Lock And Nguyen Chapter 1 Summary

In Chapter Four, Lock and Nguyen explored the unquestioned biological normality of the human body. They explore this by examining four cases that deal with biological and cultural outcomes. The first of these cases deals with menopause, and how women from different cultures experience different symptoms. Lock and Nguyen use research that was gathered in the mid-1980s about women from Japan, Canada, and the United States. The subjects were all women between the ages of 45-55. The results from this research showed that menopause was not difficult for United States and Japanese women. Many Japanese women did not experience hot flashes, which in the United States is one of the most common symptoms of menopause. When asked about why Japanese women have such low symptoms one doctor responded with saying, “Japanese women do not pay enough attention to their bodies,” (Lock and Nguyen 2012:87). There is also an idea that perhaps culture, the environment, or genetics have a say in menopausal symptoms. There is still the danger of using Europeans as the standard that everyone else
The case was very interesting because the disease had appeared during the 1920s. There was much debate among the scholars who studied the case about what the origin of the disease was. The anthropologist Robert Glasse studied about how the tradition of endocannibalism, the tradition among the women and children to cook and eat the bodies of the dead, began around the same time. This had turned out to be the cause of Kuru. A similar thing had happened in the United Kingdom. Cows would be fed ground up brains of deceased cows, a form or forced cannibalism. The cows would then be turned into beef and sold to the masses. This became known as “Mad Cow Disease.” Since cannibalism was found as the culprit to Kuru and “Mad Cow Disease,” the tradition was put to a stop, and potentially saved hundreds of