An important historical account of Tuskegee University’s significant advances in health care, which affected millions of lives worldwide.
Alabama’s celebrated, historically black Tuskegee University ...is most commonly associated with its founding president, Booker T. Washington, the scientific innovator George Washington Carver, or the renowned Tuskegee Airmen. Although the university’s accomplishments and devotion to social issues are well known, its work in medical research and health care has received little acknowledgment. Tuskegee has been fulfilling Washington’s vision of “healthy minds and bodies” since its inception in 1881. In To Raise Up the Man Farthest Down , Dana R. Chandler and Edith Powell document Tuskegee University’s medical and public health history with rich archival data and never-before-published photographs. Chandler and Powell especially highlight the important but largely unsung role that Tuskegee University researchers played in the eradication of polio, and they add new dimension and context to the fascinating story of the HeLa cell line that has been brought to the public’s attention by popular media.
Tuskegee University was on the forefront in providing local farmers the benefits of agrarian research. The university helped create the massive Agricultural Extension System managed today by land grant universities throughout the United States. Tuskegee established the first baccalaureate nursing program in the state and was also home to Alabama’s first hospital for African Americans. Washington hired Alabama’s first female licensed physician as a resident physician at Tuskegee. Most notably, Tuskegee was the site of a remarkable development in American biochemistry history: its microbiology laboratory was the only one relied upon by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (the organization known today as the March of Dimes) to produce the HeLa cell cultures employed in the national field trials for the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Chandler and Powell are also interested in correcting a long-held but false historical perception that Tuskegee University was the location for the shameful and infamous US Public Health Service study of untreated syphilis.
Meticulously researched, this book is filled with previously undocumented information taken directly from the vast Tuskegee University archives. Readers will gain a new appreciation for how Tuskegee’s people and institutions have influenced community health, food science, and national medical life throughout the twentieth century.
Through Federal Welfare Reform, Congress directed states to aggressively enforce statutory rape laws. Family planning professionals deal with many adolescent clients, and their support for such ...enforcement or willingness to report is unclear. The authors of this study examined current attitudes and practices of family planning program managers (FPPMs) about statutory rape law enforcement, including current reporting practices. In 1997, all 77 local Kansas Title X FPPMs were surveyed. Structured telephone interviews were conducted with 10 FPPMs to add detail to quantitative responses. Sixty‐eight FPPMs responded to the written survey (88%). Of these, 79% supported aggressive enforcement, and 43% thought enforcement would reduce adolescent pregnancy rates. With increased enforcement, 38% believed teenagers would be discouraged from seeking reproductive health care, compared to 41% who believed they would not. Among key informants, all of whom were FPPMs, willingness to report cases was mixed, with those who would report wanting the flexibility to judge on a case‐by‐case basis. For those not reporting cases, confidentiality concerns overrode beliefs in any positive outcome of enforcement. Kansas Title X FPPMs strongly supported aggressive enforcement, but had mixed beliefs about negative consequences. Among those interviewed, there were also mixed beliefs and practices about reporting. Reporting from FPPMs will be sporadic and arbitrary unless protocols are developed and laws are clarified.
Context: The 1996 federal welfare reform law calls for the reduction of adolescent pregnancy rates through aggressive enforcement of statutory rape laws at the local and state level. Yet there are ...few quantitative data on district attorneys' attitudes toward enforcement and related issues. Methods: Anonymous surveys were mailed to all 105 Kansas district attorneys in 1997; 92 surveys were returned. In-depth telephone interviews were conducted with seven of the attorneys. Results: Most of the respondents (74%) favored aggressive enforcement, but just 37% believed the public would support aggressive enforcement. Only 24% believed enforcement would reduce adolescent pregnancy. Fifty-seven percent supported the current legal age of consent in Kansas (16 years). Fifty-three percent thought the law should not specify age differences between the partners. Most (77%) believed the law should protect sexually active minors, and that paternity acknowledgments should be admissible evidence in prosecutions (78%). Only 17% believed that enforcement would discourage adolescents from seeking health care. Conclusions: The potential impact of statutory rape prosecution on reproductive and psychological health should be considered in each case. Educating law enforcement officials about adolescent health care issues and encouraging them to consult with professionals in health and psychological fields may help to minimize the potentially negative effects of enforcement on adolescents' reproductive health.
The purpose of this study was to chemically and texturally characterize ceramic oil jar sherds from North Carolina Shipwreck 31CR314 and to explore the utility of environmental scanning electron ...microscopy/X-ray energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM/EDS) for that purpose. The oil jar sherds, widely dispersed about Shipwreck 31CR314, are morphologically similar to each other, which suggests they could be from a single jar, but with so few joins this could not be concluded with certainty. Therefore, an aim of this study was to investigate whether chemical or textural characterization of the sherds might reveal unique attributes that could distinguish individual jars; results of characterization perhaps could give information on their origin and possibly site formation processes, such as whether environmental forces could have scattered sherds of a single jar during and after sinking of the ship. Previous studies have indicated this shipwreck is likely the remnants of the
Queen Anne's Revenge, flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. Sherds from this shipwreck were compared with similar oil jar sherds excavated from a land site, Brunswick Town, North Carolina, to explore the use of composition and texture as hallmarks. The chemical components of the artifacts were determined by SEM/EDS. This method of analysis is valuable for archaeological research because it is rapid and non-destructive to the ceramic artifacts. Both groups of lead-glazed coarse red earthenware sherds were texturally similar except for the glazed sides of all 31CR314 sherds that exhibited small tracks of unique crescent-shaped marks. These marks may be due to manufacturing effects and immersion in seawater, and the marks may serve as hallmarks for individual jars or potentially individual manufacturers. The sherds were generally similar in composition, but the two groups exhibited distinct differences. Brunswick Town sherds consistently contained more phosphate on unglazed sides, an average 1.46 wt.% P
2O
5, and also contained trace elements not detected in the Shipwreck 31CR314 sherds. These distinct differences could be due to different manufacturing origins for Shipwreck 31CR314 and Brunswick Town ceramics but also could reflect their subjection to different environments during use and loss prior to archaeological recovery.
