Sniffles? Cough and sneezes? Read this book for your health
“Building the Worlds That Kill Us: Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History” by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz
c.2024.
Columbia University Press
$28.00
408 pages
Get lots of rest.
That’s always good advice when you’re ailing. Don’t overdo it. Don’t try to be Superman or Supermom; rest and follow your doctor’s orders. And if, as in the new book, “Building the Worlds That Kill Us” by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, your skin color and social strata are a certain way, you’ll feel better soon.
Nearly five years ago, while interviewing residents along the Mississippi River in Louisiana for a book they were writing, authors Rosner and Markowitz learned that they’d caused a little brouhaha. Large corporations in the area, ones that the residents of “a small, largely African American community” had battled over air and soil contamination and illness, didn’t want any more “agitators” poking around. They’d asked a state trooper to see if the authors were going to cause trouble.
For Rosner and Markowitz, this underscored “what every thoughtful person at least suspects”: that age, geography, immigrant status, income, wealth, race, gender, sexuality, and social position primarily impact the quality and availability of medical care.
It’s been this way since Europeans first arrived on North American shores.
Native Americans “had their share of illness and disease” even before the Europeans arrived and brought diseases that decimated established populations. There was little to no medicine offered to slaves on the Middle Passage because a ship owner’s “financial calculus… included the price of disease and death.“ According to the authors, many enslavers weren’t even “convinced“ that the cost of feeding their slaves was worth the work received.
Factory workers in the late 1800s and early 1900s worked long weeks and long days under sometimes dangerous conditions, and health care was meager; Depression-era workers didn’t fare much better. Black Americans were used for medical experimentation. And just three years ago, the American Lung Association reported that “‘ people of color‘ disproportionately“ lived in areas where the air quality was hazardous…
So what does all this mean? Authors David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz don’t seem to be too optimistic, for one thing, but in “Building the Worlds That Kill Us,“ they do leave readers with a thought-provoker: “We as a nation… created this dark moment, and we have the ability to change it.“ However, finding the “how“ in this book will take serious between-the-lines reading.
If that sounds ominous, it is – most of this book is, in fact, quite dismaying, despite that there are glimpses of pushback here and there in the form of protests and strikes throughout many decades. If this is a subject you’re passionate about, you may notice that the histories may be familiar but more profound than you might’ve learned in high school. You’ll also see the relevance to today’s healthcare issues and questions, and that’s likewise disturbing.
This is not a happy-happy vacation book, but it is essential reading if you care about national health issues, worker safety, public attitudes, government involvement, and inequality in medical care. You may know some of what’s inside “Building the Worlds That Kill Us,“ so now learn the rest.
