Tag: research

Why we need to improve heart health in Europe

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Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number one killer in Europe. They cost the EU an estimated €282 billion in 2021, larger than the entire EU budget itself.[1] Sixty million people live with CVDs in the EU, while 13 million new cases are diagnosed annually.[2]

Behind this data are individual stories of suffering and loss, of lives limited and horizons lowered by, for example, heart attack and stroke. These diseases directly affect every community in every country. And they strain our health services which must respond to cardiac emergencies as well as the ongoing care needs of chronic CVD patients.

Sixty million people live with CVDs in the EU, while 13 million new cases are diagnosed annually.

Cardiovascular health is a priority not just because of the scale of its impact, but because of the scope we see for significant advances in outcomes for patients. We should take inspiration from the past: between 2000 and 2012, the death rate from CVDs fell by 37 percent in the five largest western European countries (France, Germany, the U.K., Spain and Italy).[2] This progress was achieved through a combination of medical innovations, and supported by a mix of health care policies and guidelines that propelled progress and improved patients’ lives.

New treatments can now help prevent strokes or treat pulmonary embolisms. Others can delay kidney disease progression, while at the same time preventing cardiovascular events.

Despite progress, this downward trend has reversed and we are seeing an increase in the CVD burden across all major European countries.

And the research continues. Precision medicines are in development for inherited CVD-risk factors like elevated lipoprotein(a), which affects up to 20 percent of the population.[3] A new class of anti-thrombotics promises to bring better treatments for the prevention of clotting, without increasing the risk of bleeding. New precision cardiology approaches, such as gene therapy in congestive heart failure, are being investigated as potential cures.

Despite progress, this downward trend has reversed and we are seeing an increase in the CVD burden across all major European countries.[4]

Getting the definitions right

This year’s World Heart Day, spearheaded by the World Heart Federation, comes amid the revision of the EU pharmaceutical legislation. The European Commission’s proposal of a narrow definition of unmet medical need, which could hamper innovation is causing deep concern across stakeholders.

Instead, a patient-centered definition of unmet medical need taking the full spectrum of patient needs into consideration, would incentivize more avenues of research addressing the needs of people living with chronic conditions. It would provide a basis for drafting the next chapter in the history of cardiovascular medicines — one that we hope will be written in Europe and benefit people in the EU and beyond. Not only would this inspire advances that help people to live longer, but it would also improve quality of life for those at risk of, and affected by, cardiovascular events.

Unmet medical need criteria currently included in the draft Pharmaceutical Legislation would do a disservice to patients by downplaying the chronic nature of many CVDs, and the importance of patient-reported outcomes and experience.[5] And many of the advances seen in recent decades would fall short of the narrow definition under consideration. This limited approach disregards incremental innovation, which might otherwise reduce pain, slow disease progression, or improve treatment adherence by taking account of patient preferences for how therapies are administered.

Much of the illness and death caused by CVD is preventable — in fact, 9 out of 10 heart attacks can be avoided.

At this moment it is unclear how the unmet medical need criteria in the legislation will apply to these and other situations. Policymakers should create a multistakeholder platform with the space to discuss patients’ needs, getting expert views from medical societies, patients and industry to better understand the innovation environment. The European Alliance for Cardiovascular Health (EACH), a multistakeholder network comprised of 17 organizations in the CVD space in Europe, stands ready to inform policymakers about the CVD burden and the pressing needs of patients. [6] EACH not only supports the EU´s endeavor to develop more policies on CVD, it also supports and promotes the idea of an EU Cardiovascular Health Plan to work towards better patients’ health care across the EU and more equal health standards. So far, structured discussions with such stakeholders do not sufficiently take place, and we risk missing those opportunities, and lose in both patient access as well as R&D attractiveness of the EU.

Primary and secondary prevention

As well as driving future innovation, Europe must also make the best possible use of the tools we have now. We must do what works — everywhere.

At the heart of this approach is prevention. Much of the illness and death caused by CVD is preventable — in fact, 9 out of 10 heart attacks can be avoided.[7] Primary prevention can dramatically reduce rates of heart attack, stroke and other CVDs. Secondary prevention, which includes screening and disease management, such as simple blood tests and urine tests, as well as blood pressure and BMI monitoring, has a key role to play in containing the burden of disease. [8]

Joint cardiovascular and diabetes health checks at primary care level, taking an evidence-based approach, would help diagnose and treat CVD before the onset of acute symptoms.[9] By following current treatment guidelines and protocols, health care professionals across Europe can help to prevent complications, improve health outcomes for patients and save health care costs. Also here, a multistakeholder approach is key. Policymakers should not miss out on listening to the CVD multistakeholder alliances that have already formed — at EU and at EU member countries level, as for example EACH. These partnerships are great ways for policymakers to better understand the needs of patients and to get the experts’ views.

Research-driven companies exist to meet the needs of patients in Europe and around the world. We need to create an environment that enables companies to embark on complex and unpredictable trials. That means having the rights incentives and clarity on the regulatory pathway for future treatments.

[1] https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases/Price-tag-on-cardiovascular-disease-in-Europe-higher-than-entire-EU-budget

[2] https://iris.unibocconi.it/retrieve/handle/11565/4023471/115818/Torbica%20EHJ%202019.pdf

[3] https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/Articles/2019/07/02/08/05/Lipoproteina-in-Clinical-Practice

[4] https://www.efpia.eu/about-medicines/use-of-medicines/disease-specific-groups/transforming-the-lives-of-people-living-with-cardiovascular-diseases/cvd-dashboards

[5] https://health.ec.europa.eu/medicinal-products/pharmaceutical-strategy-europe/reform-eu-pharmaceutical-legislation_en

[6] https://www.cardiovascular-alliance.eu/

[7] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.119.024154

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5331469/

[9] https://www.efpia.eu/news-events/the-efpia-view/statements-press-releases/because-we-can-t-afford-not-to-let-s-make-a-joint-health-check-for-cardiovascular-disease-cvd-and-diabetes-happen/



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Beyond forgetfulness: Why we must act on Alzheimer’s disease now

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In the face of an increasingly aging population, today’s reality reveals a harsh truth: health systems in the EU and beyond are ill-equipped to provide early and timely diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and embrace innovative treatments that could help to preserve memory and, with it, independence.  

Recent advances suggest that timely intervention may hold the promise to slow the memory decline in Alzheimer’s disease, making early diagnosis more critical than ever before. Yet without the necessary health care infrastructure in place to diagnose and provide treatment, we risk missing the crucial early window and the opportunity to delay — and hopefully in the near future prevent — distressing symptoms for patients and heartbreaking experiences for families.  

The EU and its member countries have the opportunity to be remembered for leading in this space by increasing funding for research, improving health care infrastructure to support accurate diagnosis and timely intervention, and enhancing support services at a national and regional level. The forthcoming European Parliament elections in June 2024 are the ideal moments to make that pledge. For individuals, families and health care systems, Alzheimer’s disease is a ticking time bomb unless we invest in our future health today.  

The EU is not prepared for Alzheimer’s disease  

In Europe, approximately 7 million people are affected by Alzheimer’s disease, a number set to double to 14 million by 2050.1 On top of the physical and emotional distress this will cause, there are direct financial and social implications on families and communities, with Alzheimer’s costs expected to reach a staggering €250 billion by 20302 — bigger than the GDP of Portugal3 — placing an additional and substantial weight on global health care systems that are already struggling under cost and capacity burdens.4 

Timely diagnosis stands as a cornerstone in determining the appropriate treatment for patients.

