Social care is facing a “very, very distressing situation”, the Archbishop of York has told Parliament as he urged Government action to tackle the crisis.

Speaking at Westminster, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell painted a bleak picture in the region he represents, with vulnerable people not receiving the support they need, while recruitment and retention of staff was “appalling”.

The senior church leader raised his concerns as ministers were also pressed over reports that a promised £500 million investment in the adult social care workforce could be at risk.

Read it all.

“In the cities of Hull and Middlesbrough, which I serve, I see so many people in need of care+not receiving it.

“I discover recruitment+retention R appalling. I find care workers having 2 use food banks so they can feed their families" https://t.co/A7GECquy24 #socialcarecrisis

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 27, 2023

A vicar undergoing treatment for stage four skin cancer has made a song from the sounds of an MRI scanning machine.

The Reverend Matthew Simpkins, of Lexden in Colchester, was first diagnosed with the disease in 2019.

In 2021, the cancer returned and the 44-year-old, who is the priest-in-charge of Lexden, has had months of treatment and various scans.

“I thought the way I am going to get through this is by writing a song during this scan,” he said.

Read it all.

An Essex vicar found the best way to cope with MRI scans – was to turn the noises into a pop song 🎸
Matt has stage 4 cancer & says making music is therapy to him
This weird and wonderful story is on Look East at 6:30pm! 🎥 #essex #colchetser #suffolk https://t.co/JgMdMh85v6

— Zoie O'Brien (@ZoieOBrien_) March 22, 2023

One of the highlights of my pandemic workweek was the Zoom workout I did with a dozen fellow swimmers once we lost access to our pool. Most aspects of my life were upended, but the 7:45 a.m. home exercise session was a constant: a warm-up, two sets of resistance exercises designed by our loyal coach, then stretching and gabbing. None of us wanted to give up this routine when restrictions eased, and we’re still at it.

I feel more upbeat and quicker on the uptake on days when I do planks and squats. Now a new paper evaluating studies of the impact of exercise on mood shows that physical activity, of any kind, is just as effective as antidepressants at reducing feelings of anxiety and depression—and sometimes more effective.

Dr. Ben Singh, a research fellow at the University of South Australia, was the lead author of the study, which appeared in February in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. He and 12 other scientists combed the research literature for all randomly controlled studies published before 2022 that involved adding exercise to a person’s “usual care,” to see how physical activity might relieve psychological distress.

Read it all.

For some people with depression, regular exercise may often be just as effective as medication at bringing relief https://t.co/EBz4YemXKa

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 23, 2023

We are engaged in a massive national experiment, making all schoolchildren fit one behavioral mold; the results speak for themselves. Reading and math scores have not risen, but mindless acceptance of orthodoxy certainly has. The dream of certain educational reformers for centuries, it is only in the past couple decades that factory education has become reality, thanks to the power of Big Pharma. When students of the past did not fit, there was not that much even the most authoritarian teacher could do about it. Today, however, the choice is starker: Conform or be drugged. We used to make dystopian movies about it; now we make our children live it.

The medicine is the message. The nature of your discourse depends upon the popularity of your prescriptions. Once we have obedience in a tablet—a drug that makes students sit still and attend to whatever faddish nonsense their teacher may be spouting—society can be independent no longer. By making pharmaceuticals an integral part of the modern educational project, it is not simply the stimulant-taking students who become docile and obedient, but the unmedicated ones as well.

Read it all.

If Ritalin did not exist, neither would ADHD; the treatment conjures the disease. https://t.co/Rl4h992jxz

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) March 17, 2023

Each war teaches us something new about trauma. In World War I, hospitals overflowed with soldiers who screamed or froze or wept, described in medical texts as “moral invalids.” By the end of World War II, a more sympathetic view had emerged, that even the hardiest soldier would suffer a psychological collapse after sufficient time in combat — somewhere, two experts from the surgeon general’s office concluded, between 200 and 240 days on average.

