Delivering Nicotine : Diagnosing Lung Disease

"I think people will be sensitive and there will be a heightened awareness [resulting from American research linking vaping to lung disease]."
"[The situation in Canada is] like the wild west [currently, for vaping]. What is troubling is the complete absence of any form of regulation."
"[The epidemic of respiratory illnesses now recognized in clusters in the U.S. will result in] a whole new generation of addicts, many of whom will turn to nicotine products."
Dr.Andrew Pipe, Ottawa Heart Institute

"The Government of Canada will continue to monitor all available data sources for indications of similar issues in Canada and will take action, as appropriate, to protect the health and safety of Canadians."
Maryse Durette, spokesperson, Health Canada

"These [lung illnesses discovered in the U.S. with people vaping contaminated THC-based products] are fundamentally different from the nicotine vaping products that millions of people worldwide have been using in place of lethal cigarettes."
David Sweanor, chair, advisory board, Centre for Health Law Policy and Ethics, University of Ottawa

"[Non-smokers and young people should not vape] However, vaping is a less harmful option than smoking for Canadians who already smoke tobacco products."
"Smokers who switch completely to vaping can significantly reduce their exposure to many toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke."
Health Canada

Vaping Nam Y. Huh / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In 2017, one quarter of high school students in Ottawa have claimed they experimented with e-cigarettes, and the general consensus is that since then that number has likely increased. According to Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, research indicates a clear link between advertising and promotion and e-cigarette use. The current promotion and advertising with JUUL Labs as an example, is geared toward youth.

The colourful, playful packaging, the youth-oriented flavours are all attractants specifically for a young market. And that market is responding with enthusiasm. Research by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit demonstrates exposure to advertising to be sky-high in Ontario: "Just about everybody is exposed", stated Mr. Schwartz. And with that exposure, rates of vaping among youth who have never before smoked is increasing in Ontario as well as in other provinces, a situation concerning to school officials and health authorities alike.

Evidence of harm from vaping, including its negative effects on the lining of the respiratory system leading to young people accustomed to vaping, coughing and wheezing twice as frequently as non-users is pointed to by Dr. Schwartz. Tens of thousands of young people who have vaped are now becoming addicted to nicotine, thanks to the flavours attractive to teens. Now that the news of hundreds of instances of severe lung disease in the U.S. flagged as linked to vaping has alerted Canadian health authorities, a new spotlight on vaping has emerged.

Most lung illness cases now under investigation in the United States, a death included, involved youth and young adults, leading Canadian health experts like Dr. Andrew Pipe to calling out for more stringent rules on advertising and packaging and promotion of e-cigarettes. In the United States, certain flavours of the JUUL products have been banned on the basis of their appeal to children and teens, whereas no such preventive action has been taken in Canada.

There is little research into the long-term effects of vaping. Phil Noble / REUTERS

Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health points out that in each instance of lung disease, oil-based THC and not the alcohol-based liquids in most e-cigarettes has been identified. He takes exception to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control advising youth and young adults to avoid e-cigarettes altogether, insisting this bias places lives at risk by not singling out the specific product causing harm; instead causing general alarm that will result in moving people away from a safer alternative to smoking.

Dr. Pipe, on the other hand is concerned with evidence pointing to some e-cigarette products delivering greater amounts of nicotine into the system than cigarettes. Where a pod -- the system that JUUL uses to deliver nicotine and flavour -- contains the equivalent of 20 cigarettes' nicotine content. With reports of teens vaping an entire pod at a time, this rings alarm bells for him.

A man poses for a picture as he vapes at a vape shop.

Daniel Becerril | Reuters

Clarifying C-Sections Connecting With Autism

"Our study does not provide irrefutable proof that C-sections cause psychiatric disorders. Association is not causation."
"However, we believe that the study provides information that may help parents [and] doctors to make informed decisions about how they want their births to be."
"C-section is often recommended by obstetricians if the mother has diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. Some of the diseases might already have an effect on a child’s brain development when he or she is still in the womb. [A combination of factors may contribute to the risk, so] it would therefore be wrong to demonize C-sections. C-sections should continue to be used when medically necessary." 
"Researchers should continue [to] investigate what are the underlying causes of the observed associations." 
Tianyang Zhang, researcher, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, study lead author

"Public health concerns have been raised because access to medically indicated cesarean delivery may be difficult in low-resource settings and unnecessary cesarean deliveries may be performed in high-resource setting."
Research team, study, published in JAMA Network Open

It’s important to understand why there may be a link between cesareans and some disorders, especially as C-section rates have risen in recent years, say the researchers.  (Loic Venance/Getty Images)

"The impact of this is not going to be great because the increase is still pretty low."
"It’s not very dramatic. It’s statistically significant but from the population standpoint, the risk is not huge. And it absolutely does not prove that cesarean section is causing autism or ADHD."
"The risk factors that lead to a C-section may also be risk factors that lead to autism or ADHD."
Dr. Pankhuree Vandana, pediatric psychiatrist, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio

"This study is certainly interesting and begs further prospective research be undertaken to try and answer the question of whether delivery by caesarean section increases the burden of mental health issues in children."
"Before undergoing any treatment, particularly elective treatment, it is important that doctors make patients aware of the options they have and their potential risks and benefits."
"Ultimately, this study does not answer this question, but merely comes up with the correct recommendation that 'further research is required'."
University of Queensland obstetrics researcher Gino Pecoraro

The link might be due to other factors such as the mother’s age or weight. Christian Bowen

A research team involving scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden along with a number of Australian researchers undertook to examine 60 studies incorporating a total of 20.6 million births, finding that children delivered by caesarean section are a third likelier to develop autism than children born normally through the birth canal. The analysis also found that those children delivered by C-section were as well a sixth more likely to develop ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder). The results of the study saw publication in JAMA Network Open.

