Lack of access to clean drinking water is being exacerbated by climate change. In fact, less than 1% of the world’s water is fresh and accessible, according to Melissa Ho, senior vice president of freshwater and food at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

“Although we see water all around the planet, we do not necessarily realize what a precious and finite resource it is,” she said.

Ho cited that statistic during “This is Climate: Water,” a Washington Post event that featured leaders at the forefront of water crisis initiatives discussing possible solutions to address global water inequities and the role of water in sustainable development.

Ahead of Wednesday’s World Water Day, Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper outlined growing demands on the Colorado River, which drains a watershed from seven Western U.S. states and Mexico.

While lack of access to clean water is especially prevalent in developing nations, more than 2 million Americans are without running water in their homes.

“In the U.S., race is the No. 1 predictor of water access,” said DigDeep co-CEO Julie Waechter. “Native American households are 19 times more likely than white households to not have running water, and Black and Latino households are twice as likely.”

According to Waechter, when water infrastructure was expanded in the U.S., “many communities of color were not included in that expansion.”

“So communities of color that are trying to catch up and get that water infrastructure are having a really hard time finding the funding to do that.”

WWF’s Ho said women and girls are disproportionately affected by inaccessible water, with millions of girls worldwide routinely walking more than 3 kilometers to fetch water. “Think of what that means for their safety and health and access to schooling and educational opportunities,” she added.

Contaminated water in US

Even when water is accessible, in too many instances it is unsafe to drink. Ho said water quality is an issue that should be of “prime concern” given that chemicals, heavy metals, hormones and other potentially toxic substances are routinely present in the U.S. water supply.

The White House on Tuesday announced the first-ever national drinking water standard for six polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also referred to as “forever chemicals.” The proposal would enforce limits on the amount of PFAS allowed in drinking water.

Water use in industry

Speakers also addressed the use of water in industry, where it’s needed but often wasted.

In the United States, agriculture, including farming and ranching, is the biggest user of water, with 70% of fresh water going to agriculture. World Environment Center CEO Glenn Prickett said that makes farmers “also the most vulnerable to climate impacts in terms of drought or flooding.”

With all industries depending on water in some way, limited availability of water worsened by climate change is an economic reality.

“Water scarcity is a key portion of what companies should be thinking about as they think about their water sustainability programs so that they can be more water resilient into the future,” said Calvin Emanuel, vice president and general manager of Sustainable Growth Solutions at Ecolab. “It has to be a part of their growth strategy and path forward.”

“Some are obvious, like food and beverage manufacturing,” Prickett said, “but others may be less obvious but highly valuable to our economy, like fabrication of microchips or data centers for the cloud or chemical manufacturing. All use water, and if they didn’t have it, it would be a big impact on their business and their profitability.”

Environmental activist Alexia Leclercq closed the session with thoughts on how activists are trying to conserve clean water sources for future generations.

“Not to diminish the complexity of policy and of these solutions that we direly need, but I think that if we shift away from prioritizing profit, I think that gives us a lot of space to imagine what our future could look like and actually put our resources towards finding those solutions and working on those solutions,” the Start: Empowerment co-founder said. “It’s really limitless what we can create.”
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a number of improvements in access to mental health care on Thursday to reduce suicides in the military but held off on endorsing more controversial recommendations to restrict gun and ammunition purchases by young troops, sending them to another panel for study.

An independent committee in late February recommended that the Defense Department implement a series of gun safety measures, including waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and ammunition by service members on military property and raising the minimum age for service members to buy guns and ammunition to 25.

In a memo released Thursday, Austin called for the establishment of a suicide prevention working group to “assess the advisability and feasibility” of recommendations made by the initial study committee — which would include the gun measures. He also asked for cost estimates and a description of any “barriers” to implementing other changes and set a deadline of June 2 for that report. At no point did he specifically refer to the gun proposals or mention gun safety.

Growing concern 

Austin’s orders reflect increasing concerns about suicides in the military despite more than a decade of programs and other efforts to prevent them and spur greater intervention by commanders, friends and family members. But his omission of any gun safety and control measures underscores the likelihood that they would face staunch resistance, particularly in Congress, where such legislation has struggled in recent years.

The more immediate changes address broader access to care.

To more quickly provide help for troops who might be struggling, Austin directed the Pentagon to hire more behavioral health specialists and implement a scheduling system for appointments where patients receive multiple health care visits weekly when they first seek care.

Austin also ordered military primary care health clinics to screen for unhealthy levels of alcohol use, make unhealthy alcohol use treatment easier to receive, and make sure mental health care is available through service members’ primary care as well.

“The mental health support available for our teammates must be comprehensive and easy to access,” Austin said in the memo.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in a briefing Thursday that Austin’s orders involved areas where the department already has the authority to take immediate steps.

“While we recognize that suicide has no single cause, and that no single preventative action, treatment or cure will eliminate suicide altogether, we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health and morale of our total force,” Ryder said.

Committee recommends rules about firearms

The initial study committee recommended that the department require anyone living in military housing to register all privately owned firearms. In addition, the panel said the department should restrict the possession and storage of privately owned firearms in military barracks and dorms.

Confirming findings in annual suicide reports, the panel noted that about 66% of all active-duty military suicides — and more than 70% of those by National Guard and Reserve members — are done with firearms. It said reducing access to guns could prevent some deaths.

Craig Bryan, a clinical psychologist and member of the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, said the department should slow down troops’ access to guns — specifically those bought in stores on bases — so people under stress can survive periods of high risk.

He likened the expanded gun safety measures to requirements that the department puts on motorcycle usage — such as mandated helmets — that are often more strict than some state laws. Asked how likely such changes would be, Bryan said he believes troops are more receptive to such limits than civilians might be.
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Deaths of pregnant women in the United States fell in 2022, dropping significantly from a six-decade high during the pandemic, new data suggests.

More than 1,200 U.S. women died in 2021 during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth, according to a final tally released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022, there were 733 maternal deaths, according to preliminary agency data, though the final number is likely to be higher.

Officials say the 2022 maternal death rate is on track to get close to pre-pandemic levels. But that’s not great: The rate before COVID-19 was the highest it had been in decades.

“From the worst to the near worst? I wouldn’t exactly call that an accomplishment,” said Omari Maynard, a New Yorker whose partner died after childbirth in 2019.

Experts blame COVID-19 

The CDC counts women who die while pregnant, during childbirth, and up to 42 days after birth. Excessive bleeding, blood vessel blockages, and infections are leading causes.

