Mooney, a Contributing Editor to Science Progress who will be a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT for the next academic year, and Kirshenbaum, a marine biologist at Duke University, advocate for a greater presence of science in the national dialogue in their new book. The authors joined Science Progress for a podcast discussion last week. No only should scientists should hone better communication skills to convey their messages, politicians should be more willing to learn the importance of science to public policy, and journalists should pay more attention to science policy news, the authors said. (To listen to the podcast of our conversation, see the audio player in the sidebar, download the mp3, or subscribe via iTunes.)

“I think a lot of scientists are very nervous to get involved, particularly in the political arena because they don’t want to ruffle any feathers. They just want to keep doing their research in the lab, and not necessarily have to go talk about it and lobby for money,” Kirshenbaum said. This is a problem because “it all trickles down to research dollars,” she explained.

Getting important groups to listen to significant science is difficult but important, Mooney added. Legislators are often reluctant to hear from scientists who show up at their offices even for a minute, “especially when the science is hard.”

Moreover, scientific outfits sometimes make the mistake of lobbying staffers and members of Congress without coordination, and “with different messages about the same issue,” Kirshenbaum, a former congressional staffer, said. On the other hand, the “pseudoscience side is very well organized, very well funded, and often has extremely articulate speakers with PhDs.”

“They know how to put on a good briefing. They know how to make people laugh; they serve food,” she explained, “And they have a unified message so a lot of the really valuable stuff that should be making it’s way to the Hill gets lost in all of the noise.” Lobbyists with pseudoscientific agendas may work to discredit the threat of climate change or ban vaccines, she said.

Moreover, for important research that addresses 21^st-century challenges to get necessary funding, “We’re going to have to get involved on the Hill and in discussions well beyond Washington, D.C.,” she said.

Both authors worked to get these issues on center stage during last year’s presidential election by helping found Science Debate 2008, an initiative to get the presidential candidates to talk about their science policy positions on national television.

Although Science Debate 2008’s supporters—which included Nobel laureates, government leaders, and universities—did not achieve their ultimate goal, they still made a lot of progress, according to Mooney. The effort was important, he said, because of two words: “science matters.” Science matters to policy and the economy, he said, and given that it is germane to what politicians do, “they should talk about it publicly and often.”

Kirshenbaum emphasized that the project galvanized the scientific establishment. The initiative, now simply called “Science Debate” is hoping to “push towards the next presidential election” and get people talking about science issues on the local level, she said. The ultimate goal is to move science from its “special interest status” into our “common culture,” she explained.

We need to employ scientists in more communication outlets so they can explain why science matters to the public, Mooney said. Cultivating more of those communicators will provide “a unique asset because they’re the small part of the public that not only knows why science matters, but is deeply engaged and has the technical ability” to correctly explain the science. And that, he would argue, is good for the United States.

Interview produced by Andrew Plemmons Pratt, managing editor for Science Progress, and Vivian Cheng, intern with Science Progress.

His work at DOE inspired him to write Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. The book explains how groups like the tobacco industry use various “tricks of the trade” to mask the health hazards of the products or operations by “manufacturing uncertainty” about risks and by debating the validity of scientific data.

“These are tricks that turn positive studies into negative ones or take one positive study and do a literature review which buries the positive study in what is essentially a whole mass of garbage so it looks like there is nothing there,” he told Science Progress in a podcast interview last year.

Doubt Is Their Product illustrates how “product defense firms” hired by big industries managed to consistently delay government actions to control the health risks of beryllium, tobacco, asbestos, lead, chromium, and other deadly chemicals. In his research, Michaels “found some very powerful smoking guns,” which he made available at www.defendingscience.org “so anyone can download them and read exactly how these people work.”

Several of these smoking guns came from Hill & Knowlton, a public relations company that defended the tobacco industry for over a decade. In addition, the company listed among its accomplishments that it was essentially able to delay regulation for a couple of years on Freon, a chlorofluorocarbon known for depleting the ozone layer.

Noting the difficultly of spotting these “tricks of the trade,” Michaels said that he supported prohibiting financial conflicts of interest in scientific studies and government advisory panels as a way to curb “industry’s assault on science.”

“We know the basic problem is that scientists who are paid to find a certain result will find that result. That’s certainly what we see in these studies over and over again: that scientists who work for these companies that actually manufacture uncertainty never find a result the sponsor doesn’t want,” he said.

Michaels also did a book event at the Center for American Progress: view full event video (CAP site)

Update: The New York Times commended David Michaels for his commitment to worker safety and endorsed his nomination for OSHA director in an editorial yesterday. Michaels “seems just the right man to steer the agency back toward an emphasis on protecting workers after eight years of lax oversight and favoritism to industry under the Bush administration,” the newspaper wrote. The editorial suggested that Michaels may meet resistance from business interests, but that they may want to rethink their position on the nominee since “his emphasis on cultural change and involvement of workers in improving safety could help ease the polarization between business and labor.”

Image: CAP

To explore these ethical approaches to emerging technologies Science Progress spoke with Gregory E. Kaebnick, editor of the Hastings Center Report and principal investigator on the Center’s “Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology” project, and Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Because the field is advancing so rapidly, scientists, ethicists, and policymakers must address the social and ethical issues now, as it still matures, argue Kaenick’s colleagues, the authors of the new study. (To listen to the podcast of our conversation, see the audio player in the sidebar, download the mp3, or subscribe via iTunes.)

Synthetic biology, commonly referred to as “synbio,” is not one particular technology, but “more of an agenda” to use existing scientific tools to do rather than simply understand biological science, Kaebnick explained. Synbiologists “create and modify biological parts and organisms” using “a confluence of a variety of technologies” including DNA synthesis, information processing, and DNA sequencing, he said. The techniques can yield medicines, fuel, and industrial chemicals. Moreover, Light added that synbio shares many important concepts and jargon with information technology. Synthesizing DNA, for instance, is analogous in some ways to programming a machine to make it perform a specific task.

But what about the potential benefits promised by emerging technologies like synthetic biology and nanotech? One likely benefit, Light explained, may come from the intersection of nano and synbio energy research. Scientists in multiple U.S. labs are working to develop artificial photosynthesis, a process in which engineered cells turn water, sunlight, and carbon into biofuel. Light pointed to this as an important area of renewable energy research because it could help harness the 800 terawatts of solar energy striking the Earth at any given moment and transform it into useable resources. “This is at least one reason why I think we could see a big benefit if this technology develops in a responsible way,” he said.

