It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, July 10, 2023
Wine production could be harming wild birds, French scientists find
Wild birds are "highly susceptible" to contamination by triazole fungicides in vineyards, new research has found.
Frederic Angelier/dpa
Wine, or at least a glass or two too many, has sometimes been thought of as a guilty pleasure.
Chief guilt-tripper these days is surely Ireland's government, which in May 2023 became the first European state to mandate health warning labels on bottles of booze, sparking the ire of the alcohol industry across the continent, Ireland's own included.
For those who like to kick back after work, glass of Merlot in hand, there could now be yet another reason to worry about the downside of wine.
That's because it has been shown that wild birds are "highly susceptible" to contamination by triazole fungicides in vineyards, according to fieldwork by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), which warned that the sprays, which used to help keep vines fungus-free, have been found "to disrupt hormones and metabolism, which can impact bird reproduction and survival."
The research, published by the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB), suggests that the birds are more vulnerable to the fungicides in vineyards than in other agricultural systems, such as wheat fields, where the sprays are also widely used.
"We found that birds can be highly contaminated by triazoles in vineyards," says Frédéric Angelier, senior researcher at the CNRS.
Vineyards "cover a large proportion of lands in some European countries and, importantly, they are associated with a massive use of fungicides," of up to 7 times' that with other crops.
The research was published after the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May published findings suggesting Europe's bird population had fallen by a quarter in four decades due to the use of fertilizer and pesticides.
As climate gets hotter, the termites get hungrier, UM-led study finds
Here’s something that will send a shiver up the spine of anyone who has battled termites — meaning just about every homeowner in Florida.
Termites get hungrier as temperatures get hotter, according to a new study, with their appetites for wood somehow whetted by rising temperatures.
That finding comes from more than 100 researchers across six continents who measured how fast termites ate blocks of dead wood left outside for at least a year in different regions with varying temperatures and rainfall.
The results were eye-opening, said Amy Zanne, a University of Miami biology professor who led the study. They also underline why warm South Florida is so inviting for such termites. In the study, termites living at sites averaging 86-degrees ate wood seven times faster than in cooler environments averaging 68 degrees. So increasingly hotter days driven by climate change likely means increasingly hungrier termites — in South Florida and elsewhere.
“Nobody has measured that high of a value, so we kept recalculating and checking,” said Zanne, who is the Aresty Chair in Tropical Ecology at UM. “It was surprising how sensitive they are to temperature.” Most termites aren’t pests
One note: The research study published in Science in 2022 actually focused on termites in the wild not the pests that move in uninvited and swarm in South Florida homes, causing costly damage and demanding expensive eradication treatments. In fact, less than 4 percent of the 3,000 known termite species are pests that give the rest of them a bad rap. The majority of termites contribute to the natural ecosystem, scientists say, nourishing the soil and breaking down dead material so new life can flourish.
“They’re also fascinating organisms because they have the social structure that allows them all to cooperate to make these incredibly high mountains,” Yatzo said.
Still, though the bugs munching your wall studs and window sills weren’t the focus of the study, Zanne and other researchers say it is fair to surmise that temperatures impact pest species in Florida much the same way. They too likely will pick up their pace eating wood in homes and businesses as climate pushes the mercury higher.
Researchers still don’t know why exactly the termites eat so much faster in higher temperatures. It could just be how enzymes and their guts respond to heat, similar to how human hearts pump faster and metabolism speeds up in rising temperature.
But Zanne’s research indicated termites are particularly responsive to heat. Her work compared the rate of termite eating to how fast microbes, such as fungi and bacteria, decompose dead wood in different environments. While the fungi and bacteria also sped up twofold in hotter temperatures, termites still took first place.
Climate change could impact termites in other ways as well. Some species could soon migrate north and south toward once cooler areas. With warming shifts to tropical climates, wood decay also will likely increase as termites access more areas of the world, the study indicates.
“They are accelerating the decomposition of wood in areas where that didn’t have termites so in that sense that are likely expanding and they are increasing their CO2 fingerprint,” said Oscar J. Valverde-Barrantes, an FIU assistant professor who conducted the experiment in Miami. Termite farts: An impact on climate?
There is also increasing research on how termites themselves might exacerbate climate change.
Termites, similar to cows, have microbes or bacteria inside their bodies that break down carbons during digestion. And like cows, termites fart — releasing gas in the form of methane and CO2.
While termites are tiny, there are an awful lot of them — a biomass that could be on par with humans or with cows, said Zanne. And their diet, wood, is an understudied storehouse of carbon, she said.
“So, if you think about the CO2 that we are releasing, that cows are releasing — termites are probably equivalent,” Zanne said.
That would be a lot of emissions. Cattle, for example, make up an estimated 14.4 percent of global greenhouse emissions, which contribute to climate change. It is still unclear, however, how much termites contribute to the global carbon footprint overall.
Studying how termites and decomposition of wood contributes to the global carbon cycle is a slow process and the science is complex. Just because termites emit methane, for instance, not all that gas actually makes it into the atmosphere. Termites often stay low to the ground which locks away carbon in the soil for longer. Another complication is that a bacteria in termite mounds, called methanotrophs eat up some of the methane in the process.
“One of the things that’s tricky about termites is taking it in the context of everything else that is happening,” said Abbey Yatzo, a UM doctoral student in Zanne’s lab, said. “A lot of the research about termites and understanding the role in the global methane budget is understanding the balance between what’s getting released, what’s getting mitigated, and what is actually entering the atmosphere.”
