Category: Regulations

Stimulating Brain with Electrical Currents Can Improve Long-Term Memory for Older Adults

(p. A5) Zapping the brain with weak electrical currents that mimic normal neural activity can boost memory in healthy older adults, at least over the short term, researchers said in a study published Monday [Aug. 22, 2022] in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

. . .

The researchers found that repeated delivery of low-frequency currents to a brain region known as the parietal cortex—located in the upper back portion of the organ—improved recall of words toward the end of the 20-word lists. When the researchers targeted the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain with high-frequency currents, the study participants saw improvements in their ability to remember words from the beginning of the lists.

. . .

The electrical stimulation improved both short- and longer-term memory lasting minutes by about 50 to 65 percent over four days of treatment, Dr. Reinhart said. The improvements persisted one month after the treatment sessions. Short-term, or working, memory involves storing information over a period of seconds like remembering a phone number someone just gave you. Long-term memory involves storing and then retrieving information over minutes, days, months or years.

. . .

Though the apparatus used in the experiments is lightweight and easy to use, Dr. Reinhart said, it hasn’t been cleared for clinical use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and for now is available only in research settings.

For the full story see:

Aylin Woodward and Daniela Hernandez. “Electrical Brain Stimulation Is Shown to Boost Memory.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022): A5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 22, 2022, and has the title “Improve Memory by Zapping Your Brain? Study Says It’s Possible.”)

The academic article summarized in the passages quoted above is:

Grover, Shrey, Wen Wen, Vighnesh Viswanathan, Christopher T. Gill, and Robert M. G. Reinhart. “Long-Lasting, Dissociable Improvements in Working Memory and Long-Term Memory in Older Adults with Repetitive Neuromodulation.” Nature Neuroscience 25, no. 9 (Sept. 2022): 1237-46.

Costs of Covid Lockdowns and Mask Mandates Exceeded Benefits

(p. A15) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention belatedly admitted failure this week. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Director Rochelle Walensky said. She vowed to establish an “action-oriented culture.”

. . .

U.S. states with more-restrictive policies fared no better, on average, than states with less-restrictive policies. There’s still no convincing evidence that masks provided any significant benefits. When case rates throughout the pandemic are plotted on a graph, the trajectory in states with mask mandates is virtually identical to the trajectory in states without mandates. (The states without mandates actually had slightly fewer Covid deaths per capita.) International comparisons yield similar results. A Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of studies around the world concluded that lockdown and mask restrictions have had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.”

. . .

In 2006 he and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh considered an array of proposed measures to deal with a virus as deadly as the 1918 Spanish flu.

Should schools be closed? Should everyone wear face masks in public places? Should those exposed to an infection be required to quarantine at home? Should public-health officials rely on computer models of viral spread to impose strict limitations on people’s movements? In each case, the answer was no, because there was no evidence these measures would make a significant difference.

“Experience has shown,” Henderson’s team concluded, “that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.” The researchers specifically advised leaders not to be guided by computer models, because no model could reliably predict the effects of the measures or take into account the “devastating” collateral damage. If leaders overreacted and panicked the public, “a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

This advice was subsequently heeded in the pre-Covid pandemic plans prepared by the CDC and other public-health agencies. The WHO’s review of the scientific literature concluded that there was “no evidence” that universal masking “is effective in reducing transmission.” The CDC’s pre-2020 planning scenarios didn’t recommend universal masking or extended school and business closures even during a pandemic as severe as the 1918 Spanish flu.

For the full commentary see:

John Tierney. “Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failure.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Aug. 19, 2022): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 18, 2022, and has the title “Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response.”)

Human Challenge Trial Sped Phase 3 of Typhoid Vaccine Clinical Trial

Observers Give Thumbs-Up to Matthew Speight as He Prepared to Drink Typhoid Bacteria as Part of a Human Challenge Trial.
Source of Image: NYT commentary cited below.

(p. D3) “I was curious.” That’s how James M. Duggan, an Oxford University medical student, explains why he agreed to swallow a big dose of live typhoid bacteria.

. . .