COVID-19 can be particularly dangerous to pregnant women, and experts believe it was the main reason for the 2021 spike. Burned-out physicians could have added to the risk by ignoring pregnant women’s worries, some advocates said.

In 2021, there were about 33 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births. The last time the government recorded a rate that high was 1964.

What happened “isn’t that hard to explain,” said Eugene Declercq, a longtime maternal mortality researcher at Boston University. “The surge was COVID-related.”

Previous government analyses concluded that one quarter of maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021 were COVID-related — meaning that the entire increase in maternal deaths was due to coronavirus infections or the pandemic’s wider impact on health care. Pregnant women infected with the coronavirus were nearly eight times as likely to die as their uninfected peers, according to a recent study published by BMJ Global Health.

The bodies of pregnant women are already under strain, their heart forced to pump harder. Other health problems can make their condition more fragile. And then on top of that, “COVID is going to make all that much worse,” said Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes.

It didn’t help that vaccination rates among pregnant women were low in 2021 — particularly among Black women. Part of that was related to limited vaccine availability, and that the CDC did not fully recommend shots for pregnant women until August 2021.

“Initially, there was a lot of mistrust of the vaccine in Black communities,” said Samantha Griffin, who owns a doula service that mainly serves families of color in the Washington area.

But there’s more to it than that, she and others added. The 2021 maternal mortality rate for Black women was nearly three times higher than it was for white women. And the maternal death rate for Hispanic American women that year rose 54% compared with 2020, also surpassing the death rate for white moms.

More than a year into the pandemic, a lot of doctors and nurses were feeling burned out and they were getting less in-person time with patients.

Providers at the time “were needing to make snap decisions and maybe not listening to their patients as much,” Griffin said. “Women were saying that they thought something was wrong and they weren’t being heard.”

‘She wasn’t being heard’

Maynard, who is 41 and lives in Brooklyn, said he and his partner experienced that in 2019.

Shamony Gibson, a healthy 30-year-old, was set to have their second child. The pregnancy was smooth until her contractions stopped progressing and she underwent a cesarean section.

The operation was more involved than expected but their son Khari was born in September. A few days later, Shamony began complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath, Maynard said. Doctors told her she just needed to relax and let her body rest from the pregnancy, he said.

More than a week after giving birth, her health worsened and she begged to go to the hospital. Then her heart stopped, and loved ones called for help. The initial focus for paramedics and firefighters was whether Gibson was taking illicit drugs, Maynard said, adding that she didn’t.

She was hospitalized and died the next day of a blood clot in the lungs. Her son was 13 days old.

“She wasn’t being heard at all,” said Maynard, an artist who now does speaking engagements as a maternal health advocate.
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For the first time, scientists have created baby mice from two males. 

This raises the distant possibility of using the same technique for people — although experts caution that very few mouse embryos developed into live mouse pups, and no one knows whether it would work for humans. 

Still, “It’s a very clever strategy,” said Diana Laird, a stem cell and reproductive expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. “It’s an important step in both stem cell and reproductive biology.” 

Scientists described their work in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. 

First, they took skin cells from the tails of male mice and transformed them into “induced pluripotent stem cells,” which can develop into many different types of cells or tissues. Then, through a process that involved growing them and treating them with a drug, they converted male mouse stem cells into female cells and produced functional egg cells. Finally, they fertilized those eggs and implanted the embryos into female mice. About 1% of the embryos — 7 out of 630 — grew into live mouse pups. 

The pups appeared to grow normally and were able to become parents themselves in the usual way, research leader Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University and Osaka University in Japan told fellow scientists at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing last week. 

In a commentary published alongside the Nature study, Laird and her colleague, Jonathan Bayerl, said the work “opens up new avenues in reproductive biology and fertility research” for animals and people. Down the road, for example, it might be possible to reproduce endangered mammals from a single male. 

“And it might even provide a template for enabling more people,” such as male same-sex couples, “to have biological children, while circumventing the ethical and legal issues of donor eggs,” they wrote. 

But they raised several cautions. The most notable one: The technique is extremely inefficient. They said it’s unclear why only a tiny fraction of the embryos placed into surrogate mice survived; the reasons could be technical or biological. They also stressed that it’s still too early to know if the protocol would work in human stem cells at all. 

Laird also said scientists need to be mindful of the mutations and errors that may be introduced in a culture dish before using stem cells to make eggs. 

The research is the latest to test new ways to create mouse embryos in the lab. Last summer, scientists in California and Israel created “synthetic” mouse embryos from stem cells without a dad’s sperm or a mom’s egg or womb. Those embryos mirrored natural mouse embryos up to 8 ½ days after fertilization, containing the same structures, including one like a beating heart. Scientists said the feat could eventually lay the foundation for creating synthetic human embryos for research in the future.
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Moonwalking astronauts will have sleeker, more flexible spacesuits that come in different sizes when they step onto the lunar surface later this decade. 

Exactly what that looks like remained under wraps. The company designing the next-generation spacesuits, Axiom Space, said Wednesday that it plans to have new versions for training purposes for NASA later this summer. 

The moonsuits will be white like they were during NASA’s Apollo program more than a half-century ago, according to the company. That’s so they can reflect heat and keep future moonwalkers cool. 

The suits will provide greater flexibility and more protection from the moon’s harsh environment, and will come in a wider range of sizes, according to the Houston-based company. 

NASA awarded Axiom Space a $228.5 million contract to provide the outfits for the first moon landing in more than 50 years. The space agency is targeting late 2025 at the earliest to land two astronauts on the moon’s south pole. 

At Wednesday’s event in Houston, an Axiom employee modeled a dark spacesuit, doing squats and twisting at the waist to demonstrate its flexibility. The company said the final version will be different, including the color. 

“I didn’t want anybody to get that mixed up,” said Axiom’s Russell Ralston. 
…

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, truck drivers, grocery clerks and other essential workers were hailed as heroes.

“Now we are vilifying them … and this has long-term ramifications for our well-being,” said Manuela Tomei, International Labor Organization assistant director-general for governance, rights, and dialogue.

“The work that these persons perform is absolutely essential for families and societies to function,” she said, speaking Wednesday in Geneva. “So, the non-availability of their services would really result into a loss of well-being and the impossibility of ensuring safe lives to society at large.”

And yet a new study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) finds essential workers are undervalued, underpaid and laboring under poor working conditions, exposed to treatment that “exacerbates employee turnover and labor shortages, jeopardizing the provision of basic services.”

The U.N. agency’s report classifies key workers into eight main occupation groups covering health, food systems, retail, security, cleaning and sanitation, transport, manual, and technical and clerical occupations.

