Sublime

The American body rejects the Black body.

A reporter named Harvey Longo wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine about the two paraplegics called “Poetic Injustice” and won a Pulitzer Prize. Science was mentioned in the article as “The genius younger brother” and “The hope of the family.”

David Freedman, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science,” Atlantic, October 4, 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/.

a belief

This is America, we would say to ourselves, there is no need to worry. And we would be wrong.

In 1918, a ship named the Talune docked in the port of Apia, in Western Samoa. The New Zealand officers and crew knew that some of their passengers were ill, with symptoms that resembled the deadly disease known variously as influenza, Spanish influenza, and the flu. Yet they told the harbormaster there were "only sniffles, but nothing serious."

Upon closer examination, three in four AIDS sufferers showed evidence of some brain damage. Doctors frequently missed the damage to the central nervous system, writing off the often-vague symptoms of dementia as related to stress or depression.