Measles Misinformation Sparks Concern, Supreme Court Limits EPA Power, and Scientists Create Woolly Mice todayheadline

Measles Misinformation Sparks Concern, Supreme Court Weakens EPA, and Scientists Engineer Woolly Mice

By Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura

Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with our usual science news roundup.

First, a quick note about measles, which is still spreading in West Texas and has also cropped up in smaller numbers in eight other states. In an op-ed for Fox News published on March 2, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arguably downplayed the importance of vaccines, saying the MMR jab provides protection against measles while also calling vaccination a “personal choice.” He also claimed that vitamin A supplementation has been shown to “dramatically reduce measles mortality.”

Since the publication of that op-ed, many experts have sounded the alarm on that plug for vitamin A. The research RFK Jr. referenced does exist, but there’s important context missing. The analysis he cited focuses on studies that mostly looked at low-income countries where many people have vitamin A deficiencies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data, less than 1 percent of people in the U.S. have vitamin A deficiencies.

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Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, told the Washington Post that vitamin A can play a role in treating children who are hospitalized with measles. But he and other experts conveyed concerns to the Washington Post about RFK Jr.’s framing creating a false equivalency between vaccination, which is an extremely effective way to prevent measles, and vitamin supplementation, which may or may not help children avoid complications from measles. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently put out a statement emphasizing that vitamin A supplementation is no substitute for vaccination and that it should only be conducted under the supervision of a medical professional. Vitamin A overdoses can cause bone fractures, liver damage and other serious issues.

Now let’s move on to a somewhat complex environmental ruling from the Supreme Court. The headline here is that in a 5-4 ruling last Tuesday, the justices sided with the city of San Francisco against the Environmental Protection Agency, weakening the agency’s ability to regulate pollution of the nation’s waterways.

Basically, San Francisco argued that the EPA was too vague in a permit governing the city’s release of sewage into the Pacific Ocean when extreme rainfall overwhelms a water-treatment facility. The permit tasks San Francisco with ensuring its wastewater discharge doesn’t cause the ocean to dip below “any applicable water quality standard,” but the city said that wasn’t enough information. Instead, San Francisco officials wanted the EPA to lay out exactly how much discharge was okay. During oral arguments, an EPA attorney said the agency only used those broad requirements because San Francisco wouldn’t provide the information needed to set specific dumping rules—a claim the city of course refuted.

The majority decision, penned by Justice Samuel Alito, concluded that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act by imposing the water quality requirements, which the ruling calls “end-result” provisions. With these provisions out of the picture, the onus will be on the EPA to figure out what cities—and other entities that dump sewage—need to do to keep their local surface water clean.

Back in October the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a resolution urging the city’s Public Utilities Commission to drop or settle its issues with the EPA ahead of oral arguments in the Supreme Court case, they argued that a win could weaken the agency’s ability to curb pollution—which would in turn put a real dent in San Francisco’s reputation as a green city.

In other environmental news, a study published last Wednesday in Nature offers some uplifting findings on the ozone layer. As you probably already know, back in the 1980s scientists detected an area over the South Pole where our atmosphere’s ozone layer, which helps protect the planet from the sun’s UV rays, had gotten thinner. This turned out to be due to chlorofluorocarbons and other similar human made chemicals. An international treaty called the Montreal Protocol, which went into effect in 1989, was aimed at phasing out the use of those substances. Data in recent years has shown that the ozone layer is recovering, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA projecting it could return to normal by 2066.

For the first time scientists have shown with confidence that the Montreal Protocol is indeed to thank for this incredible comeback. That’s great news; if some of the ozone layer’s recovery were due to uncontrollable factors like weather patterns, then we’d have to worry that we might lose some of our progress if those conditions shifted.

In the new study researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created simulations of the atmosphere under different conditions. Some of their simulations showed a world without an increase in greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances, which helped them understand how the ozone layer might fluctuate without our interference. The researchers say we can now be quite sure that the ozone layer is healing because we’ve stopped using the chemicals that hurt it, which is a great reminder that we really can combat climate change and other human-driven environmental issues if we band together.

Speaking of humans doing stuff that doesn’t suck for once, another study published last Wednesday offers hope for people dealing with osteoarthritis. And that hope stems from a somewhat surprising source: your septum.

Generally ignored unless they’re deviated or pierced, septums are also a great spot for grabbing a bit of cartilage without super-invasive surgery. Nasal cartilage cells also seem particularly good at fighting inflammation. A group of scientists have been working on a method of using cartilage implants grown from itty-bitty septum samples to repair knee injuries for a number of years now. What’s new in the latest study, published in Science Translational Medicine, is that the researchers compared outcomes between people whose cartilage grafts were grown in the lab for the standard couple of days before insertion with people whose grafts spent a couple of weeks maturing instead. The clinical trial was small, involving just around 100 people. But the results do suggest that, when allowed to mature, these septum-grown grafts do a better job of fixing the injury in question—and they can actually lead to improvement in the health of surrounding cartilage, too. The team is about to undertake two large clinical studies on the use of this cartilage technique in treating osteoarthritis in the kneecaps.

Last but not least we’ve simply got to talk about woolly mammoth mice. Woolly mammice? Woolly mousemoths? Whatever.

Biotech company Colossal Biosciences, primarily known for its mission to bring the woolly mammoth and dodo back from extinction with the help of genetic engineering, announced last Tuesday that the team edited several different genes in mice embryos to make them—well, woolly.

It’s important to note, however, that these mice didn’t have woolly mammoth genes inserted into their genomes. Most of the edits involved tweaking mouse genes that prior research has shown dictate hair traits such as color and texture. But Colossal also looked at ancient mammoth DNA to find genes tied to hair pattern and fat metabolism and adjusted the corresponding mice genes. The result was some real Tribble-esque rodents. The company says this is a step toward doing something similar in Asian elephants, which are woolly mammoth’s closest living relatives. But in interviews with the Associated Press several experts pointed out that making an elephant woolier isn’t the same as bringing woolly mammoths back from extinction. Another expert pointed out to the Guardian that this money could perhaps be better spent preventing the extinction of the animals living on Earth right now, which is tough but fair. Those hairy little mice are very cute, though.

That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday.

Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.

For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!