Track #58 to the 4S/EASST Congress Closed!

Yesterday, call for papers to the 4S/Congress was closed. As we posted some weeks ago, POBICS isBiorisk Intelligence otherwise: Scenarios, Visual Knowledge and new Mechanisms of Surveillance". We have received several papers (all of them so interesting!), and now is moment to revise and to correct them, and then we will send the acceptance/refuse mail.

As the rules of congress says, accepted papers we will show in the track (only abstract), and then we will begin to post here some ideas about our proposals, events and whatever thing related with the congress till their celebration on august and september. (Click here to go to the track webpage of the congress, our track is the number #58).
convinor in one of the track and we was calling for papers in the one called: "

If you have send any paper to our track, keep patience and we hope see you in a few months at the congress!
Photo Credit: Lenore Edman

Jorge Castillo Seminary part II. State, Prehension, Community

What is the state? It is the modern Leviathan Hobbes? The emphasis on results over process and its relationship with neoliberalism. The state does not exist, or at least not previously, but is the result or it appears after certain rationality of how to govern, it is the expression of a correlate of specific political practices (eg, nowadays the sovereign is oneself about itself).

"Whatever-thing" based on evidence: endorsed by using indicators / Approved and supposedly valid, best, obeying certain interests like being economically profitable, etc. In Chile: government based on the evidence (and other countries such as USA).

Government of oneself and neoliberalism in Foucault: Where it fits into the State / Government of Chile currently form ???? We understand and we govern ourselves through and from these indicators given by the government based on the evidence (in this case, about the realm of health), looking for those results of these indicators.

Multiple government: A thing is a product of joining interests. Refers to a assamblage of several processes that make it possible. The human elements are the result of measurement, and the indicators creation. The government is based on objects that affect not only the citizens, but to the very people who create these processes (experts, politicians.

Indicators as creators of realities (eg. The homoparental family emerges on the public policy when the census added a question about same-sex couples with children).

Power as prehension (Whitehead):  Displacement of the social to the community as a place where power is produced by, for example, empowerment (people become active in their own government people, relationship of loyalty and responsibility towards the close ones with whom one's destiny is associated).

Attention focused  on poverty. Policies are developed for certain people, for the government of certain people. People who triumphed govern themselves and they do not need to be governed by another. So you just have to govern the poor through community empowerment through intervention as of government. Power as an accepted and normalized is sought and pretended, but not imposed. Everyday practices are captured by own people in the comunity, from a symmetrical plane.

Therefore, a spread between empowerment and healthcarism occurs, the technical elements mediate and translate the identity of the actors. 

Prehension relations: Reality becomes from the assciation of current entities that prehen and are prehended by others. Undifferentiated materiality. Each prehension has 3 elements: 1) Prehended subject (person, thing that can produce effect), concrete element prehended, captured. 2) the Datum is prehended, perspective of the initial datum, the feel of the datum. 3) Subjectively, how the subject prehends the datum, the effect prehensión

The power in the case explained by Jorge would be understood as a way of prehension. rather than coercion or imposition. Power arises as a result of progressive composition of relations and possibilities. Power emerges as a result of heterogeneous associations.

Photo Credit: Guian Bolisay

Jorge Castillo Seminary part I. Cancer, biopolitics and subjectivation

This week we attended to the Jorge Castillo-Sepúlveda seminary about Govermentality, Biosociality and Biopolitics. Here you can read the first part of our report:

Evidence. Differences between the representational framework vs etymological meaning ( "what is evident, making something in one or more contexts).

Evidence about life:

-Origin of the shown work: Technoscientific scenarios for diseases in Catalonia . Importance of protocols and guidelines. Implications for patients  and experience configuration in the biomedical network.Cancer (object, not just the patient), also takes actions that influence patient decisions (whether they are treated or not, emotions, etc.). Result: The evidence-based medicine sets its own standards of objectivity. Ensambka disease in a new socio-technical grammar.

