Nano particles offer ever more hope on antibiotics(we update an old blog)

Veteran readers will immediately recall our 2024 offering (LSS 17 2 24) in which we hailed the use of silica nanoparticles to deliver the antibiotic ceftadizine to patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). Well, the world of nanoparticles and antibiotic resistance has not let the grass grow under its feet since that early date. For today we are proud to present no less than four(count ‘em, folks-four!) new developments which will bring a glimmer of hope to all of us interested in avoiding a catastrophic hyperpandemic unleashed by drug resistant microorganisms. Obviously we can’t go into exquisite detail gentle readers, but humbly hope that the following will whet your appetite for further reading along the lise we have indicated:

1. Nanoparticles delivering CRISPR

Nano particles are used to deliver CRISPR Cas engineered entities to knock out resistance generating genes in the target bacterium, such as blaNDM (New Delhi metallo‑β‑lactamase) as well as…..no, that’ll be more than enough gene names for today. But you get the picture.

Reference: Innovative approaches to combat antibiotic resistance: integrating CRISPR/Cas9 and nanoparticles against biofilm‑driven infections. BMC Medicine, Springer Nature.

2. Nanoparticles as Catalytic killers In effect the nanoparticles act as “nanozymes”, artificial enzymes in effect which release reactive species of oxygen molecules and knock out the bacteria directly. From delivery system to weapon system in one fell swoop!

Reference: Antimicrobial Nanozymes: Structure–Activity‑Guided Design, Synergy, and Applications. Research, Volume 9 (2026), ScienceDirect.

3. Biofilm‑penetrating LNPs

Fans of the COVID 19 pandemic will recall the development of Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to help the mRNA vaccines penetrate biofilm and deliver their loads at the point of maximum effect. Now it is being adapted for the world of antibiotic resistance. Another crossover where progress in one area helps in another, we think!

Reference: CRISPR‑based antimicrobials and nanomotor technologies for drug‑resistant biofilms. Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology, March 2026, ScienceDirect.

4. Hybrid nanoparticles (metal + polymer) overcoming efflux and membrane barriers

Always and forever, those pesky gram negative bacteria and their sturdy drug resistant membranes, what a fight they have put up! But now researchers have astutely combined membrane‑disrupting metals such as silver and copper with controlled‑release polymer shells, allowing antibiotics to slip past Gram‑negative outer membranes that previously blocked them

Reference: Antimicrobial Nanozymes: Structure–Activity‑Guided Design, Synergy, and Applications. Research, Volume 9 (2026), ScienceDirect.

We know you like us to keep you updated, good readers, Surelyb this is enough for one day?

#nanoparicles #COPD #antibiotic resistance #genes #CRISPR #health #medicine #metals #lipids #membranes

Intismeran:First successful Phase 3 trial for Personalised Vaccines

A 200X photomicrograph magnification of a direct by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Vaccines have been the most successful tool in public health for over 150 years. But up to now they have been generic: each one is raised and designed against a specific disease-such as rabies, smallpox and more recently malaria. A new class of vaccine changes that logic entirely. These are individualised neoantigen vaccines, built from the unique mutations in each patient’s tumour. Today we highlight the first positive Phase 3 results for one of these, as reported by the BBC’s Joe McFadden. [1]

Intismeran is constructed from the mutational “fingerprint” of each patient’s melanoma — a bespoke mRNA vaccine rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all jab. In the Phase 3 INTerpath‑001 trial, jointly run by Merck and Moderna, 1,137 patients with completely resected stage IIB–IV melanoma were randomised to receive either Keytruda (Merck’s anti‑PD‑1 therapy) alone or Keytruda plus Intismeran.[2] [3] This is how Joe summarises the early results:

Early results show this new jab extended the length of time these patients were cancer free, but it’s unclear for how long, according to an announcement by the two firms.

Encouraging, we say: hats off to the companies and scientists involved. As for the wider reaction from the scientific community, it is positive indeed, but we’ll leave it to Joe to tell you about that

At this point we invoke our two favourite LSS tropes: caution and caveat. This is an early-days report: the work must now jump all the usual hoops of peer review, regulatory approval scaling and much more before any kind of routine clinical applications are possible. But there are many reasons to be optimistic, not just about Intismeran, but also certain wider preoccupations of ours. Firstly: some of the best research is done by that happy, hard to define network of companies, research institutes and académe, which has done so much to transform the human condition since the nineteenth century. Secondly, genetic engineering, which we follow avidly here, is in its infancy-this is quite different to our regular antibiotics theme, isn’t it? But most of all, if you want life to really get better, stop believing in what you want to believe and start believing in the scientific method.