Another important advance is in the artificial production of artemisinic acid, the precursor for artemisinin, an effective treatment for drug-resistant malaria. Kaebnick called it the “poster child for synbio,” as natural wormwood sources for the compound are expensive and rare.

Despite these potential benefits, synbio raises a number of concerns. One of the greatest risks is bioterrorism, Kaebnick said, as DNA synthesis techniques could be used to reproduce a variety of pathogens. For example, with the appropriate gene sequences, rogue scientists could recreate the polio virus or smallpox. They could even re-engineer smallpox so it is more deadly than the original disease, he explained.

Bioterrorism is a clear potential physical harm. In contrast, potential nonphysical harms present philosophical questions that range from “Are we over stepping our bounds as humans?” by engineering artificial life forms to “Who should have access to life-extending drugs?”

For example, Light suggested, if scientists develop a drug that radically extends the human lifespan, it may not be immediately accessible to the whole population although there would be “enormous pressure to invest in this technology,” he said.

A similar concern is creating whole organisms with synthetic DNA, Kaebnick said. Environmental preservation champions who believe “we ought to preserve biodiversity and rare organisms” even if it is “economically disadvantageous” to oppose such synbio research. He went on: “Down the road, we may have the ability to control our children’s development in utero,” using emerging technologies. Ethical issues in this area of synbio are similar to existing concerns raised by assisted reproductive technologies.

A number of regulations are already in place for synbio, Kaebnick said, as rules for biotechnology often spill over to technologies used in synbio. Regulations enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies may apply to emerging technologies as well, he explained. However, Light said there are still gaps left when considering synbio research, and due diligence will be necessary to prevent their exploitation. “The attitude is not to keep synbio from happening,” he said, but rather to create and maintain public confidence in its benefits.

Interview produced by Andrew Plemmons Pratt, managing editor for Science Progress, and Vivian Cheng, intern with Science Progress.

Dr. Keith Yamamoto, Executive Vice Dean of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and member of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director, explained the process at a briefing of the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus on “Finding and Funding the Best Science: Peer Review at NIH” last week.

The peer review system has “intrinsic complexities,” but it is a “terrific system” and “works extremely well,” said Yamamoto, a veteran reviewer. However, he went on to say that there is always room for improvement.

The NIH’s $30.5 billion annual research budget, which saw a $10.4 billion boost included in the ARRA, supports a large variety of biomedical science projects, but each proposal must undergo peer review to be considered for funding. The NIH Center for Scientific Review oversees expert scientists across the country who review 70 percent of the applications, Yamamoto explained. The institutes review the remaining applications in a very similar process.

Applications are divided into 23 review groups based on subject, such as AIDS & Related Research or Immunology. Each review group further separates the applications into more specific study sections. Study section scientists assess the scientific merit of each proposal. Applications are then sent to the institute councils, comprised of both scientific and nonscientific members. Patient advocates often serve as nonscientific members, Yamamoto said. The councils, which hold the grant dollars, evaluate each project’s relevance to the institute.

There are five core review criteria: impact, approach, innovation, investigator, and environment. Peer reviewers evaluate how important each project is to “advancing the ball,” Yamamoto explained. Experimental designs must be sound and principal investigators and their collaborators should be well trained to execute them. Institutional support and the project’s potential to “challenge existing paradigms” are also valuable attributes for approval, he said.

Although Yamamoto believes the NIH peer review system is the “best system in the world,” he says it is hard to escape from “intrinsic conflicts of interest and conservatism.” Reviewers are likely to assess proposals similar to their own work, which may create a conflict of interest. Conservatism is a concern if reviewers follow the “if you think like I think, then I think you’re really smart” philosophy Yamamoto said—complexities that are “likely to require new policies.”

In an effort to address these concerns and enhance the quality of their peer review, NIH conducted a year-long system evaluation, culminating in a final report released in March 2008. Currently, NIH is focused on supporting early stage investigators, attracting and retaining the best reviewers, maintaining the 60:25:15 ratio of clinical to translational to basic research, and shortening the length of research plans while de-emphasizing preliminary and experimental data, Yamamoto said.

The children were given IQ tests at age 5, and those “exposed to the most pollution before birth scored on average four to five points lower than children with less exposure,” Tanner wrote. This is the first research to link prenatal pollution exposure to lower IQ scores.

“Reproductive Roulette,” a new Center for American Progress report by Reece Rushing, provides an overview of many research studies examining chemical exposure and its consequences for reproductive health. The report catalogs increases in fertility problems, premature births, and birth defects and disabilities connected to environmental toxins. It also includes recommendations for increased funding for chemical safety research, stronger chemical safety laws, and greater public access to chemical safety data. “Poor and minority children are exposed to lead and other dangerous chemicals at the highest levels,” Rushing writes.

The percentage of “U.S. students treated for a learning disability increased from 8.3 percent in 1976 to 13.8 percent in 2005,” the research demonstrates. The increase is attributable to chemical exposure and improved diagnostic criteria. Adolescents are unknowingly exposed to damaging chemicals from everyday consumer products including toys, food containers, nail polish, air fresheners, medical devices such as IV tubes, and compact discs, the CAP report indicates.

“Reproductive Roulette” also cites a study that found 287 industrial chemicals present in ten newborn umbilical cords. After birth, babies may be exposed to chemicals such as phthalates that may leech from baby bottles, powder, lotion, and shampoo.

Exposure to phthalates, a group of chemicals used to soften plastics, is linked to a higher incidence of childhood autism, Rushing reports. Cases of autism increased 10-fold since the 1990s, according to a study he cites. Yet CAP calls from more research in this area, as the “connection between chemical exposures and autism remains unclear.”

The report also supports an expansion of the Integrated Risk Information System, an Environmental Protection Agency database of information on the human health effects of exposure to environmental contaminants. IRIS should provide public access to more chemical safety information in “a timely manner and free of political influence,” Rushing argues. Administrator of the EPA Lisa Jackson indicated that the agency will streamline the IRIS process and curb political influence in a joint Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Subcommittee on Oversight hearing last month.

These recent reports highlight the fact that “you don’t have to live right next door to a belching factory to face pollution health risks,” Tanner wrote.