That’s why MEP Deirdre Clune is leading the call for a European Parliament hearing to discuss a focused EU strategy on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. “Timely diagnosis stands as a cornerstone in determining the appropriate treatment for patients,” argues Clune. “Therefore, the EU must create a strategic framework which lays out clear recommendations for national governments and recognises the toll of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease on societies across Europe, encourage innovation and take on board best practices to develop effective and efficient approaches. Together, with a unified approach and firm commitment, the EU can pave the way for better Alzheimer’s care.”

In the next EU political mandate, policymakers must answer the call by developing a comprehensive EU Beating Dementia Plan that specifically addresses the unique challenges posed by Alzheimer’s disease and building on established coordinated action plans for other significant health burdens, such as the EU Beating Cancer Plan. The European Brain Council and EFPIA’s, RETHINKING Alzheimer’s disease White Paper is a useful resource, calling for policymakers to rethink Alzheimer’s and offering policy recommendations to make tangible changes to improve the lives of people living with the disease.  

EU member countries must commit to investing in diagnostic infrastructure, technology and integrated care that can help to detect Alzheimer’s disease at an early stage and ensure timely intervention resulting in the preservation of memory and, thereof, independent living and normal social functioning.  

Laying the foundations at national level  

While action is certainly needed at the EU level, huge opportunity lies at the national and regional levels. Each member country has the chance to apply well-funded national dementia plans that tailor their strategies and responses to address the distinct needs of their populations, making a real and meaningful impact on the people and health systems in their country.  

Inspiration stems from Italy, which recently launched its Parliamentary Intergroup for Neuroscience and Alzheimer’s, dedicating its efforts to raising awareness, fostering discussions among national and regional institutions, promoting clinician and patient involvement, supporting novel research, implementing new diagnostic models, and strengthening patient access to care. 

Italian MP Annarita Patriarca, co-host of the Parliamentary Intergroup, affirms: “Primary responsibility of a member state is to ensure to all citizens the greatest standards of diagnosis and access to treatment and care. Thus, it is necessary to put in place a strong collaboration between the public and private sector to strengthen investments in neurological diseases. Improving patients’ diagnostic and care pathways, especially in a disease area like AD with such a high unmet medical need and societal impact will be the core focus of the intergroup.” 

Additionally, during the Alzheimer’s and Neuroscience Conference: a priority for the country in July, members of the Italian Parliament importantly put forward legislative and regulatory solutions to ensure an early and accurate diagnosis. 

Leading the conversation on the international stage   

Amid the growing burden of Alzheimer’s disease globally, this is a moment for policymakers to hold each other accountable. Member countries are uniquely placed to do this within the EU but also across the wider health care ecosystem, calling on countries and leaders to honor prior commitments that prioritized investment in relieving major health burdens, including Alzheimer’s.  

Encouragingly, the May G7 Hiroshima Leaders’ Communiqué specifically recognized and supported dementia as a freestanding issue, breaking away from the typical categorization with NCDs. Moreover, the G7 health ministers published a joint Communiqué spotlighting the priority to “enhance early detection, diagnosis and interventions, including developing care pathways and capability and capacity building of health and primary care providers by strengthening primary health care (PHC)”.  

These promising steps mean that Alzheimer’s disease is beginning to gain the recognition it deserves but also acts as a line in the sand to ensure complacency doesn’t creep in. Collectively, EU countries must assume a leading voice within the international fora, ensuring that Alzheimer’s disease remains a global health care priority and receives the investment it warrants. 

Time to commit to action in Alzheimer’s disease  

September marks World Alzheimer’s Month, and its theme Never Too Early, Never Too Late, reiterates the importance of early diagnosis. It presents a valuable foundation to initiate discussions on country- and regional-level strategies to drive and strengthen diagnostic infrastructure and services for the prevention, diagnosis, case management, monitoring and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. 

Unless we act now, a generation of people will be forgotten as they begin to lose their memories.

“Unless we act now, a generation of people will be forgotten as they begin to lose their memories,” shares Frédéric Destrebecq, executive director of The European Brain Council. “By recognizing the urgency of the situation and making concerted investments, we can forge a path toward a more compassionate, empowered future for individuals, families and communities impacted by Alzheimer’s, and remember all those who’ve been lost to this devastating disease.”

It is never too early, never too late, to be remembered for taking action against this debilitating disease.  

References:  

1 – Jones RW, Mackell J, Berthet K, Knox S. Assessing attitudes and behaviours surrounding Alzheimer’s disease in Europe: key findings of the Important Perspectives on Alzheimer’s Care and Treatment (IMPACT) survey. The journal of nutrition, health & aging. 2010 Aug;14:525-30.  

2 – Cimler R, Maresova P, Kuhnova J, Kuca K. Predictions of Alzheimer’s disease treatment and care costs in European countries. PLoS One. 2019;14(1):e0210958. Published 2019 Jan 25. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0210958 

3 – Published by Statista Research Department, 20 J. GDP of European countries 2022. Statista. June 20, 2023. Accessed August 1, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/685925/gdp-of-european-countries/. 

4 – The Economist. Why health-care services are in chaos everywhere. Available at:  https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/15/why-health-care-services-are-in-chaos-everywhere. Accessed: July 2023.  



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Knowledge gaps for perishable liquid food packs threaten Green Deal

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Professor Fredrik Nilsson, Packaging Logistics, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University

Policymakers are currently deliberating on packaging reuse targets in the proposed EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). But do they have the necessary evidence to make those decisions for all packaged products? A systematic review of 159 relevant scientific studies on packaging alternatives for perishable liquid foods[1] — milk, juices, nectars and plant-based drinks — suggests there is a clear gap in holistic impact assessment knowledge.

Packaging of perishable liquid foods exists in various forms such as aseptic paper-based beverage cartons or non-aseptic solutions such as plastic or glass bottles. Each packaging solution has an impact on the quality, safety and shelf life of the food it contains. In assessing packaging solutions, efforts should be made to understand the wider context of reuse targets for perishable liquid foods, with consideration for packaging types, food security, food safety, food waste and environmental impacts.

In both research and policy contexts, packaging is still often considered separately from its contents in impact assessments.

However, in both research and policy contexts, packaging is still often considered separately from its contents in impact assessments, despite an existing body of knowledge and evidence showing that food and its packaging should be treated as an integrated unit.

Consequently, policymakers served only with evidence of packaging impacts could be misled and make inaccurate decisions when discussing the measures included in the proposed EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR). This risks undermining the EU’s Green Deal ambitions.

The importance of the analysis

One of the primary objectives of the proposed PPWR is to ensure that “all packaging in the EU is reusable or recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030”, in line with the EU Green Deal and the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. Setting reusable packaging targets was always likely to spark a robust debate with the food industry. The European food system uses a large amount of packaging and the use of single-use packaging in particular has grown significantly in the past decades. For perishable liquid foods, producers today prefer recyclable single-use packaging — such as aseptic beverage cartons — for the sale of 75 percent of milk, 59 percent of juices and a major share of plant-based drinks in the EU[2].

We undertook a comprehensive and systematic analysis of all identifiable studies on single-use versus reusable packaging for perishable liquid foods.

With a specific focus on the 154 billion liters of perishable liquid foods produced in the EU each year[3], a more fundamental question occurred to the Packaging Logistics division in the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University. We wondered if a sufficient body of evidence existed to help policymakers make packaging reuse decisions, so we undertook a comprehensive and systematic analysis of all identifiable studies on single-use versus reusable packaging for perishable liquid foods.

