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<title>16 March, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Lapses in the person radar: ADHD symptoms predict difficulty in interpersonal distancing</strong> -
<div>
Objective: Across contexts, from social cognition to the COVID-19 pandemic response, individual variation in the regulation of interpersonal distance has typically been viewed as a voluntary choice. Here we examine the frequency of unintentional lapses in interpersonal distancing, and their relationship with childhood ADHD symptoms. Method: We administered a novel measure of difficulty in interpersonal distancing across 3 undergraduate samples (total N = 1,233), in addition to measures of recalled childhood ADHD symptoms, mind wandering and hyperfocus. Results: Almost all (&gt;97%) participants reported unintentional lapses in maintaining interpersonal distance, with 16% experiencing such lapses frequently. Thirty percent of the variance in these reports was accounted for by attentional traits: Inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive ADHD symptoms jointly predicted difficulties with interpersonal distancing, with the former relationship fully mediated by hyperfocus and spontaneous mind wandering. Conclusion: Both inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive ADHD symptoms confer vulnerability to frequent unintentional lapses in interpersonal distancing.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/2yrfj/" target="_blank">Lapses in the person radar: ADHD symptoms predict difficulty in interpersonal distancing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Peg-interferon Lambda Single Dose Treatment for COVID-19: A Call to Avoid another Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco.</strong> -
<div>
In this perspective, I counter-argue a claim that was recently made that a single dose of Peg-interferon lambda can significantly lower incidence of COVID-19 hospitalizations or emergency department visits. Some major flaws in a recently published article that suggested this benefit are discussed while asking the global authorities to learn from the prior mistakes and to be of utmost caution when considering its final decision regarding adoption of a single dose of Peg-interferon lambda to manage COVID-19. It has been declined to be published by the respective NEJM that published the fraudulent claim without any comment and it’s reasonable that many journals might be hesitant to allow a peer review. However, no matter my argument could seem harsh, the loss of millions of lives due to corrupted American journals and health care authorities that allowed failure pharmacotherapeutics to manage COVID-19 patients in return of billions of dollars profits is much harsher and I’ll not be surprised if this preprint follows numerous previous ones that I was tired and eventually gave up and stopped seeking to find a peer review opportunity.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/5xd6q/" target="_blank">Peg-interferon Lambda Single Dose Treatment for COVID-19: A Call to Avoid another Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Changes in Environmental Stress over COVID-19 Pandemic Likely Contributed to Failure to Replicate Adiposity Phenotype Associated with Krtcap3</strong> -
<div>
We previously identified Keratinocyte-associated protein 3, Krtcap3, as an obesity-related gene in female rats where a whole-body Krtcap3 knock-out (KO) led to increased adiposity compared to wild-type (WT) controls when fed a high-fat diet (HFD). We sought to replicate this work to better understand the function of Krtcap3 but were unable to reproduce the adiposity phenotype. In the current work, WT female rats ate more compared to WT in the prior study, with corresponding increases in body weight and fat mass, while there were no changes in these measures in KO females between the studies. The prior study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, while the current study started after initial lock-down orders and was completed during the pandemic with a generally less stressful environment. We hypothesize that the environmental changes impacted stress levels and may explain the failure to replicate our results. Analysis of corticosterone (CORT) at euthanasia showed a significant study by genotype interaction where WT had significantly higher CORT relative to KO in Study 1, with no differences in Study 2. These data suggest that decreasing Krtcap3 expression may alter the environmental stress response to influence adiposity. We also found that KO rats in both studies, but not WT, experienced a dramatic increase in CORT after their cage mate was removed, suggesting a separate connection to social behavioral stress. Future work is necessary to confirm and elucidate the finer mechanisms of these relationships, but these data indicate the possibility of Krtcap3 as a novel stress gene.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.532439v1" target="_blank">Changes in Environmental Stress over COVID-19 Pandemic Likely Contributed to Failure to Replicate Adiposity Phenotype Associated with Krtcap3</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Homologous Ad26.COV2.S vaccination results in reduced boosting of humoral responses in hybrid immunity, but elicits antibodies of similar magnitude regardless of prior infection</strong> -
<div>
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The impact of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection on the durability of Ad26.COV2.S vaccine-elicited responses, and the effect of homologous boosting has not been well explored. We followed a cohort of healthcare workers for 6 months after receiving the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine and a further one month after they received an Ad26.COV2.S booster dose. We assessed longitudinal spike-specific antibody and T cell responses in individuals who had never had SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared to those who were infected with either the D614G or Beta variants prior to vaccination. Antibody and T cell responses elicited by the primary dose were durable against several variants of concern over the 6 month follow-up period, regardless of infection history. However, at 6 months after first vaccination, antibody binding, neutralization and ADCC were as much as 33-fold higher in individuals with hybrid immunity compared to those with no prior infection. Antibody cross-reactivity profiles of the previously infected groups were similar at 6 months, unlike at earlier time points suggesting that the effect of immune imprinting diminishes by 6 months. Importantly, an Ad26.COV2.S booster dose increased the magnitude of the antibody response in individuals with no prior infection to similar levels as those with previous infection. The magnitude of spike T cell responses and proportion of T cell responders remained stable after homologous boosting, concomitant with a significant increase in long-lived early differentiated CD4 memory T cells. Thus, these data highlight that multiple antigen exposures, whether through infection and vaccination or vaccination alone, result in similar boosts after Ad26.COV2.S vaccination.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.23287288v1" target="_blank">Homologous Ad26.COV2.S vaccination results in reduced boosting of humoral responses in hybrid immunity, but elicits antibodies of similar magnitude regardless of prior infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Latin-American Registry of Cardiovascular Disease and COVID-19: Final Results</strong> -
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Background: COVID-19 is a global disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Patients with a severe or critical illness can develop respiratory and cardiovascular complications. This study aimed to describe a Latin American and Caribbean (LA&amp;C) population with COVID-19 to provide information related to this disease, in-hospital cardiovascular complications and in-hospital mortality. Methods: The CARDIO COVID-19-20 Registry is an observational, multicenter, ambispective, and hospital-based registry of patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection that required in-hospital treatment in LAC. Enrollment of patients started on May 01, 2020, and ended on June 30, 2021. Results: The CARDIO COVID-19-20 Registry included 3260 patients from 44 institutions of 14 LA&amp;C countries. 63.2% patients were male and median age was 61.0 years old. Most common comorbidities were overweight/obesity (49.7%), hypertension (49.0%), and diabetes mellitus (26.7%). Most frequent cardiovascular complications were cardiac arrhythmia (9.1%), decompensated heart failure (8.5%), and pulmonary embolism (3.9%). 53.5% of patients were admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and median length of stay at the ICU was 10.0 days. Support required in ICU included invasive mechanical ventilation (34.2%), vasopressors (27.6%), inotropics (10.3%) and vasodilators (3.7%). Rehospitalization after 30-day post discharge was 7.3%. In-hospital mortality and 30-day post discharge was 25.5% and 2.6%, respectively. Conclusions: The LA&amp;C population with COVID-19 patients and hospitalization, has a considerable burden of cardiovascular diseases related to a worse prognosis. It is necessary to carry out a more specific analysis to determine risk factors for cardiovascular outcome.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.23287304v1" target="_blank">Latin-American Registry of Cardiovascular Disease and COVID-19: Final Results</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Left ventricular global longitudinal strain as a parameter of mild myocardial dysfunction in athletes after COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
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Background Whether impaired left ventricular (LV) function contributes to persistent cardiopulmonary symptoms or decreased exercise capacity after COVID-19 remains unclear. The aim of this prospective study was to determine differences in LV global longitudinal strain (GLS) between athletes who did not have a history of LV dysfunction but had a positive COVID-19 test (PCAt) and healthy control (CON) athletes and relate them to symptoms during COVID-19. Methods We performed 151 transthoracic echocardiographies in our high-performance laboratory. GLS was determined in four-, two-, and three-chamber views and assessed offline by a blinded investigator in 88 PCAt (35% women) at a median of two months after COVID-19 who trained at least three times per week with more than 20 MET per week and 52 CONs from the German national squad (38% women). Results GLS was significantly lower (GLS -18.53 ±1.94% vs. -19.94±1.42%, p&lt;0.001) and diastolic function significantly reduced (E/A 1.54±0.52 vs. 1.66±0.43, p=0.020; E`l 0.15±0.04 vs. 0.17±0.04, p=0.009; E/E9l 5.74±1.74 vs. 5.22±1.36, p=0.024) in PCAt. There was no association between GLS and acute symptoms like resting dyspnea, exertional dyspnea during or after COVID-19, palpitations, chest pain or increased resting heart rate. However, there was a trend toward lower GLS in PCAt with subjectively perceived performance limitation (p=0.054). Conclusions In a cohort of athletes at a median two months after COVID-19, significantly lower GLS and diastolic function were observed, suggesting mild myocardial dysfunction. GLS could be used as a screening element during return-to-sport examinations.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.14.23287258v1" target="_blank">Left ventricular global longitudinal strain as a parameter of mild myocardial dysfunction in athletes after COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Modeling COVID-19 vaccination strategies in LMICs considering uncertainty in viral evolution and immunity</strong> -
<div>
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Vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus were developed in record time, but their distribution has been highly unequal. With demand saturating in high-income countries, many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) finally have an opportunity to acquire COVID-19 vaccines. But the pandemic has taken its toll, and a majority of LMIC populations have partial immunity to COVID-19 disease due primarily to viral infection. This existing immunity, combined with resource limitations, raises the question of how LMICs should prioritize COVID-19 vaccines relative to other competing health priorities. We modify an established computational model, Covasim, to address these questions in four diverse country-like settings under a variety of viral evolution, vaccine delivery, and novel immunity scenarios. Under continued Omicron-like viral evolution and mid-level immunity assumptions, results show that COVID-19 vaccines could avert up to 2 deaths per 1,000 doses if administered to high-risk (60+) populations as prime+boost or annual boosting campaigns. Similar immunization efforts reaching healthy children and adults would avert less than 0.1 deaths per 1,000 doses. Together, these modeling results can help to support normative guidelines and programmatic decision making towards objectively maximizing population health.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.23287285v1" target="_blank">Modeling COVID-19 vaccination strategies in LMICs considering uncertainty in viral evolution and immunity</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Living alone and mental health: parallel analyses in longitudinal population surveys and electronic health records prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
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Objectives: To describe the mental health gap between those who live alone and those who live with others, and to examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on this gap. Design: Ten population based prospective cohort studies, and a retrospective descriptive cohort study based on electronic health records (EHRs). Setting: UK Longitudinal population-based surveys (LPS), and primary and secondary care records within the OpenSAFELY-TPP database. Participants: Participants from the LPS were included if they had information on living status in early 2020, valid data on mental ill-health at the closest pre-pandemic assessment and at least once during the pandemic, and valid data on a key minimum set of covariates. The EHR dataset included 16 million adults registered with primary care practices in England using TPP SystmOne software on 1st February 2020, with at least three months of registration, valid address data, and living in households of &lt;16 people. Main outcome measures: In the LPS, self-reported survey measures of psychological distress and life satisfaction were assessed in the nearest pre-pandemic sweep and three periods during the pandemic: April-June 2020, July-October 2020, and November 2020-March 2021. In the EHR analyses, outcomes were morbidity codes recorded in primary or secondary care between March 2018 and January 2022 reflecting the diagnoses of depression, self-harm, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and severe mental illnesses. Results: The LPS consisted of 37,544 participants (15.2% living alone) and we found greater psychological distress (SMD: 0.09 (95% CI: 0.04, 0.14) and lower life satisfaction (SMD: -0.22 (95% CI: -0.30, -0.15) in those living alone pre-pandemic, and the gap between the two groups stayed similar after the onset of the pandemic. In the EHR analysis of almost 16 million records (21.4% living alone), codes indicating mental health conditions were more common in those who lived alone compared to those who lived with others (e.g., depression 26 and severe mental illness 58 cases more per 100,000). Recording of mental health conditions fell during the pandemic for common mental health disorders and the gap between the two groups narrowed. Conclusions: Multiple sources of data indicate that those who live alone experience greater levels of common and severe mental illnesses, and lower life satisfaction. During the pandemic this gap in need remained, however, there was a narrowing of the gap in service use, suggesting greater barriers to healthcare access for those who live alone.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.23287292v1" target="_blank">Living alone and mental health: parallel analyses in longitudinal population surveys and electronic health records prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>Post-COVID-19 syndrome and related dysautonomia affect patients life and work productivity</strong> -
