Flexible Bodies, parts 3 & 4, set 8

“I learned later that the discovery of the flexibility of the antibody was a galvanizing moment in the development of immunology.”

(Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin, p. 92).

“In my mind, this language crashed into contemporary descriptions of the economy of the late twentieth century with a focus on flexible specialization, flexible production, and flexible rapid response to an ever-changing market with specific, tailor-made products… This course on immunology made me want to know much more about how scientists see their work fitting into daily life and how they imagine the world inside the body.”
(Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin, p. 93)

The idea of the flexibility of the immune system shown to Martin by her immunology professor created an implosion in her fieldwork where different elements that she was studying finally came soundly together for her (p. 91). The immune system as her professor described it was flexible and constantly adapting in order to continue to fight off damaging antigens. Mentioning the world inside the body as imagined by scientists and the flexibility of that world in order to work as efficiently as it can brings to mind images Martin talked about in her book of how societies function. As our society progresses and changes so does our understanding of the immune system.

She talks about the perceived hierarchy of cells where the T cells are the masculine hero commanders, and all other cells are either feminized, such as B cells taking orders from the T cells, or macrophages, which were feminine because they did the housekeeping, or were compared to minorities who held the most basic and menial jobs. This hierarchy, which was commonly put into the context, by the media, of a military campaign or war being fought inside our bodies, was reflected outside of bodies as well. As our society has started to break down that old hierarchy of white male domination, and women and minorities are now accepted as useful members of society, the perceived hierarchy of the immune system has also broken down. Martin says that the younger people she interviewed as well as many alternative medicine practitioners described health and immunity as a complex system where the elements are well managed in relation to each other. (p. 89). The immune system in the body is evolving from a hierarchical interpretation to one that is in a state of homeostasis. Each system in the body relies on and works with the others to keep the body functioning at its best.

This idea of a world inside the body reminds me of the movie “Osmosis Jones” and its later spin off “Ozzy & Drix”. Osmosis Jones is described as a hot-blooded, adventure seeking rebel cop type white blood cell working in the body of Bill Murray’s character. He is forced to take on a new partner, Drix, a cold pill after making too many hotheaded mistakes that embarrass the mayor and police chief. They have adventures, battle a killer virus and in the end Osmosis gets the girl and the petty mayor gets farted out of the body. It’s a story that mirrors any number of cheesy Hollywood action, adventure police movies, but with many clever puns. The Saturday morning spin off is basically the same. This movie is an example of the changing knowledge of the immune system to an idea of a system that functions like a metropolis with all the parts of the body, big and microscopic working together in a mutually supportive way. Even though there is a hierarchy reflective of popular movies, it shows that the body needs all of its systems working together efficiently in order to be healthy.

Osmosis Jones movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF9mfwXAFgY

Spin off cartoon, Ozzy & Drix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09xPJq4vEFU&feature=related

Images from:

www.webwombat.com.au/.../movies/osmosis.htm

http://tf.org/images/covers/Osmosis_Jones_poster.JPG

www.digitalmediafx.com/News2001/July/071001.html

Flexible Bodies, parts 1 & 2, set 7

Quote taken from interviewee, Peter Keller, biology professor:

“I think people who don’t think about the immune system walk around saying, Oh God, this farm is all full of germs. My mother, for example, my mother and my grandmother, their attitude was the world is very dangerous and there are all these germs and what if we get them. I mean they never ever thought in terms of, well, we’re strong, we get them every day. And we beat them.”
(Flexible Bodies, Emily Martin, p. 38).

Martin and her graduate students questioned people in different communities near Baltimore about how they perceive health and how the people’s personal and societal culture has changed along side the changing of their perception of health. Much of her discussion in parts one and two of her book center around how the medical system, scientists and regular people have changing and evolving perceptions of germs, antibodies and immunity. Early in our modern medical history, the body was viewed as a fortress with barriers that must be kept free from germs and dirt, so hygiene was very important. Martin talks about the early excessive use of disinfectants in the home and the obsession with disinfecting the outside of the body, without really understanding how the inside of the body was capable of fighting diseases. The view of beating germs has evolved to emphasizing vaccines, antibodies and the immune system. People in the early part of the 20^th century did not understand the greater complexities of the human body that are understood today, and there will be even more discoveries about health in the future.

