Medical Humanities Blog

Call for Papers: 3rd International Conference on The History of Medicine in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA 2010)

CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd International Conference on
The History of Medicine in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA 2010)

To be held in Singapore

22-25 June 2010

to coincide with IAHA 2010 (International Association of Historians of Asia)

Organised by:

Department of History, STS Research Cluster & Asia Research Institute (ARI) National University of Singapore

With support from:

The National University of Singapore

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine

University College London (UCL)

The Canada Research Chair in Health Care Pluralism

Université de Montréal (Canada)

The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS, The Netherlands)

Program Committee:

Professor Harold Cook, Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine at UCL

Professor Rethy Chhem, Medical University of Vienna/ Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Ulm University

Dr. Laurence Monnais, University of Montreal, CRC in Health Care Pluralism

Dr. John DiMoia, National University of Singapore

Dr. Liew Kai Khiun, National University of Singapore

and other members of the LOC (Local Organizing Committee)

All proposals on the subject of the history of medicine and health in Southeast Asia will be considered, but preference will be given to those on the theme of:

New Medicines, Markets, and the Development of Medical Pluralism

The theme "New Medicines, Markets, and the Development of Medical Pluralism" intends to explore how both local and metropolitan actors in Southeast Asia have contributed historically to the growth and development of medical markets throughout the region, here implying both traditional pharmacopeia as well as the arrival of newer pharmaceuticals in colonial and post-colonial settings. With a time frame preceding formal colonial intervention in the region and ranging up to the present, with the creation of a local infrastructure for biomedical and biotech work, participants are encouraged to submit individual papers and panels with possible themes
including:

• Women and Health in Southeast Asia

• Medical pluralism in Southeast Asia: A Historical Perspective

• Medical markets in SEA

• Southeast Asian Biopoleis (including the growth of biomedical infrastructure, Science Parks, and Local Production Facilities-identification of pharmacopoeia, drug development)

• New Sources, New Methodologies, New Historiographies

As the HOMSEA meeting will coincide with the IAHA 2010 meeting in Singapore, those interested in expanding the discussion either geographically-to include North East Asia and South Asia-chronologically, or methodologically are encouraged to apply to HOMSEA as well as the IAHA meeting to broaden the scope of discussion.

Please see the IAHA website at:
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/hist/iaha/index.htm

Please submit a one-page proposed abstract for a 20-minute talk, and a one-page CV by 30th December 2009 to: Laurence Monnais
(laurence.monnais-rousselot@umontreal.ca)

Please note that it may be possible to subsidize some of the costs of participation for scholars from less wealthy countries.

For further information about funding and the general organization of the meeting, please contact: John DiMoia (hisjpd@nus.edu.sg)

Dr. Laurence MONNAIS

Associate professor/ Professeur agrégé

Département d'histoire - Centre d'Etudes de l'Asie de l'Est

Chaire de Recherche du Canada sur le pluralisme en santé/ Canada Research Chair in Health Care Pluralism  <http://www.chairs.gc.ca/> http://www.chairs.gc.ca/

Equipe MEOS (Le MEdicament comme Objet Social)  <http://www.meos.qc.ca/> http://www.meos.qc.ca/

Université de Montréal

C.P. 6128 Succ. Centre-ville

MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA, H3C 3J7

Tel: (514) 343-6544

(h/t H-SCI-MED-TECH)

New Medical Humanities Journal

I recently learned of the publication of the inaugural issue of Eä – Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology.

The journal is electronic, peer-reviewed, and open-access.  These are a few of my favorite things, and the first issue looks terrific.  I have every intention of submitting some work to the journal in the near future, and I hope interested readers support the fledgling journal -- interdisciplinary, intercontinental, multilingual, all things a medical humanities publication ought to endorse, IMO.

Recommended!

(h/t MEDMED-L)

On Ghostwriting

PLoS Medicine has generally impressed me with the amount of attention, as well as the validity of its substantive ethical positions, on the disgraceful prevalence of ghostwriting in biomedical scholarship. 

