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Edward Lhuyd Scientist of the Day Edward Lhuyd, a...  

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Edward Lhuyd Scientist of the Day

Edward Lhuyd, a Welsh naturalist, died June 30, 1709, at about age 49 (we don't know his date of birth).

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Why The Haitian Cholera Victims Deserve Their Day In Court  
The battle between victims of the cholera epidemic in Haiti and the United Nations may resemble a classic David and Goliath story, except in this case Goliath hasn't even shown up to fight.

The reason is that the United Nations is granted "immunity from every form of legal process" -- even though public health experts believe UN peacekeeping troops are responsible for the cholera outbreak in Haiti, which has infected more than 750,000 people and killed more than 9,000 since October 2010. (Though a recent paper from Médecins Sans Frontières researchers suggests that there may be "a substantially higher cholera mortality rate than previously reported.")

Nevertheless, on Jan. 9, 2015, US District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed a class action lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. But in March the Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to review the District Court's ruling. The decision of the three judges is pending.

The United Nations should not be able to invoke immunity in order to foreclose on justice. The 1946 convention that granted them immunity also charged them with a responsibility. They aren't to be accountable to no one. Rather, according to the convention, the UN "shall make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement." But the UN has refused to do so in this case.

The United Nations should account for their role in one of the deadliest outbreaks of cholera in recent history. Some argue that time is better spent on halting the epidemic and not trying to point fingers at who started it. But while that trade may satisfy members of elite organizations, it is unlikely to satisfy people like Lisette Paul, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Her brother, Fritznel, became sick while working in the fields. He vomited and had diarrhea for seven days straight until he died. His medical and funeral expenses plunged his family into debt. Soon, they could no longer afford to send his daughter to school. The suffering of Fritznel, Lisette, and those like them shouldn't be pitted against the prevention of future pain. They should have a forum to air their claims and the UN should provide it.

No one doubts that the ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti is a man-made disaster. The debate is who, or what, was responsible. Cholera is a bacterial infection that causes diarrhea and vomiting and, unstopped, eventually dehydration and sometimes death. People can catch it from contaminated water. But it hadn't been in Haiti for 100 years at least. So how did it wind up there in October 2010?

The short answer is human activity from South Asia. One team of public health experts matched the strain of cholera to a South Asian type. Another made a circumstantial case that the disease came from a camp of UN peacekeeping troops from Nepal. Before the troops were deployed to Haiti, there had been a cholera outbreak in Kathmandu, Nepal. Less than two weeks after the first cases, the Associated Press reported an overflowing septic tank, the "stench of excrement," and "a reeking black flow" from the camp's pipes to the Artibonite River, which 1.5 million Haitians use.



The UN doesn't deny all of these claims. In fact, they rounded up an independent panel that reached many of the same conclusions. They also found that the cholera strain matches the South Asian type and the outbreak happened "as a result of human activity."

But the UN panel report arrives at a different conclusion. Though they agree someone must have brought cholera to Haiti, they say no one should be blamed. This is because, they argue, there was a "confluence of circumstances." These circumstances include the environmental conditions, the role that Haitians played in spreading the disease, an especially deadly strain of cholera, and the country's poor sanitation and water conditions. Indeed, by the time the cholera outbreak hit, a mere 17% of Haitians had access to facilities that separate human waste from human contact.

The "confluence of factors" argument amounts to little more than victim blaming. If only Haiti had better water and sanitation, the argument goes, then cholera would not have spread.

But does that mean someone should be able to leak contaminated raw sewage with impunity? "From a legal perspective that stuff is all totally irrelevant," counters Brian Concannon, the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. "If the UN negligently introduced this disease into an environment they knew was weak, then legally it's still responsible."

Still, this isn't an open-and-shut case. Daniele Lantagne and the rest of the UN panel give two reasons why not. First, there is no hard scientific link between the peacekeepers and the outbreak. Someone else from South Asia could have been in Haiti at the time and, however miniscule the possibility, they could have carried the strain. Second, the introduction of cholera undoubtedly was an accident and not a deliberate act.

