Should nicotine be included the war on drugs?

When that paragon of unimpeachable virtue Richard Milhous Nixon announced the War on Drugs back in 1971, we counted ourselves among his most fervid supporters. It chimed with our most basic principle: people must be stopped from enjoying themselves wherever and when that is possible. And when some of those people are pot-smoking hippies or degenerate cocaine fiends, how much more satisfying still was that act of repression! But yet, as always, the Devil Whispered in Our Ear: If we were banning all that weed and charlie and smack and billy whizz because they altered minds and caused social problems, then what about nicotine and alcohol? Didn’t Jesus seem to take a relaxed view of the matter, both in the famous wedding at Cana (John 2 10 ), and in the Last Supper (Matthew 26:27–29) At least the company didn’t light up cigars at the end of the meal-but boy, did these passages pose us some problems!

Since when things have slipped still further. As if they didn’t have enough problems with fossil fuels and rising sea levels already, the nation of Palau has dropped another logic bomb upon the Comfortable nations of the world Read this Should Nicotine be regulated like drugs? from Nature Briefings

A call by the Pacific island nation of Palau for nicotine to be regulated like narcotics by the United Nations will trigger an assessment and a vote by member states. If nicotine were to be added to the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, it would effectively make it illegal to sell nicotine products that aren’t considered medicinal, says nicotine-treatment specialist Renee Bittoun. But tobacco-company lobbying makes it unlikely that nicotine will be added to the list, says Bittoun. Nature | 4 min read

Whatever next, gentle readers? Will they free up restrictions and red tape on the sale of tea and coffee? Will they start alleging the thrill people get from driving fast cars is like that from cocaine-and bring in speed restrictions? Or will some sect of uber – Free Market Liberals, followers of Adam Smith or something, seize power and then abolish all restrictions on all neurologically active substances? We can’t decide whether we are going to be oppressed by Communists or Capitalists: but we await our fate in trepidation.

[1] War on drugs – Wikipedia

#tobacco #nicotine #palau #pollution #free market #war on drugs #cannabis #cocaine #heroin #alcohol

Diabetes: another benefit of the BCG Vaccine?

A couple of years ago we did a piece called Did your long-ago BCG Vaccine save you from dementia? In which we reported that the famous BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine was also proving efficacious in cases of bladder cancer and certain types of dementia. (LSS 2 12 24) Well today things just became even more intriguing. Read this from Nature Briefing, Century Old Vaccine helps control diabetes;

A tuberculosis vaccine developed in the 1920s helps to regulate blood sugar in people with certain types of diabetes, enabling them to reduce their insulin use. The findings demonstrate yet another beneficial off-target effect of the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine, derived from a weakened form of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in cows. The shot has been approved to treat bladder cancer in the United States and is being investigated against conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. The results were presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting on 7 June.

Nature | 5 min read

And the Learning Point? When we did Training and Teaching, they always told us that we had to have a learning point. So we think it’s this:

Vaccines are one of civilisation’s quiet miracles:[2] you design them for one threat, and decades later they’re still paying unexpected dividends — BCG for TB, then bladder cancer, then dementia, and now hints of protection against diabetes. That’s what real science does: it compounds. You invest once, and the benefits echo for generations. But if you decide, like the climate denier or the old‑school smoker, that evidence is optional and expertise a nuisance, you’re effectively betting your long‑term future against the only tool that has ever reliably improved it. Reality is not something you can pick and choose.

[1] BCG vaccine – Wikipedia

[2] Vaccines and immunization

#vaccination #BCG #tuberculosis #cancer #dementia #diabetes #health #medicine #research

More on AI and Antibiotics-and it’s good news

Once again, the source for our blog today comes from the excellent Nature Briefing, who are always in the forefront of scientific research in every field. Today we are showcasing their piece AI is taking on antibiotic resistance because we think they’re picking up on some real game-changing developments, and we really want you to know about them.

Let’s start with their usual helpful summary, as it’s a good general overview. But this time we earnestly beg you to click on the link they have provided: read below to find out why.