Data from 90 countries show that during the COVID-19 crisis key workers suffered higher mortality rates than non-key workers overall, with transport workers being at highest risk.

The report found 29% of key workers globally are low paid, earning on average 26% less than other employees. It reports they tend to work long, unpredictable hours under poor conditions.

Tomei said inaction in improving sub-standard conditions of work is having consequences today.

“In a number of countries, these sectors are facing some labor shortages because people are increasingly reluctant to engage in work which is not fairly valued by society and rewarded in terms of better pay and also improved working conditions.

“So, we are facing a crisis right now,” she added.

Richard Samans, director of the ILO research department, noted that a critical shortage of nurses in many countries is of particular concern.

“This affects the very life of people,” he said Wednesday. “Many people in countries are facing long delays in treatment. In the event of a shock — some sort of a major health disruption or natural disaster or otherwise — if the system is already strained, it cannot handle the major influx of demand for those nursing services.”

A new report by the World Health Organization warns the “widespread disruptions to health services” due to the COVID-19 pandemic “has resulted in a rapid acceleration in the international recruitment of health professionals,” mainly from poor to rich countries, exacerbating shortages of this vital workforce in developing countries.

The ILO reports that countries are still experiencing supply shortages three years after WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. ILO research director Richard Samans attributes this to a scarcity of truck drivers due to lack of training and bad working conditions.

“In the event of a shock that increases the demand for certain types of products and services, if the underlying logistical infrastructure is not fit for purpose, then that affects the daily livelihood of people and, in some cases, their health and well-being,” he said.

The ILO report also says key workers fare worse than non-key workers in both wealthy and poor countries, but ILO senior economist Janine Berg said the problems are worse in low-income countries.

“There are particularly severe problems, for example, in agricultural work in low-income countries, and the entire agricultural food chain is part of the key worker definition,” she said. “There are also very severe problems in lower-income countries with respect to very low coverage in social protection.”

The report urges nations to identify gaps in decent work and develop national strategies to address the problems facing key workers through strengthened policies and investment.

Among its recommendations, the report calls on governments to reinforce occupational health and safety systems, improve pay for essential workers, guarantee safe and predictable working hours through regulation, and increase access to training so that key workers can carry out their work effectively and safely.
…

Every month, young girls in Ghana are forced to miss school days due to menstruation. But a schoolteacher is working to find a solution by providing reusable sanitary pads. Hamza Adams visited a school in Afari, Ghana, and has this story narrated by Salem Solomon.
…

The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death.

NASA released the picture Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

The observation was among the first made by Webb following its launch in late 2021. Its infrared eyes observed all the gas and dust flung into space by a huge, hot star 15,000 light years away. A light year is about 5.8 trillion miles.

Shimmering in purple like a cherry blossom, the cast-off material once comprised the star’s outer layer. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a shot of the same transitioning star a few decades ago, but it appeared more like a fireball without the delicate details.

Such a transformation occurs only with some stars and normally is the last step before they explode, going supernova, according to scientists.

“We’ve never seen it like that before. It’s really exciting,” said Macarena Garcia Marin, a European Space Agency scientist who is part of the project.

This star in the constellation Sagittarius, officially known as WR 124, is 30 times as massive as our sun and already has shed enough material to account for 10 suns, according to NASA.
…

Illegal fishing, a multibillion-dollar industry closely linked to organized crime, is set to pose a greater threat to global security as climate change warms the world’s oceans, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute, a research organization based in London, in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trust.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated, or IUU, fishing is worth up to $36.4 billion annually, according to the report, representing up to a third of the total global catch.

Fish stocks

As climate change warms the world’s oceans, fish stocks are moving to cooler, deeper waters, and criminal operations are expected to follow.

“IUU actors and fishers in general will be chasing those fish stocks as they move. And there’s predictions, or obviously concern, that they will move in across existing maritime boundaries and IUU actors will pursue them across those boundaries,” report co-author Lauren Young told VOA.

RUSI said that global consumption of seafood has risen at more than twice the rate of population growth since the 1960s. At the same time, an increasing proportion of global fish stocks have been fished beyond biologically sustainable limits.

The report also highlights that fish play a key role in capturing carbon through feeding, so a decline in fish stocks itself could accelerate warming temperatures.

Crime nexus

“Climate change will impact in other ways, with impacts on coastal erosion as well, and that will have impacts on local small-scale fisheries. As their livelihoods become more vulnerable, they may begin engaging more in IUU practices like disruptive fishing practices or engaging in other type of criminal activity as well.”

“There is a nexus with other crime types as well, like narcotics, human trafficking and labor abuses,” Young added.

Many poorer countries do not have the capacity to police their waters. In parts of Africa and South America, foreign trawlers — including many vessels from China — have devastated fish stocks. Beijing denies its fleets conduct illegal fishing.

The United States Coast Guard said in 2021 that IUU fishing had replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat. “If IUU fishing continues unchecked, we can expect deterioration of fragile coastal states and increased tension among foreign-fishing nations, threatening geo-political stability around the world,” the document warned.

US response

The United States launched a sustainable fishing initiative in Peru and Ecuador in October. Project “Por la Pesca” is aimed at helping artisanal fishing in the face of depleted stocks caused by IUU fishing.

“It’s having a profound impact on stocks of fish, on the livelihoods of fisherpeople, on sustainability,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on a visit to Peru in October. “We have many countries around the world where fishing is at the heart of their economy and the heart of their culture as well, where illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing is a real and growing challenge.”

South China Sea

RUSI highlights the warming South China Sea as a flashpoint. Already, fishing grounds and maritime boundaries are hotly contested, with frequent armed confrontations.

“Many relate to China’s commitment to the nine-dash line, which is the country’s self-declared sort of maritime boundary,” said RUSI’s Young. “And they enforce that through armed fishing militia. So that obviously plays into it a lot as well. But those existing tensions there are likely to be exacerbated by climate change. And that is in line with predictions of climate change being this kind of threat multiplier.”

Enforcement

Earlier this month, United Nations member states agreed to the High Seas Treaty, aimed at protecting biodiversity by establishing vast marine protected areas.

“Whilst it’s a positive move with climate change that we’re looking to protect more of the world’s oceans, we need to improve our ability to actually monitor and enforce [the agreements] as well,” Young said.

The report authors call on governments and multinational bodies to tackle illegal fishing based on climate change predictions; enhanced vessel monitoring capabilities and tougher enforcement, with greater recognition on the role the industry plays in wider criminal networks.
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Poorer countries are increasingly losing health care workers to wealthier ones as the latter seek to shore up their own staff losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes through active recruitment, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. 

