Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2017

As mentioned in class yesterday, Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler switches between chapters of the past and the present. After reading parts two and three, I believe that the reason for the shift in time is for the reader to gain information on Eli, as the Maslin family gains information about the extraterrestrial organism. Unlike Toni Morrison’s Home, I am not confused by the changes in time by Clay’s Ark, and enjoy anticipating what the next chapter will reveal. Continue reading “Jumping from Past to Present”

Throughout this semester we have continually been exposed to texts that reveal the horrors African Americans have been subject to in the name of medical research and education, with Fortunes Bones being a unique example of a combination of history and an author’s fictional interpretation of it. Marilyn Nelson uses poems and blurbs to educate readers on the story of Fortune, a slave whose skeleton would be exploited for decades after his death. This stylistic approach provides us a multitude of viewpoints on issues related to the exploitation of Fortune’s bones and allows the reader to contemplate many ethical questions regarding the use of black bodies in medicine on a personal level. Although we have read other texts such as Home and Medical Apartheid that depict similar abuses, no text has quite impacted me as much as Fortune’s Bones has to this point. This is mainly due to the fact that as the son of a dentist who is interested in medicine, I have been exposed to real-life examples of human anatomy from a young age, ranging from living patients to objects like models and even a real skull my father still possesses from dental school. I was taught to respect whatever I learned from regardless if what I was using was an object or observing a patient. I knew that this exposure was unique, but never fathomed that the respect and ethical practices used when treating people/ handling objects would vary, especially when race became a factor. Learning about how African Americans have been so disproportionately abused in the name of medicine was so drastically opposite from the level of respect I was raised to have. This was exemplified in all of the texts we have read but the one text that really hit home the most for me was that of Fortune’s and how dissimilar the Porters treated one’s remains compared to my upbringing.

Continue reading “Respecting Bodies”

This past summer, Dr. Munch and several students had the opportunity to go on a study abroad trip to Ghana to take Biology 344. Along with this being a class, it was an experience for these students. They were able to help search for the sources of several diseases that have been affecting the people’s health drastically. The three main objectives to going on this trip were to improve Healthcare, economic wealth-fare, and the educational infrastructure.

During Wednesday’s class, we discussed the difficulties that millions of Ghanaians deal with on a daily basis and the perspectives that people have regarding Medical Voluntourism. Dr. Munch and Professor Kennison came in to serve as a source for our curiosity and interest in these topics. Continue reading “Solutions”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been contemplating if I should write a blog post about consent. I didn’t want to come across as disrespectful. As a forewarning, I don’t want to seem insensitive to anyone who has experienced abuse by discussing controversial current events and making my own interpretations/connections to the past. In no way am I trying intentionally to single anyone out, but I would like to explain the “both/and” connection I made about how people use the time period to justify their actions and excuse their immoral behavior.

Before I even make my “both/and” connection, I’d like for you to guess which statement came from a recently exposed situation and which statement came from a past event.

1. “Things were simple then. Informed consent was unheard of. No one asked me what I was doing. It was a wonderful time.”
2. “I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.”

Continue reading “Justifying the Times”

When I finished Zulus, I was left confused and (unsurprisingly) disappointed. Like I mentioned in my last post, it is important for us to examine why the novels we read make us feel the way that we do. We can simply close the book and walk away from it, we can read something that we know may be more fulfilling, but little growth will come from doing that. Continue reading “A Thank You Note to Everett”

In fiction, villains are often flattened into two-dimensional characters who do nothing but wreak havoc and cause evil. People often do not realize that not all villains or to put it more lightly, bad characters, are immediately recognizable at first glance. Personalities are complex; just like their roles and purposes, they’re not as clear as black and white. This was hard to understand as a kid who was [is] an avid fan of Scooby Doo, Totally Spies, and other similar, classic weekend cartoons. Every new episode features a different villain with which we are told little to nothing about except their evil scheme for the day and that we must focus on conquering this wicked being by the end of our twenty minutes. Continue reading “Breaking the Hero and Villain Canons”

Before entering this course, and really even these past two weeks, I had little knowledge on what medical volunteering was. Also, I had no idea how many negatives people find in these medical mission trips. After diving into this subject in class, I haven’t come away with a clear decision on whether I think medical volunteerism is good or bad, but I’ve taken away thoughtful insight from both the articles assigned and group discussions.

