Where to buy boar, rabbit and other wild game meat

Before my family moved to Maine back in the mid ’90s, I’d only ever had chicken, beef, and pork, with the odd bit of duck and lamb on special occasions. Once we settled in and made friends with folks, I had my first taste of game meat — specifically, deer and moose. Hunting was, and continues to be, a big thing where I grew up. Every November, the handful of our friends that hunted would bag a deer, and we’d inevitably end up with some of it in our freezer. Because of that, I’ve always associated winter with venison stew.

It’s been a long time since I last lived in Maine, but I still get those annual cravings for venison. A few years back, I wondered if I could get my hands on venison online, along with any of the other types of game meat I’d since been lucky enough to try. As always, my old pal the internet provided a bounty of options. Here are my three favorite places to buy wild game meat.

1. Fossil Farms (Boonton, NJ)

This supplier originally started as an ostrich farm back in 1997. As its customer base grew, so did demand for other game meats, and they currently offer (in my experience) the widest selection of game meats of any online supplier. I asked why they’re called Fossil Farms, assuming I’d get an answer about prehistoric hunters. As it turns out, “Fossil” is what founders Lance and Todd Appelbaum call their father, who advised them, “You don’t have to be the biggest, just be the best at what you do!” The company is named after him.

House favorites include ostrich steaks, of course, but they also recommend their bison short ribs, braised and pulled for nachos, tacos, and chili, as well as their kangaroo loin and wild boar tenderloin. Personally? I’m a huge fan of their semi-boneless quails. And if you’re not sure where to start, or how to prepare a certain cut, everyone on staff has culinary experience. Give them a call, and whoever picks up will be happy to geek out about food with you.

2. Broken Arrow Ranch (Ingram, TX)

Founded in 1983, this supplier had an unconventional start. “My dad used to carry venison around in a cooler, walking the streets of NYC and Chicago, to get chefs to taste his meat,” says Broken Arrow Ranch owner Chris Hughes. Originally a wholesaler for restaurants, they opened their supply to individual customers in 2007. Beyond wild and farmed venison, they’ve expanded their offerings to include locally sourced wild boar, Bandera quail, and lamb. Hughes’ favorite cut is the venison osso buco, especially in the colder months, and I’m inclined to agree. Although venison is known for being a leaner meat than beef, I’d take venison osso buco over beef any day. After a long braise, it’s just as tender and even more flavorful than any osso buco I’ve had before.

3. FarmFoods Market (Los Altos, CA)

Founded out of a desire to know exactly where her meat was coming from, FarmFoods Market COO Janna Land originally specialized in sourcing grass-fed beef from local farms. FarmFoods Market now works with several small farms across the country, and as demand for their products has increased, so has its selection. In addition to beef, pork, and chicken, you can now buy elk, venison, bison, wild boar, rabbit, and yak. While the beef is fantastic (grass-fed beef really is a delight), I recommend the yak—it’s wonderful in stews and curries.

Still game for more?

How hunting my own food taught me to cook mindfully

From the pandemic, a roadmap for lowering the costs of medicine

Just under a decade ago, health care analysts at a pair of U.K.-based financial firms identified a trend they playfully referred to as “Eroom’s Law.” The name was an inversion of “Moore’s Law,” the observation that computers and transistors tend to become exponentially faster and cheaper over time. Unlike its better-known counterpart, Eroom’s Law observed that since at least the mid-20th century, the inflation-adjusted cost to bring a new drug to market in the U.S. has been doubling roughly every nine years. Some pharmaceutical companies now report that development costs for a new medicine routinely exceed a billion dollars. Undoubtedly, these rising costs have contributed to surging prescription drug prices, a problem that has escalated to crisis proportions in recent years.

Through our research at the intersection of drug development and policy, we’ve unearthed inefficiencies in the development, regulation, and distribution of prescription drugs — all of which likely contribute to Eroom’s Law. But over the past year, we’ve also seen what drug development can look like when it’s freed from those inefficiencies. As the public and private sectors have galvanized to deploy new treatments for Covid-19, they’ve not only shown us that Eroom’s Law can be broken; they’ve shown us how to break it.

The decades-long trend of rising drug prices described by Eroom’s Law is in part a result of regulatory inefficiencies. Like the federal tax code, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s review process for new medicines has grown increasingly onerous over time, with drug makers being asked to perform an ever-growing number of procedures and clinical measurements to win approval. Arguably, the agency has overreacted to high profile safety lapses such as that of the arthritis medication Vioxx, which was pulled from the market when research linked the drug to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. In the wake of the Vioxx debacle, the FDA began requiring extensive cardiac monitoring during clinical trials, as well as extensive monitoring of drugs following approval. Such regulatory reactions are well-meaning, but reminiscent of the old adage that military planners are always fighting the last war, not the one to come. The mounting testing and paperwork burdens led one Eli Lilly executive to quip that were the required documentation for a drug approval application to be printed out and stacked, it would reach taller than the Empire State Building. In recognition of this over-reaction, the FDA has begun revising some of the regulations, as evidenced by updated guidance conveyed in March 2020.

