Yesterday, this paragraph was in the public radio newsletter: “Colorado said the bridge that collapsed near Pueblo in a fatal train derailment was owned by the railroad company, but the company says the state owns it.” It’s going to be a long wait. Sigh. “Photos and videos posted by authorities showed the partially collapsed bridge with the semi-truck caught beneath in the right lane. The images also show a pileup of train cars and wheels scattered across the scene and loads of coal covering a portion of the highway. Thirty-nine cars of the 124 being hauled derailed, the National Transportation Safety Board said.”
Also, my ballot arrived. I already knew how I wanted to vote on the two issues, but there is also a school board election. Five candiedates. Two vacancies. At least this time Ballotpedia came through on a couple of them (one yes, one no) and another candidate ‘s name was unusual enough that just her name brought up that she’s registered D. So I had two that I could vote for, and did. The other two should have filled out the questionnaires.
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John Pavlovitz – The One Place to Stand in The Israel-Palestine Violence
Quote – As a person of faith, morality, and conscience, I don’t know where to stand in times like these—other than with squandered, brutalized life. That means I don’t get off so easy as to be able to make a tidy little declaration and walk away feeling good about myself. It means I have to leave the shallows of ambiguity and into deep waters of nuance and history and human nature. It means I have to read and learn, to listen and reflect, to pray and wrestle. It means I’ll end up with fewer answers and more questions and I might be sick to my stomach. But this place of staring at the ugly unfigureoutable is where I am, where many of us are. Click through for full secular sermon – which is what I found it to be. Yes, John is a pastor, but he does his best to speak to everyone, and often succeeds. I think he succeeds here.
Colorado Public Radio – Navy honors sailor who helped stop Club Q shooting
Quote – During a ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 5, Rear Adm. Scott Robertson, director of Plans, Policy and Strategy for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command, presented the medal on behalf of the Navy…. “I myself can only hope that I would channel the courage in our Navy core values like he did,” Robertson said. “But, we don’t have to wait for crisis to apply core values. We can and should apply them every day. That’s what I am taking away from the lessons you taught us all.” Click through for full story. This is a week or more old – I saved it until Pat got back. Thank God Tommy Tuberville didn’t have his way before this occurred – it could have been much worse.
Today, had she lived , would have been my mother’s 117th birthday (though that would have been extremely unlikely. ) She was a survivor of childhood abuse, widowhood with a newborn child, and a melanoma on her nose. She was not a woman who talked a lot, but one could generally take anything she said to the bank. When I was in high school and college it was never hard for me to get friends to come over, but sometimes it was hard to tell whether it was her or me for whom they were coming. At her funeral my last surviving sunt (who had always been known to be the most easily offended person in the family) said, that my Mom had been “the most loving person she had ever known.” And, both prior to that and to this day, Virgil has raised many eyebrows by saying that he never really knew what love was until he met his wife’s mother. Of course I miss her. But I would probably miss her more had she not put so much time and effort into preparing me to be strong and independent. Happy Birthday, Mom.
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Democratic Underground (Zorro) – They Checked Out Pride Books in Protest. It Backfired.
Quote – Adrianne Peterson, the manager of the Rancho Peñasquitos branch of the San Diego Public Library, was actually a little embarrassed by the modest size of her Pride Month display in June. Between staff vacations and organizing workshops for graduating high school students, it had fallen through the cracks and fell short of what she had hoped to offer. Yet the kiosk across from the checkout counter, marked by a Progress Pride rainbow flag, was enough to thrust the suburban library onto the front lines of the nation’s culture wars. Ms. Peterson, who has run the library branch since 2012 and highlighted books for Pride Month for the better part of a decade, was taken aback when she read an email last month from two neighborhood residents. They informed her that they had gotten nearly all of the books in the Pride display checked out and would not return them unless the library permanently removed what they considered “inappropriate content.” Click through for what happened next.This take is so that Colleen can get bragging rights for her city. The original article was in the NY Times, but I don’t have a gift link, and besides, the comments are pretty good.
Good News Network – Stunned Researchers Discover that Metals Can Heal Themselves ‘Without Human Intervention’
Quote – Scientists for the first time have witnessed pieces of metal crack, then fuse back together without any human intervention, overturning fundamental scientific theories in the process. If the newly discovered phenomenon can be harnessed, it could usher in an engineering revolution—one in which self-healing engines, bridges, and airplanes could reverse damage caused by wear and tear, making them safer and longer-lasting. The research team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University described their findings today in the journal Nature. Click through. I found this through CPR. I don’t often do an all good news day, and I didn’t plan this one, but I figured, since it is Mom’s birthday, I’d let it go.
