10 research outputs found
Infrastructure-building for Public Health : The World Health Organization and Tuberculosis Control in South Korea, 1945-1963
This paper examines WHO’s involvement in South Korea within the context of the changing organization of public health infrastructure in Korea during the years spanning from the end of the Japanese occupation, through the periods of American military occupation and the Korean War, and to the early years of the Park Chung Hee regime in the early 1960s, in order to demonstrate how tuberculosis came to be addressed as a public health problem. WHO launched several survey missions and relief efforts before and during the Korean War and subsequently became deeply involved in shaping government policy for public health through a number of technical assistance programs, including a program for tuberculosis control in the early 1960s. This paper argues that the principal concern for WHO was to start rebuilding the public health infrastructure beyond simply abolishing the remnants of colonial practices or showcasing the superiority of American practices vis-à-vis those practiced under a Communist rule. WHO consistently sought to address infrastructural problems by strengthening the government’s role by linking the central and regional health units, and this was especially visible in its tuberculosis program, where it attempted to take back the responsibilities and functions previously assumed by voluntary organizations like the Korea National Tuberculosis Administration (KNTA). This interest in public health infrastructure was fueled by WHO’s discovery of a cost-effective, drug-based, and communityoriented horizontal approach to tuberculosis control, with a hope that these practices would replace the traditional, costly, disease-specific, and seclusion-oriented vertical approach that relied on sanatoria. These policy imperatives were met with the unanticipated regime change from a civilian to a military government in 1961, which created an environment favorable for the expansion of the public health network. Technology and politics were intricately intertwined in the emergence of a new infrastructure for public health in Korea, as this case of tuberculosis control illustrates
Chemical translators: Pauling, Wheland and their strategies for teaching the theory of resonance
The entry of resonance into chemistry, or the reception of the theory of resonance in the
chemical community, has drawn considerable attention from historians of science. In
particular, they have noted Pauling's ¯amboyant yet effective style of exposition, which
became a factor in the early popularity of the resonance theory in comparison to the
molecular orbital theory, another way of applying quantum mechanics to chemical
problems.$ To be sure, the non-mathematical presentation of the resonance theory by
Pauling and his collaborator, George Wheland, helped to facilitate the reception ; but this
presentation was vulnerable to the confusion that arose among chemists owing to the
similarity between resonance and tautomerism, or between foreign and indigenous
concepts. The reception occurred at the expense of serious misunderstandings about
resonance. This paper investigates the ways in which Pauling and Wheland taught, and
taught about, the theory of resonance, especially their ways of coping with the difficulties
of translating a quantum-mechanical concept into chemical language. Their different
strategies for teaching resonance theory deserve a thorough examination, not only because
the strategies had to do with their solutions of the philosophical question whether
resonance is a real phenomenon or not, and whether the theory of resonance is a chemical
theory or a mathematical method of approximation, but also because this examination will
illuminate the role of chemical translators in the transmission of knowledge across
disciplinary boundaries
Tomorrow’s City Today: Prospects for Standardising Sustainable Urban Development
No abstract available
Building Capacity for a Global Genome Editing Observatory: Conceptual Challenges
A new infrastructure is urgently needed at the global level to facilitate exchange on key issues concerning genome editing. We advocate the establishment of a global observatory to serve as a center for international, interdisciplinary, and cosmopolitan reflection. This article is the first of a two-part series
Building Capacity for a Global Genome Editing Observatory: Institutional Design
A new infrastructure is urgently needed at the global level to facilitate exchange on key issues concerning genome editing. We advocate the establishment of a global observatory to serve as a center for international, interdisciplinary, and cosmopolitan reflection. This article is the second of a two-part series
Amino acid position 37 of HLA-DR beta 1 affects susceptibility to Crohn's disease in Asians
Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the major types of chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) characterized by recurring episodes of inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Although it is well established that human leukocyte antigen (HLA) is a major risk factor for IBD, it is yet to be determined which HLA alleles or amino acids drive the risks of CD and UC in Asians. To define the roles of HLA for IBD in Asians, we fine-mapped HLA in 12 568 individuals from Korea and Japan (3294 patients with CD, 1522 patients with UC and 7752 controls). We identified that the amino acid position 37 of HLA-DR beta 1 plays a key role in the susceptibility to CD (presence of serine being protective, P = 3.6 x 10(-67), OR = 0.48 [0.45-0.52]). For UC, we confirmed the known association of the haplotype spanning HLA-C*12:02, HLA-B*52:01 and HLA-DRB1*1502 (P = 1.2 x 10(-28), OR = 4.01 [3.14-5.12]).N