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Background: A significant percentage of COVID-19 patients experience post-COVID-19 symptoms and signs. Post-COVID-19 syndrome affects physical and mental health of patients in several ways. Aim: To investigate the impact of post-COVID-19 syndrome and related dysautonomia on patients life and work productivity. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study in Greece using an online questionnaire. Study population included 108 workers over 18 years old that have been diagnosed with post-COVID-19 syndrome. Patients were recruited from the Long COVID Greece patients society. We measured demographic and clinical characteristics of patients, resilience, and social support. Results: Among patients, 68.5% stated that post-COVID-19 syndrome affected their daily life to a great extent, 25% to a moderate level, and 6.5% to a small extent. Moreover, 56.5% stated that post-COVID-19 syndrome affected their work productivity to a great extent, 27.8% to a moderate level, and 15.7% to a small extent. Multivariable analysis identified that females and patients with post-COVID-19 dysautonomia had more problems in their daily life. Moreover, increased duration of COVID-19 symptoms was associated with increased daily problems. Increased resilience was related with fewer problems in daily life. Also, we found that patients with post-COVID-19 dysautonomia had less work productivity. Moreover, increased duration of COVID-19 symptoms was associated with more problems in work. Resilience was related with increased work productivity. Conclusions: Post-COVID-19 syndrome and related dysautonomia affect significantly patients daily and work life. Also, resilience is an important preventive factor improving patients life. Policy makers should develop and implement educational programs to improve patients life. Healthcare professionals should be aware of the post-COVID-19 syndrome and its consequences in order to understand post-COVID-19 patients and their problems.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.23287298v1" target="_blank">Post-COVID-19 syndrome and related dysautonomia affect patients life and work productivity</a>
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<li><strong>Association of radiological severity with inflammatory biomarkers for prognostic prediction in patients with COVID-19</strong> -
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Background: Covid 19 caused by SARSCoV2 has become a pandemic. It has a rapid disease progression and causes severe and fatal complications. Associating radiological severity with effective biomarkers like CRP, leucocytes, lymphocytes, DDimer, would be helpful in screening, categorizing patient, preventing serious complications. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study was to investigate association between levels of inflammatory biomarkers and correlate it with HRCT chest finding to identify patients at risk of fatal complications. Materials and Methods: It was a retrospective monocentric observational study undertaken at Ibn Tofail hospital COVID19 dedicated center. 177 Patients&gt;18 year of age who were admitted from september 1, 2020 up to november 30,2020 with laboratory confirmed diagnosis of Covid19 were included in the study. Data was collected on demography, disease severity, laboratory measurements, radiology imaging retrospectively from records of patients. The disease severity was classified into light, mild to severe and critic based on CT Severity scoring. HRCT Chest and inflammatory biomarkers were sent in every patient at the time of admission and the outcome was recorded. Results: There were 116 male patients, 61 female patients in our study. Average age of patients having severe lung involvement is 61.9years, whereas Average age of patients having non-severe lung involvement is 56.8 years and showed significant association with severity of lung involvement (p value : 0.017). Severity of lung involvement according to HRCT chest findings was greater in patients with both raised values of CRP &lt;0.001), DDimer (P value 0.032) and low values of lymphocytes (P value : 0.001) . Capillary oxygen SATURATION was also found to be significantly associated with radiological severity among covid19 patients. Compared with CRP, leukocytes, lymphocytes, and DDimeres levels, the CT severity score had higher sensitivity, specificity, and overall accuracy in predicting severe, critical cases, and short term mortality. Conclusion: the severity of Covid19 disease is correlated with radiological severity andinflammatory markers thereby it will help in immediate categorization of patients into different risk groups following diagnosis, to ensure optimal resource allocation.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.14.23287265v1" target="_blank">Association of radiological severity with inflammatory biomarkers for prognostic prediction in patients with COVID-19</a>
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<li><strong>Epithelial galectin-3 induces mitochondrial complex inhibition and cell cycle arrest of CD8+ T Cells in severe/critical ill COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
Several studies have identified the presence of functionally depleted CD8+ T cells in COVID-19 patients, and particularly abnormally reduced CD8+ T cells in severe/critical patients, which may be a major cause of disease progression and poor prognosis. In this study, a proliferating-depleted CD8+ T cell phenotype was observed in severe/critical COVID-19 patients through scRNA-seq and scTCR-seq analysis. These CD8+ T cells were subsequently found to be characterized by cell cycle arrest and downregulation of mitochondrial biogenesis and respiratory chain complex genes. Cellchat analysis revealed that the Galectin signaling pathways between infected lung epithelial cells and CD8+ T cells play the key role in inducing CD8+ T cell reduction and dysfunction in severe/critical COVID-19. We used SARS-COV-2 ORF3a to transfect A549 epithelial cells, and co-cultured with CD8+ T cells. The ex vivo experiments confirmed that galectin-3 inhibited the transcription of mitochondrial respiratory chain complex III/IV genes in CD8+ T cells by suppressing the nuclear translocation of nuclear respiratory factor 1 (NRF1). In addition, the regulatory effect of galectin-3 was correlated with the activation of ERK signaling and/or the inhibition of Akt signaling. Galectin-3 inhibitor, TD-139, promoted nuclear translocation of NRF1, and enhanced mitochondrial respiratory chain complex III/IV gene expression and mitochondrial biogenesis, then restore the expansion ability of CD8+ T cells. Our study improved the understanding the immunopathogenesis and provided new target for the prevention and treatment of severe/critical COVID-19.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.14.532609v1" target="_blank">Epithelial galectin-3 induces mitochondrial complex inhibition and cell cycle arrest of CD8+ T Cells in severe/critical ill COVID-19</a>
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<li><strong>scMinerva: an Unsupervised Graph Learning Framework with Label-efficient Fine-tuning for Single-cell Multi-omics Integrated Analysis</strong> -
<div>
Single-cell multi-omics is a rapidly growing field in biomedicine, where multiple biological contents, such as the epigenome, genome, and transcriptome, can be measured simultaneously. Despite its potential, the integrated analysis and prediction of cellular states based on this complex multi-omics data pose significant challenges due to data sparsity, high noise, and computational overhead. To address these challenges, we developed scMinerva, an unsupervised framework for single-cell multi-omics integrated analysis. The learned embeddings from the multi-omics data enable accurate integrated classification of cell types and stages. Specifically, we construct a heterogeneous graph from multiple omics and propose a novel biased random walk algorithm omics2vec, which can learn the heterogeneous biological graph in a way that balances both local and global network structures. scMinerva successfully outperforms existing unsupervised methods on various simulated and real-world datasets when fine-tuned by very few labels. Additionally, scMinerva demonstrates strong label efficiency, is robust to fluctuation in data quality, allows one omics to compensate for weakness in others and could effectively classify cells with different annotation granularities. Furthermore, we showcase scMinerva’s ability to accurately provide prospective biomarkers and predict cell differentiation trends for COVID-19-infected cells, through the joint analysis of multi-omics data.
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.28.493838v2" target="_blank">scMinerva: an Unsupervised Graph Learning Framework with Label-efficient Fine-tuning for Single-cell Multi-omics Integrated Analysis</a>
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<li><strong>The real-world effectiveness of an intranasal spray A8G6 antibody cocktail in the post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19</strong> -
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Background: Due to the continuous appearance of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants that are resistant to approved antibodies and leading to the epidemic rebound, several approved neutralizing antibodies have been paused for their usage against COVID-19. Previously, we identified A8G6, an antibody combination of two synergic SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies 55A8 and 58G6, that showed broad neutralizing activities against Omicron variants. When administrated by the nasal spray delivery system, A8G6 showed promising efficacy in COVID-19 animal models and also showed favorable safety profile in preclinical models as well as in a first-in-human trial. The aim of this study is to evaluate the real-world efficacy of A8G6 neutralizing antibody nasal spray in post-exposure prevention of COVID-19. Methods: From November 27, 2022 to January 31, 2023, an open-label, non-randomized, two-arm, blank-controlled, investigator-initiated trial was conducted in Chongqing, China. High-risk healthy participants (18-65 years) within 72 hours after close contact to SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals were recruited and received a three-dose (1.4 mg/dose) A8G6 nasal spray treatment daily or no treatment (blank control) for 7 consecutive days. The primary end points were 1) the occurrence of positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR cases in A8G6 treated group vs blank control group at the end of day 7; 2) time to SARS-CoV-2 positive conversion at the end of day 7. The secondary end points were 1) viral load of SARS-CoV-2 when participants became SARS-CoV-2 positive; 2) the time from SARS-CoV-2 infection to negative COVID-19 conversion. Safety end point of the nasal spray AG86 was analyzed by recording adverse events during the whole course of this trial. This study was registered with Chictr.org (ChiCTR2200066416). Findings: Of 513 enrolled participants, 173 in the A8G6 treatment group and 340 in the blank-control group were included in the analysis. SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred in 151/340 (44.4%) subjects in the blank control group and 12/173 (6.9%) subjects with the A8G6 treatment group. The result indicates that the intranasal spray A8G6 reduces the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (HR=0.12, 95% CI, 0.07-0.22; p&lt;0.001). The prevention efficacy of the A8G6 treatment within 72-hours exposure was calculated to be 84.4% (95% CI: 74.4%-90.4%). Moreover, compared to the blank-control group, the time from the SARS-CoV-2 negative to the positive COVID-19 conversion was significantly longer in the AG86 treatment group (mean time: 3.4 days in the A8G6 treatment group vs 2.6 days in the control group, p=0.019). In the secondary end-point analysis, the A8G6 nasal treatment had no effects on the viral load at baseline SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR positivity and the time of the negative COVID-19 conversion (viral clearance). Finally, 5 participants (3.1%) in the treatment group reported general adverse effects. We did not observe any severe adverse effects related to the A8G6 treatment in this study. Interpretation: In this study, the intranasal spray AG86 antibody cocktail showed potent efficacy for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection in close contacts of COVID-19 patients.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.14.23287255v1" target="_blank">The real-world effectiveness of an intranasal spray A8G6 antibody cocktail in the post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19</a>
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<li><strong>Engineering Nanomolar Potent Protein-based Inhibitors for Papain-like Protease Guided by Residue Correlation Network</strong> -
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We developed a rational protocol with a minimal number of mutated residues to create highly potent and selective protein-based inhibitors. Guided by an interaction and dihedral correlation network of ubiquitin (Ub) and MERS coronaviral papain-like protease (PLpro) complex, our designed ubiquitin variant (UbV) with 3 mutated residues (A46F, K48E, and E64Y) resulted in a ~3,500-fold increase in functional inhibition as compared with the wild-type Ub (wtUb). Further optimization with C-terminal R74N and G75S mutations led to a KD of 1.5 nM and IC50 of 9.7 nM and 27,000-fold and 5,500-fold increases in affinity and potency and selectivity, respectively, without destabilizing the UbV structure. This approach effectively designs tight binding inhibitors, which assists the development of therapeutics for COVID-19 and other coronaviruses.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.532709v1" target="_blank">Engineering Nanomolar Potent Protein-based Inhibitors for Papain-like Protease Guided by Residue Correlation Network</a>
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<li><strong>Rapidly Adaptable Multiplexed Yeast Surface Display Serological Assay for Immune Escape Screening of SARS-CoV-2 Variants</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