Yatzo is conducting an experiment in Australia to measure the amount of CO2 and methane released from termite mounds to understand more about that balance.
This climate report is funded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald retains editorial control of all content.
Mike Mosedale, Minnesota Reformer July 5, 2023, Silver carp jumping in the Fox River in northern Illinois. (Ryan Hagerty/USFW) As he dipped a net into a big cylindrical tub in the dimly lit fish laboratory at the University of Minnesota’s Hodson Hall, Dr. Peter Sorensen scooped a half dozen small silvery fish and gazed at the wiggling, bug-eyed creatures with a look of benevolence.
“I don’t hate them, I really don’t,” said Sorensen. “It’s not their fault they’re here.”
Sorensen, a longtime researcher and professor at the university’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, restricts the diet of his captives to stunt their growth. If he didn’t, he explained, the fingerling-size fish would already weigh 10 or 15 pounds — an unwieldy size for lab experiments.
The fish in question — silver carp — have occupied Sorensen’s professional attention for over a decade. It’s an outgrowth of rising concerns that the highly invasive species is inexorably moving up the Mississippi River from Iowa.
While the fishes’ northward march has been slowed by the existence of barriers in the river — the locks and dams that enable navigation — the carp can pass through spillway gates during times of high water, as well as the lock chambers during normal operations.
In 2012, lawmakers in St. Paul responded to the looming crisis and funded a new entity at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center. Sorensen, who had developed an expertise in the control of two other harmful invasive fish, the common carp and sea lamprey, was tapped as its first director.
Sorenson didn’t last long in the leadership post — “I’m a scientist, not a manager,” he said — but he has continued his research in the field of invasive carp, a catch-all term that describes silver carp, the closely related bighead carp, grass carp and black carp. His cluttered office is adorned with a trio of taxidermied silver, bighead and common carp.
In the course of his investigations, Sorensen has developed respect for the silver carp. For one thing, he notes, they are far more elusive than our native fish, with a wariness that makes them difficult to capture. “They are smart, skittish fish. They hear you coming. Traditional fishing gear doesn’t work very well. These are not walleyes,” he said, adding with a laugh: “Honestly, our native fish are pretty stupid.”
Silver carp are also not fish anyone, least of all a fisheries scientist like Sorensen, wants to see in Minnesota’s lakes and rivers.
“They have no ecological value, they take food from other fish, and they destroy water quality,” Sorensen said flatly. “They are just bad news.”
The other ‘silver tsunami’
Silver and bighead carp escaped into the Mississippi River in the 1970s after they were originally imported from Asia to Arkansas to control algal blooms in fish farms and sewage ponds (and widely touted as a green alternative to common chemical treatments).
In the years since, they have relentlessly expanded their range. Along the way, the fish — voracious, fast growing filter feeders that hoover up the phytoplankton and plankton that is base of the food chain — have devastated native fisheries. In some stretches of the Illinois River, silvers and bigheads account for as much as 90% of the fish biomass.
It’s not just anglers and fish biologists who are disturbed by this development. Silver carp, which can reach weights in excess of 90 pounds, have a strange habit of leaping high out of the water when startled. This has created a new hazard in many lakes and rivers, as schools of leaping carp, triggered by the sound of motors, occasionally collide with and injure people in passing boats.
The unusual behavior has given rise to some novel fishing tactics. To kill silver carp, some people deliberately drive through pods and, when the fish leap from the water, they shoot them with bow and arrow. The made-for-YouTube spectacle serves as a gruesome comedic counterpoint to the dire environmental calamity the fish represent.
In Minnesota, the first documented bighead was netted in Lake St. Croix, a wide spot in the St. Croix River in 1996. The first silver was discovered in the Mississippi near the Iowa border in 2008. In the years since, the fish — especially the silvers — have been spotted with increasing frequency in Minnesota waters, including in the Mississippi River in St. Paul.
While the appearance of the occasional stray is not necessarily worrisome, evidence that fish are here in substantial numbers is; that’s because both silvers and bigheads are wildly prolific spawners.
“At some point, they will reproduce. And if they start to reproduce, I don’t see any hope,” Sorensen said. “The females can produce a million eggs. They are moving upstream. If they reproduce, it will destroy half the fish in the river.”
That’s why Sorensen has focused his research on technologies that can stop — or at least slow — the carps’ upriver passage. The approach that he has long endorsed is called a bio-acoustic fish fence. The BAFF, as it is commonly referred to, combines strobing lights with underwater audio speakers and a curtain of bubbles.
While it sounds like a Rube Goldberg device (or an underwater disco), Sorensen said the BAFF, manufactured by a British company called Fish Guidance Systems, has been shown to be remarkably effective at repelling silver and bighead carp. Under laboratory conditions, Sorensen found that the BAFF deterred 90% of fish from passing the gauntlet. Real world experiments have been similarly encouraging. (Sorensen served as a co-leader of an ongoing BAFF demonstration project in Kentucky, where the device has been placed in a lock in highly infested waters).
Sorensen pointed out that he has published two peer-reviewed scientific papers that validate the efficacy of the approach. Long ago, he came to the conclusion that he knew the ideal spot to install a BAFF to best protect Minnesota waters: Lock and Dam #5, just upriver from Winona.