[1] Vaccine breakthrough stops cancer returning in trial – BBC News

[2] Merck and Moderna Announce Phase 3 INTerpath-001 Trial of Intismeran Autogene Plus KEYTRUDA® Met Endpoints of Recurrence-Free Survival (RFS) and Distant Metastasis-Free Survival (DMFS) in Patients With Completely Resected Stage IIB-IV Melanoma

[3] Merck-Moderna cancer vax slows recurrence in ph. 3 trial

# Intismeran # Keytruda #melanoma #vaccine #mRNA #health #medicine #cancer #reseach #peer review

Alternatives to a World Government#2: the deep, deep problem with a consumer society

All our breezy prescriptions for a World Government will fail miserably if they don’t address the same problem that the Governments of the Nations are grappling with. And one of the biggest is the widening gap between People and Rulers. Almost within days of arriving in office, the government of our poor namesake Sir Keir Starmer found itself plagued by a deep and inveterate hostility from the voters.

Those same voters demand endlessly lower taxes, then complain bitterly about potholes, weak defence and the lack of capacity in the prison system. They demand an end to red tape and regulation while simultaneously clamouring for restrictions on immigration, the sale of certain drugs, and the use of the internet by minors. Where has such demanding — and self‑contradictory — behaviour come from?

One possible source, we wondered (and at first this was mere speculation), is consumer society. For decades people have been born and raised in a milieu that specialises in gratifying their capricious wants: for sweet foods, for psychologically active substances, and for ever faster ways of travelling towards the next traffic jam. We do not blame companies like Amazon, Netflix or Deliveroo; they have simply perfected trends in a culture a century in the making.

So we asked: do people now demand the same instantly gratifying solutions from politicians that they expect from fast‑food companies?

Readers will be glad to know that help arrived from a much deeper thinker. We came across the work of a remarkable philosopher, Luke Yates, whose book was published in that far‑off year of 2022. Modern society, Luke argues, is based on consumption practices: convenience, speed and instant gratification. If this is how people come to perceive politics, then our outlook is dire indeed.

For, as those of us in the — er — more reflective- elements of the population have known for centuries, politics isn’t like that at all. Its word‑cloud comprises such elements as slow, procedural, available resources, nuance, evidence and above all: choose options. To expect any politician, world emperor or local councillor to wave a magic wand and solve all is to chase mare’s nests and even, dare we say it, bark at the Moon.

Which leads us to a third, depressing metaphor: dead ducks. For if Luke’s thesis is even halfway reasonable, our plan for a World Government will solve absolutely nothing at all.

Oh well. We tried.

Luke Yates (2022), How everyday life matters: everyday politics, everyday consumption and social change, Consumption and Society, 1(1): 144–169.

#world government #luke yates #consumer society #politics#economics #culture

Alternatives to a World Government #1: the deep disease of inequality

Get the diagnosis right, or the ill will never be cured. Thus far, our LSS remedy for the current malaise– economic stagnation, mass migrations, ecological collapse, the utter alienation between rulers and ruled–is the institution of a World Government (LSS passim). But that is a Historian’s diagnosis. What if other viewpoints understand the problem better? If they are right and we are wrong, then our World Government will surely fail. Let’s look at some other possibilities then, starting with our number one candidate: economic inequality. And our Witnesses for the Prosecution, as t’were, are firstly, Thomas Piketty [1] [2] and secondly Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

In Capital in the Twenty‑First Century and Capital and Ideology, Piketty shows that when the rate of return on capital outpaces economic growth — — wealth concentrates faster than societies can redistribute it. The long arc of history is one of repeated “regimes of justification” for inequality, periodically interrupted by shocks (wars, depressions) that force elites to accept progressive taxation and broader social investment. Since the 1980s, most advanced economies have dismantled the egalitarian tax and welfare structures built after 1945, allowing inequality to surge back to levels last seen in the Belle Époque. This produces political fragmentation, democratic fatigue, and a sense that the social contract has frayed. For Piketty, rising inequality is not merely an economic issue — it is a political destabiliser.