As far as experts in the field are concerned, it remains  unclear why risks associated with C-sections appear to be so elevated, irrespective of whether the C-section was planned or undertaken as a result of a medical emergency. However, there is a possibility that factors such as a mother being older, or a baby at risk of premature birth could conceivably impact with such consequences and may also explain the higher risk of developmental disorders

Scientists also throw in the possibility that post-birth exposure to antibiotics could play a part as well. Professor Jeffrey Keelan, deputy director of the women and infants research foundation, University of Western Australia, found the study "interesting and well-performed", but failed to sufficiently adjust for a host of factors that could explicate the additional risk -- while other scientists felt the findings to be "significantly flawed", in that some of the studies included in the analysis reflected extremely high autism rates.

It is estimated that in the United Kingdom alone, around one percent of the population could be on the autism spectrum, reflecting the fact that Britain hosts some of the highest rates of births by caesarean section in Western Europe, with 26.2 percent delivery by C-section currently, in comparison to 19.7 percent performed in 2000. Experts link the rise in C-sections to the increasing age of mothers-to-be, along with the rise of obesity levels.

"The need for a caesarean is often caused by problems that could influence brain function, such as a poorly functioning placenta. It is highly unlikely the caesarean delivery itself is causal in these mental health conditions, from our current understanding of brain physiology and the effects of a caesarean."
"Women should not be alarmed by the need for a caesarean, which is often performed to reduce risk to their baby."
Dr. Andrew Shennan, professor of obstetrics, King's College London

"A number of underlying factors ... were not accounted for [in the study]. Therefore the findings of this paper do not show that caesarean birth leads to autism and ADHD."
"Women who have a caesarean birth should be reassured that it is a safe procedure. In many cases, a caesarean birth can be a life-saving intervention."
Dr. Pat O'Brien, consultant obstetrician, spokesman, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Kids delivered by c-section are a third more likely to develop autism, a study has found     Credit: Getty - Contributor

"We know, for example, that caesarean sections are more common for pregnant women who are obese and older, and who have a history of immune conditions such as asthma."
"All of these factors have also been linked with an increased chance of having a child with autism, and it is entirely possible – and some would argue, probable – that it is more likely these factors underlie the relationship between caesarean section and neurodevelopmental disorders."
Dr. Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, University of Western Australia

Female Heart Risk Data

"[Being female is a] statistically significant risk factor for dying after surgery."
"These established sex differences explain our overall observation of lower estimated long-term survival in women after cardiac surgery and of female sex being an independent risk factor for long-term mortality."
"[The risk of dying after bypass surgery remains low; in the one percent rage.] But out of that one percent, we are seeing more women than men."
Dr. Louise Sun, cardiac anesthesiologist, clinical scientist, University of Ottawa Heart Institute

"Given the substantial sex differences in patient presentation for coronary and valvular heart disease, further efforts need to be directed at the education of both physicians and patients in the early recognition of acute presentation of cardiac disease in women."
Research Study authors 

Cardiogram monitor in surgery Fotolia

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association where over 72,000 Ontario cardiac patients were involved, found women likelier to die than their male counterparts following coronary artery bypass surgery or valve surgery, including both combined, within thirty days -- including in the longer term. Researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the University Health Network in Toronto, conducted the study which now becomes part of the evidence steadily mounting pointing out that heart disease and surgical outcomes are vastly different between men and women.

Of the 72,824 Ontario patients who had undergone cardiac bypass and valve surgeries in the years 2008 to 2016, the majority represented male patients, a reflection that heart disease afflicts a greater number of men than it does women. Of those studied, twenty-five percent were women. While women were seen to have significantly higher rates of death compared to men following coronary artery bypass surgery and combined bypass and mitral valve surgery, women had lower rates of long-term mortality after isolated mitral valve replacement.

Men, on the other hand, experienced lower death rates after isolated mitral valve repair, findings that led researchers to the conclusion that women are plagued with "long-term mortality" in the wake of cardiac surgery. Several plausible reasons were considered, explaining women's high death rates; one, that women tend to be more age-advanced than men when cardiac bypass surgery is required; they are more physically frail, and more medically complex, frequently associated with additional health issues like diabetes and hypertension.

Apart from those common gender-difference reasons, women frequently experience treatment delays where men do not tend to, leading to their conditions becoming more seriously impacted by the time surgery appears on the horizon. Among medical complexities in female patients, pointed out Dr Sun, is that some patients undergoing bypass and mitral valve surgery have had a previous undetected heart attack which might explain why they require surgery to replace a leaky mitral valve.