Last year, however, as Covid-19 spawned a global crisis, the FDA embraced a more nimble and innovative regulatory posture — and a more open exchange of information with the companies and institutions working to discover, develop, and deploy new treatments for the disease. Early on, the agency pledged not only to expedite reviews of the final data packages submitted at the end of each three-phase clinical trial, but also to rapidly review preliminary data provided before and during a trial’s first phase. The improved communication and coordination set the tone for a collaborative approach between the public and private sectors, and it helped pave the way for a Covid-19 vaccine to be developed in a fraction of the time required to develop previous vaccines.

Moving forward, it should be possible to streamline this process even further. One important step will be to assess which of the vast data and testing requirements for drug approval are critical for ensuring safety and efficacy, and which are merely box-checking exercises. In recent decades, for example, the FDA — scarred by episodes like the Vioxx debacle and buoyed by scientists’ increased understanding of the body — has pressed drug makers to demonstrate increasingly rigorous understanding of the mechanisms by which their medicines work. Yet, one might argue that these guidelines reflect either hubris or naivete: The vast majority of safe and effective drugs were approved despite uncertainty about their mechanisms of action. Even today, scientists do not completely understand how acetaminophen works, yet the world is a far healthier place for having this drug.

In some high-profile cases during the pandemic, the FDA leaned less on mechanistic proof of effectiveness and more on empirical indicators, such as patient survival rates. For instance, when objective data revealed that the steroid dexamethasone helped severely ill patients survive what might otherwise have been deadly coronavirus infections, the FDA was quick to support the drug’s use, despite scientists having only a speculative understanding of how the steroid works against the disease. To be sure, the FDA must continue to prioritize its mandate to protect patients and clinical trial volunteers. But the pandemic has shown that safety and speed need not be an either-or proposition.

That said, the inefficiencies in drug development clearly do not end with the FDA. As we write in an upcoming book, private sector efforts to sidestep Eroom’s Law — for instance, by consolidating and outsourcing — have often backfired, reinforcing the upward cost trend instead of reversing it. The premium that one company pays to acquire another can eventually get passed down to consumers; companies that dismantle their internal capabilities in favor of outsourcing find themselves at the mercy of contractors, whose prices have gone up and who, as an industry, have also been undergoing consolidation. The rapidly rising costs of these activities may soon threaten the industry’s very ability to develop new medicines to combat public health threats.

As we move through the vaccine-rollout phase of the pandemic, the business activities of retail distributors, the pharmacy benefit managers who serve as middlemen between insurers and drug makers, and others involved in the proverbial last mile of prescription medicine distribution will also come under scrutiny. These industries have been criticized for opaque billing and pricing practices that make it all but impossible for customers and manufacturers to know a medicine’s true sticker price. Indeed, this lack of transparency has led many pharmaceutical executives to claim that distributors profit more from medicines than do the manufacturers themselves; pharmacy benefit managers, in turn, lay the blame in the lap of pharmaceutical companies.

Despite this finger-pointing, there’s reason to be optimistic about the future of the prescription drug market. If industry stakeholders and regulators heed the lessons of the pandemic, 2020 might be remembered not only as the year scientists, regulators, and private companies galvanized to battle the biggest public health threat of our time, but also as the dawn of a new era in the development of medicines for diseases new and old. That is, it might be remembered as the year Eroom’s Law met its match.

* * *

Michael S. Kinch is associate vice chancellor, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and director of the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology & Drug Discovery at Washington University in St. Louis. He is co- author of the upcoming book from Simon & Schuster, “The Price of Health.”

Lori Weiman is a communications and business consultant. She is also a writer and the co-author of the upcoming book “The Price of Health.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Poet Martín Espada: “The imagination is absolutely critical to political activism”

A rare constancy of the human experience is poetry. No matter how much people degrade each other in the quest for power, profit, or a false sense of security, and irrespective of how far some try to push poetry off the cliff, poets will stand at the ready, pen in hand.

The world of letters, and particularly the United States, is fortunate that for the past four decades one of those poets in Martín Espada. Operating under a grand, Whitmanesque vision of poetic possibilities, Espada pulls together the political and personal into one literary constellation, flashing lights that expose both injustice and opportunities for solidarity.