The scale of the knowledge gap that we uncovered was eye-opening.

Findings from the study

Based on an analysis of 159 identified scientific papers, we came to three main conclusions.

First, the research and knowledge of food waste for single-use packaging compared to reusable packaging alternatives for perishable liquid foods was clearly insufficient. No studies were found that evaluated reusable packaging for such foods in relation to food waste, consequently no studies were found comparing single-use packaging with reusable packaging in this regard. A few studies were found that evaluated different single-use packaging alternatives in terms of the packaging and the liquid food being contained, finding that multilayer carton packages had the lowest environmental impact. Most environmentally-focused studies on food packaging did not consider the food saved or wasted.

The research and knowledge of food waste for single-use packaging compared to reusable packaging alternatives for perishable liquid foods was clearly insufficient.

Second, there were few studies comparing reusable and single-use packaging for perishable liquid foods in terms of food safety and quality. Instead, the majority of sampled papers simply provided insights and evidence for critical factors to be considered in food production and supply chain handling to keep liquid foods safe and of sufficient quality. This analysis surfaced several challenges related to reusable packaging, some related to food safety and others to quality limitations. For example, some studies pointed out quality-related challenges from plastic refillable bottles, such as the absorption of chemicals from previous use.

Finally, while there were many papers addressing shelf life as a critical aspect for perishable liquid foods — and many that empirically provided evidence of lower food waste in retail and at the consumer stage when shelf life is prolonged — there were still sizable knowledge gaps. No studies were found that compared the shelf life of single-use versus reusable packaging for perishable liquid foods. None were found that evaluated the shelf life of reusable packaging for such foods in relation to food waste, and none were found that clarified what optimal shelf life is for different products.

In our view, the key knowledge gaps at this time are: evidence of food waste impacts for reusable alternatives, so that a comparison with recyclable single-use packaging is possible; comparative studies on food safety and quality impacts through using single-use and reusable alternatives; shelf life comparisons; impact assessments that also take into account climate and land-use impacts; and, most importantly, food packaging studies that take into account the product that the packaging contains and protects. 

Key knowledge gaps need to be addressed

Policymakers should be insisting on accessing a more holistic knowledge base built on assessment of impact, before they finalize reusable packaging targets in the PPWR. 

The evidence we have today suggests that greater food safety, food security and food quality could be achieved by increasing the use of recyclable single-use packaging.

A more holistic perspective is crucial to help policymakers avoid measures that might miss higher environmental gains, compromise consumers’ health and wellbeing, and reconfigure the packaging industry. Further knowledge might indicate that reusable packaging for perishable liquid foods is feasible under specific circumstances. However, the evidence we have today suggests that greater food safety, food security and food quality could be achieved by increasing the use of recyclable single-use packaging. Support for that choice is already demonstrated today through the packaging chosen by the majority of European milk, juice and plant-based drink producers.

[1] Perishable foods are defined in EU legislation under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 as foods which, from a microbiological point of view, are highly perishable and are therefore likely after a short period to constitute an immediate danger to human health.

[2] AIJN, Liquid Fruit Market Report, 2018, p.7 https://aijn.eu/files/attachments/.598/2018_Liquid_Fruit_Market_Report.pdf

[3] Key figures on the European food chain, Eurostat, 2021



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Moldova ramps up EU membership push amid fears of Russia-backed coup

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CHIȘINĂU, Moldova — Tens of thousands of Moldovans descended on the central square of the capital on Sunday, waving flags and homemade placards in support of the country’s push to join the EU and make a historic break with Moscow.

With Russia’s war raging just across the border in Ukraine, the government of this tiny Eastern European nation called the rally in an effort to overcome internal divisions and put pressure on Brussels to begin accession talks, almost a year after Moldova was granted EU candidate status.

“Joining the EU is the best way to protect our democracy and our institutions,” Moldova’s President Maia Sandu told POLITICO at Chișinău’s presidential palace, as a column of her supporters marched past outside. “I call on the EU to take a decision on beginning accession negotiations by the end of the year. We think we have enough support to move forward.”

Speaking alongside Sandu at what was billed as a “national assembly,” European Parliament President Roberta Metsola declared that “Europe is Moldova. Moldova is Europe!” The crowd, many holding Ukrainian flags and the gold-and-blue starred banner of the EU, let out a cheer. An orchestra on stage played the bloc’s anthem, Ode to Joy.

“In recent years, you have taken decisive steps and now you have the responsibility to see it through, even with this war on your border,” Metsola said. “The Republic of Moldova is ready for integration into the single European market.”

However, the jubilant rally comes amid warnings that Moscow is doing everything it can to keep the former Soviet republic within its self-declared sphere of influence.

In February, the president of neighboring Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned that his country’s security forces had disrupted a plot to overthrow Moldova’s pro-Western government. Officials in Chișinău later said the Russian-backed effort could have involved sabotage, attacks on government buildings and hostage-taking. Moscow officially denies the claims.

“Despite previous efforts to stay neutral, Moldova is finding itself in the Kremlin’s crosshairs — whether they want to be or not, they’re party of this broader conflict in Ukraine,” said Arnold Dupuy, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

“There’s an effort by the Kremlin to turn the country into a ‘southern Kaliningrad,’ putting in place a friendly regime that allows them to attack the Ukrainians’ flanks,” Dupuy said. “But this hasn’t been as effective as the Kremlin hoped and they’ve actually strengthened the government’s hand to look to the EU and NATO for protection.”

Responding to the alleged coup attempt, Brussels last month announced it would deploy a civilian mission to Moldova to combat growing threats from Russia. According to Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, the deployment under the terms of the Common Security and Defense Policy, will provide “support to Moldova [to] protect its security, territorial integrity and sovereignty.”

Bumps on the road to Brussels

Last week, Sandu again called on Brussels to begin accession talks “as soon as possible” in order to protect Moldova from what she said were growing threats from Russia. “Nothing compares to what is happening in Ukraine, but we see the risks and we do believe that we can save our democracy only as part of the EU,” she said. A group of influential MEPs from across all of the main parties in the European Parliament have tabled a motion calling for the European Commission to start the negotiations by the end of the year.

But, after decades as one of Russia’s closest allies, Moldova knows its path to EU membership isn’t without obstacles.

“The challenge is huge,” said Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. “They will need to overcome this oligarchic culture that has operated for 30 years where everything is informal, institutions are very weak and large parts of the bureaucracy are made viable by vested interests.”

At the same time, a frozen conflict over the breakaway region of Transnistria, in the east of Moldova, could complicate matters still further. The stretch of land along the border with Ukraine, home to almost half a million people, has been governed since the fall of the Soviet Union by pro-Moscow separatists, and around 1,500 Russian troops are stationed there despite Chișinău demanding they leave. It’s also home to one of the Continent’s largest weapons stockpiles, with a reported 20,000 tons of Soviet-era ammunition.

“Moldova cannot become a member of the EU with Russian troops on its territory against the will of the Republic of Moldova itself, so we will need to solve this before membership,” Romanian MEP Siegfried Mureșan, chair of the European Parliament’s delegation to the country, told POLITICO.

“We do not know now what a solution could look like, but the fact that we do not have an answer to this very specific element should not prevent us from advancing Moldova’s European integration in all other areas where we can,” Mureșan said.