With numerous variations in the Spike protein, including concentrated mutations in the receptor-binding domain (RBD), the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant significantly shifted in the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand individual patient risk profiles in the face of rapidly emerging variants, there is an interest in sensitive serological tests capable of analyzing patient IgG response to multiple variants in parallel. Here, we present a serological test based on yeast surface display and serum biopanning that characterizes immune profiles against SARS-CoV-2 RBD variants. We used this yeast-based multi-variant serology method to examine IgG titers from 30 serum samples derived from COVID-19-convalescent and vaccinated individuals in Switzerland and assessed the relative affinity of polyclonal serum IgG for Wuhan (B lineage), Delta (B.1.617.2 lineage), and Omicron (B.1.1.529 lineage) RBD domains. We validated and benchmarked our system against a commercial lateral flow assay and showed strong concordance. Our assay demonstrates that serum IgGs from patients recovered from severe COVID-19 between March-June 2021 bound tightly to both original Wuhan and Delta RBD variants, but became indistinguishable from background when assayed against Omicron, representing an affinity loss of &gt;10-20 fold. Our yeast immunoassay is easily tailored and parallelized with newly emerging RBD variants.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.17.23286074v2" target="_blank">Rapidly Adaptable Multiplexed Yeast Surface Display Serological Assay for Immune Escape Screening of SARS-CoV-2 Variants</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Performance Evaluation of the CareSuperb™ COVID-19 Antigen Home Test</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: CareSuperb COVID-19 Antigen Home Test Kit<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   AccessBio, Inc.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Use of E-health Based Exercise Intervention After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Behavioral: Exercise training using an e-health tool<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Norwegian University of Science and Technology;   University of Oslo<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Selected Types of Breathing Exercises on Different Outcome Measures in Covid-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: breathing exercise<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Basma Mosaad Abd-elrahman Abushady<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect Of Calcitriol On Neutrophil To Lymphocytes Ratio And High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein Covid-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Calcitriol;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Universitas Sebelas Maret<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clinical Study for the Efficacy and Safety of Ropeginterferon Alfa-2b in Moderate COVID19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: P1101 (Ropeginterferon alfa-2b);   Procedure: SOC<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   National Taiwan University Hospital<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase I Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine(Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase II Clinical Trial of Recombinant Variant COVID-19 Vaccine (Sf9 Cell) (WSK-V102)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Recombinant variant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (CHO cell);   Biological: Recombinant COVID-19 vaccine (Sf9 cell)<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   WestVac Biopharma Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Compare QLS1128 With Placebo in Symptomatic Participants With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: QLS1128;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Qilu Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Kinesio Tape Versus Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercise In Post COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post COVID-19 Condition<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Pursed lip breathing;   Other: Cognitive Behavior Therapy;   Other: Diaphragmatic breathing exercise;   Other: Kinesio tape<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Cairo University<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study of WPV01 Compared With Placebo in Patients With Mild/Moderate COVID-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: WPV01;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Westlake Pharmaceuticals (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hydrogen-Oxygen Generator With Nebulizer for Adjuvant Treatment of Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Covid19;   Hydrogen-oxygen Gas;   AMS-H-03<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Device: Hydrogen-Oxygen Generator with Nebulizer, AMS-H-03;   Device: OLO-1 Medical Molecular Sieve Oxygen Generator<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>ARVAC-A New Recombinant Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19 Vaccine<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Gamma Variant RBD-based ARVAC-CG vaccine;   Biological: Omicron Variant RBD-based ARVAC-CG vaccine;   Biological: Bivalent RBD-based ARVAC-CG vaccine;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Mónica Edith Lombardo;   Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM);   National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, Argentina;   Laboratorio Pablo Cassará S.R.L.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Oxygen Atomizing Inhalation of EGCG in the Treatment COVID-19 Pneumonia in Cancer Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19 Pneumonia;   Neoplasms Malignant<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: EGCG;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shandong Cancer Hospital and Institute<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Use of Photobiomodulation in the Treatment of Oral Complaints of Long COVID-19.A Randomized Controlled Trial.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Xerostomia;   COVID-19;   Long COVID;   Persistent COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Combination Product: Institutional standard treatment for xerostomia and Long Covid;   Radiation: Photobiomodulation Therapy;   Radiation: Placebo Photobiomodulation Therapy<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   University of Nove de Julho<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Balneotherapy for Patients With Post-acute Coronavirus Disease (COVID) Syndrome</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Post-COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Balneotherapy and aquatic exercises<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Parc de Salut Mar;   Caldes de Montbui’s City Council;   Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER);   European Regional Development Fund<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A confirmed COVID-19 in a patient with newly diagnosed hypertension and preexisting type 2 diabetes mellitus: a case report</strong> - CONCLUSION: Poor blood glucose management in the case of COVID-19 may increase the pathogen’s susceptibility, the likelihood that patients will be admitted to the hospital, and the likelihood that mortality will be enhanced.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Zilucoplan in immune-mediated necrotising myopathy: a phase 2, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial</strong> - BACKGROUND: Immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) is an autoimmune myopathy characterised by proximal muscle weakness, high creatine kinase (CK) values, and autoantibodies recognizing 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGCR) or the signal recognition particle (SRP). There are currently no approved therapies for IMNM and many patients experience active disease despite off-label treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin, glucocorticoids, and immunosuppressants. Detection of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Delivery of anti-microRNA-21 by lung-targeted liposomes for pulmonary fibrosis treatment</strong> - Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic lung disorder with a low survival rate. Pulmonary fibrosis is one of the complications of COVID-19 and has a high prevalence in COVID-19 patients. Currently, no effective therapies other than lung transplantation are available to cure IPF and post-COVID-19 pulmonary fibrosis. MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that mediate the development and progression of pulmonary fibrosis, thus making them potent drug candidates for this serious disease….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Insights of different analytical approaches for estimation of budesonide as COVID-19 replication inhibitor in its novel combinations: green assessment with AGREE and GAPI approaches</strong> - Simple, direct, rapid, and sensitive HPLC and spectrophotometric methods were established for simultaneous estimation of a novel combination of budesonide and azelastine (BUD/AZL) in their laboratory-prepared mixture and dosage form according to the medicinally recommended ratio 1:4.28. Budesonide is an important inhalation corticosteroid that plays a vital role in the inhibition of COVID-19 replication and cytokine production. The first chromatographic method was created for the simultaneous…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A multi-organoid platform identifies CIART as a key factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - COVID-19 is a systemic disease involving multiple organs. We previously established a platform to derive organoids and cells from human pluripotent stem cells to model SARS-CoV-2 infection and perform drug screens^(1,2). This provided insight into cellular tropism and the host response, yet the molecular mechanisms regulating SARS-CoV-2 infection remain poorly defined. Here we systematically examined changes in transcript profiles caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection at different multiplicities of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Colchicine reduces the activation of NLRP3 inflammasome in COVID-19 patients</strong> - CONCLUSION: Treatment with colchicine inhibited the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome, an event triggering the ‘cytokine storm’ in COVID-19.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Teicoplanin derivatives block spike protein mediated viral entry as pan-SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors</strong> - The rapid emergence of highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants poses serious threat to the efficacy of vaccines and neutralizing antibodies. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop new and effective inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 and future outbreaks. Here, we have identified a series of glycopeptide antibiotics teicoplanin derivatives that bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein, interrupt its interaction with ACE2 receptor and selectively inhibit viral entry mediated by S protein….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Paving New Roads Using <em>Allium sativum</em> as a Repurposed Drug and Analyzing its Antiviral Action Using Artificial Intelligence Technology</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered interest among researchers to conduct future research on molecular docking with clinical trials before releasing salutary remedies against the deadly malady.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Brevicillin, a novel lanthipeptide from the genus Brevibacillus with antimicrobial, antifungal and antiviral activity</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study provides detailed description of a novel lanthipeptide and demonstrates its effective antibacterial, antifungal and anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of residual humoral immune response against SARS-CoV-2 by a surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT) 9 months after BNT162b2 primary vaccination</strong> - The humoral response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination has shown to be temporary, although may be more prolonged in vaccinated individuals with a history of natural infection. We aimed to study the residual humoral response and the correlation between anti-Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) IgG levels and antibody neutralizing capacity in a population of health care workers (HCWs) after 9 months from COVID-19 vaccination. In this cross-sectional study, plasma samples were screened for anti-RBD IgG using a…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of Antiviral Activity of Gemcitabine Derivatives against Influenza Virus and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2</strong> - Gemcitabine is a nucleoside analogue of deoxycytidine and has been reported to be a broad-spectrum antiviral agent against both DNA and RNA viruses. Screening of a nucleos(t)ide analogue-focused library identified gemcitabine and its derivatives (compounds 1, 2a, and 3a) blocking influenza virus infection. To improve their antiviral selectivity by reducing cytotoxicity, 14 additional derivatives were synthesized in which the pyridine rings of 2a and 3a were chemically modified….</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A novel mAb broadly neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in vitro and in vivo, including the Omicron variants</strong> - Novel immune escape variants have emerged as SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread worldwide. Many of the variants cause breakthrough infections in vaccinated populations, posing great challenges to current antiviral strategies targeting the immunodominance of the receptor-binding domain within the spike protein. Here, we found that a novel broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibody (mAb), G5, provided efficient protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) in vitro and in vivo. A single dose…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mucosal immunization with Ad5-based vaccines protects Syrian hamsters from challenge with omicron and delta variants of SARS-CoV-2</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 variant clades continue to circumvent antibody responses elicited by vaccination or infection. Current parenteral vaccination strategies reduce illness and hospitalization, yet do not significantly protect against infection by the more recent variants. It is thought that mucosal vaccination strategies may better protect against infection by inducing immunity at the sites of infection, blocking viral transmission more effectively, and significantly inhibiting the evolution of new…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>2-Deoxy-D-Glucose: A Novel Pharmacological Agent for Killing Hypoxic Tumor Cells, Oxygen Dependence-Lowering in Covid-19, and Other Pharmacological Activities</strong> - The nonmetabolizable glucose analog 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) has shown promising pharmacological activities, including inhibition of cancerous cell growth and N-glycosylation. It has been used as a glycolysis inhibitor and as a potential energy restriction mimetic agent, inhibiting pathogen-associated molecular patterns. Radioisotope derivatives of 2-DG have applications as tracers. Recently, 2-DG has been used as an anti-COVID-19 drug to lower the need for supplemental oxygen. In the present…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Potential Regulation of NF-κB by Curcumin in Coronavirus-Induced Cytokine Storm and Lung Injury</strong> - The current pandemic coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) is still a global medical and economic emergency with over 244 million confirmed infections and over 4.95 million deaths by October 2021, in less than 2 years. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS), and COVID-19 are three recent coronavirus pandemics with major medical and economic implications. Currently, there is no effective treatment for these infections. One major pathological…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Nicholas Humphrey’s Beautiful Theory of Mind</strong> - In his new book, “Sentience,” a neuropsychologist argues that consciousness evolved to make us feel that life is worth living. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/nicholas-humphreys-beautiful-theory-of-mind">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What the Saudi-Iran Deal Means for the Middle East</strong> - Brokered by China, the agreement between the two regional rivals reflects shifting economic—and ideological—alignments. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-the-saudi-iran-deal-means-for-the-middle-east">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>J. D. Vance, Ron DeSantis, and the G.O.P’s Diverging Paths</strong> - The upcoming Presidential primary will likely pit rural white nationalism against “anti-woke” culture warfare. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/j-d-vance-ron-desantis-and-the-gops-diverging-paths">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy</strong> - A generation is still dying younger than it should—this time, of “natural causes.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hip-hop-at-fifty-an-elegy">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why Barney Frank Went to Work for Signature Bank</strong> - The former congressman, who overhauled financial regulation after the 2008 crisis, sits on the board of a bank that was just seized by the government. What happened? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-barney-frank-went-to-work-for-signature-bank">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>America’s bad bet on expanding legal sports gambling</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yv6H4EMG9pI1rlIVuDpVxkfKyeM=/611x0:5488x3658/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72080591/1393908329.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Fans walk past a Fanduel sports betting location at Footprint Center before Game Five of the Western Conference First Round NBA Playoffs between the Phoenix Suns and the New Orleans Pelicans on April 26, 2022, in Phoenix, Arizona. | Christian Petersen/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The unfortunate consequences of the huge growth of sports betting, explained.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4OTVxd">