Frustration at the Legislature
Over his years working on the carp problem, Sorensen has become a regular figure at the Capitol, where he has testified in support of funding for carp research. In more recent years, he has repeatedly advocated for the construction of a BAFF in the lock at Winona.
“I think I’ve tried to get it funded five or six times now. I’ve lost count,” Sorensen said. “By 2015, when we were first looking at this, it was very clear to me that Lock #5 was the best spot.” In part, that’s because the spillway gates at the dam — the easiest means for fish to move upriver — are rarely open.
As part of his research, Sorensen has implanted receivers in common carp in the waters below the lock. Not once in two years of data collection has he recorded an upriver passage through the spillway. To the south, he said, the dams and spillways are “like Swiss cheese.” To his thinking, that makes clear that a deterrent in Lock # 5 is the best — and maybe last — bet to hold the fish back.
If reproducing populations of silver carp become established upriver of Winona, it would expose some of Minnesota’s most iconic waters to ecological catastrophe. The fish would almost certainly prosper in Lake Pepin, the nutrient-rich 22-mile long wide spot in the Mississippi south of Red Wing. The St. Croix River below the dam at Taylors Falls and the Minnesota River could easily be overrun soon afterwards.
In March, Sorensen appeared before the Senate’s Environment, Climate and Legacy Committee to testify in support of $17 million appropriation to fund the BAFF, along with monies for contracted netting operations and further research that the DNR sought.
Despite past failures at the Legislature, Sorensen was optimistic. Among other things, he came armed with a freshly completed 128-page feasibility study from Barr Engineering Company, which endorsed Lock #5 as the most suitable site for the BAFF.
According to the company’s analysis, a BAFF could be installed at a cost between $8.2 and $16.5 million, depending on whether the state chose to purchase or rent. Combined with other measures, including netting of fish below the lock, Barr endorsed Sorenesen’s findings that the BAFF could prevent the upstream passage of 99% of carp.
This year’s legislative push was spearheaded by the group Friends of the Mississippi River, with support from a bevy of other conservation organizations operating under the banner of the Stop Carp Coalition. It had the full-throated support of several lawmakers, including chief author, Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin. “This proposal is the only plan we have,” Hoffman told fellow lawmakers. If the fish begin to reproduce upriver from Winona, Hoffman warned, the state would likely be forced to spend millions on netting programs every year.
In one notable regard, the timing of the Senate hearing could not have been better. In past years, experts like Sorensen had cautioned that the carp were on their way. But on the very day of the hearing, the DNR announced that a commercial crew had just netted 30 silver carp just below Lock #5. It was the largest single capture of the fish that far north on the Mississippi.
In her testimony, Colleen O’Connor Toberman of Friends of the Mississippi highlighted the significance of that event. She also pointed to a political reality of the moment: With the state coffers awash in a record $17 billion surplus, there would probably be no better opportunity to fund a BAFF than 2023. “We will invest now or we will pay more later,” she told lawmakers.
Despite the prevailing enthusiasm for the BAFF, one key voice was conspicuous in its silence: the Department of Natural Resources. In testimony that day, Heidi Wolf, the supervisor of the DNR’s invasive species unit, touted the agency’s emphasis on carp capture and research. She also told lawmakers that the agency was ramping up plans to commence “a structured decision making” process, which would bring key stakeholders, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, DNR and the state of Wisconsin, together to settle on the best path forward.
Wolf did not expressly oppose the BAFF proposal but did not endorse it either. And she offered what seemed to be a measure of reassurance to senators anxious to get moving: There is no evidence, she said, that silver or bighead carp are successfully reproducing in Minnesota. (In Sorensen’s view, the absence of evidence of reproduction does not mean much, given the difficulty of sampling a big, fast flowing river like the Mississippi).
Still, both Sorensen and Toberman left the hearing convinced that there was a good chance the BAFF funding would be included in the committee’s big budget bill. They were wrong.
Due diligence or undue delay?
A few days later, when the language of the Senate’s environmental spending bill was unveiled, Whitney Clark, the executive director of Friends of the Mississippi, was “shocked” to see the BAFF money stripped out, with just $1.7 million left for more research, more targeted netting and, possibly, a study of potential modifications to the operation of the spillway at Lock #5.
After consulting with FMR’s lobbyist, as well as the chair of the Senate environment committee, Sen. Foung Hawj, DFL-St Paul, Clark concluded that the BAFF funding had been excised at the behest of DNR Assistant Commissioner Bob Meier. “Bob Meier went to Sen. Hawj and told him it was unworkable, that there would be cost overruns, and they had big questions about the viability, efficacy, and ongoing costs,” Clark said.
Clark felt sandbagged. Through the fall and winter, FMR had consulted regularly with the DNR about the bill. Before that, the group had repeatedly prodded the DNR to update its 2011 carp action plan (a process that is now underway). While the BAFF wasn’t included in the agency’s budget proposal, Clark said Meier and others in the agency seemed encouraging in the discussions. “I wanted it to be a collaborative effort,” said Clark. “I thought we were in a really good place.”
Reached for comment, Meier eschewed the notion that he single-handedly tanked the BAFF funding. That said, Meier contended that there are too many lingering questions to proceed with the BAFF before getting answers. “We were just concerned about putting the cart before the horse,” he said.
Some of the hurdles are jurisdictional. Lock #5 is federal property, he noted, which raises the question of whether it makes sense for the state to own and operate equipment. He believes the Army Corps of Engineers is more suited to the task. Further, Meier said the costs of the maintenance and operations remain uncertain. He also questioned whether the BAFF could withstand flood conditions and what, if any, effect it might have on native fish.
