Ethan @ethanjli@scholar.social

#introductions
Hi, everyone! I'm a PhD student in bioengineering, and I love designing and building hardware+software tools. For my thesis, I'm studying challenges and strategies for open-source medical devices for global health equity: how might platforms and communities be built to support cooperative production of medical devices appropriate for local contexts, all the way from invention to implementation?

I haven't been on Mastodon in forever, but last week I led a group meeting talk+disussion for my lab about global inequities in COVID-19 diagnostics & vaccines; and structural alternatives for technology & production, with an eye towards our climate emergency. If that sounds interesting to you, here are my slides and speaker notes: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OqKqICzt9mmcQWQA5TsTDt1CWBe0870sMrsWrA9I07Y/edit?usp=drivesdk (feedback welcome and appreciated!)

[deleted and reposted because the previous version of this toot used a link shortener]

https://www.mixcloud.com/UnderTheOliveTree/interview-with-tarek-loubani-3d-printing-for-doctors-march-of-return-icc-and-covid-19-in-gaza/ here's an interview with Dr. Tarek Loubani last year on open-source medical devices and decentralized 3-D printing in Gaza, for health care system independence under Israel's blockade of essential medical equipment and plastics as well as the threat of airstrikes; and on being targeted by IDF snipers while doing frontline medical work during the Great March of Return protests

"Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency. Without gift relationships with bees and birds, Serviceberries would disappear...they would not save themselves from the fate of extinction if their partners did not share in that abundance. Hoarding won’t save us either. All flourishing is mutual." https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-serviceberry/ (via @MaxLiboiron@twitter)

Meanwhile, every time I start Mendeley Desktop I see this notification: "Mendeley will be performing planned maintenance between 6:00am to 10:00am UTC on 21st of April 2021, we do not expect any outage or disruption of service during the maintenance window." Clearly one hand isn't talking to the other, but I guess I'll switch to Zotero after this, it'll just be a question of how painful it'll be.

Mendeley completely wiped the folder structure I was using in an invite-only group where I was organizing all my references to share with labmates. Apparently they've discontinued that feature, and they fully removed it yesterday after a temporary restoration of the feature to allow users to export their data. Too bad I never received a notification of this in Mendeley Desktop 😡

it's hilarious to me that apparently https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdj79/peoples-expensive-nfts-keep-vanishing-this-is-why is a thing that's happening

how it's going:

"Initially, the group was testing for the coronavirus[...] But in recent weeks, the department of health said PFC abruptly stopped testing for the virus, as well, a key component of the partnership."

"The city has since cut ties after the group failed to disclose that it recently became a for-profit company, after collecting the personal information of thousands of residents."

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/coronavirus/philly-fighting-covid-ceo-andrei-doroshin-admits-to-giving-vaccines-to-friends/2682322/

how it started:

“We get pictures from doctors and nurses wearing our stuff, like on our social media, we post it, it’s really been quite humbling,” Doroshin said. “They’ve been ecstatic because they’ve had people charge them for stuff, which is mind-blowing.”

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-philadelphia-philly-fighting-covid-ramping-up-efforts-to-provide-regions-hospitals-with-reusable-personal-protective-equipment/

Writing letters of recommendation for people is a strange and new experience: on one hand I haven't emotionally understood that I might be qualified to evaluate people or act as a research mentor/supervisor, but on the other hand it's nice to talk about all the ways they're great

(3/3) Social justice-oriented development of infrastructure+capacity and wealth redistribution are also needed to make globally just provision of medical care (and the technologies needed for it) possible; this exceeds historical visions/definitions for FOSS. Maybe approaching open-source from the ethical grounds of global health justice can help preempt a tendency towards what Andrew Ross described about the software world as "voices proclaiming freedom in every direction, but justice in none"?

(2/) I like that starting from global health justice requires judging/building "open-source" as a political project through material questions about who has access to technologies needed for health, who has resources for developing & implementing technologies to meet local needs, and what political economy maintains the hoarding of those things. Yes, individual freedoms are necessary, and open-source has advantages as a means of production. But they're nowhere near sufficient for health justice.

(1/) Here's reporting in The Lancet about an ongoing dispute in the World Trade Organization between low- & middle-income countries vs. high-income countries over COVID-19-related patents and access to COVID-19 vaccines. This is a fight about the global IP regime, but the groups & countries challenging it are also making a deeper argument about ownership and power over the production and distribution of things needed for health: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32581-2/fulltext