Russia’s war in Ukraine stands out among modern wars for its extreme violence. Its front lines are close together and barraged with heavy artillery, and rotations from the front line are infrequent. Ukraine’s forces are largely made up of men and women who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat.

“We are looking at a war that is basically a repetition of the First World War,” says Robert van Voren, who heads the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry, which provides mental-health support in Ukraine. “People just cannot fight anymore for psychological reasons. People are at the front line too long, and at a certain point, they crack. That’s the reality we have to deal with.”

Read it all.

The war in Ukraine stands out for its extreme violence, and Ukrainian forces are largely made up of people who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat. Hospitals in Ukraine cannot manage the volume of psychiatric casualties coming in. https://t.co/43mu2NwrnE

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) March 15, 2023

Last week, a group of physician assistants across the state rallied at the Statehouse in Columbia calling for legislators to pass a bill that aims to address the growing need for primary care providers in South Carolina.

If passed, Senate Bill 553, proposed in February and with support from the South Carolina Academy of Physician Assistants, would allow eligible physician assistants to practice without the legal oversight of a licensed physician.

The bill stands to combat a lack of health care access for residents living in medically underserved areas of the state and those who are low income, who are currently experiencing the brunt of a worsening physician shortage.

The bill allows PAs who’ve completed 6,000 working hours under a supervising physician to practice without one.

Read it all.

Last week, a group of physician assistants across the state rallied at the Statehouse in Columbia calling for legislators to pass a bill that aims to address the growing need for primary care providers in South Carolina. https://t.co/JUzkorpVul

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) March 14, 2023

Last June, Keller participated in an inpatient immunotherapy trial at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, which he said had “shown great promise in potentially curing cancer.” The 72-year-old is returning to the Bethesda, Maryland, facility next month to do another variation of that immunotherapy on new tumors.

The tumors “are unfortunately in some fairly inconvenient places,” Keller said, “so the doctors encouraged us to go through the treatment again, this time targeting a different genetic marker of the cancer.”

“It was brutal last June, so we approach this with an awareness of how much prayer we need,” Keller wrote on Twitter. “Please pray for our trust and dependence on God, for his providential oversight of the medical preparations now in process, and for our desire to glorify God in whatever comes our way. Thank You.”

Read it all.

“Please pray for our trust and dependence on God, for his providential oversight of the medical preparations now in process, and for our desire to glorify God in whatever comes our way.”https://t.co/xhlyOxhdvA

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) March 13, 2023

Divine Physician, your Name is blessed for the work and witness of the Mayos and the Menningers, and the revolutionary developments that they brought to the practice of medicine. As Jesus went about healing the sick as a sign of the reign of God come near, bless and guide all those inspired to the work of healing by thy Holy Spirit, that they may follow his example for the sake of thy kingdom and the health of thy people; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever.

A #Prayer for the Feast Day of William Mayo, Charles Menninger and Their Sons 'As Jesus went about #healing the sick as a sign of the reign of God come near, bless and guide all those inspired to the work of healing by thy Holy Spirit' https://t.co/JJzBS4FAiX #health #Lent2018 pic.twitter.com/VjlGHb60Px

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) March 6, 2018

Do not miss it.

At 82 years old, with an aggressive form of blood cancer that six courses of chemotherapy had failed to eliminate, “Paul” appeared to be out of options. With each long and unpleasant round of treatment, his doctors had been working their way down a list of common cancer drugs, hoping to hit on something that would prove effective—and crossing them off one by one. The usual cancer killers were not doing their job.

With nothing to lose, Paul’s doctors enrolled him in a trial set up by the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, where he lives. The university was testing a new matchmaking technology developed by a UK-based company called Exscientia that pairs individual patients with the precise drugs they need, taking into account the subtle biological differences between people.

The researchers took a small sample of tissue from Paul (his real name is not known because his identity was obscured in the trial). They divided the sample, which included both normal cells and cancer cells, into more than a hundred pieces and exposed them to various cocktails of drugs. Then, using robotic automation and computer vision (machine-learning models trained to identify small changes in cells), they watched to see what would happen.