Espada was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and followed the example of his father, a photographer and leader in the Puerto Rican civil rights movement, by striving to create a hybrid of advocacy and art. He spent his early years focusing more on the former as a tenant lawyer in Chelsea, Massachusetts, often representing non-English speaking Puerto Ricans facing eviction and suffering the exploitation of greedy landlords or an inadequate public housing system. His first book of poetry, “The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero,” was published in 1982. Since then, he was published more than 20 books as a poet, essayist, editor, and translator. Among many awards, he has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the International Latino Book Award.

His newest book, “Floaters,” features poems that deal with hate crimes, poverty, and immigration, but also love, grief, and remembrance. “Floaters” is a brilliant collection of poems that anger, delight, amuse, and shatter.

I interviewed Espada over Zoom about his work, and more broadly, poetry, politics, and activism.

You’ve said that you often have the intention to explain when you are writing a poem. Given how many of your poems deal with sociopolitical subject matter, could you walk me through how your poems begin with the specific, but then still possess the mystery and artistry that we associate with poetry?

I am a storyteller at heart. I am a narrative poet. I intend to communicate clearly, and this means there will be some attempt at explanation. This is especially true if I am telling a story that comes from a cultural, political, or historical experience outside the “mainstream” experience of many readers. That is a position to which I am accustomed. As much as I write for and about certain communities, I am always aware that other readers are going to be dealing with the unfamiliar. There are names, places, dates, history, politics, poetics, an entire perspective many will encounter for the first time. I want to communicate without sacrificing my identity or the art. I remember doing an interview with the great Nicaraguan poet-priest, Ernesto Cardenal, in 1982. I was stunned when he said, “The first duty of the poet is to write well.” This was the major poet of revolutionary Nicaragua. I remember, as a young, would-be revolutionary, being taken aback by that statement. But he was right. We have a duty to write well so we can best tell a story that may otherwise remain untold. In the service of that untold story, I pay attention to the art. As for mystery: I know where I’m going, but I don’t know how I’m getting there. I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how I’m going to say it. I don’t know what language I will use, what image I will call upon, or what metaphor will become central to the telling. I know that I want to tell this tale, reveal a hidden history or a forgotten injustice. It’s like having a map, but not having a map.

You mention making references or describing something that an audience won’t easily understand or appreciate. That seems to emphasize representation. In your new book, “Floaters,” the second section of poems – “Asking Questions of the Moon” – falls into a tradition of your poetry that gives representation – to Puerto Ricans, to the tenants who were your clients. What do you feel, in addition to first and foremost, writing well, is your responsibility as the poet attempting to represent something particular to a general audience, especially considering that it will have political implications?

Issues of representation are always complex, thorny, and difficult. Yet, consider the alternative: silence. Consider the alternative: disappearance. Consider the alternative: dehumanization. Representation comes naturally in my work as a poet, in part, because it was an essential characteristic of my work as a tenant lawyer for Su Clínica Legal in Chelsea, Massachusetts. I didn’t stop to contemplate the dilemma of representation when I was standing in front of a judge. My client was on the verge of being evicted, being made homeless, and didn’t understand a word in court. Keep in mind that the language of the law is the language of power, designed to render its victims dizzy. Imagine being doubly removed from that language of power if you don’t even speak English. It was a natural step for me to stand up in court and speak on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves. In fact, there was an ethical imperative. Can you imagine if I went into to court, and said, “Excuse me, Your Honor, I lack the authority to speak,” and sat down? I would have been disbarred. There isn’t much of a leap from what I did as a lawyer to what I do as a poet if I write a poem that documents the struggle of those without the opportunity to be heard.

Now, I don’t sit down in the morning at my computer screen to search for a headline that will provoke a storm of poetic outrage. There is usually some tangible connection with the subject of the poem. You mention one poem about my own life experience, “Asking Questions of the Moon.” I’m an adolescent playing the outfield and pondering a girl’s gently racist inquiry about my Puerto Rican identity when a baseball smacks me in the eye. Another poem in that section contemplates my father’s raucous activism in Brooklyn — and then his quiet death years later. There are poems in the first section about migrants from México and Central America, including the title poem. There is a poem about my legal work at Su Clínica and an encounter with a bigoted cab driver, called “Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge.” There is usually a tangible connection that not only allows me to follow the dictum, “Write what you know,” but gives me an emotional bridge to cross when I write about the subject.

You describe the law as the “language of power.” The poet Susanna Childress in very creative and clever ways talks about the “utility of poetry.” If law is the language or power, what is the utility of poetry?

