title: Influenza vaccine

text: Although Guillain–Barré syndrome had been feared as a complication of vaccination, the CDC states that most studies on modern influenza vaccines have seen no link with Guillain–Barré. Infection with influenza virus itself increases both the risk of death (up to one in ten thousand) and the risk of developing Guillain–Barré syndrome to a far higher level than the highest level of suspected vaccine involvement (approximately ten times higher by 2009 estimates).


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Although one review gives an incidence of about one case of Guillain–Barré per million vaccinations, a large study in China, covering close to a hundred million doses of vaccine against the 2009 H1N1 "swine" flu found only eleven cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome, (0.1 per million doses) total incidence in persons vaccinated, actually lower than the normal rate of the disease in China, and no other notable side effects.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Although most influenza vaccines are produced using egg-based techniques, influenza vaccines are nonetheless still recommended as safe for people with egg allergies, even if severe, as no increased risk of allergic reaction to the egg-based vaccines has been shown for people with egg allergies. Studies examining the safety of influenza vaccines in people with severe egg allergies found that anaphylaxis was very rare, occurring in 1.3 cases per million doses given.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Monitoring for symptoms from vaccination is recommended in those with more severe symptoms. A study of nearly 800 children with egg allergy, including over 250 with previous anaphylactic reactions, had zero systemic allergic reactions when given the live attenuated flu vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Vaccines produced using other technologies, notably recombinant vaccines and those based on cell culture rather than egg protein, started to become available from 2012 in the US, and later in Europe and Australia.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Several studies have identified an increased incidence of narcolepsy among recipients of the pandemic H1N1 influenza AS03-adjuvanted vaccine; efforts to identify a mechanism for this suggest that narcolepsy is autoimmune, and that the AS03-adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine may mimic hypocretin, serving as a trigger.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Some injection-based flu vaccines intended for adults in the United States contain thiomersal (also known as thimerosal), a mercury-based preservative. Despite some controversy in the media, the World Health Organization's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has concluded that there is no evidence of toxicity from thiomersal in vaccines and no reason on grounds of safety to change to more-expensive single-dose administration.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: TIV or QIV induce protection after injection (typically intramuscular, though subcutaneous and intradermal routes can also be protective) based on an immune response to the antigens present on the inactivated virus, while cold-adapted LAIV works by establishing infection in the nasal passages.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Various public health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), recommend that yearly influenza vaccination be routinely offered, particularly to people at risk of complications of influenza and those individuals who live with or care for high-risk individuals, including:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The flu vaccine is contraindicated for those under six months of age and those with severe, life-threatening allergies to flu vaccine or any ingredient in the vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), the group that advises the Public Health Agency of Canada, recommends that everyone over six months of age be encouraged to receive annual influenza vaccination, and that children between the age of six months and 24 months, and their household contacts, should be considered a high priority for the flu vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) recommends vaccinating the elderly as a priority, with a secondary priority people with chronic medical conditions and health care workers.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The influenza vaccination strategy is generally that of protecting vulnerable people, rather than limiting influenza circulation or eliminating human influenza sickness. This is in contrast with the high herd immunity strategies for other infectious diseases such as polio and measles. This is also due in part to the financial and logistics burden associated with the need of an annual injection.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In the United States routine influenza vaccination is recommended for all persons aged six months and over. It takes up to two weeks after vaccination for sufficient antibodies to develop in the body. The CDC recommends vaccination before the end of October, although it considers getting a vaccine in December or even later to be still beneficial.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: According to the CDC, the live attenuated virus (LAIV4) (which comes in the form of the nasal spray in the US) should be avoided by some groups.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Within its blanket recommendation for general vaccination in the United States, the CDC, which began recommending the influenza vaccine to health care workers in 1981, emphasizes to clinicians the special urgency of vaccination for members of certain vulnerable groups, and their caregivers:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The US government requires hospitals to report worker vaccination rates. Some US states and hundreds of US hospitals require health care workers to either get vaccinations or wear masks during flu season. These requirements occasionally engender union lawsuits on narrow collective bargaining grounds, but proponents note that courts have generally endorsed forced vaccination laws affecting the general population during disease outbreaks.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Vaccination against influenza is especially considered important for members of high-risk groups who would be likely to have complications from influenza, for example pregnant women and children and teenagers from six months to 18 years of age who are receiving aspirin- or salicylate-containing medications and who might be at risk for experiencing Reye syndrome after influenza virus infection;


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The CDC indicated that live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), also called the nasal spray vaccine, was not recommended for the 2016–2017 flu season in the United States.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Furthermore, the CDC recommends that health care personnel who care for severely immunocompromised persons receive injections (TIV or QIV) rather than LAIV.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Dr Jenny Harries maintained winter 2021–2022 in the UK will be "uncertain" since flu and COVID-19 will be circulating together for the first time. She urged eligible people to get COVID-19 and flu vaccines. She maintains flu vaccination is important every year. People need to know that flu can be fatal as many people do not know this.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The Australian Government recommends seasonal flu vaccination for everyone over the age of six months. Australia uses inactivated vaccines. Until 2021, the egg-based vaccine has been the only one available (and continues to be the only free one), but from March 2021 a new cell-based vaccine is available for those who wish to pay for it, and it is expected that this one will become the standard by 2026.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Uptake of flu vaccination, both seasonally and during pandemics, is often low. Systematic reviews of pandemic flu vaccination uptake have identified several personal factors that may influence uptake, including gender (higher uptake in men), ethnicity (higher in people from ethnic minorities) and having a chronic illness. Beliefs in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine are also important.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A number of measures have been found to be useful to increase rates of vaccination in those over sixty including: patient reminders using leaflets and letters, postcard reminders, client outreach programs, vaccine home visits, group vaccinations, free vaccinations, physician payment, physician reminders and encouraging physician competition.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Frontline health care workers are often recommended to get seasonal and any pandemic flu vaccination. For example, in the UK all health care workers involved in patient care are recommended to receive the seasonal flu vaccine, and were also recommended to be vaccinated against the H1N1/09 (later renamed A(H1N1)pdm09) swine flu virus during the 2009 pandemic. However, uptake is often low. During the 2009 pandemic, low uptake by healthcare workers was seen in countries including the UK, Italy, Greece, and Hong Kong.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In a 2010 survey of United States health care workers, 63.5% reported that they received the flu vaccine during the 2010–11 season, an increase from 61.9% reported the previous season. US Health professionals with direct patient contact had higher vaccination uptake, such as physicians and dentists (84.2%) and nurse practitioners (82.6%).


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The main reason to vaccinate health care workers is to prevent staff from spreading flu to their patients and to reduce staff absence at a time of high service demand, but the reasons health care workers state for their decisions to accept or decline vaccination may more often be to do with perceived personal benefits.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In Victoria (Australia) public hospitals, rates of health care worker vaccination in 2005 ranged from 34% for non-clinical staff to 42% for laboratory staff. One of the reasons for rejecting vaccines was concern over adverse reactions; in one study, 31% of resident physicians at a teaching hospital incorrectly believed Australian vaccines could cause influenza.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Research continues into the idea of a "universal" influenza vaccine that would not require tailoring to a particular strain, but would be effective against a broad variety of influenza viruses. No vaccine candidates had been announced by November 2007, but , there are several universal vaccines candidates, in pre-clinical development and in clinical trials.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In a 2007 report, the global capacity of approximately 826 million seasonal influenza vaccine doses (inactivated and live) was double the production of 413 million doses. In an aggressive scenario of producing pandemic influenza vaccines by 2013, only 2.8 billion courses could be produced in a six-month time frame. If all high- and upper-middle-income countries sought vaccines for their entire populations in a pandemic, nearly two billion courses would be required. If China pursued this goal as well, more than three billion courses would be required to serve these populations. Vaccine research and development is ongoing to identify novel vaccine approaches that could produce much greater quantities of vaccine at a price that is affordable to the global population.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Most flu vaccines are grown by vaccine manufacturers in fertilized chicken eggs. In the Northern hemisphere, the manufacturing process begins following the announcement (typically in February) of the WHO recommended strains for the winter flu season. Three strains (representing an H1N1, an H3N2, and a B strain) of flu are selected and chicken eggs are inoculated separately. These monovalent harvests are then combined to make the trivalent vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: , both the conventional injection and the nasal spray are manufactured using chicken eggs. The European Union also approved Optaflu, a vaccine produced by Novartis using vats of animal cells. This technique is expected to be more scalable and avoid problems with eggs, such as allergic reactions and incompatibility with strains that affect avians like chickens.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Influenza vaccines are produced in pathogen-free eggs that are eleven or twelve days old. The top of the egg is disinfected by wiping it with alcohol and then the egg is candled to identify a non-veinous area in the allantoic cavity where a small hole is poked to serve as a pressure release. A second hole is made at the top of the egg, where the influenza virus is injected in the allantoic cavity, past the chorioallantoic membrane. The two holes are then sealed with melted paraffin and the inoculated eggs are incubated for 48 hours at 37 degrees Celsius. During incubation time, the virus replicates and newly replicated viruses are released into the allantoic fluid


