Seafarers stranded in the Strait of Hormuz face danger and dwindling rations

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0:22John Canias:This is a humanitarian crisis that is happening. Yes. weeks. None of them has touched ground. They don't know when they can go out from the area.

0:34Angus Chen:Stranded on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz with no relief in sight. It's Thursday, April 23rd, and this is Here and Now, anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:55Angus Chen:Today on the show, the science behind one of the biggest cancer breakthroughs in years. I think down the road, people are looking at this and saying it's the beginning of the end for pancreatic cancer. Also, why the CEO of Axios wants you to stop worrying and love artificial intelligence. It would be like going into the workplace and saying, I don't want to use a phone or the computer or the internet. People would look at you like you're an alien. Before we get to that, though. Some 20 ,000 people are stuck on ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz because of the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran.

1:37Angus Chen:Some are on board the commercial cargo ships that Iran seized yesterday. Tehran says they were responding to the U.S. seizing a ship earlier this week. And in that tit-for-tat struggle, civilian seafarers are caught in the middle. Many posted on social media that they're running low on food and water. John Kanyas is with the International Transport Workers Federation, a union for people who work on ships. He told Scott Tong, working on a ship in the region right now can be deadly.

2:09John Canias:There has been reported eight casualties that is linked to an attack to a vessel. The number is very high, so what we think for the last eight weeks. And the danger of seabares in the area is exponentially getting worse.

2:24Angus Chen:Can I ask you about these three ships? Iran has seized two of them. This is very recent. Have you heard from the crew members on the ships that have been seized any communication with them?

2:37John Canias:The report that has been provided to us is the seabirers are safe or none of them are home. However, this is a humanitarian crisis that is happening within the area. As you could imagine, eight weeks, none of them has touched ground. They don't know when they can go out from the area. Their families are concerned about their safety. Some seabirers do want to go home. And the request for repatriation since eight weeks ago until today, around 500 of them has been repatriated successfully.

3:14Angus Chen:And let me ask you more about these stranded crew members, these seafarers in and around the Persian Gulf. What have you learned about their conditions? Do they all have access to food, water, medicine? Are they being paid?

3:29John Canias:So we have not heard anything so far that is negative on this aspect. However, though, there is a growing concern of provisions, food and water getting low. So the problem will escalate a little bit further day by day. So far, the concerns on fuel and water is still very minimal. But this is not enough for our side from the trade unions, because what we wanted to see is safety. Safety of the seapares, that they don't constantly worry about where they are. They could be attacked. They don't really know. That's the danger of it. They just don't know. As a seafarer, they're not trained to be on that situation for an extended period of time.

4:17Angus Chen:John, you mentioned safety. I want to ask about that. What are the risks that these seafarers face? That is, do they face the risk of drones, missiles, mines in the water? What are the specific safety threats to them?

4:31John Canias:There has been incidents of where a vessel is targeted, which cause enormous fire, because they normally do the attack on the engine room, where there is fuel, and then the fuel caught fire, and then there's the fire on board. Some crew members have been evacuated as a result of it as well, but there is no replacement crew members that is willing to go to the area.

4:59Angus Chen:So what you're saying is there are crew members who are in port. They want to go home, but if there's no replacement for them, they're stuck. They keep working. Is that what you mean?

5:11John Canias:That is a possibility, yes.

5:12Angus Chen:Okay. And John, you are a former seafarer yourself from the Philippines. Many of these sailors are Filipino. These are very difficult jobs. Can you give a couple of examples of how hard the job is right now for these crew members who are stuck?

5:27John Canias:Sea pairing as a job is, I say, challenging, not only with the weather, but also work and different time zones. Fatigue comes in as well because of the long contracts. There are 12 ,000 sea pairs in the beginning of the war from the Philippines in the area of the 20 ,000. So the greater majority are from the Philippines. And many of them will be a sole breadwinner of the family. Now, can you just imagine the pair? and also thinking about their family back home, that they may not go back.

6:02Angus Chen:John, finally, you have mentioned many seafarers have said they want to go home to be repatriated, many back to the Philippines. It's not always possible. Can you imagine what they're going through right now? Stuck in the Persian Gulf, perhaps not allowed to go home. What is that like for them physically, mentally? You've been there.

