Shot to stop cancer looks promising
Potential breakthrough for pancreatic patients shows why federal support of research is vital
ANOTHER VIEW| CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Our fraught national debate over immunization and public health has overshadowed some extremely encouraging advances being made by researchers in the decades-long battle against cancer.
Recent news of a potential breakthrough vaccine for one of the most lethal of all cancers — pancreatic cancer — demonstrates why continued federal research support for such treatments remains so vital.
Once diagnosed, pancreatic cancer has been a death sentence for those afflicted in the vast majority of cases. With conventional treatments, just 13% of patients are alive five years after diagnosis, according to the American Cancer Society.
Recently disclosed results of the test of an experimental vaccine using messenger RNA (mRNA) on 16 patients were extraordinarily positive. The immune systems of eight of the 16 in the trial responded to the vaccine. Of those eight, seven were alive four to six years after surgery, according to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, which performed the study.
Of the eight patients whose systems didn't respond, just two have survived to this point. The six who died survived a median of 3.4 years.
Obviously, this is a very small sample. A larger group is being tested in a second phase of clinical trials. This vaccine also is only for patients whose tumors are operable. Those diagnosed at later stages — such as former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who has spoken openly and movingly about his experience — can't currently benefit from this technology.
But this study is a real ray of hope for treating a disease that is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. and essentially doesn't respond to ordinary cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.
The mRNA technology involves producing individualized vaccines, developed after patients have their pancreatic tumors removed and analyzed. When the vaccines work, the patient's body is trained to produce so-called T cells that kill the cancer cells along with another kind of T cell that helps sustain the immune response.
"As we continue to learn more about how these vaccines work, there is a real belief and determination in the pancreatic cancer community that we can effectively treat this disease by training the patient's own immune system," said Dr. Vinod Balachandran, who led the trial and is Memorial Sloan Kettering's director for cancer vaccines.
The early dramatic results from mRNA vaccines on cancer could help soften the suspicions some Americans have toward more common vaccines. They also could help restore Americans' trust in medical science — indeed, in science generally. Medical science has blessed our generation with an abundance of preventive methods — including vaccines — and treatments that enable a far greater percentage of us to live longer and healthier lives than our forebears.
We should be grateful.
How the US can avoid havoc caused by population decline
GEORGE WILL
The shrinking of America's population — per-haps probable, certainly regrettable — is not inevitable. It is preventable, but requires an attitude adjustment among Americans who do not understand that people are resources immeasurably more valuable than rare earth minerals.
In 2025, America's fertility rate (births per women of childbearing age), declining since 2007, reached a record low. Happily, the fertility rate for teenagers is down 81% since its 1991 peak. And the rate has risen among women delaying childbearing until their 30s and 40s, reflecting women's expanded life choices.
But a new report by the American Enterprise Institute's Nicholas Eberstadt indicates that an ominous question mark haunts the nation's future: "Can a Depopulating America Still Flourish?" He says "wrenching changes" that "depopulation will unforgivingly impose" might come with "stunning speed."
Some have already come. Higher education, a source of overheated anxiety about population "pressure" threatening the planet's "sustainability," will suffer from a "birth dearth" and perhaps curtailment of legal immigration. Economist Tyler Cowen notes that a shrinking cohort of college-age Americans will accelerate this: Since 2013, more than 700 — about 15% — of U.S. colleges have closed.
The Congressional Budget Office projects deaths exceeding births in four years, with a million more deaths than births by 2046. Immigration will delay depopulation until 2056, when the U.S. population will peak at 364 million — just 4% more than today because of 0.1 percent growth from 2037 to 2056.
A depopulating America will be increasingly aged. In perhaps just three years, 65-plus Americans will outnumber children under 18. The fastest growing cohort, the "super-old" (80plus), will more than double by 2050.
Longevity has fueled global flourishing, and vice versa. Since 1968, world population has soared from 3.5 billion to over 8 billion, life expectancy at birth has increased from 56 years to 74 years, and the world is better fed and healthier than ever. This is because, Eberstadt says, "human beings are the uniquely adaptable, ingenious, problem-solving animal." Population increase means increased "consumers, workers, taxpayers, investors."
Long-term population decline, coinciding with the increasing life expectancy of an aging population, would require people to work longer. This can compensate for an increasingly adverse ratio of workers to retirees that threatens the entitlement (Social Security and Medicare) state.
Population decline makes it imperative to reverse the decline of the labor force participation rate of Americans aged 15 to 64. If today's rate were what it was at its 20th-century peak in 1998, the workforce would be 5 million larger. Instead, the rate for prime age men (25-54) is slightly lower than in March 1940, when the national unemployment rate was above 14%. So, Eberstadt says, for prime age men we have today a "Depression-scale problem with work."
This resists remediation because it involves some intractable and entangled social pathologies, particularly criminality and excessive dependence on government. Eberstadt's educated estimate is that 25 million — 1 in 7 adult men — have felony convictions.
And dependency on government is disincentivizing work. Disability benefits are implausibly rife among prime-age men who are neither working nor looking for work.
Population aging depresses the saving rate, hence investing, hence productivity, a particular threat to American households (36 million, in 2023) with net worths less than $25,000, including 40% of Hispanic American and almost half of Black households.
A depopulating society cannot thrive with the chronic dependence that accompanies the breakdown of family structure: Since 1960, the percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers has surged from 5% to almost 40%. By 2023, more than one-fifth of children were in one-parent homes.
The Social Security Administration, predicting what it must desperately desire, projects additional 100 million Americans by 2100. But intractable pathologies — including government's fiscal incontinence and "pay-as-you-go entitlements" — spell catastrophe for a nation with an upside-down "population pyramid," where each generation is smaller than the previous one.
One promising solution is to increased skilled immigration into our nation, which has, as Eberstadt says, "an unusually good knack for turning newcomers into loyal and productive citizens."
Will writes for The Washington Post.
Carlson's reversal on Trump is a familiar script
LZ GRANDERSON
Tucker Carlson last week apologized for unintentionally "misleading" voters into supporting President Donald Trump's return to the White House. The apology came days after the president called Carlson dumb and overrated on social media. We've seen this plot before: It's a different name but the same story.
Recall the president's first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was "a real 'yes man' … then God help us."
Some of the highlights from Trump's second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn't lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein's child sex-trafficking operation.
Now it appears it's Carlson's turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president's handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer's remorse.
Everyone has that line they won't cross for the president.
Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.
For Carlson, it's Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. Trump said last week there's no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.
"I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences," Carlson told his brother. "We'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people."
Of course, Trump's ascension to the White House wasn't solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He's had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time.
When he entered the political arena, he didn't have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That's why it's doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump "campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he's doing the exact opposite thing. … I voted for none of this."
As if "this" had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.
Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That's why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won't mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don't regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.
Granderson writes for the Los Angeles Times.
