Monica H Green

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After this weekend's racist attacks on the EU, I've written a column about the moral obligation to stop posting on X.

Oh no, wait, I wrote it *two years ago* when it was blatantly obvious what was going on and how it would get much much worse.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

UPDATE: Another Chicago-area church has put up an immigration-themed Nativity scene.

A church member at Urban Village Church sent this one along, where Mary, Joseph and Jesus are gone and replaced with a sign that reads: “Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in hiding.”

Our DNA, Our Sovereignty: Reclaiming Genetic Data in Indian Country Native genetic data has been taken, studied, and stored often without tribal consent. TCUs can lead the effort to change the paradigm.

2/2 but good in that more Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students know about and wish to talk about this and overall Indigenous Data sovereignty!! tribalcollegejournal.org/our-dna-our-...

I know nothing about them. What's the story?

Thanks to all who are reading & engaging w/ this 🧵. It seems that b/c I added a comment to the 🧵 after it was completed, for some people the 🧵 diverts & stops at that comment instead of proceeding to its original end. Maybe if you enter midstream here, you can see the whole thing. #GlobalHealth

Sen. Mark Kelly: “He’s trying to silence me, but he’s not silencing me. I will do my job every single day whether this president wants to kill me, hang me, execute me, or shut me up. I’m not going to shut up.”

Neither are we, sir!
#ProudBlue #Pinks #TrumpIsUnfitForOffice

Informational flyers, cards, and stickers in English and Spanish for reporting ICE assaults. Also whistles on lanyards and a plastic bracelet with the helpline phone number.

Choose an injustice & fight!

Today it was assembling whistles & info cards for witnesses to ICE assaults & kidnappings.

These are ones that were given to me at a Taco Giro in Tucson on Friday. (I’ll pass those out soon) On Saturday we made more for other people.

#StandUpFightBack

For those folk interested in #histmed going to the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago next month, there will be a poster dedicated to "SHIFA–ANA: Healing Histories of Death and Disease in Anatolia." aha.confex.com/aha/2026/web...

Thread.

Spotlight on an Early Career Psychologist: Cindy Fast, PhD trains African Giant Pouched Rats to detect landmines and more Dr. Cindy Fast leads behavioral training at APOPO, a humanitarian non-profit, to work with rats to detect landmines, tuberculosis, and trapped people.

W/ apologies to those who work w/ the African Giant Pouched Rats (Cricetomys ansorgei), e.g., www.apadivisions.org/division-6/p...

🙏

This woman is a fascinating follow on the history of disease.

Do we need more work on tuberculosis (TB)? Absolutely! But issues w/ TB (or other diseases) cannot be framed solely in terms of modern colonialism. Colonialism is an amplifier to be sure. As global-warming & climate change will be as we look to the future. But history should also be our laboratory.

Exeter scholars secure significant research funding to investigate the early history of Smallpox and Measles The early histories of smallpox and measles – and the insight they might offer to contemporary health and medicine – will be under the microscope of a new research project. Pustules, Palaeogenetics an...

Citing skeptical category-nitpicking w/ respect to the history of smallpox but not acknowledging that there is also pushback against such blinkered nominalism means that readers cannot see why a project such as this one at Exeter is so groundbreaking: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h... #histmed

And it's the lack of acknowledgement of historical work *applying* the evolutionary findings of aDNA research that's the most regrettable aspect of the Blevins et al. review. For historians, changes in hosts or virulence are not mere biological curiosities. They are changed historical circumstances.

Plague's 3 historical pandemics are each tied to different phases of Empire. Grain transport is a factor (perhaps the biggest factor) in the 1st & 2nd pandemics. #PandemicThinking is shifting toward looking at the anthropogenic factors--not pernicious deliberate acts, but inadvertent consequences.

As I said to @kakape.bsky.social when he asked me some months ago what the value of studying the 3rd Plague Pandemic was, I said that it is precisely b/c plague has been "tamed" for the most part, but not defeated, that it's our best historical model for infectious disease history.

One Health is most commonly framed in terms of humans' interactions w/ domesticated animals. And it is true (so far as I know) that humans have never deliberately domesticated rats. But many rats are commensal. And marmots, who are not, likewise play huge roles in plague's pandemic phases.

Blevins et al 2026, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-025-00912-4 "Box 1 | Ancient pathogen research in the context of global health The study of ancient pathogens shows promise for understanding the evolutionary history of disease, and it is tempting to argue that this research is fundamental to alleviating infectious diseases that threaten humans today, but it is important to position ancient pathogen genomics within the context of present-day global health. The countries with the highest burden of infectious diseases suffer not from a lack of understanding of pathogen evolution but from systemic inequities such as inadequate health- care systems and limited access to clean water and sanitation[155]. For example, sub-Saharan Africa bears the highest burden of infectious diseases globally, accounting for ~24% of global infectious disease deaths despite having only 14% of the world’s population[156]. This disparity is a direct legacy of colonialism, perpetuated by systemic issues that continue to disrupt local health systems and sustain economic inequalities. Moreover, the persistence of colonial practices in global health research exacerbates these inequities by prioritizing questions and methodologies that often fail to address the needs of the most affected populations[157]."

