Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, by James Jones, is a chronicle of the appalling cruelty that turned people into "subjects" for the sake of science. The men in the study were told that they had "bad blood''—but the "treatment'' they received was only aspirin and iron tonic. The PHS worked with local...
Tag - healthcare
Self-care involves developing the competence to do for oneself and one’s family and friends many of the things which we now rely on medical professionals to do. Most importantly, it means developing the capacity to diagnose common health problems and to deal with them effectively without going to a doctor and without...
The disabled of Nicaragua have a collective history of which they can be proud. Many of them became disabled while fighting the dictatorship. A good many blind people used their disability as a disguise of innocence while smuggling messages and arms to the Sandinistas during the insurrection. They now have a...
A growing number of health care workers are engaged in the task of forging an alternative health care system based on genuine people’s participation. Experiments in grassroots health care planning have been started in various parts of the country. Their goal is to train health workers in the barrios to pass on...
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, authors of the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, is just such a model. The collective has, in the last ten years, helped to radically change the consciousness of women of all classes about their bodies and their health, and has empowered women to take action for their health in...
...it is time that women stop being viewed primarily in terms of their childbearing capabilities. It is time that women's occupational health, not simply pregnant women's health, be studied and dealt with.
There is much more profit in finding a cure for cancer than in preventing the disease. Industry tries to manipulate cancer prevention into a case of the environmentalists against the workers; just as nuclear power, uranium mining, automobile emissions standards, and too many others have been previously manipulated...
Nonionizing radiation is an example of a presumed benevolent technology which, because found useful for military and corporate purposes and for social benefit, has become intertwined in our lives to a potentially dangerous level. When it first gained widespread use some 30 to 50 years ago, little work was done to...
I had been to China in February '72, and I spent two years giving lectures on China. When I talked to people about worker control of the factory, their eyes glazed over. But when I talked about a health care system which was run by the community and in which many of the people doing health care work identified...
What can be done? Research aimed at identifying hazards of jobs employing large numbers of blacks is sorely needed, as are efforts to train black workers in the recognition and control of job hazards. Black health professionals and physicians need to be trained to identify occupational diseases, take work histories...