Mr. Duggan, 33, was not on a self-destructive sympathy bender. Like more than 100 other residents of Oxford, England, he was taking part in a trial of a new typhoid vaccine.

Typhoid fever, caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi and spread in food and water, kills almost 200,000 victims a year — many of them young children — in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Survivors may suffer perforated intestines, heart problems and other complications.

The experimental vaccine was a big success. The trial’s results were published in The Lancet on Thursday [Sept. 28, 2017]: the vaccine turned out to be 87 percent effective.

. . .

“These are great results,” said Dr. Anita Zaidi, the foundation’s director of diarrheal diseases. “And challenge tests are a great way to short-circuit the process of proving it works.

“If we’d done this in the field, we would have had to follow children for three or four years.”

So-called challenge tests involve giving subjects an experimental vaccine and then deliberately infecting them with the disease to see if it protects them.

These tests can only be done with illnesses — like cholera or malaria — that can be rapidly and completely cured, or with diseases — like seasonal flu — that normally do not damage healthy adults.

. . .

So what would motivate dozens of well-educated Britons to swallow a vial full of the germs that made Typhoid Mary famous? In interviews, they gave various reasons.

Some, like Mr. Duggan, were curious. Some wanted to help poor people. And some mostly wanted the cash.

Participants who followed all the steps, which included recording their temperatures online, making daily clinic visits and providing regular blood and stool samples, received about $4,000.

They all said they understood the risks.

For the full commentary see:

Donald G. McNeil Jr. “Curiosity, and Cash, Fight a Fever.” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 3, 2017): D3.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 28, 2017, and has the title “They Swallowed Live Typhoid Bacteria — On Purpose.”)

The print version of The Lancet article mentioned above is:

Jin, Celina, Malick M. Gibani, Maria Moore, Helene B. Juel, Elizabeth Jones, James Meiring, Victoria Harris, Jonathan Gardner, Anna Nebykova, Simon A. Kerridge, Jennifer Hill, Helena Thomaides-Brears, Christoph J. Blohmke, Ly-Mee Yu, Brian Angus, and Andrew J. Pollard. “Efficacy and Immunogenicity of a Vi-Tetanus Toxoid Conjugate Vaccine in the Prevention of Typhoid Fever Using a Controlled Human Infection Model of Salmonella Typhi: A Randomised Controlled, Phase 2b Trial.” The Lancet 390, no. 10111 (Dec. 2, 2017): 2472-80.

Miami Mayor Welcomes Private Enterprise with Public Safety, Low Taxes, and Few Regulations

(p. A15) On one side, we have the socialist model: high taxes, high regulation, less competition and declining public services with government imposing itself as the solver and arbiter of all social problems. On the other side, we have the Miami model: low taxes, low regulation and a commitment to public safety and private enterprise. The models present a stark choice on issues ranging from personal freedom, economic opportunity, public safety and the role of government.

. . .

In Miami, many residents have personally experienced the socialist model along with its symptoms of hyperinflation, class resentment and stagnant growth. Four years ago Miami residents elected me to pursue a different path. We reduced taxes dramatically, and our revenue base doubled. We invested in our police, and our crime rate dropped. And last week we reduced taxes to their lowest level in history—cutting costs for residents and promoting economic growth.

Miami is a place where you can keep what you earn, invest what you save, and own what you build. We are meeting the high demand of rent costs by encouraging public-private partnerships, activating underutilized land through zoning reforms, and harnessing free-market forces to build more. It works, and our new residents from New York and California can confirm it.

For the full commentary see:

Francis X. Suarez. “Miami Takes On the Socialist Model.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Aug. 22, 2022): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 21, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Leftist Anti-Covid-Vaccine Roman Catholic Nun Defends Free Speech

(p. A12) MONTSERRAT, Spain — Sister Teresa Forcades came to public notice years ago for her unflinching liberal views: an outspoken Roman Catholic nun whose pronouncements ran counter to the church’s positions on same-sex marriage and abortion.

She became a fixture on Spanish television, appearing in her nun’s habit to advocate independence for her native region of Catalonia, and to debate other hot-button topics, including vaccines. She had trained as a doctor, partly in the United States, and argued that vaccinations might one day pose a danger to a free society.