The United States is in the midst of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22945877/sports-betting-promos-odds-draftkings-caesars">sports gambling boom</a>, and it may be a generational policy mistake.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PPFbtc">
Anyone who has watched the Super Bowl, listened to a sports podcast, walked into an arena that has a gambling parlor, or, in my case, opened my mailbox to see direct mail from DraftKings offering “free bets” has seen the explosion in sports betting throughout the US.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="45sMgU">
That’s a recent change, and a fairly big one. For most of the 20th and 21st centuries, betting on sports was mostly limited to black-market bookies and the state of Nevada. Intermittent scandals like the <a href="https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-black-sox-scandal/">1919 Black Sox</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/08/29/history-of-sports-gambling/">mid-century college basketball match fixing</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978%E2%80%9379_Boston_College_basketball_point-shaving_scandal">point shaving</a> kept a stigma around sports gambling and convinced leagues it was better to keep the industry limited.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZHhcQ4">
Laws were occasionally passed to keep sports gambling a gray- or black-market activity, including the <a href="https://www.stinson.com/newsroom-publications-Don_t_Bet_On_It_Interstate_Sports_Betting_Markets_Hampered_by_Federal_Wire_Act">1961 Federal Wire Act</a>, which banned the use of wire communications for “interstate or foreign commerce of bets or wagers … on any sporting event or contest,” and the <a href="https://www.si.com/more-sports/2018/05/14/professional-amateur-sports-protection-act-explained-supreme-court-decision">1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA),</a> which functionally banned sports gambling outside of Nevada and a few other states with more limited sports betting.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HTmgoy">
Multiple intersecting threads brought the end of this decades-long regime. First, in the 2010s, the companies DraftKings and FanDuel used a legal gray area around fantasy sports’ status as a purported game of skill to rapidly grow into cultural and financial behemoths. One couldn’t bet on an actual game, but the performance of a fantasy team composed of real players was a different matter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MQ4yr9">
Second, in part due to lucrative partnerships with DraftKings and FanDuel, sports leagues’ longtime aversion to legal gambling gradually reversed as owners and commissioners saw the potential for a new revenue stream. (In 1991, NBA Commissioner David Stern <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/s/2003/0209/1506501.html">testified</a> in front of Congress vehemently opposing legalized sports betting. Twenty-three years later, his successor, Adam Silver, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/opinion/nba-commissioner-adam-silver-legalize-sports-betting.html">wrote</a> a New York Times op-ed headlined “Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UTYows">
Finally, the emergence of internet and offshore gaming companies allowed unregulated gambling to proliferate among Americans with the technical know-how to access the sites and skirt payment restrictions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XbZIe9">
As all this was happening, New Jersey had been on a quest to challenge PASPA, the 1992 gambling ban, in federal court. When the Supreme Court finally heard the state’s challenge and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/5/17320088/sports-betting-legal-supreme-court-legalized-gambling">invalidated PASPA in 2018</a>, there were sports leagues, states, and a well-heeled industry ready to take advantage of the opening. Since then, more than 30 states have <a href="https://www.americangaming.org/research/state-gaming-map/">legalized sports betting</a> in some form, with over 20 allowing gambling by mobile phone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Qsfjk">
New Jersey, the state that brought the suit to the Court, has seen sports bets rise from <a href="https://www.app.com/story/news/local/2023/01/20/nj-bet-33b-on-sports-since-2018-gambling-addiction-soars/69791559007/">$1.2 billion in 2018 to $10.9 billion in 2022</a>; a forthcoming study by Rutgers estimates 13 percent of the state now qualifies for a gambling problem.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="904JWi">
That increase is an indication of how sudden and consequential the legalization of gambling has been — and why it’s not a policy shift we should be celebrating.
</p>
<h3 id="VQKp4n">
The dire consequences of the sports gambling boom, explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vamhNV">
The common-sense argument for legalized sports gambling is on its face reasonable. If gambling is going to happen anyway, states should tax it and regulate it. Advocates also argue that it’s a matter of individual freedom: If I enjoy gambling and I’m not hurting anyone, why can’t I do this? Let people live a little.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y60WOR">
But the choice to legalize sports gambling hasn’t been so simple. First, implicit in this argument is that the amount of sports gambling is fixed, and that it’s simply being moved from the untaxed, unregulated black market to the revenue-generating legal market.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="22QLuC">
The entire point of the industry’s legalization push, though, is that it massively expands the pool of potential customers. Many casual sports fans aren’t going to learn the cumbersome methods needed to bet at an offshore sportsbook, but they will download an app being hawked on TV by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEFnutIUWok">Wayne Gretzky</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3DIlLrsKc">Barry Sanders</a> that’s in their phone’s app store.
</p>
<div id="BfRzjB">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3RlPVL">
The result has been an explosion in gambling. And based on the research we have, the harm such widespread adoption has caused is not trivial. With the United States’s boom so recent and therefore data somewhat sparse, the United Kingdom is a useful comparison. It has had a legalized and regulated system <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-the-gambling-act-2005-terms-of-reference-and-call-for-evidence/review-of-the-gambling-act-2005-terms-of-reference-and-call-for-evidence">for over 15 years</a>, one that includes not just sports but casino gambling.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c2CaGC">
An extensive report <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-gambling-addiction-stories-how-uk-got-hooked-on-online-casino-betting/#xj4y7vzkg">by Bloomberg</a> cataloged the harms since legalization: Sixty percent of industry profits come from the top 5 percent of users; the industry, supposedly regulated, has an estimated 36,000 children addicted to it; the government estimates 8 percent of suicides are gambling related.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V4jO8o">
In 2016, the situation was already so bad that the co-founder of Paddy Power, an industry leader, resigned from the company’s board while “fighting back tears” because he believed he was complicit in an immoral industry, Bloomberg reported.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZZno5b">
Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, and amid a <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30232-2/fulltext">surge of suicides</a> linked to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/business/online-gambling-causing-surge-of-suicidal-young-men-in-a-e-nhs-clinic-says-b2231060.html">gamblers deep in debt</a>, the UK government has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-64510095">promised a policy plan</a> on the gambling industry paired with reforms and new regulations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xrA4lI">
None of this would be a surprise to experts in addictive industries. <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/22/20703014/mark-kleiman-criminal-justice-drug-policy-expert-died">Mark Kleiman, the late public policy professor</a> who advised states legalizing marijuana, frequently brought up the “80/20 rule” — that 80 percent of most industries’ profits come from its top 20 percent of users.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bnnGsl">
In a 2013 Vice interview, Kleiman <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG0Y-m5YwzI">said</a>:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lVMgbq">
The public interest is in the provision of alcohol, cannabis, gambling services to people — adults — who use them responsibly and harmlessly. … The commercial interest is in finding those people with problems and in making as many of them as possible. If you’re in the alcohol business, you’re in the alcoholism business. They all have these signs that say ‘drink responsibly’; that means ‘please put us out of business.’ It’s not responsible drinkers that build breweries.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MpMXZH">
The same logic applies to sports betting. It’s not casual gamblers that will expand these companies’ profits, it’s the addicts. In New Jersey, “About 5% of all sports bettors placed nearly half of all bets and spent nearly 70% of the money,” wrote Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers, <a href="https://theconversation.com/data-from-new-jersey-is-a-warning-sign-for-young-sports-bettors-197865">in the Conversation</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q5EVn9">
Proponents of legalization would argue that these kinds of arguments could apply to drugs, whether marijuana or alcohol, and yet momentum has been toward destigmatizing those substances.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="852SJM">
But there’s a key difference. The war on drugs has meant that millions of people have been convicted for drug-related crimes. Those people are imprisoned, gain lifelong felony convictions that scar their employability, and destroy families.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7dLsRf">
By contrast, there was no war on gambling. The harm involved in sports gambling’s illegality was mostly roadblocks to gamblers and lost tax revenue. According to the <a href="https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend">National Incident-Based Reporting System used by the FBI</a>, there were 893,682 drug offenses reported in the United States in 2021. There were 504 betting/wagering offenses. Sports gambling was functionally already a decriminalized activity.
</p>
<h3 id="U9nSLB">
The relentless search for more and more consumers
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yCmhCR">
These sorts of arguments can sound conservative, even Puritan: “Gambling is an unvirtuous activity we ought to discourage.” But there’s a progressive, even leftist angle to this.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RohafW">
Science fiction author <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-ted-chiang-transcript.html">Ted Chiang told Ezra Klein</a> in 2021 that he believed “most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism<strong>.</strong>”<strong> </strong>The same is true here, in that gambling isn’t per se the problem; someone making a bet with a friend over their rival teams isn’t immoral, and a fantasy league with a buy-in isn’t sinful.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lHg1I2">
But in today’s United States, every policy decision opening up sectors to the markets ends up a maximal one, and companies preying off what ought to be casual fun will now saturate every television market, every piece of stadium advertising real estate, in an attempt to turn non-gamblers into casual gamblers, casual gamblers into regulars, and regulars into addicts. (For its part, the gaming industry has repeatedly emphasized the harms of offshore gambling and pointed out its own industry-led initiatives toward <a href="https://www.americangaming.org/new/nba-joins-agas-have-a-game-plan-bet-responsibly-public-service-campaign/">responsible gaming</a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mrteej">
Here’s the thing: A multinational profit-making industry and responsible gambling by customers are mutually exclusive. This is not hypothetical. The specific event that spurred Stewart Kenny, the Paddy Power co-founder, to resign from the board of directors was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-gambling-addiction-stories-how-uk-got-hooked-on-online-casino-betting/#xj4y7vzkg">learning that</a> “senior managers shelved a safer gambling campaign it was running in Australia because it had proved too effective and was costing them money.” This is exactly what Kleiman and other scholars would have predicted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tkQgNH">
Every possible customer vein will be mined. The University of Colorado at Boulder in 2020 <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/18/cu-boulder-sports-betting-deal-goes-against-long-held-ncaa-stance">signed a $1.6 million partnership</a> with a gaming company that included $30 for every new bettor the University recruited, an obvious play at signing up college students even though the legal gambling age in Colorado is 21. (The $30 incentive was <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2023/02/28/cu-boulder-sports-betting-pointsbet/">discontinued</a> in 2023 after negative press.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zO8XEN">
The Gaming Society, a “betting education platform,” markets itself to women by promoting the opportunity to “prope[l] women’s sports forward through sports betting.” Its tagline? “Bet on women.”