Medicine based on evidence (MBE) is a medicine based on knowledge and tested diagnostics (the knowledge is valid if it is test internationally in different trials). They are specified in protocols and guidelines. Cambrosio: the objective is included in a guideline or protocol, because it has been well established arbitrarily. The real is that which depends on certain regulations. The MBE changes medicine: it realigns biology and medicine, creating what we know as biomedicine. Health-pathology debate is reconfigured according to the provisions of a number of propositions enrolled in clinical guidelines.

The context is very different between Chile and Catalonia: the neoliberal framework ban medical protocols to be applied because this "cuts" the free exercise of their profession. In addition, it is impossible without the intervention of private companies. Disease in Chile, is what protocols and guidelines grounded in MBE say. Health is to access to minimum benefits and guarantees. The citizen becomes a consumer and he is not a patient anymore. It does not guarantee health, but technology, quality, performance (if it is not proved by evidence it is not collected as health).

Guarantee vs warranty. The first is the formal assurance that certain conditions are met. The second is the written guarantee that promises to replace or repair an item (the person is a body that must be replaced or repaired certain elements). Redefinition of the relationship between public and private. The State does not monitor the health market, but creates his own one, as well that it is powered by State in relation to the allocation of certain rights to citizens.

"GES diseases" (diseases gathered in a protocol by the Chilean State, that are state-funded) are different from "non-ges diseases". Differing modes of access to health systems. The subject of law becomes consumer: the concept of citizenship is redefined. 

Subjectivity (Latour interface, something which registers certain experiences. Connections that an entity of human character learns to register. Agency distributed between humans and non-human (Artur Leal)). Regulations redefine the notion of pathology. Protocols relocate the body and distribute it among many different actors and organizations that register their properties and then invest this knowledge about it. In this moment arise vitality regimes: truths that govern how we manage our own lives and how we meant by ourselves.

Embodiment: incarnate expression of disease. Having a body is the ability to affect and be affected. Corporealization of pathology is the process by which a biomedical proposal establishes certain conditions affecting the person.

Biopolitics to biogubernamentality. Biosociality (forms / social practices arising from a  biological feature, knowledge or concern).

"Ges" as a governmental expression of life through its protocols and the promoting of biosociality. Biogubernamentality, then, rules at the basis on the biomedical strategies, creating biomedical subjects and biomedical forms to understand ourselves. Moreover, beyond the proper sphere of biomedicine and go beyond.

Photo Credit: Eric Gjerde

4S/EASST Deadline for Call for Papers is coming!

As we are announcing from December, the 4S/EASST International STS Congress is Calling for Papers in each one of the accepted tracks. POBICS is convinor in one of them. Remember the title of it is: "Biorisk Intelligence otherwise: Scenarios, Visual Knowledge and new Mechanisms of Surveillance". Until 21st February you can upload papers to the diferent tracks, so if you are interested in bios, threats and surveillance, you can call for our track here with this steps:

• Go to tracks,
• Select the track you would like to submit a paper to and
• Press ‘propose paper’ at the bottom of your chosen track.

As you will se, submission has diferent parts (title, authors, short abstract and big abstract). Here we offer two examples about the short abstract and, and so, you can also see what we will send to the track and what is about our track:

PAPER ONE:

-Paper title: Speed operators in the new epidemics.

-Short Abstract: From the 21^st Century’s arrival, epidemics or virus, and, in general, the bios, has suffered several and important shifts. One of this changes is related with the speed that events happen. We will offer some ideas about the notion of “speed operators” in order to shape this reality.

PAPER TWO:

-Paper title: Epidemics and Images within the new state of exception intelligence 

-Short Abstract: Images have accompanied the social from its origin. In a first moment, images had their own ontological status, but some decades after, text and discourse gaining ground to images and theses last ones was subordinated as a mere illustration or representation of what text said. We want to recover the original sense about images, starting from the latest theories about Visual Culture or Visual Anthropology. 

