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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided on Tuesday in Sierra Club v. EPA to throw out a rule that prevented states from implementing their own pollution-limiting permits. This marks marks yet another instance of a U.S. court overturning a Bush administration Environmental Protection Agency air quality rule on the grounds that it did not actually protect air quality.

This time the court ruled against the EPA because their actions directly violated the stipulations of the Clean Air Act. As John Walke at NRDC’s Switchboard points out, it’s interesting that the Bush administration would have dared to take away the power of the states to regulate their own pollution levels, given the precision of the language in the Clean Air Act:

No grants shall be made under this section until the Administrator has consulted with the appropriate official as designated by the Governor or Governors of the State or States affected… Not later than 3 years after the date of the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Governor of each State shall develop and submit to the Administrator a permit program under State or local law or under an interstate compact meeting the requirements of this title.

The rule that was just overturned prevented states from doing exactly this, which crippled the states’ ability to regulate themselves, and increased the power of the industries that profit from a lack of regulations. Walke quotes some juridical advice from the ruling: “(1) Read the statute; (2) read the statute; (3) read the statute.” Among the industry groups that supported the EPA’s case against state-level regulatory action was the American Petroleum Institute.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research has shut down a $500,000 program that helps developing nations predict and prepare for natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and cyclones, Andrew Revkin reports in The New York Times. The program, called the Center for Capacity Building, was created in 2004.

AP/NASA

Cyclone Nargis as it approaches the coast of Bangladesh.

The program served a critical need for poor nations that lack the forecasting infrastructure to accurately predict or sufficiently prepare for natural disasters that ravage their population, cripple weak economies, and destroy food and water supplies.

Writing recently about the “Staggering Cyclone Nargis Catastrophe,” Chris Mooney argued that effective warning systems and evacuation plans have been effective:

Although the Yucatan and Central America got smacked by back-to-back Category 5 storms [in 2003]—Hurricanes Dean and Felix were both far more powerful, meteorologically, than Cyclones Sidr and Nargis—the combined death toll was only 162. That’s because nations like Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras warned their populations and, in some cases, evacuated people in vulnerable areas.

Cyclone Nargis, by comparison, claimed the lives of 138,000 people in Bangladesh. Accurate forecasting and disaster preparedness , which the Center for Capacity Building sought to implement, can save lives.

According to Revkin, the Center for Capacity Building was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, and was shut down due to “shrinking federal science budgets.” A recent supplemental appropriations bill for various scientific organizations, including NSF, is not sufficient to sustain essential scientific programs, and federal scientific budgets should be further increased.

Correction: This post misstated the funding for the Center for Capacity Building as $500 million; it is $500,000

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Chairman of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, called the Salmonella St. Paul outbreak the next saga of “outbreak roulette,” and asked “which industry will be next?” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), sponsor of the TRACE Act, H.R. 3485, which would strengthen the food industry’s traceability system, did not hesitate to call the FDA and CDC out on their faults. She called the food safety system “agonizingly slow.” In her opening statement, she asked, “Why is it that the FDA has jurisdiction over cheese pizzas, but the CDC has jurisdiction over pepperoni pizzas?”

Yesterday Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA, shocked the audience by admitting that only three FDA investigators were currently in Mexico, and that none were stationed there permanently to check the food supply that enters the United States. But he was able to escape the most severe questioning by breaking the news that the FDA had only hours before discovered Salmonella St. Paul in the groundwater of a farm in Mexico that produced serrano peppers.

That did not save Bill Hubbard, former senior associate commissioner for policy, planning and legislation at the FDA, this morning, as he testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Hubbard was quick to discuss the flaws in his agency. He said that reduced funding has led to a reduced staff and a reduced ability to perform the agency’s essential duties. He also noted that while the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 requires that food industries be able to trace their food supply back one step and forward one step, the FDA receives only partial reports, if any, from many food producers.

