Biotech Flashcards
Did the number of women doctorates awarded annually increase between 1920 and 1970?
No
What are five characteristics of technoscience?
-Large teams of collaborators from several disciplines (administrators accountants, scientists,
-Goal oriented
-Cross-institutional collaboration
-International collaboration due to specialized resources and knowledge-base
-cutting edge technology and science
What would be humanity’s oldest technological system?
Biotechnology in the form of agriculture
What were the environmental consequences of early human agriculture?
May have forestalled a new ice age
Genetic engineering is a new tool which does similar things as…?
Selective breeding
Did women generally. make it in the technological and scientific professions?
Not really
How did the Geodimeter Model 6 include women in the advertising?
The selling point was that the product was designed so that even women could use it. you could then pick your assistant for their looks
What was the state of late 19th century biotechnology?
Development of vaccines, elucidation of diseases and parasitic relationships, isolation of some biologically active substances and the definition of the laws of genetics by Mendel
How did the improvement of public health alter the role of women?
It freed them from duties of home care
What was the state of biotechnology by the second half of the 20th century?
Genetic code was decoded and new classes of drugs were discovered
The success of penicillin did what for drugs?
Raised hopes of drugs that would be magic bullets capable of vanquishing disease without fail
The FDA had how many professionals employed in 1958?
Three full-time physicians and four part-time doctors finishing their residency training
How many new drug applications and supplemental applications did the FDA have to process on average per year between 1957 and 1962?
400 new drug applications and 3,000 supplemental applications
In 2008, what percentage of pregnancies worldwide were unintended?
41 percent
When were oral contraceptives first introduced?
1950s
What was the original “the pill” marketed for? when?
As a treatment for gynaecological disorders. 1957
How has the pill been modified since its original?
By reducing the content of progestin to 1/10 estrogen to 1/3-1/6
What is a thrombose?
A blood clot
What was the side effect of the pill?
Increased the risk of blood clots
When were the first cases of fatal thromboses from the pill?
1960
When were thromboses from the pill confirmed? from what?
1967 by a British epidemiological study
What disaster forced drug safety legislation in the US?
The thalidomide disaster (1961-1962)
Thalidomide was marketed for what?
To alleviate morning sickness
What did thalidomide cause in kids?
birth defects and miscarriages
When was Diethylstilbestrol identified?
1938
What is Diethylstilbestrol?
A powerful synthetic estrogen
What is the precautionary principle?
If insufficient evidence exists for a drug being safe, it should not be allowed.
Why did the FDA initially reject DES in 1938?
Animal studies suggested that DES increased the likelihood of certain cancers, congenital deformities, and miscarriages,
What is astroturfing?
making something seem like a grassroots movement
Why did the FDA approve DES?
-A healthy amount of lobbying and astroturfing
-FDA was small and under resourced
What was DES used for?
Treating symptoms of menopause
What did DES manufacturers argue about the tests informing DES’s rejection?
They were conducted on animals and so they were unreliable
What did the FDA condition the approval of DES on?
That a list of warnings of side effects be available on request
When was the oral contraceptive pill approved for contraceptive use?
1960
What was the effect of the DES episode on the FDA?
It became far more timid in attempting to limit drugs or flag their dangers
Were side effects of the pill noted in company trials?
Yes
What condition did the FDA apply to the pill contraceptive in 1960?
No more than two years continual use
Why was the Pill approved for contraception?
The known side effects seemed less significant than the known risks of pregnancy and childbirth. In fact, many effects mimicked symptoms of early pregnancy
How large were the trials for the pill in the 50s
anywhere between 20-80 patients. That is really not a lot
How many people had used the pill without serious consequences by 1959?
100-500k
Why were the initial thromboses from the pill relative to normal risks for young women unclear?
A lack of autopsies in the period
How did testing practices for drugs evolve during the 1960s?
Studies with thousands of people over many years
The American Cancer Society’s 11965 study on the contraceptive featured what? how long?
Compare 5k contraceptive users with 5k non-users over 7 years
Which journalists charged by 1969 that the FDA only approved the pill based on 132 women?
Morton Mintz and Barbara Seaman
What was the reaction to the journalists who charged the inadequacy of the approval of the pill in 1960?
Nelson hearings applied stricter standards to the issue of the safety of oral contraceptives, leading to new guarantees of informed consent
In 1963, the FDA determined that thrombotic deaths occurred at a rate of…
12.81 per million among pill users vs 8.4 per million for non pill users
What is the difference in increase in deaths from thromboses in women 20-34 among pill users and non-pill users?
1.5/100k vs 0.2/100k
What is the difference in increase in deaths from thromboses in women 35-44 among pill users and non-pill users?
3.9/100k vs 0.5/100k
what decade do women in PHDS start to increase?
1970s
In what STEM field do women phds awarded outnumber men
life sciences
Which stem field has the lowest percentage of women PDHs?
engineering
How does the case of the pill illustrate the blurring of causation typical of modern hazards?
The lethal thrombosis risks of the pill have overlap with normal risks. There is a chance that a death is statistically not actually due to the pill itself.
What is an externality?
The consequences for bystanders of accidents or pollution– not just those doing the pollution
What is an example of an externality arising from a technology working as intended?
the externality of an axe (making a forest into a field) is very much intended
Intended externalities are the product of old or modern technologies
older ones
What is the characteristic of the externalities of modern technologies?
The effects of the byproducts become noticeable
What categories of events prompted new thinking about risk management by the 1970s?
