Linda C. Fentiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780814724828
- eISBN:
- 9780814770290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724828.003.0008
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter examines childhood lead poisoning, which causes severe and irreversible cognitive and nervous system impairment, as well as behavioral problems, in more than half a million American ...
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This chapter examines childhood lead poisoning, which causes severe and irreversible cognitive and nervous system impairment, as well as behavioral problems, in more than half a million American children each year. While the United States has addressed some causes of lead poisoning, a core group of children, concentrated in poor, urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest, remains at high risk. In nearly every state, manufacturers of lead paint and other lead products have not been held responsible for this harm, even though they were aware of the risks of lead poisoning since the nineteenth century. Many landlords in lead poisoning cases succeed in shifting the blame from themselves to the tenants, arguing that mothers are the actual cause of harm to the child. Because the American legal system has traditionally preferred to find a single cause of harm that cuts off others’ responsibility, many children injured by exposure to lead fail to receive compensation and treatment for their injuries.Less
This chapter examines childhood lead poisoning, which causes severe and irreversible cognitive and nervous system impairment, as well as behavioral problems, in more than half a million American children each year. While the United States has addressed some causes of lead poisoning, a core group of children, concentrated in poor, urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest, remains at high risk. In nearly every state, manufacturers of lead paint and other lead products have not been held responsible for this harm, even though they were aware of the risks of lead poisoning since the nineteenth century. Many landlords in lead poisoning cases succeed in shifting the blame from themselves to the tenants, arguing that mothers are the actual cause of harm to the child. Because the American legal system has traditionally preferred to find a single cause of harm that cuts off others’ responsibility, many children injured by exposure to lead fail to receive compensation and treatment for their injuries.
Sara Shostak
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520275171
- eISBN:
- 9780520955240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275171.003.0001
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
Defining Vulnerabilities opens with a description of the history of childhood lead poisoning in the United States, which frames the puzzle at the center of this book: why and how did environmental ...
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Defining Vulnerabilities opens with a description of the history of childhood lead poisoning in the United States, which frames the puzzle at the center of this book: why and how did environmental health scientists, whose defining focus is on the effects of the environment on human health, make “gene-environment interaction” their mantra?How do we understand how scientists deeply committed to protecting public health decided to shift their research practices inside the human body and to the molecular level? The introduction provides a brief overview of the central analytic categories of the book, including fields, institutions, socially skilled actors, and biopolitics.Less
Defining Vulnerabilities opens with a description of the history of childhood lead poisoning in the United States, which frames the puzzle at the center of this book: why and how did environmental health scientists, whose defining focus is on the effects of the environment on human health, make “gene-environment interaction” their mantra?How do we understand how scientists deeply committed to protecting public health decided to shift their research practices inside the human body and to the molecular level? The introduction provides a brief overview of the central analytic categories of the book, including fields, institutions, socially skilled actors, and biopolitics.
Daniel Renfrew
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520295469
- eISBN:
- 9780520968240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295469.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter provides an introduction to the contested dynamics between medical knowledge, public policy, and grassroots political action. The chapter examines how lead’s victims and their advocates ...
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This chapter provides an introduction to the contested dynamics between medical knowledge, public policy, and grassroots political action. The chapter examines how lead’s victims and their advocates responded to a once “invisible” and newly recognized environmental disease. It also analyzes official state responses in relation to international biomedical and public-health intervention norms and practices. The chapter argues the state’s Official Protocol worked to minimize the parameters of lead-poisoning risk by, among other measures, raising international action thresholds—doubling the threshold for the lead level in blood and quintupling it for that in water. It conformed a set of de-facto policies and regulatory interventions focusing and circumscribing state action on lead poisoning within the spatial realm of squatter settlements, the cultural realm of the urban poor, and the ecological realm of soil.Less
This chapter provides an introduction to the contested dynamics between medical knowledge, public policy, and grassroots political action. The chapter examines how lead’s victims and their advocates responded to a once “invisible” and newly recognized environmental disease. It also analyzes official state responses in relation to international biomedical and public-health intervention norms and practices. The chapter argues the state’s Official Protocol worked to minimize the parameters of lead-poisoning risk by, among other measures, raising international action thresholds—doubling the threshold for the lead level in blood and quintupling it for that in water. It conformed a set of de-facto policies and regulatory interventions focusing and circumscribing state action on lead poisoning within the spatial realm of squatter settlements, the cultural realm of the urban poor, and the ecological realm of soil.
Daniel Renfrew
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520295469
- eISBN:
- 9780520968240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295469.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The book’s introduction presents the origins, character, scope, and implications of the Uruguayan lead-poisoning epidemic. The chapter situates the epidemic within a political and economic context of ...