DeGette came to his rescue by supporting his claim that not all of the FDA’s problems are their fault. The FDA had pushed for additions to the Bioterrorism Act that would have included electronic food tracing records, the identification of each box of tomatoes with individual farm lot numbers, and a consistent recording format, all of which were denied.

Ed Beckman of the California Tomato Cooperative argued today that his company could successfully trace back their tomatoes “in 35 minutes.” Parker Booth of Delta Prepack Company even brought physical evidence of how his company maintains efficient and reliable traceability. He held up a cardboard tomato box which had, printed on the side, the individual farm lot number that the tomatoes came from, along with other state identification codes. This code, provided by a commercial system called HarvestMark, labels all of his company’s tomato boxes, and costs about a penny per box. It could be a good idea to implement on a federal level.

The Washington Post reports that phthalates are so ubiquitous today that in one study, the Food and Drug Administration found traces of the chemicals in every one of its 1,000 subjects. Despite strong lobbying from the chemical industry, especially Exxon Mobil, Congress moved to outlaw the chemicals from commercial products, pending further research. The Post indicates that a White House spokesman stated that President Bush opposes the legislation. Sarah Vogel explained the scientific maneuvering that led to this much-needed oversight earlier this year at The Pump Handle. Describing a Senate hearing on bisphenol A and phthalates oversight, she wrote: “At stake is the means by which society determines chemical risks and benefit.”

According to their annual reports, Merck’s net profits have been steadily declining since 2002, and Pfizer experienced a sharp 29 percent drop in net profit in 2007. Eli Lilly, however, has enjoyed a steady increase in net profit since 2004.

Interestingly, Pfizer’s pharmaceutical revenues have actually increased by 11 percent since 2003—the drop in profit has been due to a 28 percent increase in costs. Merck’s situation is similar: since 2002, revenues have increased by about 11 percent, but costs have skyrocketed 32 percent.

Part of the problem may be that the number of new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for Merck and Pfizer has dropped dramatically in recent years. The Wall Street Journal cited increased concern for consumer safety as a reason the FDA is approving fewer and fewer drugs each year.

So is this why these once cut-throat competitors are now joining forces? Perhaps, but don’t forget that all things considered, the pharmaceutical industry is not exactly suffering. Merril Goozner reported in January 2008 that the sector had the highest profit margin, 20 percent, of various other profitable industries, including gas and oil, during the first nine months of 2007. Perhaps the formation of a joint company is the start of a new era for pharmaceutical companies, but either way, we can be sure that drug companies will continue to prosper for many years to come.

According to the research, 90 percent of the African population express two copies of a mutation in DARC called DARC-negative. This mutation effectively removes the Duffy antigen from the surface of red blood cells, where it would normally bind to chemokines, small molecules that contribute to the immune response. Antigens like Duffy are large molecules that help generate antibodies and increase the response of the immune system.

However, the new study suggests that the mutated Duffy antigen that is so common in the African population actually helps the HIV virus attach to red blood cells, and more efficiently infect T cells. T cells are like the police chiefs of the immune system—they activate other cells and tell them to destroy various biological threats, such as cells that have been infected by viruses. Once T cells get infected by HIV, the body’s ability to destroy other cells infected by the virus is severely compromised.

But the DARC mutation is not completely devastating for those at risk of contracting HIV. The study indicates that “DARC-negative… is associated with slower disease progression.” In other words, HIV spreads slower when the body’s immune system is already slightly compromised by the mutation in DARC. So while individuals who are DARC negative are at a greater risk for contracting HIV, the same mutation may also slow the progression of the disease.

This research news comes just after the House and Senate passed bills allocating $50 billion for the global fight against AIDS and other diseases and lifting a travel ban for HIV-positive people that has been in place since 1987. However, this latest work on the mutation suggests that policymakers should also increase their commitment to funding HIV/AIDS research, especially because of further discouragement within the community about the possibilities for the development of a vaccine.

Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of CSPI, opened the event by emphasizing that politicians must “allow facts to drive policymaking, not the other way around.” Merrill Goozner, the director of CSPI’s the Integrity in Science project, remained optimistic, stating that the group wanted to look forward rather than backwards. He called for the federal government to take an increased role “if our nation is going to curb many of the [scientific] challenges that lie ahead.”

The conference covered a variety of topics, including curbing industry influence on regulatory science, conservation, and conflicts of interest, but one major topic of conversation was renewable energy. Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security spoke of the need for Congress to mandate that every new car sold in America be “flexible”—able to run on multiple sources of energy rather than only on gasoline. Ken Zweibel of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory then argued that solar and wind energy “are a lot closer to economic reality than people realize.”

Integrity in the science that informs renewable energy policy making is a critical issue, as recent years have seen many officials and the Bush administration downplay the reality of global climate change and delay serious efforts to invest in renewable energy. For example, the Illinois FutureGen project, which was supposed to create the world’s first near-zero emissions coal plant, had its funding removed one day after Bush’s 2008 State of the Union address in which he argued that the country should “fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.”

But the most recent disregard of scientific evidence in crafting energy policy is in the national discussion over offshore oil drilling. Just yesterday, President Bush lifted executive orders that ban on off-shore oil drilling. A legislative moratorium still bars companies from drilling on the continental shelf, but the scientific and economic reality is that offshore drilling will not yield more oil for many years, and that oil would then be sold on the world market, reducing domestic oil prices by an insignificant amount. The Center for American Progress has a full ten reasons why lifting the ban on offshore drilling is such a bad idea. As Congress considers lifting the ban, they should heed Rep. Miller’s words and let science inform their decisions.

The report examines a a 40-year sampling of the top 100 innovations annually recognized in R&D Magazine as the nation’s best. The authors, Fred Block and Matthew Keller, conclude that in the 1970s, most of those top 100 innovations came from single corporations working alone. But in recent years, “approximately two-thirds of the award-winning U.S. innovations involve some kind of interorganizational collaboration,” which includes “partnerships involving business and government, including federal labs and federally funded university research.” They conclude that, “In 2006, only 11 of the U.S. entities that produced award-winning innovations were not beneficiaries of federal funding.”

The result, they go on to report, may be due to two factors. First, in the 1970s, much of the American economy was dominated by a relatively small number of large firms. These large firms, because of their established control over the market, were willing and able to take risks. Some of these risks included investing in long-term, high-return technologies. Many of these endeavors were fruitful, and produced many of the most influential innovations. In order to explain why these big firms cut back on staff in the following years and therefore did not continue to wield such influence over the market, the report cites: increased international competition, such as in the car industry; government policies which disbanded monopolies; and a shift in consumer tastes away from standardized products; among other reasons.

Second, they argue that at present, most innovators do not keep their research inside one company or organization because of the growing complexity of scientific fields since the 1970s. “[S]uccessful technological innovation now requires the assembly and management of multidisciplinary teams that bring together different types of expertise,” they write.

They also note that, “during the three decades immediately following World War II, the federal government accounted for 2/3 of all R&D spending as contrasted to 1/3 in recent decades.” However, the federal government has continued to play a strong role in stimulating scientific research. In the 1980s, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act, and created a series of initiatives that included the Manufacturing Extension Program and the Small Business Innovation Research Program, which extended the government’s scientific spending beyond the realms of space exploration and defense technologies, and fueled the rise of federally funded innovations and small businesses.

The report concludes that, “If one is looking for a golden age in which the private sector did most of the innovating on its own without federal help, one has to go back to the era before World War II.” They go on to suggest that:

[T]o succeed in the future, U.S. innovation policy must help support and reinforce our natural national advantage in collaboration. Thus, funding for the U.S. government’s technology initiatives should be expanded and made more secure, and the coordination of these technology initiatives across the federal government, particularly those that support partnerships between firms, universities, and federal laboratories, must be improved.

However, the writers decline to make further policy recommendations, instead stating that they “hope these findings spur a broad debate about the changing role of the federal government in our national innovation system.”

