Senior High School Students' Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Information on Their Health in the Kumasi Metropolis.

The study examines senior high school students' understanding and attitudes toward information on their health in the Kumasi Metropolis. Multiple sampling techniques (convenient and simple random sampling techniques) were used in the study. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 391 respondents for the study. Frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the sociodemographic data. Again, the study used Pearson's correlation coefficient to show the degree of relationship between the level of knowledge of health information and attitudes toward seeking and sharing health information. The study found students' knowledge of the causes and symptoms of malaria, cholera, and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) to be appreciably high as a result of readings from textbooks and health professionals. Again, the study found that the students preferred sharing their health information with friends than their parents and schools' authorities. The study further found that the major sources of students' health information included health professionals and textbooks. Lastly, even though some of the students claimed internet sources to their health information, it was not a major source to the student body at large. The study recommends strong health systems on the campuses of senior high schools as they have become communities on their own as a result of the emergence of the free senior high school program. The monitored positive peer-counseling group should also be encouraged by the schools' management and by extension the counseling units for the students to share views on themselves, particularly on health issues where they deem fit.

Informação em saúde: produção, consumo e biopoder / Information on health: production, consumption and biopower

Este trabalho objetiva suscitar desconfianças ao valor atribuído à verdade médica presente na literatura biomédica. Tomou-se como exemplo a temática da proteção das práticas sexuais e recorreu-se às obras de pensadores como Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Bourdieu e, principalmente, Michel Foucault, a fim de pensarmos que a elaboração e o emprego de informações em saúde podem ser interpretados como práticas constitutivas de uma política que articula dinamicamente peritos e não peritos à verdade médica, constitutiva de uma moralidade que se apoia na produção e consumo dessa verdade. Uma política, denominada por Foucault de biopolítica, capaz de estabelecer modos de viver onde o exercício do pensamento parece não ser tão "recompensador", onde práticas de mando e de obediência a si são mediadas pela informação em saúde. Nesta perspectiva médicos e não médicos foram seduzidos pela vontade de atingir a verdade, de modo que se verifica o empenho de todos na produção e consumo de enunciados que acreditam poder prolongar a vida e salvá-la do adoecer; discursos cultivados no mercado de uma sociedade midiática, onde o controle dos indivíduos pela informação produz subjetividades que se ancoram no binômio: verdade médica-capital.

This article seeks to elicit misgivings regarding the value attributed to medical truth found in the biomedical literature. The issue of the protection of sexual practices was taken by way of example and the works of thinkers like Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, and especially Michel Foucault, were consulted. This was done in order to consider that the elaboration and use of health information can be interpreted as a practice constituting a policy that dynamically inspires both experts and non-experts on medical truth, constituting a morality that is based on the production and consumption of this truth. It is a policy that Foucault called biopolitics, able to establish ways of living where the exercise of thought does not seem to be so "rewarding," where practices of command and obedience are mediated by health information. In this perspective, physicians and non-physicians have been seduced by the desire to attain the truth, such that the commitment of everyone is seen to concentrate on the production and use of statements that they believe can prolong life and save from getting sick. These are discourses cultivated in the market of a media-dominated society in which individuals controlled by information produce subjectivities that are anchored in the medical-capital truth binomial.

A regulação do uso de animais no Brasil do século XX e o processo de formação do atual regime aplicado à pesquisa biomédica / Regulation of the use of animals in Brazil in the twentieth century and the process of forming the current regime applied to biomedical research

O artigo analisa a política pública e regulatória do Brasil sobre o uso de animais no ensino e na pesquisa biomédica. Aborda o arcabouço institucional-legal e a situação jurídica da proteção dos animais no país, além do debate legislativo que resultou na promulgação da lei 11.794/2008, que estabelece procedimentos para o uso científico de animais. Ressalta algumas características do atual regime regulatório e tece considerações de ordem teórico-metodológica, voltadas para a ampliação do entendimento do fenômeno investigado.