As part of the DNR’s structured decision-making process, which kicked off this June, Meier expects to have more answers by the end of the year. If there is a consensus among the agencies and stakeholders, he said, the Legislature could come up with the money for the BAFF. Twenty million dollars may be a lot of money, he noted, but it is less daunting against the backdrop of a $72 billion state budget
“If it’s important enough to do, and it makes sense, I don’t see that being a real excuse,” Meier said. As to the criticisms he has received from Sorensen and Clark, Meier was unruffled. “I don’t take those things personally,” he said. “I do my job and I do what’s best for the state of Minnesota.”
Asked whether the BAFF would have been funded had the DNR offered institutional support, Hawj was diplomatic. “I don’t want to be absolute on that,” he said of the agency’s role. “They’re not against it, but they want to have a good foundation for support.”
That said, Hawj insisted that the BAFF will be one of his priorities moving into the next session, adding: “I trust Dr. Sorensen’s research.”
For his part, Sorensen is unlikely to have much involvement in the fight over the BAFF going forward. At 68, he is moving into phased retirement. If the DNR funds the spillway study, he may go on emeritus status and work on that piece of the puzzle. But he has little appetite for further tracking the upriver spread of silver carp — a prospect he finds depressing.
In the months since the BAFF proposal died at the Legislature, Sorensen had visited Lock #5 regularly to track the movements of common carp that he has tagged with receivers. On several occasions, he said, silver carp were conspicuous in their presence, leaping out of the water.
By mid-June, Sorensen had an undergraduate disassembling his lab at Hodson Hall as he readied himself for a vacation at his off-the-grid summer home in British Columbia. He was not inclined to offer the DNR the benefit of the doubt, referring to the lack of urgency at the agency as “dereliction” and “ineptitude.”
In the course of his long career, Sorensen has worked on an array of vexing issues involving invasive fish, from the control of sea lamprey in the Great Lakes to the control of common carp in Tasmania. Many of those experiences were validating, as various state, federal and other government agencies coordinated to take swift action. “You’re not seeing any of that here,” he said. “It’s embarrassing.”
While no solutions are perfect, Sorensen said, aggressive action can bear results. After the sea lamprey devastated populations of lake trout, scientists have managed to curtail their numbers, and the trout have largely rebounded, even though the lamprey have not been completely eliminated.
Sorensen said that the level of collaboration to achieve such goals — and the willingness to take decisive, if imperfect action — has been missing since the alarms were sounded over the invasion of silver carp in Minnesota. In 2005, when the carp were beginning to appear in large numbers below a Mississippi River dam in Keokuk, Iowa, the DNR’s now-retired invasive species coordinator broached the idea of installing a BAFF at the dam there. Nothing came of it.
While no single approach is likely to be 100% effective in stopping the movement of the silver carp, in Sorensen’s view, that’s no excuse for not trying the best available option and buying time.
“My analogy is, if you are in a boat and it’s sinking because there is a hole and you don’t have a perfect plug but you have an old T-shirt, you stuff that old T-shirt in the hole. You fix the hole. Then maybe you go on Amazon and get a better plug,” Sorensen said. “I don’t know why that isn’t intuitive.”
Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and Twitter.
Thousands flood the streets in South Florida to rally for Haiti as kidnappings, violence surge 2023/07/09
Carl Juste/Miami Herald/TNS
MIAMI -- More than 2,000 people filled the streets marching under sweltering heat in North Miami Sunday afternoon to rally in support for the people of Haiti and to protest ongoing gang violence, political instability and corruption.
“We are marching against violence, we are marching against kidnapping,” Anna Dorvilier, 40, from West Palm Beach, yelled waving a sign that read “If we are not on the table, we are on the menu.”
Chanting and singing “Jistis pou Ayiti” and “Souf pou Ayiti” — Creole for “Justice for Haiti” and “Relief for Haiti” — the crowds waved tiny Haitian flags and followed a tractor trailer truck with an elevated platform carrying dignitaries like Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, clergy and musicians
“We are united for Haiti, and God’s ears are open today,” Levine Cava said.
Dance and church music boomed over huge speakers towed by the truck and the people in back and ahead of the semi sang along.
“We want everyone to hear our voices,” said marcher Mana Pierre-Louis, a 31-year-old who moved to South Florida from Haiti seven years ago. “We need a solution to Haiti now.”
The “Relief for Haiti” rally was organized by pastor Gregory Toussaint, senior pastor of Tabernacle of Glory Church in North Miami. Toussaint, who is CEO of Shekinah.fm. The North Miami was among several the pastor organized in major cities across the United States and in Haiti itself. He decided to organize a March after a petition drive to get support for a sanctions bill in congress garnered more than 100,000 signatures in a week.
Toussaint’s goal was to bring together Haitians in the U.S., Haiti, Canada and France in an effort to bring awareness to the escalating gang violence and kidnappings in the Caribbean country, and demand something be done.
Sunday’s rally also comes amid escalating violence in the Caribbean country. On Friday, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières announced suspension of all treatment at its trauma facility in the Haitian capital after approximately 20 armed men stormed its hospital in Tabarre.