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The book’s introduction presents the origins, character, scope, and implications of the Uruguayan lead-poisoning epidemic. The chapter situates the epidemic within a political and economic context of neoliberal reform and crisis and in relation to the global and biomedical history of the disease. The chapter outlines the author’s ethnographic research methods and the book’s principal social actors and research sites. The theoretical foundation of the book follows a political ecology of health perspective, with focused analyses of environmental justice, knowledge/power, and governance/resistance.Less
The book’s introduction presents the origins, character, scope, and implications of the Uruguayan lead-poisoning epidemic. The chapter situates the epidemic within a political and economic context of neoliberal reform and crisis and in relation to the global and biomedical history of the disease. The chapter outlines the author’s ethnographic research methods and the book’s principal social actors and research sites. The theoretical foundation of the book follows a political ecology of health perspective, with focused analyses of environmental justice, knowledge/power, and governance/resistance.
Linda C. Fentiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780814724828
- eISBN:
- 9780814770290
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724828.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
In the past several decades, medicine, the media, and popular culture have focused on mothers as the primary source of health risk for their children, even though American children are healthier than ...
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In the past several decades, medicine, the media, and popular culture have focused on mothers as the primary source of health risk for their children, even though American children are healthier than ever. The American legal system both reflects and reinforces this conception of risk. This book explores how this occurs by looking at unconscious psychological processes, including the ways in which we perceive risk, which shape the actions of key legal decisionmakers, including prosecutors, judges, and jurors. These psychological processes inevitably distort the way that ostensibly neutral legal principles are applied in ways that are biased against mothers. The book shows how assertions that mothers and mothers-to-be have “risked” their children’s health play out in practice. Pregnant women, women who do or do not breastfeed, and mothers whose children are injured or killed by the mother’s abusive male partner end up facing civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution. The book also illustrates how America’s resistance to the precautionary principle has led to an epidemic of children poisoned by lead. Vaccination is the only area in which parents are permitted to opt out of medically recommended health care for their children. The book explores the role of “choice” in children’s health and how it is applied unevenly to mothers and others, including manufacturers of toxic products. The book ends with recommendations for real improvement in children’s health.Less
In the past several decades, medicine, the media, and popular culture have focused on mothers as the primary source of health risk for their children, even though American children are healthier than ever. The American legal system both reflects and reinforces this conception of risk. This book explores how this occurs by looking at unconscious psychological processes, including the ways in which we perceive risk, which shape the actions of key legal decisionmakers, including prosecutors, judges, and jurors. These psychological processes inevitably distort the way that ostensibly neutral legal principles are applied in ways that are biased against mothers. The book shows how assertions that mothers and mothers-to-be have “risked” their children’s health play out in practice. Pregnant women, women who do or do not breastfeed, and mothers whose children are injured or killed by the mother’s abusive male partner end up facing civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution. The book also illustrates how America’s resistance to the precautionary principle has led to an epidemic of children poisoned by lead. Vaccination is the only area in which parents are permitted to opt out of medically recommended health care for their children. The book explores the role of “choice” in children’s health and how it is applied unevenly to mothers and others, including manufacturers of toxic products. The book ends with recommendations for real improvement in children’s health.
Daniel Renfrew
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520295469
- eISBN:
- 9780520968240
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295469.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Drawing on political ecology and science studies perspectives, Life without Lead examines the social, political, and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead-poisoning epidemic. Lead became ...
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Drawing on political ecology and science studies perspectives, Life without Lead examines the social, political, and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead-poisoning epidemic. Lead became Uruguay’s first mass contamination event, affecting tens of thousands of children in neighborhoods across the capital, Montevideo, and other cities. Carrying along a deep sense of urgency, the discovery and unfolding of lead contamination raised broad-ranging questions about the nature of urban environmental risk, the fraught and changing relationship between citizens and the state, and the transformative social, economic, and political landscape of a country in crisis. The book situates the Uruguayan case in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political left in Latin America. It traces the rise of an environmental-justice movement; analyzes the politics of culture, place, organized labor, and class; and examines the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested biomedical science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, Life without Lead traverses the realms of material reality and experience, disputed claims to “truth,” and the symbolic and power-laden terrain of collective identities, meaning, and action.Less
Drawing on political ecology and science studies perspectives, Life without Lead examines the social, political, and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead-poisoning epidemic. Lead became Uruguay’s first mass contamination event, affecting tens of thousands of children in neighborhoods across the capital, Montevideo, and other cities. Carrying along a deep sense of urgency, the discovery and unfolding of lead contamination raised broad-ranging questions about the nature of urban environmental risk, the fraught and changing relationship between citizens and the state, and the transformative social, economic, and political landscape of a country in crisis. The book situates the Uruguayan case in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political left in Latin America. It traces the rise of an environmental-justice movement; analyzes the politics of culture, place, organized labor, and class; and examines the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested biomedical science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, Life without Lead traverses the realms of material reality and experience, disputed claims to “truth,” and the symbolic and power-laden terrain of collective identities, meaning, and action.
