Search

The contours of human life – birth, childhood, maturity, reproduction, the experiences of health, illness, and disability, and death – have been and will remain nearly universal; but their duration and texture are undergoing great changes. In this chapter, we chart the transformations and make projections into the near future. Many of the trends are favorable: fewer children are dying, and many enjoy greater longevity. But these advances are not distributed uniformly among and within countries and regions. Furthermore, the value of longevity is compromised by an increasing number of people living with diminished health under inequitable systems of health and social care. A more just future can be achieved by a continuing emphasis on equity in global health systems even as human lives continue to be extended and enhanced., After four years of drafting, debating, rethinking, and revising, the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) report is finally published. This work represents an incredible effort from our 200+ authors all around the world. The report is available from Cambridge University Press in multiple forms: as a 3-volume set, as separate volumes, and as a Kindle e-book.

Background Pioneering technologies (e.g., nanotechnology, synthetic biology or climate engineering) are often associated with potential new risks and uncertainties that can become sources of controversy. The communication of information during their development and open exchanges between stakeholders is generally considered a key issue in their acceptance. While the attitudes of the public to novel technologies have been widely considered there has been relatively little investigation of the perceptions and awareness of scientists working on human or animal diseases transmitted by arthropods. Methods Consequently, we conducted a global survey on 1889 scientists working on aspects of vector-borne diseases, exploring, under the light of a variety of demographic and professional factors, their knowledge and awareness of an emerging biotechnology that has the potential to revolutionize the control of pest insect populations. Results Despite extensive media coverage of key developments (including releases of manipulated mosquitoes into human communities) this has in only one instance resulted in scientist awareness exceeding 50 % on a national or regional scale. We document that awareness of pioneering releases significantly relied on private communication sources that were not equally accessible to scientists from countries with endemic vector-borne diseases (dengue and malaria). In addition, we provide quantitative analysis of the perceptions and knowledge of specific biotechnological approaches to controlling vector-borne disease, which are likely to impact the way in which scientists around the world engage in the debate about their value. Conclusions Our results indicate that there is scope to strengthen already effective methods of communication, in addition to a strong demand by scientists (expressed by 79.9 % of respondents) to develop new, creative modes of public engagement., Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France). Action Interdisciplinaire de Recherche (AIR)

Background: Pioneering technologies (e.g., nanotechnology, synthetic biology or climate engineering) are often associated with potential new risks and uncertainties that can become sources of controversy. The communication of information during their development and open exchanges between stakeholders is generally considered a key issue in their acceptance. While the attitudes of the public to novel technologies have been widely considered there has been relatively little investigation of the perceptions and awareness of scientists working on human or animal diseases transmitted by arthropods. Methods: Consequently, we conducted a global survey on 1889 scientists working on aspects of vector-borne diseases, exploring, under the light of a variety of demographic and professional factors, their knowledge and awareness of an emerging biotechnology that has the potential to revolutionize the control of pest insect populations. Results: Despite extensive media coverage of key developments (including releases of manipulated mosquitoes into human communities) this has in only one instance resulted in scientist awareness exceeding 50 % on a national or regional scale. We document that awareness of pioneering releases significantly relied on private communication sources that were not equally accessible to scientists from countries with endemic vector-borne diseases (dengue and malaria). In addition, we provide quantitative analysis of the perceptions and knowledge of specific biotechnological approaches to controlling vector-borne disease, which are likely to impact the way in which scientists around the world engage in the debate about their value. Conclusions: Our results indicate that there is scope to strengthen already effective methods of communication, in addition to a strong demand by scientists (expressed by 79.9 % of respondents) to develop new, creative modes of public engagement.

The social analysis of insects has challenged our concepts of sociability, intentionality and language, while investigations of their habitats have informed how we construct and manage public space. Insect knowledge including, but not limited to, entomological expertise – has been integral to the expansion of empire, the emergence of secular science, and in the managerial revolution that linked technology to agricultural improvement. Reading insects as hosts, vectors and companions of science, this special issue introduction opens up the epistemic, biopolitical and social dimensions of human-insect connections. Drawing insight from studies into the material culture of science, postcolonial geographies and a burgeoning literature on human-animal relations, we invite readers to consider how practices and products of science are made up of encounters between scientists and insects. By parsing these intersections, we can begin to understand the kinds of knowledge made possible and elusive by insects’ capacity to connect and carry, inscribe and destabilize, disgust and inspire. Insects, we suggest, are not only good to think with because of the analogies one might draw to human life and social order. Thinking with insects is foremost a task of theoretical innovation, one that has allowed us to re-examine how life produces space, time and history, and to intensify entanglements of ecological, institutional and experimental relations.

For many in the scientific world, technologies of genetic modification offer a promising method to control vector-born infectious diseases such as malaria. Nevertheless, the recent releases of the first genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes into the wild have triggered heated discussions. How is the human-mosquito relationship being reconfigured through the development of GM mosquitoes? The scientific modifications that make mosquitoes incapable of transmitting malaria and capable of generating profit have epistemic consequences for public health. GM mosquitoes have shifted malaria control in ways that might best be understood in terms of ‘transposition’ (Braidotti): the mosquito transforms from a disease-bringing agent to a benevolent public health tool. This transformation from vector to tool is technically elegant, but this elegance is also risky. As the history of malaria epidemics has shown mosquitoes travel long distances in hardly predictable patterns. Creating a GM mosquito then also means to surrender public health practices to the lines of flight of the mosquito itself.

This paper is concerned with the material and social transformation of a German ambulance car into a Ghanaian minibus—called tro-tros in Ghana. We track the journey of a Mercedes Benz 310 from Winnenden in Germany to Kumasi in Ghana and examine the transformation of Rettungswagen 7/83-2 to tro-tro Dr.JESUS. Tracing the car’s geobiography enables us to explore a specific material relation between Europe and West Africa. Considering debates on technology transfer and transformation, we argue for a nuanced understanding of ‘fluid technologies’ that includes opportunities but also emphasises the dangers implicated in the transfer and transformation of objects. Furthermore, by locating the reused bus within international trade in discarded objects, we introduce the notion of ‘provincialising waste’ to underline changing uses and values of objects. In this paper we suggest that careful attention needs to be paid to the ambivalent geobiographies of secondhand objects.

Among the public health community, ‘all except malaria’ is often shorthand for neglected tropical diseases. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's cause célèbre, malaria receives a tremendous amount of funding, as well as scientific and policy attention. Malaria has, however, divergent biological, behavioural and socio-political guises; it is multiply implicated in the environments we inhabit and in the ways in which we inhabit them. The malaria that focuses our attention crops up in the back alleys of Dar es Salaam, brought into being by local labour and municipal governance – a version of malaria that, we argue, is increasingly excluded in current eradication campaigns. This article considers the cycles of public health amnesia, memory and neglect that construe the parasitological exchange between man and mosquito. It begins by exploring the political concerns and technical capacities that have transformed malaria into a global enemy. Combining these historical accounts with ethnographic material, we suggest how malaria is disentangled from or conflated with particular places. Ultimately, our aim is to reflect upon the relationship between scale of malaria control and its social consequence, attending to the actors and relations that fall outside of contemporary global public health policy.