gwenspage: October 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Flu in Public Health Sphere

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Flu in the Civic Sphere

CLG's "flu oddities" page http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities_shortnews.html, http://www.legitgov.org/flu_oddities.html

ACLU: against post-9/11 law enforcement approaches to pandemic prep
MSEHPA critique http://www.aclu.org/privacy/medical/14857res20020101.html
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/33649prs20080114.html
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf
In addition, a number of specific recommendations are made for a sounder approach to pandemic preparedness that protects health while safeguarding liberty, privacy and democracy. These include the following:
• Stockpiling and ensuring fair and efficient distribution and rationing of vaccines and medication;
• Emphasizing community engagement rather than individual responsibility;
• Protecting minorities and socially disadvantaged individuals from discriminatory rationing schemes for vaccination and treatment or from bearing the burden of coercive health measures;
• Relying wherever possible on voluntary social distancing measures rather than mandatory quarantines;
• Providing counsel and procedural protections to those individuals proposed for detention or travel restrictions;
• Protecting individual privacy in disease surveillance and investigation; and
• Ensuring that public health actors remain accountable for their actions in accordance with the law.

Sunshine Project
critique Spanish flu resurrection http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr091003.html, http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr051005.html

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management:
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: Adaptive Responses to an Evolving Challenge, 2006 http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?context=jhsem&article=1233&date=&mt=MTIyNjM4NTg1Mw==&access_ok_form=Continue
Pandemic Influenza Tabletop Exercises: A Primer for the Classroom and Beyond, 2008 http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?context=jhsem&article=1453&date=&mt=MTIyNjM4NTc3Mw==&access_ok_form=Continue

BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
2007 Children as Bioterrorists http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/laura-h-kahn/children-the-bioterrorists-we-love

2008 Flu unlikely Bt http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-challenges-of-developing-synthetic-pathogens

INFO
case tracking http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.ConfirmedCasesUpdated

individual preparedness
http://www.getpandemicready.org/

BLOGS
on biden and bird flu http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/08/biden_on_bird_flu_1.html

MSEHPA critique http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/MSEHPA_review.htm

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Flu in the Government

US President's National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, 2005
http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza.html

HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan
http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/

GOVERNMENT'S AVIAN FLU PREP SITE: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/
Wild bird surveillance site, 2005 Lieberman CDC: http://www.gains.org/ http://lieberman.senate.gov/documents/bills/051024birdflu.pdf

BIOSENSE http://www.cdc.gov/biosense/

BIOWATCH http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL32152.html#_1_3

Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, 2006
http://www.fas.org/biosecurity/resource/legislation/s3678.htm

GAO Report on Flu vaccines/antivirals, 2007
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0892.pdf

Flu assistance-other countries, 2007, Hse. Rpt. 110-197
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp/attachment/a.pdf?_m=955e8c310a06f8023f337a67aa50a248&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkSA&_md5=006d9306df00a8e428bcefc3e6bc3d4a&ie=a.pdf

USDA's "How to protect your pet from bird flu" http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_health/content/printable_version/ProtectYourPetBird2006.pdf

National Defense University's "Bird flu and you" guide that specifies difference between seasonal flu and pandemic flu, and discusses pets and poultry work, and methods of "social distancing" http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/life_sci/TheBirdFluandyou%20Big%20Final.pdf

CDC Information:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pdf/avianflufacts.pdf

Providing leadership to the National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Task Force, created in May 2005 by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Working with the Association of Public Health Laboratories on training workshops for state laboratories on the use of special laboratory (molecular) techniques to identify H5 viruses.
Working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and others to help states with their pandemic planning efforts.
Working with other agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration, on antiviral stockpile issues.
Working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate influenza H5N1 among people (e.g., in Vietnam) and to provide help in laboratory diagnostics and training to local authorities.
Performing laboratory testing of H5N1 viruses.
Starting a $5.5 million initiative to improve influenza surveillance in Asia.
Holding or taking part in training sessions to improve local capacities to conduct surveillance for possible human cases of H5N1 and to detect influenza A H5 viruses by using laboratory techniques.
Developing and distributing reagent kits to detect the currently circulating influenza A H5N1 viruses.
CDC has developed and is distributing the first FDA approved test for the detection of the H5 viruses that first emerged in Asia in 2003.

Letters-Biosecurity project

Intervening in the Science of Security: a Feminist Perspective on Bioterrorism and Biosecurity

Introduction

The proposed project examines the embeddedness of cultural norms in scientific knowledge production, focusing specifically on how assumptions about gender and race shape the scientific production of biotechnologies for “national security”. The proposed postdoctoral research is an extension of my dissertation work, in which I focused on cultural productions of gender and race in popular scientific discourse pertaining to post-9/11 “biosecurity”.

After 9/11, the U.S. government refocused “national security” policies with new fervor into an official “global war on terror”. Biotechnology in particular has played an important role in operationalizing new forms of surveillance and security. In the post-9/11 U.S. securitized politic, efforts to protect against “bioterrorism” diseases—diseases such as anthrax and smallpox recently defined as potentially of use to the would-be “bioterrorist”— focused on increasing laboratory security procedures on the one hand and research into these diseases and their technological “countermeasures” on the other. While there has been a fair amount of scholarship from scholars in the medical humanities and social sciences on the consequences and ethics of the new technologies and laboratory regulations enacted to protect against “bioterrorism” (McBride 2002; King 2003; Guillemin 2004; Rabinow 2004; Lakoff and Collier 2008), none of these examine the issues from a feminist science studies perspective focusing on the central roles of gender and race. Mainstream bioethics concerns have focused mainly on privacy issues raised by the use of surveillance technologies and biological research laboratory regulations enacted to protect against “bioterrorism”. Even more striking than the minimal attention to how assumptions about gender and race are embedded in laboratory security procedures is the complete absence of any scholarship on how they shape the research and development of “bioterrorism” disease countermeasures.

