What Madness Prompts, Reason Writes: New York City September 11–October 2, 2001

This personal narrative describes the use of ethnographic data collection as a means for its author, a New York City resident, to take stock of local reaction and response to the events of September 11 by documenting arid analyzing the writing New Yorkers posted in public spaces during the three weeks following the attacks on the World Trade Center.     

Color-Full before Color Blind: The Emergence of Multiracial Neighborhood Politics in Queens, New York City

The United States is undergoing a "majority minority" transition, with the historic European-ancestry white majority projected to fall beneath 50% of the population in the second half of the current century. Elmhurst-Corona, a neighborhood in Queens, New York City, was 98% white in 1960 but by 1990 had become intensely multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual, with neither African Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, nor the remaining whites constituting a majority of the local population. Based on ethnographic fieldwork between 1983 and 1996, in this article I trace the growth of cross-racial political interaction in Elmhurst-Corona, highlighting initial resistance by white residents, entry of newcomers into civic politics, innovation by female civic activists, and acceptance of shared local "quality of life" concerns as representation at the central political arena, the neighborhood's appointed community board, became more inclusive, [political anthropology, race, immigration, New York City, United States]     

Reminiscences from the first curator of the whitney-rothschild collection

Dr Ernst Mayr has been one of the seminal figures of 20th century biology. His essential contributions were in the development of the Modern Synthesis in evolutionary biology. His landmark book Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and has long been acknowledged as one of the key foundations of 20th century evolutionary biology. In many subsequent articles and books on evolution and the history and philosophy of biology during the past half century, he has continued to be a key contributor of ideas and inspiration to successive generations of evolutionary biologists. In the first of two ‘Roots’ articles, he describes the early stages of his career and the serendipitous events that furthered it. This article was first presented as a talk, on October 27, 1993, at the 50 year Jubilee celebration of the founding of the Whitney wing, the ornithological section, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In next month's ‘Roots’ article, Dr Mayr will describe the events that led to the founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution in 1946, in St Louis, Missouri.     

Estimating the Effects of September 11th and Other Forms of Violence on the Mental Health and Social Development of New York City's Youth: A Matter of Context

This longitudinal study examines the effects of exposure to the terrorist attack of September 11th as well as exposure to other forms of community violence on change in the mental health and social attitudes of youths in New York City. Three quarters of the youths reported some form of direct exposure to the events of September 11th, and 80% reported a lot of exposure to at least 1 form of media coverage of September 11th; these rates were comparable with the citywide survey of public school students in New York City conducted by the New York City Department of Education. Results of a structural equation model that included controls for previous levels of mental health and social attitudes, as well as a range of demographic factors, indicated that direct exposure and family exposure to the event did not predict change in any mental health outcomes, but did predict change in levels of social mistrust; media exposure did predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. In contrast, victimization by other forms of violence was strongly associated with change in or current levels of all of the examined mental health symptoms, whereas witnessing other forms of violence was associated with change in or levels of 3 of 4 mental health symptoms and with increased hostile attribution bias and levels of social mistrust. Implications of the results for applied developmental and public mental health strategies in response to traumatic events are discussed.     

The Secret Kappa Lambda Society of Hippocrates (and the Origin of the American Medical Association's Principles of Medical Ethics)

This paper relates the neglected history of an idealistic, secret medical fraternity which existed briefly in Lexington, Kentucky, during the first half of the 19th century. It was created for students in the Medical Department at Transylvania University, the fifth US medical school, founded in 1799. One goal of the fraternity was to counter the widespread dissension and often violent quarrels among doctors that characterized American medicine of that period. And to that end, it was among the first to promote Thomas Percival's code of medical ethics in this country. Branches of the fraternity were established in Philadelphia and New York City, where members became influential in local medical politics but in time encountered hostility from rival physicians. The secret character of the fraternity branches was publicized and maligned during an anti-Masonic movement in this country in the 1830s, which soon led to the demise of the Philadelphia group. The New York branch remained active through the 1860s. Members of both branches were among those who in 1847 established the American Medical Association and devised its Principles of Medical Ethics.     