The incident on Thursday night serves as a microcosm of the unprecedented level of violence in Port-au-Prince, and particularly in Tabarre, where armed men last month kidnapped prominent journalist Marie Lucie Bonhomme out of her home in the middle of the night. Ten days later they abducted her husband, the former head of the Provisional Electoral Council, Pierre-Louis Opont. He remains in captivity.
The march started at North Miami Senior High School on Northeast Eight Avenue and ended at North Miami City on 125th Street.
And though the rally was announced last week, the enormous size of the crowd was a pleasant surprise to those marching.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Babylson Dorelien, a 49-year-old Coral Springs man who moved from Haiti when he was a little boy in the early 1980s. He grew up to join the U.S. Army, and while Dorelien considers the United States home, he — like the others at the rally — want to be able to visit Haiti. Something the increasing gang violence makes nearly impossible.
“It’s necessary to be united and bring everyone together to show the world we are as one and we want our country to be free of the corruption and to be free to go back to our country and enjoy our country as we should,” he said.
His wife, Marjorie Dorelien, also 49, said something divine was afoot Sunday gauging from the sea of people covering the streets and hearing about similar rallies in other cities around the world.
“This is God’s purpose, and God is going to make a move,” she said.
In the United States, marches were planned a number of cities, including Atlanta, Newark, N.J., Brookyln, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Philadelphia and Tampa.
Guerty Saint Jour, 43, said she hasn’t been back to Haiti in six years. She said if those living in the U.S. can’t visit friends and family in Haiti, the people left behind will continue struggle, especially economically.
“The people are suffering and they need help,” she said. “But, we can’t help them because we can’t go back to our country, to visit, to send money, to send goods.
Her friend, Woodline Mezier, 39, was born in Haiti, but also hasn’t been able to return since 2017.
“We’re tired of working 40 hours a week, and we’re not able to go home,” she said.
Mezier said she’s also sad that her young children have never been able to go to Haiti to visit their relatives there.
“Our heart breaks because Haiti is our country,” she said. “It’s home.”
In its latest report on the situation in the country, the United Nations says that violence by armed groups in the country is worsening, with sexual violence against women and girls and attacks against police officers and substations on the rise. María Isabel Salvador, who heads the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, told the U.N. Security Council that another worrying trend is the rise in vigilante killings. Her office has documented the killing of 264 alleged gang members by vigilante groups this year.
Back in Haiti, several thousands took to the streets at noon, traveling a familiar protest route that started near the Carrefour airport and headed in the direction of the National Palace. As they marched, they waved signs in Creole that read, “Haiti will not go to waste.”
Those participating in the North Miami march said they’re optimistic the large turnout at home and at similar rallies abroad could create a momentum resulting in improved conditions for people living in Haiti.
“The country of Haiti has suffered a lot, and the roots of the challenges in our country are very deep,” said Mashli Fleurestil, a member of Fraternity Baptist Church in North Miami. “But change has to start, and this is our first step in helping organize the diaspora here in Miami.”
In Philly and nationwide, interest is rising in psychedelics to treat depression. The FDA released new research guidelines.
2023/07/10
Jason Wallach, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Saint Joseph’ s University, left, and Garrett Walker, pharmacology and toxicology major, right, examine slides in the lab.
- Melissa Kelly/Saint Joseph’s University/TNS/TNS
When Jason Wallach started researching psychedelic compounds just over a decade ago, he expected he would spend his career laboring in obscurity.
Now the Food and Drug Administration is taking new steps to advise scientists studying these drugs, a sign that the federal government, and society at large, are paying closer attention to his rapidly-growing field of research. Wallach, a professor at Philadelphia's St. Joseph's University, develops psychedelic drugs to treat depression and other mental illnesses.
In June, for the first time, the FDA released a draft list of guidelines for conducting clinical research studies with those drugs.
The FDA has been approving studies for these drugs for some time, Wallach said, but the release of guidelines shows that interest in psychedelic compounds is higher than ever.
"They realize there's a lot of studies going on actively and likely to be a lot more," he said.
Wallach recalls how not long ago most researchers dismissed the possible therapeutic uses of hallucinogenic drugs like LCD and psilocybin, and more experienced colleagues told him to get out of the field entirely.
"A faculty member told me there was no funding, that people just don't understand the potential, and that prohibition and the drug war has done so much damage that it's just a bad career move. I didn't take that advice," he said, laughing.
Rising interest in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, there's rising interest in the field of psychedelics, a class of hallucinogenic drugs that can alter people's senses and perceptions. Last November, hundreds of advocates and therapists met at a conference at the Independence Visitor Center aimed at helping attendees navigate the fast-growing industry.
Pennsylvania has not legalized many psychedelic drugs for therapeutic use, as Oregon and Colorado have. But there is a small but growing industry of clinicians in Philadelphia who incorporate psychedelic therapy into their work.
Some prescribe patients the hallucinogenic drug ketamine — which is legal in the state — to use under observation and in combination with therapy sessions. (The new FDA guidelines do not include studies researching ketamine.)
There's also an underground network of "trip sitters" who guide people through experiences with psychedelics that haven't been legalized here.
Wallach isn't involved in clinical studies, but for the last two years has partnered with Compass Pathways, a British biotech company, to develop psychedelic compounds to treat depression and other mental health issues. He partners with Compass researchers currently running trials, and the new guidelines won't change their existing work.
Stephen Levine, Compass's senior vice president for patient access and medical affairs, said the company is pleased to see the FDA recommend "rigorous" standards for psychedelic studies, just as they would any other drug. Currently, the company is running large-scale human trials on a psilocybin compound aimed at alleviating treatment-resistant depression.
