside her; he kept her imprisoned in their house and threatened her with murder. She eventually escaped in 1972, fleeing in bare feet as Phil refused to let her own shoes.

She spent 15 years battling Phil with her bandmates for royalties they were owed, eventually successfully – in 2000 a New York court ruled that Phil owed them $2.6m. This decision was reversed in 2002 after judges found that the record deal the group initially signed meant that Phil Spector had rights to the recordings, but in 2006 the New York state supreme court awarded the group a lump sum, and ordered Phil to continue paying them yearly royalties. There were further legal complaints later that decade, with Phil accused of withholding royalty payments.

In 1982, Ronnie married her manager Jonathan Greenfield, with their marriage lasting until her death. She is survived by him and their two sons, Jason and Austin.

How we made the Ronettes' Be My Baby

The Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson was among those paying tribute, saying: “I loved her voice so much and she was a very special person and a dear friend. This just breaks my heart. Ronnie’s music and spirit will live forever.”

Anti-vaxxers are touting another new Covid ‘cure’ – drinking urine. But they are not the only obstacles to ending the pandemic

Those spreading misinformation are doing real damage. 

But big pharma and rich countries need to stop hoarding vaccines

Dangerous falsehoods are undermining trust in the Covid-19 vaccine. 

Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Rex/Shutterstock

Tue 11 Jan 2022 

Arwa Mahdawi

I am starting to think that common sense really is not that common after all – we live in exceedingly stupid times. Exhibit 874: US anti-vaxxers are now urging people to drink their own urine to fight coronavirus. Over the weekend, Christopher Key, the leader of an anti-Covid-19 vaccine group called the “Vaccine Police”, posted videos online extolling the health benefits of what he described as “urine therapy”. According to the wizard of wee, there is “tons and tons of research … [and] peer-reviewed published papers on urine”; so if you do your own pee-search you will discover it is God’s own antidote to Covid-19. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” Key said. “I drink my own urine!”

That is not the only questionable thing he does. Key was recently arrested for refusing to wear a mask and filming proceedings during a court hearing. The reason he was in court? He was arrested in April for refusing to wear a mask at a Whole Foods store. In August he made headlines for suggesting that pharmacists should be executed for administering coronavirus vaccines; in December he also set off on a road trip across the US with a fake badge and firearms, in a mission to arrest a Democratic governor over vaccine mandates. Very busy man, our Mr Key! I cannot help thinking that if his name was Mohammed his shenanigans would have had him locked up in Guantánamo Bay by now.

Key’s “urine therapy” is far from the only experimental – and highly dubious – Covid “cure” to be promoted during the pandemic. We all remember the former US president’s comments on the benefits of injecting bleach. Last year saw a prolonged bout of Ivermectin-mania. Now, along with urine, the right seems to be fixated on Viagra and colloidal silver. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who has repeatedly questioned the efficacy and safety of Covid vaccines, recently dedicated a portion of his show to hyping the potential of Viagra as a potential cure. Carlson seized on the story of a British nurse reportedly recovering from a Covid-19 coma, after being given a dose of Viagra, to sing the little blue pill’s praises. “Is there anything [Viagra] doesn’t cure?” Carlson joked. Yes, I am afraid it does not appear to cure stupidity.

Speaking of which, the conservative media personality Candace Owens recently told her social media followers that she takes a “teaspoon a day” of colloidal silver, a product that has also been touted as a Covid cure by the likes of Infowars founder Alex Jones. I am sure I do not need to tell you this but there is zero evidence that colloidal silver can help with Covid. On the contrary, taking too much can turn your skin blue permanently and, in rare cases, can even kill you. (I can never resist an opportunity to big-up my hero Wilkie Collins, so I urge you to read his underrated novel Poor Miss Finch, about a blind woman who falls in love with identical twins, one of whom turns blue after trying to cure his epilepsy with silver. The novel won’t cure Covid but it may provide temporary reprieve from existential ennui.)