Perspectives On Tuberculosis Among Traditional Chinese Medical Practitioners In New York City’s Chinatown

This article discusses the perspectives of Chinatown’s traditional Chinese medical practitioners on tuberculosis among New York City’s Chinese laborers. The practice of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the United States is neither regulated nor well understood. Some public health providers have expressed their concern that the use of TCM could prevent Chinese tuberculosis patients from receiving proper, biomedical treatment. Contrary to the suspicion of public health providers, the traditional Chinese medical practitioners in the context of New York City’s Chinatown provide diverse methods of health care, many being familiar with the biomedical explanation for tuberculosis. All TCM informants in this study stated that biomedicine is more effective than Chinese medicine in treating tuberculosis. TCM in tuberculosis therapy is said to complement biomedicine and to restore bodily balance and the general health of patients. This study discusses the political–economic context shaping the explanation and treatment of tuberculosis among traditional Chinese medical practitioners and broadens our understanding of the various contexts in which TCM and biomedicine can be integrated. Furthermore, it is suggested that an opportunity exists for tuberculosis control programs to incorporate TCM practitioners in the effort to control the disease within New York City.     

Dog bites in New York City

The purpose of this review is to characterize the public health problem of dog bites in New York City. Dog bites represent a major source of morbidity, mortality, disability, and health care cost in the United States. The most severe injuries are frequently referred to the plastic surgeon. The authors have recently treated several severe cases of unprovoked dog attacks in children. To characterize the dog bite problem in New York City, data were obtained for 1998 from the New York City Department of Health. During that year, 6568 bites were reported by the mandated physician reporters in the five boroughs of New York City. The upper extremities, lower extremities, and face were predominantly affected. The peak incidence occurred during the summer months and in children ages 7 to 9 years old. Preventive measures are discussed.     

Resurgence of malaria in Bombay (Mumbai) in the 1990s: a historical perspective

Bombay has achieved extraordinary success in controlling its malaria problem for nearly six decades by relying primarily on legislative measures and non-insecticidal methods of mosquito abatement. In 1992, however, malaria reemerged in Bombay with a vengeance. During 1992-1997, the city witnessed a manifold increase in the number of malaria cases diagnosed and treated by the public health system. The large number of malaria patients treated by private practitioners was not recorded by the municipal malaria surveillance system during this period. In 1995, at the peak of the resurgence, public health officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay (MCGB) confirmed that 170 persons in the city had died due to malaria. The crisis was unprecedented in Bombay's modern public health history. In response to intense criticism from the media, the city's public health officials attributed the resurgence to the global phenomenon of mosquito-vector resistance to insecticides, and Plasmodium resistance to antimalarial chemoprophylaxis and treatment. Local scientists who investigated the problem offered no support to this explanation. So what might explain the resurgence? What factors led the problem to reach an epidemic level in a matter of two or three years? In addressing the above principal questions, this paper adopts a historical perspective and argues that in the resurgence of malaria in Bombay in the 1990s, there is an element of the 'presence of the past'. In many ways the present public health crisis in Bombay resembles the health scenario that characterized the city at the turn of the 19th century. It is possible to draw parallels between the early public health history of malaria control in Bombay, which was punctuated by events that followed the bubonic plague epidemic of 1896, and the present-day malaria epidemic punctuated by the threat of a plague epidemic in 1994. As such, the paper covers a long period, of almost 100 years. This time-depth is used to illustrate how malaria control programs in Bombay and in other parts of India have evolved through a combination of local historical forces and political expediencies in the context of technological developments. The boom in construction activities in Bombay following the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991, and the local politics affecting administrative practices of the MCGB, are discussed as crucial factors in the crystallization of the present-day malaria resurgence in Bombay. The paper concludes by arguing that malaria in urban India is a serious problem that cannot be neglected. In the case of Bombay, the solution to the crisis can be found, in part, by reexamining the historical and political issues that have determined the nature and magnitude of the problem over the last century.     

