BILLIONAIRES BUILD NUKES

UK gets glowing salute from Bezos-backed General Fusion: Nuclear energy company to build plant in Oxfordshire

Biz will develop Magnetized Target Fusion technology at the site

Tim Richardson

Fri 18 Jun 2021 

General Fusion – the Canadian-based atomic outfit backed by Jeff Bezos and a battalion of other major investors – is to build a test facility in Oxfordshire to showcase its power-generating technology.

Following a COVID-friendly handshake, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has given General Fusion the green light to proceed with its Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP) at UKAEA's Centre for Fusion Energy Campus in Culham.

The campus – a Royal Navy airbase until it was handed to the UKAEA in 1960 – is home to a cluster of fusion development technologies.

The building of the new plant is expected to start in the second half of next year and should be up and running in 2025.


According to the announcement, the FDP will feature General Fusion's proprietary Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology. If successful, it could lead to the creation of a commercial pilot plant.

Writing in the company's blog, General Fusion chief exec Christofer Mowry explained: "At 70 per cent of full scale, it will be powerful enough to heat hydrogen plasma fuel to fusion temperatures of 150 million degrees.

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"Utilising our pulsed Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology, the FDP is designed to refine those technical performance metrics that will become the measure of our technology's ability to economically produce energy, durably operate as a power plant, and easily follow the fluctuating demands of electricity on power grids."

According to General Fusion, just 1kg of fusion fuel can power 10,000 homes for a year.

Earlier this month TerraPower – the Bill Gates-founded nuclear company – and Warren Buffett-owned PacifiCorp revealed they were hooking up to build a Natrium reactor at a decommissioned coal plant in Wyoming, US.

The project is based around a 345MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with a molten salt-based energy storage system.

According to boffins, the storage technology can boost the system's output to 500MW of power for more than five and a half hours when needed, which is equivalent to the energy required to power around 400,000 homes. ®

The Jeff Bezos-backed company General Fusion is building a nuclear fusion plant, which is due to switch on in 2025
insider@insider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton) 

© Provided by Business Insider Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Nuclear fusion company General Fusion is building a demonstration facility in the UK.

Jeff Bezos has been an investor in General Fusion for over a decade.

The new facility will begin construction next year, and should be operational by 2025

General Fusion, a Canadian company backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced Thursday it's building a nuclear fusion facility in the UK.


General Fusion and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) announced the project together, which will see General Fusion build a fusion demonstration plant in the village of Culham, near Oxford.

The facility will be a proof-of-concept, allowing General Fusion to demonstrate its Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology before going on to build its first commercial facility.

According to General Fusion, construction will begin in 2022, and it is expected to be about three years before the plant is able to open.

"This new plant by General Fusion is a huge boost for our plans to develop a fusion industry in the UK, and I'm thrilled that Culham will be home to such a cutting-edge and potentially transformative project," the UK science minister, Amanda Solloway, said in a statement.

The BBC reports Bezos has been an investor in General Fusion for over a decade, and the company raised $100 million in its latest funding round.

Nuclear fusion is still an experimental energy source. It differs from nuclear fission, which is what modern nuclear power plants use to generate energy.

Whereas fission involves splitting atoms, fusion happens when two atoms collide and form one heavier atom. Commercially viable fusion has been highly sought after, as it would theoretically produce much more power than fission as well as far fewer radioactive byproducts.

Read the original article on Business Insider

INDIA’S VACCINE MAKERS ARE PANDEMIC PROFITEERS, NOT HUMANITARIANS

The Indian government’s free-market approach to vaccine distribution has privileged profit over lives.

A health care worker holds a vial of Covishield at a vaccination center in Sopore, in the Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir on May 3, 2021. 

Photo: Nasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via AP

Aparna Gopalan
June 19 2021, 1:00 a.m.

IN APRIL, a deadly Covid-19 surge overtook India as the country’s overflowing hospitals and crematoria made global headlines. While new daily cases are now reportedly in decline, the overall death toll continues to rise — estimated to exceed official figures at well over 1 million. At the height of the surge, India’s vaccination rate began falling, and just 3.5 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated.

Most global media coverage has attributed the ongoing crisis to two key causes: the Indian government’s mismanaged pandemic response and Big Pharma. Over the last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right government engaged in superspreader theatrics rather than disaster mitigation. Meanwhile, by upholding patents on Covid-19 vaccines, pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and Europe have denied low- and middle-income countries the ability to produce lifesaving vaccines, creating a system of global vaccine apartheid that devalues non-Western lives.

Amid the censure of the Modi government and Big Pharma, India’s health care capitalists have gone largely unnoticed. Aided at each step by the government’s free-market approach to vaccine distribution, India’s very own Big Pharma has used the pandemic to strengthen market shares, grow profits, and place vaccines behind a paywall unscalable for most people in a country riven with dire systemic inequalities.

