Chain Reactions

The H5N1 bird flu first jumped to humans in 1997 in Hong Kong, killing six of the 18 patients infected. But that was not the end of H5N1. In 2003 it resurfaced in humans and over the next few years was detected in wild birds in many regions around the world. For...

Disunity of Purpose

In 2007, the Indonesian government announced it would stop sending samples of the H5N1 avian influenza virus detected in its country to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) reference laboratories. Its worry was that these samples, provided freely, would be used by...

The ‘One Health’ Challenge

What does One Health mean in practice? Professor Malik Peiris, Tam Wah-Ching Professor in Medical Science, of the School of Public Health, one of the most highly cited scholars in the world on emerging infectious diseases and recent joint recipient of the prestigious...

Workers of the World, Divided

In the 1970s, democratic United States and authoritarian China began to witness trends in the regulation of workers’ collective rights that, today, have resulted in puzzling similarities. Both countries increasingly prioritised contractual arrangements between...

Unmasking the Machine

When a South Korean call centre decided to bring robots into the workplace, they asked Dr Sara Kim to study their employees’ response. The firm had told workers they would not be replaced, but it wanted to better understand their insecurities and perceptions of these...