Indholdsfortegnelse for 88.2 Apr-Jun 2017 i AQ: Australian Quarterly

If it could be said that there was a fundamental energy that fuelled human society, it would be that fissive, uncontrollable, potentially-explosive power born of the tension between the past and the future. We’re drawn to the irresistibility of the future without being able to escape the gravity of the past – a convenient over-simplification is: the cold electricity of progress versus the warm embrace of nostalgia. To my mind, the feeling of our social fabric being pulled both forward and back, stretching and thinning like a balloon, has never felt so pronounced as it has in the last 12 months. The rapid run away of technologies that could alter the very nature of humanity, the first thumping roll-back agendas of Trump and the resurgent Tony Abbott. The alienation of…

AQ welcomes submissions of articles and manuscripts on contemporary economic, political, social and philosophical issues, especially where scientific insights have a bearing and where the issues impact on Australian and global public life. All contributions are unpaid. Manuscripts should be original and have not been submitted or published elsewhere, although in negotiation with the Editor, revised prior publications or presentations may be included. Submissions may be subject to peer review. Word length is between 1000 and 3000 words. Longer and shorter lengths may be considered. Articles should be written and argued clearly so they can be easily read by an informed, but non-specialist, readership. A short biographical note of up to 50 words should accompany the work. The Editor welcomes accompanying images. Authors of published articles are required to assign…

This capacity to sequence a person’s DNA in both their nuclei and mitochondria (their genome) and to compare the result to a reference set of sequences to facilitate understanding of the variants found and related pathogenicity, has developed at an extraordinary pace. The result is a new medical discipline called genomic medicine which is beginning to inform diagnostic, therapeutic and reproductive decision-making and will predicate a seismic shift in health policy. It is provided still largely in the public sector but with increasing commercial interest. In some cases that interest is to provide the test and result via the internet without the involvement of a healthcare practitioner: so called, direct-to-consumer testing. Genomic medicine underpins a number of concepts such as ‘precision medicine’ and ‘P4 medicine’ (predictive, personalised, preventive and participatory).…

Open Source Drug Discovery: Global Solutions to Global Problems 1 Cox, F. E. G. History of the discovery of the malaria parasites and their vectors. Parasites & Vectors 2010, 3:5. DOI: 10.1186/1756-3305-3-5 2 WHO World Malaria Report 2016 http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2016/report/en/ 3 http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2014/regional-committee-africa/en/ 4 Light, D. W.; Lexchin, J. R. Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money?, British Medical Journal 2012, 345, e4348 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.e4348 5 http://www.thesynapticleap.org/node/343 6 Williamson, A. E.; Ylioya P. M.; Robertson M. N.; et al. Open Source Drug Discovery: Highly Potent Antimalarial Compounds Derived from the Tres Cantos Arylpyrroles, ACS Cent. Sci., 2016, 2, 687–701. DOI:10.1021/ acscentsci.6b00086 7 Robertson, M. N.; et al. Open Source Drug Discovery – A Limited Tutorial, Parasitology 2014, 141, 148–157. DOI: 10.1017/S0031182013001121 8 Badiola, K.; et al. Experiences…

People who live without adequate sanitation are exposed to more diseases; people who live outside of adequate healthcare infrastructure may not receive diagnosis or prescription medicines; and people living with, or dying from, diseases that aren’t profitable are not a major focus for the development of new medicines. Take malaria for example. It is one of the world’s oldest diseases with symptoms first documented in ancient Chinese writings in 2700 BC.1 Although preventable and treatable, there are still over 200 million cases of malaria every year and around 429 000 fatalities, most of whom are young children. A concerted global effort, combined with unprecedented funding, helped to reduce the number of deaths by 22% between 2000 and 2015,2 demonstrating exactly what can be achieved with the appropriate infrastructure and investment.…