In effect, the researchers were doing what the doctors had done: trying different drugs to see what worked. But instead of putting a patient through multiple months-long courses of chemotherapy, they were testing dozens of treatments all at the same time.

The approach allowed the team to carry out an exhaustive search for the right drug. Some of the medicines didn’t kill Paul’s cancer cells. Others harmed his healthy cells. Paul was too frail to take the drug that came out on top. So he was given the runner-up in the matchmaking process: a cancer drug marketed by the pharma giant Johnson & Johnson that Paul’s doctors had not tried because previous trials had suggested it was not effective at treating his type of cancer.

It worked. Two years on, Paul was in complete remission—his cancer was gone.

Read it all.

On average, it takes more than 10 years and billions of dollars to develop a new drug.

Incorporating AI into the drug development pipeline could help create cheaper pharmaceuticals faster. https://t.co/xYVZFyA5fY

— MIT Technology Review (@techreview) February 15, 2023

Almost 3 in 5 teenage girls reported feeling so persistently sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year that they stopped regular activities — a figure that was double the share of boys and the highest in a decade, CDC data showed.

Girls fared worse on other measures, too, with higher rates of alcohol and drug use than boys and higher levels of being electronically bullied, according to the 89-page report. Thirteen percent had attempted suicide during the past year, compared to 7 percent of boys.

Sharon Hoover, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine and co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health, said she was struck by “the magnitude of the increases and the gender difference.”

Hoover and others pointed out it is unclear whether the data is influenced by other factors — if girls were more aware of depressive symptoms than boys, for instance, or more inclined to report them — or whether girls are simply far worse off.

Read it all.

Teen girls across the United States are “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,” according to federal researchers who released data Monday showing increases in rape and sexual violence, as well as record levels of feeling sad or hopeless. https://t.co/CQZfSuGOvb

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 13, 2023

Today our society is suffering from an epidemic of self-harm, culminating in the most final form of suffering on this earth—in “deaths of despair.”

These deaths speak to the harm inflicted on oneself through overdosing, suicide, or health issues from alcoholism. They manifest despair as a way of coping (or trying to end) one’s suffering of physical or mental pain.

A new study makes the case that a loss of religion has played a significant part in this rise. This does not necessarily entail atheism, as many of these people may continue to believe in God or some other kind of spirituality. Rather, it involves no longer participating in organized religion within a faith community.

Previous research has shown that men and women who regularly attended religious services at least once a week were less likely to die of despair. Which means, as Tyler VanderWeele and Brendan Case point out in a CT article, “Empty pews are an American public health crisis.”

The individualization of religion and the isolation of its experience are two factors contributing to this trend. We live in times of great confusion regarding how God created us—and among the lies we struggle with is believing that community is something we can take or leave.

Read it all.

I've got another piece up this morning with @CTmagazine. Thankful they were willing to look at my deeper dive into how the church is needed in combating deaths of despair:

People Perish for Lack of Religion https://t.co/YPjcLWOOv7 via @CTMagazine

— Adam M. Carrington (@carringtonam) February 6, 2023

This winter’s COVID-19 surge in the U.S. appears to be fading without hitting nearly as hard as many had feared.

“I think the worst of the winter resurgence is over,” says Dr. David Rubin, who’s been tracking the pandemic at the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

No one expected this winter’s surge to be as bad as the last two. But both the flu and RSV came roaring back really early this fall. At the same time, the most contagious omicron subvariant yet took off just as the holidays arrived in late 2022. And most people were acting like the pandemic was over, which allowed all three viruses to spread quickly.

So there were big fears of hospitals getting completely overwhelmed again, with many people getting seriously ill and dying.

But that’s not what happened.

Read it all.

