Article Summary (Janis Jenkins, Pharmaceutical Self)
Janis Jenkins focuses on addressing the sudden surge in pharmaceutical use across the globe. Her article examines the cultural aspects of pharmaceutical use and how these drugs are changing our perspectives. This is addressed by an analysis of how culture is transformed by the regular use of drugs to treat all kinds of ailments. The paper also examines the effectiveness of these drugs and whether or not they are good. It also looks at how global pharmaceutical markets are controlled and managed to create health autonomies and lockout some sections of the world. It finalizes with an analysis of how governments make choices over the distribution and sale of pharmaceutical products. The contributors in the journal analyze the global redistribution of medicine use and the logic behind it.
Janis explains the self as the sum of orientations towards the environment. He juxtaposes this with the term pharmaceutical self that is the aggregate orientation of an individual towards medicinal drugs. She also introduces the question of imagination in the pharmaceutical imaginary, which loosely refers to how the individual conceives possibilities in the field of pharmaceuticals. According to the article, most people already have a conception of their pharmaceutical experience, and it has developed into a personal culture. Janis argues that the pharmaceutical self is yet to be appreciated and that it is essential to analyze how companies shape patterns diagnosis, prescription, and general medical practice on individuals.
The writer also focuses on the power of medicines to transform and how this ability influences individuals. This is concerning the basic facts that drugs are ingested into bodies, inserted in some places, rubbed on others, and used generally in a very personal way. Through this personal interaction with medicine, individuals are transformed both physically and psychologically. Notably, pharmaceutical producers have capitalized on this intrinsic drug culture to shape their business and production.
The article also focuses on the paradox of medicinal treatment. Using the example of patients struggling with mental conditions, he analyzes stigma, side effects, social interpretation, and pressure accompanied by the use of drugs for treatment. Using this argument, the writer poses the question of using these paradoxes to question the conduct and expansion of pharmaceutical empires. Should the pharmaceutical onslaught take into consideration the degree of alteration that their products cause to their clients?
The writer adds that we all are already pharmaceutical selves with a corresponding imaginary perspective that shapes our culture. She gives an angle of addressing mental health concerns in a war-ravaged population where by listening to individual narrations, a physician goes ahead to prescribe medication to patients by assuming the degree of medical care required from the description. The setting of medical facilities and their corresponding equipping also serves as a critical factor that influences how people perceive medical care and pharmaceuticals. On psychiatry, the author notes that in some countries, medical institutions are underfunded barring access to relevant drugs. At the same time, there are some types of drugs that are distributed by the governments to people free of charge.
Jonathan Metzl, a contributor, notes that diagnostic paradigms have created stereotypes for psychiatric conditions complete with gender-based analytics. Another contributor looks at the cultural shaping of sleep patterns in the USA and how the quest for remedies was embraced. The journal is a summary of how the pharmaceutical self is created complete with its conception in society and ethnographic concerns in production and distribution.
- Conceptual Analysis (Dumit: Pharmaceutical witness)
This article is primarily concerned with the aspect of advertising pharmaceuticals and their overall effect on the American public. It addresses the behavior of marketers who feel that by convincing more Americans that they are sick and prescribing to them medicine, they can increase their sales. This article analyzes advertiser activities on American media and literary materials on pharmaceuticals heralding the conversion of science into business by using facts to convince people. According to the author, the percentage of Americans who take a keen interest in these adverts is negligible despite the projection of the pharmaceutical industry of a 5-15 percent boost. He attributes this projection to the amount of anxiety generated among the audience as a result of their continued exposure to pharmaceutical information, enough to keep the industry hopeful for expansion.
The author analyzes an advert that majors on describing symptoms that could point to a particular disease. He spells out the advert format that includes creating awareness, personalizing the risk, increasing motivation for diagnosis, meeting and convincing a doctor, and finally branded compliance. According to him, the advertisers are hell-bent on making people believe that their bodies are deceptive structures that conceal several ailments. The result is people trooping to hospitals to get checkups and receive medicine for the symptoms of discovered diseases. However, I don’t feel the importance of looking at public disease awareness in the light of profit-making. Instead, it should be seen as a way of creating more knowledge of the health risks that compound our stay on earth. Then I dismiss this argument since the body should be viewed as an essential system that requires regular checkup and maintenance because life is irreplaceable.
