first opinion
HHS's silence on health care's contribution to climate change is deafening
Christine Kao/STAT
The U.S. healthcare system produces nearly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and massive amounts of air pollution. It leads all other nations in its health care-related emissions. But you probably wouldn't know that based on how the health care system acts, climate policy consultant David Introcaso writes in a new First Opinion.
A recent proposal from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — more specifically, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — would give certain hospitals the chance to voluntarily report their emissions over the course of five years. The proposal is a "regulatory illusion intended to accomplish nothing," Introcaso writes. "Climate nihilism" is common across health care, and groups that should support better regulation of emissions avoid the issue completely. He argues that HHS can be tougher on emissions, including by requiring hospitals to publicly report their emissions each year. Read more.
vaccines
HIV vaccine history is riddled with failures. Could a new approach work? Immunologists have been trying for decades to develop an effective vaccine against HIV, with no success. Just last year, researchers' last attempt to get an HIV vaccine off the ground in this decade was shut down; the vaccine regimens were a dud. HIV is famously a shapeshifter, mutating at the highest rates known to science. That makes it really difficult for the human immune system to catch up and shut the virus down.
So it's with great skepticism (and hope) that researchers are testing a new approach, STAT's Annalisa Merelli and Jonathan Wosen report. Last week, four studies bolstered the idea that exposing the immune system to a series of different vaccine molecules could trigger a powerful and protective antibody response. The studies, conducted in mice and monkeys, showed that researchers could begin to coax an exceedingly rare kind of B cell to make antibodies that block a broad swath of viral strains — an important first step. But there are still plenty of barriers to making this work in people. Read more.
research equity
She works hard for the money
Over the last few decades, there's been a solid upward trend in the number of women scientists in the life sciences. In the mid-'80s, around the same time Donna Summer released that chart-topping banger, less than 40% of doctorate recipients were women. That number is about 55% now. And NIH funding has largely followed that same trajectory (a little over 10% of NIH funding was awarded to women in 1985). Good news all around for gender parity.
Except. Some studies still point to stubborn funding discrepancies when controlling for a bunch of other factors. A new paper analyzed the distribution of 2.3 million NIH grants awarded in biomedicine from 1985 to 2017. The researchers found that while women scientists as a whole have been awarded more grant resources over time, the gains are unequal. The change over time "disproportionately benefits senior women scientists, while leaving other, junior women scientists behind," the authors write.
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