Photo Credit: Bill Barber

Voices from Chernobyl meeting. Threat and life. Radiation vs Biosecurity

Last week we held a seminary with a diferent kind of reading: Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich. And we say is a diferent reading because this Nobel Prize wrote a periodistic-novel book; and it is distinct from our main readings. 

Nevertheless, we extracted several interesting ideas, comparing our kind of threats (epidemics, virus, etc.) with a catastrophe of this magnitude as Chernobyl was. Here our report:

Why the author says Chernobyl went beyond the Holocaust or Kolyma? Because these horrors are linked to the war (which we already know what happens there), and history (wars give us History). Chernobyl breaks this because it is not linked to war or History: it is something unexpected (although the USSR linked him to war and managed it military). Chernobyl catastrophe and war were linked.

-The Enigma of Chernobyl is that a new regime of life was brought, and all the stories in the book talk about the new limits for life and the danger to life. Chernobyl is a cosmic catastrophe, the first major global catastrophe. It is the origin of the History of threats. Chernobyl expect us to new regimes of the living: every child born has a unique and different deformity: life takes on a varied and multiple topology - the threat to life is also re-defined, therefore Chernobyl opens a new stage (perhaps the 4/5 diagram not said by Deleuze) where not only sees life in new ways, but also its control and their (bio) surveillance.

• How is the threat that Chernobyl brings?
• Is the same catastrophe that threat? The first would aim to past and second to the future.
• Preparedness / Syndromic Observation (active surveillance by lay-people, and circulation of this knowledge) is introduced.
• The radiation is more "invisible" than viruses. There is an ongoing effort to visualize the virus, in contrast to radiation, that is much more difficult to see (we only have Geiger counters and maps of clouds with wind colors).
• Scales are articulated: The structure of life is altered.

-The blast reactor event works as scenario (in our current conception):  future and past are undifferentated, the living and the dead are entangled and they cannot be separated; equally to the far and the near (distant-close ...) are merged, etc.

Photo Credit: Ben Adlard.

New open seminary by Jorge Castillo: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government

Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, our colleague Jorge Castillo, arrived from the Psychology School of the Santiago de Chile's University, will explain some ideas about his current work and research. The title of this seminary is "Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government". The meeting will be in Spanish, from 16:00 to 20:00, and is open to anyone who wants to come (Martín Baró's Room, Social Psychology Department, UAB).

Here we offer a little abstract about the topics and ideas that Jorge will explain:

The seminary is adressed to researchers whose project is related with the concept of bio-governmentality in order to understand the relationships between a) recent political

institutional formations, b) the development of technologies in biomedical knowledge on various socio-economic scenarios, and c) subjective and personal productions. For this, we propose the three thematic approach, each considering a case study:

Table of Contents.

Day 1 social studies of biomedicine.

a) Science, Technology and Society: semiotic approaches to the study of materials biomedical activities .

b) Micropolitics of normality: a case study of cancer in Barcelona.

Day 2. Evidence-based policy and power as prehension.

a) Modernization and political scenarios.

b) Case Study: power and evidence-based policies.

Day 3. Biogovernmetality.

A) From biopolitics to biosociality.

b) Case study: obligation schemes, somatocracy and acceleration in the system Explicit Guarantees in Health from Chile.


Finally, we offer his main milestones as researcher (in Spanish):


Jorge es psicólogo por la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Máster en Investigación en Psicología Social y Doctor en Psicología Social por la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, con la tesis “Oncología y ontología, un análisis semiótico-material del cáncer”, que analiza desde la teoría del actor-red, las implicancias de la articulación de tecnologías y prácticas biomédicas en le redefinición del significado socio-material de la enfermedad. Desde marzo de 2013, se desempeña como Profesor Asistente en la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Sus ámbitos de interés se relacionan con los tipos de gobierno sustentados en procesos de índole biológica, y su relación con prácticas y procedimientos biomédicos. De manera más específica, su labor se ha especializado en realizar descripciones de diagramas biopolíticos y modos contemporáneos de gubernamentalidad.