ITIF will hold a forum on July 15th at which Dr. Richard Lipsey, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon Fraser University, will discuss long-term economic growth, and argue that growth is driven principally by technological change.

The organization has called the epidemic a “disaster” not only to draw media attention, but also to emphasize a “complex link” between natural disasters and the spread of HIV. According to chapter 6 of the report, natural disasters destroy crops, raise food prices, and contaminate drinking water, lowering the overall health of a population and creating conditions that can weaken the ability of individuals to combat the virus. Severe weather can also destroy roads, which leaves people unable to reach medical facilities and leaves medical facilities desperate for supplies.

The report reminds readers that 2007 was a “particularly bad year” for floods, forest fires, and other natural disasters. “Africa saw no less than 23 countries affected by some of the biggest floods in decades. In Asia, tens of millions were affected by floods in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.”

In response to these and other natural disasters, the United Nations issued 15 “Flash Appeals” in 2007. Flash Appeals help coordinate the response to and funding for the multiple agencies that respond to humanitarian crises. Of these 15 Flash Appeals, nine were issued for countries with a “generalized HIV epidemic,” meaning that over 1 percent of the adult population is HIV positive. The report cites this as evidence that due to natural disasters, “hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV would have been affected in one or more ways, and general populations exposed to increased risk of infection.”

The report raises increased concern about climate change, stating that because natural disasters can so severely impact the health of entire communities, climate change “may result in an increasingly harsh environment for some already vulnerable populations… An increase in climatic disasters would increase both the numbers of individuals suffering these impacts each year and their severity.”

In the conclusion, Sálvano Briceño, Director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, argues that, “[d]isaster risk reduction is not an option, it is an urgent priority.” The report urges that HIV prevention programs mirror and complement disaster response programs:

Overall, the best approaches to HIV in the context of natural disasters is consistent with guidelines for all forms of disaster [sic]. Better emergency responses must be planned which take into account the specific epidemiological situation in the disaster area, strengthening existing institutions’ ability to withstand the disaster event and restore much needed health services as quickly as possible. At the same time, the development-related aspects of HIV responses must be taken into account, particularly in areas of chronic risk, addressing the epidemic’s contribution to weakening societies and economies and to undermining their ability to respond to disasters.

While this additional funding represents a step in right direction, the additional $150 million sent to the NIH with the passage of this supplemental bill falls woefully short of the annual 10 percent, or $2.59 billion, increase that is necessary to support critical biomedical and health research. The Bush administration has held the NIH budget flat for five years, and inflation has eroded the agency’s purchasing power. In order to truly bolster work that improves our country’s health, grows our economy, fuels the development of renewable energy technologies, and supports basic research, R&D funding for several key agencies should be set on a 10-year doubling course.

• $62.5 million for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for “science, aeronautics, and exploration”
• $62.5 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF) for research and education. $5 million of the $62.5 million is for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and $40 million is for the Robert Noyce scholarship program, which “seeks to encourage talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and professionals to become K-12 mathematics and science teachers.”
• $62.5 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) “to eliminate all furloughs and reductions in force which are a direct result of budgetary constraints.”
• $150 million for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “to support additional scientific research.”
• $62.5 million for Defense Environmental Cleanup

The House passage of this bill comes just after Congress sent good news to the NSF in the form of a proposed 14 percent funding increase above the FY2008 appropriation, bringing the total budget for the agency to $6.9 billion for FY2009. That appropriations bill now moves to the Senate floor.

There may also be good news for the National Institutes of Health, which has seen its spending power decline 8 percent in real terms on account of economy-wide inflation after five years of flat funding from the Bush administration. Moreover, the NIH estimates a loss of 13 percent of buying power in biomedical research expenses, in which prices increase faster than in the rest of the economy. According to Inside Higher Ed, the House Appropriations Committee:

unanimously backed a plan to give the NIH $1.2 billion more than it is receiving in 2008 and than President Bush proposed giving the biomedical research agency for 2009… The $1.2 billion increase, which would lift spending for the NIH to $30.2 billion, would allow for 1,000 new research grants, [Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI)] said.