. . .

“It’s always important that criticism is possible, to have dissenting voices,” she said of her views, which center as much on her doubts about the vaccines as her right to question them in public. “The answer cannot be that in the time of a crisis, society cannot allow the criticism — it’s precisely then that we need it.”

. . .

In the world of vaccine skeptics, Sister Teresa, who was born in 1966 to a nurse and a commercial agent, is hard to categorize. She acknowledges that some vaccines are beneficial, but opposes making them mandatory. Her misgivings about coronavirus vaccines largely stem from her view that pharmaceutical companies are not to be trusted, and the clinical trials were rushed.

. . .

Sister Teresa, though staunchly leftist, doesn’t distance herself from right-wing followers, calling her distrust of some vaccines a “transversal question able to reach a wide spectrum of people.”

For the full story see:

Nicholas Casey. “Spanish Nun With Medical Training Champions Vaccine Distrust.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 24, 2021): A12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the date April 23, 2021, and has the title “A Nun and a Doctor, She’s One of Europe’s Longstanding Vaccine Skeptics.”

“Paradox”: “Masks Work and Mask Mandates Do Not Work”

(p. A19) The Evidence

From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, puts it, “It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”

To start with the first half of the paradox: Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.

Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.

In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.

Advocates of mandates sometimes argue that they do have a big effect even if it is not evident in populationwide data, because of how many other factors are at play. But this argument seems unpersuasive.

After all, the effect of vaccines on severe illness is blazingly obvious in the geographic data: Places with higher vaccination rates have suffered many fewer Covid deaths. The patterns are clear even though the world is a messy place, with many factors other than vaccines influencing Covid death rates.

Yet when you look at the data on mask-wearing — both before vaccines were available and after, as well as both in the U.S. and abroad — you struggle to see any patterns.

Almost 30 Percent

The idea that masks work better than mask mandates seems to defy logic. It inverts a notion connected to Aristotle’s writings: that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, not less.

The main explanation seems to be that the exceptions often end up mattering more than the rule. The Covid virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place.

For the full commentary see:

David Leonhardt. “Masks Work, So Why Haven’t Mandates Made Much Difference?” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 1, 2022): A19.

(Note: the headings appeared in bold in the original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 31, 2021, and has the title “Why Masks Work, but Mandates Haven’t.”

Illegal Entrepreneur “Vagabond” Works Hard to Please Customers

(p. 16) . . . nutcrackers, homemade brews that are not technically classified as to-go cocktails in New York, are still illegal, as is drinking in local parks and beaches.

. . .

Vagabond, who is in his early 30s, has kept his face and name out of articles for fear of getting into legal trouble. He said that he started selling cocktails for $10 to $15 in the park during the summer of 2020 — after his restaurant temporarily shut down — to support his family.

“None of the restaurants were open; the beaches were closed,” he said. “The only places to be were people’s backyards or the park.”

He said that nutcrackers were traditionally “really sweet, really harsh alcohol, and it’s just going to give you a buzz,” but that many sellers found ways to rebrand and shake up the colorful drinks during the pandemic.

Vagabond said that he puts a lot of thought into his cocktails, using specific liqueurs and infusing them with herbs like mint and basil, which requires extra time and effort.

Some people balk at the idea of spending $15 on a nutcracker. But as Mr. Lewis jokes about his drink, “I prefer the gentrified term — ‘craft cocktail.’”

He also said that in the nearly two years since he’s been selling the drinks, he’s never been stopped by the police.

. . .

Vagabond said that an article that featured him in 2020 gave him an uncomfortable amount of exposure.

“Within days of this New York Post article coming out, N.Y.P.D. was looking for my Instagram,” he said. “My worst fear came true. I got caught.”

After being let off with a warning, he decided selling in the park wasn’t worth the heightened risk and effort. Now, he said, he mostly just delivers drinks — occasionally catering events like birthdays and weddings.

“Some people think I just magically appear in the park and I’m just strolling along,” he said. “I think people miss how hard and demanding it is.”

Mr. Lewis also said that he’s hoping Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams will consider legalizing the work that nutcracker vendors do around the city.

