Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Gene therapy allows an 11-year-old boy to hear for the first time

Summary: An 11-year-old boy who was born deaf due to a mutation in a single gene has had that gene replaced using a new gene therapy technique and is now able to hear.

Context: This same rare, congenital type of deafness affects around 200,000 people globally, and it’s expected that more people will gain access to this treatment soon—though researchers are currently focused on making sure the therapy works as intended in younger patients, before a next-step goal of revising it to target other sorts of congenital deafness; the same general therapy approach is also being applied to other gene-caused conditions, and the optimistic hope is that this could someday lead to a portfolio of broad-based therapies for all sorts of disorders and debilitations, though the theory and practice of targeting the right genes and delivering the therapies are still being refined.

—The New York Times

One Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Global coal exports and power generation hit new highs in 2023

Summary: New data from environmental think tank Ember indicate that global coal-powered electricity generation hit a new high in 2023, and the export of thermal coal passed 1 billion metric tons for the first time even as the deployment of renewables continues to mark new milestones.

Context: The majority of coal mining, export, and use takes place in Asia, in part because that’s where coal can be mined efficiently, and in part because a lot of middle class population growth is happening in China, Southeast Asia, and in Africa where China in particular does a lot of business—so even though solar, wind, and nuclear power are expanding rapidly, many growing nations are still at least partially reliant on coal because of its accessibility, low price, and flexibility (especially within aging energy production infrastructure).

—Reuters

Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025

Summary: A new report from the International Energy Agency indicates that new reactors coming online over the next few years will make 2025 a record year for nuclear power.

Context: This parallels news that renewable sources will likely overtake coal (in terms of overall power generation, globally) in 2025, and it’s illustrative of how much money is being plowed into creating stable, reliable energy sources as the world struggles to pivot away from fossil fuels, but doesn’t yet have flexible enough grids and sufficient battery storage to juggle all the intermittent electricity being produced by new and often quite large-scale solar and wind installations.

—The Guardian

File this under “shocking but not surprising”: the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere is increasing at a rapid enough clip that it’s now considered unlikely we’ll be able to limit average global climate temperature increase to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees C.

—Axios

775

Number of brand-name drugs that have seen price-hikes in the US in 2024.

The median price increase is about 4.5%, but some saw 10% hikes—in both cases higher than the 3.4% rate of inflation in December of 2023.

This is happening in the context of US lawmakers casting heightened scrutiny on pharmaceutical companies for their pricing practices (drug prices are way, way higher in the US than the rest of the world, and have been pretty much forever).

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit onesentencenews.substack.com