[Sci-tech-public] Modern Times, Rural Places seminar, Friday, April 14, 2006

[Margo Collett]

Modern Times, Rural Places:
Seminar Series at MIT

"The Disease Among Us:  Agriculture, Public Health, and the Bovine 
Tuberculosis Debates"

Susan D. Jones

Associate Professor, Program in the History of Science and 
Technology; Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior; University 
of Minnesota


The dynamic ecology of bovine tuberculosis serves as a window into 
changing human-animal relationships and visions of rural and urban 
health.  It transgresses the organic boundaries between cattle, 
humans, and wildlife; is equally at home in rural, urban, and "wild" 
places; and has played a role in national dramas of 
modernization.  In the late 1800s, Anglo-American scientists 
characterized bovine tuberculosis as an "environmental" disease that 
destroyed innocent children.  American public health workers linked 
anti-tuberculosis measures to the larger campaign for "purity" in 
individuals, corporate powers, and governance.  In both the U.S. and 
the U.K., costly 20th-century campaigns attempted to eradicate 
tuberculosis in cattle.  Control has proved elusive as the disease 
has flourished in rural areas of the world and in the wildlife of 
nations where it was assumed to be eradicated.

Friday, April 14, 2006
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095


Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science, 
Technology, and Society
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact 
Margo Collett at <mailto:mcollet at mit.edu>mcollett at mit.edu
For location visit http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg
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