But this only raises more questions that the UN should answer. No one argues that the peacekeepers contaminated the water supply on purpose. If they had the disease, they may have had no idea. In fact, it is possible to be totally asymptomatic. But this doesn't answer why they weren't screened for the disease. After all, a cholera outbreak was reported on September 23, 2010, in Kathmandu, which is where the peacekeepers trained for three months. They received a medical examination before traveling to Haiti. Why weren't they tested for cholera? A recent article in PLOS Medicine reports that the rapid diagnostic test only costs $2.54 per person and a single-dose prophylaxis on the higher end runs $1.32 per person.

Even if they were definitively singled out as the cause, it would be unfair to punish the peacekeepers. They weren't experts. Peacekeeping troops are hired out, largely from poor countries, to the UN for $1,028 per soldier per month of duty.

But that doesn't mean no one could have foreseen harm. Just two days after the January 2010 earthquake, the US National Center for Medical Intelligence wrote that it "expects damage to urban water and sewage infrastructure will increase rates of diarrheal disease, possibly to include cholera." Even if an accidental act and a confluence of factors spread cholera, the important ethical questions are when those factors were known, and by whom.

It isn't only outsiders like Brian Concannon and the IJDH who are calling on the UN to hear claims from the victims of cholera. In his first report as the UN's independent expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti, Gustavo Gallón called for a "reparation commission for cholera victims." Given that the UN proclaimed that victims of human rights violations must be able to seek remedies and reparations, Mr. Gallón reminds us, anything less would be hypocritical.

In October 2015, four UN Special Rapporteurs joined Gallón to argue that "the victims of cholera have access to a transparent, independent and impartial mechanism that can review their claims and decide on the merits of those claims in order to ensure adequate reparation, including restitution, compensation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition."

More recently, Jan Eliasson, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, wrote a letter that the "Secretary General and I are fully committed to ensuring that the Organization fulfills its human rights obligations." Yet the letter doesn't mention financial compensation nor does it mention any "transparent, independent and impartial mechanism" to review claims.

One out of every fourteen Haitians has been infected with cholera. They deserve an official forum to examine why this happened and who is responsible. People like Claudine, another client of IJDH, who spent her life savings to bury her father should be made financially whole. As of today, none of this will happen.

This blog originally appeared at PLOS Public Health Perspectives.

Photo Credit: V. cholerae on TCBS. Via Flickr VeeDunn CC BY 2.0.

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Jupiter's throwing a firework party for Juno and Hubble's peeking in  

Spacecraft 'welcomed' by gas giant's aurora, light show seen by NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured new images of Jupiter's glowing aurora swirling around one of the planet's poles, as part of a wider observation programme of the gas giant.…

 
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Day 300: Virtually There  


Until we get really good at transgressing the laws of physics, we live under the thumb of certain hard facts. One of the hardest is this: we can't physically be in two places at once. Happily, through miracles of modern technology like speakerphones, Skype, and virtual reality, as long as we're on the same planet as an event, we can virtually attend. At least, our likenesses can. Our voices, faces, and/or avatars can appear in our places. Using these work-arounds, our essences can sort of exist in two or more places at once. Virtually near-infinite versions of ourselves, some more robust than others, can experience elements of distant locations and the people -- with a catch.

"Distant" here is "less than or equal to the maximum circumference of the Earth and nearby orbits." This modus operandi does not function at an interplanetary level. In fact, it starts to break down as soon as you get to the Moon. The delay -- 1 second each way -- is barely perceptible, but nonetheless palpable. Send a command -- wait for it, wait for it -- then get a reply. "Hello!"... 1... 2 -- "Hello!" It's ALMOST like being there, but not quite. It's more like awaiting an echo.



The further out we go in the Universe, the more protracted these conversations become. By the time you get to Mars, delay could be as short as 4 minutes -- like being placed "on a brief hold while we find someone to serve you" -- or as long as 20 minutes each way; like Mars is telling you, "Go on a lunch break. Your reply will be waiting when you return."

This is not a complaint by any means. Compared to the good folks running the Juno mission to Jupiter (due to arrive on 7/4!) a call to Mars represents a rapid turn-around. Juno's controllers currently wait 1.5 hours for a reply from their spacecraft. The folks listening to signals from Voyager 1 stay on hold for more than 37 hours. Still, our lag, however tiny on the scale of the solar system, means that we on simulated Mars are never quite there on Earth: for the people we care about, or for ourselves.