“The Indian vaccine ‘market’ is held in a vise-like grip of a vaccine duopoly,” journalist V. Sridhar, who has written about the country’s vaccination failures for the Indian news magazine Frontline, told me in a message. “What else would you call this duopoly but vaccine barons?”

Almost all of India’s vaccine supply comes from the country’s two largest vaccine producers: Serum Institute of India, led by CEO Adar Poonawalla, and Bharat Biotech, run by founder Krishna Ella. While both companies have repeatedly advertised their vaccines as the cheapest in the world, they seldom mention that those vaccines are also the world’s most profitable. For each dose sold to private hospitals, Serum makes profits of up to 2,000 percent — what Poonawalla might consider “super profits” — and Bharat Biotech up to 4,000 percent. In comparison, based on the estimated cost to make one dose, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s profit margins are 650 percent and 500 percent, respectively.

“Disasters are a fabulous business,” journalist P. Sainath writes in his recent piece on India’s widening wealth inequality. “There is always money to be made in the misery of the many.” India’s Covid-19 disaster is no exception.
The Prince of Profit

Poonawalla is one of India’s premier pandemic profiteers. He is the 40-year-old son of India’s eighth-richest man, from whom he inherited the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. Among Western progressives, generics are often discussed as a public health solution to Big Pharma profiteering. Generics manufacturers like Poonawalla, however, are still businesspeople working for profit, not humanitarians motivated by the public good.

Pune-based Serum makes 1.5 billion doses of various vaccines every year and sells them across 170 countries. Poonawalla sees Serum, with its sizable production capacity, as “almost designed for [a pandemic],” and the company has seized on its “once-in-a lifetime opportunity.” In 2020, Serum entered a partnership with British-Swedish company AstraZeneca through which Serum could produce the Oxford University vaccine in exchange for royalties. With the resulting vaccine — known in India as Covishield — Serum captured 90 percent of the country’s vaccine market share. The company also committed up to 200 million doses for export to the global vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, at the company’s Hadapsar plant in Pune, Maharashtra, in India, on Jan. 22, 2021.
Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images


Despite Serum’s lucrative licensing agreement with AstraZeneca, Poonawalla has been one of the loudest voices decrying global vaccine inequality and Western Big Pharma. In March, Poonawalla objected to U.S. President Joe Biden’s use of the Defense Production Act, which stipulated that U.S. companies manufacturing vaccine raw materials must prioritize U.S. government contracts. Poonawalla criticized the move and in April tweeted at Biden to “lift the embargo.”

Recent analysis notes how Poonawalla’s demand for raw materials “placed him at the heart of several heroic imaginations.” This was especially true once India’s Covid-19 surge became front-page news in April. Indian, global, and even socialist media picked up and amplified Poonawalla’s rebuke, pointing to U.S. hoarding of raw materials as a humanitarian concern right alongside India’s pressing need for oxygen and personal protective equipment. As activist and humanitarian pressure to release the raw materials mounted, Biden removed export restrictions on bags, vials, filters, and other materials. A White House spokesperson said in a statement that the U.S. had agreed to release “specific raw material urgently required for Indian manufacture of the Covishield vaccine.”

The spokesperson was mistaken, as was much of the global media. Poonawalla went on the record multiple times to clarify that his request was not for Covishield or indeed for any vaccine approved to inoculate Indians. Since January, Serum has had the capacity to produce around 5,000 doses of Covishield per minute. Rather, the raw materials Poonawalla sourced from the U.S. are for a new Covid-19 vaccine Serum is producing in commercial partnership with U.S. company Novavax. Poonawalla was able to benefit from activist outrage to secure vaccine raw materials that would do nothing to mitigate India’s public health crisis. Serum declined to comment on the record for this piece.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe Coronavirus Crisis


Media coverage has facilitated Poonawalla’s enterprising use of the gray zone between humanitarianism and commerce during the pandemic. While Serum has always emphasized its “philanthropic philosophy,” the company’s founding family has mostly been known for their ostentatious wealth — be it their majestic farmhouse where they hosted Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; their luxury car collection that includes a one-of-a-kind Batmobile; or the refurbished aircraft that houses Poonawalla’s office.