Fifty years ago when the emphasis was on wiping away germs and zealously scrubbing off dirt, when cleanliness was next to godliness, it seems like a disservice had been done to the human body. Like in the excerpt above, the older generations would look at a farm and think it was full of germs because it was full of dirt and animals. They thought that a dirty surface meant germs and did not look beyond that. I had heard about studies a few years ago that said people who grew up on farms had healthier immune systems than city people did. I found recent articles like the following that asserted that pregnant mothers who spent time on farms, in barns and drinking fresh milk had newborns with fewer occurrences of allergies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520090438.htm

There are also studies that show that children who have lived on farms since at least five years old have less cases of asthma. This video from WebMD talks about the trend that farm kids tend to be healthier those not living on a farm. http://www.webmd.com/video/environmental-allergens-immune-system

Being exposed to animals, dander, dust, dirt and all the good stuff that comes with living on a farm helps build up immune systems. I grew up on a mini-farm; we had horses, goats, pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, birds and reptiles and I consider myself healthy. I do not have allergies or asthma, but I do get the occasional cold. It is a little ironic that our parents and grandparents were so worried about the dirtiness of farms when shielding children from all possible germs that should be boosting their immune systems may be the very cause of the rise of asthma and allergies. Protecting children from all exposure to germs is still happening today, and it is creating sickly people. I understand the apprehension though. Take MRSA, for example, a super staph infection that causes abscesses on the skin and serious illness, is passed by contact with infected surfaces and people, and which has evolved to be resistant to antibiotics. (The overuse of antibiotics is a topic for later discussion). While trying to kill all germs, we have created strains of bacteria that are harder for our bodies to fight off.

Photos from:

www.livingpictures.org/domesticanimals.htm

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php?id=9158

Twice Dead, set 6

Imagine, an HP Inkjet printer that can create life-saving organs, no more need for the ambiguity of determining brain dead donors.

“The public furor over the Wada transplant focused on the possible murder of the donor, but the medical profession was more concerned about unprofessional treatment of the recipient, Miyazaki Nobuo” (Twice Dead; Organ Transplant and the Reinvention of Death, Margaret Lock, p. 133).

This excerpt is merely one of many that Margaret Lock used in her book as an example of the controversy that the concept of the brain-dead definition of death has instigated. This particular high profile case was from an August 1968 heart transplant done in Japan by Dr. Wada Jiro, and the 30^th heart transplant in the world. It turned out that there was no documented time of death of the donor, or an EEG printout showing that he was completely brain-dead. Dr. Wada was also accused of replacing the recipient’s entire heart rather than just repairing a mitral valve that was previously documented as all that was needed. The recipient died after 83 days. Japanese physicians claim that this case was one of the reasons that organ transplants are still so controversial in Japan after 30 years.

Lock discusses many questions that have been raised regarding using organs from the brain-dead, including the recipients’ bodies rejecting the donated organ. She says that there was debate in the US in previous decades, but for many reasons, the American public no longer is overly concerned about where organs come from. At least not concerned enough to make it as controversial as abortion, or even stem cell research. Harvesting of body parts is not well known or discussed in American society or in the media. I, probably like many North Americans, have not thought much about where that donated heart in the news came from. Lock presents plenty of questions brought up by American researchers and medical professionals who have thought about the subject, one being the question of error in judging when someone is irreversibly brain- dead, as is shown in the following excerpt:

“Clearly plenty of room exists for conceptual confusion, but the possibility of actual mistakes and even malpractice cannot be ruled out. One is left to wonder whether there have been cases when procurement has started before the patient is indeed brain-dead. If organ donation proceeds, it is impossible to show when an error has occurred” (p. 124).

