Online marketing practices of regenerative medicine clinics in US-Mexico border region: a web surveillance study

Introduction The potential of regenerative medicine to improve human health has led to the rapid expansion of stem cell clinics throughout the world with varying levels of regulation and oversight. This has led to a market ripe for stem cell tourism, with Tijuana, Mexico, as a major destination. In this study, we characterize the online marketing, intervention details, pricing of services, and assess potential safety risks through web surveillance of regenerative medicine clinics marketing services in Tijuana. Methods We conducted structured online search queries from March to April 2019 using 296 search terms in English and Spanish on two search engines (Google and Bing) to identify websites engaged in direct-to-consumer advertising of regenerative medicine services. We performed content analysis to characterize three categories of interest: online presence, tokens of scientific legitimacy, and intervention details. Results Our structured online searches resulted in 110 unique websites located in Tijuana corresponding to 76 confirmed locations. These clinics’ online presence consisted of direct-to-consumer advertising mainly through a dedicated website (94.5%) or Facebook page (65.5%). The vast majority of these websites (99.1%) did not mention any affiliation to an academic institutions or other overt tokens of scientific legitimacy. Most clinics claimed autologous tissue was the source of treatments (67.3%) and generally did not specify route of administration. Additionally, of the Tijuana clinics identified, 13 claimed licensing, though only 1 matched with available licensing information. Conclusions Regenerative medicine clinics in Tijuana have a significant online presence using direct-to-consumer advertising to attract stem-cell tourism clientele in a bustling border region between Mexico and the USA. This study adds to existing literature evidencing the unregulated nature of online stem cell offerings and provides further evidence of the need for regulatory harmonization, particularly to address stem cell services being offered online across borders.

(Re)defining legitimacy in Canadian drug assessment policy? Comparing ideas over time

How do experts judge the legitimacy of technical policy processes, and do their ideas change as these processes are opened to other stakeholders and the public? This research examines the adoption of public and patient involvement in pharmaceutical assessment in Canada. It finds tensions between scientific legitimacy that prioritizes rigor and objectivity, and democratic legitimacy that values inclusion and a broader range of evidence. In response to policy change, experts incorporate new ideas about democratic inputs and processes, while maintaining scientific policy goals. The research responds to calls for more precise measurement of ideas and ideational change and more evaluation of public and patient involvement in health policy. It helps us understand the significance of, and limits to, ideational change among experts in health policy domains that are highly technical and publicly salient. Understanding the way democratic and scientific legitimacy are negotiated in policy decisions has a wide applicability in health, but is particularly relevant during a global pandemic when evidence is being generated rapidly, decisions must be made quickly, and these decisions have a significant, immediate effect on the lives of all citizens.

Source Criticism

This chapter illustrates source criticism, which is a technical and intellectual method used to track down the itinerary of a source of information. It aims to identify the producer, determine its initial meaning, and establish its conformity as an authentic unaltered source that yields truthful information. The general aims of source criticism are now widely shared by all social science disciplines. Though interdisciplinary in nature, its treatment and implementation vary according to the fields and sources concerned. The use and application of criticism can differ considerably depending on whether a study relies directly on people, documents, or other potential evidence. Ultimately, source criticism provides scientific legitimacy and rigour in the social science disciplines, where the nature and diversity of levels of intermediation and interpretation in the observational and empirical process can often prove misleading.

Félida, doubled personality, and the ‘normal state’ in late 19th-century French psychology

The case of Félida X and her ‘doubled personality’ served in the last quarter of the 19th century as a proving ground for a distinctively French form of psychology that bore the stamp of physiology, including the comparative term normal state. Debates around Félida’s case provided the occasion for reflection about how that term and its opposites could take their places in the emerging discursive field of psychopathology. This article centres its analysis on Eugène Azam’s 1876–77 study of Félida, and the ways his framing of the case was adopted or critiqued by subsequent researchers. Azam initially deployed the label normal state in a routine manner, in contrast to his use of condition seconde to designate Félida’s other state; this pairing served, I argue, to anchor the scientific legitimacy of Félida’s extraordinary psychological manifestations. Unpacking the conceptual associations of Azam’s use of normal state, we find it marked as qualitatively distinct, temporally fixed, and most of all individualized; this without becoming normative. It was only through responses to and criticism of Azam’s study that there emerged a more generalized sense of normality against which pathological (hysteric) subjects’ comportment could be contrasted. Félida’s case itself constitutes a highly individualized reconfiguration of the concept of a normal state, while the subsequent framing of doubled mental states provides a valuable vantage point from which to consider the articulations between the language of emerging French psychology and its evolving subjects of enquiry.