To be fair, even when I stayed put on one planet, in the course of more than thirty solar revolutions I missed an event or two. Due to residency training, I was absent during my only sibling's wedding. I missed the funeral of one of my best friends from high school because it occurred on the same day as my cousin's wedding. These circumstances aside, I've made every attempt to be there -- virtually if not physically -- for marriages, births, deaths, anniversaries, chemotherapy, and just about every important happening in the world where my presence could make a difference. That is, until my presence was requested on a different world.

It's been a little over 300 days since I was physically present for anyone back on Earth. Now seems like a good time to acknowledge the things that I have missed.

• Two friends began and completed chemotherapy. Survival looks promising! Good job, guys.
• 
  
• My only niece began school.
• 
  
• A colleague who spent her life removing cancers from women's reproductive systems was forced to stop working... because she has cancer.
• 
  
• My husband's grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, turned 90.
• 
  
• My father was assaulted in his own home and had to undergo surgery to stabilize his arm.
• 
  
• My best friend since childhood had twins (Full-sized twins!)
• 
  
• On Monday, at the age of 88, my beautiful grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep.

On Earth, we cannot always be there for these moments. Future space explorers will not be there for these moments. As much as we all accept this as part of the job, the fact that we cannot be there however much we wish to be might take a toll on future missions to asteroids, other planets, and other stars.

To mitigate the potential damage from this rift, we've begun studying how our presences back home (and our family's absence in space) can best be substituted. Based our experiences during the last 10 months, I can report that sending videos back-and-forth satisfies some basic needs. We can see and hear people. They can see and hear us. Everyone walks away knowing that everyone else basically OK. What else does one need, really?

Before yesterday, I couldn't have answered that question. Now it's clear that there's something more that we space travelers might need from time to time -- something that regular video cannot supply.



The HI-SEAS crew goes on VR trips in the airlock: one of the few places in the hab where it's large enough (and quiet enough) to set up the system.

The news of my grandmother's passing arrived in the morning via an email from my mother. The crew had a full day of studies ahead (there's really no day off in space). Coincidentally, I was at the helm for that particular day's experiment. So I set to work getting everything ready. When my turn came, I hooked myself up to all of the gadgets and gizmos, started the recorder, and hit "Go" button on the 3D virtual reality system. I had done this before, many times. This time, however, the experience was different.

The city that appeared before me was one in which I used to live. By happenstance, the high-resolution 3D images were taken in the early summertime, which is taking place right now on that continent on Earth. They were taken around the same time of day when I was watching the video in the hab: early afternoon. The images were of places that I had visited frequently. In an unexpected twist, people walking past the camera rig would occasionally stop and peer at it. Sometimes, they would even point and gesture to it. I experienced the satisfying sensation that life was going along back at home just as it should have been -- not without me, but with me present as a sort of spectral spectator. Though you might not expect it, that part of the VR experience -- being noticed by people on Earth -- was the most moving. The visual cues told my brain, if not my mind, that I was home.

Being able to give future space explorers this experience on demand may be critically important. As our crew architect recently pointed out: if this were really Mars, we would have just arrived. Since mankind's smallest target area on Mars is a few kilometers at best, we would have spent much of these last few weeks running around looking for our stuff. Hopefully, we would have found all or most of it by now. Hopefully, all or most of it would be functional (or would be after some intrepid astronaut intervention). Then those first human visitors to Mars may discover, as we have, that missing Earth is not a regular occurrence. Here, the vistas here are grand and strange. We appreciate them for their beauty and oddity. The scenery is more than good enough. No scenery can substitute for people, though: we miss people and their lives, if not life on Earth, persay.



Being gone for three years, not just one, means that each man and woman on that journey will miss everything about people's lives that we've missed, times three. In a way, it's a frustrating experience. There was nothing I could do when my father was attacked. It's also a sort of relief: because I could not be there, a friend of the family stepped up and is living with him now -- done and handled. In that way, being in space is both a sacrifice and a ticket to ride. I told my grandmother that I loved her and thanked her for being in my life over delayed video. That was hard. On the other hand, in my last memory of her, my grandmother is standing by her white sink washing green grapes. She's on her own two feet in her own home. She's smiling. I have that image of her, happy and healthy, because I was here, not there, for the end.

