A bold new indictment of the racialization of science Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research. James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes. Sweetness in the Blood challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.

Through the lens of Type 2 diabetes this dissertation considers race and problems of difference and risk with developments in treatment, genomic science, and the conduct of research and research priorities. Based primarily on fieldwork in New York and California, I interrogate public health notions of outreach with biotechnology and clinical research concepts of biomedical translation as synonymous practices. Institutional relationships and marketing drivers, I argue, reflect relatedness back onto the Type 2 diabetes patient through causal narratives of risk and inevitability. In effect, kinship--genetic, familial, racial, ethnic, and environmental--becomes the driver of both risk and emergent forms of bioliterary discipline. I present a narrative of how diabetic risk became racialized over time and how African Americans became seen as a desirable research population. Arguing against biological race, I present an ethnographic example of how one such African American population, or community, emerged from particular social and political histories. Fieldwork uncovered lingering memories of the Tuskegee Experiment combined with cultural incompetency in both public health and biotechnology sectors. Further, I consider the bioethical challenges of African (American) participation in new genomic research aimed toward reducing health disparities. However, as a racial category, genetics researchers debate the precise genetic location and definition of "Africa" in the human genome. I suggest that the search for a pathological Africa in the human genome may deepen racial stigmatization as well as author new narratives of difference. I submit that social disparity, not biological disparity, presents the ultimate challenge to successful effective clinical translation and public health outreach.

Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Proceeding from the premise that there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts.

Compellingly argues that good health is as much social as it is biological, and that the racial health gap and the racial wealth gap are mutually constitutive. The Danger Zone Is Everywhere shows that housing insecurity and the poor health associated with it are central components of an unjust, destructive, and deadly racial order. Housing discrimination is a civil and economic injustice, but it is also a menace to public health. With this book, George Lipsitz reveals how the injuries of housing discrimination are augmented by racial bias in home appraisals and tax assessments, by the disparate racialized effects of policing, sentencing, and parole, and by the ways in which algorithms in insurance and other spheres associate race with risk. But The Danger Zone Is Everywhere also highlights new practices emerging in health care and the law, emphasizing how grassroots community mobilizations are creating an active and engaged public sphere constituency promoting new forms of legislation, litigation, and organization for social justice.

From the author of Race After Technology, an inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time “A true gift to our movements for justice.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day. Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well. Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

This book examines the relationship between media and medicine. Drawing on insights from anthropology, linguistics, and media studies, it considers the fundamental role of news coverage in constructing wider cultural understandings of health and disease. The authors advance the notion of ‘biomediatization’ and demonstrate how health knowledge is co-produced through connections between dispersed sites of knowledge making and through multiple forms of expertise. The chapters offer an innovative combination of media content analysis and ethnographic data on the production and circulation of health news, drawing on work with journalists, clinicians, health officials, medical researchers, marketers, and audiences. New to this edition are new case studies, in particular about the COVID-19 pandemic. The first case study looks at pharmaceutical and biotech news, and how journalists portray the flow of information across the boundaries between science and business. The next two case studies examine pandemic news, beginning with the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic and continuing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The final case study examines the treatment of race and racism in health news, looking at the ways it interacts with cultural constructions of health citizenship, and the forces that have produced a shift from deracialization of health news to a much stronger focus on race and racism in contemporary health news. This book is ideal for undergraduate students and scholars across the social sciences, health sciences, cultural studies, and journalism.

In November 1970, an amalgam of radical activists took over a section of the notorious Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx of New York. From that action an innovative drug detoxification program evolved. Public health historians have documented the role played by the Young Lords and Black Panthers in direct-action healthcare reform, while in acupuncture circles Dr. Michael Smith is famed for developing a technique for drug detox. Hidden behind these better-known narratives is the history of a movement, led by African American and Latinx activists, that sought to employ acupuncture to transform the heroin addiction ravaging their communities and the capitalism, colonialism, and "e;chemical warfare"e; it saw as causative factors. Acupuncture as Revolution traces the history of revolutionary acupuncture in the United States, from its origins in the radicalism of the 1960s to its modern manifestation in the community acupuncture movement. The book compels the reader to look beyond popular conceptions of Western acupuncture while connecting the history of traditional Chinese medicine to a lineage of racial and health justice.ReviewsIn America, prior to the 1970s, East Asian medicine and acupuncture were essentially unknown outside of Asian communities. The history and acceptance of this remarkable ancient medicine into mainstream USA is certainly worthy of scholarly research. With her thoughtful, well-researched and beautifully written book, Rachel Pagones has provided a compelling history of the role acupuncture played in the long and continuing struggle for health and racial justice in America.-Richard Gold, co-founder of Pacific College of Health and ScienceAcupuncture as Revolution is a timely publication. After the murder of George Floyd, the profession of licensed acupuncturists and the broader integrative health movement are engaging efforts to heal entrenched diversity and equity challenges... Pagones guides readers into a time and story 50 years ago that adds to the scholarly literature correcting the dominant white rendition of the missions of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. She shows how, to serve the health of communities broken by racism and intentional neglect, these organizations and their allies in the South Bronx reached outside of accepted practices to fold acupuncture into a remarkable model of community engagement. Acupuncture as Revolution provides both acupuncturists and the integrative health movement an origin story that is a remarkable counter to the white privilege with which each is often associated. -John Weeks, author of the Integrator Blog and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary MedicineA captivating study of how radical activists, armed with an antidote to heroine withdrawal, battled with elite policymakers over inequities in health and medicine... provides insight into the history of the current American opioid epidemic and how acupuncture disrupted the plan. It's a fascinating read for acupuncturists, activists, and readers who enjoy learning about events that impact national public health. - Jennifer A. M. Stone, senior editor, Medical AcupunctureAcupuncture as Revolution offers a trenchant social history of acupuncture, traditional Chinese Medicine, and their intersections with racial inequality, health disparities, and medical justice in the United States. - James Doucet-Battle, author of Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 DiabetesAn engaging and timely contribution that sheds new light on acupuncture's radical lineage and its contemporary descendants. In this eye-opening and highly readable history, Pagones restores to their proper place key actors and and traditions, from China's barefoot doctors to the Bronx's Young Lords. This book should be read by everyone who cares about acupuncture and alternative movements to promote health.- Andrew Zitcer, author of Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid beyond Capitalism