Tazin Karim, doctoral candidate in medical anthropology, was recently awarded the Disciplinary Leadership Endowment Fellowship from the Council of Graduate Students and the Graduate School. This award recognizes her participation and demonstrated leadership in the field of anthropology including professional societies at the local, national and international levels. In particular, Taz was acknowledged for her involvement with the Society for Medical Anthropology and her role as chair of a special interest group on Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Research.

The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to announce that Adrianne Daggett (PhD Candidate) has just been awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for her project titled “Early Iron Age Social and Economic Organization in Sowa Pan, Botswana.”

Adrianne will conduct archaeological survey and excavation at two sites near the present-day village of Mosu in northeastern Botswana. This project will investigate economic behavior and settlement organization patterns at these sites to understand the relationship between prehistoric farming settlements of this area and the emerging state-level societies of the time. The project will also investigate whether hunter-gatherers interacted with the Mosu farming settlements, and if so, how they may have contributed to the regional political economy. The research will take a critical look at the late first millennium AD, a crucial period of southern African prehistory during which complex societies and intercontinental trading networks were emerging. Fieldwork will be conducted in an area far from the Shashe-Limpopo Basin, the locale generally considered to be the center of cultural, political, and economic developments for this time period. Because of the distances between communities and the relative parity in natural resources among areas, reason exists to question the presumptions that the Shashe-Limpopo Basin claimed predominance in the southern African political economy from the earliest times, and that all communities of the late first millennium exercised the same cultural and social practices. Comparative research of this kind will improve understanding of the relationship between populated areas in prehistoric southern Africa as well as of localized processes of social and economic development.

EAST LANSING, Mich. —  A Michigan State University anthropologist who spent more than a year infiltrating the black market for human kidneys has published the first in-depth study describing the often horrific experiences of poor people who were victims of organ trafficking.

Monir Moniruzzaman interviewed 33 kidney sellers in his native Bangladesh and found they typically didn’t get the money they were promised and were plagued with serious health problems that prevented them from working, shame and depression.

The study, which appears in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Moniruzzaman’s decade-long research in the field describe a growing worldwide market for body parts that include kidneys, parts of livers and even corneas.

Moniruzzaman said the people selling their organs are exploited by unethical brokers and recipients who are often Bangladeshi-born foreign nationals living in places such as the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Because organ-selling is illegal, the brokers forge documents indicating the recipient and seller are related and claim the act is a family donation.

Doctors, hospital officials and drug companies turn a blind eye to the illicit act because they profit along with the broker and, of course, the recipient, said Moniruzzaman, who questioned many of the people involved.

Most of the 33 Bangladeshi sellers in his study had a kidney removed across the border in India. Generally, the poor seller and the wealthy recipient met at a medical facility and the transplant was performed at that time, he said.

“This is a serious form of exploitation of impoverished people, whose bodily organs become market commodities to prolong the lives of the wealthy few,” said Moniruzzaman, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences.

Moniruzzaman recently delivered his research findings and recommendations on human organ trafficking to both the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

His briefing included the experiences of Mehedi Hasan, a 23-year-old rickshaw puller who sold part of his liver to a wealthy recipient in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka. Like many poor Third World residents, Hasan did not know what a liver was. The broker exploited this fact and told Hasan the sale would make him rich.

The recipient died soon after the transplant. Hasan received only part of the money he was promised and is now too sick to work, walk long distances or even breathe properly. He thinks often of killing himself, Moniruzzaman said.

Organ brokers typically snag the unwitting sellers through deceptive advertisements. One ad, in a Bangladeshi newspaper, falsely promised to reward a kidney seller with a visa to the United States. Moniruzzaman collected more than 1,200 similar newspaper ads for the study; see two examples here.

The organ trade is thriving in Bangladesh, a country where 78 percent of residents live on less than $2 a day. The average quoted price of a kidney is 100,000 taka ($1,400) – a figure that has gradually dropped due to an abundant supply from the poor majority, Moniruzzaman said.

One Bangladeshi woman advertised to sell a cornea so she could feed her family, saying she needed only one eye to see. That transplant didn’t happen, but Moniruzzaman said there have been cases of corneas being sold.

Moniruzzaman said it’s important to note that most sellers do not make “autonomous choices” to sell their organs, but instead are manipulated and coerced. He said the global trade of organs is a fairly recent phenomenon – made possible by advances in medical technology in the past 30 years – that represents a form of gross exploitation unseen in human history.

To combat organ trafficking, he recommends, among other steps:

• Global governance. The U.S. Department of State should play an active role in putting pressure on national affairs and foreign governments to acknowledge the problem and insisting on crackdowns on brokers, recipients, doctors and businesspeople involved in the trade.
• Transparency and accountability. The State Department should ensure all medical centers have a transplantation registry and verify the relationship between recipients and donors.
• Cadaveric donation. Countries such as Bangladesh that do not have a system in which people can donate organs when they die should implement these systems. The United States should provide aid and encourage cadaveric organ donation through educational institutions, news media and religious centers.