But ever since Poonawalla became an early investor in the AstraZeneca vaccine, news stories have praised him as a “vaccine prince” — a risk-embracing entrepreneur with a moral mission. The media’s acceptance of how Poonawalla presents himself explains how easily he has been cited as an advocate for global public health rather than as a billionaire CEO advancing his company’s commercial interests. Journalistic sympathy for Poonawalla often comes at the cost of fair reporting. For instance, the media’s portrayal of Serum’s vaccine exports as a charitable “bid to protect the world” obscures the fact that Serum is charging poorer countries up to $7 for the same vaccine dose that the European Union is getting from AstraZeneca at $2.
Westward Expansion

Poonawalla has been cast in news coverage not just as a disinterested advocate of public health, but also as a decolonial challenger to Big Pharma seeking to “save the world from coronavirus — and then radically remake the international pharma landscape.” Poonawalla’s supposed desire to transform the global pharmaceutical industry is extrapolated from his opposition to vaccine patents, especially as calls to “free the vaccine” from intellectual property restrictions have found salience in Western leftist circles.

“We’re seeing a new system of vaccine apartheid coming into place,” says Tobita Chow, director of Justice Is Global, an initiative that campaigns to remove Covid-19 patents. Many public health experts agree that a temporary waiver of the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, provision is a necessary first step toward increasing vaccine production and access and creating a more competitive pharmaceutical industry worldwide. With sustained pressure from activists, last month the Biden administration signaled its support for a temporary TRIPS waiver, a measure initially proposed by the governments of India and South Africa.



Related
The Vaccine Divide


On the surface, Poonawalla has echoed activist concerns about pharmaceutical patents. But his fight against patents is not the same as activists’ fight for a people’s vaccine. Poonawalla’s interest in a TRIPS waiver comes from his admitted intention to poach competitors’ shares in Western markets. “Though we’re already in 165 countries, I will also expand our global reach: pushing into Europe and the United States — markets that we’ve never been able to enter as we’ve been blocked by Big Pharma,” he told GQ India last year. “These are the new and final frontiers.”

Serum has expanded into those frontiers. In 2012, the company acquired Bilthoven Biologicals from the Netherlands government and since then its European presence has only grown. In May, as Covid-19 ravaged India and the country’s vaccine supply dried up, Poonawalla sequestered himself in his $69,000-a-week rental mansion in London as the British government announced that Serum would invest over $330 million in the U.K. to create a new sales office, expected to generate business worth over $1.4 billion. If the clinical trials mentioned in the announcement are any indication, the vaccines developed as part of this deal might target European markets.

Serum’s global ambitions illuminate Poonawalla’s real problem with Big Pharma. It is not that Poonawalla is against the commercialization or patenting of lifesaving drugs; rather, he opposes Big Pharma insofar as it blocks his own access to Western markets. This is why, while campaigning against the hoarding of U.S. raw materials or supporting calls to waive U.S. drug patents, Poonawalla had also been working with then-President Donald Trump to escape the “stupid rules and regulations” that prevented him from selling his products in the U.S.

The TRIPS waiver might become yet another humanitarian response to India’s viral surge that enriches Poonawalla.

If these restrictions — raw material embargoes, patents, regulatory requirements — were waived for Covishield in Western markets, even at a price as high as $10 a dose, Covishield could easily outcompete the more expensive Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines while making a considerable profit. By undercutting competitors’ prices for Covid-19 vaccines, Serum could both expand its operations and trigger a race to the bottom, pushing other producers to consolidate or outsource to lower their prices. Back in 2016, Poonawalla had diagnosed that the pharmaceutical industry was experiencing “the lull before the storm” of acquisitions or mergers. If it succeeds in using the pandemic to break into Western markets, Serum could find itself riding the coming tidal wave of pharmaceutical industry consolidation.

The TRIPS waiver might become yet another humanitarian response to India’s coronavirus surge that enriches Poonawalla. The waiver could enable Serum to keep profiting from the AstraZeneca vaccine without paying royalties. Serum may also be able to develop a replica of the vaccine, the patent for which it could hold within India even as global patents are suspended. Several of the experts I interviewed saw the probability of such a vaccine monopoly emerging.

Poonawalla has done little to dispel these fears. Even as he stresses that Serum’s production capacity must increase to vaccinate the world’s poor, Poonawalla also maintains that there is no need to bring other manufacturers into the vaccine market to help increase supply.

Serum’s primary goal isn’t to equitably vaccinate the world or break down monopolies; it is to corner new markets while maintaining dominance within India. Without curbs on Serum’s power, the removal of global patents would not result in “freeing” the vaccine, only freeing streams of profit.

Krishna Ella, founder and chair of Bharat Biotech, holds a package of the typhoid vaccine Typbar-TCV during a press conference in Hyderabad on Jan. 3, 2018.
Photo: Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images

Immunity for Sale

Serum is not the only Indian company engaging in vaccine profiteering. Bharat Biotech, which developed Covaxin with public funds, has been charging Indians exorbitant rates for each shot — up to about $5.40 for states and about $16 for private hospitals — despite founder Ella’s early assurance that the vaccine would cost less than a bottle of water. Bharat Biotech has also been expanding commercial Covaxin exports despite India’s recent export restrictions.

