We have entered the age of vital politics, of so-matic ethics, and of biological responsibility
I slightly disagree with this. I think that we are almost there and that it is fantastic that we are discussing this now, but I think that it will be at its peak of salience in about 100 years when tech overshadows human work and diagnosis's
Doctors have lost the monopoly of the diagnostic gaze and of thetherapeutic calculation: the clinical judgment of the practicing physicianis hemmed in and constrained by the demands of evidence-based medicineand the requirements for the use of standardized, corporately framed di-agnostic and prescribing procedures
This is true, but I do not necessarily think that this is a bad thing. Evidence based medicine is the best and most accurate type of medicine I believe and I think that there is some value in having a doctor's opinion but as tech develops and becomes more relevant in the medical world, I think the doctor will be used less and less.
To "rely solely on official institutions for our information," James (1986) advised bluntly, "is a form of group suicide.
I completely agree with this assertion. I think that we would be blind to take this approach to all of our medical research and information. As a society we always depend on people who push the envelope in regards to breaking social and institutional norms. The hardest part about applying this logic to health is the fact that these studies can infringe on people's health and well being.
rface between biomedical professionals and social movements. I then describe the unique characteristics of the AIDS treatment activist movement and analyze four key mechanisms or tactics that these activists have pursued in constructing their credibility within biomedicine: the acquisition of cultural competence, the establishment of political representation, the yoking together of epistemological and ethical claims making, and the taking of sides in pre-existing methodological disputes. Finally, I point to some of the implications, complica- tions, and ironies of the activist engagement with biomedicine
I think that activism is always important as a system of checks and balances but what if there was no activism and more of authoritarian based research and experimentation. Cuba has been known for their exceptional advancements in medicine and this is partly because of the way they implement their trials and research. It would be interesting to see how they compare to the United States or any other democratic nation in terms of medical advancements based on research.
One technique for sex selection arose with prenatal tests using amniocentesis and ultrasound. These medical technologies were developed to detect genetic abnormalities such as spina bifida and Down syndrome. But they can also reveal the sex of the fetus—allowing for the abortion of a fetus of an undesired sex. Even among those who favor abortion rights, few advocate abortion simply because the parents do not want a girl. Nevertheless, in traditional societies with a powerfulcultural preference for boys, this practice has become widespread.
I think that the whole point of health care is to provide the best possible life for patients (fetus and parents). If this means aborting an unhealthy or down syndrome fetus I think this is acceptable. Obvious it will be a decision for the parents to grasp, but I don't think it should ever be regulated or banned.
ex selection.Perhaps the most inevitable nonmedical use of bioengineering is sex selection. For centuries parents have been trying to choose the sex of their children. Today biotech succeeds where folk remedies failed.
As we have learned in China this has already been done to a certain extent. I think that this is something that should be open for the parents to decide at first but as society moves along and if people are abusing this and creating a one-gendered dominated population, it should be stopped.
Sharing genetic and health information for re-search, policymaking, and marketing purposes isundoubtedly associated with some risk. First, thelong-term implications of publicly available ge-netic-sequence data are not fully understood.Data that are released about DNA may be innocu-ous now but may contain implicit information thatbecomes apparent with future discoveries.
I think genetics and gene privacy will become a more salient issue as genetic modification and engineering develops. I am glad that this is being discussed right now because as this issue gains more prominence I think the entire health community will have some good research and ideas behind the legislation.
When they agree to participate in research studies,patients assume that their health history will be usedto advance research but will be kept confidentialand never used to discriminate against them. As aconsequence, researchers invest substantial effortsin removing any information from research datasets that could be used to identify the specific par-ticipants.
This brings up a valid point that people can be discriminated against but I haven't really seen people be affected by this yet. I can only think of hypotheticals where this would be an issue but I have yet to hear of a case where a specific individual was directly victimized.
Brazil’s GHG emissions in the early 1990s averaged 225 million tons of carbon per year,with about one-third coming from energy-related activitiesand the remainder from land use practices,primarily deforestation(see Figure 1).Brazil ranks relatively low in energy-related carbon emissions because the nation derives almost half ofits energy from hydropower and biomass. Over 90 percent of the country’s electricity comes from hydro-electric plants and about 15 percent of totalenergy from renewable
Brazil is a great case study for this for their many governmental changes and developments over the past 50 years but I think that a truly developing country like some in the middle east that are still agrarian states, would be more interesting to look at. The United States has put billions of dollars into their renewable technology but almost none of it is being put to use because of unrest in the regions and the corruption and gridlock in the countries. I think it would be very interesting to have the numbers and data from those countries.
