This week’s articles focused on the mediation of medicine, and two themes that recur in these readings are seeking reassurance of normality and the effect of what we learn on how we perceive.
In Joseph Dumit’s article “Is it me or my brain? Depression and neuroscientific facts”, the author begins by stressing how neuroimaging techniques such as the PET scan allow unprecedented visualization of different “types” of brains, which presumably entail different “types” of people. Dumit is interested in the cultural and visual logics by which these images can persuade viewers “to equate person with brain, brain with scan, and scan with diagnosis. He suggests that when we read causality when we look at these types of different brain scan for different conditions, it in fact stems from out local culture (the example with the big toe). Dumit proposes an objective-self, which is the set of acts that concerns our brains and our bodies deriving from received-facts of science and medicine. He draws a distinction between these received-facts rather than just facts from the activity of translation, or mediation, which transforms the fact from one media to another. The proliferation of these brain scans used in the context of differences derived from other conditions (such as manic and depressive versus normal states) gives us the cultural common sense that two different behavioral states would have different brain states. He brings up the notion of identity politics with the example of Tracy Thompson, who conceptualizes her depression by seeing herself as a new type of person, a depressed person, with a different type of brain, a depressed brain. He concludes his article by proposing a particular kind of self he calls the “pharmaceutical self”, where as one takes psychoactive drugs to help oneself recover from one’s condition, one finds himself in a state of not normal, but better. In this way, mental illness is seen as sort of a pharmaceutical side effect.
Shigehisa Kuriyama’s article “Between Mind and Eye: Japanese Anatomy in the Eighteenth Century” introduces Sugita Gempacku, a Japanese physician, and his translation of a Dutch medical text into the Kaitai Shinsho. Gempacku uses the expression memboku o aratameru, “changing one’s outlook”, in which he calls for a fundamental rethinking of the nature and method of medical knowledge. This change is primarily perceptual, and it refers to a new way of seeing just as much as a new way of thinking. Gempacku asserts that previous failures of traditional medicine ultimately were a failure of vision, and although Japanese doctors had preformed dissections in the past, he saw the human body differently than they had seen it. In other words, we see what we are taught to look for. For example, the doctor Toyo postulated that the small intestine was a myth perpetuated by medieval physicians, even after performing dissections. Kuriyama holds that this difference in perception between Gempacku and Toyo were due to the texts that guided their seeing. Gempacku found that the Western anatomical pictures perfectly matched the cadaver, and Kulmus’s illustrations guided not just what Gempacku saw but how he saw, he acquired a new visual style. The Western anatomical illustrations were more faithful to actual human anatomy, and Shiba Kokan explains: “if..a picture does not faithfully copy an object as it really is, it loses this marvelous usefulness.” Interestingly, Kokan refers to the camera obscura as the epitome of the Western style of illustration, as a practically useful form of art. Have you had any experience that made you aware of how mediated vision actually is? Have you visually perceived something differently after learning to look for things you have not previously been looking for?
“Sonography and Sociality: Obstetrical Ultrasound Imaging in Urban Vietnam” by Tine Gammeltoft addresses the ways in which new reproductive technologies, such as the ultrasound, are introduced and consumed in developing countries, such as Vietnam. Previous studies have characterized ultrasound technologies as a male, medical, and technocratic takeover of pregnancy and birth, however Gammeltoft notes that this literature often ignores how the technology is actually consumed by its users. In Vietnam, ultrasound sound scans are very common, and Gammeltoft found that the average number of ultrasounds per pregnancy was about 6.6 for the over 400 women interviewed. One of the major differences in the consumption of ultrasound technology in Vietnam is the concern for safety: Vietnamese woman tended to not trust the safety of the technology, and often worried that the ultrasound was harming her fetus. Even through this fear and suspicion, the women reported that they still “had to go see”. Gammeltoft hypothesizes that this perception that ultrasound “must” be harmful may be due to Sino-Vietnamese medical theories, which stress the importance of bodily balances and sketches disease and illness in terms of disturbance. Despite their lack of trust in the technology, the Vietnamese women had many of these ultrasounds done in order to get reassurance that their fetus was developing normally. The women that were interviewed wanted to see how the fetus is developing manifesting in several scans, even though they thought these scans might be harmful. Gammeltoft attributes this to the concept in Chinese medicine of a body that is vulnerable to disorganization and in need of continued reinvention. The mistrust may stem from the proliferation of stories of pregnancies gone awry, and the sense that a healthy mother and baby is not guaranteed.