Food For Thought
I made this. Marthe48 says “Please feel free to share.”
Yesterday, I received an e-mail with a little video of Jamie Raskin announcing that his cancer is in total remission. Now that’s something to break out a little bubbly for! I also received a note (email) from Pat advising me she has out-of-town family visiting, so will probably not be around this weekend (so don’t worry.) I also received a grocery order. Most of it was there, But there was one substitution, and it was a bad one (which common sense should have prevented. So I had to file a refund claim for that. I got it all in and the shulder was still better after doing so than it was the previous day, so that’s a win. It’s still a work in progress, but I;m liking the progress.
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Politico – Biden’s hydrogen bombshell leaves Europe in the dust
Quote – European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change. But now, many of those jobs will be going to the United States instead. The clean energy subsidies that undergird President Joe Biden’s climate agenda have just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million factory that will produce the equipment needed to extract hydrogen from water. And other European-based companies are being tempted to follow suit, people involved in the continent’s hydrogen efforts say — making the universe’s most abundant substance the latest focus of the transatlantic trade battle on green energy. Click through for details. I wish no ill to Europe, but I cannot help feeling that this is so cool.
National Public Radio – Researchers found a rare octopus nursery off the coast of Costa Rica
Quote – Scientists working off the coast of Costa Rica say they’ve discovered the world’s third known octopus nursery…. According to a press release, researchers witnessed Muusoctopus eggs hatch. They said it demonstrated that the area, known as the Dorado Outcrop, was hospitable to young octopuses… Scientists said the discovery also indicated that some deep-sea octopus species brood their eggs in low-temperature hydrothermal vents, such as the one where the nursery was discovered, where fluid heated in the Earth’s crust is released on the seafloor — like hot springs. Click through for story. I cannot bring myself to be surprised that octopuses have discoverd this and made use of it for child care – they are so doggoned smart! But I am charmed by it. The octopuses in this story are neither South Asian nor mimics, but I couldn’t resist the chart below.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Between an effective antibody for all the CoViDs (SARS-2) – mentioned in a short take today – and the promises of gene therapy, it’s been an impressive week. Yes, I realize I’ve put up a lot of good news/potentially good news today – but hey, it’s Mother’s Day.
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Gene therapy helps combat some forms of blindness – and ongoing clinical trials are looking to extend these treatments to other diseases
New gene therapies are helping to treat certain forms of inherited blindness. GettyImages
An estimated 295 million people suffer from visual impairment globally. Around 43 million of those people are living with blindness. While not every form of blindness can be cured, recent scientific breakthroughs have uncovered new ways to treat some forms of inherited blindness through gene therapy.
Jean Bennett is a gene therapy expert and a professor emeritus of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania. She and her laboratory developed the first gene therapy drug for a genetic disease to be approved in the U.S. The drug, Luxturna, treats patients with biallelic RPE65 mutation-associated retinal dystrophy, a rare genetic disorder that causes visual impairments and blindness in patients early in life.
In March, Bennett spoke at the 2023 Imagine Solutions Conference in Naples, Florida, about what gene therapy is, why it matters and the success she and her team have had helping the blind to see. The Conversation caught up with Bennett after the conference. Her edited answers are below.
Jean Bennett speaks at the 2023 Imagine Solutions Conference.
What is gene therapy and how does it work?
Gene therapy is a set of techniques that harness DNA or RNA to treat or prevent disease. Gene therapy treats disease in three primary ways: by substituting a disease-causing gene with a healthy new or modified copy of that gene; turning genes on or off; and injecting a new or modified gene into the body.
How has gene therapy changed how doctors treat genetic eye diseases and blindness?
In the past, many doctors did not think it necessary to identify the genetic basis of eye disease because treatment was not yet available. However, a few specialists, including me and my collaborators, identified these defects in our research, convinced that someday treatment would be made possible. Over time, we were able to create a treatment designed for individuals with particular gene defects that lead to congenital blindness.
Gene therapy treatments are now available in pharmacies and operating rooms all over the world.
