There was much concern some time ago when the swine flu pandemics began to spread from Mexico to the USA and Europe. Then we somehow got overwhelmed by other information such as the Air France flight crash in the Atlantic or Michael Jackson’s death. Now it seems that the swine flu has come back again (or are the medias putting more emphasis on it?) as everyday more people get infected and die. The WHO (World Health Organization) increased the Pandemic level to Phase 6 -equal to widespread human infection- as shown in image below.

At the same time, a strange phenomenon is going on: the swine flu parties. What’s a swine flu party, you’ll ask? It consists of organizing a party where one of the attendee is someone infected with the Swine Flu virus. Therefore it pretends to help healthy people catch the virus and consequently grow immune against it. This very strange and unexpected practice is growing popular among people as we can read on this article on the Independant where this 15 year old girl states that she would “prefer to get it now, rather than next year which is my final GCSE year, and because apparently it’s going to be the winter version of the disease that will be more dangerous“. Reading this I started to look for further information and happened to be very surprised at people starting to organize parties and looking for infected people. A first look at Facebook (a reference when dealing with organizing a party) left me speechless…

Obviously, this practice is growing popular. People argue that they are used to doing the same with Chicken Pox for their children. But are they? Do people really do that?

Let’s get things straight and explain why I think this is an irresponsible behavior. It is understandable that some of the people think it is better to catch it now before it mutates and become stronger. Nevertheless there are way more risks than benefits to this kind of behavior:

• Nobody knows how will the virus act on every single person. We can’t yet plan its consequences and development so it is very risky. As declared Richard Besser (Head of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ) “…how an individual person will be impacted by the infection is not something that we know“.
• We shouldn’t forget that once someone is infected, he’s likely to infect more people. Among them, some may be weaker: children, elderly people, pregnant women, with health condisions, etc and be seriously injured by the virus.
• …

For more information on the spread of influenza virus, have a look at this study “Modeling the Worldwide Spread of Pandemic Influenza: Baseline Case and Containment Interventions“.

Now I’m asking you: Would you go to one of them?

Old book

Good news!!! Today I have seen that the NIH initiative of public access policy will be made permanent. This is quite some time in a so competitive area as Science. Since the policy was implemented the percentage of manuscript sent to PMC has increase over 3,000 new articles each month.

If the information was overwhelming enough with 2,000 new articles per day -more than 18M scientific articles all together- the free access to full articles will increase the amount of data relevant to biomedicine. This increase is not only on the side of number of articles available but also on the total amount of information since the whole text of the article is going to be accessible. This brings new interesting challenges.

The question now is, how do we get through all the new information fast and efficiently? System that helps get relevant scientific information such as novoseek are more needed than ever.

However, is it really useful for scientists to have the results freely available 1 year behind? Obviously it is not the best possible scenario but the analysis of literature and Grant information could give us an insight on what would be new potential upcoming articles.

Dodo bird

The NIH’s recent measure responds to a paradox in the field of scientific publications.  It is the classic “chicken or egg” scenario.

First, much of the content generation is done so at no cost to the “publishing house”.  Researchers, sponsored mainly by public institutions – and driven by their own interests and search for knowledge – create new research.  The new content creation is usually based on “free” generation, collaboration and assessment of content.

Second, the publishing companies then add value by managing, editing and distributing that content. In this process, “end-user” scientists have willingly paid publishers for the ability to access this “approved” content.

So the paradox before us is…if the free content is based upon paid content (made available through publishing houses), should the new content be made available for free or follow the publishing payment model?

In fact, there is no black and white answer – but new technologies are creating an even more heated debate.

New technologies and the Internet have simplified the editing  and distribution processes, opening new possibilities for additional  formats and business models, such as open access publications, in  which access to contents is free and redistribution is at your fingertips.  Will the new technologies be able to handle the role that traditional publishers have successfully handled for nearly 100 years in the areas of managing, editing and distributing that content?

In the new model – what becomes of peer review?  In  the traditional method, public institutions fund the management and the peer-review  editing process, since these publications charge researchers for the  distribution and circulation of their work once it is considered  scientifically relevant.

Through PubMed Central, the NIH has generated a centralized system aimed to distribute scientific works which have already undergone a peer-review process, and have made scientists sponsored by the NIH add a clause regarding the copyright’s release to publishing companies, before the last version of their work can be  placed in this repository 12 months before the publication. Congress’s proposal wishes to avoid this kind of measure.

We must take into account that the research process is strongly supported in the maintained publication of new results, which daily becomes the base for additional discoveries by scientists. Better access to information and the implementation of easier conversations, such as access offered by the Internet would accelerate research, as mentioned  by Mr. Akst in The WSJ: “knowledge dissemination is crucial for the creation of wealth and can’t reproduce in isolation.”

It is true that the management of any peer-review process is necessary if willing to maintain the quality and excellence of scientific works,  but it is in any case a process in which scientists collaborate  voluntarily, a process in which new technologies have enabled a new,  easier distribution. And if there is an entity willing to lead the centralization of contents, is it sensible to approve measures not favoring this access to content?

Unfortunately I don’t have an answer.  To deny access to valuable medical information, just doesn’t seem right.  Neither does denying a commercial business the right to operate when it provides a valuable service.

So – chicken or egg?  All I know is this debate is not likely to go the way of the dodo bird anytime soon.