I can tell you that the common ground is precision. Whether I am speaking the language of law or the language of poetry, there is an obligation to be precise. One word out of place, and everything may collapse. That can happen in a will or contract or a poem. As far as the utility of poetry goes: people find poetry useful all the time. We, as a society, crave meaning. In the absence of words that matter, we hunger for words that matter. We are bombarded with euphemisms, whether these euphemisms are political, commercial, or legal. We endure a barrage of words that do not mean what they supposedly mean. Poetry makes an appearance in places and moments where people crave meaning deeply. At one point, I did six memorial services in 12 months. People, in that moment, seek a way to make sense of something senseless: death. They crave meaning. Thus, they call upon poets. The same is true of weddings. I’ve done my share of weddings. That is the other end of the spectrum, a celebration, but, again, the participants crave meaning. Poetry fills that longing.

We live in an age when, ironically, we’re buried in words. We are subject to more words and images than ever, yet they come at such a high rate of speed. We see these words and images scrolling past us, only to see those words and images pushed aside to make room for the next flurry of words and images. What poetry enables us to do is to savor, to taste the words that will sustain us, in contrast with that sense of the meaningless that confronts us every day.

When I spoke to Rita Dove, she said that poetry “deals with the unremarked upon.” Your reference to death reminds me of that idea. There are several poems in “Floaters” that deal with some measure of the unremarked upon – whether it is racism, something historical – and you bring it to bear in your poetry. Is casting light upon the unremarked upon also part of the utility of the poet?

Absolutely. Often, what I intend to do when I deal with “the unremarked upon” is to humanize the dehumanized. For example, we see statistics about what’s going on right now at the southern border, numbers and more numbers. These abstractions don’t move us as they should. They don’t connect us as human beings with other human beings. If I can deal with “the unremarked upon” by presenting the faces or voices of one migrant family, that means humanizing the dehumanized. Then again, sometimes I deal with the remarked upon to accomplish the same ends. Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos were two Salvadoran migrants, father and daughter, who drowned crossing the Río Grande on June 23, 2019. A photograph of their bodies went viral. Óscar and Valeria, as they came to be known, were remarked upon. There was outrage, grief —and trutherism. An anonymous post in the “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group charged that the photograph had been faked. The same post referred to the drowned migrants as “floaters,” a term used by certain members of the Border Patrol to describe those who drown crossing over. The title poem of my book, “Floaters,” responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, to their death by drowning, to the charges of fakery, to the use of the slur “floaters” itself. I wrote the poem to deal with the remarked upon.

Now, almost two years later, the same poem deals with “the unremarked upon.” We see something, register horror — and forget. On the first anniversary of the drowning, I wanted to post that poem on social media, and connect it with a story in the media that would mark the anniversary. There was nothing. I noticed, as time passed and I would read that poem in public, that people were already forgetting. It is a given that what we are talking about today we may not be talking about tomorrow, and almost certainly not talking about a year from now. When I write a poem, it may appear that I am commenting journalistically on the events of the day. However, what begins as journalism soon becomes history and then becomes oblivion. This is how I remember. This is how I observe the unobserved. To come full circle, there are migrants dying right now on the border, be it river or desert. We just aren’t saying their names.

You’re reminding me of the connection that always exists, as Albert Camus wrote, between rebellion and love. The singer/songwriter, John Condron, often says, “Sometimes the best protest song is a love song.” The last section of poems in “Floaters” are homage poems to people you knew, you loved. There is no contradiction or disharmony between those poems and the earlier poems in the book that are directly political. Is the connective tissue memory?

You could say that the connective tissue is memory. You could also say that the connective tissue is forgetting. I don’t want people to forget. Maybe it’s gesture of futility. It’s not as if I can alert the entire world to the existence of people I want the world to remember. You refer to love. At the risk of coming off “sentimental,” which is considered a great sin among contemporary poets, I’d say this is a book grounded in such passions. I am best known as a political poet. You see the political poems in the first section of the book, dealing with immigrants and racism. There is a middle section of love poems dedicated to my wife, Lauren Marie Schmidt, a poet in her own right, as well as a novelist and high school teacher. There’s even a wedding sonnet in there. There are persona poems that are absolutely ridiculous. I have a poem in the voice of a Galapagos tortoise by the name of Lonesome George. From these poems of love, it’s a logical transition into the poems of homage in the last section. Most of these are elegies, a form I know well, since so many I’ve loved have died, since I’ve been called upon so often to speak at memorials, including the memorial for my father, Frank Espada. He makes an appearance at the end of the book in the poem, “Letter to My Father.” This is not only a poem for him, but for the island of Puerto Rico — and his hometown of Utuado in the mountains — in the aftermath of Hurricane María and Trump’s disgraceful neglect. There is a poem for Luis Garden Acosta, friend and mentor, a brilliant organizer and the co-founder of El Puente, “The Bridge,” a multi-service community center in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He died a couple of years ago. This was my way of remembering him, but also telling a good story.

