While medicine may agree in principle that cancer screening requires informed consent, such consent is not, in fact, common practice. In the case of prostate-cancer screening this means that men in large numbers undergo PSA testing with little understanding of its liabilities – in particular, that it may or may not decrease mortality, often detects cancer of questionable significance, and may lead to unnecessary surgery. Given that prostate cancer is known to be overtreated and that family history is (...) a risk factor, it follows that a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, even if it is of no clinical significance, automatically promotes his son into the high-risk category; and given that those so categorized are subject to heightened medical surveillance and that the more diligently medicine searches for prostate cancer the more likely it is to find it, it follows that the sons of men diagnosed as a result of PSA testing are at risk of being overdiagnosed (and overtreated) precisely because their father was. Twenty years into the PSA revolution, its generational consequences have not been discussed in the medical literature. (shrink)

A statewide program in California to detect neural tube and other birth defects may revive enthusiasm for mass prenatal screening. Participation in the program is voluntary, but all expectant mothers are asked to sign a statement of “informed consent/refusal.” So far California's program seems to be working well, but questions for the future include the level of participation, the possibility that normal fetuses will be aborted, the kinds of information given to women, and the elusive nature of free (...) choice. (shrink)

Providing individuals with the information necessary to make informed decisions is now considered an ethical standard for health systems and general practitioners.

The ethically controversial option of genetic population screening used to be restricted to a small number of rather rare diseases by methodological limitations which are now about to be overcome. With the new technology of DNA microarrays ("DNA chip"), emerging from the synthesis of microelectronics and molecular biology, methods are now at hand for the development of mass screening programmes for a wide spectrum of genetic traits. Thus, the DNA chip may be the key technology for a (...) refined preventive medicine as well as a new dimension of eugenics. The forthcoming introduction of the DNA chip technology into medical practice urgently requires an internationally consistent framework of ethical standards and legal limitations if we do not want it to become a new Pandora's box. (shrink)

The way we communicate with each other is vital to preserving the cultural ecology, or wellbeing, of a place and time. Do we listen to each other? Do we ask the right questions? Do we speak about each other with respect or disdain? The stories that we convey on screens, or what author Carl Plantinga calls 'screen stories,' are one powerful and pervasive means by which we communicate with each other. Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement argues that (...) film and media studies needs to move toward an an approach to ethics that is more appropriate for mass consumer culture and the lives of its citizens. Primarily concerned with the relationship between media and viewers, this book considers ethical criticism and the emotional power of screen stories that makes such criticism necessary. The content we consume-- from television shows and movies to advertisements-- can significantly affect our welfare on a personal and societal level, and thus, this content is subject to praise and celebration, or questioning and even condemnation. The types of screen stories that circulate contribute to the cultural ecology of a time and place; through shared attention they influence what individuals think and feel. Plantinga develops a theory of the power of screen stories to affect both individuals and cultures, asserting that we can better respond ethically to such media if we understand the sources of its influence on us. (shrink)

According to Hugo Münsterberg, the direct application of experimental psychology to the practical problems of education, law, industry, and art belonged by definition to the domain of psychotechnics. Whether in the form of pedagogical prescription, interrogation technique, hiring practice, or aesthetic principle, the psychotechnical method implied bringing the psychological laboratory to bear on everyday life. There were, however, significant pitfalls to leaving behind the putative purity of the early psychological laboratory in pursuit of technological utility. In the Vocation Bureau, for (...) example, psychological instruments were often deemed too intimidating for a public unfamiliar with the inner workings of experimental science. Similarly, when psychotechnical means were employed by big business in screening job candidates, ethical red flags were raised about this new alliance between science and capital. This tension was particularly evident in Münsterberg's collaboration with the Paramount Pictures Corporation in 1916. In translating psychological tests into short experimental films, Münsterberg not only envisioned a new mass medium for the dissemination of psychotechnics, but a means by which to initiate the masses into the culture of experimental psychology. (shrink)

Newborn screening consists of taking a few drops of blood from a baby's heel in the first week of life and testing it for a list of disorders. In the United States and most countries in Europe, newborn screening programs began in the 1960s and 1970s with screening for phenylketonuria (PKU), a rare metabolic disease that causes severe and irreversible mental retardation unless treated before problems arise. As knowledge about rare diseases expanded and new screening technologies (...) were introduced—such as the tandem mass spectrometer and high‐performance liquid chromatography—the same blood sample could be used to test for a whole list of disorders. In general, screening programs in most countries have tended to expand, but in different countries they have expanded in different ways. Regulation also varies. In some states, screening is mandatory, whereas in others—Wyoming and Maryland—parents are asked for their informed consent. Germany and France have adopted an explicit informed consent procedure, whereas other European countries have a more informal “opt‐out” procedure that does not require signing an informed consent form. Whether newborn screening requires informed consent is an ongoing issue in bioethics. In this article, we will focus on the tension between informed consent and the problem of compliance in newborn screening. Asking for informed consent—allowing parents to opt out—is often thought to pose a threat to compliance. Building on the work of Onora O'Neill on informed consent and trust, however, as well as on work she coauthored with Neil Manson, we will argue that informed consent procedures may actually help maintain trust in newborn screening and may therefore support compliance. (shrink)