Dumit portrays the pharmaceutical advertisers as accomplished manipulators who have mastered the art of using health to control the behavior of the public for their benefit. Through his analysis, the adverts are deconstructed as structurally formed information that does not have the interests of the audience in mind. He notes that these clinicians stretch the evidence form laboratory examination to the extent of public awe in a bid to sell more and meet investor expectations. According to his analysis, patients who fall for these adverts are channeled through a controlled system that ends up with a dependency on these drugs at the benefit of the pharmaceuticals.
I, however, refuse to look at the adverts in this angle. Most people are equally passive about their health, and chronic problems end up, causing them a lot of financial strain when they ate finally discovered. For this reason, it is vital to increase public awareness and motivate constant diagnosis for a healthier nation. However, the choice of treatment and medication should be informed by accurate lab analysis and not convictions reported by the adverts. This way, we can decrease the strain of illnesses such as cancer through early discovery and treatment. In a world filled with a lot of pressure, it is necessary to have a medical angle that continually reminds us of our mortality, though without coercion or unethical convincing based on tapping into our fear of death.
- Analytical questioning of David Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head.
Opening the head is a term that Pinchbeck uses to refer to the process of opening up the mind to different paradigms by the use of hallucinogens. Pinchbeck writes the book questioning the reason why certain drugs that are frowned upon in the western culture are revered in different parts of the world. In this book, Pinchbeck narrates his personal experience with these drugs. He begins the narrative with a background of western beliefs and culture on psychedelics. According to him, with the abolishment of psychedelics, the possibilities of expanding the consciousness was killed.
He transforms his character from a New York executive to a travelogue crisscrossing the world and enjoying new experiences through experimenting with drugs. He refers to the words of Walter Benjamin, who decried consumerism as a continuous cycle of good things that don’t satisfy us. Benjamin himself was an enthusiast of drugs who experimented with hashish, among other drugs. In this, he is questioning why the barrier of western civilization locked out these excitements. He narrates his experience eating iboga in Gabon that sent him into a 30-hour trance with cosmic experience.
The author also touches a bit on shamanism by telling the stories of shamans he met in his travels across the globe. These people could swing into the other world and see things that ordinary people could not. He glorifies the input of psychedelics to such experiences. He elaborates on the contrast in cultures by his inbuilt resistance and skepticism to some of this new experience intertwined with the desire to be transformed by new cultures. He, therefore, opines that the careful use of psychedelics could be an important mechanism for self-exploration. This narrative projects the cultural differences across the world and shares a different perspective from the almost atheistic western experience.
Using his ‘normal’ life as a starting point, the writer takes us through an exciting journey that could leave anyone yearning for a taste. He uses this narrative to campaign for the possibility of legalizing some drugs that currently thrive in the African, South American, and Asian jungles, away from the interference of civilization. As compelling as the narrative could be, the underlying tone is questionable. Does the writer take into account the adverse effects of these drugs in his sense? Does he appreciate the import of clarity of thought without undue interference? Can he pinpoint the exponential benefits of using drugs in the modern set up?
The answer to these questions could surely knock down most of his arguments. More seriously, they isolate the writer as another enthusiast who is narrating an intoxicated experience wishing that it could follow him into his ordinary world and form part of him. He is a man in his apex of excitement, enjoying hallucinatory experiences like any other drug user out there. For this, his arguments can hardly qualify for an empirical discussion that could lead to the reconsideration of the rules on drug use. With a lack of concrete observable benefits to human beings, the drugs in his experience must remain locked from a world of pragmatism like ours.
- Thematic analysis: racism, classism, and sexism in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Racism is an old concept that still poses challenges to modern America. It is compounded by the problem of classism and sexism, all of which work together to model an intricate web of discrimination against some members of the community. The themes of racism, classism, and sexism in America are essential in internalizing this tantalizing novel. Henrietta, the principal character in the narrative, is weak and lacks sufficient academic background exposing her to all manners of social problems in her journey of treatment. Her treatment process meant a lot of endurance in the hands of doctors who cared little about her personal choices in the treatment process.