I believe there is a solution to the ambiguity, a different option. I think that the use of stem cells can be that option and that its research should be a priority in American medicine. It can re-grow skin, pieces of organs and according to some articles, even whole organs, using the cells of the person who needs it. That would eliminate the problem of organ rejection, eliminate harvesting living cadavers for organs, and eliminate looking at a brain-dead person as a container that holds the valuable commodity of organs. While looking up the creation of organs from stem cells from the person in need, I came across the idea of “organ-printing”, or “bio-printing”. It is a technology where the inkjet printer concept is remade to print layers, or sheets of biological tissue that can be layered and shaped by biodegradable molds into human organs. I found an article where this has been successful in reproducing bladders for children suffering from spina bifida. Using a body's stem cells to clinically grow new organs can be the future of organ transplant, and I hope it actually can create more detailed human organs than bladders and skin. With the amazing advances in technology, harvesting organs from brain dead living cadavers can become an archaic memory of the past.

Layers of skin can be carefully produced by bio-printing.



Articles on re-growing organs:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=1603783&page=3

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/04/03/engineered.organs/index.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/22/sunday/main3960219.shtml

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.09/13-breast.html

http://www.machineslikeus.com/cms/news/bioengineering-challenge-growing-
organs-stem-cells








photos from:

http://futurismic.com/2007/10/15/fleshjet-bio-printing-making-progress/

www.nextnature.net/research/?p=885



end of set 6

Breathing Spaces & Twice Dead, set 5

“ the experience of possession signaled that an individual had lost the power to negotiate and maintain a sense of control within him- or herself” (p. 86, Breathing Spaces, Nancy Chen).

“Mr. Gao, a male patient in his fifties, described how his practice of Daoist qigong progressed as expected until one day the qi in his right leg became ‘stuck.’ ‘I was walking along Wangfujing Street and suddenly felt as if my right leg had a will of its own. I started walking in a wide circle, because the leg became planted on the ground and my other leg tried to continue going forward. I had to stop and really concentrate before my leg could move again.’” (p.103, Breathing Spaces, Nancy Chen).

These excerpts were part of Langford’s discussion about how the use of qigong caused possession and deviance in some of its practitioners. Initially qigong was a powerful force for people looking to be healed of debilitating diseases, and for people looking for social outlets in a controlling society, but it became an object of study in Chinese psychiatry (p.87) partially because it seemed to create odd actions and emotions in its followers. Langford studied patients in hospitals and psychiatric wards in China in an attempt to discover the forces at work behind deviation associated with qigong. The ‘dis-ease’, as she terms the lack of ease certain people seemed to have after improperly practicing or over-doing the practice of qigong was cause for much anxiety on the part of the relatives and the government. People behaved unnaturally within the context of their culture therefore suggesting that qigong deviation could be a culture-bound disorder, although similar deviations were found outside of China too. The various forms of deviation that she included in her study were interesting, however I found that the form of one body part having a will of its own was strangely connected with the second reading for this week, Twice Dead by Margaret Lock.

I apologize for being morbid, but I could not get the cult movie The Evil Dead out of my mind. As soon as Langford mentioned the man's leg becoming possessed due to qigong, I thought of the following clip from the 2^nd Evil Dead movie, where Ash’s, the main character played by Bruce Campbell, hand became possessed by demons released after listening to an audiotape reading of “The Book of the Dead” on a camping trip. The movie involves a darkly humorous spin on possession so I hope this clip doesn’t offend too much. Ash’s hand isn’t possessed by the electrically charged healing forces of qi as were Mr. Gao’s legs, but Mr. Gao’s legs seemed to want to lead him to his death at the guns of the soldiers at Tiananmen Square in a sinister fashion similar to Ash’s hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekm871gZ5TM

So qigong possession put me into a morbid state of mind, and then I started to read Twice Dead. While both books have themes regarding healing in common, I also see a connection in regards to the discussion of body parts. Breathing Spaces made brief mention of possessed body parts due to qigong deviation, but Twice Dead discussed the commoditization of body parts. This brings to mind a number of less humorous horror movies than The Evil Dead.

