- Email: [email protected]
Fosamax safety fears may be unfounded
News in perspective
SHAUL SCHWARZ/GETTY
Upfront– TASK-SHIFTING TO COMBAT HIV Wanted: 4 million extra health workers worldwide to help combat HIV and AIDS. Applicants with no qualifications considered. Please apply immediately. That’s the message from the World Health Organization, which this week met health ministers from 50 countries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss how to solve the desperate shortage of medical personnel in countries stricken with HIV. Their suggestion is to pass on key tasks to medical staff, and even patients themselves who, although less qualified, have valuable first-hand knowledge of how HIV treatment regimes work. “We hope health ministers will accept the concept and implement it on a massive scale,” says Badara Samb, coordinator of the WHO’s “task-shifting” initiative. In Addis Ababa, he presented
results showing that such schemes are already working well in countries such as Haiti and Uganda, as well as Malawi, where there is only one doctor per 7435 patients with HIV or AIDS. Compare this with the one doctor per 0.6 patients in the UK or US. The idea behind task-shifting is to lighten the load of overstretched doctors and nurses. In Malawi, for example, nurses have been administering antiretroviral therapies previously given only by higher-qualified clinical officers. Samb says the evidence backs taskshifting provided there is adequate training, supervision and money. “It doesn’t mean lower standards,” he says. And allowing HIV-positive individuals to help others like themselves can give them new-found self-esteem and status.
Nuclear battles
democratic mandate for nuclear new build in the UK.” Greenpeace, which took legal action last year to force the government to rerun the consultations, is now considering returning to court. In the US, a coalition of antinuclear groups has filed a petition aiming to prevent the government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from extending the operating life of reactors. The groups claim that safety reviews drawn up by NRC staff routinely include chunks of text “cut and pasted” from reactor operators’ literature. The NRC insists that its staff make conclusions by “independent, objective review”.
–Grass-roots knowledge–
STEM cells have yet to make it into mainstream civilian medicine, but that hasn’t stopped the US military betting on them to save its personnel if there’s a nuclear explosion or radiological attack. On 3 January, the Department of Defense awarded a contract to two biotech firms to develop a treatment for radiation sickness based on stem cells extracted from the bone marrow of healthy adult donors. If the treatment, known as Prochymal, wins approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Pentagon will purchase up to 20,000 doses at a total cost – including funding for development – of $224.7 million. High doses of radiation kill by damaging the DNA of fastdividing cells in the gut and bone
marrow struggles to produce enough white blood cells. The experimental stem cell therapy, being developed by Osiris Therapeutics of Columbia, Maryland, and Genzyme of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is intended mainly to repair the initial damage to the gut lining. However, Osiris also claims that its stem cells will help reconstitute the blood of irradiated people and repair skin damage, based on clinical trials in people whose bone marrow was damaged by chemotherapy, or whose skin was ulcerated by graft-versus-host disease – a common complication of bone marrow transplants. PETER BAZELEY/GETTY
Life savers
“Stem cells could help repair skin damage in people with radiation sickness” marrow. If victims survive the diarrhoea, intestinal bleeding and loss of water caused by damage to their gut linings, they may succumb to fatal infections in the following weeks as their bone –Something worth chewing over– 4 | NewScientist | 12 January 2008
THE return of nuclear power is not going to be smooth. Governments in the UK and US are bracing themselves for legal battles that could hamper their plans to generate more electricity from nuclear reactors. The UK government’s nuclear programme – expected to be announced this week – has come in for heavy criticism in a report by 17 academics. Public consultations relied on “preordained solutions based on problematic information”, says lead author Paul Dorfman of the University of Warwick. “The government has an insufficient
What ‘killed’ jaws? IT IS known as “phossy jaw”, and left 19th-century match-makers who handled phosphorus with gangrenous, pus-filled jawbones. Today, hundreds of people are suing drugs giant Merck, claiming they suffered a similar fate after taking its osteoporosis drug Fosamax. A new paper casts doubt on the link. Athanasios Zavras of Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Boston and his colleagues examined the medical insurance claims of over 700,000 people www.newscientist.com
60 SECONDS with osteoporosis or cancer – more than 200,000 of whom had taken Fosamax and related drugs, called bisphosphonates. While those who were given the drugs intravenously had a higher risk of developing inflammatory jaw conditions, the majority – who took them orally – had a reduced risk (Journal of the American Dental Association, vol 139, p 23). But Tim O’Brien, an attorney in Pensacola, Florida, representing some 500 claimants, says the study diluted evidence for side effects by including jaw conditions besides phossy jaw – also known as osteonecrosis of the jaw. It may also have included people who only took the drugs for a short period.