Postal workers' perspectives on communication during the anthrax attack

In 2001, the nation experienced its first bioterrorism attack, in the form of anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service, and public health professionals were challenged to communicate with a critical audience, U.S. postal workers. Postal workers, the first cohort to receive public health messages during a bioterrorist crisis, offer a crucial viewpoint that can be used in the development of best practices in crisis and emergency risk communication. This article reports results of qualitative interviews and focus groups with 65 postal workers employed at three facilities: Trenton, New Jersey; New York City; and Washington, DC. The social context and changing messages were among the factors that damaged trust between postal workers and public health professionals. Lessons learned from this attack contribute to the growing body of knowledge available to guide communications experts and public health professionals charged with crisis and emergency risk communication with the public.     

A partial explanation of superior birth weights among foreign-born women

This study of 766 black women reexamined the issue of advantage in birthweight and length of gestation in foreign-born women and confirms the reported higher birthweights among that group. Subjects were new registrants for prenatal care at a public clinic in Harlem, New York City, 1971-73, and were part of a randomized trial of nutritional supplementation during pregnancy. 3 nativity groups were represented: New York City, southern United States, and foreign countries. Despite the standard selection of all subjects for high risk for low birthweight, foreign-born women had only 3.8% of births under 2500 grams in contrast to 15.6% among the southern women, and 18% among New York City natives. 6 sets of variables were examined in relation to birthweight outcome. An average birthweight advantage of 218 grams for the foreign-born was found to be associated with higher childhood social status and more positive health behaviors.     

A Century of Tuberculosis Epidemiology in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere: The Differential Impact of Control Interventions

Background

Cape Town has one of the highest TB burdens of any city in the world. In 1900 the City of Cape Town, New York City and London had high mortality of tuberculosis (TB). Throughout the 20th century contemporaneous public health measures including screening, diagnosis and treatment were implemented in all three settings. Mandatory notification of TB and vital status enabled comparison of disease burden trajectories.

Methods

TB mortality, notification and case fatality rates were calculated from 1912 to 2012 using annual TB notifications, TB death certifications and population estimates. Notification rates were stratified by age and in Cape Town by HIV status (from 2009 onwards).

Results

Pre-chemotherapy, TB mortality and notification rates declined steadily in New York and London but remained high in Cape Town. Following introduction of combination chemotherapy, mean annual case fatality dropped from 45–60% to below 10% in all three settings. Mortality and notification rates subsequently declined, although Cape Town notifications did not decline as far as those in New York or London and returned to pre-chemotherapy levels by 1980. The proportional contribution of childhood TB diminished in New York and London but remained high in Cape Town. The advent of the Cape Town HIV-epidemic in the 1990s was associated with a further two-fold increase in incidence. In 2012, notification rates among HIV-negatives remained at pre-chemotherapy levels.

Conclusions

TB control was achieved in New York and London but failed in Cape Town. The TB disease burden trajectories started diverging before the availability of combination chemotherapy in 1952 and further diverged following the HIV epidemic in 1990. Chemotherapy impacted case fatality but not transmission, evidenced by on-going high childhood TB rates. Currently endemic TB results from high on-going transmission, which has been exacerbated by the HIV epidemic. TB control will require reducing transmission, which is inexorably linked to prevailing socio-economic factors.     

Ethnic culture and social mobility among second-generation Asian Americans

ABSTRACT

This review engages with Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou’s The Asian American Achievement Paradox to consider how ethnic culture matters for social mobility among the immigrant second generation. It describes the strengths and contributions of the book, connects it to broader debates on culture, poverty, and mobility, and draws on my own research on the second generation in New York City. It highlights three additional cultural mechanisms that underlie the Chinese (or Asian) second-generation advantage: social class heterogeneity in the co-ethnic community, intergenerational support in the immigrant family, and the belief in achievements as redemption for parental sacrifice. While pointing out the similarities and differences between Los Angeles and New York, it also suggests possible applications of these cultural mechanisms in explaining second-generation achievements.     