“It is only recently, however, that the body has gained commercial value as a source of spare parts and therapeutic tools” (p. 47, Twice Dead, Margaret Lock).

“The organs of brain-dead donors were, from the outset, a scarce resource, and it was evident that the urgent need for organs might threaten the presumption that every effort should be made to preserve human life” (p. 65, Twice Dead, Margaret Lock).

Prior to reading this book, I did not know that being brain dead while the rest of the body still had living functioning organs was considered legally dead in the U.S. Maybe it is common knowledge, but it is new to me. It is somewhat creepy that the brain is dead but the body is not, and it is called a living cadaver, and organs can be harvested from it. Lock contrasted Japanese resistance to the brain dead description of death with the lack of resistance to it in North America and Europe, but maybe resistance to it here is not noticed because we are not aware of it? An article in The New York Times from July 15 titled“Countries Make Push to Increase Eye Donors” talks about the rising demand for cornea donors for transplant worldwide, and that the U.S. is not exporting as many corneas as it used to. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the donors of the corneas may be living cadavers, and it only lightly mentions that people need to die in order to satisfy the increased need for the body part. In fact the cornea is discussed as simply a product that is in short supply, and that other countries have need to increase the supply to meet the demand. Creepy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/health/15corn.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=
eye%20donations&st=cse&oref=slogin

Fluent Bodies & Breathing Spaces, set 4

The Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan- practicing inebriated fisticuffs

“…the ‘marma technician’ arrived, drunk as usual... The friends undressed the patient, and the technician threw a sheet over him so no one could view his technique. After he pressed a few points, the patient opened his eyes. The patient’s friends gave the technician a wad of money, and he left. This story is important not so much for what it tells us about marma therapy as for what it tells us about modern Indian perceptions of marma therapy. Here is a practice in which the precision of a laser beam is achieved with a rustic tool, a subtle savant arrives disguised as a drunkard, and a precise pulse examination masquerades as an indifferent brush of the patient’s wrist. Here is a healing practice, in other words, that, for modern observers, seems to draw its authority from the mystery with which it cloaks a sophisticated esoteric knowledge in apparently ‘primitive’ practices” (p.214, Fluent Bodies, Jean M. Langford).

Marma cikitsa is a South Indian practice similar to acupressure within Ayurveda practice. Marmas are vulnerable points on the body that could be touched to heal or to do harm and should be avoided by surgeons (p.212). Langford discussed marma therapy as another traditional and mystical Ayurveda practice found mainly in South India, a practice, like pulse reading, that is marginalized by mainstream Ayurvedic schools. According to Dr. Vijayan, marma practitioners are very secretive about their knowledge and as seen in the above excerpt, some act as though they are drunk so that no one can find out how they do what they do. They protect their art through the guise of drunkenness. Their expertise is so valuable to them that they hide their actions from those around them, not divulging the tricks of the trade to anyone except perhaps a talented pupil.

Langford notes that marma cikitsa falls under healing as well as Kalahari martial arts which I am guessing is a form of martial arts found in India. The use of pressure points that could heal a person by touch could also be used in combat. The theme of healing being related to the martial arts was mentioned in Nancy Chen’s Breathing Spaces as well. On page 59, Chen talked about the popularity of qigong masters and their depiction as martial arts masters in comic books and in film. A best-selling novel, the name translates to “Great Qigong Master”, was about “tales of a qigong master’s adventures in the city as he searched for truth and universal forces” (p. 59). The connection in both the Ayurveda marma technique and qigong with martial arts reminded me of the 1978 movie “The Drunken Master” starring Jackie Chan. His character, Wong Fei Hung, was a popular historical Chinese folk hero who was not only a martial artist and revolutionary, but also a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. The movie was done in comedic fashion, as is Jackie Chan’s style, and he learned a drunken form of kung fu. The moves appeared to be from a blundering drunkard, but they were actually very graceful and precise and in the film very effective. It took him a while of goofing off and messing up before he seriously began to learn from his master. Behaving and moving as though he was drunk was useful in deceiving his opponents. They thought he would be easy to defeat and therefore underestimated his ability to fight which worked to his advantage. The marma practitioners from above behaved as though they were drunk so that their abilities would be underestimated and they could keep their knowledge concealed.