I found that one of the most interesting aspects of this reading is how unaware I was of the mediation of vision, of our actual visual perception of things and how it is changed by how we are taught to look at it. For example, I am a neuroscience major who has done many dissections in my required course load, and thinking about the human body in the non-Western aspects discussed in the readings (for example as a “liquid” body or envisioning our internal body structure as the traditional anatomical depictions in figures 1.1. and 1.3. of Kuriyama’s article illustrate), is almost alien to me. I find myself trying to convince me that I would never have seen the body in such ways, but my perception of the anatomy of the human body is probably due to the way that I have been taught. Is this change in perception ‘relearnable’? If I spent enough time with traditional Chinese and Japanese medical texts, do you think that this perception would replace my current one, or can these two modes of vision coexist simultaneously?
Both the Dumit and Gammeltoft articles dealt with the need to be assured of normality. There are patients that see the graphical contrast of normal and depressed brain scans and worry that there is something wrong with their brain and therefore themselves, and there are also Vietnamese mothers who repeatedly get ultrasounds that they feel may be dangerous in order to reassure themselves that their child is developing normally. The contrast between the normal and the abnormal has been discussed in class before (such as in relation to the episode of wife swap), but what is it about the need for normality that is so powerful that a mother would expose her fetus to what she suspects to be harmful technologies in order to find out if her child is normal?
-Matthew Levine
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I would certainly agree with the difficulty in and discomfort with changing one’s notion of the very way in which we see what one would consider to be the most tangible and obvious, the body. I do not, however, see the incorporation of different conceptions of the body and its function as “relearning” per se. Kuriyama contends that “to grasp the meaning of Gempaku's call for a changed outlook, common schematic notions of anatomy-of anatomy as simply cutting open the body and peering inside-are inadequate. We need to inquire further and pursue the specific character of anatomical observation” (23). What is emphasized here is the supplementary quality of Kuriyama’s discussion of different views of anatomy. Replacing traditional versions of “the body” with alternatives still works within a line of thought which prizes or delineates one “true” notion of anatomy. This only reiterates the same problem of restricted anatomical understanding and obscures what seems to be Kuriyama’s intent in speculating about differing notions of the body.
In response to Matthew’s discussion of normality with regards to ultrasound technology in Vietnam, I think that there may be an underlying problem in the way we are thinking of normalcy itself. The problem of what is normal in the context of the anxiety of Vietnamese mothers-to-be is of a different stock than the contrasting normal/abnormal binary we saw with something like Wife Swap. The paradoxical relationship with ultrasound technology in this instance seems to conflate strictly biological, health related normalcy with social acceptability, the latter being the only type we see in a program such as Wife Swap. Gammeltoft marks how one woman, Oanh, explains her experience: “because of my health, I felt very uncertain, I felt I had to have ultrasound scanning. I went for the scan thinking that if the fetus was not normal, I would be forced to have an abortion. So I went very often, I felt nervous and wanted to see if my fetus had all its limbs or not” (133). She frames her worries about normalcy with specific reference to an explicitly biological fear, the possession of limbs. However, her distrust of the technology and uncertainty about using it at all seems to reflect cultural abnormality in the sense that it goes against what she perceives to be a behavior she should engage in, and which is nationally acknowledged as risky. Concern about physical, biological normalcy seems, in this case to override social normalcy creating a more complex issue than the teasing out of the singular conception of “normal” we see in Wife Swap.
In response to Matt’s question, have you ever visually perceived something differently after learning to look for things you have not previously been looking for, I think the answer is yes. Emmanuel’s post in the first section brings up the video of the students passing the ball to each other in a room. When you are asked to count the number of passes, you do not see the gorilla walk in through the center of the circle. When the research tells you that there was one, you are shocked and only see it now that you have been enlightened to its existence. The interesting thing about Kuriyama’s article is not so much the difference between the Eastern and Western perceptions of the interior of the body, but of the “moral taint associated with the oversights of past anatomists.” Not only did the past anatomist’s fail to see certain internal realities in their dissections because their guides did not illuminate them to their existence, but their “failure” is deemed by Gempaku as a certain “skewed state of mind”. The changed outlook thus represents not only a way of seeing that is changed by the introduction of the western models, but a “moral purification” as well, an attentiveness that implies balance.