“Don’t criminalize this, incorporate this,” he said. “I would rather pay a $200 license fee than a $200 fine.”

He said that he’s on cordial terms with the other people who sell drinks in Prospect Park — “there’s enough pie in New York City for everybody.”

The biggest obstacle he usually faces, he said, is the sheer labor involved in dragging the heavy bags of drinks through the park.

For the full story see:

Julia Carmel. “For Bottle Service With a Smile in a Brooklyn Park, He’s the Man.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 29, 2022): 16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the date May 28, 2022, and has the title “Want a Nutcracker or a ‘Craft Cocktail?’ He’s Your Guy.”

“Overzealous Environmentalism” Hurts Poor Poaching “Misunderstood Outcasts”

(p. 17) In the journalist Lyndsie Bourgon’s telling, . . ., the poachers are not quite villains. Instead, they are responding — if not justifiably then at least predictably — to a lack of economic opportunities and the perception that the rules governing forests are arbitrary and heavy-handed.

Bourgon puts herself in the poacher’s shoes, and the result is a refreshing and compassionate warning about the perils of well-intentioned but overzealous environmentalism.

. . .

. . . she regards the history of the American conservation movement with something approaching scorn. It was hatched, she writes, to serve the whims of wealthy urban vacationers who wanted access to lands unspoiled by their longtime inhabitants. National parks were conceived as vehicles to resist “any attempt to turn to utilitarian purposes the resources represented by the forest,” as one booster put it.

At times, the motives were even less pure. Bourgon describes how ultrarich environmentalists in the early 1900s saw conservation — and in particular the protection of California’s redwoods — “as part of a mission to enshrine a white, masculine dominance over the wilderness.” Some conservationists, she notes, were “eugenicists who saw parallels between environmental destruction and the decline of Nordic supremacy.”

. . .

This is the backdrop for Bourgon’s depiction of “tree thieves” as misunderstood outcasts. “I have begun to see the act of timber poaching as not simply a dramatic environmental crime, but something deeper — an act to reclaim one’s place in a rapidly changing world,” she writes, tracing that desire back to 16th-century England, where poachers in royal forests were celebrated as folk heroes.

Bourgon immersed herself with a small handful of these men in the Northwest, and a picture emerges of a fractious band of down-on-their-luck crooks. A number abuse drugs. The poachers acknowledge that what they’re doing is illegal, but they frame it as principled, akin to stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families.

. . .

On the one hand, unemployed loggers and others who are suffering economically because of stringent enforcement of conservation laws are facing poverty. On the other hand, the damage that poachers are inflicting on forests appears to be, in the grand scheme of things, modest.

For the full review, see:

David Enrich. “No Clear-Cut Villains.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, July 24, 2022): 17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June [sic] 21, 2022, and has the title “When It Comes to Timber Theft, There Are No Clear-Cut Villains.” Where the online version has “misunderstood poacher’s” [sic], the print version quoted above has “misunderstood outcasts.”)

The book under review is:

Bourgon, Lyndsie. Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.

U.S. Climate “Net-Zero” by 2050 Costs $11,300 per Person per Year

(p. A19) . . . Mr. Biden’s current promise—100% carbon emission reduction by 2050—will be . . . phenomenally expensive.

A new study in Nature finds that a 95% reduction in American carbon emissions by 2050 will annually cost 11.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. To put that in perspective: Total expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid came to 11.6% of GDP in 2019. The annual cost of trying to hit Mr. Biden’s target will rise to $4.4 trillion by 2050. That’s more than everything the federal government is projected to take in this year in tax revenue. It breaks down to $11,300 per person per year, or almost 500 times more than what a majority of Americans is willing to pay.

Although the U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses right now, America’s reaching net zero would matter little for the global temperature. If the whole country went carbon-neutral tomorrow, the standard United Nations climate model shows the difference by the end of the century would be a barely noticeable reduction in temperature of 0.3 degree Fahrenheit. This is because the U.S. will make up an ever-smaller share of emissions as the populations of China, India and Africa grow and get richer.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Biden’s Climate Ambitions Are Too Costly for Voters.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 14, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Oct. 14, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

Increasing Tax Rates Will Reduce Venture Funding for Cancer Research

(p. A17) In his last year as vice president, Joe Biden launched a “cancer moonshot” to accelerate cures for the disease. It was short-lived, but he did help negotiate an agreement in Congress easing regulation of breakthrough drugs and medical devices.