The trend for nurses and other staff to leave parts of Africa or Southeast Asia for better opportunities in wealthier countries in the Middle East or Europe was already under way before the pandemic but has accelerated since, the U.N. health agency said, as global competition heats up.

“Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems do not have enough and many are losing their health workers to international migration,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general.

He was referring to a new WHO list of vulnerable countries which has added eight extra states since it was last published in 2020. They are: Comoros, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Laos, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Jim Campbell, director of the WHO’s health workforce department, told journalists safeguards for countries on the WHO list were important so they “can continue to rebuild and recover from the pandemic without an additional loss of workers to migration”.

Some 115,000 health care workers died from COVID around the world during the pandemic but many more left their professions due to burnout and depression, he said. As a sign of the strain, protests and strikes have been organised in more than 100 countries since the pandemic began, he added, including in Britain and the United States.

“We need to protect the workforce if we wish to ensure the population has access to care,” said Campbell.

Asked which countries were attracting more workers, he said wealthy OECD countries and Gulf states but added that competition between African countries had also intensified.

The WHO says it is not against migration of workers if it was managed appropriately. In 2010, it released a voluntary global code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel and urges its members to follow it.
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Jiang Yanyong, a Chinese military doctor who revealed the full extent of the 2003 SARS outbreak and was later placed under house arrest for his political outspokenness, has died, a long-time acquaintance and a Hong Kong newspaper said Tuesday.  

Jiang was 91 and died of pneumonia Saturday in Beijing, according to human rights activist Hu Jia and the South China Morning Post.

News of Jiang’s death and even his name were censored within China, underscoring how he remained a politically sensitive figure even late in life.

Jiang had been chief surgeon at the People’s Liberation Army’s main 301 hospital in Beijing when the army fought its way through the city to end weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, causing the deaths of hundreds — possibly thousands — of civilians.

In April 2003, as the ruling Communist Party was suppressing news about the outbreak of the highly contagious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Jiang wrote an 800-word letter stating there were many more SARS cases than were being officially reported by the country’s health minister.

Jiang emailed the letter to state broadcaster CCTV and Hong Kong’s Beijing-friendly Phoenix Channel, both of which ignored it. The letter was then leaked to Western media outlets that published it in its entirety, along with reports on the true extent of the outbreak and official Chinese efforts to hide it.

The letter, along with the death of a Finnish United Nations employee and statements by renowned physician Zhong Nanshan, forced the lifting of government suppression, leading to the resignations of both the health minister and Beijing’s mayor. Strict containment measures were imposed virtually overnight, helping to restrain the spread of the virus that had already begun appearing overseas.

In all, more than 8,000 people from 29 countries and territories were infected with SARS, resulting in at least 774 deaths.

“Jiang had the conscience of a doctor to people the patients first. He saved so many lives with that letter, without thought for the consequences,” Hu told The Associated Press.  

Chinese authorities later sought to block media access to Jiang, who retired with the rank of major general. He turned down an interview with The Associated Press, saying he had been unable to obtain the necessary permission from the Ministry of Defense.

From 2004, Jiang and his wife were periodically placed under house arrest for appealing to Communist leaders for a re-evaluation of the 1989 protests that remains a taboo topic. That recalled Jiang’s earlier experiences when he was persecuted as a rightist under Mao Zedong during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

In 2004, Jiang was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service from the Philippines, considered by some an Asian version of the Nobel Peace Prize. In the citation, he was praised for having broken “China’s habit of silence and forced the truth of SARS into the open.”

Jiang was prevented from leaving the country and the award was collected by his daughter on his behalf.

Three years later, he won the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award given by the New York Academy of Sciences, but was again blocked from traveling.

Echoes of Jiang’s experience were heard in China’s approach to the initial outbreak of COVID-19, first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

A Wuhan eye doctor, Li Wenliang, was detained and threatened by police for allegedly spreading rumors on social media following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus. Li’s death on Feb. 7, 2020, sparked widespread outrage against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts. 

Sympathy and the outpouring of anger of the treatment of Li and other whistleblowers prompted the government to change course and declare him and 13 others martyrs.

COVID-19 has killed almost 7 million people worldwide, including an estimated 1.5 million in China, whose government has been accused of massively undercounting the true number of deaths.

Jiang is survived by his wife, Hua Zhongwei, a son and a daughter, according to the South China Morning Post.   
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Pfizer Inc PFE.N struck a $43 billion deal for Seagen Inc SGEN.O to add innovative targeted therapies to its portfolio of cancer treatments as it braces for a steep fall in COVID-19 product sales and stiff competition for some top sellers.

Monday’s deal, Pfizer’s biggest in a string of acquisitions following a once-in-a-lifetime cash windfall from its COVID-19 vaccine and pill, will add four approved cancer therapies with combined sales of nearly $2 billion in 2022.

Washington-based Seagen is a pioneer of antibody-drug conjugates, which work like “guided missiles” designed for a targeted destructive effect and spare healthy cells.

The deal helps Pfizer move into an area “that it is more protected from regulators, patent perspectives and market dynamics,” Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a conference call. 

Seagen, Bourla said, is set to benefit from out-of-pocket health care spending caps for older Americans under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), meaning more patients could have access to the company’s expensive treatments.

A focus on complex biotech medicines also provides a longer exclusivity on the market versus pills before becoming subject to government price limits under the IRA, he said.

Pfizer will pay $229 in cash per Seagen share, a 32.7% premium to Friday’s closing price. Seagen’s shares rose to $200 in early trading.

The latest deal comes as Pfizer seeks to mitigate an anticipated $17 billion hit to revenue by 2030 from patent expirations for top drugs and decline in demand for its COVID products.

The drugmaker expects more than $10 billion in sales from Seagen products in 2030, and another $15 billion from its other recent acquisitions.

Pfizer’s recent deals include its purchase of Global Blood Therapeutics for $5.4 billion, migraine drug maker Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding for $11.6 billion, and a $6.7 billion buyout of drug developer Arena Pharmaceuticals.

Pfizer’s portfolio of oncology therapies includes 24 approved drugs, while Seagen’s includes Adcetris for lymphoma, Padcev for bladder cancers, Tivdak for cervical cancer and breast cancer treatment Tukysa.

The companies expect to complete the deal in late 2023 or early 2024. Pfizer said antitrust regulators could closely review the deal due to its size but eventually approve it.

