The horizon of understanding the epidemic phenomenon will also be broadened by taking into account data from soils understood as environmental reservoirs of pathogens and their vectors. The team wants to be a pioneer in this type of approach, which is still on the fringe of scientific approaches, whereas soils are undeniably important epidemic foci because of their preservation of bacterial traces for many years.
Projects
The concept of the self has made it possible to think of the organism under the category of identity in order to account for the unity and effectiveness of the system of defense of its integrity. The dualism of self and non-self posits that an organism defends itself by an immune reaction against an external element ("non-self") while sparing the entities recognized as its own ("self").
The "self/non-self" model is based on the reasoning by analogy long decried by epistemologists, as well as the use of metaphors borrowed from social life, which lead to thinking of the body's self-normativity on the model of a community of competing pathogens (pathogens tolerated by the "self" as endogenous entities) but sufficiently unified to fight against potentially aggressive external agents.
Pharmaceutical law is undoubtedly one of the specialties of the "Health Law" axis that best ensures the team's visibility. This field of research is, from a legal point of view, poorly exploited in France.
Hospital law can be described as the second marker of the team's disciplinary visibility. The books and manuals on this subject have been particularly praised. In recent years, hospital law has given rise to reflections on the organization of the health care system, on financing mechanisms and on liability. In the last few months, the subject has been in full mutation and the team has been able to take advantage of it to propose innovative publications.
Traditional medicine is probably the most surprising object of study. In the West, work on it is, to say the least, scarce. This lack of research does not mean that traditional medicine is not of interest to the researcher or the professional. The emergence of new medical techniques and the demands for a more alternative medicine have raised many legal questions.
The problem of violence in all its forms (physical, psychological, verbal, symbolic) has been the subject of a galloping inflation of legislation in France and abroad, the aim of which is to ensure better protection for victims, with diversified responses.
This program, which addresses questions of paleopathology and paleoepidemiology, deals with the health status of populations in the past and as such represents an important federating area for the team. In particular, it addresses the estimation of the impact of infections (visible or invisible on the bone) on the general health of immatures, in collaboration with colleagues of the GENGLOBE team (Hommes-Microbes project). This component on immatures, started in 2021, runs until 2025.