The literature on mass communication is now dominated by "objective sociological "approaches. What makes the work of Stephenson so unusual is his starting points: his frank willingness to adopt a "subjective "and "psychological "approach to the study of mass communication. In short, this is an internal analysis of how communication processes are absorbed by individuals. The theory of play is not a doctrine of frivolity, but rather a way in which Stephenson gets at such sensitive areas of communication (...) theory as what is screened out and why. Without a notion of the play element in communication one would be led to imagine that every televised docudrama would be immediately lived out by every adolescent. Clearly, this is not the case. People can distinguish quite well between imaginary and real events in mass communication contexts. "The Play Theory of Mass Communication "is a work that studies subjective play, how communication serves the cause of self-enhancement and personal pleasure, and the role of entertainment as an end in itself. In short, for those who are tired of cliche-ridden volumes on the political hidden messages and meanings of communication, or the economic management of media decisions, this volume will come as a refreshment, a piece of entertainment as well as instruction. But with all the emphasis "on "aspects, Stephenson's volume is shrewdly political. He takes up themes ranging from the reduction! of international tensions to the happily alienated worker to such pedestrian events as the reporting of foreign Soviet dignitaries in their visits to democratic cultures. This is, in short, an urbane, wise book--sophisticated in its methodology and critical in its theorizing. (shrink)

A historical and theoretical investigation of the unexpected ways screen-based media protect and excite viewers' fears and anxieties of the worldIn this brilliant contribution to contemporary media studies, acclaimed theorist Francesco Casetti advances a provocative hypothesis: instead of being prostheses that expand or extend our perceptions, modern screen-based media are in fact apparatuses that shelter and protect us from exposure to the world. Rather than bringing us closer to external reality, dominant forms of visual media function as barriers or enclosures (...) that defend against the apparent threats and dangers that seem increasingly to surround us. Working with an original historical overview that begins with the Phantasmagoria of the late eighteenth century, then the shared interior spaces of the movie theater in the early to mid-twentieth century, and finally the solitary digital milieus of the present, Casetti traces the outlines of the protective "bubbles" that disconnect us from our immediate surroundings. To be provided with a shield of immunity to the hazards and uncertainties of the world while experiencing them at a safe remove might seem a positive development. But, he asks, what if these media, instead of providing invulnerability, ensnare individuals in a suffocating enclosure? What if, in their effort to keep reality under control, they exercise a violence equal to that of the dangers they resist? In a dialectical exercise, and through a vivid range of cultural artifacts, Screening Fears traces the emergence of modern protective media and the way they changed our forms of mediation with the world in which we live. (shrink)

Context: Despite much research on informed choice and the individuals’ autonomy in organised medical screening, little is known about the individuals’ decision-making process as expressed in their own words.Objectives: To explore the decision-making process among women invited to a mammography screening programme.Setting: Women living in the counties of Sør- and Nord-Trøndelag, Norway, invited to the first round of the Norwegian Breast Cancer Screening Program in 2003.Methods: Qualitative methods based on eight semistructured focus-group interviews with a total of (...) 69 women aged 50–69 years.Results: The decision to attend mammography screening was not based on the information in the invitation letter and leaflet provided by the NBCSP. They perceived the invitation letter with a prescheduled appointment as if a decision for mammography had already been made. This was experienced as an aid in overcoming the postponements that easily occur in daily lives. The invitation to mammography screening was embraced as an indication of a responsible welfare state, “like a mother taking care.”Conclusion: In a welfare state where governmental institutions are trusted, mass screening for disease is acknowledged by screening participants as a valued expression of paternalism. Trust, gratitude, and convenience were more important factors than information about benefits, harms, and risks when the women made their decisions to attend screening. These elements should be included in the ethical debates on informed choice in preventive medicine. (shrink)

In 2009, in a provocative article in the Lancet , Granich et al . proposed a radical public health intervention to address the vast human toll exacted by the HIV epidemic in regions with generalized epidemics where millions are infected. The proposal, based on modeling, suggested that universal screening for HIV and immediate treatment for all found to be infected, regardless of immune status, could ultimately reverse an epidemiological course that has appeared resistant to efforts at prevention.

