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Border fence forced through
News in perspective
FRED GREAVES/CORBIS
Upfront– RAILING AGAINST BORDER FENCE The Bush administration is bulldozing environmental laws to build a controversial fence designed to block illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican border. To force through its construction, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, waived 35 separate environmental protection laws last week using provisions of the Real ID Act of 2005. The act allows him to set aside laws that might interfere with the construction of physical barriers at US borders. Segments of fence totalling 750 kilometres are to be completed this year and will pass through many sensitive environments. In southern Texas the fence will run along floodcontrol levees between 100 and 1500 metres from the Rio Grande, creating what critics call a “no-man’s land” between fence and river.
This section of the fence will cut through rich wildlife reserves, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and most of the Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve near Brownsville. Other wild areas are threatened in New Mexico, Arizona and California. Chertoff has previously issued similar waivers when residents and conservation groups tried to block fence construction in other sensitive areas, including the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona. Opponents are not giving up. Defenders of Wildlife called Chertoff’s move “a flagrant violation of the separation of powers principle that frames the US Constitution” and joined with the Sierra Club to request a Supreme Court review. –The current barrier is wildlife friendly–
Bird flu clues A NEW case of human-to-human transmission doesn’t prove that H5N1 bird flu is learning to spread among humans, but it reinforces fears that there could be many more undiagnosed human infections in China. It may also point to a potential cure. Last November, a salesman hospitalised in Nanjing, China, with fever, diarrhoea and pneumonia was given antibiotics for suspected bacterial infection, but tested positive for H5N1 shortly before he died. The next day his father fell ill with a nearly identical virus, and was given plasma from a woman who had
“The virus is still hard to catch. None of the other 91 people in contact were infected” received an experimental wholevirus H5N1 vaccine. He recovered (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(08)60493-6). The month before, an H5N1 patient in Shenzhen also recovered after receiving plasma from someone who had survived 6 | NewScientist | 12 April 2008
the infection, suggesting that antibodies from such survivors are a promising approach to treating H5N1, and should be investigated further. However, poultry in Chinese markets are required to be vaccinated, and the fact that the Nanjing salesman had visited a live poultry market shortly before he fell ill reinforces fears that many Chinese could be getting H5N1 from vaccinated poultry, which carry the virus but remain healthy. Like the salesman, such people could be misdiagnosed because they have not been near sick birds. Jeremy Farrar of the University of Oxford’s Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, says scientists should study family clusters of H5N1 to learn what allows the virus to infect humans. Clusters in Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan and possibly Vietnam have involved only genetically related people. Generally, the virus remains hard to catch – none of other 91 people who’d had contact with the salesman or his father were infected. This suggests that “there may be a rare genetic predisposition to the virus”, Farrer says.
One size fits all? IF A drug is not tested on a range of different people, you cannot be sure how widely it will work. That’s the warning from a 300-strong team of researchers and medical staff led by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, which examined the origins of clinical trials volunteers in the US. They found that ethnic minorities and the elderly are under-represented, suggesting we need to know more about how drugs work in these groups. For example, while 60 per
cent of all cancers occur in older Americans, only a quarter of those taking part in cancer studies in 2003 were aged over 65. Furthermore, fewer than 1 in 10 participants in cancer studies conducted between 1995 and 1999 were from ethnic minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics, even though they make up about 1 in 4 of the population. Ethnic communities may be discouraged from getting involved in trials by the complex recruitment processes, which often involve forms only available in English, say the researchers.
THE UPSIDE OF A CRISIS If everyone lost just 4 or 5 kilograms, mortality rates would drop dramatically. At least that’s one lesson from the economic crisis Cuba suffered in the 1990s. When the Soviet empire began to unravel in 1989, Cuba was hit with serious food and fuel shortages. From 1991 to 1995, people were getting only about 1800 calories a day and had to walk or cycle wherever they needed to go. The result was an average drop in body mass index of 1.5 units, and a
halving of the obesity rate to just 7 per cent. In the years that followed, deaths from potentially fatal diseases fell dramatically – diabetes by 51 per cent, coronary artery disease by 35 per cent and stroke by 20 per cent (Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol 178, p 1032). In countries like Canada and the US, where obesity rates are around 30 per cent, the gains from population-wide weight loss would be even greater, the authors argue.
www.newscientist.com
FRED GREAVES/CORBIS
Upfront– RAILING AGAINST BORDER FENCE The Bush administration is bulldozing environmental laws to build a controversial fence designed to block illegal immigrants from crossing the Mexican border. To force through its construction, the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, waived 35 separate environmental protection laws last week using provisions of the Real ID Act of 2005. The act allows him to set aside laws that might interfere with the construction of physical barriers at US borders. Segments of fence totalling 750 kilometres are to be completed this year and will pass through many sensitive environments. In southern Texas the fence will run along floodcontrol levees between 100 and 1500 metres from the Rio Grande, creating what critics call a “no-man’s land” between fence and river.
