ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines link biology, ecology and sociology in a coherent explanation of sickle cell. It provides a less anthropocentric history of sickle cell, acknowledging non-humans such as mosquitoes, malaria parasites, water, plants and forests. The book explains a narrower history, being at once more anthropocentric, concentrated primarily on the United States of America, and focuses on the historically and culturally specific racialized assumptions in the US cultural system. It illustrates how struggles over human social and financial interests become linked to struggles over primordialist views. The book examines the life-and-death consequences of the misuse of sickle cell trait. It suggests that although North American and European societies continue to frame sickle cell in terms of ethnicity, the implementation of universal sickle cell screening tends to produce realities undermining this framework.
