Raytheon Reveals US Plan To Remove Anti-Air Systems From Gulf For Ukraine

 Via The Cradle,

The CEO of US weapons giant Raytheon Technologies, Gregory Hayes, revealed on Thursday that Washington is working with partner nations in West Asia to transfer a handful of their air defense systems to Ukraine.

"The [Pentagon] is going to attempt to do some trading for us where we’ll take some from the [West Asian] countries that are our friends and some from our NATO allies, and try and get those into Ukraine early next year," Hayes said, before adding that the weapons will be  "[backfilled] with new production over the next two years."

Hayes did not mention specific countries the US is discussing the plan with. Washington’s goal with this plan is to deliver National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) to Ukraine within the next three to six months, to avoid a two-year wait for new ones from Raytheon’s factory.

"Just because it takes 24 months to build, it doesn’t mean it’s going to take 24 months to get [to Ukraine]," he said.

NASAMS are operated by five NATO members – Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, and Spain – as well as Oman and Qatar in West Asia, according to Defense Security Cooperation Agency records. Australia, Chile, Finland, and Indonesia also operate the systems.

The White House reportedly approved the arrangement to transfer the air defense systems to Ukraine. However, a Defense Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Politico.

Hayes made the revelations just a day after the US army awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Raytheon for six NASAMS for Ukraine, which are part of the fifth Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package with a total value of $2.98 billion. Raytheon is also waiting in the wings for the approval of a $1 billion deal to provide Qatar with anti-drone systems.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, the US congress has approved $65.9 billion in Ukraine assistance through three separate supplemental funding packages.

Just two weeks ago, US President Joe Biden asked congress for an additional $38 billion in Ukraine aid. If approved, this would bring the total amount of US taxpayer money Washington has funneled into the pockets of US weapon makers and Ukrainian authorities to $104 billion in less than a year.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/raytheon-reveals-us-plan-take-anti-air-systems-west-asia-ukraine

Vaccinated People Make Up Majority Of COVID-19 Deaths: CDC Data

 by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that vaccinated and boosted people made up most of the COVID-19 deaths in August.

Of the total 6,512 deaths recorded in August 2022, 58.6 percent of the deaths were attributed to vaccinated or boosted people, and seem to be a sign of a growing trend where vaccinated individuals are increasingly becoming the majority in COVID-19 mortalities.

In January 2022, COVID-19 mortalities in the vaccinated was still the minority with 41 percent of the data related to vaccinated or boosted individuals.

However, analysis of the CDC data from June and July showed over 50 percent of deaths were being reported in vaccinated individuals, with 62 and 61 percent reported respectively.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cynthia Cox, the vice-president of the Kaiser Family Foundation told the Washington Post in an article dated Nov. 23. 

COVID mortality data from September 2021 to August 2022 (Courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation)

Cox, while in support of COVID-19 vaccination, gave three reasons that may explain why.

One was that the majority of Americans have at least been given the primary series. Her second reason is that elderly, who have the greatest risk of dying from COVID, are also more likely to take up vaccinations.

Cox’s final reason was that the potency of the vaccine will wane over time and as variants become more resistant, and therefore recommended more booster uptake.

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness has been shown to wane dramatically over the period of a few months, sometimes falling into negligible efficacy.

Professor Jeffrey Townsend from Yale University, biostatistician, and lead author to a research study evaluating natural and vaccinated immunity against COVID-19, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times that at this stage in the pandemic, rather than comparing the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, it is more helpful to look at an individual’s time since last exposure instead, with exposures meaning vaccinations or infections.

“Most people have had some kind of exposure, the time since last exposure, along with what the last exposure was, dictates the level of immunity and can explain most variation in susceptibility, morbidity, and mortality,” Townsend wrote.

Currently, long term studies on immunity against COVID-19 have shown that whether a person is vaccinated or infected with COVID-19, their immunity wanes over time.

Other research compared natural immunity with vaccinations often showed that vaccination tends to wane at a much higher rate than that of natural infection.

Some scientists also posited that mRNA vaccines may interfere with the body’s natural immune response. Since the current technology used in mRNA vaccines may “hide the mRNA from cellular defenses and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein,” according to a June 2022 paper published in Food and Chemical Toxicology. The spike protein is the main pathogenic part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Clinicians Question ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ Narrative

Internal medical physician and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times that the pandemic was only driven by the unvaccinated in 2020, where there were no vaccines available, and from 2021 it was mostly the vaccinated people who were dying from COVID-19. He reasoned that it is simply because the vaccine did little to control mortality.