Unlike Serum’s Covishield, Covaxin is not restricted by any Big Pharma patent. The Indian government controls part of Covaxin’s intellectual property rights, yet Bharat Biotech inexplicably monopolized production until a month ago, when the government finally greenlighted manufacturing of the vaccine in its own production facilities. Bharat Biotech declined to comment for this piece.

Throughout the pandemic, the Modi government has refused to curb pharmaceutical profiteering. Despite using taxpayer money to provide clinical trial support and sizable production advances to Serum and Bharat Biotech, the government has failed to ensure affordable vaccines for India’s people. Until May, the central government had procured all the doses for $2 each — a price at which the vaccine companies are reported to have made between 188 percent to 500 percent in profits. But they wanted more.

“When you’ve got low supply and high demand, what happens to the price? It skyrockets,” Poonawalla has said in describing how U.S. drug companies insulate themselves from competition with generics. Yet Poonawalla essentially politically engineered the same reality in India.

“By self-admission, India’s monopolistic vaccine producers were deeply unhappy with the ‘normal profits’ they earned at the regulated prices,” R. Ramakumar, a development economist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, told me in a message. “They lobbied to ‘free’ prices. Not surprisingly, vaccine prices more than doubled, even tripled and quadrupled, over just one week.”
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The Indian government enabled the rise in prices with its “liberalized” vaccine distribution policy, deliberately manufacturing a seller’s market. Starting May 1, the central government stopped procuring and distributing all the country’s vaccines as it and almost every other government in the world had been doing up until then. Instead, the central government began buying only half of the vaccine supply, leaving India’s 28 states and private hospitals to compete for the remaining doses on the private market — at prices set by the vaccine companies. The Indian health ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

By distributing vaccines through the open market, the Indian government fractured its citizens’ collective buying and bargaining power, giving up all leverage to capitalists. With a quarter of the country’s vaccine stock reserved for private hospitals, and vaccine producers vocalizing their preference to sell to those hospitals at higher prices, India’s vaccination drive was designed to favor private-sector monopolization.

The resulting inequalities have been stark. Private hospitals have outcompeted cash-starved states: In May, just nine hospital chains had cornered 50 percent of all doses. While India’s states pledged to vaccinate people for free, private hospitals voiced no such intention. Absent price caps, most of India’s impoverished population has either been paying exorbitant amounts to get vaccinated at private hospitals or waiting for government hospitals to acquire scarce doses.

By distributing vaccines through the open market, the Indian government fractured its citizens’ collective buying and bargaining power, giving up all leverage to capitalists.


“Imagine if the vaccine is sold at $10 to a family of four and they each need two doses,” health journalist Vidya Krishnan says. “How are they going to be able to afford it?” The average person in India makes an estimated $50 a month. Add to the mix the Modi government’s disastrous economic policies from prior years, and vaccination becomes unattainable for most Indians.

India’s vaccination plan for almost one-fifth of the world’s people has been so alarming that even the country’s judiciary and Modi’s own allies have joined journalists, opposition politicians, and medical experts in asking: Why no price standardization or price ceiling? Why not go back to centrally procuring vaccines instead of making states compete? Why not, as Krishnan asks, use the decades-old public vaccination system that was used to eradicate polio? Why not, as experts I interviewed suggest, waive patents within India and issue compulsory licenses so that more than two big companies could make vaccines?

In response to months of public outcry, last week Modi announced a partial reversal of his vaccine distribution “experiment.” Starting June 21, the central government will procure 75 percent of the country’s total vaccine stock directly from the companies, which it will give to state governments to distribute to their residents for free.

The change reverses one of the most politically controversial aspects of the previous policy but still leaves plenty of room for profiteering. A quarter of India’s vaccine stock will remain reserved for private hospitals and, consequently, for the rich. Even with price caps at private hospitals, vaccine manufacturers’ rates of profit will reach over 1,000 percent. As Yogesh Jain, a founder of the rural health care nonprofit Jan Swasthya Sahyog, wrote on Twitter, India’s vaccination capabilities will remain “publicly provided, and privately guzzled.”

The Modi government has tweaked India’s profit-centric vaccine policy, but as Ramakumar says, what is needed is an overhaul. Instead of using the powers at its disposal on behalf of the people, the Indian government continues to privilege profit over lives.

