Artifact 4

Posted on by

Smallpox is a great microcosm of human interaction with diseases. We see real treatments being developed, a systematic approach to dealing with the disease, and even understanding how it spreads enough to use it as a weapon, as well as understanding of building up an immunity.

The understanding of how immunity is developed without knowing what is causing it or anything about germ theory is impressive. Slaves from Africa were brought over and were sought after because they had already had smallpox and survived. They knew that once someone was infected they had an immunity to it. So, if you buy a slave that lived through it already, you don’t have to worry about your investment dying later from smallpox. The Chinese also started insufflation in the early 1500s in where the infectious scabs were inhaled through the nose. Later the practice was perfected with vaccination in where a bifurcated needle was used to make a prick of the skin and develop a cow pox strain. This would cause a localized infection that had a higher survival rate and was invented by Edward Jenner in 1796.

Compulsory vaccination and surveillance and containment were used to completely eradicate the disease in 1980. While some people did die from the vaccination and everyone who received it had a small localized infection that might end up scarring, it was warranted due to the estimated 300 million people who died from this disease and being able to get rid of something so deadly is worth the side effects of the vaccine. To truly eradicate the disease in India, with its high population, it was going to be impossible to vaccinate everyone for smallpox, so instead what they did is surveyed the areas for active cases. They offered bounties for anyone to tell them who is infected, and then the World Health Organization vaccinated everyone in the immediate area of the person infected. With this strategy the disease was able to be contained and eventually eliminated.

Artifact 5

Posted on by

The potato is nutrient packed enough to sustain life with a few added supplements. The Irish at the time would live off potatoes and dairy products derived from milk. They relied on the potato to the point where it was their main source of food. The type of potato that they were eating was a GMO where the Mexican potato and Irish potato were crossbred to create a potato that was larger and produced a greater yield. However, one side effect was that it became susceptible to a blight which destroyed the leaves and tubules of the potato plant killing it and making the potatoes growing inedible. Since potatoes were the main food source of Ireland at the time, many people starved, and the Irish potato famine ended up killing over one million people. The British were dicks at the time and didn’t do anything to help the Irish out with the famine and just let them die, kind of like a natural genocide.

While this is definitely a bad mark on GMO’s in general, it really says a lot more about being dependent upon only one food source. GMO’s are everywhere and most people don’t know what corn used to look like before it was selectively bred to create what we eat today. Without GMO’s we wouldn’t be able to sustain and feed our current population. GMO’s however aren’t perfect because the genome of anything is a lot more complicated than big potato + big potato = bigger potato like with the Irish potato. They were breeding for size and yield, which they got, but they also bread out a resistance to the blight that they used to have. So, while I believe GMO’s are essential to feed todays population, it is also important to be careful with them. Making sure to understand the traits of the strain before implementing them fully or depending upon them, because things can and will go wrong that is hard to impossible to determine in lab tests. The side effects could be anywhere from extinction of a species, a new crop disease, or having a negative impact on the environment.

Artifact 6

Posted on by

TB is relatively simple to cure today with modern treatment. However, after people have stopped taking the treatment mid-way through, it has given rise to new forms of TB such as XDR or MDR TB where the resistance is a lot higher and the treatment becomes a lot more intensive. Immunosuppressive diseases such as HIV have been introduced recently that increase the spread of the disease. Even with HIV one of the biggest factors to TB thriving even today is living conditions. In first world countries there is small risk of being infected with TB unless you are immunosuppressed such as a small child, someone undergoing chemotherapy, or someone infected with HIV. That’s mostly because we have good basic hygiene as well as enough room to get away from somebody who is sick and coughing to avoid the aerial spread of the disease. However, when we were learning about the outbreak of TB in Swaziland there was also a epidemic of HIV going through the area as well as everyone lived in small homes and usually in the same room as everybody else in their family. Most of the people we saw in the video “The Silent Killer” were infected by their own family from close contact with them. Swaziland also has barriers, societal and physical, in place that prevent people from getting proper treatment. TB and HIV both have a stigma surrounding them making people not want to come forward and get treated or let other people know about it, so some people try to hide it and continue working, spreading the disease even more. Getting treatment is also difficult because the treatment centers are far away, and you need to stay there until your treatment is complete or you become no longer contagious because treatment for TB is monitored. This means that you are separated from your family for a very prolonged period. About 6 months for MDR and up to 2 years for XDR.