Unfortunately the $150 million sent to the NIH with the successful passage of this most recent 2008 supplemental bill falls woefully short of the annual 10 percent, or $2.59 billion, increase that is necessary to support critical biomedical and health research. Moreover, R&D funding for the NIH, along with other key agencies, should be set on a doubling course over the next decade to bolster work that improves our country’s health, grows our economy, fuels the development of renewable energy technologies, and supports basic research.

Last Thursday, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), one of the aforementioned three physicists, appeared at the Washington D.C. chapter of Student Pugwash USA for an event on “Science, Technology, and the 2008 Elections.” He spoke of a dire need for scientists on Capital Hill. He also spoke of his own efforts to facilitate discussions between Congress and top scientists. One of his main projects is to revive the de-funded Office of Technology Assessment, which was dissolved in 1995. The OTA was a bipartisan group designed to directly inform Congress about the scientific implications of their policy decisions. Holt said that Congress, under then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, voted to disband the OTA because they could “just go to their neighborhood professor.” Laughing, he said this amounted to a “self-imposed Congressional lobotomy.”

Science Progress Contributing Editor Chris Mooney wrote in support of Congressman Holt’s revival efforts earlier this year: “The need for OTA has only become more apparent, not less, over time, as policymakers see more and more that many political issues have inescapable technical components.” To make critical policy decisions about climate change, health care, and the future of innovation in the United States, lawmakers need the best scientific advice, whether it comes from their colleagues, from outside experts, or from Congressional researchers.

Hopefully the most recent budget increase will alleviate some of the FDA’s shortcomings. According to a statement made by the FDA commissioner, “[t]he funds requested yesterday include $125 million to protect the food supply, $100 million for the safety of drugs and medical devices and $50 million to prepare the FDA’s workforce and laboratories for ‘areas of emerging science’ such as nanotechnology and gene therapies.”

This U.S. policy development is of special concern to Russians, as an increasing number of U.S. pharmaceutical companies conduct their drug trials in Russia, which currently lacks extensive regulations. Merrill Goozner is currently reporting on that country’s health care system, which he explains has the potential to become “ground zero” in the discussion over the FDA’s withdrawal from the Declaration.

Russian health care and longevity has fallen dramatically since the end of communism, and in some areas is just now starting to recover. In some of the most rural parts of Siberia, the first health clinics are just now being built. Even with the recent improvements, the lack of regulations regarding pharmaceutical companies conducting trials concerns Sergey V. Smirnov, the Russian director of the nongovernmental organization, Community of People Living with HIV. Goozner spoke with Smirnov for Scientific American about his activism on the regulation of pharmaceutical trials:

Two years ago, Smirnov joined an informal working group of scientists and bioethicists in drafting legislation designed to beef up clinical trial patient protections. Among backers: representatives of the Russian government’s Bioethics Commission, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the local UNESCO office.

The legislative draft would give the government power to require greater disclosure of sponsors of and participants in clinical trials. It also provides a framework for protecting the patient privacy and safety in the trials, including requiring that they give their (noncoerced) consent to participate.

Smirnov hopes that the bill will be voted on sometime this year, remedying the current lack of effective regulations for clinical trials.

The decision by the FDA to withdraw from the Declaration of Helsinki has evoked much criticism, both at home and abroad. In recent years, the FDA has noticed that even with the Declaration in effect, many international drug trials run by American pharmaceutical companies are not reported until after they are conducted, and as such, the FDA cannot regulate them. The new guidelines may be an attempt to reassert control over these pharmaceutical companies, rather than rely on international law. By relaxing the rules, the FDA may either encourage more international drug trials—and therefore increase the number of drug trials that go unreported and unregulated—or it may find that companies are more likely to adhere to the slightly lower testing standards.