While she denied that Brussels had sent any official signals that Moldova’s accession would depend on Russian troops leaving the country, Sandu said that “we do believe that in the next months and years there may be a geopolitical opportunity to resolve this conflict.”

Ties that bind

Even outside of Transnistria, Moscow maintains significant influence in Moldova. While Romanian is the country’s official language, Russian is widely used in daily life while the Kremlin’s state media helps shape public opinion — and in recent months has turned up the dial on its attacks on Sandu’s government.

A study by Chișinău-based pollster CBS Research in February found that while almost 54 percent of Moldovans say they would vote in favor of EU membership, close to a quarter say they would prefer closer alignment with Russia. Meanwhile, citizens were split on who to blame for the war in Ukraine, with 25 percent naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and 18 percent saying the U.S.

“Putin is not a fool,” said one elderly man who declined to give his name, shouting at passersby on the streets of the capital. “I hate Ukrainians.”

Outside of the capital, the pro-Russian ȘOR Party has held counter-protests in several regional cities.

Almost entirely dependent on Moscow for its energy needs, Moldova has seen Russia send the cost of gas skyrocketing in what many see as an attempt at blackmail. Along with an influx of Ukrainian refugees, the World Bank reported that Moldova’s GDP “contracted by 5.9 percent and inflation reached an average of 28.7 percent in 2022.”

“We will buy energy sources from democratic countries, and we will not support Russian aggression in exchange for cheap gas,” Sandu told POLITICO.

The Moldovan president, a former World Bank economist who was elected in 2020 on a wave of anti-corruption sentiment, faces a potentially contentious election battle next year. With the process of EU membership set to take years, or even decades, it remains to be seen whether the country will stay the course in the face of pressure from the Kremlin.

For Aurelia, a 40-year-old Moldovan who tied blue and yellow ribbons into her hair for Sunday’s rally, the choice is obvious. “We’ve been a part of the Russian world my whole life. Now we want to live well, and we want to live free.”



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AI policy needs to bring the public with it

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Voiced by artificial intelligence.

Seb Wride is director of polling at Public First. 

Do you think an AI that’s as smart as a human and feels pain like a human should be able to refuse to do what it’s asked to? Like so many other issues, the answer to this question may well depend on one’s age. 

At Public First, we recently ran polling on AI in the United Kingdom, and found that the youngest and oldest in the country have very different attitudes toward AI. According to our findings, it’s likely that those under 35 in the U.K. will be the first to accept that an AI is conscious and, further, the first to suggest that the AI should be able to reject tasks. 

AI has very rapidly become a hot topic in the last few months, and like many others, I’ve found myself talking about it almost everywhere with colleagues, family and friends. Despite this, the discussion on what to do about AI has been entirely elite-led. Nobody has voted on it, and in-depth research into what the public thinks regarding the immense changes to our society AI advancement could bring is practically non-existent. 

Just last week, some of the biggest names in tech, including Tesla and Twitter boss Elon Musk, signed an open letter calling for an immediate pause on the development of AI that’s more powerful than the newly launched GPT-4 program, out of concern for the risks of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — meaning, AI on par with human cognition capabilities, particularly when it comes to being able to pick up any task it’s presented with.  

However, if these threats start to shape policy, it hardly feels fair that the public should be left out of the debate. 

In our polling, we found the public to be broadly aligned on what it would take for an AI to be conscious — namely, it should feel emotions and feel pain. However, while a quarter of those aged 65 and over said that an AI can never be conscious, only 6 percent of those aged 18 to 24 thought the same. 

What’s particularly interesting is how these age groups differ if we then postulate that an AI as smart as a human or that feels pain were to be developed. Almost a third of 18 to 24s who were polled agree that an AI “as smart as a human” should be treated equally to a human, compared to just 8 percent of those aged 65 and over.  

And when we instead suggested an AI that “felt pain like a human,” more 18 to 24s agreed that it should be treated equally than not (46 percent to 34 percent), while a majority of the oldest age group believed it still shouldn’t be (62 percent). 

Pressing this issue further and providing examples of ways in which an AI could be treated equally, we then found that over a quarter of those under 25 would grant an AGI the same legal rights and protections as humans (28 percent), over a quarter would give the AI minimum wage (26 percent), and over a fifth would allow an AI to marry a human (22 percent) and to vote in elections (21 percent).  

The equivalent levels among those over 65, however, all remained under 10 percent.  

Most starkly, by 44 percent to 19 percent, those aged 18 to 24 agreed that an AI as smart as a human should be able to refuse to do tasks that it doesn’t want to do, while an outright majority of those over 45 disagreed (54 percent). 

an AI as smart as a human should be able to refuse to do tasks that it doesn’t want to do | Image via iStock

We’re still a long way off from these discussions of AGI becoming political reality, of course, but there is scope for dramatic shifts in the way the public thinks and talks about AI in the very near future. 

When we asked how the public would best describe their feelings toward AI, the words “curious” (46 percent) and “interested” (42 percent) scored top. Meanwhile, “worried” was the highest scoring negative word at 27 percent, and only 17 percent described themselves as “scared.” And as it stands, currently, more people describe AI as providing an opportunity for the U.K. economy (33 percent) than posing a threat (19 percent) — although a good chunk are not sure. 

But this could all change very quickly. 

Awareness and public-facing use-cases of AI are growing rapidly. For example, 29 percent of those polled had heard of ChatGPT, including over 40 percent of those under 35. Additionally, a third of those who had heard of it claimed to have already used it personally. 

There is, however, still a lot of scope for AI to surprise the public. 60 percent in our sample said they would be surprised if an AI chatbot claimed to be conscious and asked to be freed from its programmer. Interestingly, this is more than the proportion who said they would be surprised if a swarm of autonomous drones was used to assassinate someone in the U.K. (51 percent).  

Based on this, I would suggest that many of the attitudes we see the public currently expressing toward AI — and AGI — are premised on a belief that this is all a far-off possibility. However, I would also argue that those who are just starting to use these tools are only a few steps away from an “Eerie AI” moment, when the computer does something truly surprising, and one feels like perhaps there’s no going back. 

Just the other week, our research showed how much beliefs that an artist’s job could be automated by an AI could shift, simply by showing individuals some examples of art produced by AI. If we see this sort of shift play out with Large Language Models — like GPT — then suddenly, the concern expressed by the public on this issue will shoot up, and it might start to matter whether one tends to believe that these models are conscious or not. 

Now, however, it all feels like a “which will happen first” scenario — the government curbing AI development in some way, an AI model going rogue or backfiring horrendously, or the appearance of a public opinion backlash to rapid AI development. 

In essence, this means we need a rethink of how AI policy develops over time. And personally, I’d be a whole lot less worried if I felt I had at least some say over it all — even if that’s just with political parties and government paying a bit more attention to what we all think about AI.



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Helping consumers snack mindfully

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Can Buharali, senior director global public affairs at Mondelēz International

Every day, people seeking a healthier lifestyle can encounter different recommendations about what foods and beverages they should have or avoid. However, little guidance may be seen on why and how to eat or drink to get the most out of the eating experience. One approach is shifting the thinking from the what, to the why and how — this approach is called mindful eating.

Rimi Obra-Ratwatte, European lead nutrition strategy at Mondelēz International

As one of the largest snacking companies in the world, we at Mondelēz International embrace the important role we have to play in empowering consumers to snack more mindfully. This is integral to our purpose of ‘helping people to snack right’. 