 

Artifact 2

Posted on by

The Black Plague occurred during the budding of modern culture, where world trade, large cities, and large agricultural farms are just starting. The black plague came over from East Asia due to the increased interaction between Europe and Asia through war and trade. It was able to stay and prosper in Europe for centuries due to crowded cities which provided multiple hosts, and a lack of sanitation where waste disposal was an issue. The Black Plague likely rose up in Asia from a zoonotic disease. Because of the increased human interaction with domesticated animals, the zoonotic disease was able to transfer over to humans and infect them.

Once the Black Plague made it into Europe, there wasn’t much helping citizens from becoming infected since germ theory wasn’t around yet and what was around was about balance of the four elements of the body and miasmas. Because of the lack of understanding of the disease, medical treatment didn’t do anything to help and sometimes would just make it even worse. So, without being able to go to doctors or science, many turned to religion for help or an explanation. Many also turned away from religion, mostly the catholic church and sought their own answers, either by establishing their own private church or by becoming a flagellate. Flagellates during the black plague probably made it a lot worse as they did many of the things we know not to do during an epidemic because it could spread the disease. They would travel from town to town and interact with the people, sometimes having sex while there. They would also whip themselves and cause self-harm which was bad because the plague could be spread through blood contact. Not only were the flagellates possible carriers of the plague, their radical and extreme antics caused widespread panic throughout Europe making the people lash out and lynch and burn Jews, which they blamed to be the cause of the plague.

The most interesting part for me about the Black Plague is what happens in the aftermath. For the lower class, although they were hit the hardest by the plague, they benefited greatly from the aftermath because the population was so low that they had a deficit of manual labor, making their living wages increase and they were able to buy their own land and food was much more plentiful because there was less mouths to feed. For the upper class however, while they weren’t heavily impacted because they could move away from plague infected areas and seal themselves away, after the plague they lost their cheap labor force to run the castles and farms. Some nobles even had to work their own land to survive because the old workers could afford to move away.  This also meant that there was in increase in war and fighting as the nobles were trying to maintain their power.

The knowledge of germ theory today makes a widespread plague a lot harder to occur unless its hard to detect or has a high drug resistance. Even though we have basically the perfect set up for a pandemic to occur with fast global transport and a high population density, the understanding of what germs are and how they are spread means that we have a lot of safe guards in place to try and stop pandemics from occurring. We also have Vaccines for many of the diseases that are around today such as small pox, polio, mumps, and measles. In developed countries where most of the population has these vaccines the country has heard immunity where there aren’t enough viable hosts for a disease to survive and spread. However in undeveloped countries with poor healthcare is where we still see epidemics occurring such as the bubonic plague still in Madagascar or Polio surviving in India, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. A lot of this has just as much to do with education in these areas as poor healthcare. In Madagascar where the bubonic plague is still occurring you have people interacting with the dead and stealing their infected bodies to talk to. You also have eating of animals (bush meat) which have died from the plague or natural causes and then they get it from that. And they also have a lot of people living in basically a junk yard that is full of trash and dead bodies with very low hygiene practices.

Artifact 1

Posted on by

The development of cities, homes, and farms and other permanent settlements allowed the human population to increase and advance to where it is today. However, that is not without a price. As population density increases sanitation problems rise. Waste management has always been a problem of society. With fecal matter in the streets fecal borne pathogens can be easily spread. Another thing about population density is that a pathogen doesn’t need to travel as far to keep infecting new hosts. Additionally, as we become more sedentary, we also become more mobile as well by trading across long distances. This is how the Black Death was theorized to spread. Traveling from China to Europe along the silk road, the plague was able to travel hundreds of miles where as before people developed cities, such a migration was impossible. Also, as we domesticated and raised more species and in greater quantity our interaction with animals increased allowing zoonotic diseases to more easily spread to humans. This new contact with animals along with increased population density meant that diseases had more chances of developing a mutation that allows it to jump to humans or increases the severity of it. Normally when this would happen when we were hunter gatherers the mutation would die out since it would run out of hosts, but cities and towns provide it a path to expand and travel and thrive.

