Emerging infectious diseases: coping with uncertainty

The world’s scientific community must be in a state of constant readiness to address the threat posed by newly emerging infectious diseases. Whether the disease in question is SARS in humans or BSE in animals, scientists must be able to put into action various disease containment measures when everything from the causative pathogen to route(s) of transmission is essentially uncertain. A robust epistemic framework, which will inform decision-making, is required under such conditions of uncertainty. I will argue that this framework should have reasoning at its centre and, specifically, that forms of reasoning beyond deduction and induction should be countenanced by scientists who are confronted with emerging infectious diseases. In previous articles, I have presented a case for treating certain so-called traditional informal fallacies as rationally acceptable forms of argument that can facilitate scientific inquiry when little is known about an emerging disease. In this paper, I want to extend that analysis by highlighting the unique features of these arguments that makes them specially adapted to cope with conditions of uncertainty. Of course, such a view of the informal fallacies must at least be consistent with the reasoning practices of scientists, and particularly those scientists (viz. epidemiologists) whose task it is to track and respond to newly emerging infectious diseases. To this end, I draw upon examples of scientific reasoning from the UK’s BSE crisis, a crisis that posed a significant threat to both human and animal health

Emerging infectious diseases in Hong Kong.

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Social Inequalities and Emerging Infectious Diseases

Although many who study emerging infections subscribe to social-production-of-disease theories, few have examined the contribution of social inequalities to disease emergence. Yet such inequalities have powerfully sculpted not only the distribution of infectious diseases, but also the course of disease in those affected. Outbreaks of Ebola, AIDS, and tuberculosis suggest that models of disease emergence need to be dynamic, systemic, and critical. Such models--which strive to incorporate change and complexity, and are global yet alive to local variation--are critical of facile claims of causality, particularly those that scant the pathogenic roles of social inequalities. Critical perspectives on emerging infections ask how large-scale social forces influence unequally positioned individuals in increasingly interconnected populations; a critical epistemology of emerging infectious diseases asks what features of disease emergence are obscured by dominant analytic frameworks. Research questions stemming from such a reexamination of disease emergence would demand close collaboration between basic scientists, clinicians, and the social scientists and epidemiologists who adopt such perspectives

Emerging Challenges and Opportunities in Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

Much of the intellectual tradition of modern epidemiology stems from efforts to understand and combat chronic diseases persisting through the 20th century epidemiologic transition of countries such as the United States and United Kingdom. After decades of relative obscurity, infectious disease epidemiology has undergone an intellectual rebirth in recent years amid increasing recognition of the threat posed by both new and familiar pathogens. Here, we review the emerging coalescence of infectious disease epidemiology around a core set of study designs and statistical methods bearing little resemblance to the chronic disease epidemiology toolkit. We offer our outlook on challenges and opportunities facing the field, including the integration of novel molecular and digital information sources into disease surveillance, the assimilation of such data into models of pathogen spread, and the increasing contribution of models to public health practice. We next consider emerging paradigms in causal inference for infectious diseases, ranging from approaches to evaluating vaccines and antimicrobial therapies to the task of ascribing clinical syndromes to etiologic microorganisms, an age-old problem transformed by our increasing ability to characterize human-associated microbiota. These areas represent an increasingly important component of epidemiology training programs for future generations of researchers and practitioners

Exploring Risk Perceptions of Emerging Infectious Diseases

This thesis is about risk perception of infectious diseases, with a special focus on the emerging infections SARS and avian influenza, and explores potential determinants of risk perception and the relation of risk perception with precautionary behaviours. In this first chapter I discuss the context of emerging diseases, the theoretical framework, relevant studies on risk perception and infectious diseases, and the research questions addressed in this thesis

Representations of SARS in the UK newspapers

In the Spring of 2003, there was a huge interest in the global news media following the emergence of a new infectious disease: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). This study examines how this novel disease threat was depicted in the UK newspapers, using social representations theory and in particular existing work on social representations of HIV/AIDS and Ebola to analyse the meanings of the epidemic. It investigates the way that SARS was presented as a dangerous threat to the UK public, whilst almost immediately the threat was said to be ‘contained’ using the mechanism of ‘othering’: SARS was said to be unlikely to personally affect the UK reader because the Chinese were so different to ‘us’; so ‘other’. In this sense, the SARS scare, despite the remarkable speed with which it was played out in the modern global news media, resonates with the meanings attributed to other epidemics of infectious diseases throughout history. Yet this study also highlights a number of differences in the social representations of SARS compared with earlier epidemics. In particular, this study examines the phenomena of ‘emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases’ over the past 30 or so years and suggests that these have impacted on the faith once widely held that Western biomedicine could ‘conquer’ infectious disease