The amount of misinformation about Covid cures is highly depressing, and it is important that we hold to account the people spreading dangerous falsehoods, and undermining trust in the vaccine. Still, let us be clear: the biggest obstacle towards ending this pandemic is not kooks such as Key and Owens. The obstacle is the rich countries that have been hoarding vaccines, and the likes of Pfizer and Moderna, who have been slow to license their vaccine technology (developed with taxpayer money) to poor countries. The fact that big pharma is making billions from a public health crisis is unconscionable. I am very pro-vaccine but I am running out of enthusiasm for boosters. The idea of potentially having to get a fourth shot soon, while so much of the world still cannot access a first dose, makes me sick. If only we had a vaccine for greed.


Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

After Fauci Smackdown, Rand Paul Fundraised On Fox News

POSTED BY ELLEN  ON JANUARY 12, 2022 · 

After Dr. Anthony Fauci blasted Sen. Rand Paul for spreading lies that have endangered the Fauci family for the sake of fundraising, Paul ran to Fox News – yep, to fundraise off the encounter.

The fiery exchange occurred in a Senate hearing yesterday. Paul accused Fauci of “catastrophic” errors and “an arrogance that justifies in his mind using government resources to smear and to destroy the reputation of other scientists who disagree with him.” This, from the guy who deliberately exposed his own colleagues to COVID-19 and who was suspended from YouTube for promoting the medical disinformation that masks don’t help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Paul’s larger goal was to argue that there was “no way” the virus originated in a Chinese lab and to suggest Fauci was engaged in some kind of cover up about his supposed role in its real origins, a right-wing meme.

Fauci wasn’t having any of it from Sen. Death. After a bit of back and forth, he lowered the boom, which you can watch below. He accused Paul of distracting from the real purpose of the committee, which was “to get our arms around” the pandemic and of ginning up anger against Fauci as a fundraising ploy – which has caused death threats to Fauci and harassment of his family.

That must have really gotten under Death Paul’s skin because he ran to Fox News not once, but twice. First, Paul visited the “news” show, America’s Newsroom. He joined Laura Ingraham’s more prolonged attacks on Fauci that evening.

Not surprisingly, America's Newsroom host Bill Hemmer didn’t mention the death threats Paul and colleague Tucker Carlson have instigated. That's not surprising given that Fox host Jesse Watters was just rewarded by the network with a primetime show after talking about taking a “deadly” “kill shot” at Fauci. Nor did Hemmer mention Paul’s deliberately risky behavior nor his spreading of COVID disinformation.

Instead, Sen. Death got a platform to complain, unchallenged, “we are doing way too many tests” and “before you know it, we’ve got a lockdown.” In fact, Hemmer all but asked for more attacks on Fauci, saying that after two years of the pandemic, “you can’t get a test” and “the therapies have not been pursued at the level that they should have.” Then, feigning curiosity, Hemmer asked, “Why is it so personal between you two?” That, of course, was nothing more than an opening for further attacks on Fauci from Paul.

And fundraising! Paul said, “I’m proud of the fact that people can go to [he gave his website address] and yes, we are raising money to fire Fauci.” That was followed by a long tirade against him. Paul concluded with a pitch for his re-election: “Yeah, it’s a political thing because whoever wins the election will make the decision on whether he stays or goes or whether we investigate where the virus came from in the beginning.”

FACT CHECK: While it’s true Paul is up for re-election this year and that GOP control of the House or Senate would inevitably lead to the kind of COVID investigations Sen. Death is salivating for, neither Paul nor his fellow Republicans have the power to fire Dr. Fauci.

Hemmer didn’t point that out to his viewers, even though they may have been duped into believing Paul's pitch.

But we, the voters, can fire Sen. Death Paul. A good guy, named Charles Booker, is running against him. You can check him out and join the fight here.

You can watch Fauci’s smackdown of Paul as well as his subsequent Fox fundraising below, from the January 11, 2021 America’s Newsroom. And don't forget: This dangerous demonization of one of the world's most respected infectious disease specialists is bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch.

