Allowing avian flu to run rampant in US poultry would be dangerous and unethical

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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In a Policy Forum, Erin Sorrell and colleagues – a coalition of virologists, veterinarians, and health security experts – argue that the recent proposal to permit the uncontrolled spread of highly pathogenic avian influence (HPAI) among U.S. poultry to identify birds that survive infection is dangerous and unethical. “Allowing a highly lethal, rapidly evolving, and contagious virus to run a natural course of infection in poultry would lead to unnecessary suffering of poultry and put other susceptible animals on and near affected farms at risk,” write Sorrell et al. “It would prolong exposure for farmworkers, which could increase viral adaptation and transmission risks for poultry, other peridomestic animals, and humans.” Since January 2022, over 173 million birds in the U.S. have been infected with highly HPAI. However, despite the risks, key high-ranking federal officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, have suggested allowing HPAI to spread unchecked in poultry flocks to identify and preserve naturally resistant birds.

 

Here, Sorrell et al. critically evaluate the implications of the proposed strategy. According to the authors, allowing the virus to circulate freely in poultry flocks increases the risk of viral adaptation, which could create long-term reservoirs of infection that raises the risk of a future pandemic with serious public health consequences. The proposal may also have serious economic and food security implications. Poultry and eggs are vital, affordable sources of protein for Americans, and widespread infection would reduce production, increase prices, and disrupt access. Moreover, it could cost billions in animal losses and destabilize trade via global policies restricting the imports of U.S. poultry products. Rural communities would suffer disproportionately, facing economic ripple effects across farms, feed suppliers, processors, and transport networks. Instead of pursuing a high-risk "let-it-spread" strategy, Sorrell et al. suggest that public health and agricultural agencies need to reinforce surveillance, improve outbreak response, and adopt new science-based tools to reduce spillover risks and protect both public and ecological health. “The US is not prepared for uncontrolled spread of H5 in avian species – let alone in mammalian or human hosts,” write the authors. “If this policy is enacted, it will need to be rolled back in favor of collaborative, on-the-ground, and real-time implementation science.”

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adx8639 

Article Title

The consequences of letting avian influenza run rampant in US poultry

Article Publication Date

3-Jul-2025

Gantangqing site in southwest China yields 300,000-year-old wooden tools

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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New discoveries from the Pleistocene-age Gantangqing site in southwestern China reveal a diverse collection of wooden tools dated from ~361,000 to 250,000 years ago, marking the earliest known evidence of complex wooden tool technology in East Asia. The findings reveal that the Middle Pleistocene humans who used these tools crafted the wooden implements not for hunting, but for digging and processing plants. Although early humans have worked with wood for over a million years, wooden artifacts are quite rare in the archaeological record, particularly during the Early and Middle Pleistocene. Most ancient wooden tools have been found in Africa and western Eurasia, with notable examples that include spears and throwing sticks from Germany and the UK, dating back 300,000 to 400,000 years, as well as structural elements like interlocking logs from Zambia and wooden planks and digging sticks from sites in Israel and Italy. While the long-standing Bamboo Hypothesis argues that early East Asian populations relied on bamboo for toolmaking, archaeological evidence for organic material-based tools from the region is scarce.

 

Here, Jian-Hui Liu and colleagues present new findings from the Gantangqing site in southwestern China, which has yielded a wide range of artifacts. Among these are 35 wooden artifacts that exhibit clear evidence of intentional shaping and use, including signs of carving, smoothing, and wear, suggesting that they were purposefully crafted by hominins. These tools, most of which were fashioned from pine, range from large two-handed digging sticks to smaller hand-held implements, and even include hook-like tools potentially used for cutting plant roots. According to Liu et al., compared to other well-known contemporaneous wooden tool sites in Europe, which are generally characterized by medium-sized hunting gear, Gantangqing stands out for its broader and more diverse array of small, hand-held tools designed primarily for digging up and processing plants. The sophistication of these wooden tools underscores the importance of organic artifacts in interpreting early human behavior, particularly in regions where stone tools alone suggest a more “primitive” technological landscape, say the authors.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adr8540 

Article Title

300,000-year-old wooden tools from Gantangqing, southwest China

Article Publication Date

3-Jul-2025

 

Forests can’t keep up: Adaptation will lag behind climate change

Syracuse University

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Syracuse University researcher David Fastovich

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Credit: Syracuse University

Ecologists are concerned that forest ecosystems will not keep pace with a rapidly changing climate, failing to remain healthy and productive. Before the rapid climate change of the past century, tree populations in the Northern Hemisphere adapted to colder and warmer periods over thousands of years. During onsets of Ice Ages, tree populations migrated south, seeking warmer conditions as global temperatures cooled, their seeds dispersed by winds and carried by animals. When the climate warmed again, tree species adapted by migrating north to more suitable conditions. Mature trees are long-lived, and their populations can’t migrate quickly. Current climate change is happening faster than many forests can adapt and thrive, creating a mismatch between the pace of warming and forests’ natural adaptation.