Verticality

Anthropological critiques of urban segregation tend to maintain a horizontal frame. Walls and gates keep undesirable people over there as opposed to here. Insightful as this approach has been, this article pairs everyday perspectives with the built form to assess the politics of vertical segregation in Guatemala City. With more than one hundred office towers and condominium complexes constructed in the last decade, Guatemala City presents a vivid and visually stunning example of how the rich lift themselves above the rest. This article argues that vertical segregation is yet one more strategy employed by elites to abandon public space. Guatemala City sprouted a skyline in little less than a decade. Although the city was low level for centuries, kept at one or two storeys by earthquakes, a recent surge in foreign investment has prompted the construction of more than one hundred new office towers and condominium complexes over the last ten years. Each is over ten storeys. Each is exclusive. Given that most capital cities across the Americas went vertical in the early twentieth century, Guatemala City's newfound height presents an opportunity to consider the ‘verticality’ of urban segregation.     

An objective view of biological diversity: how history and epistemology shaped current treatment

The concept of biological diversity has inspired important discussions throughout the history of ecology. Although its meaning and usefulness have been questioned, it is currently one of the key artifacts of ecology. One way to try to understand why such a concept has undergone so many discussions is to examine its emergence and history from the epistemology perspective. In the present work, we investigated how the emergence of mechanical objectivity (as an epistemic virtue) and trained judgment affected how ecologists address the concept of biological diversity. Thus, we employed the theoretical framework of objectivity (provided by Daston and Galison in Objectivity. Zone Books, New York, 2007) to analyze different periods of scientific literature in ecology (“initial period”: end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century; “intermediate period”: mid-twentieth century; “contemporary period”: from the second half of the 1980s). Our results showed that the emergence of mechanical objectivity and trained judgment affected biological diversity research. In particular, the ideal of objectivity behind the way in which the concept of biological diversity is addressed in different fields of contemporary ecology could not be the same.     

The Weight of the Hyphen: Freedom,Fusion and Responsibility Embodied by Young Muslim-American Women During a Time of Surveillance

This article reports on a qualitative investigation of 15 young Muslim-American women living in New York City, after 9/11 and in the midst of the Patriot Act. Participants completed surveys about identity, discrimination, and coping; drew “identity maps” to represent their multiple identities and alliances; and participated in focus groups on several college campuses in the New York metropolitan area. Focus groups were conducted to investigate collectively their sense of hyphenated identities, their experiences of surveillance and their responses to scrutiny in families, communities, on the streets and in the political public sphere. Implications for the theoretical and empirical study of immigrant youth “under siege” are developed, with a particular focus on the burdens and responsibilities embodied by daughters of the second generation of Muslim-Americans.     

Genetic analyses of the Asian longhorned beetle (Coleoptera,Cerambycidae, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Anoplophora glabripennis</Emphasis>), in North America,Europe and Asia

The Asian longhorned beetle, (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky)), is endemic to China and Korea and an important invasive insect in North America and Europe. We analyzed mitochondrial DNA sequence data of invasive populations of A. glabripennis in North America and Europe, and microsatellite allele frequency data of beetles from North America. We show that populations in New York City and Long Island NY; New Jersey, Chicago, IL, and Toronto, Canada have limited genetic diversity compared to populations in China. In addition, the data suggest that separate introduction events were responsible for many of the populations in North America and for European populations in Austria, France, Germany and Italy. Populations on Long Island, NY are suspected to have been initiated by the transport of cut wood from New York City. A. glabripennis beetles found in Jersey City, NJ appear to be derived from an expansion of the New York City, NY population, whereas beetles found in Linden, NJ are an expansion from the Carteret, NJ population. Limited genetic diversity did not stop this invasive insect from establishing damaging populations in North America. Founders of introduced A. glabripennis populations in North America and Europe are likely derived from populations in China that are themselves invasive, rendering difficult the identification of source populations. Invasiveness in an insect’s natural range could be an important predictor of potential pest status of introduced populations.     