Gene therapy is even being used to restore vision to people whose photoreceptors – the cells in the retina that respond to light – have completely degenerated. This approach uses optogenetic therapy, which aims to revive those degenerated photoreceptors by adding light-sensing molecules to cells, thereby drastically improving a person’s vision.
You created one of the first gene therapies approved in the US. What is the current state of the clinical use of gene therapy?
There are now many approved gene therapies in the U.S., but the majority are combined with cell therapies in which a cell is modified in a dish and then injected back into the patient.
Many forms of gene therapy are helping to treat blindness. GettyImages
The majority of those therapies target different forms of cancer, although there are several for devastating inherited diseases. The drug Skysona is a new injectable gene therapy medication that treats boys ages 4 to 17 with cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy, a genetic disease in which a buildup of very-long-chain fatty acids in the brain can lead to death.
The gene therapy that my team and I developed was the first FDA-approved project involving injection of a gene therapy directly into a person – in this case, into the retina. Only one other FDA-approved gene therapy is directly administered to the body – one that targets spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that causes progressive muscle weakness and eventually death. The drug, Zolgensma, is injected intravenously into babies and children diagnosed with the disease, allowing them to live as healthy, active children.
There are now more than two dozen FDA-approved cell and gene therapies, including CAR T-cell therapies – in which T cells, a type of immune system cells, are modified in the laboratory to better attack cancer cells in the body – and therapies for various blood diseases.
What are you currently working on that you’re most excited about?
I am very excited about some upcoming clinical trials that my team will soon initiate to target some other devastating blinding diseases. We will incorporate a new test of functional vision – how your eyes, brain and the visual pathways between them work together to help a person move in the world. This test utilizes a virtual reality game that is not only fun for the user but promises to provide an objective measure of the person’s functional vision. I hope that our virtual reality test will inform us of any potential benefits from the treatments and also serve as a useful outcome measure for other gene and cell therapy clinical trials involving vision.
What are the biggest challenges gene therapy faces?
The biggest challenges involve systemic diseases, or diseases affecting the entire body rather than a single organ or body part. For those diseases, super-high doses of gene therapy reagents must be delivered. Such diseases involve not only technical challenges – such as how to manufacture enormous amounts of gene therapy compounds without contaminating them – but also difficulties ensuring that the treatment targets diseased tissues without causing toxic immune side effects. That level of a problem does not exist with the eye, where relatively small doses are used and exposure to the rest of the body is limited.
Another challenge is how to address diseases in which the target gene is very large. Current approaches to delivering treatments into cells lack the capacity to hold large genes.
Cost remains a key issue in this effort – gene therapy drugs are enormously expensive. As drug manufacturers are able to refine this technique, gene therapy drugs may become more commonplace, causing their price to drop as a result.
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AMT, this news carries a lot of potential. Some of it will probably not work as expected and hoped. But even if only a few of the possibilities pan out, the results could be amazing. I’m thinking today of the pain mothers of children with some kind of genetic problem have had to suffer ocer the millennia, and hoping that may someday be a thing of the past.
Yesterday, I managed to get the weekly email out before sunset, and was able to slow down a little and saw a headline in the ProPublica newsletter of a follow-up to the story of the teens who don’t want to be sent back to their abusive father. Under pressure from public opinion and a couple of prosecutors, the judge has (at least temporarily) vacated his order, and the kids will be able to see the light of day while this is being hashed out. It’s not a total victory, but it is a cease-fire and allows them to breathe.
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Crooks and Liars – Jack Smith Subpoenas The Maids At Mar A Lago
Quote – That includes Mar-a-Lago staff like a housekeeper and restaurant servers, as well as Trump political aides like Margo Martin, who was a press assistant in the White House and then stayed with Trump as he relocated to Florida after leaving office. The prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, are “casting an extremely wide net—anyone and everyone who might have seen something,” an unnamed source told CNN. Click through for details. This takes me back to Agatha Christie and other detective novels featuring the British upper class. I don’t know why, but it appears to be unsurmountably difficult, not just in fiction, but IRL, for the wealthy to grasp that nothing is secret from the help.
