 | Michael Bartos - Independent researcher |
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04.08.2025-30.09.2025
The millennium pandemics
Objectives
To complete a book comparing the AIDS and Covid-19 pandemics.
To develop new insights into the nature and impact of the AIDS and Covid-19 pandemics on concepts of health, public policy, health ethics, global health decision-making and geopolitics.
To formulate and test with key policy audiences in international health institutions conclusions and lessons learnt and not learnt from the AIDS and Covid-19 pandemics.
To identify areas of consensus and of contestation in relation to pandemics, health and society.
Expected outcomes
Finalisation of the manuscript.
Formulation of key ideas in global health policy and ethics as they have been created in the context of these pandemics.
Establishment of robust notions of global health policy, health security, community involvement, decolonisation of global health, and global health architecture.
Shared understandings of critical points of contestation, robustness and fragility in global health and pandemic preparedness and response.
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01.02.2017-28.04.2017
Taming Frankenstein's new monster: a framework for posthuman ethics
Michael Bartos worked for the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 2000 to the end of 2016, providing policy advice in Geneva headquarters and representing the organization in Central America and most recently Zimbabwe. Before that he was a Research Fellow in Australia’s HIV social research programme and has published widely on HIV prevention, HIV investment and impact, as well as on governmentality, Foucault and sexuality. He has an M.Ed from the University of Melbourne and his disciplinary background is in health sociology and philosophy. Michael is working on a framework for ‘posthuman’ bioethics. Human boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred, on the one hand by technologies to enhance the body and mind, and on the other hand the call of the Anthropocene for humans to extend their ethic of care to other species and the planet. For some, calling into question the limits of what it is to be human is a horror story, but for others it is an opportunity for new forms of ethical responsibility. Frankenstein originated by the shores of Lac Leman, and today around these shores a number of global institutions are working on simulating the human brain, new nutritional frontiers, and regulating synthetic biology. Michael will engage with them to find out how useful they find the idea of posthuman bioethics.
Michael Bartos is an independent researcher in the fields of global health, ethics and government. From 2000 to 2016 he was part of the global AIDS response holding policy advice positions in relation to HIV prevention and care with the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and as a country representative for UNAIDS in Central America and from 2013 to 2016 in Zimbabwe. Previously he was a research fellow in Australia's national AIDS research programme. From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic he was a writer and adviser including serving as senior editor for the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response. He has been a consultant writer for WHO in relation to pandemics, the WHO investment case, and the social determinants of health. His research background is in philosophy, sociology and policy studies.
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