Employees work on the production line to make vials of Covishield at the Serum Institute of India’s Hadaspar plant in Pune, Maharashtra, in India, on Jan. 22, 2021.
Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Profiteering as the Public Good

The failures of India’s vaccination drive are reflective of the country’s overall pandemic response, characterized by the government’s strong support of private profiteering. India’s Supreme Court has repeatedly suggested that the central government has the power to speed up the manufacturing of oxygen and other essentials by investing public funds, which Indian cities like Madurai and states like Kerala have done successfully. But not only did the central government do nothing to increase its critically low oxygen capacity, it also allowed India’s industrial oxygen exports to rise by over 700 percent over the course of the pandemic instead of redirecting oxygen production to medical needs. Unsurprisingly, the stock of oxygen corporations like Linde India shot up even as countless people gasped to death.

“The government of India has withdrawn from the central social responsibility of an enlightened welfare state,” Ramakumar told me. “It has also opened the floodgates for a vulgar form of predatory capitalism to take over the stage amid the raging human tragedy.”

Poonawalla has claimed that “even God” couldn’t have foreseen the gravity of the crisis, but India’s pandemic disaster was long foretold. Things did not have to play out this way. India could have had medical supplies, PPE, testing kits, and vaccines ready if public health dictated production and distribution, rather than profits. Wherever vaccines have been administered on a mass scale, it has happened because at key moments of reckoning, public health advocates challenged the profit motive. But in India, profiteering itself masquerades as the public good.

In India, 38 new billionaires were minted in the past year, while the combined wealth of the country’s 140 billionaires went up by 90.4 percent.

Pandemics often exacerbate preexisting sociopolitical dynamics, argues Nivedita Saksena, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. India’s current situation is no exception. With a public health system that has been starved of funds for decades, and no viable alternative to for-profit health care, India’s Covid-19 pandemic was bound to become an opportunity for profiteering.

India’s big businesses have even managed to use aid from abroad to make money — which is why private hospitals sold airlifted oxygen cylinders to desperate patients, why vaccine raw materials from the U.S. are being used for disaster profiteering, and why a global patent waiver will likely strengthen the power of Indian Big Pharma.

To win a world where human life is truly valued above profit, we must realize that the small handful of very wealthy people who stand in the way of the public good are dispersed across the world — as much in Pune as in New York City. Their numbers are growing, as is their power within their home countries. In India alone, 38 new billionaires were minted in the past year, while the combined wealth of the country’s 140 billionaires went up by 90.4 percent. During the pandemic, Poonawalla’s net worth rose by 85 percent in five months, as tens of millions of Indians descended into poverty. This is not a coincidence, as P. Sainath writes, in “a year when hundreds of millions of Indians were hungrier than they’d been in decades.”

“A wealth ‘surge’ usually rides on a misery surge,” Sainath says. The swelling wallets of India’s health care elites are directly linked to the bodies in the streets. Until we eliminate the profitability of misery, India’s nightmare has no end in sight.

Singer Macy Gray: The US flag is 'tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect'

BY CELINE CASTRONUOVO - 06/19/21 

Singer-songwriter Macy Gray said this week that the American flag is in need of a replacement, arguing that it is “tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect.”

In an op-ed in honor of Juneteenth published Thursday on MarketWatch, the Grammy Award-winning R&B and soul artist wrote that the American flag “has been hijacked as code for a specific belief.”

“God bless those believers, they can have it,” she continued. “Like the Confederate, it is tattered, dated, divisive, and incorrect. It no longer represents democracy and freedom.”

“It no longer represents ALL of us,” she added. “It’s not fair to be forced to honor it. It’s time for a new flag.”

Gray argued that the flag should contain 52 stars, citing the continued lobbying efforts of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico to achieve statehood.

As far as the “stripes” on the U.S. flag, Gray said, “Smithsonian documents that the ‘white” stripes represent purity and innocence.”

“America is great. It is beautiful,” she wrote. “Pure, it ain’t. It is broken and in pieces.”

“What if the stripes were OFF-white?” she questioned. “What if the stars were the colors of ALL of us — your skin tone and mine — like the melanin scale?”

“The blue square represents vigilance and perseverance; and the red stripes stand for valor. America is all of those things,” Gray wrote.


“So, what if those elements on the flag remained? What if the flag looked like this?” she said before introducing a picture of her own redesigned U.S. flag, complete with 52 stars in a range of colors from light peach to dark brown and stripes that are light gray instead of white.

Gray in the op-ed went on to describe the history of the flag, which was designed by 17-year-old Bob Heft for a school project in 1959, when there were just 48 states in the country.

“Hawaii and Alaska were up for statehood and Bob had a hunch they’d get the nod,” Gray wrote. “He crafted a NEW flag with 50 stars for the then-future, because things had changed.”

“Sixty-two years later, in 2021, we have changed and it’s time for a reset, a transformation,” she added. “One that represents all states and all of us.”