title: Influenza vaccine

text: After the 48-hour incubation period, the top of the egg is cracked and the ten milliliters of allantoic fluid is removed, from which about fifteen micrograms of the flu vaccine can be obtained. At this point, the viruses have been weakened or killed and the viral antigen is purified and placed inside vials, syringes, or nasal sprayers. Done on a large-scale, this method is used to produce the flu vaccine for the human population.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Methods of vaccine generation that bypass the need for eggs include the construction of influenza virus-like particles (VLP). VLP resemble viruses, but there is no need for inactivation, as they do not include viral coding elements, but merely present antigens in a similar manner to a virion. Some methods of producing VLP include cultures of "Spodoptera frugiperda" Sf9 insect cells and plant-based vaccine production (e.g., production in "Nicotiana benthamiana"). There is evidence that some VLPs elicit antibodies that recognize a broader panel of antigenically distinct viral isolates compared to other vaccines in the hemagglutination-inhibition assay (HIA).


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A gene-based DNA vaccine, used to prime the immune system after boosting with an inactivated H5N1 vaccine, underwent clinical trials in 2011.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: On November 20, 2012, Novartis received FDA approval for the first cell-culture vaccine. In 2013, the recombinant influenza vaccine, Flublok, was approved for use in the United States.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: On September 17, 2020, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for Supemtek, a quadrivalent influenza vaccine (recombinant, prepared in cell culture). The applicant for this medicinal product is Sanofi Pasteur. Supemtek was approved for medical use in the European Union in November 2020.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Australia authorised its first and cell-based vaccine in March 2021, based on an "eternal cell line" of a dog kidney. Because of the way it is produced, it produces better-matched vaccine (to the flu strains).


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In addition, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Thailand had facilities in final stages of establishing production.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The cost-effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccination has been widely evaluated for different groups and in different settings. In the elderly (over 65), the majority of published studies have found that vaccination is cost saving, with the cost savings associated with influenza vaccination (e.g. prevented health care visits) outweighing the cost of vaccination. In older adults (aged 50–64 years), several published studies have found that influenza vaccination is likely to be cost-effective, however the results of these studies were often found to be dependent on key assumptions used in the economic evaluations. The uncertainty in influenza cost-effectiveness models can partially be explained by the complexities involved in estimating the disease burden, as well as the seasonal variability in the circulating strains and the match of the vaccine. In healthy working adults (aged 18–49 years), a 2012 review found that vaccination was generally not cost-saving, with the suitability for funding being dependent on the willingness to pay to obtain the associated health benefits. In children, the majority of studies have found that influenza vaccination was cost-effective, however many of the studies included (indirect) productivity gains, which may not be given the same weight in all settings. Several studies have attempted to predict the cost-effectiveness of interventions (including prepandemic vaccination) to help protect against a future pandemic, however estimating the cost-effectiveness has been complicated by uncertainty as to the severity of a potential future pandemic and the efficacy of measures against it.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Influenza research includes molecular virology, molecular evolution, pathogenesis, host immune responses, genomics, and epidemiology. These help in developing influenza countermeasures such as vaccines, therapies and diagnostic tools. Improved influenza countermeasures require basic research on how viruses enter cells, replicate, mutate, evolve into new strains and induce an immune response. The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project is creating a library of influenza sequences that will help researchers' understanding of what makes one strain more lethal than another, what genetic determinants most affect immunogenicity, and how the virus evolves over time. Solutions to limitations in current vaccine methods are being researched.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A different approach uses Internet content to estimate the impact of an influenza vaccination campaign. More specifically, researchers have used data from Twitter and Microsoft's Bing search engine, and proposed a statistical framework which, after a series of operations, maps this information to estimates of the influenza-like illness reduction percentage in areas where vaccinations have been performed. The method has been used to quantify the impact of two flu vaccination programmes in England (2013/14 and 2014/15), where school-age children were administered a live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV). Notably, the impact estimates were in accordance with estimations from Public Health England based on traditional syndromic surveillance endpoints.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The rapid development, production, and distribution of pandemic influenza vaccines could potentially save millions of lives during an influenza pandemic. Due to the short time frame between identification of a pandemic strain and need for vaccination, researchers are looking at novel technologies for vaccine production that could provide better "real-time" access and be produced more affordably, thereby increasing access for people living in low- and moderate-income countries, where an influenza pandemic may likely originate, such as live attenuated (egg-based or cell-based) technology and recombinant technologies (proteins and virus-like particles). , more than seventy known clinical trials have been completed or are ongoing for pandemic influenza vaccines. In September 2009, the FDA approved four vaccines against the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus (the 2009 pandemic strain), and expected the initial vaccine lots to be available within the following month.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In January 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Audenz as a vaccine for the H5N1 flu virus. Audenz is a vaccine indicated for active immunization for the prevention of disease caused by the influenza A virus H5N1 subtype contained in the vaccine. Audenz is approved for use in persons six months of age and older at increased risk of exposure to the influenza A virus H5N1 subtype contained in the vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A "universal vaccine" that would not have to be designed and made for each flu season in each hemisphere would stabilize the supply, avoid error in predicting the season's variants, and protect against escape of the circulating strains by mutation. Such a vaccine has been the subject of research for decades.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: One approach is to use broadly neutralizing antibodies that, unlike the annual seasonal vaccines used over the first decades of the 21st century that provoke the body to generate an immune response, instead provide a component of the immune response itself. The first neutralizing antibodies were identified in 1993, via experimentation. It was found that the flu neutralizing antibodies bound to the stalk of the Hemagglutinin protein. Antibodies that could bind to the head of those proteins were identified. The highly conserved M2 proton channel was proposed as a potential target for broadly neutralizing antibodies.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The challenges for researchers are to identify single antibodies that could neutralize many subtypes of the virus, so that they could be useful in any season, and that target conserved domains that are resistant to antigenic drift.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Another approach is to take the conserved domains identified from these projects, and to deliver groups of these antigens to provoke an immune response; various approaches with different antigens, presented different ways (as fusion proteins, mounted on virus-like particles, on non-pathogenic viruses, as DNA, and others), are under development.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Efforts have also been undertaken to develop universal vaccines that specifically activate a T-cell response, based on clinical data showing that people with a strong, early T-cell response have better outcomes when infected with influenza and because T-cells respond to conserved epitopes. The challenge for developers is that these epitopes are on internal protein domains that are only mildly immunogenic.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Along with the rest of the vaccine field, people working on universal vaccines have experimented with vaccine adjuvants to improve the ability of their vaccines to create a sufficiently powerful and enduring immune response.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: As of 2019, an oral flu vaccine was in clinical research. The oral vaccine candidate is based on an adenovirus type5 vector modified to remove genes needed for replication, with an added gene that expresses a small double-stranded RNA hairpin molecule as an adjuvant. In 2020, a PhaseII human trial of the pill form of the vaccine showed that it was well tolerated and provided similar immunity to a licensed injectable vaccine.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: An influenza vaccine and a COVID-19 vaccine may be given safely at the same time.<ref name="NHS28/9/2021"></ref> Preliminary research indicates that influenza vaccination does not prevent COVID-19, but may reduce the incidence and severity of COVID-19 infection.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Tom Jefferson, who has led Cochrane Collaboration reviews of flu vaccines, has called clinical evidence concerning flu vaccines "rubbish" and has therefore declared them to be ineffective; he has called for placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials, which most in the field hold as unethical. His views on the efficacy of flu vaccines are rejected by medical institutions including the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, and by key figures in the field like Anthony Fauci.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Michael Osterholm, who led the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy 2012 review on flu vaccines, recommended getting the vaccine but criticized its promotion, saying, "We have overpromoted and overhyped this vaccine... it does not protect as promoted. It's all a sales job: it's all public relations."