In Scientific American’s article “Trouble with Medical Voluntourism”, a number of the negatives people find in this subject are talked on. It talks about students being underprepared and unaware of the necessary treatments for people in these countries. One example is found in the text when it reads “Mary violated obstetrics best practices, doing unnecessary episiotomies (cutting the skin between the vaginal opening and anus to make room for the baby’s head) and pulling breech babies (babies positioned bottom instead of head-first in the birth canal)”. This is an example where there is obviously great danger that can be caused through these medical missions.

In Rafia Zakaria’s article “white tourist’s burden”, a slightly different tone is found, and I tend to agree with this article more than Scientific American’s. It mentions how some people go on these medical assistance trips mostly to talk about it when they get home, rather than feeling a need to actual help the people in sed communities. In response to this, the author of this article believes that Medical Voluntourism is not a lost cause, and can actually be a very good thin, but it is currently a cause that can be improved on greatly. One thing that I learned from our guest speaker in class on Wednesday is that the people of the village they visit in Haiti are thankful to have American friends. I believe that when done properly, medical missions can be a very great thing. I connected what the guest speaker had said to a group conversation I had in class on Monday. Our group had come to a consensus that these people that are in the most severe of situations, do not care where their help comes from, they are just grateful to be receiving help. This is not true with all patients, but something such as a matter of life and death situation, indigenous people would be grateful to receive any help. Overall, I believe that while there are flaws in the system of medical tourism, there is also a lot of good that comes out of it, and a lot more can come if there are stricter rules and guidelines are enforced on people leaving for these trips.

 

Today in class, we examined two articles titled “The White-Savior Industrial Complex” by Teju Cole and “The white tourist’s burden” by Rafia Zakaria which both focus on the negative consequences of voluntourism. This term refers to privileged, first world citizens gallivanting around the globe “helping” poor people in variously afflicted parts of the globe in various ways. The motivations of these helpers vary across every individual participant in every individual voluntourism program and range from altruistic to self-seeking. In Evelyn Mendez’s blog post titled “Volunteer?”, she references another article, “The Trouble with Medical “Voluntourism”” which sheds light on the damaging effects of institutions like “Doctors without Borders Alternative.” Groups like this are tasked with performing clinical surgeries such as delivering babies and pulling teeth without the proper experience and oftentimes, sanitation or equipment (Sullivan, 2017). These risky practices by incompetent students acting as unqualified practitioners of medicine often lead to more harm for patients than good (Sullivan, 2017). Mendez explains that these students are often going on these trips only to make themselves appear better on a resume to get into a better medical school for their own personal gain. However, the students themselves do not stay in the area abroad long enough to see the damage they potentially cause, but rather only long enough to feel good about the short term relief they provide. This, both the moral and selfish motivation to help people whose culture and problems the helper are not privy to, embodies the “White Savior Industrial Complex” Cole and Zakaria refer to in their articles.

What makes any institutional problem an “Industrial Complex”, whether it be the “Prison Industrial Complex” or the “Military Industrial Complex” is that the system in question is profitable as well as self-sustaining and justifiable through rhetoric. In the case of the WSIC, Americans are given a challenge or palatable enemy, like Joseph Kony or “hungry mouths, child soldiers or raped civilians” (Cole, 2012). Next, they take the moral high ground as people who are “going to ride in on a white horse and resolve it.” (Cole, 2012) So when someone like Kony is stopped or any amount of children are fed by privileged white people, they gain satisfaction not out of the resultant happiness their help lead to but by the implication that they are better people because of it.

