CRISPR Technology explained by Dr. Martínez Mojica

El impacto de la tecnología CRISPR en biomedicina.

Sesión científica celebrada en la sede de la Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de les Illes Balears el 9 de julio de 2019 a cargo del profesor Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica, microbiólogo, investigador y profesor español titular del Departamento de Fisiología, Genética y Microbiología de la Universidad de Alicante.

The narrative of pandemics

Pandemics, Publics, and Narrative

This is a book that explains the lived experience of general publics affected by the 2009 swine flu pandemic, establishes an interesting narrative approach to health communications and public health. Good read for nowadays.

In what follows we draw out three key lessons for public engagement with pandemic threats: persuasion narrative and its implications; how individuals addressed themselves to biopolitical citizenship in light of the 2009 pandemic, and; biopolitical metaphors— contagion and immunity— and their association with embodied individualism. We also consider a more general question of what our research suggests for the turn to narrative in public health with reference to the global nature of pandemics.

Just like now.

The transformative power of a pandemic

Humanitarian Economics
War, Disaster and the Global Aid Market

From the chapter of Disaster Economics

Referring to the notion of creative destruction developed by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in the mid-twentieth century,several scholars argue that disasters stimulate economic growth in the long run. Disaster precipitates the destruction of the old and thus makes way for the new faster than would otherwise be the case (see Chapter 7 on the transformative power of disasters). Based on a Schumpeterian model of endogenous growth, Aghion and Howitt find that disaster accelerates capital replacement
associated with technological change, which increases productivity and generates a positive economic impact. Under endogenous growth theory, the destruction brought about by disasters can be seen as a form of accelerated capital depreciation that leads to the rapid adoption of new technology and infrastructure upgrading, which increases productivity. This is part of the theoretical foundations behind building back better (BBB).

We still don't know if this will be the case with our pandemic.
These are the remaining chapters.

Introduction
1.Reason, Emotion and Compassion
2.The Humanitarian Market
3.War Economics
4.Terrorism Economics
5.Disaster Economics
6.Survival Economics
7.The Transformative Power of Humanitarian Crises 

Stop covid with CRISPR Diagnostics

With Crispr, a Possible Quick Test for the Coronavirus

Sherlock's quick, CRISPR-based coronavirus test gets emergency nod

STOP COVID

Point-of-care testing for COVID-19 using SHERLOCK diagnostics

Great!

The FDA granted its first emergency authorization for a CRISPR-based test for COVID-19, developed by Sherlock Biosciences, designed to turn results around in about an hour compared to the four to six hours needed for other molecular diagnostics.
The test is based on the company’s namesake technology, SHERLOCK, short for Specific High-sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter unLOCKing, a Cas13a-based CRISPR system that targets RNA rather than DNA. It looks for an RNA sequence specific to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in patient samples taken from the upper airways with a swab or from airways in the lungs known as bronchoalveolar washing.
“If it’s there, it attaches to the Cas13 enzyme and activates it, which leads to the chewing up and cleaving of RNA probes,” Sherlock CEO Rahul Dhanda told FierceMedTech. When cleaved, those RNA molecules release a fluorescent signal to show the virus is present.

Gates on the pandemic

Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?

Bill Gates says in NEJM:

The long-term challenge — improving our ability to respond to outbreaks — isn’t new. global health experts have been saying for years that another pandemic whose speed and severity rivaled those of the 1918 influenza epidemic was a matter not of if but of when. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed substantial resources in recent years to helping the world prepare for such a scenario.

Finally, governments and industry will need to come to an agreement: during a pandemic, vaccines and antivirals can’t simply be sold to the highest bidder. They should be available and affordable for people who are at the heart of the outbreak and in greatest need. Not only is such distribution the right thing to do, it’s also the right strategy for short-circuiting transmission and preventing future pandemics. These are the actions that leaders should be taking now. There is no time to waste.

Edward Hopper 

Paying providers and adjusting for quality and performance

Payment Methods and Benefit Designs: How They Work and How They Work Together to Improve Health Care

Value-Based Provider Payment Initiatives Combining Global Payments With Explicit Quality Incentives: A Systematic Review

Figure 1. Core components and associated design features of a VBP model combining global base payments with explicit quality incentives.

In the coming years, VBP models stimulating value in a broad sense will likely continue to gain ground, as the quest toward VBHC proceeds. This article demonstrates that VBP models consisting of global base payments combined with explicit quality incentives are operationalized in practice in various ways. In addition, our results show that this particular VBP model has the potential to improve value and contribute to VBHC. Going forward, this article may serve as inspirational material for those interested in developing new or improving on existing VBP models.

Behavioral contagion

Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work

So much has been written on behavioral economics and nudging, and I always think about the implications. Robert Frank in his new book provides new insights to understand the behavioral contagion among all of us. He says:

The argument I will defend in this book, implicit in several of the examples already discussed, is summarized in the following seven premises:
1. Context shapes our choices to a far greater extent than many people consciously realize.
2. The influence of context is sometimes positive (as when people become more likely to exercise regularly and eat sensibly if they live in communities where most of their neighbors do likewise).
3. Other times, the influence of context is negative (as when people who live amidst smokers become more likely to smoke, or when neighboring business owners erect ugly signs).
4. The contexts that shape our choices are themselves the collective result of the individual choices we make.
5. But because each individual choice has only a negligible effect on those contexts, rational, self-interested individuals typically ignore the feedback loops described in premise 4.
6. We could often achieve better outcomes by taking collective steps to encourage choices that promote beneficial contexts and discourage harmful ones.
7. To promote better environments, taxation is often more effective and less intrusive than regulation.

Among behavioral scientists, the first five of these premises are completely uncontroversial. It is only 6 and 7 that provoke disagreement. Regarding 6, even when everyone acknowledges that behavioral contagion causes harm, as in the smoking example, it is often hard to reach consensus on collective actions that would modify the contexts that shape our actions. In part, the difficulty is that individual incentives and collective incentives often diverge so sharply. But objections to premise 6 are also rooted in the long American tradition of hostility toward regulations generally. Nor can there be any presumption that regulation always improves matters. Markets sometimes fail to deliver optimal results, but government interventions are also imperfect. Premise 7 is controversial simply because many people dislike being taxed. Yet a moment’s reflection reveals that the only interesting questions in this domain concern not whether we should tax but rather which things we should tax and at what rates. Whether you’re a small-government conservative or an expansive progressive, tax revenue is necessary to pay for valued public services.

A must read. The book has clear messages for professionalism in Medicine and for pandemics.