Emilio Mordini: GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark Zuckerberg

Emilio Mordini: GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark Zuckerberg: Heterogonie der Zwecke  (heterogony of ends) is an expression coined in 1886 by German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, to indicate an intenti...

GDPR, The Great Gatsby, and Mark Zuckerberg

Heterogonie der Zwecke (heterogony of ends) is an expression coined in 1886 by German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, to indicate an intentional action which ends up achieving unexpected, even opposite, ends. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforced by the European Union on May 25th, 2018 to protect the “fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons and in particular their right to the protection of personal data” (art.1), offers some amusing examples of heterogony of ends (read the full article) 

DOGS, VACCINE AND AUTISM

On the 24th of this past April, the breakfast show “Good Morning Britain” tweeted the bizarre  request  to be contacted by “pet owners who haven't given their pets vaccinations because they're concerned about side effects - as well as people who have done so and now believe their pet has canine autism as a result”.   Such an odd request raised several remonstrations and criticisms, because “in a single tweet they managed to perpetuate the myth of a link between autism and vaccination, and the myth that autism is something that can be contracted. But even more than the harm this does to public health, the comparison between autistic people and poorly-trained pet dogs is immensely insulting and hurtful”.  The British Veterinary Association (BVA) immediately reacted with a tweeted statement “There's currently no reliable scientific evidence to indicate autism in dogs (or its link to vaccines). Potential side effects of vaccines are rare & outweighed by the benefits in protecting against disease”.  Yet, not all the experts share their views, for instance Lisa Tenzin-Dolma, book author, chair of the International Companion Animal Network, and founder of the International School for Canine Psychology and Behaviour, stated   “We don’t have scientific evidence to back claims of canine autism, however, we have seen anecdotal evidence of dogs having a marked change in their behaviour (‘canine dysfunctional behaviour’)”.

The notion of “canine autism” is not new, it dates to a paper “A syndrome in the dog resembling human infantile autism” published in 1966 on the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, by Dr. Michael W.Fox. British veterinarian and former vice president of the Humane Society of the United States,  one of the most influential animal protection organizations in the U.S. Dr. Fox is an expert in animal behaviour and passionate animal advocate. His scientific production is vast and assorted - ranging from animal rights to sustainable agriculture, to vegan cat foods –including also eccentric papers, such as one devoted to the evidence of the Oedipus complex in dogs.  Dr. Fox is also a prolific journalist.  As a columnist, he regularly collaborates to the Washington Post, where he publishes about post-traumatic stress disorders in cats,   obsessive-compulsive disorders and panic attacks in dogs, and so on.  Brief, Dr. Fox is not just a scientist, he has a mission,  "To help heal the broken bonds between my own species and other living beings and the natural environment for the good of all: One Earth, One Health."

However, notwithstanding Dr. Fox, it was only recently that the notion of “canine autism” became mainstream. In facts, searching “canine autism” on Google, one gets 11,500 results (the query “dog autism” gets many more results, which also include dog companions to assist autistic people, while “canine autism” is quite selective). Surprisingly enough, restricting the query to a smaller date range (from Jun 1966 – Fox’s paper publication -  to Jun 2014), one gets only 154 results. The remaining 11,150 results have been all produced in the last four years. What happened in 2014 to justify such an explosion of interest? On October 2014, Translational Psychiatry - a prominent academic journal, issued by the Nature group, with an impact factor of  5.601 and an article influence score of 1.943 -  published an original paper authored by a team of biologists, veterinarians, and psychiatrists, led by T.C. Theoharides, chair of the Department of Integrative Physiology and Pathobiology, at Tufts University School of Medicine.  The paper was devoted to comparing serum neurotensin and CRH levels in children with autistic spectrum disorders and tail-chasing Bull Terriers with a “phenotype similar to autism.” The paper goal was to propose a new animal model for human autism, more reliable than those based on mice and parrots. According to the team, Bull-Terriers affected by compulsory tail-chasing showed stereotypic movements very close to those exhibited by autistic children, as well as behavioural problems (aggression, seizures, fixed stare, and immobility) similar – authors claim - to behaviours characterising autistic spectrum disorders in children. Authors also suggest some biological markers, which would be shared by human and canine syndromes. Michael W.Fox, probably considered more an activist than a pure scientist, was not referenced in the bibliography, or otherwise mentioned, by the paper. Theoharides’  paper was a signal of the zeitgeist. Always in 2014, the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Massachusetts Medical School – in collaboration with the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center,  the  American Humane Association, and the Translational Genomics Research Institute – launched the research project “Canines, Kids and Autism”, involving both dogs and children, with the primary aim to investigate the causes of obsessive-compulsive disorders in dogs, “in hopes of pinpointing those genes that might be responsible for atypical behaviors” in dogs and autistic children.

So, the notion of “canine autism” grew in popularity and captured the imagination of general press, social media, and, presumably, pet owners. Finally, in 2017, a “pet anti-vax movement” also emerged,  becoming soon in fashion among  Brooklynites: more and more, in New York, “the young and the hip are refusing to vaccinate their dogs against such potentially lethal diseases as distemper, hepatitis and rabies, because vaccines absolutely, positively cause autism”. From New York, the “pet anti-vax movement” spread in the U.S.  and now also in the UK. Dr. Amy Ford of the Veterinarian Wellness Center of Boerum Hill, one the most reputed animal hospitals in  Brooklyn, said: “We do see a higher number of clients who don’t want to vaccinate their animals, this may be stemming from the anti-vaccine movement, which people are applying to their pets.” Most commentators used the same argument to explain the “pet anti-vax movement.”  They are only partly right.

