One of America's first physicians could not convince his patients that they should pay for his services. They thought it appropriate to pay for the drugs that he supplied, but not for his attention and time. It seemed natural for one person to care about another, not to charge for it. This incident, related in Barbara...
Author - SftP Publishing
It's six a.m. in Cambridgeport, an integrated, basically blue-collar neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the row of triple deckers on Brookline Street, Gwen Woods and her neighbors awaken simultaneously. At that tender hour, Advent Corporation's Emily Street plant is already venting styrene fumes into the...
In this issue we present two firsthand accounts of the struggle of a group of residents in a working-class area of Cambridge to halt the pollution of their air with styrene, an unpleasantly pungent and hazardous chemical emitted by a nearby factory. Several members of Boston SftP have been directly involved and were...
This article surveys the Marxist literature in medical care. The Marxist viewpoint questions whether major improvements in the health system can occur without fundamental changes in the broad social order. One thrust of the field—an assumption also accepted by many non-Marxists—is that the problems of the health...
The following is an abridged and revised transcript of a recent seminar on community health and development given by John L. McKnight. It is reprinted from Development Dialogue, a journal of international development published by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Ovre Slottsgatan 2, 752 20 Uppsala, Sweden (1978:1).
Tanzania is an East African country of approximately 16 million people known to many Americans only as the site of Mount Kilimanjaro, Serengeti game park, and the movie "African Queen." The country was a German colony until World War I and subsequently became a British protectorate called Tanganyika until independence...
I originally entered a mental institution voluntarily, believing I could get help there. At that time I was very unhappy; clinically it's called depressed. In retrospect I would prefer to call it a terrible unhappiness with the state of my life. I was so unhappy that I was unable to get out bed for days and weeks at a...
Health care is an important problem worldwide. The articles in this issue on health care range from concrete struggles in the U.S. to alternatives in other countries to theoretical analyses of the problem.
Hong Kong, July 2, 1978: We have just left the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) after a one-month visit. Our itinerary took us from Hainan Island in the south of China to Peking in the north - with many stops scattered in between. Although the main focus of the trip was to study the current organization and objectives...
After a year of preparation for the illegal "occupation-restoration" at the Seabrook nuclear plant on June 24th (the fourth occupation), New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson on June 12th proposed a four-day "legal demonstration" on the neighboring 18 acre Seabrook dump- and suddenly it was a whole new ballgame. Was...