Wilkinson and Pickett’s research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of inequality. Their central claim is that what matters for social wellbeing is not absolute wealth but relative position: societies with high income inequality exhibit higher rates of mental illness, mistrust, violence, poor health outcomes, and weakened community life. Inequality, they argue, acts as a chronic stressor, pushing individuals into status competition and eroding the sense of shared fate that healthy societies require They show that wealthy but unequal societies suffer from social pathologies that cannot be explained by poverty alone. Inequality corrodes the emotional infrastructure of everyday life — the ability to trust neighbours, feel secure, and imagine a common future. In their view, rising inequality is not just a symptom of malaise but a generator of it.

So any World Government that does not tackle these deep anomies would either become a castle built on sand, or quickly degenerate into a tyranny defending the same arrangements which have brought the Nations to this present sorry pass. Not an easy argument to overcome, especially when we thought we had it all worked out. And guess what, gentle readers-more demolitions will be inflicted in upon us in the next few episodes of this new series : don’t miss it!

[1]Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty‑First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

[2]Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020.

[3]Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane, 2009.

[4]Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett. The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well‑Being. London: Allen Lane, 2018.

#inequality #economics #history #world government# #politics #society #government

More on why everyone hates Keir (but this time we’ve got serious back up)

A few months ago(LSS 5 2 26) we offered a short piece called Everyone hates Keir-here’s why, in which we pondered the troubles of Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s soon-to-be-former Prime Minister. And why this essentially dull, technocratic and overwhelmingly honest man seemed to inspire such depths of visceral hatred from so many of our fellow citizens. We tried to place it in the context of Britain’s economic decline. And our only conclusion was to liken poor Sir Keir to the sort of sensible family lawyer who tells a family of rakehell aristocrats that the family funds have finally run out. He’s not going to be welcome is he?

But today we are glad to bring you an explanation which we think goes far further, and has far more explanatory power than our own humble offering. For it comes from the sagacious Professor Ben Anderson of Durham University, in the Conversation, who places his own analysis in the context the post 2008 crash economic wasteland we all now inhabit. You should read the article for yourself; but to dare our own take, he argues that the politics of feeling have replaced the politics of coherent ideology. Poor Starmer offers reason, rationality and evidence in a world that longs for feelings of certainty, belonging and attachment.

And, we ask,what stronger feeling can there be than hatred? In some of the most memorable words we have read for some time, Professor Anderson tells us:

Hatred is intense, and that intensity is central to today’s politics of feeling. And so an apparent hatred of Starmer is about the experience of feeling something intensely – and the difference this makes to people’s everyday lives. Intense feeling interrupts boredom, loneliness and other kinds of ordinary malaise. And in uncertain and anxious times, hate offers the illusion of reassurance. It establishes an unequivocal position against something.

In such circumstances no rational centrist politician can thrive, nor even govern for long. Keynes noted that the whole world of Arts Sciences and Letters which he believed in were in mortal peril if the basic needs of ordinary people for security and food were not met. Thus he so accurately foresaw the raise of the dictators and the coming Second World War. Are we living through similar days again?

[1] https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-feeling-why-did-boring-prime-minister-keir-starmer-provoke-such-visceral-reactions-286491?utm_medium=email&utm_c

#sir keir starmer #politics #uk #economics #jm Keynes #labour party #psychology #emotion #reason #unreason

Brexit: how two Rights made a wrong

Photo by Duu0161an Cvetanoviu0107 on Pexels.com

Brexit could have worked. Read those words slowly, from an honest Remainer. Because as some of us always knew, there were pragmatic arguments from the other side, which we feared greatly, because they were exceedingly strong. So how is that most successful political project in recent British History now seems to have fallen so flat? Why, ten years on, do the memories of Brexit feel far from triumphant? We repeat, so that no one gets us wrong: Brexit could have worked. And this is why we think it didn’t.

The overarching problem was that the Leave coalition was built from two groups who wanted entirely different futures. Both were impeccably Right Wing. Both were possessed a vision of a future that could well have worked. But both pressed the same “Brexit “ button for opposite reasons. Because they belonged to two quite different right-wing tribes. One tribe, The Free‑marketeers dreamed of a Britain unshackled from Brussels, a nimble “Singapore‑on‑Thames”: low taxes, light regulation, capital flowing freely, goods moving frictionlessly, and a labour market kept competitive by high mobility. Their model required openness — to investment, to trade, and, crucially, to people. What can be more red tape than Immigration controls? But it might have been very, very prosperous.

