Issue 14: A peasant surprise
Plus: Giving yourself the Zika virus, cut-and-cover railway tunnels, and more reasons to donate your organs.
Works in Progress’s 14th issue is out now.
Our lead essay tells the story of Pyotr Stolypin’s attempts to bring a final end to serfdom in Russia.
The issue also includes essays on:
Politically feasible mechanisms to encourage organ donation.
Why cities no longer build underground railways using the cut and cover method.
After 8,500 years, we are still finding new uses for silk.
What it’s like to participate in a human challenge trial, where you are deliberately given a disease to test a vaccine or treatment.
How Israel turned homeowners into YIMBYs, driving a massive apartment boom in Tel Aviv.
SGLT-2 inhibitors, a new best-in-class kidney drug, which tackles diabetes and heart disease at the same time.
Political reforms often fail in the face of powerful incumbent interests. And few reforms in history were as significant as Russia’s dismantling of the legacy of serfdom in the early 20th Century. Our new researcher Samuel Watling tells the story of how Russia fixed its commune system, by enfranchising the serfs and using their support to counteract opposition by landowners and the nobility. Some readers might notice lessons for crafting successful reforms today.
‘Nudging’ people to donate their organs by making them donors by default was tried in many countries, with surprisingly little success. Duncan McClements and Jason Hausenloy suggest that changing incentives to donate might have more success, and propose ways of doing so that could avoid a political backlash.
Tunneling is so expensive that it prevents many cities from building the underground railway networks they would otherwise benefit from. Historically, many cities built their subways using the cut and cover method, digging trenches under existing roads and then covering them back up to create tunnels. At the time, this approach was highly cost effective. Yet it is now very uncommon. Brian Potter investigates why this practice fell out of favor, and asks whether we could bring it back.
Silk is an ancient material, perhaps cultivated as long as 8,500 years ago. You might think that it comes out the end of a silkworm – in fact we have to feed silkworms inordinate quantities of mulberry leaves, and then boil them alive to get it. Historically it has been used in textiles. Hiawatha Bray reports on how we are today putting it to an incredible array of new uses: vaccine patches that simply disappear; tiny silken screws strong enough to repair a broken bone; and even edible electronics.
Human challenge trials involve intentionally infecting volunteers with a disease to test a drug or vaccine, and were proposed, unsuccessfully, to speed up the development of the Covid vaccines. Keller Scholl explains why he volunteered for a challenge trial for the Zika virus and what it was like to go through it.
Around the world, attempts to change planning or zoning rules in order to get more housing built begin with the same problem: homeowners usually oppose new development. Israel seems to have stumbled into a brilliant way to get homeowners to say ‘yes’ to nearby new development, densifying and beautifying neighborhoods with the enthusiastic consent of homeowners. In the first detailed accounts in English, Tal Alster, an Israeli academic, explains the development of Pinui Binui and Tama 38, two transformative Israeli regeneration policies.
SGLT-2 inhibitors were developed to treat blood sugar. They lower blood sugar, so it was obvious why they might work for diabetes – which they were proven to do. We soon stumbled into discovering that they cut heart problems by about a third. And then, most surprising of all, writes Natália Coelho Mendonça, researchers discovered that they beat all our existing kidney drugs by a gigantic margin. And scientists and clinicians continue to find more and more interesting uses for the drug class. The results are so impressive some researchers think SGLT-2 inhibitors might even connect with aging itself.
Books in Progress:
Books in Progress and Stewart Brand’s Maintenance: of Everything, which Books in Progress hosts, were recently featured in The Economist. Chapters 1 and 2 – The Maintenance Race and Vehicles (and Weapons) – are now available to read in full online and commenting remains open. Stewart is currently hard at work with Chapter 3, due for release in the next few months.
Follow Stewart on Twitter for more updates on the project. Helpful commenters will be thanked in the eventual printed release.
Even more
On Notes in Progress, Fermenting Revolution tells the story of aerated bread and women’s liberation.
Stripe Press pop-ups are coming to Sydney, Singapore, and Paris this Spring. Subscribe for updates on when and where here.
Check out new episodes from the podcasts we sponsor, The Studies Show and Bretton Goods.
Remember that you can follow us on Apple News.
Hannah Ritchie, a frequent WIP author, has published her book Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. It is excellent.
What we’ve been up to
Nick has two new articles nearing completion. One will come in the issue after this one: 15. He is currently climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Ben has been researching the British leasehold system and property taxes, and hopes to have an article on these with you quite soon.
Saloni wrote about seven things people don’t know about life expectancy.
Sam has been caring for his new baby, Finn, who was born in January.
More from around the web
China is likely to fail in its attempt to build a domestic chip industry that can stand up to Taiwan’s. If even the US can’t do it, then who can?
Letting people access drugs that have been approved by other countries’ medical regulators is one way of speeding up access to quality healthcare. What about doing it for nuclear power plant designs too?
The UK Act that authorized the Channel Tunnel to France included a clause banning any future government from spending any money on it. Also see this 1856 design for a tunnel back then, which included a surface-level port halfway along the tunnel.
A cool map of London in 1934. More land was developed between 1934 and 1939 than has been added in the 85 years since 1939.
A beautiful website aiming to be a ‘living database of methods to advance science and technology’.
Age-adjusted heart disease death rates peaked in the 1950s in the USA, and have declined nearly 40 percent since then.
A map of GDP per capita in regions across Europe. Some quibbling around the shape of the regions, but note how much of the UK is as poor as Eastern Europe.
The incredible history of the micropipette from Asimov Press, an exciting new science-focused publication.
Why are drugs getting harder to develop? The pharmaceutical industry from Janssen to today.
See ya.
— Saloni, Nick, Sam and Ben