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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?

"'In the globalized world of the 21st Century,'... simply stopping disease at national borders is not adequate"

"Early advocates of such [biodefense] efforts...argued that adequate preparation for a biological attack would require a massive infusion of resources into both biomedical research and public health response capacity" 

"Security experts and some life scientists worry that existing biosafety protocols focused on material controls in laboratories will not be sufficient as techniques of genetic manipulation become more powerful and routine, and as expertise in molecular biology becomes increasingly widespread."

"In all of them, we find that health experts, policy advocates, and politicians have competing visions about how to characterize the problem of biosecurity and about what constitutes the most appropriate response. Thus, the question is not just whether certain events (or potential events) have been characterized as "biosecurity" threats that require attention; we also need to ask what kind of biosecurity problem they are seen to pose, what techniques are used to assess them, and how certain kinds of responses to them are justified" 

The 1814 burning of the Captiol Building was in response to the American's burning fown York. The British decided to return the favor and burn down the captiol buildings and other cities in the Union. The building itslef had structural issues with poor ventilation, rotting timbers, and leaking roofs. In the efforts to reconstruct the capitol building, the engineer was met with public criticism, which could be considered out of line to an expert. He stated that the buildings left from the fire were already doomed, regardless of the fire's destruction. Other questions were brought by the public after the fire, such as the defense of the capitol and the war of 1812 itself. The engineer, Latrobe, conducted his own "investigation" of the buildings. In the end, the investiagtion revealed that the public was not as concerned with the how, but more the reasons why. 

In 1850 , a boiler exploded in the basement of a printing press factory in Manhattan. The diasaster led to a number of workers, notable children and adults alike, being trapped in the rubble in need of rescue. These rescue attempts were repeatedly halted in order to put out emerging fires around the explosion site. The total death toll was 67, with an additonal 50 injured. Seventeen jurors were brought to the site to observe the boiler (what remained of it) for its strength and fitness for use. Out of all the witnesses called forward for questioning on the boiler's fitness, numerous named any number of issues, specific to their area of expertise. The engineer who designed the boiler stated it was not properly constructed wiht numerous defects. The maker of the boiler had examined the boiler and found cracks prior to the explosion. The end result of the investiagtion revealed that the public had a fair amount of knowledge on the workings and issues with boilers. The incident also effected change in the inspection policies. 

The Iroquois Theater Fire happened in part due to the design of the theater and in part from the mistakes of the managers of the building. Exits were blocked or locked. The investigation revealed that the inspections of the theater were never truly enforced and many things did not meet code (such as fire sprinklers placement). The public, in this case, played a crucial role in pushing for a public investiagtion of the Iroquois, and other theaters. 

"... pathology, which previously aroused suspicion, has therefore become a source of social recognition"

"The issuing of a diagnosis and prognosis- an every-day act for the clinician, in principle involving no difficulties other than technical ones- became a problem of conscience that seemed like to invovle ideological of ethical issues" 

"The logic of state sovereignty in the control of immigration clearly prevailed over the universality of the priciple of the right to life. The compassion protocol had met its limit" 

The article was mainly backed by statistical evidence and cited other reesearch articles and studies. The authors, I assume, used their own extensive backgrounds in the field to support their arguments and views. 

The app was actually designed originally as an experiement by the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. The members of their Affirmative Consent Division were given the app as an experiment on the context of discussion around cosent. The idea was to test how discussion about consent affects the consent itself and the acts following. The Institute page doesn't really say where the funding is from, though I'd say privately through members and sponsors.

This system definitely shouldnt be used as a means of diagnosis when a doctor is completely stumped for answers. Its a tool but not a reliable resource.