Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

E Fee

Publications and source records attributed to E Fee.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Preemptive biopreparedness: can we learn anything from history?

The treat of bioterrorism is in the public eye again, and major public health agencies are urging preparedness efforts and special federal funding. In a sense, we have seen this all before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grew substantially during the Cold War era in large part because Alexander Langmuir, Chief Epidemiologist of the CDC, used an earlier generation's anxieties to revitalize the CDC, create an Epidemic Intelligence Service, and promote epidemiologic "surveillance" as part of the nation's defense. Retrospective investigation suggests that, while Langmuir contributed to efforts promoted by the Department of Defense and the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the United States did not have real cause to fear Communist biological warfare aggression. Given clear historical parallels, it is appropriate to ask, What was gained and what was lost by Langmuir's central role in that first instance of American biopreparedness? Among the conclusions drawn is that biopreparedness efforts fed the Cold War climate, narrowed the scope of public health activities, and failed to achieve sustained benefits for public health programs across the country.

Biological Warfare↗
PubMed1999

The wages of sin.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Attitude↗
PubMed1997

Why history?

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Anniversaries and Special Events↗
PubMed1996

The pleasures and perils of prophetic advocacy: Henry E. Sigerist and the politics of medical reform.

Henry E. Sigerist, an internationally renowned medical historian, played a surprisingly important and visible role in American medical politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Paris of Swiss parents, he was professor in Leipzig, Germany, before coming to the United States in 1932 as professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Once in America. Sigerist became deeply involved in medical politics and the campaign for national health insurance. He argued that individualized medical practice was outdated and should gradually be superseded by state-run and state-financed health services. National health insurance was but one step in this historical progression. Sigerist thus lent the weight of history itself to the cause of medical care reform. The charming and erudite Sigerist was welcomed by the leaders of academic medicine in America. Soon, he emerged as a spokesman of the left wing of the medical profession, an effective and popular speaker and an impassioned advocate of socialized medicine. This paper traces Sigerist's political ideas and activities, and his contributions toward medical care reform in the United States.

Germany↗
PubMed1996

Measuring social inequalities in health in the United States: a historical review, 1900-1950.

For over two centuries, U.S. vital statistics routinely have been stratified by age, sex, and race, but not by social class. The usual explanation is that U.S. government officials have not considered social class relevant to health. During the first third of the 20th century, however, questions of socio-economic inequalities in morbidity and mortality ranked high on the agenda of federal and other public health agencies, and routine reporting of U.S. vital statistics and health survey data by socioeconomic measures was nearly institutionalized. This history has largely been lost. In this article, the authors focus on the period from 1900 to 1950 and examine how public health researchers and agencies conceptualized and analyzed socioeconomic inequalities in health. Highlights include production, for 1930, of the first U.S. national death rates stratified by social class, in work sponsored by the National Tuberculosis Association and Bureau of the Census, and the Public Health Service's 1935-1936 National Health Survey, which reported morbidity data stratified by socioeconomic measures. Efforts like these were cut short by the onset of World War II and their legacy erased by the Cold War. Recovering this rich history can help inform current debates about collecting and evaluating data on social inequalities in health.

Health Status↗
PubMed1994

Social class: the missing link in U.S. health data.

National vital statistics in the United States are unique among those of advanced capitalist countries in reporting data only by race, sex, and age--not by class and income. This article reviews the limited U.S. data resources that may be used to document social class inequalities in health. Summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of the British approach to gathering data on social class and health, the authors discuss possible approaches to collecting data that could be feasible in the U.S. context. They argue that educational level is an insufficient marker for socioeconomic position and contend that appropriate measures must take into account not only individual but also household and neighborhood markers of social class. These additional types of social class data are especially important for accurately describing and understanding social class inequalities in health among women and across diverse racial/ethnic groups.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Man-made medicine and women's health: the biopolitics of sex/gender and race/ethnicity.