Antibiotics are an effective, but somewhat indiscriminate solution to some gut infections. Helpful species of gut bacteria get caught in the crossfire, which increases the likelihood that drug-resistant bacterial strains will evolve. Researchers are now designing drugs to selectively target disease-causing species with the help of artificial intelligence. Some teams are using AI to screen drug molecules for the most promising candidates quickly and cheaply. Others have developed tools that predict how drug molecules bind to protein targets to reveal a drug’s mechanism of action, reducing the need for wet-lab experiments.

Nature | 15 min read

Because if you do, you will step into a world of research where Information Science and Biological Science are meeting: which of course is more and more these days isn’t it? You will learn about:

Jonathan Stokes of McMaster University in Canada who have pioneered the use of AI to test their newest molecule called enterololin and thereby strip out all kinds of old-skool testing processes.

Regina Barzilay of MIT who with her team have done much of the AI work to set this up for Jonathan She is a remarkable woman who has been hunting down the link between antibiotics and AI since 2018-how’s that for far sightedness, folks?

You’ll be able to name check tools like Diffdock , RdKit and Chemprop which these people use to do all this-how’s that going to sound in the pub?

And a woman called Molly Bartlett who’s something called a Chemical Informatician at London’s Imperial College. As we still have a tenuous connection to that august institution we sometimes write in to their alumnus mag and tell them what a good job they’re doing, knowing we speak for all of you, gentle readers.

And much more besides, Especially if you do the decent thing and sign up to go behind the paywall.

Funny, isn’t it? If our first name were Donald (it isn’t) we might note how much this progress a) seems to come from despised places like Canadia and Englandland b) how somehow these evil foreigners still find ways to work with Unitedstatespersons c) maybe if you want to find cures for important things you may have to look at other methods in addition to earnest prayer d) if I were getting bigly older, perhaps approaching my eightieth birthday for example, I might like to have a few antibiotics around. Just a thought.

# Antibiotic research #Artificial Intelligence ~medicine #health #bacteria

Round up of the week: What happens when you don’t educate women, and what happens when you do

Taliban v education Further depressing news from Afghanistan about the crack-down on female education. Oh well, it’s up to them, but they will be the long term losers, as every possible statistic will soon start to show. The Conversation has the details:

https://theconversation.com/what-happened-to-afghanistans-female-academics-283000?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20June%201%202

Yet more hope on cancer Here’s what happens in societies that do educate women. A new drug that goes by the snappy name of GRWD5769 may be on the brink of transforming prospects for late-stage cancer patients To rub the point in we’ve stories from opposite ends of the political spectrum our old stand-bys,The Mail and the Guardian.

Wonder pill shrinks tumours in a third of patients with six hard-to-treat cancers, early trial shows | Daily Mail Online

.Smart drug that strips cancer cells of ‘invisibility cloak’ can shrink tumours by 30%, trial shows | Cancer | The Guardian

Super El Niño Better keep your ice cubes ready if you read our cocktail column (LSS passim) Because you are going to need them says the Mail, who, despite what you might think, are having a good Climate Crisis.

Super El Niño is on its way: Scientists warn there’s now an 80% chance the unusual climate pattern will arrive this summer – bringing extreme heat ‘nearly EVERYWHERE’ | Daily Mail Online

AI and Vaccines come together Are we a medical blog or an AI one? Looks like the difference doesn’t matter any more, as the two fields seem to be in fusion. This is a remarkable one, gentle readers so if you need a bit of cheering up, read it, from the BBC

‘World-first’ vaccine designed by artificial intelligence – BBC News

CAR-T enables kidney transplants reports Nature Briefing Yet Another LSS Favourite New Techniques (FNT) takes yet another encouraging step forward, this time in the world of transplant medicine:

A single dose of engineered immune cells has helped three people with ‘highly sensitized’ immune systems to receive life-saving kidney transplants. People in this group are often ineligible for transplants because their bodies usually reject the donated organ. Researchers engineered the recipient’s own immune cells into chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that ultimately reduce the trouble-making antibodies that push their immune systems into overdrive. More than a year after receiving the cells, the three people are now living with new kidneys and without notable side effects.