Snacking is part of everyday living. It can provide fuel for energy or a boost to jump-start your day. It can also simply be a treat. People are looking for snacks that fit their busy lifestyles. They want convenient and delicious snacks they feel good about eating, while also seeking balance when making their snack choices.

Our own extensive consumer data shows that 74 percent of consumers want snacking tips and visual indicators of portion size on pack. Indeed, we believe consumer information needs to be meaningful, actionable, consistent across markets and provide clear portion guidance at the point of purchase and consumption.

Our own extensive consumer data shows that 74 percent of consumers want snacking tips and visual indicators of portion size on pack.

So, what does mindful snacking really mean? 

Over the past eight years we’ve worked with mindful eating experts to develop and validate our global Mindful Snacking program. 

Mindful Snacking is the application of mindfulness to eating and can be practised by anyone, anywhere and by all ages. It can help people to manage their relationship with all food and to do so in moderation.

It is about paying attention to why you want to eat before you choose what to eat.

It is about paying attention to why you want to eat before you choose what to eat. Are you hungry? Are you simply bored, distracted or seeking a break from what you are doing?  

Thinking through your reasons can help you to be more deliberate about what you eat and more conscious about the reason why you want a snack. And it’s also about how you snack, taking your time to taste the flavors and textures, leaving distractions aside, and slowing the pace of eating so that you really enjoy what you’re eating and know when you’re full or satisfied. Tasting the subtlety of the flavors for example in chocolate will allow you to get the most satisfaction out of even a small portion.

It’s also about how you snack, taking your time to taste the flavors and textures, leaving distractions aside.

Moreover, mindful snacking has been shown to lead to a more positive relationship with food (1) by making more deliberate and conscious food choices, more satisfaction and pleasure from food by savoring with all your senses (2) and being less likely to overeat (3) by paying attention to feelings of satisfaction. 

In fact in some countries such as Germany, Australia and Brazil practices regarding mindful eating are included in national dietary guidelines — that by eating slowly and consciously, there is a greater enjoyment and promotion of the sense of satiation.  

Tasting the subtlety of the flavors for example in chocolate will allow you to get the most satisfaction out of even a small portion.

This approach is also supported by the British Nutrition Foundation, which emphasizes that healthy eating is not only about what we eat, but also how we eat it. Time of day, speed, portion size, our emotional state and the food environment may all influence our relationship with food and healthy eating.

via Mondelēz

Mind your portion?

Scientific research shows that eating mindfully leads to better management of food portions and less tendency to overeat by paying attention to feelings of hunger and satiety (4).  It is about being intentional when choosing a portion according to the emotional and hunger needs in the moment.

Providing visual indicators of portion sizes on packaging can help consumers, especially for products like snacks. Snacks are often consumed in much smaller amounts than per 100g, which is what many food labelling regulations are based on,  so portion size indicators can be used to help educate and guide consumers on appropriate servings. Portion control packaging formats can also be helpful, as individually packaged portions can help support more mindful eating and control calorie consumption.

Providing visual indicators of portion sizes on packaging can help consumers, especially for products like snacks.

What is Mondelēz International doing on mindful snacking?  

At Mondelēz International, we want to educate consumers about how to snack mindfully and inspire satisfying snacking experiences. Satisfying portion sizes and detailed labeling help consumers understand that snacks like chocolate can fit into balanced and mindful lifestyles.

We’re helping people to snack mindfully in many ways.

via Mondelēz
via Mondelēz

We aim to add information on pack across all of our European brands by 2025 and our Snack Mindfully website provides resources, tips and information on mindful snacking. This will empower our consumers by making them more aware of portion sizes through visual images of a portion along with the calories it provides, alongside tips on how to snack mindfully. We have also partnered with renowned mindful eating experts to provide consumer-friendly videos that explain mindful snacking and how to practice it, which are also available on the website. 

And in the U.K., we have piloted QR codes on pack, to provide consumers with further information.  By scanning the QR code on the outer packaging, consumers can access our new online platform https://www.snackingright.com/ which provides information about the company’s global Snacking Made Right programs, including its cocoa sourcing program Cocoa Life, tips on mindful snacking and recycling information. 

How to practice mindful snacking?  

Mindful Snacking is based on six, practical and accessible behaviors that anyone can practice, anytime and anywhere. Taking these behaviors and bringing them to life in the right occasion through our brands is what makes it authentic and real with consumers. Learn more on our website and find out how to practice mindful snacking.   

Sources:
(1) Alberts et al., 2012; Katterman et al., 2014; Hendrickson et al., 2017; Camillieri et al., 2015; Gravel et al., 2014 

(2) Hong et al., 2014; Arch et al., 2016; Cornil & Chandon, 2015; Hetherington et al., 2018 

(3) Oldham-Cooper et al., 2011; Higgs et al., 2011; Mittal et al., 2011; Robinson et al., 2014; Daubenmier et al., 2016 

(4) Gravel et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2014; Arch et al., 2016; Cornil & Chandon, 2015; Oldham-Cooper et al., 2011; Higgs, 2015; Mittal et al., 2011; Higgs et al., 2011, Robinson et al., 2014



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Submissions to Senate concussion inquiry call for national registry, more research, consistent guidelines

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Australia’s peak body for general practice has called for government investment to tackle the issue of concussion in sport, including research funding, bigger Medicare rebates for longer consults and the establishment of an Australia-wide concussion registry. 

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is one of a number of groups and individuals to put in submissions to a Senate committee inquiry into the impact of concussion and head trauma in contact sports.

The RACGP said the current lack of consistent definitions for concussion was resulting in confusion and an inconsistent approach to treatment and management of concussion, while differences in protocols between sports were adding to the problem.

RACGP national president Dr Nicole Higgins said there was insufficient evidence to fully understand and determine the long-term impacts of concussion and head trauma, and that significant research was needed. 

“We need a national approach to management of concussion, with evidence-based guidelines across all sports and codes, ” Dr Higgins said.

“It’s also important that all sports — and across all states and nationally — there’s a commitment to management and reporting to ensure we have the data available.”

The latest international Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport is due to be handed down later this year.

Dr Higgins said she hoped the release would allow a consistent definition of concussion.

The RACGP’s submission said the development of an Australia-wide concussion registry would provide a valuable source of data to determine long-term impacts of concussion and repeated head trauma.

The submission said GPs play a vital role in monitoring and managing prolonged concussion symptoms, such as post-concussion syndrome and suspected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

“Applying a 10 per cent increase to Medicare rebates for longer consultations and introducing a new 60-minute-plus consultation Medicare item would make a real difference for GPs and practice teams managing these complex health issues.”

Other submissions received by the committee include:

Sydney-based neurologist Dr Rowena Mobbs said in her submission that the community had “turned a blind eye to systematic concussion”.

“The absence of mandatory reporting on concussion, neurological care after concussion, and stories of returning to the field too early are harrowing,” Dr Mobbs said.

“Furthermore, the dearth of meaningful, fully independent, and appropriately funded research has represented a dark chapter in Australian sport.”

Among her recommendations were:

  • Federal government funding for longitudinal research on patients with existing symptoms of CTE
  • The federal government to mandate a code of conduct for sports organisations including a public register of suspected and confirmed player concussions, funding independent neurological player assessments after concussion, and establishing sub-specialist concussion and CTE clinics for at-risk athletes

Insurance for long-term injuries ‘inadequate and inequitable’    

Monash University law academic Dr Eric Windholz said existing insurance arrangements for long-term injuries from concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sports were inadequate, inequitable and in some cases may operate in breach of worker’s compensation laws.

