Loads of medical science news. That bodes well for the transhumanist agenda of living forever I suppose. We’ll start with the exception first.

• Included because I’m very much in favor of YIMBYism, this paper posits that environmental land use regulation reduces the construction of new housing. Specifically these regulations apply to areas near the habitats of endangered species and as more species are added to the list, the land area affected grows as well. It’s an obvious conclusion but the paper lays down some numbers on many housing units have been displaced and deterred by such regulations. The estimated range is wide but the author puts the central estimate at 6.3 million units or 4% of the US total housing stock as of 2025. The point is not to claim that such regulations are bad but that we should be aware of the trade-offs that are being made.
• Over the past month, I’ve seen a marked push to get older adults to take the herpes zoster (HZ) or shingles vaccine. One impetus may be this recent paper studying older adults admitted to a nursing facility. They found that those who received the recombinant HZ vaccine (RZV) were associated with lower risk of developing dementia, especially as time goes on. This evidence is of course correlational only but adds to previous observations that there is a protective effect. That’s enough to convince me to get the vaccine personally even if it is rather expensive.
• Accompanying this is this article looking into claims that Chinese teams have been successful in reversing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease through surgical intervention. This isn’t new but the initial claims in the form of videos of dramatic recoveries weren’t taken seriously at first. Since then many more surgeries have taken place and larger, more rigorous trials, are being held. The treatment supposedly works by improving the flow through the array of fluid-filled channels that run alongside blood vessels through the brain to flush out waste. Most of the gains seem modest but there have occasionally been drastic improvements. There are also doubts over how long the beneficial effects can last.
• The viral science news of the month has to be the announcement that a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine combined with immunotherapy has been successful in treating melanoma. Specifically it was shown to be able to reduce the recurrence of the cancer and prevent it from spreading to other parts of the body. The vaccine is made-to-order based on the mutations of the patient’s tumors and the results are promising, hence the immediate uptick in Moderna’s share price following the announcement. While this applies only to skin cancer so far, the hope is that the same approach can be readily applied to other types of cancer.