HUBRIS AND HEALTH

Assumptions about the timeless nature of African societies and their disease burden are most directly addressed by Tamara Giles-Vernick and Stephanie Rupp in their essay on human interaction with the great ape hosts of retroviruses and hemorrhagic fevers in the northern forests of central Africa. In his discussion of the categories of thought which encouraged mass treatment of sleeping sickness, Lachenal declares that 'race... in the African colonial context', led public health authorities to ignore the iatrogenic effects of vaccination on individuals. [...]a vital lesson from historical study of global health in Africa is that the end of colonialism did not eradicate the tendency to subordinate individual welfare and to overlook the complexity of social and cultural context.