Emerging infectious diseases

Emerging Infectious Diseases is providing access to these abstracts on behalf of the ICEID 2012 program committee (www.iceid.org), which performed peer review. Emerging Infectious Diseases has not edited or proofread these materials and is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions. All information is subject to change. Comments and corrections should be brought to the attention of the authors.Influenza preparedness: lessons learned -- Policy implications and infectious diseases -- Improving preparedness for infectious diseases -- New or rapid diagnostics -- Foodborne and waterborne infections -- Effective and sustainable surveillance platforms -- Healthcare-associated infections -- Molecular epidemiology -- Antimicrobial resistance -- Tropical infections and parasitic diseases -- H1N1 influenza -- Risk Assessment -- Laboratory Support -- Zoonotic and Animal Diseases -- Viral Hepatitis -- E1. Zoonotic and animal diseases -- E2. Vaccine issues -- E3. H1N1 influenza -- E4. Novel surveillance systems -- E5. Antimicrobial resistance -- E6. Late-breakers I -- Antimicrobial resistance -- Influenza preparedness: lessons learned -- Zoonotic and animal diseases -- Improving preparedness for infectious diseases -- Laboratory support -- Early warning systems -- H1N1 influenza -- Policy implications and infectious diseases -- Modeling -- Molecular epidemiology -- Novel surveillance systems -- Tropical infections and parasitic diseases -- Strengthening public health systems -- Immigrant and refugee health -- Foodborne and waterborne infections -- Healthcare-associated infections -- Foodborne and waterborne infections -- New or rapid diagnostics -- Improving global health equity for infectious diseases -- Vulnerable populations -- Novel agents of public health importance -- Influenza preparedness: lessons learned -- Molecular epidemiology -- Zoonotic and animal diseases -- Vaccine-preventable diseases -- Outbreak investigation: lab and epi response -- H1N1 influenza -- laboratory support -- effective and sustainable surveillance platforms -- new vaccines -- vector-borne diseases and climate change -- travelers' health -- J1. Vectorborne diseases and climate change -- J2. Policy implications and infectious diseases -- J3. Influenza preparedness: lessons learned -- J4. Effective and sustainable surveillance platforms -- J5. Outbreak investigation: lab and epi response I -- J6. Late-breakers II -- Strengthening public health systems -- Bacterial/viral coinfections -- H1N1 influenza -- Novel agents of public health importance -- Foodborne and waterborne infections -- New challenges for old vaccines -- Vectorborne diseases and climate change -- Novel surveillance systems -- Geographic information systems (GIS) -- Improving global health equity for infectious diseases -- Vaccine preventable diseases -- Vulnerable populations -- Laboratory support -- Prevention challenges for respiratory diseases -- Zoonotic and animal diseases -- Outbreak investigation: lab and epi response -- Vectorborne diseases and climate change -- Outbreak investigation: lab and epi response -- Laboratory proficiency testing/quality assurance -- Effective and sustainable surveillance platforms -- Sexually transmitted diseases -- H1N1 influenza -- Surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases -- Foodborne and waterborne infections -- Role of health communication -- Emerging opportunistic infections -- Host and microbial genetics -- Respiratory infections in special populations -- Zoonotic and animal diseases -- Laboratory support -- Antimicrobial resistance -- Vulnerable populations -- Global vaccine initiatives -- Tuberculosis -- Prevention challenges for respiratory diseases -- Infectious causes of chronic diseases -- O1. Outbreak investigation: lab and epi response II -- O2. Prevention challenges for respiratory diseases -- O3. Populations at high risk for infectious diseases -- O4. Foodborne and waterborne infections -- O5. Laboratory support: surveillance and monitoring infections -- O6. Late-breakers IIIAbstracts published in advance of the conference