Evolution denied
Not green enough
SHIPPING NOT SO SQUEAKY CLEAN
AFTER months of taking a battering from its critics over Pity – we almost got away with emissions limits and a raft of believing it was OK to keep shipping other issues, the US Environmental bananas and flowers from Africa to Protection Agency enjoyed some Europe. But a study published this good news last week – although week, which suggests fuel emissions the respite was brief. from ships cool the world and will On 2 January, the EPA continue to do so for centuries, has announced that it had exceeded been criticised for being “misleading”. its targets on reducing pollution Jan Fuglestvedt of the Center from vehicle emissions under the for International Climate and Clean Air Act. Between 1995 and Environmental Research in Oslo, 2005 the agency worked with oil Norway, and colleagues calculated firms to reduce the nastier how emissions produced in 2000 by chemicals in fuel. According to various forms of transport will affect figures released last week, the the world in 20, 100 and 500 years. sulphur content of petrol fell by Shipping, they conclude, “causes net over two-thirds and emissions of cooling, except on future timescales nitrogen oxides fell by more of several centuries” (Proceedings of than 10 per cent. The news was the National Academy of Sciences, welcomed by environmental DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702958104). organisations. However, on the very day the EPA report was published, 16 states and five green groups announced two separate plans to sue the agency on a different but related issue. In December the EPA blocked moves by California and other states to set their own tough carbon emissions standards for vehicle exhausts, insisting that less-stringent federal rules introduced in the same month would suffice. Both the coalition of states and the environmental groups hope to overturn this decision in the courts. –When the smoke clears there’s still CO2– www.newscientist.com
New Year’s resolutions Following the standard advice on healthy living really does add years to your life. A study of death rates in 20,000 people has found that being physically active, eating enough fruit and veg, not smoking, and keeping your alcohol intake below 15 units a week can add 14 years to your life – no matter how fat and unhealthy you are otherwise (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pmed.0050012).
“None of the other candidates in the nomination race has denied evolution” Creationism. It directly addresses intelligent design, and is an attempt to improve the way teachers, scientists and the media communicate understanding about evolution. (See editorial comment, page 3)
Allergy advice changed Avoiding certain foods while pregnant, using soy formula or delaying the introduction of solid food beyond six months is unlikely to protect your child against allergies, according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics. It recommends breastfeeding for at least four months instead (Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-3553).
However, a key assumption – that shipping emissions ceased after 2000 – is clearly unrealistic, says Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre in Manchester, UK. “The conclusions may be misleading to policy-makers if they take this paper to be an assessment of the future impact of transport modes,” she says. Shipping fuel produces ultra-fine particles which reflect solar energy back out into space, and so can cool the climate. Yet they are washed back down to the ground in a matter of days. Carbon dioxide, meanwhile, accumulates in the atmosphere. “I guess that if we did the same thing for 2001 and 2002 and so on we should see an increasing effect of CO2 and a warming that is more difficult to get rid of,” concedes Fuglestvedt.
Reef grief: human blame Coral reef decline in the Caribbean has been linked to overfishing, sewage, global warming, nutrient run-off from agriculture and the expansion of human populations (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1472). The study concludes that conservation schemes would work better if combined with restrictions on sewage dumping, agricultural run-off and fishing.
Fresh start for sun
KADIR VAN LOHUIZEN/NOOR
AS New Scientist went to press, one of the front-runners for the Republican US presidential nomination was a politician who does not believe in evolution. Mike Huckabee, who surprised pundits with his rapid rise from obscurity by winning the Iowa caucus last week, believes God played a role in creation and that the human race could not have come about by “accident”. None of the other remaining candidates has denied evolution. Huckabee’s rise may reignite the debate over intelligent design, which has been relatively quiet in the US since a judge ruled in
2005 that it should not be taught in Pennsylvania public schools. It comes as the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine release a new edition of a key text in that debate, Science, Evolution and
The sun is changing its spots. On 4 January, it officially entered its next 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, according to NASA. The change was marked by the appearance of a new sunspot with a magnetic field pointing in the opposite direction to sunspots in the previous cycle.
More space for China China’s space programme shows no sign of abating. On 8 January, Chinese officials announced plans for a third crewed mission in October, featuring its first space walks. It will also launch 15 rockets and 17 satellites this year, and will mount a joint effort with Russia to explore Mars in 2009.