Mass drug screening offers a deceptively simple solution to the problem of drug use among workers. Even a very effective test is subject to error. In any given group of tested individuals, some will unavoidably be falsely accused. Even though scientific tests appear to provide efficient solutions to social and legal problems, these tests should not be accepted unless they also meet our standards for fair dealing.

Breast cancer is a major public health challenge. Organized mammography screening (OS) is considered one way to reduce breast cancer mortality. EU recommendations prone mass deployment of OS, and back in 2004, France introduced a national OS programme for women aged 50–74 years. However, in 2012, participation rate was still just 52.7%, well short of the targeted 70% objective. In an effort to re-address the (in) efficiency of the programme, the French National Cancer Institute has drafted an expert-group (...) review of the ethical issues surrounding breast cancer mammography screening. (shrink)

For over four decades, knowledge that symptoms of some inherited diseases can be prevented or reduced via early detection and treatment in newborns has underpinned state-funded screening programs in most developed countries. Conditions for which newborn screening is now a recognized preventative public health initiative include phenylketonuria, congenital hypothyroidism, and, more recently, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disorder. The use of tandem mass spectrometry to detect conditions such as amino-acidopathies and fatty-acid oxidation defects is also becoming increasingly (...) prevalent. a. (shrink)

The alleged emergence of a ‘post-truth’ regime links the rise of new forms of social media and the reemergence of political populism. Post-truth has theoretical roots in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies, with sociologists of science arguing that both true and false claims should be explained by the same kinds of social causes. Most STS theorists have sought to deflect blame for post-truth, while at the same time enacting a normative turn, looking to deconstruct truth claims and (...) subject expertise to criticism. Steve Fuller has developed a positive case for post-truth in science, arguing that post-truth democratizes science. I criticize this argument and suggest an alternative approach that draws on the prehistory of the field in the 1930s and 1940s, when philosophers and sociologists sought to define the social conditions necessary for reliable knowledge production that might stem mass media irrationalism. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this study was to examine whether extended use of a variety of screen-based devices, in addition to television, was associated with poor dietary habits and other health-related characteristics and behaviors among US adults. The recent phenomenon of binge-watching was also explored. -/- Methods A survey to assess screen time across multiple devices, dietary habits, sleep duration and quality, perceived stress, self-rated health, physical activity, and body mass index, was administered to a sample of US adults (...) using the Qualtrics platform and distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were adults 18 years of age and older, English speakers, current US residents, and owners of a television and at least one other device with a screen. Three different screen time categories (heavy, moderate, and light) were created for total screen time, and separately for screen time by type of screen, based on distribution tertiles. Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to examine differences in dietary habits and health-related characteristics between screen time categories. -/- Results Aggregate screen time across all devices totaled 17.5 h per day for heavy users. Heavy users reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics – including self-rated health – compared to moderate and light users. Moreover, unique dietary habits emerged when examining dietary patterns by type of screen separately, such that heavy users of TV and smartphone displayed the least healthful dietary patterns compared to heavy users of TV-connected devices, laptop, and tablet. Binge-watching was also significantly associated with less healthy dietary patterns, including frequency of fast-food consumption as well as eating family meals in front of a television, and perceived stress. -/- Conclusions The present study found that poorer dietary choices, as well as other negative health-related impacts, occurred more often as the viewing time of a variety of different screen-based devices increased in a sample of US adults. Future research is needed to better understand what factors among different screen-based devices might affect health behaviors and in turn health-related outcomes. Research is also required to better understand how binge-watching behavior contributes impacts health-related behaviors and characteristics. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive overview of what sound means in this century. It's primary argument is that sound is the newest sense, having been elevated with the advent of sound recording approximately 100 years ago. With chapters ranging from sound recording to the acquisition of language, this study is meant to engage readers on what the author argues is our primary sense. Chapters on the weaponization of sound, sound refuges, and sound design are also part of these extensive study (...) by a scholar focused on contemporary rhetoric and mass media. (shrink)

