RFK, Jr., Fires CDC Vaccine Panel, Oceans Are Acidifying, and Pangolins Face Newly Understood Threat
Major changes hit a key CDC vaccine advisory panel, ocean acidification crosses a critical threshold, and new research reveals an unexpected threat to pangolins.
Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific American
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American’s board of editors.
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to the weekly science news roundup. Let’s dive right in.
First, I’ve got a quick dispatch from Lauren Young, associate editor for health and medicine at Scientific American. Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced the dismissal of all the public health experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The ACIP is an independent committee that counsels the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. Here’s Lauren now to tell us more about the situation.
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Lauren Young: So a little rundown of what ACIP does: the committee’s recommendations help guide doctors, health practitioners and the general public on whether or not various groups of people should get access to vaccines and when. So for instance, they help shape immunization schedules for adults, kids, pregnant people and those with preexisting health conditions that may make them more vulnerable to severe illness.
So the ACIP meets about three times a year, and the meetings are open to the public and typically broadcasted and recorded online; you can go back and watch old meetings. The ACIP members review all sorts of different types of data: evidence from government scientists, studies from vaccine manufacturers, independent studies, etcetera.
In Kennedy’s announcement of the dismissals in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he framed the firings as a “bold step in restoring public trust” in the committee and said that a total rehaul of ACIP is needed. HHS also made a statement that the next meeting on June 25–27 is still on the books. And that upcoming meeting is a big one: votes for the upcoming fall COVID vaccines as well as guidance for flu and RSV vaccines are all on the table.
I spoke with Brown University epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, and she says that without ACIP’s nonpartisan expert guidance, access to vaccines can easily become interrupted. She also points out that the HHS secretary makes final approvals of new members, giving a potential opportunity for Kennedy, who has a history being an anti-vaccine advocate, to potentially stack the committee with new members who may support anti-vaccine views. And this can have larger consequences on access to all vaccines in the United States.
So if the ACIP doesn’t recommend a vaccine, health insurers don’t have to cover the costs, and that can mean a pretty hefty bill for a shot. That’s a concern scientists are wrestling with right now with the anticipated reductions in access for the next COVID shots. But Nuzzo is worried that COVID shots may only be the beginning. We’re gonna have to wait and see what potentially happens at the next ACIP meeting for more information.
Feltman: On Wednesday afternoon Kennedy announced eight people he’d chosen to replace the 17 dismissed advisory panel members. His picks are already raising red flags among public health experts, with the list including several individuals who have expressed skepticism or spread misinformation about vaccine safety and efficacy.
We’ll keep you updated on this situation as it evolves further. You can also read more on ScientificAmerican.com.
Now for some environmental news. You’ve heard of climate change, but what about its “evil twin”? That’s what some experts have dubbed ocean acidification, according to the Guardian. Until now ocean acidification was one of the few Earth system processes thought to still be within its “planetary boundary”—the safe operating limits for keeping the planet stable. But a study published last Monday in Global Change Biology suggests this isn’t the case.
Ocean acidification refers to the dropping pH of ocean waters. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the acidity of surface waters has increased by about 30 percent in the more than 200 years since the start of the industrial revolution. That’s because when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels go up, global warming isn’t the only consequence; the ocean absorbs a lot of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide, and CO2 sets off a series of chemical reactions that leads to a lower pH. The first organisms to fall victim to ocean acidification are typically ones with skeletons and hard shells because a lower pH makes it more difficult for animals to build and maintain those structures. But fish and other organisms can suffer, too.
The new study combined existing ice core data with computer models to get a better picture of how the ocean’s pH is changing. The researchers found that by 2020, more than 40 percent of the global ocean surface had passed the planetary boundary threshold. The authors say lowering carbon dioxide emissions is the only way to fix the problem, but conservation efforts could help affected organisms and regions in the meantime.
We’ll wrap up with a couple of animal stories. I’ll get the less fun one out of the way first. If you’ve never seen a pangolin, I highly recommend doing a quick image search for one. They’re the only mammals fully covered in scales, and I’ve always thought they look like sentient pine cones. Unfortunately, pangolin scales are highly sought after for use in traditional medicine, and these adorable critters are considered to be the most highly trafficked mammal on the planet. What’s worse is that they react to danger by curling up into little scaly balls—that’s where the pine cone resemblance gets really uncanny—which is a great way to ward off a hungry predator but also a great way to make them easy pickings for a human hunter.
A study published last Friday in Nature Ecology & Evolution confirms another inconvenient truth about pangolins: apparently they’re delicious.
It’s not actually news that lots of people eat the eight pangolin species found in Africa and Asia. But researchers wanted to figure out how much the demand for meat contributed to the animal’s decline versus the scale trade. The researchers surveyed 809 hunters and meat vendors in Nigeria—which has become a major hub for pangolin trafficking, thanks to the creature’s dwindling populations in Asia—about how and why they acquire pangolins. It turns out that 97 percent of pangolins are captured not by dedicated pangolin hunters but by people in the right place at the right time and largely to be eaten. More often than not, the scales are actually discarded. Another survey the researchers ran—this one focused on hunters, meat vendors, and household members of each—also ranked pangolin meat higher than any other wild game or domesticated animal in terms of taste.
This matters for a couple of reasons. First, the researchers point out, their data suggests that our estimates of pangolin exploitation, which largely rely on the number of scales found on the trafficking market, are probably way too low. This also suggests that conservation efforts are putting their resources in the wrong place. The authors note that implementing programs to improve food security for local people, combined with efforts to educate hunters about the importance of pangolin conservation, could have a bigger impact than aggressive policing of scale traffickers. The results also provide a broader reminder that conservationists need to make an effort to understand the motivations of the people who are hunting or otherwise exploiting endangered animals.
Lastly, we have a story about Triassic reptiles walking 500 miles and then walking 500 more—and doing that 10 times.
In a study published last Wednesday in Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists report that more than 200 million years ago, archosauromorphs—reptiles from the evolutionary branch upon which dinosaurs and crocodiles would later emerge—may have migrated across vast distances that were previously thought to be inhospitable to life.
Scientists already knew that these reptiles survived a brutal mass extinction, which opened the door for dinosaurs to evolve. It was previously assumed that archosauromorphs were stuck living in a few specific spots because of extreme heat throughout the tropics. But by modeling the reptiles’ evolutionary trees to cover gaps in the fossil record, researchers found evidence that the creatures managed to cross 10,000 miles of hellish terrain to spread across the globe. I guess it really is true that life finds a way.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday with some surprising new microbiome science.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