The piece was published the same day President Biden signed into law legislation making Juneteenth an official federal holiday.

The day, June 19, marks when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were told they were free. For years, it has become more widely acknowledged as the day officially marking the end of slavery....

D.C. and Puerto Rico, both of which have nonvoting delegates in the U.S. House, have repeatedly launched efforts to become official U.S. states.

The House in April passed along party lines a bill that seeks to make D.C. statehood official.

The D.C. bill, which has received support from Biden, is set to be discussed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing on Tuesday.

Warsaw pride parade back after LGBT rights backlash and pandemic break

Issued on: 19/06/2021 -

People with rainbow flags cool off in a sprinkler ahead of the Equality Parade, the largest LGBT pride parade in Central and Eastern Europe, in Warsaw, Poland, on June 19, 2021. © Czarek Sokolowski, AP Photo

Text by:NEWS WIRES

The largest gay pride parade in central Europe took place again in Warsaw for the first time in two years after a pandemic-induced break — and amid a backlash in Poland and Hungary against LGBT rights.

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski walked at the head of the Equality Parade on Saturday — a sign of support for LGBT rights by the liberal politician. Thousands of people joined the march and were cheered on by others waving rainbow flags from their apartment balconies.

But that level of acceptance is not universal in Poland, a heavily Catholic, largely conservative nation.

The joyful and colorful celebration was tinged with fear of what the future holds for the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people after setbacks first in Russia and now in Hungary.

“The day of the parade is always a bitter-sweet moment for our community," said Rafal Wojtczak, a spokesman for the organizers. He described feelings of sadness and helplessness that LGBT people have not achieved rights like same-sex partnership or marriage in Poland, while also facing new threats.

The parade comes days after Hungary's parliament passed a law that makes it illegal to show any materials about LGBT issues to people under 18.

Hungary's conservative ruling party portrayed the law as an effort to fight pedophilia. But human rights groups see it as a cynical tool that will stigmatize and discriminate against LGBT people, and prevent youth from accessing critical information.

Poland's populist ruling party has taken a political direction very similar to that of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban in past years, pushing conservative policies and tightening ruling party control over courts and media. The European Union has denounced both these two member nations, accusing them of eroding democratic norms.

One prominent Polish activist, Bart Staszewski, carried a Hungarian flag in Saturday's march. He said it was a message to the EU to act in defense of LGBT people because he fears that “Poland will be next.”

A year ago, the Polish LGBT community faced a backlash from ruling conservative politicians, local communities and the church. In his successful bid for reelection against a challenge from Trzaskowski, President Andrzej Duda declared that “LGBT is not people; it's an ideology” while also claiming that it was “even more destructive” than communism.

A Polish archbishop warned of a “rainbow plague.” And dozens of local communities in Poland were passing resolutions against "LGBT ideology” in what was described as an attempt to protect the traditional family. These were strongly denounced by EU officials and a handful have since been rescinded.

“We’ve been through a very, very rough time, but at the same time we are going out in the streets and we are saying we are stronger and we are not going to give up,” said Miroslawa Makuchowska, vice director of Campaign Against Homophobia.

Wojtczak said “our community has been used in a political war.”

At the start of the march, some people chanted a vulgarity against Poland's ruling party.

This weekend’s Equality Parade comes 20 years since the event was first held in the Polish capital. It was banned twice in its early years by a conservative mayor, Lech Kaczynski, who feared it would promote homosexuality, and last year it was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the first event in 2001, Polish society has become largely more open on the issue of gay rights, shaped by EU membership and cultural influences from the West.

This year's parade was smaller than the one in 2019 due to some pandemic restrictions.

The true spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection is much greater than that observed by capturing only swab-diagnosed COVID-19 cases

EUROPEAN ALLIANCE OF ASSOCIATIONS FOR RHEUMATOLOGY

Research News

 

As part of the MAINSTREAM project, Favalli and colleagues conducted a seroprevalence cross-sectional study between 4th May and 16th June 2020toestimate the prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in a large cohort of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or spondyloarthritis (SpA) treated with biologic or targeted synthetic disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs (b/tsDMARDs) in a COVID-19 high-endemic area (Lombardy, Italy). Over this time, 300 people were tested for IgG, IgM and IgA antibodies against three viral antigens-nucleoprotein, spike protein, and the receptor-binding domain. These data were compared with those observed in the healthy population in the same period and region. Everyone taking part also completed a questionnaire to collect information about symptoms consistent with COVID-19, risk factors, and comorbidities.

