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Disease isn't synonymous with its etiological agent or the map of its victims, whether or not either is placed within a... context that acknowledges the functional ecologies humans, livestock and wildlife share. [This] misses the structural factors underlying pathogen emergence and by virtue of that omission the pathogens' likely reemergence. Every one of the new potentially human-specific influenzas, for instance, have evolved out of industrial poultry and livestock. "

When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic - something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy. But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped...""

Why data resource profiles (DRPs)? We can't do epidemiology without data. Data are cen- tral to epidemiology's three main challenges: to describe health states in populations, make inferences about their causes and to apply that knowledge to improve health. The more high quality data we have to support these three tasks, the better.10,11 The challenge of providing health data coverage on a global scale is immense. Termed a 'scandal of invisi- bility', in the world's least developed countries more than two-thirds of all births and deaths go unregis- tered.12 Meanwhile, in advanced industrialised na- tions publicly funded data collection systems are under threat, particularly at a time of state retrench- ment.13 In the UK and Canada the long-form census was cancelled. Canada, too, cancelled some of its premier longitudinal studies of children and youth, leaving the country with little signal about the state of human capability development of its future gener- ations. Removing parts of the publicly funded health information infrastructure is easy, but rebuilding sur- veillance will require orders of magnitude more vision, dedication and money.

"The link between air pollution and dementia remains controversial-even its proponents warn that more research is needed to confirm a causal connection and work out just how the particles might enter the brain and make mischief there. But a growing number of epidemiological studies from around the world, new findings from animal models and human brain imaging studies, and increasingly sophisticated techniques for modeling PM2.5 exposures have raised alarms. Indeed, in an 11-year epidemiological study to be published next week in Translational Psychiatry, University of Southern California (USC) researchers will report that living in places with PM2.5 exposures higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's standard of 12 μg/m3 nearly doubled dementia risk in older women. If the finding holds up in the general population, air pollution could account for roughly 21% of dementia cases worldwide,"

"Tests for hereditary predispositions to breast and ovarian cancer have figured among the first medical applications of the new knowledge gleaned from the Human Genome Project. These applications have set off heated debates on general issues such as intellectual property rights. The genetic diagnosis of breast cancer risks, and the management of women "at risk" has nevertheless developed following highly localized paths. There are major differences in the organization of testing, uses of genetic tests, and the follow up of patients. This article studies testing practices and ways of managing breast cancer risk in France and compares them with those in the United States and United Kingdom. It shows how the complex interaction between global and local factors shapes the multiple meanings assumed by the phrase cancer risk."