Reflective Essay

Posted on by

The difference between sex and gender wasnt something new to learn for me. You hear about gender expression on the news all the time and how many different ways there are to express your gender. I also already knew about how hormonal expression and genetic variations can cause biological sex to become sort of a grey area and not the typical XX-female XY-male gene expression. What I did learn however is the correct terminology for the ideas, that hermaphroditism doesn’t cover all people with a genetic variation somewhere in between true XX and true XY. As far as my views on how biology affects gender, they’re still the same after this course. That is that there is a biological reason, chemical or physical, of why people are the way that they are. I know currently there is no concrete scientific proof of this, but I believe that we just haven’t found it yet or have the scientific means of which to find it. Who is to say that just a minor difference of 1ng of a hormone during development between two people couldn’t change the way synapses in the brain fire? This is just a rough example of what I mean however. With that being said however I didn’t realize how much gender roles in a country

can affect how a person can view their own gender (artifact 1, sex and gender).

 

One thing that stuck with me and I noticed every time is how the major religion of a culture would affect how different genders are viewed, either male, female, or non binary. The only time I didn’t see religion impacting gender roles is when I researched the Tonga of the South Pacific (Artifact 2). To be fair however, the research went into their cultural practices and their roles and never into their religion. However from the article it highly seemed that the way one of the genders was viewed was by their contribution to their society. This makes sense because let’s say you’re working on a group project with four people, and two people in the group show up on time and work habitually on it, one shows up and works on it as well but is always around 20-30 minutes late, and the final one shows up every other time the group meets. How highly is everyone thought of in the group? You also see this on survival shows

all the time, especially on naked and afraid where there is no previous history between the people. Male and female doesn’t matter as much as what that person contribute to the group. Some episodes the man is doing far more than the woman, sometimes the woman is pulling the man along, and sometimes they both contribute equally. In the episodes where there is equal contribution they see each other as equal, even when there are roles such as the guy goes and gets food while the woman stays in the camp and keeps the fire alive and works on the shelter. There are clear gender roles between the two, however each is equally important.

When looking at the global gender gap and comparing the countries you could see the effects religion have on the countries rankings (article 3). The Scandinavian countries which, while currently are Christian based, were historically Norse and Norse mythology and practices had a high value of females in the culture and the two genders were very equal. Then below the Scandinavian countries there were the Christian countries, Buddhist, and Hindu countries generally mixed together. Generally is important there as there are a lot of outliers. And at the bottom of the list are muslim countries and even more important than that are countries run by religious rules such as Sharia Law. In those countries women are treated more as objects or slaves because they have to take care of their husbands, the husbands can have multiple wives, forced marriages are common, women can’t even go outside the house by themselves or drive, and women can be killed on the street for breaking traditions in an “honor killing” and nobody would care.

I was surprised to see that even in the worst rated country on the global gender gap report, the healthcare gap was relatively small (article 3). The top and bottom country were 0.062 points away from each other. Because of this, seeing that America was only 0.007 points from the top position I thought that there really wasn’t anything different about males and females receiving medical treatment in the US. Article 4 made me rethink that however and realize that there isn’t a law stating that there is a difference or even really a social construct against women going to the doctor, but instead its a cost issue with insurance being higher for women because they have to go more often and see additional doctors.

Before this class I hadn’t ever really thought about circumcision as a bad thing, but that is because i was looking at it from the male perspective only because I had never heard of female circumcision or the negative effects it has (article 7). What writing these articles has done is made me explore and engage with subjects that I either oppose, have never really had a formed opinion on, or something I had no idea about and learn more about it than if it was just on a slide during class.

 

Guyland and Pornland

Posted on by

Porn is a problem in todays society. It’s not so much that its there or what there is out there, but the access to it. This is because our culture isn’t comfortable talking about sex. It’s taboo. We are still arguing if we should even tell children about sex, and what we do teach them at an early age is just the bad things. We just basically show them all the STI’s and STD’s in order to scare them away from ever trying it and barely giving information on ways to prevent pregnancy. The problem with continuing this type of teaching, and why porn is such a problem, is that the kids have many more questions than what is covered, but they dont ask and they dont know who to ask because we dont talk about sex in our culture.

