Book Review: 'Air-borne' transforms scientific history into detective story
Zimmer creates a highly relevant and gripping history of the study of the air that spans from Louis Pasteur holding a glass globe on a glacier to scientists racing to fight COVID-19 during the pandemic.
The book shows what a vital role the science of airborne life has played in the fight against COVID, influenza and other diseases. Zimmer also introduces readers to figures little known to the mass public who have played a role in the field's evolution.
They include William Firth Wells, a pioneer in aerobiology whose work was crucial in understanding how airborne diseases spread, especially during the pandemic.
Zimmer's book also shows how the work of Wells and other scientists was distorted into something that was used as the basis of biological weapons.
Using the outbreak among a Washington state choir, Zimmer chillingly describes how COVID-19 spread through the air and the frustrating rifts among health officials during the pandemic about addressing to the public that the virus was airborne.
As Zimmer puts it, the pandemic 'made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible.' His book is a key guide for understanding that ocean.
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AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press
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San Francisco Chronicle
7 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars
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Politico
8 hours ago
- Politico
Experts' bird flu warning
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Key context: U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the administration in June to restore hundreds of scientific grants the NIH terminated this year. During a hearing on two lawsuits about grant terminations, the Massachusetts judge, a former President Ronald Reagan appointee, rebuked the administration for what he called 'appalling' and 'palpably clear' discrimination against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ Americans. Industry Intel COMMON GROUND WITH AMA — Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, the American Medical Association's new president, is seeking common ground with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., even as the AMA has skirmished with Kennedy over his changes at HHS, Simon reports. Mukkamala told POLITICO on Friday he supports Kennedy's push to swap out unhealthy food additives, like Coca-Cola's decision to replace high-fructose corn syrup with cane sugar in its soda recipe. He added that he wants to prevent food producers from 'dictating' Americans' diets. 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UPI
8 hours ago
- UPI
Korean scientists say they developed oral drug against COVID-19
An illustration is intended to show how CP-COV03, or Xafty, works against COVID-19 in the body. Image courtesy of Hyundai Bioscience SEOUL, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- A group of scientists, primarily from South Korean universities, has confirmed the efficacy of an oral anti-viral treatment, called CP-COV03 or Xafty, against COVID-19 after a clinical trial. If a later-stage trial is successful and the medication is approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the drug could be available next year. Developed by Korea's biotech company Hyundai Bioscience, the drug was found to address major COVID-19 symptoms listed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, including cough, headache, sore throat, nausea and chills. The findings were published in the latest edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. "We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial with 300 patients to learn that CP-COV03 was effective in improving COVID-19 symptoms for more than 48 hours, with no serious adverse events," Dankook University professor Choy Jin-ho told UPI. He is one of the paper's corresponding co-authors. "Patients treated with CP-COV03 returned to usual health more quickly and had a lower risk of hospitalization compared to the control group. This shows that the drug is safe and effective in patients suffering from mild to moderate COVID-19," he said. Choy said he expects that CP-COV03 to have strong commercial potential because it was based on niclosamide, a well-known medication previously used to treat tapeworm infections. "Niclosamide's clinical use has been limited due to poor solubility and bioavailability. However, our study indicates that niclosamide-based CP-COV03 works as a safer and more effective alternative to previous COVID-19 treatments such as Paxlovid," Choy said. Hyundai Bioscience noted that the Seoul-based company would develop CP-COV03 as a versatile anti-viral treatment for a range of diseases, beyond just COVID-19. "We are prepared to produce CP-COV03 as a broad-spectrum treatment once we are authorized to do so in our target countries," Hyundai Bioscience CEO Bae Byoung-jun said in a phone interview. "To use CP-COV03 as a treatment for dengue fever, for example, we have received approval to start a seamless phase II/III clinical trial in Vietnam. We hope to launch the study this year, with the aim of bringing the drug to market next year," he said.