The culture of Vietnam and the way women respond to ultrasound technology also calls to mind this sense of balance that is so stressed by Sino-Vietnamese medical theories. Ill health is framed in terms of a “disturbance” of this balance and thus with this important cultural notion in mind, we can understand these women’s fear of ultrasound waves but also their need to see the normalcy of their developing fetuses. The body is not assumed to be materially stable” in Chinese medicine as it is in Western science, and thus numerous scans are necessary in order to “reinvent” continually, their image of the fetus. Women must balance their fears with their necessity for "reinventing".
Balance is again an important feature of Dumit’s article. First, as it relates to chemical imbalances in the brain that can be seen through PET scan images, thus categorizing brains into normal and abnormal types according to biological criteria. Patients must also balance their understanding of their mental illness as a brain disorder with their understanding of their visions of themselves as connected to this brain. As Dumit says of one patient, “How can she disavow her depression then, without disavowing her self?” The balance is created through not disavowing either but instead creating a new type of human that is also a type of brain.” The identity politics created here through her fashioning of this new self-invention is correlated also to our discussion of the politics of representation, though now of the self. How does one represent oneself? How does a brain illness such as depression effect one’s understand of one’s self, and can that understanding ever be separated from the brain illness? The idea of balance seems to be important in reconciling this responsibility with autonomy.
-Sarah Schulman
I found also thought this works seemed themed toward the idea of balance and normality. I found Sarah’s questions “How does one represent oneself? How does a brain illness such as depression effect one’s understand of one’s self, and can that understanding ever be separated from the brain illness?” interesting for two reasons. The first it reminds me of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” where the main character (based off mathematician John Nash) who is a genius, is also schizophrenic. He has to deal with this idea that he understands that some of the people he has met are actually hallucinations and eventually uses his reason to figure out why they must be hallucinations (one of them is a young girl who never ages). I found it interesting how, as Dumit pointed out “In discussing brain images we come face-to-face with an uncertainty regarding our own normality, and regarding the “kinds” of humans that we and others are” because when I received an MRI, I too was curious about the differences between my brain and that of what would be considered normal.” Like the women, Oahn, that Stephanie mentioned from Gammeltoft’s essay earlier, I too had this almost necessity to compare my MRI to that of a normal one to make sure I was also normal (though I didn’t continuously go back to get an MRI). It makes me wonder if there really is much of a difference between Eastern and Western Cultures in terms of this mindset, and that in this case it just a different part of medicine that has the same effect in both cultures. This desire to inspect ourselves through the technologies of medicine also remind me in Kuriyama’s essay how Gempaku introduced “very notion of an anatomical approach to the body- the idea of visual inspection in dissection as the primary and most essential way of understanding the nature of the human body.” Through these technologies we visually dissect ourselves to ensure normalcy, either during and MRI scan or a pregnancy. This idea of visual inspection as the primary way of understanding the human body makes me wonder if that is why, as Professor Pandian showed in class, shows like House and CSI are popular not just due to their content but in the way the producers have dissected the subject anatomically, allowing the viewer to have a visual representation of what is wrong as oppose to just being told it.
-Kyle Bieg
I definately agree with Matthew and the reading about how you perceive things based on how you are taught to perceive them. Although there are many things that during the course of your life you will learn on your own, there are many things that you will just assume are true because someone told you so and you have no other reason not to believe them, especially when it is a role model figure like a parent or teacher. I believe that people's perception of things is "relearnable". If you learned how to do something the wrong way, it will just take hard work and determination to fix it.
Coming from a healthy American family I think that my family members are born with normality, so it is hard for me to know how powerful the need for normality is when I believe I have had it all my life, as compared to Vietnamese families. I think the fact that the women in that culture who go through all of that to find out if they are having a normal baby really speaks volumes for how lucky some people are and how some people will try desperately just to have normality.
I found Joseph Dumit's article to be intriguing, especially the "Is it me or my brain". In looking at the original post, visualizing different types of brains which may entail or represent different types of people is difficult to believe. From all I have learned growing up, most human brains are very similar other than those who may have been born with a mental issue. The human species is very similar in most ways and peoples brains are developed and people become the way they are through their experiences.
In the case of Tracey Thompson, it is interesting to try to believe the way that this person was thinking. I believe that people do in fact have problems with their brain and they are born with this which can lead to things such as depression. In the case of Tracey, thinking that it is a different person altogether who becomes depressed is tough to believe considering that it is the same person just with a different mindset in the end. Medicine has been developed to help treat some of these symptoms that are seen in people such as bipolar disease which has been shown to be affected through the brain.
