African American women with lupus have more severe cases and worse outcomes than women in other demographics. Lupus provides the perfect example of how all autoimmune diseases function.
A ‘Mother’ Disease
“It’s the mother of all autoimmune diseases,” Kamen says. “The basis of autoimmune disease is that the immune system attacks healthy cells and tissues, and many are focused on one area of the body.”
“For example, MS (multiple sclerosis) attacks the nervous system, and RA (rheumatoid arthritis) attacks the joints,” she says. “But antibodies from lupus attack many different types of cells in many different parts of the body. Patients can have multiple different organ systems affected at the same time.”
Ramos says each participant in her research will submit genetic data from blood samples “as well as social exposure data, including sociodemographic, behavioral, racial discrimination, and social support data.”
Ramos and Kamen believe understanding how social factors affect gene regulation and how the resulting gene expression patterns affect lupus, could lead to new methods for helping patients.
“We hope to see some positive effects of things like social support that may offset detriments like racial discrimination or low socio-economic status,” Ramos says.
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by Willy Blackmore
Last December, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the award of $600 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to fund thousands of environmental justice projects across the country. Rather than giving money to individual projects, the EPA selected 11 so-called grantmakers to give lump sums to, which would then be doled out to other community-based groups.
One of those grantmaking organizations is the Climate Justice Alliance, which is still waiting to receive the $50 million it was awarded by the EPA. With President Biden’s days in office dwindling, it may very well never receive it, all because the non-profit is vocally pro-Palestinian.
The deadline for awarding the grants passed on December 6, and despite pressure from organizers and members of Congress, CJA still hasn’t received its funds. Now, staffers from both the EPA and the Department of Energy are calling for the funds to be released in an open letter they anonymously published under the name Federal Environmental and Energy Workers for Justice in Palestine.
“The funds to CJA are critical for building community resilience against climate change threats, particularly in severely capacity-constrained tribal, remote, and rural areas,” the letter reads. “Taking away this funding would leave the people living in these communities vulnerable to potentially disastrous climate disturbances.”
The organization does not directly work on Palestinian issues.
The CJA application to EPA was submitted with a number of partners, including The Chisholm Legacy Project.
“This is a key milestone for Chisholm Legacy Project and Climate Justice Alliance in our respective journeys to ensure the arc bends toward justice and systems change, particularly around the vast resources at the disposal of the government,” the organization’s founder and executive director, Jacqueline Patterson, said in a release when the award was first announced a year ago. “We look forward to ensuring that thousands of $150,000 to $350,000 EPA grants move to marginalized, environmental justice communities to address historic harms.”
While CJA has drawn the connection between the environmental justice harms being perpetuated by Israel in Gaza — like deliberately destroying drinking-water sources and the huge climate footprint of all the bombs that have been dropped there — and has called for a ceasefire, the organization does not directly work on Palestinian issues. The grants it would make with the $50 million would specifically support American-based climate-justice projects.
The Biden Administration’s block on the funds comes not only as the second Trump Administration looms, but also as the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would allow the Treasury to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status over support for “terrorism.”
The bill, which would still have to pass the Senate and be signed by the president to become law, has raised concerns that it could be used indiscriminately against progressive organizations by the Trump Administration — like, say, against a climate justice nonprofit with a Black Caucus division that is critical of American imperialism. The fact that it’s already happening under the Biden Administration certainly doesn’t bode well for what President Trump could do, particularly if that law is enacted.
For now, the pressure is focused on getting the money released while it still can be.
“Prioritizing environmental justice is not selective,” an EPA staffer involved with the letter told The Intercept, which first reported its publication. “The United States needs to advance it everywhere, including indigenous communities at home and abroad, which means demanding an end to the genocide in Palestine with an arms embargo to Israel and fulfilling its funding commitment to the Climate Justice Alliance here at home.”