Basic motor competencies are a prerequisite for children to be physically active, participate in sports and thus develop a healthy, active lifestyle. The present study provides a broad screening of BMC and associations with age, sex, body mass index and extracurricular physical activity in 10 different European countries. The different country and regional contexts within Europe will offer a novel view on already established BMC associations. The cross-sectional study was conducted in 11 regions in 10 European countries in (...) 2018. The motor competence areas, object movement and self-movement, were assessed using the MOBAK-1-2 test instrument in 3758 first and second graders during Physical Education classes. Children were questioned about their extracurricular PA and age. Their body weight and height were measured in order to calculate BMI. Statistical analyses included variances and correlations. The results showed significant differences in BMC levels between countries whereas associations between BMC and correlates were similar. Boys performed significantly better in OM while girls performed better in SM. Age was consistently positively related to OM and SM with older children reaching higher levels of BMC than younger ones. While participation rates for extracurricular PA differed widely, participation in ball sports was correlated with OM and SM. Participation in individual sports showed a significant association with SM. In summary, BMC levels of children seem to depend on where they live and are strongly related to their participation in extracurricular PA. Therefore, education and health policies, in order to enhance motor competence development and PA participation, are recommended. Further research on country-specific Physical Education frameworks and their influence on BMC will provide more insights into structural factors and cultural characteristics of BMC development. On a school level, support tools and educational materials for teachers about BMC may enable children to achieve a basic level of motor competencies through Physical Education, contributing to lifelong participation in PA. (shrink)

A new landscape of prenatal testing is presently developing, including new techniques for risk-reducing, non-invasive sampling of foetal DNA and drastically enhanced possibilities of what may be rapidly and precisely analysed, surrounded by a growing commercial genetic testing industry and a general trend of individualization in healthcare policies. This article applies a set of established ethical notions from past debates on PNT for analysing PNT screening-programmes in this new situation. While some basic challenges of PNT stay untouched, the new (...) development supports a radical individualization of how PNT screening is organized. This reformation is, at the same time, difficult to reconcile with responsible spending of resources in a publicly funded healthcare context. Thus, while the ethical imperative of individualization holds and applies to PNT, the new landscape of PNT provides reasons to start rolling back the type of mass-screening programmes currently established in many countries. Instead, more limited offers are suggested, based on considerations of severity of conditions and optimized to simultaneously serve reproductive autonomy and public health within an acceptable frame of priorities. The new landscape of PNT furthermore underscores the ethical importance of supporting and including people with disabilities. For the very same reason, no ban on what may be analysed using PNT in the new landscape should be applied, although private offers must, of course, conform to strict requirements of respecting reproductive autonomy and what that means in terms of counselling. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the role of regulation in the shaping new scientific facts. Fleck chose to study the origins of a diagnostic test for a disease seen as a major public health problem, that is, a ‘scientific fact’ that had a direct and immediate influence outside the closed universe of fundamental scientific research. In 1935, when Fleck wrote his book, Genesis and development of a scientific fact, he believed that the tumultuous early history of the Wassermann reaction had come (...) to an end, and that this reaction was successfully stabilized through the standardization of laboratory practices and thanks to the rise of a specific professional segment—the serologists. He could not have predicted that in the 15 years that followed the publication of his book, regulatory measures—barely metioned in his historical narrative—would play a key role in the destabilization of the original meaning of this reaction. The introduction of mass screening for syphilis—mainly via legislation that introduced obligatory premarital tests and promoted the testing of pregnant women—weakened in fine the link between Wassermann serology and infection by the etiological agent of syphilis, the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Fleck elected to study the Wassermann reaction because of its novelty, its complexity, and because it became the focus of a controversy regarding its origins. However, the Wassermann reaction was also one the first examples of a medical technology regulated by the state and incorporated into legal dispositions. It may therefore be seen as an exemplary case of the close intertwining of scientific investigations, their practical applications and regulatory practices. (shrink)

It is a paradox that medical experimentation on individuals, whether patients or healthy volunteers, is now controlled by strict ethical guidelines, while no such protection exists for whole populations which are subjected to medical interventions in the name of preventive medicine or health promotion. As many such interventions are either of dubious benefit or of uncertain harm-benefit balance, such as mass screening for cancers or for risk factors associated with coronary heart disease, there is no justification for maintaining (...) the ethical vacuum in which preventive medicine finds itself at present. (shrink)

The Papanicolaou (Pap) smear, also called the Pap test, cyto test, cervical smear or cervical cytology, has been described as the most widely used and established cancer-screening technology in the world. It has also been described as a very simple technology including a brush, a microscope slide, fi xative and cervical cells from women. In 1928, George N. Papanicolaou, a Medical Doctor, investigator, PhD in zoology and Aureli Babes (1928/1967), a Romanian pathologist, each independently claimed to have found a (...) ‘very simple’ technique, which provided a new possibility for early diagnostics of cancer/malignant tumours in the female genital tract/uterine cervix. The technique was subsequently named after Papanicolaou who, according to Wied (1964: 174), was more successful than Babes in ‘stimulating the introduction of mass screening projects which are the actual benefi t of the method’. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

