2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

The reading for this week was focused on public health in a sociological perspective. Chapter 2 spoke of the developments of the past that were created with the concepts of public health in mind, such as the development of sanitation systems and pure water. The concepts presented of the poor being blamed for their diseases is still present in modern society though. The medical problems were caused by character of the poor and focused on their “sinful living” and in modern close-minded people will believe the same things.

Chapter 3 mentions that there needs to be changes in education to lead to awareness; that there needs to be changes in social structures for equality for all races, genders, and classes. While reading this it struck me. We talk about this in class constantly, that you must better the environment in which people live in, expand the options for food purchases, create areas where physical exercise is fostered and free healthcare is offered. In theory, this all seems so simple but there are obvious limitations. The way Obamacare was fought against within the country shows just how difficult it can be to instate welfare type programs. The reading particularly mentioned this corporate involvement in public policy as well by stating that “public health officials defined their mandate ever more narrowly and shrank from political engagement with powerful interests such as corporations and businesses that created unheahlthful environments.” Yet corporate influence and government turmoil are just a few limitations. There are also limitations in funding, problems in creating specialized programs based on individual neighborhoods (as not all neighborhoods will benefit in similar ways nor require equal amounts of attention), and public opinion to worry about. Yet, structural reform must happen to ease the inequity in public healthcare. Hopefully, James and I will be able to create an open discussion of all the issues surrounding this development of public health structures tomorrow.

How many times has the thoughts of the government and the fear ridden people lead to wrong decisions? How many times did the stigma of being poor carry over into a deserved death by plague? Apparently, a lot.
As I was reading the end chapters I was confused as to how many people assumed the poor were poor from choice, were living in filth by choice. Whitehead was a physician and religious man that we even willing to believe that the poor and destitute could have been the deserved receivers of this disease yet his cases said otherwise when the rich and “pristine” died. The environment was conducive to these deaths with their cramped quarters and limited sewage systems but the people were not to blame. In fact, now we recognize that “squatter communities… are where the developing world goes to get out of poverty” (Johnson).
I also found it amazing this spread of disease was exactly what helped contribute to modern cities. People had slowly developed to accomodate these larger populations and led to some of the advances we know today. The chapter focusing on risks in living cities did instill a sense of fear in me though, that we are so helpless if it comes to things such as nuclear warfare. Yet it also comforted me to know that biological warfare could be halted in a matter of days, that we had gotten so advanced from the times of London’s cholera outbreak. Admittedly, there are still diseases we must work to find cures for such as cholera and HIV but the advances made in modern medicine and city society is amazing.

While reading “The Ghost Map” I could not help but feel a certain sense of anxiety. The cause of the disease, in retrospect, seems fairly obvious yet here we are reading about entire families succumbing to cholera. Here we are reading about a researcher struggling to find the culprit of this disease without knowing that the virus was already discovered. Here we are looking at the elite attempting to blame the poor for the cause of the disease and their living conditions. It was an exact form of dramatic irony and all I wanted to do was yell at people to listen to Dr. John Snow.
The progression of this disease could have been limited if people were not as blinded by the social conditions and general unrest of the time. The book spent a great amount of time describing the poor living conditions of those in the lower class, with feces piling up and causing contamination of the water supply, with the sheer concentration of people in small areas, with the literal physical division between the lower and upper class. They began to blame the air, blame the people, blame the dead, yet no one would be willing to listen to the doctor who figured it out. I’m interested to see the later chapters and to see how the public will shift their attitudes towards the disease.

Medina Mishiyeva