A conflict of interest arises when financial or personal considerations have the potential to compromise or bias professional objectivity. These conflicts are a special concern in biomedical research because they have the potential to influence the outcome of study results or clinical trials. In some cases, such conflicts may result in experimental data that favors a particular commercial product; in others, they may shape unnecessary or dangerous risks for trial participants.

Conflicts of interest, commonly referred to in research literature as COI, may take different forms, including both financial interests and opportunities for professional advancement, which are known as “intangible COI.” However, financial conflicts of interest are simultaneously the most pervasive and easily remedied through policy, since intangible COI are difficult to identify.

A recent case clearly demonstrates the lack of transparency concerning financial conflicts of interest. Dr. Charles Nemeroff of Emory University received $2.8 million from drug company GlaxoSmithKline, but did not report a large portion of this financial COI to the institution. While GlaxoSmithKline paid him from 2000 to 2007, Nemeroff oversaw a project funded by a $3.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to study five anti-depressants produced by the pharmaceutical company. But despite rules requiring that universities disclose corporate income in excess of $10,000 per year for researchers working on federal grants, Nemeroff consistently reported receiving far less money than GlaxoSmithKline records showed. The National Institutes of Health rules are designed to ensure that such financial ties do not compromise patient safety and research integrity.

A recent national study on industry sponsorship and research integrity (co-authored by SP Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Moreno) found that “knowledge of compromises in research integrity is widespread” among investigators and is directly correlated to industry support. Respondents to a survey on first-hand knowledge of conflicts indicated that such compromises were present in research participants’ wellbeing, research initiatives, publication of results, interpretation of research data, and scientific advancement. Nine percent of the respondents said they witnessed a situation that compromised research participants’ safety due to industry sponsorship, and participants’ wellbeing were “seriously or significantly compromised” in 40 percent of these instances.

Expert recommendations for how to reduce the number of financial conflicts and their impact on science include standardizing requirements for the dollar thresholds at which researchers must disclose financial conflicts, standardizing the formats for reporting conflicts across institutions, making them more easily discoverable, and requiring COI disclosure in scientific journals and research studies. Many academic journals have disclosure rules, but they are not yet mandatory or uniform, and author compliance is inadequate. Suggestions to prevent undue industry influence include developing rules that preserve the use of industry expertise in research and limiting that industry involvement to an advisory role. Such restrictions could prevent corporations from controlling research design and methods in academic research and clinical trials.

Financial conflicts of interest are a problem since even the appearance of a conflict may undermine the public’s trust in science. For example, it is reasonable to believe that a researcher’s financial relationship with a drug maker would skew his or her judgment on the drugs. Moreover, if investigators in human subjects research have conflicts of interest, influence on their conclusions could endanger subjects and future patients, as the survey participants mentioned above attest. In 2007, New York Times found that psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from creators of antipsychotic drugs wrote three times as many prescriptions for the drugs, to children and adults, as psychiatrists who received less money or none. These drugs are not approved for most uses in children due to a high risk of side effects.

Why do conflicts of interest exist?

Conflicts of interest originate from research partnerships among industry, academia, and government. Corporate research funding substantially increased over the past 40 years while federal research and development funding remained relatively constant. Although these relationships are essential to the discovery process that can lead to new medical therapies that benefit society, increasing financial relationships between industry and scientists create suspicion that conflicts will cause dangerous partial professional judgments.

Academic researchers and industry grew closer when Congress passed what is known as the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. The law fostered greater collaboration between researchers and industry by allowing universities to patent discoveries developed using federal funding. Academic researchers subsequently sought ties to industry, believing the connection would accelerate the marketing process.

How do types of conflicts of interest differ?

Conflicts of interest appear in a variety of scenarios that have distinct impacts. However, most COI are complicated because they are comprised of a combination of these characteristics.

Financial COI: Individuals may benefit financially from a certain outcome in a clinical trial or the extent of an invention’s development. Research funding industries may offer scientists different types of financial compensation:

• Equity Interests are a proportion of company ownership in the form of stocks. A scientist with equity interests may be biased towards the company’s products since the financial benefits are dependent upon the success of clinical studies and future marketing ventures. Institutional Review Boards evaluate any research on human subjects conducted at an institution, and members who own equity interests have an incentive to approve studies regardless of IRB rules since a product must be tested before it can enter the marketplace and produce profit for stock owners. IRB conflicts of interest therefore eliminate the independent review that is necessary for patient safety.
• Consulting Fees include income scientists earn by providing expert advice about a product to private companies. This is a less problematic scenario than owning equity interests because consulting fees are typically predetermined. Thus, the scientist’s consulting income is independent of drug testing outcomes. However, a scientist may feel indebted to a company if the consulting fee is substantial, leading to research bias towards the company’s products.

Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Trials: This type of conflict is especially concerning because preferential treatment to a particular experimental group in a clinical drug study could harm research participants and future patients. For example, biased research may signal to the Food and Drug Administration that it should approve a drug that does not actually meet safety standards. If the drug is allowed to enter the market, doctors prescribing it may endanger their patients since they are unaware of its actual risk.
Further, doctors who recruit their own patients into clinical trials for which they are investigators may be so hopeful for their patients’ improvement that they believe a treatment is more successful than it is in reality. Moreover, a doctor may have patients with similar health characteristics, and placing them in the same trial keeps it from remaining a randomized trial-a standard requirement for producing objective results.

Industry COI: Industry-funded studies are more likely to draw conclusions favorable to their company’s product. However, industry sponsorship does not immediately indicate a conflict of interest because a company would not fund a clinical trial if it did not believe it may be a success. Nevertheless, a company can exercise undue influence over a study’s design that may impact its conclusion.

Industry may also interfere with research by delaying the publication of negative results after the trial’s conclusion to avoid negative attention. In one case, a pharmaceutical company postponed for seven years publication of a study that concluded the widely prescribed levothyroxine was no more effective than a less-expensive generic.

As well, presenting physicians with gifts like expenses-paid meetings in exotic locations, complementary meals, and other small items branded with a company’s name may create an unconscious bias towards the industry sponsor’s products. Leading medical schools and hospitals, such as Johns Hopkins, acknowledge this form of COI and largely ban such items.