12 January 2008 | NewScientist | 5
SHAUL SCHWARZ/GETTY
Upfront– TASK-SHIFTING TO COMBAT HIV Wanted: 4 million extra health workers worldwide to help combat HIV and AIDS. Applicants with no qualifications considered. Please apply immediately. That’s the message from the World Health Organization, which this week met health ministers from 50 countries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss how to solve the desperate shortage of medical personnel in countries stricken with HIV. Their suggestion is to pass on key tasks to medical staff, and even patients themselves who, although less qualified, have valuable first-hand knowledge of how HIV treatment regimes work. “We hope health ministers will accept the concept and implement it on a massive scale,” says Badara Samb, coordinator of the WHO’s “task-shifting” initiative. In Addis Ababa, he presented
results showing that such schemes are already working well in countries such as Haiti and Uganda, as well as Malawi, where there is only one doctor per 7435 patients with HIV or AIDS. Compare this with the one doctor per 0.6 patients in the UK or US. The idea behind task-shifting is to lighten the load of overstretched doctors and nurses. In Malawi, for example, nurses have been administering antiretroviral therapies previously given only by higher-qualified clinical officers. Samb says the evidence backs taskshifting provided there is adequate training, supervision and money. “It doesn’t mean lower standards,” he says. And allowing HIV-positive individuals to help others like themselves can give them new-found self-esteem and status.
Nuclear battles
democratic mandate for nuclear new build in the UK.” Greenpeace, which took legal action last year to force the government to rerun the consultations, is now considering returning to court. In the US, a coalition of antinuclear groups has filed a petition aiming to prevent the government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from extending the operating life of reactors. The groups claim that safety reviews drawn up by NRC staff routinely include chunks of text “cut and pasted” from reactor operators’ literature. The NRC insists that its staff make conclusions by “independent, objective review”.
–Grass-roots knowledge–
STEM cells have yet to make it into mainstream civilian medicine, but that hasn’t stopped the US military betting on them to save its personnel if there’s a nuclear explosion or radiological attack. On 3 January, the Department of Defense awarded a contract to two biotech firms to develop a treatment for radiation sickness based on stem cells extracted from the bone marrow of healthy adult donors. If the treatment, known as Prochymal, wins approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Pentagon will purchase up to 20,000 doses at a total cost – including funding for development – of $224.7 million. High doses of radiation kill by damaging the DNA of fastdividing cells in the gut and bone
marrow struggles to produce enough white blood cells. The experimental stem cell therapy, being developed by Osiris Therapeutics of Columbia, Maryland, and Genzyme of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is intended mainly to repair the initial damage to the gut lining. However, Osiris also claims that its stem cells will help reconstitute the blood of irradiated people and repair skin damage, based on clinical trials in people whose bone marrow was damaged by chemotherapy, or whose skin was ulcerated by graft-versus-host disease – a common complication of bone marrow transplants. PETER BAZELEY/GETTY
Life savers
“Stem cells could help repair skin damage in people with radiation sickness” marrow. If victims survive the diarrhoea, intestinal bleeding and loss of water caused by damage to their gut linings, they may succumb to fatal infections in the following weeks as their bone –Something worth chewing over– 4 | NewScientist | 12 January 2008
THE return of nuclear power is not going to be smooth. Governments in the UK and US are bracing themselves for legal battles that could hamper their plans to generate more electricity from nuclear reactors. The UK government’s nuclear programme – expected to be announced this week – has come in for heavy criticism in a report by 17 academics. Public consultations relied on “preordained solutions based on problematic information”, says lead author Paul Dorfman of the University of Warwick. “The government has an insufficient
What ‘killed’ jaws? IT IS known as “phossy jaw”, and left 19th-century match-makers who handled phosphorus with gangrenous, pus-filled jawbones. Today, hundreds of people are suing drugs giant Merck, claiming they suffered a similar fate after taking its osteoporosis drug Fosamax. A new paper casts doubt on the link. Athanasios Zavras of Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Boston and his colleagues examined the medical insurance claims of over 700,000 people www.newscientist.com
60 SECONDS with osteoporosis or cancer – more than 200,000 of whom had taken Fosamax and related drugs, called bisphosphonates. While those who were given the drugs intravenously had a higher risk of developing inflammatory jaw conditions, the majority – who took them orally – had a reduced risk (Journal of the American Dental Association, vol 139, p 23). But Tim O’Brien, an attorney in Pensacola, Florida, representing some 500 claimants, says the study diluted evidence for side effects by including jaw conditions besides phossy jaw – also known as osteonecrosis of the jaw. It may also have included people who only took the drugs for a short period.