DR.FAUCI PISSES OFF THE NY POST

Fauci dismissed Wuhan lab leak theory as ‘shiny object’ in April 2020 email IT WAS AND IT IS

By Mark Moore
January 11, 2022

An email from Dr. Anthony Fauci in which he seemed to dismiss the theory that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab was made public by House Republicans on Jan. 11, 2022.
EPA/Greg Nash / POOL

Dr. Anthony Fauci pooh-poohed the theory that COVID-19 may have emerged from a Chinese lab shortly after the onset of the pandemic in the US, calling it a “shiny object that will go away,” according to an email made public Tuesday by House Republicans.

Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, revealed the contents of the April 2020 email in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding he make the chief White House medical adviser available to testify.

On April 16, 2020, then-National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins sent Fauci a link to a report by Fox News host Bret Baier which stated that “multiple sources” who had been briefed on the origins of COVID-19 believed it emerged from the Wuhan lab.

“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy, with what seems to be growing momentum,” wrote Collins. “I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this. But probably didn’t get much visibility. Anything more we can do? Ask the National Academy [of Sciences] to weigh in?”

Fauci’s April 2020 email was made public by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).Brett Carlsen/Getty Images

“I would not do anything about this right now. It is a shiny object that will go away in times [sic],” Fauci responded to Collins early on the morning of April 17.

Two months earlier, on Feb. 1, 2020, Comer and Jordan claim, Fauci and Collins took part in a conference call with at least 11 other scientists in which they were warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but “it is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them.”

One participant in the call, Tulane University virologist Robert F. Garry, wrote in a follow-up email that “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario” for the emergence of the virus.

However, Garry later signed his name to a paper called “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” a draft of which was sent to Collins and Fauci before it was to be published in Nature Medicine. This was the paper to which Collins referred in his April 16 email to Fauci and it stated: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”


Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said Fauci’s emails “raise significant questions.”Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images

CONJECTURE OUT OF THIN AIR
“After speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins, the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak. It is also unclear if Drs. Fauci or Collins edited the paper prior to publication,” the Republicans’ letter says.


Fauci rages against Republican Sens. Paul, ‘moron’ Marshall at Senate hearing

That suggestion triggered a tense exchange between Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Fauci during a Senate Health Committee hearing Tuesday.

“Did you communicate with the five scientists who wrote the opinion piece in Nature, where they were describing, ‘Oh, there’s no way this could have come from a lab?'” asked Paul.

“That was not me,” responded an agitated Fauci. “You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning how you do that.”

“Were most of the scientists that came to you privately, did they come to you privately and say, ‘No way this came from a lab,’?” Paul later pressed. “Or … was their initial impression actually that it looked very suspicious for a virus that came from a lab?”

“Senator, we are here at a committee to look at a virus now that has killed almost 900,000 people,” Fauci deflected. “And the purpose of the committee was to try and get things out how we can help to get the American public. And you keep coming back to personal attacks on me that have absolutely no relevance to reality.”

The two GOPers also claimed that Fauci was aware in January 2020 that NIAID worked with the non-profit EcoHealth Alliance to design a policy that would sidestep a gain-of-function moratorium and allow it to complete dangerous experiments on novel bat coronaviruses.


The Republicans worry that Fauci could have edited a paper that discredited the lab leak theory.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Comer and Jordan further contend that Fauci also knew in January 2020 that EcoHealth was not in compliance with the terms of its grant that funded the Chinese lab.

EcoHealth also failed to submit a report to NIAID by Sept. 30, 2019, and the House committee learned that it had not done so “presumably to hide a gain-of-function experiment conducted on infectious and potentially lethal novel bat coronaviruses,” the letter said.

Jordan and Comer said the emails “raise significant questions.”

“Did Drs. Fauci or Collins warn anyone at the White House about the potential COVID-19 originated in a lab and could be intentionally genetically manipulated?” they ask. “If these concerns were not shared, why was the decision to keep them quiet made?”

LOT'S OF WHAT IF'S DO NOT MAKE A SINGLE FACT

Fauci Scolds Senator Citing Project Veritas Leaked Emails: It ‘Pains Me’ to Tell the American People How ‘Absolutely Incorrect You Are’

By Ken Meyer

Jan 11th, 2022

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s hearing before the Senate Health Committee went further off the rails as he and Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) sparred over the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) alleged link to the emergence of the coronavirus.

