Health
Sicko in Taiwan
Last year I wrote a post about Taiwan’s National Health Insurance program, having found a thoughtful article about the costs and benefits of Taiwan’s system. Now it seems that Taiwan’s system is getting even more attention, this time from a new PBS TV series: “Sick Around the World.” (All episodes of Frontline are available for […]
NHI
NHI stands for Taiwan’s National Health Insurance program. After seeing the movie Sicko (see here) which compared US healthcare to that in several other countries, I’ve been looking for a way to get a sense of how it compares to health care here in Taiwan. (I’m not the only one, Thoth Harris wrote a post […]
Responsible Criticism
Reading the reactions to Sicko in the press is an interesting exercise. Almost without exception, including papers from both the left and the right, reviewers feel compelled to adopt the tone of voice of a disapproving adult, condemning Moore for his excesses while reluctantly conceding that the film is important and that these issues need […]
No AIDS Love Only
I liked the graphics on these Taiwanese AIDS awareness flyers:
{AIDS, graphic design}
Dioxin
The Tainan City Government yesterday issued a medical report showing that residents living near a closed factory in southern Taiwan have extremely high levels of dioxin in their blood, in one case 30 times higher than the standards accepted by the United Nations.
… According to the report, one of the surveyed residents had 951 pg. […]
Juno
In the Simpsons episode about Mojo, the helper monkey, Homer’s lifestyle slowly ruins the monkey’s health.
When a colleague asked if I would take over ownership of his 8 month old golden retriever, Juno, I was worried that the same thing would happen to her. While I’ve always gotten a minimal amount of exercise on a […]
Vaccinate
That’s a lot of needles!
China has vowed to vaccinate all of its estimated 14 billion poultry to contain the spread of bird flu.
{bird flu, chicken, China, flu, 中國}
Beveridge vs. Bismarck
Taiwanese love to complain about their country and how it is going down the drain. And they also like to idealize how much more advanced and modern America is by comparison. When I was in Taiwan this past summer, everyone was bitching about the poor quality of health care. It is true, there are a […]
Avian Flu
The latest round of avian flu may or may not be like the 1918 epidemic that killed 50 million people. We can’t know what will happen, just as we can’t know when or where a hurricane or a terrorist will strike next.
But there are some things we can do - like beef up our “first […]
Eat the Sun
A sixth of the world’s population lives on less than a dollar a day. Most of these 1.2 billion people are women, and they spend a significant amount of their day gathering fuel:
Because of their traditional responsibilities for collecting fuel and water, in many developing countries women and girls would benefit the most from access […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