I've come to realize that like most of life, this whole space thing is a give and take. In a recent interview (by delayed audio signal) I was asked, "How are you handling the stress of isolation?" My reply was: "How are you all on Earth handling the stress of waking up every day, getting to work through traffic, racing to get everything done so that you can get the kids to soccer practice or play league volleyball with your friends, then shopping, cooking, and fixing the house?" I seem to recall that on Earth the demands on one's time and the places from which those demands might emanate are nearly limitless. Here, the demands on our bodies and minds are highly limited by the simple fact that we aren't on Earth. Our commute is remarkably short. Though we're busy growing the radishes under LEDs, there is no shopping or insuring to be done, no phones to answer, no snow to shovel off the driveway. I truly believe that the average stress in space and on Earth is equal in magnitude if differently distributed -- with one notable exception.

Difficulty with long distance -- really long distance -- arises when there's a part of our lives that cannot be assigned to someone else, or something particular about Earth that cannot be replicated in space. One of those non-replicable things is being there for your friends and family in their moments of triumph and grief. Another is the sheer mass of humanity. By virtue of infinite diversity in infinite combinations, while on Earth we know that there's someone nearby going through the exact same thing that we are going through. We might not know who they are or where they are, but we know that they are out there: by the dozens if not hundreds or thousands. The five other people here all know what it's like to look for a certain type of volcanic rock while experiencing intermittent radio failure. (Thankfully.) None of them are going through the loss that I'm going through right now. It's me alone. Or rather, it was. In an unexpected moment of relief, I stepped back into a familiar city on Earth and was suddenly surrounded by other people -- people who might be and are experiencing anything, from extreme joy to extreme defeat, loss and gain and everything in between. In spite of the distance, I was virtually there with them and they were there with me -- if only for a moment.

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Simulation of idealized, wind-driven ocean basin  

Full Text:

Pictured is the vorticity at the surface of the ocean with red indicating clockwise rotation and blue indicating counter-clockwise rotation. Many small coherent eddies are visible. These eddies can rotate in either direction and can endure for a year or more. The sharp boundary between the broad red and blue regions is a fast-moving, meandering jet, analogous to the North Atlantic Gulf Stream. This was done by a numerical simulation of an idealized, wind-driven ocean basin calculated on massively parallel computers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

Image credit: Jeffrey B. Weiss, University of Colorado Boulder

 
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Ocean acidification affects predator-prey response  

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According to new research, ocean acidification makes it harder for sea snails to escape from their sea star predators. The findings suggest that by disturbing predator-prey interactions, ocean acidification could spur cascading consequences for food web systems in shoreline ecosystems.

Image credit: Brittany Jellison/UC Davis

 
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Innovations In Science: Pursuing Another Giant Leap For Mankind  
According to the American Cancer Society, in 2016 there will be an estimated 1.6 million new cancer cases diagnosed and over half a million cancer deaths in the US. While much has been achieved in the detection and treatment of cancer, it's clear that this disease in all its various forms, will be with us for a long time.

Regardless of who you are, where you live, or your personal circumstances, chances are you've been touched by cancer in some form. And you don't have to have cancer to be affected by it. All illness is the story of one. Speak to anyone who has had to care for a loved one with cancer and you'll quickly know the emotional, physical and financial toll it takes on everyone involved.

Last year, Vice President Joe Biden lost his son Beau Biden, to brain cancer. This bright, enigmatic young man who was the Attorney General for Delaware was only 46. His death was tragic, but if there is a silver lining in all of this, it's the announcement by President Obama during the State of the Union address on January 12, 2016, establishing the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative to accelerate cancer research, led by Vice President Biden. Its goal is to make more therapies available to more patients, improve early detection methods and, ultimately, prevent this insidious disease.

Make no mistake, finding a cure for all the types of cancer we currently know about will be hard, but sending someone to the moon was a pretty ambitious goal as well. When John F. Kennedy announced on May 25, 1961 America's goal to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, there was no reason to think it couldn't be done. Billions of dollars were invested, and there were plenty of failures along the way, but for anyone who remembers when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the dusty surface of the moon and said his immortal words "that's one small step..." it was a seminal moment.

