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

The readings this week were indeed disturbing.

When I started reading, it sounded like it was going to be a crazy conspiracy theory, along the lines of “The government has a secret plan to lock everyone up!” But I figured Professor Braine wouldn’t make us read 60 pages of drivel, so I ventured further.

The author’s theory that the war on drugs and mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow is not as crazy as it seems at seems at first glance. I knew that jail populations were mainly black and Latino, but I didn’t see that as intentional before. The idea of pitting lower class whites against the blacks, throughout the slavery and Jim Crow years, and even now, seems ingenious and terrible.

The real question here is: What are we going it do about it? The author specifically states that the purpose of her book is to merely draw attention to this issue. But it seems obvious that something should be done. Statistics have shown that the war on drugs has been unsuccessful, and this unfair oppression against “criminals” goes against every principle this country was founded on. Something should be done. I look forward to hearing the Harm Reduction Coalition’s views on this topic tomorrow.

This week’s reading discussed the problem that public health has, in that it has grown from its beginnings as a social force, to more of a biological one, placing a policy of “individual responsibility” in its place.The reason it is a problem is that being health is something you don’t choose, for if it were, we would all choose to be healthy. The author suggests that public health needs to return to its roots, battling unhealthy conditions, working as a social movement, and incorporating minority groups. I agree. Without the power to affect social change, public health is useless. This stems from a realization that our social standings affect our health, no matter who we are.

Having discussed healthcare with many people of differing political opinions, I feel that it comes down to whether you think everyone deserves to be healthy, or just those who can afford it should be healthy. It reminds me of one time quite recently when I wasn’t feeling well, so I Googled my symptoms (as one does). I happened upon a post of someone asking what could be wrong with them, saying they couldn’t afford to go to the emergency room, and that they’d just rather die than get another $8,000 bill. That struck me as incredibly sad, and only reinforced my belief that there is something wrong with out healthcare. I am not one who believes in strong central governments, but I do think everyone deserves good health care.

As with the fist half of the book, I found the reading to be really interesting. Snow’s journey to convince the scientific and political world of his waterborne theory of cholera was frustrating, but eventually rewarding.  I thought it was interesting that the one who eventually convinced everyone was Whitehead, who originally opposed the theory. I wonder why it was not the scientific man, but the religious one, who knew the ins and outs of the community, who was able to popularize a theory that had been scoffed at so many times before. It shows us how closely linked the scientific and social scene are, and how societal relationships play a role in something like an epidemic. I liked that Johnson gave Whitehead the credit he deserved.

In the chapter when Johnson wrote about the reasons miasma was so popular, he mentioned an evolutionary reason, suggesting that our sense of smell has evolved so that we avoid unpleasant smells, since they signify microbes. The idea of humans mistaking the “smoke” (the bad smells) for the fire (what was actually dangerous– bacteria) was very intriguing, and is something I definitely need to think about a little more.