I see the connection of Indian Ayurvedic marma healing, Chinese qigong healing, and martial arts as relying on showmanship as well as function. Both Fluent Bodies and Breathing Spaces make a point of revealing how charismatic practitioners were effective in gathering faithful followers. It seemed that the more charismatic they were, the more their patients believed in what they could do. Martial arts are also reliant on showmanship; the fast paced, graceful and powerful movements of the masters are captivating to watch. They have large followings too, most noticeably in the number of films featuring them.

Here is a clip from The Drunken Master demonstrating the various drunken fighting techniques:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE6jYJb4_Tc&feature=related

photos from:
www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews_2/drunken_master.htm

www.moviecritic.com.au/.../

Magic & healing in Jesus Camp- week 3

"The rhythmic movement, uniform and continuous, is the immediate expression of a mental state, in which the consciousness of each individual is overwhelmed by a single sentiment, a single hallucinatory idea, a common objective. Each body shares the same passion, each face wears the same mask, each voice utters the same cry." Mauss P. 163

In Mauss’s analysis and explanation of magic a point is made that magic, although an individual may perform it, is a social movement and a group phenomenon. He describes how the magical believers react when they are worked up to a frenzy or how “magic produces mental excitation in individuals” (p. 163). One example he used was in tribal situations where the women, the elderly and children participated in ritual dancing while the able-bodied men were out on a hunt or at war. The power of the dancing was believed to aid the men in victory. Mauss wanted his discussion of magic to be separate from that of religion although he often bridged the connection between the two. While reading the above excerpt, the images of a recent religious documentary called, Jesus Camp came to mind.

The film Jesus Camp was about an evangelical Protestant group of Pentecostal children sent to a summer camp by their parents with the intention of creating warriors for Christ. The children were expected to be the religious leaders of the future and to be as militant as they believed extremist Muslim children were. There were scenes in the movie where everyone in the camp auditorium was worked into such a frenzy that they began speaking in tongues and swaying. The participants at the camp displayed many of the same reactions to powerful feelings brought on by a group consensus of beliefs and practices that Mauss attributed to more magic prone peoples. Mauss depicted magic as a group experience, where he portrayed tribal practices where people were carried away, where they were “…masked with the image of the same desire, to hear all mouths uttering proof of their certainty… there is no possibility of resistance, by the convictions of the whole group” (P. 164). The young followers in the film could have been described by that sentiment too.

Mauss represented magic as a versatile thing, one in which many must participate in order for the magic to work. It required belief in higher supernatural powers and the mana in everything to make the magic function. Religion, it can be argued, also needs the beliefs of the group to work. The children and volunteers in Jesus Camp created their fervor together. In the film they fed off each other’s energy. Their passion lied in a shared belief of the ubiquitous power of their God and his reaction to their rituals. Although Mauss connected magic and religion to science and medicine multiple times, it is difficult to make the connection between science, medicine and the evangelicals in the film. They didn’t address science in a positive light, to them science was a means of denying their belief system, for example they chanted and prayed against the practice of abortion. However, because they felt the world was against their belief system, [what I perceive as] the magical spirit of their religious connection could be a form of psychological therapy for their feelings of being on the fringe of society. The images of massive faith healings associated with evangelicals also come to mind in this context although that was not part of the movie, it was instead massive group therapy.

Pictures from:

www.ica.org.uk/Jesus20Camp+15193.twl

www.caica.org/HEADLINE%20NEWS%20SEPT%20OCT.htm

Disclaimer: I started writing about the film last week, before I noticed that many others had written about it too. When I did notice, I decided not to start all over again and stuck with it.