A new study in the journal Science shows that forests have a lag time of one to two centuries to shift tree populations in response to climate changes, according to first author David Fastovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Syracuse University in the Paleoclimate Dynamics Lab of Tripti Bhattacharya, Thonis Family Professor of Paleoclimate Dynamics and associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The research team set out to map the timescales at which tree populations respond to climate change, examining pollen data from lake sediment cores spanning up to 600,000 years ago.

“We’ve known these time lags have existed, but no one could put a firm number on them,” says Fastovich. “We can intuit how long a tree lives. We can count the rings on a tree and estimate from there. But now we know that after one to two centuries—very close to how long a tree lives on average—entire forest ecosystems begin to turnover as trees die and are replaced in response to climate.”  

The research team used spectral analysis—a statistical technique common in fields such as physics and engineering—to study long-term ecological data. This method allowed the researchers to compare the relationship between tree populations and climate from decades to millennia. One goal was to learn how closely tree population migrations, tree mortality and forest disturbances from things like forest fires match climate changes over time.

Spectral analysis provides a newly unified statistical approach that connects how natural forest adaptation evolves from days to thousands of years.

“This gives us a common language for people who observe forest change—ecologists, paleoecologists and paleobiologists—to talk to one another about those changes no matter if we study forests on annual or millennial timescales,” Fastovich says.

The researchers found that at timescales of years and decades, forests typically change slowly. After about eight centuries, though, forest changes tend to become larger, tied to natural climate variability.

“With this new technique, we can think about ecological processes on any timescale and how they are connected,” says Fastovich. “We can understand how dispersal and population changes interact and cause a forest to change from decades to centuries, and even longer timescales. That hasn’t been done before.”

The study also suggests that forests will need more human intervention to keep them healthy. Assisted migration might be an effective tool. It is the practice of planting warmer-climate trees in traditionally colder locations to help woodlands adapt and flourish despite the heating of their habitats from climate change. Forest adaptation to climate will be a slow, complex process requiring nuanced, long-term management strategies, Fastovich notes.

“There’s a mismatch between the timescales at which forests naturally change to what’s happening today with climate change,” Fastovich says. “Population-level changes aren’t going to be fast enough to keep the forests that we care about around. Assisted migration is one tool of many to keep cherished forests around for longer.”

  

David Fastovich (left) led a study that used pollen data from lake sediment cores to track how tree populations respond to climate change. In the photo above, he is shown sampling a sediment core from Lake Tulane, Florida, alongside Jack Williams (center, University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Claire Rubbelke (right, Syracuse University).

Credit

Syracuse University

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Journal

Science

 

Sturgeon reintroduction initiative yields promising first-year survival rate

The University of Toledo-led research, published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, supports an initiative to establish a self-sustaining population of naturally reproducing lake sturgeon in the Maumee River

University of Toledo

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Dr. William Hintz is an associate professor of ecology whose lab led recent research into the first-year survival rates of lake sturgeon released into the Maumee River in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

 

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Credit: The University of Toledo

Ecologists celebrated the release of thousands of palm-sized lake sturgeon into northwest Ohio's Maumee River in 2018, kicking off an ambitious two-decade plan to re-establish the ancient species in the waters it once called home.

More than five years later, it’s still too soon to declare success. But early signs are promising, according to recent research led by The University of Toledo and published in the peer-reviewed North American Journal of Fisheries Management.

The research tracked the first-year survival rates for cohorts released in 2018, 2019 and 2021, with results suggesting that the initiative is on track to achieve its goal of a self-sustaining population of 1,500 naturally reproducing lake sturgeon in the Maumee River – hopefully – by 2038.