There is no doubt that anti-vaccine movement deeply influenced (and took advantage) of the urban myth of “canine autism,” but – as I pointed out – such a myth was fuelled, if not created, by distinguished medical and academic institutions. Even more seriously, these scholars implicitly supported the anti-vax movements. The first lines of 2014 Theoharides’ paper are appalling, notably if one considers that they were published by a journal ranked 22/142 in Psychiatry: “Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders (…)Fifty percent of such children regress at 2–3 years of age, often after a specific event such as reaction to vaccination, infection,  trauma, environmental toxins or stress (…) Recent evidence suggests that ASD involve some defective immune responses in many ASD patients and their relatives,  as well as some neuroimmune component, especially allergic-like symptoms”. As far as this author knows, no one in the academic world has ever protested against such a grave, misleading, statement.  Admittedly, this silence is more perturbing than anti-vaxxer barks.

Emilio Mordini: Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Healt...

Emilio Mordini: Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Healt...: Launched in October 1994 , with 123.9 million visitors from Nov 2017 to Jan 2018, including 23.33 million monthly unique visitors (www.sim...

Collateral Campaigns, Universal Flu Vaccine, Health Communication

Launched in October 1994, with 123.9 million visitors from Nov 2017 to Jan 2018, including 23.33 million monthly unique visitors (www.similarweb.com), Wired is not only a “historical” online technology magazine, but it is still one of the most authoritative. It is rare that Wired dedicates one of its main articles to a health theme,  yet, on Feb 1,  the magazine published a full piece entirely devoted to flu vaccines. This article is part of a wider media campaign on next-generation flu vaccines, which are expected  - as the story goes - to meet the challenges posed by ongoing virus mutations.

Why are media so interested in flu vaccines? The search for the universal flu vaccine is not at all novel, although new approaches are in the pipeline. This flu season has been one of the worst of the last decade, and this could be a possible explanation. However, the actual reason is probably more mundane; quite simply, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemics. Anniversaries prompt ideas, initiatives, and, ultimately, business.

On  January 15th, Vaccitech, an Oxford University spin-out company developing a universal flu vaccine, announced  to have been granted with £20m by two major venture capital firms, GV (the venture capital arm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google), and Sequoia Capital China, the fifth yuan-denominated fund, which has in its portfolio internet giant Alibaba.  On January 19th, Vaccitech announced to be about to start a phase 2 trial for a universal flu vaccine.

Many other teams are working on next-generation flu vaccines, including the Palese Laboratory in the Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, supported by GlaxoSmithKline and Gates Foundation;  and the American biotech firm, FluGen, which was awarded on October 2017 with $14.4 million by the U.S. Department of Defense to enter human trial with RedeeFlu, an experimental flu vaccine.

The most challenging enterprise, is, however, the Universal Influenza Vaccine Initiative (UIVI), launched by the Human Vaccines Project, “a global nonprofit that brings together leading stakeholders across academia, industry, governments and nonprofits”,  funded inter alia  by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the J. Craig Venter Institute, and drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, and still others. The Universal Influenza Vaccine Initiative is more ambitious than any other project previously mentioned because it aims “to harness the human immune system to prevent and control disease in ways previously considered unimaginable (…) Decoding the human immune system holds the key to the development of such new and improved vaccines. Deciphering the human immunome, the universal and common elements of the B and T cell receptors that make up the adaptive immune system, will facilitate germline targeting and structure-assisted vaccine discovery”.  The UIVI proposes itself as the new Human Genome Project, the greatest scientific enterprise for the next decade. This is also echoed by Michael Osterholm - director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, and influential public health and a biosecurity  scientist – who argues that universal  flu vaccine needs an initiative similar to the Manhattan Project, the U.S. atomic bomb programme during World War II.

This editor has not the scientific expertise necessary to evaluate whether we truly need a new Manhattan Project (admittedly, it is not the most reassuring comparison one could use). The recent history is full of attempts to build great scientific enterprises; sometimes they succeed, other times they just generate bombastic “collateral campaigns,” to evoke Musil’s novel, “The Man Without Qualities.” One thing is for sure; the current universal flu vaccine campaign makes one wonders about scientists’ communication skills. Using the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemics to raise public awareness is laudable but doing it by overturning years and years of health communication policies is crazy. Since October 2017, when news about universal flu vaccine started spreading, web searches on “universal flu vaccine”  have been going up and fluctuating in parallel with queries on “flu vaccine effectiveness” and on “flu shot side effects.”  For ages, people have been told that vaccines are always effective – although medical literate people knew that things were more nuanced than  naive popularizations  - now nonchalant articles and broadcasts are informing everybody, almost casually,  that “flu vaccine is only about 10 percent to 30 percent effective”. The least that could happen is that those who vaccinated themselves, feel deceived, and those who did not, find their doubts fully confirmed.