This winter's U.S. COVID surge is fading fast, likely thanks to a 'wall' of immunity https://t.co/v9MVp6JWP0

— NPR Health News (@NPRHealth) February 3, 2023

According to a recent study from the Barna Group, 42 percent of pastors have given “real, serious consideration” to quitting full-time ministry. That number is higher for pastors under 45 years old and even higher for women (regardless of age). If 42 percent of pastors are seriously considering quitting, then no doubt most of the pastors reading this have at least thought about it. And if you’re a layperson, deacon, or elder, hear me now: there’s a good chance your pastor is thinking about quitting.

This column is not a call to take better care of your pastor or to take a special collection to send them on an uninterrupted vacation. As nice as vacations are—and I wonder how many “Pastors like Mai Tais, too!” T-shirts I could sell—a lack of vacation is not high on the list of burnout factors that pastors cite. In this season, clergy health requires something much more imaginative than “Here, go away.”

Pastors burn out for the same reasons engines do: they work too hard. Frontline care providers of all kinds are working too hard these days. One myth is that better engines can sustain the load, that clergy burnout is the result of weak or unfit clergy. But while it is true that some people have no business doing public ministry, the larger truth is that small, relatively weak engines can last hundreds of thousands of miles and perform incredibly well—with the right support. Both performance and lifespan depend largely on how much an engine has to compensate for systems around it that aren’t functioning well. And any pastor, whether they feel “built for this” or not, will be brought closer to burnout if they are performing most of the operational duties at a church themself.

When Barna asked pastors why they were considering quitting, the top two answers were “stress” and “feeling lonely and isolated” (with “political divisions” coming in a distant-but-meaningful third)

Read it all.

Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, is in the process of introducing new banknotes for the first time in more than 20 years. The move is an attempt to reignite confidence in the currency, the naira, which is under severe pressure. With inflation at more than 20%, people are struggling to cope with the rising cost of living. It is leading to the largest exodus of young professionals in years.

“Imagine going to the grocery store one day, and everything has tripled in price? How do you even cope? You have a family at home. What do you cut out of the budget?” Oroma Cookey Gam tells me by Zoom, her face incredulous.

The fashion designer left Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, with her young family a year ago for the UK capital, London. Her husband and business partner Osione, an artist, was granted a Global Talent visa, which enables leaders in academia, arts and culture, as well as digital technology to work in the UK.

She says it had become too expensive to raise their young family in Lagos. “Our money was buying us less and less. We weren’t able to pay our bills, we weren’t able to do normal things that we were doing.”

Oroma studied law at the UK’s University of Northumbria and moved back to Nigeria almost 20 years ago, keen to use her degree to help develop her country. Along with Osione, she eventually set up This Is Us, a sustainable fashion and lifestyle brand that uses local materials and artisans, including cotton grown and dyed in northern Nigeria.

Read it all.

Important piece.

“Despite having one of the largest health workforces on the continent, Nigeria's skilled health workforce density is only 1.95/1,000 population, well below the recommended benchmark”.

On brain drain @MayeniJones https://t.co/O9banuAPIw

— Ashis Basu (@BasuAshis) January 31, 2023

The percentage of Americans reporting they or a family member postponed medical treatment in 2022 due to cost rose 12 points in one year, to 38%, the highest in Gallup’s 22-year trend.

Each year since 2001, Gallup has tracked Americans’ self-reports of delaying medical care in the past 12 months due to cost. The latest reading, from Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare poll conducted Nov. 9-Dec. 2, is the highest by five points and marks the sharpest year-over-year increase to date.

This change came amid the highest inflation rate in the U.S. in more than 40 years, which made 2022 a challenging year for many Americans. A majority of U.S. adults have said inflation is creating at least a moderate hardship for them. The public continues to view the state of the U.S. economy negatively, and Americans were more likely to name inflation as the most important problem facing the U.S. in 2022 than at any time since 1984.

Read it all.