A General Theory of Magic, set 2

Voodoo dolls, a representation of magic

"However separate the different moments in the representation of a magical rite may be, they also form part of a total representation whereby cause and effect become confused. Here we have the basic idea behind magical actions, an idea involving immediate and limitless effects, the idea of direct creation."

A General Theory of Magic by Marcel Mauss, page 78

This quote is from the “Representations” part of the Mauss’s explanation of the three elements of magic; the magician, the action and the representations. Very briefly put, the magician is the performer, the action is what is performed and the representation is how magic is projected by the magician. He explained representation in multiple ways such as the effects that the magical rites have on the intended objects or people, or the “relationship between the persons and things involved in the ritual” (p. 77). It seems that it is the representations of magic that determines if the magic is “real” or not. The magician is a colorful figure who performs the actions of the rite. The power or affect of the rite depends on the representation of beings or things invoked.

Mauss attempted to give as detailed an explanation for magic as possible based on his research. He discusses different elements of magic, how magicians and their arts are perceived in their societies, and its connection with religion, nature, science and medicine. I am interested in his element of magic, representation, because it seems to be in the representation of magic that its power is visible. It involves the magical outcome and can make a person a believer.

This reminded me of Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, a wonderful novel that I read a few years ago. It is a story steeped in the magic and history of a community of descendents of ex-slaves. It takes place in both New York and in a fictional small island community called Willow Springs just off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina without being a part of either state. Miranda Day, called Mama Day by the townspeople, is the powerful leader of the community. She is the local spiritual leader, healer, and magician or witch as Mauss would have described her. She uses sympathetic magic and an extensive knowledge of alternative medicine to heal her people and to keep them safe based on rituals and knowledge passed down from their first matriarch, an African slave who had the power to free herself and her family and take over the island from the white owners. The novel also explores the value of alternative medicine in connection with the power of magic.

The two other main characters in the book is Mama Day’s great-niece, Cocoa, who grew up on the island, and her husband, George, a New Yorker. The first and only time that Cocoa brings George to the island proves to be tragic, in the sense of tragedy as Janelle Taylor describes on page 163 of her paper, “The Story Catches You and You Fall Down”. Despite the heroes acting exactly as they should, the outcome was tragic mostly due to inherent character virtues and cultural differences. George, a realistic thinker who knew only city life, was warmly accepted into his wife’s community although he could not believe in the magical beliefs of the people there. A hurricane destroyed the only bridge off the island thus not allowing Cocoa and George to return to New York when planned creating the timeframe for the tragedy to occur. A jealous townswoman, Ruby, misinterpreted Cocoa’s behavior at one point and through poison and magic cursed her and made her deathly ill. The voodoo-like magic Ruby performed used the laws of similarity to strengthen her curse. She took strands of Cocoa’s hair to bind her to the spell. With no malicious intent, Mama Day told George that only he could save Cocoa, part of which involved sacrificing a chicken, and in his valiant attempt to do so George had a massive heart attack and died. The story suggests that his sacrifice was the representation of the cure that saved Cocoa’s life. Maybe if he had been able to understand her family’s culture sooner, the tragedy could have been averted.

I found many ideas discussed in Mama Day related to the research done by Mauss. The novel spoke a lot on the representation of magic on the lives of the inhabitants of Willow Springs, a close-knit community that revered the magic of Mama Day. Supernatural power was an ordinary part of their religious, medical and daily beliefs.

For further summary of Mama Day:

http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1176

http://www.answers.com/topic/mama-day-1

Voodoo doll image from:

http://www.zombieye.com/images/voodoo_doll_family.jpg

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, set 1

A Hmong tvix neeb, or shaman performing a ceremony to recapture a lost soul and return it to its body.

“Medicine was religion. Religion was society. Society was medicine. Even economics were mixed up in there somewhere… and so was music… In fact, the Hmong view of health care seemed to me to be precisely the opposite of the prevailing American one, in which the practice of medicine has fissioned into smaller and smaller sub-specialties, with less and less truck between bailiwicks. The Hmong carried holism to its ultima Thule… I concluded that the Hmong preoccupation with medial issues was nothing less than a preoccupation with life.”