Growth in GHG emissions has been slowed to almost half the economicgrowth rate over the past two decades through economic reform,energy efficiency improvements,switching from coal to natural gas,renewable energydevelopment,afforestation,and slowing population growth.Chinese researchers have not comprehensively documented the reductions in emissions growth resulting from these efforts.The following analysis documents reductions of 250 million tons a year—150 million as a result of slowerpopulation growth and 100 million as a result of reduced energy intensity
I find this outcome connected to the whole militaristic implementation of the one child policy. This case is obviously less intrusive and the effects can be seen immediately but I think that there is a significant amount of value in these pragmatic decisions that they are making. I think the most interesting part of their decisions is that they actually make them, and in a very timely manner.
er the long term, a policy of one child for all would create distortions throughout the society and economy. In the short term, enforcing such a rule would require the use of coercion and leave parents urgently needing a son little choice but to dispose of their baby girls. Those attending the spring meetings were well aware of these costs. Yet in the atmosphere of impending threat to China's prosperity, global ambitions and even survival, the majority view - that all such costs were secondary concerns - prevailed.73
I think that what is happening with the one child policy in China is obviously wrong and should be stopped but the pragmatic side of me thinks that what they are doing might be significant for the rest of the world as the global population is rising at an exponential rate. I think that as resources dry up and the average life span increases that the globe will be challenged with the same decisions that China has been facing.
fence rationalities and population policy. The retention of a one child-with-exceptions policy in the context of ultra-low fertility and perilously rising social costs can be understood by considering the second danger: the influence of defence thinking on population policy. Though Song's reformulations of the population issue drew heavily on the Club of Rome, in sinifying the Club's ideas for use in China, he unwittingly imported military rationalities into Chinese population work. Both the framing of the problem as a national security emergency and the big push, top-down, total-leadership-commitment enforcement strategy bore traces of Chinese military logics.
I think these points are the most important from the essay. If populations are treated by the military as combatants that need to be punished I think that is the biggest key factory as to why there is civil unrest and a potential revolution in the works. I think that China will have to cut back completely in these militaristic attitudes to their population. For example their current invasion of privacy with the Great Firewall of China and their censoring represent this same idea of repression that I think will lead to an uproar unless it is changed completely and stopped.
Take the very different_though it is not altogether that different_take a differenr axis, something lìke seruulitr. ff.;,r;rr;;0.r.*-uality become a field of .'rital.ltrar.g;. ;;forrance in rhe nineteenthcenrury?
I think that this point is very interesting because I think it has changed a lot since the 19th century that he referenced. I also think that religion is the most important factor to think about when discussing the societal implications of sexuality and gender roles because each religion has a different set of guidelines or doctrines that dictate these roles and ideas.
I think that we can see a concrete manifestation of this power inthe famous gradual disqualification of death, which sociologists andhistorians have discuss.d ,o^ oft..r. Everyone knows, thanks in partic_ular to a certain number of recent ,trá.r, that the great public dt*ualizat.ìon,of death gradually began to disappear, or at least to fadeaway' in the rate eighteenth cenrury and that it is st'l doing so today.So much so that death_which has ceased to be one of thor". *..o_ular ceremonies in which individuals, the family, the group, and prac_tically the whole of society took part_has become, i., .orrtr"rt,something to be hidden away.It h", b..o_e the most private andshameful thing of all (and ,lti-at.ly, it is now nor so much sex asdeath that is the object of a taboo).
I think this a very interesting point that he makes here but I also think that it cannot be generalized to every culture or society. Different countries and continents vary extensively with their different religions, ideas, and ceremonies for in Mexico there is a national holiday to celebrate the dead where as in some places this would be extremely disrespectful and out of place. I think this example of death doesn't exactly fit because it really varies by who dies and when. If a person on death row dies compared to a 3 year old in a drive by shooting, the societal reaction will be completely different.
The central feature of predictive-text Chinese typewriters in the Peo-ple’s Republic was the organization of characters on the tray bed. In par-ticular, it was the decidedly body-centered logic of this reorganization thatconcerns us, and the way in which the Kangxi radical-stroke system wasabandoned in favor of a highly individualized taxonomic system in whicheach typist adjusted the layout of the character tray bed to the idiosyn-crasies of his or her own body and memory. The first historical develop-ment that requires our attention, then, is the practice of somatically organ-ized language.
