Inflamed
Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice
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5.0 • 1件の評価
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
'A work of exhilarating scope and relevance ... What a rare and powerful experience to feel a book in your very body' Naomi Klein
'Health is not something we can attain as individuals, for ourselves, hermetically sealed off from the world around us. An injury to one is an injury to all.'
Our bodies, societies and planet are inflamed. In this boldly original book, renowned political economist Raj Patel teams up with physician Rupa Marya to illuminate the hidden relationships between human health and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. In doing so, they offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization.
Journeying through the human body - our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems - Marya and Patel show how inflammation is connected not just to the food that we eat, the air that we breathe and access to healthcare, but is also linked to the traumatic events we experience and the very model of health that doctors practice: one which takes things apart, rather than seeking to bring ideas and lived experiences together.
Combining the latest scholarship on globalization and biology with the stories of patients in marginalized communities and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a medicine that heals what has been divided and has the potential to transform not only our bodies but the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Physician Marya, cofounder of the Do No Harm Coalition, and University of Texas research professor Patel (The Value of Nothing) examine the social and environmental causes of ill health in this thought-provoking treatise. Taking eight bodily systems in turn, they explain the basic functions of each system and how nongenetic factors contribute to malfunctions. For example, the section on the immune system describes how "age-related diseases of chronic inflammation," such as diabetes and Alzheimer's, have been linked to cellular damage caused by "stress, trauma, and environmental toxicity," and why "historically oppressed groups," such as Blacks and Indigenous Americans, had higher death rates from Covid-19. Turning to the respiratory system, Marya and Patel note that "working-class people are more likely to be exposed to higher levels of pollution and are more likely to have diseases driven by inflammation that makes that exposure more lethal." In the book's final section, they propose "deep medicine," a holistic practice designed to personalize the relationship between the patient and healer while "resisting colonial cosmology," as a means of healing illness and liberating individuals from the "prison" of oppressive systems. Though highly technical at times, this is a persuasive argument for the need to address the systemic problems that plague people's minds and bodies.
