On Monday Take Two will discuss controversy in California health insurance contracts, crowd funding an Ebola cure, Edward Snowden at the Oscars, regulating sperm banks, Seattle celebrating Indigenous People's Day, the effect of drought on wine and pumpkins, a documentary called "Meet the Mormons" and more.
Ebola cure: Southern California scientist crowdfunds research
As a second person in the U.S. comes down with Ebola and the disease continues to kill hundreds daily in West Africa, urgency increases to find some sort of a cure.
Erica Ollmann Saphire, a scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, is helping lead a global effort to do just that.
Saphire is currently being sent antibodies for study from countries afflicted with Ebola.
But because she can't get the job done fast enough with current resources, she has started a crowdfunding project to raise money for the cause.
Saphire spoke with KPCC's Take Two about the research and immediate needs for trying to find a cure.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
You've been studying Ebola for 11 years. Did you anticipate what's going on right now?
Sadly, we did. Knowing what the virus can do and what it's capable of we always wondered if one day there would be an outbreak like this, so the goal was to do the research we needed to make sure we knew why it was lethal and how it works and where we needed to fight it.
What is your role in working on a cure?
I'm the director of a global consortium to make antibody therapeutics like ZMapp. It had been thought for a long time that antibodies wouldn’t work against an Ebola virus. When in maybe 2012 it was discovered that they would as long you put several together. We formed this global group to say, "Ah, here's what we need." The free market is not going to support multiple Ebola therapies. Typically it's very rare, and everything has to be donated, because most people infected can’t afford expensive treatment. We need everyone on the same page to figure out what the single best cocktail ought to be. So everybody in the world donated their antibodies, and they came to my lab, and we're going to blind them, and we're going to compare them side by side and figure out what's best and why and which ones to mix together. So ZMapp was the first stage of that and was sort of the proof of concept. Now we're going to have hundreds of human antibodies rolling in from people that have survived this outbreak. We'd like to understand how they survived and what immune response they made and how we can use that information to make new treatments.
Once you’ve figured out what might have helped these people fight off Ebola, then what?
We would figure out what antibodies are best, which combination is most synergistic — which work together best — and then you express them to high levels in whatever biotechnology system you want to do. So you can grow them in plants, algae, tissue culture, and you test them in animals, and then eventually if they work you test them in people.
Is ZMapp gone?
It is, but they are making more. Mapp Bio and public health agency of Canada only discovered the ZMapp combination was so effective maybe seven months ago. And based on the brilliant animal efficacy data, that means how well it worked in monkeys, the human trial was scheduled for 2015. So not that much human material had been made when this outbreak happened. Mapp Bio gave away everything they had, and they are making more. They are planting greenhouses full of it in Kentucky. They are working with other groups like the Gates Foundation to grow more of it in other sources, because it certainly seems to work.
You've turned to crowdfunding to raise money for your equipment. What are your immediate needs?
We are about to have hundreds of human antibodies come rolling in. The support we have is kind of peace-time level funding, and right now we are at war with this virus. The funding that we had was to study about 150 antibodies, mostly raised in mice against 1995's Ebola virus. Well, that's not going to work anymore. We need to understand the 2014 version of Ebola. It's got at least 55 mutations. Call it Ebola 2.0. And we need to understand these human antibodies: How did these humans survive? That's going to be a three-fold scale up of what we need to do, and we need to do it fast. So I can't make more hours in the day, but I can increase the speed at which we can process and purify and analyze the samples by getting some better, faster equipment.
We've talked to doctors who say the most important thing right now is to isolate the sick and get basic supplies to the infected region. Do you worry that money for a cure is just too much of an optimistic thing right now and money should go toward beds and health care workers?
It's true that none of these experimental therapies are going to be available in enough doses to treat everybody; it's just not possible. To contain this outbreak the focus really needs to be on medical supplies and medical care. We just can't have people dying in the streets and infecting their families at home. They need to be cared for by doctors and nurses that have supplies to protect themselves, but the contain and control isn't enough. One of the things about crowdfunding is it gives people the control. They can choose what they want to invest in and maybe they want to put some of their resources toward supplies like medical gloves and bleach and maybe they want to put some of their resources toward getting a cure ready to treat this thing.
Seattle rebrands Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day
Monday is Columbus Day, but Seattle is celebrating Indigenous People's Day. The city now joins a list of cities that have chosen to shift the attention away from the Italian explorer credited with discovering America.
A week ago today, the city council there voted unanimously to re-brand the holiday.
For more, reporter Jason Pagano of public radio station KUOW in Seattle joins Take Two.
California senators contribute to other Senate races
Neither of California's U.S. Senators is on the ballot this year.
But that doesn't mean they're sitting out the November election.
Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer together have contributed nearly half a million dollars to Senate races nationwide.
Southern California Public Radio's Kitty Felde reports.
Related: Election 2014: Boxer, Feinstein funding Senate races around the country
California's no-bid health contracts amounted to $184 million
A new investigation from the Associated Press reveals a behind-the-scenes look at California's health insurance exchange, seen as one of the most successful in the nation.
Reporter Michael Blood discovered that Covered California awarded $184 million in contracts without the use of competitive bidding.
Several of those contracts went to a consulting group whose founder had ties to the health agency's executive director.
Covered California is allowed to secure no-bid contracts in order to meet tight federal deadlines on healthcare, according to the AP report. So far, the exchange has charted success by signing up some 3.4 million state residents. It begins the second enrollment period next month.