"There are huge unmet needs out there — millions of people suffering," Levine said. "But we still do have a lot of unanswered questions. We have to make sure these things actually help people, and make sure that a safe framework is set up."
Unique research challenges
The new FDA guidelines — for which the agency is accepting public comment through Aug. 25 — apply to "classic psychedelics," a class of drugs that includes LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms.
They include recommendations on how to safely monitor study participants while they take the drugs, and note concerns around the potential for abuse of psychedelics.
The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, those with "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." Researchers have to comply with additional DEA regulations to study Schedule I substances.
The FDA also highlighted the unique challenges of designing effective studies with psychedelic drugs. For example, psychedelic drugs can cause people to experience hallucinations or alter their senses. So blind studies, in which one group of participants receives a drug and the other receives a placebo an effort to generate unbiased results, are more difficult to conduct.
"If you give one group psychedelics and one group a placebo, you're going to know which is which and they're going to know which is which," said Holly Fernandez Lynch, an assistant professor of medical ethics and law at the University of Pennsylvania.
The FDA is holding psychedelic drugs to the same regulatory standards as any other new medication, she said: "Researchers are going to have to demonstrate in some meaningful way that [the drugs] have their intended affect."
The real reason Social Security is in danger that nobody’s talking about Robert Reich July 9, 2023, Photo by Brock Wegner on Unsplash
It’s not just because too many boomers like me are retiring. It’s because of inequality.
Now, I don’t want to alarm you. Social Security is still helping us oldies enjoy our golden years — but only for so long.
Social Security is one of the most popular and successful government programs ever created, not only helping retirees — but it’s also keeping 26 million people out of poverty. Yet here is the problem:
It’s going run out of money before you can ever receive it if the rich don’t start paying their fair share.
Boomer retirees like me might be soaking up some sun, but we’re not soaking up all of the program’s funds.
The Social Security trustees anticipated the boom in boomer retirements. This is why Social Security was amended back in 1983, to gradually increase the age for collecting full retirement benefits from age 65 to 67. That change is helping finance the boomers’ retirement.
What did the trustees fail to anticipate? How much income would be going to the top.
But income subject to the Social Security payroll tax is capped. No dollar of earnings above the cap is taxed. The cap in 2023 is $160,200.
So, as the rich have become far richer, more and more of the nation’s total income has escaped the Social Security payroll tax.
For example, a CEO earning $20 million a year pays Social Security taxes on roughly 1% of their income, while a worker earning under the cap pays Social Security taxes on 100% of their income. But they both end up paying the same amount of money into the program.
The rise in the amount of income above the cap due to inequality has cost the Social Security Trust Fund reserve an estimated $1.4 trillion since 1983.
The solution is obvious: it’s time to scrap the cap, and make the rich pay more in Social Security taxes.
One plan introduced in Congress would eliminate the cap on earnings over $250,000 and also subject investment income to Social Security taxes. It’s estimated that this would extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years without raising taxes on 93% of American households.
This is where you come in. Share this video and help spread the word about the real threat to Social Security.
If we want to ensure Social Security’s long term future, and that working people can retire with dignity, we must make the wealthy pay their fair share.
Fox News guest: Blood-drinking Chinese soldiers secretly invaded US for upcoming attack
Columnist Gordon Chang told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that blood-drinking Chinese fighters have secretly entered the United States in preparation for a surprise attack.
During an interview on Sunday, Bartiromo noted that the apprehension of Chinese nationals at the southern border was up 1,300% in the last year.
Chang said some of the apprehensions involved middle-class Chinese.
"But among them are packs of males of between 5 and 15 who are of military age, not coming with family groups, pretending not to speak English, and engaging in Chinese military rituals like drinking blood," he explained. "So clearly, these are saboteurs coming into America to wage war on the United States on the first day that there is war in Asia."
"Drinking blood?" Bartiromo gasped. "Is that what you just said?"
"One of the Chinese military rituals is to slaughter an animal, in this case, chickens," Change claimed. "Michael Yon, a war correspondent, has seen this, and they basically drink the blood. And this was done in a hotel in Panama after they crossed the Darien Gap from Colombia. So we know that these are Chinese military coming into our country."
Dead birds pop up in Oklahoma City: Like 'a Hitchcock movie'
July 9, 2023 Photos: Screen captures
"Like a scene out of a Hitchcock movie," said one Oklahoma woman while standing outside of a Starbucks. She sent Raw Story a video of the grass and parking lot.
At a number of spots around the Oklahoma City and Mustang, Oklahoma area, dead birds are covering the ground.
According to the woman that contacted Raw Story, an employee at Starbucks said that someone was coming to "take care of it," because customers were unnerved by the scene.
"The meteorologist that I trust with my life says that the #OklahomaCity storm's more severe weather tracked over all these dead birds," tweeted Casey Pregent. "Walmart/ olive garden/ Starbucks at sw 3rd and MacArthur: avoid the area."
Her comment was part of a conversation with KOCO's meteorologist Michael Armstrong, who explained that the birds could have been killed due to the early morning storm that rolled through the city. Winds were clocked at about 80 mph, and some areas of the city saw hail, including the areas with the dead birds.
"It’s definitely consistent with the track of the worst hail and wind," said Armstrong. "It’s not unprecedented for cattle to be killed by hail, and now imagine birds riding out wind-driven hail sitting in a tree. It’s just an unfortunate side of these powerful storms."