Linda C. Fentiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780814724828
- eISBN:
- 9780814770290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724828.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter challenges the prevailing narrative that mothers are risky to their children’s health, discussing the myriad ways in which mothers are portrayed as dangerous to their children’s ...
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This chapter challenges the prevailing narrative that mothers are risky to their children’s health, discussing the myriad ways in which mothers are portrayed as dangerous to their children’s health—and are often held legally responsible for it. This often occurs simultaneously with society’s failure to acknowledge the significant contributions to children’s health made by fathers and other men, as well as more distant, but equally significant, social, economic, and physical factors. The chapter introduces the role of unconscious psychological processes in influencing the decisions of key legal players.Less
This chapter challenges the prevailing narrative that mothers are risky to their children’s health, discussing the myriad ways in which mothers are portrayed as dangerous to their children’s health—and are often held legally responsible for it. This often occurs simultaneously with society’s failure to acknowledge the significant contributions to children’s health made by fathers and other men, as well as more distant, but equally significant, social, economic, and physical factors. The chapter introduces the role of unconscious psychological processes in influencing the decisions of key legal players.
Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814799932
- eISBN:
- 9780814763841
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814799932.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter examines factors that account for health disparities, government response to public health threats to African Americans, and sociohistorical influences on perceived fairness of the ...
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This chapter examines factors that account for health disparities, government response to public health threats to African Americans, and sociohistorical influences on perceived fairness of the public health system. It first cites evidence showing that African Americans receive a poorer quality of health care than whites before turning to a discussion of African Americans' distrust of the public health establishment and especially the biomedical community. It then explores the problems facing many “safety-net” urban public hospitals that serve the poor and uninsured and goes on to analyze lead poisoning as a classic example of an environmental health threat that disproportionately impacts low-income children and children of color. The chapter also looks at three experiments that illustrate the legacy of racial discrimination and bias treatment in medical research: the federally funded Public Health Service Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the East Baltimore Childhood Lead Paint Experiment, and pesticide tests on children in Florida. Finally, it evaluates government responses to epidemics and bioterrorism threats.Less
This chapter examines factors that account for health disparities, government response to public health threats to African Americans, and sociohistorical influences on perceived fairness of the public health system. It first cites evidence showing that African Americans receive a poorer quality of health care than whites before turning to a discussion of African Americans' distrust of the public health establishment and especially the biomedical community. It then explores the problems facing many “safety-net” urban public hospitals that serve the poor and uninsured and goes on to analyze lead poisoning as a classic example of an environmental health threat that disproportionately impacts low-income children and children of color. The chapter also looks at three experiments that illustrate the legacy of racial discrimination and bias treatment in medical research: the federally funded Public Health Service Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the East Baltimore Childhood Lead Paint Experiment, and pesticide tests on children in Florida. Finally, it evaluates government responses to epidemics and bioterrorism threats.
Sara Shostak
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520275171
- eISBN:
- 9780520955240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275171.003.0007
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
Chapter 6 considers how environmental justice activists perceive the ascendance of research on gene-environment interaction. This chapteropens with a case study of a 2002 court case-Tamiko Jones, et ...
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Chapter 6 considers how environmental justice activists perceive the ascendance of research on gene-environment interaction. This chapteropens with a case study of a 2002 court case-Tamiko Jones, et al., v. NL Industries, et al. (Civil Action No. 4:03CV229)-in which genetic arguments were used to undermine plaintiffs’ claims that their children’s cognitive and behavioral deficits were caused by lead poisoning. It then describes activists’ fears that research on gene-environment interaction will serve as a “smoke screen” for the social-structural dynamics underlying the disproportionate burden of environmental risks and illness borne by communities of color in the United States. However, it alsoconsiders to activists’ cautious interest in using molecular techniques to generate proof of environmental exposures and their deleterious effects.Less
Chapter 6 considers how environmental justice activists perceive the ascendance of research on gene-environment interaction. This chapteropens with a case study of a 2002 court case-Tamiko Jones, et al., v. NL Industries, et al. (Civil Action No. 4:03CV229)-in which genetic arguments were used to undermine plaintiffs’ claims that their children’s cognitive and behavioral deficits were caused by lead poisoning. It then describes activists’ fears that research on gene-environment interaction will serve as a “smoke screen” for the social-structural dynamics underlying the disproportionate burden of environmental risks and illness borne by communities of color in the United States. However, it alsoconsiders to activists’ cautious interest in using molecular techniques to generate proof of environmental exposures and their deleterious effects.