“[The CDC data] is far too late in drawing that conclusion, [the vaccinated] probably assumed the majority sometime during 2021,” said McCullough.

In 2020, more than 385,000 COVID deaths were documented by the CDC, whereas in 2021, when vaccinations were rolling out, there were more than 463,000 COVID-19 deaths.

By June of 2021, around 53 percent of the U.S. population had received their first dose and 44 percent were fully vaccinated.

Yet there was little difference in COVID-19 mortality cases between the first half of 2021 and the second half, with over 244,000 cases (more than 50 percent of the whole year) reported from July to December.

“It certainly can’t be a situation where we blame the unvaccinated for COVID deaths. And we certainly wouldn’t conclude that the vaccines made any impact on us as the majority of deaths happened during the era of vaccinations,” said McCullough.

Data from other countries have also demonstrated higher rates of vaccinated patients being hospitalized with COVID as vaccination rates overall rose.

As early as January 2022, hospitalization data coming out from the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia showed that a greater proportion of hospitalized patients were vaccinated. The vaccinated contributed to 50.3 percent of ICU presentations as compared to the 49.1 percent who were unvaccinated.

NSW was the only state that continued to track and publicize the vaccine status of the people being hospitalized in Australia. It is one of the most vaccinated places; by Nov. 24, over 80 percent of people over the age of 16 received their first boosters.

The most recent weekly data from NSW continued to show that the vaccinated make up the majority of COVID hospitalizations, ICU admission, and deaths. The most recent report, dated to Nov. 12, showed that unvaccinated patients contributed to 21 percent of COVID deaths, and less than 1 percent of hospitalizations and ICU admissions.

However, it should be noted that there was only 24 cases of COVID deaths reported in the report, with 440 hospitalizations and 40 ICU admissions, suggestive of a decline in disease severity.

Mortality data from Manitoba in Canada in the week July 31 to Aug. 6, 2022 also showed that while the boosted population made up 70 percent of all COVID mortalities, the unvaccinated contributed to less than 10 percent of deaths. This is with 43 percent of the population boosted.

Reports out of the UK also showed similar findings. A report (pdf) published on March 31, 2022 showed that almost 73 percent of COVID mortalities were in boosted individuals while 10 percent were attributed to unvaccinated people. At the time, over 57 percent of the population received a booster shot and 73 percent received their primary doses.

Unvaccinated Mortality Rates May Not Reflect the Whole Picture

McCullough added that with the decrease in overall disease severity with Omicron, the data may not present an accurate understanding on COVID deaths.

“The CDC death data has to be interpreted with caution, because they’re not adjudicated as dying of COVID. They can actually die with COVID.”

The CDC’s website currently estimates that only 10 percent of COVID-19 deaths have COVID as the contributor of deaths. Therefore, there may be cases counted as a COVID mortality even if COVID was not the primary driver for the death.

McCullough gave the example that a person may be admitted to the hospital for a heart attack and test positive on the COVID test from having contracted the disease 6 months ago.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/vaccinated-people-make-majority-covid-19-deaths-cdc-data

Musk Releases THE TWITTER FILES: How Twitter Collaborated With "Biden Team" To Cover Up Hunter Laptop Story

 In a greatly anticipated Friday night drop of what has was expected to be a cache of information involving the censoring of Hunter Biden's notebook story days ahead of the 2020 presidential election, moments ago Elon Musk - who worked in collaboration with the notoriously independent gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi of "Vampire Squid" fame - has published the "Twitter Files."

Shortly before their release, Matt Taibbi sent the following email to his substack subscribers:

Dear TK Readers:

Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too.

The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.

Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to to discuss this, too, in time. In any case, thanks for your support and your patience, and please hold me to a promise to make all this up to you, and then some.

Moments later Elon confirmed that he did, in fact, work with Taibbi:

And this is what Taibbi has been tweeting in the past few minutes (link here):

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.

4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.

5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another:  “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:

10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:

11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.

... Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let's jump forward

16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.

19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”

20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:

21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy:  https://web.archive.org/web/20190717143909/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials

22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence - that I've seen - of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem...

23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.

24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:

26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.

27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”

28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:

29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:

30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.

31. Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:

32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:

33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”

34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a "tipping point," complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”

35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:

36.Twitter files continued:  "THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE” 

Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it's "not absolute"

37. An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get "unfucked" (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.

38. While reviewing Gadde's emails, I saw a familiar name - my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident

39. There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum

Developing

*  *  *

The release was telegraphed one week ago, when Musk acknowledged that revealing Twitter's internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is "necessary to restore public trust."

Recall that the Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real "laptop from hell," which contained still-unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden - including a 2015 meeting with an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.

Users who tried to share the link to the article were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Then, days after Musk's tweet, Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, admitted it was a 'mistake' to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In his first public appearance since becoming an ex-employee, Roth suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was simply 'too difficult' for Twitter to verify. Alternatively, the company could have perhaps simply trusted the Post, one of America's oldest publications that doesn't have a reputation for fabricating bombshell stories - like Twitter does with countless anonymous bombshells from other major publications.

“We didn’t know what to believe. We didn’t know what was true. There was smoke,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, as noted by the Epoch Times. “And ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”

“It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” he said, referring to a notorious team of cyberspies affiliated with Russian military intelligence. “Everything about it looked like a hack and leak.”

When asked whether if it was a mistake to censor the story, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.”

Would Roth have suppressed the story if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?

* * *

Finally, it will be very interesting to see which "independent", "impartial" and "objective" members of the Mainstream Media cover the Twitter Files, which unlike all that Russia collusion bullshit, was a real and actionable attempt to interfere with US democracy by covering up one of the most explosive political stories of a generation, not to mention an event that would have swayed the 2020 presidential election. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/elon-musk-releases-twitter-files-how-twitter-collaborated-biden-team-cover-hunter-notebook

Biden Admin Waives Supreme Court Review in Key Transgender Fight

 For the last six years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has pushed a controversial “transgender mandate,” which threatens religious doctors and hospitals with multimillion dollar penalties unless they perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience and medical judgment. When those doctors fought back—winning a major victory in federal appeals court in August—the fight appeared poised to head to the Supreme Court. But on Friday, the Biden administration gave up on seeking Supreme Court review—meaning the hard-fought victory for religious liberty now stands as a powerful precedent nationwide. 

The case, called Franciscan Alliance v. Becerra, was brought by a Catholic hospital system and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, a nationwide organization of thousands of Christian healthcare professionals. The plaintiffs—motivated by their religious mission—compassionately treat every patient that walks through their doors, for everything from cancer to the common cold. But like many other healthcare professionals and experts, they view medical interventions designed to “change” a person’s gender to be harmful—contrary both to the best medical data about how to treat individuals struggling with gender dysphoria and to their religious understanding of sexuality and the human person. They therefore decline to perform such procedures, or to cover them in their insurance plans. 

In 2016, however, the federal government attempted to make them. That year, in the waning days of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule interpreting the Affordable Care Act’s ban on “sex” discrimination in healthcare to mean that healthcare professionals must perform and insure gender transitions, or else face crippling penalties. Over the intervening years and administrations, the mandate has been tweaked around the edges. But the basic requirement—perform gender transitions or else get out of medicine—has remained the same, with the Biden Administration most recently declaring it “dangerous” and likely unlawful to “[a]ttempt[]” to restrict” gender-transition procedures, even for “minors.” 

Fortunately, religious-freedom law protects the ability of religious doctors and hospitals to take a different path. In 2021, a federal court in Texas struck down the transgender mandate as unlawful and permanently blocked the federal government from forcing the plaintiffs to perform or insure gender transitions. The Biden Administration—joined by the ACLU—appealed, but a unanimous Fifth Circuit affirmed—becoming the first federal appellate court to block the transgender mandate. And on Friday, the Biden Administration let its deadline for appealing to the Supreme Court expire—meaning healthcare professionals nationwide can now get back to their ministries without fear that the mandate will be applied to them.  

This is a crucial win, for religious freedom and good medicine alike. As a 2019 survey shows, most healthcare professionals simply couldn’t continue to practice if the price for doing so were to violate their deeply held religious beliefs. Meanwhile, the evidence cutting against a dogmatic “affirmation” approach continues to pile up. Earlier this year, the UK announced it would be shutting down its state-run youth gender-transition clinic, following a report identifying the risks from its “unquestioning affirmative approach.” And just last week, the New York Times highlighted the “emerging evidence of potential harm” from the “puberty blockers” that are typically prescribed as the first step to gender transition, noting that they can lead to dangerously low bone density and commit children to the transition path, even if without intervention they would desist. 

