The Obama Administration, with Michelle Obama in the frontlines, may be helping to lead a gradual cultural shift in the way Americans approach food. With media attention on the First Lady’s organic garden in the White House and her serving healthy foods in local soup kitchens, two flashpoint phrases are slowly coalescing with mainstream audiences and are gaining meaning together: “healthy eating” and “the poor.” As such, the First Lady is shining the spotlight on an issue that has already gained traction with mainly white middle- and upper class audiences, at least when it comes to healthy eating and making ethical food choices. This trend towards eating so-called “whole foods”—and avoiding the nutritionally-deficient, scientifically-based, expertise-driven, industrially-processed “foodstuffs”—is touted as a great leap to stanching many of our societal ills. Everything from the obesity epidemic and industrial agriculture to the unfair treatment of migrant workers and livestock, and even global warming is included in the litany of rhetorical promises. Although this is a tall order, what this movement does is present an opportunity to create a different kind of food system with different embedded values that might lead to “better” outcomes as enumerated in the promises made. The driving questions should be “better what, exactly?” and “better for whom?” Continue reading »
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23JulAuthor: mbhadra ( )
Tags: food
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18JulAuthor: rmeyer (Ryan Meyer)
This article from Christopher Beam at Slate examines the funding and decision processes behind various genome sequencing projects. After reviewing the criteria used by the NIH (the heaviest hitter in the game), he notes (emphasis mine):
Scientists often target organisms that are already used in the laboratory, since their genomes are likely to be the most useful. Accordingly, the mouse, the fruit fly, the zebra fish, and the roundworm were among the first sequenced genomes.
Hmmm… what exactly do these scientists mean by “useful”? Continue reading »
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15JulAuthor: jennydyckbrian (Jenny Dyck Brian)
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services FINALLY (after being given the go-ahead by the Office of Management and Budget) issued regulations to allow HIV positive people to enter the United States. This comes more than a year after Congress voted to repeal the HIV travel ban - and 22 years after Jesse Helms introduced the Helms Amendment that created the HIV travel ban. Continue reading »
Tags: HIV
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13JulAuthor: jennydyckbrian (Jenny Dyck Brian)
As a follow up to my Mother’s Day soapbox post, this article in The Guardian is another great example of the expert advice directed at mothers.
This professor and midwife says that epidurals are used far too frequently and “diminish childbirth as a rite of passage and undermine the mother’s bond with her child.” Ugh. This is a fantastic example of unfair judgment of the PERSONAL decisions mothers make, and of the harmful assumptions about what makes a “good” or “bad” mother. This (MALE!) professor is essentially saying, “If you can’t hack the agony of child birth, you will be totally unprepared for the stress of raising that baby - to whom you will not be close because you didn’t sacrifice your autonomy to feel all the pain of the birthing process.” Excuse me for not being more articulate, but… GAH.
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13JulAuthor: jennydyckbrian (Jenny Dyck Brian)
Wow, late to the game here… but I really need to write something about Obama’s new bioethics panel. So, Obama dissolved the President’s Council on Bioethics (established by President Bush in 2001) in favour of a new bioethics committee that will focus on providing practical policy advice. Continue reading »
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13JulAuthor: jennydyckbrian (Jenny Dyck Brian)
Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings began today, and there has been much to-do about her “judicial activism” and “reverse racism”. In support of the former, Republicans have cited this quote from an old speech by Sotomayor:
“a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”You can read the whole text of her speech here, but she does follow up that comment with “No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice.” In this speech, she describes her aspiration for impartiality, but she is also aware that her life experiences will have some bearing on her decisions as a judge. (Note that Samuel Alito said almost exactly the same thing in his confirmation hearing.) She openly strives for empathy, for impartiality over objectivity.
