Finding a way between nihilism and romanticism: Some reflections on the practice and politics of the sociology of risk

This editorial argues that aspects of a number of contemporary debates within the sociology of risk, including those concerned with the nature of expert knowledge, the capacity of theory to address practical real-world issues, and the appropriate political stance of the scholar, were pre-figured in helpful and insightful ways in the work of the British medical sociologist Philip M. Strong (1945–1995). The recent publication of a selection of Strong's essays, which had earlier appeared in a disparate range of books and journals, makes a valuable resource available not only to specialist health researchers, but also to the wider risk research community.     

浅谈药品分类管理

我们国家落实对药品的分类管理,来逐步加强处方药的监督管理,规范非处方药的购买过程,改善现有的药品自由销售状况,从而保障人们用药安全有效、科学用药。     

Making schools and young people responsible: a critical analysis of Ireland's obesity strategy

Worldwide reports of an obesity 'epidemic' prompted the Irish government to appoint a multidisciplinary Taskforce, whose report was published in May 2005. This paper critically analyses the report and its recommendations for reducing health risks among families, children and young people. Using a Foucauldian perspective, we question the report's individualizing focus and support for a strategy which responsibilises schools, families and young people and relies on individuals to do 'the right thing'. Specifically, we examine the Taskforce recommendations for the education sector, and identify their dependence upon a discourse of governmentality, under categories of individualization, responsibilization and freedom of choice, participation and techniques for management of the self. We conclude that the report fails to address the multi-faceted and complex nature of obesity, and obscures the social, economic and material realities of the lives of pupils and schools.     

Sex,politics, and personality: A multidimensional study of college students

Two-hundred undergraduate students (100 males, 100 females matched on age and school year) in university dormitories were administered measures of sexual attitude and behavior, individual differences in stimulation seeking, personality, and political orientation (liberal-conservative). Factor analysis using the Harris interpretation strategy was applied to the data. Clear sexuality factors, with generally little contribution of the personality and political-orientation variables, were obtained.     

论农村卫生事业的发展与卫生政治学

卫生工作具有政治性,发展卫生事业必须讲政治。一个国家整个人群的健康不是取决于单个的公民或医生,而是取决于社会制度和社会关系。只有通过政治才能改变社会制度和社会关系。解放后我国农村卫生事业取得了令国际社会赞赏的辉煌成就,根本原因在于中国共产党注重从政治的高度认识并开展农村卫生工作。市场经济条件下,我国农村卫生事业发展遇到了挫折,需要我们重新审视农村卫生与政治的关系,探索建立卫生政治学新学科,为农村卫生工作提供理论指导。     

Truth,belief and the cultural politics of obesity scholarship and public health policy

A number of debates centring on the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ have sprung up in the last 10 years. Although debate is the normal state of affairs in any scientific endeavour, my focus here is on two broad camps we might call ‘alarmists’ and ‘sceptics’. While alarmists have characterised the ‘obesity epidemic’ as a looming global health catastrophe, sceptics have argued that the consequences of rising obesity levels have either been greatly exaggerated or are unclear. In focusing on obesity, my intention is not to prove the case of one camp or the other but rather to construct a kind of anatomy of the obesity controversy. In this essay, I want to move beyond the idea of there being two camps in debates about obesity and provide a more complex account of the different groups that make up both sides. My interest in this research is to explore the idea that belief matters more than truth. In the context of debates about obesity, nothing could be more irrelevant than the ‘truth’ of fatness. The energising principle will be what people, particularly but not only politicians and journalists, can be made to believe.     

Sex, drugs, and politics: the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. While most strains are relatively harmless, some increase a woman's risk of developing cervical cancer. This article explores the intimate, contested relationships among etiologies of cervical cancer, development and use of the new HPV vaccine, and contested notions of sexuality. We particularly focus on shifts in US health care and sexual politics, where the vaccine has animated longstanding concerns about vaccination ( e.g. parental rights, cost, specialisation) and young women's bodies and behaviour. We conclude that vaccines are a distinctive kind of pharmaceutical, invoking notions of contagion and containment, and that politics shape every aspect of the pharmaceutical lifecourse.     

