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This study aims to compare the techno-scientific systems of four Latin American countries: Panama and Costa Rica for Central America and Uruguay and Paraguay for South America. The overall objective is to explore their performance in terms of generation of knowledge in science and technology using the triple helix model as a framework.

The methodological approach applied was scientometric and bibliometric. The management of the techno-scientific governance in each country was analysed; input, process and output indicators were applied and a table of correlated factors was generated to determine the capabilities of each. The triple helix was used as a framework, as the study assessed the capabilities of the three actors in this model (academia, industry and government).

By studying this type of small Latin American techno-scientific worlds and the interrelationships between the three actors examined, it can be seen that there is a limited supply of certified knowledge and weak interactions between these helixes and this restricts the development of innovation initiatives.

There is little evidence of evaluations of the techno-scientific systems of peripheral countries and even less of the smaller ones. By cross-referencing governance information with indicators and generating a multi-factorial matrix, new knowledge is being generated that will contribute both to the general knowledge and to the improvement of public policy decisions in these countries.

The purpose of this study was to compare the evolution of the scientific production of Costa Rica and Panama, from Central America and Paraguay and Uruguay, from South America in the period 2000–2018. To achieve this, first, a bibliometric mapping was performed using the Web of Science (WoS) database. Second, the triple helix model was used to determine whether there are similar patterns or marked differences in the distribution of this type of publications in the helices of government, academia and industry.

The steps followed in this study were as follows: design and application of an algorithm to perform WoS downloads; download the publications using the country descriptor; process data using R and VOSviewer; design of a profile of the selected countries based on indicators; and use of the triple helix model to determine the weight of the scientific production.

The data found corroborate that the small technoscientific worlds examined do not have the minimum Science & Technology personnel nor the capabilities in infrastructure and technological equipment, and that expenditure in this area is minimal and for these reasons, the production in the WoS is low.

Studying the small technoscientific worlds from a bibliometric perspective allows generating inputs to diagnose the state of these countries in this area, as no evidence of similar studies in these countries was found in Scopus or the WoS. Likewise, examining scientific production from the triple helix model makes it possible to identify the weaknesses of each actor, and the results can contribute to the design of better public policies.

An inquiry into the constitution of the experience of patienthood. It understands “becoming a patient” as a production of a subjectivity, in other words as a process of individuation and milieu that occurs through an ontology of production. This ontology of production can, of course, also be understood as a political ontology. Therefore, this is, first of all, an inquiry into a mode of production, and, secondly, an inquiry into its relation to the issue of social justice – because of effects of digital divisions. In these terms, it also reflects on how expert discourses, such as in medical sociology and science studies (STS), can (and do) articulate their problems.

An integrative mode of discourse analysis, strongly related to discursive institutionalism, called semantic agency theory: it considers those arrangements (institutions, informal organizations, networks, collectivities, etc.) and assemblages (intellectual equipment, vernacular epistemologies, etc.) that are constitutive of how the issue of “patient experience” can be articulated form its position within an ontology of production.

The aim not being the production of a finite result, what is needed is a shift in how “the construction of patient experience” is produced by expert discourses. While the inquiry is not primarily an empirical study and is also limited to “Western societies,” it emphasizes that there is a relation between political ontologies (including the issues of social justice) and the subjectivities that shape the experiences of people in contemporary health care systems, and, finally, that this relation is troubled by the effects of the digital divide(s).

A proposal “to interrogate and trouble” some innovative extensions and revisions – even though it will not be able to speculate about matters of degree – to contemporary theories of biomedicalization, patienthood, and managed care.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how “manias” in global health governance lead to health inequalities even before, during and in the aftermath of acute health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “Manias” as used here refer to obsessive ir/rational behaviors, misguided policy/strategic choices and the exercise of power that benefit the major global health actors at the expense of stakeholders.

From post-colonial and historical perspectives, this study delineates how the major global health actors influence outcomes in global health governance and international business when they interact at the national–global level using an illustration from an emerging economy.

Power asymmetry in global health governance is constructed around the centralization of economic influence, medico-techno-scientific innovation and the geopolitical hegemony of a conglomerate of super-rich/powerful actors. They cluster these powers and resources in the core region (industrialized economies) and use them to influence the periphery (developing economies) through international NGOs, hybrid organizations, MNCs and multilateral/bilateral agreements. The power of actors to maintain manias lies in not only how they influence the periphery but also the consequences of the periphery’s “passivity” and “voluntary” renunciation of sovereignty in medical innovations and global health policies/politics.