The reasoning is unusual because Oklahoma is known for its storms, tornadoes, and large hail. Only a month ago, parts of Oklahoma City and Edmond experienced DVD-sized hail. But there were no widespread bird carcasses littering the ground at the time. The same can be said for Chickasha in April, where baseball-sized chunks of ice fell from the sky. There were no widespread bird deaths in that case either.
Unlike cattle, birds have a lot of freedom of movement and places where they can hide outside and under things that are more solid than trees. Cows have a fairly restricted environment, given they're often fenced in.
The Suffolk, New York County Health Department announced that they are collecting some dead birds under suspicion that they could have succumbed to the West Nile virus. They explained birds like crows, blue jays, robins and birds of prey are the most susceptible to the infection.
Another alternative could be a chemical spray, either a pesticide or something similar.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has a new desperate prayer to God: kill everyone.
Speaking on his Sunday show, Jones' logic was a little convoluted, but essentially he wants the world to be blown up before anyone else can do it.
"And we, we, we also have to talk to the establishment and just say, listen, you know, you've lost and we'll give you absentia, you can go and, and take some of your stolen money," Jones rambled. "People say, don't be a wimp, we want vengeance. No. You look at how wars get ended properly because you just, you just, you mark them. You expose them. By mark them, I mean mark them in the media. You expose them, and then you destroy their names politically, and culturally, and, and then you let them go because they will blow stuff. They will blow the planet up if they're cornered now.
"Now I'm trying to give the globalists a way out," Jones tried to explain. "The globalists are losing and might blow up the planet. But if they are going to win, then God should blow up the planet now for the sake of the children."
Recently, Raw Story wrote about Jones claiming that Donald Trump knew of an assassination plot and that he was ready to die. Nothing has happened. Jones was also desperate to promote a conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden was killing Secret Service agents "within days" of finding the cocaine in the White House. No agents have died.
COLD CASE James Lewis, the sole suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, has died
2023/07/09
James Lewis, the lone suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, was found dead Sunday at his home in suburban Boston, multiple law-enforcement sources confirmed to the Tribune.
His death comes after 40 years of intense scrutiny from law enforcement, in which Lewis played a cat-and-mouse game with investigators. Local authorities questioned him as recently as September as part of a renewed effort to bring charges in the case.
With the investigation’s only suspect dead, it now seems unlikely that charges will ever be brought in poisonings that killed seven people and caused a worldwide panic.
“I was always hoping justice would be served, and this short-circuits it,” said former FBI special agent Roy Lane, who worked the case for decades.
Former assistant U.S. attorney Jeremy Margolis, who successfully prosecuted Lewis for an attempted extortion related to the case, also expressed regret that Lewis was never held accountable for the murders.
“I was saddened to learn of James Lewis’ death,” he said in a statement to the Tribune. “Not because he’s dead, but because he didn’t die in prison.”
Lewis — a convicted con man who inserted himself into the Tylenol investigation by sending an extortion letter to the drug’s manufacturer — long denied being the killer. He was 76.
Seven Chicago-area residents died after swallowing Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide in September 1982. The victims were Mary Kellerman, Mary McFarland, Mary “Lynn” Reiner, Paula Prince, and Stanley, Adam and Terri Janus. Their deaths prompted a national recall of the medicine and led to the adoption of tamper-evident packaging.
The ensuing police investigation, including the intense focus on Lewis, was the subject of a Tribune series and companion podcast last year. The award-winning podcast, “Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders” was produced in partnership with At Will Media.
The Tribune investigation revealed investigators believe Lewis tampered with the Tylenol in an act of revenge against Johnson & Johnson, Tylenol’s parent company. Records show his 5-year-old daughter, Toni, died in 1974 after the sutures used to fix her congenital heart defect tore.
The sutures were made by Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, according to a medical document reviewed by the Tribune.
Days after the murders, Lewis sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson, demanding payment to “stop the killing.” After being convicted of attempted extortion, he offered to help investigators find the killer. He met with them several times, drawing detailed sketches showing ways of filling the capsules and providing flowcharts on how to carry out the poisonings without getting caught.
Those drawings played a key part in what law enforcement described as a “chargeable, circumstantial case” against Lewis, according to documents reviewed by the Tribune.
Lewis spent about 13 years in federal prison for attempted extortion related to the Johnson & Johnson letter and for committing mail fraud in a Kansas City credit card scam in 1981. He was released from prison in October 1995 and then joined his wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived the rest of his life.
In a brief conversation with the Tribune last August, Lewis again denied being the Tylenol killer and suggested he has been treated unfairly.
“Have you been harassed over something for 40 years that you didn’t have anything to do with?” he asked.
A Tribune reporter spoke to Lewis while he was walking near his home. He gave no direct response to a question about law enforcement’s most recent attempts to bring charges against him.
Lewis, instead, pointed the finger at Johnson & Johnson and questioned why its corporate scientists were allowed to test Tylenol bottles that were recalled after the murders. Lewis has long maintained that the company was given too powerful a role in an investigation that centered on its own product.
Last September, a suburban police detective and two Illinois State Police investigators traveled to Cambridge to interview Lewis. Sources said they persuaded Lewis to meet with them by offering to return a personal item seized in a raid of his home in2009.
