Highlights of this week in Science

Making abortion difficult is causing mental health problems for American women. Thermonuclear fusion as a source of electricity faces another predicted hurdle.

This post discusses two articles in Science, the “premier global science weekly” of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The first publication addresses the mental health issues predicted following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The second covers the major thermonuclear fusion energy project, ITER. It's a bit of a stretch, but one could see fusion in biology and physics as the common theme.

Mental health and abortion

While it is well-known that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court consists of Dark Age ideological zealots, scientific studies must continue to provide evidence of the damage done by this group. It's also crucial to highlight that the real owners of this country installed this reactionary faction to divert attention from lopsided ownership, persistent poverty, and growing inequality. Diversion is a time-honored tactic of the power elite. Though diversionary, the victims of class warfare and the culture wars are real people.

The power elite, as documented in The U.S. Inequality Debate, is trying to obscure that:

• Income and wealth inequality is higher in the United States than in almost any other developed country, and it is rising. 

• There are large wealth and income gaps across racial groups, which many experts attribute to the country’s legacy of slavery and racist economic policies.

Here are some informative charts:

The 0.01% cannot be included; their income is literally off the chart.

The July 3, 2024, issue of Science Advances reports a recent study, once again confirming the predicted effects of the infamous, June 24, 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Federalist Society inspired U.S. Supreme Court decision. The essence of the abstract of the paper is clear:

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to numerous states enacting new abortion restrictions. […] Responses [to a nationwide survey] indicate a significant increase in reports of mental distress after the institution of such restrictions. These effects appear to persist at least 4 months following a ban and are moderated by household income and education but not by sex, race, age, marital status, or sexual orientation. Less educated and less wealthy subjects reported greater mental health distress compared to wealthier, more educated groups. These results suggest that the institution of abortion restrictions has had broad negative implications for the mental health of people living in the US, particularly those of lower education and personal wealth. (emphasis added)

This abstract is basically a dispassionate version of what Human Rights Watch wrote over a year ago in its report Human Rights Crisis: Abortion in the United States After Dobbs:

Less than a year on from this catastrophic legal decision, it is now apparent that the consequences are even worse than feared. Women and girls in need of reproductive healthcare are being met with systematic refusals, onerous financial burdens, stigma, fear of violence, and criminalization. Thousands are being forced to remain pregnant against their will.

Part II of this briefing paper outlines the consequences of Dobbson on the fundamental human rights of women and girls, as well as the disproportionate impact it has on certain demographics made vulnerable by systemic oppressions.

Another study was published on March 31, 2023, in JAMA Network Open, a publication of the prestigious journal of the American Medical Association (AMA). The following is from the discussion included in this paper:

Losing the constitutional right to abortion can be associated with women’s reproductive health directly and indirectly via how future obstetricians-gynecologists would be trained. This case-control study found that for female individuals, the loss of abortion rights was associated with a 10% increase in prevalence of mental distress relative to the mean over the 3 months after the SCOTUS decision. Restricting legal abortion access may be associated with disproportionate outcomes among individuals of lower socioeconomic status and in medically underserved areas, who may experience greater economic and mental health burdens of having unwanted pregnancies due to increased travel costs of obtaining abortions.

These negative consequences had been predicted, as for instance in this January 2021 paper, which concludes that:

These [abortion restricting] laws treat patients as fundamentally suspect by promoting the inaccurate stereotype that those who seek abortion services are morally deviant and incompetent decision makers. The resulting stigma increases the risk of poor psychological and physical health outcomes among pregnant individuals and stigmatizes, devalues, and professionally harms abortion providers.

Nothing new here, but worth repeating.

Fusion Energy Project ITER Faces Major Setback

ITER, which started in 1985, is an international thermonuclear fusion energy project involving China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the USA. This decades-long collaboration aims to construct and operate an experimental fusion device, advancing the technology to the point of a functioning demonstration reactor.

Fusion energy has been hailed, as I remember from the 1970s, as a potential breakthrough—on a then supposedly twenty-year timescale—that promises to provide limitless, clean energy. There has been notable scientific progress during the last couple of years, particularly in achieving ignition of a deuterium-tritium mixture. Ignition refers to the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, releasing more energy than is required to initiate it. Department of Energy administrators claim these developments will revolutionize the energy sector. As political appointees tend to do, they have eagerly made bold and grandiose claims, such as asserting that fusion energy:

will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.

This week, the news section of Science reports about ITER: the Giant international fusion project is in big trouble. Here is one paragraph:

The giant fusion reactor known as ITER will not turn on until 2034, 9 years later than currently scheduled, according to a new timeline the international organization announced this week. Energy producing fusion reactions—the goal of the project—won’t come until 2039, and only in short bursts, to satisfy safety concerns of the nuclear regulator in France, where ITER is under construction. Manufacturing faults, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the complexity of a first-of-a-kind machine have all slowed progress, ITER Director General Pietro Barabaschi said at a 3 July press conference. “We want to make up for past delays by starting with a more complete machine,” he said.

Nice try, Pietro!

Criticism and Concerns

Not everyone shares Pietro Barabaschi’s optimism. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published critical pieces over the years, including some by Daniel Jassby, a former insider. The gist is that:

• Fusion is not as clean as often suggested. That is, fusion reactors will still produce radioactive waste and pose other environmental hazards such as radioactive tritium leaking into the groundwater, and the production of radioactive waste.

• Nuclear weapon proliferation is a serious problem:

  The open or clandestine production of plutonium 239 is possible in a fusion reactor simply by placing natural or depleted uranium oxide at any location where neutrons of any energy are flying about.

• Fusion reactors will be plagued by tough material science problems, such as radiation damage to structures. The latest news in Science shows that ITER faces supposedly unforeseen problems. The optimism expressed about the proposed solution probably is wishful thinking:

  To make ITER more relevant to power plant operations, Barabaschi—who became director general in October 2022—has also made a major change in the material of the inner reactor wall that is exposed to the hot plasma. The original plan was to use beryllium, but plasma can erode it. Designers have switched to tungsten, which is more resistant to vaporizing but shuts down fusion if it contaminates the plasma. Starting the machine with a potentially tricky material presents a risk, but “we think it is a manageable risk,” Loarte says.

• Much of the motivation for fusion research is tied to nuclear weapons development, providing a way to advance bomb research without actual nuclear explosions. Indeed, John Mecklin's interview with Bob Rosner—a physicist at the University of Chicago and former director of Argonne National Laboratory—highlights several key points regarding the motivation behind fusion research and its ties to nuclear weapons development. The interview explains that much of the motivation for fusion research is driven by the desire to advance bomb technology without actual nuclear explosions. Training a new generation of nuclear bomb engineers is an additional motivation. Never forget former Secretary of Energy Moniz’s report, The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler.
  
  Furthermore, fusion research allows countries to respect the letter of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), one of the few treaties that the United States has not left. It’s a treaty the U.S. has observed and signed but never ratified. Under the guise of trying to find a source of carbon free energy, countries continue weapons development while avoiding the political and environmental consequences of nuclear tests.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has an archive that can serve to further explore the pros and cons of fusion energy.

Overall conclusion

Summing up this post: robust scientific evidence must inform public policy and innovation, ensuring progress that benefits society as a whole. It doesn’t come as a surprise that neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the U.S. Department of Energy live up to this expectation.