Secret History: Return of the Black Death Channel 4, 7-8pm In 1348 the Black Death swept through London, killing people within days of the appearance of their first symptoms. Exactly how many died, and why, has long been a mystery. This Secret History documentary follows experts as they pick through the evidence and reveal why the plague killed on such a scale. And they ask, what might be coming next?

Medscape

Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace

The politics of life itself Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

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Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development

Funding information: FP7 Security, Grant/Award Number: SurPRISE (Surveillance, Privacy, Security) Grant A.

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Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries

The first birth from a donated egg was reported in Australia in 1984, ushering in a new era of possibilities for the treatment of infertility (1). Since then egg donation has undergone a number of technical, regulatory and commercial transformations. Its use by a growing and diverse range of social groups and more recently the dawn of advanced freezing technologies, have reconfigured the process. Given the transformation in its organisation and practice, there is a pressing need to map these changes in finer detail and to ask critical questions about the continued fit of existing policy and regulation in this rapidly developing landscape of fertility medicine. In this paper we present a ‘critical reflection’ (2) on developing practices in egg donation, which we suggest are reshaping the character of egg donation as well as raising questions regarding their implications for policy. We highlight a number of policy ‘blind-spots’ relating specifically to information giving and informed consent for egg providers, the emergence and entry of a range of intermediaries and a shift towards certain practices which may see eggs increasingly treated as tradable commodities. We call for a re-contextualising of the debate on egg donation and for renewed attention to the new political economy of egg donation in Europe.

Reframing egg donation in Europe: new regulatory challenges for a shifting landscape

This article investigates the normative and procedural criteria adopted by European citizens to assess the acceptability of surveillance-oriented security technologies. It draws on qualitative data...

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Beyond the security paradox: Ten criteria for a socially informed security policy:

Los sistemas reguladores que controlan la reproduccion con la participacion de terceros determinan el modo en que las personas que donan materiales y trabajo reproductivos –ovulos, esperma y servicios de gestacion subrogada– son escogidas y compensadas. Estados Unidos y Espana tienen regulaciones muy diferentes en lo que concierne a la reproduccion con terceros, pero ambos son lideres mundiales en la prestacion de tratamientos de fertilidad con donantes de ovulos. En este trabajo, analizamos el modo en que dos diferencias fundamentales entre estos sistemas –como son escogidas y como son compensadas las donantes– influyen en el mercado mas amplio de los ovulos humanos, asi como las implicaciones que esto tiene para las mujeres proveedoras. Apoyandonos en entrevistas y en el trabajo de campo realizado en Estados Unidos y en Espana, este articulo compara como la donacion de ovulos compensada opera en un sistema publico/privado regulado (Espana) frente al modo en que lo hace en un sistema medico no regulado de libre mercado (Estados Unidos). Exploramos como las diferentes bioeconomias reproductivas influyen en la mayor biodisponibilidad de unas mujeres sobre otras en el mercado de los ovulos humanos. Finalmente, hipotetizamos que los avances en las tecnologias de crioconservacion de ovulos –y, por ende, el incremento del almacenamiento de ovulos en bancos– puede fomentar una cultura del consumo de los cuidados de la fertilidad en ambos paises.

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Las bioeconomías de la provisión de óvulos en Estados Unidos y en España: una comparación de los mercados médicos y las implicaciones en la atención a las donantes

BackgroundOver the past 20 years, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have raised enormous expectations, passionate political controversies and an ongoing debate on how these technologies should be assessed. Current risk assessment procedures generally assess GMOs in terms of their potential risk of negatively affecting human health and the environment. Can this risk-benefit approach deliver a robust assessment of GMOs? In this paper, we question the validity of current risk assessment from both a social and an ecological perspective, and we elaborate an alternative approach, namely in-context trajectory evaluation. This paper combines frame analysis, context analysis and ecosocial analysis to three different case studies.ResultsApplying frame analysis to Syngenta's recent campaign 'Bring plant potential to life', we first de-construct the technosocial imaginaries driving GMOs innovation, showing how the latter endorses the technological fix of socioeconomic problems whilst reinforcing the neoliberal sociopolitical paradigm. Applying context analysis to biopharming in New Zealand, we then explore local practices and knowledge, showing that particularities of context typically omitted from risk assessment processes play a key role in determining both the risks and the potential benefits of a technology. Finally, drawing from the Italian case, we outline through ecosocial analysis how the lack of long-term studies, further aggravated by current methodological deficiencies, prevent risk assessment from considering not only how GMOs affect the environmental context but also, and most importantly, the way people live in, and interact with, this context.ConclusionIncorporating frame analysis, context analysis and ecosocial analysis, in the form of in-context trajectory evaluation, into the assessment of GMOs can improve the social compatibility, political accountability and ecological sustainability of its outcomes.

Vincenzo Pavone

Papers

Institutional trustworthiness and national security governance: Evidence from six European countries

Reframing egg donation in Europe: new regulatory challenges for a shifting landscape

Beyond the security paradox: Ten criteria for a socially informed security policy:

Las bioeconomías de la provisión de óvulos en Estados Unidos y en España: una comparación de los mercados médicos y las implicaciones en la atención a las donantes

From risk assessment to in-context trajectory evaluation. GMOs and their social implications