March 17, 2025: USAID saved millions of kids. Plus, the world's first carbon capture plant and an AI to talk to aliens. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | • Almost 40 years ago, toxicologist Joseph Borzelleca published a study on the food coloring Red No. 3. The FDA cited his work when banning the additive in January. But the researcher says the dye is safe. | 5 min read | | | • A genomic study of ancient people from the eastern Maghreb region—present-day Tunisia and northeastern Algeria—shows that Stone Age populations who lived there more than 8,000 years ago were partly descended from European hunter-gatherers. | 3 min read | | | USAID Saved Millions of Lives | As soon as he was inaugurated on January 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting all foreign aid for 90 days and announced weeks later his plan to downsize the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, from more than 10,000 workers to 290. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the Trump administration was canceling 83 percent of USAID programs and folding the rest under the Department of State.
USAID funding significantly improves child mortality rates (under 5 years old), according to a 2022 study. Countries that received above-average levels of USAID funding had, on average, 29 fewer deaths per 1,000 live births than countries that didn't receive funding. That works out to roughly 500 fewer deaths per day, the lead study authors say. | | | Amanda Montañez; Sources: "Estimating the Impact of Donor Programs on Child Mortality in Low‑ and Middle‑Income Countries: a Synthetic Control Analysis of Child Health Programs Funded by the United States Agency for International Development," by William Weiss et al., in Population Health Metrics, Vol. 20, No. 1, Article No. 2; December 2022 (USAID funding effects data); World Bank (U.S. estimate) | Maternal health also benefitted. In 2009 through 2019, countries that received a sustained high level of USAID funding saw a maternal mortality rate reduction of 0.8 death per 1,000 women of reproductive age. This translates to about one million to 1.3 million deaths prevented, or four extra years of life expectancy. | | | Amanda Montañez; Sources: "Accounting for Aid: Estimating the Impact of United States' Global Health Investments on Mortality among Women of Reproductive Age Using Synthetic Control and Bayesian Methods," by Karar Z. Ahsan et al. Preprint posted to SSRN on August 27, 2024 (USAID funding effects data); "Mortality Rates among U.S. Women of Reproductive Age, 1999–2019," by Alison Gemmill et al., in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 4; April 2022 (U.S. estimate) |
What the experts say: Foreign health aid "has always been extremely bipartisan," says William Weiss, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who served as an advisor in the global health bureau at USAID until his agreement was recently suspended. "Congress and their constituents [have long been] behind these programs saving children's lives, especially in poor countries, with interventions that were fairly cheap," he says. "This is what the American people wanted, across ideological lines."
Widespread impact: The USAID cuts have affected more than just funding for children's and women's health. They have terminated the President's Malaria Initiative, which was protecting 53 million people from disease and death through the use of bed nets, diagnostics and treatments. All work on tuberculosis, including funding for most TB treatment, has been halted. And the cuts have suspended USAID contracts that administer funding from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the landmark HIV program launched by then president George W. Bush in 2003 and funded with bipartisan support by Congress ever since. PEPFAR has been providing medication to 20 million people worldwide. | | | D-Wave's Advantage2 quantum processor. D-Wave Quantum Inc. | | | Author John Green sits down with Science, Quickly host Rachel Feltman to talk about his new book, Everything is Tuberculosis, and how the diseased has shaped our world. Even though it's now curable, it remains our planet's deadliest infectious disease, he says. | | | Are you enjoying this newsletter? Consider supporting the vital science journalism we do with a subscription to Scientific American. Special discounts are available for Today in Science readers!
| | | • After 40 years of searching for extraterrestrial life and sending out various signals, astronomers have not found any alien intelligence, and our messages remain unanswered. Rather than transmitting signals or golden records, we should send a Large Language Model out to the stars, propose Franck Marchis and Ignacio G. López-Francos, from the SETI Institute and NASA, respectively. "This would enable extraterrestrial civilizations to indirectly converse with us and learn about us without being hindered by the vast distances of space and its corresponding human-lifetime delays in communication," they say. "Aliens could learn one of our languages, ask the LLM questions about us and receive replies that are representative of humanity." | 5 min read | | | Large Language Models could be the first to interact with an alien intelligence in the coming decades. But here on Earth, AI-powered tools have already begun transforming everyday life: AI may improve the flow of traffic, recommend your next favorite book, and can advise you on financial investments (steer clear of these, for now). For better or worse, the AI future is here. Read more about this exciting (and perhaps perilous) age of innovation in our latest collector's edition on AI. Download here or find on newsstands. | Welcome to a new week of discovery. I love hearing from you! Send your thoughts, notes, and suggestions to: newsletters@sciam.com. Until tomorrow. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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