Cancer is a global health issue and, as people live longer, one that will continue to grow. From a research standpoint it's also exceptionally cross-discipline covering a broad scope of medical specialties such as neurology, gynecology, pulmonology, gastroenterology and hematology, as well as related factors such as the environment, pharmacology, public health awareness and nutrition. Curing cancer will therefore require intensive collaboration from the scientific community at large.

Economics is another major factor in treating cancer. Most patients will need long-term, on-going care which has enormous implications for family finances as well as the social and psychological impact for the care-givers. Developing treatments, finding cures and, ultimately, preventing cancer, will require the commitment of tremendous resources from government as well as the private and academic sectors. America's moonshot was largely financed by the U.S. government. But in today's economic climate and greater scrutiny of public spending, economic support from the private and philanthropic sectors will be a factor in supporting more cancer research.

Technology, especially the internet, social scientific networks such as Social Science Research Network, an online open-access repository, as well as collaboration platforms such as Mendeley, will allow research teams worldwide easier ways to share knowledge and leverage expertise regardless of location and affiliation.

There's certainly no shortage of work already accomplished. According to ScienceDirect more than 1.5 million research papers about cancer have been published in the past five years; a huge amount of data. Scopus data reveals Europe leads in overall cancer research output, but there have been significant increases from institutions in North America and Asia Pacific during the same period, most notably by China and the United States.

Thanks to the dedication of millions of anonymous researchers tirelessly engaged in cancer research, there have been tremendous strides made in the past decade. The dreaded "c-word" is no longer an automatic death sentence. People are now better educated about high risk behaviors that should be avoided such as smoking and exposure to certain chemicals, as well as the importance of annual physical tests. Sophisticated diagnostic imaging such as ultrasound, MRI and CT scans as well as blood tests can help with early detection of small growths and masses which means early intervention and better chances for a complete cure.

Cancer is a tremendously complex disease and new strains are discovered every day. We may never eradicate it completely, but if it is possible to send a man to the moon and bring him safely home in less than a decade, we stand a pretty good chance of securing a "giant leap for mankind" in reducing cancer's impact on our society.

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NIST-4 watt balance weighs in on Planck's constant  
Most precise measurement of h is one step closer to redefining the kilogram  
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What is a watt balance?  
Stephan Schlamminger weighs in on the watt balance and how it will redefine the kilogram  
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Sleep is Good for the Waistline  


You are likely to have heard Americans are getting fatter. Eating fast and processed foods and a sedentary lifestyle are likely contributors. Today, almost 70% of Americans are overweight and this is a public health disaster. Officials in New York City sounded the alarm and intervened by banning trans fats but that is hardly enough. It is recognized that there are many other causes. By definition, you are considered obese if your body mass index is over 30.

Another prevalent health issue in the US is problems with sleeping. Almost 20 million people have sleep apnea and about one third of Americans are not getting enough sleep. There is also a high association between sleep disorders and being overweight. But did you know that almost 80% of overweight adults report sleep problems? A study followed women for 16 years and found that those sleeping less than 5 hours a night had a 30% greater chance of gaining 30 lbs or more over that time. How is that for a correlation!

Sleep deprivation has many effects including increasing irritability, memory issues, reduced immune function, risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The connection between obesity and sleep has been reported many times. Predictably, sleepy people are apt to not exercise regularly. Reduced activity with even consistent caloric intake can pile on the pounds. On top of this, our bodies own metabolism works against us.

Hormonal changes are induced during sleep deprivation. The so called hunger hormones, leptin and ghrelin are appetite stimulating hormones whose levels are altered in sleep-deprived individuals. So when you are tired, the signals are interpreted as being hungry and you eat! It turns out that hunger and sleep induced fatigue alters the physiology of humans similarly.

Our brains also make a chemical called endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoylglycerol or 2-AG. You might have guessed it is chemically related to the active chemical in marijuana and has some of the same effects. It is likely that the cause of the hunger arising from limited sleep is similar to the munchies from smoking pot. 2-AG is associated with pleasure and appetite and is elevated in those that are sleep deprived stimulating the brain's reward system. Researchers found that restricting sleep from eight and one half to four and one half hours, led to the consumption of an extra 1000 calories in the form of "fatty rewarding snacks" during the evening. These results provide obvious implications for weight gain from sleep deprivation.