Additionally, sex-specific risk-prediction models for patients undergoing cardiac surgery is needed, for which a suitable protocol is currently being worked on.

Heart attack symptoms for women

The most common heart attack symptom in women is some type of pain, pressure or discomfort in the chest. But it is not always severe or even the most prominent symptom, particularly in women. And, sometimes, women may have a heart attack without chest pain. Women are more likely than men to have heart attack symptoms unrelated to chest pain, such as:

• Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or abdominal discomfort
• Shortness of breath
• Pain in one or both arms
• Nausea or vomiting
• Sweating
• Lightheadedness or dizziness
• Unusual fatigue

Mayo Clinic

Cannabis? Best to Avoid During Pregnancy

"Unfortunately, it would seem that health-care professionals are not good sources of information for pregnant women. One study found that only half provided counselling when informed of marijuana use during pregnancy and this often focused on the legal rather than the medical consequences. In fact, women reported that it was difficult to find reliable information on cannabis use during pregnancy and often relied on anecdotal advice from friends or family."
"Clearly, how we as a society view cannabis has changed drastically in the past decade and has led to its general acceptance and legalization. But we should not forget that there are potential risks to its use, and regardless or whether you support its legalization or not, probably best to avoid it while pregnant."
Dr. Christopher Labos, McGill Office for Science and Society, Montreal

Obstetrician-gynecologists in Canada are seeing an increasing number of pregnant women who think that using marijuana through their pregnancy is fine, that there are no risks associated with doing so. It has also been agreed that cannabis  represents the most commonly used drug during pregnancy. Women appear to be cognizant that to protect their growing foetus it is best to avoid alcohol and smoking  and the use of those two potential health risks are steadily reducing. Daily use of cannabis on the other hand during the first trimester of pregnancy appears to be on the increase.


That is of particular concern to the health community given the reality that the drug has become more potent than it once was. Cannabis use does come with risks, aside from risks associated with its use during pregnancy. Heavy use of marijuana by teens is fraught with a particular danger to the maturing brain. Its potential effect on mental health in the young represents yet another concern, which is why the medical community recommends it not be used until maturity, around 22 years of age. CBD has properties that may also be considered to be problematical for health.

All this aside from its recognized use for health benefits for people suffering from some chronic conditions finding relief with cannabis use. For pregnant women the general consensus among the medical community is that women be advised to avoid its use. The American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has warned against cannabis use in pregnancy. It was clearly found in a matched cohort analysis using Ontario health data that cannabis use is associated with an increase in preterm births (10.2 percent as opposed to 7.2 percent).

Babies whose mothers use cannabis while pregnant are likelier to be transferred to the neonatal ICU because they're born smaller. In addition to which an increase in stillbirths has been noted. However, not all studies support these conclusions. A different 2016 meta-analysis found no increased risk of preterm births. When expectant mothers smoke tobacco it is difficult to separate that issue from the harms seen in smoking marijuana. The debate becomes how much of an increased risk is attributable to smoking, as opposed to marijuana use.

Long-term effects that cannabis can have on the developing brain of the foetus represents yet another concern. If it is seen -- and it is -- to affect the brain development of teens, it makes sense that the drug would cross the placenta to affect the brain of the developing foetus. There may be some confusion resulting in society linked to the issue of legalization leading to the increasing popularity of cannabis use. People tend to think that something that is legal is also safe, thus making it more socially acceptable.

Data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health database reveal the proportion of women believing marijuana use to hold no risks during pregnancy rose from 4.6 percent to 19 percent between the years 2005 and 2015. Women appear to rely sometimes on advice they solicit from cannabis dispensaries. One study indicated that 70 percent of Colorado dispensaries recommend marijuana as a morning sickness treatment, an actual misrepresentation.

Vox

Risks to a child’s brain development

Use of cannabis during pregnancy may affect a child’s brain development, behaviour and mental health into adolescence and early adulthood. The effects may be permanent. If a mother uses cannabis daily, some of the risks for the child may be:
Age 0 – 3 years:

• Difficulty calming down
• Exaggerated startles
• Sleep problems

Age 3 – 6 years:

• Poorer memory
• More impulsive
• Less attentive
• Less able to understand and follow instructions

Age 6 – 10 years:

• More hyperactive and impulsive
• More difficulty learning
• Symptoms of depression and anxiety
• More difficulty making decisions
• Less attentive

Age 14 – 18 years:

• Poorer school performance
• Delinquency problems
• May try and/or use cannabis earlier
• Continue to be hyperactive, impulsive and less attentive

Government of Canada Website

Trends in self-reported and biochemically tested marijuana use among pregnant Females in California From 2009 to 2016.

