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Got 20 minutes? Be part of this coronavirus relationships study.
How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect relationships? One study aims to find out. If you have 20 minutes, take the survey!
- Psychology researchers are looking for people to participate in study about relationships during the coronavirus epidemic.
- Anyone—regardless of sexual orientation or relationship commitment—can participate in the 20-minute survey here.
- After the initial survey, there will be two 5-10 minutes follow-up assessments at 10-day intervals, and one final 10 to 15 minute assessment in six months time.
Want to participate in a coronavirus study that doesn't require any prodding and poking?
Researchers from the psychology department at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, are collecting data on how the COVID-19 pandemic affects relationships. The main objective of the study is to examine factors that help or hurt couples during this period relative to normal times, ranging from the physical living space, job situation, the division of labor in the couple, to partners' personality factors and levels of aggression. "There is much discussion about such questions these days but little data—a gap we hope to help closing with our study," says Dr. Marcel Zentner, Professor of Psychology at the University of Innsbruck. "Eventually, we expect our findings to be used to improve prevention and intervention methods for couples and families that are struggling during unusually stressful periods like these."
What does the study involve?
According to the study website, there will be 4 quick assessments, described as below:
- In the first assessment we will ask you to complete some questionnaires about your relationship, how you cope with the current situation. It will also include some questions about yourself, your way of reacting and coping in general, because these factors are known to influence our close relationships. This first questionnaire will take about 20 minutes.
- In the second and third assessments (at 10-day intervals), we will ask you to complete a small portion of the previous questionnaires about your current relationship situation, relationship satisfaction, and levels of strain. They will take about 5-10 minutes.
- In a follow-up assessment (after 6 months) we will ask you to answer some final questions about how your relationship has evolved. This will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
Bonus: It's for a good cause
Beyond the thrill of participating in scientific research, there's another good reason to participate. The University of Innsbruck, Austria, will donate 50 Euro to child protection charity SOS Children's Villages for every 100 participants.
If you want to be part of the study, take the survey here and find more information here.
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LIVE EVENT | Radical innovation: Unlocking the future of human invention
Innovation in manufacturing has crawled since the 1950s. That's about to speed up.
07 August, 2020
Big Think LIVE
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<p>
Using a combination of imagination and technology, science tech company <a href="https://nanotronics.co/" target="_blank">Nanotronics</a> aims to revolutionize the factory floor so that industries can have a smaller factory footprint, produce less waste, and rapidly increase the speed from R&D to production—it's this very philosophy that allowed Nanotronics to pivot and manufacture ventilators as a rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic.<br>
</p><p>
In this Big Think Live session, presented by
<a href="http://www.bmo.com" target="_blank">BMO Financial Group</a>, <strong>Matthew Putman, scientist, musician, and CEO of Nanotronics</strong>, and Peter Hopkins, co-founder and president of Big Think, will open a window to the future. Learn how manufacturing disruption will accelerate innovation in a multitude of industries, why impact over profit should be a guiding star for leaders, and watch Putnam settle this question once and for all: Is AI a homicidal, job-devouring nemesis?
</p><p>
Ask your questions for Matthew Putman during the audience Q&A!
</p><p>
<em>Join the live stream at 10am EDT, Tuesday August 11.</em>
</p><h2>STREAMING LINKS:</h2><p>
<em><a href="https://edge.bigthink.com/live_streams/108" target="_self">Big Think Edge</a> | <a href="https://youtu.be/QcKEogKu3Co" target="_blank">YouTube</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/posts/10157564628763527" target="_blank">Facebook</a></em>
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<strong>Thanks to our partner BMO Financial Group.</strong></p><p>
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Popular
NASA's idea for making food from thin air just became a reality — it could feed billions
Here's why you might eat greenhouse gases in the future.
19 July, 2019
Jordane Mathieu on Unsplash
Technology & Innovation
- The company's protein powder, "Solein," is similar in form and taste to wheat flour.
- Based on a concept developed by NASA, the product has wide potential as a carbon-neutral source of protein.
- The man-made "meat" industry just got even more interesting.