Institutional COI: A conflict of interest is institutional rather than individual if research at the institution could affect its investment holdings, patents, or funding sources. Researchers and physicians at the institution may collectively feel allegiance to the institution’s investments or funders. When funders include nonprofits like patient advocacy organizations, COI becomes more complex since corporations may form and run these nonprofits, using them to funnel payments to researchers. The American Medical School Association grades the level of COI at top academic medical centers based on the presence or absence of policies regulating interactions between students and faculty with pharmaceutical and device industries.

What is the current state of conflict of interest policies?

Conflict of interest policies aim to separate private industry and researchers just enough to avoid harm to scientific integrity and patients, but preserve the collaboration benefits. The Public Health Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that includes NIH, requires that all institutions that receive PHS grants adopt policies on individual COI to promote objectivity. All PHS grant recipients are required to report significant financial interests, defined as financial gains over a $10,000 value, or equity stakes in companies in excess of 5 percent. This sum does not include salary from an investigator’s institution or income from participation in events sponsored by public or nonprofit entities, which is a problem since many for-profit companies create nonprofit counterparts to filter funds without technically breaking rules. There currently is no universal institutional policy, as rules vary in stringency and effectiveness across schools and research organizations.

Most peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association, require authors to disclose all potential conflicts of interest, but many do not have financial COI policies for peer reviewers or editors.

What policies could mitigate conflicts of interest?

The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Science, convened a committee to examine conflicts of interest in medical research and make recommendations, which were released in a report in April 2009. Although the IOM does not possess policy-making authority, it has influence over the FDA and Congress. The report cites disclosure as “a critical but limited first step in the process of identifying and responding to conflicts of interest.”

Financial COI disclosure should be standardized so all institutions have the specific information required to accurately assess relationships between industry and scientists, the report suggests. In addition to disclosure, researchers with significant financial conflicts should be banned from conducting human subjects research. Medical institutions should create standing COI committees and NIH should require its research grantees to follow the committees’ rules, the IOM recommends.

The IOM advises that Congress create a national program that requires pharmaceutical, medicine device, and biotechnology companies and their foundations to publicly report payments to researchers, physicians, institutions, professional societies, patient advocacy groups, and continuing medical education providers. Payment information should be readily available on a public website so individuals, journals, and universities could verify disclosures.

What recent activity could lead to conflict of interest policy reform?

The Public Health Service sought public comments “on whether the HHS should amend its regulations on the responsibility of applicants for promoting objectivity in research for which PHS funding is sought and on responsible prospective” until July 7, 2009. Final rule changes, if any, are forthcoming.

In addition, U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) introduced S. 301, the Physician Payment Sunshine Act-legislation aimed at reducing COI and increasing transparency-on January 22, 2009. If passed, manufacturers and group-purchasing organizations would be required to report their payments to physicians and physician-owned entities if valued over $500. The bill is currently in the Committee on Finance, but Grassley’s aggressive investigations on apparent COI convinced at least two companies, Eli Lilly & Co. and Merck & Co., to abide by the bill’s rules beginning in 2009 nonetheless.

Vivian Cheng is an intern with Science Progress.

A Virginia Commonwealth University survey found that Americans’ support for stem cell research exceeded opposition in 2003—two years after President Bush banned federal funding for research using new stem cell lines. The survey that asked participants if they favored or opposed “medical research that uses stem cells from human embryos” each year from 2002 to 2008. Support surpassed opposition by 21 percentage points in 2008.

The gap between support and opposition is even wider when survey questions put embryonic stem cell research in the context of curing diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A June 2008 Time poll reported 73 percent in favor of and 19 percent in opposition to the medical use of embryonic stem cells.

Before President Obama lifted Bush’s stem cell restrictions in March 2009, 53 percent of Americans believed the federal government should fund research using human embryonic stem cells, according to a May 2007 CNN poll. Only 41 percent of those surveyed opposed federal funding.

Americans Have Great Respect for Scientists, Research, and Education

70 percent: the proportion of Americans who believe scientists contribute a lot to the “well-being of society”

60 percent: the proportion of the public who agree that “government investment in research is essential for scientific progress”

39 percent: the proportion of the public who would increase scientific research funding if given the opportunity to shape the federal budget

67 percent: the proportion of Americans who support increased federal spending on science education

Climate Change Perceptions: Scientists and the Public

49 percent: the proportion of the general public that says the earth is getting warmer “mostly because of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels”

84 percent: the proportion of scientists who attribute the earth’s warming to human activity

56 percent: the proportion of the public who believe scientists generally agree that human activity contributes to the earth’s warming

70 percent: the proportion of scientists who consider global warming “a very serious problem”

47 percent: the proportion of Americans who consider global warming “a very serious problem”

But the American public does support substantial action to tackle climate change, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll analyzed by CAP Senior Fellow Ruy Texeria.

Americans Support Action to Curb Emissions

75 percent: the proportion of Americans who support government regulation of greenhouse gases

52 percent: the proportion of Americans who support a system of “cap-and-trade” to regulate greenhouse gases

59 percent: the proportion of Americans who support U.S. action on climate change even if other nations take less substantial steps

The proposed registry, which they also explain how to implement, would provide information regarding the reliability of health-related genetic tests; how test results “relate to current and future disease risk”; and how useful results are in informing disease diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention. All clinical laboratories and distributors that advertise for tests or provide result interpretations that are different from those offered by laboratories should be required to register, with the exception of “providers of tests for ultra-rare disorders,” the authors recommend. They also suggest penalties for laboratories that do not comply.

A genetic testing registry would be an important educational resource for patients, parents, and health care providers. In a recent podcast with Science Progress, bioethicist Sandra Soo-Jin Lee said that lack of access to interpretive information about genetic testing is more pressing than lack of access to the testing itself, and that understanding what the results mean for your health is the most complex and valuable part of the process.

The proposal for a registry that would include so many genetic conditions highlights the questions about patient protection that remain even after the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, known as GINA, became law last year. GINA prohibits the use of information obtained from genetic testing to deny health insurance coverage or employment, but insurers are not required to cover the costs of prevention measures a genetic test indicates would be beneficial, Susannah Baruch explains in a recent SP article.

The authors of the new study also suggest that either the National Institutes of Health or the Food and Drug Administration maintain the test registry. NIH has “extensive expertise in registry development and implementation” and FDA “has significant enforcement capability,” they explain. Despite where the registry, if created, is placed, the paper insists FDA be responsible for enforcement of consequences for non-compliance.