Cole’s sequential tweets are spot on in describing how privileged whites do good deeds that have no real lasting impact not to achieve “justice” but to simply satisfy “sentimental needs” and have “a big emotional experience” (Cole, 2012). Not only are the roots of the problems often ignored, but other problems are created as a result. Cole later explains in the article that Nigerians who were protesting their corrupt government were noticeably not aided by the US government because of oil interest Yet the US government released a statement “supporting” the protesters right to protest in order to give off the image of preserving democracy and individual rights without making an actual change (Cole, 2012). A way to make actual change would be to import more expensive oil from non corrupt regimes to bolster them instead of empowering corrupt regimes simply because they produce a cheaper product. When money is on the line for privileged folks, morality is almost always tossed aside.

Meanwhile, Zakaria explains that there is a specific voluntourism program in South Africa that actually creates orphans. Because the American workers have economic backing, they resultantly “crowd out local workers” which leads parents to send their kids away to these orphan centers where they can actually afford to go to school (Zakaria, 2014). The question of whether it is better to be an educated orphan or non educated child living with their parents in poverty is irrelevant. The point that it is unjust for foreigners to be dictating the lives of native inhabitants at their own convenience for reasons independent of their plight is relevant, however. In class, Frank raised the solid point that most people participating in these programs are students on vacations which means a lot of the “help” might come seasonally. While I must be careful not to generalize all voluntourists as being unwanted and ignorant to the causes they are supposedly fighting, Zakaria explains that the participants should pay their “due diligence” by attempting to assimilate themselves with the culture as well as gain a real understanding of the native peoples’ and their plight (Zakaria, 2014). Both writers articulate the problem that many voluntourists simply go on these trips to feel good about themselves and bolster resumes as well as gain “good party stories” and “Facebook profile pictures” instead of for a more altruistic reason such as a desire to help people in need (Zakaria, 2014). These intrinsic motivations for white people to help non white people are more often than not self-serving and epitomize the WSIC.

Whilst discussing how we can connect Zulus and Medical Apartheid last week, I came across two quotes from the books that eerily seemed to connect. Continue reading “Unfortunately Ironic”

Humankind has a history of oppressing women’s bodies. Foot binding, the restrictions of gender roles, and unreasonable societal expectations of age and beauty are all timeless examples of this oppression. However, a relevant issue in the United States is reproductive rights. While there are few efforts made to encourage the development of new forms of male contraception, hundreds of provisions have been made in 2017 alone to restrict abortion access at the state level. Percival Everett’s Zulus contains many examples of injustice at the sake of the female body, with Alice Achitophel as our victim of it.

Alice Achitophel lives in a post-thermonuclear war society, where each woman is expected to be sterilized. Due to Alice’s weight (300 pounds) she believes she has no reason to have the procedure done because she probably won’t have sex. “She had thought to herself then that the people at the hospital had seen her and knew she was fat and ugly and could see from her file that she was an old maid, probably knew that she had never kept company with a man” (12). First, the readers see that this sterilization is forced and therefore not the women’s choice, which is just another example of this oppression. Secondly, Alice Achitophel believes she is unworthy of love and intimacy because of her weight, which is clearly an idea that’s been instilled by society. Her unattractiveness is not a fact, but a matter of opinion. Alice is referred to as the “fat woman” multiple times throughout the novel, suggesting that this objective description may be the only way see her.

A coworker of mine told me over the summer that she lost her health care because she made more money than usual the prior month, and that she was no longer able to pay for her birth control or many other health services. While birth control technically isn’t considered necessary, so many people want to use it that its price and accessibility are a prominent issue in modern America. While the women in Zulus aren’t given the option of contraceptives, this situation still connects to the novel in the sense that the government makes it difficult to make choices regarding one’s own body.

“…the opening body yielding the complete woman, full of the brain and emotions of her fat mother, earth mother, Alice Achitophel” (109). When Alice gives birth, she gives birth to a more attractive version of herself–a rebirth, in a sense. This new Alice is more determined and confident. This situation in nature is a contradiction to obsolete ideas of how women should behave and the expectations placed upon them. While the end of the novel is morbid because Kevin Peters and Alice pull the lever and end the world, it’s also empowering. The end reminds us that even those who are oppressed can always resist.