JAMA

Accessing, Assessing a 'Death Test'

"You may say, 'don't tell me the time of my death', but your doctor may know. Your bank may demand to know, as may your creditors. Even admission to medical school or pilot training may require disclosure."
"Huge implications are coming as we get better at what we have been perfecting for aeons."
"Ever since the invention of astrology, humans have either been desperate to know when they will die or eager to find ways to beat the predictions."
"Life insurance is devoted to the prediction of customer deaths, and very good at it. So, improving predictions is inevitable and something ethically we need to come to grips with."
Arthur Caplan, bioethicism Langone Medical Center, New York University

"Although the majority of these biomarkers [biological molecules circulating in the bloodstream] have been associated with mortality before, this is the first study that shows their independent effect when combined into one model."
"The association of these biomarkers [with mortality] were consistent in men and women [of all ages]."
Research team, Leiden University Medical Centre, Netherlands

"We cannot say anything about single individuals, or the man in the street."
"[However], we want to tackle the vulnerability of people's health that is hidden and that doctors cannot see from the outside."
"I am still surprised by the fact that in a group of people you can take one blood sample at one point of time in their life, and that would say anything meaningful about their five- to ten-year mortality risk."
Eline Slagboom, molecular epidemiologist, senior study author

A man lies on a hospital bed. A new study attempts to foretell risk of death in the next 10 years,by analyzing blood samples.Getty Images

Most people, needless to say, would be happy living without the knowledge that medical science will shortly now deliver, of when and possibly how/why they will die at a given time. What we don't know won't interrupt the rhythm of our lives; in this instance ignorance certainly can be bliss. We can live our lives without that nagging reminder deep in our consciousness that we are scheduled to die at a certain point that has been identified, rather than simply putting aside the very thought of death being imminent.

Five or ten years isn't much of a heads-up. And knowing what lies in the near future would most certainly make us intensely aware of the passage of time, that previous amount of time presumably left to us before all is extinguished and we no longer are aware of anything. Reasoning that for business reasons alone the science will proceed to make it easier for commercial interests to know exactly the time-frame they may be dealing with for maximum efficiency and profit, is no reason at all to proceed with the science.

And should such tests become available as a normal screening process required before a life insurance contract can be signed; the insurance company having such intimate knowledge of the insurance petitioner would seem to devalue life itself as a mere commodity. The prediction is, however, that blood tests used to analyze and disclose when end-of-life will occur within a five-to-ten-year time frame will soon become routine.

The researchers at Leiden University Medical Centre reported their conclusions in Nature Communications, having identified 14 bio-markers which in total appear to predict all-cause mortality risk for people; the certain eventuality of any kind of death concluding the passage of life into its final stages is an assurance in the near future. Various fundamental biological processes related to molecules, such as involving the transportation of fat in the blood, fluid balance and inflammation helped identify cause-and-effect leading to death.

The largest of its kind yet undertaken, the study was based on samples of blood taken from 44,168 people from age 18 to 109 from the time they first gave blood samples to the followup time -- ranging from three to nearly 17 years during which time 5,512 of the study subjects died during follow-up. Links between levels of 226 different biomarkers in the blood of the living and the dead were targeted by the research team.

Starting out with 63 candidates, the study set out to identify biomarker association with mortality. Among those which stood out were some -- as example, the ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids to total fatty acids, evidently linking with a lower risk of dying even as a higher risk of dying was associated for other biomarkers -- such as elevated glucose. The biomarkers' association were seen to be independent of the person's cause of death.

The research team tested the biomarkers in blood samples taken from 7,603 Finns in 1997; during follow-up 1,213 of the test subjects died. Greater accuracy was predicted by the biomarkers in the five- and ten-year risk of death than with classic risk factors such as blood pressure, total cholesterol and smoking. That the accuracy level was due to a single Finnish study in isolation, calls for additional research, however.

It is envisioned that should more research bear out the findings in the Finnish study, treatment decisions could be guided for health professionals --  such as whether an elderly patient may be too health-fragile to undergo invasion surgery. Dr.Slagboom's team succeeded in singling out only a fraction of the metabolites in human blood; by identifying ten more than were discovered by an earlier group in 2014 however, the science has been significantly advanced.

Metabolic biomarker may predict death in next 5 to 10 years. Photo: TheScientists

The Online Search for Celebrity, Teen Reality

"There is so little research, good research, that can give answers to [those] questions. The science has simply not been able to keep up with the technology."
"There's a lot more continuity than we thought was going to happen."
"I think there's the automatic danger of trying to prevent your children from using these technologies because of these instances. They're shocking. They capture the imagination. They're the ones that stand out."
"But for the most part, I think, the research suggests children are using technology in normative ways."
Kaveri Subrahmanyam, developmental psychologist, California State University

"I think what we know is that young people have always made poor decisions around their actions and in particular in doing things that excite their peers."
"It's almost heightened the need to perform and engage with your peers through posting and engaging behaviours that they may not do outside of the social media context."
"We're beginning to see this trend where the excitement over the virality of the post and what that can do for your clout is overriding a sense of consequences among young people."
"There is no core curriculum around helping people navigate their digital footprint and what it means to be a citizen of digital society."
"And that, I think, should be over [behaving as though the digital and physical realms are separate]."
Desmond Patton, technologist/intersection of youth violence and social media, Columbia University

From left, Kayden McIntosh, 16, Denali Brehmer, 18, and Caleb Leyland, 19, are arraigned by a Superior court judge in the Nesbett Courthouse in Anchorage, Alaska on Tuesday, June 18, 2019, after a grand jury indicted them on first-degree murder and other charges in the shooting death of 19-year-old Cynthia Hoffman. (Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

This transcends the gawking bystander effect, where people tend -- like cattle curious about what is happening -- to gather around the scene of an accident, getting in the way of those who are actively responding, causing problems by their very presence, complicating the process of addressing a scene of carnage, unwilling when asked to move on and out of the way, as though they are self-entitled to gorge themselves on the gruesome spectacle, as a prize talking point among their friends and colleagues.

