Au cours de la pandémie, le plastique est devenu un mal nécessaire pour répondre aux contraintes sanitaires.  

Qu’il s’agisse de l’équipement de protection individuelle, des boîtes de repas à emporter ou encore des cloisons en plexiglas dressées afin de protéger les clients au restaurant, il est devenu omniprésent. 

L’ubiquité de cette matière n’est pas nouvelle, mais son utilité dans l’ère de la COVID est marquante. Pourtant, cela ne change rien quant à son caractère polluant. Personne ne souhaite répandre cette matière dans la nature, surtout pas dans nos fleuves et autres cours d’eau. 

C’est la raison pour laquelle le premier ministre du Québec François Legault a annoncé l’élargissement du système de consigne. Ce faisant, il cherche à mieux recycler les bouteilles de plastique. Le ministre de l’Environnement, Benoit Charrette, a aussi révélé des plans afin de réduire la consommation de plastique des entreprises dans l’espoir de mieux recycler leurs déchets. 

Il y a aussi des centaines d’entrepreneurs québécois dans l’industrie du recyclage qui deviennent de plus en plus efficaces et grossissent à vue d’oeil. L’usine de Lavergne à Montréal en est un bel exemple, tout comme Plastiques GPR de Saint-Félix-de-Valois. Ces deux entreprises comptent des clients partout à travers le monde et aident à faire rayonner le Québec. 

La popularité de ces initiatives est le fruit des efforts de l’industrie et du gouvernement du Québec. 

Le plastique n’est pas toxique

Il semble aujourd’hui qu’Ottawa cherche à aller se chercher une part de cette gloire. En octobre, le gouvernement de Justin Trudeau a déclaré qu’il désignerait le plastique comme une substance toxique selon l’annexe 1 de la Loi canadienne sur la protection de l’environnement. Cela interdirait l’utilisation d’articles en plastique à usage unique tels que les sacs en plastique, les pailles, les bâtonnets à mélanger, les ustensiles et les récipients de polystyrène. 

Cette décision du gouvernement nous inquiète pour deux raisons. Tout d’abord, nous savons tous que les produits en plastique ne sont pas toxiques. Ce n’est pas comme l’amiante et le plomb, deux autres produits déjà identifiés par cette loi. Pourquoi reléguer une matière d’une si grande utilité au même statut que des substances cancérigènes ? Cela ne fait aucun sens. 

Ensuite, cela fait fi du travail des entrepreneurs et entreprises innovantes cherchant des solutions concrètes pour résoudre le problème de pollution, notamment en travaillant sur le cycle de vie de ces manières. Bannir ces matières ou les considérer « toxiques » vient éliminer les solutions privées qui ont été développées par nos entrepreneurs et innovateurs locaux. Ce rejet des solutions innovantes est inquiétant. 

Qui plus est, Ottawa vient empiéter une fois de plus sur les efforts des provinces pour lutter contre ces matières résiduelles. Le Québec et l’Alberta ont déjà mis en place des plans afin de réduire la consommation de plastiques. Ces plans conçus localement répondent mieux aux besoins de leurs citoyens que ceux imposés par Ottawa. 

La reclassification du plastique est loin d’être une bonne solution. C’est plutôt une démarche cynique du gouvernement Trudeau visant à justifier son empiétement sur un domaine de compétence provinciale et répondre maladroitement aux demandes des groupes environnementaux. 

Un bien indispensable

S’il est nécessaire d’applaudir les efforts pour réduire la consommation de plastiques, il est tout aussi important d’être réaliste : le plastique est un bien indispensable, et la pandémie nous l’a rappelé. L’important est de s’assurer qu’il ne se ramasse pas n’importe où et puisse être réutilisé ou bien recyclé. 

C’est grâce au génie québécois que nous pourrons disposer de notre plastique de façon responsable, et non grâce à une prohibition du gouvernement fédéral. Au lieu de laisser les provinces gérer leurs approches et les innovateurs trouver des solutions efficaces, le gouvernement fédéral a choisi la voie paresseuse de l’interdiction pure et simple de certains produits. Cela nuit à tout le monde, et particulièrement à nous tous, consommateur. 

Cette reclassification vient aussi créer une réelle incertitude sur ce qui pourrait être ajouté à la liste des produits toxiques dans un futur rapproché. 

Le Québec a montré qu’il est un leader dans le recyclage du plastique. Il est crucial qu’Ottawa lui permette de le demeurer. 

Originally published here.

The EU is currently trying to “beat cancer” with a new plan, which sets out to ban or restrict certain behavioural habits, such as smoking or drinking. Instead, we should look to innovation to increase our lifespan.

Supporting medical research to fight disease is seen by most people as something laudable, not controversial in any case.T he reaction seems to be different when it comes to stopping and slowing down the ageing process itself. Such an undertaking may strike many as either an unrealistic utopia or an immoral intervention in the course of nature.

Neither assumption is necessarily valid: In recent years, this kind of ageing research has gained immense popularity and scientific foundation; so-called senolytics play a vital role in this. So it is no longer a utopian thought experiment of some eccentrics.

Stopping the ageing process is not immoral, either, because it prevents the human body’s natural development. The implicit assumption here is that adhering to the natural process of decay of the human body is morally superior. This is not particularly convincing. After all, even though the use of prosthetic joints and organ transplants, we improve our quality of life and life expectancy in an unnatural, in the first case even mechanical, way.

It’s not necessarily about living forever

Even if you don’t necessarily want to live much longer, there is an important reason to support life extension approaches. In treating diseases such as cancer and diabetes, it has been assumed that it is only possible to stop or alleviate the symptoms that appear after the condition has occurred. Preventive approaches are also being pursued but focus only on the prevention of specific diseases.

