The Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage video directed by Stange (2008), explains how the U.S. military has contributed to the disruption of the Marshallese culture, life, and overall good health. The army base Kwajalein and the island of Ebeye are only three miles apart and are living in completely different worlds. The Marshallese people living in Ebeye suffer from high rates of Tuberculosis (TB), poverty, and crowding. The Marshallese people are also suffering from high rates of chronic diseases. The video lastly explains the everlasting impact that the U.S. military has inflicted on Marshallese people through dislocation. According to the video the U.S. Army was using the Marshallese islands as a testing sites for hydrogen bombs and a miscalculated …show more content…
and overpowered bomb was tested near the islands in 1954 that created a massive fall out of harmful chemicals that burned the Marshallese. This incident urged the military to treat and test the affected Marshallese people and relocate them to different islands like Ebeye (Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage, 2008). This marked the beginning of the demise of Marshallese health. Later natives of Kwajalein were moved to Ebeye and other islands to make room for U.S. Army base installation on Kwajalein. In the video Anthropologist, Julie Walsh Kroeker discusses the vast difference between life on Kwajelain and life on Ebeye. Very few Marshallese are allowed to live in Kwajalein and ones that do are contracted workers who work on the Army base.
Kroeker explains that the contrast between the two islands is shockingly unequal (Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage, 2008). The video further explains how the Marshallese people have higher cases of TB, infant mortality rates, diabetes, and a shorter life span than the U.S. population. The narrator in the video states that Ebeye suffers from conditions of poverty that include crowding of homes, malnutrition, water shortages, and power outages(Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage, 2008).Furthermore, Doctor Neal Palafox explains that poverty contributes to feelings of loss of control over one’s life due to poor environmental factors. Palafox also explains that living in impoverished areas contribute to weak immune systems making it easy to acquire diseases and infections. Also, TB program coordinator Rihna James explains that Marshallese living in Ebeye lack the resources to seek medical care and the program that she works with helps deliver necessary medication for TB treatment in order to avoid TB from spreading. James also explains how the crowding factor in Ebeye makes it the perfect environment to spread infections and diseases (Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage,
2008). Lastly, nurse Sandy Hainline, a Marshallese program coordinator in Arkansas explains health issues among Marshallese people have relocated to Arkansas. Although, the U.S. may provide a healthier environment, Hainline states that the drastic difference of a U.S. lifestyle creates health issues for the Marshallese in the states. Hainline points out the having a work schedule, and acclimating to rough winters could contribute to chronic stress that weakens the immune system and raises risks of infections and diseases like TB (Unnatural Causes: Collateral damage, 2008). I believe public health programs that help at risk populations are important resources that help support long-term health promotion and disease prevention.
John Dower's War without Mercy describes the ugly racial issues, on both the Western Allies and Japanese sides of the conflict in the Pacific Theater as well as all of Asia before during and after World War II and the consequences of these issues on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. In the United States as well as Great Britain, Dower dose a good job of proving that, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor." (8) On this issue, there was no dispute among contemporary observers including the respected scholars and writers as well as the media. During World War II the Japanese are perceived as a race apart, a species apart referred to as apes, but at the same time superhuman. "There was no Japanese counterpart to the "good German" in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Dower is not trying to prove how horrible the Japanese are. Instead, he is examining the both sides as he points out, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Dower explores the propaganda of the United States and Japanese conflict to underline the "patterns of a race war," and the portability of racist stereotypes. Dower points out that "as the war years themselves changed over into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well."(13) "the Japanese also fell back upon theories of "proper place" which has long been used to legitimize inequitable relationships within Japan itself."(9) After...
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
The Bomb takes place on the small island of Bikini Atoll after World War II in the year 1946. Being located in the west Pacific led to problems with Japan. This island was under Japanese control during World War II, until the Americans freed them. Glad to be out of Japanese control, the Islanders are happy, until the United States needs to do something even more devastating then Japan ever did.
Metaphoric Illness also contributes to our fears. One huge issue of the 1990's was GWS, Gulf War Syndrome. The media depicted sick veterans in wheel chairs or beside their deformed children (pg.156) to show us what effect GWS has on its victims. The New England Journal of Medicine did a study comparing 33,998 infants born to Gulf War veterans and 41,463 babies of other military personnel and finding no evidence of an increase in the risk of birth effects for children of Gulf War veterans (pg.157). This has been such an over exaggerated problem and because of this thousands of Gulf War veterans have undergone countless medical exams, rather than going to get the much needed counseling. The real illness is the fear, anxiety and hopelessness of the veterans; these may explain their "health" problems.
In Harper Lee’s fictional novel To Kill A Mockingbird, an African American field hand is falsely accused of raping a white women. Set in the 1930’s in the small town of Monroeville Alabama, Addicus Finch an even handed white attorney tries to shed a light on the injustice of this innocent black man’s conviction. Atticus feels that the justice system should be color blind, and he defends Tom as an innocent man, not a man of color.