As a quintessential feature of manias, power asymmetry makes it harder for weaker actors to actually change the institutional conditions that produce structural inequalities in global health.

This timely and multidisciplinary study calls for a novel architecture of global health governance. Thus, democratizing global health governance with sufficiently foresighted investments that prioritize equitable access by and the inclusiveness of vulnerable stakeholders will help dismantle institutionalized manias while decreasing health inequalities.

In this article our objective is to do a very deep analysis into biobusinesses and bioethics in order to identify holistic views concerning business enterprises in biopharmaceutical and biotechnological industries. We are arguing that biobusinesses and biotechnologies are not error free because in reality bio‐technoscientific discoveries and breakthroughs are not viewed as holistic real “natural logic”. They are “techno‐scientific logic”. Through a biosophical deliberation, if we believe that there is a difference between “natural logic” and “scientific logic”, then we may conclude that there are erroneous thoughts which exist and if existence is based on thinking, then false thoughts are as “real” as any misunderstanding among bio‐techno‐scientists and practitioners may thus end up with global catastrophes. Through a biosophical logic, we may choose both paths of “natural logic” and “scientific logic” in order to arrive in a real consensus conclusion. In addition, in this article we have examined the Promethean biosophical and biophilia perceptions and practices of global biopharmaceutical industries and biotechological businesses concerning bioethics.

This paper aims to focus on the modern development of bionics and linking new technologies with the human nervous system or other biological systems that cause changes of the human biological structure.

The paper is a discursive evaluation of technological progress and new systems where computers and machines integrate, making a single matrix entity – the cyborg. Here fundamental questions arise, such as what it means to be human and what is (descriptive aspect) and what should be (normative aspect) a human being?

The paper argues for the value of twenty-first century human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies that promised to “help” humans become “more than human”, trying to create human beings with greatly enhanced abilities, to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. Modern man is gradually disappearing as a natural being and increasingly turning into an artificial creature “cyborg” that leads into the question, what will ultimately remain human in a human body?

The paper contributes to the existing debates about further development of cyborgisation and examines boundaries that will strictly divide man from a cyborg in the near future. In order to protect man from the omnipotence of technology and its unethical application is necessary to establish cyborgoethics that would determine the implementation of an artificial boundary in the natural body.

In the wake of growing pressures to make scholarly knowledge commercially relevant via translation into intellectual property, various techno-scientific communities have mobilized to create open access/open source experiments. These efforts are based on the ideas and success of free and open source software, and generally try to exploit two salient features: increased openness and circulation, and distributed collective innovation. Transferring these ideas from software to science often involves unforeseen challenges, one of which is that these movements can be deemed, often incorrectly, as heretical by university administrators and technology transfer officers who valorize metrics such as number of patents filed and granted, spin-off companies created, and revenue generated. In this paper, we discuss nascent efforts to foster an open source movement in nanotechnology and provide an illustrative case of an arsenic removal invention. We discuss challenges facing the open source nano movement that include making a technology widely accessible and the associated politics of metrics.

This article explores the ways in which actor‐network theory (ANT) invites an alternative account of democratic process, namely in terms of issue‐formation, which is particularly well suited to the study of democratic practices facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICT). Engaging with arguments that have been made in political theory in favor of the re‐invigoration of institutional and extra‐institutional forms of democratic debate, this article argues that a re‐valuation of issue‐politics is more than timely. In this respect, actor‐network theory is a particularly fruitful approach, since it provides the conceptual and methodological equipment to account for democracy in terms of processes of issue formation. Such an account of democracy, it is argued, is particularly appropriate to the study of ICT‐based democratic processes, since in the context of ICT distributed networks that configure around particular issues can be seen to emerge as the carriers of democratic process. Moreover, ANT provides the conceptual and methodological tools for the development of a research practice of tracing public controversies as they are enacted in such networks on the Web. In tracing a particular controversy on the Web, around the Development Gateway, a portal for development information set up by the World Bank, one begins to articulate an alternative understanding of the significance of ICT for institutional as well as extra‐institutional forms of democracy. A number of requirements on effective democratic action, as facilitated by ICT, are derived from the case study, which move beyond the requirement of social networking, i.e. the building of partnerships, and informational networking, i.e. the exchange of knowledge and opinion. Issue‐networking here comes to the fore as indispensable to democratic politics.