Blevins et al 2026, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-025-00912-4 Box 1 | Ancient pathogen research in the context of global health (cont.) "To illustrate how power structures also influence the direction of ancient pathogen research, we can examine the disproportionate focus on Yersinia pestis. Today, however, plague has a negligible impact in Europe and a relatively minor impact in Africa compared with other infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which together claim millions of lives annually in low-income and middle-income countries. The overwhelming availability of well-preserved plague victims in Europe, coupled with most ancient DNA laboratories being in Europe, has led to an excessive focus on plague at the expense of other ancient pathogens. Although this focus has yielded groundbreaking methodological developments and insights into the evolutionary history and pathogenicity of Y. pestis, it is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on global health outcomes. Therefore, it is honest to frame ancient pathogen research as a means to uncover fascinating insights into the evolution of pathogenicity, rather than as a solution to contemporary infectious disease challenges. Presenting this research as a pathway to ‘solve the problem of infectious diseases today’ risks obscuring the systemic inequities driving current infectious disease burdens."

It's therefore particularly regrettable that the authors poo-poo Y. pestis as a useful historical model for exploring One Health questions that are pressing modern concerns. Y. pestis has extraordinary host tropism (ability to move into different hosts); that's how this non-human disease globalized.

I adore this, Monica!

Indeed he would. And also the fact that your written echoing of his written words have given me a kick to dive into my own writing this morning. The written word not only endures, but inspires beyond our capacity to foresee.

A large pen-drawn letter 'S' that looks like it's been formed by a scroll (often used in medieval art to contain spoken works, like speech bubbles in comics), but the scroll has been bent to shape a letter S. Inside the lines of the scroll are the words, in latin, "Scriba, littera scripta manet": write, the written letter remains (or endures).

"Write! The written letter endures!" Scribal wit at the start of financial records for London bridge in 1424. Cleverly, the scribe created the letter 'S' by folding a speech scroll, so the form of the letter conveys the meaning of the conventional proverb, "speech is fleeting but writing endures."

Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical Literature Recent studies have underlined the importance of consulting different sources to trace global histories of diseases. However, due to a lack of critical editions of medical works, leprosy is poorly und...

When it rains, it pours! More medieval disease history today. @gi-anna97.bsky.social has just brought out her FIRST BOOK! Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical Literature: The Kitāb al-Malakī and Related Texts. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... De Gruyter/Brill are having a sale. #MedievalSky

A] LOVE that independent journalists are LIFTING EACH OTHER UP

B] Follow @marisakabas.bsky.social if you don't already

C] Follow every outlet on Marisa's list:
@51st.news
@404media.co
@aftermath.site
@assignedmedia.org
@autonomynews.co
@thebarbedwire.com
@boltsmag.org / @taniel.bsky.social

[1/2]

Mixed media assemblage painting featuring a resin steampunk seahorse. The painting’s is roughly 5 inches by 7 inches and three dimensional with gears, bits of metal, fabric, and other elements framing the resin seahorse. The colours are vintage gold and bronze with green and blues representing the verdigris

Day 6 Art Advent Calendar
Steampunk Seahorse
This mixed media assemblage painting features a resin seahorse surrounded by gears, fabric, metal ocean charms, and other found objects. The colours are more gold, blue and green. #art #ArtAdventCalendar #mixedmedia #steampunk

CDC advisory panel rolls back universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation The change upends decades of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and goes against widespread public health consensus.

Remember: RFK Jr. fired his last CDC director because she refused to ram through his anti-vax agenda.

Yesterday, RFK Jr.’s handpicked vaccine skeptics threw out DECADES of settled science — and Donald Trump gave a thumbs-up.

This will hurt American kids and families.

The lives vaccines have saved in the US, in one chart Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters expl...

This is all-hands on deck. RFK Jr. wants to destroy vaccination in the US. COVID and HBV vaccination were the first step. These diseases WILL come back. And your personal vaccination status is important, but so is the coverage in your community. So up your game and fight. www.vox.com/2015/3/25/82...

Double-posting b/c this is so true but also so important to say out loud: "You have to stand up and fight. And that’s not what administrators are selected for." Thank you @miriamposner.com!

You have to stand up and fight. And that’s not what administrators are selected for. But that’s what they owe to the people who make up the institutions they represent.