The Genetic Menace

Download or read book Silent Travelers written by Alan M. Kraut and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1995-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the American tradition of suspicion of the unassimilated, from the cholera outbreak of the 1830s through the great waves of immigration that began in the 1890s, to the recent past, when the erroneous association of Haitians with the AIDS virus brought widespread panic and discrimination. Kraut (history, American U.) found that new immigrant populations--made up of impoverished laborers living in urban America's least sanitary conditions--have been victims of illness rather than its progenitors, yet the medical establishment has often blamed epidemics on immigrants' traditions, ethnic habits, or genetic heritage. Originally published in hardcover by Basic Books in 1994. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR