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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?

This article has been used as a reference in other STS articles and books. 

While this chapter does not discuss emergency response, its approach to discussing the public health aspects of immigrants and French policies created a discussion about how immigrants and others seeking asylum for various reasons should be treated. The focus of this chapter is more on the public health side of society and the humanitarian side of immigration.

Through extensive data analysis and interviews, the authors were able to produce claims and formulate their argument. They used information from the NIH and other research and data already obtained to explore displacement in relation to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and age. 

The main point made about emergency response is the need for debriefing and how crucial that is for first responders as well as victims of trauma. They also highlight that emergency responders are some of the sufferers of mental illness and that debriefing could be a way to reduce that statistic. 

The author of this article is Adriana Petryna. She is an Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology at UPenn. She teaches primarily anthropology courses because her main interest lies in anthropological theory and methods, the social studies of science and technology, globalization and health, and medical anthropology. Her research focuses on the effects of cultural and political forces on science and medicine. She has written several books and articles. 

It is clear from the bibliography as well as the notes, that Schmid is very educated in this field. She has done immense amounts of research (including citing herself), which shows that this is being written by an expert, and not a random scientist with an opinion. She provides information within her notes that help point someone seeking further information in the right direction. She also cites multiple sources form the same author, showing knowledge of other colleagues or experts within the field who may provide good insight and information.

The main finding or argument of this article is that a patient's culture will significantly impact a patient's narrative and description of their medical history. Each culture has its own stigmas and norms that can affect the way a patient views their own medical history. This is an important thing that doctors should recognize when analyzing and assessing a patient's situation and history. Also, there is discussion about how an illness can impact an individual physically, mentally, socially, and otherwise. Public perception is an important part of this article.

The main public health issue mentioned in this article is the cholera epidemic that was caused by UN Nepalese workers, and the lack of accountability by the UN. The article discusses how the UN is "immune" to a court's decision, despite its obvious injustice for Haiti. In spite of the distrust by world leaders and NGOs on the Haitain government to handle a trust fund meant to help its citizens, the money that has gone directly to them has been used to increase childhood vaccination and save HIV patients. This shows their ability to manage funds and the issues that arise when allowing people overseas to handle the money meant for efforts in Haiti.