When they have these questions about their sexuality or about what sex even is, they only have two places they feel like they can go. They can either go to their friends, who will probably make fun of them for not knowing even though they dont know themselves, or they can watch porn.

The problem with porn isnt that its out there, but that its too out there. When a kid is forming their idea of sex based off of the porn they watch, they see a very unrealistic standard and idea of what its like. While most people when they get older realize that it is fake and unrealistic, there are some that dont and thats where the issue comes from. In porn nobody laughs, makes a mistake, says they dont like something, and there isnt ever any communication between the partners. If you believe that all sex should be like porn then youre going to have a very unhappy love life because you wont be able to get what is shown in porn. And even if you do, theres been a lot of interviews with porn stars about it and they all say that its not a good sexual experience, that it looks good but it’s not.

You also get the people who get into the deep end of porn with BDSM and other fetishes. If you are into that and you have a consenting partner, you do you, thats your thing. But there also needs to be an understanding that someone might not like to be tied up or hit. not every girl likes anal, despite what porn has led you to believe. If you talk to anyone that is really into BDSM you learn that there is a lot of consent in it. they go over just about everything they are going to do before hand and make sure everyone is ok with it before going into it. they also put a ton of emphasis on safety. from just watching porn, you would not understand that because it seems like anything goes, and that could lead to a lot of problems.

What i think would be a good solution would be to make what comes up when you type in “free porn” or something that a young kid might search have a lot of vanilla porn in it. The other types should still be there, just harder to get to. If you’re into it you’re still going to find it, but a kid wont know enough to go looking for it. Its like keeping you’re porn on your computer in a folder instead of as shortcuts right on your desktop. its not really secure or well hidden, but its still going to keep most people from finding it unless they’re already looking.

Artifact 4

Posted on by

While both sexes are able to get some of the best healthcare in the US, you would expect US health to be a lot higher than it actually is. This is caused by a couple of reasons, but mainly because of gender rolls and access to that healthcare.

First off, Healthcare isn’t cheap in the US. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Its good because we have some of the best doctors and facilities in the world and people from all over the world, if they have the money, come to the US for treatment. My mom went to the mayo clinic in Jacksonville, Fl when she had breast cancer and I was shocked by the number of foreigners there. Probably only half of the patients could speak English and most people weren’t local and came from all over. because of this they had taxis that just ran from the airport to the clinic and they also had specially built hotels for patients to stay at. If healthcare rates go down, these high end facilities would not be feasible, let alone profitable. the doctors would move to somewhere else where they can still make a lot of money and so would the business.

While we have these types of facilities not many people can afford it. Without medical insurance regular checkups aren’t financially feasible for a lot of people. Without medical checkups cancers arent found until its already too late and diseases go untreated.  This mostly affects women because they tend to go to the doctors more often for just normal sicknesses and generally minor things. They also require a lot more medical checkups than males do. Males only need a family doctor, a dentist, and maybe an optician if they have bad eyesight. Females on the other hand also need a gynecologist and an OBGYN  when pregnant or wanting to become pregnant. Insurance companies know that females tend to need more healthcare, which means they are more expensive, so they charge women more than men. This means that its harder for women to get the healthcare that they need than a male.

Men’s problem with healthcare seems more based on gender roles. Men don’t like going to someone for help or being seen as sick or injured because they might be seen as weak. Its much more likely for a guy to tape his fingers together when broken than to just go to the doctor. Guys don’t go to the doctor for anything unless they’re dying. Other than normal checkups/getting shots, the only time I have gone to the doctors is to get something removed from me or get a body part stitched back together or on. This is also pretty funny because guys will act like they’re dying when they have a cold and its pretty funny watching the guy who got struck by lightning and didn’t make a big deal about it, laying in his bed dying just from being congested. Another reason guys don’t go to the hospital is because its expensive. that mixed with their stubbornness makes even men who can afford to go, not go to the hospital. I’m not paying someone a bunch of money to just do what i can do with some superglue and butterfly strips.

Related image

Artifact 7

Posted on by

Robert Eads was a transsexual male who transitioned later in life, in his 40’s, after bearing two children and being in a heterosexual marriage with his husband. He went to Miami where a doctor there agreed to preform the procedure to change him into a man and Robert would be given testosterone shots and have a double mastectomy. Because Robert had already gone through menopause the doctor left Roberts uterus and ovaries in tact and still inside of Robert. Robert retained his female external genitalia as well. When Robert was 51 he was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1996.

