Unnatural causes series.
(Unknown)

English

Videos in this series may be obtained separately.

Originally produced for American public television in 2008.

Originally produced by California Newsreel in 2008.

Unnatural causes sounds the alarm about the extent of our glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, Unnatural causes crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick. This is a story that implicates us all. We're spending Two trillion dollars a year and rising on healthcare, more than twice per person than the average industrialized nation. Yet American life expectancy ranks 29th in the world, behind Costa Rica. Infant mortality? Cypress, Slovenia and Malta do better. One third of Americans are obese. Chronic illness now costs American businesses more than One trillion dollars a year in lost productivity. It turns out there's much more to our health than bad habits, healthcare or unlucky genes. The social conditions in which we are born, live and work profoundly affect our well-being and longevity. Unnatural causes is a medical detective story out to solve the mystery of what's stalking and killing us before our time, especially those of us who are less affluent and darker-skinned. But its investigators keep peeling back the onion, broadening their inquiry beyond the immediate, physical causes of death to the deeper, underlying causes that lurk in our neighborhoods, our jobs and even back in history. The perpetrators, of course, aren't individuals but rather societal and institutional forces. And theirs are not impulsive crimes of passion. These are slow deaths the result of a lifetime of grinding wear and tear, thwarted ambition, segregation and neglect. But this is also a story of hope and possibility, of communities organizing to gain control over their destinies and their health. The good news is that if bad health comes from policy decisions that we as a society have made, then we can make other decisions. Some countries already have, and they are living longer, fuller lives as a result.

Video 1. When the bough breaks: The number of infants who die before their first birthday is much higher in the U.S. than in other countries. And for African Americans the rate is nearly twice as high as for white Americans. Even well-educated Black women have birth outcomes worse than white women who haven't finished high school. Why?.

Video 2. Place matters: Why is your street address such a good predictor of your health? Latino and Southeast Asian immigrants like Gwai Boonkeut have been moving into long-neglected urban neighborhoods such as those in Richmond, California, a predominantly Black city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Segregation and lack of access to jobs, nutritious foods, and safe, affordable housing have been harmful to the health of long-time African American residents, and now the newcomers health is suffering too.

Video 3. Collateral damage: Two billion people worldwide are infected with the TB bacillus, but only 9 million people a year actually get the disease. The story of the Marshall Islands can help us understand why.

Video 4. Becoming American: Recent Mexican immigrants, although poorer, tend to be healthier than the average American. They have lower rates of death, heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses, despite being less educated, earning less and having the stress of adapting to a new country and a new language. In research circles, this is the Latino paradox.

Video 5. Bad sugar: The Pima and Tohono Oodham Indians of southern Arizona have arguably the highest diabetes rates in the world half of all adults are afflicted. But a century ago, diabetes was virtually unknown here. Researchers have poked and prodded the Pima for decades in search of a biological or more recently, genetic explanation for their high rates of disease.

Video 6. Not just a paycheck: In the winter of 2006, the Electrolux Corporation closed the largest refrigerator factory in the U.S. and moved it to Juarez, Mexico, for cheaper labor. The move turned the lives of nearly 3,000 workers in Greenville, Michigan, upside down.

Video 7. In sickness and in wealth: What are the connections between healthy bodies, healthy bank accounts and skin colour? Our opening episode travels to Louisville, Kentucky, not to explore whether medical care cures us but to see why we get sick in the first place, and why patterns of health and illness reflect underlying patterns of class and racial inequities.

Originally produced,[San Francisco, Calif.], California Newsreel, c2008.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.