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Genetic rights are enshrined in US law
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A SPEEDY new way to make antibodies to flu could provide a treatment within weeks of the onset of a pandemic. At present flu vaccines take at least six months to produce after a new strain appears. A faster lifesaving strategy might be to treat people with antibodies produced by earlier patients. The main antibody-secreting cells take up to four weeks to appear, but there is a transient burst of another kind of antibody-making cell a week after infection. Now a team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has isolated these early cells from
Genetic rights
HOW TO COUNTER ILL WINDS
AFTER more than a decade, the US Senate has finally passed the Would-be hurricane fighters hoping to Genetic Information stop a future Katrina before it makes Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). landfall should aim to wound, not kill. GINA bans health insurers The goal should be to re-route hurricanes from setting premiums or and ease their fury, rather than try to denying coverage based on the stop them forming in the first place. results of genetic tests, as long This is the latest advice from as applicants have no existing weather modification experts. The field symptoms. The bill is also has a colourful history. In the 1960s and supposed to stop discrimination early 1970s, scientists on “Project in employment decisions. Stormfury” tried in vain to disrupt the “It’s the first civil rights bill of inner structure of hurricanes by seeding the new century of life sciences,” them with silver iodide crystals. Various said veteran Democratic other far-fetched ideas to neutralise Senator Edward Kennedy of storms have been mooted since then, Massachusetts last week. such as cooling the ocean surface. This week the House of More recently, the US Department Representatives is expected of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a to approve GINA, which should Stormfury veteran called Joe Golden – then be signed into law by now at the University of Colorado at President Bush. Geneticists hope the act will usher in a new era of personalised medicine, but that will depend on people being willing to take genetic tests without fear of discrimination. A loophole may still allow employers to view genetic test results, says Mark Rothstein at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In the latest issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol 36, p 174) he warns that employers can still request medical records, which may include genetic information, after making a conditional job offer. –Oh, for an ounce of prevention– www.newscientist.com
people injected with an ordinary flu vaccine and discovered that the antibodies they make attack that strain of flu (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06890). What’s more, they were able to make masses of purified “monoclonal”
Vulture warning Griffon vultures could disappear completely from India within 10 years, warn researchers from Bombay Natural History Society. The birds are being killed by the painkiller diclofenac, which they ingest from the carcasses of dead cattle, despite government efforts to ban the drug.
“They were able to make masses of purified antibodies within a few weeks”
Food crisis force
antibodies from the cells within a few weeks, a process that takes months using the later cells. The team is checking whether potentially pandemic flu, such as H5N1 , also induces such early antibodies.
The United Nations is setting up a task force to tackle the escalating global food crisis. It estimates that 100 million people are going hungry because the cost of staples such as rice, grain and sugar has risen by more than 50 per cent in the last year. The UN’s World Food Programme says it needs $755 million to tackle the task.
Alzheimer’s drug boost
Boulder – to gather experts to evaluate prospects for taming hurricanes. Last week, the panel reported their findings at an American Meteorological Society meeting on weather modification in Westminster, Colorado. The group says aiming to stop storms altogether needs careful consideration: “Hurricanes serve a useful purpose in the Earth’s energy budget and… rainfall from tropical cyclones is a vital component of the regional water supply.” Diverting storms and weakening them should be the aim. They have requested $2.6 million from the DHS over three years to study how this might be achieved. Golden told New Scientist that the DHS is receptive to the idea. “I’m very upbeat, amazed and encouraged,” he says.
People with mild Alzheimer’s disease who took high doses of a drug called tarenflurbil for two years deteriorated more slowly than patients on lower doses or placebos, according to Gordon Wilcock at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK, and colleagues (The Lancet Neurology, DOI: 10.1016/S14744422(08)70090-5). But the drug had no effect on people whose illness was more advanced.
Record breakers
TYRONE TUNER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY
Fast flu solution
if they received the substitutes instead of a salt or starch solution, and nearly three times as likely to have a heart attack (Journal of the American Medical Association, DOI: 10.1001/jama.299.19.jrv80007). “The data is overwhelming,” he says. Death rates were similar for the five products, all based on modified versions of haemoglobin. An accompanying editorial (DOI: 10.1001/jama.299.19. jed80027) calls for a halt on trials of blood substitutes. “All current trials should be suspended, not terminated, to look at safety,” says Dean Fergusson of the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Ontario, Canada, who co-authored the editorial.
Satellite launchers have been setting new records this month. On 28 April, India’s space agency sent 10 satellites into orbit on a single rocket, beating Russia’s previous record of eight. This followed Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s launch of the heaviest-ever commercial satellite on 14 April, which weighs in at 6634 kilograms.
Safe sex rewards Can you pay people to practise safe sex? The World Bank intends to find out, by backing a project that rewards people who do not contract sexually transmitted diseases. Around 3000 participants in southern Tanzania will receive $45 each – as much as a quarter of their annual salary – every time they test negative for STDs.