Civil Discourse – Courage
Quote – After all of the speculation over whether there might be some type of standoff at Mar-a-Lago if charges are filed against Trump, we get this quiet concession from the lawyers. It’s an early acknowledgment that Trump isn’t above the law in these anticipated proceedings. He will have to follow “normal procedures” just like anyone else who is charged with a crime. Of course, he will be doing it with a Secret Service agent at his side. The agent will presumably go through all of the booking procedures with him and accompany him in court. That’s a good reminder that we are in uncharted territory from here on out, but unprecedented doesn’t mean the procedural rules don’t apply to Trump. It’s a good sign that his lawyers have been forced to concede that before charges are even filed. Click through for full article. Of course I can’t possibly track the entire internet and every newspaper in the country – but, to my knowledge, Joyce Vance is the only attorney to publish a matter-of-fact description of what may be expected if and when. I think it’s worth sandwiching in.
The 19th News – The radio divide: How airplay reinforces the gender gap in country music
Quote – The year 2015 was especially emblematic, [Jada Watson,… the principal investigator of the SongData project,] noted, with Gary Overton, then the chief executive of Sony Nashville, saying, “If you’re not on country radio, you don’t exist.” After that came “Tomato-gate,” when radio consultant Keith Hill told an industry publication, “If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out,” before going on to compare women artists in country to the tomatoes, not the lettuce, of the salad of country radio. These remarks were “pretty indicative of how the industry mainstream works,” Watson said of country radio in the years following the fallout surrounding The Chicks. “If you’re not a White, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied male, you’re not on air and you’re not on the radio and so you don’t exist within that space. There are multiple barriers to access to [the country music industry] and the biggest one is radio.” Click through for analysis. I don’t hate country music, but am not a huge fan. I do, however, highly appreciate many of its performers, past and present, who understand what love of country means – and act accordingly. To name just a few, Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley. It’s the fans who are shallow, not the genre.
Yesterday I received the email that my ballot has been received. Good news. There was other news also, consequential and inconsequential, but today I am just focusing on humor, because that also came in multiple emails, and I think we all could use some. That’s also why the FFT is just a wordplay, only marginally related to news. If you really want some har news, Letters from an American touches on the presser held by DOJ and also the letter to Biden from Congressional Progressives which weems to have been overinterpreted.
Psyche – Just when in history did men decide that women are not funny?
Quote – Allow me, an historian, to offer evidence about the modern origins of this myth, instead of theories about the supposed evolutionary advantage of bro jokes…. Perhaps the answer will come as no surprise: it was when men began to value humour highly that they decided women didn’t have it. Click through for story. Just offhand, my mind jumped first to “Much Ado About Nothing” (1598), specifically to Beatrice and Benedict, who are supposed to be a subplot, but whom audeiences have always considered the stars, and who “never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”
Yesterday, putting this post together, I realized I had picked two good news stories. I didn’t set out to do that. It was just, having read so much legal-judicial stuff, I was looking for something new and different, and these jumped out. Besides being good news, the two have something else in common – both hark back to the Obama administration in some way.
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The 19th – 53 years ago, the White House sought to end hunger. Now it’s trying again.
Quote – “This conference is engaging all sectors — the public sector, the private sector, community-based organizations — all around shifting the conversation from just getting food into people’s hands to also making sure that we get healthy food into people’s hands and that it is seen as a public health issue, rather than just an emergency food issue,” said Jason Wilson, vice president of marketing and development for the Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit organization created in conjunction with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign. Click through for details. Fifty-three years ago most Republicans were human beings, and only a few were fascist monsters. Now, it’s the other way around. I widh the conference alll the luck in the world.
Wonkette -Schools Go Solar, Save Millions On Energy, Upgrade Classrooms, Pay Teachers More — Yes, In The USA
Quote – It’s been another crazy exasperating week, so we bet you could do with some really cool news about public schools that are switching to clean solar energy, saving millions of dollars in some cases, and using the savings to improve the schools and even their communities. This isn’t a proposal in some position paper about how we might create a wonderful clean energy future, either — it’s been going on for a while now, as the New York Times recently reported [There is a free gift link in the article but it’s too long to reproduce here]. The story notes that one in 10 US public and private schools in the US was using solar energy by early 2022, according to a report from clean energy nonprofit Generation 180 — twice as many as in 2015. That’s one more benefit of the rapid decline in the cost of solar panels in the last couple decades. Hey, if you’d like to say “Thanks, Obama,” you certainly could, since clean energy investments in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped jumpstart the widespread adoption of renewable energy and the resulting reductions in solar energy costs. Click through for story – stories actually. It’s happening in states you would not ecpect. Amazing.