Shortly after Fauci’s explosive rematch with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Marshall was called upon to speak, and promptly told Fauci “you’ve lost your reputation. The American people don’t trust the words coming out of your mouth.” Fauci countered that Marshall’s comments are “a real distortion of the reality” of his efforts to promote the CDC’s health recommendations, though Marshall reiterated “you are hurting the team right now.”

From there, Marshall invoked a Project Veritas report based on leaked emails which push the notion Fauci lied in previous testimony that the NIH never funded gain of function research in partnership with EcoHealth Alliance. Marshall read through the emails as he accused Fauci of breaking the gain of function moratorium with the NIH’s funding grants, and he eventually arrived at three questions:

Why did you tell the committee that your agency has never funded gain of function research? Why did your agency award this grant despite it being rejected by DARPA due to its concerns about violating the moratorium that was in place? And finally, will you commit today to release all records fully un-redacted ,by the end of this week so Congress and the American people can know the truth about NIH’s role and the or engines origins of Covid-19?

“Senator, it really pains me to have to point out to the American public how absolutely incorrect you are,” Fauci responded. He said the DARPA grant cited by Project Veritas was “distorted,” then he added “We have never seen that grant, and we have never funded that grant. So once again, you are completely and unequivocally incorrect.”

Marshall reacted by saying his social media accounts would post the supporting documents behind the allegation, which prompted Fauci to ask him “you’re backing down on this?” This led to the two of them sparring over the legal definitions of gain of function research, and Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) had to interject multiple times as their confrontation nearly went out of control.

Joy and nakedness at San Francisco’s Dyke March: Phyllis Christopher’s best photograph

‘The march is like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year, where women celebrate half naked and anything goes’

Shirtless statement … Dyke March, 1999, by Phyllis Christopher. 

Photograph: Phyllis Christopher

Interview by Edward Siddons
Wed 12 Jan 2022 

In San Francisco, the night before the annual Pride parade is reserved for the Dyke March, a celebration of lesbian life throughout the city. It was like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year – and half of us would be so hungover we wouldn’t make it to Pride the next day.

I remember getting a call from an editor at On Our Backs, a lesbian magazine run by women that billed itself as offering “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian”. It was a bedrock of the lesbian community – one of the few ways to communicate with one another, and to celebrate sex and educate each other about it at a time when Aids had brought so much devastation to queer communities. The editor wanted me to shoot a kiss-in, but the tone of her voice sounded almost guilty – like she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask me to work on the biggest party night of the year. But to me, it was the most fun I could imagine

Lesbians from all over the country, many of whom I knew, had gathered in the park, mingling and chatting to whoever came along – gay, straight, whatever gender. But when the Dyke March began, the crowds cleared and the Dykes on Bikes took the lead, with the rest of us forming a column behind.

I’ve always found something beautiful about that moment: people stepping aside to give lesbians their space, to celebrate and applaud them. Many of the women would march shirtless as a gesture of their freedom. It was a time for lesbians to assert themselves in the public sphere, a moment of safety and joy.
It was a way of celebrating sex in the face of the death wrought by Aids – and opposing those who blamed us for it

The rules of the Dyke March were pretty much “anything goes as long as it’s fun”. Women were celebrating being half naked, feeling safe and supported by everyone. There were no protesters because there were simply too many queer people in San Francisco. It was a moment of wild abandon, marching through the streets, climbing bus stops, on top of cars, hanging out of windows.

This shot was taken on 18th Street in the Castro, one of the centres of queer life in San Francisco. Anyone who had an apartment on the march route would take full advantage of their windows. Every year, the inhabitants of houses would lean out of the windows, often with signs, screaming for the crowd and the crowd would scream back.