The proposed research aims to examine how assumptions about gender and race constitute the very scientific theories and models upon which the research and development of “bioterrorism” countermeasures are based. I approached the study of scientific discourse as constituted by media, culture and other features of social and historical context as much as by practices occurring in the circumscribed realm of science proper. Through a feminist science studies lens, I will examine questions of how broader cultural ideas about the normative disease carrier--both the notion of the "Middle Eastern bioterrorist" and the trope of "women and children" victimized by disease embedded in the scientific production of “bioterrorism” countermeasures. I will utilize primary scientific literature and popular media coverage of the scientific research and technology production, engaging in textual analysis of the language, methods, and stated purposes of the countermeasures in achieving what has come to be known as “biosecurity”.

Letters-feminist science studies letter

Feminist science studies cover letter--

I am writing to express my interest in the tenure-track position in History of Science and WGS, which was advertised on the STSGRAD website. I was this past June awarded a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from UCLA. My scholarship on gender and race in science and medicine make me a strong candidate for this position.

I seek an academic position that will allow me to continue studying contemporary formations of gender and race in scientific discourses of disease. I approach the study of scientific discourse through an interdisciplinary lens, as constituted by media, culture and other features of social and historical context as much as by practices occurring in the circumscribed realm of science proper. My first research project concerned the intersecting discourses of science and Orientalism represented by the U.S. mass media in its coverage of SARS and China. I demonstrated the ways in which Orientalism shaped U.S. understandings of SARS epidemiology and of Chinese norms of gender and hygiene, and resulted in the notion of a diseased transnational Chinese Other. This work resulted in a publication titled “Chinese chickens, ducks, pigs and humans, and the Technoscientific Discourses of Global U.S. Empire” (enclosed).

In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examined the role of gender and race in discourses of "biosecurity" and practices of disease control in the post-9/11 U.S. The post-9/11 era has been characterized by heightened attention to “national security”, and the spectre of “bioterrorism” has shaped the disease scares that occurred in rapid succession following the September 11 attacks in the U.S. —the anthrax scare immediately after, the smallpox scare in 2002, SARS in 2003 and “bird flu” in 2004. Through a multi-sited analysis of textual sources including mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I examined the ways in which these bioterrorism-inflected disease scares invoked racialized representations of disease threats and gendered measures of "biosecurity".

My research illustrated that, in the backdrop of U.S. imperialist politics, women were discursively deployed as alternately health guardians of the U.S. nation and signifiers of a feminized white society vulnerable to "biological threats" presumed to emanate from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asians (intentionality is associated with the former case, un-intentionality with the latter). I demonstrated how these disease representations played a role not only in the enlistment of women as healthcare workers into an emerging biodefense apparatus and the Othering of racialized groups, but also in the instantiation of neoconservative measures of disease control under the rubric of “biosecurity”, such as the militarization of biomedical science and the securitization of public health. Drawing heavily on feminist and postcolonial theory, and cultural studies of science and medicine, this multi-sited cultural history contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of healthcare during the post-9/11 period in the U.S. This research was funded by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures.

For my next research project, I am interested in focusing primarily on the domain of science in order to examine the embeddedness of cultural norms in scientific knowledge production. More specifically, I wish to study how assumptions about gender and race constitute the very scientific theories and models upon which the research and development of “bioterrorism” countermeasures are based. I will utilize primary scientific literature and popular media coverage of the scientific research and technology production, engaging in textual analysis of the language, methods, and stated purposes of the countermeasures for achieving “biosecurity”.

I am particularly excited about the prospect of teaching students in women, gender and sexuality studies as well as history of science. I have teaching interests as well as experience in both introductory and upper-level Women's Studies courses that emphasize feminist activism, intersectionality, and global contexts. I have taught “Introduction to Women’s Studies” three times at a two-year college and worked as a teaching assistant for two years at UCLA. In spring 2007, I designed and taught a course to rave reviews titled “Feminist Studies of Science and Technology” which focused on gender, race, sexuality, class and imperialism in relation to science and technology (enclosed).

In addition to a desire to continue teaching science studies and introductory women’s studies courses, I am interested in teaching courses on the history of race and disease, empire and medicine, women's health, feminist cultural theories and methods, transnational feminisms, women in transnational perspective, and the history of U.S. women of color. I am passionate about teaching and am dedicated to empowering creative, socially-aware, and independent thinkers. In a nurturing classroom environment, I encourage students to undertake the learning process through the lens of their own experiences and as critically engaged participants. I attempt to demystify knowledge production and authority figures by encouraging students to view themselves as capable of contributing and asserting knowledge rather than as passive learners. My pedagogical strategies consist of a participatory instruction style, diverse course content, and situated knowledge practices.

My skills and experience in curriculum development, administrative departmental committee service, as well as my community service are also attributes I would contribute to the department. As a member of the UCLA Women’s Studies graduate curriculum committee, I spearheaded a revamping of the required two-course graduate series on feminist theory in order to move away from Eurocentric paradigms towards a more intersectional, globally-contextualized framework. I also served as graduate representative on the UCLA Women’s Studies faculty advisory committee, as a student member of the UC Migrating Epistemologies Working Group, and co-founded the student group “Women in the World”, which put on plays and other cultural programs to reach a wider UCLA audience. I welcome this wonderful opportunity to continue working in my field of specialization and contribute to the department of history of science and program in women, gender and sexuality. The interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research environment would be ideal to nurture and support my scholarly development.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

gwenspage

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Flu in Public Health Sphere

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Flu in the Civic Sphere

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Flu in the Government

Letters-Biosecurity project

Letters-feminist science studies letter

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