Pfizer rival Merck & Co Inc MRK.N and Seagen were in advanced deal talks last year but those reportedly collapsed over antitrust concerns. 
…

Discovering the origins of COVID-19 is a moral imperative and all hypotheses must be explored, the head of the World Health Organization said, in the clearest indication yet that the U.N. body remains committed to finding how the virus arose.

A U.S. agency was reported by The Wall Street Journal to have assessed the pandemic had likely been caused by an unintended Chinese laboratory leak, raising pressure on the WHO to come up with answers. Beijing denies the assessment which could soon become public after the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to declassify it.

“Understanding #COVID19’s origins and exploring all hypotheses remains: a scientific imperative, to help us prevent future outbreaks [and] a moral imperative, for the sake of the millions of people who died and those who live with #LongCOVID,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter late on Saturday.

He was writing to mark three years since the WHO first used the word “pandemic” to describe the global outbreak of COVID-19.

Activists, politicians and academics said in an open letter this weekend that the focus of the anniversary should be on preventing a repeat of the unequal COVID-19 vaccine rollout, saying this led to at least 1.3 million preventable deaths.

In 2021, a WHO-led team spent weeks in and around Wuhan, China where the first human cases were reported and said in a joint report that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, but further research was needed. China has said no more visits are needed.

Since then, the WHO has set up a scientific advisory group on dangerous pathogens but it has not yet reached any conclusions on how the pandemic began, saying key pieces of data are missing.
…

Researchers have found long-term evidence that actively monitoring localized prostate cancer is a safe alternative to immediate surgery or radiation.

The results, released Saturday, are encouraging for men who want to avoid treatment-related sexual and incontinence problems, said Dr. Stacy Loeb, a prostate cancer specialist at NYU Langone Health who was not involved in the research.

The study directly compared the three approaches — surgery to remove tumors, radiation treatment and monitoring. Most prostate cancer grows slowly, so it takes many years to look at the disease’s outcomes.

“There was no difference in prostate cancer mortality at 15 years between the groups,” Loeb said. And prostate cancer survival for all three groups was high — 97% regardless of treatment approach. “That’s also very good news.”

The results were published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a European Association of Urology conference in Milan, Italy. Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Research paid for the research.

Men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer shouldn’t panic or rush treatment decisions, said lead author Dr. Freddie Hamdy of the University of Oxford. Instead, they should “consider carefully the possible benefits and harms caused by the treatment options.”

A small number of men with high-risk or more advanced disease do need urgent treatments, he added.

Researchers followed more than 1,600 U.K. men who agreed to be randomly assigned to get surgery, radiation or active monitoring. The patients’ cancer was confined to the prostate, a walnut-sized gland that’s part of the reproductive system. Men in the monitoring group had regular blood tests and some went on to have surgery or radiation.

Death from prostate cancer occurred in 3.1% of the active-monitoring group, 2.2% in the surgery group, and 2.9% in the radiation group, differences considered statistically insignificant.

At 15 years, cancer had spread in 9.4% of the active-monitoring group, 4.7% of the surgery group and 5% of the radiation group. The study was started in 1999, and experts said today’s monitoring practices are better, with MRI imaging and gene tests guiding decisions.

“We have more ways now to help catch that the disease is progressing before it spreads,” Loeb said. In the U.S., about 60% of low-risk patients choose monitoring, now called active surveillance.

Hamdy said the researchers had seen the difference in cancer spread at 10 years and expected it to make a difference in survival at 15 years, “but it did not.” He said spread alone doesn’t predict prostate cancer death.

“This is a new and interesting finding, useful for men when they make decisions about treatments,” he said. 
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On the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus is still spreading, and the death toll is nearing 7 million worldwide. Yet most people have resumed their normal lives, thanks to a wall of immunity built from infections and vaccines.

The virus appears here to stay, along with the threat of a more dangerous version sweeping the planet.

“New variants emerging anywhere threaten us everywhere,” said virus researcher Thomas Friedrich of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Maybe that will help people to understand how connected we are.”

Saturday marks three years since the World Health Organization first called the outbreak a pandemic, March 11, 2020, and the United Nation’s health organization says it’s not yet ready to say the emergency has ended.

The virus endures

With the pandemic still killing 900 to 1,000 people a day worldwide, the stealthy virus behind COVID-19 hasn’t lost its punch. It spreads easily from person to person, riding respiratory droplets in the air, killing some victims but leaving most to bounce back without much harm.

“Whatever the virus is doing today, it’s still working on finding another winning path,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute in California.

We’ve become numb to the daily death toll, Topol says, but we should view it as too high. Consider that in the United States, daily hospitalizations and deaths, while lower than at the worst peaks, have not yet dropped to the low levels reached during summer 2021 before the delta variant wave.

At any moment, the virus could change to become more transmissible, more able to sidestep the immune system or more deadly. Topol said we’re not ready for that. Trust has eroded in public health agencies, furthering an exodus of public health workers. Resistance to stay-at-home orders and vaccine mandates may be the pandemic’s legacy.

Fighting back

There’s another way to look at it. Humans unlocked the virus’ genetic code and rapidly developed vaccines that work remarkably well. We built mathematical models to get ready for worst-case scenarios. We continue to monitor how the virus is changing by looking for it in wastewater.

“The pandemic really catalyzed some amazing science,” said Friedrich.

The achievements add up to a new normal where COVID-19 “doesn’t need to be at the forefront of people’s minds,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at Emory University. “That, at least, is a victory.”

Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins, said the current omicron variants have about 100 genetic differences from the original coronavirus strain. That means about 1% of the virus’ genome is different from its starting point. Many of those changes have made it more contagious, but the worst is likely over because of population immunity.

Matthew Binnicker, an expert in viral infections at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said the world is in “a very different situation today than we were three years ago — where there was, in essence, zero existing immunity to the original virus.”

That extreme vulnerability forced measures aimed at “flattening the curve.” Businesses and schools closed, weddings and funerals were postponed. Masks and “social distancing” later gave way to showing proof of vaccination. Now, such precautions are rare.

“We’re not likely to go back to where we were because there’s so much of the virus that our immune systems can recognize,” Ray said. Our immunity should protect us “from the worst of what we saw before.”

Real-time data lacking

On Friday, Johns Hopkins did its final update to its free coronavirus dashboard and hot-spot map with the death count standing at more than 6.8 million worldwide. Its government sources for real-time tallies had drastically declined. In the U.S., only New York, Arkansas and Puerto Rico still publish case and death counts daily.