Overall, 65% of people taking part had RA, 23% had psoriatic arthritis, and 21% had ankylosing spondylitis. Most people were being treated with tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi;57%), and the remainder were receiving abatacept (20%), interleukin-6 inhibitors (IL-6i;11%), or januskinase inhibitors (JAKi;5%).Of the 300 people, 4 had a prior diagnosis of COVID-19 defined by nasopharyngeal swab.

Immunoglobulin titres were evaluated resulting in 9%, 13.6%, and 13.3% positive patients for IgG, IgM and IgA, respectively, and there was no significant difference to the healthy population. Among seropositive patients, 55.3% were asymptomatic, 16% had minor and 19.6% major symptoms, 7.1% were hospitalized. No deaths or admission to intensive care occurred. IgM, IgG and IgA titres to the receptor binding domain of the virus were higher in patients with both minor and major symptoms compared with asymptomatic ones. No differences were found between seronegative and seropositive patients in relation to age, sex, rheumatic diagnosis, and treatment with cs- and b/tsDMARDs or corticosteroids. A relative increased risk was associated with obesity and presence of at least two comorbidities.

This study confirms that, even in a cohort of rheumatic patients, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection is much greater than that observed by capturing only swab-diagnosed COVID-19 cases. The underlying rheumatic disease and ongoing therapy with b/tsDMARD does not seem to impact SARS-CoV-2 antibody positivity, which conversely seems to be associated to symptomaticCOVID-19 and presence of comorbidities.

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Personalized medicine, not X-rays, should guide forearm fracture treatment in older adults

The new findings will guide future treatments of distal radius fracture

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Research News

 

A decade-long study of the most common forearm fracture in older adults revealed that personalized medicine catering to a patient's individual needs and environment, not age or X-rays, should guide treatment options.

Led by a Michigan Medicine physician, the research team examined treatment outcomes over two years for patients who fractured their distal radius, the larger of two bones in the forearm. They found no one-size-fits all method for treating the fracture, which more than 85,000 Medicare beneficiaries sustain annually.

"Traditionally, surgeons look at these broken bones on X-rays, and they have to assess various ways of fixing it based off fracture anatomy and patient age," said Kevin Chung, M.D., study lead and Charles B. G. De Nancrede Professor of Surgery at Michigan Medicine. "However, in older patients, we determined that the patient-centered care in tailoring particular treatments to their needs, social environment and risk tolerance for surgery are all considerations in prescribing treatment."

The new study, published in JAMA Network Open and funded by the National Institutes of Health, covered more than 180 participants studied at more than 20 global medical centers over a 10-year period.

"For hand surgery, this is the most intense, collaborative effort to try and answer a 200-year puzzle about distal radius fractures in older adults," Chung said. "It is one of the most common fractures in the world for this patient population - you have parents and grandparents that will get this fracture. For the good of public health, we needed to answer this question."

Participants in the trial were randomized to receive one of three treatment strategies, including volar locking plates, external fixation, and pinning. Those who chose not to have surgery were treated with casting. Although participants treated with volar plating reported better ability to perform daily tasks early on in the follow-up period of the trial, that gap between plating and other methods disappeared at the six-month mark. All participants were satisfied with the outcomes at the study's conclusion.

"Surgeons need to know how to perform all the techniques available to treat distal radius fracture, rather than being so ingrained to using just the plating system because, now, most trainees are taught just that system," Chung said. "But there are so many fracture patterns that require one to have all the tools and skills necessary to make sure patients receive tailored treatment for their injuries."

The results show that the interaction between the surgeon, the patient and the patient's family is key because satisfaction of the patients demands a much more personal approach than the singular interest of fixing a broken bone, Chung said.

"We know that chronological age doesn't determine a patient's physiological age," he said. "When someone is 70 years old, they may be physiologically 40-50. Those patients have a need to get back to physical activities and independent living, so we should treat them more aggressively."

Recruitment for a trial lasting 10 years proved difficult for the research team. The older people participating in this historic study, some struggling with transportation, wanted to help others, Chung said.

"It is difficult to participate in this trial because of the time and effort invested by the patients," he said. "These are special people. They contributed their lives for the science of helping other older patients who will suffer from this fracture. Their commitment is inspirational to us, which kept our research team going, despite overwhelming challenges. We are grateful to our study participants, the National Institutes of Health and the support of the American people."

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Paper cited/DOI: "Comparison of 24-Month Outcomes After Treatment for Distal Radius Fracture," JAMA Network Open. DOI: doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.12710

Researchers review data on reputed toxins thought to cause neurodegeneration

UNIVERSITY OF GUAM

a joint publication by University of Guam and University of British Columbia researchers.