<p>It's not like you can make food out of thin air. Well…it turns out you can. A company from Finland, <a href="https://solarfoods.fi/" target="_blank">Solar Foods</a>, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO₂, water and electricity. It's a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021. </p><p>It's likely to first appear on grocery shelves in protein shakes and yogurt. It could be an exciting development: Solein's manufacturing process is carbon neutral and the potential for scalability seems unlimited — we've got too much CO₂, if anything. Why not get rid of some greenhouse gas with a side of fries?</p>
Seriously sustainable
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTk0MDIzNS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjM4NTMzMX0.BCEfYnn6C3z1zUHIS38xOWjXktgamNBi5iyqklSMYK8/img.png?width=980" id="ea524" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="50533380eeb18eb5833b6b6aa3abec38" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Solar Foods
<p>Solar Foods makes Solein by extracting CO₂ from air using <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90356326/we-have-the-tech-to-suck-co2-from-the-air-but-can-it-suck-enough-to-make-a-difference" target="_blank">carbon-capture technology</a>, and then combines it with water, nutrients and vitamins, using 100 percent renewable solar energy from partner <a href="https://www.fortum.com" target="_blank">Fortum</a> to promote a natural fermentation process similar to the one that produces yeast and lactic acid bacteria.</p><p>When the company claims its single-celled protein is "free from agricultural limitations," they're not kidding. Being produced indoors means Solar Foods is not dependent on arable land, water (i.e., rain), or favorable weather.</p><p>The company is already working with the European Space Agency to develop foods for off-planet production and consumption. (The idea for Solein actually began at NASA.) They also see potential in bringing protein production to areas whose climate or ground conditions make conventional agriculture impossible.</p><p>And let's not forget all those <a href="https://www.bk.com/menu-item/impossible-whopper" target="_blank">beef-free burgers</a> based on pea and soy proteins currently gaining popularity. The environmental challenge of scaling up the supply of those plants to meet their high demand may provide an opening for the completely renewable Solein — the company could provide companies that produce animal-free "meats," such as <a href="https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/" target="_blank">Beyond Meat</a> and <a href="https://impossiblefoods.com" target="_blank">Impossible Foods</a>, a way to further reduce their environmental impact.</p>The larger promise
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTk0MDI0MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjU4MTg2OX0.7dZZYT5WEV_EupBuLVFwHynarTiz8RYR9aJtC6Ts2C4/img.jpg?width=980" id="3415d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2e6eebe06d795f844752f9e9d30040d7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Solar Foods
<p>The impact of the beef — and for that matter, poultry, pork, and fish — industries on our planet is widely recognized as one of the main drivers behind climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and antibiotic-resistant illness. From the cutting down of rainforests for cattle-grazing land, to runoff from factory farming of livestock and plants, to the disruption of the marine food chain, to the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, it's been disastrous.</p><p>The advent of a promising source of protein derived from two of the most renewable things we have, CO₂ and sunlight, <a href="https://solarfoods.fi/environmental-impact/" target="_blank">gets us out of the planet-destruction business</a> at the same time as it offers the promise of a stable, long-term solution to one of the world's most fundamental nutritional needs.</p>Solar Foods' timetable
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTk0MTEzMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5OTU1OTMwMn0.wnXh56iO_77x2XKV2uIPf78BKw4AJLUpmiyq_JBVGvo/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=172%2C146%2C62%2C135&height=700" id="0297c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="125c9a98ec818f5c241fa28ef1423e67" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Lubsan / Shutterstock / Big Think
<p>While company plans are always moderated by unforeseen events — including the availability of sufficient funding — Solar Foods plans a global commercial rollout for Solein in 2021 and to be producing two million meals annually, with a revenue of $800 million to $1.2 billion by 2023. By 2050, they hope to be providing sustenance to 9 billion people as part of a $500 billion protein market.</p><p>The project began in 2018, and this year, they anticipate achieving three things: Launching Solein (check), beginning the approval process certifying its safety as a Novel Food in the EU, and publishing plans for a 1,000-metric ton-per-year factory capable of producing 500 million meals annually.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTk0MjExMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTg0MTYwNH0.CJOYcncprxMcWhsnxeKPX7DGut-QYMy-hxY7hVzQSjI/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=4%2C103%2C181%2C1&height=700" id="35ff9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e4d6344c57432c2603f589d2be85397e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
The protein powder Solein. Image source: SOLAR FOODS
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How COVID-19 will change the way we design our homes
Pandemic-inspired housing innovation will collide with techno-acceleration.
09 August, 2020
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Coronavirus
COVID-19 is confounding planning for basic human needs, including shelter.