“We rely so heavily on public data and it’s just not there,” said Beth Blauer, data lead for the project.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still collects a variety of information from states, hospitals and testing labs, including cases, hospitalizations, deaths and what strains of the coronavirus are being detected. But for many counts, there’s less data available now and it’s been less timely.

“People have expected to receive data from us that we will no longer be able to produce,” said the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Internationally, the WHO’s tracking of COVID-19 relies on individual countries reporting. Global health officials have been voicing concern that their numbers severely underestimate what’s actually happening and they do not have a true picture of the outbreak.

For more than year, CDC has been moving away from case counts and testing results, partly because of the rise in home tests that aren’t reported. The agency focuses on hospitalizations, which are still reported daily, although that may change. Death reporting continues, though it has become less reliant on daily reports and more on death certificates — which can take days or weeks to come in.

Then and now

“I wish we could go back to before COVID,” said Kelly Forrester, 52, of Shakopee, Minnesota, who lost her father to the disease in May 2020, survived her own bout in December and blames misinformation for ruining a longtime friendship. “I hate it. I actually hate it.”

The disease feels random to her. “You don’t know who will survive, who will have long COVID or a mild cold. And then other people, they’ll end up in the hospital dying.”

Forrester’s father, 80-year-old Virgil Michlitsch, a retired meat packer, deliveryman and elementary school custodian, died in a nursing home with his wife, daughters and granddaughters keeping vigil outside the building in lawn chairs.

Not being at his bedside “was the hardest thing,” Forrester said.
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A requirement that travelers to the U.S. from China present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights expired Friday after more than two months as cases in China have fallen.

The restrictions were put in place December 28 and took effect January 5 amid a surge in infections in China after the nation sharply eased pandemic restrictions and as U.S. health officials expressed concerns that their Chinese counterparts were not being truthful to the world about the true number of infections and deaths. The requirement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expired for flights leaving after 3 p.m. Eastern time Friday.

When the restriction was imposed, U.S. officials also said it was necessary to protect U.S. citizens and communities because there was a lack of transparency from the Chinese government about the size of the surge or the variants that were circulating within China.

The rules imposed in January require travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macau to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone 2 years and older, including U.S. citizens.

China saw infections and deaths surge after it eased back from its “zero COVID” strategy in early December after rare public protests of the policy that confined millions of people to their homes and sparked demands for President Xi Jinping to resign.

But as China eased its strict rules, infections and deaths surged, and parts of the country for weeks saw their hospitals overwhelmed by infected patients looking for help. Still, the Chinese government has been slow to release data on the number of deaths and infections.

The U.S. decision to lift restrictions comes at a moment when U.S.-China relations are strained. U.S. President Joe Biden ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot down last month after it traversed the continental United States. The Biden administration has also publicized U.S. intelligence findings that raise concern Beijing is considering providing Russia weaponry for its ongoing war on Ukraine.
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As the world waits for NASA to announce the first crews in its Artemis missions to the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh talks with several astronauts hoping to make the cut as the space agency promotes diversity in its ranks. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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After three nasty years, the La Nina weather phenomenon that increases Atlantic hurricane activity and worsens Western drought is gone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Thursday.

That’s usually good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists said.

The globe is now in what’s considered a “neutral” condition and probably trending to an El Nino in late summer or fall, said climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, head of NOAA’s El Nino/La Nina forecast office.

“It’s over,” said research scientist Azhar Ehsan, who heads Columbia University’s El Nino/La Nina forecasting. “Mother Nature thought to get rid of this one because it’s enough.”

Global impact

La Nina is a natural and temporary cooling of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. In the United States, because La Nina is connected to more Atlantic storms and deeper droughts and wildfires in the West, La Ninas often are more damaging and expensive than their more famous flip side, El Nino, experts said, and studies show.

Generally, American agriculture is more damaged by La Nina than El Nino. If the globe jumps into El Nino, it means more rain for the Midwestern corn belt and grains in general and could be beneficial, said Michael Ferrari, chief scientific officer of Climate Alpha, a firm that advises investors on financial decisions based on climate.

When there’s a La Nina, there are more storms in the Atlantic during hurricane season because it removes conditions that suppress storm formation. Neutral or El Nino conditions make it harder for storms to get going, but not impossible, scientists said.

Over the last three years, the U.S. has been hit by 14 hurricanes and tropical storms that each caused $1 billion or more in damage, totaling $252 billion in costs, according to NOAA economist and meteorologist Adam Smith. La Nina and people building in harm’s way were factors, he said.

Influence of climate change

Climate change is a major factor in worsening extreme weather, alongside La Nina, scientists said and numerous studies and reports show. Human-caused warming is like an escalator going up – It makes temperatures increase and extremes worse – while La Nina and El Nino are like jumping up and down on the escalator, according to Northern Illinois University atmospheric sciences professor Victor Gensini.

La Nina has also slightly dampened global average temperatures, keeping warming from breaking annual temperature records, while El Nino slightly turbocharges those temperatures, often setting records, scientists said.

La Nina tends to make western Africa wet, but eastern Africa, around Somalia, dry. The opposite happens in El Nino, with drought-struck Somalia likely to get steady “short rains,” Ehsan said. La Nina has wetter conditions for Indonesia, parts of Australia and the Amazon, but those areas are drier in El Nino, according to NOAA.

El Nino means more heat waves for India and Pakistan and other parts of South Asia and weaker monsoons there, Ehsan said.

Signs that La Nina’s leaving

This particular La Nina, which started in September 2020 but is considered three years old because it affected three different winters, was unusual and one of the longest on record. It took a brief break in 2021 but came roaring back with record intensity.

“I’m sick of this La Nina,” Ehsan said. L’Heureux agreed, saying she’s ready to talk about something else.

The few other times that there’s been a triple-dip La Nina have come after strong El Ninos, and there’s clear physics on why that happens. But that’s not what happened with this La Nina, L’Heureux said. This one didn’t have a strong El Nino before it.

Even though this La Nina has confounded scientists in the past, they say the signs that it’s leaving are clear: Water in the key part of the central Pacific warmed to a bit more than the threshold for a La Nina in February, the atmosphere showed some changes, and along the eastern Pacific near Peru there’s already El Nino-like warming brewing on the coast, L’Heureux said.

Think of a La Nina or El Nino as something that pushes the weather system from the Pacific with ripple effects worldwide, L’Heureux said. When there are neutral conditions like now, there’s less push from the Pacific. That means other climatic factors, including the long-term warming trend, have more influence in day-to-day weather, she said.