Lewis met with investigators on an overcast afternoon at a hotel within walking distance of his condo. They spoke for several hours in a recorded interview. Investigators left Boston the next day without making an arrest. The meeting was the most significant sign of activity in the case in a decade. But the investigation appears to have stalled afterward.
Lewis’ cause of death was not immediately known.
Cambridge police Superintendent Fred Cabral confirmed to the Tribune that authorities found Lewis’ body after responding to his condo just after 4 p.m. Sunday.
Lewis’ wife was out of town at the time. After being unable to reach her husband, she asked someone to check on him and he was found unresponsive.
“We have no reason to believe there was anything suspicious,” Cabral said of Lewis’ death.
Public records show Lewis had a history of heart problems and had been in poor health recently. Cabral said Cambridge police also notified Illinois law enforcement.
The Tribune’s investigation leading up to the crime’s 40th anniversary included more than 150 interviews in multiple states. Reporters also obtained tens of thousands of pages of documents through records requests, including sealed affidavits and court orders that outline some of law enforcement’s best evidence in the unsolved case.
Reporters viewed an FBI video from an elaborate 2007-08 undercover sting operation in which Lewis stated it took him three days to write the extortion letter. At Lewis’ 1983 trial for attempted extortion, prosecutors could not determine the exact date on the letter’s postmark. They told jurors only that it had been sent in early October.
Since then, however, advancements in technology had allowed the FBI to determine the letter was mailed Oct. 1, 1982, the Tribune reported.
On the undercover recording, Lewis did not dispute that date. After confirming he spent three days writing the letter, Lewis asked FBI Special Agent Lane — who had come out of retirement to help with the sting — when the homicides took place.
Lane picked up a manila folder, sketched out a calendar and showed it to Lewis, who had a messenger bag strapped across his body. The agent calmly counted back three days from Oct. 1, landing on Sept. 29 — the day all seven victims swallowed poisoned capsules.
News of the poisonings didn’t become public until Sept. 30, meaning Lewis would have been writing the letter before officials had even determined the pills had been poisoned.
Lewis was quiet for a moment on the recording and then hugged the messenger bag to his chest.
“I see your quandary,” he says on the recording. “I’ve been telling myself for 25 years I worked on it for three days. But it’s impossible.”
The FBI asked Cook and DuPage County prosecutors in 2012 to move forward with a grand jury, stating that it was law enforcement’s best — and perhaps last — chance at bringing justice to the case. No charges were ever approved.
“There’s not, as the prosecutors say, a smoking gun,” Rob Grant, former special agent in charge of the Chicago office, told the Tribune last year. “But smoking guns can come in a lot of different places and they can come from a compilation of evidence. … It’s all the pieces assembled on the table that makes a gun. And it’s all those pieces I think we have.”
Lewis’life is chronicled in more than 5,000 pages of court transcripts, parole documents and psychological assessments maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration and obtained by the Tribune. The records paint a portrait of a convicted con man whose life, at times, was driven by vindictiveness, trauma and a steadfast belief that he was always the smartest person in the room.
Born on Aug. 8, 1946, in Memphis, Tennessee, Lewis was the youngest of seven children. His birth name was Theodore, after his father, Theodore Elmer Wilson. His parents were “poor, irresponsible” and ill-equipped to care for their children, according to federal court documents.
After his father deserted the family when Lewis was a year old, his mother, Opal, moved the children to Joplin, Missouri, to be closer to her own mother. But she still struggled to provide a stable home and later abandoned the children in the summer of 1948.
Young Theodore was adopted at age 2 and his name was changed to James William Lewis.
The Lewises raised him as an only child on a 20-acre farm near Joplin, living what investigators called “an unremarkable childhood.”
The first documented sign of psychological trouble came in summer 1966 when Lewis was 19. According to the records, the teen went missing for about two days that June and was found in a shallow pond “apparently trying to drown himself.”
He was brought back to his family’s home, where he demanded access to his stepfather’s gun cabinet. When his stepfather refused to give him the key, court records say, Lewis violently attacked the older man and broke several of his ribs. As his parents fled their farm during the outburst, Lewis threatened them with an ax, the records state.
Lewis was arrested on assault charges and spent three weeks in the county jail, where authorities said he took 36 aspirin in a suicide attempt. The charges were dropped after Lewis was committed to a state psychiatric hospital on June 24, 1966, according to federal records.
In the decades that followed, Lewis would repeatedly deny attacking his stepfather. “My parents were good and loving people,” he told a judge in 1984. He insisted that “his commitment for treatment was merely a ruse he perpetrated in concert with his parents in order to evade the draft,” records show.
He briefly attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he befriended people in the pharmacology department and met his wife, LeAnn. The couple married in 1968 and she gave birth to their only child, Toni, the following year.
Toni, who was born with Down syndrome, would sit in the window of her parents’ tax business and wave to passersby. One of those people was Raymond West, who befriended the little girl’s parents and hired them to do his taxes.
Five years after Toni’s death, West’s dismembered body was found in the attic of his home in August 1978. Lewis was charged with his murder after Lewis forged a check in West’s name for $5,000 and police determined Lewis was the last person to see West alive. Prosecutors, however, dropped the case on the eve of trial after a judge found Lewis had not been read his rights before being questioned about his former tax client’s death.
Kansas City police began investigating Lewis again in 1981 for a credit card scam, prompting Lewis to leave town and move to Chicago. He and LeAnn lived there for about nine months under assumed names before assuming new identities and moving to New York three weeks before the Tylenol poisonings.
