Living with Long Covid: A Reflection
As a COVID long-hauler, I inhabit a liminal space of intractable uncertainty with regards to diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and prognosis. COVID infections have blurred the boundary between the two…
Tag: medical anthropology
Book Review: Preventing Dementia? Critical Perspectives on a New Paradigm of Preparing for Old Age by Barbara Pieta
Preventing Dementia? Critical Perspectives on a New Paradigm of Preparing for Old Age Edited by Annette Leibing and Silke Schicktanz Berghahn Books, 2020. 268 pages In their recently…
Complicating Disability: On the Invisibilization of Chronic Illness throughout History
Introduction At the time of writing, the world is entering the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus is causing…
Incarceration as Harm Reduction: The realities of lethal street-based opioid overdoses in neoliberal Philadelphia by Tali Ziv
Philadelphia is the poorest of the ten largest cities in the United States and has one of the highest rates of fatal opioid-related overdoses in the state of…
Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement (Book Review)
By Jack Payne-Cook If I was asked by someone unfamiliar with anthropology to provide an example of the contemporary relevance of the discipline, I would consider offering Alex…
The Mind of Plants: Book launch by Synergetic Press on December 15
–Synergetic Press has just released The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence, edited by John C. Ryan, Patricia Vieira and Monica Gagliano, and with a foreword by D…
A letter for the 97%
ISOBEL THORLEY Dear Elizabeth Truss, Nadine Dorris and Priti Patel, As the Minister for Women and Equalities, Minister of State Mental Health, and Home Secretary, I am writing…
Waiting to Be Seen – How I Spent My Time in a Pain Treatment Center as a Patient
I am hospitalized while I am typing this, waiting to be seen for cervical vertebral disease, which is causing a daily numbing sensation in both hands. The wait…
On the Edge of the Body
By Renata Carvalho Anthropology’s many attempts of conceptualising the body into clear and useful analytical categories has raised significant ontological questions that problematise the very basi…
A Letter to Matt Hancock
URSULA WHITE February 2021 Dear Secretary of State, I am writing to express my concern on discovering that, as of February 2021, Operose Health has acquired AT Medics,…
Letter to Jens Spahn
JASMIN SIMAO AJAYI Dear Mr. Spahn, I am a German citizen from Munich, currently in my final year of studying Anthropology at the University College London (UCL). I…
Enigmas of Corporeal Justice: Surrogacy and Legality in India
Over the last two decades, India has become a popular global destination for what is commonly referred to as reproductive tourism, wherein clients travel from one part of…
Who Decides What We Measure in Health Tech?
At present, there are several problems in women’s health that still remain poorly characterized and understudied. In my research on one such issue, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), it is…
HIV Letter
PIA KEELY-JOHNSON Dear Gavin Williamson, I am a queer woman living in London who, like more than 18.9 million people1 who sat down to watch Russell Davies’ hit show …
Eating Disorders, Education, and TikTok
EMILIE THOMPSON 28th February 2021 Dear Mrs Murdoch, Please let me express my enormous gratitude for the work you and your team continue to conduct in the face o…
An Epidemic of Loneliness
PEPE WEISCHER Dear Mr Spahn, The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has strained the capacity of the German health system in unprecedented ways, but it seems to me that one…
A Letter for Malcolm Reed
TANYA SHARMA Dear Professor Malcolm Reed, (Lead Co-Chair of the Medical Schools Council), I am a medical student in the UK writing to you to discuss the teaching…
A Letter to Tedros A. Ghebreyesus
AY NASSIMOLDINA Dear Dr Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, The world is in a vulnerable state right now, and we have trusted you with the World Health Organization to lead…
A Letter to Andrew Selous
SHOLA AJAO Dear Mr Andrew Selous, It is unfortunate that I find myself writing to you again during these unprecedented times. As you may recall, I wrote July…
Fighting Inequality by Improving NHS Dental and Oral Care
MAXINE PEPPER 22nd March 2021 Dear Sir Stevens, RE: Fighting inequality by improving NHS dental and oral care The COVID-19 pandemic …
Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Calls for Public and Global Health Change
Series Introduction CARRIE RYAN For the next few weeks, the UCL Medical Anthropology blog will run a special series called ‘Advocacy Letters: Anthropological Ca…
A Tale of Two [Unvaxed] Women
We needed to find a new plumber. I called around. The first business that seemed willing to clean our boiler and replace a problematic hose spigot had availability…
Understanding My Mom’s Unorthodox Healing Practices
Sheets of newspaper cover a portion of the floor of our house in Manila, and on top of those thin pieces of paper sits a white candle, a…
Swarming Syphilis: On the Reality of Data
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Treponema pallidum spirochetes under microscope using a modified Steiner silver stain. Obtained from the…