Group items tagged

"Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground" (A lot of focus on cholera and Snow's work.)

Disease isn't synonymous with its etiological agent or the map of its victims, whether or not either is placed within a... context that acknowledges the functional ecologies humans, livestock and wildlife share. [This] misses the structural factors underlying pathogen emergence and by virtue of that omission the pathogens' likely reemergence. Every one of the new potentially human-specific influenzas, for instance, have evolved out of industrial poultry and livestock. "

When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic - something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy. But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped...""