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Luísa Reis-Castro: mosquitoes, race, and class

LuisaReisCastro
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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

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jaostrander
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Emily Goldmann, PhD, MPH is a current assistant research professor at NYU College of Global Public Health. Goldmann researches environmental and social determinants of mental health conditions. and has focused on surveillance of psychological distress, serious mental illness, and psychiatric hospitalization of New Yorkers following Hurricane Sandy.

Sandro Galea, MD, MPH is a canadian/american board-certified emergency physician. Dr. Galea is currently the Dean of BU School of Public Health and former Chair of the Department of Epidemiology of Columbia University's Mailman School of Global Public Health. He specifically researches social production of health within urban populations, and especially notes psychological and mental health disorder prevalence within vulnerable populations, including mood-anxiety disorders and substance abuse. 

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jaostrander
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United States Marine Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger lived with his family on Marine Base Lejeune in North Carolina after returning from the Vietnam War in the 1970s. His daughter was diagnosed and died from leukemia.  The film follows Sergeant Ensminger on his journey to find justice for his daughter and others affected by chemicals in the bases potable water from 1959-1985. The United States Marine Corp hid reports of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals that had polluted the bases water. The film also investigates the pollution of water from other military bases.  

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jaostrander
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Information for this article was gathered from field work, including interviews with workers at the chernobyl site during the inial response efforts and in the recovery efforts undertaken in the aftermath, as well as effected citizens.  This tells us that the author did extensive research for this article and looked to others for opinions and information.

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jaostrander
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This study was puplished in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology. This journal typically puplishes a variety of articles relating to medical oncology, clinical trials, radiology, surgeries, and basic research.The japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology is known for publishing high quality medical articles that relate to the Asian region.

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jaostrander
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This policy was part of the Consolitated Omnibus Reconciliation Act. Prior to this legislation, specifically Medicare and uninsured patients were being refused lifesaving procedures because of their inabiliy to pay for the services. Patient dumpin became an issue, in which a patient is transferred from a private to a public hospital, and essentially over working public hospitals for minimum wages.