“If they survive at this age, it’s a really good sign,” said Dr. William Hintz, an associate professor of ecology based at UToledo’s Lake Erie Center in Oregon, Ohio. “Once they grow beyond the first-year stage, their survival rates are high. At that point it becomes likely they will become adults and hopefully stick around.”

Lake sturgeon were once abundant in the Maumee River, but have faced significant population declines due to habitat loss, overfishing and pollution since the 1800s. This result was extirpation from the Maumee River and endangerment across Ohio.

UToledo has long been engaged with the reintroduction initiative alongside federal and state partners and the Toledo Zoo, with faculty and students evaluating habitat conditions in the Maumee River well before the first fingerlings were released in 2018.

The reintroduction initiative aligns with a broader area of research excellence at UToledo, where scientists, engineers, doctors and public health experts are engaged in numerous facets of water quality research. These include the ecologists at UToledo’s Lake Erie Center, who study local environmental conditions and aquatic resources as a model for the Great Lakes and aquatic ecosystems worldwide.

Hintz and Jorden McKenna, who graduated with a master’s degree in ecology and organismal biology in 2023 and now works as a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, join colleagues at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Michigan State University Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and the Toledo Zoo as co-authors on the recent research in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management.

It analyzes data gathered through acoustic transmitters that are implanted in a subsample of sturgeon that are released into the Maumee River. These transmitters track fish survival and movement by pinging receivers that are strategically positioned throughout Lake Erie under the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System.

The researchers’ analysis suggests an annual survival rate between 19% and 71% for the three cohorts of approximately 3,000 sturgeon each that were released in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

“The survival rate looks promising,” Hintz said. “The fish aren’t all dying. They’re surviving at a rate that if we keep stocking them for 20 years, we’d hopefully reach our target population of 1,500 naturally reproducing adults.”

One important caveat? Survival is only half of what’s needed to successfully establish a self-sustaining population of lake sturgeon in the Maumee River.

Hintz explained that ecologists are also counting on the fish to imprint on the unique chemical signatures of the river and return to it to spawn, similar to the process that drives Pacific salmon back to their natal streams across the western United States and Canada.

But that won’t happen until the sturgeon, whose lifespans routinely pass a half-century, reach sexual maturity at 12 to 15 years old — still  several years away even for the first cohort that ecologists reintroduced in 2018.

“Maybe by 2030 or 2032, we might be able to see some adults coming back,” Hintz said.

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Journal

North American Journal of Fisheries Management

DOI

10.1093/najfmt/vqaf036 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

First-year survival of Lake Sturgeon reintroduced to the Maumee River

 

What a bumble bee chooses to eat may not match ideal diet

Bees may under- or over-consume necessary nutrients, researchers find

Penn State

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Humans may not be the only species that struggles to eat the right amounts of the ideal foods. A new study led by researchers at Penn State suggests that what bumble bees choose to eat may not line up with their ideal nutritional needs.

The study — published in the Journal of Insect Physiology — examined whether giving bumble bees diets of pollen and nectar enriched with different amounts of proteins, fats and carbohydrates had an effect on how much they ate, as well as a variety of physical characteristics.

The researchers found that bumble bees consumed different amounts depending on which diet they were assigned, but these amounts didn’t translate to better physical fitness. For example, bees over-consumed the protein-enriched pollen and under-consumed the fatty, or lipid-enriched, pollen, even though neither of these choices enhanced fitness.

Etya Amsalem, associate professor of entomology in the College of Agricultural Sciences and lead author on the study, said the findings challenge previous beliefs that scientists can make assumptions about bees’ nutritional needs based on what they choose to consume.

“Bee preferences are unlikely to reflect true needs and more likely result from evolutionary constraints,” she said. “For instance, bees may under-consume lipids not because high-lipid diets are harmful, but because their physiology is not well-suited for digesting or storing large amounts of lipids.”

Similarly, Amsalem added, bees may over-consume proteins because they have evolved to seek them out whenever they’re available, even though excess protein can be detrimental because it affects how efficiently bees can eliminate nitrogen from their bodies.

As bee populations decline around the globe, the researchers said, more studies are pointing toward nutritional stress as a contributing factor, making diet an important factor to understand. Habitat loss and agricultural development have reduced the numbers of flowers, forcing bees to rely on suboptimal food sources.

While bumble bees have been shown to regulate their food intake, Amsalem said, scientists don’t know if bee preferences necessarily align with what benefits them the most.