In the Unnatural Causes trailer, one of the speakers said “we carry our history in our bodies”. This statement means that the factors that we come across in daily life impact our health. The decisions one makes will affect his or her body in the future. For example, whether or not one avoids smoking or a poor diet will impact his or her health in the future. During an examination years down the road, it will be able to be determined whether or not that person was able to avoid smoke or junk food. In this way, our past is inscribed into our biology. The history carried in our bodies is not formed solely from conscious decisions-- much of our genetic past is molded by policies and social conditions (“Unnatural causes trailer”, 2008).
Deliberate killings, human bombs, dozens of vicious groups, and a growing sense of insecurity trouble Iraq (Tirman). Cluster bombs and landmines’ have caused many deaths to innocent civilians. People forced from their homes in fear of their lives and their family’s lives. When some refugees tried to go home, they were killed.
In War Without Mercy, John W. Dower approaches World War II from both the Western perspective and the Japanese perspective. Dower, as many others, views the war as a race war (Dower 4). Racism negatively influenced the conduct of this war. The amount of violence and brutality inflicted on each enemy is only made possible by the thought that this enemy is less than human. Dehumanizing another person makes it easy for someone to act as they please without remorse. The dehumanization of others, due to prejudice, racial pride, and use of propaganda, intensified the brutality of the Pacific War.
The actual living conditions of people directly correlate to the spread of infectious diseases and infestation of chronic illnesses that result in premature death. Crowding, such as in ghettos and low income projects, creates an unnecessary closeness of people in a community. Therefore we see an increase in the spread of infectious diseases because human to human contact is inevitable. For instance, in the US controlled Marshall Islands has a population of over 10,000 people living in an area smaller than Manhattan. Tuberculosis runs rampant there and is often times left unchecked due to the lack of personal space in conjunction with poor sanitary conditions. Poor sanitation in a region is an effect of lack of public interest in the community and subsequently aids in the demise of the health of the population.
War is one thing that we all know is a necessary evil. The United States has been involved in many wars since being founded in the late 1700’s. There are many reasons that the United States has been involved in, or is currently involved in wars. Although war is not always a popular thing to become a part of, the full effects of the war are not always known and may never be known as long as the United States is a country. Stephen Crane tells us that there are many effects of war in his poem “War is Kind”. From that it can be derived that physical, mental, family, etc are all effects of war needing to be monitored. All of these effects are causing hardships among the people that are coming home from these battles either directly or indirectly. The full effects of any war are never known and are something that is going to need further investigation to allow professionals such as mental and physical health doctors to provide soldiers with the help they so greatly deserve.
I grew up in India, where access to food healthcare was very rare. However, my family and I were very fortunate to have many Doctors in our family. This was the only reason why I was able to get good doctors for monthly checkups, and vaccinations as a kid. There were also shortage of pharmacies, however I personally never had to experience any hardship. That does not mean others had the same. Many people were not as fortunate as I was. People who were poor or lower caste had no proper medications or healthcare. They did not have regular health checkups or proper funds to have three meals a day. Poor people are always the target of many unfortunate situations. “You wont see inequality on a medical chart or a coroner's report under 'cause of death.' You wont see it listed among the top killers in the United States each year. All too often, however, it is social inequality that lurks behind a more immediate cause of death, be it heart disease or diabetes,
War is a devastating event in which a country is in a state of aggression and resentment. Although war has its effects on almost every civilian residing in that country, historically people of minority groups and of low social class suffer the most. During the Pacific War, the Japanese Imperial Army was struggling with many cases of rape and the spread of venereal diseases among its armed forces. In order to cope with these ongoing issues, they schemed an idea to invent a comfort women system. The system started off with real Japanese prostitute volunteers, but then turned to tricking and abducing women into the system once volunteers ran out. As the Pacific War continued, Japanese forces began establishing “comfort stations” in many other parts of Asia. When studying the Japanese Comfort Women system of World War II, it is apparent who the people who suffered the most were. The Japanese Armed Forces sought after a certain group(s) of women who were seen as easy drafts into the comfort women system because of the many disadvantages associated with being a woman of a low social class and/or non-Japanese race during the World War II.
Nearly 50,000 people, including 30,000 children, die each day due to poverty-related problems and preventable disease in underdeveloped Countries. That doesn’t include the other millions of people who are infected with AIDS and other incurable diseases. Especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa (70%), or “the Third-World,” and while we fight to finish our homework, children in Africa fight to survive without food, or clean water. During the next few paragraphs I will give proof that poverty and disease are the two greatest challenges facing under developed countries.
Vivisection is Both Immoral and Unjustifiable I am strongly against vivisection. In this modern world there is no place for this barbaric practice that is 'animal testing'. This is a highly sensitive issue on which many members of the public are un-decided. Animal testing sounds so innocent and may appear to be necessary, however the reality is quite different. Supporters of vivisection argue that animals are anaesthetised during procedures.
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as