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Horses with horse flu can run a fever, have a dry hacking cough, have a runny nose, and become depressed and reluctant to eat or drink for several days but usually recover in two to three weeks. "Vaccination schedules generally require a primary course of two doses, 3–6 weeks apart, followed by boosters at 6–12 month intervals. It is generally recognized that in many cases such schedules may not maintain protective levels of antibody and more frequent administration is advised in high-risk situations."


title: Influenza vaccine

text: It is a common requirement at shows in the United Kingdom that horses be vaccinated against equine flu and a vaccination card must be produced; the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) requires vaccination every six months.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Poultry vaccines for bird flu are made inexpensively and are not filtered and purified like human vaccines to remove bits of bacteria or other viruses. They usually contain whole virus, not just hemagglutinin as in most human flu vaccines. Another difference between human and poultry vaccines is that poultry vaccines are adjuvated with mineral oil, which induces a strong immune reaction but can cause inflammation and abscesses. "Chicken vaccinators who have accidentally jabbed themselves have developed painful swollen fingers or even lost thumbs, doctors said. Effectiveness may also be limited. Chicken vaccines are often only vaguely similar to circulating flu strainssome contain an H5N2 strain isolated in Mexico years ago. 'With a chicken, if you use a vaccine that's only 85percent related, you'll get protection,' Dr. Cardona said. 'In humans, you can get a single point mutation, and a vaccine that's 99.99percent related won't protect you.' And they are weaker [than human vaccines]. 'Chickens are smaller and you only need to protect them for six weeks, because that's how long they live till you eat them,' said Dr. John J. Treanor, a vaccine expert at the University of Rochester. Human seasonal flu vaccines contain about 45 micrograms of antigen, while an experimental A(H5N1) vaccine contains 180. Chicken vaccines may contain less than one microgram. 'You have to be careful about extrapolating data from poultry to humans,' warned Dr. David E. Swayne, director of the agriculture department's Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory. 'Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs.'"


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Researchers, led by Nicholas Savill of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, used mathematical models to simulate the spread of H5N1 and concluded that "at least 95percent of birds need to be protected to prevent the virus spreading silently. In practice, it is difficult to protect more than 90percent of a flock; protection levels achieved by a vaccine are usually much lower than this." The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has issued recommendations on the prevention and control of avian influenza in poultry, including the use of vaccination.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A filtered and purified Influenza A vaccine for humans is being developed and many countries have recommended it be stockpiled so if an Avian influenza pandemic starts jumping to humans, the vaccine can quickly be administered to avoid loss of life. Avian influenza is sometimes called avian flu, and commonly bird flu.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Swine influenza vaccines are extensively used in pig farming in Europe and North America. Most swine flu vaccines include an H1N1 and an H3N2 strain.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Swine influenza has been recognized as a major problem since the outbreak in 1976. Evolution of the virus has resulted in inconsistent responses to traditional vaccines. Standard commercial swine flu vaccines are effective in controlling the problem when the virus strains match enough to have significant cross-protection. Customised (autogenous) vaccines made from the specific viruses isolated, are made and used in the more difficult cases. The vaccine manufacturer Novartis claims that the H3N2 strain (first identified in 1998) has brought major losses to pig farmers. Abortion storms are a common sign and sows stop eating for a few days and run a high fever. The mortality rate can be as high as fifteen percent.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In 2004, influenza A virus subtype H3N8 was discovered to cause canine influenza. Because of the lack of previous exposure to this virus, dogs have no natural immunity to this virus. However, a vaccine was found in 2004.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Each year, three strains are chosen for selection in that year's flu vaccination by the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. The chosen strains are the H1N1, H3N2, and Type-B strains thought most likely to cause significant human suffering in the coming season. Starting with the 2012–2013 Northern Hemisphere influenza season (coincident with the approval of quadrivalent influenza vaccines), the WHO has also recommended a 2nd B-strain for use in quadrivalent vaccines. The World Health Organization (WHO) coordinates the contents of the vaccine each year to contain the most likely strains of the virus to attack the next year.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System's selection of viruses for the vaccine manufacturing process is based on its best estimate of which strains will predominate the next year, amounting in the end to well-informed but fallible guesswork.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Formal WHO recommendations were first issued in 1973. Beginning in 1999 there have been two recommendations per year: one for the northern hemisphere and the other for the southern hemisphere.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: Historical annual reformulations of the influenza vaccine are listed in a separate article. WHO seasonal influenza vaccine composition recommendations:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of virus vaccines for use in the 2020–2021 Northern Hemisphere influenza season recommended by the World Health Organization on February 28, 2020, is:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The WHO recommends that trivalent vaccines use as their influenza B virus a B/Washington/02/2019 (B/Victoria lineage)-like virus.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of egg-based influenza vaccines for the US 2020–2021 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The committee recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of cell- or recombinant-based influenza vaccines for the US 2020–2021 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: For trivalent influenza vaccines for use in the US for the 2020–2021 influenza season, depending on the manufacturing method of the vaccine, the committee recommended that the A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H3N2) and B/Victoria lineage viruses recommended above for the quadrivalent vaccines be used.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of virus vaccines for use in the European Union for the 2020–2021 Northern Hemisphere influenza season recommended by the European Medicines Agency on April 1, 2020, was:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: A B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus is recommended in addition to the strains mentioned above for the quadrivalent vaccines.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of vaccines for use in the 2021 Southern Hemisphere influenza season influenza season recommended by the World Health Organization in September 2020:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: In Australia, the standard vaccine under the National Immunisation Program for 2021 is the quadrivalent one.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of virus vaccines for use in the European Union for the 2021–2022 Northern Hemisphere influenza season recommended by the European Medicines Agency on March 30, 2021, is:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of egg-based influenza vaccines for the US 2021-2022 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The committee recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of cell- or recombinant based influenza vaccines for the US 2021-2022 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: For trivalent influenza vaccines for use in the US for the 2021-2022 influenza season, depending on the manufacturing method of the vaccine, the committee recommended that the A(H1N1) pdm09, A(H3N2) and B/Washington/02/2019-like virus (B/Victoria lineage) viruses recommended above for the quadrivalent vaccines be used.


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of vaccines for use in the 2022 Southern Hemisphere influenza season influenza season recommended by the World Health Organization in September 2021:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: It is recommended that trivalent influenza vaccines for use in the 2022 southern hemisphere influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The composition of virus vaccines for use in the European Union for the 2022–2023 Northern Hemisphere influenza season recommended by the European Medicines Agency on March 29, 2022, is:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of egg-based influenza vaccines for the U.S. 2022-2023 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: The committee recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of cell- or recombinant-based influenza vaccines for the US 2022–2023 influenza season contain the following:


title: Influenza vaccine

text: For trivalent influenza vaccines for use in the US for the 2022–2023 influenza season, depending on the manufacturing method of the vaccine, the committee recommended that the A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H3N2) and B/Austria/1359417/2021-like virus (B/Victoria lineage) viruses recommended above for the quadrivalent vaccines be used.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle assessment or LCA (also known as life cycle analysis) is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product's manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave).


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: An LCA study involves a thorough inventory of the energy and materials that are required across the industry value chain of the product, process or service, and calculates the corresponding emissions to the environment. LCA thus assesses cumulative potential environmental impacts. The aim is to document and improve the overall environmental profile of the product.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Widely recognized procedures for conducting LCAs are included in the 14000 series of environmental management standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), in particular, in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. ISO 14040 provides the 'principles and framework' of the Standard, while ISO 14044 provides an outline of the 'requirements and guidelines'. Generally, ISO 14040 was written for a managerial audience and ISO 14044 for practitioners. As part of the introductory section of ISO 14040, LCA has been defined as the following:LCA studies the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle (i.e., cradle-to-grave) from raw materials acquisition through production, use and disposal. The general categories of environmental impacts needing consideration include resource use, human health, and ecological consequences.Criticisms have been leveled against the LCA approach, both in general and with regard to specific cases (e.g., in the consistency of the methodology, particularly with regard to system boundaries, and the susceptibility of particular LCAs to practitioner bias with regard to the decisions that they seek to inform). Without a formal set of requirements and guidelines, an LCA can be completed based on a practitioner's views and believed methodologies. In turn, an LCA completed by 10 different parties could yield 10 different results. The ISO LCA Standard aims to normalize this; however, the guidelines are not overly restrictive and 10 different answers may still be generated.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is sometimes referred to synonymously as life cycle analysis in the scholarly and agency report literatures. Also, due to the general nature of an LCA study of examining the life cycle impacts from raw material extraction (cradle) through disposal (grave), it is sometimes referred to as "cradle-to-grave analysis".