Dr Windholz said injury payment schemes had maximum payment periods and ceased on the expiry of players’ contracts.

He said state and territory workers’ compensation schemes had exemptions for professional players, but that the arguments for the exemptions were “redundant in a world in which sport has been corporatised and commercialised”.

Support ‘basically non-existent’ says former Australian Rules player 

Retired Queensland Australian Rules player Lydia Pingel called for accountability for sporting clubs and organisations to ensure they took protocols and guidelines seriously.

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Why Don’t We Have a Cure for Alzheimer’s?

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In November of 1901, a young German psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, Alois Alzheimer, found what appeared to be misfolded proteins forming sticky clumps, or plaques, between the neurons in the brain tissue of a patient who had died from dementia. Inside the neurons he found threadlike twists, called neurofibrillary tangles, of another protein. Eventually these plaques and tangles came to define the disease named after him: Alzheimer’s disease.

By the mid 1980s, these strange proteins had been identified as beta-amyloid proteins, and by the 1990s it was widely accepted that an excess of these proteins caused the formation of the plaques, which in turn caused the disease. The tangles, which turned out to be malformed strands of a protein called tau, were thought to be a result of the amyloid plaques. For the past 30 years, the bulk of research on Alzheimer’s, and most of the efforts to find a cure, have been based on the amyloid hypothesis.

However, after decades of research based on this hypothesis, drug trials have mostly struck out. No drug tested has produced meaningful improvement in the symptoms of the disease. Even drugs that reduce amyloid levels in the brain haven’t done what really matters: improve the lives of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

In January of this year, a new Alzheimer’s drug, lecanemab, was approved by the FDA even after the deaths of several trial participants raised questions about the drug’s safety. Safety issues aside, lecanemab is far from a cure. It did not stop the progression of the disease, and it reduced cognitive decline by only a small amount. “It’s a small step in the right direction,” says Donald Weaver, MD, PhD, clinical neurologist and Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Toronto, “not a big stride.”

 

Are We in a Rut?

These disappointing results have led many researchers to ask if the amyloid hypothesis needs rethinking. Marissa Natelson Love, MD, is a neurology researcher at the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Natelson Love has focused her research on anti-amyloid therapies based on the amyloid hypothesis and is recruiting patients for further studies on lecanemab. Still, she says, “Every time we have a meeting, someone asks, ‘Are we on the wrong track?’” Perhaps, as Weaver once put it, Alzheimer’s research is in an “intellectual rut.”

There’s a reason science sometimes gets in these ruts. Science is a slow, accretive process that builds upon work — often decades of work — that came before.

Researchers complete PhDs on a particular topic, then go on to be postdocs in the lab of an established scientist in the same area. Soon there’s an entire body of researchers with years of training and experience in one approach to a given problem, explains Michael Strevens, PhD, philosopher of science at New York University. “There’s a protocol, what you might call a recipe book, for doing the science. Whereas with a new, untested hypothesis, no one has yet written the recipe book.” This isn’t laziness, but momentum. Like a giant ocean liner, research can’t turn on a dime. When it comes to Alzheimer’s, the momentum is mostly behind the amyloid hypothesis. The roles of other processes in the course of the disease, such as inflammation, prior infections, or autoimmune illness, have gotten short shrift.

Still, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem may not be with the amyloid hypothesis, but with the specific drugs being tested. Maybe researchers just haven’t found the right drug. Or maybe these are the right drugs and they’re just being given at the wrong time; it could be that in order to be successful, anti-amyloid treatments need to start long before symptoms appear.

Another possibility is that the selection of trial participants has not been ideal. Until the past decade or so, Alzheimer’s couldn’t be definitively diagnosed until after death. “If we go back and look at the autopsies from previous Alzheimer’s disease studies,” says Natelson Love, “not everyone in the study actually had Alzheimer’s.” Not only might that explain why a particular trial was unsuccessful, but it could also have a downstream effect on future research. If researchers were unknowingly testing a potential Alzheimer’s treatment on patients who didn’t have Alzheimer’s, that data would be flawed — and later research that drew on it could be flawed, too.

New techniques make it possible to diagnose Alzheimer’s before death. Imaging tests like MRI can rule out other reasons for memory loss; specialized PET scans can detect beta-amyloid plaques and tau proteins. Cerebrospinal fluid can now be tested for biomarkers of amyloid and tau, and though not yet widely available, some new blood tests can detect the presence of amyloid. While these techniques are not enough to diagnose the illness alone, they are making it much easier to confirm it in living patients.

Traffic Jams in the Brain

New approaches to studying amyloid plaques might also change the trajectory of Alzheimer’s research. Rather than just trying to rid the brain of plaques and tangles, researchers are now investigating the biological pathways that created them in the first place. As Scott Small, MD, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, put it, “One of the reasons there’s been such frustration is because we haven’t yet fully understood what’s fundamentally broken in Alzheimer’s, what’s fundamentally wrong. If you don’t know what’s fundamentally broken, you can’t fix it.”

Though Small says he has great respect for the amyloid hypothesis, he agrees that clearing plaques, while beneficial, results in only “subtle slowing of cognitive decline.” If you want to have a meaningful impact on the illness, he says, you need to get to the actual source of the pathology by addressing the cellular biology of the disease. He and his colleagues are pursuing that approach, looking for the source of the problem at the cellular level and trying to discover what is happening inside neurons to create the problems between neurons.

Small and others are seeking the source of the problem in endosomes, organelles inside cells that regulate the movement of proteins. Proteins on their way out of the endosomes get blocked, creating what Small calls “traffic jams,” eventually leading to the buildup of amyloid and tau proteins and thus to Alzheimer’s. They’re working on therapies that would unjam endosomes.

Meanwhile, a variety of other approaches to the problem are gaining traction. Weaver’s lab in Toronto is working on the hypothesis that Alzheimer’s disease is an autoimmune disorder in the brain. The hypothesis is that amyloid is not an abnormal protein, but a normal component of the brain’s immune system, produced in response to bacterial infections. The problem, as with all autoimmune illnesses, is that something goes wrong with the immune system, causing it to attack the body’s own tissues; in this case, the amyloid confuses healthy brain cells with infectious bacteria and attacks brain cells instead of or along with the bacteria. The result, of course, is Alzheimer’s disease. Because the drugs used to treat autoimmune illness in other parts of the body do not have a therapeutic effect in the brain, Weaver and colleagues are researching drugs that target the immune pathways specifically in the brain.

Other researchers are looking into possible connections between infections and the inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s. Kristen Funk, PhD, a neuroimmunologist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, studies how the body’s inflammatory response to viral infections, such as herpes simplex and viral encephalitis, affects cognition and might be linked to the development of Alzheimer’s.

Some evidence suggests that Alzheimer’s could be a metabolic disorder, much like type 2 diabetes. In fact, some researchers have called Alzheimer’s “diabetes of the brain” or “type 3 diabetes.” Insulin resistance in the brain can lead to inflammation and oxidative stress, and eventually to amyloid plaques and Alzheimer’s. Bolstering this theory are findings that some diabetes drugs may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s takes a long time to develop. The damage to the brain that eventually results in the disease can begin 20 or even 30 years before memory loss or other symptoms. In a way, that’s a cause for hope: if we could only figure out how to stop it or slow it down, we’d have so much time to do it. Epidemiological studies, studies that look at who gets Alzheimer’s and when, offer some hints about prevention. Those studies suggest that although the end result is amyloid plaques in the brain, the disease could actually be caused by a number of factors at once.