The other half of the coalition wanted the exact reverse. The Nationalists imagined their Brexit as a chance to pull up the drawbridge: to instigate tighter immigration rules, more insulation from global competition, to achieve a more interventionist state protecting industries and communities. Some were driven by economic insecurity, some by cultural anxiety, and yes — some by outright hostility to outsiders, seeing Brexit as a way to begin a purge of “foreigners” from public life. Their model required barriers, buffers, and a powerful State willing to police identity as much as borders. It was a vision of national retreat, not global acceleration. But it might have been very, very stable.

These two projects could not coexist beyond Brexit day. You cannot believe in the free movement of capital and goods while fleeing, like a child at bathtime, from the free movement of labour. Markets do not work that way. Block labour and capital simply moves instead; block people and goods compensate; block both and you get the stagnation we now inhabit. Brexit tried to fuse two rights — the right to globalise and the right to barricade — and produced a wrong. A decade later, the contradiction still sits at the heart of British politics, unresolved and unresolvable, because the country cannot be both fortress and freeport at the same time. Deep, deep down, the question is not about Europe, nor taxes nor even immigration rules: all are details It is What do you want to be going forwards?

‘I feel entirely vindicated’: three Guardian columnists debate Brexit and its legacy | Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins | The Guardian The Economic Impact of Brexit | NBER

#brexit #united kingdom #european union #economics #history #nationalism #free markets

Vaccines: it’s a question of Anthropology not Biology: Gillian Tett knows why

Why doesn’t evidence cut through? Why do reason and learning so often fail? They’re themes that have haunted this blog since its inception way back in the COVID‑19 days of 2020. Aren’t we supposed to be the heirs of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and all that? Maybe part of the answer lies in this story about the UK and Japan, and their startlingly different experiences with their respective HPV vaccination programmes, as detailed in this excellent Conversation article by Professor Justin Stebbing of Anglia Ruskin University [1].

On the face of it, vaccines are a winner: the biology is clearly understood, they save lives, and they have eliminated numerous diseases [2]. Which explains the success of the UK rollout of the HPV vaccine: Justin has a barrage of juicy statistics, but in his words the NHS now feels able to publish a plan to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem in England by 2040. Compare that with Japan, where following a reasonable start, the HPV vaccine campaign collapsed into desuetude. There were media stories, the government lost its nerve: the result is” that among girls born in certain years, coverage fell from around 70% to below 1%, and it remained at that level for years“. And Justin explains the dreary consequences at some length.

So why can’t we understand the difference between the two countries? In the end, vaccine hesitancy has very little to do with the science and everything to do with the stories people swim in. The biology stays constant; what shifts is the cultural weather around it. A rumour here, a misframed headline there, a neighbour’s anecdote, a politician’s stumble — tiny changes in narrative that can tilt whole communities from confidence to doubt. Vaccination succeeds or fails not in the laboratory but in the social world: in trust networks, identity cues, and the fragile ways humans decide whom to believe. It is anthropology, not virology, that explains why one hospital bed stays empty and another does not.

In other words, public health is really about anthropology, not biology. One person who understands this well is Gillian Tett, whose formidable book Anthro‑Vision [3] argues that the real drivers of human behaviour are rarely the numbers on the page but the cultural currents beneath them — the stories people trust, the tribes they belong to, the risks they feel rather than calculate. Public health often talks in data, but people decide in narrative. A stray rumour, a clumsy headline, a shift in group mood can undo months of scientific clarity, while a well‑placed story or trusted voice can restore confidence just as fast. And suddenly this becomes true of many of the things that preoccupy us here — climate change, economics, even the long arc of female emancipation. For all our “LSS are the heirs‑of‑the‑Age‑of‑Reason,” for all our Whiggish rhetoric, we’ve missed one important truth. People are not how we would like them to be. And this book tells us a lot about why.

