Guest post by Barbara Rose Johnston
I received last week copies of two very different publications reporting on outcomes from the scientific assessment of life in a nuclear warzone. These studies consider, first, the health experience of resident populations living in areas contaminated by nuclear weapons fallout, and, second, the health of people as affected [...]
Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell
The XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna concluded on July 23. Twitter buzzed all week with updates from speakers and attendees, and comments from those who, like me, didn’t attend but followed from home.
The biggest stories of the week? Undoubtedly at the top are the speeches of Bill Clinton [...]
Question: Who knew that marijuana can improve your night vision?
Answer: Many people around the world. For example, Jamaican fisherman who smoke cannabis or drink a tincture infused with it say that they can see better when they are out fishing at night. It helps them avoid dangerous reefs. But why believe what they and [...]
The latest issue of the Journal of Women’s Health includes three articles describing health risks of women in the United States related to social exclusion and cultural factors. They all demonstrate that good health is about a lot more than medical care.
The first article looks at three factors associated with cardiovascular disease–hypertension, elevated cholesterol, and [...]
Who knew that so many commuters on trains and buses in England carry fecal bacteria on their hands? Val Curtis, medical anthropologist and public health expert, teamed up with five other researchers to assess the presence or absence of fecal bacteria on the hands of over 400 people in five UK cities. Dr. Curtis is [...]
The Internet has been labeled a modern day Pandora’s box. It can let loose on the Internet viewing public any and all knowledge and opinions. Anna Kata, a graduate student in anthropology at McMaster University, mined several Internet sites for the “social discourse” they establish concerning the dangers of vaccination.
As context, she reports that around [...]
This list is intended to provide a guide to recent resources on culture and society in Haiti for people who wish to be better informed about the context in which the recent earthquake and its devastation are occurring. With apologies, most of the journal articles are not public access.
Furthermore, we really encourage everyone to visit [...]
UPDATE 1/14: This post was linked in a story by Discovery News’ James Williams.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola. Following the island’s discovery by Columbus in 1492, Spanish colonialists exterminated the island’s indigenous Arawak Indians. In 1697, the French took control of what is now Haiti and instituted an exceptionally [...]
• Tell it to the Marines
NPR aired an interview with cultural anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber who teaches “operational culture” at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Classes include discussion of cultural sensitivity and the cultural/social consequences of military presence and military actions, such as blowing up a bridge.
• Nacirema craziness goes global
In an article called “The [...]
An editorial in Nature argues that funding is meager for research on psychiatric diseases compared to that for other major diseases. Focusing just on schizophrenia, new directions for the upcoming decade include: considering why the efficacy of medications has not improved other than reducing side effects; changing the focus on diagnosis and drugs in late [...]
