News Updates

In an example of the difficulties imposed on transgender young people and their families, Texas’s governor recently called on doctors and teachers to report parents who give their children gender-affirming care, according to a recent NPR report. In Issues, Adam Briggle provides a powerful—and personal—look at challenges transgender kids face. Society has been “deranged by centuries of gender stereotypes,” he writes. “Do we close in, box out, and hold tight to our truths with righteous certainty? Or do we take a leap, open our hearts, listen to the people who are struggling to carry their existence, and help?”

Research on the genetic underpinnings of mental diseases has yet to yield much therapeutic benefit for patients, a former leader of the United States’ premier mental health research institution tells the New York Times. This view aligns with observations in Issues by Jonathan Leo. As neuroscience has implicated more and more genes in mental disorders, he writes, “the importance of each individual gene decreases … and it becomes hard to see how this information can be used in a clinical setting.” The psychiatry community, Leo adds, should “rethink how it treats patients, how it allocates research money, and its emphasis on the biological treatments of psychological conditions.”

A Spanish company is planning to open the first commercial octopus farm to raise the animals for food. The company claims its optimized operations overcome problems such as high animal mortality rates that plagued previous farming efforts. In Issues, a multidisciplinary group of researchers make a case against octopus farming. “We believe that octopuses are particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass-production, for reasons both ethical and ecological,” Jennifer Jacquet and her colleagues write. Instead, they argue, private and public efforts should focus less on industrializing food systems and more on “achieving a truly sustainable and compassionate future for food production.”

The Biden administration is having to rethink an array of policy measures aimed at curbing climate change, after a federal judge blocked the government at least temporarily from using the so-called social cost of carbon in quantifying the benefits or costs of proposed actions. As this plays out, a little background might be in order. In Issues, R. David Simpson examines how the social cost of carbon is developed and how policymakers use this figure. He concludes that while debate may continue about its value, “the unknown and unknowable risks of climate change argue for caution.”

Alondra Nelson has been named temporary director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In a recent Issues interview conducted when she was the office’s deputy director for science and society, Nelson describes her desire to bring social science expertise to federal science and technology policies and to ensure that policies are fair and equitable for all members of society. One step, she says, is to “build a science policy that intentionally and explicitly includes the perspectives of the American public, including seeing science and technology through the eyes of folks who are marginalized or vulnerable.”

Driven by global warming, sea level will rise dramatically over the next 30 years, and US coasts will face major impacts, according to a new federal report. As a possible silver lining, the report leader said it “provides us with information needed to act now to best position ourselves for the future.” In Issues, Bruce Guile and Raj Pandya offer a blueprint for action. The nation, they write, must improve the quality and usability of risk information; increase investment in adaptation-focused research, development, and demonstration; plan for the public and private economic costs of adaptation; and strengthen policies related to adaptation.

Community colleges, a major producer of workers ready for skilled occupations, are reportedly under threat, with enrollment at nearly 20-year lows and funding falling. Underscoring what economists might call lost opportunity costs, William B. Bonvillian and Sanjay E. Sarma highlight in Issues how a trio of community colleges have proved successful in workforce education—and how to build on their success. Among key features, the authors write, successful schools closely link programs to industry needs, offer schedules suited to students’ daily lives, award credentials based on demonstrated competencies, and embrace lifelong learning.

Highlighting use of the gene-editing tool CRISPR in an early-stage clinical trial to treat a patient with a rare genetic disease that interferes with heart function and typically proves fatal, the Washington Post reports on the growing number of researchers looking to the technology to address a variety of such disorders that now lack approved medical treatment. In an Issues interview, Jennifer Doudna, a codiscoverer of CRISPR, offers an insider’s look at the tool’s potential. But she adds that policymakers, with the counsel of scientists and bioethicists, must also develop guidelines to ensure responsible management of the revolutionary technology.

The Biden administration has reignited the Cancer Moonshot, first launched by the Obama administration, with a goal of reducing the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years. But do such moonshots pay off for society? Walter Valdivia addresses this question in Issues, concluding that the answer is uncertain. Among other problems, he writes, there are few well-established causal links ascribing research to specific societal outcomes. But some useful lessons are emerging, he adds, going on to propose some criteria for assessing the impact of moonshots and some policy recommendations to make them most useful.