Fling Weekend

April 19, 2009
Fling Weekend @ UPenn

Oh, how I despise fling at Penn.
A weekend that starts Wednesday night.
Drinking, drinking, drinking, and drugs.
Drinking in the open.
Stumbling around, tripping over curbs, hanging on the shoulders of blearly eyed friends.

Sirens blaring as ambulances come to help those students intoxicated beyond the point of blackouts and into sheer unconsciousness.
Why can't we all just acknowledge our limits? Why can't we take the advice my roomate has disseminated--"Tipsy, not trashed!"? What happened to the natural high of being among friends, under the beaming sun, surrounded by cherry blossoms, music, and daffodils, and tulips. This true beauty surrounds us, why must it be hindered by a blanket of intoxication?

I chose to run away from fling this year. I spent Friday night, instead of swaying to Akon in the weedy fumes of Franklin Field, among great friends dancing to salsa, bachata, merengue, and reggaeton downtown. And I enjoyed it! I learned more about my friends' aspirations, their limits, and their everyday life. It made me feel good. Really good, and not the good that comes with a temporary high or buzz.

I like spring, but I don't think you need to enjoy it with a beer in one hand, a rum and coke in the other. I choose to enjoy in running in the sun, down the river; walking to the market; walking in the night without a heavy wool coat.

So, this year, I decided to avoid fling and I don't regret it at all!

25 March 2009_Marcia Ochoa

March 25, 2009

Marcia Ochoa, assistant professor @ UC Santa Cruz, gave a talk today titled: “La moda nace en Paris y muere en Caracas ”: Fashion, Beauty and Consumption on the (Trans) National."

Her talk mostly communicated the content and argument in her upcoming book of the same title.

Some points that I appreciated and terms that I would like to investigate more:

-variegation (variegated sovereignty)

-"capitalize on heretogeneity"

-modernity, center, and periphery

Nancy Scheper Hughes

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Today, medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper Hughes came to campus to speak about organ trafficking. I was familiar with Scheper-Hughes through reading Death Without Weeping, an ethnographic account of maternal-child relationships in Brazil.

Nancy Scheper Hughes is director of Organ Watch, a group that monitors and makes an effort to document organ trafficking.

Some points she brought up that I would like to further explore include...

RELATING TO ORGAN TRAFFICKING

• invisible sacrifice
• donors as "biodisposables"
• "fresh organs" (from living donors)
• Ethical Transplant Committee
• Bellagio Taskforce (http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList302/87DC95FCA3C3D63EC1256B66005B3F6C)
• Israel as a special case because of political/cultural attitude (brain death is not death) -->Zaki Shapira -->http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7601/973
• -->Israel formally outsourced kidney transplants (but it is contentious to report on this because of "blood libel" and tension towards Israel)
• Argentina's Colonia Montes de Oca
• India
• -->bio-availability
• -->bio sociality
• -->emergence of cyclosporine as key
• -->Lawrence Cohen's scholarship (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n8_v107/ai_21191220/)
• -->medical citizenship
• -->economic involvement
• Surgical medical diplomacy
• GLOBAL VALUES
• -->how do values travel?
• -->attitudes towards market solutions
• -->body as commodity
• -->human dignity and human freedom
• -->lethal injection as medicalized; mix of medicine and criminal justice
• -->ex] China didn't understand what's wrong with using executed prisoner population for transplants
• -->transparency as a Western value
• -->neoliberal defense of organ sales
• -->Anthropological Defense against organ trafficking
• ----->global social justice
• ----->equity
• ----->solidarity
• ----->values at stake
• Neoliberal versus anthropological values
• -->humanitarianism vs utilitarianism
• Lancet article about kidney transplants
• Kidney as a commodity
• -->circulation follows flow of capital in many ways!
• Good article--> "This Little Kidney Went to Market"
• "scars on geopolitical"
• "neocannibalism"
• "kidney half life"

RELATING TO PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY

• "scholarship with commitment"
• ethics of anthropology-->criminology & undercover

FURTHER SCHOLARSHIP

• Francois Rabelais (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais)
• Jean Comaeroff (http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/faculty/faculty_comaroff_jean.shtml)

My Questions--Answered

• Do sellers see their contribution as a gift of life?
• -->not the sense of "transplant altruism" that we typically perceive
• what is coercion?
• -->could just be montary incentive
• Should there be regulation?
• -->big question, maybe a watchgroup is enough ?!?!
• -->it seems countries have set their own legal precedents

Making a shark ejaculate

Weds., April 8, 2009

Today in bio lab we dissected dogfish shark.
My team had a male--we could tell because of the claspers surrounding his cloaca.
After eviscerating the digestive tract, we moved on to the reproductive system. I was following the path of sperm from the testes, through the seminal vesicles down to the seminiferous tubules near the cloaca. Trying to identify where the sperm are ejected from the cloaca, I gave it a little pressure and---squirt.
Like a volcanic eruption, preserved white semen ejected from a hole under the claspers of the cloaca.

Hot, huh?

At least I can please sharks! :)

To Read

N Engl J Med. 2008 Nov 6;359(19):1977-81.
Saying no isn't NICE - the travails of Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.Steinbrook R.

Thoughts on Campus Commentary

Some thoughts I have from different speakers who have come to campus this semester...
-->Mohammad Yunis and sustainability
-->Philanthrocapitalism: can it really work?

JOB STRESSES AND HEALTH
-->job security and health
-->Read: Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze
-->comparison of US financial crisis to Japan's lost decade
-->Japanese exposure to stock market
-->Tasks towards resolving inequality
-->look into Employee Free Choice Act
-->Reduce discrimination towards part-time workers
-->improve work/life balance
-->compare us to Sweden!

GUATEMALA
-->Babette Zemel's scholarship on nutrition and growth
-->Fetal programming hypothesis (CV)
-->SES composite indices (list of variables w/ FJ; Population Studies Center; Gere Berham; demographers)
-->SV
-->mother's intake depending on number of times
-->3 day recalls
-->what cook with?
-->growth during pregnancy: dietary reference intake? body range? body weight? for normal growth!
-->24 hour recalls
-->mypyramid.gov: analyze diet (Minnesota database?)--energy, protein, fats, minerals

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07 April 2009
This evening I heard the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Nancy Nielsen speak about the health care revolution. Topics that came up included: single payer system (never going to work!), defensive medicine, rationing beginning of life and end of life care, end of life care (our culture really differs from others, that consider family essential to end of life care!)