Since many drainage systems and water treatment facilities are outdated in the Northeast, research suggests that New York, Chicago, Washington, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia are likely to be at a greater risk of water-borne diseases. Increased downpours that result from shifting weather patterns may also trigger contaminating sewage overflows in these cities, the USGCRP reports.

A World Bank report on climate change in Europe and Central Asia likewise forecasts greater risks of water contamination due to weak infrastructure in the former Soviet Bloc. If changing weather patterns increase flooding as forecasted, old toxic waste dumps may release dangerous substances into the water supply. As well, the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s most recent report projects that Middle Eastern coastal aquifers will be similarly overwhelmed and contaminated with salt water as sea levels rise around Lebanon. Increased flooding in the Pacific Islands, including Hawaii, may also foster water pollution and endanger drinking water quality, the USGCRP says.

Heat Waves

Heat waves will become more frequent and intense in both the lower and higher emissions scenarios described by the USGCRP report. In fact, by the end of the century, the average U.S. temperature will increase by between 4 and 11ºF, depending on emissions. Heat waves similar to the 1995 Chicago heat wave that claimed over 700 lives are estimated to occur every other year in Chicago by 2100 in a lower emissions scenario and as many as three times a year in a higher emissions scenario. As a result, annual heat-related deaths in Chicago are expected to increase from about 175 deaths in 1980 to over 400 by 2090 in a lower emission scenario. In the higher emissions scenario, heat-related deaths are projected to reach 1,200. By the 2090s, annual heat-related deaths in Los Angeles may increase by two to seven times the baseline of 165 deaths observed in the 1990s. The report also predicts that the Southeast will suffer more heat-related illness and death in summer months.

Declines in Human Health

Climate change threatens public health. Insects that carry diseases, such as ticks and mosquitoes, will survive winters and produce larger populations, the report warns. In addition to insect vector diseases like West Nile virus, water-borne diseases will become more prevalent as pathogens thrive in warmer Midwestern climates. More frequent heavy downpours that overwhelm drainage systems are expected to increase the risk of water-borne disease in the Northeast. The report also forecasts more shellfish-borne disease outbreaks in the Southeast since coastal water temperatures will rise significantly in both emissions scenarios.

Costs for Coastal Economies

Fisheries that contribute to the economies of coastal regions will be jeopardized if emissions are not reduced. The report predicts smaller harvests of marine species in Alaska due to changes in ice edge extent and location. As a result, commercial fisheries are expected to be farther from existing fishing ports, requiring relocation or greater investment in transportation time and fuel costs. The current overfishing problem in Hawaii and other U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean is expected to intensify because of an accelerated decline in live corals that sustain fisheries. Fish populations in the continental United States will also suffer from climate change. Since rising water temperatures influence the time and location of spawning, the growth and survival of North Atlantic cod and wild trout will decline, the report projects. Salmon populations in the Northwest are predicted to fall below their already historically low population levels as winter rain replaces snow, clearing streambeds of incubating eggs and damaging spawning nests. A forecasted decline in dissolved oxygen in aquatic habitats will also damage ecosystem diversity in the Southeast.

A public registry would give patients, their doctors, and their parents access to information essential to making informed decisions about genetic testing, Zonno said. It should include the name of the laboratory performing tests, the name of the test developer, and facts about the test’s ability to enhance existing care.

Genetic Alliance suggested that the National Center for Biotechnology Information maintain the registry and that the FDA oversee it so information could be combined with other genetic resources. One such resource already available from the NCBI, GeneTests, provides “current, authoritative information on genetic testing and its use in diagnosis, management, and genetic counseling.” A public registry with the characteristics Zonno recommended would be more comprehensive than the current GeneTests system.

When FDA sends warning letters to pharmaceutical companies, only some are made public. After FDA released a group of these letters last year, former CAP senior fellow Rick Weiss wrote that although the “rare bit of transparency” was good news, the delay in disclosure leaves time for patients and physicians to be affected by the companies’ “bold twists of truth.” In a warning letter to Novartis Pharmaceuticals concerning the ADHD drug Focalin XR, FDA warned Novartis to remove the claim that the drug’s benefits are sustained for over six months since the effectiveness of Focalin XR had never been studied beyond seven weeks. Over at TechPresident, Nancy Scola considers a new open document management project, DocumentCloud, that could support this sort of transparency.

The Transparency Task Force, formed in January to address the Obama Administration’s Transparency and Open Government agenda, is led by FDA deputy commissioner Joshua Sharfstein. The task force is considering all views including supporters of strong trade secret protection and a comprehensive report will be submitted to FDA commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg in five months.

Rising temperatures “will interact with many social and environmental stresses” the report says. In fact, temperature increases already inflict water challenges on the United States, especially in the West and Southwest regions. More frequent droughts, floods, and water quality problems limit the country’s water supply and distress the agriculture sector. The report predicts that “large reductions in spring precipitation” in the Southwest will increase competition for water supplies since the region is at the forefront of the nation’s population growth. In addition, Sarah Bates describes in her column this week how “climate change knits energy and water policy together” as western rivers and reservoirs diminish and various power generation methods consume considerable amounts of water.

Decreased precipitation is imminent in the Southwest whether the United States has low or high emissions, the report projects, but a higher emissions scenario will subject parts of the country to up to 40 percent reductions in precipitation in 2080-2099 compared to the period from 1961-1979. Damage to crop yields and quality are expected to increase along with droughts, according to CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy, who explains the daunting future climate change poses for American farmers. Moreover, worldwide productivity losses attributed to climate change cost farmers $4.8 billion in 2002 alone.

Furthermore, heavy downpours and floods accompany less frequent precipitation. Intense rains “delay spring planting while flooding fields during the growing season,” Kenworthy writes. In the spring of 2008, such downpours caused agricultural losses of up to $8 billion. These losses trended upward by 27 percent in the Midwest over the last 50 years, according to the new USGCRP report.

It is clear the agriculture industry is at risk for great losses if we don’t address climate change immediately, but Chris Mooney points out that the report’s release demonstrates that farmers have an ally in the current administration, which supports reducing emissions and moving the country to a clean energy economy: “This latest study tells us a lot about climate science—but the bigger story is that we have a government that’s finally managing that science on behalf of its citizens.“

When Real was 13, both his parents were incarcerated and his two older brothers had already dropped out of high school. By sophomore year, Real was so distracted by his torn family that he was sure he would repeat his brothers’ mistakes. However, when a health care teacher introduced him to technology and his school gave him a laptop, his life began to turn around. Even when “home life was a mess,” Real could instant message his classmates and teachers after school to work on projects and ask questions through his computer, he said. The laptop program was a “portal to a new life,” in his words.

