The Public Sphere in Emerging Infectious Disease Communication: Recipient or Active and Vocal Partner?

Objective: Recent years have seen advances in theories and models of risk and crisis communication, with a focus on emerging epidemic infection. Nevertheless, information flow remains unilateral in many countries and does not take into account the public's polyvocality and the fact that its opinions and knowledge often "compete" with those of health authorities. This article addresses the challenges organizations face in communicating with the public sphere.

Emerging infectious disease (EID) communication during the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak: literature review (2009-2013) of the methodology used for EID communication analysis.

Objective: This year alone has seen outbreaks of epidemics such as Ebola, Chikungunya, and many other emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). We must look to the responses of recent outbreaks to help guide our strategies in current and future outbreaks or we risk repeating the same mistakes. The objective of this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review of the methodology used by studies that examined EID communication during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic outbreak through different communication channels or by analyzing contents and strategies.

Risk Communication Recommendations and Implementation During Emerging Infectious Diseases: A Case Study of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic.

Objective: To examine their implementation, we analyzed World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines from 2005 to 2008 for risk communication during an emerging infectious disease outbreak, WHO and CDC reports on implementing the guidelines worldwide after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic; and a case study of a member state.

Methods: A qualitative study compared WHO and CDC guidelines from 2005 to 2008 with WHO and CDC reports from 2009 to 2011, documenting their implementation during the H1N1 outbreak and assessed how these guidelines were implemented, based on the reports and Israeli stakeholders (n=70).

Results: Eight risk communication subthemes were identified: trust, empowerment, uncertainty, communicating the vaccine, inclusion, identification of subpopulations and at-risk groups, segmentation, and 2-way communication.

Body, biometrics and identity.

According to a popular aphorism, biometrics are turning the human body into a passport or a password. As usual, aphorisms say more than they intend. Taking the dictum seriously, we would be two: ourself and our body.

Technology and fear: is wonder the key?

Technology is a social practice that embodies the capacity of societies to transform themselves by creating and manipulating not only physical objects, but also symbols and cultural forms. It is an illusion that scientific and socioeconomic drivers are the sole elements determining the destiny of a technology. Although they are important, what is really crucial is the way in which a human community 'metabolizes' a new technology, that is the way in which a new technology becomes part of the mental landscape of people living in that society.

Body identification, biometrics and medicine: ethical and social considerations.

Identity is important when it is weak. This apparent paradox is the core of the current debate on identity. Traditionally, verification of identity has been based upon authentication of attributed and biographical characteristics.

Ethical and social implications of biometric identification technology.

This paper discusses the social and ethical aspects of biometrics, using mainly a historical approach. A description is provided as regards the origins and development of the word. Reference is made to the various ways in which it has been interpreted, sometimes very different one from another, and finally to the meaning currently attached to it.

The Budapest Meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science: the case of reproductive cloning, germline gene therapy and human dignity.

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.

Bioethical Implications of Globalization: an international consortium project of the European Commission.

The BIG project looks at some of the ethical concerns surrounding globalization and health.

Ethical considerations on pharmacogenomics.

Pharmacogenetics offers the prospect of an era of safer and more effective drugs, as well as more individualized use of drug therapies. The effect of human genetic variance on responses to therapy will influence drug-development clinical trials and the use of products in clinical practice. It also promises to raise new ethical challenges, in particular in the fields of research and therapy.

Peptide vaccines in immunocontraception.

Vaccines have been used successfully to treat and eradicate infectious diseases; this has encouraged a major drive towards development of contraceptive vaccines (immunocontraception) as an additional method against rising human and animal populations. Despite three decades worth of research in this field, there are no licensed human contraceptive vaccines and less than ten for use in animals. The development of peptide antifertility vaccines has had a substantial impact on improving safety and specificity of immunogens, but has resulted in efficacy problems.

[Weakness of will].

Addictive behaviours raise the issue how it is possible that a free agent is not able to act according to his own will. Indeed an agent can be defined as "addicted", to a substance or a behaviour, only when he does not succeed in discontinuing despite his will. Namely in the very idea of addiction it is involved the idea of weakness of will.