More than 20 years later, this image still hits me in my gut: I feel the power in it. It encapsulates a kind of joy that, at the time, was absolutely necessary. It was a way of celebrating sex in the face of the death wrought by Aids, and in opposition to voices on the right who blamed us for the epidemic. We couldn’t marry and job security was still uneven across the US for queer people. We still felt like outlaws

In the 1980s, there was a lot of discussion among feminists about the importance of sex. Some took a strident line – that photographing sex was offensive, even violent. While we owe everything to lesbian feminists of that era – they paved the way in so many respects – our generation wanted something different. We were pro kink, pro sex, and pro pornography. Sex meant a lot to us; we weren’t just going to let it go. It was a kind of political hedonism.

It wasn’t separatist by any means but the world we created in San Francisco felt like a beautiful laboratory

There have been few times in history where women run the camera, the press and the ecosystem of publishing. But the world we created in San Francisco felt like a beautiful laboratory. It wasn’t separatist by any means – we didn’t seclude ourselves from men and non-lesbians – but we were making work for each other. I think that’s evident in these images.

Publishing my work from that time in book form has been a dream of mine. I photographed that period so intensively: it told such a story of that community, and I didn’t want it to get lost. Photographs can get destroyed, ruined or lost, and the relative scarcity of lesbian publications means that, often, this work is absent from our collective archives. I’m so glad this survived.

I have immense respect for the women who let me photograph them. It was a real political statement. But there was a feeling that it was also essential to let other gay women know that they were not alone. There’s always this stereotype of the lesbian as angry. Often, we had reason to be. But sometimes, we were too busy having a great time.

Phyllis Christopher. 

Photograph: Kate Sweeney
Phyllis Christopher’s CV

Born: Buffalo, New York, 1963
Trained: State University of New York at Buffalo.
Influences: Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Honey Lee Cottrell, Jessica Tanzer, Chloe Atkins, Leon Mostovoy, Mark Chester and Jill Posener.
High point: Getting my book, Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 published this year.

Low point: Making the switch from working in a darkroom to the digital world. I missed the magic and chemistry of revelation under the red lights.

Top tip: “Follow your bliss – your heart always knows the answer.”

An exhibition of Phyllis Christopher’s work is at the Baltic, Gateshead, until 20 March. Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 is out now (£24).

HAPPY CARNIVORES
The seaweed-eating sheep that may help us to climate-friendly meat

By Vicky Allan

Senior features writer

HERALD SCOTLAND

11th January

The two-metre-high and 12-mile-long wall circling North Ronaldsay is probably the largest such continuous dry-stone dyke in the world, its purpose being to keep a unique breed of sheep out. The construction is a barrier, nearly two centuries old, that prevents the North Ronaldsay flock from reaching the grass that feeds the cattle, and keeps them to the foreshore, where they forage on a diet of seaweed.

The mutton from these small sheep is considered a gastronomic delicacy, served to the Queen at her Diamond Jubilee, and described as “gamey” in flavour. But also, more recently, this rare breed has drawn global attention because it is believed that they might provide clues for how to rear low methane-producing meat.

There has been much hype in recent years about the possibility that the introduction of seaweed to recent feeds might help reduce emissions of the methane, a greenhouse gas which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere. One study at the University of California found sprinkling 85g of seaweed a day into a cow's feed cut methane production by more than 80 percent. This asparagopsis seaweed produces a compound which inhibits the enzyme in the gut which enables formation of methane.

READ MORE: A cry for kelp. Why Scotland's green future could be blue

Methane is burped, and farted, out into the atmosphere by cattle and sheep. The average cow produces 160 to 320 litres of methane every day, the average sheep around 30 litres. We do not yet know the average daily emissions for the North Ronaldsay sheep.

The James Hutton Institute, however, has been researching what these pedigree sheep tell us about a seaweed diet for well over a decade, and has collaborated with Davidsons Animal Feeds, to investigate whether seaweed supplements might work to reduce methane emissions in other sheep and cattle.

Meanwhile, rearing sheep on North Ronaldsay, remains a practice unlike sheep farming anywhere else. A key figure on the island is the sheep dyke warden, whose job it is to maintain the wall. This is crucial, because any break in the wall, could lead to sheep getting through, not only eating grass reserved for cattle, but also impacting on their own health – since the sheep are now highly adapted to their seaweed diet. Long term exposure to the grass is bad for them, as their digestive systems have changed over time and they are now intolerant to the high copper it contains. What fascinates many scientists is the way their digestive systems have adapted, and in particular the way they are able to digest the distinct sugars present in brown seaweeds.

