News Updates

Four scientific and medical leaders endorse President Biden’s proposal to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) within the National Institutes of Health. It would be patterned on DARPA, the groundbreaking defense agency. But in an important twist, Francis S. Collins, Tara A. Schwetz, Lawrence A. Tabak, and Eric S. Lander write in Science that ARPA-H should be structured to meet the particular needs of biomedical and health research, and they offer an operational blueprint. The idea reflects a proposal by Robert Cook-Deegan in Issues some 25 years ago that NIH needs something like DARPA. He argues that the DARPA model—built on expert staff, clear mission, focused effort, and lean management—can “effectively foster scientific and medical progress in critical areas and accomplish tasks when a new technology is promising but not yet proven.”

In a first, physicians have treated patients with an inherited disease by infusing them with the gene-editing tool CRISPR and letting it find its way into defective cells to restore function. This success in treating a rare liver disorder, researchers say, is proof-of-concept that CRISPR can potentially work for some more common diseases. In Issues, Jennifer Doudna, who shared a Nobel Prize for codiscovering CRISPR, sees “vast potential for CRISPR to become a standard of care for treating disease.” But expanding its use, she says, will require “applying it responsibly and allowing it to be fairly assessed by those in need.”

In its latest budget, the North Carolina Senate makes permanent the NC Policy Collaboratory. Created in 2016, the program’s mission is “to utilize and disseminate the research expertise across the University of North Carolina System for practical use by state and local government.” And as this new budget indicates, the Collaboratory appears to work. In Issues, Jeffrey Warren reviews its evolution—from skepticism to broad approval—and successful track record. Its story, he writes, shows that by focusing on open communication, transparent processes, operational efficiencies, and real-world problem-solving, it is possible to bring science and policymaking closer together.

In a modern irony, much of the infrastructure needed to build a low-carbon economy will be made of steel and cement, yet manufacturing them produces much of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, says a new Brookings Institution report. Equally vexing, these industrial sources are among the most difficult to decarbonize. In Issues, Colin Cunliff proposes a research and policy agenda for addressing this and other hard-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy. Among the options, he says, carbon capture, utilization, and storage is the most promising technology for decarbonizing many industrial processes, including the production of cement and steel.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives are launching a new group whose stated aim is to educate party members about climate change. Rather than endorsing particular legislative policies, the group will provide members with information on a variety of issues the party has often ignored, says its organizer, Representative John Curtis of Utah. The effort is in keeping with what Sarah E. Hunt describes in Issues as a “conservative climate change policy agenda … quietly taking shape in Congress.” The agenda, she writes, is “broadly based on a philosophy of market environmentalism with public-private partnerships at its core.”

In a bipartisan effort, three US senators introduced legislation aimed at bringing broadband internet access to rural and tribal areas that lack the needed infrastructure. The $40 billion BRIDGE Act would also help low-income urban residents get online. Teenagers might especially benefit. In Issues, Camille Crittenden writes that teens who regularly gather information and communicate online see gains in mental and reproductive health, career development and economic security, and civic engagement. Indeed, she argues, the lack of broadband access is a greater threat to their well-being than the familiar worry of too much access.

The Biden administration has announced legal action to revise a Trump-era change to the definition of the “Waters of the United States.” The WOTUS rule determines which waterways, including wetlands, qualify for federal protection under the Clean Water Act. In Issues, Charles Herrick offers a broad look at the evolution of WOTUS and other federal policies regarding wetlands protection. And in a suggestion that would seem to foreshadow the administration’s planned revisions, he cites “the need for a policy framework that can assure stewardship of wetlands even in the face of changing political winds.”

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a controversial new drug for Alzheimer’s disease. In doing so, the agency overrode objections from researchers, including its own advisers, that the drug hasn’t proven effective in slowing the disease’s hallmark mental decline. Poor drug performance has been the pattern in Alzheimer’s treatment, Robert Cook-Deegan notes in Issues. He argues that the “brightest ray of hope” comes from gains “in the practical work of taking care of people who develop dementia.” Still, challenges remain in finding fair ways to make quality care more accessible and affordable for all in need.

The light-emitting diodes used in new automobile headlights often cause problems for oncoming drivers, the New York Times reports. The trouble arises in large part from the blue light the LEDs emit. As a remarkable scientific advance, blue-emitting LEDs won a Nobel Prize for their discoverers. But as the materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez recounts in Issues, the lights also turned out to come with a variety of unintended consequences. And she cites this as a prime example of why society, higher education, and scientists themselves should pay early and deep attention to the full potential effects of technological innovations.