The enculturated gene : sickle cell health politics and biological difference in West Africa / Duana Fullwiley.

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-305, 307-328) and index.

Online resource; title from e-book title screen (EBL platform, viewed January 27, 2014).

Introduction: the powers of association -- Healthy sicklers with "mild" disease: local illness affects and population-level effects -- The biosocial politics of plants and people -- Attitudes of care -- Localized biologies: mapping race and sickle cell difference in French West Africa -- Ordering illness: heterozygous "trait" suffering in the land of the mild disease -- The work of patient advocacy -- Conclusion: economic and health futures amid hope and despair.

In the 1980s, a research team led by Parisian scientists identified several unique DNA sequences, or haplotypes, linked to sickle cell anemia in African populations. After casual observations of how patients managed this painful blood disorder, the researchers in question postulated that the Senegalese type was less severe. The Enculturated Gene traces how this genetic discourse has blotted from view the roles that Senegalese patients and doctors have played in making sickle cell "mild" in a social setting where public health priorities and economic austerity programs have forced people to imp.

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