Actualmente, es investigador principal del proyecto PAI Nº 791220018, relacionado con la 
performatividad de las políticas basadas en la evidencia en Chile, e investigador responsable del proyecto Fondecyt de Iniciación en Investigación Nº 11140590, titulado “Aportes de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología a la comprensión de enfermedades abordadas por la medicina basada en la evidencia: regímenes de subjetivación, corporización y biosocialidad en el GES”, ambos financiados por la Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).

Photo Credit: Shawn Campbell

Some ideas about Zika Virus

El Zika aparece en nuestras vidas cuando habíamos comenzado a olvidar el Ébola, la velocidad con que se propaga hace saltar las alarmas en un tiempo relativamente corto de la OMS y del CDC. Pero, ¿por qué parece ser más peligrosa esta amenaza?, ¿qué es el Zika?, ¿por qué parece ir más veloz que el temido Ébola?, ¿es un nuevo virus o una mutación? Vamos a intentar arrojar un poco de luz ante todo lo vertido en prensa y televisión estos últimos días.  

ZIKA, UN VIEJO CONOCIDO 

El Zika no es un nuevo virus ni es producto de una mutación, es un viejo virus que fue aislado por primera vez en 1947 en el Bosque de Zika (Uganda). 

Pertenece a la categoría de los flavivirus. La primera vez que se aisló fue en un mono de la familia de los rheusus y hasta 1968 no fue aislado en un humano en Nigeria. Los flavivirus son un tipo de virus que se caracterizan por tener una envoltura y cuyo material genético tan solo reside en una cadena de ADN. Biología aparte, podemos encontrar dentro de esta familia algunos virus conocidos, a saber: Dengue, Banzi o Jungra (fiebre amarilla).  

Los informes de la OMS notifican que el primer caso que se dio del Zika fue en 1964 y se han ido produciendo varias epidemias entre el 2007 y 2014 en el continente de África. Hasta hace apenas unos meses se consideraba un virus “poco agresivo” ya que producía una virulencia leve y muy limitada que podía ser tratada sintomatológicamente. 

¿SE TRASMITE SOLO POR LA PICADURA? 

No. Existen otras vías que aunque se argumenta en medios de comunicación que no están “demostradas”, la literatura médica recoge en cuanto a esta familia y que son muy parecidas a las que ya conocemos de otros virus: sangre, fluidos y vía perinatal. Brasil ha confirmado dos casos de trasmisión por vía sanguínea y Dallas el de un caso por vía sexual.

La subestimación del Zika, como virus “poco agresivo”, paralizó los estudios de su virulencia hace ya unos años e ignoró el hecho de que la literatura médica recogiera que este tipo de virus tienen capacidad de ser un vector patógeno emergente que puede extenderse con facilidad. Lo que podemos decir con certeza, y sin que ello se considere una hipérbole, es que no se puede estimar el nivel de virulencia de Zika en estos momentos. El verdadero potencial del virus es totalmente desconocido y es por ello que los sistemas de alerta de salud han hecho saltar las alarmas ante la expansión del Zika.  

MOSQUITO TIGRE, ¿ZIKA CAMUFLADO? 

Esta ha sido otra de las preguntas que ha sembrado la psicosis entre algunos sectores de la población. Algunos zoólogos y biólogos, lanzaron la hipótesis de que el mosquito tigre podría trasmitir el virus, esta afirmación tiene parte de verdad y parte de irrealidad, me explico: 

En España contamos con un familiar del Zika o comúnmente denominado Aedes Aegypti, que es el mosquito tigre. El mosquito tigre pertenece a la familia de los Aedes Albopictus, así que siguiendo la lógica de los expertos, si se podría trasmitir el virus. Pero el asunto es algo más complejo. Existen posibilidades, y esto es una obviedad, pero debemos recordar que aunque estén emparentados por la familia Aedes tienen distinta morfología.  