Alarmed by Three Mile Island, Love Canal, and other disastrous deployments of new technologies, the public is demanding more voice in the decision-making on technology. To make this possible, it is proposed that metatechnology be evolved that will provide a practical technology for the safe, effective, and economical use of technology. A case history of a specific metatechnology is presented. Here the metatechnology enabled a realistic balancing of the benefits of mass screening of women by mammography against the (...) hazards from the X-rays. By showing that the screening of women under 50 was counterproductive, this metatechnology helped to ban such screening in a program involving a quarter of a million women. The strategic mistake in setting up this and other technological programs was that the decisions were made by the technologists. They benefited the technologists but were not beneficial to the women. One of the potentials of metatechnology is that in its fully computerized versions it could be used directly by the public for decision-making on the deployment of technologies. (shrink)

The genetic testing and screening of children has been fraught with controversy since Robert Guthrie developed the bacterial inhibition assay to test for phenylketonuria and advocated for rapid uptake of universal newborn screening in the early 1960s. Today with fast and affordable mass screening of the whole genome on the horizon, the debate about when and in what scenarios children should undergo genetic testing and screening has gained renewed attention. United States professional guidelines — both (...) the American College of Medical Genetics /American Society of Human Genetics statement and the American Academy of Pediatrics Statement on the genetic testing of children and the new AAP and ACMG joint policy statement and technical report — as well as the old UK guidelines by the Working Part of the Clinical Genetics Society and the new United Kingdom guidelines by the British Society of Human Genetics all give the same answer: genetic testing and screening should only be done if it is in the child’s best interest. (shrink)

The standard formulation of quantum gauge theories results from the Lagrangian (functional integral) quantization of classical gauge theories. A more intrinsic quantum theoretical access in the spirit of Wigner’s representation theory shows that there is a fundamental clash between the pointlike localization of zero mass (vector, tensor) potentials and the Hilbert space (positivity, unitarity) structure of QT. The quantization approach has no other way than to stay with pointlike localization and sacrifice the Hilbert space whereas the approach built on (...) the intrinsic quantum concept of modular localization keeps the Hilbert space and trades the conflict creating pointlike generation with the tightest consistent localization: semiinfinite spacelike string localization. Whereas these potentials in the presence of interactions stay quite close to associated pointlike field strengths, the interacting matter fields to which they are coupled bear the brunt of the nonlocal aspect in that they are string-generated in a way which cannot be undone by any differentiation.The new stringlike approach to gauge theory also revives the idea of a Schwinger-Higgs screening mechanism as a deeper and less metaphoric description of the Higgs spontaneous symmetry breaking and its accompanying tale about “God’s particle” and its mass generation for all the other particles. (shrink)

What Ivan Illich regarded in his Medical Nemesis as the ‘expropriation of health’ takes place on the surfaces and in the spaces of the screens all around us, including our cell phones but also the patient monitors and (increasingly) the iPads that intervene between nurse and patient. To explore what Illich called the ‘age of the show’, this essay uses film examples, like Creed and the controversial documentary Vaxxed, and the television series Nurse Jackie. Rocky’s cancer in his last film (...) (submitting to chemo to ‘fight’ cancer) highlights what Illich along with Petr Skrabanek called the ‘expropriation of death’. In contrast to what Illich denotes as ‘Umsonstigkeit’ – i.e., a free gift, given undeservedly, i.e., gratuitously – medical science tends to be tempted by what Illich terms scientistic ‘black magic’, taking over (expropriating) the life and the death of the patient in increasingly technological ways, a point underscored in the concluding section on the commercial prospects of xenotransplants using factory farm or mass-produced (and already for some time) human-pig mosaics or chimeras. (shrink)