But Covered California officials say the contracts have been used to complete critical tasks at the program. The process took place "completely with transparency and within the law," said Dana Howard, deputy director of communications for the agency. Howard said there was nothing "improper, illegal or inappropriate" about the contracts.
Covered California's Executive Director told the AP in a statement that the fledgling exchange "needed experienced individuals who could go toe-to-toe with health plans and bring to our consumers the best possible insurance value. Contractors like The Tori Group possess unique and deep health care experience to help make that happen and get the job done on a tight deadline."
For more on this, AP reporter Michael Blood joins Take Two.
On The Lot: Edward Snowden heading for the Oscars?
"Citizenfour," Laura Poitras' documentary about Edward Snowden, premiered over the weekend at the New York Film Festival. That immediately set off Oscar talk, says the LA Times' Rebecca Keegan. She also says the film reveals some new information about the NSA spying programs and indicates there is a second whistleblower inside the NSA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM
Keegan also talks about Lena Dunham's latest project. The HBO "Girls" director has taken on a young adult novel. She's adapting it for the screen and will direct. Hollywood, says Keegan, continues to rely heavily on just-past juvenile fiction as fodder for hits.
Another popular bet in Hollywood is sequels staring superheroes. And the latest has a twist. It's the Batman Lego movie. Will Arnett did a turn spoofing Christian Bale's Batman in the original Lego movie, and now Warner Bros. will release a made-of-bricks Batman movie, with Arnett returning as the Caped Crusader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5lUgBNBUC8
Rebecca Keegan joins KPCC each Monday for Take Two's review of the film business, On The Lot.
How are sperm banks regulated?
These days there are all sorts of ways to have a baby -- including using a sperm bank.
Use of donor sperm can be a tremendous boon to those trying to conceive, but the practice is not without some cause for concern.
Take for example a white woman in Ohio who recently sued a sperm bank for mistakenly providing her with sperm from a black donor.
Her case raises some tough questions about how sperm banks are regulated.
To help sort through some of those questions Take Two speaks with Naomi Cahn. She is a professor of law at George Washington University and author of "Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Market Needs Legal Regulation."
Medi-Cal dental coverage not enough for some
Five years ago, the state legislature cut dental coverage for adults on Medi-Cal.
Earlier this year, it brought it back.
But it left some procedures uncovered, and that's left some poor Californians with fewer choices about their teeth.
Southern California Public Radio's Adrian Florido reports.
Related: Some fall through gaps in state's dental program for the poor
Pumpkin farmers struggle to produce plump harvest due to drought
This upcoming Halloween you might notice pumpkins looking a little less plump. Well, that's because they are. The ongoing drought and late heat waves have hit pumpkin farmers particularly hard this year.
Several farmers have had to fallow their fields and invest what little water they have on more important crops like almond trees. The recent heat waves have also caused pumpkins to ripen quicker than usual. John Boss is a farmer at Dutch Hollow Farms in Modesto. He's been growing pumpkins since 2006 and says his pumpkins are significantly smaller than other years.
Calif. drought could have silver lining for wine grape growers
For the most part, California's drought has been nothing but bad news for everyone from pool builders to almond farmers.
But for a very select few, the drier weather may actually be a boon.
These warm days and cool nights are wonderful for some types of grapes.
Will Bucklin, owner of the Old Hill Ranch Vineyard and Bucklin Winery in Sonoma Valley, says that dry, hot weather is actually ideal for growing wine grapes.
When the vines are exposed to drought stress, Bucklin explains, "what happens is the grapes themselves don't grow as big as they would when they have more moisture, or when it's cooler."
The smaller berries have less juice and more skin, "and the skin is where the flavor is, and where the aroma is, and the color as well. So if you have smaller berries, you generally have higher quality."
Too much rain at the wrong time can lead to rot and bad-tasting fruit, and that's bad for wine.
But that's not to say Bucklin isn't hoping the drought will end soon. Because he doesn't irrigate his fields (a practice known as "dry farming"), rain is extremely important.
What would be ideal, he says, is "as we would call it, a 'normal' season in California, with rain in the winter and spring, and even in the fall, but dry during the summer."
'Meet the Mormons' surprises at the box office
When you think of Mormons, a few things might come to mind.
Perhaps Utah. Mitt Romney. A punchline in, "The Book of Mormon."
But you probably don't think of them as a box office hit.
The new documentary film, "Meet the Mormons," took in nearly $3 million over the weekend despite being screened in just 317 theaters.
It was created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in part because the church, itself, knows it has an image problem.
Among the criticisms sometimes lobbed at Mormons -- they're ultraconservative, they supported California's Prop 8, they practice polygamy.
"We don't even blame you if that's what you think," says director Blair Treu, "because for the most part that's what you've been told through popular culture and through things like the play 'The Book of Mormon.'"
But the LDS Church hopes a movie like this could shed some light on who they think Mormons really are.
The film follows six different church members to explore their faith, from an African-American bishop in Atlanta to a Nepalese engineer in Kathmandu.
Showcasing a diverse array of people around the world of different ethnicities was on purpose: there are more Mormons outside the U.S. than inside the country, says Treu.
"That's why we felt it was important to actually not have, thank heavens, a bunch of white people that look like me," he says.
The film is also a slick, upbeat PR campaign. Many of the stories trend high on "feel good," although some critics say the movie is more about propaganda than truth.
Also, it's up against Hollywood heavyweights like "Gone Girl."
"It's a documentary, it's religious, it's faith-based. So it has a number of strikes against it," says Treu.
But he hopes that non-Mormons who are curious and watch a screening will walk away with a better perception of the LDS Church.