After his diagnosis Robert went to multiple doctors to get treated but none would preform the surgery on him, either because of his lack of insurance or because he was transsexual. Doctors thought that having a transsexual male in the office would drive patients away. Robert was finally accepted for treatment by a doctor in ’97 but it was too late and the cancer spread and was inoperable.

Robert lived in rural Georgia and from what it looked like in the movie was south of Atlanta, which is extremely backwoods Georgia. This is an area with a whole bunch of backward thinking and prejudices and would probably look exactly the same today as when the film was shot, floppy disks and all. I can say this, i’m from south Georgia. Even with these prejudices around him, I don’t think it was much of a problem for him being transsexual except for those people who knew him well because i don’t think anyone would be able to tell. His family in the movie seemed that they didnt disown Robert or anything, just that they didnt really understand him. His father referred to him as something other than his daughter when Robert would visit in order to keep the neighbors from knowing, which is pretty good because like Rockbridge its a small town so everybody would also know and it would probably lead to Robert getting hurt or just being treated differently. His son still refers to him as mother and seemed awkward around him but that was probably because of the film crew because it still seemed like he loved Robert still.

Robert did however have a close group of friends for support that he referred to as his chosen family. They were a bunch of people that he met from southern comfort, a kind of transsexual group that met in Atlanta and they get to be around similar people as them. His chosen family was with him until he died in ’99 and helped him until the end and also helped him go to his last SoCo event and give a speech and lead a panel. While it seemed that Robert still had the support of his family, the ones mentioned anyways, Robert’s chosen family didn’t all have the same support and SoCo and the support Robert gave them was very important.

Artifact 6

Posted on by

Menstruation is treated differently by different cultures. some see it as a positive thing, but for some reason it is more common to be seen as a bad thing. it doesn’t make much sense to me in modernized countries why it is still stigmatized since we know exactly what causes it, why it happens, and that it is a perfectly normal occurrence for any female.  We also have Tampons and other things to keep it a “clean” process. I definitely cant figure out why men are afraid or disgusted by a piece of cotton on a string basically.

I do however get where some of the stigma of women being on their periods and them being crazy comes from. growing up I had an older sister who, when it was her time of the month, would turn into the most hateful person in the world. All you would have to do is sneeze when watching TV and it would set her off and shed start hitting you or screaming. Now i am definitely not saying this is all women, i have met far more that aren’t like this at all, but like democrats or republicans it only takes a few very noisy people to make the entire group look bad.

Men for some reason cant even touch feminine hygiene products because those are “for girls”. One of the most embarrassing things that could happen to a guy in school was to have a tampon shoved up his nose for a bloody nose. And when men have to buy their girlfriend or spouse, or whatever it may be, feminine hygiene products for the first time they feel embarrassed. I would personally feel embarrassed however, not because of the actual purchase, but because of the fact that i wouldn’t know what to get for her, just like when buying a girl clothes.

What I do like is that I’ve been seeing a push against the “periods are gross” and “you’re angry so you must be on your period” approaches. I don’t know if it is because i’m just getting older and more guys are getting over it because they are having to deal with it now, or that there is actually a cultural shift occurring. There’s been a big shift towards framing “real” men as those that go out and buy tampons, that bring her chocolate, run a hot bath, or just generally care for her as if she was sick. I’m not saying periods are a sickness, just that when you’re feeling bloated and cramping up and just generally feel miserable, it’s probably nice to be taken care of. It’s also nice for guys too, because if she’s happy, she’s not biting your head off. It’s a win-win.

Hopefully menstruation will become normalized to where women will stop feeling embarrassed when they’re on their period, and stop having to hide their tampons in their purses. And hopefully men will learn to not run away once a month and just be supportive about it, it sucks for women enough already there is no need to add on to it by making them feel worse.

(as an aside, I am actually shocked by how many of my girl friends have been confused by me not being disgusted when I find a tampon in their purse. It’s literally just a piece of cotton and string. the only way it would be disgusting is if it was used, but that would be the same as just keeping a bloody band-aid around.)