An argument which Fassin made in his SMA address as well: “The aim of this article is to return to the origins of the concept [of biopolitics] and to confront the issue of life as such. This implies four shifts with respect to Foucault’s theory: (1) Politics is not only about the rules of the game of governing, but also about its stakes. (2) More than the power over life, contemporary societies are characterized by the legitimacy they attach to life. (3) Rather than a normalizing process, the intervention in lives is a production of inequalities. (4) The politics of life, then, is not only a question of governmentality and technologies, but also of meaning and values,” (Fassin 2009).

“No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse,” (Specter 2009).

“When Erica Gibson traveled to La Gloria, Mexico, for fieldwork earlier this year, she found that the emergence of swine flue had dramatically impacted the town.”

“[Juárez] is one of a few Mexican border towns quietly promoting state-of-the-art hospitals that cater to international patients–Juárez has five such facilities–and betting that refugees from the tattered U.S. health care system will come. On paper, at least, the numbers look promising: According to a 2008 study by Deloitte LLP, 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for medical care in 2007. That number is expected to reach six million by 2010,” (Cuddehe 2009).

“Making research ethical in such contexts has always been a matter of adding protections and safeguards. Perhaps being ethical in a deeper sense would involve chipping away at the gaping inequalities in power and wealth between the researchers and the researched, but almost no one wants to touch that one: not researchers, not their funders, and (sadly) not governments,” (Rennie 2009).

“At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers… inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice,” (Brown 2009).

“Without philosophy, particularly without analytical philosophy, there is no anthropology worth talking about and I feel the same way about history and historical inquiry. If we don’t have an anthropology that is read with a historical perspective on absolutely everything, including anthropology, if we don’t have an anthropology that is totally grounded in the debates within analytical philosophy and other branches of philosophy, we’ve got an intellectually impaired, maybe even empty discipline,” (Duclos 2009).

“Without ongoing social and ethical analysis, as well as careful thought by the researchers about their role in this process, the future use of psychiatric biomarkers could marginalize efforts to identify and address social and environmental factors associated with the development of antisocial and criminal behaviours in young people. It could also reinforce the use of problematic diagnoses and/or medical treatments to manage the current and anticipated behaviour of very young children. Such developments could lead to stigma and labels that affect children’s psychological development, their social and educational opportunities, and their medical care and employment options,” (Singh and Rose 2009).

“Anthropologists…have often loudly scoffed at the psychiatric definition of latah as a syndrome, suggesting it is just a defined social role of the local culture that has its own limits and and ‘rules’,” (Bell 2009).