</p>
<div id="pkZ2XU">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
Big week for GS! <br/><br/>Our founders <a href="https://twitter.com/jmessler?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="jmessler">@jmessler</span></a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinGarnett5KG?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="KevinGarnett5KG">@KevinGarnett5KG</span></a> hosted our first ✨ Betting Academy Experience to teach sports betting through real-life events<br/><br/>Our VP of Business <a href="https://twitter.com/MarissaC_25?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="MarissaC_25">@MarissaC_25</span></a> followed up w/ a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BetOnWomen?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BetOnWomen</a> roundtable on the importance of investing in women’s sports <a href="https://t.co/5ycNcGvegj">pic.twitter.com/5ycNcGvegj</a>
</p>
— Gaming Society (<span class="citation" data-cites="GamingSociety">@GamingSociety</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/GamingSociety/status/1580251221448761344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2022</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NTMWJU">
As anyone who watched the Super Bowl can tell you, there’s something unsavory about the direction this takes our society.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3MfXpl">
The United States is never going to be Vatican City, but it’s hard not to be a little queasy at public universities emailing students to “place your first bet (and earn your first bonus),” as the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/caesars-sports-betting-universities-colleges.html">reported</a> Louisiana State University doing, or Texas Christian University <a href="https://gofrogs.com/news/2020/3/5/general-winstar-world-resort-named-presenting-sponsor-of-the-legends-club-and-suites">partnering</a> with a casino as a “presenting sponsor” for its stadium’s new collection of VIP suites. The speed and intensity with which the gaming industry has swung state governments and public universities illustrate how difficult it will be to trust local legislators to stand up to and rigorously regulate the industry.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T3gjoF">
Financialized industries under modern, liquid capitalism will never be happy with small-time brands earning modest profits. DraftKings has already gone through <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/05/27/why-draftkings-acquired-its-tech-provider/">a reverse merger</a> with a Bulgarian tech firm and a special-purpose acquisition company. Fanduel was acquired by Paddy Power, that European sports betting giant whose co-founder resigned.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RTkKJy">
And what about the tax argument? Maybe legalized sports gambling does have a negative side, but the benefits toward various worthy state initiatives are worth it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ur33jD">
The first problem is that government revenue really doesn’t work this way. Revenue is fungible: As soon as legislators see a service being funded by one source, it’s a green light to <a href="https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/do-lotteries-really-benefit-public-schools-the-answer-is-hazy">cut its funding</a> from elsewhere. State lotteries, for instance, were widely created with claims that the revenue would bolster, say, education. But instead of that lottery money being added on top of existing education funding, it often <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/why-state-lotteries-never-live-up-to-their-promises-1f911fae58dc/">ended up replacing it</a>, as state revenue could be <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160323X9702900104">diverted elsewhere</a>. Many states have worse education crises than before lotteries were instituted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YQC82c">
To put it another way, states can raise revenue whenever they want, through whatever means they want. If more money is needed for a particular state service, it can be raised through any type of tax.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FOob1m">
It’s also a conceptually odd use of a <a href="https://www.thebalancemoney.com/sin-tax-definition-examples-4157476">sin tax</a>, considering that the entire point of one is to discourage<em> </em>activities that are damaging to public or societal health. Alcohol and tobacco taxes artificially raise the market price of those goods because higher prices curb <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3794433/">alcohol</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/activities/raising-taxes-on-tobacco">tobacco</a> use.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ChxZlw">
But here, the logic is reversed, and we are intentionally expanding the amount of gambling and gambling addiction in order to juice state revenue numbers.
</p>
<h3 id="ZFwMaJ">
Gaming out the future
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sA2zw8">
Unfortunately, the horse is likely very far out of the barn. These industries are already huge lobbying players, and there’s very little historical precedent for re-criminalizing liberalized industries. The United States’s expansive First Amendment rights will likely make advertising restrictions difficult to pass, <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/first-amendment-and-regulation-pharmaceutical-marketing-challenges">as with prescription drugs</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RQlyIi">
That said, some steps are available around the edges. Massachusetts <a href="https://www.legalsportsreport.com/105019/maryland-new-york-examine-college-sports-betting-partnerships/">banned</a> all college advertising of sports betting, for instance. To a cynic, though, there’s something farcical about this now out-in-the-open and legal industry being “regulated” with bills that would, for instance, require a <a href="https://sportshandle.com/illinois-rg-pop-up-message-advances/">pop-up message</a> about responsible gambling every 10 wagers.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qiVnNx">
A strange irony of all this is that sports gambling is not the most profitable, or addictive, industry in this sector. Oddsmaking is a skill; bookmakers can set the odds incorrectly or simply get unlucky and have to pay out considerable winnings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="w4xiIz">
Which is why, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-lobbying-kansas.html">as the Times<em> </em>reports</a>, the end goal is full “casino” gambling on your phone — slot machines, roulette, and so on. The industry has tried to rebrand this as iGaming, with the chief executive of DraftKings telling lawmakers at a conference: “It is time for your state to add iGaming … Not in the future, but now.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RPbhSi">
One policy error has already been made across much of the United States. It’s not too late to prevent another one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mqYHt9">
<em>Jack Meserve is the managing editor of </em><a href="https://democracyjournal.org/"><em>Democracy: A Journal of Ideas</em></a><em>.</em>
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>What is life? Scientists still can’t agree.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="The face of a king vulture." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7ZpXaUFvu3PXblB9vb1Lq0Eo0jU=/0x0:3530x2648/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72080515/456761468.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
This bird is just as confused at the definition of life as we humans are. | Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Science writer Carl Zimmer explains why this question has been so hard to answer.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2rFo38">
We know life when we see it. Flying birds are clearly alive, as are microscopic creatures like tardigrades that scurry around in a single drop of water.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kufd34">
But do we, humans, know what life fundamentally is? No.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H4WSWE">
“No one has been able to define life, and some people will tell you it’s not possible to,” says New York Times columnist and science reporter Carl Zimmer on<em> </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/"><em>Unexplainable</em></a><em> </em>— Vox’s podcast that explores big mysteries, unanswered questions, and all the things we learn by diving into the unknown.
</p>
<div id="5ZDInL">
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="piXX6n">
It’s not for a lack of trying. “There are hundreds, hundreds of definitions of life that scientists themselves have published in the scientific literature,” says Zimmer, who wrote about them in his book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/life-s-edge-the-search-for-what-it-means-to-be-alive-carl-zimmer/14802836?ean=9780593182734"><em>Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive</em></a>. They include everything from simple definitions like “Life is a metabolic network within a boundary” to sentences that seem to require a PhD to decipher: “Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last common universal ancestor and includes all its descendants.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qKljHr">
There’s no consensus definition, but still the question teases us. It feels like it should be easy, something a fifth grader ought to be able to answer for science homework.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hvk7LP">
“It does feel like it should be easy because we feel it,” Zimmer says. “Our brains are actually tuned to recognizing things like biological motion. We’re sort of hardwired for recognizing life. But that doesn’t actually mean that we know what it is.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bpcQVH">
But it still might be essential to answer. “Like imagine astronomers not agreeing on the definition of a star,” Zimmer says. “But this is even more fundamental. This is life.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GA3DHh">
The problem is, for every definition of life, there’s a creature or perplexing life-like entity that just sends us right back to the drawing board.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iSExn8">
I spoke to Zimmer about why it has been so damn hard to define life, and whether it might not be possible to define it at all.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zzxHkZ">
(This conversation is pulled from the third episode in a series all about how life began on Earth. Check out the whole series <a href="https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/23616700/unexplainable-mysteries-life-earth">here</a>.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gIARyG">
<em>This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.</em>
</p>
<h4 id="ebm6mP">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lItFPA">
So what’s wrong with the NASA definition of life, or any of the hundreds of others that exist?
</p>
<h4 id="m0rE8v">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jt6s8y">
There are lots of edge cases where things get really hard, so then people start arguing about who gets to be in the club.
</p>
<h4 id="Wg3ENL">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l2vbcp">
I know one of the most famous ones are viruses. Can you explain why viruses have been just so confounding? Are they alive? Are they not alive?
</p>
<h4 id="YJdK9z">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0pm2eT">
So in some ways, viruses just seem incredibly alive. We’re talking during a pandemic — there are who knows how many copies of SARS-CoV-2 that have been produced over the past few years through reproduction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hcweq0">
Not only that, but those viruses mutate. Some of those mutations make them better at certain jobs. It’s made of genes. It’s made of protein.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="655NHq">
I mean, what more do you want? It seems alive to me, right?
</p>
<h4 id="qjRPeY">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ok09IS">
Yeah, that seems alive!
</p>
<h4 id="BTofl7">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oTdzPI">
But you might say no because if what’s really important to you is metabolism, you know, eating stuff, well, viruses don’t do it. Viruses don’t have any way of taking in molecules and fashioning those molecules by themselves into new molecules. They don’t have a mouth, they don’t have a stomach, they don’t have enzymes, they don’t have any of that.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wyIV0z">
All they have are basically instructions that reprogram a cell. And that cell, not the virus, makes new viruses.
</p>
<h4 id="SdRWME">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mDHefg">
You mentioned that NASA definition, “life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” So viruses check Darwinian evolution, they’re a chemical system, but they’re not self-sustaining.
</p>
<h4 id="zxzt1c">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6nX4fL">
Right, right.
</p>
<h4 id="EUVNQu">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gkIoKj">
So if viruses aren’t alive, what are they?
</p>
<h4 id="iqrdTT">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KWC9kA">
I don’t know. It would be weird to say that they’re dead because, by definition, they’d have to be alive first to be dead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d977HN">
Would you say they’re inert or inanimate? Well, I don’t know.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JSWiy5">
Something that can go through such dramatic changes, but also be passing genes down through the generations — to say that that has nothing to do with life, just … it feels weird.
</p>
<h4 id="LxDPvg">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C2kaDg">
What’s the problem if we expand the definition to include viruses? Why does that make people unhappy?
</p>
<h4 id="TwriVy">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iT72gJ">
Well, you know, one issue is where do you stop?
</p>
<h4 id="LmSXVv">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CM2JRx">
If you have a more expansive definition of life, what else could be considered alive?
</p>
<h4 id="Dba3wQ">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2Rftv7">
Red blood cells are an interesting example.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWksEG">
If I took all your red blood cells out of you, you’d be dead. Done. These cells have lots of proteins inside of them that do lots of important jobs, particularly getting oxygen from your lungs and ferrying it around your body.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="itiErZ">
So here are these things, they have boundaries like living things do, they carry out complicated biochemical jobs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RQZkfg">
People will talk about the lifespan of red blood cells. They basically are only around for a few months in your body. So you’d think that something that has a lifespan is alive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sCErsm">
What are these things? Are they alive or not? They have some of the characteristics of life, some really important ones, but they’re totally missing one of these really central ones.
</p>
<h4 id="Ej7WNE">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b7yc92">
The central one being?
</p>
<h4 id="ouGdra">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RI6wKT">
Genes. Red blood cells have no genes. There’s no way for them to grow and divide and replicate, that’s it.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="July 2016 Named Hottest Month In Recorded History" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cqwpGe86uAR8O8iL9dvdXYcCt-o=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24510516/591898876.jpg"/> <cite>Spencer Platt/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A seal, blissfully unaware of the head-spinny reality of life being very hard to define.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h4 id="9eXEbh">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r4zKAp">
To sum up, what’s the case that red blood cells are alive distinct from us?
</p>
<h4 id="LCbwX0">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HOvBOM">
That’s interesting that you would say that — “distinct from us.” Do things have to be distinct from you to be alive?
</p>
<h4 id="Acptlp">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VjNJDf">
Oh, I have no idea.
</p>
<h4 id="p5WZqg">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N2gOmJ">
Well, think about this. So there are some kinds of insects — like cicadas, for example — that grow special organs inside their bodies where certain kinds of bacteria live inside the cells.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1onood">
These bacteria are vital to these cicadas. They will make certain kinds of amino acids for the insects that the insects can’t get from eating plants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v7O9HH">
These bacteria in turn get lots and lots of food from the cicadas. And they cannot live outside of the cicadas. They are chemically incapable of surviving.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oefJN7">
They have their own genes. So they can grow and replicate, but they’re not distinct. They actually have to be inside of cicada cells. So they are as merged with them as you can imagine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WVEL9y">
Are they alive? Well, you know, I think you can make the case, but you can’t. If one of your rules is all “it has to be distinct,” then I don’t think they meet that.