Without an El Nino or La Nina, forecasters have a harder time predicting seasonal weather trends for summer or fall because the Pacific Ocean has such a big footprint in weeks-long forecasts.

El Nino forecasts made in the spring are generally less reliable than ones made at other times of year, so scientists are less sure about what will happen next, L’Heureux said. But NOAA’s forecast said there’s a 60% chance that El Nino will take charge come fall.

There’s also a 5% chance that La Nina will return for an unprecedented fourth dip. L’Heureux said she really doesn’t want that but the scientist in her would find that interesting.
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All U.S. women getting mammograms will soon receive information about their breast density, which can sometimes make cancer harder to spot.

The new requirements, finalized Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, are aimed at standardizing the information given to millions of women following scans to detect breast cancer. Regulators first proposed the changes in 2019; health care providers will have 18 months to comply with the policy.

Some states already require that women receive information on breast density.

About half of women over age 40 have dense breasts, with less fatty tissue and more connective and glandular tissue. That tissue appears white on X-rays, the same color as growths in the breast, making mammograms harder to read. Dense breast tissue is one of the factors that can increase a woman’s chances of developing cancer.

Under the new rules, women with dense breasts will receive a written memo alerting them that their status “makes it harder to find breast cancer.” Those patients will also be directed to speak with their doctor about their results.

Professional guidelines don’t specify next steps for women identified with dense breasts, but some physicians may recommend additional forms of scanning, including ultrasound or MRI.
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Sodium is essential for the smooth functioning of muscles and nerves and maintaining the proper balance of water and minerals. But too much sodium in the diet can kill.

“Almost 2 million deaths each year are associated with excessive sodium intake,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.

“Too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure and increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases,” he said. “And yet globally, average sodium intake is more than double the WHO recommendation for adults of less than 2,000 milligrams per day, or 5 grams of salt.”

That is equivalent to one teaspoon of salt a day.

A WHO report launched Thursday explores for the first time the progress countries have made in implementing sodium intake reduction policies. A survey of WHO’s 194 member states showed “the world is off track to achieve its global target of reducing sodium intake by 30% by 2025.”

The report finds that only 5% of WHO member states “are protected by mandatory and comprehensive sodium reduction policies,” and 73% of WHO member states “lack full range of implementation of such policies.”

Francesco Branca, director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, noted that reducing sodium intake is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve health and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases “as it can avert a large number of cardiovascular events and deaths at very low program costs.”

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, claiming an estimated 17.9 million lives. WHO reports that more than four out of five of these deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes, with one-third occurring prematurely in people under age 70.

9 nations succeed

The report finds that only nine countries — Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Uruguay — have fully enacted WHO’s recommended policies to reduce sodium intake.

Tom Frieden, CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, cites Chile as a leader in the implementation of lifesaving sodium-reduction policies.

Speaking in a webinar among fellow experts that followed the report’s launch, Frieden said Chile had “passed the law of food labeling and advertising that simultaneously required mandatory front-of pack warning labels, including on sodium; restricted marketing of products that have those warning labels; and banned the procurement of the sale of those products in schools.”

He noted that Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay had all passed similar policies, following Chile’s lead.

Branca noted that a significant proportion of sodium in the diet comes from processed and highly processed foods sold in many high-income countries and increasingly in low- and middle-income countries.

“Government-led mandatory maximum limits for sodium-processed foods promote industrywide reformulations,” he said. “They create a marketplace that restricts the less healthy food options regardless of where people shop, or how much they understand or have access to information on labels.”

Frieden said self-regulation by the food manufacturing industry has repeatedly proven to be ineffective and “voluntary policies are often ignored.”

“In fact, a mandatory approach creates a level playing field,” because it can keep companies that take positive steps from feeling as though they must conduct business at a competitive disadvantage.

In addition to the existing proven strategies to reduce sodium, Frieden said, countries can consider new, innovative measures, such as increasing the availability and use of sodium and salt substitutes.

“Recent studies show that these substitutes significantly decrease not only blood pressure, and not only heart attack and strokes, but even death from cardiovascular events,” he said.

“Imagine that changing the brand of salt that you use could reduce the risk of death by 10% or 15%.”
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WeightWatchers, the 60-year-old diet firm, announced this week it would acquire a telehealth company whose providers prescribe anti-obesity drugs for growing numbers of eager online subscribers.

The $132 million deal with Sequence is just the latest commercial push into the red-hot market for prescription drugs that promises significant weight loss. For months, the diabetes drug Ozempic has been touted on social media by celebrities, even though it’s not approved for weight loss. The demand for it sparked shortages.

WeightWatchers will be introducing its roughly 3.5 million subscribers to a new generation of medications that go beyond behavioral changes like gym workouts and diet tracking. Obesity experts say the drugs may revolutionize treatment of the disease that affects 42% of American adults.

Here’s a look at the promise of these new medications and cautions about their use.

What are these new diet drugs?

The drugs that have generated most buzz are from a class of medications called GLP-1 agonists. Two of the most popular, Ozempic and Wegovy, are different doses of the same drug, semaglutide.

Ozempic has been used for six years to treat Type 2 diabetes and is not approved for weight loss. Wegovy was approved in 2021 to treat obesity in adults, and late last year to treat kids and teens 12 and older.

Doctors prescribe the medications to people with diabetes alone, or to people who are obese or who are overweight with additional health problems. Most of these types of drugs are delivered through weekly injections.

Supply problems and soaring demand last year led to a shortage of the drugs, but manufacturer Novo Nordisk said those have been replenished.

How do the drugs work?

They mimic the action of a gut hormone that kicks in after people eat, boosting the release of insulin, blocking sugar production in the liver and suppressing appetite.

A newer drug called tirzepatide mimics the action of two hormones for even greater effect. The Eli Lilly and Company drug, sold under the brand name Mounjaro, is now approved to treat diabetes. But the FDA granted fast-track status to review it to treat obesity. A decision is expected this spring.

With lower appetite and a greater feeling of fullness, people using these drugs eat less and lose weight.

How effective are the drugs?

In a clinical trial, adults who took Wegovy saw a mean weight loss of nearly 35 pounds, or about 15% of their initial body weight. Adolescents lost about 16% of their body weight.

A clinical trial of Mounjaro, which is still being studied, saw mean weight loss of 15% to 21% of body weight depending on the dose, compared with a weight loss of about 3% for people taking a placebo, or a dummy drug.

Why not just diet and exercise?