Linda C. Fentiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780814724828
- eISBN:
- 9780814770290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724828.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter notes that, in a historical context, American children are generally quite healthy. Nevertheless, when compared with other economically developed countries, today the United States falls ...
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This chapter notes that, in a historical context, American children are generally quite healthy. Nevertheless, when compared with other economically developed countries, today the United States falls short, especially in measures of infant mortality, preterm birth, and childhood injury and death. This can be attributed in large part to class- and race-based disparities, as well as to stressors, such as environmental hazards, physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and substance abuse and mental illness. The American legal system has largely taken a hands-off approach to many of these problems, and children have suffered as a result.Less
This chapter notes that, in a historical context, American children are generally quite healthy. Nevertheless, when compared with other economically developed countries, today the United States falls short, especially in measures of infant mortality, preterm birth, and childhood injury and death. This can be attributed in large part to class- and race-based disparities, as well as to stressors, such as environmental hazards, physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and substance abuse and mental illness. The American legal system has largely taken a hands-off approach to many of these problems, and children have suffered as a result.
Linda C. Fentiman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780814724828
- eISBN:
- 9780814770290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724828.003.0010
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter considers the comprehensive risks to children’s health, which are complex and often interconnected. Only by taking collective responsibility to protect children’s health will the real ...
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This chapter considers the comprehensive risks to children’s health, which are complex and often interconnected. Only by taking collective responsibility to protect children’s health will the real risks to children’s health be reduced. It is time to embrace the precautionary principle. Instead of addressing children’s health problems by scapegoating mothers, society would be better served by addressing broader risks to childhood health, especially those related to poverty and living in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Offering voluntary medical and social services to mothers is the key to improving children’s health.Less
This chapter considers the comprehensive risks to children’s health, which are complex and often interconnected. Only by taking collective responsibility to protect children’s health will the real risks to children’s health be reduced. It is time to embrace the precautionary principle. Instead of addressing children’s health problems by scapegoating mothers, society would be better served by addressing broader risks to childhood health, especially those related to poverty and living in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Offering voluntary medical and social services to mothers is the key to improving children’s health.
Michael A. Osborne
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226114521
- eISBN:
- 9780226114668
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226114668.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book is a history of the ideas, people, and institutions animating French colonial and tropical medicine from its origins through World War I. Until the 1890s most of what counted as colonial ...
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This book is a history of the ideas, people, and institutions animating French colonial and tropical medicine from its origins through World War I. Until the 1890s most of what counted as colonial medicine was actually linked to or simply was naval medicine, an activity taught at schools in the port cities of Brest, Rochefort-sur-Mer, Toulon, and Bordeaux. The study utilizes Jürgen Habermas’s “lifeworld” concept and more recent place-based techniques to chart the emergence, modification, and eventual demise of this discrete and largely separate species of French medicine pressured by reforms in medicine, education, colonial and domestic governance, and penology. The Parisian and civilian emphasis of French medical history merits re-evaluation. For colonial medicine and the study of “exotic pathology,” the action was not in Paris but in provincial naval ports, in the colonies, on the “great school of the sea,” and later in Bordeaux and Marseille. Provincial cities had very different resource endowments from what was found in Paris, and naval medical training and career patterns where vastly different from those of civil medicine although they intersected from time to time. It was, as its practitioners noted, a special or distinctive sort of medicine in virtue of its content, practitioners, patients, diseases, and places of practice. Considering its history enables a more comprehensive and nuanced view of French medicine, medical geography, and race theory. It also signals the navy’s crucial role in combating yellow fever, lead poisoning, and investigating the racial dimensions of health.Less
This book is a history of the ideas, people, and institutions animating French colonial and tropical medicine from its origins through World War I. Until the 1890s most of what counted as colonial medicine was actually linked to or simply was naval medicine, an activity taught at schools in the port cities of Brest, Rochefort-sur-Mer, Toulon, and Bordeaux. The study utilizes Jürgen Habermas’s “lifeworld” concept and more recent place-based techniques to chart the emergence, modification, and eventual demise of this discrete and largely separate species of French medicine pressured by reforms in medicine, education, colonial and domestic governance, and penology. The Parisian and civilian emphasis of French medical history merits re-evaluation. For colonial medicine and the study of “exotic pathology,” the action was not in Paris but in provincial naval ports, in the colonies, on the “great school of the sea,” and later in Bordeaux and Marseille. Provincial cities had very different resource endowments from what was found in Paris, and naval medical training and career patterns where vastly different from those of civil medicine although they intersected from time to time. It was, as its practitioners noted, a special or distinctive sort of medicine in virtue of its content, practitioners, patients, diseases, and places of practice. Considering its history enables a more comprehensive and nuanced view of French medicine, medical geography, and race theory. It also signals the navy’s crucial role in combating yellow fever, lead poisoning, and investigating the racial dimensions of health.
