'Accept no limits': imaginaries of life, responsibility and biosafety in xenobiology

Researchers in the emerging field of xenobiology aim to explore the non-canonical (or non-natural) biological world through the development of alternative genetic systems and chemistries. This discipline may help us better understand the origin of life, as well as enable the development of biological systems with built-in safety features (biocontainment). The development of xenobiology is assumed to be guided by goals, narratives, imaginaries and visions of possible futures, whose 'opening up' and examination are the central question of this thesis. This thesis combines work in science and technology studies and ‘responsible research and innovation.’ It focuses on the values, assumptions and “sociotechnical imaginaries” that drive the development of xenobiology, in terms of how xenobiologists understand and redefine life, and how they construct promises of biosafety through biocontainment. The thesis’ argument draws on semi-structured interviews with scientists in the fields of synthetic biology and xenobiology. In addition, I conducted a year-long participant observation in a xenobiology laboratory located in London. This thesis argues that two sociotechnical imaginaries lead the development of xenobiology. The first is about redefining life, or “life unbound,” according to which the biological universe is thought to include (or navigate) novel biological worlds. Second, an imaginary of ‘controllable emergence’ accounts for claims of biosafety and governance by containment, a response to the collective imagination of the public who are fearful and concerned about release, and portrays scientists as responsible by pursuing safety. As xenobiologists test the limits of what is biologically possible, they also test the limits of what is socially acceptable. I describe how xenobiologists, in order to justify research in their field, draw on existing legacies of governance, such as the Asilomar Conference, and previous controversies over genetically modified crops. These legacies are still in use because they allow scientists to turn questions about governance into questions about design and science. These assumptions, shared by science funders, help to attract resources and visibility to the field, as well as legitimize the release of genetically modified microorganisms. This thesis concludes by suggesting that xenobiology should be open to uncertainty and frameworks that give up control in exchange for deliberation and reframing of problems as technologies advance, following ideas of real-world experimentation and collective experimentation

Disaster Preparedness for Ebola Virus Disease: Perspective on National Public Health Policies and Case Study of North Carolina and UNC Hospital

The outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa from 2013 to 2015 illustrates the most recent example of the United States' growing need for domestic preparations for emerging infectious diseases. One case of Ebola presenting in the U.S. exposed weaknesses in federal and state level hospital preparations, employee protections, and screening, prevention, and surveillance protocols. In disaster preparedness federal entities such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and key leaders of health care organizations are expected to strike a balance between disseminating timely information to train and protect workers and patients with appropriate resource utilization; a difficult task especially in the current national health care climate that demands value and cost effectiveness. Around the nation hospitals took various approaches for Ebola preparedness, often in a non-systematic or un-regulated manner. Late in the Ebola outbreak, regional tiered response systems called Ebola Treatment Facilities or Centers (hereafter called ETFs) were introduced as a federal policy for the emergency response. This study used interviews with key decision makers or stakeholders from the UNC Health Care System (Chapel Hill, NC) and the Public Health Department of North Carolina to identify key themes in system leaders' thinking about Ebola preparation and also about the opportunity to pursue ETF status. Stakeholders emphasized that the experience of preparing for Ebola was expensive but protecting the public and employees was a priority worth the resources it cost. Ultimately, leaders in North Carolina declined ETF status mostly due to lack of federal planning around the designation and lack of funding at the time. ETF designation did not roll out clearly and went relatively untested as the outbreak overseas declined and screening domestically increased. A triangulation of careful review of the policy documents, interviews with key stakeholders, a survey of health care workers, and a limited systematic review of the literature permits me to conclude that capitalizing on national and local Ebola preparations will require that future federal disease preparedness policy better define the regionalized approach and strengthen local collaboration; promote ongoing training and adaptable communicable disease plans; and provide more and more consistently distributed funding for public health infrastructure and hospital preparedness programs.Master of Public Healt

Advancing One Health:Updated core competencies

International audienceAbstract One Health recognises the interdependence between the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment. With the increasing inclusion of One Health in multiple global health strategies, the One Health workforce must be prepared to protect and sustain the health and well-being of life on the planet. In this paper, a review of past and currently accepted One Health core competencies was conducted, with competence gaps identified. Here, the Network for Ecohealth and One Health (NEOH) propose updated core competencies designed to simplify what can be a complex area, grouping competencies into three main areas of: Skills; Values and Attitudes; and Knowledge and Awareness; with several layers underlying each. These are intentionally applicable to stakeholders from various sectors and across all levels to support capacity-building efforts within the One Health workforce. The updated competencies from NEOH can be used to evaluate and enhance current curricula, create new ones, or inform professional training programs at all levels, including students, university teaching staff, or government officials as well as continual professional development for frontline health practitioners and policy makers. The competencies are aligned with the new definition of One Health developed by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP), and when supported by subjectspecific expertise, will deliver the transformation needed to prevent and respond to complex global challenges. One Health Impact Statement Within a rapidly changing global environment, the need for practitioners competent in integrated approaches to health has increased substantially. Narrow approaches may not only limit opportunities for global and local solutions but, initiatives that do not consider other disciplines or social, economic and cultural contexts, may result in unforeseen and detrimental consequences. In keeping with principles of One Health, the Network for Ecohealth and One Health (NEOH) competencies entail a collaborative effort between multiple disciplines and sectors. They focus on enabling practitioners, from any background, at any level or scale of involvement, to promote and support a transformation to integrated health approaches. The updated competencies can be layered with existing disciplinary competencies and used to evaluate and enhance current education curricula, create new ones, or inform professional training programs at all levels-including for students, teachers and government officials as well as continual professional development for frontline health practitioners and policymakers. The competencies outlined here are applicable to all professionals and disciplines who may contribute to One Health, and are complimentary to, not a replacement for, any discipline-specific competencies. We believe the NEOH competencies meet the need outlined by the Quadripartite’s (Food and Agriculture Organisation, United Nations Environment Programme, World Health Organisation, World Organisation for Animal Health) Joint Plan of Action on One Health which calls for cross-sectoral competencies