Only things have changed. People, mostly very young people, are fascinated in the presence of dangerously harmful incidents, as though they are mesmerized and don't want to miss any of the action, even when this is a scene that will end with someone's death. Teens addicted to photographing and videoing bizarre, grotesque, dangerous, illegal behaviours, posting them to social media sites, drawing attention and hoping for plaudits and admiration. Youth violence taking place, being recorded, shared on any number of media platforms.

It is as though teens are witness to a spectacle that is simply a drama that is being acted out, not enacted in real time, impacting deleteriously on some unfortunate; they are emotionally removed from the harm being done, no need for a conscience, for reaction of any kind that might seek a solution, help to aid those being harmed. And then there are the perpetrators, those visiting harm on others, proud of it, tickled beyond pink because they have caused an online sensation.

Someone is injured, perhaps dies -- and those who not only might have prevented the personal catastrophe for some unfortunate, but who might have had a hand in causing the problem with deliberate intention -- thought of as merely disposable, unimportant, a vehicle to be used to gain notoriety. Research into the phenomenon is only in its early stages in an attempt to try to understand the alienating, irresponsible effects of removing teens' sense of reality that social media casts them into.

But some researchers are stunned to realize that what they see in online behaviour reflects in actual fact, behaviour engaged in offline, in reality. Brutish, psychopathic behaviour making no distinction between social media and real-time life events. There will always be such individuals within any society. The shocking aspect, however is the onlooker effect, those who watch, who witness and from whom there is no reaction other than in fact being an accomplice by their lack of reaction.

This is stupidity, this is cruelty, this is unabridged anti-social behaviour unworthy of any human being, to simply do a mental shrug and move on rather than attempt to intervene, to protest, to make an effort to protect a vulnerable person whose life is ebbing away because of the harm being visited upon them. Like older teens in the presence of a  younger teen who wants to be like them, willing and complicit in his own harm because he wants to be part of the gang.

Being given drugs with the relentless intention of doing harm to someone who tagged along with older teens admiringly hoping to be noticed and accepted only to be accepted as a guinea pig to see how he would react being plied with an overdose so the older boys could jeer and express their contempt, even while watching the younger boy's life ebbing away. Finally becoming so bored after taking enough photographs, just walking away leaving death to nurse the boy toward his final moments.

Like a stone tossed into a tranquil pond, causing ripples to cascade out from the central source of the tumult caused, the footage is aired, the photos published online available for their peers to watch and to post their own personal little dashes of black humour with no one thinking to alert authorities, no one feeling it necessary because after all they had nothing to do with the amusing little incident, so it's no big deal...

Oh, wait when Carson Crimini, 14, in Langley, British Columbia became the latest victim on August 7, of one of these 'events', it appears that there was someone who saw a photo of him on Snapchat and who saw fit to call police. Police however, did not respond until two hours later when a skateboarder found the boy lying next to a chain-link fence, cold, hardly breathing. That's when police showed up. And an ambulance. But the boy's heart had stopped beating and doctors were unable to resuscitate him.

Fourteen-year-old Carson Crimeni died August 7 after trying to fit in with older teens through drug use

That Which Humankind Has Destroyed ... To be Restored

"We are very happy that after this first procedure on Najin and Fatu that they have recovered very smoothly and they are doing really well and fine today just twenty-four hours after this first procedure."
Dr.Robert Hermes, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW)

"I am pretty sure we will overcome that hurdle [perfecting the technique whereby the species can be renewed]."
"But even if we are able to have those frozen embryos and store them for 3,000 years or longer, we can say we have saved the whole organism for future generations."
IZW spokesman

Rhino keeper James Mwenda checks on Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos on the planet

"Both the technique and the equipment had to be developed entirely from scratch." 
"We were able to harvest a total of 10 oocytes - five from Najin and five from Fatu - showing that both females can still provide eggs and thus help to save these magnificent creatures."
Professor Thomas Hildebrandt, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Germany

"On the one hand Ol Pejeta is saddened that we are now down to the last two northern white rhinos on the planet, a testament to the profligate way the human race continues to interact with the natural world around us."

"However we are also immensely proud to be part of the groundbreaking work which is now being deployed to rescue this species."

"We hope it signals the start of an era where humans finally start to understand that proper stewardship of the environment is not a luxury but a necessity."

Richard Vigne, managing director, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kenya

Fatu is surrounded by her keepers and Dr. Stephen Ngulu of Ol Pejeta before the procedure

China's immense population, the largest in the world, has some cultural appetites that seem unappeasable. It has been well documented and well publicized that many wild animals on all continents are threatened with extinction. Yet the appetite in China for bones, skin, horns, and various parts of endangered species as well as common species of animals knows no boundaries. Animals illegally slaughtered so that their parts can be used in Chinese traditional pharmaceuticals, in potions believed to have health-giving qualities as well as those viewed as aphrodisiacs.