In February [2022], President Biden revived the initiative, setting a goal of reducing cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 25 years. It’s ambitious but may be achievable given how rapidly scientific knowledge and treatments are advancing. Other Biden policies, however, are at odds with the goals of this one.

Two pharmaceutical breakthroughs were announced only last week that could save tens of thousands of lives each year and redefine cancer care. Yet the tax hikes and drug-price controls that the Biden administration is pitching would discourage the private investment that has delivered these potential cures.

. . .

Oncologists were blown away by the results reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine: All 12 patients receiving the drug achieved complete remission after six months of treatment. None needed surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Although some may relapse, the 100% success rate is unprecedented even for a small trial.

. . .

Last week AstraZeneca in partnership with Daiichi Sankyo reported that Enhertu reduced the risk of death by 36% in patients with metastatic breast cancer with low HER2 and by half for the subset who were hormone-receptor negative. These results blow the outcomes for other metastatic breast-cancer therapies out of the water.

. . .

These treatment breakthroughs aren’t happening because of government programs. They’re happening because pharmaceutical companies have invested decades and hundreds of billions of dollars in drug research and development. It typically takes 10.5 years and $1.3 billion to bring a new drug to market. About 95% of cancer drugs fail.

This is important to keep in mind as Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress push for Medicare to “negotiate”—i.e., cap—drug prices and raise taxes on corporations and investors. The large profits that drugmakers notch from successful drugs are needed to reward shareholders for their investment risk and encourage future investment. Capital is mobile.

Mr. Biden’s proposal to increase the top marginal individual income-tax rates, including on capital gains, would punish venture capitalists who seed biotech startups, which do most early-stage research on cancer drugs and are often acquired by large drugmakers. At the same time, his proposed corporate global minimum tax would raise costs of intellectual property, which is often taxed at lower rates abroad.

There aren’t many things to celebrate nowadays, but biotech innovation is one. Let’s hope the president doesn’t kill his own cancer moonshot.

For the full commentary see:

Allysia Finley. “Biden May Stop His Cancer Moonshot’s Launch.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, June 16, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 15, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Feds Requiring EV Chargers in Desolate Parts of the West That Are Off the Electric Grid

(p. B1) The U.S. government wants fast EV-charging stations every 50 miles along major highways. Some Western states say the odds of making that work are as remote as their rugged landscapes.

States including Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Colorado are raising concerns about rules the Biden administration has proposed for receiving a share of the coming $5 billion in federal funding to help jump-start a national EV-charging network. The states say it will be difficult, if not impossible, to run EV chargers along desolate stretches of highway.

“There are plenty of places in Montana and other states here out West where it’s well more than 50 miles between gas stations,” said Rob Stapley, an official with the Montana Department of Transportation. “Even if there’s an exit, or a place for people to pull off, the other big question is: Is there anything on the electrical grid at a location or even anywhere close to make that viable?”

. . .

(p. B2) Some Western states are unhappy over the federal determination of which U.S. highways should have the chargers, which is a carry-over from 2015 legislation for alternative-fuels roadways.

Mr. De La Rosa of New Mexico said it could result in a disproportionate number of charging stations in the southeast part of the state, and none in the northwest. “It’s not apparent here in New Mexico how those decisions were made,” he said.

Utah’s population is largely clustered in cities along the Wasatch Front and Interstate-15 in the northern and southern parts of the state, and there are concerns that spending on remote locations could skip serving the routes most delivery drivers and residents use, said Kim Frost, executive director of the Utah Clean Air Partnership.

For the full story see:

Jennifer Hiller. “Plan for EV Chargers Meets Skepticism in West.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 14, 2022): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 13, 2022, and has the title “Biden Plan for EV Chargers Meets Skepticism in Rural West.”)