Perspectives on Science

Many social, economic, and political factors affect urban health on local, regional and global scales. Examples from near and far, past and present, abound. In the 18th century, yellow fever coursed from city to city across the world as merchant shipping helped spread the disease. As cities incubated the disease, social relations among urban communities were reconfigured. In modern times, increasing urbanism—the unintended effect of agricultural policies compounded by political instability and social prejudice—led to outbreaks of disease. The entrenchment of Chagas disease—a debilitating and sometime fatal infection—made the city of Arequipa, Peru, a microcosm for the way cities shape disease, and a model for the recent bedbug outbreak in New York City. Join American historian Billy Smith, and epidemiologist Michael Levy, for a conversation that uses both science and history to understand the intersection of urban development and the spread of contagions. Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at: https://www.chstm.org/video/56

Are we now approaching a time when we could all live, at least in freezers, forever? Modern collection and storage of biological samples make possible a kind of "immortality" for anyone who has ever had a saliva sample frozen for genealogical testing or a blood sample stored in medical collections. New technologies, like CRISPR for gene editing, expand possible future uses of biological materials stored around the world. The story of Henrietta Lacks, popularized in a book by Rebecca Skloot and an HBO special starring Oprah Winfrey, illustrates the ways that a single person's cells and tissues can take on lives of their own as research material. In 1953, just before her death, Lacks's cancer cells yielded the oldest and most common human cell line still used in research. There has been significant public interest in her remarkable story, but the "immortality" of people like Henrietta Lacks raises pressing questions for all of us. Who owns and controls bodily materials extracted from research subjects and patients? Who can profit from the cells and genes that make us who we are? How do we weigh the value of personal privacy and an individual’s sense of self against the potential for medical progress? How do imbalances of wealth and power influence questions of consent, exploitation, and identity for people who provide biological materials? These questions framed a public forum organized by the Consortium and hosted by the American Philosophical Society on September 28, 2017. Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at: https://www.chstm.org/video/51

In this episode, we will discuss energy, environment, and the origins of the American fossil fuel paradigm with Christopher Jones. Christopher is Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University, and the author of Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America. Routes of Power traces the pathways by which the American energy industry grew into a vast network of canals, pipelines, and wires crisscrossing the nation. This network fueled an explosion of urban and industrial growth and accelerating the speed at which goods and power moved from sites of extraction and production to sites of consumption. While cities on the Eastern seaboard benefited from cheap and abundant energy, rural regions of the mid-Atlantic suffered from the environmental costs of creating and maintaining the power infrastructure. Christopher Jones was a 2008 to 2009 Dissertation Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at: https://www.chstm.org/video/64

What's that smell? Join us as we discuss the history of cities, senses and public health. The first episode of our new podcast series features Melanie Kiechle's book, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America. This book illuminates the lives of 19th-century Americans—including medical experts and ordinary city-dwellers—who used their noses to detect and address sanitation challenges associated with foul odors in the midst of rapid urban and industrial growth. Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at: https://www.chstm.org/video/62