The percentage of Americans reporting they or a family member postponed medical treatment in 2022 due to cost rose 12 points in one year, to 38%, the highest in Gallup’s 22-year trend. https://t.co/G37mr1fW1M

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) January 17, 2023

Hospital chaplains are witnessing acute stresses and strains in the NHS, in a ministry now as much geared to the needs of staff as of patients; current pressures were showing the value of that trend towards staff well-being, the president of the College of Health Care Chaplains (CHCC), Dr Simon Harrison, said on Monday.

“What Covid began is now very much continuing,” he said. “My colleagues and I are in emergency departments daily, visiting to support patients wherever they are found. There’s nothing we’re doing that’s new. Everyone is in different ways putting their hand to the pump.

“But what we learned from Covid is that you need to see staff where they are: to be alongside them on the front line. It’s not about waiting to be called, but about going out proactively to see how they’re doing on a good day or a bad day. The thing chaplains do which is relatively unique is brief encounters: a lot of these, in the moment — very real, confidential if required, but in the moment.”

Canon Mia Hilborn, a Hospitaller and chaplaincy team leader at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, in central London, described the added pressure from the sheer numbers in hospital, including many who no longer needed to be there. but had nowhere to go as a result of the shortage of workers in the care system.

“There’s a shortfall if everyone is well. But if they take leave or are off sick, then it’s a major shortfall,” Canon Hilborn said.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Care now needed for NHS staff, as well as patients, say hospital chaplains https://t.co/vYIDgJ7giJ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 13, 2023

Covenant, Calling and Crisis: Autonomy, Accountability and Wellbeing among Church of England Clergy revisited 63 people who have been interviewed every two years since 2017. It presents qualitative findings from individual and group interviews conducted in autumn 2021 and is part of the third wave of the ten-year Living Ministry programme. The research findings explore clergy wellbeing during the Covid 19 pandemic and how clergy understand and experience autonomy and accountability.

Dr Liz Graveling, author of the report, said:, “I am deeply grateful to all the people who continue to share the joys and trials of ordained ministry to help the church learn how best to care for its clergy. Supportive frameworks of autonomy and accountability are crucial, and the stories contained within this report illuminate how these two things can be held together in the context of covenantal relationships.”

You can find much more information there.

The overall well-being of the clergy has declined since 2019, but could be improved through stronger relationships of accountability, the third wave of the ten-year study Living Ministry suggests. https://t.co/LidhLL4reP

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 13, 2023

Blake Hounshell, an influential political journalist who was managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a top editor at Politico before joining The New York Times and overseeing its popular newsletter “On Politics,” died on Tuesday in Washington. He was 44.

His family said in a statement that he had died “after a long and courageous battle with depression.” The police in Washington were investigating the death as a suicide, a police official said.

Mr. Hounshell, who joined The Times in 2021, wrote “On Politics” out of Washington, incorporating contributions from other Times correspondents. The newsletter appears five days a week and is regularly read by an estimated half-million paying subscribers.

Mr. Hounshell “quickly distinguished himself as our lead politics newsletter writer and a gifted observer of our country’s political scene,” Joseph Kahn, the Times’s executive editor, said in a memo to the staff, adding, “He became an indispensable and always insightful voice in the report during a busy election cycle.”

Read it all.

Nurses continue to garner the highest ethics rating from Americans among a diverse list of professions, a distinction they have held for more than two decades. The 79% of U.S. adults who now say nurses have “very high” or “high” honesty and ethical standards is far more than any of the other 17 professions rated. Still, the current rating is 10 percentage points lower than the highest rating for nurses, recorded in 2020, when they were on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and their ethics ratings soared.

Two other health-related professions that enjoyed similar bumps in their ethics ratings in 2020 — medical doctors and pharmacists — now rank second and third behind nurses, with 62% and 58% of Americans, respectively, rating them highly. And like nurses, both of these professions’ ethics ratings dropped significantly in 2021 and edged down further this year. All three are now below their prepandemic levels.