FROM NAUGHTY GOODS TO NICOLE MILLER: MEDICINE AND THE MARKETING OF AMERICAN CONTRACEPTIVES

In the rich history of modern pharmaceutical advertising in the United States, few medical objects have been as controversial as contraceptives. Condemned in the 1870s as lascivious devices whose commercial visibility would tarnish female sexual purity, contraceptives have in the late twentieth century been repackaged by pharmaceutical companies as the smart, progressive, and fashion-conscious woman’s ally. This article explores evolving perspectives on the place of birth control in public spaces from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In so doing, it elucidates the changes and continuities in the long and contested history of marketing, medicine, sexuality, and reproductive control.     

Reproductive Politics,Biopolitics and Auto-immunity: From Foucault to Esposito

The contingent cultural, epistemological and ontological status of biology is highlighted by changes in attitudes towards reproductive politics in the history of feminist movements. Consider, for example, the American, British, and numerous European instances of feminist sympathy for eugenics at the turn of the century. This amounted to a specific formation of the role, in late nineteenth and early twentieth century feminisms, of concepts of biological risk and defence, which were transformed into the justificatory language of rights claims. In this context, one can ask how reproductive politics are to be fitted into the paradoxical relationship between biopolitics and thanatopolitics discussed by Michel Foucault and more recently by Roberto Esposito. In this context, “reproductive life,” can be thought of arising at the intersection of thanapolitics and biopolitics as these relate to women’s bodies. Revisiting Foucault and Esposito in the light of reproductive politics also allows a reconsideration of the paradoxical feminist aims involved in defending individual rights by reference to overall biopolitical interest and futurity.     

The cholera epidemics and the development of public health in Meiji Japan. 1. Modernity, cholera, and health thought

We present here the beginnings of public health politics in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Due to a two century isolation of Japan, public health concepts developed in the West from the end of the 18th century were foreign in premodern Japan. Due to its isolation, Japan was also relatively preserved from some acute infectious diseases such as cholera. In this paper, we investigate the role of cholera epidemics in the emergence of public health concepts in the peculiar context of Meiji Japan. We show that chronic diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy were neglected for a long time and that the Meiji government set priority on acute infectious diseases that were considered as long as they disturbed public order. Nevertheless, some physicians and government officials considered issues of welfare and poverty. We also review some emerging concepts of social medicine. We try to show, that in Japan as well as in Western nations, public health politics were not exempt of contradictions and paradoxes and a permanent tension existed between coercitive policies and conceptions of welfare and rights to health.     

A century of research into the cause of cancer: is the new oncogene paradigm revolutionary?

Contemporary oncological research is predominantly characterised by genetic explanations, a situation which may be briefly denoted as the oncogene paradigm. This essay discusses why the new paradigm was perceived so attractive that it could take over the whole field of oncology within a time-span of less than two decades. It is argued that the revolutionary character of the oncogene paradigm stems from the fact that it transcends a dichotomy which has kept experimental cancer research divided for more than three quarters of a century. This concerns the dichotomy between so-called exogenous and endogenous explanations of cancer causation. This essay mainly focuses on the role of the exogenous/endogenous dichotomy in the reception of research on oncogenic viruses, especially discussing the work of Nobel laureate Peyton Rous on cancer viruses at the Rockefeller Institute. Rous was severely criticised by James Ewing, director of the Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases in New York, who held the idea that the origin of cancer was based in the cell. The twentieth century controversy over oncogenic viruses is placed in the context of the intense discussion over causality in medicine during the first decades of the twentieth century in Germany. It is argued that the oncogene paradigm may be seen as revolutionary because it succeeded in uniting the exogenous and endogenous explanations of cancer in a single paradigm.