</p>
<h4 id="zFBMTC">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xL0Khz">
Those bacteria sound a little virus-like.
</p>
<h4 id="EEEIPJ">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KzgN4Q">
Viruses are a lot more alive in a way than these bacteria. These bacteria get passed down from mothers to their offspring. They’re not floating around.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UVz9AZ">
We ourselves are resident to some former bacteria. Two billion years ago, our single-celled ancestors formed a union with these oxygen-consuming bacteria. They became these little squishy things inside of our cells called mitochondria, which generate our fuel. We take out our mitochondria, we’re dead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DwJA1x">
They still have a few genes left inside them. But you will never see mitochondria busting out of a cell and just crawling off by themselves. They can’t do it. They can’t. They don’t have the means to survive.
</p>
<h4 id="anKaTP">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ezNRyx">
So are the bacteria in the cicadas alive and our mitochondria not alive?
</p>
<h4 id="dVWZGX">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RfUqdU">
Another way to talk about it is to say, well, they’re involved in the process of living.
</p>
<h4 id="CROUY8">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1FcS8k">
Okay, so red blood cells and mitochondria might not be alive, they’re “involved in the process of living.” But are there also examples of things that definitely seem alive, no arguments, but still confuse definitions of life?
</p>
<h4 id="V2CbxF">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6PfoOF">
My favorite one is this fish called the Amazon molly.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PAJ3DZ">
This is a fish. It looks completely innocuous. You would not look twice as this tiny little fish darts around in streams in Mexico and the Southern United States. It evolved several hundred thousand years ago when two other species of molly interbred and they produced a hybrid. And now that hybrid, the Amazon molly, only produces daughters. They’re all female, and they only produce daughters who are clones of themselves.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RNYrt1">
However, if you just keep an Amazon molly by itself, or a whole tankful of Amazon mollies by themselves, they will not reproduce. The reason being that they actually still have to mate with a male from one of those ancestral species.
</p>
<h4 id="zbU5zN">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W8K5pe">
So the Amazon molly needs a sexual partner to reproduce, but it doesn’t actually reproduce with them. It’s just reproducing with itself.
</p>
<h4 id="WVTPFx">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AaXIIx">
This is a species that cannot reproduce within itself. It needs to go and find a male of another species of fish. The sperm triggers this process of its eggs starting to develop. But that female Amazon molly destroys the sperm and all of the genes inside of it. It’s like, thank you very much. I’m on my way. And then once it’s been able to mate with a male fish from another species, it then just makes a whole bunch of clones of itself. So biologists call them sexual parasites.
</p>
<h4 id="Z5rFR3">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qwtixW">
There’s a funny head-spinny thing here because that also sounds like what the virus does. But the virus isn’t alive. It needs another host to create more copies of its exact self. But the virus seems so different from a fish that swims around.
</p>
<h4 id="CJGWe7">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Rax4E7">
Right. Exactly. They are both sort of taunting us in the same way. It’s a fish. Of course it’s alive, of course. But when you actually try to put into words what it means to be alive, the Amazon molly and things like it can get you all tangled up.
</p>
<h4 id="ZQXMs2">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t19fa9">
I’m seeing why this simple question — what is life — has been so hard to answer. What are the words that puts you and me in the same box but keeps the red blood cells and viruses out and Amazon mollies in.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5jI8NG">
I can see the language problem of drawing that circle around all that.
</p>
<h4 id="dA5nM4">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Rw4uli">
We’re trying to draw these circles and maybe that’s part of the problem. This is more a philosophical problem than a scientific one. Philosophers have been thinking about these issues for quite a while. A very simple way of trying to understand this problem and perhaps one solution is instead of life, say like, well, what’s a game?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yA3VL8">
If you try to come up with some totally sharp circle definition of games, you’re gonna fail.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="July 2016 Named Hottest Month In Recorded History" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Dcc2W4k3JMLRYrKPvZ9bw92n9hE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24510528/591898864.jpg"/> <cite>Spencer Platt/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Snow monkeys: definitely alive.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h4 id="2xsXsh">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HJplik">
Are games really that hard?
</p>
<h4 id="fmbab4">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4Txap5">
Do games have to involve cards? Well, they can, but they can also involve tokens like in Monopoly. Do you make money playing games? Well, certain games, yes. And others you have to pay to play them. Do you have to win in a game? Well, sometimes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4jyzNE">
But you never have a child go to a toy store and go to the game section and be like, “What is this? I don’t understand.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HBXG03">
What [philosopher Ludwig] Wittgenstein said was that games are these things that have family resemblances, so they’re all connected in this sort of network of related meaning.
</p>
<h4 id="S3dnt5">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vggxXG">
Yeah, that feels so wishy-washy, though. Like red blood cells all in the same family as wombats and giraffes. I don’t know.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qwTvnw">
Is this something we actually need to do as humans? Decide what life is?
</p>
<h4 id="YEe41x">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bISzY1">
Well, again, it really depends on who you talk to.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y0zDjF">
So there will be people who will say, we really do need a definition of life for scientific purposes. So NASA can have some idea of what they’re doing, for example.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OXNfAO">
We need a definition of life for legal purposes. You know, because everyone’s shouting about quote-unquote when life begins.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UnlUiG">
There are all these situations where we really need clear-cut definitions of life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S3yXye">
But there are other people who say a definition of life is absurd and a waste of time. There’s a philosopher named Carol Cleland who has said this is like alchemists defining water in 1500. That’s a waste of time [without understanding molecules and atomic structure]. These molecules are composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and the way that they bond leads to all sorts of different behaviors that we know of for water.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6uGG86">
Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t there when it came to chemistry. He would pull his hair out trying to understand what water is. He would write in his journals like, “I don’t know, like, you know, it’s different colors. It has different tastes. It’s like, what is this thing?” He was banging his head against the wall. We happen to live at a time where a theory of chemistry is pretty well worked out so we can understand water, whereas we’re not there yet for life.
</p>
<h4 id="2NB27q">
Brian Resnick
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zwtt15">
Without having a solid theory of life … does that complicate our search for it in space? Might we find something that looks totally unlike the life we have on Earth?
</p>
<h4 id="GqKVNs">
Carl Zimmer
</h4>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eXCjY6">
If we could find another form of life somewhere else, that would just change the game profoundly, and maybe we would have to step back and say, okay, what’s our theory to explain life both on Earth and off on Alpha Centauri or wherever.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2HYsMa">
[But] I would not be surprised at all if our first encounter with something that seems like life just leaves us completely baffled.
</p></li>
<li><strong>My year as a pescatarian did more harm than good</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Two fish are seen with their faces protruding out of a fishing net." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/h3xrLKsKquMWixqGqWgNn5Fxxy0=/0x0:1824x1368/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72080460/WAM16443.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Fish caught in a net in Poland. People catch or farm billions of fish for food each year. | Andrew Skowron/We Animals Media
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Pescatarians are responsible for many more animal deaths than regular meat eaters.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PMSl3N">
When I decided to stop eating animals for ethical reasons five years ago, I wanted to make sure I could stick with it. Following a path where, I thought, each step brought me closer to the most moral diet, I became a pescetarian first, swapping chicken quesadillas and beef burgers for salmon poke bowls. This went on for a year before I adopted a fully vegetarian diet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X6FZan">
Pescetarianism — the practice of eschewing red meat and poultry but still eating seafood — is <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/3djvq9/vegetarians-who-eat-fish-are-actually-onto-something">often</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/pescatarians-are-right-why-i-say-eating-fish-is-more-ethical-than-eating-meat-158117">recommended</a> to people who want to make better food choices, but don’t want to go vegan or vegetarian. Fishing <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68231-8#Fig3">typically has a smaller carbon footprint</a> than factory farming, fish are often seen as <a href="https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-019-56006-9/MediaObjects/41598_2019_56006_MOESM1_ESM.pdf#page=5">less worthy of compassion</a> than land animals, and, while wild-caught fish lives are cut short, at least they don’t spend their entire existence in <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/8/17318936/smithfield-foods-pork-pig-humane-animal-abuse-animal-welfare">cages so small</a> they can’t turn around, like some factory-farmed animals. Many people ease into thinking and acting more critically about what (or who) they’re eating this way, which is something we should laud in a society that eats billions of animals <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/9/12/23339898/global-meat-production-forecast-factory-farming-animal-welfare-human-progress">raised in terrible conditions</a> without giving it much thought.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="owBzAv">
Nearly a quarter of Americans report that they’re <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/282779/nearly-one-four-cut-back-eating-meat.aspx#:~:text=Reasons%20for%20Eating,not%20eat%20meat)%5D%3F">trying</a> to eat less meat, motivated more by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/style/what-is-climatarian.html">concern for the environment</a> than for animal welfare. This matches my experience: saying that you’ve stopped eating animals because of concern for the animals themselves tends to provoke more hurt feelings and tense conversations than citing health or environmental reasons. And switching from an omnivorous diet to a pescetarian one <em>is</em> likely to reduce your climate impact because on average, seafood production <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68231-8#Fig3">releases less carbon</a> per pound of meat than raising land animals (though there is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02928-w">huge variance</a> depending on the species).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FmI9yx">
But even though I shrank my carbon footprint by going pescetarian, I now think I was actually doing more harm to animals during my year of fish than when I was just a regular omnivore.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l9N8Sl">
For one thing, scientists have amassed <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based">evidence over the past 20 years that fish are sentient</a> — that they feel pain, experience emotions, and engage in complex social behavior that we once thought was limited to humans and land animals — upending decades of received wisdom that <a href="https://hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-what/#:~:text=Conventional%20wisdom%20has,of%20%E2%80%98fish%20pain.%E2%80%99%E2%80%9D">they don’t matter morally</a> because they can’t really suffer.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zJ8cwv">
Then there’s the question of numbers. Even if you’re less confident that fish can suffer like as pigs or cows, or you just have less empathy for them, keep in mind that you typically have to eat many more individual fish to get an equivalent serving of food. An average farmed salmon <a href="https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/#back_ajs-fn-id_1-450:~:text=types%20of%20meat.-,Results%20table,-Column%201">yields</a> just under four-and-a-half pounds of meat. That’s over 30 times less meat than a single pig and over 100 times less than a cow. <a href="https://www.fishwelfareinitiative.org/salmon-welfare">Salmon</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21437054/chickens-factory-farming-animal-cruelty-welfare">chickens</a> produce a similar amount of meat per animal, and both experience intense suffering on industrial farms, but <a href="https://globalsalmoninitiative.org/en/about-salmon-farming/#:~:text=The%20salmon%20farming%20production%20cycle%20lasts%20about%203%20years.">farmed salmon</a> live <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.180325#:~:text=This%20may%20be%20an%20underestimate%2C%20given%20the%20standing%20population%20of%2022.7%20billion%20and%20lifespan%20of%20five%20to%20seven%20weeks.">roughly 26 times longer</a> than chickens before reaching slaughter weight, which means 26-fold more time spent in pain. And unlike farmed land animals, lots of the fish we eat are carnivorous, so <a href="https://countinganimals.com/the-fish-we-kill-to-feed-the-fish-we-eat/">they eat</a> a huge number of bait fish before they make it to your plate, which only adds to the pescetarian’s moral bill.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hLNgbX">
When I went pescetarian, I started eating around two pounds of salmon a week, the <a href="https://www.chefs-resources.com/seafood/salmon-yields/">equivalent</a> of one to two <a href="https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-salmon#:~:text=They%20grow%20much%20faster%20in,of%208%20to%2012%20pounds.">entire Atlantic salmon</a> every month. The typical farmed salmon <a href="https://globalreportingprogram.org/fishmeal/">is fed</a> 147 fish over the course of their short lives — which meant that I was responsible for somewhere between 1,700 and 3,500 fish deaths per year from eating salmon alone. By comparison, the typical American eats around <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/4/22/23036010/eat-less-meat-vegetarian-effects-climate-emissions-animal-welfare-factory-farms">25 land animals</a> in total per year (based on data from a decade ago, but current figures are similar).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mtkbrv">
So it’s little surprise that, according to <a href="http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/fishcount_estimates_list.php">one estimate</a>, humans catch or farm at least 840 billion to 2.5 trillion fish each year — at least <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#number-of-animals-slaughtered">11 times</a> the combined number of cows, chickens, and pigs slaughtered globally, even though seafood <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animal-protein-consumption?stackMode=relative&amp;country=~OWID_WRL">makes up</a> just 17 percent of the world’s animal protein intake.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YQCTCP">
These numbers are <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/global-seafood-market-factbook-2023-124800891.html">expected to increase</a> — even more so if more consumers change how they’re eating to primarily help the climate, without worrying too much about animals. There’s a well-known trade-off here: a diet of small animals like <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22430749/beef-chicken-climate-diet-vegetarian">chicken</a> or <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02928-w">anchovies</a> instead of large ones like cows has a smaller carbon footprint but results in suffering and death for a far greater number of individual animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mxIVlu">
Fortunately, there’s a simple way out of this dilemma, one that is better for both animals and the climate: instead of swapping one animal for another, eat <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3954#erlac3954s3:~:text=Plant%2Dbased%20foods%20had%20generally,than%20for%20small%20pelagic%20fish.">fewer animals</a> of any species and more plants.
