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World health officials are linking a significant rise in African Ebola outbreaks in this century to climate change.    

Uganda’s September 20 Ebola outbreak is just the latest in a growing number of eruptions of this deadly hemorrhagic disease in Africa. Since 2000, the World Health Organization has reported 32 outbreaks of Ebola, 19 in the last decade compared to 13 in the preceding one.

Ebola is one of a range of zoonotic diseases — infections originating in animals and jumping to humans. A WHO analysis finds Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks. The remaining 30% include dengue fever, anthrax, plague, and monkeypox.  

WHO Africa incident manager for the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Patrick Otim, says the number of zoonotic diseases occurring in the region in the last decade has increased by more than 63%.

“There have been a couple of researchers that have shown a possible link between the climatic changes that we are seeing and the increase in zoonotic diseases, and for this particular case for Ebola, for instance,” he said.

Otim said diseases are caused by several factors. Ebola, he said, is strongly influenced by the human factor. As populations increase and people encroach on wildlife habitats, interaction with animals increases. This, he said, increases the spread of disease to humans.

Otim said temperature and climatic changes also spur migration and movement of some Ebola virus hosts. 

“For the Ebola virus, we know that the bats and other animals are hosts of this particular virus,” he said. So, when they move from areas where, for instance, there is drought or whether areas that are no longer conducive for them and they move to favorable areas, they may move into an area where the human population is inhabiting and therefore the interaction between the humans increases.”

WHO says Ebola now has spread to seven districts in Uganda beyond the original epicenter in the Mubende district. The latest reports put the number of cases at 131, including 48 deaths.

The current Ebola outbreak in Uganda has been triggered by the so-called Sudan strain for which there is no vaccine. WHO said several promising candidate vaccines soon will undergo clinical trials to evaluate their potential against Ebola.
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Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away.

Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder.

It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun.

The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.
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More than 120 world leaders will attend this year’s U.N. climate talks, and requests by environmental activists to stage a rally during the event would be responded to “positively,” host Egypt said.

Veteran diplomat Wael Aboulmagd, who heads the Egyptian delegation, told reporters Friday that his country had been working for months to set the scene for “meaningful outcomes” at the two-week meeting in the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh starting Sunday.

“We have, I think about 121 maybe, and the number is growing, heads of state and government here,” he said during an online briefing. “We hope that it will be a watershed moment.” Leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed their attendance, but Aboulmagd said other major heads of state such as China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi would not be going.

Aboulmagd said recent scientific reports highlighted the urgency of tackling global warming.

“Everyone is now aware of the gravity of the situation, of the enormity of the challenge, and have come here hopefully to work together,” he said.

Greenhouse gases, financial aid

Several thorny issues will be discussed at the November 6-18 talks, including further cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting financial aid for poor countries struggling with the impacts of climate change. It is the first such meeting held in Africa since 2016. Over 40,000 people have registered for the event.

Aboulmagd appealed to negotiators to engage constructively. “We cannot afford to waste any time,” he said. “So everyone must rise to the occasion and must move away from the adversarial winner-takes-all approach that has plagued this process for too long.”

Civil society groups have expressed concern that their presence at this year’s talks will be restricted, citing Egypt’s questionable human rights record.

But Aboulmagd said activists would get their space, with special arrangements already put in place “for those who want to organize demonstrations or protests or stand-ins.”

Asked about the possibility of holding a large rally midway through the talks, as has traditionally happened in previous meetings, he said, “That will be taken care of.”

Organizers would need to submit the names of contact persons, and city officials must approve the planned route.

“Once a request to that effect comes, it will be responded to positively,” he said.

Egypt would press diplomats to live up to the lofty pledges their leaders had made, Aboulmagd said, warning that so far, these had not been translated into the negotiating rooms.

“This separation between the reality in the public sphere and what actually happens in negotiating rooms cannot continue,” he said. “It is about real lives that are being lost and future lives that will be devastated” by unchecked climate change. 
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In South Africa, a country where ‘braai’ all-day barbecuing is a national pastime, plant-based substitutes are making surprising inroads despite a deep cultural love of meat and hostility from the regulator.

That could be heartening for climate scientists, who say shifting diets from emissions-heavy meat and dairy towards more plant-based foods is vital to the fight against climate change.

Plant-based meat substitutes are growing by 6.5% a year and sales are expected to reach $561 million by 2023, according to Research and Markets – more than half Africa’s share of a global market forecast to hit $162 billion by 2030.

That is still pretty niche – South Africans spent $15 billion on meat products in 2018 and is now the world’s 9th biggest per capita consumer of beef.

But the popularity of veggie alternatives would have been unthinkable even a decade ago and the market is outstripping forecast growth for meat. The shift has so unnerved South Africa’s processed meat industry that in June it lobbed for – and got – a government ban on plant-based products using words like ‘nugget’, ‘sausage’ or ‘burger’ on packaging.

The agriculture department at the time said the move was aimed at preventing consumer confusion. A spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Food producers remain undeterred.

At meat processor Feinschmecker, staff pour powdered soy and pea protein into vats and rehydrate them to make its plant-based ‘deli slice’ – called so in anticipation of a ban on labeling it ‘ham’.