“It’s an odd assumption when you think about it — my toddler prefers chocolate over broccoli, but I wouldn’t conclude from that that chocolate is healthier for her,” she said. “So, why do we assume bees are different? Understanding potential mismatches between consumption and fitness outcomes is important, as most conservation and management strategies assume bees can self-regulate their diets for optimal health.”

For the study, the researchers split the bees into groups and provided them with different diets manipulated by enriching the pollen or modifying the sugar solution — which mimicked nectar — with different macronutrients in different concentrations.

They then measured consumption and several indicators of fitness — mass gain, ovary activation and number of eggs laid by workers — for 10 days. All worker bees were the same age, and all tests were conducted in microcolonies containing three workers, which Amsalem said enabled the researchers to directly test if consumption aligned with improved fitness.

These groups were compared with a separate control group of bumble bees, which were allowed to feed freely from wild pollen and a 60 percent sugar solution.

The researchers found that increasing protein levels in pollen resulted in bees consuming more pollen, while increasing lipid levels led to bees eating less. Additionally, worker bees over-consumed sucrose when it was offered at lower concentrations.

However, despite bees choosing these eating patterns, these choices ended up negatively affecting their fitness compared to the control. In all cases, egg-laying decreased and body mass either declined or remained unchanged.

Amsalem said the findings suggest that conservation and agricultural management strategies may want to consider diet composition impacts on fitness, not just preference or intake.

“Future research could investigate why bees fail to optimize diet — for example, metabolic limitations, gustatory biases or ecological tradeoffs — and may explore nonmacronutrient components like vitamins and minerals that may explain fitness discrepancies,” Amsalem said.

Anna Cressman, who earned a master of science in entomology from  Penn State, and Seyed Ali Modarres Hasani, postdoctoral scholar at Penn State, also co-authored this paper.

The Agricultural Resource Center program of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture helped support this research.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.

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Journal

Journal of Insect Physiology

DOI

10.1016/j.jinsphys.2025.104822 

Article Title

Do bumble bees make optimal nutritional choices?

 

Benefits and risks: informal use of antibiotics to prevent sexually transmitted infections on the rise in key populations in the Netherlands

Survey data from the Netherlands show high interest and intention to use antibiotics to prevent sexually transmitted infections

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

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"As doxyPEP is already happening, public health experts and clinicians in the field of STIs have a collective responsibility to understand its extent and should not miss opportunities to engage with individuals who are using it or intending to do so." (Lyons et al. Editorial in Eurosurveillance on 3 July 2025)

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Credit: Eurosurveillance

New research analysing an online survey of 1,633 respondents found 15% recent use of doxycycline post- and pre-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP/PrEP) among men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender and gender diverse people in the Netherlands according to a recent study published by Eurosurveillance [1]. These data highlight an increase in the informal use of doxyPEP/PrEP, with 65% of the participants intending to use it in the future. Currently, doxyPEP/PrEP is not recommended or actively promoted by healthcare professionals in the Netherlands. Informal use i.e. without a prescription by a healthcare professional, could contribute to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and changes in the microbiome.

The use of doxyPEP has been shown to be an effective method in the prevention against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in MSM, transgender and gender diverse persons. Clinical trials of doxyPEP have shown significant reductions in syphilis and chlamydia, with additional potential to reduce incidence of other bacterial STIs such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea

However, the public health implications of the widespread use of doxyPEP are subject to current debate. The administration of doxyPEP to specific individuals could prevent a substantial number of STIs and lower antibiotic use, particularly among those who repeatedly have STIs.

Informal doxyPEP/PrEP use associated with HIV PrEP use, sexualised drug use and perception of safety

As highlighted by this paper and an accompanying editorial by Lyons et al. [2], the prescription of doxyPEP to many sexually active individuals poses the risk of a substantial population-level increase in overall antibiotic consumption and an increase in AMR.

Teker et al. reviewed data from a cross-sectional study gathered from an online survey among MSM, transgender and gender diverse persons of 18 years of age or older. The survey focused on previous use of doxyPEP or doxyPrEP awareness and intention to use it. Participants were recruited through advertisements at the Centre for Sexual Health in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as well as dating apps (Grindr), Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger and targeted Instagram accounts.