The elegy is not only a lament. The idea is to recall the vision, the blood and heartbeat that energized that human being. Only in the last stanza of the poem for Luis do I even mention his death. What I want people to take away is Luis in resplendent life. In an elegy, for me, death is necessary but not sufficient. What is the life force that made the person indelible?

You have one poem, “I Now Pronounce You Dead,” that deals directly with capital punishment, but also the effect of memory, which is so often haunting.

Of course, nearly everything we do in our society, we measure in dollars and cents, according to profit and loss. Poetry is an art form that usually refuses to be so measured. I write poetry not for the sake of transaction, but for communion. When I read an elegy in public, invariably someone will approach me and say, “Yes, I lost someone too.” The poem forms a bridge where we cross back and forth to one another. Once, in Boston, I read a series of elegies I wrote about my father, who died in 2014. A young woman came up to me and said, “I am glad you read those poems about your father. I lost my father too.” I said, “I’m sorry. When?” She said, “Wednesday.”

You use the word, “haunting.” We’re all haunted. When Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico, the only person I wanted to talk to was my dead father, or, more specifically, his ashes in a box on my bookshelf. In “Letter to My Father,” I call upon him to rise against Trump. That’s what it means to be haunted. In fact, there is a poem in my previous book, “Vivas to Those who Have Failed,” to my father, called, “Haunt Me.” I’m inviting him in. Most people want to keep the ghosts at arm’s length. I invite them in. The dead have as much to say to us as the living do.

Returning to the idea of “life force,” in your poem, “Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence,” you write about teenagers playing soccer in an immigrant detention facility, and you have a beautiful imagining of where the soccer ball might travel – how it might not only emancipate them, but serve as a mechanism of justice in the world. Imagination is obviously essential to poetry, but how important is it to politics? It seems so much of our politics suffers under a deficit of imagination.

This is why most people find political discourse so damned dull. It so often centers around policies and the partisan. The imagination is absolutely critical to political activism, illuminating the vision of a world that does not yet exist. Vision is hope, and hope is fuel for the activist. What we imagine now might become concrete reality in this lifetime or the next. There are times when we wait decades or centuries for change, and then suddenly (or so it appears), there is change. We must be able to envision a world that isn’t here yet. Those who do so will be accused of utopianism. Guilty as charged. This reminds me of Eduardo Galeano’s “Window on Utopia.” Galeano writes: “Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps away. I walk ten steps, and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I walk, I’ll never reach it. What good is utopia? That’s what: it’s good for walking.” Even if we don’t get where we want to go, the vision moves us in the direction of justice, and ultimately makes for a more just society.

Back to your question: Poetry invigorates the imagination. When they bring me to speak at a demonstration, a rally, a community center, an urban high school, an ELL (or English Language Learners) program, they are bringing me there to invigorate the imagination. They are bringing me to raise hell. I gladly accept that responsibility.

Do you believe that American culture’s fine arts, our poets have become too antiseptic and detached from the processes and activities you are referencing? Do you believe that our poets are not sufficiently in the streets?

Poets often accept their own marginality. We live in a mercantile culture, and there is no price tag on a poem. Poetry is famously unprofitable; therefore, poets accept this sense of being marginalized. Poets engage in self-mockery because we internalize this idea of our own irrelevance. It is easier to confine ourselves to circles of the academy or the intelligentsia. I believe poets are better than that. We are much more capable than that.

I can’t speak for all poets. As Robert Creeley put it, “Thankfully, a plurality of poetries exists.” Some poets write poems that will never go beyond those circles because those poems are not designed to do anything else. But for those of us who are poets and participants, poets and activists, poets and citizens, it is incumbent upon us to get out there. We must face that challenge of transcending barriers. I have read everyplace you can imagine. My first reading happened at the bar where I was the bouncer. I once did a reading at El Matador Tortilla Factory in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I once did a reading for young amateur boxers, mostly Puerto Rican, at the Windham Boxing Club in Willimantic, Connecticut. Every year I do readings at The Care Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a program for adolescent mothers, mostly Puerto Rican, who have dropped out of the public school system. Those community programs bring me back where I belong. Some people may think of these as non-traditional audiences. I think they are the most traditional of all because they go back to the idea of poetry as an oral and communal art form, which it was in the ancient world and continues to be in the present.

Sherman Alexie once said that if you want to help people, write poems about them, and sing songs for them. Do you think that’s true?

It requires a leap of faith, but political poetry is, paradoxically, a matter of faith, just as political activism is a matter of faith. The fact is that, when I write a poem or read a poem aloud, I have no idea what will happen because of that poem. You cannot quantify the impact of a poem. You cannot label it or box it, weigh it or measure it. I put the poem in the world, and it takes wing.

