***The Anthropology of Human Vulnerability in Biological Disasters: 
Ducks, Pigs, Fowl, Flu, and You***

*Honors Seminar (Fall 2005)*

**Roy E. Roper, Ph.D.** rroper25@comcast.net

Adjunct Professor of Anthropology 1-724-869-8833 (home office)

Honor\'s College, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA

Tuesday Evenings 6 - 8:40 PM

Fisher Hall Room 611

Office Hours: By appointment before or after class (call or email to
arrange)

Anthropological perspectives on disasters reveal a complex interplay
between potentially destructive agents in the natural environment,
technological development, and populations. Human vulnerability may be
induced by social, political, and cultural conditions. Disasters are
neither simply "natural" nor \"manmade.\"  Disaster events can be those
from a "specific other "intent on harm such as \"9/11\" domestic
terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Or, disasters may have
a "generalized other" as the perceived causal agent in the form of fate,
deity, or a god. The well-known, traditional examples noted throughout
recorded history are hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, landslides,
volcanoes, droughts, plagues, and heat waves. Globalization, economic
development, population pressures, and emergent infectious diseases are
all shaping and redefining the local and national geographies of risk,
preparedness and response.

Anthropology is inherently a study in comparisons and contrasts on a
worldwide basis. The anthropological perspective compares the historical
present to the prehistoric past at the level of a single individual and
that of nation-states. This course will focus on biologically-based
disasters and their effects on local communities, public health
infrastructures, and even the continuity of the nation-state as a
political entity. This course has special relevancy given the current
national distress over the uses of biologically-based weapons of mass
destruction \-- bioterrorism. This emphasis is even more poignant given
the recent "near-miss" of SARS, the continued expansion of West Nile
virus, and the potential of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1)
to reassort into a form with easy, sustained transmissibility between
humans. The world health communities and governments are concerned about
a global influenza pandemic. This comes at the time the US vaccine
supply mechanisms have been shown to be vulnerable, friable and
incapable of rapid production of pandemic influenza stock in the
quantities necessary on the world stage.

Early in the semester, the class will break into learning teams to begin
their semester long investigations into challenges in disaster
preparedness, response, and recovery with an emphasis on biologically
induced disasters. A recent honor's seminar studied SARS in Hong Kong,
the Paris heat wave, and the mass poisoning in India, North Vietnam, and
Bangladesh through arsenic contaminated well water. Other topics include
epidemics (plague in US history), pandemics (\"Spanish flu\"), smallpox,
and highly pathogenic avian influenza now circulating in a dozen
countries in Asia. The learning teams may elect to investigate issues
common to biologically based public health emergencies such as
quarantine, isolation, surge capacity, and even the interface between
civil and military control.

Biological disasters change public perceptions of acceptable risk,
public health preparedness, and response mechanisms. The class will also
investigate issues of risk perception, blame, and accusation in
understanding the social construction of human vulnerabilities to
destructive agents referencing the concept of political ecology. The
notion of discrete, time-bound "disasters" will be placed into the
larger flows of human history. Guest lecturers from the National
Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), the Disaster Mortuary Team
(DMORT), and the American Red Cross will also contribute to the course.
The class topics will be modified to suit the specific interests of
students or an emergent local, regional, or national calamity.\
\
Students will be expected to perform significant independent research in
a learning team on a chosen topic, and write, discuss, and present to
the class on the topic. This honor's seminar is suitable for students in
any area of the University ranging from Liberal Arts, Education,
Pharmacy, Health Sciences, Nursing, Music, and Business. Anyone
interesting in post-9/11 emergency preparedness and response, issues of
bio-terrorism, and the interplay of natural, technological, and
biological hazards with human activities will find the course timely,
interesting, and useful. The course will place an emphasis on high
consequence events -- those for which mass casualties can be expected.

The course has an extensive reading list suitable for students in an
honor's seminar. These weekly readings are critical to each student's
success in the course and the seminar's success as a venue for
discussing the readings critically. These readings or "vignettes" of
specific disasters or topics will help students gain a better
perspective on what constitute the parameters of disaster response,
preparedness, and mitigation. These readings will also help students
understand how human affairs can change ecological systems, the built
environment, cultural systems, and the biological balances in
potentially devastating ways. These readings are general and
"non-technical" in nature.

The readings from books are designed to provide close-focused, in-depth
materials on various calamities -- mostly of a biological nature. Much
of this work is at the near-ethnographic level of presentation --
history and stories. At the other end of the spectrum will be weekly
assigned readings available from WWW sources in the medical, biological,
epidemiological, and public health fields. These have been selected to
provide parallel views on similar public health, readiness and response
issues facing society today within the anthropological context of
political ecology. Students will read the current plans associated with
preparedness and response to biological events that have the potential
for high consequences or social and political disruption. The goal is to
engender critical analysis and discourse on preparedness for biological
disasters in contemporary nation-state environments.

The course has 15 total face-to-face sessions, or one per week. Students
will experience a significant time compression in the reading
assignments in the first half of the course. Students are expected to
read all materials thoroughly before class. Please be prepared for
detailed, critical discussions!

***Course Required Readings***

Barry, John. 2004. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest
Plague in History. New York: Penguin Group.

Camus, Albert. \[1947\] 1948. The Plague. New York: The Modern Library.