National vital statistics in the United States present data in terms of race, sex, and age, treated as biological variables. Some races are clearly of more interest than others: data are usually available for whites and blacks, and increasingly for Hispanics, but seldom for Native Americans or Asians and Pacific Islanders. These data indicate that white men and women generally have the best health and that men and women, within each racial/ethnic group, have different patterns of disease. Obviously, the health status of men and women differs for conditions related to reproduction, but it differs for many nonreproductive conditions as well. In national health data, patterns of disease by race and sex are emphasized while social class differences are ignored. This article discusses how race and sex became such all-important, self-evident categories in 19th and 20th century biomedical thought and practice. It examines the consequences of these categories for knowledge about health and for the provision of health care. It then presents alternative approaches to understanding the relationship between race/ethnicity, gender, and health, with reference to the neglected category of social class.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1993

Understanding AIDS: historical interpretations and the limits of biomedical individualism.

The popular and scientific understanding of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States has been shaped by successive historical constructions or paradigms of disease. In the first paradigm, AIDS was conceived of as a "gay plague," by analogy with the sudden, devastating epidemics of the past. In the second, AIDS was normalized as a chronic disease to be managed medically over the long term. By examining and extending critiques of both paradigms, it is possible to discern the emergence of an alternative paradigm of AIDS as a collective chronic infectious disease and persistent pandemic. Each of these constructions of AIDS incorporates distinct views of the etiology, prevention, pathology, and treatment of disease; each tacitly promotes different conceptions of the proper allocation of individual and social responsibility for AIDS. This paper focuses on individualistic vs collective, and biomedical vs social and historical, understandings of disease. It analyzes the use of individualism as methodology and as ideology, criticizes some basic assumptions of the biomedical model, and discusses alternative strategies for scientific research, health policy, and disease prevention.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1993

Thinking and rethinking AIDS: implications for health policy.

In the United States, we see three main phases in the construction of the history of AIDS, with each having very different implications for health and social policy. In the first, AIDS was conceived of as an epidemic disease, a "gay plague," by analogy to the sudden, devastating epidemics of the past. In the second, it was normalized as a chronic disease, similar in many ways to diseases such as cancer. In the third, the authors propose a new historical model of a slow-moving, long-lasting pandemic, a chronic infectious ailment manifested through myriad specific HIV-related diseases. The new paradigm of AIDS incorporates the positive aspects of both earlier conceptions. It emphasizes, like the plague model, the etiology, transmission, and prevention of disease but rejects its assumption of a time-limited crisis. It takes from the chronic disease model an appropriate time frame and concern with the clinical management of protracted illness but insists on the primacy of prevention. The authors criticize both infectious and chronic disease models for their individualistic conceptions of disease and their narrow strategies for disease prevention. They further argue that the traditional distinction between, and approaches to, infectious and chronic diseases need to be rethought for other diseases as well as for AIDS.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1993

The emerging histories of AIDS: three successive paradigms.

Thinking of AIDS as an 'emerging disease' inevitably raises questions of comparison. In the United States, we see three main phases in understanding AIDS, with each having very different implications for health and social policy. In the first, AIDS was conceived of as an epidemic disease, a 'gay plague', by analogy to the sudden, devastating epidemics of the past. In the second, it was normalized as a chronic disease, similar in many ways to diseases such as cancer. In the third, we outline a new understanding of AIDS a slow-moving, long-lasting pandemic, a chronic infectious ailment manifested through myriad specific HIV-related diseases. This new paradigm emphasizes, like the plague model, the etiology, transmission, and prevention of disease; like the chronic disease model, it is concerned with the clinical management of protracted illness. We do criticize, however, both the infectious and chronic disease models for their individualistic conceptions of disease and their narrow strategies for disease prevention. We further suggest that the traditional distinction between, and approaches to, infectious and chronic diseases are problematic and need to be rethought for AIDS and other diseases.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