The lives of North Ronaldsay sheep are unlike those of any others. Instead of grazing in the day, and ruminating at night, they forage according to the tides, and, interestingly, it’s in the winter, when gales pile the seaweed high on the shore, when sheep eat best. Distinct in so many ways, the flock show show we may find answers for the future in old and very local practices; why, in this frequently monocultural world, they are so worth preserving.

HUMAN GUINEA PIG

Why pig-to-human heart transplant is for now only a last resort

Analysis: As doctors monitor world’s first human recipient of pig heart, safety and ethical concerns remain

Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted a heart from a pig into 57-year-old David Bennett. 

Photograph: University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM)/EPA

Ian Sample 

Science editor
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 11 Jan 2022

The world’s first transplant of a genetically altered pig heart into an ailing human is a landmark for medical science, but the operation, and the approach more broadly, raise substantial safety and ethical concerns.

Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center spent eight hours on Friday evening transplanting the heart from the pig into 57-year-old David Bennett, who had been in hospital for more than a month with terminal heart failure.

It was an exceptional procedure. Doctors considered Bennett to be facing near-certain death and deemed him too ill to qualify for a routine human heart transplant. As a last resort, the medical team sought emergency authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to transplant a heart from a genetically altered pig.

The heart came from a the pig created by Revivicor, a spin-out from PPL Therapeutics, the UK company that created Dolly the Sheep in 1996. Now under US ownership, Revivicor’s pigs are engineered to avoid immune rejection. Among the genetic alterations made are tweaks that remove a sugar molecule from the tissues that provokes organ rejection. The FDA approved the operation, along with the team’s proposal to use an experimental drug to prevent Bennett’s body from rejecting the organ.

Dr Bartley Griffith with David Bennett , the world’s first human recipient of a pig heart.

 Photograph: Bartley Griffith/AP

On Monday, doctors at the hospital said Bennett was awake and breathing on his own, but it was too soon to call the operation a success. Doctors are waiting to see how Bennett fares in the coming days, weeks and hopefully months.

The prospect of harvesting organs from animals to save human lives has a long and chequered history. Advocates see the approach as a way to slash waiting lists for desperately ill patients, while animal rights activists see it as dangerous and ethically abhorrent. In the 1960s, US doctors transplanted chimp kidneys into more than a dozen patients, all but one of whom died within weeks. In the 1980s, a premature baby in California received a baboon heart but died three weeks later.


Maryland doctors transplant pig’s heart into human patient in medical first

The main risk is immune rejection: even with organs from human donors, recipients need constant immunosuppression to prevent their bodies from attacking the transplants. While Revivicor’s pig heart is designed to be less prone to immune rejection than standard animal organs, it is unclear how well it will be tolerated by the body. Because the organ comes from another species, Bennett will need more potent immunosuppression than usual, which comes with its own medical risks.

Recent work on such donor animals has focused on pigs because, although they have different immune systems to humans, the animals’ organs are very similar. While much of the effort has been directed at making pig organs invisible to the human immune system, it is far from the only challenge. In the 1990s, scientists all but abandoned their work on donor pigs when they realised that retroviruses lurking in the animals’ DNA could potentially infect human cells. That raised the worrying prospect of transplanted organs spreading infection to the vulnerable patients who received them.

Research has been under way to overcome the problem, by taking genome editing to another level. After tweaking pig DNA to remove molecules that trigger immune rejection, scientists have made precision alterations that remove dozens of retroviruses from pig tissues in the hope the organs will be safer when they are eventually transplanted.

How well animal organs work will be for clinical trials to decide, rather than one-off operations. Many biotech companies are moving cautiously, setting up trials to check whether the organs are safe and effective, first in other animals and then in humans. For those with failing organs, the hope for now remains with the generosity of human donors.