Advancing One Health: Updated core competencies

Funding: The author ED received payment from NEOH funds for literature search and manuscript writing for this manuscript equivalent to 10 days of work. No other specific funds were received or used for writing this manuscript.publishersversionpublishe

Advancing One Health: Updated core competencies

One Health recognises the interdependence between the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment. With the increasing inclusion of One Health in multiple global health strategies, the One Health workforce must be prepared to protect and sustain the health and well-being of life on the planet. In this paper, a review of past and currently accepted One Health core competencies was conducted, with competence gaps identified. Here, the Network for Ecohealth and One Health (NEOH) propose updated core competencies designed to simplify what can be a complex area, grouping competencies into three main areas of: Skills; Values and Attitudes; and Knowledge and Awareness; with several layers underlying each. These are intentionally applicable to stakeholders from various sectors and across all levels to support capacity-building efforts within the One Health workforce. The updated competencies from NEOH can be used to evaluate and enhance current curricula, create new ones, or inform professional training programs at all levels, including students, university teaching staff, or government officials as well as continual professional development for frontline health practitioners and policy makers. The competencies are aligned with the new definition of One Health developed by the One Health High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP), and when supported by subjectspecific expertise, will deliver the transformation needed to prevent and respond to complex global challenges

On Media, On Technology, On Life - Interviews with Innovators

The book 'On Media, On Technology, On Life: Interviews with Innovators' features thirteen artist-researchers whose artworks reconfigure the relationships between living bodies, microorganisms, tools, techniques, and institutions to ask new questions of life itself. When encountered for the first time, these are works that seem to challenge a conventional understanding of what artists and scientists do. Through the words of the artists themselves, these interviews explore what it means to spearhead innovative new partnerships able to create work that takes on a life of its own. By posing new questions at the interface between media, technology, and life, the book explores themes such as the life of multi-species bodies, the future of food security in the age of biotechnology, the microbial lives of historic archives, and the biohacker communities of the future. Together, they reveal how we are all actors in this theatre of life innovation

Occupational Health in Academic Research Laboratories: Upstream Factors of Risk

High profile injuries and fatalities in academic research laboratories have placed academic research safety culture in the spotlight. Academic research is a high-cost, high-risk investment of over 75 billion federal dollars in 2018. Three published guidelines and recommendations from American Chemical Society (ACS), National Research Council (NRC) and the American Association for Public Land Grant Universities (APLU) address this issue, as do some peer-reviewed studies, but no studies focus on universal solutions directly related to academia. The working conditions for faculty and staff performing multiple roles in research, instruction, and service can distract from safety oversight. Other challenges include dependence on an unreliable funding source and under-trained student workforce and decentralized training and compliance. The current COVID-19 pandemic has increased involvement of academic research institutions to help investigate the virus, and create and test vaccines. This development further highlights the need to focus on safety culture. The first aim used a scoping literature review and thematic analysis of the ACS, NRC and APLU reports to assess peer-reviewed studies related to safety culture in workplaces analogous to academic research laboratories to identify strategies from other workplaces that could address safety in academia. We found 55 articles related to safety culture from five different work sectors; academia, healthcare, biosafety, high mobility workplaces, and general workforce. We analyzed them using five thematic references from the safety recommendations: leadership, communication, training, ethics and funding. We identified a multi-factored definition of safety culture that includes critical elements of personal safety awareness, the safety climate, and the ethical commitment to safety and compliance. The second aim examined workplace safety interventions applicable to academia through the results of a literature review, investigation reports and tort cases related to incidents in academic research laboratories and government research institutions. We assessed whether recommendations from key safety reports factor into interventions. We found interventions related to ergonomics and total worker health; safety communication skills; checklist-based communication tools, error reporting, and team training. The third aim assessed potential predictors of failures in safety (defined as violations revealed during inspections, and reported injuries, near misses, or other adverse safety outcomes) using data from a large academic research institution. We used longitudinal multivariate regression analysis to estimate independent and joint associations between space usage, federal research funding, and work characteristics of PIs with adverse outcomes, and whether these outcomes differed by laboratory hazard rating. Across all laboratories, amount of laboratory space was consistently associated with higher rates of violations. PIs with non-tenured status differed in their effect on violation rates. In laboratories where PIs shared space, violation rates increased, with the exception of LHR3 laboratories. This dissertation contributes to research on academic safety culture by uniquely analyzing relevant literature and identifying elements useful for application in this context, and by quantitatively examining the various upstream factors of risk for adverse safety outcomes to inform regulatory and policy support for interventions and infrastructural changes in the academic research workplace.PHDEnvironmental Health SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163266/1/bkatrina_1.pd

Strengthening a One Health approach to emerging zoonoses

Given the enormous global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Canada, and manifold other zoonotic pathogen activity, there is a pressing need for a deeper understanding of the human-animal-environment interface and the intersecting biological, ecological, and societal factors contributing to the emergence, spread, and impact of zoonotic diseases. We aim to apply a One Health approach to pressing issues related to emerging zoonoses, and propose a functional framework of interconnected but distinct groups of recommendations around strategy and governance, technical leadership (operations), equity, education and research for a One Health approach and Action Plan for Canada. Change is desperately needed, beginning by reorienting our approach to health and recalibrating our perspectives to restore balance with the natural world in a rapid and sustainable fashion. In Canada, a major paradigm shift in how we think about health is required. All of society must recognize the intrinsic value of all living species and the importance of the health of humans, other animals, and ecosystems to health for all