Pharma in the bedroom . . . and the kitchen. . . . The pharmaceuticalisation of daily life

This paper examines the consequences of a new emphasis on lifestyle in the production, marketing and consumption of pharmaceuticals. Over the past decade, a range of medicines have become available that address aspects of lifestyle, while others have been the subject of lifestyle marketing. We argue, with recourse to a broad literature from the social sciences, economics and health services research and from our study of pharmaceutical consumption, that two processes can be discerned. First, there is a domestication of pharmaceutical consumption, with drugs available via home computers, and marketing of pharmaceuticals that focuses upon private or personal conditions and addresses domestic activities such as sex and cooking. Secondly, there is a pharmaceuticalisation of everyday life as the pharmaceutical industry introduces profitable medicines for a range of daily activities and pharmaceuticals come to be seen by consumers as a 'magic bullet' to resolve problems of daily life. We suggest that the pharmaceuticalisation of daily life links the economics and politics of pharmaceutical production to the private lives of citizens.     

Violence-related outcomes of the D.A.R.E. plus project.

The objectives of this study were to examine outcomes of the Minnesota D.A.R.E. Plus Project on violence-related behaviors among middle school students and mediation analyses that test how the intervention was effective in reducing physical and verbal violence. Twenty-four schools were randomly assigned to the D.A.R.E. middle school curriculum, the D.A.R.E. Plus multicomponent intervention, or control. The study cohort completed a self-report questionnaire at baseline and two follow-ups. The results showed that boys had higher rates of violence and victimization than girls. The D.A.R.E. Plus program was more effective in preventing violence among boys than among girls. It appears that the small behavioral effect that D.A.R.E. Plus did demonstrate on physical and verbal violence among boys was entirely mediated by a decrease of norms that support violence, an increase in outcome expectancies about being violence-free, and an increase in parental consequences for fighting.     

Proceedings of the 2014 A.S.P.E.N. Research Workshop

The human and earth microbiomes are among the most important biological agents in understanding and preventing disease. Technology is advancing at a fast pace and allowing for high‐resolution analysis of the composition and function of our microbial partners across regions, space, and time. Bioinformaticists and biostatisticians are developing ever more elegant displays to understand the generated megadatasets. A virtual cyberinfrastructure of search engines to cross‐reference the rapidly developing data is emerging in line with technologic advances. Nutrition science will reap the benefits of this new field, and its role in preserving the earth and the humans who inhabit it will become evidently clear. In this report we highlight some of the topics of an A.S.P.E.N.‐sponsored symposium held during Clinical Nutrition Week in 2013 that address the importance of the human microbiome to human health and disease.     

长毛铗蠓和满载铗蠓二新种描述

本文描述了长毛铗蠓满载铗蠓二新种,分别采自四川省犍为县和海南省三亚市。     

L.I.F.E. and D.E.A.T.H

In this short, rhetorical article, I offer a thought experiment that seeks to make an analogy between ‘life’ and ‘disease’. This article was written whilst under the influence of Nietzsche, and I hope that readers will not mistake the polemical style and the occasional nod towards humour for flippancy. This is a serious subject, and this article attempts to ask, inexplicitly, a serious question. If we do suspend our subjective value judgements about life, and strip away what might be considered the ‘dogma’ of value in life, what effect might this have on our feelings towards voluntary euthanasia, and what can our reaction to that thought experiment tell us?