I will cite a professor of mine from the University of Wisconsin in Madison where I got my Bachelor’s Degree in History. His name was Herbert Hill. Hill was the National Labor Director of the NAACP. He was one of those responsible for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, dealing with discrimination in employment. He would say to us, “Ideas have consequences.” Simply, yet elegantly expressed.

I don’t know what consequences my ideas in poetic form will have, but I do believe in the truth that Herbert Hill expressed: Ideas have consequences.

Scientists have isolated the gene behind one of the deadliest forms of breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer among American women. In 2021 alone, roughly 281,550 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 49,290 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer are likely to be diagnosed in the United States, according to a breast cancer advocacy nonprofit. Among female breast cancer patients in this country, roughly 43,600 are expected to die.

As one of the most common cancers, a breakthrough in breast cancer research has the potential to save a huge number of lives. Now, a new study has pinpointed how the highest-mortality breast cancer is actually triggered — research that has huge implications for prevention in the future.

According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, researchers in Australia have discovered a gene which triggers a sub-group of hormone sensitive breast cancers that are especially deadly and difficult to treat. Hormone sensitive breast cancers are those that grow in response to hormones like estrogen or progesterone. They are often treated with hormone therapy and usually have a better prognosis than breast cancers which are not hormone-sensitive. There is a small percentage of hormone sensitive breast cancers, however, that the Australian researchers discovered are extremely aggressive and have the highest mortality rate among all the breast cancer types.

The group of researchers, led by Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research epigeneticist Dr. Pilar Blancafort, explain that they isolated a gene that causes the body to produce unusually large amounts of a unique protein called AAMDC. This protein can stimulate tumor growth within the especially deadly group of hormone sensitive breast cancers. Moreover, traditional treatments for hormone sensitive breast cancer could actually make them worse for patients who have this gene.

“We began by taking data from a major genomic study in Stanford USA of thousands of breast cancers and looked at the worst types in that group of previously unidentified cancers,” Dr. Blancafort explained in an official statement. “By analyzing this sub-group, we discovered these aggressive cancers have extra copies of a particular oncogene (cancer causing gene) and we found this gene is used to make a cancer driving protein (AAMDC) at higher than normal levels.”

Blancafort added, “This amplification of the gene that makes the AAMDC cancer driving protein is found on a particular chromosome – chromosome 11 – in about 10% of all breast cancers.” Blancafort pointed out that this gene amplification also exists in prostate, ovarian, lung and other types of cancer, acting as a sort of shield that protects cancer cells from medicines that try to destroy them.

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“Importantly we can now find these cancers by looking for high levels of AAMDC in the tumor cells,” Blancafort said in her statement. “This protein is not like any other yet discovered, it is unique.”

As Science Alert explains, breast cancer researchers in 2012 created a classification system known as Integrative Clustering (IntClust) to split up breast cancer types into 10 subgroups so that scientists could better understand and treat them. Because of this system, scientists were able to notice that one cluster of cancers called IntClust2 had an unusually poor prognosis, even though it was estrogen receptor-positive. This prompted them to learn more about those types of cancers and, ultimately, discover that roughly 25 percent of the tumors in that category had higher quantities of AAMDC. When AAMDC levels were reduced in mouse breast cancer cells, those cancers suddenly became more treatable.

The case for a COVID commission: Accountability for Trump is the only way to keep Americans safe

In our cynical political world, presidential commissions, like Senate Select Committees or on occasion Joint Congressional Committees convened for a specific purpose, are generally considered graveyards for controversial issues the political leadership just wants to sweep under the rug. Blue Ribbon Commissions, which tend to be manned by outsiders with specific expertise, have a little bit more credibility because of their independence although they don’t have any authority of their own. But on the whole, because various presidents and congressional leaders have created so many commissions which led nowhere or resulted in little change, the people don’t put much stock in them.

There are exceptions, however. The most recent example is the 9/11 Commission, established by congressional legislation and signed by President George W. Bush to investigate the circumstances that led to the terrorist attacks and offer recommendations for change. It was staffed by former officials and experts of both parties and was chaired by former Governor Thomas Keane, a Republican from New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. They issued a report that resulted in some major changes (for better and worse) in the federal government.

The investigation’s most memorable moment came in 2004, during a public hearing, in which commission member Richard Ben-Veniste questioned the National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice about whether the administration had any advance warning. And this came out:

BEN-VENISTE. Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the Aug. 6 P.D.B. warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that P.D.B.

RICE. I believe the title was “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States.”

