The War Against Swine Flu: Who Loses?
September 16, 2009 - 5:00 pm
Philip Alcabes, Hunter College, CUNY
In this talk, Prof. Alcabes will examine world health policy, viewing the 2009 swine flu outbreak in the context of global environment, commerce, and economic stress – and asking how Latin America figures into U.S.- and Europe-centered disease control.
Moderator:
Diego Armus, Swarthmore College
Organizer:
Araceli Tinajero, The City College of New York and The Graduate Center, CUNY
About the Speakers:
Philip Alcabes is currently Associate Professor in the Program in Urban Public Heath at Hunter College’s School of Health Sciences and in the doctoral public health program at the CUNY Graduate Schools. He is also a member of Hunter’s Council on Honors. In addition to his Hunter appointment he holds a visiting faculty appointment at the Yale School of Nursing.
Alcabes’s new book Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu (PublicAffairs, 2009) is a history of how people have thought about epidemics in the western world. Alcabes’s essays on the history, policy, and ethics of public health have appeared in The American Scholar, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as peer-reviewed journals. Previously, he conducted epidemiologic research on the epidemiology of AIDS and other community-acquired infections, social issues in the spread of epidemics, and methods for the statistical study of infectious diseases. Outside the university, Alcabes is a member of the scientific advisory board of the World Trade Center Registry project in NYC. He has consulted on public-health policy and AIDS-prevention projects in Eastern Europe for the Open Society Institute, World AIDS Foundation, and Fogarty International Foundation of the National Institutes of Health.
Alcabes graduated from Union College and holds masters degrees in biochemistry (U. of California, Berkeley) and public health (Columbia University). He earned a Ph.D. in infectious-disease epidemiology in 1993 from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Diego Armus teaches courses on Latin American history at Swarthmore College. His current research centers on the history of diseases, public health, and habits in modern Latin American cities, particularly Buenos Aires. His most recent book is La Ciudad Impura. Salud, Tuberculosis y Cultura en Buenos Aires, 1870-1950 (Buenos Aires, 2007); its English version will be published by Duke University Press, tentatively entitled The Tuberculosis Years. Disease, Culture and Society in Buenos Aires, 1870-1950. He has also written or edited several books. Among them, Avatares de la Medicalización en América Latina (2005); From Malaria to AIDS (2003); Entre Médicos y Curanderos. Cultura, Historia y Enfermedad en la América Latina Moderna (2002) and Mundo Urbano y Cultura Popular. Estudios de Historia Social Argentina (1990).