Research News

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IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF GUAM CYCAD BIOLOGIST BENJAMIN DELOSO INSPECTS SEEDS ON A CYCAS MICRONESICA PLANT AT THE MONTGOMERY BOTANICAL CENTER IN MIAMI. UNIVERSITY OF GUAM BIOLOGISTS COLLECTED GUAM SEEDS IN 2006... view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY MICHAEL CALONJE

Identifying the causes of human neurodegenerative diseases is a global research priority, warranting frequent reviews of the accumulating knowledge. In doing just that, biologists from the Plant Physiology Laboratory at the University of Guam and neuroscientists from the Experimental Medicine Program at The University of British Columbia have published an update on the reputed environmental toxins that have been suspected of being involved in mammal neurodegeneration. Their summary was published in April in the book Spectrums of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which is available online from the publisher Wiley Blackwell.

A decades-long search for a dementia-causing toxin

Interest in the correlations between environmental toxins and neurodegeneration focused the world's magnifying glass on the island of Guam in the 1950s due to an unexpected increase in cases of neurodegenerative cases among the indigenous CHamoru population. The specific condition that temporarily affected Guam is known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-parkinsonism dementia (ALS-PDC) and known locally by the CHamoru term lytico-bodig.

A focus on this isolated cluster of cases led to decades of pursuit of causal toxins found in seeds of Guam's native cycad tree. These seeds were components of the local cuisine at the time, and increased reliance on this form of food starch during World War II was a plausible hypothesis to explain the increase in neurodegeneration cases shortly after the war.

Several factors likely coalesce

An ebb and flow of sequential disappointments has evolved since the 1950s because the identification of a single causal cycad toxin remains elusive.

But these disappointments have been countered by successes. It is now understood that several factors likely coalesce into a synchronized perfect storm to generate an unusual increase in localized neurodegenerative cases, such as what temporarily happened on Guam. These co-factors may include exposure to high doses of the environmental toxin by the most susceptible gender with the most susceptible genes at the most susceptible age, followed by a latency period before the neuronal damage begins to express itself.

The UOG-UBC collaboration has lasted more than two decades, and various members of the team have authored more than 100 journal articles on various aspects of cycad biology during that time. The toxicology of Guam cycad seeds was the subject of 14 of these publications.

"When I began collaborating with UOG, we had the benefit of building on the foundation of decades of research from Guam," said co-author Christopher Shaw, UBC neuroscientist. "We used the fact that no plant scientist had been directly involved in any of the previously published research to secure funds to revisit various issues concerning cycad seed toxins."

Difference between acute and slow-acting toxins

One of the many confusing aspects of this research is that acute toxins, which cause immediate poison reactions following cycad seed ingestion, are distinct from slow-acting toxins, which lead to neurodegeneration.

"The distinctions between these two forms of toxins are often confused, and scientists are constantly reminding the public that many years need to elapse after the exposure to a slow plant toxin before negative health outcomes develop," said Benjamin Deloso, a cycad biologist with UOG.

Claims of cyanide poisoning inaccurate

Another benefit from the marathon pursuit of the causal cycad toxin is that an enormous body of literature has developed that uncovered which biomolecules are not at play. "This is how science works," Shaw said. "The aggressive empirical look at each candidate toxin was justified and refined the development of superseding hypotheses that were vigorously tested."

For example, cassava roots contain sugar-based molecules that liberate cyanide after ingestion by mammals, and cycad seeds contain similar molecules, but cycad seeds contain no free cyanide and the identified sugar-based cycad molecules in cycads are incapable of liberating toxic levels of cyanide following ingestion by mammals. The meticulous research revealed the claims of cyanide as a potential cycad toxin and that cycad seed consumption could cause cyanide poisoning were inaccurate.

"Throwing around fear-mongering buzzwords, like cyanide, is a classic example of a repetition of false information in order to drive a personal agenda," Deloso said. "There are even petitions being circulated that falsely claim that cycad plants contain cyanide in attempts to force retail nurseries to stop selling cycad plants to pet owners."

The research team contends that scientists are not immune from the mistake of repeating these sorts of false claims about cycads. This tends to happen when scientists get their information from the gray literature or online encyclopedia style websites that are not vetted by cycad experts.

The authors hope that one outcome of their new publication is a decline in the spread of false information about cycad poisoning, as these untruthful statements damage the international community's attempts to improve cycad conservation.

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Further Reading: Shaw, C.A. and T.E. Marler. 2021. The Lessons of ALS?PDC - Environmental Factors in ALS Etiology. p. 57-79. In: Spectrums of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119745532.ch4

CAPTION

Researchers process dried chips from the seeds of Guam's native cycad tree in preparation of foods for experimental mammal consumption. The status of knowledge about toxins in cycad seeds is discussed in a joint publication by University of Guam and University of British Columbia researchers.

CREDIT

Photo courtesy of University of British Columbia