9/11 was one of the worst catastrophes to ever befall our country and everyone understood that there had to be some come kind of independent investigation into what went wrong. There were legitimate criticisms of the report the commission produced and there were many questionable actions taken by the government that were not adequately addressed, but for the most part, the report was taken seriously. There were too many lives lost and too much fear and trauma to sweep it under the rug. The results of that failure by the government and the subsequent debacle of the Iraq War still haunt us 20 years later.

So what are we going to do about the latest debacle at the hands of yet another Republican president who couldn’t seem to take the warnings of impending disaster seriously?

The country had already been through an ongoing political crisis with the election of the manifestly unfit Donald Trump and his bizarre and incompetent administration for three long years when we were hit with a deadly crisis of epic proportions. The COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet, of course, and we will not know the true scope of the carnage for quite some time. But we already know that the U.S. response to the crisis during its first year was atrocious. What we don’t yet know is just how much of the illness and death can be attributed to the Trump administration’s ineptitude and reflexively hyper-political decisions.

According to Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s COVID task force coordinator, the number of needless deaths number in the hundreds of thousands.

https://youtu.be/naKirLVszao

Birx is a flawed messenger, of course. I wrote about her conflicts and unsuitability for the job before. But her testimony in this recent CNN special hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, along with that of other top doctors who worked on the administration’s task force, painted a picture of dysfunction that was shocking even for those of us who followed the story in detail as it was unfolding. The Trump administration was the leakiest in history, but the point of view from these particular players offered a different angle. Even if it was mostly an attempt to make themselves look better — and there was certainly an element of that — it was still stunning.

For instance, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the former CDC director said that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and his staff pressured him to alter scientific reports, specifically those that reported mortality rates. The former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, described his relationship with Azar as “strained” after the secretary unilaterally revoked the FDA’s power to regulate COVID tests. Trump’s testing czar, Admiral Brett Giroir, admitted that the administration lied when they said there were millions of tests. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he knew they were in trouble when he saw that Trump had tweeted “liberate Michigan!” in contravention of everything they were trying to do. And Birx said that Trump told her in April that he would never allow the country to be shut down again.

But it wasn’t just President Trump’s self-serving focus on “optics” and magical thinking. The fact is that despite years of predictions of a coming plague from scientists, the U.S. was totally unprepared. Dr. Robert Kadlec, former U.S. assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump explained: “When we started the pandemic in January, we really didn’t know what the status of the supply chain was. We didn’t know what hospitals had on hand. We didn’t know what the state supplies were. We didn’t even know what the commercial distributors had on their shelves.”

Clearly, the systems for dealing with a national public health emergency simply didn’t exist. And there certainly was no plan. When you add this to all we know about the potential corruption of Jared Kushner’s involvement, the Fox News quack doctors like Scott Atlas who were brought in by Trump to tell him what he wanted to hear as well as dozens of other revelations about how the government dropped the ball, if there was ever a situation that required a Blue Ribbon Commission, this would be it.

It’s not just about the death toll from this disaster, although that would be enough reason to do it. A full “autopsy” is necessary so that the government can prepare for the next one, which every one of those doctors insists is inevitable.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine how such a thing could be put together considering our divided nation and the ongoing devotion of the Republican Party to Donald Trump. The 9/11 Commission called upon respected elder statesmen from both parties who all saw the job as an important mission for the good of the country. It is impossible to imagine any Democrats who would be acceptable to the Republicans or any Republicans who would be willing to buck the party to criticize Donald Trump. So I’m afraid it’s likely that this massive tragedy will pass into history without any official reckoning from the American government. We’ll just have to hope that when the next pandemic hits our shores we’ll have better luck than we did this time. Don’t throw away your masks.

My husband is vaccinated. I’m not. And that’s causing a rift

Dear Pandemic Problems,

My husband, who is vaccinated, wants his friends and family over to our home — inside — even though I have not been vaccinated. I take care of my elderly parents, who have not been vaccinated and have medical issues. Even after I get vaccinated, I still will not feel completely safe because they are not 100% effective. I just cannot take a chance with my health. My husband does not feel the same way and I’m worried that this will cause problems that will just get worse. Please help with any advice!

Sincerely,

Under Stress & Unvaccinated

Dear Under Stress & Unvaccinated,

The vaccine, and the varying ability of any one individual to access it, is certainly creating stressful social situations in households around the country. Answering the question as to who can mingle with whom can be confusing and anxiety-provoking. And as public health recommendations are continually evolving, it’s hard to stay on top of all the latest information.

In other words, no wonder you’re stressed.

Please know before I go any further in answering your question that you are not alone in this predicament. There are plenty of relationships that are navigating new territory as we continue down this transitional phase — such as, in your case, when half of a couple if vaccinated, and the other half is not. I’m hopeful it will get better once a majority of us are vaccinated.

