Newsletter: December 2003
Medical anthropology and medical humanities
Cecil G. Helman (Royal Free & University College Medical School, and Brunel U)
Recently I had the privilege of giving a Key-Note lecture on ‘Anthropology and Medicine: A New Partnership’ to the Oxford Forum for Medical Humanities, at Oxford University. The forum has recently been established to promote the interdisciplinary discussion of topics relating to medical humanities. Open to Oxford students and faculty from all departments, it is particularly popular among students of clinical medicine, but also of philosophy, anthropology, medical ethics, history, theology, law, and the basic sciences, who are interested in the interface between their specialty and medicine.
To me, the positive response to this lecture, and to similar ones recently, indicates a growing acceptance of medical anthropology within the medical world – not as an autonomous subject, but as part of the larger, and expanding project of ‘Medical Humanities’ in this country. Only recently has medical anthropology been included as one of the basic ‘medical humanities’ within British medical schools, and this inclusion is likely to increase its future acceptability. The reasons for this new acceptance are clear: they include the increasing diversity of the British population (a recent study showed London to be the most multi-lingual city on earth, with only two-thirds of its 850,000 schoolchildren having English as a home language, the rest speaking 307 different languages); the growing crisis (and cost) of the biomedical paradigm here, as expressed in the National Health Service; and the proliferation of ‘alternative’ healing sub-cultures, many of them imported from the non-industrialised world.
Although anthropologists might query the supposed relationship between studying the medical humanities - and becoming a humane practitioner - we should welcome medical anthropology’s inclusion in this new movement. Like medical anthropology, it is critical of the current biomedical enterprise, but it also carries much less post-colonial ‘baggage’ here than does anthropology. It is also free of the paradox of medical anthropology in the UK: of being a rather elitist intellectual discipline, but one which is still rather marginal in its ability to influence actual health policy and practice.
Applied Medical Anthropology Taught At The University Of Habana
Linda Whiteford (U South Florida)
In February 2003, two medical anthropologists from the University of South
Florida and a medical technologist from the University of California, San
Francisco taught a short course on applied medical anthropology in Habana,
Cuba. Linda Whiteford, Curtis Wienker and Karen Cox offered a pre-conference
course for Latin American and Caribbean scholars attending the VIII Luis
Montane Physical Anthropology Conference. More the 40 scholars attended
the course, many of whom were professionals with years of experience. Attendees
included the team of Cuban forensic anthropologists who lead the investigation
and then identified the remains of Che Guevara in Bolivia. The course was
presented in Spanish and reviewed the history, theory and methods of applied
medical anthropology, particularly as taught in the US. The course generated
considerable interest and the faculty have been asked to return to teach
a longer course. Cuban medical professionals are deeply committed to practice
and applied medical anthropology has great significance to their lives and
professions
Linda Whiteford also presented a Keynote Address to the Luis Montane Conference.
Her address was entitled: "Globalization and Health:Time for a New
Direction". Curtis Wienker also presented a scholarly paper on his
own research, as did Linda Whiteford on her work with Graham Tobin on "Resilience
and Recovery: Health and Volcanic Eruptions."
Please send your comments, contributions, news and announcements to the SMA Contributing Editors Nancy Vuckovic (nancy.vuckovic@kpchr.org) or Janelle Taylor (jstaylor@u.washington.edu).