Part 1: What is life worth? Exploring biomedical interventions, survival and the politics of life

AbstractFrom nearly any perspective and metric, the effects of malaria on the African continent have been persistent and deep. By focusing on the malady of malaria and the last century of biomedical interventions, Graboyes and Alidina raise critical historical, ethical, and scientific questions related to truth telling, African autonomy, and the obligations of foreign researchers. They provide a condensed history of malaria activities on the continent over the past 120 years, highlighting the overall history of failures to eliminate or control the disease. A case study of the risks of rebound malaria illustrates the practical and moral problems that abound when historical knowledge is ignored. In light of current calls for renewed global eradication efforts, Graboyes and Alidina provide evidence for why historical knowledge must be better integrated into global health epistemic realms.

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Can Animism Save the World? Reflections on Personhood and Complexity in the Ecological Crisis

Sociologus ◽

10.3790/soc.71.1.73 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 73-92

Author(s):

Guido Sprenger

Keyword(s):

Intimate Relationships ◽

Ecological Crisis ◽

Ontological Status ◽

Moral Commitment ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

The World ◽

Human World ◽

Communicative Processes ◽

Politics Of Life

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

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Controlling The Monster: Exploring Constructions Of Women And Their Bodies In Endometriosis Apps

10.26686/wgtn.17145875 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Hannah Quigan

Keyword(s):

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Medical Knowledge ◽

Lifestyle Changes ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Natural Health ◽

Women's Bodies ◽

The Usa ◽

Research Findings ◽

Management Recommendations ◽

Biomedical Interventions

People globally increasingly use digital applications (apps) to manage their health and health conditions. In particular, women commonly use apps to understand and manage female reproductive issues. Some apps target women with endometriosis, a common but poorly understood condition primarily affecting women. The aim of the current research was to explore how endometriosis apps constructed endometriosis and people with endometriosis, how people with endometriosis were positioned, and the potential implications of this positioning for app users. Multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) was used to systematically examine dominant meanings produced by visual and linguistic features (i.e. colour, imagery, text and interactive app functionality) of five endometriosis apps from the USA, New Zealand and Singapore. Results demonstrated that apps drew on biomedical and biological discourses to construct endometriosis as a complex and confusing disease of the female reproductive body. This positioned biomedical and natural health professionals as knowledgeable experts about endometriosis while minimising women’s experiential knowledge of their bodies. Apps drew on intersecting postfeminist, neoliberal and healthist discourses to construct women with endometriosis as responsible for self-tracking many physical, emotional and behavioural experiences. Self-tracking was constructed as generating data that was meaningfully interpreted by app algorithms and experts to help women understand and manage their endometriosis. Dominant management recommendations (i.e. biomedical interventions; lifestyle changes) aligned with hegemonic ideals of traditional and neoliberal femininity. These findings align with previous feminist research findings that mainstream endometriosis discourse reflects androcentric biases in medical knowledge and that health apps targeting women often reinforce neoliberal and postfeminist ideals. Therefore, dominant discourses about endometriosis and female biology that pathologise women’s bodies and behaviours limit the potential for apps to offer women empowered and agentic subject positions.

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Preparation of cyclodextrin nanoparticles and evaluation of its effect on the capacitation of bovine spermatozoa used in the in vitro fertilization

International Journal of Drug Delivery ◽

10.5138/09750215.2196 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 112

Author(s):

Heba F Salem ◽

Mai Raslan ◽

Hanaa Suliman ◽

Tamer Essam ◽

Saber Abd-Allah

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

In Vitro Fertilization ◽

Interval Data ◽

Fertilization Rate ◽

Vitro Fertilization ◽

Bovine Spermatozoa ◽

The Media ◽

Biomedical Interventions ◽

Positive Effect

This study was conducted to produce nanosized cyclodextrin (NCD) and assess its effect on bovine spermatozoa during In vitro fertilization (IVF) to optimize the capacitation media for successful IVF. Therefore, Four cyclodextrin formulations were prepared and characterized. Data analysis revealed the best formula (F2) showed a smallest particle size (15 nm), zeta potential (-37 mv), and higher yield percentages (95%) was selected for spem capacitation. Motile spermatozoa were separated from frozen-thawed semen by a swim-up procedure and capacitated in IVF-TALP medium with different formulae of NCD or CD or without treatments (control) and incubated for 3hours(hr) at 38°C and evaluated every one (hr) interval. Data analysis revealed that the formulation of cyclodextrin nanoparticles (F2) after (2hr) incubation in the media gave best effect on sperm capacitation and acrosme reaction (AR) and effect of sperm treated with NCD on fertilization rate was evaluated. The results showed that the proportion of Oocytes fertilized was increased significantly in F2 (60%) than in the control (35%), and cyclodextrin group (50%) groups (p<0.05). It could be inferred from this investigation that cyclodextrin nanoparticles can be used for biomedical interventions in bovine spermatozoa. NCD improve sperm motility, viability, and (AR), also fertilization rate of sperm treated with NCD increase. So NCD gave positive effect on sperm functions during IVF.

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“They Medicated Me Out”

Contemporary Drug Problems ◽

10.1177/0091450918781590 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 188-207 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Allison V. Schlosser

Keyword(s):

Drug Use ◽

Drug Testing ◽

The United States ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Mutual Aid ◽

Rapid Weight Gain ◽

Heavy Sedation ◽

Medication Effects ◽

And Control ◽

Biomedical Interventions

Addiction, a cultural construct long framed in moral, psychological, and social terms, is increasingly understood as biological and treated with medications. In the United States, methadone, buprenorphine, and a variety of psychopharmaceuticals are now commonly used to treat addiction alongside long-standing approaches such as 12-Step mutual aid. These biomedical interventions reshape the very condition they intervene on, influencing the ways treatment clients understand and experience addiction. Clients often experience medication treatment in tension with embodied and social practices of addiction: bodily routines, sensory experiences, temporalities, and social contexts of use. This article examines these tensions through theories of the social flesh and embodied citizenship. This analysis is based on a 20-month ethnography in and around “Sunrise” residential center in Northeast Ohio. Sunrise merges biomedical interventions with 12-Step, psychological and juridical approaches. These data show how biomedical practices alter client bodies and subjectivities, promoting body alienation at stark odds with the intense bodily connection clients established through drug use. This alienation results from rapid weight gain and heavy sedation clients attribute to medication effects, as well as mandated medication and adherence practices that strip clients of a sense of control of medication use. Many clients describe feeling “medicated out” of life: estranged from treatment peers and kin who oppose medications, counselors and other powerful authorities who demand their undivided attention, and friends with whom they are unable to relate when heavily medicated. Clients, however, do not passively accept this estrangement. They alter their bodily experiences by leveraging embodied practices developed during drug use. Through practices such as selectively taking medications based on historical bodily experience and illegal drug “testing” in the underground economy, clients reassert bodily connection and control, deriving a modicum of power—albeit constrained and risky—in a treatment system that strictly limits it.

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