Looking at a foreign outlook on the subject of medicine and one's mind, the article by Shigehisa Kuriyam is a good one to look at. It talks about the failures that have occured in traditional medicine by the Japanese and also talks about new outlooks that are being taken. Human anatomy was brought up a few times and was interesting to read about this. If you can find out how the body works and why it functions certain ways, it can be a better understanding of what is going on in the brain because the brain controls the whole body.
I agree with Sarah in that the answer to Matt's question is yes i think we can defiantly view something differently after we have learned to look for curtain things. I think the comment about the video of kids passing a ball is a great example of this. I find the Vietnamese women and their fear of the ultra sound to be very interesting. they have fear of the waves but they feel a greater need to see their developing baby. they want to be reassured that they have a normal healthy baby. But the notion of normalcy can be viewed so different. They also feel that being healthy means having balance and a disturbance in this balance can cause illness. i find that to be odd because it doesnt seem to fit with modern science.
I want to further elaborate on Matt’s point about normalcy. I think there are many factors that encourage the mother’s to continue getting ultrasounds. Despite their fear of the machine itself, they are even more fearful of the idea that their child might not be developing adequately. They might not understand the technology itself but they understand how it serves as a possible source of information. It is almost as though a negative report would put troubled Vietnamese at ease because having unknown risk is worse than known risk to them. This also applies to Dumit’s article about brain scans. An informative brain scan transforms the idea of one’s self, much like an ultrasound can alter the perception of a baby’s health and future. The more information to go off of, more interpretations are possible to replace doubts of missed information.
In the Kuriyama’s article, the reliance on known information discourages the pursuit of new information, or deviation from “normalcy.” Because how we learn relies so heavily upon past knowledge and imagery, people were unable to discover new parts of the anatomy (and other subjects in general) because they knew what to look for and could not see beyond those facts. Commenting on the lack of new knowledge stemming from dissections, Kuriyama said that "With no sign attached to each organ, all they could do was listen to the dissector's words and nod." Here, the normalcy is the known information, or the status quo of knowledge. To challenge the status quo, one needs to desire progression from the normalcy of information, much like how mothers and brain scan patients want to know the truth about their health.
How do you think the “culture of interpretation” and the pursuit of knowledge vary among the different articles?
Gammeltoft explains that the fetus is seen as relatively "unstable" by the women, and they cannot rely on just one good-news ultrasound because they still worry about "the fetus undergoing constant development and change," so there is potential for the baby's health and development to change as well (145). Gammeltoft concludes that the fear and skeptics surrounding these ultrasounds is not as important or vital as the knowledge of the baby’s wellbeing and developmental health, a “normal” baby. This means mothers are willing to take risks to confirm the normality of their child. This also makes me think in terms of the ultrasound as a picture of a baby, not the actual baby. Maybe because the ultrasound is not the actual fetus, but a picture of it, this allows mothers to let their protective guard down in order to find out the babies developmental status.
The concept of “normality” is akin to the idea that “we see what we are taught to look for,” which is highlighted in Kuriyama’s article about the multiple interpretations of what the actual human anatomy. A picture that is not the exact copy of an object “loses this marvelous usefulness,” Shiba Kokan explains (36).
I feel as though that quote sums up all three of the readings quite well, in one way or another. The article by Dumit on brain-scan interpretations and depression was similar to the article on ultrasounds because both were about modern technology as a medium for “normality” and what this means in terms of the self. These technologies are “useful” because they are deemed “exact” copies of the brain or fetus, but the catch is that you must be able to read these copies to understand what they mean in terms of what is normal and what is not.
As a women, gender, sexuality studies minor, I found these reading particularly interesting because sexuality and gender have attracted much attention concerning what it means to be of a normal sex, gender, or sexuality. Normal is defined by what is accepted in society. Heterosexual relationships are considered the norm, which implies that homosexuality is not “normal,” and any sexual preference in between or completely different from the norm and the abnormal is taboo as far as society is concerned.
What if depression was normal? What if we are all meant to be depressed, and what consider “normal” now was a strange condition? The discourse around depression, and the word itself might not even exist. The qualities deemed “normal” are what people are “taught to look for.”
I would have to agree with the lead blog poster that the material covered by this week's lecture and articles have strongly reshaped the way I think about medicine and my own body. In our earliest lessons whilst discussing mediation, we examined how the media plays a role as both a fragmenter of reality and as an extension to our senses. The articles read this week underscore these points very strongly, particularly Gammeltoft on obstetrical ultrasound imaging in Vietnam. The willingness of the Vietnamese women to compromise their own self-defined 'safety' (even though the technology has been deemed safe in the West) to seek a blurry, pixelated image on a screen of what is 'inside' is very peculiar. The thought process behind this violation of self-security is necessarily complex, and it would suggest that the women have come to accept the screen depicts a different reality existent only on the inside of their bodies. This is the same concept brought up to us by Dr. Pandian after watching the clip of Dr. House, as referenced to by Kyle; how is it that different cultures have come to accept these 'internal' visualizations as truths about our body?
