The law and ethics of ‘self-quantified’ health information: An Australian perspective

This exploratory article examines the phenomenon of the ‘Quantified Self’—until recently, a subculture of enthusiasts who aim to discover knowledge about themselves and their bodies through self-tracking, usually using wearable devices to do so—and its implications for laws concerned with regulating and protecting health information. Quantified Self techniques and the ‘wearable devices’ and software that facilitate them—in which large transnational technology corporations are now involved—often involve the gathering of what would be considered ‘health information’ according to legal definitions, yet may occur outside the provision of traditional health services (including ‘e-health’) and the regulatory frameworks that govern them. This article explores the legal and regulatory framework for self-quantified health information and wearable devices in Australia and determines the extent to which this framework addresses privacy and other concerns that these techniques engender, along with suggestions for reform.

Book review: "Kozak, M., & Kozak, N. (Eds). 2008. Destination Marketing: An International Perspective. Wallingford, Oxon: Routledge"

This edited volume contains 18 chapters by 40 contributors from many parts the world, and is divided into four thematic sections. The focus of Part 1 is Destination image, and contains five chapters. This has arguably been the most popular topic in the destination marketing literature, underpinned by the knowledge that the image an individual holds of a destination is as important as any tangible features. Yin Chew and Siti Johari attempt to model the relationship between destination image and country image using structural equation modelling. While this does address an important gap in the literature, the measures used to operationalise the constructs are not reported and little of the data analysis is discussed to support the finding that country image is a predictor of destination image. Ana Rodriquez, Antonia Correia and Metin Kozak report the findings of an exploratory study about lakedestination image. They used a neural network content analysis of 40 lake descriptions featuring on an online directory for lake enthusiasts to derive a set of cognitive attribute themes. Yang Zhang and Yi-Wei Xiao explore the relations between literary works and tourism through the Asian voice. Whereas most literary tourism studies have been around Western culture, this is a rare perspective from Chinese culture...

Does gender moderate the relationship between polydrug use and sexual risk-taking among Australian secondary school students under 16 years of age?

Introduction and Aims This study examines the association of alcohol and polydrug use with risky sexual behaviour in adolescents under 16 years of age and if this association differs by gender. Design and Methods The sample consisted of 5412 secondary school students under 16 years of age from Victoria, Australia. Participants completed an anonymous and confidential survey during class time. The key measures were having had sex before legal age of consent (16 years), unprotected sex before 16 (no condom) and latent-class derived alcohol and polydrug use variables based on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, inhalants and other illegal drug use in the past month. Results There were 7.52% and 2.55% of adolescents who reported having sex and having unprotected sex before 16 years of age, respectively. After adjusting for antisocial behaviours, peers' drug use and family and school risk factors, girls were less likely to have unprotected sex (odds ratio = 0.31, P = 0.003). However, the interaction of being female and polydrug use (odds ratio = 4.52, P = 0.004) was significant, indicating that girls who engaged in polydrug use were at higher risk of having unprotected sex. For boys, the effect of polydrug use was non-significant (odds ratio = 1.44, P = 0.310). Discussion and Conclusions For girls, polydrug use was significantly associated with unprotected sex after adjusting for a range of risk factors, and this relationship was non-significant for boys. Future prevention programs for adolescent risky sexual behaviour and polydrug use might benefit from a tailored approach to gender differences.

Clinician perspective on molecular profiling of non-small-cell lung cancer

The article by Meric-Bernstam et al1 that was recently published in Journal of Clinical Oncology raises important questions about the clinical application of large-scale genomic testing. We congratulate the authors for this ambitious study, which successfully profiled 2,000 consecutive patients with advanced cancer. The next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform was used for 1,749 of 2,000 patients (87.5%). Of 789 patients with potentially actionable mutations, 83 (11%, or 4% of screened population) were enrolled in a genomically matched clinical study. As the editorial2 accompanying the article by Meric-Bernstam et al1 pointed out, the 4% figure, albeit disappointing, may be an underestimate because cancers such as lung adenocarcinoma and melanoma, for which ≥ 50% of patients have actionable mutations, were under-represented. ...