In the field of ageing research, however, this approach is fundamentally criticised by numerous scientists. They argue that this strategy does not effectively focus on the actual development of the disease. This is because it is insurmountably linked to the human ageing process. In other words: If we find a cure for ageing, we will most likely also find a treatment for cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and other diseases of old age.

Switching off the ageing process with senolytics

Whatever the reason for being optimistic about the possibility of prolonging human life, senolytics seem to make this project more and more realistic. Senolytics are molecules that can induce the death of senescent human cells. These cells accumulate in the body with age, in humans and animals. Unlike non-senescent cells, these cells no longer divide.

It is assumed that cells divide until they reach the so-called Hayflick limit – usually around 50 cell divisions. After that, programmed cell death sets in. Senescent cells represent a tiny proportion that escapes this fate of the rest of the cells. Instead of dying or being destroyed, they continue to accumulate in the body. This senescence process causes an increase in inflammation in the body and is considered to trigger the ageing process.

It is believed that many signs of ageing and disease can be attributed to the increase in senescent cells – from dementia, osteoporosis, frailty, diabetes and heart disease to liver and lung disease and the more frequent occurrence of cancer.

The aim of senolytics to kill senescent cells, therefore, seems logical – removing cells that appear to be fundamentally responsible for the ageing process. An effective endogenous mechanism that leads to the cell death of senescent cells does not seem to exist. If this were the case, these cells would not accumulate over the years and cause all kinds of age-related diseases.

Senolytics could be ready for use in a few years

Even though this mechanism seems logical to stop the ageing process and associated diseases, this approach may still seem quite utopian. After all, it is a radical approach to conditions that differs from the previous focus on symptoms. Senolytics are also not just preventive interventions but rather pre-preventive: the aim is not to prevent the onset of certain diseases but to prevent the cause of all age-related diseases.

Nevertheless, senolytics could be ready for use in a few years, as clinical trials with human subjects are already taking place. The results are promising. Well-known biotech companies in this field include:

Currently, Unity Biotech is focusing on the use of senolytics to eliminate specific age-related joint diseases such as osteoarthritis, with an additional focus on eye and lung diseases. Last year, positive results were announced from one of the first studies involving human volunteers whose osteoarthritis symptoms were significantly reduced by adding the senolytic molecule UBX 0101.

Unity Biotech currently has the most progress in the field of human trials. Besides, there is, for example, Oisin Biotechnologies, which is developing a mechanism for precise targeting of senescent cells. The goal here is a tailored removal of senescent cells without damaging other cells. Clinical trials with human participants are currently in preparation.

Due to the rapid success and speed of research in senolytics, it is now assumed that these molecules could be ready for use in a few years to slow down the ageing process. It seems that utopias do not always have to be unrealistic or far away.

Originally published here.

The health benefits are tiny, but the economic damage will be huge.

Following a six-week consultation, it looks like the British government is poised to push ahead with its policy to blanket ban online junk-food advertising. Over the weekend, a ‘government source’ welcomed a helpfully timed report from a campaign group that lifted ‘the lid on the secretive online strategies global food giants are using to manipulate British children’.

The report – or ‘exposé’, as it is being branded – is from an organisation called Bite Back 2030, and carries endorsements from celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and, for reasons that are unclear, a Dolce & Gabbana model.

As you might expect, the dramatic revelations of the report aren’t actually very dramatic at all. It merely points out the fact that some celebrities have many thousands of Instagram followers, before revealing, stage-magician-style, that those celebrities sometimes sign advertising deals with companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

The headline figure is that children are being ‘bombarded’ with 500 online junk-food ads per second. Presumably, that’s the total amount of ads shown per second to Britain’s 12million children, rather than to each child, which might make for an uncomfortable viewing experience.

Even if there was evidence that online advertising of unhealthy foods is a crisis that needs to be tackled urgently, the ad ban would still be a terrible idea. But it is not even a real problem, let alone a crisis needing a state-imposed solution. Indeed, the government’s analysis of its own policy concludes that it will remove an average of 1.7 calories from kids’ diets per day. For context, that is roughly the equivalent of half a Smartie.

Plus, there is the inevitable problem that comes with centralising issues like this in Whitehall – in this case, what counts as the ‘junk food’ from which children’s vulnerable eyes must be shielded? The government says it is focusing on food items ‘high in fat, sugar and salt’. Yet this means they ended up condemning famously obesity-inducing foodstuffs like Marmite, yoghurt, honey, mustard and tinned fruit.

The economic costs of a policy like this are catastrophic, especially as we move towards a period of post-lockdown recovery. Advertising-industry bodies have been concerned about this for months, trying desperately to draw attention to the ways it would hamstring the economy. But their complaints have gone unheard among the red-tape enthusiasts in Westminster.

There’s also the issue of small businesses, like the baking business my mum runs out of her kitchen. The policy, in its proposed form, seems as though it will criminalise my mum for posting pictures of her cakes to her Instagram account to advertise her services. The nameless government source in The Sunday Times says that we needn’t worry about that: ‘There will be caveats – this is not aimed at small companies advertising home-made cakes online. It is aimed at the food giants.’

Yet it is unclear if or how a policy like this can be targeted at specific businesses and not others. When people are still being fined for going to the park with friends and arrested for the crime of ‘socialising outdoors’, this anonymous briefing to a newspaper is hardly reassuring.

Once this policy is implemented, the UK will have the toughest digital-marketing restrictions in the world, by some margin. That’s not something to be proud of. There are plenty of areas where Britain can be world-leading – vaccine rollout, for instance – but leading the world in breaking new ground in the ways we regulate diet and online culture is not a record any government ought to be striving for.

Originally published here.