IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, looking at the legacy of Madame Curie through the women who worked in her lab. And we’ll dive into a big discovery that shows that your microbiome has a lot in common with your friends’ microbiome, and what are the implications of that.
But first, earlier this week, the US Supreme Court heard arguments that could change the Food and Drug Administration’s power to regulate nicotine-based vapes. It revolves around a case where the FDA denied applications of two vape companies that sell flavored liquids in their products, citing that the liquids presented a danger in addicting youth to nicotine. But a lower court rejected that denial, saying the agency was inconsistent in its approval process.
Well, here to read the tea leaves of this case and enlighten us with the science news of the week is Rachel Feltman, host of the Popular Science broadcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week and Scientific American’s podcast, Science Quickly. Welcome back to Science Friday, Rachel.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Thanks for having me, Ira.
IRA FLATOW: All right. Can you tell us what’s going on with this case in the court?
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. So back in 2020, a couple of companies filed FDA applications for vape products, and they included a bunch of flavors that the FDA flagged as being potentially really appealing to kids. And as you said, a lower court then said that proper legal procedures hadn’t been followed. And what we’re seeing now is, basically, the result of an appeal that the FDA filed under Joe Biden’s administration.
So the question isn’t, should all flavored vapes be allowed? The FDA has definitely cracked down on flavored vapes, and no one is against that, in principle. But what the Supreme Court is going to decide is how much power the FDA actually has to enforce that.
IRA FLATOW: So in other words, we’ll see whether the courts think the FDA should retain its enforcing powers.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Exactly. Yeah, or are there going to be a ton of loopholes for companies to say, no, the FDA unfairly targeted us for these flavors, which, just to be clear, in this case, includes stuff like Pink Lemonade and a flavor called Jimmy the Juice Man, Peachy Strawberry, which it is really hard to imagine that it’s not targeting the TikTok generation. But we will see how the Supreme Court rules, which should happen sometime in the summer.
And at least the preliminary sense is that it looks like some members of the Supreme Court were not impressed with the argument that the FDA overstepped here or misstepped, that it seems like the Supreme Court might be leaning toward siding with the FDA.
IRA FLATOW: And if the Trump administration keeps coming to the Supreme Court with more challenges to other regulations, this might tell us how it might rule in those cases.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. Well, and vapes are an interesting thing, in particular, when it comes to the Trump administration because he recently posted on social media that he was going to, once again, save flavored vapes, which is interesting because his administration did come out against vapes targeting kids and being available to kids.
But he now seems to be taking issue with the anti-flavored vape cases. So it’s hard to actually know where they stand on this issue, in particular. But yeah, certainly, we’re seeing a lot of challenges to agencies’ power, so it’ll be interesting to see how this case plays out.
IRA FLATOW: Yeah. All right, let’s stick with health for a second, because we have some really great news this time about a huge decrease in cervical cancer death rates. What’s happening there?
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. So researchers were basically saying, it’s been almost 16 years since the HPV vaccine was introduced. So we should start to see the initial impact of that vaccine on cervical cancer deaths because the people who were first vaccinated are getting to be in the age groups where we would expect cervical cancer diagnoses and deaths.
And they found something really promising. They were seeing in the data a steady drop in the number of deaths from cervical cancer in US women specifically under the age of 25. But then from 2016 to 2021, instead of that steady drop, they saw like an absolute plummet. And while they weren’t looking specifically at which of these women were vaccinated, there’s really no other factor at that time that could explain that sudden drop in deaths.
And it’s especially compelling, given that we saw things trending downward, which we can attribute to better screening, more public awareness. So it does seem quite likely that the vaccine is to thank for that big drop in deaths.
IRA FLATOW: Wow, that is good news. Well, speaking of what may not be such good news, I want to move over to the Arctic Ocean, where scientists are projecting that we could see the first ice-free day there before 2030. Wow, that’s pretty early, isn’t it?
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, it’s definitely troubling. This is a study looking at the idea of an ice-free Arctic, which just to clarify, because I think some folks have been a little confused by the headlines on this. We’re not talking about literally no ice. I mean, it’s the Arctic. For there to be literally no ice, our planet would be uninhabitable if it was that warm up there.
But it’s less than 1,000,000 square kilometers of ice is considered functionally ice free, because that is so below the range of what is normal. And also, at that threshold, basically, we would functionally have what you call a blue ocean event, meaning the ice that’s supposed to help reflect solar energy and insulate that part of the world would be gone.