While genetics certainly plays a role, some of those risk factors are modifiable: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, hearing loss, and depression are some known ones.

As more evidence suggests that modifying those risk factors can prevent — or at least reduce the risk — of Alzheimer’s, many researchers are looking at what they call a multimodal approach to prevention. Lifestyle interventions, like an improved diet and more exercise, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Existing medications that control blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, for example, become a key part of this approach to prevention. Something as simple as fitting a patient with hearing aids or addressing their loneliness and isolation might be effective as well.

The beauty of these interventions is that they’re mostly low risk. Treatments for the risk factors for Alzheimer’s have already been in constant use for years. They’re likely to be relatively inexpensive and are typically covered by Medicare and other insurance plans. Lecanemab, on the other hand, is expected to cost more than $25,000 per year.

“Who can afford that?” asks Weaver. “Is it going to be restricted to wealthy people in wealthy countries? Ultimately, I hope that somebody comes up with an agent which is cost-effective to produce, cost-effective to distribute, and therefore may actually have a global impact on this disease.”

Most researchers agree that the final answer will likely involve a combination of approaches. “I think, just like in cancer, [Alzheimer’s treatment] is eventually going to be a cocktail that will bolster people’s resilience to the breakdown of the nerve cells, as well as remove some of the things triggering it,” says Love.

Any real hope for a cure for Alzheimer’s likely rests not on any one hypothesis, but with the willingness of scientists to question themselves, each other, and their prior assumptions. That doesn’t mean the years spent with a laser focus on amyloid have been wasted. But researchers do agree that it’s time to look more closely not only at the amyloid paradigm, but also further afield, in the hope of finally making progress against this devastating illness.

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Keeping the digital ecosystem strong

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Wassim Chourbaji, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs & Public Policy EMEA at Qualcomm

Competitive markets and strong partnerships have always encouraged companies to innovate. Policies promoting such an environment allow for more inventions and creations within national, regional and international markets.

The EU leads the world in understanding the broad, interlinked forces driving technology innovation in the digital sector. The approval and enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) exemplify this leadership and are critical to preserving an open digital ecosystem.

The development of communications network infrastructure is another important area that can spur innovation. The EU has recognized the need to incentivize investment in digital infrastructure through ‘virtuous circles’ to bring reliable and secure connectivity. The physical network sits at the core of the digital ecosystem, but is also at the heart of our economies and societies.

Moreover, the EU has focused on the strategic value of semiconductors as engines of the digital transition that foster Europe’s competitiveness. The EU Chips Act has highlighted the need for a geo-diversified production and coordinated strategy amongst countries to balance global dynamics, security needs and supply priorities.

Fostering talent

In addition to the regulatory environment, it is important to nurture the human ingenuity that drives technology by strengthening partnerships that bring people and companies together.

Successful partnerships that lead to cutting-edge innovations are built on the individual human connections that spark new ideas. Talent is the most valuable resource for today’s knowledge-based economy. Promoting participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to create the skilled workforce necessary for the global digital economy is essential. Qualcomm collaborates with community stakeholders on several programs across Europe that reach and inspire students from all backgrounds.

Furthermore, local innovation hubs have a paramount role in attracting, retaining and developing talent. With this in mind, Qualcomm established a 5G/6G R&D centre in Lannion, France, and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) R&D lab in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, doing fundamental research to fuel the connected intelligent edge with innovation.

Successful partnerships that lead to cutting-edge innovations are built on the individual human connections that spark new ideas.

Transforming through partnerships

Partnerships to develop and apply advanced technologies are decisive in unlocking access to future innovations and use cases, such as leveraging the metaverse for industrial and learning applications. Europe is an epicenter of technology R&D leadership — and our labs in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain are integral to our ability to engage in such partnerships.

From operators to automotive and industrial players, Qualcomm’s partnerships with European companies are good examples of how shared digital value can be created across an expanding range of verticals – by combining complementary technologies and expertise.

The automotive sector is a prime example. Digital transformation is a priority for automakers as vehicles become connected computers on wheels. Qualcomm’s digital chassis high-performance solutions empower automakers to add a full suite of technology to create software-defined intelligent vehicles that are highly customizable and upgradeable. This flexibility enables the adoption of a wider array of powerful automotive platforms, while allowing automakers to keep the relation with their customers and shape the in-vehicle digital experience.

Europe is an epicenter of technology R&D leadership — and our labs in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain are integral to our ability to engage in partnerships.

Protecting innovative ideas

As companies like Qualcomm drive cycles of innovation and creativity, it is important to have a strong intellectual property regime that protects the ideas that emerge. One key area that relies on such protections are communications standards like 5G. Standards are the foundation of the digital ecosystem. They also are crucial to competition, helping new entrants compete with existing players.

Today’s 5G standard is a direct descendant of a European initiative back in the 1980s that pushed for a single mobile standard to enable the single market. Europe’s strong patent rights were critical to its early leadership in mobile standards. These rights have given innovative companies the necessary incentives to invest in research and development and to contribute their intellectual property (IP) to the standards. Without these incentives, innovation within the ecosystem would stagnate.

This year, the European Commission will tackle files that will impact standards development – including the IP that fuels the necessary ongoing innovation. It is our hope that their importance to the digital ecosystem continues to be championed.

Qualcomm is a partner to Europe in achieving its digital transformation through talent development, transformative partnerships, and continuous innovation.

Building a future vision

All stakeholders have a role to play in incentivizing a vibrant digital ecosystem. By keeping a holistic view of all aspects that support a healthy digital ecosystem, Europe is bound for success.

This success can be further bolstered by the joint EU-US continuous dialogue. We hope the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) will be a vehicle for the EU-US cooperation to address new and emerging global tech and trade challenges. The TTC could serve as a focal point to increase trust and understanding to enable innovation, encourage investments and foster competition. Global leadership can only be achieved through policy cooperation and market-led approaches.

Qualcomm is a partner to Europe in achieving its digital transformation through talent development, transformative partnerships, and continuous innovation. Our connected future depends on it.



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Fauci Q&A: On Masking, Vaccines, and What Keeps Him Up at Night

Post By Health , , , , , , ,

Jan. 30, 2023 – When he was a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, Anthony Fauci loved playing sports. As captain of his high school basketball team, he wanted to be an athlete, but at 5-foot-7, he says it wasn’t in the cards. So, he decided to become a doctor instead. 

Fauci, who turned 82 in December, stepped down as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that same month, leaving behind a high-profile career in government spanning more than half a century, during which he counseled seven presidents, including Joe Biden. Fauci worked at the National Institutes of Health for 54 years and served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years. In an interview last week, he spoke to WebMD about his career and his plans for the future. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.

It’s only been a few weeks since your official “retirement,” but what’s next for you?

What’s next for me is certainly not classical retirement. I have probably a few more years of being as active, vigorous, passionate about my field of public health, public service in the arena of infectious diseases and immunology. [I’ve] had the privilege of advising seven presidents of the United States in areas that are fundamentally centered around our response and preparation for emerging infections going back to the early years of HIV, pandemic flu, bird flu, Ebola, Zika, and now, most recently the last 3 years, with COVID. What I want to do in the next few years, by writing, by lecturing, and by serving in a senior advisory role, is to hopefully inspire young people to go into the field of medicine and science, and perhaps even to consider going into the area of public service. 

Almost certainly, I’ll begin working on a memoir. So that’s what I’d like to do over the next few years.