There appears to be no cut-and-dry answer to how this has occurred globally, which Dumit puts it eloquently by saying "even in the face of specific received-facts about ourselves
such as brain images, there is room for negotiation and redefinition" (44).
Kuriyama's article brought up the point that we look for what we are taught to look for, and I could not agree with this more with regards to the other articles. When we looked at cultures of the visual image during our photography unit, we saw the same trend arise whilst comparing what is valued in photography in the West (clarity, depth of focus, ecc) and amongst the Yoruba people (representations of self). The differences in what we look for could be argued to be rooted deeply in history and sociological norms, but ultimately they vary deeply amongst individual themselves due to different personal histories and deducing 'reasons' as to why the Vietnamese women behaved a certain way is beyond the capabilities of any individual.
-Ian Hooley
Thinking about the themes of normality and perception in this week's readings made me think about society's perception of homosexuality and how it has evolved, especially as of late. While this example does not exactly pertain to medicine, I think it is very relevant to some overriding concepts from the articles, and has a significant tie to media and politics of representation.
Many Americans are taught by their parents and religious leaders that homosexuality is wrong, sinful, a choice, and/or a disease. This has created a societal stigmatization that is quite prevalent today. No matter how much scientific information is provided otherwise, there is a significant portion of the population who refuses to accept evidence-based truths including that homosexuality is natural, innate, and not a disorder. As Kiryama states regarding dissections, “…physicians in the past had been unable to perceive what was before their very eyes because of certain long standing delusions, owing to certain dispositions of the mind. They had looked but they had not seen.” The individuals who are presented with scientific truths and do not reshape their thinking towards homosexuality are in this way ‘looking and not seeing’. This thinking is often guided by religious texts, such as the bible. Here, we can relate differences in Toyo and Gempaku, whose respective thoughts about anatomy were developed because of the “differences in texts that guided their seeing”. Like Matthew’s question, if one is taught to believe in the wrongfulness of homosexuality, how easy is it to ‘relearn’ otherwise? I believe that it takes the ‘change in outlook’ proposed by Gempaku.
Joseph Dumit writes on the power that brain images have to convey the way people see their ‘objective self’. Just as these brain images portray kinds of brains and associated categories of belonging, so too do homosexual representations in the media with respect to “kinds” of homosexuality and identification with a group. These representations leave media consumers wondering, is it normal and acceptable? For the most part, the answer is yes- homosexual representation in the media, has, in recent years, been positive and a driving force in getting people to reconsider negative views associated with homosexuality. Similarly, I compare Gammeltoft’s look into ultrasounds in Vietnam and their use to determine normality. Many women would want to “see” their child via ultrasound multiple times, to re-ensure that their baby was normal. I liken this to the amount of homosexual representations there are in the media- I would think that the more there is, the more “normal” it can be perceived.
Like the other bloggers, I saw a pattern in all of the articles on normalcy. The Vietnamese women described in Tine Gammeltoft's “Sonography and Sociality: Obstetrical Ultrasound Imaging in Urban Vietnam,” grew up with Eastern medicine, specifically the use of natural and spiritual methods of treatment. These methods are, like Ian said, deeply rooted in their respective cultures. Therefore, the Vietnamese women are correct in thinking that ultrasounds are risky. Western medicine's trust in technology--ultrasounds in this case--to determine health (or "normalcy") is completely different than Eastern medicinal practices but has still been planted in Vietnam. Though ultrasounds are subject to speculation, society has placed importance on having 'normal children' forcing these Vietnamese mothers to risk undergoing "risky" ultrasounds in order to ensure their children's normalcy and acceptance in their community. What if we were on the opposite end of this--referring to Victor's lecture, what if we were taught to look at the spiritual anatomy (ie. auras) rather than the physical anatomy?
