Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The New York Times: Pioneering Gene Therapy Freed Her Of Sickle Cell. Is A Cure At Hand? 
Helen Obando, 18 and soon to be a high school senior, nibbled french fries at a cafe and chatted about her future. Dressed in a halter top and shorts, her toenails painted turquoise, she described her plans to enroll in community college, teach hip-hop dance and become a trauma nurse someday. For most of her life, such modest dreams would have been unattainable. Helen was born with sickle cell disease. Since babyhood, she had experienced episodes of searing pain, hospitalization and organ damage, and would have been expected to die in her 40s.But in 2019 she became the first American teenager with sickle cell to be declared free of the disease six months after undergoing an experimental gene therapy meant to cure her. Her symptoms have vanished. She assures teenagers she met at a camp for children with sickle cell: “One day they can have what I had.” (Kolata, 9/14)

Philadelphia Inquirer: For Doctors Treating Afghan Refugees At PHL, The Airport Is ‘A Modern-Day Ellis Island’
When refugees from Afghanistan arrive at Philadelphia International Airport, some of the first people they meet are the doctors and nurses staffing long lines of triage stations, prepared to care for people who’ve been in transit for days or weeks, and perhaps suffering trauma for even longer. The all-hands-on-deck effort -- staffed by health care workers from around the region -- is a mark of how crucial health care is for the new arrivals. Many left quickly, with no time to bring vaccination or health care records or to get the medical check-ups normally required before leaving for the United States. Some have suffered the physical and emotional trauma of struggling to get to airports blocked by weapons-wielding Talliban, and once there, waiting days to get a flight. (Whelan, 9/13)

Politico: Vaccine Mandates Crash Into America’s ‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’ State 
The back doors of the union hall are propped open, letting the desert sunshine in to reflect off metal shelves lining the cinder block walls. On them are jars of peanut butter and piles of canned goods, unfolded cardboard boxes and other remnants of the food bank the local entertainment union set up here to help its 1,700 members after the coronavirus shutdowns last year threw them out of work almost overnight. Standing on the back steps, facing out toward the Las Vegas Strip on a 100-plus-degree August Friday, Phil Jaynes reflected on the progress his union had made in the months since. As coronavirus case counts fell and high-rise hotels, theaters and convention spaces began hiring again this past spring, the food bank grew quieter. In early July, Jaynes, as president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 720, reopened the union’s doors for the first time in 16 months. (Cassella, 9/13)

The New York Times: A Medical Career, At A Cost: Infertility 
From the start, Dr. Ariela Marshall, a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, proceeded with the conviction that if she worked harder, longer and better, she would succeed. And she did: She graduated as high school valedictorian, attended an elite university and was accepted into a top medical school. But one achievement eluded her: having a baby. She had postponed getting pregnant until she was solidly established in her career, but when she finally decided to try to have children, at 34, she was surprised to find that she could not, even with fertility drugs. Dr. Marshall attributed it to having worked frequent night shifts, as well as to stress and lack of sleep, which can affect reproductive cycles. (Mroz, 9/13)

The New York Times: The New Science On How We Burn Calories
It’s simple, we are often told: All you have to do to maintain a healthy weight is ensure that the number of calories you ingest stays the same as the number of calories you expend. If you take in more calories, or energy, than you use, you gain weight; if the output is greater than the input, you lose it. But while we’re often conscious of burning calories when we’re working out, 55 to 70 percent of what we eat and drink actually goes toward fueling all the invisible chemical reactions that take place in our body to keep us alive. “We think about metabolism as just being about exercise, but it’s so much more than that,” says Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. “It’s literally the running total of how busy your cells are throughout the day.” Figuring out your total energy expenditure tells you how many calories you need to stay alive. But it also tells you “how the body is functioning,” Pontzer says. “There is no more direct measure of that than energy expenditure.” (Tingley, 9/14)

In stories about DNA and ancestry —

The Washington Post: Forty-Five Years Later, Virginia Woman Identified As The Woodlawn Jane Doe
Authorities said Wednesday that they had finally identified the body of a 16-year-old girl found strangled and sexually assaulted 45 years ago in the Woodlawn area of Baltimore County. Known as the Woodlawn Jane Doe to cold case detectives for nearly five decades, Baltimore County police, using sophisticated DNA analysis that connected her body to relatives, identified the woman as Margaret Fetterolf of Alexandria, Va. ... Edward Fetterolf, Margaret’s brother, said in an interview that police told him last month that they had identified his sister’s body with the help of DNA a relative uploaded to Ancestry.com. He was stunned. (Rosenwald, 9/15)

Politico: How Joe Biden Became Irish 
While it is cliche for political figures to portray themselves as being “as American as apple pie,” President Joe Biden has long advertised another selling point: He’s also as Irish as a pint of Guinness (despite being, like his predecessor, a teetotaler). More so than any president since John F. Kennedy — the only other Catholic to hold the office — Biden’s Irish heritage is central to his public persona. He is so strongly identified with it that Sarah Palin, famously, could not get his name right. During prep sessions for their 2008 vice presidential debate, she kept referring to him as Senator O’Biden, according to an account given by a campaign aide. His Secret Service codename, meanwhile, is Celtic. (Schreckinger, 9/14)