The doctors treat her like an experimental piece of meat, not informing her of developments in her treatment process, even the fact that the therapy would cause infertility. The white doctors dominated the decision making in her treatment and felt that also, if she were to know their steps, she would not understand. The doctors formed this belief from a racists point of view since she was a black and poorly educated woman.
After her death, the question of racism became even worse. Her cells were only referred to through a code name. This way, even the scientist who did their research using her cells did not know who she was. Meanwhile, these scientists were lauded for their discoveries and contributions to the field of cancer treatment while the cell donor was shoved to the backstage for a long time. Her family was not informed of her contribution or even the work that was being done with their kin’s body. There was no effort to make the family benefit from the proceeds of such research. This could only be explained as arrogance stemming from the position the family occupied in the white-dominated society.
Some sad anecdotes and observations emerge in the author’s muse about the conduct of the scientific community. According to her, the family was not included in any way to enable them to benefit from the research to a point where they did not even have health insurance despite massive proceeds from research using their kin’s genetic cells. The book narrates the tale of Deborah, one of Henrietta’s children, who notes that her immediate family can’t benefit from the research proceeds. Instead, people like Rebecca, the author, should ensure their children benefit when she sells the book she wrote on Henrietta. The saddest part is that Deborah went on to die from complications that could be averted if she was a more privileged member of society.
- Musing over Laura Mamo’s Affinity ties as a kinship device
Kinship is a familiar concept within the confines of social sciences. It refers to the biological relationship between people, usually who form a family. However, there is another concept of fictive kinship which exists outside the traditionally accepted family formats. In these kinds of arrangements, kinship could exist biologically and legally. This is manifested in situations such as when lesbians get married and decide to adopt a child that could have their genes or of someone else. The author of the article projects a possibility for creating family ties by matching genes of family members with the intended child to create a family bond.
The writer goes on to answer a set of questions that involve the journey of a lesbian towards getting children. The first concern is the importance of the sperm as a biomaterial and culturally accepted object. She also explores the question of how sperm banks work harmoniously to enjoin kinship choices. The methodology for choosing sperms for reproduction by lesbians is studied with its implications for kinship and out of normal reproduction. According to Laura, the kinship question is divided into blood relations and marriage ties and generally represents how the society is controlled in its basic set up. However, she is quick to note the interruption of this et up by the advancement in reproductive technology in the current century. She adds that with time, the concept of kinship becomes more and more cultural than biological.
The author speaks fondly of biomedicalization and the opportunity it provides for yearning parents to choose their intended characteristics for a child. The development in science then goes ahead to modify the prospective child to their tastes and preferences. Laura notes that the advent of sperm banks and their popularity shows that people are outgrowing notion that birth is an entirely natural process. Consequently, stringent rules were put in place to ensure that sperms were healthy and free from contamination. This also had the effect of limiting the pool of men donating their sperms. This looks like a barrier for this crop of men with health conditions but has peculiar characteristics such as superior intellect. In my opinion, the donor regulations that have introduced a culture of shaming should be eliminated. This includes situations when sperm donors are sent away for being too fat, too short, or too gay.
Additionally, there are legal bottlenecks in some places over the question of sperm donations. Some states like California consider the sperm donor as the legal father of a child. Furthermore, the issue of sperm donation has raised a lot of questions on the cultural desirability of some traits. Women, when they go to sperm banks, spell out a particular type of qualities they want. Does this give us a window into the general thinking of the society? Is it a coincidence, or is it in our nature to want perfection culturally and physically?
This article clearly shows how women at sperm banks use a definite criterion to choose sperm. This includes maximizing health while reducing the health risks of potential children. They also set out to make sure there is a reasonable probability for a physical resemblance between the child and the mother. This is finally completed with the question of culture and ethnicity. Some argue that children should know their roots, while others feel that the children should always take a specific cultural identity that is different from the mother. They then look for genes that will make the child have a social affinity with the parents. This affinity is based on a close match in the character of the sperm donor and the mother. According to the author, this loosely looks like buying a husband in a store. The article possesses an in-depth coverage of the donor mother relationship in the process of looking for children and how culture influences the whole process.