<p> Around the world, home builders are vigilantly reading tea leaves in the fog, trying to figure out how to survive (and even thrive in) an unfolding economic disaster. And we mourn the fallen, working to keep our loved ones healthy and safe.</p><p>COVID-19 has drawn a political dividing line in much of the world. It reminds me of something an American revolutionary, Samuel Johnson, said in 1775: "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." In my story, the scoundrel is this virus – COVID-19.</p><p>Home builders construct the physical environments for families, who turn them into homes – homes we hope are filled with laughter, love, aspiration and celebration. Good housing is the cornerstone of strong communities.</p><p>Much of how COVID-19 impacts us will be determined by science, but not all. "The question of how the pandemic plays out is at least 50% social and political," Sarah Cobey, epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, told <em>Scientific American.</em></p><p>Just as the Spanish flu gave us the vanity room, which originated as a hand-washing basin immediately inside the front entry of a home, COVID-19 will influence innovation in home design.</p>
<p>
Open-plan, ever-larger houses have ruled the market for decades, even though family size has shrunk and middle-class real earnings have remained flat. U.S. households averaged 2.44 children in 1965 but 1.9 by 2015. With 128.6 million households, that's 7 million fewer children. Yet the average size of U.S. houses grew 62% from 1973-2015, from 1,660 square feet to 2,687. House size was still growing in 2018. In Canada, houses have also grown as families shrunk. In Europe, average house size has grown to 1,880 square feet (which Europeans will say astounds them).
</p><p>
Pandemic thinking will likely favour less-open spaces (though people will crave nature-positive spaces), perhaps reviving cozy dens to supplement living rooms. Spending may shift into less obvious enhancements of safety and comfort. Better interior insulation will enable quieter places. Screened-in porches and outdoor spaces, and new approaches to landscaping will help keep mosquitoes and other disease-bearing critters at bay. A bedroom, kitchen, living room area and bath that is a little removed from the core of the house will accommodate adult children now and elderly parents later (at Lennar, we call this the Next Gen Home). Split HVAC systems can prevent sickroom air from being pumped into everybody's space. Such mini-HVAC systems with no ductwork have become very affordable.
</p><p>
Home-based jobs call for better home offices (Lennar calls this the Next Gen Home Office). The infamous toilet flush in the background of U.S. Supreme Court by-telephone oral arguments underscored the perils of inappropriate home-work spaces. So do videos of children and pets interrupting conference calls or other tasks. A larger home-based work force will drive designers to balance job requirements with the privacy and safety of the family.
</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0NjM2Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTI4MDQ2MH0.aQZirj2jDCmwTn94E7cHku5Np1Sj3XYTd5U-cjHFJA4/img.png?width=980" id="7841f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ad162e4cbaa85f0a8bb886bcdc9ea738" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>Pandemic-inspired housing innovation will collide, however, with three critical forces that were already simmering pre-COVID and are now at a high boil.</p><ul><li><strong>Techno-Accelerations.</strong> The pandemic has accelerated the already-brisk integration of real and virtual activities, including remote work, remote health, and remote education. But electric and automated vehicle compatibility, delivery-enablement systems, frictionless purchasing and the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling the remote maintenance and repair of homes . . . all require fast bandwidth – faster even than 5G. It also requires security: in a geopolitical environment where surface attack areas have expanded, we all want military-grade cybersecurity.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Climate.</strong> As China began publicly grappling with deaths from COVID-19 in mid-January 2020, the World Economic Forum's "2020 Global Risks Report" was released. It warned that climate change makes more of the planet hospitable to infectious pathogens. Resilience is therefore the watchword of the remainder of the century. Energy and flood resilience, and smart insurance and other financing products that will encourage a great migration away from the coasts . . . these are the characteristics of the new urban morphology brought about by climate change.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Social Justice.</strong> While COVID-19 did not cause the social justice movement that swept many parts of the world this summer and the U.S. in particular, the virus amplifies economic burdens which, in turn, exacerbate the movement's root causes: income inequality is central to this dynamic. The Institute for Policy Studies found America's 400 richest people are worth $US3 trillion, more than all African-American households plus 25% of Hispanic households combined. There's little doubt these numbers err on the low side now. COVID-19 has wiped out the ready resources of many families and that will spark varying degrees of political reaction globally. Populist housing policies that threaten capital investment could deter home building and contribute to future housing crises. Inclusionary housing programmes that accelerate wealth creation among traditionally excluded populations, enable financing, inject innovation into housing use and urgently work toward housing security for vulnerable populations will underpin how governments reallocate precious housing-related subsidies.