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Predicting viral evolution may let vaccines be prepared in advance

Generally, immune systems mount responses only against pathogens that have already infected the bodies they are protecting. Science, though, can shorten the path to immunity by vaccination. This involves presenting the immune system with harmless or lookalike versions of dangerous pathogens so that it may create antibodies and killer cells hostile to the real thing in advance of any actual infection, thereby reducing its danger.

Like immune responses themselves, however, vaccination generally has to wait for the appearance of the pathogen in question before it can do its stuff. There is, therefore, a delay between a pathogen’s arrival on the scene and the deployment of a vaccine against it. That delay costs lives.

But, just as vaccination introduces immune systems to pathogens that are remote from them in space, new techniques which have come to the fore during the current pandemic offer the possibility of introducing them to pathogens that are remote from them in time—pathogens, indeed, that have not yet evolved, but which are likely to do so in the future. Thanks to a combination of high-throughput DNA-sequencing technologies and modern machine-learning it is now possible not merely to observe which variants of a virus are circulating, but also to suggest how they are likely to change. Understanding in this way what a virus might look like in the months and years to come gives those designing vaccines and therapies a leg up, enabling them to prime more immune systems sooner, so that fewer people die.

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Global vaccine coverage

This chart shows the global vaccination coverage of one-year-olds with some of the most important vaccines recommended by the WHO (World Health Organization). For many essential vaccines, coverage is now much higher than 80%. However, the rates of vaccination are still not sufficient.

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Life on a desert island

Alexander,L.G.

Most of us have formed an unrealistic picture of life on a desert island. We sometimes imagine a desert island to be a sort of paradise where the sun always shines. Life there is simple and good. Ripe fruit falls from the trees and you never have to work. There is also the other side of the picture: Life on a desert island is wretched - you either starve to death or live like Robison Crusoe waiting for a boat which never comes. Perhaps there is an element of truth in both these pictures, but few of us have had the opportunity to find out.

Two men who recently spent five days on a coral island whished they had stayed there no longer. They were taking a badly damaged boat from the Virgin Islands to Miami to have it repaired. During the journey, their boat began to sink. They quickly loaded a small rubber dinghy with food, matches, and cans of beer and rowed for a few miles across the Caribbean until they arrived at a tiny coral island. There were hardly any trees on the island and there was no water to drink, but this didn’t prove to be a problem since the men collected rain-water in the rubber dinghy. As they had brought a spear gun with them, they had plenty to eat. They caught lobster and fish every day, and, as one of them put it, “ate like kings”. When a passing tanker rescued them five days later, both men were genuinely sorry that they had to leave.

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Some of the world’s best arabica coffee beans are grown on the fertile land around Mount Kenya. But like the citizens of many former British colonies, Kenyans are partial to tea. Now an expanding middle class is getting a taste for coffee. Domestic consumption is expected to reach 3,600 tonnes this year, almost a tenth of total production. The pandemic has shown just how important a local market can be, as logjams at ports and a sharp drop in global demand crush exports. “Covid has been an eye-opener,” says Gloria Gummerus, who runs the Sakami estate in western Kenya.

It is a similar story for other coffee-producing countries. Apart from Brazil and Ethiopia (which has an elaborate coffee ritual), many are just beginning to consume their own beans. Over 30% of the world’s coffee is now drunk in producing countries, according to José Sette of the International Coffee Organisation, up from 22% 30 years ago.

A abertura e o aperfeiçoamento de caminhos terrestres e a implantação e a extensão de ferrovias também passaram a apresentar forte demanda de trabalhadores. [...] Anúncios publicados na Gazeta de Campinas, um dos principais jornais do município e ferrenho defensor dos interesses cafeeiros ao longo da década de 1870, traziam uma série de trabalhos nas propriedades cafeeiras e nas construções de vias de escoamento do produto.

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A woman suffering from a rare blood condition is on a quest to find her estranged biological father, who may enable her to get a potentially life-saving transplant if he donates his bone marrow.

Sarah Langdale, 32, was diagnosed with severe anemia when she was two.

This disease occurs when the body stops producing new enough blood cells. Patients with the condition are often fatigued and more prone to infections, as well as uncontrolled bleeding.