The paper considers the symmetries of a bit of information corresponding to one, two or three qubits of quantum information and identifiable as the three basic symmetries of the Standard model, U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) accordingly. They refer to “empty qubits” (or the free variable of quantum information), i.e. those in which no point is chosen (recorded). The choice of a certain point violates those symmetries. It can be represented furthermore as the choice of a privileged reference frame (e.g. that (...) of the Big Bang), which can be described exhaustively by means of 16 numbers (4 for position, 4 for velocity, and 8 for acceleration) independently of time, but in space-time continuum, and still one, 17th number is necessary for the mass of rest of the observer in it. The same 17 numbers describing exhaustively a privileged reference frame thus granted to be “zero”, respectively a certain violation of all the three symmetries of the Standard model or the “record” in a qubit in general, can be represented as 17 elementary wave functions (or classes of wave functions) after the bijection of natural and transfinite natural (ordinal) numbers in Hilbert arithmetic and further identified as those corresponding to the 17 elementary of particles of the Standard model. Two generalizations of the relevant concepts of general relativity are introduced: (1) “discrete reference frame” to the class of all arbitrarily accelerated reference frame constituting a smooth manifold; (2) a still more general principle of relativity to the general principle of relativity, and meaning the conservation of quantum information as to all discrete reference frames as to the smooth manifold of all reference frames of general relativity. Then, the bijective transition from an accelerated reference frame to the 17 elementary wave functions of the Standard model can be interpreted by the still more general principle of relativity as the equivalent redescription of a privileged reference frame: smooth into a discrete one. The conservation of quantum information related to the generalization of the concept of reference frame can be interpreted as restoring the concept of the ether, an absolutely immovable medium and reference frame in Newtonian mechanics, to which the relative motion can be interpreted as an absolute one, or logically: the relations, as properties. The new ether is to consist of qubits (or quantum information). One can track the conceptual pathway of the “ether” from Newtonian mechanics via special relativity, via general relativity, via quantum mechanics to the theory of quantum information (or “quantum mechanics and information”). The identification of entanglement and gravity can be considered also as a ‘byproduct” implied by the transition from the smooth “ether of special and general relativity’ to the “flat” ether of quantum mechanics and information. The qubit ether is out of the “temporal screen” in general and is depicted on it as both matter and energy, both dark and visible. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has declared a world pandemic due to COVID-19. In response, most affected countries have enacted measures involving compulsory confinement and restrictions on free movement, which likely influence citizens' lifestyles. This study investigates changes in health risk behaviors with duration of confinement. An online cross-sectional survey served to collect data about the Spanish adult population regarding health behaviors during the first 3 weeks of confinement. A large sample of participants from all Spanish regions completed the survey. Binomial (...) logistic regressions adjusted for socioeconomic characteristics, body mass index, previous HRBs, and confinement context were conducted to investigate associations between the number of weeks confined and a set of six HRBs. When adjusted, we observed significantly lower odds of experiencing a higher number of HRBs than before confinement overall in a time-dependent fashion: OR 0.63; 95% CI: 0.49–0.81 for the second and OR 0.47; 95% CI: 0.36–0.61 for the third week of confinement. These results were equally consistent in all age and gender subgroup analyses. The present study indicates that changes toward a higher number of HRBs than before confinement, as well as the prevalence of each HRB except screen exposure, decreased during the first 3 weeks of COVID-19 confinement, and thus the Spanish adult population may have adapted to the new situational context by gradually improving their health behaviors. (shrink)

The rapidly increasing number of cases of Zika virus and limited understanding of its congenital sequelae (e.g., microcephaly) led to stories of fear and uncertainty across social media and other mass communication networks. In this study, we used techniques generic to netnography, a form of ethnography, using Internet‐based computer‐mediated communications as a source of data to understand the experience and perceptions of families with infants diagnosed with Zika‐related microcephaly. We screened 27 YouTube™ videos published online between October 2015 and (...) July 2016, during which the Zika epidemic started, peaked, and declined. We identified three themes: (a) experiencing the news of a diagnosis of Zika‐associated microcephaly; (b) experiencing feelings and expectations of the ‘imperfect’ child; and (c) seeking to understand microcephaly to care for the child. We found that families experienced distressing feelings of shock, sadness, hopelessness, and pain, while dealing with emerging and sometimes conflicting information being transmitted by news outlets, uncertainty about the child's health, and healthcare providers’ lack of clarity to guide the family members. The ‘unknown’ factor of ZIKA was an additional stressful factor in the experience of the families. (shrink)

Some health leaders and researchers have launched mass prevention programs without sound biomedical groundwork. They have oversold the benefits of prevention and underestimated the secondary effects. Some have forced nonmedical concerns into the medical model. Others have blurred the distinctions between prevention and other measures such as screening or therapy. Some have transferred responsibility for disease to the victim. A few have imputed magical powers to certain symbols of prevention, in order to create an illusion of control.