Evolution denied
Not green enough
SHIPPING NOT SO SQUEAKY CLEAN
AFTER months of taking a battering from its critics over Pity – we almost got away with emissions limits and a raft of believing it was OK to keep shipping other issues, the US Environmental bananas and flowers from Africa to Protection Agency enjoyed some Europe. But a study published this good news last week – although week, which suggests fuel emissions the respite was brief. from ships cool the world and will On 2 January, the EPA continue to do so for centuries, has announced that it had exceeded been criticised for being “misleading”. its targets on reducing pollution Jan Fuglestvedt of the Center from vehicle emissions under the for International Climate and Clean Air Act. Between 1995 and Environmental Research in Oslo, 2005 the agency worked with oil Norway, and colleagues calculated firms to reduce the nastier how emissions produced in 2000 by chemicals in fuel. According to various forms of transport will affect figures released last week, the the world in 20, 100 and 500 years. sulphur content of petrol fell by Shipping, they conclude, “causes net over two-thirds and emissions of cooling, except on future timescales nitrogen oxides fell by more of several centuries” (Proceedings of than 10 per cent. The news was the National Academy of Sciences, welcomed by environmental DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702958104). organisations. However, on the very day the EPA report was published, 16 states and five green groups announced two separate plans to sue the agency on a different but related issue. In December the EPA blocked moves by California and other states to set their own tough carbon emissions standards for vehicle exhausts, insisting that less-stringent federal rules introduced in the same month would suffice. Both the coalition of states and the environmental groups hope to overturn this decision in the courts. –When the smoke clears there’s still CO2– www.newscientist.com
New Year’s resolutions Following the standard advice on healthy living really does add years to your life. A study of death rates in 20,000 people has found that being physically active, eating enough fruit and veg, not smoking, and keeping your alcohol intake below 15 units a week can add 14 years to your life – no matter how fat and unhealthy you are otherwise (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pmed.0050012).
“None of the other candidates in the nomination race has denied evolution” Creationism. It directly addresses intelligent design, and is an attempt to improve the way teachers, scientists and the media communicate understanding about evolution. (See editorial comment, page 3)
Allergy advice changed Avoiding certain foods while pregnant, using soy formula or delaying the introduction of solid food beyond six months is unlikely to protect your child against allergies, according to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics. It recommends breastfeeding for at least four months instead (Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-3553).
However, a key assumption – that shipping emissions ceased after 2000 – is clearly unrealistic, says Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre in Manchester, UK. “The conclusions may be misleading to policy-makers if they take this paper to be an assessment of the future impact of transport modes,” she says. Shipping fuel produces ultra-fine particles which reflect solar energy back out into space, and so can cool the climate. Yet they are washed back down to the ground in a matter of days. Carbon dioxide, meanwhile, accumulates in the atmosphere. “I guess that if we did the same thing for 2001 and 2002 and so on we should see an increasing effect of CO2 and a warming that is more difficult to get rid of,” concedes Fuglestvedt.
Reef grief: human blame Coral reef decline in the Caribbean has been linked to overfishing, sewage, global warming, nutrient run-off from agriculture and the expansion of human populations (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1472). The study concludes that conservation schemes would work better if combined with restrictions on sewage dumping, agricultural run-off and fishing.
Fresh start for sun
KADIR VAN LOHUIZEN/NOOR
AS New Scientist went to press, one of the front-runners for the Republican US presidential nomination was a politician who does not believe in evolution. Mike Huckabee, who surprised pundits with his rapid rise from obscurity by winning the Iowa caucus last week, believes God played a role in creation and that the human race could not have come about by “accident”. None of the other remaining candidates has denied evolution. Huckabee’s rise may reignite the debate over intelligent design, which has been relatively quiet in the US since a judge ruled in
2005 that it should not be taught in Pennsylvania public schools. It comes as the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine release a new edition of a key text in that debate, Science, Evolution and
The sun is changing its spots. On 4 January, it officially entered its next 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, according to NASA. The change was marked by the appearance of a new sunspot with a magnetic field pointing in the opposite direction to sunspots in the previous cycle.
More space for China China’s space programme shows no sign of abating. On 8 January, Chinese officials announced plans for a third crewed mission in October, featuring its first space walks. It will also launch 15 rockets and 17 satellites this year, and will mount a joint effort with Russia to explore Mars in 2009.
12 January 2008 | NewScientist | 5