Hunger correlates with 2-AG levels observed in the blood. Sleep deprived individuals had levels of 2-AG that were one third higher than those with a full night's sleep. For those sleeping normally, 2-AG builds during the day peaking in the early afternoon, while those with limited sleep maintained high levels of 2-AG well into the evening. Therefore 2-AG maybe a new target for therapy to prevent weight gain.

There is also hope in taking advantage of this connection between weight and sleep behavior. If you can achieve more normal sleep, this may help you with weight loss and vice versa.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

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PAC slams UK government for lack of evidence-based science investments  

Says funding should be informed by a 'sound business case' ... WHAT?

The Public Accounts Committee has advised the UK government to take a more evidence-based approach when deciding spending on science projects, according to a report published today.…

 
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Beyond Sightseeing: You'll Love The Sound Of America's Best Parks  

The National Park Service is racing to record soundscapes each park that capture nature for the ear. "If we start to lose sounds of wilderness, we start to lose a piece of us," one scientist says.

 
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Video privacy software lets you select what others can see  

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Camera-equipped smartphones, laptops and other devices make it possible to share ideas and images with anyone, anywhere, often in real-time. But in our cameras-everywhere culture, the risks of accidentally leaking sensitive information are growing. Computer scientists at Duke University have developed software that helps prevent inadvertent disclosure of trade secrets and other restricted information within a camera's field of view by letting users specify what others can see.

Image credit: Duke University

 
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What happens when you steam a planet?  

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There are reasons to be interested in the other worlds even if they couldn't possibly harbor life. The hot, rocky planets, for example, offer rare and precious clues to the character and evolution of the early Earth. Numerical models show these exoplanets can change their chemistry by vaporizing rock-forming elements in steam atmospheres that are then partially lost to space.

Image credit: NASA

 
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You can be my wingman any time! RaspBerry Pi AI waxes Air Force top gun's tail in dogfights  

Maverick, it's not your flying, it's your AI-ttitude

Today's generation of fighter pilots could be the last of their breed, thanks to an AI system dubbed ALPHA that's proving unkillable in air combat.…

 
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Why Vice President Biden's Cancer Moonshot Is A Game Changer  
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama tasked the Vice President with heading up a new national effort, the Cancer Moonshot. The ultimate goal is to double the rate of progress--to make a decade's worth of advances in cancer research in five years--to ultimately end cancer as we know it.

Since 1993, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) has been committed to ending breast cancer by advancing the world's most promising research. The impact of our dedication is clear: BCRF has been involved in every major breakthrough in breast cancer research over the last twenty years.

In response to Vice President Biden's call for commitment, cooperation and collaboration, today, we announce an unprecedented goal of doubling our annual cancer research investment from $50 million to $100 million, aiming for a cumulative investment of $1 billion, by 2021.

As the country's largest non-governmental, nonprofit funder of breast cancer research, BCRF's approach is multi-pronged: looking at the full spectrum of breast cancer research from prevention, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship and metastasis.

With a bold vision to double our commitment, BCRF aims to accelerate the path from discovery to clinical implementation--improving treatment options for patients faster. We will launch a multi-million-dollar impact-investment program aimed at fostering productive teams to bring lifesaving, paradigm-changing discoveries to patients.

Furthermore, BCRF intends to speed the understanding of what causes cancer in the first place--opening an avenue of discovery to stop it in its tracks or prevent it from occurring--by "connecting the dots" between amassing molecular information on tumors and how that sums together to cause the dozens of diseases we call cancer.

To accomplish this, we will build on our twenty-three-year history of fostering collaborative science to convene and support an academy of biologists, physicians, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, lay advocates and other dedicated, creative individuals.

The Cancer Moonshot aims to expand the very fabric on which BCRF was founded: to unite with others around research--the only way we'll achieve a future beyond cancer. This Wednesday, we'll join a collective group of organizations that are expanding their goals, working collaboratively and undoubtedly speeding our way to ending the devastating disease.

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