Nature | 5 min read
Reference: New England Journal of Medicine paper 1 & paper 2

We think that lot more or less makes our point for today. Except for this thought from some American bloke:

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin

#cancer #CAR-T #Artificial Intelligence #transplants #climate change #health #medicine #women #education #afghanistan

Chikungunya: another potential Climate Change epidemic?

News that we’re in for a record El Niño[1] this year brings a depressing thought is Climate Change going to deliver a whole new wave of tropical diseases alongside all those floods. fires and migrations? We’ve touched on this before (LSS 25 10 21,14 11 23, 2 10 25) but had rather hoped that it had all gone away. It hasn’t, as this excellent article by Shivali Best of the Mail [2] explains in forensic detail. And it’s her work we’ll be riffing on today, with a little help other sources.[3]

Shivali takes Chikungunya virus as her theme. It’s a nasty little disease caused by an alphavirus of the Togaviridae group. Discovered in Tanzania in 1952 it delivers a painful cocktail of symptoms including fever and severe joint pains: the latter may be extremely debilitating and long-lasting. But the real problem lies in its vectors, the famous yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti and the scarily named tiger mosquito (a. albopictus) Do they call it that because of its bite? Not only does climate change allow these insects to spread to lands where the cold had formerly precluded their presence. The same warming allows the virus to breed up to five times faster inside the mosquito. Before you ask: there are vaccines of sorts underway: but progress has been slowed because most of the money has been spent on wars and shopping malls.

And so Chikungunya joins the long sorry list of diseases spreading due to global warming. To which we could append Malaria, Dengue, Zika, Lyme, Tick Born Encephalitis, Vibrio group……..enough! LSS readers are a well-informed lot. They know what’s happening. They know why. The real task before us all is how to clear up the damage, and make those culpable pay for it

[1]Prepare for El Niño, UN warns – it could be the strongest in decades – BBC News

[2]Chikungunya virus is heading for Europe: Scientists warn mosquito-borne tropical disease could spread to major cities thanks to climate change | Daily Mail

[3]Chikungunya fact sheet

#chikungunya #malaria #climate change #disease #vector #epidemic #health #mosquito

Broaden your mind with these two great brain stories from Nature Briefing

We believe that research into the human brain is the flip side of research into Artificial Intelligence. As the two will one day coincide, the more we know about both the better. So when Nature Briefing, that go-to Record for all things new and scientific, puts out not one but two (two, folks!) stories on the human brain, we felt it our solemn duty to bring you them both.

We have always believed that scaring people into doing things is counter-productive in the long term. Our worse fears are confirmed by this piece called Stress stops the Brain Joining the dots.

Acute stress makes it difficult to connect memories of past experiences with fresh information — a process crucial for making deductions. This could explain why people struggle to show insight under pressure. During psychological tests that involved making links between indirectly related pictures, brain imaging showed altered activity in the hippocampi of people who had been through a stressful mock interview compared with those of people who’d had to complete a simpler task, which suggests that their brains hadn’t inferred connections between the images as strongly.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: Science Advances paper

Every epoch casts reality in its own image The Victorians though that everything in the world worked like a steam engine. Around 1910 they thought all was electric circuits. And Cold war people put us all down as computers. Every picture of the brain is an analogue, an attempt only as this piece The Brian is no machine makes clear.

In The Brain, In Theory, neuroscientist Romain Brette makes the case to move away from the predominant model of the brain, which treats the organ like a computer. Brette argues that engineering metaphors are often vague and misleading, and attempts to breathe life back into brain science by focusing on the study of the nervous system on biology. “Brette’s take-down of the field’s dominant theoretical frameworks is systematic,” writes neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín in his review. “The book is intense and intricate. One can get lost in it, but it is worth the adventure.”

Nature | 7 min read

So our advice is study both of the above with close attention, gentle reader. It’s a no-brainer!

