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Friends, Those of you who are interested in loweering the level of inter-racial, inter-cultural or inter-national violence may want to consider the use of certain key terms which have been loosely associated with dread diseases. The most recent of these rhetorical events is the labelling of a dread disease as the "West Nile virus". As ths virus shows up in places around northeastern North America, particularly at a time when Middle Eastern tensions are rising it is worth asking whether this kind of labelling contributes to our understanding either of the disease or of the people with which the lavel associates the disease. Now that this virus is showing up in southwestern Ontario perhaps it should be named -- in North America at least -- the Western Ontario virus. This, after all, is a much closer place for both medical students and voyeurs to come and views its effect. > Remember "Asian flu"? "German measles?" > > Re mad cow disease: "Because the British epidemic has been traced to a > “pan-Asia strain” first detected in Taiwan in 1999 that spread within > the year to Japan and South Korea [10], jingoism joined racism as > Britain's Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union, suggested > that the yellow race was responsible for the outbreak. “Is it a > coincidence that we had classical swine fever in east Anglia last year > of an Asian origin, and foot and mouth now, also of an Asian origin? > It raises questions about freer world trade.” > > "Those sentiments are reminiscent of the times of the microbe > hunters, when all disease came out of Africa, Asia, or the Middle > East. Irrational fears of aliens became conflated with rational fears > of the microbes that brought plague, cholera, and typhus." > [ http://praxis.md/post/thisweek/030701 ] > > Or the Plague: "People sought to blame others; scapegoating was in > season; xenophobia was the norm—all strangers were suspected of > spreading disease. As had happened before and since, Jews were the > targets of choice (even though they died of Plague at the same rate as > others). Rumors of their having poisoned wells ran rampant. > There were pogroms and massacres. The rabble was loose. Zurich > expelled all its Jews and closed its gates to them. On a single day in > 1349, 2000 Jews were burned to death by a mob in Strausborg. Even > officialdom entered the fray. The canton of Basel gathered all 4500 of > its Jews in a specially built structure on an island in the Rhine and > burned them to death, after which the town fathers passed a law > forbidding Jewish residence in the canton for 200 years. The largest > Jewish community in Europe was in Mainz, Germany where at least 6,000 > Jews were incinerated after they fought and killed 200 of an attacking > mob. Pogroms also occurred in Baden, Brussels, Burren, Dresden, > Eisenach, Erfurt, Freiburg, Gotha, Landsberg, Lindau, Memmingen, > Solothurn, Speyer, Stuttgart, Ulm, Worms, and Zofingen. There were > over 350 separate recorded massacres of Jews during the years of the > Plague." [ http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/BUGL/histepi.htm#plague ] > Michael Posluns & friends. -- "Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the education system we have imposed upon our Indian wards."... Saturday Night magazine, November 23, 1907, on the report of Dr. P.H. Bryce, Chief Medical Officer, Indian Affairs Branch. "How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality toward the wicked? Do justice to the poor and fatherless, deal righteously with the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the poor and needy; save them from the hand of the wicked." (A Psalm of Asaph, The Psalm for the Third Day.) How can we be sure that the unexamined life is not worth living? Michael W. Posluns, The Still Waters Group, First Nations Relations & Public Policy Daytime: 416 995-8613 Evening: 416 656-8613 Fax: 416 656-2715 36 Lauder Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6H 3E3 -- "Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the education system we have imposed upon our Indian wards."... Saturday Night magazine, November 23, 1907, on the report of Dr. P.H. Bryce, Chief Medical Officer, Indian Affairs Branch. "How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality toward the wicked? Do justice to the poor and fatherless, deal righteously with the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the poor and needy; save them from the hand of the wicked." (A Psalm of Asaph, The Psalm for the Third Day.) How can we be sure that the unexamined life is not worth living? Michael W. Posluns, The Still Waters Group, First Nations Relations & Public Policy Daytime: 416 995-8613 Evening: 416 656-8613 Fax: 416 656-2715 36 Lauder Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6H 3E3
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