German genes and Turkish traits: Ethnicity,infertility, and reproductive politics in Germany

This ethnographic study uses the lens of ethnic difference to examine the experience of infertility and the cultural politics of belonging in modern Germany. The data are derived from participant observation and interviews conducted with forty-one ethnic Germans and thirty-three German Turks undergoing biomedical treatment for infertility at a fertility clinic in Berlin (1998–2000). Through their illness narratives, men and women symbolically link their loss of biological parenthood to losses in other life arenas, such as gender identity, social status and cultural acceptance. Results reveal that while both German Turks and ethnic Germans experience disruption and social suffering from their inability to conform to procreative norms, German Turkish sufferers exhibit higher levels of distress, which directly relates to their dual stigma as outsiders in both German Turkish culture and mainstream German culture. The findings suggest that the tensions surrounding individual reproductive practices are reflective of larger national tensions regarding the constitution of the body politic in an increasingly multicultural Germany.     

Risk,science and blood: The politics of the haemophilia crisis in Ireland

With Ireland's blood supply compromised in the 1980s, the impact upon its haemophiliac community was unprecedented. Thus far, academic attention has focused on apportioning blame and identifying administrative failure: what the government knew about Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and Hepatitis C; and when the blood supply was compromised. Our task is to explain why the crisis emerged. We maintain it was not an issue of risk management, but risk assessment. Prior to the 1970s, decisions about risk were refracted through government channels (ministers, civil servants and medico-scientific experts, i.e. the realm of the political/legal). By the 1980s, risk assessment/management were separated and Government was predisposed to accept market decisions (the realm of the economic/legal). Here intervention is recognised as legitimate only if a risk is established and, even then, it must be proportionate. A balance must be struck between competing objectives: safety, innovation, cost, competitiveness and free trade. Crucially, this reform precluded a precautionary approach.     

Social media for message testing: a multilevel approach to linking favorable viewer responses with message, producer, and viewer influence on YouTube

To explore the feasibility of social media for message testing, this study connects favorable viewer responses to antismoking videos on YouTube with the videos' message characteristics (message sensation value [MSV] and appeals), producer types, and viewer influences (viewer rating and number of viewers). Through multilevel modeling, a content analysis of 7,561 viewer comments on antismoking videos is linked with a content analysis of 87 antismoking videos. Based on a cognitive response approach, viewer comments are classified and coded as message-oriented thought, video feature-relevant thought, and audience-generated thought. The three mixed logit models indicate that videos with a greater number of viewers consistently increased the odds of favorable viewer responses, while those presenting humor appeals decreased the odds of favorable message-oriented and audience-generated thoughts. Some significant interaction effects show that videos produced by laypeople may hinder favorable viewer responses, while a greater number of viewer comments can work jointly with videos presenting threat appeals to predict favorable viewer responses. Also, for a more accurate understanding of audience responses to the messages, nuance cues should be considered together with message features and viewer influences.     

The legal mandate of drug registration authorities in theory and practice

In the course of this century all industrial nations witnessed a growth in the influence of the state over the individual. Usually, state intervention in private life is justified by the state's mandate to protect the health and security of its constituents, either through general, uniform precepts such as laws or decrees, or through individual arrangements such as licences or subsidies. The principle of state protection has also long been established in the pharmaceutical sector, and entails that regulatory agencies should only approve those drugs for market use, which--according to scientific knowledge--have benefits which outweigh their potential harmful effects. Although 'the state of scientific knowledge' seems to imply that safety decisions concerning drugs are predominantly based on medical, scientific criteria, it is argued in this paper, that regulatory agencies nevertheless have wide discretionary margins, which allow for a political dimension to such decisions. For this reason it is briefly examined how drug authorities react under political pressure, i.e. when a drug has become a public problem. Additionally, the issue is considered why especially so-called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID's) have recently been the focus of controversy in the media. This attention has led to a situation in which it seems that regulatory agencies only accept drugs for market use with zero risk. The paper concludes by recommending that safety decisions of health authorities should involve two expert levels: in order to make precise risk assessments on the scientific level all relevant information about risks and benefits of drugs should be collated, whereas safety decisions should be taken by experts knowledgeable in the field of societal proportions.     