6:25John Canias:It's depleting, mostly. They keep on going in terms of the daily work, but they may not be there mentally at all. So safety is one of the causes of accident impact as well, right? So if they are on that situation, it's best for them to go home. If they are not there mentally in terms of work that they need to do all day, The industry itself, together with many willing states, wanted to create a green corridor for the ships to go out along with the seafarers. But this is post-war, after there is a deal. But the reality is seafarers need the safety right now and be not subjected to any harm while they are there just doing their jobs.

7:15Angus Chen:We've been talking to John Kanyas. He's with the International Transport Workers Federation. which represents seafarers, many of whom are stuck right now in the Persian Gulf. John, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

7:34Angus Chen:Coming up next, a potentially game-changing breakthrough in cancer research. Stick around.

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8:31Angus Chen:There's a breakthrough in the fight against pancreatic cancer, often considered the most fatal major cancer for its low survival rate. Angus Chen covers cancer for the health and medicine publication Stat, and he tells Scott Tong, it's hard to overstate how big a deal this is. This breakthrough, I think, is probably one of the biggest moments in cancer that we've seen in years. It means that for the first time, physicians will probably very soon have, because this drug is not yet approved, but it means for the first time, doctors will be able to treat one of the most important driving mutations of cancer, which is most important for pancreatic cancer.

9:11Angus Chen:And physicians are saying it's a completely new era of pancreatic cancer medicine. I think down the road, people are looking at this and saying it's the beginning of the end for pancreatic cancer. Oh my goodness. And that's a huge deal. It's a huge deal because this has been one of the deadliest, most difficult to treat cancers that is out there, that is known to humans. Yeah, so let's talk about, you mentioned the specific gene mutation at work that is part of these cancer cells forming in the first place. So explain the basics of that. Yeah. So the gene that this drug targets is called KRAS.

9:49Angus Chen:It actually doesn't just target KRAS, but the family of proteins that KRAS belongs to. So we'll just call it RAS. And what RAS does normally in normal functions is it controls cell growth and division. And when it's mutated in cancer, it kind of locks that protein into sort of an on state and forces that uncontrollable growth that we all know is part of cancer. And it's so central to cancer cells that they need this mutation or this sort of abnormal protein to survive. What this drug does is it takes that away from the cancer. And so when the drug is working, the cancer cannot survive and it dies.

10:26Angus Chen:Wow. And you mentioned this possibly being approved quickly by the FDA. I mean, what are we talking about? Is this a drug that could be on the market soon? How soon? That's a really good question. I can't predict exactly what the Food and Drug Administration will do. But I can say that the company that is developing this drug, Draxon Rassib, the company is called Revolution Medicines. They have stated that they intend to file for approval for this drug. And they have actually like an accelerated track for approval granted to them by the FDA. So I think that we can expect that the approval will come fairly swiftly.

11:01Angus Chen:I would be surprised just as an observer if it came like beyond the end of this year. I would expect it to come probably sometime this year. Wow. Angus, in your recent article for Stat, you profiled a woman named Liana Stokes, who has advanced pancreatic cancer. She's a mom to two young boys. They're five and eight years old. How has this drug changed her life? It's been transformative for her life. For a lot of patients who have talked about their experience on this drug, many of them might not actually be here today if it wasn't for the opportunity for them to take this drug. For Liana in particular, she had gone through a couple lines of chemotherapy first, which is not easy on the body.

11:46Angus Chen:It's quite difficult. And while she was having a response to that chemotherapy, it didn't last forever. like for so many pancreatic cancer patients, that cancer started to progress again. And that's when she got on this drug. And she had an incredible response to it. It started to shrink back her tumors. You know, when she started diagnosis, she had hundreds of tumors in her body. Now she was telling me that she only had three metastases in her liver. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And it's an incredible thing. And she feels so much better because the side effect profile of this drug is a lot easier on her than chemotherapy was.

12:22Angus Chen:There's still toxicity to the drug, but for a lot of patients who've been on chemotherapy, it gives them their life back. And beyond that, it gives them so much more time with their family to do the things they want. For Liana, she said that it helped her find herself again and that she felt like she could be a mom to her kids again. It's an amazing personal part of the story. Real quick, what are the implications of this for other cancers going forward? Yeah, so the KRAS mutation or RAS mutations aren't just found in pancreatic cancer. They're found in about a third of all solid tumors. So you can imagine, you know, maybe a quarter to a third of patients with tumors that need this mutation to survive, they might be eligible to get this drug.

