Citizen-science alliances and health social movements: contested illnesses and challenges to the dominant epidemiological paradigm -- Breast cancer: a powerful movement and a struggle for science -- Asthma, environmental factors, and environmental justice -- Gulf War-related illnesses and the hunt for causation: the "stress of war" vs. the "dirty battlefield" -- Similarities and differences among asthma, breast cancer, and Gulf War illnesses -- The new precautionary approach: a public paradigm in progress -- Implications of the contested illnesses perspective -- Conclusion: the growing environmental health movement
Summary
The increase in environmentally induced diseases and the loosening of regulation and safety measures have inspired a massive challenge to established ways of looking at health and the environment. Communities with disease clusters, women facing a growing breast cancer incidence rate, and people of color concerned about the asthma epidemic have become critical of biomedical models that emphasize the role of genetic makeup and individual lifestyle practices. Likewise, scientists have lost patience with their colleagues' and government's failure to adequately address environmental health iss
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-337) and index