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: As stated by the National Risk Management Research Laboratory of the EPA, "LCA is a technique to assess the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service, by:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Hence, it is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling. The results are used to help decision-makers select products or processes that result in the least impact to the environment by considering an entire product system and avoiding sub-optimization that could occur if only a single process were used.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Therefore, the goal of LCA is to compare the full range of environmental effects assignable to products and services by quantifying all inputs and outputs of material flows and assessing how these material flows affect the environment. This information is used to improve processes, support policy and provide a sound basis for informed decisions.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The term "life cycle" refers to the notion that a fair, holistic assessment requires the assessment of raw-material production, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal including all intervening transportation steps necessary or caused by the product's existence.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Despite attempts to standardize LCA, results from different LCAs are often contradictory, therefore it is unrealistic to expect these results to be unique and objective. Thus, it should not be considered as such, but rather as a family of methods attempting to quantify results through a different point-of-view. Among these methods are two main types: Attributional LCA and Consequential LCA. Attributional LCAs seek to attribute the burdens associated with the production and use of a product, or with a specific service or process, for an identified temporal period. Consequential LCAs seek to identify the environmental consequences of a decision or a proposed change in a system under study, and thus are oriented to the future and require that market and economic implications must be taken into account. In other words, Attributional LCA "attempts to answer 'how are things (i.e. pollutants, resources, and exchanges among processes) flowing within the chosen temporal window?', while Consequential LCA attempts to answer 'how will flows beyond the immediate system change in response to decisions?"


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: A third type of LCA, termed "social LCA", is also under development and is a distinct approach to that is intended to assess potential social and socio-economic implications and impacts. Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) is a useful tool for companies to identify and assess potential social impacts along the lifecycle of a product or service on various stakeholders (for example: workers, local communities, consumers). SLCA is framed by the UNEP/SETAC’s Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products published in 2009 in Quebec. The tool builds on the ISO 26000:2010 Guidelines for Social Responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The limitations of LCA to focus solely on the ecological aspects of sustainability, and not the economical or social aspects, distinguishes it from product line analysis (PLA) and similar methods. This limitation was made deliberately to avoid method overload but recognizes these factors should not be ignored when making product decisions.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Some widely recognized procedures for LCA are included in the ISO 14000 series of environmental management standards, in particular, ISO 14040 and 14044. Greenhouse gas (GHG) product life cycle assessments can also comply with specifications such as Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050 and the GHG Protocol Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: According to standards in the ISO 14040 and 14044, an LCA is carried out in four distinct phases, as illustrated in the figure shown at the above right (at opening of the article). The phases are often interdependent, in that the results of one phase will inform how other phases are completed. Therefore, none of the stages should be considered finalized until the entire study is complete.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The ISO LCA Standard requires a series of parameters to be quantitatively and qualitatively expressed, which are occasionally referred to as study design parameters (SPDs). The two main SPDs for an LCA are the Goal and Scope, both which must be explicitly stated. It is recommended that a study uses the keywords represented in the Standard when documenting these details (e.g., "The goal of the study is...") to make sure there is no confusion and ensure the study is being interpreted for its intended use.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Generally, an LCA study begins with an explicit statement of the goal, which sets out the context of the study and explains how and to whom the results are to be communicated. Per ISO guidelines, the goal must unambiguously state the following items:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The goal should also be defined with the commissioner for the study, and it is recommended a detailed description for why the study is being carried out is acquired from the commissioner.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Following the goal, the scope must be defined by outlining the qualitative and quantitative information included in the study. Unlike the goal, which may only include a few sentences, the scope often requires multiple pages. It is set to describe the detail and depth of the study and demonstrate that the goal can be achieved within the stated limitations. Under the ISO LCA Standard guidelines, the scope of the study should outline the following:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis involves creating an inventory of flows from and to nature (ecosphere) for a product system. It is the process of quantifying raw material and energy requirements, atmospheric emissions, land emissions, water emissions, resource uses, and other releases over the life cycle of a product or process. In other words, it is the aggregation of all elementary flows related to each unit process within a product system.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: To develop the inventory, it is often recommended to start with a flow model of the technical system using data on inputs and outputs of the product system. The flow model is typically illustrated with a flow diagram that includes the activities that are going to be assessed in the relevant supply chain and gives a clear picture of the technical system boundaries. Generally, the more detailed and complex the flow diagram, the more accurate the study and results. The input and output data needed for the construction of the model is collected for all activities within the system boundary, including from the supply chain (referred to as inputs from the technosphere).