3 May 2008 | NewScientist | 7
A SPEEDY new way to make antibodies to flu could provide a treatment within weeks of the onset of a pandemic. At present flu vaccines take at least six months to produce after a new strain appears. A faster lifesaving strategy might be to treat people with antibodies produced by earlier patients. The main antibody-secreting cells take up to four weeks to appear, but there is a transient burst of another kind of antibody-making cell a week after infection. Now a team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has isolated these early cells from
Genetic rights
HOW TO COUNTER ILL WINDS
AFTER more than a decade, the US Senate has finally passed the Would-be hurricane fighters hoping to Genetic Information stop a future Katrina before it makes Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). landfall should aim to wound, not kill. GINA bans health insurers The goal should be to re-route hurricanes from setting premiums or and ease their fury, rather than try to denying coverage based on the stop them forming in the first place. results of genetic tests, as long This is the latest advice from as applicants have no existing weather modification experts. The field symptoms. The bill is also has a colourful history. In the 1960s and supposed to stop discrimination early 1970s, scientists on “Project in employment decisions. Stormfury” tried in vain to disrupt the “It’s the first civil rights bill of inner structure of hurricanes by seeding the new century of life sciences,” them with silver iodide crystals. Various said veteran Democratic other far-fetched ideas to neutralise Senator Edward Kennedy of storms have been mooted since then, Massachusetts last week. such as cooling the ocean surface. This week the House of More recently, the US Department Representatives is expected of Homeland Security (DHS) asked a to approve GINA, which should Stormfury veteran called Joe Golden – then be signed into law by now at the University of Colorado at President Bush. Geneticists hope the act will usher in a new era of personalised medicine, but that will depend on people being willing to take genetic tests without fear of discrimination. A loophole may still allow employers to view genetic test results, says Mark Rothstein at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In the latest issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol 36, p 174) he warns that employers can still request medical records, which may include genetic information, after making a conditional job offer. –Oh, for an ounce of prevention– www.newscientist.com
people injected with an ordinary flu vaccine and discovered that the antibodies they make attack that strain of flu (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06890). What’s more, they were able to make masses of purified “monoclonal”
Vulture warning Griffon vultures could disappear completely from India within 10 years, warn researchers from Bombay Natural History Society. The birds are being killed by the painkiller diclofenac, which they ingest from the carcasses of dead cattle, despite government efforts to ban the drug.
“They were able to make masses of purified antibodies within a few weeks”
Food crisis force
antibodies from the cells within a few weeks, a process that takes months using the later cells. The team is checking whether potentially pandemic flu, such as H5N1 , also induces such early antibodies.
The United Nations is setting up a task force to tackle the escalating global food crisis. It estimates that 100 million people are going hungry because the cost of staples such as rice, grain and sugar has risen by more than 50 per cent in the last year. The UN’s World Food Programme says it needs $755 million to tackle the task.
Alzheimer’s drug boost
Boulder – to gather experts to evaluate prospects for taming hurricanes. Last week, the panel reported their findings at an American Meteorological Society meeting on weather modification in Westminster, Colorado. The group says aiming to stop storms altogether needs careful consideration: “Hurricanes serve a useful purpose in the Earth’s energy budget and… rainfall from tropical cyclones is a vital component of the regional water supply.” Diverting storms and weakening them should be the aim. They have requested $2.6 million from the DHS over three years to study how this might be achieved. Golden told New Scientist that the DHS is receptive to the idea. “I’m very upbeat, amazed and encouraged,” he says.
People with mild Alzheimer’s disease who took high doses of a drug called tarenflurbil for two years deteriorated more slowly than patients on lower doses or placebos, according to Gordon Wilcock at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK, and colleagues (The Lancet Neurology, DOI: 10.1016/S14744422(08)70090-5). But the drug had no effect on people whose illness was more advanced.
Record breakers
TYRONE TUNER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY
Fast flu solution
if they received the substitutes instead of a salt or starch solution, and nearly three times as likely to have a heart attack (Journal of the American Medical Association, DOI: 10.1001/jama.299.19.jrv80007). “The data is overwhelming,” he says. Death rates were similar for the five products, all based on modified versions of haemoglobin. An accompanying editorial (DOI: 10.1001/jama.299.19. jed80027) calls for a halt on trials of blood substitutes. “All current trials should be suspended, not terminated, to look at safety,” says Dean Fergusson of the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Ontario, Canada, who co-authored the editorial.
Satellite launchers have been setting new records this month. On 28 April, India’s space agency sent 10 satellites into orbit on a single rocket, beating Russia’s previous record of eight. This followed Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s launch of the heaviest-ever commercial satellite on 14 April, which weighs in at 6634 kilograms.
Safe sex rewards Can you pay people to practise safe sex? The World Bank intends to find out, by backing a project that rewards people who do not contract sexually transmitted diseases. Around 3000 participants in southern Tanzania will receive $45 each – as much as a quarter of their annual salary – every time they test negative for STDs.
3 May 2008 | NewScientist | 7