But if I’m being honest, Under Stress & Unvaccinated, I’m concerned about you and your situation. You say that your husband, that person that is supposed to be your partner in life until death do you part, wants to have his friends and family over — inside and unmasked. He’s vaccinated, but you’re not. And, you take care of your unvaccinated elderly parents.

Now, you didn’t note if these people coming inside — unmasked — are vaccinated or not. That is an important missing detail, but I’d like to lay out the risk for you for both situations. If they’re all vaccinated, there is a lower risk of you getting COVID-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccinated people can visit a single unvaccinated household, indoors, without anyone wearing masks and there is a low risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

However, if any these guests are unvaccinated, this would be a very high-risk situation and put you and your parents’ lives in danger.

I’m not a marriage expert, but your husband’s behavior would be concerning even if he were merely your roommate. I suspect that your husband isn’t listening to you, and it sounds like he’s being a bit callous. My first piece of advice would be to have an honest conversation about how you feel and your fears about infection — fears which are fully justified.

Take a page from psychotherapist Esther Perel, and stay focused on the task of communication. Sit down and have a conversation where both of you are able to express your concerns and be heard. Talk only about how you’re going to start socializing again, and how that works with each of you vaccination statuses. My hope is that you can reach a compromise. Could your husband have people over outside? In the garage? Or go to their homes, instead? Perhaps everyone would remain masked throughout the visit?

If he is unable to compromise, I would suggest seeing a therapist. People are often hesitant to go to couples’ counseling, but I know that it can work wonders.

I may be wrong, but I sense there is a deep fear in you about re-entering the world, and you’ve been deeply afraid of losing your loved ones to this virus. That is 100 percent understandable. I know it’s a scary time, and yes, none of the vaccines are 100 percent effective against catching COVID-19. But they are all — as of now — nearly 100 percent effective in preventing severe disease and hospitalization. That means that even if people who are vaccinated contract COVID-19, the virus will be more like a cold, and less like a life-threatening disease.

I hope you can have a productive conversation with your husband. I hope that he hears your fears, and he’s willing to compromise. But mostly, I hope you know you’re not alone.

Sincerely,

Pandemic Problems

“Pandemic Problems” is a weekly advice column devoted to answering readers’ COVID-related questions — often with help from epidemiologists, philosophy professors or therapists — who weigh in on how to “do the right thing.” Do you have a pandemic problem? Email Nicole Karlis at nkarlis@salon.com. Peace of mind and collective commiseration awaits.

How to get your kitchen windows squeaky clean and streak-free

We’re not exactly sure why, but cleaning the windows is one of those tasks that gets put off until the absolute last minute. And by last minute, we mean: It’s 9 a.m. and your in-laws are visiting at 10 a.m. — the counters have been scrubbed, the beds are made, the floor has been vacuumed — but the light coming into your home remains . . . mottled.

Okay so maybe it’s because for many of us, this means getting up on a ladder outside our windows, and for others, it simply doesn’t seem doable at all in a 5th floor walkup (hello, city-dwellers). Unfortunately though, we’ve all got to face it at some point, since there’s nothing that makes a space feel bigger and brighter than cleaning the windows.

Plus, it’s been a long winter of kicked-up street salt, stay-inside days, and dirt gripping onto water marks. You’ll be amazed to see how much more light comes in once those layers of grime has been removed. I’m also happy to report it only took me about five minutes to clean each window, aka, no excuses!

When cleaning your windows, aim for early in the morning or late in the day — anytime the sun isn’t directly hitting them: You’ll be able to see the streaks better when it’s not as bright, and the heat of the sun can dry the water or cleaning solution you’re using onto the window before you have the chance to wipe it off (read: streaky windows).

I learned the hard way that if you start by spraying a cleaning solution on your window, and use a rag to wipe it up, you will end up with smeared dirt. Don’t be like me; here’s how to do it right:

* * *

What you’ll need:

A large bucket or pot
Warm water
White vinegar (which, added to your tub of water, helps sanitize and cut grime)
A large sponge
A squeegee
A few rags
Several sheets of newspaper
Window cleaner like Windex or a natural cleaning solution of 1:1 water to vinegar (I found the Windex to work slightly better)

* * *

What you’ll do:

1. Sponge the glass with vinegar water.

Fill your bucket with a gallon of warm water, add 1 cup white vinegar, and then soak your sponge in it completely. Wipe the sponge across the window in an S-motion (get to one side, then turn around and go the opposite way, one row down). Dunk your sponge as needed, but do this fairly quickly so the water on the windows doesn’t have time to dry before you wipe it off; if needed, do your window in sections. Be especially careful to get flush against the top of the window — it’s easy to miss this spot!