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: As referenced in the ISO 14044 standard, the data must be related to the functional unit, as well as the goal and scope. However, since the LCA stages are iterative in nature, the data collection phase may cause the goal or scope to change. Conversely, a change in the goal or scope during the course of the study may cause additional collection of data or removal or previously collected data in the LCI.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The output of an LCI is a compiled inventory of elementary flows from all of the processes in the studied product system(s). The data is typically detailed in charts and requires a structured approach due to its complex nature.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: When collecting the data for each process within the system boundary, the ISO LCA standard requires the study to measure or estimate the data in order to quantitatively represent each process in the product system. Ideally, when collecting data, a practitioner should aim to collect data from primary sources (e.g., measuring inputs and outputs of a process on-site or other physical means). Questionnaire are frequently used to collect data on-site and can even be issued to the respective manufacturer or company to complete. Items on the questionnaire to be recorded may include:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Oftentimes, the collection of primary data may be difficult and deemed proprietary or confidential by the owner. An alternative to primary data is secondary data, which is data that comes from LCA databases, literature sources, and other past studies. With secondary sources, it is often you find data that is similar to a process but not exact (e.g., data from a different country, slightly different process, similar but different machine, etc.). As such, it is important to explicitly document the differences in such data. However, secondary data is not always inferior to primary data. For example, referencing another work's data in which the author used very accurate primary data. Along with primary data, secondary data should document the source, reliability, and temporal, geographical, and technological representativeness.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: When identifying the inputs and outputs to document for each unit process within the product system of an LCI, a practitioner may come across the instance where a process has multiple input streams or generate multiple output streams. In such case, the practitioner should allocate the flows based on the "Allocation Procedure" outlined in the previous "Goal and Scope" section of this article.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The technosphere is more simply defined as the human-made world, and considered by geologists as secondary resources, these resources are in theory 100% recyclable; however, in a practical sense, the primary goal is salvage. For an LCI, these technosphere products (supply chain products) are those that have been produced by humans, including products such as forestry, materials, and energy flows. Typically, they will not have access to data concerning inputs and outputs for previous production processes of the product. The entity undertaking the LCA must then turn to secondary sources if it does not already have that data from its own previous studies. National databases or data sets that come with LCA-practitioner tools, or that can be readily accessed, are the usual sources for that information. Care must then be taken to ensure that the secondary data source properly reflects regional or national conditions.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: LCI methods include "process-based LCAs", economic input–output LCA (EIOLCA), and hybrid approaches. Process-based LCA is a bottom-up LCI approach the constructs an LCI using knowledge about industrial processes within the life cycle of a product, and the physical flows connecting them. EIOLCA is a top-down approach to LCI and uses information on elementary flows associated with one unit of economic activity across different sectors. This information is typically pulled from government agency national statistics tracking trade and services between sectors. Hybrid LCA is a combination of process-based LCA and EIOLCA.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The quality of LCI data is typically evaluated with the use of a pedigree matrix. Different pedigree matrices are available, but all contain a number of data quality indicators and a set of qualitative criteria per indicator. There is another hybrid approach integrates the widely used, semi-quantitative approach that uses a pedigree matrix, into a qualitative analysis to better illustrate the quality of LCI data for non-technical audiences, in particular policymakers.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life Cycle Inventory analysis is followed by a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). This phase of LCA is aimed at evaluating the potential environmental and human health impacts resulting from the elementary flows determined in the LCI. The ISO 14040 and 14044 standards require the following mandatory steps for completing an LCIA:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: In many LCAs, characterization concludes the LCIA analysis, as it is the last compulsory stage according to ISO 14044. However, the ISO Standard provides the following optional steps to be taken in addition to the aforementioned mandatory steps:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle impacts can also be categorized under the several phases of the development, production, use, and disposal of a product. Broadly speaking, these impacts can be divided into first impacts, use impacts, and end of life impacts. First impacts include extraction of raw materials, manufacturing (conversion of raw materials into a product), transportation of the product to a market or site, construction/installation, and the beginning of the use or occupancy. Use impacts include physical impacts of operating the product or facility (such as energy, water, etc.), and any maintenance, renovation, or repairs that are required to continue to use the product or facility. End of life impacts include demolition and processing of waste or recyclable materials.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle interpretation is a systematic technique to identify, quantify, check, and evaluate information from the results of the life cycle inventory and/or the life cycle impact assessment. The results from the inventory analysis and impact assessment are summarized during the interpretation phase. The outcome of the interpretation phase is a set of conclusions and recommendations for the study. According to ISO 14043, the interpretation should include the following:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: A key purpose of performing life cycle interpretation is to determine the level of confidence in the final results and communicate them in a fair, complete, and accurate manner. Interpreting the results of an LCA is not as simple as "3 is better than 2, therefore Alternative A is the best choice". Interpretation begins with understanding the accuracy of the results, and ensuring they meet the goal of the study. This is accomplished by identifying the data elements that contribute significantly to each impact category, evaluating the sensitivity of these significant data elements, assessing the completeness and consistency of the study, and drawing conclusions and recommendations based on a clear understanding of how the LCA was conducted and the results were developed.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Specifically, as voiced by M.A. Curran, the goal of the LCA interpretation phase is to identify the alternative that has the least cradle-to-grave environmental negative impact on land, sea, and air resources.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: LCA was primarily used as a comparison tool, providing informative information on the environmental impacts of a product and comparing it to available alternatives. Its potential applications expanded to include marketing, product design, product development, strategic planning, consumer education, ecolabeling and government policy.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: EPDs provide a level of transparency that is being increasingly demanded through policies and standards around the world. They are used in the built environment as a tool for experts in the industry to compose whole building life cycle assessments more easily, as the environmental impact of individual products are known.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: A life cycle analysis is only as accurate and valid as is its basis set of data. There are two fundamental types of LCA data–unit process data, and environmental input-output (EIO) data. A unit process data collects data around a single industrial activity and its product(s), including resources used from the environment and other industries, as well as its generated emissions throughout its life cycle. EIO data are based on national economic input-output data.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: In 2001, ISO published a technical specification on data documentation, describing the format for life cycle inventory data (ISO 14048). The format includes three areas: process, modeling and validation, and administrative information.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: When comparing LCAs, the data used in each LCA should be of "equivalent" quality, since no just comparison can be done if one product has a much higher availability of accurate and valid data, as compared to another product which has lower availability of such data.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Moreover, time horizon is a sensitive parameter and was shown to introduce inadvertent bias by providing one perspective on the outcome of LCA, when comparing the toxicity potential between petrochemicals and biopolymers for instance. Therefore, conducting sensitivity analysis in LCA are important to determine which parameters considerably impact the results, and can also be used to identify which parameters cause uncertainties.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: As noted above, the inventory in the LCA usually considers a number of stages including materials extraction, processing and manufacturing, product use, and product disposal. When an LCA is done on a product across all stages, the stage with the highest environmental impact can be determined and altered. For example, woolen-garment was evaluated on its environmental impacts during its production, use and end-of-life, and identified the contribution of fossil fuel energy to be dominated by wool processing and GHG emissions to be dominated by wool production. However, the most influential factor was the number of garment wear and length of garment lifetime, indicating that the consumer has the largest influence on this products' overall environmental impact.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Cradle-to-grave is the full Life Cycle Assessment from resource extraction ('cradle'), to manufacturing, usage, and maintenance, all the way through to its disposal phase ('grave'). For example, trees produce paper, which can be recycled into low-energy production cellulose (fiberised paper) insulation, then used as an energy-saving device in the ceiling of a home for 40 years, saving 2,000 times the fossil-fuel energy used in its production. After 40 years the cellulose fibers are replaced and the old fibers are disposed of, possibly incinerated. All inputs and outputs are considered for all the phases of the life cycle.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Cradle-to-gate is an assessment of a "partial" product life cycle from resource extraction ("cradle") to the factory gate (i.e., before it is transported to the consumer). The use phase and disposal phase of the product are omitted in this case. Cradle-to-gate assessments are sometimes the basis for environmental product declarations (EPD) termed business-to-business EPDs. One of the significant uses of the cradle-to-gate approach compiles the life cycle inventory (LCI) using cradle-to-gate. This allows the LCA to collect all of the impacts leading up to resources being purchased by the facility. They can then add the steps involved in their transport to plant and manufacture process to more easily produce their own cradle-to-gate values for their products.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Cradle-to-cradle is a specific kind of cradle-to-grave assessment, where the end-of-life disposal step for the product is a recycling process. It is a method used to minimize the environmental impact of products by employing sustainable production, operation, and disposal practices and aims to incorporate social responsibility into product development. From the recycling process originate new, identical products (e.g., asphalt pavement from discarded asphalt pavement, glass bottles from collected glass bottles), or different products (e.g., glass wool insulation from collected glass bottles).


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Allocation of burden for products in open loop production systems presents considerable challenges for LCA. Various methods, such as the avoided burden approach have been proposed to deal with the issues involved.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Gate-to-gate is a partial LCA looking at only one value-added process in the entire production chain. Gate-to-gate modules may also later be linked in their appropriate production chain to form a complete cradle-to-gate evaluation.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Well-to-wheel (WtW) is the specific LCA used for transport fuels and vehicles. The analysis is often broken down into stages entitled "well-to-station", or "well-to-tank", and "station-to-wheel" or "tank-to-wheel", or "plug-to-wheel". The first stage, which incorporates the feedstock or fuel production and processing and fuel delivery or energy transmission, and is called the "upstream" stage, while the stage that deals with vehicle operation itself is sometimes called the "downstream" stage. The well-to-wheel analysis is commonly used to assess total energy consumption, or the energy conversion efficiency and emissions impact of marine vessels, aircraft and motor vehicles, including their carbon footprint, and the fuels used in each of these transport modes. WtW analysis is useful for reflecting the different efficiencies and emissions of energy technologies and fuels at both the upstream and downstream stages, giving a more complete picture of real emissions.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The well-to-wheel variant has a significant input on a model developed by the Argonne National Laboratory. The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model was developed to evaluate the impacts of new fuels and vehicle technologies. The model evaluates the impacts of fuel use using a well-to-wheel evaluation while a traditional cradle-to-grave approach is used to determine the impacts from the vehicle itself. The model reports energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and six additional pollutants: volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (NOx), particulate matter with size smaller than 10 micrometer (PM10), particulate matter with size smaller than 2.5 micrometer (PM2.5), and sulfur oxides (SOx).