The physician/care provider and politics: life and society viewed from different angles: a cross-cultural issue

PREAMBLE: This article is written by the "Médecin cantonal" (Chief Medical Officer) of the Swiss Canton of Vaud (capital city, Lausanne). Under the Swiss Constitution, responsibility for most health-related issues lies with the Cantons. The "Médecin cantonal" is the medical advisor to the health minister and the cantonal government. His or her traditional role concerned the organisation of health care delivery, such as the distribution of hospitals and licencing of practitioners, as well as health promotion, school health and disaster preparedness. However this has changed considerably in the face of health threats, such as HIV/AIDS and the rise in drug addiction. These bring new and complex challenges, and in particular bioethical concerns. In this personal view the author discusses his experience at this intersection between medicine, health care, the exercise of public authority, politics and civil society. In particular he reflects on how physicians and politicians have different perspectives on the circumstances of collective life.     

Governmentality and risk: setting priorities in the new NHS

The aim of this paper is to explore priority setting issues in the British National Health Service (NHS). It focuses on the changing way in which rationing issues are managed by a sample of English health authorities in the wake of Health Service reforms and the separation of function between purchasing and providing health care. The paper employs the conceptual framework of 'governmentality', associated with the French social theorist Michel Foucault, to analyse this aspect of contemporary British health policy. Governmentality analysis situates social and economic change as reflecting shifts in the 'mentality' of government. The consequence of this new articulation is that the concepts of priority setting and rationing become embedded as dominant discourses and emergent practices within health policy. Equally important is the way in which the perceived shift in the formula of governance also results in a different conceptualisation of the subject of health governance based on the management of individual risk.     

Individual, group and community risk and protective factors for alcohol and drug use among Swedish adolescents

BACKGROUND: A number of factors have been identified that protect adolescents or, alternatively, put them at risk for drug use and other high-risk behaviours. These factors concern different personal and environmental factors, e.g. the community, the school setting, family, peer group and individual characteristics.The aim of the present study was to examine the associations between risk and protective factors and adolescents' use of alcohol and drugs. METHODS: In both May 2003 and 2004, random samples of 4800 adolescents (a total of 9600) in Sweden were contacted and asked to fill out a questionnaire.It concerned use of alcohol and illicit drugs and a large number of adolescent risk and protective factors. A total of 5445 (57%) adolescents agreed to participate. RESULTS: About 44% of the adolescents in grade 9 (15-16 years of age) had been drunk on at least one occasion and nearly 80% of those in grade 11 (17-18 years of age). Almost 15% in grade 9 and 40% in grade 11 had been drinking heavily during the previous month, and 4% in grade 9 and 12% in grade 11 had used cannabis. Strong associations were found between elevated individual, family, school and community risk factors and use of alcohol and drugs. Conversely, protective factors were negatively related to the use of alcohol and drugs. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the importance of risk and protective factors within different domains in explaining alcohol and drug use among adolescents. The results support efforts targeting multiple risk and protective factors in alcohol and drug preventive interventions for adolescents.     

从抗击非典斗争反思卫生与政治的关系

本文从政治角度对非典的爆发流行和我国抗击非典的斗争进行反思，依次论述了：卫生与政治的关系的历史演变过程，非典爆发流行的政治因素和政治影响，抗击非典的斗争及其胜利的政治意义，从抗击非典斗争中汲取政治上的经验教训。人们从中不难看出，在新的形势下卫生与政治的关系的新变化。