Analyze

CIEL's report is the first I have encountered to attempt to give a comprehensive analysis of Formosa Plastics and its impact on communities. The report breaks down the corporation's story into several sections: its origins and convoluted corporate structure, its primary products and common health risks of production, documented legal violations, and environmental justice threats. Together, the 100-page document covers significant ground, yet is readable in under an hour. It includes key statistics that are understandable without extensive background. I believe this report, as a mode of communication, finds an outstanding balance between accessible language, analysis, brevity, and detail. Activists and researchers alike should strive for the same qualities in their knowledge-sharing strategies.

This report released in 2021 by the Center for International Environmental Law was an important collaboration between "No Formosa" organizers in different settings. While the report's primary goal was to highlight and challenge Formosa's expansion in Southern Louisiana, it also addressed Formosa's operation in different places in the US, as well as Cambodia, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The report also prompted discussions about how to talk about environmental justice and what related concepts (like environmental racism) can be used to characterize the dynamics that produce injustices in these settings. 

1) “Repeatedly, I have been surprised by the impact that even lightly sketched case histories can have on readers.”

2) “But even the manifesto conceded that less formal expertise would remain important in the areas of practice that had not been subject to high-level testing. THAT confession covers much of the territory.”

The author conducted his research by personal experience and reference to case examples.

The main point of the article is that doctors need individual stories about patient success stories but that the current medical community has largely done away with this. His argument is that that are needed because of their impact on patients, their use in identifying problems like depression, knowing others have felt the same or have the same condition can give hope, and they can inspire research agendas.

Dr. Kramer refers to various people in various medical cases but redacts their names.

The Journal of the American Medical Association and the medical community as a whole embraced “evidence based medicine” back in the 90s and claimed that individual case stories were inferior, antiquated, and a thing of the past.

Oxford University press and the New England Journal of Medicine started writing case reports embracing stories.

The author addresses public health by making the case that “evidence based medicine” is not always there for every type of case nor is it always infallible. This effects emergency response where there are so many variables and there are no datasets, protocols, or studies for some cases.

1) “Repeatedly, I have been surprised by the impact that even lightly sketched case histories can have on readers.”

2) “But even the manifesto conceded that less formal expertise would remain important in the areas of practice that had not been subject to high-level testing. THAT confession covers much of the territory.”

I looked into how EMS operates in situations that are beyond protocols, standing orders, and medical control. I also looked into how story cases are used by other medical professionals. Further I looked into how “evidence” based approaches are formulated for studies and research.

• "For a variety of reasons, including a heightened awareness of medical error and a focus on cost cutting, we have entered an era in which a narrow, demanding version of evidence-based medicine prevails. "
• "No formal research can offer a 40-year lead-in or a 19-year follow-up. Few studies report on both symptoms and social progress. Research reduces information about many people; vignette retains the texture of life in one of its forms."
• "Beyond its roles as illustration, affirmation, hypothesis-builder and low-level guidance for practice, storytelling can act as a modest counterbalance to a straitened understanding of evidence."
• "We need storytelling, to set us in the clinical moment, remind us of the variety of human experience and enrich our judgment."