And that seems to me to be all that we can ever do. Scientists, judges, ethicists, policymakers, doctors - none of these groups can ever be truly objective. We, as humans in a complex social/cultural/political/economic context, can never attain objective knowledge. But we can be more objective when we bring out into the open unexamined biases. Judge Sotomayor is open about her values and life experiences and the effect they have on her judgments. This is valuable for debate on the Supreme Court, because it exposes the other judges to different perspectives, and it will allow all of the judges to examine their own biases. We do more damage when we try to pretend that we are not influenced by anything or anyone and make false claims to objectivity.
Tags: objectivity, Supreme Court
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13JulAuthor: jennydyckbrian (Jenny Dyck Brian)
This morning, President Obama announced his selection for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin. Surgeon General is largely a ceremonial post, to convey important public health messages, but it’s an exciting appointment. Dr. Benjamin has received the Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” for establishing a rural health clinic in a medically undeserved fishing village in Alabama. (Her clinic was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt, and then burned down right before it was to re-open. So, she did house calls, bartered medical services for oysters, and paid for the prescriptions of those patients who couldn’t afford them.)
Her appointment is important - as this country tries to struggle through health care reform - for bringing visibility to the needs of those who don’t have access to adequate medical care because they (1) live in rural areas and/or (2) cannot afford the treatment.
On a related note, this morning’s news highlights the much-needed moves toward creating a more diverse government. One news story shows a (Hispanic female) Supreme Court nominee beginning her confirmation hearings, and another news story shows our (bi-racial) President and our (female) Secretary of Health and Human Services introducing the (African-American female) appointment for Surgeon General. Inspiring.
Tags: health care, Obama
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12JulAuthor: Owen M. ( )
I don’t think I’m alone (at least I hope not) in my occasional bewilderment at some of the jargon used in the day to day study of CSPO/CNS-type things. Certain terms and usages seem to keep popping up in this particular corner of academia that one would rarely encounter in typical conversation.
The aim of this post is to provide a robust, reflexive space for symmetrical, bottom-up public engagement on the constellation of complexified, paradigmatic terminological imaginaries that CSPAWNers inevitably encounter… Get it?
Tags: jargon
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10JulAuthor: rmeyer (Ryan Meyer)
Jenny Brian pointed me to this article about a recent survey which claims to have evaluated the “share of Americans who see science as the nation’s greatest achievement.”
This article has all the key ingredicnts of your typical “science and the public” piece:
1. A survey finds that in general people think science is pretty great, even though they don’t know much about it. In this case, more people thought that S&T advances have been our greatest achievements than any other category (aside from “don’t know”).
2. Someone speaking on behalf of science (Alan Leshner of AAAS in this case), warns of the danger of the US losing its prowess in S&T, backing it up with some aspect of the survey that might point to waning public adulation. Here, the worry is that the share of admirers has decreased, even though it’s still the biggest.
3. Said spokesperson drags out the ol’ PUS model (Public Understanding of Science), arguing that if only people knew more about science, they sure would like it more. Here you can blame the public itself, or the bad scientists communicators, or both - take your pick.
But, all snarkiness aside, is it really all that tragic that the public’s view of S&T advances is “losing ground” to things like equal rights? Would our country be all that much worse off if people felt that our progress in the latter issue were our greatest achievement instead of science?
Of course, that’s exactly the problem with this kind of survey: anyone can make of it what they will. The numbers don’t do much to even raise (let alone address) the more important questions of how and why public perceptions of science matter, and how understanding of science actually relates to those things.
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09JulAuthor: rmeyer (Ryan Meyer)
The one-sidedness of all this media coverage of the supposed breakthrough in the G8 climate talks in Turin, Italy has been pretty frustrating. Yes, most of the stories are reporting the “landmark agreement to set a target for limiting global warming,” while also quoting various yawning critics who think the targets are either not strong enough, or too far off. As far as that goes, journalists appear to be showing multiple perspectives.
But they continue to ignore the most important and controversial issue: this whole process continues to be centered on emissions targets. Continue reading »
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