#neuroscience #artificial intelligence #biology #IT #nervous system #logic #stress

Programmable Therapeutics(here’s what they’ll be talking about in 2046)

In these happy, carefree days of 2026, we almost take the success of advanced techniques like CRISPR–Cas9 and CAR‑T for granted. Yet not so long ago they were obscure experimental curiosities, known only inside specialist laboratories. So we asked ourselves: is there something equally obscure in 2026 that will be the stock‑in‑trade of doctors in 2046? We think there might be: programmable cell therapeutics.[1]

The jumping‑off point is the logic behind CAR‑T. Readers will recall how T‑cells are removed from a patient, engineered to recognise the chemical signatures of their cancer, and then reinfused to hunt down malignant cells. Researchers are now extending this idea to a wider cast of immune cells, stem cells, and progenitors, so they can tackle diseases far beyond oncology.

What makes the next generation different is the importation of ideas from electrical engineering. Instead of a single engineered receptor, cells can be fitted with ON/OFF switches, logic gates, multi‑step decision pathways, and feedback loops. In other words, cells that don’t just attack — they compute. They sense the molecular environment, decide what’s happening, and act accordingly.

And thanks to delivery tools such as viral vectors and mRNA‑carrying nanoparticles, these circuits can increasingly be installed in vivo. Rather than the expensive choreography of removing cells, re‑engineering them, and putting them back, the ambition is to program the cell to reprogram itself. Why rebuild the army in the barracks when you can train the soldiers already in the field?

Gentle readers, we are always looking for ways to put you ahead of the curve — not what is happening now, but what will be happening in five, ten, or twenty years’ time. By 2046 we could plausibly see:

cancer therapies that activate only in tumour microenvironments
gene therapies that self‑limit to avoid toxicity
immune cells that make multi‑step decisions
RNA‑based switches that restore gene expression dynamically

All this, of course, depends on continued investment in scientific research and a strong ecosystem of independent universities and research institutes. Hopeful, isn’t it.

[1]Next-generation programmable cell therapies for precision medicine | Nature Reviews Genetics

#gene editing #medicine #health #cancer #mRNA #CRISPR #CAR-T #DNA

No Pandemic this time: but what happens next?

While we sympathise with the unfortunate passengers and crew of the MV Hondius who may have been exposed to the hantavirus, our first response was rather selfish; “is this a new pandemic, and if so, how bad will it be?” We were not alone: and fortunately, as this excellent summary article from Julia Musto of the Independent, via MSN, explains: humanity seems to have dodged the bullet this time [1] Although utterly dangerous the virus just doesn’t seem to spread with the same facility as others such as SARS-CoV-2, or the influenza group. So that’s alright then.

Or is it? Because as certain as the House always winning, another pandemic will come along. Bringing the same economic, social and physical disruptions as COVID 19 did back in 2020. Or worse maybe. Surely humanity has learned some lessons from that catastrophe? Taken steps, you might think, to mitigate the worst effects and learn to pool our resources so that next time round everything will be different? Not according to Kat Lay of the Guardian [2] whose indefatigable investigations have unearthed another avoidable catastrophe in the making.

Because although a Pandemic Treaty has been signed , it cannot go into effect until a special clause called a Pabs (Pathogen access and benefits sharing) has been ratified. It hasn’t, as regular readers will be unsurprised to learn. The result is:

“If a new pathogen emerged today, the world remains largely unprepared for it. A lack of action to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic threat is a disservice to humanity,”

Kat cites the usual litany of petty squabbles, mutual jealousies and general misinformations which have led us all into this sorry plight and ends her article there.

But we, gentle readers, cannot quite leave you without adding our own thought. Natural Selection tells us that species go extinct when their key survival features are no longer adequate to their environment (what use are flippers to a whale out of water, for example?) Humanity’s key advantage was its intelligence and relatively large brain. Is this clear example of the failure to use this clear cognitive advantage a sign of even worse things to come?

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/general/could-cruise-boat-hantavirus-be-the-next-global-pandemic/ar-AA22CAGh?