Hanna Pitkin explains that Arendt’s defense of collective political action tends to reify and mystify an opposing concept Arendt calls ‘the Social’. Was Arendt actually right about the rise of ‘the Social’? Does the deep-set global mass entertainment culture tend to sap action even when it purportedly celebrates it? And what can viewing publics and counter-publics tell us about the meaning and reception of ‘the Social’, especially in this massively online era? This article surveys different ways of thinking about (...) the basic problem presented by American popular action cinema, and especially big-budget Hollywood action films, through an Arendtian lens. In presenting this overview, the article looks to reorient traditional philosophical concerns about screen violence and its censorship, and to offer a holistic reappraisal of ‘the Social’ and ‘action’ by placing democratic theory in closer dialogue with film studies. (shrink)

In recent years, various obesity-related policy strategies have fostered rigorous debate in both the academic and popular literature: should a city restrict soda size to reduce obesity rates? Should low-income individuals receiving government food assistance through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program be prohibited from using such funds to purchase soda or other “junk foods?” Should schools undertake screening and surveillance of student body mass index? These strategies pose a central challenge for public health regulation: what is the role (...) of government in responding to rising obesity rates? Specifically, to what degree can the state restrict individual freedom to reduce the burden of.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 267-296 [Access article in PDF] Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era Robert Hariman The man lies on the hotel bed, clad only in his underwear, as he watches the TV screen just beyond his feet. His right hand holds the remote control, which he uses to scan through the cable channels. To his left sits Abraham Lincoln, clothed in long-sleeved white (...) shirt and black pants and reading a book. Lincoln's long, angular frame is just a bit stooped, and his brow is slightly furrowed, as if long accustomed to thinking on the edge of melancholy. Lincoln is mulling over a statement by Walter Benjamin: "Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things" (Benjamin 1977, 178). 1Seated to the man's right is a woman wearing the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. She leans slightly forward, legs crossed, as she reads the New York Times Magazine cover story about President Clinton. "Listen to this," she says with a bemused smile. "In the clutter around his desk in the Oval Office stands not a single bust of a favorite predecessor, but five: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman and two of F.D.R., plus a statuette of Will Rogers for good measure. If governing is choosing, this collection is a metaphor for this President's trouble with choices, and he himself allows, 'That's the story of my Presidency, that desk'" (Purdum 1996, 36).The man says nothing as he continues to watch the succession of images on the screen: a lizard flicks its tongue in the desert heat; a child in a stroller laughs as she holds a strawberry ice cream cone; a congressman in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie jabs his finger into the air as he talks earnestly; cars plastered with automotive product logos curl around a race track; Fred and Ginger swirl around the dance floor; soldiers wade ashore at Omaha Beach; the Space Shuttle lifts off; Groucho lifts his eyebrows; Regis smiles; mushrooms and peppers simmer in a pan.The succession of images could go on indefinitely. The tableau remains static. The composition is an allegory: a figural presentation that organizes multiple interpretations regarding collective experience. It also contains and comments on other forms of itself: Clinton's desk is an example [End Page 267] of the figural anecdote that has been a staple of American public address. The manifold of televisual images exemplifies the allegorical encoding that operates within postmodern art forms, including fragmentary appropriation, paratactic association, encyclopedic range, and non-linear temporality. The statement by Benjamin illuminates the nature of allegory in a specific genre and historical period, and as it is a general mode of representation, and perhaps as it is a model for all textual interpretation.The composition also evokes a set of dialectical tensions that are characteristic of both allegory in general and fundamental anxieties in the contemporary period. Past and present sit side by side, but incongruously, as if by artifice alone. So it is also with the print and visual media, which are held together by mutual competencies but otherwise in figural isolation that perhaps represents different destinies. Likewise, one might wonder about the peculiar relationship between public affairs and private life: the succession of images on the screen adhere to no hierarchy of values, no principle of loyalty or sacrifice, no basis for discerning obligations or maintaining rights, yet they are replete with the paraphernalia of these concerns, and the arrangement of figures in the room likewise is at once suggestive yet inconclusive. If this tableau contains familiar features of the mass-mediated experience that now saturates American politics, one might wonder: Is the democratic tradition in ruins?Allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame. This principle of composition seems particularly suited to periods of cultural change. To the extent that the genre of allegory has a history, it is one of eternal recurrence at periods of loss and fragmentation produced by the expansion of a new, somewhat... (shrink)

In contrast to industrial markets based on mass-production of material goods, postindustrial markets hinge on images, experiences, and emotions produced and exchanged on screens and in real life. Because postindustrial markets tend to be highly concentrated and technology-driven, they pose a threat to small businesses and low-skill workers in both advanced industrial economies and the Global South, where a large share of the population makes a living in the informal economy. Using the 2014 World Cup as a case of (...) postindustrial economic activity hinged on spectacle, emotional experience, and intellectual property, I analyze the income-making strategies used by street vendors in São Paulo, Brazil. I show that organizers’ control of fan markets was limited by local conceptions of ownership over national symbols as well as informal workers’ flexible relation to legal norms and enforcement-dodging practices. Circumventing market barriers required risky and sophisticated strategies, however, which were more readily available to the more marginal section of the street vending population. (shrink)