Although Franciscan is finally finished, the legal battle over these issues is expected to go on. A companion case involving other religious doctors and hospitals remains pending in the Eighth Circuit. And the Biden Administration has proposed a new rule that would carry the transgender mandate forward against all healthcare professionals not protected by an injunction. But Franciscan will continue to serve as powerful precedent in future cases, helping to ensure that those who participate in the age-old practice of religiously motivated healthcare can continue to do so without having to disavow their beliefs about what it means to heal. 

Joe Davis is counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty  

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/02/biden_admin_waves_supreme_court_review_in_key_transgender_fight_868028.html

Is the Cancerous Biden Administration Worse than Cancer Itself?

 It’s a 50-year-old movie, but that opening scene from Patton endures in the public consciousness. Every time American military leaders give a motivational speech – intentionally or not – they are channeling George C. Scott’s address to his troop.

At least that’s the impression I got when I heard President Biden say the following recently as part of the country’s ongoing “war on cancer.” He said:

That’s why I’m also calling on the science and medical communities to bring the boldest thinking to this fight. I’m calling on the private sector to develop and test new treatments, make drugs more affordable, share more data and knowledge that can inform the public and benefit every company’s research.

The thing that’s craziest about this is Biden calling on science to win a war while simultaneously crippling his soldiers.

The Democrats strategy on life-saving drugs has been to demand cheaper drugs now, (with an election in November) while ignoring the cost to humanity with fewer new drugs in the future. Make one kind of medicine more affordable now, kill twenty more new innovations tomorrow. Getting a drug to market is an expensive, laborious, and risky process that depends on the traditional American free market.

Democrats’ short-term health care strategy is winning a short-term victory for themselves while sabotaging any kind of long-term victory against cancer. Biden’s speech would be like Patton calling on his men to charge into Germany while taking away their boots and the keys to their tanks.

Cancer has touched many of our families. But you can’t wave a magic wand and fix cancer. Stopping cancer takes real work – in labs, boardrooms, and by government. And “work” means rolling up your sleeves and possibly doing something that your party might not agree with. It means making hard decisions that might not be popular but moving us in the right direction. It means looking at things through the eyes of an entrepreneur instead of a politician.

However, Biden is a politician.

One of the first tests that the administration faced after the announcement of the moonshot was a merger between two companies in the cancer space – Illumina and GRAIL. Instead of stepping aside and allowing these companies to merge – the administration decided to meddle. Illumina, a genetic-sequencing company, and GRAIL, which is developing blood tests for early cancer detection, sought a merger to allow them to do more together, but two companies consolidating their resources doesn’t fit with other areas of the administration’s agenda and doesn’t sit well with the president’s base.

So, instead of doing the hard thing and pursuing his so-called moonshot against cancer, the administration fought the merger. Fast forward a few months and now the administration has lost their case against the merger– costing the government money, the companies involved money and resources, and everyone has lost time that they will never get back.

And,  the Patent Office the administration has gone the other way. To pursue their moonshot, they are allowing cancer-focused innovation to cut in front of other ideas on their way through the Patent Office. Could the patents they are bypassing effect heart disease – the number one killer? Maybe the bypassed patents could help solve/stop/avoid the next pandemic? Maybe the patents that are being slowed would solve migraines that effects our workforce in ways so significant that we aren’t even fully aware of the effects.

No, we might never know what innovations the slow-down will cost us.

On the other hand – the fact that the Patent Office can take six years to approve a patent is appalling and should be the point that the administration rolls up its sleeves and goes to work – not cutting in line.

Solving cancer is a valiant goal. But if it is merely talking points then Biden’s speech was an abhorrent lie. If the administration really wants to attack cancer, they need to roll up their sleeves and do the are hard – like rolling back government programs that interfere with research. The administration isn’t going to solve cancer themselves – but they can make life easier on the people who are going to solve cancer by getting out of their way.

As Patton famously said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” If he were alive today, he’d remind Smilin’ Joe Biden that no bastard ever won a war by attacking his own soldiers.

Charles Sauer is the President of the Market Institute, and the author of ‘Profit Motive: What Drives the Things We Do.’

