There isn’t much to add. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend.
War and health
The Lessons of Hiroshima
A friend of mine, Hugh Gusterson, wrote this imaginary speech that President Obama might consider delivering if he should decide to visit Hiroshima. Hugh is a very thoughtful person and I thought he did an excellent job here. It doesn’t look like his essay was shared very widely, so I thought I would repost it here…
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“The White House is reportedly trying to decide whether President Obama should visit Hiroshima before he leaves office. He should go. And, since he is a very busy man, I’ve written his speech for him:”
Growth of Recently Arrived Refugee Children in the U.S.
A recent paper in the journal PLoS One examined growth patterns of 982 refugee children (age 0-10 yrs) from 35 countries who were resettled in the state of Washington (Dawson-Hahn et al 2016). Using height and weight measured at the time of their overseas health examination, the authors calculated rates of stunting (low height-for-age), wasting (low weight-for-height), and overweight/obesity as markers of a child’s nutritional status. These statistics were also compared to low-income children in Washington.
To me, the most important part of the results was that rates of substandard growth were quite high among refugees. Overall, refugee children aged 0-5 years old were more likely to be wasted and stunted, and less likely to be obese in comparison to low-income children in Washington.
Figure 1 from Dawson-Hahn et al
Syria, After the War
“Conscience cannot stand much violence. Once thoroughly broken down, who is he that can repair the damage?” – Frederick Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom” (1855, Chapter XI)
The war in Syria has to end, eventually. However, the tragic reality is that the damage is likely to last for decades.
Woman and child in Douma, Syria in Dec 2014. (AFP Photo/ Abd Doumany)
Yesterday, The New York Times reported that in the past few days “tens of thousands of civilians” have fled the city of Aleppo as the Syrian military, aided by Russian jets, have tried to reclaim the area. This is only the latest wave of civilians being forcibly displaced by the war. Altogether, the UN estimates that more than half of Syrians have been displaced from their homes at least once. Some of these have crossed into other countries, while the rest remain internally displaced.
“It’s never too late” to do the right thing: UXO in Laos
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Laos on Sunday, foreshadowing a visit by President Obama sometime this autumn. It will be the first ever visit by a U.S. President to Laos. There are probably several reasons for the visit, including strengthening ties, checking Chinese power in the region, etc. Most relevant to me is the hope that more will be done to alleviate some of the damage done during the war years, especially by removing leftover unexploded ordnance (UXO).
A CNN article mentions two emotions that Americans might feel toward President Obama’s position towards Laos: guilt and optimism. It quotes Channapha Khamvongsa, who founded he NGO Legacies of War, which works to raise awareness of UXO in Laos. Continue reading
One Example of Agent Orange’s Legacy
This film — Chau, Beyond the Lines — has been nominated for an Academy award in the category of short documentary. I’m not particularly interested in such awards, but in this case I’m grateful to learn of this film and that it raises awareness of how the effects of the Vietnam War continue to linger.
Year in Review: Top Posts of 2015
Congolese children play on a destroyed military tank in Kibumba, DRC. Source: Prime Collective.
These were the most viewed posts of the year. It wasn’t the biggest year for this blog in terms of number of visitors, but there were a few highlights. Themes included war, human frailty, sex and love. I ranked them below, with #1 being the most read.
13) …And They Shall Beat Their Tanks into Playgrounds (Mar 24th, 70 words)
A simple collection of photos that I thought would inspire hope. “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”
12) Thoughts on PTS and “Moral Injuries” (Jun 24th, 898 words)
“If there is any good news, perhaps it’s that individuals who suffer a moral injury must, almost by definition, have some deep reservations about certain acts of violence. After all, one’s sense of morality cannot be injured if it didn’t exist in the first place. Secondly, the concept of ‘injury’ implies that healing is possible.”
11) Did the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Affect Child Growth? (Jun 1st, 705 words)
Yes. A look at some old data.
10) Courage and the Past (Apr 20th, 710 words)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ― James Baldwin
9) Confronting Human Frailty (Mar 4th, 557 words)
Seeking lessons from the Tragic and Utopian perspectives of human nature.
8) “The Fundamental Connection That We All Share” (Jul 28th, 222 words)
Very short post on President Barack Obama’s observing famous fossils in human evolution. All people have evolved from our common origins. We’re all connected.
7) “To Tame the Savageness of Man” (Aug 4th, 981 words)
Another attempt at finding hope. “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” –Robert F. Kennedy, on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination (1968)
The Modern Scourge of Civilized Men
“Nothing is more useless in developing a nation’s economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized men.”
– King Hussein, Address at Tulane University, April 1976 (Link)
Beware the Myth of War
Beware the mythic narrative of war. From Chris Hedges:
“If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the eight schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan a week ago and listen to the wails of their parents we would not be able to repeat clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan people. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press is as guilty as Hollywood. During the start of the Iraq war, television reports gave us the visceral thrill of force and hid from us the effects of bullets, tank rounds, iron fragmentation bombs and artillery rounds. We tasted a bit of war’s exhilaration, but were protected from seeing what war actually does.
The wounded, the crippled and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted off stage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myth of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. And those whom fate has decreed must face war’s effects often turn and flee.”
Some Lessons on War and Forced Displacement
Lessons from our SSHB conference on The Human Biology of Poverty, held in Lisbon earlier this month. Thanks to Ines Varela Silva for putting together a great conference in a beautiful country.
This is not a complete list, but a copy and paste of some of the highlights from our session:
Presentations
- War and forced displacement: Embodiment of conflict-related experiences (Patrick Clarkin)
- Female minor refugees: Are they underprivileged by forensic age estimation? (Bianca Gelbrich)
- War and its effect on the changes in lifestyles: a case of Croatia (Sasa Missoni)
- Secular trends of somatic development in Abkhazian children and adolescents for the last decades (Elena Godina)
- Do stress biomarkers track poverty, stress, and trauma? Evaluating war-affected youth (Amelia Sancilio)
- Refugees in Portugal: What do we know? (Cristina Santinho and Ines Varela-Silva)
- Poster: Maya Guatemalan children in refugee camps in Mexico. How bad is their growth status? (Aya Ueno, Barry Bogin, Faith Warner and Ines Varela-Silva)
Summary of the session
Below are some reasons why our research is important and how it is relevant for the public in general.
Patrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D. 