washington

Grindr wants to lobby Washington on HIV prevention and IVF

Spencer Platt/Getty Images 

The queer dating app Grindr is … getting into lobbying? The company hired The Daschle Group, founded by former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, to lobby on “HIV prevention; LGBTQ family formation challenges including surrogacy and IVF,” STAT’s Nicholas Florko and Sarah Owermohle reported yesterday after reading federal disclosures filed last week.

The move comes as competing bills designed to protect IVF, or in vitro fertilization, sit in the Senate. Washington has also seen increased lobbying around access to PrEP, the HIV prevention medicine. It is unclear how much Grindr is paying Daschle's firm to lobby on its behalf.

Read more on what the move means for Grindr and what we know about the lobbyists the company hired. 

food safety

Do you know how hot your food is supposed to be?

To be clear, there is no evidence that you can get the H5N1 bird flu virus by cooking and eating the meat that lands in your fridge. If you’re worried about bird flu, just make sure you’re not part of the small percentage of U.S. adults drinking raw milk. 

But since the way our food affects our health is on the mind these days, the Annenberg Public Policy Center surveyed nearly 1,500 Americans earlier this month about food safety. When presented with various temperatures for heating poultry, beef, and steak, then asked about which ones would kill any H5N1 virus, over half of respondents said they were not sure. On top of that, only about one in four U.S. adults use a food thermometer either “often” or “all the time.” 

So as a refresher: Cooking poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit kills bacteria and viruses. Ground beef needs to get to at least 160, while steak needs to get to at least 145.

mouse research

How a parasite could help get meds into the brain

There’s a very exclusive list and a very powerful bouncer at the front door of our brains, as the body works hard to keep it safe from external substances. But what if somebody on the list could bring a plus one? A mouse study published yesterday shows how a parasite that’s already able to cross the blood-brain barrier was engineered to treat a brain development disorder in mice.

Scientists at MIT engineered the parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, to make and secrete therapeutic proteins once it was inside the mouse brains. This “smart microbe” could be a gamechanger, but first, scientists need to think about the treatment’s safety. Read more on the science from STAT’s Alia Sajani.