Animals favoured and valued, and bringing huge profit to the black marketers to be used for exotic and highly prized food preparation, recipes unique to China. And there is the matter of bones and tusks used for traditional art, proscribed by most countries of the world in recognition both of the cruelty of slaughtering great beasts and leaving their bodies to rot after their prized horns and tusks have been removed.

The prohibition against hunting endangered species hasn't stopped poaching nor the illegal trade; game preserves in Africa can be monitored but the will is there to make a way to supply the black market. All efforts to stop poaching appear to have come up hard against human greed unwilling to forfeit the opportunity to extract huge sums for prohibited goods. And those whom the black market serves appear to have little conscience respecting their illegal and immoral destruction of animal life.

Demand for rhinoceros horn for Chinese medicine and for dagger handles in Yemen were the cause of a crisis, the result of which was these animals being swept wholesale into extinction from the 1970s forward. The northern white rhino was declared extinct in the world in 2008. An animal population survey was unsuccessful in finding any live specimens in the wild. A handful of the beasts were kept on a Kenyan wildlife reserve where they were carefully monitored and protected.

There were two males left out of the huge numbers that once roamed the grassy plains stretching along the southern edge of the Sahara desert, from Uganda, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad. There were no natural predators, other than human beings who were more than eager to continue supplying the illegal market demanding rhino horn. One male named Suni died of natural causes in 2014. The sole remaining male then died in 2018. Leaving only two females.

Neither of the females was able to become pregnant though the older of the two had borne the younger one almost two decades ago. Najin is the daughter of the male Northern White, Sultan, who died last year. She is 28 years of age, and had given birth to a now-18-year-old female, Fatu, both of them living under 24-hour armed guard in the same reserve. Biologists involved in the preservation of a species now doomed to extinction felt it would be worthwhile extracting eggs from the two females.

Years ago, sperm had been cryonically preserved from four male rhinos. Should the scientists involved ultimately be successful in breeding living offspring with the use of the frozen sperm and eggs, the goal they envision is to create a herd of up to fifteen animals. The intent then would be to return the beasts to their natural habitat in Africa, an ambitious project that may well take a decade to succeed with.

This will represent a new procedure in artificially inseminating frozen sperm in a technique never before attempted that must be experimented with to ensure the technique can be properly perfected. The projected involves the Italian biotech laboratory Avantea, the Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic and the Kenya Wildlife Service representing an "attempt to push the boundaries of what is medically and technically feasible."

A skeptic might ask what good it would do to return fifteen animals to Kenya when the problem that led to the collapse of the species to begin with has not been solved. What is to stop that small herd of fifteen animals from becoming prey once again to unscrupulous poachers and reprehensibly unscrupulous buyers of prohibited exports?

The team performed the ovum pick-up procedure on Fatu to collect eggs from her ovaries

Judging The Experiment

Released: 2019-08-15

Canadian males aged 15 and older are more likely to consume cannabis compared with their female counterparts. Males use cannabis more frequently—they are also more likely than females to consume it for non-medical reasons and to purchase the cannabis they use.
New data from the National Cannabis Survey (NCS) continue to show that males and females differ in how they obtain and consume cannabis products post legalization.
Females, for example, more often report getting cannabis from family and friends than their male counterparts, which may also explain why fewer females pay for the cannabis they consume.
The use of "other" methods of cannabis consumption, such as "on the skin or under the tongue" is also more common among females.
Males are more likely to report consuming dried cannabis (flower/leaf) and hashish.
The Cannabis Act (C-45) became law on October 17, 2018. To monitor cannabis consumption before and after the legislative change, Statistics Canada has been conducting the NCS every three months (quarterly) since 2018. This release provides the latest information about cannabis use in Canada. Analyses of data for the first half of 2019, as well as for the second quarter of 2019, are available.
Statistics Canada

This is a screenshot of the Ontario Cannabis Store website, which sells dried flower for as low as $7.50 a gram. OCS

In the StatsCan collection of data an estimated 48 percent of  cannabis users surveyed by Statistics Canada stated the legal market was the source of 'some' of their cannabis. Canadians, in other words are self-reporting that they obtain 'some' of their marijuana legally, and the remainder through the same illegal black-market sources that the legislation was meant to put out of business. Well, it's early days yet, just a year since the federal government legalized possession.

It would appear however, from an analysis of the responses received by StatsCanada that fewer than 30 percent of consumers of cannabis actually make their purchases exclusively from the legal market. The latest quarterly snapshot published and made public by the venerable old statistical-gathering institution indicated that Canadians spent $5.9 billion on cannabis. The black market accounted for $4.7 billion of that total, interestingly enough.

Which, of course, like the illegal market for counterfeit tobacco, deprives the government of any profit through taxes. And what it really means is that 80 percent or thereabouts of all cannabis bought in Canada was derived from the black market. So much for government intervention to free up cannabis use for Canadians and at the same time controlling quality and gathering revenues by opening up a new, legal consumer market.

While much of the stigma attached to drug use with a popular recreational drug has been removed, the other two essential reasons for enacting the critical legislation remain unfulfilled. But the problem of avoiding cannabis use by teens, of persuading cannabis users not to smoke up and drive, remains even as anticipated revenues remain elusive and purchasers are frustrated by ongoing government bureaucracy in the availability of the product they crave.

Will you buy legal cannabis? Graeme Roy / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Price, access and product variability all represent issues that put users off legal purchases. Illegal cannabis is considerably less expensive to purchase than its legal variety; the price gap is extremely persuasive to people deciding to stick with what they know best; their long-time dealer. At the federal level, legal cannabis has GST attached, a ten percent excise tax, and a half billion dollars representing producers' compliance fees, all expenses passed on to consumers.

All of this, including provincial boutique taxes, double the price of legal cannabis for consumers who then seek out illegal cannabis, cheaper and more readily accessible since legal stores offer a limited product. A product not on display other than in boringly plain packaging for which marketing and advertising restrictions limit their appeal to the consumer.

Yet another government initiative taking over from the private sector to improve consumer experience, ending up a roaring success story.

A man smokes outside of a cannabis store in Montreal on the day marijuana became legal. MARTIN OUELLET-DIOTTE / AFP/Getty Images

That Problematical Autism Explosion

"The pretend epidemic of autism is related to the inclusion of people less and less different from non-autistics."
"This means that, across all disciplines, the people with or without autism who are being included in studies are increasingly similar. If this trend holds, the objective difference between those with autism and the general population will disappear in less then ten years."
"The definition of autism may get too blurry to be meaningful -- trivializing the condition -- because we are increasingly applying the diagnosis to people whose differences from the general population are less pronounced."
"[There is no gold standard, no biological marker such as a blood test] to tell you this one is autistic, this one is not. People tried all possible solutions, but with the constant enlargement of the criteria."
"Fifty years ago, one sign of autism was a lack of apparent interest in others. Nowadays it's simply having fewer friends than others. Twenty years ago you would ask for a complete absence of facial expression. Now it's less facial expression, fewer friends, less reciprocity -- it's become more and more fuzzy."
"You could not be ADHD and autistic before 2013. Now you can. This is justified in some cases where people have both presentations. But it also authorizes to label as autistic pure ADHD people."
"The cliche that you will see everywhere is, 'oh, you have more autism because they are better recognized', which is absolutely wrong."
"It's not that they are better recognized. [It's that people with less profound deviations from] normal [are being diagnosed with autism]."
Dr.Laurent Mottron, professor of psychiatry, Universite de Montreal

"Panicked parents falsely assumed the rapid increase in rates was due to vaccination — not realizing it was First described in the 1940s a decade later severe autism instead a consequence of looser definitions and assessments."   Getty Images

First identified as a condition in the 1940s, a decade later it was assumed that severe autism affected five to ten children for every 10,000 in any population. That estimate rose to one child in 59 by the year 2014 -- according to figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By any standards of measurement that represents an enormous spike. The mystery is, what could account for it? Are children in those numbers really legitimately to be classified in the autism range? What could possibly be causing what certainly appears on the surface to look suspiciously like an epidemic?

Ah, of course, that would be inoculations. Those same inoculations against diseases that once swept a deadly swath of destruction through the global community. And still do, in some backward areas of the world, now trying to 'catch up' by fast-tracking inoculations for children, led by the UN's WHO. And then the backlash, the uninformed but persuasive opinions with no basis in medical science whatever promulgated on social media by celebrities, that autism is caused by inoculations. And so many convinced this to be true, aided by a since-discredited scientific paper, that measles and other once-rare diseases have returned.

The anti-vaxxers have a huge, faithful following. Medical science, dismayed but forgiving to a fault, expresses the opinion that these 'misguided' parents who withhold vaccine inoculations from their children simply need to be educated; that their fears for the well-being of the children have led them down the confused garden path of inviting disease rather than spurning its onset. A newly-published study looks at the prevalence of autism diagnoses and has arrived at a not very surprising conclusion; the condition is being over-prescribed, partly thanks to the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Published in JAMA Psychiatry, Dr. Mottron and his colleagues involved in the research project identified the explosion in diagnoses of autism as having resulted from the broadening of the "autism" definition to the extent that differences between those diagnosed with autism and the balance of the population are seen to be diminishing. The research reviewed eleven meta-analyses -- studies of studies -- published from 1966 to 2019 comparing individuals with autism and those in the population considered to be autism-free.

The magnitude of the differences observed between those with autism and those without was of particular interest to the researchers, in how the "effect size" changed over the period studied. Close to 23,000 people diagnosed with autism in total were included in the study. Traits assessed including "emotion recognition", recognizing emotions in other people, and brain size, in recognition that people with autism tend to have a slightly larger brain volume, along with other traits that were assessed, seeing shrinkage in measurable differentiation by 45 to 80 percent.

Too many people with mild and dubious symptoms not very different from people without true autism are being diagnosed with autism, invalidating study results, concluded Dr. Mottron. This is a situation whereby any child or adult exhibiting symptoms barely resembling autism now is being diagnosed with autism. The result overwhelms specialty clinics and related services to the extent that true autistics are being denied the assistance they require. Diagnostic criteria have been loosened unhelpfully.