[1]https://theconversation.com/the-hpv-vaccine-works-but-only-if-we-keep-trusting-it-285618?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20fo

[2] Why vaccination is important and the safest way to protect yourself – NHS

[3]Tett, Gillian. Anthro‑Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. London: Random House Business, 2021.

#vaccination #public health # HPV #anthropology #biology #culture #history

So-why would anyone love a World Government anyway?

Recently we approached one of the sharpest minds in the UK with our thoughts on the nation state. To our immense honour they replied. Please understand that, although we must protect their confidentiality, these are their exact words:

….. the core paradox today is that countries have to be small to get a real sense of citizen accountability – but big to grapple with these problems of security and prosperity. Therein lies the size conundrum………….

And we hope that the following anecdote illustrates why they are right.

Yesterday, while wandering at leisure on England’s south coast, we came across a seafront meeting of locals who had convened to discuss ways of improving their town, which they held to be in Decline. Before anyone sneers, let us record how moved we were that they had turned out at all, and how assiduously they strived to avoid dragging in wider political allegiances. Their concerns were local indeed:-flower beds, and the colours of bus shelters, mainly. Their hostility common- a deep suspicion of their local council and all its works. Which is shortly to be replaced by a merger with certain neighbouring towns, a prospect greeted with general dismay.

It follows that, if they were so suspicious of their local council- the very first and most immediate layer of their government- how much more suspicious might they be of a World Government? And not just them, but people everywhere, from the High Arctic to the projected colonies on the Moon? What makes people cling so jealously to the local and the tangible? We confidently tell them that Big offers Defence, Economies of scale, Energy grids, Supply chains, AI, biotech, cyber capacity and Climate resilience. Plus the World Cup. And quite rightly they counter that Small offers meaningful scrutiny, power where the scale is human, that corruption is easier to spot, that leaders are socially legible (you can imagine them in your local pub), not a distant man in a suit reading from an autocue. Policy feedback loops are brief too, meaning decisions have immediate consequences political pressure works-and you see where your money is going. That is a strong set of arguments, tuned to the way people are. Should we close down this whole LSS trope of World Government, and concentrate instead on flower beds and bus shelters?

Perhaps. And perhaps not. Even the most well-kept flower beds cannot escape the droughts of climate change for ever, nor the neatest town the effects of rising seas. The threats in the world will require collective action sooner or later. While the things they love like beer, cars and chocolate are supplied from the efficiencies of world markets, the very antithesis of the local and the particular. But so far all arguments on our side have been based on reason and evidence. Which can never win the emotional loyalty which those who tell stories about Tribe and Location currently scoop with ease. It is time for us to look for stories of our own. Which can offer so much more.

#world government #accountability #politics #economics #history #power

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

Labour’s troubles are historic, not just economic

One thing we like about Larry Elliott of the Guardian: he always looks for deeper reasons behind the news stories flashing across our screens. For him, they’re often economic reasons. .[1] Today he examines the plight of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the sea of troubles against which he has tried to take arms. Brexit,(“not done properly” Elliott asseverates ) globalisation (“has mainly benefitted the South East”), too much financial services ,and of course de-industrialisation. Especially in the old manufacturing areas like the Midlands, the North of England and the Scottish river valleys. Where Starmer and his party received such a kicking in the recent local elections. It was that last one that caught our eye, gentle readers.

For what was the Labour Party but a Party of the mass industrialised workers? From its foundation, in deep partnership with the Trades Unions and Co-Operative movement, but a Party of workers, who had been torn off their farms and thrown together into mass agglomerations in things like factories, mines and ports? Whose consciousness and very lives were collective, where sharing was a more certain way to survive hardship. But now those factories are gone. And the industrial unions with them. (for the benefit of foreign readers, Britain has an atrophied group of unions, but they now largely represent small groups of white collar workers and count for little in the balance of power).

For us the clue is in the name: the party of Keir Hardie grew from an organised, industrial membership. The Party of Keir Starmer exists in a very different nation. The politics of the 20th century were all about economics Those of the 21^st about Identity. No wonder Labour got such a kicking. No wonder the Conservatives did too. A very different road now lies ahead. In every country.

[1] Labour is being destroyed by dithering: it should either do Brexit properly or rejoin the EU | Larry Elliott | The Guardian

[2] Labour Party (UK) – Wikipedia

#Keir Starmer #Keir Hardie #Labour Party #economics #politics #history #society #britain