“I’m having blood transfusions every three weeks. I eventually started to lose my color and energy and I can´t do anything” Langdale told local news outlet Northampton Chronicle and Echo. Doctors have told her that she urgently needs a bone marrow transplant before her condition worsens.

“I really need my Dad to come forward, I’ve been looking hard for him. I`ll die without a transplant and I hope I can find a better match with him or my half-siblings. And I´m relying on someone seeing my story and coming forward with information. I can only live in hope.

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Predicting viral evolution may let vaccines be prepared in advance

Generally, immune systems mount responses only against pathogens that have already infected the bodies they are protecting. Science, though, can shorten the path to immunity by vaccination. This involves presenting the immune system with harmless or lookalike versions of dangerous pathogens so that it may create antibodies and killer cells hostile to the real thing in advance of any actual infection, thereby reducing its danger.

Like immune responses themselves, however, vaccination generally has to wait for the appearance of the pathogen in question before it can do its stuff. There is, therefore, a delay between a pathogen’s arrival on the scene and the deployment of a vaccine against it. That delay costs lives.

But, just as vaccination introduces immune systems to pathogens that are remote from them in space, new techniques which have come to the fore during the current pandemic offer the possibility of introducing them to pathogens that are remote from them in time—pathogens, indeed, that have not yet evolved, but which are likely to do so in the future. Thanks to a combination of high-throughput DNA-sequencing technologies and modern machine-learning it is now possible not merely to observe which variants of a virus are circulating, but also to suggest how they are likely to change. Understanding in this way what a virus might look like in the months and years to come gives those designing vaccines and therapies a leg up, enabling them to prime more immune systems sooner, so that fewer people die.

Read the following text and answer the following two questions based on it.

E-cigarettes could be prescribed by NHS in world first

England could become the first country in the world to prescribe medicinally licensed e-cigarettes to cut smoking rates.

Fresh guidance from the medicines regulator paves the way for vaping products to be prescribed on the NHS to tobacco smokers.

E-cigarettes were the most popular aid used by smokers trying to quit in England last year, and health chiefs say they have led to some of the highest success rates, alongside local “stop smoking” services, with up to 68 per cent successfully quitting.

But the move could be controversial, after American scientists said earlier this month that people using the devices were 8.5 per cent more likely to relapse within 12 months and return to using their old cigarettes than people who quit entirely.

US researchers revealed they had found that as well as nicotine, e-cigarettes contain unidentified chemicals that could have health risks.

A separate study, in the UK, suggested that vaping could affect people’s lungs just as much as cigarette smoking.

Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport found both smokers and vapers showed similar obstruction of the airways in the lungs that can affect people’s ability to efficiently take in air.

However, experts in the UK and US have generally concluded that regulated e-cigarettes are less harmful than smoking. A medicinally licensed e-cigarette would have to pass even more rigorous safety checks, officials say.

Manufacturers will be able to submit their e-cigarettes to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to gain approval just like other medicines.

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration in the US gave regulatory approval for the first time to a handful of e-cigarette products after banning tens of thousands of others from being marketed.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices with cartridges filled with a liquid that contains nicotine and flavourings. The liquid is heated into a vapour, which the smoker inhales.

More than 6 million people in England still smoke, and they see their GP at least a third more often than non-smokers, according to the NHS. Almost 64,000 people died from smoking in England in 2019, official figures show.

Men Adrift
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi, William Morrow & Co., 1999 662 pp. $27.50

Scores of men, their wives and partners, friends and kin, and the sharks that have exploited them come alive through Faludi’s keen reporting. The men she writes about are presented as prototypes of the generation of baby-boomer men who have experienced layoffs, broken promises of upard mobility, the Vietnam War, meaningless work, and new definitions of “what it means to be a man” in contemporary America. A further “cause” of their plight, she writes, is the emphasis on celebrity in American culture. The narratives in Faludi’s book are woven through with themes of loss and the substitution of superficial values for the “real” values of meaningful work.

Faludi asserts that many men today feel “shipwrecked” in a service economy, but that this is only the start of their troubles. Victims of downsizing and de-skilling, they no longer play breadwinner roles in their families and develop difficulties in their marriages. In some cases, wives they once supported now support them.

Through this book she hopes to make men conscious of their condition and to encourage them to mobilize in ways approximating the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This is a commendable task, but it is doubtful whether men will either accept its premises or identify with the individuals Faludi refers to in making her case.