Are you looking forward to going back and seeing patients and being out of the public eye?

I will almost certainly associate myself with a medical center, either one locally here in the Washington, DC, area or some of the other medical centers that have expressed an interest in my joining the faculty. I am not going to dissociate myself from clinical medicine, since clinical medicine is such an important part of my identity and has been thus literally for well over 50 years. So, I’m not exactly sure of the venue in which I will do that, but I certainly will have some connection with clinical medicine.

What are you looking forward to most about going back to doctoring?

Well, I’ve always had a great deal of attraction to the concept of medicine, the application of medicine. I have taken care of thousands of patients in my long career. I spent a considerable amount of time in the early years of HIV, even before we knew it was HIV, taking care of desperately ill patients. I’ve been involved in a number of clinical research projects, and I was always fascinated by that because there’s much gratification and good feeling you get when you take care of, personally, an individual patient, when you do research that advances the field, and those advances that you may have been a part of benefit larger numbers of patients that are being taken care of by other physicians throughout the country and perhaps even throughout the world. 

So those are all of the aspects of clinical medicine that I want to encourage younger people that these are the opportunities that they can be a part of, which can be very gratifying and certainly productive in the sense of saving lives.

Looking back over your career, what were some of the highs and lows, or turning points?

I first became involved in the personal care and research on persons with HIV, literally in the fall of 1981. [That was] weeks to months after the first cases were recognized. My colleagues and I spent the next few years taking care of desperately ill patients, and we did not have effective therapies because the first couple of years, we did not even know what the ideologic agent was. Even after it was recognized after 1983 and 1984, it took several years before effective therapies were developed, so there was a period of time where we were in a very difficult situation. We were essentially putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages, metaphorically, because no matter what we did, our patients continued to decline. That was a low and dark period of our lives, inspired only by the bravery and the resilience of our patients. A very high period was in [the late 1990s] and into the next century [with the development] of drugs that were highly effective in prolonged and effective suppression of viral loads to the point where people who were living with HIV, if they had access to therapy, could essentially lead a normal lifespan.

We put together the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program known as PEPFAR, which now, celebrating its 20th anniversary, has resulted in saving 20-25 million lives. So, I would say that is … the highest point in my experience as a physician and a scientist, to have been an important part in the development of that program.

Do you feel like there’s any unfinished business? Anything you would change? 

Certainly, there’s unfinished business. One of the goals I would have liked to have achieved, but that is going to have to wait another few years, is the development of a safe and effective vaccine for HIV. A lot of very elegant science has been done in that regard, but we’re not there yet, it’s a very challenging scientific problem. 

The other unfinished business is some of the other diseases that cause a considerable amount of morbidity and mortality globally, diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. We’ve made extraordinary progress over the 38 years that I’ve been director of the institute We have a vaccine, though it isn’t a perfect vaccine [for malaria]; we have monoclonal antibodies that are now highly effective in preventing malaria; we have newer drugs, better drugs for tuberculosis, but we don’t have an effective vaccine for tuberculosis. So, malaria vaccines, tuberculosis vaccines, those are all unfinished business. I believe we will get there.

These new COVID-19 variants keep getting more and more contagious. Do you see the potential for a serious new variant that could plunge us back into some level of public restrictions?

Anything is possible. One cannot predict, exactly, what the likelihood of getting yet again another variant that’s so different that it eludes the protection that we have from the vaccines and from prior infection. Again, I can’t give a number on that. I don’t think it’s highly likely that will happen. 

Ever since Omicron came well over a year ago, we have had sublineages of Omicron that progressively seem to elude the immune response that’s been developed. But the one thing that’s good and has been sustained is that protection against severity of disease seems to hold out pretty well. I don’t think that we should be talking about restrictions in the sense of draconian methods of shutting things down; I mean, that was only done for a very brief period of time when our hospitals were being overrun. I don’t anticipate that that is going to be something in the future, but you’ve got to be prepared for it. There are some things that have been highly successful, and that is the vaccines that were developed in less than 1 year. And now, our challenge is to get more people to get their updated boosters. 

There’s already been criticism of the FDA’s discussion of an annual COVID-19 vaccine. One criticism is that the COVID vaccines’ effectiveness appears to wane after several months, so it would not offer protection for much of the year. Is that a legitimate criticism?

There’s no perfect solution to keeping the country optimally protected. I believe that it gets down to, “It’s not perfect, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” We want to get into some regular cadence to get people updated with a booster that is hopefully managed reasonably well to what the circulating variant is. There are certainly going to be people – perhaps the elderly, some of the immune-compromised, and perhaps children – who will need a shot more than once per year, but the FDA’s leaning towards getting a shot that is [timed] with the flu shot, would at least bring some degree of order and stability to the process of people getting into the regular routine of keeping themselves updated and protected to the best extent possible. 

Do you think we need to move on from mRNA vaccines to something that hopefully has longer-lasting protection?

Yes, we certainly want next-generation vaccines – both vaccines that have a greater degree of breadth, namely covering multiple variants, as well as a greater degree of duration. So, the real question is, “Is it the mRNA vaccine platform that is inducing a response that is not durable, or is the response against coronaviruses not a durable response?” That’s still uncertain. Yes, we need to do better with a better platform, or an improvement on the platform; that could mean adding adjuvants, that could mean a [nasal] vaccine in addition to a systemic vaccine. 

Do you always wear a mask when you go out into the world? How do you evaluate the relative risk of situations when you go out in public?

I’ve been vaccinated, doubly boosted, I’ve gotten infected, and I’ve gotten the bivalent boost. So, I evaluate things depending upon what the level of viral activity is in the particular location where I’m at. If I’m going to go on a plane, for example, I have no idea where these people are coming from, I generally wear a mask on a plane. I don’t really go to congregate settings often. Many of the events I do go to are situations where a requirement for [attending] is to get a test that’s negative that day. 

When you’re in a situation like that, even if it’s a crowded congregant setting, I don’t have any problem not wearing a mask. But when I’m unsure of what the status is and I might be in an area where there is a considerable degree of viral activity, I would wear a mask. I think you just have to use [your] judgment, depending on the circumstances that you find yourself in.

Doctors and health care professionals have been through hell during COVID. Do you think this might bring a permanent change to how doctors perceive their jobs?

Health care providers have been under a considerable amount of stress because this is a totally unprecedented situation that we find ourselves in. This is the likes of which we have not seen in well over 100 years. I hope this is not something that is going to be permanent, I don’t think it is, I think that we are ultimately going to get to a point where the level of virus is low enough that it’s not going to disrupt either society or the health care system or the economy. 

We’re not totally there yet. We’re still having about 500 deaths per day, which is much, much better than the 3,000 to 4,000 deaths that we were seeing over a year ago, but it is still not low enough to be able to feel comfortable. 

As a scientist, even a semi-retired one, what scares you? What wakes you up at night with worry? 

The same thing I have been concerned about for, you know, 40 years: the appearance of a highly transmissible respiratory virus that has a degree of morbidity and mortality that could really be very disruptive of us in this country and globally. Unfortunately, we’re in the middle of that situation now, finishing our third year and going into year 4. So what worries me is yet another pandemic. Now that could be a year from now, 5 years from now, 50 years from now. Remember, the last time a pandemic of this magnitude occurred was well over 100 years ago. My concern is that we stay prepared. [We may] not necessarily prevent the emergence of a new infection, but hopefully we can prevent it from becoming a pandemic.

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