</p>
<h3 id="fOcvAP">
Our weird relationship with fish
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eyvODV">
While I’ve never had any interest in hunting, I grew up fishing with my grandfather in the Florida Keys. When I was a boy, I remember watching with concern as he beat a fish to death with the handle of a knife. “Fish don’t feel pain,” he assured me. The fish’s writhing around on the prep table suggested otherwise, but hey, I thought, he knows a lot more about fish than I do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nwkRbv">
It’s hard to imagine this being seen as normal in the context of, say, hunting a deer, and hunting itself is a more culturally contentious activity than fishing. Americans are more disapproving of hunting than fishing, according to a 2019 <a href="https://www.fishwildlife.org/application/files/7715/5733/7920/NSSF_2019_Attitudes_Survey_Report.pdf#page=5">survey</a> conducted by hunting and fishing advocates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nUGUoA">
The same goes for how we raise the animals we eat. While we routinely treat land animals on factory farms in <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/9/12/23339898/global-meat-production-forecast-factory-farming-animal-welfare-human-progress">unconscionable ways</a>, we tolerate even worse treatment of fish. <a href="http://fishcount.org.uk/fish-welfare-in-commercial-fishing/humane-slaughter">Wild-caught</a> and <a href="https://awionline.org/content/fish-farming">farmed fish</a> are routinely left to suffocate in open air or killed by a combination of suffocation and being cut open alive. Fish aren’t covered by the US <a href="https://www.nal.usda.gov/animal-health-and-welfare/humane-methods-slaughter-act">Humane Methods of Slaughter Act</a>, so they get essentially no protection from cruelty. It’s much less likely consumers would tolerate the routine slaughter of chickens via drowning, which the US government at least <a href="https://www.fsis.usda.gov/policy/fsis-directives/6110.1">nominally prohibits</a> (although this <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers-factory-farms-cafos-animal-rights-booker-warren-khanna">still happens</a> in poultry slaughterhouses).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DJMn6O">
To take one extreme example: there’s a Japanese culinary tradition called ikizukuri — roughly translated to “prepared alive” — where sashimi is <a href="https://hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-what/#:~:text=I%20recently%20learned,of%20its%20body.">prepared</a> from the body of a still-living fish right in front of the customer. Can you imagine a Manhattan restaurant carving off the flank of a squealing pig right in the middle of the dining room?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5Px3aH">
Of the animals we eat, fish and other seafood — a term that, really, says it all about how we view aquatic life — get the least moral consideration. Why? As Vox’s Kenny Torrella <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based#:~:text=They%20live%20underwater%2C%20so%20we%20rarely%20interact%20with%20them.%20They%20can%E2%80%99t%20vocalize%20or%20make%20facial%20expressions%2C%20so%20it%E2%80%99s%20much%20harder%20to%20understand%20them%20than%20mammals%20and%20birds.%20And%20research%20has%20shown%20that%20the%20further%20animals%20are%20from%20us%20on%20the%20evolutionary%20chain%2C%20the%20less%20likely%20we%20are%20to%20try%20to%20protect%20them.">writes</a>: “They live underwater, so we rarely interact with them. They can’t vocalize or make facial expressions, so it’s much harder to understand them than mammals and birds. And research has shown that the further animals are from us on the evolutionary chain, the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56006-9">less likely we are to try to protect them</a>.”
</p>
<h3 id="qg1yG6">
The shifting consensus on fish pain
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gt0WFq">
Our evolutionary distance from fish has contributed to the now-debunked myth that, as my grandfather believed, they don’t experience pain. The most common biological argument against fish pain <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&amp;context=animsent">went something</a> like: humans experience pain in the brain’s neocortex, but fish don’t have a neocortex. Therefore, fish can’t experience pain.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1IXaaw">
Becca Franks, a <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/becca-franks.html">professor</a> of environmental studies at NYU, counters this argument with the example of the octopus. Humans need their visual cortex to see, but octopuses don’t have a visual cortex. That doesn’t mean they can’t see — it just tells us that they process vision <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.01637/full">differently</a>. Vastly disparate animal species have independently developed vision with different eye and brain structures, in a phenomenon known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/convergent-evolution">convergent evolution</a>. The same thing has been found in birds, who were once thought to lack intelligence but are now <a href="https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf">acknowledged</a> by neuroscientists to have developed capacities that are strikingly similar to humans. (Scientists are still learning about the extraordinary abilities of crows, for example, who can create <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/08/crows-know-how-to-have-fun">tools</a> to retrieve food). We should expect functions that provide animals with an edge in survival, like vision and logic, to arise in different species independently.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xxwa3Y">
Similarly, there’s an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347214003431">evolutionary incentive</a> for animals to develop the ability to detect and avoid pain. Donald Broom, a professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&amp;context=animsent">has argued</a> that pain and fear systems in animals evolved a long time ago and are unlikely to have suddenly appeared in just mammals or humans.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yLJP8c">
In 2002, around the time my grandfather first taught me to fish, zoologist <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23344718/future-perfect-50-lynne-sneddon-zoologist-fish-pain-university-gothenburg">Lynne Sneddon</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691351/">discovered nociceptors</a> — neurons that react to potentially painful stimuli — in fish. While we can’t exactly ask fish if they feel pain, Sneddon and other researchers have devised clever ways of getting to an answer. To distinguish reflexive behavior from behavior that can best be explained by a subjective experience of pain, a common approach is to look at how painful stimuli affect fish behavior, like by making them <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/acwp_aff/8/">avoid predators</a> or <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&amp;context=acwp_vsm">novel objects</a>, with and without the presence of painkillers like morphine or <a href="https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/220/8/1451/18829/Reduction-in-activity-by-noxious-chemical">aspirin</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="meMuL8">
To take one example, when zebrafish are presented with the choice between a tank enriched with things like pebbles and fake plants or a barren tank, they’ll consistently choose the former. Their preference persists when they’re injected with noxious acetic acid (vinegar). But when the barren chamber is filled with a painkiller and the enriched chamber isn’t, the zebrafish will <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&amp;context=acwp_arte">prefer</a> the barren chamber.
</p>
<h3 id="cQudhI">
Fish form surprisingly complex social bonds
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mjUFin">
Some researchers, like Franks, think the fish pain debate is missing the point. Rather than getting bogged down with contrived experiments, they argue, we should look more closely at fish behavior in their native environments, where they show clear evidence of sentience and express preferences. As Franks told me the relevant question is, “Are those preferences more than just reflexes, and instead felt experiences, felt emotions, and strong desires about the conditions of their life?” She firmly believes that all conscious creatures have evolved to enjoy the process of survival and that prey species may even get a thrill from evading predators.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g9v8Wb">
While Sneddon has focused a lot of her efforts on determining if fish can feel pain, when I spoke to her, she, too, was quick to point to broader evidence of fish sentience, which she defined as an animal’s ability to form relationships both within and across species. She cited the example of moray eels <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/groupers-use-gestures-to-recruit-morays-for-hunting-team-ups">teaming up</a> with grouper fish to form a hunting relationship, one in which the eels use their flexible, slender bodies to flush prey out of hiding places for the speedier grouper to catch. When teamed up, each predator <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040431#s2:~:text=Joint%20Hunting%20Appears%20to%20Be%20Mutualistic">gets</a> to keep the kill about half the time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hPTSnr">
One thing that first convinced me to stop eating sea creatures was a 2018 talk on the inner lives of fish by Franks. She pointed out that even tiny fish exhibit surprisingly complex social behavior. Take the cleaner wrasse fish, which eats parasites off of larger fish. Occasionally, they’ll eat a scale off that big fish by mistake, and to “apologize” to them, they’ll <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2001.1495">give</a> a literal back rub, providing extra attention to predatory fish. All this in a fish less than six inches long!
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A small blue and black striped fish is seen on top of a large coral-colored moray eel with its jaw open." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Z1XCLl0RTLBpN1vkbnbg8ubIxAg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24506678/GettyImages_549398943.jpg"/> <cite>Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A tiny cleaner wrasse fish cleans a yellow-margined moray in the Indian Ocean.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WN40l8">
Cleaner wrasse fish who see their reflection will <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/fish-cleaner-wrasse-self-aware-mirror-test-intelligence-news">attempt to</a> remove marks on their scales, joining a <a href="http://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-that-have-passed-the-mirror-test/">small handful</a> of species in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208420120">passing a self-recognition test</a>. These fish also <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504063/">outperform</a> three primate species, including orangutans, in a foraging task requiring advanced social intelligence, which may help explain their delicate masseuse sensibilities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ukOawX">
The list goes on: guppies <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep41679">have friends</a>, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/7/6/42/htm">salmon probably jump for fun</a>, monogamous convict cichlid fish <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/20/20700775/fish-pain-love-emotion-animal-cognition-study">exhibit more pessimistic</a> behavior after a breakup, and Japanese puffer fish <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQr8xDk_UaY">make flirtatious art</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="slWpCC">
These capacities should have profound implications for all the ways we interact with fish, from sport-fishing to scientific research, but by far <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00012/full">most of our interactions</a> with fish are with the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/capture-fisheries-vs-aquaculture">ones we eat</a>. And the suffering we cause in those interactions is incalculable.
