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Shanghai To Relax One-Child Policy As China Faces Aging Population, Shrinking Work Force
Nearly three decades after China implemented its one-child policy, the city of Shanghai is planning to encourage young couples to have a second child in an effort to address the country"s aging population and shrinking work force, the New York Times reports. The city"s plan is the most public effort made by the government to counteract a program that is "considered both a tremendous success and a terrible failure," the Times reports. The policy has managed to keep population growth under control but also has led to forced abortions, according to the Times.The country is not abandoning the one-child policy, which applies mostly to residents in urban areas. Rather, the government is allowing more exceptions to the rule, with Shanghai -- where about 22% of its 20 million residents are older than age 60 -- leading the effort. China as a whole faces a similar problem seen in Shanghai, the Times reports. About 8% of the country"s population was older than age 65 in 2006. That figure is expected to increase threefold by 2050 to about 322 million people, or nearly 25% of the population, according to the United Nations.In Friday"s issue of China Daily, Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, was quoted as saying, "We advocate eligible couples to have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of the aging people and alleviate a work force shortage in the future." City officials plan to visit homes, pass out leaflets, and offer counseling and financial incentives, the Times reports. Current exceptions to the one-child policy are in place for ethnic minorities and rural residents, who can have a second child if the first child is a girl. Couples made up of two parents who have no siblings have always been allowed to have a second child and are now being encouraged to do so (Barboza, New York Times, 7/24).
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AGTC And National Neurovision Research Institute Collaborate, Funding Research In Two Genetic Retinal Diseases
Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation (AGTC), a privately-held, clinical stage biotechnology company developing novel systems to deliver human therapeutics, announces that AGTC has entered into an agreement with the National Neurovision Research Institute (NNRI), the clinical trial support organization for the Foundation Fighting Blindness(FFB), to collaborate in experiments using the AAV delivery system in the treatment of two genetic retinal diseases known to cause blindness at an early age. The research will be coordinated by AGTC and will be conducted at The University of Florida, Oregon Health & Science University, The University of Pennsylvania, and The University of British Columbia.
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Promising Results With Aleglitazar, A New Treatment Drug For Type 2 Diabetes (SYNCHRONY Study)
The results from the phase II SYNCHRONY study are published in an article Online First and in a future edition of The Lancet. At the same time, the findings are presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans, USA. They suggest that aleglitazar, a treatment for type 2 diabetes, might be safe and effective and may perhaps be introduced into phase III trials.
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Lessons From The Vaccine-Autism Wars

Researchers long ago rejected the theory that vaccines cause autism, yet many parents don"t believe them. Can scientists bridge the gap between evidence and doubt? This week, the open-access journal PLoS Biology investigates why the debunked vaccine-autism theory won"t go away. Senior science writer/editor Liza Gross talks to medical anthropologists, science historians, vaccine experts, social scientists, and pediatricians to explore the factors keeping the dangerous notion alive-and its proponents so vitriolic. Pediatrician Paul Offit has made it his mission to set the record straight: vaccines don"t cause autism. But he won"t go on Larry King Live-where he could reach millions of viewers-or anyplace celebrity anti-vaccine crusaders like Jenny McCarthy appear. ""Every story has a hero, victim, and villain,"" he explains. ""McCarthy is the hero, her child is the victim-and that leaves one role for you."" When she read that hecklers were issuing death threats to spokespeople who simply reported studies showing that vaccines were safe, anthropologist Sharon Kaufman dropped her life"s work on aging to study the theory"s grip on public discourse. To Kaufman, a researcher with a keen eye for detecting major cultural shifts, these unsettling events signaled a deeper trend. ""What happens when the facts of bioscience are relayed to the public and there is disbelief, lack of trust?"" Kaufman wondered. ""Where does that lead us?"" Despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines don"t cause autism, one in four Americans still think they do. Not surprisingly, the first half of 2008 saw the largest US outbreak of measles-one of the first infectious diseases to reappear after vaccination rates drop-since 2000, when the native disease was declared eliminated. Mumps and whooping cough have also made a comeback. Last year in Minnesota, five children contracted Hib, the most common cause of meningitis in young children before the vaccine was developed in 1993. Three of the children, including a 7-month-old who died, hadn"t received Hib vaccines because their parents either refused or delayed vaccination. Now, more than ten years after unfounded doubts about vaccine safety first emerged, scientists and public health officials are still struggling to get the story out. Their task is made far more difficult by the explosion of misinformation on the Internet, talk shows, and high-profile media outlets, by journalists" tendency to cover the issue as a "debate," and, as Kaufman argues, by an erosion of trust in experts. Information technology has transformed the way trust and knowledge are produced, Kaufman says: ""Scientists have to consider their role in this changed landscape and how to compete with these other s of knowledge."" Simply relating the facts of science isn"t enough. No matter that the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that vaccines don"t cause autism. When scientists find themselves just one more voice in a sea of ""opinions"" about a complex scientific issue, misinformation takes on a life of its own. Funding: This work received no funding. Competing interests statement: The authors declare that no competing interests exist. Citation: "A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars." Gross L (2009) PLoS Biol 7(5): e1000114. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000114 Plos Biology


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