“A lot of it’s driven by flexitarianism. People who want to make a bit of an effort to eat less meat,” Alistair Hayward, Feinschmecker managing director, told Reuters.

Top food producer Tiger Brands TBSJ.J bought a stake in meat-substitute start-up Herbivoire in March, while supermarkets like Woolworths WHLJ.J have introduced their own ranges.

Clearly, ethical food choices are a luxury of the relatively well-to-do – a quarter of South Africans struggle to put any food on the table.

Consumer climate

Evidence is accumulating that curbing consumption of meat and dairy – which the latest estimates put at around a fifth of all emissions – is key to meeting U.N. climate goals.

A paper in Science in February said ending animal agriculture could stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68% of CO2 emissions this century; another in 2018 showed switching the world to a purely plant-based diet could slash food-related emissions – which are about 30% of the total – by nearly half.

Yet forgoing cheeseburgers is not something governments, many of which dole out billions of dollars to livestock farmers, are likely to propose at this month’s climate talks in Egypt.

Lowering animal consumption, then, may boil down to consumers – like Angie Raphalalani, 57. She gave up meat over climate concerns and her diabetes.

“My immediate family … were shocked,” she said, after lunching at plant-based restaurant Lexi’s Healthy Eatery in Johannesburg. “But probably they’ll follow me. I’m quite influential in their lives.”
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The lone volunteer in a study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him.

Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition.

Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It’s raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases.

“This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University who is not involved in the study. “We are out on the far edge of experimentation.”

The early-stage safety study was sponsored by the nonprofit, led by Dr. Brenda Wong at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The hope was to use a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to treat Horgan’s form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The rare, genetic muscle-wasting disease is caused by a mutation in the gene needed to produce a protein called dystrophin. Most people with Duchenne die from lung or heart issues caused by it.

At this point, it’s unclear whether Horgan received the treatment and whether CRISPR, other aspects of the study or the disease itself contributed to his death. Deaths are not unheard of in clinical trials, which test experimental treatments and sometimes involve very sick people.

But trials involving CRISPR are relatively new. And Fyodor Urnov, a CRISPR expert at the Innovative Genomics Institute at University of California, Berkeley, said any death during a gene therapy trial is an opportunity for the field to have a reckoning.

“Step one is to grieve for the passing of a brave human soul who agreed to be basically a participant in an experiment on a human being,” Urnov said. “But then, to the extent that we can, we must learn as much as we can to carve out a path forward.”

Few answers yet

A statement from Cure Rare Disease said multiple teams across the country are looking into the details of the trial and its outcome, and the company intends to share findings with the scientific community.

“It will probably be 3-4 months to come up with a full conclusion,” said spokesman Scott Bauman. “At this stage of the game, saying anything is pure speculation.”

The company, which is also working on 18 other therapeutics, said in its statement that the team’s work is essential not only to shed light on the study’s outcome but also “on the challenges of gene therapy broadly.” Meanwhile, it said, “we will continue to work with our researchers, collaborators, and partners to develop therapies for the neuromuscular diseases in our pipeline.”

Bauman said the company has filed a report on death the with the FDA as required. The FDA declined to release or confirm the report.

Sarah Willey, spokesperson for Chan Medical School, said scientists there provided data to the company for the report. She later emailed to say no one there would comment further; out of respect for the family’s wishes, all information would come from Cure Rare Disease.

A crucial question is whether CRISPR played a part in Horgan’s death.

The chemical tool can be used to “edit” genes by making cuts or substitutions in DNA. The tool has transformed genetic research and sparked the development of dozens of experimental therapies. The inventors of the tool won a Nobel Prize in 2020.

In this case, scientists used a modified form of CRISPR to increase the activity of a gene. The CRISPR therapeutic is inserted directly into the body and delivered to cells with a virus.

But CRISPR is not perfect.

“We know that CRISPR can miss its target. We know that CRISPR can be partially effective. And we also know that there may be issues with … viral vectors” that deliver the therapy into the body, Caplan said. “Red flags are flying here.”

Another difference? The recent trial involved just one person — a type of trial Caplan is skeptical about.

A ‘medical pioneer’

On the company’s website, Horgan was described as a “medical pioneer” who “will be remembered as a hero.”

In 2020, the Montour Falls, New York resident blogged that he was diagnosed with Duchenne at age 3. As a kid, he said, he loved computers — once building his own — and would play catch in the driveway with his family when he could still walk. Later in his life, he used a motorized wheelchair. He studied information science at Cornell University and went on to work at the school in the information science department.

“As I grew up and began to understand what it meant to have DMD, my fears about this disease began to grow as it began to manifest,” Horgan wrote. “There weren’t many, or any, trials available to me through the years” — until this one brought the prospect of a customized drug.

The plan was to suppress Horgan’s immune system to prep his body for a one-time, gene-editing therapy delivered by IV at UMass medical school, followed by monitoring in the hospital. The therapy is designed to increase the level of an alternate form of the dystrophin protein using CRISPR, with the goal of stabilizing or potentially reversing the progression of symptoms.

Urnov, scientific director for technology and translation at the Berkeley genomics institute, said no other trial targeted this disease using this kind of virus to deliver this particular payload with its modified form of CRISPR.
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