Effect on environment of
-Nuclear fall-out
-Large-scale oil spills
-smog
-Unsafe pharmaceuticals
What was the Asilomar conference?
in the 1970s, scientists in the field of genetic engineering gathered to offer guidelines to increase the safety of future research?
What cast doubt on the validity of many post-ww2 projects’ risk assessments/
Hella accidents
What is the main industry that developed in Sudbury?
Nickel mining
What technology did the Asilomar conference aim to regulate?
Biotechnology
What was the effect of the nickel industry on Sudbury?
The smoke and tailings polluted the ground so badly that nothing grew
What Sudbury do to fix its pollution problem in the 1970s?
Built a super high smokestack so the pollution went higher in the atmosphere
How does the sudbury plant’s side effects demonstrate the blurring of cause and effects?
The pollution went higher in the atmosphere but got into rain, which polluted local ecosystems.
It is no longer the impact of the product nor of the byproduct, but the impact of the side effect of the side-effect
How does the sudbury plant’s side effects demonstrate the blurring of cause and effects?
The pollution went to
It is no longer the impact of the product nor of the byproduct, but the impact of the side effect of the side-effect
What effects does the increasing sophistication of technology have on error risks?
Smaller errors have larger impacts
What errors were involved in the 1895 Paris train crash?
Conductor stayed at cruising speed a bit longer
Air brake failed
Assistant was too distracted to apply the locomotive brake
What externality was involved in the 1895 Paris train crash?
A newsstand vendor was killed by a piece of falling masonry
What was the 1950s pollution incident at Minamata Bay?
Industrial deposits of mercury in the ocean leads to diseases of the central nervous system and congenital disorders
Why was mercury poisoning sometimes called Dancing Cat Syndrome?
Because at minimal bay, cats were the first to acquire it from being fed poisoned fish
What group in Canada is particularly exposed to mercury poisoning? Why?
Inuit; because they eat a lot of fish
What Incident occurred in Seveso, Italy, in 1976?
A major chemical accident produced a dense cloud of TCDD (I’m not writing that name) from a reactor.
What were the consequences of the Seveso incident?
15 square km contaminated, 600 people evacuated, 2,000 treated for dioxin poisoning
The Bhopal chemical spill of methyl isocyanate killed how many?
Over 3,000
When did the European Union adopt the first Seveso Directive?
1982
What year was Seveso III directive passed?
2015
What is the objective of Seveso III?
-Prevent major accidents or hazards involving dangerous substances
-Limit the consequences of accidents for people and for nature
[Protect both individuals and common environments]
What does Seveso III mandate?
-Storage and use of dangerous substances are regulated
-Inspections, safety management, emergency plans, and land use planning are mandated
-Accident reporting, better information management, and better transparency are also required
Objectively, the human toll of the contraceptive was much ___ than casualties resulting from automobile accidents or smoking
smaller
Can environmental pollution resulting from pesticide and fertilizer use be hard to relate to measurable human harm?
yes
What was the Three Mile Island incident?
March 1979 partial meltdown at the nuclear plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
What was the consequence of the Three Mile Island Incident?
100k residents left the area
Public support for nuclear power dropped by a third
True or False: Different states’ accident plans at Three Mile Island were contradictory and entailed transportation in opposite directions
true
The Chernobyl nuclear plant is in which modern day country?
Ukraine
What year was Chernobyl?
1986
How many direct fatalities occurred in Chernobyl?
At least 56
Why is the causation chain blurred for Chernobyl’s indirect fatalities?
Lots of cancer abounded in the general area and from radioactive cloud, but the effects are many many years later
Why did the Ottawa citizen publish a quick headline about 2,000 dead in Chernobyl?
It played into public fears about nuclear bombs. Assumption that an accident at the plant could do the same damage as nuclear bombs
What is the catch-22 of nuclear containment?
Any argument of improved reactors is rarely pressed lest it imply that existing reactors are unsafe. Operating costs and further accidents have notably slowed the development of nuclear power generation
What is the likely total toll of the Fukushima reactor accident?
Low hundreds of lives will probably be statistically shortened?
What event caused the Fukushima disaster?
2011 Japan tsunami
The Montreal Protocol was made to organize a response to
CFC’s (aerosols) in the atmosphere
The Kyoto Protocol was made to organize a response to
GHG’s (greenhouse gases)
The EPA was a response to what?
The growth of the Environmental movement in the United States
What factors influence the perception of technological risks?
1) Blurring of causation (direct to statistical)
2) Levels of risks (to people directly or to social orders or to profits)
3) The elusiveness of risks as they become more and more scientific to understand
4) Overselling and public backlash
5) Power of linkage (nukes vs power plats)
6) Credibility of technology’s advocates
What are the three nuclear accidents covered and their dates?
Three Mile Island (1979)
Chernobyl (1986)
Fukushima (2011)
What are the three accidental toxic spills covered and their dates?
Minamata Bay (1950s)
Seveso (1976)
Bhopal (1984)
What are three oil spills and their dates?
Torrey Canyon (1960s)
Amoco Cadiz (1970s)
Exxon Valdez (1980s)
How was nuclear technology oversold?
It was supposed to make power tooo cheap to meter
What are some of the social consequences of the pill?
Social and sexual revolutions of the 1970s
What other events might have influenced the social effects of the pill
Civil right, desegregation, war in Vietnam– was easily extended to women’s liberation
How might the pill have facilitated women getting degrees?
-Financial costs compounded by potential complications of pregnancy from early marriages. Without it, might need abstinence, out of wedlock pregancy, or marriage. And if they graduated later when their cohort had married, they might not have spouses