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2022/12/02/is_the_cancerous_biden_administration_worse_than_cancer_itself_111433.html

Re-examining antibodies' role in childhood allergies

 The presence of food-specific IgA antibodies in the gut does not prevent peanut or egg allergies from developing in children, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in Science Translational Medicine.

Scientists examined stool samples from more than 500 infants across the country and found that the presence of Immunoglobulin A, the most common antibody found in mucous membranes in the digestive tract, does not prevent peanut or egg allergies from developing later in life.

This discovery calls into question the role of Immunoglobulin A, or IgA, which was previously thought to be a protective factor against the development of food allergies.

Peanuts and eggs are the two most common allergens for infants and affect an estimated one in 13 children in the U.S., according to the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

While prior research had shown IgA could bind to and neutralize toxins and bacteria in the body, there was inconclusive evidence that IgA could do the same for food allergens, said Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, Ph.D., chief of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Medicine and senior author of the study.

"We were able to collaborate with different groups around the country to look at a number of different cohorts of children and young adults to ask: 'Does the presence of IgA to peanut tell us that the person is tolerant to peanut?'" said Eisenbarth, who is also director of the Center for Human Immunobiology and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. "We found that there really was no difference between kids who had peanut allergies and children who didn't, and the same is true with egg allergies."

The findings come as rates of allergies in children continue to climb: According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children with allergies has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Future directions for research will center on understanding the role IgA plays in people who have undergone immunotherapy and developed a tolerance to food allergens, Eisenbarth said.

"This study happened because of the hard work of lead author Dr. Elise Liu and the amazing group of collaborators that we had," she said. "This was an impressive, multi-center effort to try and answer this question. I really want to thank the people from every corner of the U.S. that provided samples and expertise to make this happen."

More information: Elise G. Liu et al, Food-specific immunoglobulin A does not correlate with natural tolerance to peanut or egg allergens, Science Translational Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abq0599

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-re-examining-antibodies-role-childhood-allergies.html

Short term memory problems can be improved with laser therapy

 Laser light therapy has been shown to be effective in improving short term memory in a study published in Science Advances.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and Beijing Normal University in China, demonstrated that the therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short term, or working memory in people by up to 25%.

The treatment, called transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM), is applied to an area of the brain known as the right prefrontal cortex. This area is widely recognized as important for working memory. In their experiment, the team showed how working memory improved among research participants after several minutes of treatment. They were also able to track the changes in brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during treatment and testing.

Previous studies have shown that laser light treatment will improve working memory in mice, and human studies have shown tPBM treatment can improve accuracy, speed up reaction time and improve high-order functions such as attention and emotion.

This is the first study, however, to confirm a link between tPBM and working memory in humans.

Dongwei Li, a visiting Ph.D. student in the University of Birmingham's Center for Human Brain Health, is co-author on the paper. He said, "People with conditions like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or other attention-related conditions could benefit from this type of treatment, which is safe, simple and non-invasive, with no side-effects."

In the study researchers at Beijing Normal University carried out experiments with 90 male and female participants aged between 18 and 25. Participants were treated with laser light to the right prefrontal cortex at wavelengths of 1,064 nm, while others were treated at a shorter wavelength, or treatment was delivered to the left prefrontal cortex. Each participant was also treated with a sham, or inactive, tPBM to rule out the placebo effect.

After tPBM treatment over 12 minutes, the participants were asked to remember the orientations or color of a set of items displayed on a screen. The participants treated with laser light to the right prefrontal cortex at 1,064 nm showed clear improvements in memory over those who had received the other treatments. While participants receiving other treatment variations were about to remember between three and four of the test objects, those with the targeted treatment were able to recall between four and five objects.

Data, including from electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during the experiment was analyzed at the University of Birmingham and showed changes in brain activity that also predicted the improvements in memory performance.

The researchers do not yet know precisely why the treatment results in positive effects on working memory, nor how long the effects will last. Further research is planned to investigate these aspects.

Professor Ole Jensen, also at the Center for Human Brain Health, said, "We need further research to understand exactly why the tPBM is having this positive effect, but it's possible that the light is stimulating the astrocytes—the powerplants—in the nerve cells within the prefrontal cortex, and this has a positive effect on the cells' efficiency. We will also be investigating how long the effects might last. Clearly if these experiments are to lead to a clinical intervention, we will need to see long-lasting benefits."

More information: Chenguang Zhao et al, Transcranial photobiomodulation enhances visual working memory capacity in humans, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq3211. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq3211

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