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Quantitative values of greenhouse gas emissions calculated with the WTW or with the LCA method can differ, since the LCA is considering more emission sources. For example, while assessing the GHG emissions of a battery electric vehicle in comparison with a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle, the WTW (accounting only the GHG for manufacturing the fuels) concludes that an electric vehicle can save around 50–60% of GHG. On the other hand, using a hybrid LCA-WTW method, concludes that GHG emission savings are 10-13% lower than the WTW results, as the GHG due to the manufacturing and the end of life of the battery are also considered.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Economic input–output LCA (EIOLCA) involves use of aggregate sector-level data on how much environmental impact can be attributed to each sector of the economy and how much each sector purchases from other sectors. Such analysis can account for long chains (for example, building an automobile requires energy, but producing energy requires vehicles, and building those vehicles requires energy, etc.), which somewhat alleviates the scoping problem of process LCA; however, EIOLCA relies on sector-level averages that may or may not be representative of the specific subset of the sector relevant to a particular product and therefore is not suitable for evaluating the environmental impacts of products. Additionally, the translation of economic quantities into environmental impacts is not validated.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: While a conventional LCA uses many of the same approaches and strategies as an Eco-LCA, the latter considers a much broader range of ecological impacts. It was designed to provide a guide to wise management of human activities by understanding the direct and indirect impacts on ecological resources and surrounding ecosystems. Developed by Ohio State University Center for resilience, Eco-LCA is a methodology that quantitatively takes into account regulating and supporting services during the life cycle of economic goods and products. In this approach services are categorized in four main groups: supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural services.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Exergy of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. Wall clearly states the relation between exergy analysis and resource accounting. This intuition confirmed by DeWulf and Sciubba lead to Exergo-economic accounting and to methods specifically dedicated to LCA such as Exergetic material input per unit of service (EMIPS). The concept of material input per unit of service (MIPS) is quantified in terms of the second law of thermodynamics, allowing the calculation of both resource input and service output in exergy terms. This exergetic material input per unit of service (EMIPS) has been elaborated for transport technology. The service not only takes into account the total mass to be transported and the total distance, but also the mass per single transport and the delivery time.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle energy analysis (LCEA) is an approach in which all energy inputs to a product are accounted for, not only direct energy inputs during manufacture, but also all energy inputs needed to produce components, materials and services needed for the manufacturing process. With LCEA, the "total life cycle energy input" is established.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: It is recognized that much energy is lost in the production of energy commodities themselves, such as nuclear energy, photovoltaic electricity or high-quality petroleum products. "Net energy content" is the energy content of the product minus energy input used during extraction and conversion, directly or indirectly. A controversial early result of LCEA claimed that manufacturing solar cells requires more energy than can be recovered in using the solar cell. Although these results were true when solar cells were first manufactured, their efficiency increased greatly over the years. Currently, energy payback time of photovoltaic solar panels range from a few months to several years. Module recycling could further reduce the energy payback time to around one month. Another new concept that flows from life cycle assessments is energy cannibalism. Energy cannibalism refers to an effect where rapid growth of an entire energy-intensive industry creates a need for energy that uses (or cannibalizes) the energy of existing power plants. Thus, during rapid growth, the industry as a whole produces no energy because new energy is used to fuel the embodied energy of future power plants. Work has been undertaken in the UK to determine the life cycle energy (alongside full LCA) impacts of a number of renewable technologies.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: If materials are incinerated during the disposal process, the energy released during burning can be harnessed and used for electricity production. This provides a low-impact energy source, especially when compared with coal and natural gas. While incineration produces more greenhouse gas emissions than landfills, the waste plants are well-fitted with regulated pollution control equipment to minimize this negative impact. A study comparing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from landfills (without energy recovery) against incineration (with energy recovery) found incineration to be superior in all cases except for when landfill gas is recovered for electricity production.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Energy efficiency is arguably only one consideration in deciding which alternative process to employ, and should not be elevated as the only criterion for determining environmental acceptability. For example, a simple energy analysis does not take into account the renewability of energy flows or the toxicity of waste products. Incorporating "dynamic LCAs", e.g., with regard to renewable energy technologies—which use sensitivity analyses to project future improvements in renewable systems and their share of the power grid—may help mitigate this criticism.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: In recent years, the literature on life cycle assessment of energy technology has begun to reflect the interactions between the current electrical grid and future energy technology. Some papers have focused on energy life cycle, while others have focused on carbon dioxide (CO) and other greenhouse gases. The essential critique given by these sources is that when considering energy technology, the growing nature of the power grid must be taken into consideration. If this is not done, a given class energy technology may emit more CO over its lifetime than it initially thought it would mitigate, with this most well documented in wind energy's case.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: A problem that arises when using the energy analysis method is that different energy forms—heat, electricity, chemical energy etc.—have inconsistent functional units, different quality, and different values. This is due to the fact that the first law of thermodynamics measures the change in internal energy, whereas the second law measures entropy increase. Approaches such as cost analysis or exergy may be used as the metric for LCA, instead of energy.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: A 2022 dataset provided standardized calculated detailed environmental impacts of >57,000 food products in supermarkets, potentially e.g., informing consumers or policy.<ref name="10.1073/pnas.2120584119"></ref> There also is at least one crowdsourced database for collecting LCA data for food products.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Datasets can also consist of options, activities, or approaches, rather than of products – for example one dataset assesses PET bottle waste management options in Bauru, Brazil. There are also LCA databases about buildings – complex products – which a 2014 study compared.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: There are some initiatives to develop, integrate, populate, standardize, quality control, combine and maintain such datasets or LCAs – for example:


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Datasets that are suboptimal in accuracy or have gaps can be, temporarily until the complete data is available or permanently, be patched or optimized by various methods such as mechanisms for "selection of a dataset that represents the missing dataset that leads in most cases to a much better approximation of environmental impacts than a dataset selected by default or by geographical proximity" or machine learning.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life-cycle assessments can be integrated as routine processes of systems, as input for modeled future socio-economic pathways, or, more broadly, into a larger context<ref name="10.1186/s40309-022-00203-9"></ref> (such as qualitative scenarios).


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: For example, a study estimated the environmental benefits of microbial protein or harm of beef within a future socio-economic pathway, showing substantial deforestation reduction (56%) and climate change mitigation if only of per-capita beef was replaced by microbial protein by 2050.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life-cycle assessments, including as product/technology analyses, can also be integrated in analyses of potentials, barriers and methods to shift or regulate consumption or production.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: The life-cycle perspective also allows considering losses and lifetimes of rare goods and services in the economy. For example, the usespans of, often scarce, tech-critical metals were found to be short as of 2022. Such data could be combined with conventional life-cycle analyses, e.g., to enable life-cycle material/labor cost analyses and long-term economic viability or sustainable design. One study suggests that in LCAs, resource availability is, as of 2013, "evaluated by means of models based on depletion time, surplus energy, etc."


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Broadly, various types of life-cycle assessments (or commissioning such) could be used in various ways in various types of societal decision-making, especially because financial markets of the economy typically do not consider life cycle impacts or induced societal problems in the future and present—the "externalities" to the contemporary economy.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Life cycle assessment is a powerful tool for analyzing commensurable aspects of quantifiable systems. Not every factor, however, can be reduced to a number and inserted into a model. Rigid system boundaries make accounting for changes in the system difficult. This is sometimes referred to as the boundary critique to systems thinking. The accuracy and availability of data can also contribute to inaccuracy. For instance, data from generic processes may be based on averages, unrepresentative sampling, or outdated results. This is especially the case for the use and end of life phases in the LCA. Additionally, social implications of products are generally lacking in LCAs. Comparative life cycle analysis is often used to determine a better process or product to use. However, because of aspects like differing system boundaries, different statistical information, different product uses, etc., these studies can easily be swayed in favor of one product or process over another in one study and the opposite in another study based on varying parameters and different available data. There are guidelines to help reduce such conflicts in results but the method still provides a lot of room for the researcher to decide what is important, how the product is typically manufactured, and how it is typically used.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: An in-depth review of 13 LCA studies of wood and paper products found a lack of consistency in the methods and assumptions used to track carbon during the product lifecycle. A wide variety of methods and assumptions were used, leading to different and potentially contrary conclusions—particularly with regard to carbon sequestration and methane generation in landfills and with carbon accounting during forest growth and product use.


title: Life-cycle assessment

text: Moreover, the fidelity of LCAs can vary substantially as various data may not be incorporated, especially in early versions: for example, LCAs that do not consider regional emission information can under-estimate the life cycle environmental impact.


title: Class conflict

text: Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor.


title: Class conflict

text: The forms of class conflict include direct violence such as wars for resources and cheap labor, assassinations or revolution; indirect violence such as deaths from poverty and starvation, illness and unsafe working conditions; and economic coercion such as the threat of unemployment or the withdrawal of investment capital (capital flight); or ideologically, by way of . Additionally, political forms of class warfare include legal and illegal lobbying, and bribery of legislators.


title: Class conflict

text: The social-class conflict can be direct, as in a dispute between labour and management such as an employer's industrial lockout of their employees in effort to weaken the bargaining power of the corresponding trade union; or indirect such as a workers' slowdown of production in protest at perceived unfair labor practices, low wages or poor workplace conditions.


