The disinformation playbook: how industry manipulates the science-policy process—and how to restore scientific integrity

For decades, corporate undermining of scientific consensus has eroded the scientific process worldwide. Guardrails for protecting science-informed processes, from peer review to regulatory decision making, have suffered sustained attacks, damaging public trust in the scientific enterprise and its aim to serve the public good. Government efforts to address corporate attacks have been inadequate. Researchers have cataloged corporate malfeasance that harms people’s health across diverse industries. Well-known cases, like the tobacco industry’s efforts to downplay the dangers of smoking, are representative of transnational industries, rather than unique. This contribution schematizes industry tactics to distort, delay, or distract the public from instituting measures that improve health—tactics that comprise the “disinformation playbook.” Using a United States policy lens, we outline steps the scientific community should take to shield science from corporate interference, through individual actions (by scientists, peer reviewers, and editors) and collective initiatives (by research institutions, grant organizations, professional associations, and regulatory agencies).

EVALUATION OF BIOACTIVE CONSTITUENTS AND IN-VIVO ANTI-INFLAMATORY ACTIVITY OF HYDROALCOHOLIC LEAVES EXTRACT OF GREWIA HIRSUTA

Plants represent the main source of molecules for the development of new drugs, which intensifies the interest of transnational industries in searching for substances obtained from plant sources, especially since the vast majority of species have not yet been studied chemically or biologically, particularly concerning anti-inflammatory action. Anti-inflammatory drugs can interfere in the pathophysiological process of inflammation, to minimize tissue damage and provide greater comfort to the patient. Therefore, it is important to note that due to the existence of a large number of species available for research, the successful development of new naturally occurring anti-inflammatory drugs depends mainly on a multidisciplinary effort to find new molecules. Although many review articles have been published in this regard, the majority presented the subject from a limited regional perspective. Thus, the current article presents highlights from the published literature on plants as sources of anti-inflammatory agents. A search for effective medication with lesser or no side effects is the need of the hour. Hence the current study is focused at evaluating the anti-inflamatory potential of Grewia hirsuta. The leaves of G. hirsuta were subjected to solvent extraction with ethanol. The best screened extract was further evaluated for it phytochemical profile by qualitative and quantitative phytochemical analysis. The results of the study suggest that Grewia hirsuta possesses significant anti-inflamatory potential. With further mechanistic studies it can be proved as a better source of natural anti-inflamatory agents.

Plants as Sources of Anti-Inflammatory Agents

Plants represent the main source of molecules for the development of new drugs, which intensifies the interest of transnational industries in searching for substances obtained from plant sources, especially since the vast majority of species have not yet been studied chemically or biologically, particularly concerning anti-inflammatory action. Anti-inflammatory drugs can interfere in the pathophysiological process of inflammation, to minimize tissue damage and provide greater comfort to the patient. Therefore, it is important to note that due to the existence of a large number of species available for research, the successful development of new naturally occurring anti-inflammatory drugs depends mainly on a multidisciplinary effort to find new molecules. Although many review articles have been published in this regard, the majority presented the subject from a limited regional perspective. Thus, the current article presents highlights from the published literature on plants as sources of anti-inflammatory agents.

Trabalhadores da cultura

This work unveils the composition, the structure, the expansions, the tensions, asymmetries, fights and ways of political-professional recognization of workers' culture in Brazil, having as specificity, the musical language considered independent. The cultural work, the artistic creation activities and the technical and technologic process associated to it are in the center of the capitalism transformation in the last times, whose ambiguities integrate the new global chains of specialized symbolic services and the transnational industries. Behind the expansion of the global cultural markets, there is the creation of symbolic-economic value propitiated through the art and culture´s fieldwork. Looking at the professional category of art, through a work's parameter contributes to reveal the reality of an area that has not been studied that much: of the self-management artist. It is about not only considering the artistic activities as profession, but as paradigmatic expression of the current market. Analyzing the specifications that allows to draw the independent musician's morphology, collaborates for the theorical debate of the artistic work and the public cultural politics, in its fundamental articulations.

The new utility of prostitution in neoliberalism

This article aims to explain the transformation of the industry of prostitution since the 70s and 80s, when it became one of the most important transnational industries in the world. In those years, just at the same time it becomes a mega-industry, it also undergoes a transformation in terms of its functionality as a patriarchal institution. It is gradually ceasing to be exclusively a way to divide women into wives and whores and also a way to justify a certain sexual ideology, in order to become a way of reassuring the more traditional masculinities, beset by the successes of feminism. At the same time, it is also becoming the necessary social relief for a male population placed, under a brutal neoliberalism wave, in a situation in which only women previously where.