This article argues that the mid-1960s saw a dramatic shift in how ‘brainwashing’ was popularly imagined, reflecting Anglo-American developments in the sciences of mind as well as shifts in mass media culture. The 1965 British film The Ipcress File provides a rich case for exploring these interconnections between mind control, mind science and media, as it exemplifies the era’s innovations for depicting ‘brainwashing’ on screen: the film’s protagonist is subjected to flashing lights and electronic music, pulsating to the ‘rhythm (...) of brainwaves’. This article describes the making of The Ipcress File’s brainwashing sequence and shows how its quest for cinematic spectacle drew on developments in cybernetic science, multimedia design and modernist architecture. I argue that often interposed between the disparate endeavours of 1960s mind control, psychological science and media was a vision of the human mind as a ‘cybernetic spectator’: a subject who scrutinizes how media and other demands on her sensory perception can affect consciousness, and seeks to consciously participate in this mental conditioning and guide its effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Public Health Ethics: Health by the NumbersMartina Darragh (bio) and Pat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)Hippocrates had nothing to say about public health. Rather, the idea that a government should protect its citizens from disease by maintaining sanitary conditions has its origin in Renaissance humanities texts, and the notion that physicians have public health responsibilities emerged in the works of such Enlightenment authors as Johann Peter Frank, Benjamin Rush, and John (...) Gregory (II, Coughlin and Beauchamp 1996). When the spread of infectious diseases such as typhoid and cholera accompanied the growth of the Industrial Revolution, England was the first to respond by passing the Public Health Act of 1848. The motivation for this reform was not based in humanitarian concerns but in the realization that unsanitary conditions were costly to industry. “... [The] founders of the public health movement were guided by nineteenth century utilitarian moral theories... the greatest good for the greatest number... accompanied by a growing appreciation for the innate value and dignity of mankind... however, the rights and autonomy of individuals have not always been respected in pursuing these important objectives” (I, Coughlin 1995, p. 1).Public health projects have dramatically improved global health status. One measure of their success is that “... most poor people now live longer, on average, than the wealthiest people a century ago” (I, Beaglehole and Bonita 1997, p. 13) These projects are not limited to such activities as disinfecting sewers. “Public health is what we, as a society, do to collectively assure the conditions in which people can be healthy. This requires that continuing and emerging threats to the health of the public be successfully countered. These threats include immediate crises, such as the AIDS epidemic; enduring problems, such as injuries and chronic illness; and impending crises foreshadowed by such developments as the toxic by-products of a modern economy” (I, Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1988, p. 1) The practice of public health has embraced this IOM challenge and includes the subspecialties of epidemiology, health promotion and education, public health administration, international health, maternal and child health, biostatistics, environmental health, and nutrition. This annotated bibliography focuses on epidemiology, [End Page 339] health promotion and education, and public health administration, and includes a wide variety of opinions on each topic.EpidemiologyAt first glance, it is hard to see what ethical issues could arise in population studies of the causes and control of illness. Disclosure of risk information in the clinical encounter is complicated by issues of uncertainty with regard to the data itself. Causation and causal inference may be affected by “wish bias,” leading to studies that use the same data but reach widely varying conclusions (II, Weed 1997). Given the complexity of the statistical calculations used to validate public health recommendations, and mass media’s portrayal of them, the public may be unintentionally deceived by population-based recommendations (V, Seedhouse 1997; II, Lupton 1995). With the addition of genetic screening, another layer of statistical complexity is added to this mix (VI, Stone and Steward 1996).Health Promotion and EducationIncreased life expectancy brought about by advances in public health has raised a new set of problems. With the realization that illness can be promoted in part by individual life-style choices, population-based recommendations about risk factors become important in the clinical encounter. This shift is not without difficulties; one author notes that he has yet to receive any risk information from his physicians, even when he asks “the experts” (V, Dugdale 1998). This may be due in part to the fact that “... public health lacks a vocabulary with which to speak about and identify commonalities among health problems experienced by very different populations” (IV, Mann 1997, p. 8). Furthermore, the mix of disciplines informing health promotion activities (sociology, psychology, recreation medicine, and the like) creates an illusion of shared ethics where none exists, which in turn leads to programs based on value systems that may not be meaningful for the populations they serve (V, Seedhouse 1997).Given these factors, a number of authors are skeptical of introducing public health measures into the clinical encounter. “We might do well to encourage people to live lives of modified hedonism so that they might... (shrink)