Pharmacists, who typically earned higher trust ratings than doctors before 2013, have ranked slightly below that profession since the pandemic and now register their lowest ethics rating in four decades of measurement (58%) by one point. Medical doctors’ rating is at its lowest point since 1999 and nurses’ since 2004.

Read it all.

Americans continue to rate nurses as having the highest ethical standards among 18 professions, while telemarketers and members of Congress remain the lowest-rated fields. https://t.co/GBfOjuA3Q2

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) January 10, 2023

A new type of blood test can detect a hidden toxin behind Alzheimer’s disease years before a patient shows any symptoms of memory loss or confusion.

If the proof-of-concept can be further tested and scaled, the test could significantly speed up diagnosis, giving millions of patients answers and access to proper care long before their disease progresses.

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) created the novel blood test. It’s designed to pick up on a molecular precursor in the blood that can cause proteins to irregularly fold and clump in the brain, ultimately forming amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques.

Read it all.

New Blood Test Accurately Predicts Alzheimer's Years Ahead of First Symptoms https://t.co/S2sq3eQpFm

— ScienceAlert (@ScienceAlert) December 22, 2022

At Mattie Richland Baptist Church in Pineview, Georgia, the adults have been back in Sunday school and the kids led a Black history presentation, but the bus that picks up children for their education program will remain idle until January.

Sunday school, adult forums and other Christian formation classes, already threatened by declines in worship attendance, have been further challenged since COVID-19 shuttered churches and sent their services online. A study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research said more than half were disrupted in some way. Other research shows religious education for adults has bounced back more than for younger church members.

“For some, it continued without any real major disruptions, and for others, it basically collapsed,” said Scott Thumma, the institute’s director, summing up its 2022 pandemic-related research during an October event at Yale Divinity School. “And the easiest way to make it collapse was to keep religious education for children and youth online. If you kept it online, you probably don’t have a religious education program now.”

The Rev. Scott Zaucha, pastor of St. Ann’s in Woodstock, a mostly white congregation with about 50 attending on Sundays, said its Sunday school had ceased to exist before the pandemic because of its aging congregation. He wondered how to begin it again and learned that online Christian education was not the answer because it seemed like “another thing to try to keep up with” when regular schooling was online.

Read it all.

“We have a crisis of catechism going on in America right now,” said @UMIChicago CEO Jeffrey Wright, expressing concern for the religious upbringing of the youngest generation. My @RNS story: https://t.co/Ji7MySJBgA

— Adelle Banks (@AMBankstw) December 22, 2022

The places most troubled by this, New York City and California, are trying to find an answer. Both have enacted policies aimed at people who are homeless and suffering from a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia. Yet they differ in important ways. Last month Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York City, instructed police and first responders to hospitalise people with severe mental illness who are incapable of looking after themselves. Mr Adams’s plan is a reinterpretation of existing rules. Law-enforcement and outreach workers can already remove people from public places if they present a danger to themselves or others. But now, the mayor stressed, people can be hospitalised if they seem merely unable to care for themselves. “It is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past them,” Mr Adams proclaimed.

The mayor’s plan follows a policy change on the opposite coast. At the urging of Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, the state legislature passed the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (care) Act in September , creating a new civil-court system aimed at directing the mentally ill and homeless to treatment and housing. Patients can be referred to care court by police, outreach workers, doctors or family members, among others.

Acceptance into the system means court-ordered treatment for up to two years, after which patients can “graduate” or, potentially, be subjected to more restrictive care, such as a conservatorship. California has been quick to try to distance care court from New York’s apparently more punitive response. “It’s a little bit like apples and giraffes,” says Jason Elliott, Mr Newsom’s deputy chief of staff. “We’re both trying to solve the same problem, but with very different tools at our disposal, and also really different realities.”

Read it all.

What is the most humane way to help unsheltered people suffering from severe mental illness? New policies in NYC and California revive an old debate.
A bicoastal take from me and @Rosemarie_Ward: https://t.co/tgYISlQNUP

— Aryn Braun (@arynbraun) December 20, 2022

Elaborately engineered immune cells can not only recognize cancer cells, but also evade defences that tumours use to fend off attacks, researchers have found.