title: Class conflict

text: In the political and economic philosophies of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, class struggle is a central tenet and a practical means for effecting radical sociopolitical changes for the social majority, the working class.


title: Class conflict

text: In political science, socialists and Marxists use the term "class conflict" to define a social class by its relationship to the means of production, such as factories, agricultural land, and industrial machinery. The social control of labor and of the production of goods and services, is a political contest between the social classes.


title: Class conflict

text: The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin said that the class struggles of the working class, the peasantry, and the working poor were central to realizing a social revolution to depose and replace the ruling class, and the creation of libertarian socialism.


title: Class conflict

text: Marx's theory of history proposes that class conflict is decisive in the history of economic systems organized by hierarchies of social class such as capitalism and feudalism. Marxists refer to its overt manifestations as class war, a struggle whose resolution in favor of the working class is viewed by them as inevitable under the plutocratic capitalism.


title: Class conflict

text: Where societies are socially divided based on status, wealth, or control of social production and distribution, class structures arise and are thus coeval with civilization itself. This has been well documented since at least European classical antiquity such as the Conflict of the Orders and Spartacus, among others.


title: Class conflict

text: In his "History", Thucydides describes a civil war in the city of Corcyra between the pro-Athens party of the common people and their pro-Corinth oligarchic opposition. Near the climax of the struggle, "the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the victorious commons might assault and carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the houses round the market-place and the lodging-houses, in order to bar their advance."


title: Class conflict

text: The historian Tacitus would later recount a similar class conflict in the city of Seleucia, in which disharmony between the oligarchs and the commoners would typically lead to each side calling on outside help to defeat the other. Thucydides believed that "as long as poverty gives men the courage of necessity, [...] so long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into danger."


title: Class conflict

text: In his treatise "Politics", Aristotle describes the basic dimensions of class war: "Again, because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government.". Aristotle also commented that "poverty is the parent of revolution." However, he did not consider this its only cause. In a society where property is distributed equally across the community, "the nobles will be dissatisfied because they think themselves worthy of more than an equal share of honor's; and this is often found to be a cause of sedition and revolution." Aristotle thought it wrong for the poor to seize the wealth of the rich and divide it among themselves, but he also thought it wrong for the rich to impoverish the multitude.


title: Class conflict

text: Moreover, he discussed what he considered a middle way between laxity and cruelty in the treatment of slaves by their masters, averring that "if not kept in hand, [slaves] are insolent, and think that they are as good as their masters, and, if harshly treated, they hate and conspire against them."


title: Class conflict

text: Socrates was perhaps the first major Greek philosopher to describe class war. In Plato's "Republic", Socrates proposes that "any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another." Socrates took a poor view of oligarchies, in which members of a small class of wealthy property owners take positions of power in order to dominate a large class of impoverished commoners. He used the analogy of a maritime pilot, who, like a powerholder in a polis, ought to be chosen for his skill, not for the amount of property he owns.


title: Class conflict

text: Plutarch recounts how various classical figures took part in class conflict. Oppressed by their indebtedness to the rich, the mass of Athenians chose Solon to be the lawgiver to lead them to freedom from their creditors. Hegel believed that Solon's constitution of the Athenian popular assembly created a political sphere that had the effect of balancing the interests of the three main classes of Athens:


title: Class conflict

text: Participation in Ancient Greek class war could have dangerous consequences. Plutarch noted of King Agis of Sparta that, "being desirous to raise the people, and to restore the noble and just form of government, now long fallen into disuse, [he] incurred the hatred of the rich and powerful, who could not endure to be deprived of the selfish enjoyment to which they were accustomed."


title: Class conflict

text: It was similarly difficult for the Romans to maintain peace between the upper class, the patricians, and the lower class, the plebs. French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu notes that this conflict intensified after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy.


title: Class conflict

text: In "The Spirit of Laws" he lists the four main grievances of the plebs, which were rectified in the years following the deposition of King Tarquin:


title: Class conflict

text: The Senate had the ability to give a magistrate the power of dictatorship, meaning he could bypass public law in the pursuit of a prescribed mandate. Montesquieu explains that the purpose of this institution was to tilt the balance of power in favour of the patricians. However, in an attempt to resolve a conflict between the patricians and the plebs, the dictator Camillus used his power of dictatorship to coerce the Senate into giving the plebs the right to choose one of the two consuls.


title: Class conflict

text: Tacitus believed that the increase in Roman power spurred the patricians to expand their power over more and more cities. This process, he felt, exacerbated pre-existing class tensions with the plebs, and eventually culminated in a civil war between the patrician Sulla and the populist reformer Marius. Marius had taken the step of enlisting "capite censi", the very lowest class of citizens, into the army, for the first time allowing non-land owners into the legions.


title: Class conflict

text: Of all the notable figures discussed by Plutarch and Tacitus, agrarian reformer Tiberius Gracchus may have most challenged the upper classes and most championed the cause of the lower classes. In a speech to the common soldiery, he decried their lowly conditions:


title: Class conflict

text: "The savage beasts," said he, "in Italy, have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and light; and having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children."


title: Class conflict

text: Following this observation, he remarked that these men "fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men." Cicero believed that Tiberius Gracchus's reforming efforts saved Rome from tyranny, arguing:


title: Class conflict

text: Tiberius Gracchus (says Cicero) caused the free-men to be admitted into the tribes, not by the force of his eloquence, but by a word, by a gesture; which had he not effected, the republic, whose drooping head we are at present scarce able to uphold, would not even exist.


title: Class conflict

text: Tiberius Gracchus weakened the power of the Senate by changing the law so that judges were chosen from the ranks of the knights, instead of their social superiors in the senatorial class.


title: Class conflict

text: Contrary to Shakespeare's depiction of Julius Caesar in the tragedy "Julius Caesar", historian Michael Parenti has argued that Caesar was a populist, not a tyrant. In 2003 The New Press published Parenti's "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome." "Publishers Weekly" said "Parenti [...] narrates a provocative history of the late republic in Rome (100–33 BC) to demonstrate that Caesar's death was the culmination of growing class conflict, economic disparity and political corruption." "Kirkus Reviews" wrote: "Populist historian Parenti... views ancient Rome’s most famous assassination not as a tyrannicide but as a sanguinary scene in the never-ending drama of class warfare."


title: Class conflict

text: The patrician Coriolanus, whose life William Shakespeare would later depict in the tragic play "Coriolanus", fought on the other side of the class war, for the patricians and against the plebs. When grain arrived to relieve a serious shortage in the city of Rome, the plebs made it known that they felt it ought to be divided amongst them as a gift, but Coriolanus stood up in the Senate against this idea on the grounds that it would empower the plebs at the expense of the patricians.


title: Class conflict

text: This decision would eventually contribute to Coriolanus's undoing when he was impeached following a trial by the tribunes of the plebs. Montesquieu recounts how Coriolanus castigated the tribunes for trying a patrician, when in his mind no one but a consul had that right, although a law had been passed stipulating that all appeals affecting the life of a citizen had to be brought before the plebs.


title: Class conflict

text: In the first scene of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus", a crowd of angry plebs gathers in Rome to denounce Coriolanus as the "chief enemy to the people" and "a very dog to the commonalty" while the leader of the mob speaks out against the patricians thusly:


title: Class conflict

text: They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us.


title: Class conflict

text: Enlightenment-era historian Edward Gibbon might have agreed with this narrative of Roman class conflict. In the third volume of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", he relates the origins of the struggle:[T]he plebeians of Rome [...] had been oppressed from the earliest times by the weight of debt and usury; and the husbandman, during the term of his military service, was obliged to abandon the cultivation of his farm. The lands of Italy which had been originally divided among the families of free and indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped by the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which preceded the fall of the republic, it was computed that only two thousand citizens were possessed of an independent substance.<nowiki> </nowiki>Hegel similarly states that the 'severity of the patricians their creditors, the debts due to whom they had to discharge by slave-work, drove the plebs to revolts.' Gibbon also explains how Augustus facilitated this class warfare by pacifying the plebs with actual bread and circuses.