</li></ul><p>The ghosts of the 2008 financial crisis hang over the pandemic economy. But the 2008 crisis was housing-ignited. High-risk mortgages drove up the prices of houses buyers couldn't afford but bought anyway. This textbook housing bubble was buoyed by an irrational conviction that prices would keep rising and rising. Low interest and inflated housing values led millions to refinance or, in the U.S., extract home equity loans to pay for remodelling, cars, boats, campers, and bucket-list quests. The housing bubble popped and its bad ink seeped through world economic systems.</p><p>A 6 January 2020 <em>Washington Post</em> article opened with: "A strong job market and low mortgage rates should sustain the housing market in 2020. The problem will be finding enough homes for buyers. With unemployment hovering at a 50-year low and interest rates well below historical norms, the real estate industry is being dragged down by scarcity in housing stock…."</p><p>Within three months, U.S. unemployment had surged to historic levels (more than 23 million Americans were officially unemployed at the start of May, more than 30 million by the end) but that <em>Washington Post</em> article still holds true today. Low mortgage costs in the U.S. and the developed world continue to drive affordability. And the deficit in housing production inherited from the 2008 crisis still constrains supply while, at the same time, millennials all over the world are starting their families.</p>
<p>Sales of existing houses — normally about 90% of the U.S. market — have been eviscerated this year. New homes are favoured over resale, and de-urbanisation is occurring where it can. If new-home sales of the late spring and, as reported in the media, the early summer, continue, 2020 could be a fair year for new home builders. There's been a big jump in online sales of new homes, a global spike in online home-searching activity, and purchasing occurring often without buyers even walking through a house. A new, fully warranted home, bought without having to spend time with realtors and owners, has great appeal.</p><p>In the last century, vaccines and the public health movement largely eliminated dreaded contagious disease in much of the world. Industrialised countries have periodic outbreaks that remind us of this danger, among which, the HIV/AIDS, SARS, Zika, and West Nile viruses. Public health professionals tell us we could be entering an era in which mass urbanisation, climate change, stressed natural eco-systems and other factors will yield a pandemic (or something approximating one) every 7-10 years. This will force a reckoning with what it means to work together toward a better future. But we will also realise that we will all seek refuge in a home. Maybe knowing that will be our true last refuge.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/how-covid-19-will-change-what-we-call-home-ddfe95b686/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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How gene editing a person’s brain cells could be used to curb the opioid epidemic
Is CRISPR the solution?
08 August, 2020
John Moore/Getty Images
Surprising Science
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic cripples the economy and kills hundreds of people each day, there is another epidemic that continues to kill tens of thousands of people each year through opioid drug overdose.
<p>Opioid analgesic drugs, like morphine and oxycodone, are the classic double-edged swords. They are the very best drugs to stop severe pain but also the class of drugs most likely to kill the person taking them.
In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jnr.24636">recent journal article</a>, I outlined how a combination of state-of-the-art molecular techniques, such as CRISPR gene editing and brain microinjection methods, could be used to blunt one edge of the sword and make opioid drugs safer.</p><p>I am a pharmacologist interested in the way opioid drugs such as morphine and fentanyl can blunt pain. I became fascinated in biology at the time when endorphins – natural opioids made by our bodies – were discovered. I have been intrigued by the way opioid drugs work and their targets in the brain, the opioid receptors, for the last 30 years. In my paper, I propose a way to prevent opioid overdoses by modifying an opioid user's brain cells using advanced technology.</p>
<h2>Opioid receptors stop breathing</h2><p>Opioids kill by stopping a person from breathing (respiratory depression). They do so by acting on a specific set of respiratory nerves, or neurons, found in the lower part of the brain that contain opioid receptors. Opioid receptors are proteins that bind morphine, heroin and other opioid drugs. The binding of an opioid to its receptor triggers a reaction in neurons that reduces their activity. Opioid receptors on pain neurons mediate the pain-killing, or analgesic, effects of opioids. When opioids bind to opioid receptors on respiratory neurons, they slow breathing or, in the case of an opioid overdose, stop it entirely.</p><p>Respiratory neurons are located in the brainstem, the tail-end part of the brain that continues into the spine as the spinal cord. Animal studies show that opioid receptors on respiratory neurons are responsible for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1113/JP270822" target="_blank">opioid-induced respiratory depression</a> – the cause of opioid overdose. Genetically altered mice born without opioid receptors <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/s0169-328x(97)00353-7" target="_blank">do not die from large doses of morphine</a> unlike mice with these receptors present.</p><p>Unlike laboratory mice, humans cannot be altered when embryos to remove all opioid receptors from the brain and elsewhere. Nor would it be a good idea. Humans need opioid receptors to serve as the targets for our natural opioid substances, the endorphins, which are released into the brain during times of high stress and pain.</p><p>Also, a total opioid receptor knockout in humans would leave that person unresponsive to the beneficial pain-killing effects of opioids. In my journal article, I argue that what is needed is a selective receptor removal of the opioid receptors on respiratory neurons. Having reviewed the available technology, I believe this can be done by combining CRISPR gene editing and a new neurosurgical microinjection technique.</p>