</p>
<h3 id="a9Fp4D">
The terrible lives of the fish we eat
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rxZ4fU">
Consumers <a href="https://www.webstaurantstore.com/blog/2388/farm-raised-vs-wild-caught-fish.html">get</a> <a href="https://sustany.org/farmed-or-wild-caught-fish-which-is-better-for-the-environment/">mixed</a> <a href="https://environment.co/farm-raised-fish-vs-wild-caught/">messages</a> about whether farmed or wild-caught fish are better for the environment. The reality is complicated — it depends a lot on the species, harvest method, and location — giving rise to <a href="https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consumer-guides/national-consumer-guide">byzantine resources</a> designed to help consumers make sustainable seafood choices. But it’s tough to even confirm where the fish on your plate came from: a 2015 analysis of salmon in a variety of US restaurants and groceries <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/science/though-labeled-wild-that-serving-of-salmon-may-be-farmed-or-faux.html">found that</a> 43 percent was mislabeled — typically falsely claiming it was wild-caught when it was in fact farmed.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9C1XZI">
Given the overwhelming evidence for fish sentience, the ethically motivated eater can rely on neither. And the distinction between farmed and wild-caught begins to break down when you consider the close relationship between commercial fishing and aquaculture, also known as fish factory farming. Over 90 percent of all fish humans slaughter <a href="http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/fishcount_estimates_list.php">are wild-caught</a>, but about half of those are eaten not by humans but processed into fishmeal (<a href="http://fishcount.org.uk/farmed-fish-welfare/numbers-of-fish-used-for-feed-in-aquaculture">mostly eaten</a> by farmed fish and crustaceans) to accommodate the rapidly growing fish farming industry. A recent study <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-welfare/article/estimating-global-numbers-of-farmed-fishes-killed-for-food-annually-from-1990-to-2019/765A7CCA23ADA0249EF37CFC5014D351">estimated</a> that the number of fish farmed globally grew ninefold in the last three decades, up to 124 billion in 2019.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jWqMKO">
Raising fish in confined conditions far different from their natural environments presents severe ethical problems, to say the least. Farmed fish <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based">suffer</a> from overcrowding, disease, and the pain of being forced to <a href="https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&amp;context=hsus_reps_impacts_on_animals">grow rapidly</a>. They experience significantly higher <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/salmon-farming-climate-change#:~:text=Mortality%20rates%20for%20farmed%20Atlantic%20salmon%20are%20estimated%20at%20between%2015%20and%2020%20percent%20globally.%20(By%20contrast%2C%20factory%20chickens%20have%20a%20mortality%20rate%20of%205%20percent.)">mortality rates</a> than <a href="https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/u-s-broiler-performance/">those of farmed land animals</a>, while <a href="https://files.fwi.fish/Salmon_Welfare_Report.pdf#page=11">diseases that spread</a> in dense fish farms also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48030430">threaten</a> wild marine populations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YE0UJ0">
Eating wild-caught fish — assuming you can actually be sure that’s what you’re getting — may be less bad from an animal welfare perspective than eating farmed ones. As brutal as standard <a href="http://fishcount.org.uk/fish-welfare-in-commercial-fishing/humane-slaughter">capture and slaughter</a> methods for wild fish are, they inflict a few hours of suffering instead of the months or years it takes to raise animals on farms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PIBsGV">
But commercial fishing creates plenty more externalities that go beyond the fish consumers directly eat. <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/critical-issues-overfishing">Ecosystem destruction</a> is practically baked into its business model. <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing#how-much-fish-do-we-catch-from-each-method">Common fishing techniques</a> like bottom trawling — dragging a large net across the sea floor — can cause <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/what-drag-global-impact-bottom-trawling#:~:text=Trawling%20destroys%20the%20natural%20seafloor,root%20systems%20or%20animal%20burrows.">severe damage and pollution</a>. Fishing boats inadvertently catch many marine animals — like dolphins, whales, and turtles — known as bycatch, a category that includes about 10 percent of wild-caught fish, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing#discards">according to Our World in Data</a>. Animals caught as bycatch are then tossed back, but most don’t survive.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two large swordfish are seen inside a container on a fishing boat." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UyHWoOaN0AHRZ8bDQono0DOg_bo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24506685/WAM3290.jpg"/> <cite>Selene Magnolia/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
Swordfish caught as bycatch in Greece on a fishing vessel.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h8EYQ7">
I’d be remiss not to mention shrimp, which are by far the most numerous individual animal species Americans eat, at <a href="https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/#:~:text=Shrimp,128.92">over 120</a> per person per year on average. We have less evidence of shrimp sentience, but this is mostly due to our <a href="https://www.shrimpwelfareproject.org/are-shrimps-sentient#:~:text=Unfortunately%20compared%20to%20larger,species%20%5B1%5D.">lack of research on it</a>. Shrimp do respond differently to noxious stimuli when given painkillers, providing some evidence for their ability to experience pain. And shrimp farming involves some of the most horrifying routine practices, like <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168472/">eye ablation</a> — the removal of eyestalks to induce female shrimp to spawn. Because so many individual shrimp need to be killed to make one serving of food, even a small chance that they’re sentient convinced me to stop eating them. Plus, trawling for wild shrimp has the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-discard-rates-gear?country=Boat+dredge~Pole-and-line~Otter+twin+trawl~Shrimp+trawl~Longline%2C+bottom~Longline%2C+pelagic~Trammel+net~Gillnet%2C+bottom~Gillnet%2C+pelagic~Purse+seine~Handline">highest bycatch rate</a> in the commercial fishing industry — more than half of the animals caught are discarded.
</p>
<h3 id="oqrW00">
Individual versus systemic change is a false choice — we need both
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5BFNtK">
But is individual dietary change the right thing to focus on, rather than systems-level change? This is a long-running debate on complex consumer issues like animal welfare and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/27/dont-blame-men-for-the-climate-crisis-we-should-point-the-finger-at-corporations">climate mitigation</a>, but it’s always been an unhelpful binary. We need both. Many of the <a href="https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/recommended-charities/">most effective</a> animal welfare organizations focus on changing corporate and state actors to improve conditions for large numbers of animals at once. <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/4/22/23036010/eat-less-meat-vegetarian-effects-climate-emissions-animal-welfare-factory-farms">Reducing your own consumption</a> of animal products also has a real, positive impact on animals and the environment. After accounting for bycatch and feed fish, the typical American <a href="https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/#:~:text=dead%20or%20dying.-,Summary,371.2%20%E2%80%93%20582.2,-From%20the%20table">is responsible for the deaths</a> of between roughly 340 and 560 sea animals per year. That’s a lot of lives you could save by simply leaving fish off your plate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Dgm0cY">
Our individual choices can also have a <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/796/yes-its-all-the-fault-of-big-oil-facebook-and-the-system-but-lets-talk-about-you-this-time">social contagion effect</a> — merely telling a recently converted pescetarian friend I was working on this piece convinced him to stop eating fish.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GuZ2Lz">
In recent years, animal advocates have begun to <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based">turn their attention</a> to this long-ignored group and lobby for welfare reforms to how we farm and catch fish. Two new organizations are dedicated to improving the lives of the aquatic animals we eat: the <a href="https://www.fishwelfareinitiative.org/">Fish Welfare Initiative</a> and the <a href="https://ali.fish/">Aquatic Life Institute</a>. This area is so neglected that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit, from <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/coho-salmon-black-1.3516983">changing tank color</a> to reduce salmon aggression in farms to <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/14/18091698/future-perfect-podcast-killing-fish-ikejime-animal-welfare">using more humane slaughter methods</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="suFAc2">
While writing this story, I’ve marveled at how much more fascinating and complex fish are than I originally thought. Our growing understanding of the sentience of other species has made it harder to identify ways in which humans are unique. Rather than diminish my view of humanity, this research motivates me to respect the unique preferences and experiences of nonhuman animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GPFdeJ">
One area where I think humans remain unique is in our moral agency — our ability to make choices based on a notion of right and wrong. It’s uniquely human to construct massive industrial aquaculture operations and suffocate fish by the billions — but it’s also uniquely human to refuse to participate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qqduiL">
<em>Garrison Lovely is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist with work in BBC Future, New York Focus, Jacobin, and Current Affairs. He appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and hosts the podcast </em><a href="https://mostinterestingpeople.podbean.com/">The Most Interesting People I Know</a><em>. He tweets from </em><a href="https://twitter.com/GarrisonLovely"><em><span class="citation" data-cites="garrisonlovely">@garrisonlovely</span></em></a><em>. </em>
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</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Waikiki and Arabian Phoenix show out</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pink Jasmine and Yukan excel</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup | Prize money hiked 300% to $150 million</strong> - The prize money for the 2023 Women’s football World Cup will see a 300% increase from the 2019 edition, FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gianni Infantino re-elected FIFA president till 2027, promises greater revenues</strong> - Gianni Infantino stood unopposed, making his re-election as head of FIFA a formality, even if he is not universally popular</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Benzema scores as Real Madrid ease past Liverpool into Champions League quarterfinals</strong> - Bidding to win back-to-back Champions League titles, a disciplined Real Madrid seemed content to sit back against a tame Liverpool who carried little threat for most of the round of 16 fixture</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Delhi excise policy case | ED rejects BRS leader Kavitha’s plea to defer proceedings against her; issues fresh summons for Mar 20</strong> - After skipping Thursday’s summons, the Telangana MLC wrote to the ED seeking protection from arrest and summons as the case was being heard in the Supreme Court</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Stage set for youth festivals in Calicut varsity</strong> - University union polls held after three years, SFI wins majority of seats</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mysuru: DC, Police Commissioner inspect counting centre</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>RSS targets one lakh work places</strong> - Presently spread over about 71,000 areas across the country</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aware of China’s funding of infrastructure projects in countries in South Asia: Govt</strong> - Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan said the government keeps a constant watch on all developments having a bearing on India’s security</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bakhmut: Russian casualties mount but tactics evolve</strong> - The BBC has been given access to positions held by Ukrainian army brigades defending Bakhmut’s southern flank.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Security building on fire in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don</strong> - One person dies in the blaze in a federal security service building in the southern Russian city.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Farmers’ protest party win shock Dutch vote victory</strong> - The movement was only set up in 2019 and is on course to become the biggest party in the Senate.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Credit Suisse to borrow up to $54bn from Swiss central bank</strong> - A slump in the troubled lender’s shares has intensified fears about a broader bank crisis.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>World’s first octopus farm proposals alarm scientists</strong> - Methods used on the Spanish farm would be “cruel” to such intelligent animals say experts, as details emerge.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>National Academies: We can’t define “race,” so stop using it in science</strong> - Use scientifically relevant descriptions, not outdated social ideas. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1924448">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>OpenAI checked to see whether GPT-4 could take over the world</strong> - “ARC’s evaluation has much lower probability of leading to an AI takeover than the deployment itself.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1924246">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Security firm Rubrik is latest to be felled by GoAnywhere vulnerability</strong> - GoAnywhere customers are dropping like flies, courtesy of code execution bug. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1924411">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New theory re-ignites debate about identity of Leonardo da Vinci’s mother</strong> - Was Caterina a slave kidnapped from the Caucasus region? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1924177">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lawsuit: Cop pulled over driver for TikTok livestream—and shared driver’s ID</strong> - Texas man suing now fears identity theft after his personal info was shared. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1924325">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Genie: What’s your first wish?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Toby: I wish I was Rich.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: Granted, what’s your second wish?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Rich: I want lots of money.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/CaptainBeans_"> /u/CaptainBeans_ </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11s35au/genie_whats_your_first_wish/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11s35au/genie_whats_your_first_wish/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why is helium so expensive these days?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Because of all the inflation.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MordredRedHeel19"> /u/MordredRedHeel19 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11s7prc/why_is_helium_so_expensive_these_days/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11s7prc/why_is_helium_so_expensive_these_days/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A guy finds a lamp, rubs it and a genie pops out.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Genie: You have 3 wishes, whats your first wish? Guy: I wish you were bad at counting. Genie: Done. Guy: I wish i was a billionaire. Genie: Piss off you’ve had your 3 wishes!
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ChefRoquefort"> /u/ChefRoquefort </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11sfh9v/a_guy_finds_a_lamp_rubs_it_and_a_genie_pops_out/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11sfh9v/a_guy_finds_a_lamp_rubs_it_and_a_genie_pops_out/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I hate that September, October, November, and December are somehow the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months of the calendar year</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Whoever messed that up ought to be stabbed
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/eaglewatch1945"> /u/eaglewatch1945 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11rta78/i_hate_that_september_october_november_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11rta78/i_hate_that_september_october_november_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I don’t want to brag, but I’m never in the wrong room.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Amphibian-Agile"> /u/Amphibian-Agile </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11slts8/if_you_are_the_smartest_person_in_the_room_you/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/11slts8/if_you_are_the_smartest_person_in_the_room_you/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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