Two studies published today in Science1,2 build on the success of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cancer therapies, which use genetically altered T cells to seek out tumours and mark them for destruction. These treatments have the potential to lead to long-lasting remission, but are not successful for everyone, and have so far been effective against only a small number of cancers.

To bolster the power of CAR-T therapies, researchers have further engineered the cells to contain switches that allow control over when and where the cells are active. The hacked cells produce a protein that stimulates T cells, to counteract immunosuppressive signals that are often released by tumours.

Both studies are a tour de force in T-cell engineering and highlight the direction that researchers want to push CAR-T-cell therapy, says systems immunologist Grégoire Altan-Bonnet at the US National Cancer Institute. “We know a lot of the parts, now it’s being able to put them together and explore,” he says. “If we engineer the system well, we can really put the tumours into checkmate.”

Read it all.

Cancer Treatments Boosted By Immune Cell Hacking #Immunology #Cancer #Oncology #Treatment #1 #37 https://t.co/sE2qLUzfmY

— George Obeid (@_Georgeobeid) December 16, 2022

Fentanyl’s catastrophic surge came after the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on the excesses of the U.S. opioid industry. Millions of Americans who had become addicted to prescription pain pills suddenly found them difficult or impossible to get.

Mexican cartels stepped in to fill the vacuum. Traffickers, who relied for decades on plant-based drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana, are now using chemicals in clandestine laboratories to manufacture fentanyl powder and pills to meet the ever-increasing demand in the United States.

Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, and its compactness makes it far easier to smuggle. The synthetic opioid is so powerful that a year’s supply of pure fentanyl powder for the U.S. market would fit in the beds of two pickup trucks.

Read it all.

Fentanyl’s recent surge came after the DEA cracked down on the U.S. opioid industry.

Millions of Americans who had become addicted to prescription pain pills then found them difficult or impossible to get.

Mexican cartels stepped in to fill the vacuum. https://t.co/UnPmsHY5Z2

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 12, 2022

“It has been 2½ years,” said advocate Michael Luciano as he tried to work a tab into a slot of the sculpture. At the first in-person World AIDS day event since the pandemic began, there is a clear need for more education and awareness of a disease overshadowed by COVID-19 in recent years.

Testing for HIV and services plummeted at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 as facilities shut down, people stayed home and others lost their jobs and their health insurance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Dec. 1. Testing dropped off 32 percent nationwide and new diagnoses fell 26 percent. There was a partial rebound by the third quarter of 2020 as facilities reopened and people ventured back out, and fortunately many patients were able to stay connected to care and continued to receive their anti-retroviral therapy, the report found.

Now, service levels are almost back to pre-pandemic levels, said Hayley Berry, a pharmacist with the Ryan White program at Medical University of South Carolina.

“We’re getting there,” she said.

Read it all.

Overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of new HIV cases are declining across the U.S. and South Carolina but are still highest among young people who may not be aware of the disease's history and ongoing risk. https://t.co/Qbk8EV5HTx

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) December 12, 2022

Given that China was already struggling to contain the disease, this is an odd time to loosen restrictions. Other once-isolated places, such as Singapore and Taiwan, prepared for a spike in cases by administering vaccines, stockpiling antiviral drugs and expanding intensive-care units (icus); only then did they gradually open up. China seems to be throwing precaution to the winds. On December 7th it eased its controls by, for example, lifting test requirements for most public venues and letting people with mild infections isolate at home rather than in state-run centres. If the government has a plan to avoid the surge of infections and deaths this could bring, nobody can say what it is—indeed, the lack of clarity alone would severely undermine it.

The easing comes amid mounting public pressure, a sign that the government could not indefinitely sustain its excessively harsh zero-covid policy. For two years this let most Chinese enjoy a normal, virus-free existence and kept the economy humming. The spread of Omicron, though, meant that more and more people had become ensnared in the government’s controls. The economy was suffering. Frustration boiled over last month, when protests occurred in cities across the country.