Este pequeño matiz podría hacer que el mosquito tigre no fuera un buen anfitrión para el virus (como lo es Aedes Aegypti) con lo cual, en caso de que pudiera sobrevivir en este “vector”, la capacidad de virulencia sería mucho menor.

CONTAGIO Y CICLO BIOLÓGICO 

Una vez el virus entra en nuestro cuerpo, su patogénesis, es decir “su fin”, es el de infectar las células dendríticas que estén más próximas al lugar donde se ha producido la inoculación, es decir, la picadura (si esta fuera la vía). 

Si el caso fuera por trasmisión sexual o sanguínea, el virus buscaría llegar al torrente sanguíneo y comenzaría a infectar células. Una vez atacadas las células dendríticas se extendería por los ganglios linfáticos y el torrente sanguíneo. 

La replicación del virus se produce en el citoplasma celular, es decir, el lugar donde se realizan prácticamente todas las reacciones químicas que los seres humanos tenemos. La incubación tiene un periodo aproximado de diez días que una vez finalizados dan paso a la sintomatología clásica: Dolores de cabeza, erupción maculopapular, conjuntivitis, fiebre, malestar general, vómitos, diarreas, etc. 

De no estar en un estado de alerta bien podría pasar por una simple gripe o resfriado. En caso de embarazo, un alto riesgo de que el feto sufra microcefalia, es decir, un crecimiento de la cabeza mucho más pequeño de lo normal.

El diagnostico se realiza con dos pruebas ya conocidas en el HIV o en el mismo Èbola: PCR y ELISA. El clínico en caso de sospecha, demandará también la búsqueda de Rna Viral y anticuerpos para el Dengue, Chikungunya y Ross River, ambos pertenecientes a la misma familia que el Zika. El screening serológico se realiza para estos tres virus además del Zika, porque existe la posibilidad que el mosquito sea portador de estas cepas. 

TRATAMIENTO Y PROFILAXIS  

Es inexistente. Como en el caso del brote de ébola no existe vacuna y tan solo se pueden paliar los síntomas.  La profilaxis o prevención se basaron en un principio en el uso de repelentes de insectos en zonas endémicas y evitar viajar a un país donde existiera el brote, en especial las mujeres embarazadas.

Ante los nuevos acontecimientos y las nuevas formas de trasmisión, prevalecen las anteriores recomendaciones y se le suma el uso de preservativo en las relaciones sexuales. Respecto a la sangre como fluido contagioso se han activado los controles de seguridad en los bancos de sangre y en las donaciones. 

FUTURO 

Como hemos comentado en el artículo es un virus que fue subestimado y del cuál se sabe muy poco. La carrera científica a contrarreloj parar frenar el Zika ha comenzado. 

Cada minuto cuenta en la búsqueda del tratamiento para detener el Zika, de momento contamos tan solo con que el Instituto Pasteur ha sido capaz de secuenciar el genoma completo del Zika, situando su origen en la Polinesia. Otros científicos creen que el virus podría estar vinculado a un aumento de la prevalencia de una enfermedad llamada Guillain-Barre, una enfermedad que a grandes rasgos, cursa con la destrucción del sistema nervioso como respuesta inmune del propio cuerpo. Zika nos muestra un escenario diferente cada día.  

No se han hecho esperar las diferentes opiniones de este nuevo “virus” tanto en redes como en la sociedad, se barajan las ya conocidas teorías conspiranoicas  o las más novedosas que aluden que fue un virus inventado por los Rockefeller. Muchos sectores de población se preguntan si no nos encontramos ante una replica de la gripe aviar y otros afirman que es la “nueva moda de los virus”. Pero, dejando a un lado el imaginario colectivo, el Zika se abandera como sucesor del Ébola en nuestro estrenado 2016. Y a su vez, como un nuevo reto para el aparataje biomédico que tiene que construir su conocimiento a través de la realidad biológica que contempla. 

Realidades y enfermedades que se tornan universales y que trascienden a los contextos sociales, transformando una vez más al ciudadano en centinela de su propia salud. 

 Photo Credit: BBC