Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Biopolitics and activism of stress and inequality
DISCIPLINES/TOPIC:
(ex: happiness psychology/neuromodulation/ persuasion (including behavioral economics, role of networks as social contagions)
Regional planning, neuroplasticity, genetics/epigenetics, communications, public health
HOW DOES IT ADDRESS “TRANSFORMING BODIES AND LIFESTYLES”
(behavior change/intervention at community/population level)
community/population level
EXPERTS: (Max 6)
(from the list, we’ll identify one or two people to invite to the APRIL 9th EXPERT WORKSHOP)
Jack P. Shonkoff
Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor in Child Health and Development
Director, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
Professor of Pediatrics
• 50 Church Street 4th Floor
WHICH GHE CATEGORY/IES:
(health, information, consumer electronics, food etc, just to have a sense of the most obvious domains of health, health care, and well-being we are researching)
health
EARLY WORKING HYPOTHESIS
(some sort of narrowing down the scope of your research, where you will be looking for directional change)
Growing evidence that pollution, stress and other environmental factors leave lasting biological imprints—on brains, genes, etc.—will propel bio-based community activism around the effects of the environment on deep biology.
That, or the miscommunication of/new findings in biology will communicate a sense of powerlessness over biology to most people, significantly disempowering people.
One of the two.
Relevant signals:
Biologically Embedded Stress/early childhood problems = adult disease: As a review article in JAMA from last year notes, a growing body of research shows that environmental stress, pollutants, and exposure to other such things in early childhood dramatically increases the likelihood of adult diseases and other lifelong mental and physical health issues. Although a lot of this is old, the more demonstrable biological effects of stress and pollution suggest that, at some point, moving toward more resilient notions of wellbeing should theoretically, at least, prompt a much greater focus on early childhood and prenatal health.
More realistically, I think this also suggests a lot of possibility for citizen activism and other responses at community levels.
See, for example: Shonkoff, Jack P., et al. “Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, and the Childhood Roots of Health Disparities: Building a New Framework for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.” JAMA. June 2, 2009.
www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene
A provocative feature in this month's Atlantic on a new way to think about genetic variations: Not as switches that confer or protect against disease risks, but as something closer to behavioral investment strategies that might offer more risk and more reward through greater sensitivity to the environment, or instead might offer more conservative strategies. You may have heard of neuroplasticity; the feature, written by David Dobbs, aims to highlight genetic plasticity and contrasts it with more standard views of genetics, behavior and the environment
scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/the_placebo_effect_of_biology.php
- The link here points toward a study about the effects of testosterone when women were aware that they were inhaling testosterone and when they weren’t, finding that, in effect, the tested subjects expectations of the effects of testosterone were self-fulfilling, whether or not they received the hormone, and that these effects were almost the exact opposite of the effect of testosterone when subjects had no idea what they were inhaling. Point being: The placebo effects of folk wisdom our strong. And as we get all of these new biological explanations about ourselves—that our genes predispose us to diseases, that our brains and neurotransmitters regulate our limits, etc.—we’ll begin to internalize them. Which is to say that how these new sciences get communicated to the public will be an increasingly critical domain.
See also: blog.liviablackburne.com/2009/12/seduction-of-brain-picture.html