He used the laptop to access information ranging from virtual university tours to career options to how to tie a necktie. Before his school system incorporated technology into classrooms, the average college attendance rate was 26 percent, but when Real graduated in 2008, 94 percent of his class moved on to college. “Technology is not a luxury in society; it is a necessity,” he said.

The other witnesses echoed Real’s testament to the power of classroom technology. Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, called incorporating technology into American classrooms a “policy priority of the president.” Virginia, where Chopra recently served as secretary of technology, is already using web-based tools to lower textbook costs and cover “areas key to Virginia’s economic growth,” he said.

When Governor Tim Kaine challenged a panel of scientists and engineers to evaluate Virginia’s physics, chemistry, and engineering curriculum in 2007, they found that topics such as simulation and nuclear physics were missing from their textbooks. About a dozen authors subsequently volunteered to write ten chapters on the topics in an open-source wiki to supplement traditional textbooks. Albemarle County schools purchased the virtual chapters, bundled as a “FlexBook,” along with low cost “netbook” computers for each physics student, Chopra said. Pooling teachers’ knowledge in supplemental chapters is more cost effective than purchasing new, updated textbooks. The flexibility of the virtual books allows teachers to choose content based on experience. As long as states “rigorously review” the content in an objective way, the marketplace can determine the best way to select and distribute the material, Chopra said.

Lisa Short, a science teacher at Gaithersburg Middle School in Maryland, uses a different tool to engage her students. After using an interactive whiteboard for one year, Short can no longer imagine attempting to captivate her students with a plain blackboard. She demonstrated how the whiteboard incorporates various learning styles—visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic—in one lesson for the committee. The whiteboard allows Short to embed video and audio clips, build maps, and record notes without wasting paper. On top of that, every student wants to go up and participate at the board, she said.

Activote, a multiple-choice question feature, helps her anonymously survey her students’ knowledge from their seats. The program records individual answers so the instructor can determine if particular students are consistently missing questions and may need extra help, Short said. Committee members tried Activote themselves and voted on the correct answer to a question about the proportion of classrooms that use interactive whiteboards: it’s 16 percent. American schools need to secure more funding and train more teachers to reach the United Kingdom’s level of classroom technology, Short said, citing the fact that 70 percent of classrooms in the U.K. use digital whiteboards. Classroom technology has the ability to not only motivate students like Real, but also to “truly change the profession of teaching,” she said.

20,894: The total number of Challenge Grants applications received by the NIH.

At least $200 million of Recovery Act funds will support these new grants. These applications come on top of the 16,312 regular applications received for the current funding cycle. Some 18,000 reviewers will help read and score them all, a workload that has NIH Center for Scientific Review Director Antonio Scarpa worried about the time it will take for each reader and the inevitable low acceptance rate. The projects that are funded will generate jobs, grow the economy, and support the search for cures.

49,015: The total number of comments the NIH received on its draft Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research.

Jocelyn Kaiser at ScienceInsider reports that the Institutes’ policy chief estimates the amount is roughly equivalent to when the NIH issued draft guidelines on the same issue in 1999.

$5,000: The threshold for earnings that should trigger mandatory disclosure under financial conflict of interest rules for NIH-funded researchers, as recommended by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Universities.

The two major academic associations, which both represent significant proportions of the institutions where scientists conduct NIH-funded research, submitted their joint comments in a letter Wednesday. NIH grantees are currently obliged to report a financial interest if they earn more than $10,000 in income or own more than $10,000 in stock plus 5 percent interest in a company, but the AAMC and AAU believe the threshold is too low to ensure research integrity. The recommendations were in response to the NIH’s request for comments on promoting objectivity in research. Patti Tereskerz recently explained the complexity of managing the conflicts of interest that result from the necessary mix of public and private research funding in Science Progress—including those that arise from corporations funding research through foundations and nonprofit institutes.

Despite the challenges, 27 states paid up to $100,000 for a spot on the exhibition floor at the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization International Convention last month. The Convention is the largest assembly of the biotechnology industry and attracted over 20,000 participants this year, including industry executives, scientists, and politicians.

The numbers make it clear why states are vying for biotech companies to do business in their cities; BIO indicates that each job in the bioscience sector creates 5.8 additional jobs in the national economy, and every dollar of National Institutes of Health funding generates more than twice that amount in state economic output.

Several experts on innovation clusters—the regional hubs like California’s tech-heavy Silicon Valley or metropolitan Boston, a major life sciences center—have taken in-depth looks on Science Progress at the policies and partnerships that can foster their growth and boost regional economies.

Cities in the biotech game should capitalize on their existing strengths, like Atlanta with its Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dewin writes. As well, Pennsylvania complemented its own state resources when it formed the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a nonprofit biotechnology initiative that provides support for entrepreneurial life-sciences enterprises, in 2000. Since Pennsylvania has the third-highest number of colleges and universities in the United States, PLSG took advantage of university research grants and helped commercialize university technologies, which benefit from nearby regional markets. Using already available assets may be crucial since there is a real threat of losing the benefits—including jobs—of biotech developments to other innovation clusters if companies need to relocate to access other resources, Dewin wrote.

The FDA defines counterfeit medicines as “fake or copycat medicines” that may be contaminated, contain the wrong active ingredients, or contain the wrong amount of ingredients. The FDA Counterfeit Drug Task Force is currently improving their ability to track and trace medications in a manner similar to tracking systems proposed to speed contaminated food recalls. Ilisa Bernstein, director of pharmacy affairs in the Office of the Commissioner at the FDA, explained the new efforts at the American Enterprise Institute’s “The Global Impact of Fake Medicine” event yesterday.

The Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 requires drug distributors to record the chain of custody, or pedigree, of drugs to increase accountability and transparency, but its implementation is challenging, Bernstein said. Radio-frequency Identification tags, small bar codes, and other electronic technologies are currently used to track drug products, but some companies are slow to adopt them. In addition to boosting traceability, the United States can toughen penalties for counterfeit drug manufacturers to discourage the practice, Bernstein said.