<h2>CRISPR to the rescue: Destroying opioid receptors</h2><p>CRISPR, which is an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, is a gene editing method that was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1225829" target="_blank">discovered in the genome of bacteria</a>. Bacteria get infected by viruses too and CRISPR is a strategy that bacteria evolved to cut-up the viral genes and kill invading pathogens.</p><p>The CRISPR method allows researchers to target specific genes expressed in cell lines, tissues, or whole organisms, to be cut-up and removed – knocked out – or otherwise altered. There is a commercially available CRISPR kit which knocks out human opioid receptors produced in cells that are grown in cell cultures in the lab. While this CRISPR kit is formulated for in vitro use, similar conditional opioid receptor knock-out techniques <a href="https://doi.org/10.1113/JP278612" target="_blank">have been demonstrated in live mice</a>.</p><p>To knockout opioid receptors in human respiratory neurons, a sterile solution containing CRISPR gene-editing molecules would be prepared in the laboratory. Besides the gene-editing components, the solution contains chemical reagents that allow the gene-editing machinery to enter the respiratory neurons and make their way into the nucleus and into the neuron's genome.</p><p>How does one get the CRISPR opioid receptor knockout solution into a person's respiratory neurons?</p><p>Enter the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2019.04.081" target="_blank">intracranial microinjection instrument</a> (IMI) developed by <a href="https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/miles-cunningham" target="_blank">Miles Cunningham</a> and his colleagues at Harvard. The IMI allows for computer-controlled delivery of small volumes of solution at specific places in the brain by using an extremely thin tube – about twice the diameter of a human hair – that can enter the brain at the base of the skull and thread through brain tissue without damage.</p><p>The computer can direct the robotic placement of the tube as it is fed images of the brain taken before the procedure using MRI. But even better, the IMI also has a recording wire embedded in the tube that allows measurement of neuronal activity to identify the right group of nerve cells.</p><p>Because the brain itself feels no pain, the procedure could be done in a conscious patient using only local anesthetics to numb the skin. Respiratory neurons drive the breathing muscles by firing action potentials which are measured by the recording wire in the tube. When the activity of the respiratory neurons matches the breathing movements by the patients, the proper location of the tube is confirmed and the CRISPR solution injected.</p>
<h2>The call for drastic action</h2><p>Opioid receptors on neurons in the brain have a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bph.13901" target="_blank">half-life of about 45 minutes</a>. Over a period of several hours, the opioid receptors on respiratory neurons would degrade and the CRISPR gene-editing machinery embedded in the genome would prevent new opioid receptors from appearing. If this works, the patient would be protected from opioid overdose within 24 hours. Because the respiratory neurons do not replenish, the CRISPR opioid receptor knockout should last for life.</p><p>With no opioid receptors on respiratory neurons, the opioid user cannot die from opioid overdose. After proper backing from National Institute on Drug Abuse and leading research and health care institutions, I believe CRISPR treatment could enter clinical trials in between five to 10 years. The total cost of opioid-involved <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/The%20Underestimated%20Cost%20of%20the%20Opioid%20Crisis.pdf" target="_blank">overdose deaths is about US$430 billion per year</a>. CRISPR treatment of only 10% of high-risk opioid users in one year would save thousands of lives and $43 billion.</p><p>Intracranial microinjection of CRISPR solutions might seem drastic. But drastic actions that are needed to save human lives from opioid overdoses. A large segment of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.10046" target="_blank">opioid overdose victims are chronic pain patients</a>. It may be possible that chronic pain patients in a terminal phase of their lives and in hospice care would volunteer in phase I clinical trials for the CRISPR opioid receptor knockout treatment I propose here.</p><p>Making the opioid user impervious to death by opioids is a permanent solution to a horrendous problem that has resisted efforts by prevention, treatment and pharmacological means. Steady and well-funded work to prove the CRISPR method, first with preclinical animal models then in clinical trials, is a moonshot for the present generation of biomedical scientists.</p><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/craig-w-stevens-1138523" target="_blank">Craig W. Stevens</a>, Professor of Pharmacology, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/oklahoma-state-university-2062" target="_blank">Oklahoma State University</a></em></p><p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-gene-editing-a-persons-brain-cells-could-be-used-to-curb-the-opioid-epidemic-143165" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Unfiltered lessons of a female entrepreneur
Join Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and best-selling author Charles Duhigg as he interviews Victoria Montgomery Brown, co-founder and CEO of Big Think.
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