The age old phrase "you must see it to believe it" is relevant in regards to the physical anatomy. As Kyle and others pointed out, visual inspection (for example, of our brains or fetuses)--presented by Shigehisa Kuriyama--has become very important in guaranteeing normalcy. I disagreed with Joesph Dumit's article in that someone who is diagnosed with depression is a different person. Rather, I wondered if this person has come to truly believe it therefore has started to doubt his own mentality. In other words, when we trust doctors who have studied the brain and go to them to find answers as to what is wrong with our well-being, we trust their diagnosis. I think this trust will cause the "ill person" to truly believe it--thus our mind will trick ourselves into thinking we are really mentally unstable.
--Geena St. Andrew
While reading Stephanie’s response this week, I could immediately drew parallels between her argument on biological/social normalcy related Gammeltoft’s piece and Dumit’s stance on biological inquiry. As Stephanie stated in her response, “the paradoxical relationship with ultrasound technology in this instance seems to conflate strictly biological, health related normalcy with social acceptability, the latter being the only type we see in a program such as Wife Swap” (Post). In Dumit’s article, “Is It Me or My Brain? Depression and Neuroscientific Facts”, we can see a similar complex situation between biological and social inquiry. He references a book, A Mood Apart that quotes a patient, Stephen, saying, “Blood-flow studies are not a sufficient explanation of cause. The manias and depressions I suffered were usually precipitated by grief… Measuring blood flow represents an important level of biological inquiry… but it tells us little about what pulled the trigger in the first place. And that’s what the patient wants to know. Then there’s a hope of gaining greater control” (43). In this situation, we are able to see that “normalcy” or the concept of normality indeed strays from mere social acceptability. In this situation, there is a need for both the biological and the social in order to understand the problem – in this case, addressing social issues and medicinally “tricking” the biological response to attempt to make the person “normal”.
Perhaps the string that holds these articles together is not necessarily just the preservation of normality, but a greater incentive to control every situation. Just as Dumit references the patient Stephen saying, “there’s a hope of gaining greater control” (43), the desire for “control” seems to fuel the entire medical process. Dumit concludes his piece, “They are creatively working to refigure responsibility for mental illness, in this case, to biology, in an attempt to gain control over this part of their world” (46). Furthermore, Kuriyama describes medicine in general to be a method of control – in his words, “biomedicine’s ability to predict, control, and manipulate objects and events” (3). This concept of control certainly relates back to Gammeltoft’s piece in which the women seek control of knowledge about their babies. Going back an average of 6 times to check on the biological status of the baby is not merely an attempt to strive toward normalcy but also a way to maintain an element of control in a field where people seem to lack it. Every person in the world has been or has to be a “patient” at some point. The proportion of doctors, nurses, or other medically trained authority figures is much less than that. Perhaps an attempt to gain more, or any, knowledge is indicative of a control-obsessed modern culture, specifically when related to our own bodies.
This week's articles and the group discussion were based mainly on balance and normality. The lead posed the question "have you ever visually perceived something differently after learning to look for things you have not previously been looking for". Most of the class responded yes that they have perceived something differently after learning something new about it, but others said they didn't agree that things were "relearnable". Dumit's article talked about chemical imbalances in the brain that can been seen through PET scan images and how they were able to categorize brains from normal and abnormal. This article posed the question "how does one represent oneself"? Another blogger thought this article reminded him of the movie "A Beautiful Mind". Another article talked about Vietnamese women getting dangerous ultra sounds done just to see if their baby would be born normal. Some bloggers thought that there was more to the ultrasounds than just normality, and others were shocked that women living in the East would feel the need to do something like that. After reading the articles, many of the bloggers agreed that their perception of medicine and even their own bodies had been changed.
This weeks articles and blogs were about medicine and more specifically about particular medical practices going on in the east. There was a strong stress on balance within the human body as well as normalcy. There was a good deal of discussion on normalcy with some debate on weather people agree with Dumit's article. Some of the blogger's did not agree with Dumit's idea of normalcy. The ability to see brain scans and determine weather a brain is functioning "normally" or not brought up a debate on weather or not this is correct or fair. The lead post this week raised a question for everyone asking if people perceive things differently after they are made aware of curtain aspects. Most of the bloggers agreed that yes people can view things differently after they learn a particular wrinkle. One of the articles raised the question how does one represent oneself, which brought about some discussion. The article about the Vietnamese women who are getting risky ultra sound procedures done just so they can see if their baby is developing properly came up in discussion allot as well. there was some bloggers that did not understand why they would take the risk just to see if their baby was normal while others thought it made sense. There were many bloggers that said that their view of medicine as well as themselves is different now after reading these articles and discussions. It seems that peoples ideas of what is normal varies and their perception of what is normal can change. this goes right along with what the lead post was asking about weather people can change their perception after learning new information.
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