Image: NSF

This morning, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Subcommittee on Oversight held a joint hearing on “Scientific Integrity and Transparency Reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency,” which included discussion of the new procedures. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA, testified on how the new IRIS process will help fulfill President Obama’s memorandum on scientific integrity by increasing transparency in science-based regulation.

EPA will now manage the entire IRIS review process, rather than the Office of Management and Budget, Jackson said. Dr. Francesca Grifo, Senior Scientist and Director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, discussed the importance of this change in control in a Science Progress podcast last month. The OMB previously had the power to change scientific advice, Grifo said, and described the problematic regulatory process under the Bush administration. “What we saw in the past was, rather than be courageous and come out and talk about which parts were policy and which parts were science, we saw changes in the science to cover up an often unpopular policy decision,” she said. Grifo explained in that interview that administration policy could break with the scientific advice, but the reasoning had to be clear, rather than resorting to an obfuscation of the data. “The key here is for all of us to see the scientific basis,” she said.

The new IRIS process requires that all written scientific comments on IRIS drafts provided by federal agencies be made public. Furthermore, most contaminant evaluations will be available on IRIS within two years of the review start date, Jackson said. The condensed process not only presents health-related information to the public more quickly, but also eliminates steps agencies could potentially use to inhibit the process, explained John B. Stephenson, director of natural resources & environment at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Under the old rules, agencies could declare a need for additional research to suspend the IRIS process and prevent or delay a substance from being added to the database. This gave agencies time to present studies that conflicted with the original “best available science,” Stephenson said.

Image: AP

Dr. Timothly R. Kuklo, a former Army orthopedic surgeon, is accused of falsifying research on a bone-growth product called Infuse, sold by Medtronic. The journal article in question concluded that Medtronic’s Infuse was significantly more effective in healing soldiers’ severe leg injuries than traditional bone-graft treatment. The Times obtained a full report of the Army investigation on Dr. Kuklo’s supposed medical research fraud. The investigation found that Dr. Kuklo forged the signatures of four Army doctors as authors of the study while naming himself the lead author. None of these doctors, including Dr. Romney C. Anderson, a Walter Reed surgeon, saw the article before it was published in the British Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

Dr. Anderson notified Army officials and the publication’s editor after reviewing the article. He was convinced that some of the data were invented after he checked the Walter Reed records Dr. Kuklo supposedly used, Meier and Wilson reported. The journal retracted the study in March and banned Dr. Kuklo from future contributions.

Dr. Kuklo also failed to disclose a financial relationship with Medtronic in the journal article. Medtronic hired him as a consultant in 2006 and financed some of his research at Walter Reed, Meier and Wilson wrote.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has journal authorship guidelines designed to prevent ghostwriting. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group, recommends these guidelines, and scientists who study ghostwriting believe better adherence to such rules is imperative to preventing research fraud. However, the ICMJE does not specifically address ghostwriting and many authors disregard or disagree with the guidelines.

Meier and Wilson reported that the New England Journal of Medicine’s peer review process prevented Dr. Kuklo’s controversial study from being published in the popular general medicine journal, but more comprehensive rules may be necessary to eliminate ghostwriting.

Image: AP/Charles Dharapak

The bill would provide the Food and Drug Administration with unprecedented control over the tobacco industry. This act allows FDA to require full disclosure of ingredient lists and to order tobacco companies to reduce the amount of harmful ingredients in their products. It would also change warning label content and increase label size, as well as ban marketing to minors. The Secretary of Health and Human Services reserves the authority to mandate additional changes to warning labels that benefit public health. The legislation also prohibits labeling cigarette packets with phrases like “light” and “low tar,” which are often deceiving to consumers and mask the health risks. It would also forbid the sale of most flavored cigarettes.

For the moment, cigarettes remain unregulated drug delivery systems. Here’s a look at some of the most recent data on national smoking trends:

19.8 percent of adults in the United States (43.4 million people) were current smokers in 2007.

30 percent of all cancer deaths involve smoking as the primary cause.

443,000 people died prematurely every year as a result of smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke during the period between 2000 and 2004.

During that same period, smoking caused $98 billion in productivity losses each year.

For every person who dies of a smoking-related disease, 20 more people suffer with at least one serious illness from smoking.

20 percent of high school students were smokers in 2007.

3,600 people between the ages of 12 and 17 pick up smoking everyday.

Image: flickr user Sami__

Here’s a look at some of the latest research on health impacts around the world plotted on the Science Progress interactive Human Toll of Climate Change map:

Scientific American’s review of the top ten places already affected by climate change reported that Europe’s first tropical disease epidemic in August 2007 resulted from climate change. More than 100 of 2,000 residents of a small village in Italy contracted a disease related to dengue fever because an abnormally mild winter allowed the Asian tiger mosquito, the disease vector, to breed early in India. A resident of the village visited India and introduced the disease to Italy.

The Centers for Disease Control discovered that a change to warmer, wetter weeks in the United States increased West Nile infections by up to 83 percent from 2001 to 2005. CDC scientists warn that increased rates of West Nile around the globe will lead to a significant number climate-change related dealths.

A study published in the journal Science found that there is a 90 percent chance that 3 billion people will be forced to choose between starving and moving to milder climates within 100 years because of climate change.

In a study released earlier this year, a Penn State entomologist emphasized that daily temperature fluctuations-not just changes in average monthly or annual temperatures-may alter malaria patterns. Whether the temperature fluctuations cause the incidence of malaria to increase or decrease depends largely on a region’s background conditions. Mosquitoes may fail to develop the malaria parasite before they die, or the parasite may develop faster, the study reports.

Image: AP/Lisa Poole

• 95.6 cents of each dollar paid for the social burdens of substance abuse and addiction, including the cost of prisons, health programs, schools, government payrolls, and child welfare, juvenile justice and mental health systems
• 1.9 cents funded prevention and treatment programs
• 1.4 cents covered the costs of collecting alcohol and tobacco taxes, regulating alcohol and tobacco products, and operating liquor stores
• 0.7 cents paid for federal drug prohibition
• 0.4 cents funded addiction-related research

When the government is dishing out a minimum of $1,486 per capita to cover the results of our failure to prevent and treat abuse and addiction, additional research on the problem might be worthy of additional investment, the report argues.

“For every dollar federal and state governments spent to prevent and treat substance abuse and addiction, they spent $59.83 in public programs shoveling up its wreckage, despite a substantial and growing body of scientific evidence confirming the efficacy of science-based interventions and treatment and their cost-saving potential,” says the CASA report.