You’re Murdering Us

This chapter examines the activism of residents of Love Canal, New York, in response to the 1976 discovery of 21,000 tons of buried toxic waste in their community. It concentrates especially on the work of the Love Canal Homeowners Association. Love Canal residents understood the health of the human body through an assemblage of epidemiology, toxicology, and personal experience. They perceived the individual as the marker of community health, environmental reality, scientific legitimacy, and government responsibility, in the process coming to see the entire world as environmentally vulnerable. Their conflicting interpretations of citizenship rights illustrated how they were torn between the conviction that everyone had the right to environmental health, and the belief that the needs of national citizens should be prioritized.

Black Boxes and Trojan Horses

This chapter introduces psychotherapists’ translating religion approaches to Buddhist traditions focusing on the therapeutic use of mindfulness practices as a popular case example. In these approaches, Buddhist elements are “translated” into biomedical treatment interventions admissible to secular-designated psychotherapy. Influenced by a number of institutional and affiliative factors, cognitive behavioral psychotherapists were predisposed to seek to maintain scientific legitimacy while incorporating Buddhist practices. Taking a closer look at the historical origins of contemporary therapeutic mindfulness practices and the currently-untold stories of the development of some of the most prominent mindfulness methodologies (Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, etc.), the chapter interrogates the prevailing narrative that “mindfulness was extracted from Buddhism” and completely remade into a secular biomedical item. The chapter elucidates the ongoing contestation among clinicians - spurred by encounters with multiple, overlapping institutional authorities (not only biomedical or Buddhist, but academic as well) - over whether to define their “translations” as Buddhist or psychotherapeutic, religious or not-religious.

Skulls, Scalps, and Seminoles

This chapter focuses on the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) and how whites and natives both developed new knowledge about the Seminoles as a unique ethnic group through violence against each other’s dead. On the one hand, Euro-Americans looked to native skulls to add scientific legitimacy to assertions that the Seminoles were a clearly defined ethnicity whose supposed predisposition for violence and lack of ancestral bonds to Florida justified their removal. On the other hand, the collection and circulation of white scalps strengthened the Seminoles’ understanding of themselves as a distinct people and allowed them to rebuild complete communities—ones that integrated the living, the multiethnic dead, and Floridian land—despite the trauma of the war.

O campo da educação no Brasil: mudanças em atributos para legitimação dos pesquisadores

Resumo: O artigo discute como os pesquisadores constroem a legitimidade científica no campo da educação no Brasil. Estratégias e disputas compõem a dinâmica e permitem analisar a obtenção de capital científico puro e político. A metodologia incluiu a análise de currículos e evidencia que, frente à busca por produtividade e legitimidade, entre 2005 e 2014, houve mudança na composição do capital acadêmico-científico dos atores, provavelmente induzida pelas políticas públicas de avaliação.Palavras-chave: universidade; campo acadêmico-científico; pesquisa em educação; avaliação. Abstract: This article discusses how researchers build their scientific legitimacy in the field of education in Brazil. Strategies and disputes mark the dynamics and offer elements to analyze the acquisition of political and pure scientific capital. The methodology included analysis of researchers' curricula and shows that, vis-à-vis the quest for productivity and legitimacy, in the time elapsed between 2005 and 2014, there was a change in the composition of the players’ academic-scientific capital, probably induced by the evaluation public policies in the last decades.Keywords: university; academic-scientific field; educational research; evaluation. Resumen: El artículo discute cómo los investigadores construyen la legitimidad científica en el campo de la educación en Brasil. Estrategias y disputas componen la dinámica y permiten analizar la obtención de capital científico puro y político. La metodología incluyó el análisis de currículos y muestra que, ante la búsqueda por productividad y legitimidad, entre 2005 y 2014, hubo cambio en la composición del capital académico-científico de los actores, probablemente inducido por las políticas públicas de evaluación.Palabras-clave: universidad; campo académico-científico; investigación en educación; evaluación.