Today they publish an editorial (forthcoming in the September 2009 issue, available now on the PLoS Medicine Blog) announcing the creation of a public database of over 1500 documents acquired through the discovery process in various lawsuits filed against pharmaceutical companies that detail the nature and extent of ghostwriting.  Some choice excerpts from the editorial:

If you are an editor, author, reviewer, or reader of medical journals, or if you depend on your doctor or health care provider getting unbiased information from medical journals, then the 1,500 documents now hosted  on the PLoS Medicine Web site should make you very concerned and angry. Because, quite simply, the story told in these documents amounts to one of the most compelling expositions ever seen of the systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the health care decisions of physicians and the general public.

[ . . . ]

What’s clear is that ghostwriting can no longer be considered one of the “dirty little secrets” of medical publishing that nothing can be done about. While editors, medical schools, and universities have turned a blind eye to, or at the least failed to tackle head-on the pervasive presence of ghostwriting, drug companies and medical education and communication companies have built a vast and profitable ghostwriting industry.

And consider the authors almost plaintive query, "How did we get to the point that falsifying the medical literature is acceptable?"

How indeed.

There is too much I want to say to really begin the task of blogging about it, although the inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading.  I hope to wade through the database if I can stomach it, and may post further thoughts subsequent to the review.

On Germs, Race, the Jim Crow South, and Public Health Policy

I apologize for the slow-blogging.  I hope to have some substantive posts up shortly.

For now, take a look at this fascinating article that appears in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of the History of Biology.

Abstract:

Race proved not merely a disadvantage in securing access to prompt and appropriate medical care, but often became a life and death issue for blacks in the American South during the early decades of the twentieth century. This article investigates the impact some of the new academic disciplines such as anthropology, evolutionary biology, racially based pathology and genetics had in promoting scientific racism. The disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates among blacks were seen as a consequence of inherent racial deficiencies that rendered any attempt to ameliorate their situation as futile. While the belief in a different pathology in blacks initially deterred most health officials from taking any action, advances in medicine and microbiology, in particular the germ theory, stirred a variety of responses out of sheer self preservation, as fears among whites at the first sign of an epidemic initiated sporadic and limited actions. Ironically, in an era of deepening scientific racism, public health initiatives based on a better understanding of disease causing microorganisms, gradually improved black health. However, some public health measures were hijacked by eugenicists and racists and, rather than addressing the ill health of blacks, public health policy complied with the new laws of heredity by promoting drastic measures such as involuntary sterilization or even abortion. This further complicated the strained relationship between southern blacks and health care professionals and effected ongoing distrust towards public healthcare services.

(h/t H-EUGENICS) 

Amalie Kass Lecture

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL Presents the Ninth Edward and Amalie Kass Lecture:

Did the Invention of Anesthesia Change Surgery?
Professor Sherwin Nuland, MD, FACS
Department of Surgery, Yale University

***Tuesday 22 September 2009, 17:30***

Lecture Theatre 2
The Cruciform Building, Gower Street, London, WC1 UK

Registration not required

For further information, please see our website:
www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed

(h/t HISTNEURO-listserv and H-SCI-MED-TECH listserv)

The Humanities in Medicine and Medical Education: Annual Symposium (New York Academy of Medicine)

All I have to say from reviewing this program is "wow."  Not to be missed, for those anywhere near New York City on October 7-8, 2009.  Keynote speakers are Onora O'Neill, Rita Charon, and Robert Shulman.

Here is the description:

Considerations of the interface between the humanities and medicine have become both more complex and more urgent in recent decades as advances in science have allowed progressively deeper understanding of disease mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities. A progressive technologic transformation of clinical practice has followed from these advances. For medical education as well as clinical practice these movements pose important questions around the directions, even the purposes, of medicine, centering on how best to manage responsibilities to the patient as a suffering person and at the same time attend effectively to the disease as a set of disordered biological processes.
Continuing progress is occurring not only in the sciences and the derivative technologies, but also in understanding of the illness experience, the physician-patient dynamic and the importance of social environments as determinants of both.