Chase, Marilyn. 2003. The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian
San Francisco. New York: Random House

Defoe, Daniel. \[1722\] 2003. A Journal of the Plague Year. New York:
Penguin Books.

Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in
Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McCullough, David. 1968. The Johnstown Flood. New York. Simon and
Schuster.

Oliver-Smith, Anthony and Susanna M. Hoffman (eds.). 1999. The Angry
Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Routledge.

Powell, John Harvey. \[1949\] 1970. Bring Out Your Dead: The Great
Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793. New York: Arno Press.
(possibly not available -- substitute from list below after start of
class).

Shah, Nayan. 2001. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San
Francisco's Chinatown. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.

***Other Readings***

Beveridge, W.I.B. 1977. *Influenza: The Last Great Plague.* Prodist.

Collier, Richard. 1974. *The Plague of the Spanish Lady: The Influenza
Pandemic of 1918-1919*. Scribner.

Crosby, Alfred W. 1976. *Epidemic and Peace 1918: America\'s Forgotten
Pandemic*. Cambridge University Press.

Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of
Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Digital History. Timeline of Asian American History. Retreived October
20, 2004. Available:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/asian_voices/asian_timeline.cfm.

Erikson, Kai. \[1994\] 1995. A New Species of Trouble: The Human
Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

Ewald, Paul W. 1994. *Evolution of Infectious Disease.* Oxford
University Press.

Garrett, Laurie. 1995. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Disease in a
World Out of Balance. New York: Penguin Books).

Grist (Gaslow), N. R. 1918. British Medical Journal of 22-29.

Keen, Anthony. 1999. Virology Lectures to 3rd Year Medical Students.
University of Cape Town. Retreived October 20, 2004. Available:
http://web.uct.ac.za/deps/mmi/index.html

Kolata, Gina. 1999. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of
1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. New York: Touchstone
Books.

Lindenbaum, Shirley. 1979. Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New
Guinea Highlands. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

McKee, Jeffrey K. 2003. Sparing Nature: The Conflict between Human
Population Growth and Earth's Biodiversity. New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press.

McPhee, John. 1989. The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux

Oldstone, Michael B. A. 2000 \[1998\]. Viruses, Plagues, and History.
New York: Oxford University Press.

PBS Organization. 1990. Influenza 1918. Retrieved October 12, 2004.
Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/sfeature/sanfran.html

Watts, Sheldon. 1999 \[1997\]. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and
Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Van Hartesveldt, Fred R. 1993. The 1918-1919 Pandemic of Influenza: The
Urban Experience in the Western World. Edwin Mellen Press.

Williams, Holly Ann (ed.). 2001. Caring for Those in Crisis: Integrating
Anthropology and Public health in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies. NAPA
Bulletin 21. Washington, DC.

***Course Grading***

Students will be graded on class attendance, active participation that
demonstrates a command of the weekly and cumulative materials assigned
in the course, presentations both formal and adhoc, and formal projects.
Students will be expected to work in Learning Teams of 4 -- 5 people
throughout the course.

***Class Schedule (S=Session) (Sample of Sessions 1-3)***

**S1: August 23, 2005** Course Introduction Biological Disasters: Who,
What, When, Where and Why?

> Exercise in Perceived Risk of Biological Events

Individual Experiences with High Consequence Events (Direct or
Vicarious)

> Assigned Reading

HHS Pandemic Influenza Response and Preparedness Plan
http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/pandemicplan/

WHO Global Influenza Preparedness Plan\
<http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/influenza/WHO_CDS_CSR_GIP_2005_5.pdf>

CDC Pandemic Influenza Plan
<http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm>

Acuna-Soto, Rodolfo, et al.

2002 Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico. Emerging
Infectious Diseases 8(4):360-362.

Ambrose, Charles T.

2005 Osler and the Infected Letter. Emerging Infectious Diseases
11(5):689-693.

Patriarca, Peter A., and Nancy J. Fox

1997 Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plan for the United States. Journal
of Infectious Diseases 176(Suppl 1):S4-S7.

DHHS, US Department of Health and Human Services

2004 Concept of Operations Plan (CONOPS) for Public Health and Medical
Emergencies. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services.

1997. 

**S2: August 30, 2005** Discussion Pandemic Influenza Plans

> Break into Learning Teams -- Contact Information

Assigned Reading Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year

Crosse, Marcia

2005 Influenza Pandemic: Challenges Remain in Preparedness GAO-05-760T:
United States Government Accountability Office.

Wheelis, Mark

2002 Biological Warefare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa. Emerging Infectious
Diseases 8(9):971-975.

Vora, Setu K.

2004 Living with the Plague. Emerging Infectious Diseases 10(5):956-957.

**S3: September 6, 2005** Discussion Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year

> Assigned Reading Camus: The Plague

TFAH, The Fund for America\'s Health

2005 Ready or Not? Protecting the Public\'s Health in the Age of
Bioterrorism. Washington, DC: Trust for America\'s Health.

Gostin, Lawrence O., et al.

2002 The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act: Planning for and
Response to Bioterrorism and Naturally Occurring Infectious Diseases.
Journal of the American Medical Association 288(5):622-628.

PAHO, Pan American Health Organization

2004 Management of Dead Bodies in Disaster Situations. Volume 5.
Washington, D.C.: Pan American Health Organization.