Biotech Week 5

What is communicable and noncommunicable disease?

What is communicable and noncommunicable disease?

1. Communicable

   1. Caused by bacteria, fungi, virus

2. Non communicable

   1. stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cardiovascular, respiratory, cancer

What are some root causes of Non-communicable diseases?

1. Causes: physical activity, alcohol abuse, tobacco, unhealthy diet

2. Causes: economic poverty, pesticide and flame retardant exposure

Types and Examples of Stresses

1. External 

   1. Job, bills, pollution, relationship

2. Internal

   1. Lack of sleep, fear, poor nutrition

3. Internal and external stress lead to allostatic load (anxiety and depression), which eventually lead to disease

What is the definition of communicable (medical vs semiotic)?

1. Medical: dicriptors of diseases

2. Semiotic: descriptor of a health message that effectively promotes an audience

What are the possible origins of COVID?

1. Lab leak

2. Endowing a flu, SARS virus endemic t birds with enhanced pathogenicity in humans

Herd immunity

resistance to the spread of illnesses in the population occurs when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals are protected (vaccinated)

• Social “herd immunity”: resistance to the spread of poor health in the population occurs when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals, across all racial, ethnic, and social class groups, are protected from and thus “immune” to negative social determinants

Pre Existing conditions

Similar to health disparities; specific disproportionate burdens on health, sometimes measurable (though not always); includes documented risks of disease, death,, illness, disability, exposure found in specific portions of a population

Necropolitics

Social Determinants of Health

race, gender, etc

Health Disparities

illness, disability

What is the social life of a virus?

• A way of viewing disease and pandemics in a more holistic, social, and societal way as opposed to pure biological occurrences devoid of larger context

Learn to critically analyze objects & technologies as primary source materials

• Consider historical context (when and why a technology/object was made

• Significance of object (controversies surrounding technologies and perspectives changing over time; cultural, economic, legal, political, and historical aspects

• Production and producers (involvement in making and designing, and preparing; who took a part in object’s production)

• Socio-cultural factors/intersectionality (aspects of identity or socio-political experience that are evoked or challenged through technology/object)

True or False: Technologies shape us as much as we shape them.

True

Name & briefly define various theories of COVID’s origins and their
differences in emotional impact to serve particular ends

1. zoonotic spillover - promotes leaving nature alone, reducing exposure to other potential virus

2. Lab Leak - fortifies lab safety

3. Deliberate -

Explain the meaning behind Grandia calling herself “thrice a canary.”
How does her tale of chemical exposures differ or expand upon
O’Rourke’s concept of allostatic load?

• having multiples illnesses at once

Vaccine hesitancy may have many different origins. Compare the idea that vaccine hesitancy derives from an extra precautionary consumerism (Dr. Panofsky’s slides) and the idea that vaccine hesitancy derives from the US healthcare system’s delivering non-affectionate, stigmatizing, expensive or dehumanizing care. Are these origins incompatible?

In noncommunicable disease messaging, recognize when roots/origins elicit or require responses that are from only a “me” (neoliberal model) or requires a “we” (collective, or governmental regulation)

allostatic load

weight of wear and tear on body as it tries to maintain homeostasis

Upstream factors

are social determinants of health that play a role in determining
population wide health outcomes through mechanisms like policy or social inequity

True or False: Social determinants of health can be upstream but could also be downstream

True

True or False: innovation systems express values in both what they emphasize and ignore

True

Acute Covid vs Long Covid

Acute - (which presented more severely in men than women) may be a 2 week up to < 3 month illness

Long Covid - not necessarily linked to an intense initial infection, but contracting the virus (even with mild presentation) leads to
lingering symptoms, e.g. “shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain, fatigue, and/or brain fog” (247)

Healing-oriented Moral Practice:

each Body-Mind is Unique determined by local conditions aka Terroir, focus on holistic care, mind-body connection, allows for uniqueness of illness and uncertainty of cure

Diagnosis-oriented science:

focused on discernible, and replicable, test results, doctor as the true expert, identify disease causing agent and deal with it

What are the “seed” and “soil” metaphors O’Rourke uses to explain her narrative of changing views of illness and the body?

Seed - Built on Germ Theory of disease where illnesses have singular biological cause

• diagnosis orientated

Soil - It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of a disease a person has