The question of what the humanities can bring to these issues is the focus of this conference. Emphases have varied—for some the primary focus has meant bringing the range of traditional humanities disciplines—philosophy, history, literature, the arts, narrative—into medical education, while for others primary attention to medical ethics or the behavioral sciences has been sought. Some of these considerations have been gathered under the rubric of humanism in the United States, or patient-centered medicine in the U.K.

This conference will explore the insights, orientations and gifts the humanities hold for medicine as well as their implications for education and clinical care.

The symposium is free, but registration is required.

(h/t Lit&Med_ASBH listserv)

On Neuroscience, Child Health, Inequities, and the Social Determinants of Health

We've covered here at MH Blog the importance of understanding the longterm effects of marginal socioeconomic conditions on child and developing brains.  The more these effects are studies, the more important are prenatal and early childhood experiences understood to be in long-term connection with health over the lifespan.

Thus, I want in particular to highlight a recent article summarizing these findings that appeared in JAMA.  One of the co-authors, Jack Shonkoff, was featured at length in the award-winning documentary Unnatural Causes, an MH Blog favorite, and another, Bruce McEwen, is one of the leading researches in the field.  Highly recommended.  Here is the Abstract:

A scientific consensus is emerging that the origins of adult disease are often found among developmental and biological disruptions occurring during the early years of life. These early experiences can affect adult health in 2 ways—either by cumulative damage over time or by the biological embedding of adversities during sensitive developmental periods. In both cases, there can be a lag of many years, even decades, before early adverse experiences are expressed in the form of disease. From both basic research and policy perspectives, confronting the origins of disparities in physical and mental health early in life may produce greater effects than attempting to modify health-related behaviors or improve access to health care in adulthood.

It is these kinds of considerations that leads me to lament how the notion of public health and social prevention -- what I have heard referred to as "primordial prevention" -- morphed into a more acute care notion of "preventive medicine," which the slightest glance at the importance of child brain development demonstrates are not remotely equivalent.  A debate over the merits of screening adults for prostate cancer, while important on its own terms, has very little to do with the merits of primordial prevention in preventing chronic illness over the lifespan.

Thoughts?

(h/t EQUIDAD)

Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry

The Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine offers an opportunity to clinicians, researchers, and historians interested in a historical perspective on their fields to discuss informally historical studies in progress.  Below you will find an announcement of this year's unusually rich Colloquium (note meeting rooms for specific dates).  Please join us.

--
   David G. Satin, M.D.

Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education, McLean Hospital And Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine present

COLLOQUIUM ON THE HISTORY OF
PSYCHIATRY AND MEDICINE

David G. Satin, M.D., DLFAPA Director

Open to students of history and those valuing a historical perspective on their professions.

September 17 (Countway Library of Medicine, 5th Floor, Minot Room) "The History of Psychiatry and Neurology at the Boston City Hospital and Boston Medical Center"

Michael A. Grodin, M.D.:  Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, Department of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Community Medicine, and Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine

October 15 (Countway Library of Medicine, 5th Floor, Minot Room)
"Check-Up:  A History of the Annual Preventive Examination in America and Its Social Context"

Stephen A. Martin, M.D., Ed.M.: Department of Medicine and Community Health, University of Massachusetts School of Medicine; Sara L. Dubow, Ph.D.: Assistant Professor, Department of History, Williams College

November 19 (Medical Education Center Room L-008) "Vitalism and Wilhelm Reich:  From Hippocrates to Holistic Healing"
Sebastian Normandin, Ph.D.: Post-Doctoral Fellow in the History of International Health, University of Windsor, Ontario

December 17 (Countway Library of Medicine, 5th Floor, Minot Room) "Foundations of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research and their Legacy for Present Policy"

Grischa Metlay:  Doctoral Candidate, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University

4:00 P.M.-5:30 P.M.
Room as indicated for each presentation

For further information contact David G. Satin, M.D., Colloquium Director, phone/FAX 617-332-0032, e-mail david_satin@hms.harvard.edu

(h/t H-SCI-MED-TECH)

Social History of Medicine 22, no. 2 (2009)

My favorite journal, Social History of Medicine, has released online its latest issue, which is literally chock-a-block with fascinating articles and reviews.

Highly recommended.