In the study, 23% of participants reported having ever used doxyPEP/PrEP and 15% reported having used doxyPEP/PrEP in the six months prior to the survey. Respondents informing about recent use were more likely to report living with HIV or frequently using oral HIV PrEP in the six months before taking the survey. They were also more likely to report a history of bacterial STIs, having a higher number of sexual partners, and a higher frequency of engaging in chemsex and in group sex during that period.

Doxycycline was the most used antibiotic reported in this study, with 46% of the participants reporting using it recently as PEP, 29% of recent PEP users using it as PrEP and 25% using it as a combination of both. 

Overall, the intention to use doxyPEP/PrEP was very high among the study population, with more than half of the participants (65%) expressing intention to use. More than two thirds of respondents (72%) were willing to pay for doxyPEP/PrEP if it became formally available, indicating a potential demand for the drug among the study population and beyond. 

It was also found that doxyPEP/PrEP was primarily obtained from countries outside of the Netherlands or through prescriptions, with participants paying on average €30 for the drug.

Additional determinants for both informal use of doxyPEP/PrEP and high intention to use included using oral HIV PrEP or living with HIV, receiving advice from others to use doxyPEP/PrEP and perceiving doxyPEP/PrEP as an effective and safe method of STI prevention.

Potential antimicrobial resistance risks from lack of monitoring

The impact of prophylactic antibiotic use on AMR was highlighted in the study as there are uncertainties regarding the long-term adverse effects of doxyPEP/PrEP use. Teker et al. emphasise the potential harms of doxycycline effectiveness and AMR risks, as summarised in previous studies including in the United States. 

They also cite its potential effects on the gut microbiome, which need to be studied further. If doxyPEP is implemented in country-wide clinical guidance, it would be vital to monitor both individual and population-level resistance to doxycycline.

Lack of awareness on the extent of informal use of doxyPEP/PrEP makes it difficult to monitor and implement appropriate public health stewardship. This leads to difficulties in detecting overuse, misuse and adverse effects including AMR development and effects on microbiome composition.

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References/notes to editors:
[1] Teker Buhari, Hoornenborg Elske, Schim van der Loeff Maarten F, Boyd Anders, Heijne Janneke CM, Prins Maria, Davidovich Udi, de Vries Henry JC, Jongen Vita W. Emergent informal use of doxycycline post- and pre-exposure prophylaxis among men who have sex with men and transgender and gender diverse people, the Netherlands, 2024. Euro Surveill. 2025;30(26):pii=2400707.
Available from: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2025.30.26.2400707 (online after 16:00 Central European Time on 3 July 2025)

[2] Lyons F and Shanley A. Doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP): balancing promise and prudence in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Euro Surveill. 2025;30(26):pii=2500454. Available from: https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2025.30.26.2500454 (online after 16:00 Central European Time on 3 July 2025)

[3] HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is the use of an antiretroviral medication by people who are HIV negative to prevent acquisition of HIV. The efficacy of PrEP is well-documented. Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for STI involves e.g. taking an antibiotic pill (doxycycline) after sex to prevent bacterial STIs, such as syphilis and chlamydia. 

 

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Journal

Eurosurveillance

DOI

10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2025.30.26.2400707 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Emergent informal use of doxycycline post- and pre-exposure prophylaxis among men who have sex with men and transgender and gender diverse people, the Netherlands, 2024

Article Publication Date

3-Jul-2025

Federal deficit could average $78B over 4 years, (CONSERVATIVE) think tank warns

WELFARE NOT WARFARE

By The Canadian Press
Published: July 03, 2025 

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with reporters on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, June 30, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

OTTAWA — The C.D. Howe Institute predicts Ottawa’s recently announced spending plans — which include a much bigger defence budget — will drive its deficits markedly higher in the coming years.

In a new analysis released today, the think tank says it expects Canada’s deficit to top $92 billion this fiscal year, given Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to meet NATO’s defence spending target of two per cent of GDP.

C.D. Howe says it expects deficit growth to slow after that but predicts deficits will still average around $78 billion annually over four years — more than double the level forecast by the parliamentary budget officer before the spring federal election.

The Liberal government did not publish a spring budget this year and has said it will instead push the planned fiscal update to the fall.

In addition to ramping up defence spending, Prime Minister Carney’s Liberals recently pushed forward legislation to accelerate major project development and delivered a one-percentage-point cut to the lowest income tax rate.

The C.D. Howe Institute accuses Ottawa of making costly commitments without showing the numbers to Canadians.