This section of the fence will cut through rich wildlife reserves, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, the Sabal Palm Audubon Center and most of the Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve near Brownsville. Other wild areas are threatened in New Mexico, Arizona and California. Chertoff has previously issued similar waivers when residents and conservation groups tried to block fence construction in other sensitive areas, including the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona. Opponents are not giving up. Defenders of Wildlife called Chertoff’s move “a flagrant violation of the separation of powers principle that frames the US Constitution” and joined with the Sierra Club to request a Supreme Court review. –The current barrier is wildlife friendly–
Bird flu clues A NEW case of human-to-human transmission doesn’t prove that H5N1 bird flu is learning to spread among humans, but it reinforces fears that there could be many more undiagnosed human infections in China. It may also point to a potential cure. Last November, a salesman hospitalised in Nanjing, China, with fever, diarrhoea and pneumonia was given antibiotics for suspected bacterial infection, but tested positive for H5N1 shortly before he died. The next day his father fell ill with a nearly identical virus, and was given plasma from a woman who had
“The virus is still hard to catch. None of the other 91 people in contact were infected” received an experimental wholevirus H5N1 vaccine. He recovered (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(08)60493-6). The month before, an H5N1 patient in Shenzhen also recovered after receiving plasma from someone who had survived 6 | NewScientist | 12 April 2008
the infection, suggesting that antibodies from such survivors are a promising approach to treating H5N1, and should be investigated further. However, poultry in Chinese markets are required to be vaccinated, and the fact that the Nanjing salesman had visited a live poultry market shortly before he fell ill reinforces fears that many Chinese could be getting H5N1 from vaccinated poultry, which carry the virus but remain healthy. Like the salesman, such people could be misdiagnosed because they have not been near sick birds. Jeremy Farrar of the University of Oxford’s Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, says scientists should study family clusters of H5N1 to learn what allows the virus to infect humans. Clusters in Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan and possibly Vietnam have involved only genetically related people. Generally, the virus remains hard to catch – none of other 91 people who’d had contact with the salesman or his father were infected. This suggests that “there may be a rare genetic predisposition to the virus”, Farrer says.
One size fits all? IF A drug is not tested on a range of different people, you cannot be sure how widely it will work. That’s the warning from a 300-strong team of researchers and medical staff led by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, which examined the origins of clinical trials volunteers in the US. They found that ethnic minorities and the elderly are under-represented, suggesting we need to know more about how drugs work in these groups. For example, while 60 per
cent of all cancers occur in older Americans, only a quarter of those taking part in cancer studies in 2003 were aged over 65. Furthermore, fewer than 1 in 10 participants in cancer studies conducted between 1995 and 1999 were from ethnic minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics, even though they make up about 1 in 4 of the population. Ethnic communities may be discouraged from getting involved in trials by the complex recruitment processes, which often involve forms only available in English, say the researchers.
THE UPSIDE OF A CRISIS If everyone lost just 4 or 5 kilograms, mortality rates would drop dramatically. At least that’s one lesson from the economic crisis Cuba suffered in the 1990s. When the Soviet empire began to unravel in 1989, Cuba was hit with serious food and fuel shortages. From 1991 to 1995, people were getting only about 1800 calories a day and had to walk or cycle wherever they needed to go. The result was an average drop in body mass index of 1.5 units, and a
halving of the obesity rate to just 7 per cent. In the years that followed, deaths from potentially fatal diseases fell dramatically – diabetes by 51 per cent, coronary artery disease by 35 per cent and stroke by 20 per cent (Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol 178, p 1032). In countries like Canada and the US, where obesity rates are around 30 per cent, the gains from population-wide weight loss would be even greater, the authors argue.
www.newscientist.com