13:04Angus Chen:And that will have a huge impact potentially on cancer. And the real promise of this drug is not using it by itself. The reason why cancer researchers were so excited at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting that I was just at this past weekend, And people were talking about it nonstop because the hope for the future is that you could combine this drug with other types of cancer therapies, like immunotherapy or other targeted therapies or even chemotherapy, and find even better results. So that's why people are saying this is the beginning of a new era for pancreatic cancer medicine and maybe a new era for KRAS mutant tumors in general.

13:43Angus Chen:That's Angus Chen, a reporter with Stat News on this breakthrough. Angus, thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

13:54Angus Chen:Let's take one more short break and we'll be right back.

14:01Angus Chen:Well, we're also following a few stories today about preparing for the future over at hereandnow.org. We've long known some kids benefit from therapy in early childhood before they even start school. Now researchers have evidence that early intervention boosts test scores years later. But not every kid gets the extra attention that they need. There are benefits to these services. And so we should be really careful when we think about cuts to some of these programs, what those downstream effects will be. It's really important that early intervention services are provided without a child having to prove that they can pay.

14:41Angus Chen:These are provided regardless of the ability to pay. And that's really important because we also saw really strong benefits in more disadvantaged populations. You can listen to that whole conversation right now at hereandnow.org. But maybe you've got kids who are a little bit older or no kids at all, and you're wondering what the future holds now that artificial intelligence is threatening to upend school and work and everything else for that matter. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about AI. For one, there's the claim it could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next few years.

15:18Angus Chen:But Jim Vandehei, the co-founder and CEO of Axios, says, yes, AI might be coming for our jobs, but that doesn't mean you can turn your back on it. Last year, Axios struck a deal with OpenAI to extend its news coverage in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and elsewhere. And he tells David Folkenflick, it's past time to embrace the technology. You can't put your head in the sand on this one. And that means you need to really study it and use it. And you need to study it so you understand the risks, but also because you're not going to be able to get a job and do a job without being very AI sophisticated.

15:57Angus Chen:And that is the new requirement for anybody going to college or coming out of college, As somebody who's hiring people every single day, it's the first question we ask. You know, you talk about your kids a bunch. You have three kids all in your early 20s. I have three kids who are, you know, notably younger than that. I read the memo that you published that you shared with them. You talk about wanting them to lean into the use of artificial intelligence, even as it threatens to strip away jobs from their generation, even as it, you know, threatens to, what shall I say, pull them away from what makes them distinct as people.

16:32Angus Chen:How do you encourage them to balance that? What I can tell you as somebody who's a father and as an employer is that nobody's going to hire you if you're not proficient in the technology that's dominant in the workplace. It would be like going into the workplace and saying, I don't want to use a phone or the computer or the Internet. Like people would look at you like you're like an alien. And so you have to understand these technologies. And when I speak to different campuses, sometimes I'm horrified by what they're being taught. They're not being taught how to utilize this technology for the majors that they've chosen.

17:05Angus Chen:And I think it's great for a teacher to say, hey, I don't want you cheating using ChatGPT, or I don't want you doing your research just using AI. That's fine, but that's different than saying, okay, now you've chosen to be a marketing major. Here are the AI applications for marketing that you're going to need to be proficient in the workplace. That's the obligation of an academic institution. You know, it's funny because I actually am very impressed by it in many ways when I try it out. And at the same time, I think about Bitcoin, which certainly exists, but does not seem to have improved the human experience or be devoted largely to non-criminal activities, right?

17:41Angus Chen:You look at things like social media, which held out great promise of connecting people socially and now, you know, seems to be generating one kind of cesspool after another, even as there are good uses for it and constructive uses for it. You know, I don't think of myself as a technophobe or sour on technology. And at the same time, I often feel that when people say that it's likely to work out great because people are spending a lot of money off it, it seems to me that people are often spending a lot of money because they think there's extraordinary riches to be made. But I'm not as confident about the end result.

18:19Angus Chen:What gives you confidence, Jim Vande Hei? I think that AI is going to be exponentially better at doing most human tasks than most people probably listening to this show think. I'm not arguing that that is a good thing. This is a technology that people have to pay attention to because it's really the first, probably since nuclear weapons, that could really lead to some really bad outcomes at scale if people don't use it responsibly. I think presidents come and go. I think wars come and go. I think AI is going to come and just keep growing. and I worry that the public's not paying enough attention, is not taking enough interest, and that collectively we're not preparing ourselves for what is going to be a massive, massive shift that probably is going to hit everybody and it could hit us in a great way and it could hit us in hard ways.