Excerpt from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong child, her American doctors and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman, page 60-61.

This excerpt, found at the beginning of Fadiman’s book, in a way sets the stage for the rest of the book for me. The context for the author’s thought came about as she was trying to organize the piles of notes she had collected about the Hmong while writing her book. She wanted to fit her notes into specific folders such as medicine, mental health, animism, shamanism, etc and finally came to the realization that the multiple aspects she discovered about her subjects could not be compartmentalized. There were many themes prevalent, but I was drawn to the idea that the animistic culture of the Hmong connected medicine to religion to everything else in their life. They believed in the sacredness of the soul and they could not understand treating the body without treating the soul at the same time.

The Hmong view of medicine as religion appeared in the physical sense in the form of their tvix neeb, or their shaman. The shaman was their doctor, their priest, their psychologist. The Hmong placed in one person that which we as Americans have compartmentalized into many different roles. The shaman was the healer of the body, mind and soul. Without the soul, the body could not survive, so to focus on fixing the body was pointless if the soul was lost. That concept was lost on the American doctors who tried to save the life of Lia Lee, a tragic little girl with severe epilepsy. The American doctors and the Hmong parents could not understand each other because of language and cultural barriers that neither side were able to cross.

Due to a class that I took, Sociology of Religion, the connection of religion with medicine grabbed my attention and made me contemplate the role of medical doctors in our Western society. We view MDs in a strictly secular sense; they focus on fixing the body based on years of scientific study, separate from religious influence. While religion in various forms still thrives in the US, it is not expected that doctors address the spiritual needs of their patients. But what about civil religion? A concept where we revere science and certain American ideals, apart from religion, as if they were religious. Civil religious symbols include the American flag, Statue of Liberty, the Fourth of July, the Pledge of Allegiance, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Thinking about the roles of our doctors in that perspective, I believe that they take on the roles of a shaman but in a civil religion.

If we compare the picture of the medical doctor to the right with that of the Hmong shaman above we can see some similarities. The MD is wearing the white gown or jacket of the profession and a stethoscope, a tool of healing, around his neck. He is dressed to perform the ritual of healing, as is the shaman. The MD is the 'shaman' in civil society, the priest and healer of secular health (which is physical rather than spiritual). He commands a high level of respect from us, as the tvix neeb does from the Hmong. He had a calling and went through rigorous training to become an MD, as did the Hmong shaman. When we are in pain or are sick, we seek a doctor for help. Many Americans have a skepticism towards doctors for one reason or another that does not seem to be shared by Hmong towards their shaman, but deep down, we have trust and hope in doctors that they will be able to repair us when we most need them. Our doctors occupy one of the highest positions in our society, as do the shaman in the Hmong society, and we look to what they say with reverence. We are supposed to eat what the doctors tell us to eat, take the medicines we are told to take, and change our habits if we are told to do so. We seek their advice because they hold answers to mysteries that lie beyond the scope of information that most of us have. The MD is the one who connects the 'holy' beliefs of a civil religion, science, to healing.

Because I am a huge fan, I want to include the connection of medicine to religion in civil society by another example: Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a television show about a fictional hero who has graced the TV networks in Great Britain for over 40 years. He is the last of the race of the Time Lords, the highest beings in existence, and travels through time and space with human companions as an adventurer and protector of Earth. He seems to know all and has great resources and scientific knowledge at his command. And he is simply known as the Doctor. He is a Time Lord called the Doctor. A lord of time has religious connotations to it and the last of them who is greatly revered all across the fictional universe is the Doctor. To me that connects the idea of religion and medicine in a non religion specific society.

Hmong shaman image from:
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20060809_
cancer_hmong/photos/Cancer_Hmong_Shaman.jpg

Medical doctor image from:
http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/photos/
uncategorized/doctor.jpg

Doctor Who image from:
http://www.infoaddict.com/fileadmin/Images/Television
/dr_who.jpg