New top story from Time: We Need More Data in the Fight Against Cancer. Here’s a Plan to Help Us Get There

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For the first time in over a year, we are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel from the devastation caused by COVID-19. While much work remains to end and avoid a resurgence of the pandemic, public and private investments in scientific research will get us to a new normal. The speed to develop, test and manufacture COVID-19 vaccines has shown how science and technology, supported by leadership from governments and the private sector, have the ability to save lives. For example, the CDC’s V-safe program, which recorded side effects, led to the collection of data from tens of millions of people after vaccination, creating a new paradigm for data collection after drug approval.

These successes show just how much can be done when we invest in science and the systems to deploy it effectively. That is why we believe President Biden has the opportunity to lead on another major investment in scientific leadership: the battle to end suffering from cancer.

Despite recent advancements in medicine, cancer still kills more Americans each year than the COVID-19 pandemic has to date. Significant disparities exist, with African-American men having the highest death rates from cancer of any group in the country.

Now in its fifth of seven years, the Cancer Moonshot program, launched under the leadership of then Vice President Biden, has made significant progress. But with challenges remaining, there is a need to renew commitment, refresh priorities and increase funding for Cancer Moonshot 2.0. These efforts will complement and accelerate the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) existing work.

We see several interrelated priorities for a second Cancer Moonshot, which can unlock new and needed progress in the war on cancer. To begin: standardizing and collecting cancer-patient data (using the same vocabulary to describe medical events and collecting patient data in the same way so they can be compared), especially on outcomes that matter to patients. Patients want to be part of the solution and participate, through use of their privacy-protected data. For too long, electronic health records have been health system–centric, making it difficult for patients, doctors and researchers to track an individual patient’s data over time and across systems. With standardized, patient-centric data, artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify measures for intercepting cancer early, reducing disparities in outcomes and using precision medicine to get treatments to patients who will most benefit from them. With standardized data, we can also create a national cancer data (NatCanDa) repository that researchers can use to inform treatment development, and better pool and share our data with the world. Data holds the clues to better treating cancer.

In addition, we have to modernize systems at the NCI, the FDA, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other government agencies that collect cancer-related data. Modernized systems, including outcomes, clinical-trial and claims data, will allow us to use real-world evidence to determine which treatments work best for which types of patients and under which models of care, and the most cost-effective ways of delivering those treatments. This will also serve as the foundation of a coordinated cancer clinical trial infrastructure to support faster and more effective drug development.

Together, these initiatives can set up a national “learning health system” for cancer treatment and prevention, where research informs clinical care, and clinical care informs research. Better data sharing and use of real-world evidence can lay the foundation for similar progress on other diseases, especially complex chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

The ability of science to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic shows that, with the right government, scientific, health care, technology and community leadership, we can come together to save lives.

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Delegation of 60 farmers meet Narendra Singh Tomar, extend support to farm laws https://ift.tt/37Py5x3

A delegation of 60 farmers belonging to Kisaan Majdoor Sangh, Baghpat on Thursday met Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar at Krishi Bhawan in Delhi. These farmers also submitted memorandum wherein they extended support to the new farm laws.

New top story from Time: Supreme Court Delivers Two Major Voting Victories to Democrats. But the Battle May Not Be Over

https://ift.tt/3ea9ynJ The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed Democrats major victories in election legal battles in two critical swing states, letting extended deadlines for mail-in ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania remain in place for now. The Supreme Court declined to expedite a decision on Pennsylvania’s extended deadline for receiving mail-in ballots, virtually guaranteeing it will remain in place through the election, and, in a separate ruling, declined to halt an appeals court ruling that kept the North Carolina deadline in place. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented in both of the rulings. The Court’s newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed on Monday, did not participate because she did not have adequate time to review the filings, according to the court’s public information officer. As a result of the rulings, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can be received through Nov. 6th in Pennsylvania and Nov. 12 ...

New top story from Time: Good Intentions Are Not Enough. We Must Reset for a Fairer Future

https://ift.tt/3usi2im We need a reset. We know we have racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and additional forms of bias and discrimination built into our workplaces, our schools, our medical care and all our institutions. We know it is systemic and harmful. In the tech industry , its products are harming our brains, our self-worth, our values, our pandemic response, our children and our society. Social media platforms are enabling and amplifying white supremacy and other forms of hate for profit. Workers are struggling to make a living wage while CEO billionaires work them harder, pay them less, create poor working environments and hoard ill-gotten profits. In politics, we are witnessing attacks on voting rights , abortion and housing; in schools and universities, teaching racism and science are under threat. In hospitals, Black, Latinx and Southeast Asian workers hold the front line while their communities get less access and worse care. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] ...

FOX NEWS: Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell.

Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/bGAoiKV

New top story from Time: Here’s What to Know About the ROC and Why Russia Can’t Compete At the Tokyo Olympics

https://ift.tt/3f2gPrp Those tuning into the Tokyo Olympics may have noticed that Russian athletes are competing under the flag of the ROC, or Russian Olympic Committee, rather than their native country. That’s because the 335 Russian athletes participating in this year’s Summer Games are considered “neutrals” due to the fact that Russia is currently banned from the Olympics. In 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency banned Russia from all international sporting competitions, including the Olympics, for four years over a doping scandal. The punishment was cut in half to two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport following a 2020 appeal and now ends in December 2022. But at this year’s Olympics, Russia still can’t be represented as a country. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] This led to the creation of the ROC, a workaround for Russian athletes who have proven they weren’t connected to the doping scandal to still be able to compete in Tokyo. How does ROC work? While the...

New top story from Time: No, the Vikings Did Not Discover America. Here’s Why That Myth is Problematic

https://ift.tt/3h1mI9B Who discovered America? The common-sense answer is that the continent was discovered by the remote ancestors of today’s Native Americans. Americans of European descent have traditionally phrased the question in terms of identifying the first Europeans to have crossed the Atlantic and visited what is now the United States. But who those Europeans were is not such a simple question—and, since the earliest days of American nationhood, its answer has been repeatedly used and misused for political purposes . Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of the discovery. The Irish claim centers on St Brendan, who in the sixth century is said to have sailed to America in his coracle. The Welsh claimant is Madog ab Owain Gwynedd, who is said to have landed in Mobile, Ala., in 1170. The Scottish claimant is Henry Sinclair, earl of Orkney, who is said to have reached Westford, Mass., in 1398. The English have never claimed first contact, but in the English colonies John Ca...

New top story from Time: What to Know About COVID-19 Vaccines and Heart Conditions in Younger People

https://ift.tt/3xSoBLv On June 23, a group of scientists told the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that mRNA vaccines (those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) have a “likely association” with heart risks for younger people. Understandably, that’s still generating a lot of attention. Here’s what you should know about COVID-19 vaccines and heart problems. The heart issues in question are called myocarditis and pericarditis Those refer, respectively, to inflammation of the heart and the lining around it. While they sound scary, both tend to clear up on their own or with minimal treatment, particularly if caught early. They can come with symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue and abnormal heart rhythms, and can be caused by viruses and bacteria. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] They are a very rare vaccine side effect Since April, about 1,000 cases have been reported among people who got vaccin...

New top story from Time: ‘One Slip of the Tongue Could Ruin Things.’ Bipartisan Talks on Police Reform Advance—Delicately

https://ift.tt/2ScOdmJ A small bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington are making an urgent push to get a police reform bill passed in Congress in the wake of a Minneapolis jury finding Derek Chauvin, a white former police officer, guilty of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, last May. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they are optimistic that renewed bipartisan talks will result in a deal that can pass both of the closely split chambers of Congress. President Joe Biden has given lawmakers a deadline to get it done by the anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25. “Congress should act,” said Biden during his joint address on Wednesday. “We have a giant opportunity to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.” The way forward in reforming America’s police force must now be found in a legislative body regularly paralyzed by partisanship and disagreement, on an issue that has become so divisive that compromise can translate to losing support from member...

New top story from Time: How the Delta Variant Overtook Missouri: A Lesson for the Rest of the U.S.

https://ift.tt/3laOIdC In mid-June, U.S. maps tracking the spread of COVID-19 began showing a cluster of cases growing in the middle of the country. The epicenter lay in Missouri, particularly its more rural and remote areas. At the time, Missouri had something that other states didn’t: the Delta variant. To be fair, the highly transmissible Delta variant had at that point already crept into other states. But it had truly established itself in Missouri. Among the 25 states the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s website reported on at the time, Delta was showing up in less than 5% of swab samples in 15 of them. Colorado had the second-highest rate, at 12%. But Missouri was something else: nearly 30% of COVID-positive swabs were linked to the Delta variant. As of July 28, Missouri is reporting a seven-day average of new daily cases of 27.3 per 100,000 people, up from 5.4 during the first week of May, before Delta took hold there. [time-brightcove not-tgx...

New top story from Time: Making Meals From Mealworms Is ‘Part of the Answer’ to the Climate Crisis, the CEO of Ynsect Says

https://ift.tt/3kKguwZ (To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here .) Global food production accounts for one-third of all greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a comprehensive study published this year in the journal Nature Food that looked at every aspect of food production from transportation to packaging. Meat production alone makes up nearly 60% of that total. The study underscores the growing consensus that in order to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, the world needs a dramatic rethinking of how food is produced and consumed . Especially since the U.N. estimates that food production will have to increase by 70% by 2050 to feed the world’s growing population. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Increasingly, companies and scientists are viewing insects as an environmentally sustainable alternative source of protein. Crickets, grasshoppers and beetles are already commercially produce...

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