ProfWeek5

The book mentioned "biological war" in regards to colonial epidemics but I was wondering do anthropologists study the spread of epidemics in the modern world? Not just how social standing or medical practices influence it but the ways in which people respond to outbreaks (like SARS or Swine Flu). http://culanth.org/?q=node/88 http://culanth.org/?q=node/176 http://depts.washington.edu/anthweb/people/faculty/CLowe.php http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/center/staff/schoch-spana.html

How did the "Presumed Consent" law not immediately spark more concern in Brazil? Even though organ donations were declining, why was it allowable to take advantage of those who may not have been fully informed on the issue? I could not find much about the law so I do not know how they take the patient's/deceased's or next of kin's opinion into account. Although even with that considered, I do not believe that it is safe to say that everyone has been educated on the issue, let alone asked to be a willing donor. Do you know how or if they had planned for educating the public on the issue when writing the law? Even though the law was only enacted for a year and a half, why did they not anticipate that there would be a strong resistance to a law based so strongly on an individual's moral opinion? The author argues that individual agency is a Euro-American idea and that in other areas its less of an "autonomous" decision due to economic and social pressures, but why does that make the decision focus any less on morals? http://crookedtimber.org/2010/05/05/presumed-consent-in-theory-and-practice/ http://www.kieranhealy.org/publications.html http://www.google.com/search?q=presumed+consent&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=presumed+consent+mike&cp=20&pf=p&sclient=psy&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=presumed+consent+mike&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=9e0a1a6a45870d9b http://www.google.com/search?q=presumed+consent&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&q=presumed+consent+mike+fortun&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=9e0a1a6a45870d9b

Since Ethnomedicine has begun to be studied by Anthropologists is there one health system that stands out amongst others as "superior."? Or are these different health systems in place due to the fact that different areas of the world have people that react in different ways and are exposed to different diseases?

Is it common to see community healing in developed nations? What community healings do we do in the U.S.? It seems that most of the community healing in the United States occurs after a tragedy to heal emotionally. Even group therapies are emotional, what physical community healing occurs in the United States? --- Why has the Western world forgone the idea of community healing when its affects are recognized by our society as a whole? Often in medical miracle documentaries there is a comment about the ill person surviving because someone was "there for them". Why haven't we changed our practices from healing in private if it is in fact detrimental to the healing process? This is especially interesting since we consider ourselves an "advanced" culture - even though we are clearly holding ourselves back. http://www.communityhealingnet.org/ http://www.communityhealingcenter.org/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Healing-Network-Inc/77468391505 http://www.bmedreport.com/archives/22268

On page 104 of the text book, there is a chart that goes through different culture-specific syndromes. One that cauge my eye was the Retired Husband Syndrome (RHS) found in older women in Japan whose husbands have retired. The symptoms include ulcers, slurred speech, rashes around the eyes, and throat polyps, and the attributed cause is stress. Why do these women get so stressed out when their husbands retire? Is it financial stress or are they stressed out by his presence? It seems strange that so many women would get this syndrome after their husbands retire. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6143010.stm http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1021891/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome http://books.google.com/books?id=JI9IsHAbsnsC&pg=PA319&dq=culture-bound&hl=en&ei=1GSITMfnGpTSuwPDwJ0B&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=culture-bound&f=false

I always wonder if refusing to check the anatomical gift box in the back of my drivers license was selfish. However after reading the article by Scheper-Hughes, I began to wonder if in case of a car accident and upon arrival to a hospital one would not be given proper treatment in order to the organs donated?

One part of chapter 5 in Barbara Miller's textbook discusses globalization and change of health systems across the globe. I thought the whole part on the new dams actually increasing the stream of the disease: schistosomiasis was so interesting. My question is, the modern world keeps coming up with more and more inventions that are progressing the world forward. The dams were put up in some sub-Saharan countries and drastically effected the increase of this disease. While we can not stop making technology and attempting to improve our technology, there must be some way to decrease the consequences of these 'improvements' and projects. What should we value more as a society: newer and grander technologies or the possible consequences that arise from adding more and more technology to the natural world? Is it naturally human to consider the consequences of an action? Or is it simply an after thought? http://apps.who.int/tdr/ http://www.cartercenter.org/health/schistosomiasis/index.html http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/global-health-strategies.aspx

Why do the Ministry of Health in Israel and the governments of the Philippines, Iraq, Turkey, Romania, Moldava, and Georgia refuse to intervene and crack down on the illegal kidney transplant business? Do they get any benefit from this trade?

While reading the public anthropology article: "The Global Traffic in Human Organs," it was interesting to see that the driving forces of capitalism even affect the trafficking of human organs and tissue. This quote sums up the shocking nature of the situation: "At the asylum a night nurse and a ward supervisor explained the long-standing practice of blood-lettings from the living inmates and cornea and tissue removal from the deceased, without consent, which they understood as a legitimate practice justified by the cost to the state of maintaining these desperate and needy inmates." Is there a limit to the reaches of capitalism in the overall umbrella of humanity, or is anything fair game, like mutilating prisoners bodies for their parts to keep the jail running. Is humanity now driven by capitalism or does humanity still control the reaches and boundaries of capitalism?

http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/nsh.html

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