The fact that the Chinese were able to overcome technological shortcomings that did not include their language in the technology is remarkable to me. I believe that this is a very representative microcosm for what STS really is. An entire nation was excluded for social (linguistic) reasons and they came together as a group to develop a way to integrate their language into the new budding technology through science and engineering.
In charting the historical emergence of this unique form of technolin-guistic experimentation during the early Communist period, I will furtherargue that it should be understood less as a leap of imagination or cogni-tion, and more as the manifestation within a particular political environ-ment of a longstanding, deeply corporeal relationship that obtained be-tween machines and human bodies, or what Ingrid Richardson refers to asthe “technosomatic” complex.7
I wonder how the technological developments would have been different under a different regime. If this was not a communist dictatorship and some kind of oligarchy, or monarchy, or democracy, how would the course of these technological developments be different? It is interesting to think about how the political and social environments influence technology in different parts of the world.
the ‘distracted’consumer of mass culture
This is the most important piece to note when discussing mp3's and file-sharing/intellectual property. The generation (my generation) that has grown up with mp3's as a cornerstone of how they listen to music does not respect the copyrights and creators of the content, for when the user clicks to download a song they are so far away from its creation and inception that there is little to no thought behind if they are downloading something legally or illegally. It has also become increasingly easier to download things illegally which makes it seem almost not illegal.
he primary, illegaluses of the mp3 are not aberrant uses or an error in the technology; theyare its highest moral calling
I understand that the author is trying to explain that as users, it is up to us to make the most morally sound decision when downloading mp3's, but in reality with the lack of enforcement by authorities for illegally downloading and using mp3's our generation for the most part doesn't even come close to classifying a download as a moral decision. It is nice in theory to think that it is a moral decision, but with just one passive click that will save you money, morals don't really come into question.
OrganizedSkepticismAswehaveseenintheprecedingchapter,organizedskepticismisvari-ouslyinterrelatedwiththeotherelementsofthescientificethos.Itisbothamethodologicalandaninstitutionalmandate.
I think that Organized Skepticism is extremely important to a certain extent but if you only use Organized Skepticism as a platform to constantly disagree, nothing will ever get done or accepted by the scientific community.
Theproductsofcompetitionare.communized,l:\andesteemaccruestotheprodJlcer.
Even if this competition is communized, there will most definitely be people who want to be solely successful and responsible for their work if it is particularly interesting or successful.
Wikipedia’s open access model makes it ideally placed for health education in developing and developed countries alike
I agree that this model is great but I think there needs to be a better way to vet the information that gets posted. I think it might be more helpful to have the top scientists be the ones that approve and remove the content.
While there were few factual errors, Wikipedia articles were often missing important information, like drug dosages, interactions, and contraindications. However, the authors failed to acknowledge that the Wikipedia style manual for drug articles specifically discourages mentioning dosages, as such information is rarely within the scope of a general encyclopedia and corruption of this information could result in serious harm. The authors did point out that drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe [51
This brings up the point that wikipedia can be used for public health only to a certain extent. It can be very helpful for general knowledge but as far as in depth treatment and other specific aspects of health go, it is rather limited. I think the authors should really drive home the point that wiki is great for general education, not for training.
it is the kinship between writing and death.
I see the connection that Foucalt is attempting to make but he doesn't exactly make it very clear. The relation to Arabian Nights does not exactly serve as an apt comparison for it was written so long ago and doesn't characterize the importance of authorship today.
We can easily imagine a culture where discourse would circulate without any need for an author. Dis-courses, whatever their status, form, or value, and regardless of our ma~er of handling them, would unfold in a pervasive anonymity.
This insight is becoming more and more prevalent as technology develops because of the speed at which information and works that have been produced by authors have been disseminated. People no longer have the need to find or seek out an author if the author's end product is not particularly jarring.
Universities are supposed to come up with new ideas, not manufacture new products. That’s what companies do. If a university holds a scientist’s patent, the main way it gets the innovation into the hands of a company is through a licensing agreement.
It seems that patents and the whole world of patent licensing appear to be grounds for commerce rather than protecting original ideas.
not to further innovation or manufacture a product but to conduct a kind of legal extortion racket.
It is confusing as to who is the victim here. If patent trolls seek to patent useful commercial ideas but never plan to develop them, what is the point of patenting them in the first place? It seems to be more to the tune of "extortion" by Wisoncsin and Apple being the victim rather than Wisconsin being the victim.