How imperialism, slavery, and war shaped epidemiology

[...]slavery and war provided opportunities to learn about the effects of vaccination and develop theories of disease transmission, all at the expense of enslaved and subjugated populations, including their children. “By arguing that weak lungs caused high mortality among Black troops, rather than t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Lancet (British edition) Vol. 398; no. 10309; pp. 1396 - 1397
Main Author Kishore, Raghav
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Elsevier Ltd 16.10.2021
Elsevier Limited
Subjects
Data collection
Disease transmission
Epidemiology
Housing
Infectious diseases
Physicians
Public health
Slavery
Vaccination
War
United States > US
India
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Summary:[...]slavery and war provided opportunities to learn about the effects of vaccination and develop theories of disease transmission, all at the expense of enslaved and subjugated populations, including their children. “By arguing that weak lungs caused high mortality among Black troops, rather than the inadequate housing, clothing, and other conditions that defined Black soldiers' experience during the war, physicians blamed the Black troops themselves for their pulmonary problems”, Downs writes. Because of the medical authority of the USSC, such racialised theories of disease and Black inferiority gained scientific credibility after the war. [...]Downs goes further and suggests that the USSC'S insistence on racialised data collection is one of the reasons why epidemiologists and public health specialists create statistics that classify human beings into racial categories to understand the spread of diseases.
ISSN:0140-6736
1474-547X
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02216-9