title: Class conflict

text: The economist Adam Smith noted that the poor freeman's lack of land provided a major impetus for Roman colonisation, as a way to relieve class tensions at home between the rich and the landless poor. Hegel described the same phenomenon happening in the impetus to Greek colonisation.


title: Class conflict

text: Writing in pre-capitalist Europe, both the Swiss "philosophe" Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith made significant remarks on the dynamics of class struggle, as did the Federalist statesman James Madison across the Atlantic Ocean. Later, in the age of early industrial capitalism, English political economist John Stuart Mill and German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would also contribute their perspectives to the discussion around class conflict between employers and employees.


title: Class conflict

text: It was with bitter sarcasm that Rousseau outlined the class conflict prevailing in his day between masters and their workmen: You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you bestow on me the little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to command you.


title: Class conflict

text: Rousseau argued that the most important task of any government is to fight in class warfare on the side of workmen against their masters, who he said engage in exploitation under the pretence of serving society. Specifically, he believed that governments should actively intervene in the economy to abolish poverty and prevent the accrual of too much wealth in the hands of too few men.


title: Class conflict

text: Like Rousseau, the classical liberal Adam Smith believed that the amassing of property in the hands of a minority naturally resulted in a disharmonious state of affairs where "the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of many" and "excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade [the rich man's] possessions."


title: Class conflict

text: Concerning wages, he explained the conflicting class interests of masters and workmen, who he said were often compelled to form trade unions for fear of suffering starvation wages, as follows:What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.


title: Class conflict

text: Smith was aware of the main advantage of masters over workmen, in addition to state protection:The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.


title: Class conflict

text: Smith observed that, outside of colonies where land is cheap and labour expensive, both the masters who subsist by profit and the masters who subsist by rents will work in tandem to subjugate the class of workmen, who subsist by wages. Moreover, he warned against blindly legislating in favour of the class of masters who subsist by profit, since, as he said, their intention is to gain as large a share of their respective markets as possible, which naturally results in monopoly prices or close to them, a situation harmful to the other social classes.


title: Class conflict

text: In his Federalist No. 10, James Madison revealed an emphatic concern with the conflict between rich and poor, commenting that "the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination." He welcomed class-based factions into political life as a necessary result of political liberty, stating that the most important task of government was to manage and adjust for 'the spirit of party'.


title: Class conflict

text: Adam Smith was not the only classical liberal political economist concerned with class conflict. In his "Considerations on Representative Government", John Stuart Mill observed the complete marginalisation of workmen's voices in Parliament, rhetorically asking whether its members ever empathise with the position of workmen, instead of siding entirely with their masters, on issues such as the right to go on strike. Later in the book, he argues that an important function of truly representative government is to provide a relatively equal balance of power between workmen and masters, in order to prevent threats to the good of the whole of society.


title: Class conflict

text: During Mill's discussion of the merits of progressive taxation in his essay "Utilitarianism", he notes as an aside the power of the rich as independent of state support:People feel obliged to argue that the State does more for the rich than for the poor, as a justification for its taking more [in taxation] from them: though this is in reality not true, for the rich would be far better able to protect themselves, in the absence of law or government, than the poor, and indeed would probably be successful in converting the poor into their slaves.


title: Class conflict

text: In his "Philosophy of Right", Hegel expressed concern that the standard of living of the poor might drop so far as to make it even easier for the rich to amass even more wealth. Hegel believed that, especially in a liberal country such as contemporary England, the poorest will politicise their situation, channelling their frustrations against the rich:Against nature man can claim no right, but once society is established, poverty immediately takes the form of a wrong done to one class by another.


title: Class conflict

text: The typical example of class conflict described is class conflict within capitalism. This class conflict is seen to occur primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and takes the form of conflict over hours of work, value of wages, division of profits, cost of consumer goods, the culture at work, control over parliament or bureaucracy, and economic inequality. The particular implementation of government programs which may seem purely humanitarian, such as disaster relief, can actually be a form of class conflict.


title: Class conflict

text: Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) led the U.S. as president from 1801 to 1809 and is considered one of the founding fathers. Regarding the interaction between social classes, he wrote:


title: Class conflict

text: Max Weber (1864–1920) agreed with the fundamental ideas of Karl Marx about the economy causing class conflict, but claimed that class conflict can also stem from prestige and power. Weber argued that classes come from the different property locations. Different locations can largely affect one's class by their education and the people they associate with. He also stated that prestige results in different status groupings. This prestige is based upon the social status of one's parents. Prestige is an attributed value and many times cannot be changed. Weber stated that power differences led to the formation of political parties. Weber disagreed with Marx about the formation of classes. While Marx believed that groups are similar due to their economic status, Weber argued that classes are largely formed by social status. Weber did not believe that communities are formed by economic standing, but by similar social prestige. Weber did recognize that there is a relationship between social status, social prestige and classes.


title: Class conflict

text: In the U.S., class conflict is often noted in labor/management disputes. As far back as 1933 representative Edward Hamilton of the Airline Pilot's Association, used the term "class warfare" to describe airline management's opposition at the National Labor Board hearings in October of that year. Apart from these day-to-day forms of class conflict, during periods of crisis or revolution class conflict takes on a violent nature and involves repression, assault, restriction of civil liberties, and murderous violence such as assassinations or death squads.


title: Class conflict

text: Class conflict intensified in the period after the 2007/8 financial crisis, which led to a global wave of anti-austerity protests, including the Greek and Spanish Indignados movements and later the Occupy movement, whose slogan was "We are the 99%", signalling a more expansive class antagonist against the financial elite than that of the classical Marxist proletariat.


title: Class conflict

text: The investor, billionaire, and philanthropist Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his view that his class, the "rich class", is waging class warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buffet said to CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." In a November 2006 interview in "The New York Times", Buffett stated that "[t]here’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."


title: Class conflict

text: In the speech "The Great American Class War" (2013), the journalist Bill Moyers asserted the existence of social-class conflict between democracy and plutocracy in the U.S. Chris Hedges wrote a column for "Truthdig" called "Let's Get This Class War Started", which was a play on Pink's song "Let's Get This Party Started." In a 2022 piece "America’s New Class War", Hedges argues that increased class struggle and strikes by organized workers, often in defiance of union leadership, is the "one last hope for the United States."


title: Class conflict

text: Historian Steve Fraser, author of "The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power", asserted in 2014 that class conflict is an inevitability if current political and economic conditions continue, noting that "people are increasingly fed up [...] their voices are not being heard. And I think that can only go on for so long without there being more and more outbreaks of what used to be called class struggle, class warfare."


title: Class conflict

text: Often seen as part of the same "movement of squares" as the Indignado and Occupy movements, the Arab Spring was a wave of social protests starting in 2011. Numerous factors have culminated in the Arab Spring, including rejection of dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption (demonstrated by Wikileaks diplomatic cables), economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population. but class conflict is also a key factor. The catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo.


title: Class conflict

text: Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German born philosopher who lived the majority of his adult life in London, England. In "The Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx argued that a class is formed when its members achieve class consciousness and solidarity. This largely happens when the members of a class become aware of their exploitation and the conflict with another class. A class will then realize their shared interests and a common identity. According to Marx, a class will then take action against those that are exploiting the lower classes.


title: Class conflict

text: What Marx points out is that members of each of the two main classes have interests in common. These class or collective interests are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn leads to conflict between individual members of different classes.


title: Class conflict

text: Not all class struggle is violent or necessarily radical, as with strikes and lockouts. Class antagonism may instead be expressed as low worker morale, minor sabotage and pilferage, and individual workers' abuse of petty authority and hoarding of information. It may also be expressed on a larger scale by support for socialist or populist parties. On the employers' side, the use of union busting legal firms and the lobbying for anti-union laws are forms of class struggle.


title: Class conflict

text: Not all class struggle is a threat to capitalism, or even to the authority of an individual capitalist. A narrow struggle for higher wages by a small sector of the working-class, what is often called "economism", hardly threatens the status quo. In fact, by applying the craft-union tactics of excluding other workers from skilled trades, an economistic struggle may even weaken the working class as a whole by dividing it. Class struggle becomes more important in the historical process as it becomes more general, as industries are organized rather than crafts, as workers' class consciousness rises, and as they self-organize away from political parties. Marx referred to this as the progress of the proletariat from being a class "in itself", a position in the social structure, to being one "for itself", an active and conscious force that could change the world.