A more accountable government might have acknowledged its errors while laying out the steps needed to leave zero-covid gradually, when life-saving measures were in place. But Xi Jinping and the Communist Party are rushing ahead, ready or not.

All signs point to not.

Read it all.

Chinese officials and state media have suddenly begun telling people that Omicron is fairly harmless, no worse than the common cold. This is both jarring and disingenuous https://t.co/srRpWNthZo

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 8, 2022

According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline.

By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)

Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).

Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019 and only 10 hours a week in 2021.

Read it all.

Do we ask our patients about this? It is one of the most powerful social determinants. Americans are choosing to be alone. Here’s why we should reverse that. @aafp @stfm https://t.co/Sd0l0f6oKf

— John Frey (@jjfrey3MD) November 27, 2022

According to the Right Rev Dr Iain Greenshields, she was in “fantastic form” on the weekend before she died.

He told Brandreth that she was “so alive and engaging”, and how they spoke about her childhood, her horses, church affairs and her sadness over the war in Ukraine. “Her faith was everything to her. She told me she had no regrets,” he said.

Brandreth wrote: “Her Majesty always knew that her remaining time was limited. She accepted this with all the grace you’d expect.” The biographer claimed he “heard that the Queen had a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer,” which he wrote would explain the tiredness, weight loss and mobility issues that were spoken about during the last year of her life.

Her death certificate stated that she had died of old age.

Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on any of the claims in the book.

Read it all (requires subscription).

“Her faith was everything to her. She told me she had no regrets,” Mr. Brandreth said.

Brandreth wrote: “Her Majesty always knew that her remaining time was limited. She accepted this with all the grace you’d expect.”https://t.co/mpV3KeyUpR

— Michael R. Strain (@MichaelRStrain) November 26, 2022

My dear friends, it’s the Eve of Advent, a season I love. I love the strong liturgical backdrop we will enjoy for the next four weeks; I love the Advent hymns; I love the sense of anticipation and expectation. I love the sustained and deliberate focus, in this season of Joyful Hope, on the assurance of God’s coming kingdom.

But today, I want to look back and not forward, and I want to offer you a Presidential Address with a difference. This morning I want to speak very personally – to tell you about a particular health challenge I have had to face over the past five years. It’s basically a good news story, though I realise the new information may be a bit unsettling for some of you.

To cut to the chase: about four weeks ago, at the start of the month, I was, thank God, signed off by the colorectal department at the Northern General Hospital, because it is five years since I went through treatment for cancer of the colon, and I am no longer meaningfully at risk of a recurrence of the disease. This morning, I’d like to tell you about the diagnosis and treatment I experienced in 2017, and about the impact it has had on me as a person and as a bishop.

I realise this raises questions. Some of you may be wondering why I did not tell you about this at the time, in 2017? It’s a fair point. I do know that you would have been only too keen to pray for me and to care for me pastorally if you had known what I was going through back then. So why didn’t I tell you? Well, partly, I was simply protecting myself. I’m an extreme introvert and in that situation I needed some privacy. But in addition, in mid 2017, this Diocese had just emerged from a torrid Vacancy in See. By then, though I myself was pretty confident, on medical advice, that the prognosis was good, though I was pretty confident of being Bishop of Sheffield long-term, given what many of you had recently gone through, I was concerned that news of my illness might create additional instability and I thought that was the last thing this Diocese needed. So I chose not to go public.

Read it all.

On Saturday @PeteWilcox1564 gave a Presidential Address to Diocesan Synod. He spoke about being diagnosed with cancer of the colon just before he became Bishop of Sheffield.

Thankfully he is no longer meaningfully at risk of a recurrence of the disease.https://t.co/jgxI1DIRwv pic.twitter.com/NmacWMn1Fq

— Diocese of Sheffield (@DioceseofSheff) November 28, 2022