Realistically, organ trafficking will never be eliminated, Moniruzzaman told lawmakers on the Human Rights Commission.

“But with our collaborative efforts,” he said, “we can significantly reduce this gross violation of human rights.”

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Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

Contact: Andy Henion, University Relations, Office: (517) 355-3294, Cell: (517) 281-6949, Andy.Henion@ur.msu.edu; Monir Moniruzzaman, Anthropology, Office: (517) 355-0189, monir@msu.edu

Published: March 12, 2012 

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The Department of Anthropology is saddened to report that Professor Emeritus Iwao Ishino, former chair of the Department of Anthropology, passed away on Tuesday, February 28th at the age 90.  A memorial reception will be held at the MSU University Club at 2:30 pm on Friday March 2.

The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to announce that Tazin Karim, doctoral candidate in the medical anthropology program, was recently awarded the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This grant will fund her ongoing project which looks at the circulation and use of ADHD medications among US college students. Studies show that up to 35% of college students have illicitly taken a prescription stimulant such as Adderall or Vivance at some point during their college years. Taz’s research draws on interview and participant observation data to understand why this behavior is occurring and how is actively influencing expectations of mental health and academic performance in American Higher Education.

Taz is the first student from Michigan State University to receive this award since 2008 and the first ever from the Medical Anthropology Program.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Just six months after launching, a virtual forum started by a group of Michigan State University graduate students has become the first of its kind to contract with a leading higher-education publication.

GradHacker.org was started by grad students Katy Meyers and Alex Galarza to help their cohorts “hack” grad school one blog post at a time. The blog is now an official partner of the higher-education publication, Inside Higher Ed.

“There are university-based grad blogs and there are academic ones, but there wasn’t anything on a broad scale talking about grad school and the universal problems, solutions and issues we deal with,” said Meyers, a doctoral student in anthropology.

Along with Meyers and Galarza, eight fulltime bloggers and a handful of guest bloggers – some from MSU and some from other universities – have cultivated a loyal following of eager, curious and sometimes frustrated graduate students. Posts appear three times a week and receive thousands of hits a day – especially after contracting with IHE.

So what do bloggers write about? Life, said Meyers. Dating. Publishing a dissertation. Embracing failure. Establishing boundaries. Accepting criticism. Creating an “academic identity” and personal brand. Mostly: Real life graduate student stuff from people who understand.

Meyers’ most popular post discussed using her blog, “Bones Don’t Lie,” as an academic publication. She argued in a GradHacker post that since her blog is peer reviewed, it should count as published research. And a post by another GradHacker blogger was picked up by “Science” magazine.

“I hear from many of our grad student readers that their programs are great at intellectual exploration, but much less so on the practicalities of preparing for the job market, learning how to finish up a dissertation and launching a career,” said Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed. “That’s why grad students gravitate to GradHacker: It’s what they’re missing from other sources.”

The original concept for the blog came from the Cultural Informatics Initiative, a platform for interdisciplinary scholarly collaboration and communication created by MSU’s Department of Anthropology and MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online.

Five fellows of the program, which included Meyers, wanted to explore new technology and other survival tools for grad school. So they hosted a boot camp, which quickly filled up. The fellows started blogging regularly, which morphed into GradHacker. MATRIX and various MSU departments continue to fund boot camps.

It’s all part of building an academic identity, Meyers and Galarza said.

“What’s great about the Web is we have mediums now that can help us address the gap between academics who are of a celebrity status and people like us who want to put our work out there,” said Galarza, a doctoral candidate in history.

GradHacker.org will expand beyond its blog this month when Galarza and fulltime blogger Andrea Zellner, a doctoral student in educational psychology/education technology, will launch a podcast.

“It’s beneficial for faculty to see what we’re dealing with. This is a very different grad school from the one they went through,” Meyers said. “And it’s good for universities to see what we’re worried about, what problems we’re having – from personal to academic – so they can better support grad students.”

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Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

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The Detroit Free Press recently featured the Michigan State University Nubian Bioarchaeology Laboratory, which houses over 400 medieval Nubian skeletons on loan from the British Museum. A team of graduate students from MSU joined the archaeological excavation in Sudan before the completion of the Merowe Dam, which flooded the region. Graduate and undergraduate researchers, interns, and volunteers have a unique experience to study human remains from a population about which little is known. Recent PhD Angela Soler was the first to write her dissertation on the collection, and ABD student Carolyn Hurst is currently managing the lab to collect data for her research, focusing on child and adolescent remains. Over a dozen undergraduates currently work in the Nubian Bioarchaeology Lab, many of whom intend to go on to graduate school. Through the research on the skeletal collection, we have a better understanding of diet, disease, and death for this medieval population.

Youtube on MichiganStateU page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiABozKmUOw&feature=uploademail

MSU News stories: http://news.msu.edu/story/10361/&topic_id=10; http://news.msu.edu/story/10360

Detroit Free Press: http://www.freep.com/article/20120221/NEWS06/202210346/MSU-undergrads-look-for-clues-about-Nubian-society-in-old-skeletons?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE