Science
Third Person Cured From HIV, Thanks To Umbilical Cord Stem Cells The third person ever, and the first woman, has been cured of the HIV virus, thanks to a stem cell transplant using umbilical cord blood. While the invasive, risky bone marrow transplant process may not prove the answer for large numbers of people, the use of cord blood may open up pathways to new treatment options for a wider variety of people than the adult stem cells used to cure the two previous patients. Vox staff writer Umair Irfan explains why. Plus how President Biden is using executive orders for decarbonizing new parts of the economy, new research on the climate origins of the mega-drought in the American West, a prediction for even more rapidly rising sea levels from NOAA, and how orangutans—some of them at least—might be able to use tools. How To Close Gaps In Healthcare Access When a public health crisis strikes, a natural instinct is to turn to a strong leader. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example: We want someone who can calm our fears, tell us what to expect, and what steps we can take to make things better. But leadership does not happen overnight—and it will take a brave person to step into the shoes that guide the country through the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. David Satcher is used to adversity. Born into poverty in Anniston, Alabama, Satcher contracted whooping cough at two years old. The town’s only Black doctor, Dr. Jackson, treated Satcher, but did not expect him to live. Overcoming this illness launched him into a lifetime of public health work, with an emphasis on health equity. Satcher speaks to Ira about his work as former assistant secretary for health, surgeon general of the U.S., and director of the Centers for Disease Control under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They also discuss his leadership work at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and his advice for getting the country towards a more equitable healthcare system. New Energy Record Set By Fusion Reactor The promise of a human-made, sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction has always seemed to be “just a few decades away.” But now recent results from JET, the Joint European Torus experiment, have researchers hopeful that practical fusion may indeed be possible as soon as 2035. In the experiment, a high-temperature plasma made of equal parts deuterium and tritium was confined in a magnetic containment vessel known as a tokamak. The run produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion “pulse” of five seconds, considerably longer than previous attempts. While the experiment did not produce more energy than it took to produce the extreme conditions needed to induce fusion, researchers took the run as a proof of concept that an upcoming reactor called ITER should be successful. Alain Bécoulet, head of the engineering domain for the ITER project and author of the upcoming book Star Power: ITER and the International Quest for Fusion Energy joins Ira to discuss the recent advance at JET and the prospects for producing a sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction—what Bécoulet calls mastering a small piece of the sun.