In a typical weight-loss program where participants rely only on diet and exercise, about a third of people enrolled will lose 5% or more of their body weight, noted Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Most people find it difficult to lose weight because of the body’s biological reactions to eating less, he said. There are several hormones that respond to reduced calorie intake to increase hunger and maintain body mass.

“There is a real physical phenomenon,” he said. “There is a resistance mechanism that is a coordinated effort by the body to prevent you from losing weight.”

What are the side effects of the drugs?

The most common side effects are short-lived gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain and constipation.

Other possible side effects include thyroid tumors, cancer, inflammation of the pancreas, kidney and gallbladder and eye problems. People with a family history of certain thyroid cancers or a rare, genetic endocrine disorder should avoid the drugs.

What should consumers watch out for?

These new medications could be an effective part of a multifaceted approach to weight loss, said Dr. Amy Rothberg, a University of Michigan endocrinologist who directs a virtual weight management and diabetes program called Rewind.

But she worries that programs like WeightWatchers are primarily interested in boosting enrollment — and profits.

“My hope is that they do their due diligence and have real monitoring of the patients taking the drugs,” she said.

It’s important to make sure that patients are taking the drugs for the intended purpose, to make sure there’s no reason they shouldn’t take the drugs and that they’re monitored for side effects, she said.
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Plastics entering the world’s oceans have surged by an unprecedented amount since 2005 and could nearly triple by 2040 if no further action is taken, according to research published on Wednesday.

An estimated 171 trillion plastic particles were afloat in the oceans by 2019, according to peer-reviewed research led by the 5 Gyres Institute, a U.S. organization that campaigns to reduce plastic pollution.

Marine plastic pollution could rise 2.6-fold by 2040 if legally binding global policies are not introduced, it predicted.

The study looked at surface-level plastic pollution data from 11,777 ocean stations in six major marine regions covering the period from 1979 to 2019.

“We’ve found an alarming trend of exponential growth in microplastics in the global ocean since the millennium,” Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Group said in a statement.

“We need a strong legally binding U.N. global treaty on plastic pollution that stops the problem at the source,” he added.

Microplastics are particularly hazardous to the oceans, not only contaminating water but also damaging the internal organs of marine animals, which mistake plastic for food.

Experts said the study showed that the level of marine plastic pollution in the oceans has been underestimated.

“The numbers in this new research are staggeringly phenomenal and almost beyond comprehension,” said Paul Harvey, a scientist and plastics expert with Environmental Science Solutions, an Australian consultancy focused on pollution reduction.

The United Nations kicked off negotiations on an agreement to tackle plastic pollution in Uruguay in November, with the aim of drawing up a legally binding treaty by the end of next year.

Environmental group Greenpeace said that without a strong global treaty, plastic production could double within the next 10 to 15 years, and triple by 2050.

A separate international treaty was agreed on Sunday to help protect biodiversity in the world’s high seas.
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France has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu among red foxes northeast of Paris, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Tuesday, as the spread of the virus to mammals raised global concerns.

After three foxes were found dead in a nature reserve in Meaux near where gulls had died, one of the foxes was collected and tested, WOAH said in a report, citing French authorities.

The World Health Organization last month described the bird flu situation as “worrying” due to the recent rise in cases in birds and mammals and that it was reviewing its global risk assessment in light of recent developments including cases of human transmission in Cambodia.

Avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has been spreading around the world in the past year, killing more than 200 million birds, sending egg prices rocketing and raising concern among governments about human transmission.

The virus infected a cat in France in late December.

It has also been detected in minks in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, sea lions in Peru and grizzly bears in the United States.
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Many states have enacted or contemplated limits or outright bans on transgender medical treatment, with conservative U.S. lawmakers saying they are worried about young people later regretting irreversible body-altering treatment.

But just how common is regret? And how many youth change their appearances with hormones or surgery only to later change their minds and detransition?

Here’s a look at some of the issues involved.

What is transgender medical treatment?

Guidelines call for thorough psychological assessments to confirm gender dysphoria — distress over gender identity that doesn’t match a person’s assigned sex — before starting any treatment.

That treatment typically begins with puberty-blocking medication to temporarily pause sexual development. The idea is to give youngsters time to mature enough mentally and emotionally to make informed decisions about whether to pursue permanent treatment.

Puberty blockers may be used for years and can increase risks for bone density loss, but that reverses when the drugs are stopped.

Sex hormones — estrogen or testosterone — are offered next. Dutch research suggests that most reports from doctors and individual U.S. clinics indicate that the number of youth seeking any kind of transgender medical care has increased in recent years.

How often do transgender people regret transitioning?

In updated treatment guidelines issued last year, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health said evidence of later regret is scant, but that patients should be told about the possibility during psychological counseling.

Dutch research from several years ago found no evidence of regret in transgender adults who had comprehensive psychological evaluations in childhood before undergoing puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

Some studies suggest that rates of regret have declined over the years as patient selection and treatment methods have improved. In a review of 27 studies involving almost 8,000 teens and adults who had transgender surgeries, mostly in Europe, the U.S and Canada, 1% on average expressed regret. For some, regret was temporary, but a small number went on to have detransitioning or reversal surgeries, the 2021 review said.

Research suggests that comprehensive psychological counseling before starting treatment, along with family support, can reduce chances for regret and detransitioning.

What is detransitioning?

Detransitioning means stopping or reversing gender transition, which can include medical treatment or changes in appearance, or both.

Detransitioning does not always include regret. The updated transgender treatment guidelines note that some teens who detransition “do not regret initiating treatment” because they felt it helped them better understand their gender-related care needs.

Research and reports from individual doctors and clinics suggest that detransitioning is rare. The few studies that exist have too many limitations or weaknesses to draw firm conclusions, said Dr. Michael Irwig, director of transgender medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

He said it’s difficult to quantify because patients who detransition often see new doctors, not the physicians who prescribed the hormones or performed the surgeries. Some patients may simply stop taking hormones.

“My own personal experience is that it is quite uncommon,” Irwig said. “I’ve taken care of over 350 gender-diverse patients and probably fewer than five have told me that they decided to detransition or changed their minds.”

Recent increases in the number of people seeking transgender medical treatment could lead to more people detransitioning, Irwig noted in a commentary last year in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. That’s partly because of a shortage of mental health specialists, meaning gender-questioning people may not receive adequate counseling, he said.

Dr. Oscar Manrique, a plastic surgeon at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has operated on hundreds of transgender people, most of them adults. He said he’s never had a patient return seeking to detransition.

Some may not be satisfied with their new appearance, but that doesn’t mean they regret the transition, he said. Most, he said, “are very happy with the outcomes surgically and socially.”
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