In the opinion of some experts, the over-diagnoses began in 1994 as a result of the American Psychiatric Association releasing the fourth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered the officially sanctioned encyclopedia of mental illness. Merging Asperger syndrome with autism increases three-fold the rate of autism diagnoses, according to Dr. Frances of Duke University. Even more critical, classic autism and Asperger's were collapsed into a "spectrum" making misdiagnoses even more common, in the current (fifth) edition of the manual, DSM-5.

"Probably the biggest mistake we made in DSM-IV was including Asperger's, a much milder form of autistic disorder with unclear boundaries to normal diversity, eccentricity and giftedness."
"Careless diagnosis, often related to requirements for extra school services, resulted in a fake epidemic -- a 50-fold increase in the past 25 years."
"Panicked parents falsely assumed the rapid increase in rates was due to vaccination -- not realizing it was instead a consequence of looser definitions and assessments. This has led to measles epidemics all over the world."
"[Over-diagnosis is also harmful for parents and children] stigmatizing them, causing needless worry and reducing expectations."
Dr. Allen Frances, emeritus professor of psychiatry, Duke University, chair, task force DSM-IV

A Mysterious Frozen Lake Disgorging Its Corpses

"It's hard to believe that each individual died in exactly the same way. We were extremely surprised by the genetics of the Roopkund skeletons."
"The presence of individuals with ancestries typically associated with the eastern Mediterranean suggests that Roopkund Lake was not just a site of local interest, but instead drew visitors from across the globe."
Eadaoin Harney, lead author, evolutionary biologist, Harvard University

"We have searched all the archives, but no such records [journeys of distinct populations in antiquity] were found."
"It is still not clear what brought these individuals to Roopkund Lake or how they died. We hope that this study represents the first of many analyses of this mysterious site."
Niraj Raf, ancient DNA expert, Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, India

Roopkund Lake and its surrounding mountains. (Atish Waghwase)

"Through the use of biomolecular analyses, such as ancient DNA, stable isotope dietary reconstruction, and radiocarbon dating, we discovered that the history of Roopkund Lake is more complex than we ever anticipated."
David Reich, geneticist, Harvard Medical School

"Individuals belonging to the Indian-related group had highly variable diets, showing reliance on C₃ and C₄ derived food sources. These findings are consistent with the genetic evidence that they belonged to a variety of socioeconomic groups in South Asia."
"In contrast, the individuals with eastern Mediterranean-related ancestry appear to have consumed a diet with very little millet."
Ayushi Nayak, archaeologist, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Skeletal remains from as many as 500 people might lie in and around Roopkund lake.   Awanish Tirkey / Shutterstock

Scientists in India, the United States and Germany have published the results of a study they collaborated in, examining DNA from 38 remains found 16,500 feet above sea level at Roopkund Lake, known colloquially as 'Skeleton Lake' for the human bones it disgorges from time to time. The new genetic analysis published in Nature Communications, according to Jennifer Raff, a geneticist and anthropologist from University of Kansas, not involved in this research, has led to "a far richer view into the possible histories of this site".

That it may have done, but the mystery of how much, less why the lake became a funeral depository for people whose genetic differences indicate they came from diverse parts of the world is no closer to being solved. The lake, one hundred and thirty feet in width, remains frozen for most of the year in its snowbound valley. When warm days arrive, a macabre spectacle can be seen with hundreds of human skeletons emerging, some with flesh remaining attached to the bones.

The mystery of what it all means has puzzled scientists for years; how did the people buried there arrive, and from where, and why would the lake be designated a burial site? The prevailing thesis up until this new published research, was simultaneous mass death owing to a catastrophic event that occurred over a thousand years earlier. An anthropological survey dating back several years had studied five of the skeletons, concluding them to date from 1,200 years ago.

Roopkund Lake and its mysteries have been known to science for the past several decades -- while the provenance of its skeletons was a puzzle. The fact that the site has been disturbed as a result of rock slides, the migration of ice disturbing the site, as well as human visitors disturbing and moving remains made it awkward to decipher when and how the burials took place, let alone who was buried there: "In a case like this, that becomes impossible", bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman of University of Bristol, England, explained.

Led by Niraj Raj and David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, the researchers extracted DNA from the remains of dozens of skeletal samples, identifying 28 as males and 15 females. Tests placed these individual skeletons into three distinct genetic groupings; twenty three, both males and females indicated ancestries typical of contemporary South Asians. Their remains had been deposited at the lake some time between the seventh and 10th centuries, discretely.

Some of the skeletons were identified as more ancient than others; many lifetimes apart. The findings settled on two more genetic groups suddenly appearing at the lake between the 17th and 20th centuries; one identified as being of East Asian-related ancestry, the remainder, 14 individuals of eastern Mediterranean ancestry. The great conundrum is how all these individuals died. No evidence can be found of bacterial infections, ruling out an epidemic.

There were children and elderly adults among the skeletons, none familial-related. Individuals were identified from chemical signatures as having had significantly varied diets, suggesting that several distinct population groups were involved. The genetic ancestry appears to resemble that of people today living in Greece or Crete, but it is clear that those from the distant eastern Mediterranean came from a far distance to reach Roopkund Lake, their reasons beyond obscure.

Roopkund Lake is 16,499 feet above sea level in the Indian Himalayas. (Pramod Joglekar)