Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

'All in all, polygenism has been hugely influential in American scientific racism and its fallout. Indeed, you cannot fully understand American racism without understanding polygenism and its history. So how did polygenism first gain traction? And how did it become a mainstream view among the American scientific establishment?'

https://aeon.co/essays/modern-racism-rests-on-scientific-theories-from-the-19th-century

'Far from the Bastille, at the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires, one of the most remarkable exhibitions I’ve seen in years punches right at the heart of today’s altercations over nationality and democracy, culture and politics, and what it means to be a citizen. Guillaume Lethière (1760—1832) was a Neoclassical painter of mixed race who has never, until now, been the subject of a solo museum show. Born in the French Caribbean, almost certainly into slavery, he reached the summits of artistic achievement in Paris and Rome. As rebellions and revolutions shook both France and the Caribbean, he painted massive history paintings of heroes in togas, and portraits of men and women from Europe and the Antilles. It was Lethière’s calling, in an era where no bonds seemed stable, to give form to fraternité.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/arts/design/guillaume-lethiere-clark-louvre-painter.html

'These studies have helped to answer “some of the questions that were precipitated by the FDA announcement,” Maus said. They still have not found definitive evidence that CAR-T therapy has directly caused new cancers, she said, and scientists continue to suspect that such an event would be extremely rare.'
#Immunology #Immunotherapy #CARTcells
https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/12/cancer-car-t-therapy-fda-secondary-cancers/?utm_campaign=rss

'Patients develop T cell lymphomas after CAR-T therapy extremely rarely — less than 0.1% of the time, Rejeski said. Second cancers also rarely cause death in CAR-T patients, Rejeski said. Mortality from these subsequent cancers occurs roughly 0.5% of the time. In comparison, infections led to the deaths of about 4% of CAR-T patients in a study that Rejeski published in Nature Medicine this week. “Infections, infections, infections. This is the main driver of non-relapse mortality,” he said.'

https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/12/cancer-car-t-therapy-fda-secondary-cancers/?utm_campaign=rss

'The findings suggest that i) the Romans most likely discovered the islands around the 1st century BCE; ii) Berber groups from western North Africa first set foot on one of the islands closest to the African mainland sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE; iii) Roman and Berber societies did not live simultaneously in the Canary Islands; and iv) the Berber people rapidly spread throughout the archipelago.'

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2302924121

'The tool — a type of ‘base editor’ — modified the target gene in more than 90% of an Escherichia coli colony inside the mouse gut. “We were dreaming of being able to do that,” says Xavier Duportet, a synthetic biologist who co-founded Eligo Bioscience, a biotechnology company in Paris. The findings were published today in Nature.'

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02238-3

'If the current forecasts are an indication, municipalities will be grappling with these questions for some time. Another two dozen daily temperature records could be broken to begin the weekend. The extreme heat will push into the Midwest and the East by early next week, with heat indexes as high as 110 expected in the Philadelphia area and in the low 100s in New York.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/us/us-heat-wave-weather-forecast.html

'Criminals also commonly paste fraudulent Ozempic labels onto insulin pens, said Mr. Safdar. After fake Ozempic in Austria landed people in the hospital last fall, health officials said they suspected it was actually insulin. Reuters reported in January that three people in the United States developed hypoglycemia, or dangerously low blood sugar, after taking suspected counterfeit Ozempic.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/well/ozempic-fake-counterfeit-drugs.html

“Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified’ status, it negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with,” said regulators in Brussels.'

https://www.ft.com/content/9419e3b1-60ab-4bcb-a1ea-30cca911667a

'The Build-A-Genome course was developed to teach students basic practical molecular genetics while also providing the raw materials for a global genome synthesis project, Yeast 2.0. The course evolved over two decades to reflect the changing needs and opportunities for the project and the development of new technologies. In addition to educating a generation of college and high school students in a new way, it also developed a cadre of educators who developed similar courses and projects at a wide variety of research and educational institutions.'
https://academic.oup.com/genetics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/genetics/iyae083/7710319?searchresult=1

'De seguida, para quem acredita na capacidade de oposição da academia, da função pública ou dos media a uma deriva autoritária, também aqui o exemplo húngaro nos deve abrir os olhos. O que parecia impossível, aconteceu: há universidades que saíram do país ou foram aparelhadas por fiéis partidários, há jornais que foram fechados de uma semana para a outra ou comprados pelos “amigos” do primeiro-ministro, e os altos funcionários públicos habituaram-se a ter de viver com testes de lealdade e a admitir escutas telefónicas aleatórias durante x meses a cada x anos, que nunca sabem exatamente quais são, e que são autorizadas diretamente pelo ministro da Justiça.'
@ruitavares
https://expresso.pt/opiniao/2024-07-11-isto-nao-e-um-teste.-se-fosse-estariamos-a-chumbar-7606d9ec

'In June I was helping to manage a community outbreak of whooping cough when the whole town ran out of clarithromycin suspension, the recommended antibiotic for the acute phase in children. None could be found, and I was reduced to asking the parents of affected children to get a pestle and mortar to grind up tablets and hide the powder in yoghurt. A few months ago we had an outbreak of scarlet fever and did the same with tablets of penicillin. The pestle and mortar is one of the oldest symbols of the pharmaceutical profession; it’s an unexpected twist in the spiralling problems of the health service that in 2024 we’re having to recommend returning to it.'

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n14/gavin-francis/short-cuts

'Male and female humans are born with the same number of cardiomyocytes — the predominant cardiac cell type by mass; however, in adulthood, males have a significantly smaller proportion of cardiomyocytes. This is thought to be due to testosterone-induced apoptosis in the male heart, although differences in cardiomyocyte-regenerative capacity may also contribute.'
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/180074

'The goal must be to ensure that people of color have fair access to the full array of medical treatments and resources available, said Dr. David Jones, a Harvard professor who has been a leading proponent of removing race from clinical algorithms.
But critics of the Apgar score’s reliance on skin color fear that it is resulting in extra medical treatment being heaped on babies of color who are healthy, potentially sending them to intensive care unnecessarily.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/health/apgar-score-black-infants.html

R.I.P. Dr Ruth Westheimer (1928-2024)

I was very sad to learn yesterday of the death at the age of 96 of celebrity sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, known universally as "Dr Ruth". I remember her well from TV appearances back in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis when she was a staunch ally of the gay community. Her frank and non-judgmental approach to sex education - especially with regard to safer sex practices - probably saved many lives during that crisis.

http://telescoper.blog/2024/07/14/r-i-p-dr-ruth-westheimer-1928-2024/

#Pfizer is working on an improved replacement for #Paxlovid. The new drug, #Ibuzatrelvir, has completed Phase II trials. Two significant advantages: it doesn't contain ritonavir, so it won't mess up dosages of other drugs the patient is taking, and doesn't produce a bitter or metallic taste.

#COVID19 #CovidIsNotOver #medicine

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/next-paxlovid

The EU plans to boycott Hungary's foreign policy summit due to Prime Minister Orban's actions, reports Politico. Brussels is considering this unprecedented step because of Orban's opposition to the EU's normal operations and foreign policy. Instead of attending the summit in Budapest, EU foreign ministers intend to organize their own foreign affairs summit in August. https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-boycott-foreign-affairs-summit-eu-ukraine-pm-viktor-orban-event-august-budapest/