However, the amount of tobacco research may soon increase. The bipartisan “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act” would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to request additional research findings from tobacco manufacturers or importers on the effects of tobacco products or on the potential to reduce the health risks of tobacco products with available technology. S.982 is in committee while the Senate will vote on cloture of the motion to proceed on H.R. 1256 today.

Image: flickr.com/SuperFantastic

The report, ordered by the President and led by Melissa Hathaway, reinforces the need for a specialized cybersecurity position, President Obama said. He acknowledged that cyberspace is “woven into every aspect of our lives” today. Whether it is in our schools, hospitals, banks, or businesses, it is powering our nation. However, the irony is that “the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy,” Obama said.

The President cited a personal experience with privacy invasion from his campaign. Although technology strengthened his campaign, hackers threatened his security when they gained access to personal travel plans and policy papers. In addition to privacy protection, cybersecurity is necessary for American competitiveness, economic prosperity, and military dominance, Obama said.

The cyberczar, or Cybersecurity Coordinator, will be responsible for protecting the country from cyber attacks. The coordinator’s office will orchestrate security policies, ensure that agency budgets prioritize security, and orchestrate responses to cyber attacks. The Cybersecurity Coordinator will be a member of the National Security staff and National Economic Council. He or she will also work closely with the Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, and Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, Obama said.

However, a budget increase of 5.7 percent, to $2.4 billion, along with Commissioner Hamburg and deputy Sharfstein’s plan for improving food safety through partnerships with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, individual states, and various academics should bring hope for the safety of the U.S. food supply yet. The FDA and USDA will continue to follow the salmonella outbreak from contaminated peanut butter earlier this year that sickened hundreds of Americans and is responsible for several deaths.

Referring to the outbreak, Hamburg and Sharfstein write: “It reflected a failure of the FDA and its regulatory partners to identify risk and to establish and enforce basic preventive controls.” With this recognition, Hamburg and Sharfstein intend to work with Congress to update food safety laws that will hopefully prevent future “Peanutgates.”

In the spirit of public health, Hamburg and Sharfstein acknowledge “the urgent need to develop and produce a vaccine against H1N1 influenza virus,” which is currently being studied at the FDA. “The agency’s success will be determined by the nation’s access to a safe and effective vaccine,” said Hamburg and Sharfstein.

Image: flickr.com/Robert Couse-Baker

To ensure that good security policy protects health records, the Center for American Progress submitted comments regarding national guidelines for dealing with potential data breaches to the Department of Health and Human Services. Senior Fellow Peter Swire explains their importance: “Large, unnecessary data breaches could undermine confidence in health care privacy and security. The new data breach guidelines, therefore, are a crucial way to reduce the number of breaches and build privacy and security effectively into the new health IT infrastructure.”

These guidelines are essential now that health care providers and insurers are responsible for notifying individuals if their personal medical data are at risk, he also explains. The recommendations cover encryption, the utility of one-way hash functions, and urge caution with regard to considering biometrics for data protection. Details and the full comments are available here.

Congress will provide the TRND program with $24 million a year for five years to conduct preclinical research and work on product development for rare and neglected diseases. If a drug survives the preclinical stage, TRND will contract a company to test the treatment clinically. These funds come from the $10.4 billion the NIH received from the stimulus package, intended to be spent by September 2010.

The NIH is targeting these diseases because private companies avoid this small market with little profit appeal, leaving patients with no treatment options. Only about 200 rare diseases have effective treatments today, as there are high barriers of entry for the pharmaceutical industry. Studies estimate that a potential drug requires between 8 and 15 years and upwards of $800 million to develop a new drug and introduce it to the market. The preclinical process, a focus of the TRND program, is the most difficult hurdle, costing $10 million and between two to four years itself. Without a successful preclinical stage, a treatment only has a 10 to 20 percent chance of reaching clinical trials, hence the nickname for this period, the “Valley of Death.” The NIH plans to use its funding and in-house academic resources to ease this process. The program will also address the difficulties in working with rare diseases, such as recruiting enough clinical trial patients, by partnering researchers with patient advocacy organizations and disease-oriented foundations.

The National Organization for Rare Disorders keeps a current database of rare diseases and associated organizations.

Image: AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez

The X-Change Files, the program’s blog, launched today with a post from the Exchange’s director, Jennifer Ouellete. She addressed the value of a symbiotic relationship between scientists and Hollywood, writing that a scientist at the launch symposium “said it made him think about the implications of his own research in interesting new ways.” She went on: “Numerous writers were thrilled to discover the rich tapestry of scientific ideas available to them, and came away inspired about new creative projects.”

Through the Exchange, entertainment leaders have the privilege of learning about cutting-edge science they can use as fresh, realistic story plots, while scientists gain an outlet to engage new audiences in accurate science. The goal is not to turn movies and TV shows into a series of science lessons, Mooney pointed out. Rather, Ouelette writes, it will “offer a viable alternative” to troublesome stereotypes and misconceptions about scientific ideas. The Exchange broadens possibilities for science communication while helping to satisfy popular culture’s appetite for shows with science plots.

(HT: Framing Science)

Image: AP/Matt Sayles

But pharmaceutical interventions have their limits in the face of an outbreak, explained Jason Schwartz recently in Science Progress, and there are simple, swift public health solutions to stopping the spread of disease like isolating exposed individuals. Schwartz wrote that the severity of the current outbreak depends on how promptly infected populations are separated from healthy, unexposed populations. A public education initiative on isolation may not be headline material, but it reduces transmission rates—hence the raft of school closings across the country.

On the other hand, a universal vaccine would provide years of protection from all types of flu, Pollack explains. It would also eliminate the need to guess which strains should be included in a seasonal vaccine—a decision that makes or breaks a vaccine’s efficacy. This solution is especially appealing because of its cost effectiveness for countries that cannot afford annual vaccinations.

Despite the promise of these approaches, both face obstacles in implementation. Voluntary, and especially involuntary, isolation and quarantine policies are controversial because of potential individual liberties violations. As well, a universal flu vaccine will take years to create since the influenza virus mutates much more rapidly than that of measles or polio. It would take six months just to produce the first doses of a vaccine aimed at swine flu, but isolation strategies work immediately.

Image: AP.