Effects of Natural Environment
Human health is substantially affected not only by the natural environment but the socially constructed external atmosphere as well. According to Singer and Baer (2012), corporate globalization has the most negative effect on human health as it influences the creation of global warming and contributes to the spread of severe diseases such as cancer and AIDS. Medical anthropologists discovered that population health is strongly influenced by the conditions of the natural environment, theoretically with assured supplies of fresh water and food, relatively constant climate, and biodiversity.
Humanity’s Survival
People not just adapt to the conditions of the natural environment but survive in “most habitats on land surfaces around the planet” due to technoeconomic, ideological, attitudinal, and structural components of their culture (Singer & Baer, 2012, p. 208). The energy- consumptive lifestyle of “only one-fifth of the world’s population lived in countries with the highest incomes” caused by the development of technologies resulted in irretrievable and devastating outcomes of climate change (Briggs, 2004, p. 166). According to the World Health Organization, global warming causes 150,000 deaths annually and contributes to the spread of malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea (Singer & Baer, 2012). Those nations who experience a lack of access to health care, especially in Africa, face prejudice that their skin color is connected with their hygiene (Edwards, 2014). In general, its poor nations who suffer most from the consequences of climate change, however, they are nor responsible for them.
Altered Global Ecosystems
Through the entire world, multinational and state corporations in capitalist societies have currently created an altered global ecosystem. It resulted in motor vehicle pollution, fossil fuel burning, acid rains, toxic chemical wastes, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the emissions of hazardous gases such as methane and carbon dioxide. These gases prevent sun heat “from escaping from the planet” and cause global warming that provokes the spread of infectious disease in the new areas in return (Singer & Baer, 2012, p. 214). What solutions can you suggest to decelerate the expansion of infections and prevent the origin of new pathogens?
References
Briggs, C. L. (2004). Theorizing modernity conspiratorially: Science, scale, and the political economy of public discourse in explanations of a cholera epidemic. American Ethnologist, 31(2), 164-187.
Edwards, S. (2014). From miasma to Ebola: The history of racist moral panic over disease.Jezebel. Web.
Singer, M., & Baer, H. (2012). Introducing medical anthropology: A discipline in action (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.