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/05/talks-stall-on-who-pandemic-treaty-global-response-disease-outbreaks?CM

[3] MV Hondius hantavirus outbreak – Wikipedia

#hantavirus #pandemic #covid 19 #WHO #health #medicine #virus

Progress on Multiple Sclerosis: When Big Data meets Molecular Genetics

Photo by Fayette Reynolds M.S. on Pexels.com

Few of us have not met someone who is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, that terrible wasting disease wherein the immune system seems to turn on its own body, especially in the fatty sheaths around the neurons. Leading to a progressive deterioration in mobility before confining victims finally to a wheelchair-or even worse. The experience for families and victims was extra-bad because for many years the cause seemed unknown, making hope of any cure quite unlikely. Michael Marshall of the New Scientist has been covering this story most assiduously. And so we are pleased to showcase it, because it celebrates achievements in two our our favourite fields-big data and molecular biology-and the benefits which accrue when scientists from both work together.

We urge you to read Michael’s article either by buying the hard copy mag (there’s tons else to read inside it) or paywalling past the link below [1] Suffice it to say: #1 The molecular evidence that the Epstein Barr virus (which can cause glandular fever) is involved. #2 That this has a strong effect on both B cells and T cells in the immune system, which ,when they go rogue, are essentially responsible for the terrible lesions of MS #3 That not all hosts of Epstein Barr virus go on to develop MS, because the chances of that depends on certain genetic propensities and variants and, best of all #4 the above and more, which we report so glibly, has been elucidated by the use of huge data studies : 10 million people in one, 617, 186 in another, even 471 000 B cells in another-how’s that for numbers, folks?-which were only possible because: #5 places like the UK and USA have worked to build big collaborative things the the UK Biobank and All of us. Well some of the people in those countries have anyway.

All of which leads us to few reflections, some of which will not be uncongenial to regular readers. Firstly, it seems a pretty good idea to spend money on science, especially basic research, instead of cutting it. Secondly scientists these days work best in large teams whose members come from all sorts of backgrounds and this is especially true when you throw multidisciplinarygroups of them together. And that this also seems to be true of football teams: how far would Arsenal FC. for example, have enjoyed their current success if they had insisted on retaining a staff entirely composed of plucky British lads? [2] The implications in turn for visa systems, cultural openness and plain common sense are clear in turn.

[1]Huge study reveals how Epstein-Barr virus may cause multiple sclerosis | New Scientist

[2]‘Everything can happen’: Trossard confident of Arsenal’s chances in final | Arsenal | The Guardian

#multiple sclerosis #Ebpstein-Barr virus #T cells #B cells #autoimmune disease #medicine #health

Hydrogen from Microbiology-another hopeful story from Nature Briefing

You might be forgiven for thinking we’re against bacteria at this blog. Got a beef with them, want more antibiotics to kill them, especially that pesky little Escherichia coli that is always clogging up the pristine pages of our little website. Nothing could be further from the truth: we are simply against bacteria that kill people, that’s all, and we admire the little creatures for all the useful things they do

Nothing more useful it seems than generating hydrogen in clean green ways that massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course we need hydrogen for all sorts of things-food, drugs, plastics-but the way it is currently made is depressingly energy intensive Which is what this remarkable team of researchers at Edinburgh University have done, re purposing E coli to make hydrogen in amazingly clean ways Get this extract from the admirable Nature Briefing:

. The new process involves growing a strain of Escherichia coli that naturally produces hydrogen when deprived of oxygen. The researchers added a palladium catalyst and substrate for the hydrogen to bind to, and when they removed oxygen, hydrogen was bound to 94% of the substrate.

And they didn’t stop there:

The team then turned waste bread into a food source that could be given to the bacteria instead of glucose, to show that this type of food waste can be repurposed. The system resulted in a three-fold decrease in greenhouse-gas equivalent emissions compared with using fossil fuels, according to the team’s modelling.

There’s a lot to be said here. First our admiration for the amazing work and intelligence of the scientists[2] whose original paper we seem for once to be able to reproduce in full. The marvellous ways old things like bread and E coli are recycled to useful purposes. And a further point which the team at the admirable Nature Briefing know well. Progress, hope even, comes from the application of the scientific method. The use of evidence and reason to judge it in that order. Nothing else, however much you might want it to be so.

[2] Native H2 pathways enable biocompatible hydrogenation of metabolic alkenes in bacteria | Nature Chemistry

#microbiology #palladium #greenhoiuse gas# hydrogen# E coli #sustainabilityn #drugs #plastics