IRA FLATOW: Wow. Even in the wintertime.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Right. Yeah. So when we talk about functionally ice free, we’re saying there’s so little ice that for climate purposes, we’re dealing with water instead of ice, on the whole. And yeah, what this study found is that in the worst case scenario, we could be seeing an ice-free day in just a few years.
Previous studies have focused on the first ice-free month or the first ice-free summer, which would take a little bit longer to happen. But researchers are pointing out, even just having one day where we met this ice threshold would show that we had reached a really bad turning point.
The good news is that if we stick to 1.5 for our climate target or even stay at 1.6, we will be very unlikely to see ice-free days in the near future. There is a lot we can do. This is a worst-case scenario. It’s not an implausible worst-case scenario, but it is one that we have some power to prevent.
IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Well, we reached 1.5 a lot earlier than we thought already. So let’s not keep doing this because we could be with this kind of news all day. I want to move on to Venus. Let’s get us off the planet for a second.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, let’s talk about a place that has apparently, always been a hellish–
IRA FLATOW: Ice free. And there’s some news there. Tell us what the news on Venus is.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. So the news on Venus is that there’s been this idea that because Venus is about the same size as Earth and about the same distance from the Sun that it might be our evil twin, is a phrase that gets used a lot, that maybe it used to have water on the surface, and it’s some kind of runaway greenhouse gas effect, messed with its atmosphere, left it totally hellish. It’s got these sulfuric acid clouds. It’s 900 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. Not a fun place to be.
But this new study looked at the content of basically, what’s coming out of the volcanoes on Venus and found such a low percentage of water steam that they think the interior of the planet must be super dry. And in fact, they say it’s so dry that it’s really implausible for there to have ever been liquid water on Venus.
IRA FLATOW: Really? Wow.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, so instead of this evil twin idea, I mean, maybe it really is our evil twin because, even though it has these superficial similarities to us, it seems like it was never a planet like Earth. It was probably always pretty hot and dry. But they say that it’s still possible that it once hosted life. It would just be something much weirder than we’ve ever seen before, like maybe microbes that evolved to live in those sulfuric acid clouds. We really don’t know.
IRA FLATOW: We don’t know. Let’s go back to some health news because there’s a study that has important findings for middle-aged women, right?
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah. So I really love this study. It looked at what the researchers call vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity or VILPA for short. And those are the little bursts of increase in heart rate that don’t happen during a high-intensity interval workout, but it’s just everyday stuff. You’re climbing stairs, you’re carrying something heavy, you’re chasing a pet, whatever.
And there’s evidence to suggest that any kind of movement, even if it’s not structured exercise, does have a cardiovascular benefit, and they wanted to see how much. And this study was pretty massive. They looked at data from, I want to say, 22,000 middle aged folks in the UK, and they did find that just a few minutes of this incidental activity every day had a really strong cardiovascular effect.
It was about 16% lower risk of things like strokes and heart attack in men, but it was much stronger in women. We saw 1/3 drop in risk if they had just a couple of minutes of this kind of activity a day. And once we get up to around 5 minutes, we’re talking about having the risk of heart attack.
So just a great reminder that every little bit of movement really does count, and yeah, just do what you can.
IRA FLATOW: And scientists have designed a new implantable device that could monitor inflammation in the body. That’s a first. How does that work?
RACHEL FELTMAN: Yeah, it’s really cool. They’ve compared it to continuous glucose monitors that you can wear and that measure your blood sugar levels continuously so that you can see trends, you can understand what’s impacting your glucose levels. And we don’t have anything like that for inflammation.
And basically, it would sit under the skin, and it has these strands of DNA that compared it to a tree shaking fruit off of its branches. The strands of the DNA can stick to proteins, but then sort of shake them off so that they can grab more to get a continuous reading.
And there are so many inflammatory diseases that cause chronic illness, that cause terminal illnesses. So this could be a really cool tool to help doctors and patients understand what’s going on.
IRA FLATOW: It’s always good to have you, Rachel.
RACHEL FELTMAN: Always great to chat, Ira.
IRA FLATOW: Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. Rachel Feltman, host of the Popular Science podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week and Scientific American’s podcast, Science Quickly.
Copyright © 2024 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/
